m = Dy / Dx
(slope equals the change in y over the change in x)

where Dy = y₂ - y₁* and,
x₁ ¹ x₂

playlist:

"Lay and Love" by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy from the album The Letting Go (this you’d play it in the hen house to get them to lay double yolkers, but the indigo-girls-like harmonics are grrreat)
Actionslacks - Shining Jewels

Ben Weaver :: Geisha (unmastered, i.e. you could exfoliate on it)

bonus - Cake – The Hem of Your Garment – for the fph who likes Cake (and soup)

leaving approximately my big toe unscathed

melbourne - spencer tunick
buffalo central station

" . . she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment."

Body and Soul:

Benny Goodman
Bill Evans & Toots Thielemans
Billie Holiday
Coleman Hawkins
Eric Dolphy
Gerry Mulligan & Paul Desmond
Jason Moran
Mel Torme
Nicholas Payton
Sonny Rollins
Stan Kenton
Sun Ra
Arturo Sandoval
Birelli Lagrene
Cal Tjader
Carmen McRae
Chet Baker
Dexter Gordon
Erroll Garner
Hot Club Quintet
Joe Pass
John Coltrane
Louis Armstrong
Tete Montoliu
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers
Johnny Griffin
Johnny Smith
Keith Jarrett
Lester Young
Oscar Peterson
Sarah Vaughan
Stephane Grappelli
Woody Herman
Benny Carter
Bobby Short
Charles Mingus
Charlie Haden
Chris Potter
Diana Krall
Gary Burton
Jim Hall & Bob Brookmeyer
Art Pepper
Stan Getz & Jimmy Rowles
Ella Fitzgerald
Duke Ellington
Etta James
Gene Krupa
Joe Henderson
Joshua Redman
Maynard Ferguson
Roy Eldridge
Sonny Stitt
Frank Sinatra

bonus track - lay low - mama for k

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Spankme Boy was a close runner up. As was, ‘Where’s the wood pile?’ But the look on the monkey's face . . . I know that look.

l.c. cooke (Sam's bro) - put me down

nibbleloungemix

gotan project – Vuelvo Al Sur
thievery corp – le monde
mylo – in my arms
Hooverphonic – mad about you

In Iceland I saw the film "Capote" and, like everybody else, my jaw dropped at the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think it is somewhat implausible though that Capote would be quite so casually accepted by the hardened natures of Dick and Perry, especially in view of Capote's bubblegum lisp. However, don't make fun of Truman's voice. It's easy to arrange a story into loving myth once all the central characters are dead, and I'm not even sure if Truman was a writer at all, or just someone who sneaked around and watched. But he was funny.

Morrissey – You’re the One for Me Fatty (la la la)

(Fatty : adj. a massive but nicely shaped ass.

DID you see the fatty on him?)

for Virgo this week: Here are tips on how to get the most out of your time with the other signs of the zodiac during the next three weeks. With Sagittarius: Think bigger and go further than you normally do. With Libra: Enjoy beautiful things together. With Cancer: Make yourself easy to give to. With Taurus: Let him or her help you get less theoretical, more practical. With Aquarius: Collaborate in making the flow of ideas crackle and splash. With Capricorn: To deepen your bond, laugh at hypocrisy together. With Pisces: Join together in feeling rich emotions about a person or situation you both care about. With Gemini: Dare to express three of your different sub-personalities. With Aries: Remember that spontaneity leads to truth. With Leo: Playfully brag to each other. With Scorpio: Dive down together, going deeper than you could have by yourself.

I like the lizard - he's got a little look in his eye. What sign is he?

john hammond - push comes to shove

bonus track yoshida brothers my heart holds

image: “Boy” from Carnies, installation storybook

[cute but morbid genre, sample: pathos]

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Natalie - Carnival
Candan Erçetín - Bir Dalda Iki Kiraz / Sallasana Sallasana

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proof I'm perfect (told ya)
2.2007
(www.foundmagazine.com)

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grant lee buffalo - honey don't think

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jonesin for upsides playlist

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Owen – in the morning before work (morrissey
and a grilled cheese in one song)
terry lee hale – work song
John Lennon – Working Class Hero
Tom Waits – can’t wait to get off work (my pick, I think)
The Isley Bros – Work to Do

Boxing Ghandis – If You Love Me Why Am I Dyin?

