The Nerd's Eye View

The Daily Show, that most complete and incorruptible of news shows, has finally arrived. I thought it had arrived when former President Clinton was interviewed on there. I stand corrected, as they have just interviewed the current president of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The questioning in the short period that TDS has in order to do this seems so much more honest and relevant than what you'd find on a so-called "reputable news source". What makes it most interesting is the rumor that Mr Musharraf requested the interview, and not the other - and more traditional - way around.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just in case you were wondering what the current state of emergencies are in the world then someone in Hungary has answered your prayers. Where's the latest news of bird flu outbreaks? How many tropical storms are picking up speed in the Atlantic? Was that plutonium that just got stolen? The answer is all there. So go there and find out where to throw the weight of your fears with accuracy.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 12:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Just got back from Berkeley where I saw Massive Attack for the first time. They are one of my all time favorite bands, ever since I heard the track Unfinished Sympathy of the Blue Lines album. Yet, I have always missed their shows, always leaving the country too early or arriving too late - all until tonight when I finally got to see them.

More or less, that is. What with Massive Attack being down to two instead of three, and one of those two having just heard of the birth of his son, we were left with Robert Del Naja (aka "3D"). A quiet fellow he was basically shrouded in darkness most of the time and had an odd way of dancing that seemed to be basically punching and drumming in the air. I was surprised at the size of the band they brought on, but it worked out quite well. The were backlit by banks and banks of large LED's which undululated and hid the faces of the band. At the footlights they had a scrolling marquee with statistics comparing the Iraqi economy and our own, among other things. The net result was a bright sea washing over the faces of the crowd into the pines behind the amphitheatre.

The suprise of the show was DJ Shadow who opened for Massive Attack and (despite the "Bay Area's Own!" jingoism) was really good. I was quite impressed - unfortunately it's too late to really discuss any of it and I need to sleep.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have a few guilty pleasures (ok a lot of them, but most are hidden away from your prurient prying eyes - perverts!) but one of the ones with simultaneously the least and most guilt associated is The Family Guy. If you're not familiar, then I can't even describe it to you. It's a cartoon series marked by some of the most random humor you're ever likely to see - in many ways I think in the tradition of early Python (yes, Chuck, Monty Python). Moreso they have a tendency to take a joke outside and brutally beat it to death.

Watching that same joke being to beaten death before the 2006 graduating class at Harvard makes the beating to death of the joke even better. Make sure to watch them all, but this one especially.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It was actually warm today in SF. WARM! All day! With sun! I am still a little bit shocked at the entire experience.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

It was bound to happen sooner or later but I just had my first spill on the bike today. Coming off the trail by the canal that I take in order to avoid riding in traffic, I directed the bike through the gate towards the stairs. Of course my handle bar caught on the gate post and the wheel turned sideways as I continued forwards, reassuringly following all known laws of physics, and down the stairs.

A moment later I had bruised up my hand and scraped up knee and was laying on my back taking deep breaths. A lovely bruise was starting on the side of my left thigh where the handlebar - I assume - had hit it. The bruise has since spread down my leg, like one of those chromatography experiments we all did in chemistry class. As I lay there on the gravel, in front of the parking garage at work, I did a quick inventory of my parts and finding nothing broken I paused only to catch my breath.

I rose and finished riding to my building where I walked in with blood streaming down my leg - and felt perversely good about myself for it. As I walked to my cubicle the thing that really struck me, though, is that as I lay there a few minutes before next to the parking garage, people had been driving their cars into it and not one of the many cars had even honked or rolled down its window.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Ever since I bought the bike and have been riding it around I've had a tune in my head. It's the song that the Muppets sing in the incredible biek riding scene in the Muppets Take Manhattan. My riding partners are not as taken with this song - mostly because they have no souls. Why couldn't we fly?

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When things seem darkest, life seems to find a way of making you feel like you are just a big crybaby. For example, I've been walking around feeling sorry for myself due to the work sitiuation and some other issues. I missed my train home and had to take a later, slower, train. As we passed Sunnyvale, my commuter buddy and I were joined in our seats by a man from whom the odor ofalcohol wafted like a brick through a window. He was dishevelled but not completely shambling, and he spoke with a voice that was so gravelly as to be cartoonish (or at least like the voice of Froggy on the Little Rascals).

Claiming to be an "OG", and a Vietnam veteran (he even showed us his DVA card), he told us that his daughter had just bought him a ticket to Connecticut but that he'd given it back. He kept slapping my buddy on the knee and dispensing words of wisdom, and at some points I could barely keep myself from laughing. As I did though, I felt like a louse. I mean this was really tragic, the way this fellow had let himself go, and here I was yucking it up. I wondered if he really was a Ranger as he claimed. He got off two stops later, but the smell of him stuck with us till we got back to San Francisco. It took a ride back in the chill of the late afternoon to cleanse my nostrils of the smell nd only then was I able to put the whole thing out if my mind.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In a stunning turn of events, famed Australian preservationist, Steve Irwin is dead at 44. Oddly, he was not killed in some sort of outrageous crocodile-related incident, but by a stingray while scuba-diving. This is not to say that his death was not as outlandish and improbable as his life was. Stabbed in the heart by a stingray's barb? This is not the stuff of Wagenerian epic but it does lend itself to discussions of fate. The likelihood of something as small as the barb striking the well-protected heart is so small that one would almost think it was foul play.

Should a guy whose M.O. was basically to say (in an Australian accent), "there's the most dangerous reptile in the wooorld, let's piss it off with a stick." die that sort of blameless death? It's hard to beleive that the stingray wasn't provoked at least a little bit. The only wonder is that it wasn't said reptile, but some fish that did him in.

disclaimer: my sympathies do go out to his wife and two small kids. It's got to be tough living with that and to lose a parent is not something I would wish upon anyone. It's a pretty big loss, as I'm sure his antics brought lots of money to the Australia Zoo.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 2:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sometime in the 1980's Hollywood discovered the bike messenger, and decided to immortalize this "dying breed, urban maverick" in film. And so they gilded the model in a Kevin Bacon vehicle entitled Quicksilver. Ghastly.

So what does all this have to do with me? Well I bought a bicycle yesterday. With my car not in the best of shape and the future uncertain at work, I thought the smart thing to do would be to avoid buying a car right away and instead waiting on that. In addition of course there is the salubrious effects of riding my bike to and from work on a semi-regular basis. I won't bore you with discussions of the extra baggage I am carrying around these days, but the light biking should help, so long as I don't start stuffing my face. Phat Munkay and Beogle, if you're reading this, I know we discussed the idea of a bike in the bay area and you opined that this was a nice suicide machine. Having said all that, though, I think I'll just give it a try.

Want to know what I got? Drop me a line!

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)