noise to signal: September 2003

NOW I've made it

Hey, look! My entry finally showed up in the IMDB!

There's also a link to my gallery of production stills from The Naked Proof. I'm in the process of editing these for a final gallery, as well as submission to magazines and galleries.

My entry ...

For least accurate fortune cookie of the month:

Guest cute cat

Lucy, resplendent among stuffed animals, does her best Olympia imitation.

We'll take your merely creepy snapshot...

And turn it into a truly horrific painting!

Bellevue Botanical Garden

A beautiful summer afternoon -- in, uh, late September -- at the Bellevue Botanical Garden with Miz Becky and her parents.

But.... uh... what is it?

From The Stranger's classified section this week.

L'shana Tovah

And happy new year! 5764 already. It seems like it turned 5763 just yesterday.

May we all see more peace and understanding in the new year.

Now that's a good message

What every neighborhood needs: A child-sized pimp costume for halloween.

It's on sale, too, for a very reasonable $39.99. Your little Snoop Dogg wannabe won't have to pimp-slap many of his bizzitches to work up enough benjamins for this outfit.

Seriously, though, what can one say about this? Yeesh.

(on the plus side, his outfit does go nicely with my site's color scheme... maybe they have one in my size?)

(Via Mr. Barry)

UPDATE: I was showing this to Miz Becky just now and we discovered that there's not just one costume... there are four child pimp daddy costumes for sale.

"Last days, Dave," she said.

That's my kind of girl

Daughter Helps Mom in Dog Attack

WAYMART, Pa. (AP) - A woman being viciously attacked by a large dog said she was saved from further harm when her 13-year-old daughter distracted the canine by screaming "You want a piece of me?" and kicking it repeatedly in the head.

Full story here.

Nice place to sleep

I wake up at 6:00. I head for the shower. I come out of the shower and slide open the closet door to put my clothes in the laundry basket. And who glares up at me because I woke him up?

Ya shoulda seen this one coming

The makers of Kazaa (popular file-sharing software similar to Napster in concept) are suing the RIAA... for copyright violation... for using unlicensed copies of Kazaa to snoop out file sharers.

That's beautiful.

Complete story here.

Mimi made me snort

Or, I suppose, technically LT did. From the latest entry at Mimi Smartypants:

I had to listen to a two-year-old voice mail from LT, where he pretended to be one Doctor Pouchenbaggen, inquiring about his upcoming article in the fake urology journal, Schlöng, called "Dein Scrotum Saccen, Das Noblebaggen." It cracks me up every time because who doesn't like fake German accents and scrotum jokes? No one, that's who. Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee or fake German accents and scrotum jokes.

Fall sunset

Yes, the ugly reality is becoming unavoidable: we're in the death of the year.

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder, and Miz Becky and I are trying to nail down our plans for our annual trip to visit my parents in Honolulu.

Our schedules are a little more constraining than usual this year, which means that the only time we're going to be able to go is around the "high season" between that goyishe holiday and the end of the year.

But who am I to complain? I don't have to go visit my parents in Pierre, or Denver, or Columbus...

Future Me

Want to write an e-mail to yourself, to be sent at some future date? Future Me has the solution.

The public entries are alternately fascinating and drab, as you might expect.

(via coudal.com)

E.C. Manning Provincial Park, BC

Well, we're back from our Sekrit Mission... did you miss us? Of course you did. And now I can 'fess up that we weren't on a particularly Sekrit Mission, just a few days of a Fresh Air Experience at Manning Park with some friends. You know the drill: Hiking, canoeing, reading, eating, and sleeping. Along with a bit of tennis and darts.

Somewhere in all of that I managed to take a few photos. Imagine!

What is love?

The last thing someone said in the dream I just woke up from (in a heavy New York Italian accent):

We were trying to figure out what to do to thank my parents for all their help with the wedding. And my friend said "you stand up during the party, thank them for their help, and wish them your love." I said "Fuck that. What is love? Love is food." So we cooked them a nice meal.

