Oh, so very tired.

I have stuff I have in my head that I want to put here, but I’m tired.

Get it?

Hey, three-day weekend (Memorial Day) coming. Some sleep-in time, ja?

Sixth anniversary of this blog.

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

And an excellent learning experience in so many ways.

And I’ve begun to write again…as I had hoped.

Let’s see what the new (blog) year holds…

And give music, free expression, YouTube and the power of the masses a chance.

OK?

I’ve never embedded a YouTube video on this blog, simply because I was afraid that YouTube would go away, be sued and clips removed and so on.

However, this clip was pointed to on Groklaw.net, and – to me – clear winner.

Terra Naomi – a wannabe musician with a huge online following – solicited input from the world for three words that spell out what, basically, they’d do with a magic wand – videotape same and send to her.

She got buttloads of replies, and embedded a bunch into her music video.

Again, my first YouTube embed, but because this is what YouTube etc. can do that can’t be done elsewhere. Here, it’s the power of the community. And a really well-done piece by Terra; powerful.

With Amazon, it’s the warehouse in the sky.

Neither would be possible without the internet.

You know Amazon; enjoy Naomi:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qo8-NlgRa4]

This “tubes” things just might catch on…

I picked up and read – for reasons I don’t recall – Mahfouz’s Palace Walk – sometime before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1988).

So, quite a spell ago.

It was nice when Mahfouz – an Egyptian whose literary influences reflect Dostoevsky and Dickens – was awarded the Prize. Sorta a “hey, I read him before people thought he was hot shit.”

But the book – part of his Cairo Trilogy series (nope, haven’t read others) – was a great insight for me.

I’m a Westerner, and this was a great glimpse into the Mideastern world – how (why) women are veiled, about the same hypocrisy that goes on in the West goes on (in a different guise) in the Middle East, the power of Islam and so on.

Eye opener.

Today – with the Middle East a tinderbox (not assigning blame, just reporting the facts, ma’am), this book – or others of his – should move up my reading list.

On everyone’s reading lists.

OK?

WATCHING:
Departed, The
Martin Scorsese, director

One of the better movies I’ve seen over the past couple of years.

What a cast – Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin – and they all mesh to make this tale of the two(?) sides of the law work, and work well.

Filled with trademark Scorsese elements (apeture fade in out; killer soundtrack), the movie – while longish by today’s standards (2.5 hours) – goes along at a good clip and you almost wish it would never end.

Highly recommened

All movies

At my best, I’m quite the boring boy.

But recently, I have exceeded that label – I am now Uber-boring boy!

Really, not much going on here. I had hoped to go to a friend’s gallery opening last Friday, but the work week was so hellish that I had a rough time getting through the work day Friday, much less driving to Chicago for the main event that evening.

Man, I suck.

This weekend – a little yard work, some work work, watched a great movie (see Watching box) and … and now it’s almost Sunday evening and, WTF? The weekend has evaporated.

Have I become the Happy Idiot?

And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I’ll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I’ll get up and do it again
…
I’m going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender

— Jackson Browne, The Pretender