In honor of the Tour de France (I guess): Tour de Bicycle.

This may have been my best weekend of racing yet. Saturday was especially fun because not only did J come along, but Tom and Michele came as well, and they all seemed to have a good time. I've been trying to get J to ride along with me when I run the course, but she's been chicken. But once Tom jumped in and had a great time, she and Michele had to try it too. They all looked cute in their borrowed red helmets too.

Anyway, that's not the only reason it was a good weekend. On both days (especially in contrast to last week!) I felt in control of the car, like I knew what I was doing and how to approach the course. More importantly, I felt like I was learning how to use the car and how to choose a strategy. I was generally smoother and faster than I've been before, and my times were generally not bad. I specifically asked J to watch and tell me where I looked slow or unsmooth and report back to me -- it's amazing how obvious it can be from the outside where someone's driving wrong, even when it's hard to tell from inside the car (or hard to process that information while you're driving and hard to recall it when you're done). Anyway, she was able to point out where I could go faster and drive better, and in most cases I could already tell, a sign that I'm getting better at learning as I drive.


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I have not (to some people's relief) been posting much about racing lately, mostly because I haven't been racing much (see previous annoyed posts regarding brake problems) but also because I just didn't feel like it. After a couple months of non-racing, I went to one today, just got home. It was in Packwood (huh huh packwood), which is south of Mt. Rainier. I don't go to many Packwood events because it's a longer drive, but on the other hand it's very scenic and interesting enough to not get dull. I went a different route this time which involved about 25 miles on a narrow, twisty forestry road alongside a river.

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A while back I made a post about an alleged New Order side project called Mankinds Audio Development*. I did some googling at the time and found a little more info, including a promo sheet that mentioned New Order (and several other bands) ambiguously. But an anonymous comment this week on that post led me to some more googling, where I found wikipedia entry that claims that MAD was members of Play Dead only. Assuming that's true, it's a little disappointing (and I know I'm not the only person who picked up that record after seeing "new order" scrawled on it in a music shop). but on the other hand, since I liked some of the MAD stuff, now I'm curious to dig up some music by Play Dead.

* No apostrophe

You know how with a Shakespeare play, at first the language seems weird and stilted, and you wonder how anyone could possibly take it seriously.. until you get into the story and then you don't even notice, you're in the play's world. It's the same with silent movies, I think -- it seems strange at first but, with the good ones, you get pulled into their world and you forget the medium and just watch the story. I find that with Louise Brooks anyway -- she's not just beautiful but magnetic and engaging, unequaled at drawing you into her story.


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What the hell?. how likely is it there's another electronica musician named Perkowitz? but in Germany? and how weird is it that I happened to search today and this happened to be created yesterday? what the hell.

Stop. A song I've been working on occasionally for a couple of months. It still could use some editing, and of course the vocally bit needs to be replaced with real vocals (I have the lyics about 1/4 written but I'm lousy at that). If you haven't been paying attention to the pop trash I've been listening to lately, this song may come as a surprise. The key thing to remember is the subtle distinction between good trash and bad trash; I'd like to explore good trash more. So if you want to give feedback, let me know how close I've come.

if any of you, my wonderful friends, has been thinking about how much you wanted to try autocross, you should go tomorrow (it's only 20 minutes away in Everett!) and let me share your car ;)

I had a fedex package coming this morning, a set of brake rotors so they would be here in time so my brakes would be fixed so I could race tomorrow. I paid a lot of money to make sure those rotors got here today, and I had everything arranged, the mechanic was ready to go the minute they arrived, the pads and sensors in my car, everything dependent on fedex getting those rotors here (to my mail service actually) in time. Well fedex came through, and yet somehow there was no one at my mail service to receive the package. and so, no rotors, no brake repair, no racing. dear mail service: fuck you! what the hell is a mail service for if not to receive fucking packages?! that's another fucking race missed, another day of work I'll miss next week, and one wasted overnight package delivery fee all because some asshole doesn't understand what a fucking mail service is for. yes, I obviously should have had them delivered here, but fuck, if you can't have stuff sent to your mail service, what do you have it for?

As mentioned earlier, I'm currently reading David Foster Wallace's book about infinity. It's an interesting book -- fairly dense math and intellectual history, all in DFW's very distinct voice, what with the footnotes, idiosyncratic abbreviations, authorial asides, and constant flirting with the line between reader amusement and reader annoyance that is his stock in trade. Anyway, I'll probably have more to say about it later, but for the moment just wanted to share one inverted nugget. One of his footnotes reads, in classic Wallaceian style, "There's really nothing to be done about the preceding sentence except apologize." The sentence in question reads (including the ellipsisized lead-in): "But neither Fourier nor anyone else in the early 1820s can prove that Fourier Integrals works for all f(x)'s, in part because there's still deep confusion in math about how to define the integral ... but anyway, the reason we're even mentioning the F.I. problem is that A.-L. Cauchy's work on it leads him to most of the quote-unquote rigorizing of analysis that he gets credit for, some of which rigor involves defining the integral as 'the limit of a sum' but most (= most of the rigor) concerns the convergence problems mentioned in (b) and its little Q.F.I. in the --Differential Equations part of E.G.II, specifically as those problems pertain to Fourier Series." right. Dying to read it now?

