HOV and pavement: a natural combination

April 30th, 2004 § Four comments § permalink

If you liked The Grey Album–a mashup of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album–you should definitely check out The Slack Album, which combines Jay-Z with Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted. Super-cool stuff.

Incidentally, when The Grey Album came out, I was delighted to learn that Jay-Z also calls himself “Hov’,” which has a rather different meaning in transportation circles. That discovery led me to rewrite some of the lyrics to Jay-Z’s “Public Service Announcement“:

My name is HOV, H to the O V

I drive cars with high occupancy

I guess even back then you could call me

So concerned with air quality. HOV!

I could probably be a bigger dork than I am, but I’m not sure how.

Tunak tunak

April 26th, 2004 § Comments off § permalink

This Indian music video is fantastic. If, like me, you have 11 major tasks on your to-do list for the week (not including school assignments), it should serve as a welcome distraction. Tunak tunak, tunak tunak tunak, tunak tunak tunak, tun da da da!

When reading becomes dangerous

April 21st, 2004 § Two comments § permalink

A quotation from Proust, via a rather long New Yorker article about P.G. Wodehouse:

Reading becomes dangerous when instead of waking us to the personal life of the spirit, it tends to substitute itself for it, when truth no longer appears to us as an ideal we can realize only through the intimate progress of our thought and the effort of our heart, but as a material thing, deposited between the leaves of books like honey ready-made by others, and which we have only to take the trouble of reaching for on the shelves of libraries and then savoring passively in perfect repose of body and mind.

“This has been tough weeks in that country”

April 13th, 2004 § Two comments § permalink

I applied Microsoft Word’s autosummarize feature to President Bush’s responses at tonight’s press conference. Here’s the 94-word version of his answers:

The Iraqi people need us there to help with security. Saddam Hussein was a threat. We needed to work with people. People needed to come together to work. John?

John?

People are sacrificing their lives in Iraq from different countries. It’ll change the world. We’re an open country. We’re at war. Iraq is a part of the war on terror. It’s a tough time for the American people to see that. The American people may decide to change. Now’s the time to talk about winning this war on terror. Free societies are hopeful societies.

The only flaw in this summary is that it does not urge us to remember the lessons of 9-11.

Poking my head above ground

April 6th, 2004 § Two comments § permalink

I’m still here. I’m just busy. Spring break was a few weeks ago. I spent most of it drawing large maps. Last weekend, I saw the Mark Lombardi show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; last night, I went to the Oakland A’s season opener. Now I am wrestling with TurboTax; eating fearsome quantities of trail mix; doing my laundry; and studying, studying, always studying.

Where am I?

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