Taj Mahal on the blues:

“The blues is like compost. You put in all the garbage that happens to you in life, and like a garden, the music produces something beautiful.”

Jon Stewart on the Georgian-Russian conflict:

“Oh, War! It’s just God’s way of teaching Americans geography!”

My thoughts are after the brief quotes. Reader be warned though, the first short quotation is graphic.

From John Vidal:

I have seen hell, and it is indisputably on Rinca Island in Indonesia. This Komodo dragon-infested spot is where three British divers who got caught in a rip tide washed up last week. Far from being “misunderstood” reptiles who only “occasionally” attack humans, as my G2 colleague Jon Henley described them afterwards, the Rinca dragons engage in what must be the vilest animal practices ever witnessed by man. I met three particularly nasty ones last year. We had walked past a few harmless-looking dragons sunning themselves in the bush or lurking under the stilts of houses, and were not beyond thinking we could be friends when we reached a water hole. A large buffalo was lying on its side, clearly having been brought down by two 6ft dragons and one that was even larger. The three reptiles were crawling over it, and during the next 24 hours they proceeded to eat it alive.

The first dragon had grabbed it by its testicles and was starting to chew its way into the body from below. The second dragon was slowly forcing the buffalo’s head open and was going down its throat. The third was, as they say, going in the back door. To make an already grisly scene far worse, the whole slow-motion kill was being conducted in deep mud. After a few hours all was black - apart from the blood that occasionally bubbled up from the muddy depths, the white saliva that sometimes oozed from the buffalo’s mouth and the bright, flickering forked tongues of the three dragons, which were forever darting around. Slippery things slithered slowly over other slippery things until it was hard to tell whose tail was whose, where one body started and another stopped and who was doing what to whom. The smell was fetid, the heat intense. Every so often the buffalo shuddered and tried to rise. Was it really still alive? We watched from a few feet away, our guide armed only with a stick, transfixed and disgusted like us. Our stomachs heaved. The buffalo continued to twitch.

We left and returned several times; each time the horror was more complete. The next day, two Americans told us that the three dragons had got deep inside the buffalo, which was still twitching.

And this from Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation:

“Yunghalm relates that he saw in Java a plain far as the eye could reach entirely covered with skeletons, and took it for a battlefield; they were, however, merely the skeletons of large turtles, five feet long and three feet broad, and the same height, which come this way out of the sea in order to lay their eggs, and are then attacked by wild dogs (Canis rutilans), who with their united strength lay them on their backs, strip off their lower armour, that is, the small shell of the stomach, and so devour them alive. But often then a tiger pounces upon the dogs. Now all this misery repeats itself thousands and thousands of times, year out, year in. For this, then, these turtles are born. For whose guilt must they suffer this torment ? Where fore the whole scene of horror? To this the only answer is : it is thus that the will to live objectifies itself.”

And finally Werner Hertzog:

“Of course we are challenging nature itself, and it hits back, it just hits back,
that’s all. And that’s what is grandiose about it and we have to accept that it’s much
stronger than we are. Kinski always says it’s full of erotic elements. I don’t see
it so much as erotic, I see it more full of obscenity … And nature here is vile
and base. I wouldn’t see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and
asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just
rotting away. Of course there is a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that
is all around us. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn’t call, doesn’t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts.”

All this in response to an argument with a friend about the “beauty, intelligence, nobility, and grace inherent in the natural world”.

I don’t deny that nature cannot be those things, but is certainly not inherently those things. Indeed, as the authors above argue, the opposite is often more true.

When I look into the eyes of an animal, even the human animal, I do not see any inherent qualities - I see a deep ambiguity, a vast unknowing.

While I don’t think one should go around contemplating all the incredible amount of suffering that goes on in the natural world everyday (indeed, that would make day to day living difficult and an optimistic life impossible), I do think we should think on it now and then.

As for myself, I don’t fully accept Hertzog’s thesis that “the moon is dull” - I find it too nihilistic, too philosophically unproductive. At the same time though, I do tire of talking to people who want to simply deny that the world is a very difficult place simply because they do not have the internal fortitude to stomach the idea.

I’m testing a new plugin, and posting these photos from BBQ at Danielle’s at the same time!