It seems to me there's not much point in reviewing something if everything there is to say about it has been said, or if no one is going to say "hay that sounds interesting I should check it out" because everyone already knows about it (or at least, the sort of people likely to be interested already know about it). Which is why it generally seems a waste of time to go about reviewing a classic film or book except from the point of view of "how this entwined interestingly with my own personal life" or something. Though every now and then I will recommend, say, Jane Austen to someone, since plenty of people formed a distaste for her in high school but would actually like her today, if they could get over that bad early experience. And so, I don't think there's that much point in my reviewing Jane Eyre except to say that, though I don't consider myself much of a Bronte fan (any of them), I liked it pretty well, and you, my friends, might feel the same. There is some kind of outside chance, maybe, that you remember poor Jane as a sort of milquetoasty put-upon governess type which sounds pretty dull. But actually, she's a girl with a bit of fire in her. She suffers patiently and then flares up without warning; and when she feels she has principle on her side, she's immovable. She impresses with that sort of quiet persistence which is not generally the stuff of heroic storytelling. And while there is plenty of silliness in her story (the object of her love mostly seems wholly unsuited to it and undeserving of it, for example; and there are some credulity-pushing coincidences best glossed over), I think you might find her worth spending some time with.

Related to my last post, I was just looking at an old conversation about the Matrix Reloaded and, though that conversation is mostly about the original movie, I do suggest that I thought reloaded was a decently fun movie. and I guess that was my original reaction. but in retrospect, it's completely forgettable, and thinking about it now depresses me. Which I guess makes me think about, say, the third Xmen movie, which I just saw and thought was a pretty good time (but unbelievably silly); but I suspect in a few months I will have entirely forgotten it and won't think much of it one way or the other. Lots of movies (and other things) can be more or less satisfying in the moment but fade quickly, like the empty calories they are. So when I tell you I just saw such-and-such and it was pretty good, take it with a grain of salt.

More than enough has already been said about The Matrix, so I'll try to be brief. Like most people, I really liked it back in the day; it was a good action movie, with lots of neat stuff. It was one of the first few DVDs I owned, simply because it was fun to put it in and watch some of the louder parts and have some mindless entertainment. But at some point I stopped watching it -- around the time its alleged sequels¹ came out. It's not very often that I think a poor sequel or remake can actually take away from a decent movie, but in this case, somehow, the anticipation and hype and sheer number of hours spent watching that crap actually left a distaste for that whole universe (and I know I'm not the only one) and I never watched the original again.

but, the other night J and I were in the mood for something loud and stupid and so we put it on. And you know what? it really is good. most of the stuff that was good the first time around is still good, even if it's no longer fresh (and has been copied a million times). "guns. lots of guns." is still amusing, the whole rescue-building-helicopter sequence is still great, and agent Smith is still a treat.² sure, repeated watchings only make more obvious all the places where bad acting combines with bad dialogue to produce some truly teeth-grinding scenes,³ and Morpheus's pretentious quasi-religious twaddle doesn't improve with time. but a well-blown-up helicopter or building is timeless, dammit. and it still does remind me of the first time I saw it, when I deliberately had found out as little as possible about the story, and the whole "world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you" thing uncoiled before my eyes. it was cool, and it still is. in spite of its creators' damndest efforts to ruin it.

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¹ Those movies had nothing to do with "The Matrix", honestly. The story ends with Neo flying around like Superman (which yes is supremely cheesy, but is over quickly).^4
2 And I'm sorry, that guy is not an elf. Second-worst elf ever (the worst being that weird chubby elf who showed up at the battle of Helm's Deep;⁵ but this is a discussion for another time).
³ I'm looking primarily at you, "Tank". Though "God damn you, Cypher!" makes me feel embarrassed every time. And Morpheus's lines are a whole other thing, but their utter silliness (and Fishburne's total scene-chewing) plays as sort of deliberate, or at least Morpheus-as-pretentious-ass doesn't seem entirely out of place, and doesn't lift me out of willing-suspension-of-disbelief as joltingly as Tank's poor delivery, lousy lines, and lower-lip-biting efforts to emote.
⁴ To those of you who may have missed my occasional footnoting, it can't be a coincidence that I'm doing it now just as I'm reading DFW's (heavily footnoted) book about Infinity.
⁵ This may be my nerdliest post ever.

One of the most interesting questions for me about Nazi Germany and WWII is: could they really have won the war? It seems to me that when you read a book that focuses on the allied side -- say, about the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park -- every hurdle is treated as being of monumental importance, with the implication that if it hadn't gone right, the war might have been lost. So, for example, when you read about Bletchley you start to suspect that without the intelligence that Turing and the others extracted, the war would have been lost. On the other hand, when you read about the Nazis, they start to look like a bunch of clowns (horrifying, villainous clowns, but clowns in the end). Both in Speer's book and one I read a while back about the relationship between Hitler and his generals, the overall sense is that Hitler was a strategic amateur who had some early victories due to his unconventional ideas but, as the war went on, was unable to make strategic decisions and unwilling to listen to any of his army experts. The decision to attack Russia (and the repeated decisions to not pull back before it was too late) just seems to ice the whole question: it seems the act of a madman. Though I've seen it asserted that even before then, Germany was already reaching its limits.

