Nick

Billie Holiday

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I have been saving this one for a little while.  About two weeks ago I had to go to the storage unit to look through my stuff in order to review my library to see what remains of my sci-fi section.  (I have always maintained a library but I tend to give a lot of books away.)  For personal and professional reasons I want to re-read the writings in Asimov’s Foundation Universe and the Dune series.  I did have all of the Asimov at one point but could only find the Foundation series minus book one – no Robot books.  I did find my special copy of Foundation and Earth.  It is thankfully back in print now, though it was out of print for years.  I picked up mine from my room in a hotel made famous by a former president.  They had not one, but three hardback copies on one of the four bookcases in the room. I liberated two and gave them both good homes.  I remember having four Dune books but I cannot remember them all.  I love the world of Dune and I did enjoy the first two or three books but I remember having trouble maintaining interest during God Emperor of Dune…

I bought another copy of Foundation and began the re-read.  I started Foundation’s Edge last night.  I am really enjoying re-visiting this world.  Even though I know and remember and anticipate the major plot shifts, it is still a great ride.  My familiarity with the books makes the professional side of the re-read a bit easier.  I am paying attention to methods of character development, landscape descriptions, and descriptions of space travel, as well as keeping an open ear to how the broad spans of time are used, layered, and referenced.  The Dune re-read will have a similar focus.

While digging through paper bags, boxes, and suitcases full of books – I did come across a few other interesting items.  The find that beat all other finds probably ever in the history of my life – three cassette tapes.  I found more than three, but these three are special and magical.  This is really about one tape, the first tape, my first real exposure to Billie Holiday.

I cannot say for sure but I believe it was 1989 and i was 13 or 14.  I took German in high school and despite attending a gigantic school, language classes tended have smaller class sizes.  There were two German teachers and most people found one they liked and stuck with it.  I was a Frau Fredette (sp?) man and I had the same teacher and the same classmates for three years running.  One of my classmates who became one of my buddies was Jen.

I had just started my several year affair with the Beat Writers and was at that time still reading and studying On the Road.  Jen and I talked about this a little bit.  I don’t remember exactly how it came up, if it was me or her that brought it up, but we talked about the scene where Sal Paradise was driving away from his recent Mexican lover without any real goodbye or explanation and he is fantasizing about Lover Man and wishing that he could make someone feel like that someday.  Not necessarily make them feel that sadness, but feel that depth and intensity that would be the precursors for such a level of sadness.  It came up that I did not know this song, nor was I really familiar with Billie Holliday.

Some short period of time later, Jen brought me a mix tape.  Since I have it in my hand, allow me to quote the spine, “Billie Holliday – Live Recordings (Mostly)”.  This is an amazing collection of recordings.  Not only are they mostly live, they were taped from a collection of vinyl records (!) many of which were rare.  These are very raw and full of emotion (duh) but I say that to contrast to the bulk of the studio recordings that just don’t reach the same emotional level.  This set of live recordings has (to me) a really depressing (but beautiful) current.

I was instantly in love.  I would have fallen in love with Billie no matter what, no mater what I heard first, or how old I was or what I was reading.  But, I was 14 years old, in love with Kerouac, in the midst of discovering how to live the theory of excess in all things – that I of course thought I invented.  (Like most arrogant kids who read Blake, and love the Proverbs of Hell, I only had the limited wisdom to understand one interpretation of “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”.)  Over the next few months and years as I added Miller into the mix, I had predictable habits.

But the tape, I loved this tape.  I listened to it driving alone or with others.  I listened to it in the rain.  I listened to it while i read Important Books and had Big Thoughts.  I listened to it while I drank wine on the roof.  I also listened to it with many, many girls.  Probably the trappings had little to do with it for anyone else, but the basement, the fire in the fireplace, and the Billie on the high fi – quite a bit of magic happened.

The tape I found is not the original tape I was given.  It is at least a second generation tape of that tape – maybe further down the train.  It is still in good shape, and luckily i kept the original case and liner notes. Compared to the polished studio stuff, the degradation of the tape itself or issues brought on my multiple dubbings only add another layer of beautiful ambience to the existing hisses and pops of the vinyl from which it was taken.

I mentioned three tapes.  The other two are also Billie Holiday and they too fill me with joy.  My parents found these for me and what a happy accident this turned out to be.  They bought me the two cassette collection “lady in autumn: the best of the verve years” and this is definitely my favorite collection of Billie’s studio recordings.  I have owned others and heard others, but I got rid of them all because they did not capture what I love about Billie.  These verve recordings have a lot of live material and while they do have some velvety smooth studio cuts – they maintain the deep despair that I love in her tone and delivery.  I have not taken the plunge yet, but I did finally find this exact set of verve recordings available for download on iTunes (I had never found the cds before) – and it is not polished, it is just the same recordings in a different format and I could not be more grateful that they left them alone.