You know the catchy music they play in the teaser for the movie Wall-E? From the first time i heard it, i thought it was great. I thought at the time that it was part of the film score, written especially for the pixar film. But then, I heard the same music, characterized by the three-note half-step sequence, in another preview of some sort, this time some for some sort of girly situational comedy. First, i thought that the sit com totally ripped off Wall-E. But i figured, at that point, that the music was actually an older composition that caught the attention of music directors for two completely different features. Recently, i saw the movie Brazil, a 1985 sci-fi film. Or, if your name beings with “Wiki” and ends in “Pedia”, its a dystopian black comedy. Whatever. The movie itself is quirky and fantastic, in my opinion, and sure enough, it has its own cult following. Very early in the film, there is a scene in which the camera moves quickly through a bustling office, and what do you know, that SAME fully-orchestrated up-tempo three-note sequence is coming out of the speakers. At this point, i’m convinced that this music, wherever it came from, is very high on Hollywood music directors’ go-to lists for “busy, excited working theme music”.

So this music has been bouncing around in my head for the last few weeks, and i’ve been meaning to find out where it really came from. Thank God for the internet. I tried asking people if they knew where that music came from, and all i get is blank stares. “Do you know that theme music they play in that movie trailer that’s like dum dum dummmm, dum dum da-da-dum… no?” It’s impossible to convey the actual piece of music with just your mouth, because the music has so many great elements that make it unique. It’s not just the 3 notes in sequence, its the building chords behind the sequence, the latin percussion, the crescendo of it all.

The music, as i have found out, is really just a very small beginning of the piece “Aquarela do Brasil” aka Brazil, written in 1939. The movie Brazil that i saw earlier used this song, translated into english, as the main part of its score. The song was recorded a bajillion times in a bajillion ways by everyone, usually as “Brazil”: Django, Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Chet Atkins, Arcade Fire (i know!), etc. The part that got my attention isn’t even prominent in most versions of the song, just the orchestral version as far as i know. Chasing down the origin and uses of this song has taken me so many different places because it’s used so much.

Now i want to show you this:
“Aquarela do Brasil” Samba Cartoon

This 8-minute Donald Duck cartoon comes from Saludos Amigos, a 1942 Disney cartoon with 4 segments, the finale of which is linked to above. This cartoon, the first use of the song in films (by Disney, no less, 66 years before Wall-E), is awesome. It struck me as fantastic even apart from the fact that it uses “Brasil”. Maybe i think its so great because i’m the kind of person that thinks films like Fantasia are the best use of animation ever created. A cartoon that centers around music is a worthwhile cartoon. So many elements present in that cartoon are no longer used in today’s attention deficit disorder sugar-high cartoons. Donald, decked out in his sailor garb, an american icon, digs this Portuguese-speaking stranger. We watch as they take a short stroll through colorful latin-american culture, including everything from Samba music to cigar-smoking and fine local liquors. Cartoons can’t get away with any of that these days, and if they do, they probably were created to appeal to a more mature crowd in the first place. Of course, what do i know… maybe the old Disney toons from the 40’s weren’t for the kids either, showing a suited Walt smoking a little cigarette in his office as he introduces his lovable characters.

Anyways, the next time you hear “Brasil”, you’ll know where it came from.

I hear there is this batman movie out, and everyone seems to like it. In fact, world, this is your advanced notice not to tell me about how **OMFG TEH NEU BATZ FILM POWENS***. Seriously. It’s like I’m in a George Romero movie where I’m the only living human who has yet to bask in the glory of Christian Bale in a dark rubber suit.

Which is not to say that I’m not going to see it. Just, patience world, patience.

Also, and I’m sure I’m not the first to wonder this, why did Joel Schummacher’s batsuit have nipples, but batgirl had oddly shaped pasties? What gives?

Other things I’m not enjoying and wish to hear less about:
- the soul-crushing economic DOOM that awaits the western world
- other people’s “totally awesome” summer vacations
- dogs

I’m sure after I take my up-and-coming break from work, I’ll be feeling better about all of the above. Oh, and I’ll have finally seen Batman.

No doubt I’m late to the game on this one, but I just discovered garfieldminusgarfield today.

I do still read garfield in the local fishwrap from time to time, if only to bask in its utter banality and non-humor. Now though, like so many things in life these days, someone on the internet has found a way to make it all better.