golden pig babies

The Magnetic Fields – World Love

bonus track (think: live music selling microwaves backbeat to an impromptu looking jazzercise squaredance class out front of the McDonalds: why??)

happy new year

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The Decemberists – My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist
Tiger Baby – Chinese Fairytale
Mando Diao – To China with Love
John Mellencamp – China Girl
David Bowie – China Girl
China Drum – Somewhere Else
Ho Mei Fan – China Night
King City – Chicken in a China Shop
China Blue – Caramel Love
Gomez – Old China
Butter Flow – China Town
Carl Douglas – Kung Fu Fighting [there were funky China men from funky Chinatown la la] How can you not love the hoo ha kicks? O yeah.

a3 - woke up this morning (drillaz in the church mix) [2:59 and again 3:37 catches recatches] {basically lunar noting time}

(a3- woke up this morning - original [:51, 1:13, 2:37 have yourself a dingdong])

dylan - mama you been on my mind

music is my hot hot sex

all I know about that song is the title, because look--I dunno why but this site appeals to me. something something hot hot sex something something something YOU'LL DO something something . . . .

[I miss China?]

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I could never really see it, about Yoko. But he could. And I could see It about him. I think there are moments like those, it’s a genre of moments of a type, wherein you suspend dismissal because of the respect you have for the one half or part of something that works and is affirmed between/amongst them in some kind of way. It’s not mere politeness. It’s humility on an aesthetic level. Teach me, to See. Just give this a minute. Think about it kinda sexy and invoking New York City, where her John hit the pavement. It won’t make your regular playlist, but.

Yoko Ono – Uh,oooh

In case you didn’t know this factoid, that pic was taken hours before he died. She didn’t want to get naked. She agreed with it in principle, the point of the thing, but not so much the actual naked part so much. Considering the running-by-the-window pace at which I took that in-the-mirror pick down yesterday, um, yeah I’m feeling that.

Changed my mind, at least in part. It really is true that patience solves many things. Yesterday, I had gotten so pissy about the existence of Valentine’s Day that I was nearly imploding. It’s an excuse to sell garbage, an occasion to piss and moan that you’re not getting something that you probably wouldn’t even want if it weren’t some special day whatever, and most of all the MUSIC WAS SUCKING. I mean, Barry Manilow was being blogged yesterday. Death Cab for Cutie, fine the follow song is good, but not 100x. Etc etc. I found one good song the whole night long and then was too pissy to post it. I did my best, going the let’s contemplate actual desire for a moment rather than manufactured bullshit route, and that was the most I could muster.

Buuuut. There is an upside to everything.

1 It made me turn off the computer for once I was so pissy, I just was like Slick you and me are on the outs. Which, backhandedly helped bore me to sleep a little earlier, just enough to want to run at 11 am rather than pm. Which I did, a blissful 5 miles still enjoying CIO’s ipod and S.’s Hip collection thereon, which the crappy weather has prevented me from returning (so an upside to that too.)

2 On the way home, I eyespy a 75% sale sign in my favorite little clothing store in town which I never hardly buy anything at because it’s always too expensive. Buuuut, of course, why didn’t I think of this?, there are right now hoards of clothes left unpurchased by women who wished their lovers were going to take them out or something but who knew better. I love brown, and I love Velvet, and I love them together at $12.

3 So feeling pretty good, I resign myself to a night in the big house without conjugal visitation and go to the grocery jonesin for a grilled cheese and outa bread. And I find the other remnants of romance left unfurrowed: FLOWERS. I so wish I’d gotten there in time for the sunflowers, I love those, but there were still Asiatic lilies which I love and daffodils, all for pennies a bunch. God I love flowers.

I’m still not taking down the pissy post from earlier/yesterday [update-took the pic down--snooze ya lose] the point remains that a statement of affection, of any kind, is unnerving to make, like looking at yourself in the mirror without a miracle bra, and a “special occasion” is a stupid crutch for one thing, and doesn’t happen often enough for another. Pretend every day is a day that your emotional investments in people, romantic or otherwise, were something that you had to choose again (i.e. stop being such pussies about it, shall we all?). But I guess I’ll post the song.

