The Totenberg Tapes

She's so awesome. I love how she sounds. Her back and forth, justice to justice. I love the way she says "Hamdam."

Searching for David Feinberg

I thought of a great game where we keep an empty room and constantly have an ad running on Craig's List and get a steady cycle of people moving through seeing the place and do a TV show about the people who come to look at it. Except we'll never rent it to anyone. We'll just show it constantly. I'm willing to use my room as the prospective room for rent.

So yeah, showing the place. Danielle robinson came to look. She's an artistic wall painter or something like that. Does weird fancy wall painting in the 'burbs. The burbs are weird here, man. Anyway, she's only 25. She's been doing this job for five years and then she quit and went to Australia for 3 months and now she's moving to the city where all of her friends are. She's veg. Likes organic food. She's a sucker for nice food, she said. She totally means it in the same way Becky and I do too.

She's moving in elsewhere. Sucks.

"So Long, It's Been Good To Know You" and vegan Skittles

I allowed myself to actually surf the internet tonight. Casually, not looking for anything in particular. Just floating from one idea to another words mushrooming out until i've got 8 windows and a dozen tabs in each one. I'm listening to Woody sing about fascists and realize I don't really know what fascism is. I mean, I know who Hitler is and that he was a fascist. And I know who George Bush is and that he is a fascist. But what exactly is fascism?

So of course. Wikipedia. They do have over a million articles. Britannica only has a hundred and some thousand.

Be sure to check it out because it's fascinating. There's a full-scale discussion going on. They have a message board called "Talk" and the article has been flagged.

set list

billy bragg @ society for ethical culture

STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN
A LOVER SINGS
GREETINGS TO THE NEW BRUNETTE
THE MYTH OF TRUST
JOHN BARLEYCORN
ENGLAND, HALF ENGLISH (inspired by "With God On Our Side")
THE WOLF COVERS HIS TRACKS
LIKE SOLDIERS DO
ALL YOU FASCISTS
WAY OVER YONDER IN THE MINOR KEY
INGRID BERGMAN
I'LL NEVER FORGET
DEATH OF RACHEL CORRIE
HELP SAVE THE YOUTH OF AMERICA
THE WORD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
NO POWER WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY
I KEEP FAITH (a song for Americans)
UNTITLED
BUSH WAR BLUES (from Ledbelly's "Bourgeois Blues")
TO HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT
THERE IS POWER IN A UNION
A NEW ENGLAND

I was so happy during the show. I got teary during the Woody Guthrie songs. So amazing.

I've started talking to myself. I've been doing it for some time now. Often in the third-person. It'll sometimes be just reassurance, or a cautionary note like, "Woah, watch out, Andy." Other times I'll come up with the most amazing song lyrics and, of course, forget them.

I bought the wrong SCR today at work. If you know what an SCR is, read on. Otherwise, this post will probably bore you, so skip ahead to the word "Wikipedia." So I got a Crydom D24125 for an old Desisti 20K dimmer, which is 240V/125A w/ DC control 3-32V. Zero-crossing (Which I still don't quite understand. If you do, let me know what it's about.). So I took the old one out, it was working, but being weird. And I put the new one in with thermal compound. There were a lot of screws, some with torx heads. A real pain for sure. And the damn thing doesn't work, so I'm thinking it's the control board for the dimmer. So I poke around on that, change the op amp (it's in a socket). Switch out the slider pot for a more appropriate value. Play around with a little trimmer pot. Won't light the lightbulb though. Try switching the polarity going into the SCR (later I found out the Crydom works down to -32VDC). Testing diodes while eating lunch. This thing is killing me. It's not that complicated. So maybe I bought the wrong SCR. It wasn't a straight replacement, the old one was an obsolete part number. I couldn't find much online about it, but I'm pretty sure I need the non-zero crossing or "random" version, which is D24125-10 and on order from Jameco for the ultra-reasonable price of 68.54 shipped. Thanks Jameco! Wikipedia is proving to be quite helpful in these sorts of technical issues though. I never would have thought. It's really becoming a great source of information. I'm working on my own article, actually. It involves a mathematical proof. Here's the basic idea:

A message to you, Natalie.