Last weekend I attended the wedding of my two close friends, Sarah and Adrian. The service was beautiful and the reception was a fantastic time - I really couldn’t have hoped for anything better for two people who truly deserved a great wedding.

Naturally, after a night of non-reflective dancing, and drinking, and general good-times, I found myself thinking over the following the next day:

1 - In some ways, being married is like being single. Both are commitments and both are in some ways non-negotiable. I found it sort of strange that the people who could change dance parters at will were the married guys (who are already taken) and the single guys (who are well, single). Since I fall into the latter category, perhaps my perspective is somewhat skewed on the former category, but personal bias not withstanding, I think wedding receptions prove the old maxim that “some commitment is better than no commitment”. Following this line of thought, one could say that dating is a kind of pseudo-commitment that could be terminated by either party at any time. That kind of ambivalence towards the future makes dating, I think, more inherently unstable than the married or single options. Hence, my new love maxim “commitment is freedom”.

2 - Unrelated to the wedding, I’m having all kinds of personal anger issues these days. My emotional reaction to everything from finding my housemate in the bath when I need to take a shower (small problem) to my love-hate relationship with my now almost year-long “temp” job (bigger problem), to my grandfather’s death (biggest problem), is to get mad. And seriously, I’m not a person who gets mad about anything. The good news is, though, that I’ve chosen to look at this emotional sea-change as a good thing. I’m embracing my anger, but I’m also trying not to take it too seriously.

3 - Somewhat related to point 2; I’ve discovered that a good way to overcome personal obstacles is to declare whatever problem I’m having a goal. For example, when I forget to buy groceries for supper the next night, all I have to do is tell myself that I was trying to set a “cooking challenge” to see what I can make with the 5 ingredients I have left in the pantry! Instant success! I think more people would be happier if they approached difficult circumstances in this way (look at the president - he’s been doing this for 8 years and he’s all smiles on TV!).

4 - I’m really neglecting this blog - so much so that I now number different ideas within a single post. It’s pathetic really. I’ve got a lot to write about, seriously. And I want to share. But I just haven’t been in the mood - I blame the weather.

5 - One thing about my life now, post-college, is that I know how to really ENJOY the things that I like and how to really AVOID the things that I don’t like. That part of adulthood is proving useful.

“Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Jacob Riis

another summer solstice has come, as my sensory data confirms. i look outside where the smoldering sun heats the chrome and metal on my car. a glowing thunderhead rolls away, and it smells like wet concrete and fresh cut grass from the afternoon rainshower. I will go home and hear and the cicadas begin their chorus in the thick damp air. a summer evening of light, the sky’s glow that stretches deep into the night hours.

my job right now is both satisfying and frustrating. I have a couple things i am working on that are actually interesting and fun, but the majority of my day is utterly boring and dumb. all i want to do is go back to summer scout day camp where we’d shoot bb guns and throw water balloons and go on the nature trail and stuff.

at least i’m not in school for the summer.

So i upgraded my blog software to WordPress 2.0, and it looks a little different on the administrative end of things. However, everything should work about the same for you folks.

Here’s some photos from my recent trip to Florida!

“nothing seems any different than before, but i’m sure everything is much better than it was.”

seen in a comment thread on slashdot. hularious. this is what life can feel like sometimes.

My grandfather passed away peacefully, if not somewhat unexpectedly,
Friday with most of his immediate family near him for his final
moments. There is so much I would like to write about Papa, about how
special he is to me and how close we were - but I’m not up to the task
just yet.

Services were held all weekend with the funeral today, and I think our
family has had about 10 hours of collective sleep over the past three
days.

So, I am exhausted - emotionally and physically. But the
services, and my family, my beautiful family, and all the people who
knew and loved Papa so well, have really helped me through this very
difficult time.

If you’re reading, please keep my family in your thoughts this
Memorial Day - the world is certainly a different place without my
grandfather in it.