It seems to me not just a question of historical chin-stroking to wonder whether they could have won. A world in which we were only an Alan Turing or a Winston Churchill (or a luckily discovered Enigma machine or a this or a that) away from utter doom is a terrifying place. If it should happen again (and it will in one way or another, won't it), what happens if we don't have that one thing? On the other hand, a world in which Hitler's very boldness and his hypnotic control over people were ultimately his downfall, in which any man mad and power-hungry enough to gain that kind of power must inevitably suffer hubris and fail, seems reassuringly tidy. It's like the Greek tragedies of old: having been through the story (I refer here to reading/thinking about the war, not to having lived through it), and seen the villain-protagonist brought low by his own flaws, we end up, with our cathartic experience, reassured in the proper working of the universe. But are we justified in thinking that way, or should we be wondering "what if?"

I've only raced a few times in the BMW so far, and I haven't been in almost two months, so I was really looking forward to racing Sunday and Monday this weekend. So it's especially annoying that late Saturday I realized my brake pads were pretty worn down and should be replaced. It was too late to do anything about it then; and I spent yesterday hunting for reasonable pads locally yesterday without much success (the only ones in stock were not very suited to racing). I ended up ordering new ones online and will hopefully have them in before next weekend's race.

It's just icing on the cake that instead of racing yesterday I ended up doing yardwork. Dammit. Totally weak.

"Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, as the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, for the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals."

Some people would say that this has already essentially happened to us, and there's some truth to that. Certainly, there's a strain of popular culture that is basically inoffensive pablum. But that's always been woth us, and it hasn't taken over; I'd say it isn't even dominant. I think we've seen the opposite in the past ten years or so: entertainment (and other products) are increasingly niche-marketed; markets are fragmented, a version of everything for every conceivable taste and temperament. Each minor minor minority has its web sites and news sources and interest groups, and then can all carry on their self-contained lives independent of the others, except when they get in yelling matches with each other, or fight over things like TV ratings or political power. Between the extremes of blandly inoffensive and totally self-regarding lies an ideal of comity that we once, supposedly, enjoyed.

seems to be working again

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad -- as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth -- so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane -- quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot."

I haven't really had much interest in seeing any James Bond movies, old or new, in a while, but I read a review or two of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (probably in Chris Orr's Home Movies column in TNR) making it sound interesting, and not like the other movies. For one thing, it's the one movie with George Lazenby in it; for another, it's got no crazy gadgets (though there's still a beautiful Aston) and less than the usual quota of Bondian over-the-topness (though it still has it: the villain is training a hypnotic army of beautiful women to unleash biological warfare, and 007 gets to sleep with several of the hypnotic honeys). and finally, it's the one movie where Bond falls in love and gets married. yes, married. to Diana Rigg. omg, Diana Rigg.

So that sounds pretty good. and it was, but unfortunately really lousy production prevented it being any better than passable entertainment. It's been ages since I saw one of the classic 007 movies, so I don't remember if this was typical, but it was pretty horrible. For one thing, a lot of the dialogue is dubbed. All of Lazenby's during one section of the movie, and all of Draco's I think, and some of Rigg's as well. It's painfully obvious, since their mouths don't move when they're talking, or you don't see their faces. Plus the audio on the dubbing doesn't match the atmosphere at all; you can tell the dialogue doesn't belong and it sounds awful. For another thing, a lot of the action sequences are ruined, for me anyway, by the fact that they're sped up, presumably to make them more actiony. It looks ridiculous -- did they think no one could tell? And it's not just car chases (a common ploy in older movies), but other action as well.

So the action sucks and the witty dialogue sounds lame; doesn't leave much of a 007 movie, does it? It's a shame, because it is appealing to have a more down-to-earth Bond, for a little while at least. I suppose at some point it would be fun to see some of the old Connery and Moore films, but I have lots and lots of movies on my list that sound more interesting.

For reasons not worth going into right now, I have been spending a bit of time this week poking around MySpace, particularly looking at the people who are really really really popular there, what kinds of pages they have, etc. And let's be frank: the most popular profiles on MySpace are either bands or trashy-hot girls who are or aspire to be models or strippers, and have photos showing lots of skin. My job kinda rules. There is lots to enjoy about spending some time this way (sure beats testing and debugging), but maybe the best is reading the comments left by fans on those trashy-hot pictures. E.g., look at this profile (something like 4th most popular non-band on MySpace). Here are some of the comments on her pictures.. MySpace rules.

DAMN, you should show alittle nipple.

dame girl your so fucking fine

i like every thing on you u is the most sexyst woemen ever [BEST MYSPACE COMMENT EVER]

i think ur hot

DAMN GIRL U GOT SUM NICE ASS TITZ DAMN DAMN DAMN U FUKIN SEXXI