Ho Hummmm, The Blow – True Affections

for Virgo this week: It's time to take down the "Under Construction" signs and clean up the messes from your works in progress. At least for now, your heart has lost its drive for further renovation and rehabilitation. Whether you think you're ready or not, then, it's time for a grand re-opening. I suggest you offer free toasters or other incentives to pull in new clients, as well as to coax disaffected old ones into returning. It may also help to put up an "Under New Management" sign.

under new management 2007

hrmmmmph no free toasters

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say hi to your mom - yeah I'm in love with an android

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Magnetic fields – if there’s such a thing as love (until 3 up a tree)
Lily Frost - Enchantment (runner up)
Corine Bailey Rae - Enchantment
Dusty Springfield – a little lovin in the mornin (wood)
Bob Dylan – Baby I’m in the Mood for You (best in show)

Bonus Track: david gray – tidal wave

If ya can't beat em VDay playlist:

David Byrne - Miss America

(I struggled in vain.)

There is always an upside (well, almost—it’s like when I told TJ, to cut him off of his relentless bragging, that nobody is stupid it’s just that other people have other talents and he scoffed and said Some People Are Just Stupid—ok ok but MOST OF THE TIME . . . etc.) to everything. No matter what I do I start to feel like jogging at about 11 pm since I got back. I’ve tried everything short of a mallet. Even ambient didn’t do squat. And then I fall asleep so hard and abruptly that I can’t remember how it happened or if I actually did something or just dreamt it. Like the 2 days of WIDEAWAKEALLTHETIMEINCLUDINGTHEPLANE on the way there made me weepy before it broke, this is making me a grumpypuss. But. I never sleep, generally. So, the upside is that I'm continually dreaming, awakesleeping.

(new dictionary)

To see a salamander in your dream, represents your ability to survive through shame, misfortune, and/or embarrassment. [we caught bunches, all over sneaking into neighborhood backyards and snagging them out of their pools]

To see hair in your dream, signifies sexual virility, seduction, sensuality, vanity, and health. It is indicative of your attitudes. [nothing about it fading (to red) and standing on end like wires]

To see or ride a scooter in your dream, suggests that you are enjoying your position of power. [that’s an old one, and I was only riding-behind]

To dream that something is on sale, represents opportunities that are readily available to you.

Iron&Wine - Woman King
(upside-highly recommended)

califone -no expectations (stones cover)

Califone's Tim Rutili has had a recurring dream since his youth, involving a giant man-bird creature, and then he discovered that the creature was actually a representation of an ancient Druid god called the heron king, which the British feared so deeply that they fled the battlefield when an effigy of the heron king was hoisted above the heads of the opposing army, and that Rutili realized that he had somehow been manifesting an image of this long-dead god figure in his head since he was a child.

dinner patter ft. insomnia opportunism

Ears-What day is it? O, right. [deflating]

TJ-The day before the Monday Morning blues. [deflating]

(pause)

TJ-[brightening] Hey I got an idea.

Me – What?

TJ – Wellll ya know how you’re not a morning person? If you slept in tomorrow, we’d be very quiet. Maybe all day. As long as you wanted!

Ears – [nodding] And the chicken tastes wonderful tonight!

The Hip - Wheatkings

For Virgo this week:

"You've been walking the ocean's edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry," writes Coleman Barks in his translation of the 13th-century poet Rumi. What he means is that you've been too tentative and inhibited in your relationship with the tidal forces of love; you've been holding back from giving your total devotion to the primal power that fuels the universe. "You must dive naked under and deeper under," Barks and Rumi continue, "a thousand times deeper!" Consider taking the poets' advice, Virgo. If you can't manage diving a thousand times deeper, try to least make it a hundred times. Happy Valentine Daze!

Oh What Ever. I just think if a man can be put on the moon 50 times and you can buy a new ass if you’re born without booty and fly to China over the north pole in one fell swoop, amidst all those scientific wonders there ought to be a way, regardless of what you’re doing or the atmospheric conditions in which you’re doing it, that curly hair could be kept from going all brunette-rooster. [And my ear still hurts.] [And I am very not fond of snow.] [Nor of being deprived of consolation.]