We here at Noise to Signal will be on hiatus for a few days, on a secret mission in the Canadian wilderness. We'll debrief with you when we return. In the meantime, spread the love. Or the butter. Whichever.

Preview of the past

I'm nearly done editing and scanning and working on the photos from my cousin's wedding, from way back in June.

Here's a preview of the madness to come, with the brother-thing showing his true colors whilst being completely ignored by my mom and Miz Becky:

Last night's walk home

I want a death ray!

Check out the newest creation from the boys at Brotron Labs:

It's quite a beautiful thing.

You must, of course, also check out the movie of the Electrolux Death Ray in action! (Quicktime, 5.2mb)

Despite my better judgement, I've sent them e-mail asking how much one would set me back. Wouldn't it look sharp in our living room? Or perhaps roof-mounted on the Protegé?

(Via Rosebaby.)

Lies and damn lies

Here's a good rundown of Bush administration lies over the last week, from the good folks at The Nation.

A couple of excerpts:

Let's start with Dick Cheney. He appeared on Meet The Press and was asked by host Tim Russert if there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. He replied, "Of course, we've had the story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack. But we've never been able to develop any more of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know." This was a deceptive answer. Shortly after 9/11, Czech intelligence officials did say they had a report from a source--a single source--that Atta had met with this Iraqi intelligence official in April 2001. Subsequent media reports in the United States noted that the source was an Arab student who was not considered particularly reliable. The FBI investigated and found nothing to substantiate the report of the meeting. In fact, the FBI concluded that Atta was most likely in Florida at the time of the supposed meeting, and the CIA questioned the existence of this meeting. (Even if there had been a meeting, one could not tell what it meant unless it was known what was said--and no one, not even Cheney, has claimed to know what might have transpired.)

Moreover, on October 21, 2002, The New York Times reported that Czech President Vaclav Havel "quietly told the White House he has concluded that there is no evidence to confirm earlier reports" of the meeting. And it seemed that Atta had gone to Prague in June 2000, not April 2001. "Now," the paper noted, "some Czech and German officials say that their best explanation of why Mr. Atta came to Prague was to get a cheap airfare to the United States."

[ . . . ]

Last, but not least, George W. Bush. September is back-to-school time, and Bush hit the road to promote his education policies. During a speech at a Nashville elementary school, he hailed his education record by noting that "the budget for next year boosts funding for elementary and secondary education to $53.1 billion. That's a 26-percent increase since I took office. In other words, we understand that resources need to flow to help solve the problems." A few things were untrue in these remarks. Bush's proposed elementary and secondary education budget for next year is $34.9 billion, not $53.1 billion, according to his own Department of Education. It's his total proposed education budget that is $53.1 billion. More importantly, there is no next-year "boost" in this budget. Elementary and secondary education received $35.8 billion in 2003. Bush's 2004 budget cuts that back nearly a billion dollars, and the overall education spending in his budget is the same as the 2003 level.

Lost in Translation

First, a vignette: I'm heading through the lobby of the Seven Gables looking for a water fountain. An employee is blocking the way of a young woman holding a brown paper bag.

"You can't bring that in here."

"Uh, no, I need to..."

"You can't. It's outside food."

"No, I need to -- "

He cuts her off. "You can't bring outside food into the theater."

She turns slightly pink. "No, it's, uh, kinda... girl stuff."

"Oh." He steps back and looks over to the door, nervously. "OK."

Lost in Translation was really quite wonderful. A lot has already been written about it -- Elvis Mitchell's review in the NY Times is good, as is Moira's article on Ms. Coppola.

There's only two things I'd like to add: first, that anyone who's ever been alone in a strange city, trying to figure out how to fill the hours between whatever it is you're there doing — or trying to figure out what you're doing with your life in general — will understand these characters.

The second thing is to mention how beautifully this movie is filmed. Every shot is a demonstration of the cinematographer's art. Whether that's due to Lance Acord or Ms. Coppola herself (who is quite a good photographer, on top of her other talents) I don't know — I suspect it's both — but I'm probably going to have to see it again just catch the plot elements I missed the first time around because I was so enthralled with the visuals.