You can view the memorial and obituary
here,
but I’ll post the fantastic obituary written by my father, for those
who don’t care to make the jump:

Harry was a loving and devoted husband, father and
grandfather, who possessed exceptional wisdom and wit. He was born in
the Second Ward of Lafayette Parish to Cleus P. Breaux and Amy Breaux,
nee Albarado. He was a direct descendant of the pioneer Acadian,
Vincent Brault, the first member of the Brault (Breaux) family to
immigrate from France to North America, settling in the Port Royal
area of L’ Acadie (present day Nova Scotia) in 1652; and Athanase
Breau (Breaux) a native of L’ Acadie who in 1755 eluded the British
during the infamous forced deportation of the Acadian people. In
1762, Athanase migrated to Louisiana and served as a volunteer to
Spanish Governor-General Bernado de Galvez during the American
Revolutionary War against the British as a member of the Militia of
LaFourche des Chetimachas.
Harry was raised on the family farm by loving parents of modest means.
He graduated from Scott High School in 1942, and only three years
later he earned his B.S. degree in accounting from SLI (now the
University of Louisiana at Lafayette).

He worked his way through college serving as bookkeeper for the
college cafeteria and waiting on tables. Later he was the business
manager for The Vermilion, the SLI newspaper. During this time, he
was also employed part-time by the Mike Donlon Real Estate Agency.

At SLI he served as President of the Boys Club, President of Sigma
Alpha Sigma Fraternity, Secretary of the Inter-Fraternity Council, and
was a member of the Veterans Council and the Newman Club. He was also
inducted into the Blue Key National Honor Fraternity.

Notwithstanding his small physical stature, he was a talented athlete,
and earned a place on the SLI varsity boxing team, 112 pound class.
After college he continued to compete whenever possible in adult touch
football, and fast pitch softball through the Lafayette Playground and
Park Commission.

He proudly served his state and country as a member of the National
Guard of Louisiana and the National Guard of the United States;
Medical Co. 156th Infantry. He earned an Honorable Discharge with a
rank of Sergeant E-5.

Following graduation from college, and at the behest of then SLI
President, Dr. Joel L. Fletcher, he accepted an accounting position in
the college’s business office.

In 1948 he began a respected career in the private sector, initially
with Stanolind Oil & Gas Company, which later became the Pan American
Petroleum Corporation. In 1960, he joined the British American Oil
Company, which was later acquired by the Gulf Oil Corporation. In
1982, after more than two decades with the Gulf Oil Corporation, he
retired from his final assignment as a Special Projects Analyst.

Among his civic endeavors was serving as President of the PTC at
Comeaux High School, being one of the initial benefactors for the
construction of the original St. Pius X Mission Chapel (now St. Pius X
Catholic Church) where he was a parishioner for many years, and
running as an Independent candidate for a seat on the Lafayette Parish
School Board.

His interests were many and varied. He was a keen political observer
and a voracious reader who also enjoyed the great outdoors. In
addition to his career in the oil industry, he also was at one time or
another an accomplished gardener, a cattleman and a real estate
developer. He collected antique automobiles and antique farm tools.
He lived long enough to enjoy dozens of live oaks that he personally
planted and nurtured to maturity on his homesite.
Among his greatest joys in life were the relationships he enjoyed with
his family, co-employees and friends. He especially enjoyed attending
scholastic and athletic events in which his children and grandchildren
participated, and the musical performances of his son, Dana, who was
an original member of the acclaimed Cajun band, Coteau.

During his retirement, he lovingly devoted much of his time to the
care of his parents. Though in his final years he suffered from
serious health setbacks, in his typical fashion he bravely endured in
all, and in doing so inspired all who knew and loved him.

Survivors include his beloved wife of sixty years, Lula M. Breaux, nee
Meyers; one son, Lafayette attorney, Timothy D. Breaux, and his wife
Beverly of Lafayette; two grandchildren, Jessica L. Breaux of
Lafayette and Jonathan D. Breaux of Baton Rouge, as well as numerous
nephews and nieces. He was predeceased by his parents; one sister,
Dolly M. Thomas; and his beloved youngest son, Lafayette musician,
Dana P. Breaux.

Pallbearers will be Timothy D. Breaux, Jonathan D. Breaux, Ricky J.
Thomas, Dallas J. Meyers, Mark V. Winslow and Horace D. Urquhart.
Honorary pallbearers are Milton J. Meyers and Lee Roy Guillot.

His family wishes to thank his special caregivers: Dr. S. R.
Kothapalli, M.D., Dr. Gary Guidry, M.D., Dr. John J. Mickey, M.D. and
Nurse Lynn Thigpen.