If ya can’t beat ‘em join ‘em Valentines Day on the blogs Playlist:

Beck – I think I’m in Love [not an Eddie Money cover]
Al Green – Love and Happiness [the, um, “backbeat” starts to be embarrassing]
Bo Diddley – Who do you love? [dancing barefoot in dirt]
The Greenhornes- Lovin in the Sun [hours on flowers hippie love]
The Tragically Hip – Last Night I dreamt You didn’t Love me
The Subways - Hide your Love Away [Beatles cover, runner up]
Nino Tempo and April Stevens - I been carrying a torch for you so long I burned a hole in my heart (la la la) [best in show]

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Buck 65 – Wicked and Weird

self help reading + music

examine the construction of the table and you'll find that each column of the table corresponds to a specific employee characteristic (or attribute in database terms). Each row corresponds to one particular employee and contains his or her information. That's all there is to it! If it helps, think of each one of these tables as a spreadsheet-style listing of information. In the previous section, we learned how tables allow us to create the framework for storing information in a database. Obviously, a database that only stored information would be useless -- we need methods to retrieve information as well. If you simply want to recall the information stored in a table, Microsoft Access allows you to open the table and scroll through the records contained within it. However, the real power of a database lies in its capabilities to answer more complex requests, or queries.

Imagine that your organization requires a simple method to create a list of those products that are currently selling above their average price. If you simply retrieved the product information table, fulfilling this task would require a large amount of sorting through data and performing calculations by hand. Additionally, you can instruct the database to only list the name and unit price of the item. Sample output is shown [stop]

user-friendly forms interface that allows users to enter information in a graphical form and have that information transparently passed to the database. The figure below provides an example of the form method of data entry. This method is less intimidating for the data entry operator but requires a little more work on the part of the database administrator. [forms. I like forms. I wonder what that means about a person, tables vs. forms.]

Jose Gonzalez – Heartbeats

Goton Project – Queremos Paz

Regina Spektor - Samson

Imogen Heap – Let Go (solo piano) [best in show]

naglag

Similar to "jetlag" to the effect of the time in between a woman nagging a man to do something, and the time he actually does it.

shitlag

Similar to jet-lag. [etc.]

lag attack

A sudden, paralyzing attack of laziness. Dude, I was gonna take the trash out, but then I had a lag attack. Now the goddamn house is filled with stog flys.

lagina

The crevice, or fleshy divot, resulting from the tension of unduly tight clothing on a man's genitalia. It specifically refers to the testicular area, and the ridge that becomes visible between the testes. Did you see that guy's 70's shorts? He's got some major lagina happening!

lagnut

a small peanut shaped piece of poo that stubbornly clings to an arse hair [Jasper gets these. If he chews one off it’s a pooptart.]

I'm on the upswing. Mama Sita, who goes home tomorrow eve, and everyone else all seem to have caught a China cough from me (knock on wood), but I just wanna run. I've got a workburst brewing in my head. Could be worse. Valentines Day is allll over the music blogs, but I'm going zen about it all as much as possible.

paula cole- feelin love

ben harper – walk away

Snowed in, everything closed. The jetlag is hitting twice as hard on the rebound wow ouch (I just finally managed to stay awake another hour in a row), the dark side of having faired pretty well in China and being peppy during the days by mid-week. The robots who yell at each other in Chinese then break dance then shoot flying saucers out of their faces at each other are a big BIG hit. As are the food stories. Snake wine with it staring at you through the bottle. Eel and alligator for sale in the Sam’s club. Cuttlefish head, eyes wide. Horse on the hotel menu. (The Judge says, “My butt is shaking just thinking about it.”)

This is what I’m listening to, cabin fevered. We’re watching TJ’s loose tooth, hoping for an event of some kind.

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mysteries of life - it's cold out
voxtrot - warmest part of winter
sebodah - cold as ice (foreigner cover)

the tragically hip - boots or hearts

There is a peninsula around here somewhere that houses a cluster of international elementary schools where Chinese kids and kids of oil riggers go to school together. I wonder how much that costs and I wonder what it would be worth to a person 15 years from now to have learned Chinese at 6 years old. Like how many licks does it take to a get to the center of a tootsie pop, I’ll never know.

I am flushing downward towards a 20 hour flight backwards in time, and into snow among a long list of other irritants and spirit festers. If I get the isle seat next to the shitter I’m going to coldclock somebody. I can clearly see how S. got blacklisted for pissy.

My camera ran out of juice before the house-sized concrete cabbage.








"Abide with Me," Thelonious Monk
"Satyagraha (Conclusion)," Philip Glass
"Incurable" - Piano Magic

My best friend's mother is dying. Today her time. What will be yesterday tomorrow for me, I guess. I hope someone is there with her now. Everyone is there. I can't think of anything on earth that would make me wish I had been "back" sooner.