Capsule review: Alternately melancholy, funny, and romantic. Go see it. I loved it. I'm going to see it again.

Mmmm, that *does* look good.

As Miz Becky said, "when even the food stylist can't make it look good for the photo, you've got a problem."

A couple of big-head-Edgar photos

It's nice to see him enjoying the new cat tree. He wasn't using it for a while after we got it — preferring to hang out on the back of the wingback chair and leave his hair there.

Last weekend, though, I took care of Janel's cats while she and Vince were in Vancouver. Part of her instructions involved giving Tio "as much catnip as he wants". When I brought the jar over to where he was sitting by the window, he ran back to where the jar had been sitting on the floor and rolled over on his back, looking for all the world like a catnip ho waiting for a fix.

As I rode the bus home, I realized that he had run back to where he had been getting the catnip — maybe that would make Edgar use the cat tree!

One good dusting of catnip later, and he started interacting with it... playing on it... finally last night he decided that he'd rather sleep in the cat tree than with us in the bed.

Sometimes the little furry bastards give us the illusion that we're in control.

George's Journal

From M@B:

Sometimes the politics of the grand ol' US of A really gets me miffed. So I let off some steam this summer by creating this little comic called George's Journal.

Happy birthday to me

Also Lorenzo de' Medici (1449), Maurice Chevalier (1888), Margaret Hamilton (1902), Jesse Owens (1913), George Jones (1931), Michael Ondaatje (1943), and Barry White (1944).

And God bless Johnny Cash, who died early this morning. He only had to spend four months away from June Carter Cash, which is something of a blessing. In memoriam, go watch his video for the Trent Reznor song "Hurt".

My memory of 9/11/2001

I was sitting right here, in my bathrobe, reading e-mail. The phone rang. Debra said "I knew you'd be awake and I had to call someone." I hadn't seen the news, but a quick scan of the news services chilled and confused me. We chatted for a few minutes, then she hung up.

I watched the news progress, and decided that the best thing for me would be to act as normally as possible. I went to work, but spent most of the day watching the live feed on MSNBC.

The next day, I wrote a letter to the editor, and sent it to several newspapers. The Seattle P-I published it on the 14th:

The events in New York and Washington, D.C., are a terrible tragedy for our country. My heart is with the families and friends of all those who were affected.

The deaths and injuries people sustained are all the more tragic because the blame for their deaths should be laid on the decades of U.S. foreign policy that created an environment where an attack of this magnitude could be mounted.

The United States has spent years going into South and Central America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, destabilizing governments, supporting thuggish dictators and playing games. When people didn't quite have the skills needed to spread terror most effectively, we brought them to Fort Benning, Ga., to train at the School of the Americas.

For years, our arrogance allowed us to believe that the chaos and fear we created would stay inside the countries we wanted to affect. Tuesday, that arrogance was proven tragically hollow.

We may eventually track down the people who directed this individual attack.

But the blood of the victims is on our own hands.

In the weeks after it was published, several people I knew well or casually came up to me and thanked me for my letter. "I thought I was the only person who felt that way" was a common comment.

Miz Becky and I headed out on a previously-planned trip around northeastern Oregon the day the letter was published. A few days later, in Halfway, I checked our answering machine at home to see if there were any messages. There were two: one from someone I had never met, thanking me for my letter, and another one that was less positive:

"Your, uh, letter indicates that you are a pacifist anti-american motherfucker, and as an old Navy SEAL, I can guarantee you I know where you live, and you're a fucking dead man."

You can hear my first death threat for yourself, if you like.

Now, at this point it's obvious that it was nothing more than a crank call designed to scare me. And it did — I've never been quite as comfortable sending a letter to the editor since.

But even more disturbing is how clearly it defined the deep divide that was going to split the USA over the next few years — how blindingly angry people on both ends of the political spectrum have become. If someone had told me at that moment that we were going to unilaterally engage in a New Vietnam in Iraq 18 months later, I wouldn't have been surprised.