I used to listen to the verve tapes on my walkman riding a bicycle on the macadam paths through the farms outside Stuttgart with a little wine and/or beer flowing in the veins and thoughts of loves past, loves lost, and loves yet to be.

When I put a few extra coins together I must buy that verve download, but more importantly, I must find an audiophile to turn my original mix tape into digital files.  Now that I found it again, it must be preserved!  If you will excuse me, i am going to set something on fire, drink wine from the bottle and find some ladies…just as long as there is a tape player nearby.

*** Written after sleep – apparently someone at NPR was up late thinking about Billie also.  I found this today.

I was just a little bit older than this guy
But not as old as this guy
Jen has the shortish blond hair and glasses

Location Revisited – an update on the digital move

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I am pretty far along in my research on moving to a self hosted WordPress environment.  I believe this will give me more of the flexibility i am looking for in terms of capability without having to also do a bunch of graphic design.

I just got off the phone with godaddy to switch my free hosting account associated with www.bone-of-contention.com from Windows to Linux.  (It helps to do your research before you go screwing around with your domain settings.  I did not check the requirements before i set-up the account.  Oops.)  That change will be completed in 24-48 hours.

The free hosting accounts at godaddy do have slightly annoying banners at the top hocking their products.  But i believe and hope that it will be tolerable for me and for you for a month or so to allow time to experiment and see if self hosting does what i hope it will do.

If the experiment works, i will happily beg you all for money shell out the dough for a paid account with no banners.

There is still nothing new for you guys to do.  The biggest question i have now is whether or not the blog can exist in two places at once (here at the free hosted site and over at the godaddy self hosted site).  I hope that it can.  I would not expect those to be integrated in any way so that updating one updates both, but it would be nice to be able to have this area stay nice and clean and ad free and “predictable” while i experiment at the new site.

Anyway, time will tell, more will be revealed.  I believe there is some feeedburner research to finish in my future.  I will let you know here before anything changes…

Misho and Nick - Library Bar, Doha, 2004

Blog Comment Spam

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I am lucky in that i have had very little spam come through the comment section of this blog, and so far, nothing that was auto-shifted to the spam folder was legitimate mail.

I do check out the spam folder though because i find it entertaining and here are the two highlights so far:

1) I’ll paraphrase – “God Bless Google for bringing me to this post, and thank you for writing it!”

Wow – awesome praise right?  This was a comment for the post WordPress Weirdness – which is about some silly momentary glitch in WordPress.  How desperate for fans do you have to be to receive a comment like this on a post like this and think “i am really reaching the people!  See how moved this new reader is!  Approve this and all future comments!!!”

2) I did not bother to translate this – but i got my first spam comment in Bulgarian!!  I was at first thrilled because i do have Bulgarian friends and i can understand a fair amount of spoken Bulgarian and Google translate and i can read Bulgarian at a second grade level so i thought, “hey, maybe it is Vlad!?” – but then i looked at the address and it was just spam.  But it was Bulgarian Spam and no one is gonna take that away from me anytime soon.

A few Bulgarian friends and Camper - Doha 2005

Password Protected

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I will use this feature from time-to-time.  If you read this blog, then i am most likely not trying to keep you from seeing whatever it is i have “hidden”.  If you want to read something password protected, let me know.

Then again – i could be trying to save you from seeing something like this:

Hard at work in Doha - 2004

Recreation…

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Tonight, and most of this week actually, i would very much like to have a shot of Bushmills and a Budweiser and a Newport, and then a shot of Jager and a Yuengling and a Newport.  (I switched to menthols after i came back from India.  Extended international travel will play hell with your cigarette brand loyalty.)

Last night was the 6 week mark on this cleansing/abstinence thing i have going on – 6 weeks without smokes, or booze, or coffee.  In general, i feel pretty good, and my teeth continue to look better and brighter.  My clothes, car, and person smell better.  And even though i have been slacking on the vigorous exercise the past 2 weeks, i am still hitting 190 on the scale and continuing to transform that weight from beer flab into muscles through not drinking beer and doing much walking and golfing.  I fit into all my fancy suits again.  The pants are a little tight at the waist on my favorite suit, but that is really a Spring/Summer affair and i should be groovy for it by then.

I am getting much more sleep than i have since probably 1990.  I am getting an average of 8 hours, and no less than 7 of solid, uninterrupted sleep (as opposed to the 4-6 i have been rocking on average for the past twenty years).  That is awesome.  But, i am having more dreams and more vivid dreams.  That is also awesome – mostly.  I am now up to 7 times in my tally of frustrating dreams.  That is right people, my subconscious is cheating and i am drinking and smoking up a storm in my sleep.  I feel that this is deeply unfair.  It is like when you dream about work.  You wake up unfulfilled, frustrated, and trying to figure out how to clock-in or otherwise bill for those hours.  I have no one to bill, i just wake up with a craving.