The come on is “minky minky”. But it’s actually “bugsie bunnie”. “ooooh FYI.” (lol)

COI says you find out what kind of shopper/person you are. It is true. I won’t go in anything anywhere if they want me to (unless I don’t care at all in the first place, so impervious). If I see something that interests me, catches me, I pause. Then if nobody comes at me, I’ll approach. Then if someone talks to me too quickly, I shrink. I like to say hello first, finally. Then they stare quietly and I study what I’m looking at. I make up my mind. If it is a thing to buy then, I have some leverage but not more than 50/50. We’re even. I decide my actual desire level and so do they, and we stare at each other. They say X, I say Y, they say A, I say B, they say A, I say A-, they say yes, I say Happy New Year. Very quiet. By Chinese standards rather expensive. I like the old people best. The chop, they study the translation proud of the effort and craftsmanship. I go back. When at home and I want sausage, like when company is coming such as K., I think it ahead and wait for the man named Mike whose mother harps on him whose uncle is shorter than I am whose spinach ravioli I also wait for.

When Ears started kindergarten, here’s how it went. The bus comes first time, his father wants him to be brave, Ears panics, I pull him off, a common and ultimately deadly difference between X and me, of many. We play “bus” on the bed, Ears and I, it’s the hydrolic something brakes schhhhhhhh sound that freaks him, and I can do a good imitation. “The wheels on the bus go round and round.” He trusts me and gets on, a few weeks later. There are no seatbelts on a bus. I think about this the entire time it takes him to reach the school, except after awhile I lapse and think of other things in that time, what the work day holds for instance. When I find that I have not thought about him, I freeaaaaaaaaak ooooouuuuuut. A panic surge, then I have to stop it on purpose concentrating. Here everything fascinates me. It is like nowhere I have been before. I have not been everywhere, but I’ve been some places. I’ve had blankets thrown on me in a mosque bc my arms were showing. But here there is an odd familiarity in the oddity. They drop their eyes if you catch them looking, then study you hard sideways. I am already doing it too. Eye catch you! Then everything goes to sleep, I find I haven’t thought about the very few people I allow to trouble me, and I jolt. In all other ways, I am nothing but quite cranky to have to leave this place.

Today was the venders (factories), by far my favorite thing so far. I am like my father, but can’t maintain anger. I am like my mother, but can’t believe in Jesus as my Personal Savior. B. takes me to the vender that makes plastic aprons. What begins to charm me is the 3^rd man down, who started as a worker but who is deft at on-the-spot engineering. For instance, a stack of plastic aprons even in this humidity will have a static charge, and on a complicated rolling machine he has rigged a bag of rocks on a string, each one a calibrated sling shot to hold the growing roll steady against itself. We walk further on and see the machine that blows the air into the plastic to create a tube of a bubble that cools on its way upward and becomes a two-layered line that becomes a row of plastic bags. He has designed this. B. explains. I marvel, truly. We go inside past the owner’s opportunistic gardening, and the 2^nd man down from the owner looks EXACTLY like Tony Soprano if he were Chinese, track suit and gut and mia familia hospitality. They make the tea in the ‘muddy’ (clay) pot, pour the cleansing dose into the beautiful wood, pour the water into the leaves quickly (no steeping!), it all smells like earth and wood and leaves green all at once—and ya know my smeller, right? I can smell all those elements, clearly, and wonder at it again delighted. They try to give me their entire tea set wood inlay and all. I look sideways at B. and ask with my eyes, ummmmm shit (?). The owner, says B., has already left to gather tea for me. I gush. Then they offer more, short cut directions, a smaller tea set, everything they can think of. I keep gushing, asking questions about it all. B. flashes me a look I have never seen except on my own face where I can’t see it when my mother is making friends with Baptists on a plane: if you don’t stop, I am gonna smack the shit outa you. (Ohhhhh . . . sorrwwy.) I stop, but it’s kind of too late because they chase us down at the gates of the next factory with two bags full of tea and a ‘muddy’ pot for me.

Nouvelle Vague - The Forest (The Cure cover)

luo hu commercial city (o so that's what you call them)

mending bowls with cramp

Coconut Monkeyrocket - Bloops, Bleeps, Bongos & Brass