What's saddest to me, on this anniversary, is that for one brief beautiful moment, we had the sympathies of the rest of the world. Vigils were held all over the world. We had a chance to join with the rest of the world, and to start working on real solutions to the anti-american hatred we had been stirring up for years.

Sadly, we went in the opposite direction. Instead of containing anti-american sentiment, it's spread. Instead of reducing the power of the hateful minority of radical Muslims, we've helped their recruiting programs. Instead of joining together as a country to move forward, we've become more deeply divided than ever before.

Shame on us for dishonoring the memory of the people who died in the terrorist attacks two years ago.

Call me Ishmael

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.

(Mr. Melville, of course. I'd add that I also like to listen to Coltrane obsessively, which of course Mr. Melville never had the benefit of.)

great logo

Is this not one of the cutest logos you've ever seen?

It's for a company that sells organic foods, which makes the ladybugs particularly appropriate.

A tree grows in downtown Seattle

I have no comment on this essay.

Hey, I resemble that accusation:

This past summer, I almost lost my husband, the man I love desperately. Not in a car crash. Not to SARS. Not to another woman, and no, not even to golf.

Tragically, I almost lost him to digital photography. I was just this side of becoming a digi-widow. Day after day, night after night, the camera was his de facto companion. He'd be out at all hours, his Nikon Coolpix 5000 strapped around his neck, lens cap dangling, hand intimately caressing the case, thumb ever-quivering above the shutter button.

[ . . . ]

Leaving the house, he'd catch the reflection on the doorknob.

Click.

"Oh, that leaf. The inherent beauty, the absolute perfection."

Click.

"Wait, don't get in the car yet. The juxtaposition of the antenna against the garage door -- it's fantastic."

Click.

Click. Click. Click.

Full essay here. (free registration required)

Hey, kids!

The lab guys are giving away free masks!

Is it a CLM to let people know about the free masks in a meeting?

Chad's response: "Dave has fun at work. None of the rest of us have fun at work."

Ah, winter.

Kirstie is getting ready for winter:

We have just had the den, where the woodstove lives, wallpapered at last, and now we are finishing up the painting. It will be a pleasant place to sit all winter long, with a fire in the stove and a cat on one's knees, the snow sifting down outside and the mister in his armchair in the corner, heaping muttered poxes and imprecations upon the Bush administration.

Miz Becky at work

... sending "just one more e-mail" from her comically tilted, butter-yellow office.

I'm not sure which is worse...

The fact that they're selling Halloween costumes before the middle of September, or the fact that fat people are apparently really funny.

Ha! Ha! A fat ballerina! A fat witch! The always humorous sumo wrestler!

How much is that dolly in the window?

The one with the creepy eyes?

More photos from Tim and Heather's wedding

Fast film, an f/2 Summicron lens, and cool lighting. What more could I ask for?

I want one

From the maker:

1. a CD has a quality of keeping music for a long long time.

2. to keep freshness of food, you freeze it.

3. listening to CD with viewing it turn inside an ice cube. Can you smell the freshness?

Via style.com, and available at monoone. For $256.

Yeesh, I don't want one that badly. I just want someone I know to own one, so I can go look at it.

You shall not pass

Heather's phone sasses her.

Another lovely morning on the 520 bridge

More of wednesday's clouds

A wedding photo

I'm going to post other photos from Tim and Heather's wedding soon, but this one is so dang cute I couldn't resist posting it tonight.

This is cheap...

but damn funny. Origin unknown.

Early this morning, a devastating fire burned down the personal library of President George W. Bush.

More poignantly, the President, due to his hectic schedule, had not found time to color in the second one.

This morning's status meeting

Nice sunrise this morning

Al Franken on Letterman

Here's a hilarious clip (realvideo) of Al Franken telling the story of his recent "dust-up" with Bill O'Reilly.

piezoelectric autofocus

This is kinda cool. From the article:

1 Limited of Cambridge, UK, has found a novel way to make a thin sheet of a piezoelectric ceramic material work like a motor. It can move whatever is placed on top of it, or it can be rolled into a cylinder to grasp and move a miniature camera lens.

Read more here.

At the movies