So I'm not sure if you'll really like this, but I'm sure you'll at least find it interesting if you look closely. I'm sitting here thinking which songs to send. I feel like I need to choose carefully to make a good impression. The perfect combination of songs. Which is great because I'm sitting here listening to these songs I love, some of which I've heard literally a hundred times, and they sound totally different to me. Kind of like every time I hear Nirvana's IN UTERO. It's one of the few albums I can really remember hearing for the first time, like where I was and what I was doing (on the way to my girlfriend's sister's wedding, made my parents stop at the music place 'cuz it just came out that day, sitting in the back seat in my formal wear with my girlfriend's best friend (my girlfriend was in the wedding so she wasn't there and my girlfriend's friend went with us (who was the girl I actually liked and had had a crush on since kindergarten (I used to chase her on the playground and threw a woodchip in her eye once (accidentally (remember that Simpson's episode we were talking about earlier tonight? story with in a story within a story...)))))), and everytime I hear it I remember that and it somehow lets me hear the album in a lot of different ways. So here's Against Me!, submitted for your approval.

"There just drunken conversations, song lyrics sung at the top of our lungs so desperately. Like I believe in the power that is of and by the people. I believe in an art that cannot be compromised."

We raise our glasses to these dreams of Operational Amplifiers.

I'm going to bed.

Message from a dear old friend:

Do you watch American Idol? Taylor Hicks is hot.
Miss you!

Do or Do Not? Hmmm? Hmmm.

Today was reasonable. Very reasonable. I got to work a little after 9 and did a few things. Went up to pick up a generator and some expendables from Raygun. Musa is good. We should hang out soon. Came back, ate some fake ham from the Buddhist monk lady. Did some more stuff. Cleaned and organized. Getting things in order. Came home. Did laundry. Watched TV. My bike is screwed up. Broken spokes. Not much exciting to write about. I meant to do a lot things but didn't.

Should I be in a hurry? Aren't you (i.e.-"one", isn't one) missing out on a lot by hurrying to reach some goal? Like I really need to pay more attention to the people around me. Like Yoda said. Where he was. What he was doing. Lame as it sounds, he's right. Just need to let the situation develop a little more. With a little nudge here and there. Am I making any sense?

Rosanna Scotto need listen up!

Rosanna Scotto and Ernie Anastos may be as New York as it gets, but they don't know Jack about 24!


Fox 5 News is taking their usual poll after 24. The question is: "If you could change one thing this season, what would it be?" The schmucks somehow refuse to air my comment, which is the only one that matters, from what I can see. They just take things far too seriously over there:

One thing I would change:

Michelle Dessler would still be alive and become President and Ms. America.

-Andy
Brooklyn

Mandy

Makes sense to me!

What's with bars and what's with the east village? Becky's right, it makes you never want to leave Brooklyn. Such a ridiculous mix of NYU students and tunnel rats. Not fun. Everyone out on Friday night trying to have fun in the most ridiculous setting. Bars don't have to be the way they are, but they usually are. Especially in Manhattan. A contrived social situation. Especially when it's warm out. I'm not going to any bars this summer. That's that.

I woke up early to make Becky breakfast and get her out of the house. She has to work all weekend. I went back to bed feeling pretty decent and woke up late not knowing what to do with myself. Pretty scared and insecure. I guess it goes like this sometimes. Relentlessly feeling ultimately alone and lost in the world and not knowing what to do with yourself.

My grandma suggested Rogaine

early morning. My hair loss has reached a new level. It's not amusing. I don't know what to do. What's to do? I don't like my hair. I cut it and still don't like it. I guess there was very little time in my life when I did like my hair. I wonder if that's the way it is with most people. I remember being a kid and hating my curls. In middle school, especially, I just wanted short, straight, brown or black hair like all the cool guys. Like Jay Larner. Funny though. I found a picture of his brother, Woody. He's bald. I wonder where Jay is now.




This somehow connects back to my experience playing on a basketball team in 5th grade. I had never played before and everyone else on the team had. I had no friends on the team. I wasn't particularly fond of basketball. Ever. I'm not sure why I played in the first place. It might've been one of those things where my parents made me do it, promising that I only had to "try it once."

I recall practices where the coach, Mr. Smith (whose daughter now plays professionally in Eastern Europe), would speak of "setting picks" and talk about his "key." These were new terms to me, the pudgy 11-year-old who quit swimming when he was nine and put on 30 pounds since then. I wasn't in the worst shape, though. In the 50th percentile, at least. I was a smart kid. A bit shy. But my main problem was not knowing the rules. I didn't understand fouls or off-sides or double dribbles. Sure I'd seen basketball games before. But I'd never paid attention to the DETAILS. One time I got the ball, freaked out and threw it out of bounds. That was the first and last time I ever got the ball.

