Temptation.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to bottle it up and let it fester and fester and fester until one day your grandma asks you to pass the potatoes and you scream, “NO GRANDMAMA, YOU CAN GET YOUR OWN F— POTATOES WITH THESE F— KNIVES THAT I’M GONNA F— THROW AT YOU.” (Gandhi, pre-bullet)
Ford’s theater.
- Ethane: MOMBYE
- Ethane: is A PLACE IN INDIA MISSPELLED
- Ethane: that got attacked by terrorists.
- Ethane: More like Bombai mirite.
Pins.
The Watergate scandal almost never happened when Nixon’s cronies refused to break into the hotel with dry lips and an upcoming deadline for their podcast, Moisturizing with the President’s Right Hand(s). Fortunately, Nixon managed to kill both birds with one stone (via the U.S. Fucking Criminal Justice System).
Full pause.
It’s time to talk about tower music. What it could’ve been. What it wasn’t. What never came to be.
We had a chance after 9/11 to create a new genre of music. Something bold that spoke to our generation—Generation Aww. Because we were the generation that saw those tragic events on TV and went “aww” for a week; maybe two weeks if you had a particularly boring life. We’ve seen it before, and how we’ve envied it. How classical-era music was born of the Renaissance. How blues were created when racism was invented. How folk music started when Peter Falk threw a guitar at a street urchin that had been bothering him but now, dead, bothered him no more. How alternative music started because “miscellaneous” was too hard to spell and “et cetera” was too pretentious. A pivotal event in history calls for a pivotal breakthrough in music. 9/11 could’ve been that pivotal event.
But we were lead astray by the sexiest, most alluring of all faults: the human ones; the ones of hubris. One catastrophe was enough but the flocks of problems and reasons for discontent multiplied. When we needed a single issue to lead the humble music scene, history failed us. And what do our children listen to? Hip hop. Thigh tussle. Rap. Liver l’accord. Clitoris clash. Hanna Montana. Idaho Schmidaho. Jaundice jangle. In short, pre-9/11 music. The last generation gave our generation the worst gift of all: Its music.
And, even when the moment is most dire for innovation in spangly instruments and quivering trebles (that’s synecdoche, mind you), no help arrives. For we had our chance, and we lost it. 9/11: It’ll never happen again goddammit.
Dial it back one more time, Joe.
Jark raced past the Time Offices, dodging the Time Eddies and hoping it wasn’t too late. The Time Fabric depended on him. He was a Time Knight, and now he glanced at his Time Piece to ascertain the Time Time. He sighed and wished the Time Marketing and Branding Department would stop relying these Time Crutch Words. Time Oh Time well.
As promised, the archives page is now existent. Something I learned by furnishing this: I’m only slightly less prolific than before, but at a much higher quality. (I’m overjoyed.)
Mazeltov.
This month, as a sidenote to you—dear reader—and your busy life, is the five-year anniversary of The Dark Balloon (formerly dotfloofy dotblog and long before that just <hao2lian />). As a result, I’ve pulled the few headers I had laying around in my backups.
- An early <hao2lian /> header. Unfortunately, no screenshot alive goes with this header, which is just as well since the theme was probably horrendous.
- A <hao2lian /> screenshot. A very subtle jab at XHTML there. It would be much later before I realized XHTML truly sucked, and the future internet would be riddled with nonsense if it ever adopted XHTML.
- One old header. Another.
- A screenshot with the previous header.
The Flickr webpages have more detailed commentary. Of course, I’ve lost everything between that point and now. Psych. I’ll run up the previous themes (even from Blogspot!) when I transfer from Wordpress to something homegrown in Python. And, yes, I am aware I have yet to upload an archives page or even a search form to this hallow institution.
The lawn mower song.
- I’m a lown mower, not a Boer.
- I go higher, I go lower.
- I’m not white, I’m not racist.
- I’m a lawn mower, I must insist.
- (Pause for breath.)
- I’m a lown mower, not a Boer.
- I like the indigenous peoples.
- I don’t build oppressive steeples.
- I’m a lawn mower, not a Boer.
- I’ve never started a single war.
- The worst thing I’ve done is stab the poor.
- (Pause for breath.)
- I’m a lawn mower, not a Boer.
- Please don’t tell me to go more slower.
- I like grammar, I have blades.
- I will cut you and your children.
Associate professor, mind you.
Ambrose PierceCERBERUS, n. — Cerberus is known to have had three heads, and some of the poets have credited him with as many as a hundred. Professor Graybill, whose clerky erudition and profound knowledge of Greek give his opinion great weight, has averaged all the estimates, and makes the number twenty-seven — a judgment that would be entirely conclusive if Professor Graybill had known (a) something about dogs, and (b) something about arithmetic.