It passes quickly.  Oddly, i have not missed or craved coffee at all – i don’t even dream about it.  Sometimes when i smell my mom’s morning cup of coffee brewing i get a little pre-nicotine rush – but that passes quickly and does not bring up a coffee craving, just the desire for smoke.

It is the evenings that are hardest, like right now.

A quick word

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Before i began blogging, i did some comparative research between Blogger and WordPress.  Since i had never blogged, i was not entirely sure which factors would become important.  I selected WordPress for a variety of reasons, many of which i do not even remember now.  I have discovered an unintentional groovy element about WordPress that i really like – the email subscription option.  I set it up for my blog, but it was not until it was added to my buddy’s site (or i noticed that it was there) that i really felt the full effect.

I go to this site regularly and i subscribe in google reader, so at first glance email updates may seem like overkill.  But, i really enjoy when i am out and about and my iPhone makes the mail ding sound and instead of an REI or EMS promotional update or new consular information about country X (i am singed up for all of them so you never know) it is a new post from bowlegged (hey – do i have to call you bowlegged for your anonymity?).

I have enjoyed every time this has happened, but the best and i think the first time was a few weeks ago while i was sitting in my car while Lucas was in surgery.  I was trying to stay out of the way and time it right to make sure i beat Lucas back to the cage post surgery to be ready to help him as he recovered, and it was difficult to stay distracted.  While i was with him before surgery it was easier.  I pet him and rubbed him and read to him.  But when it was just me, it was harder.  Then i hear the little phone ding sound and it is a new post from bowlegged and it is the first 365 reasons post.  So i had something i wanted to read anyway, but a nice beefy read to help ease me over the hump.  True i could have used the browser on my phone to go look for that stuff, but i did not know it was there to look for, and it was nicer to have it just appear.

Maybe it is on blogger too, but i have not really seen it yet (not as comprehensive and easy at least).

Anyway, that is my thoughts for the morning.  I am off to finish the resume re-write, inshallah.

Rojonekku Shirt on Nick the Cagefighter

Check out Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts – i made this a link in case you missed the one on the right over there…

Query/Poll: How do you naviagte? (or Tags in Blogs)

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Anyone who is here reads blogs (at least one) and some of you also write your own blogs.  I am curious about the use of tags in blogging.

It seems to me that the main point of tags in blogging is to drive page hits, up a blogs interaction with search engines, and generally drive traffic to a blog.

It does not seem to me from the blogs that i read or use in research that tags are particularly useful as navigational tools within a blog.  I believe this holds true for regular as well as new readers, but these are just my impressions.  It is also conceivable that tags could be useful for navigation on a complex or poorly organized blog as well.

So far, i am not using tags.  I am using categories and i believe that is working well for now, and i think that the structures i am building will work well into the future (granted that i do still need some re-writing/re-design on my static pages).

What have your experiences been? What do you think?  Do you use tags on your blog(s)?  If so, why (driving publicity, navigation, organization)?  Do you use tags to navigate blogs you visit?  Have you wished there were tags on my blog?  Would it be helpful to you if there were tags here?  Do you want to see tags here  Do you not care about this subject in the slightest?

Any and all feedback will be welcome and appreciated!

 

Thrashin' up France

 

 

A little bit of random for you (or welcome to my head)

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I am still here, still doing ok, and still committed to writing in this blog.  I have not run for several days, but i have stayed on the abstinence plan.  I celebrated 4 weeks of cleansing on the 4th with a nice bottle of tap water!  Without thinking about the larger context, i ate a chocolate covered coffee bean in Giant.  It was awesome, but after 4 weeks with no caffeine or coffee – it took about 3 seconds before i REALLY wanted a smoke.

I am currently working on a few different, hopefully brief, personal writing projects offline that i will bring here when they are a little more advanced. {Current difficulties with the running/exercise, why i hate the holidays, the general anxiety/dread/discomfort i feel related to impending life changes, the golf basics project, and a political mash-up (voting, the state of public discourse, the “discussion” about health care reform, taxes, government spending, and more!) that will take a while to untangle into manageable chunks.}

I also still have a lot of my least favorite kind of  writing to do for work (corporate re-branding) involving my least favorite professional subject matter and format (me, my career, the resume, and the short form narrative bio).