"The Ecology of Commerce" or "Bring your swiss army knife and a bottle of something"

That projector or big LCD TV keeps calling my name. And the when I think about it rationally somewhere nice, like riding across the bridge on my bike, I realize how ridiculous it is. Say you spend $1000. That's a lot of work and time people put into that piece of equipment to develop the idea and the technology and make the machines to put it together and actually put it together and then transport it here from China. And what you could do with that money, that work. I need a real project.

But sometimes when I'm sitting in a big theater. I wish I could experience every movie like that. While I"m there, it seems worth it. I feel like I'd really enjoy it.

I've decided to stop aggressive behavior. Angry aggressive behavior anyway. It's not really in my nature and I feel like it's a misguided attempt at a defense mechanism that living in New York has brought out in me. This mostly applies to two areas of my life. (1)Working and (2) Bicycling.

In the case of working, what can I say. Most people lack common sense these days and I tend to take my work pretty seriously, whatever I happen to be doing. First my shoulders and back tighten, like I'm turning into a werewolf. Then my hands go into seizure mode and I start mock-scratching the skin off my face. This happens daily on average. I usually yell profanity, too. Someone always seems to be doing something stupid that either makes more work for me or causes more work/less progress in the grand scheme of things. Or that consumes more resources. I'm always thinking about resources, especially energy.


As for bicycling, I get upset with inconsiderate drivers, often yelling at them, flipping them off, sarcastically thanking them, and punching their vehicles. This rarely does anything but raise my blood pressure (i.e., cause the relentless knots in my shoulders to tighten even more). In one instance, a guy actually caught up with me going down 2nd Avenue. He'd been honking at me for taking up too much of the right lane. (Never mind that it was a Saturday morning with virtually no traffic and he had 3 or 4 other lanes to choose from.) So I flipped him off. He caught up with me, but by the time he got out of his car I'd passed him. HAH! This happened two or three more times before he finally got in front of me, right up in my grill and dared me to flip him off again. This is where I chimed in with one of my greatest comebacks EVER. Adam was there, he'll concur. I look the guy up and down, nervously. Feet on pedals. Look him in the eye. And all I could think of was the most hurtful thing I can remember kids saying to me from childhood. Probably one of the older Hoppe boys or Jay Leitz or Bobby Rourke. "Just go home." And I rode on. I wish I could've seen his reaction.

Know your rights

David signed up for Birthright Israel today. He says they didn't ask him if he was Jewish, so I went to the sight. Unfortunately, you have to be 19-26 years old. I was planning on going and writing a book or at least a blog about how weird it is, but damn if I didnt' just turn 27 yesterday.


The website made me nervous. They had an article about Paradise Now. I guess it won a Golden Globe. The article (which came from one of my favorite publications, Jewsweek) called the award judges "part of the evil chain of terror" and accuses them of "encouraging film makers to hide behind the award" making them "participants in the next suicide murders, whether there are 17 victims or 17,000." Politics aside, the trip seems to be all about having fun with busty Jewish girls.

Alpha Eta Pi is getting their birthright on in '06!

The Church of Jesus L Fisher of Latter-day Saints

Christians! Notify your faces. Let others see Jesus in you.

Christians! Notify your faces. Let others see Jesus in you.

Christians! Notify your faces. Let others see Jesus in you.

Today is my birthday. Short day at work. Felt like it.

Had a burritto. Fixed a couple HMI ballasts, a Tweenie. Cleaned up.

I need to fix the Fisher Ten tomorrow. I dread it. I'm just really bad at shifting gears, I've found. For example, if I'm working on something very technical, say a Kino Flo ballast (see diagram below), and someone calls on the phone, I get very agitated. I wish I didn't because it's not very nice, but I just react.

650 Watt Molequartz Tweenie II Solarspot

Check out the XP6! It's schematic-tastic!

So I've been working on electrical and electronics gear and enjoy doing so. When I have to do hydraulics or other such mechanical foolishness, it just hurts to pull my head out of the electrical cloud. (It really is a cloud, too: truly magical that anything electrical works.)
_______________________________________________________

Now I'm at home chilling before 24. Becky arranged for two new episodes to come on tonight, special for my birthday. So I'm listening to Fresh Air, waiting for 8 o'clock. The guy from Belle & Sebastian is on. He says he couldn't write a song to save his life until he was in his twenties. I'm almost in my thirties though. They wouldn't do interviews until recently. Decided it was too much trouble. The media's portrayal and all that. He's got quite a voice. I have to wonder if my voice could work if I practiced. Was writing songs an act of will? A desperation to communicate through words in some rare form. You could write bad poetry with a melody attached and get away with it. Bad poetry with a sweetener. Fucking genius!

Belle

Sebastian