Caterina.net

Good show on NPR about HOV lanes vs. people paying for access to traffic-free lanes. I hate cars, and am fascinated by traffic. From the most recent issue of Cabinet Magazine, Blocking All Lanes by Sean Dockray, Steve Rowell and Fiona Whitton:

Found a piece of paper today that said only:

• Distribution Channel Management
• Ladybugs eat aphids
• Meet individually, then collectively
• Bad experience. Sharks.

Meeting notes are my specialty.

Lisa Prentice has a show called "The Purpose of Shame" at the Or Gallery until May 21. In the Or Gallery's publication for the show there is an interview with Lisa by Christine Corlett, from which I excerpt these interesting parts:

From Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which I am reading.

Nat Torkington wrote a fun bit on SIP Chains on Amazon -- Statistically Improbably Phrases that Amazon started publishing a couple weeks back. This is terribly fun. There is only one SIP for Oryx and Crake, which I just finished reading last night: fridge magnets.

Someone asked in some forum or comments section somewhere why Moby Dick didn't have "the whiteness of the whale" as a statistically improbable phrase, and my guess is that either it only occurs once in that exact phrase in the book or that the phrase itself, made famous by Moby Dick, is now used in so many other books it's now more statistically probable. The latter seems more likely to me.

Blood Meridian's SIPs, kid didnt, didnt answer, kid spat, second corporal, aint nothin, spat into the fire manages to stage a whole laconic scene. (And in the first review, there is the phrase "the whiteness of the whale.")

A painting of, what else, meat. From the Richard Heller Gallery. It's kind of fascinating. By way of Beverly.

I don't read a lot of current books. I have a weird aversion to the books that "everybody is talking about" mostly, I think, because so many contemporary books tend to get overhyped, and after 5-10 years pass no one remembers what all the fuss was about. Even my parents, who long ago were vaccinated against hype, have these bestsellers from the 70s and 80s whose titles you only see at the annual library book sale, never on people's laps on the train.

I like, instead, to find books that are lesser known, from smaller presses or foreign countries, and love also discovering books that are lurking just behind the canon, like the ones in this New York Review of Books series. Gosh, there are so many there I want to read. You too?

I decided to have a look at some of the posts that were left in draft form, and there were hundreds of them. Among them this poem:

(via Here Comes Everybody)

It doesn't make sense that a movie that I didn't particularly like (La Captive by Chantal Ackerman) should be loitering around in my brain for so long. I saw it two days ago, and it hasn't stopped coming up for more thinking. The last movie that I saw by Ackerman was Je tu il elle, in college.

Lia passed the baton and so here I go:

Total volume of music on my computer:

35.4 GB. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, or, since we ought to retire hackneyed expressions and invent new ones, that's just the feet of the witch sticking out from under Dorothy Gale's house. I've got about 2,000 CDs that are not on my computer, and that are awaiting digitization. I know it's about 2,000 because I had two sets of shelves that allegedly held 1,000 CDs each. But it's hard to cull stuff like this. Do I get rid of those Klaus Nomi CDs or not? Ding dong the witch is dead in falsetto!

The last CD I bought: Keren Ann, La Disparition. I like this one a lot more than her second one, Nolita

Song playing right now: Friday the Thirteenth by Atomic Rooster. I've recently gotten into earnest 70s British hard rock proto-metal bands. There's all that fantastic, and dated, organ and orchestral brass. Makes me want to watch movies that use a lot of zoom lenses and groovy light shows. Like Nicholas Roeg movies. Also, look at this great cover art.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

• Wild is the Wind, the David Bowie interpretation. It's an old jazz standard, but this particular version makes me want to make a movie, it is so perfect for a sound track.
• Ghost by Neutral Milk Hotel. The whole album In the Aeroplane over the sea is fantastic. There's this kind of psychedelic religiosity, with Anne Frank as the deity.
• Golf Girl by Caravan. I'm addicted to this song this week. Ask me again next week, and I'll have a different song. Also, anyone who really wants to understand the Caterina listening menu should just go visit my page on Last.fm. Now if Last.fm could record all the songs I play on my iPod, then I'd have total coverage. :)

I'm going to have to get back to you on this. All I can think of are entire albums. Whatever happened to ye old Desert Island Disc meme?

Three people to whom I’m passing the baton:

George, Stewart (though he has to get his site working again, sheesh), John. Five was just too many, and so many of my blogpals have already been hit up.

It's going to be painful, but after it's all over, it's going to be good for us. $4 a gallon:

It would be a little strap that you attach to your light saber, that goes around your wrist, so you don't drop it as much.

It says here that Umberto Eco "has a paunch and unexpectedly small, geisha-like feet." Thank you Judith.

I'm not very far into the book, but one of the themes seems to be the experience of the world, and the failure of attempts to tell it, to name it.