Redesigning schematics at midnight

I have made some good progress, but i need a few more hours of dedicated but undirected writing to get more of the broad strokes down.  I will also need another brainstorming session and review of my notes and emails to jog my memory and capture some critical past events and projects.  (For example, i forgot all about developing a TV show in India, and writing and doing the voice-overs for commercials/promotional videos in Doha and India until a short work session this morning.)  Then i have to craft that mess into sections and sift and evaluate.  What should go on the website to describe capability?  What should go into the projects archive? And the challenge for long-winded bastards like me, The One Pagers!!  What gets cut from the narrative bio?  How to mash all this crap into something attractive for a resume?

Sorting out the Tents

I will get there – but i hate this.  The last time i was even asked to submit a resume to get a job was at Borders in 1998 (maybe 99 – i am no good at historical time-lines), so this is not a simple update.  It is really hard to figure out how truthful to be also.  I don’t mean “should i embellish”? I mean “should i leave most of this out”?  Will people hire a dude who has been largely self-employed for 11 years, who founded/or co-founded six companies on three continents, who is still the CEO of three of those, and a Senior Partner in another? But who only has a BA (technically three, but no one really cares about that) and is not in a higher ed program currently?

Enough.  I gotta do some head clearing with the books or the tube for a bit and sleep.

I did golf today.  The first time i played 18 holes in a long while.  I did many things that i have been working on quite well, but i could not put it/keep it all together to avoid a few of the big numbers.  After 7 holes, i was feeling good and thought, “i will break 90 again today”.  But i carded a 101/98 (there was no one out there and i played 2 balls on two holes). My best score ever is still an 82, and i did not think i would beat that, but i feel like i should be breaking 90 much more often.

More practice required…

Return

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I did make it out to run today.  Two days of slack (kinda) turned into three days of no running.  Yesterday we had a memorial service for one of my neighbors.  I really liked this man and he was among the first people in the neighborhood to be nice to me.  And, Guthrey loved him even though he always called Guthrey “Gunther”.  Guthrey did not like a huge amount of people, so it meant something that he liked this man.  It was a very nice service.  He loved golf and the course pro let us hold the ceremony on the (under repair) 14th green.   He sang in barbershop quartets and other choirs most of his life, and a great a cappella men’s choir sang three beautiful songs.  The family said words as well as some of his friends, his ashes were scattered on the course, and then we had a get together at the family’s home.  Maybe it sounds weird to say, but it was the best funeral i have ever attended.

My dad and i had to go back to the mall because the boots we bought for him yesterday were slightly defective.   We have a replacement pair coming to the house by mail this week.  Some days, i look around and say, “Wow it is only three o’clock!” Some days i turn around and say, “Holy Crackers!  How did it get to be 8 o’clock!”  Yesterday was a Holy Crackers kind of day.  {Trivia question – without using reference materials, who knows any of the etymology of “o’clock” (any small piece will do)?  I have one very simple, specific, short answer in mind, but will be pleased to check out whatever you come up with.}

I wanted to get back on track by jumping out of bed this morning and walking with Lucas and then going for a run.  I was foiled by circumstance (and laziness).  Lucas and i both slept in until 7.  I forgot that my mom was playing the Offertory at both services at her church today and that my dad was going to go and stay with her.  I don’t like to leave Lucas alone for any reason, and certainly not while he is still recovering from surgery.  His mouth seems fine and he seems totally fine, except you can tell his stitches are bothering him on his right shoulder and he will try to scratch them if no one is watching.  So, we busied ourselves with other things.  Lucas and i did our walk, had breakfast, cranked up some RPG, vacuumed, cleaned the bathroom, did 4 loads of laundry, worked on both mom and dad’s computers with updates, backups and file maintenance, replaced the “waist cinch cord” in one of their winter jackets, failed some online trivia quizzes, spread some e-cheer, and then i went running.

Ran 1.43  Pace 9’05” – despite the time off, i ran a decent pace and i made it to the top of that hill again, then i just walked it on home.

No floor exercises so far.  I may get motivated and knock them out, or i may do double duty tomorrow.

After i finally had lunch post run (about 4:30) Vance and i went to the putting green to sneak in a little practice and competition before dark.  We just did an 18 hole challenge this time, and we did a running total of skins instead of canceling each others skins out.  I came out of the gate very nicely, but lost the touch between 13-15.  I rallied a bit the final three.  Vance won, two holes up and 10 skins to 8.  I did chip one in from off the green (after rocketing past the hole on the first chip) in order to not go down another hole.  It was fun and hopefully we will do this with more regularity.  It really helps both your feel for and confidence with the shorter chips around the green.  There are so many cases now where i will chip over the fringe instead of putting through it.  Hopefully i will finish the golf basics intro soon and do some more posting on golf as well.

I will try to think up a good prize, or a longer gaming structure for a better prize…