Hello, fellow Americans!

I’d like to take this opportunity to humbly extend my condolences to those of you who are not on vacation in Florida right now.

I’m right in the middle of my 4-night anniversary stay in Destin with my beautiful wife, and we are having a fabulous time. In fact, we are having so much fun, I started this post on saturday night when we got here and it has taken me until Monday to type this! So i’m signing off! later.

[Editor's note: I have removed the photos from this post and put them in a new post, which is here. Thx]

not sure where to begin. let’s start with school.
All A’s this semester. Barely. This was one of those semesters where i did just enough work to turn things in. Laughable, really. I couldn’t care less about the content of these classes i’m taking.* Four classes separate me from a diploma. I don’t even know how i’ll be able to concentrate next semester. I am sick of school. I am sick of homework. I hate LSU parking. I love the free time, the lounging around in the quad, riding bicycles for transportation, seeing my buddy Bennett every other day, drawing (some sketches to be scanned soon), taking life slowly. I love learning. I just need to get out of college. It’s about damn time.

One time, i thought about grad school. I had an advisor at Mercer** (you know, the kind that actually read your transcript and talked about your future with you) who set some pretty impressive goals for me, indicating how my grades could get me into engineering Grad schools across the country, and he would vouch for me and write letters of recommendation. That sounds fantastic, except after i get in, i don’t want to go.

Musically, Nick Lavin and I have been working on a collection of songs of his, and the production is coming to a close. I hope to be able to finish things up soon and start pressing records by the time he goes to Europe for a month. Nick plays mostly all of the instruments on all of the tracks, with credit given to Jon Breaux for some banjo, Me for some backing vocals and percussion, and Mark Schexy for backing vocals. Instruments involved include acoustic guitar, bass guitar, banjo, harmonica, electric guitar, spoons, pots, pans, tupperware, the guitar case itself, loose change, wooden sticks, mouth horns, the african Kalimba, slide guitar, piano, and maybe a couple other things. I think the songs are quite good, and am thrilled that I had the opportunity to work with Nick on this.

I’ve been wanting to work on dad’s songs, but require access to a drum set. I worked on one of the songs for a few weeks back before christmas, and came up with something that sounded okay but I wasn’t satisfied with it. These songs have to be at least as good as the Good Morning Coffees. Someone must eternalize these songs right, and if i’m going to be the one to do it, i’m going to be as critical as if they were my own songs. I take it very seriously, even if the songs themselves aren’t very serious. Perhaps this summer a few of those can be knocked out.

First anniversary of marriage in 10 days. it’s been quite a ride. We are going on our anniversary trip to Florida this weekend into next week, and it shall be fabulous. I hope to have many photographs.

That’s all for now. hopefully i’ll get back on this more reg-lar like.

*Over the course of my college career, I have been fortunate enough to be very interested in some of my studies, which has proven to be beneficial to my GPA: if i’m interested in it, i’m definitely going to get an A in the class, simply because i remember that information better and devote my attention to it. Since i didn’t care very much about school this semester, i’m actually impressed by the fact that i happened to get five A’s.

**I have not spoken to my advisor since i’ve gotten to LSU. I’ve met the man, he taught a class that i took. But i’ve never seen him about “advising”. There’s always some glitch, some bug in my circumstances that made me have to go to see the general EE Undergrad Advisor, whose only job, it seems, is to send you away to get some paper signed by somebody in some building across campus and bring it to another somebody in some other building. All this is very impersonal and it is probably the most concrete evidence that I am a number at LSU, an ID code who pays tuition money to the bursar, then produces letter grades and Quality Points each semester to be typed into a computerized database, which will be calculated as an eventual diploma and archived in december. That’s my function. Input money. Output grades. Don’t have enough grades for a diploma? More money please. Need some more grades? Insert dollars, checks or credit cards. While you’re here, buy some textbooks, they’re marked up 500%. Stop by at our on-campus construction site, i mean, student union, and buy some overpriced food from our underpaid workers. Please give us more of your U.S. currency, legal tender across the nation, and we will give you invisible TigerCash, which can only be used within a mile’s radius of campus, only at specified vendors who have paid LSU their own U.S. currency to have the privilege to trade with these invisible TigerCash dollars. I could go on, but i’ll stop.