Carrying the remains of a roughly 30-foot (9-meter) giant squid in her jaws, a female sperm whale, with a calf at her side, swims near the surface off Japan's Bonin Islands in the northwestern Pacific. Taken on October 15, this and other "absolutely sensational" new pictures offer rare proof of the sperm whale's taste for giant squid, said giant squid expert Steve O'Shea of the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.
Look, I do not favor the death of squid, because if there's one thing more terrifying than tentacly death, it's the AVENGING GHOST of tentacly death. But still, I remember as a kid being captivated by the notion of an epic struggle between whale and squid, happening far below the surface.
Fall has arrived in DC, which means that I go to work when it's dark, come home when it's dark, and take a lunch break when the drizzle slows down. I think my musical choices over the last two weeks reflect that reality.
Cause Cheap Is How I Feel, by the Cowboy Junkies. This song makes me want to work its title into my conversations, but I expect that would lead people to believe that I have low self-esteem. Really, it's just that I think it's an awesome song that uses some excellent phrasing to bring its emotional heft into the real world.
Once in a Lifetime, by the Talking Heads. In or out of the band, David Byrne is rapidly becoming one of my favorite artists. He makes me want to have white hair.
Cry for Love, by Iggy Pop. Speaking of old dudes who are way cooler than I am. Note: It wasn't until I watched a bunch of his live performances on YouTube that I realized how desperate Anthony Kiedis is to grow up to be Iggy Pop. A Horse in the Country, by the Cowboy Junkies. Sure, it's one of the Junkies' happier songs, but it still has that touch of everyday melancholy that makes the band such a good fit for gray fall days. The verses start with sad reflections on the mundane:
The money would be pretty good if a quart of milk was still a dollar or even if a quart of milk was still a quart
This weather I could almost stand if the sun would shine a little brighter or even if the sun would shine at all
In the fall of 1999, I spent a semester at Westfield State College in beautiful Westfield, Massachusetts. It's a small school in a very nice area of Western Massachusetts, and it had an excellent exchange arrangement with my home campus. I got to pay in-state (Montana) tuition, and was frequently treated as an honored guest of Westfield State. For instance, we exchange kids had free use of the college's fleet of 15-passenger vans, which we used on more than one occasion to visit Boston, or Montreal, or Washington, DC.
It was ten years ago last weekend that I first visited the city to which I would eventually move. And it was ten years ago today that I emailed my friends and family a report on my adventure. Here, reprinted in its entirety, is that same email:
-----Original Message----- From: Zach Ragbourn Sent: Monday, October 11, 1999 8:22 PM Subject: Weekend in Washington DC
...or, How I Got 9 College Kids Lost on the East Coast
I'm sending on this feeble story in the hopes that it might amuse y'all.
Let us begin by saying that a moderately large -- 9 persons in all -- group of students from Westfield State and UMass Amherst embarked on a monumental (ha!) journey to the capital of our fair nation. So that we might save money, we decided to leave Westfield late at night, and arrive in DC early the next morning. With that said, I present to you a chronologically-ordered list of events that transpired this weekend.
Depart Westfield State College, Friday, 11:45pm
Arrive DC, Saturday, 8:00am
Nap time. Actually, only the driver and I (the humble navigator) napped. The other 7 went on to secure places in line for the White House tour.
Sleep through the White House tour. Not my fault.
Connect with main group, visit Washington Monument, 12:45 pm
Proceed to the Lincoln Memorial, 1:15 pm
On to the Vietnam Wall,
and the Korean Wall.
Then the FDR Memorial,
and the Jefferson Memorial.
Buy 8 (one girl had a friend to visit in DC) tickets to watch the Capitols/Kings NHL game at MCI Center.
Run into Dan Keller (U of Montana student) on the street outside MCI Center.
Dinner at Planet Hollywood, DC. Loud, flashy, mediocre.
Watch Capitols tie the Kings in overtime. Neat floor shows, 3 big fights.
Sleep. Plan to awaken at 9:00am to get tickets to the Holocaust Museum.
Wake up at 9:15 to discover that nobody in my hotel room is up. The 5 girls in the other room are ready to go. We ditch the 2 sleeping Canadians and their silly Idaho friend. We can do that, because the Canadians are from Quebec.
Bum around until our scheduled tour of Holocaust Museum at 12:15
Exit Holocaust Museum at around 3:15.
Indecision.
Group A (Zach and Brittany) head to the Smithsonian. Group B (four people with strange priorities) hop the Metro for Arlington and the Capitol.
Air & Space Museum, 3:17pm. Geared toward little kids. Almost no substance at all.
Natural History Museum, 3:45pm
American History Museum, 4:45pm
Brittany and I got lost on the way back to the Red Roof Inn. Now that I'm thinking about it, that's a hefty bit of foreshadowing...
Meet up with Canadians, silly friend and silly friend's DC-native friend. Take the subway to dinner. Neat subway.
Dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. Very good Thai Spicy Pizza.
Attempt to convince DC-native friend that I'm from Canada, too. Didn't work. Not my fault.
Bummed around DC for a couple hours.
Slept lots.
Wake up, 9:15am, pack van. This time, it's my turn to drive. Brittany is the navigator.
Brittany is a California driver. 'nuff said.
Ahem. Attempt to locate *Starbucks* coffee in DC. Left DC at 10:00am.
Brittany plots a course to take us *around* and not through Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and NYC.
Ahem. Arrive Philadelphia.
Oh, while we're here, let's see the Liberty Bell!
And get a Philly cheese steak!
Back to the road. I've now driven a 15-passenger van in DC and Philadelphia. Woo!
New Joisy Toinpike. Stupidly, Brittany and I ask a toll-booth operator for directions.
Follow directions. Arrive at another toll-booth. Ask for further directions.
Those of you who know the area know where the Verrazano Bridge is. We didn't. So we followed the man's directions to "Go over the Verrazano Bridge."
Atop the bridge, Brittany says, "Hey! The Statue of Liberty!" We thought she was joking.
Arrive Brooklyn.
Battery Tunnel, the Bronx, Holland Tunnel. It's hard to remember what order they went in. But it took us the better part of 80 minutes to find an entrance to the turnpike again. During that time I was subjected to every form of ridicule known to mankind.
Ok. It's getting on toward 3 now. Maureen (the silly friend with the DC-native friend, not that it matters) managed to take over navigation. Brittany sulks. Maureen gets us on an expressway with no exits. We watch helplessly as the Garden State Parkway fades into the distance.
I got us back to the Parkway. There we saw a dude with Missoula license plates. He didn't stop and roll down his window like we asked. Bummer. But his license plate said "My grass is blue." He must rule. I think he was a hippie.
Disgusted or otherwise, Maureen takes over driving when I pull over and shout (I'm sure that the answering cry was not one of joy but sorrow) that I quit. She soon has us stuck in traffic.
Back roads through lovely Connecticut. It's dark by now.
Arrive Westfield State College, 9:15pm.
So, for a relatively small time investment, our WDC trip blossomed into a thing of ferocious beauty and ravenous fury. Or vice-versa. You may mock my poor navigational skills, but remember that I brought joy and laughter into many lives. For example, at one point in NYC, I stopped the van and ordered everyone out. Kary, ever the joker, quipped, "So you'll just pick us up on your next circle through the city?" Ah, a laugh at my expense.
But really, it was the most fun I've ever had in a 15-passenger van. Or in New York. And how 'bout them Red Sox? 23 to 7? Jeez
A few notes on this historical document:
White House tours are considerably harder to get nowadays than they were 10 years ago. In fact, it wasn't until I had lived in DC for a good 4 years that I managed to finally take the tour.
The MCI Center is now the Verizon Center, which is probably a great symbol of all that is wrong with the telecom industry. And the Caps are still a pretty weak team.
When I ran into a fellow UM student, we were carousing through some sort of street festival with lots of quick food choices, mostly of a kebab nature. I have no idea what it was, when it will happen again, or whether or not to wish for it to show up in my world.
I have never seen that Planet Hollywood again. It may have disappeared.
The hotel we stayed in is across the street from a video store that proudly advertises its "Adult-Action" movies. I always figured that meant naked kung-fu.
Probably my most vivid visual memory would be the escalator ride up from the Dupont metro station, and drinks at the Big Hunt. I was very glad to discover that both those things are every bit as awesome as I remembered.
Starbucks is laughably easy to find in DC now. But ten years ago, driving a white whale of a van full of tired and cranky college kids, it was an epic undertaking. I choose to believe that Starbucks wasn't as ubiquitous in the DC of 1999 as it is today.
After finally rebuilding the core of my music library and re-creating a system for serving up a good mix of tunes for my commute, I think I have finally achieved some stability in my music world.
Here's some of the noteworthy stuff that my new system served up this week:
By Your Side, by Sade. I looked up "smooth" in Wikipedia, and was shocked to see that Sade's picture isn't there. Please fix this, internet.
Johnny Come Lately, by Steve Earle. For a hard-charging country rocker, Steve Earle sure seems to draw a lot of inspiration from the red-headed folks of small north-Atlantic islands. Here he is with the Pogues, juxtaposing the story of a WWII fighter pilot with that of his son, a Vietnam vet. As usual, it's full of evocative and pointed lyrics, southern twang, and the kind of messaging that makes you wonder why any Republican would ever buy his records.
Jailer, by Asa. I won't even get into the fact that there are several artists with this name, all grouped together in iTunes, which led me to wonder how a European rapper could do such credible reggae. Let's suffice it to say that Asa hits all the right notes and delivers the kind of reggae tune that would be right at home in Marley's catalog.
Remember This, by Shine. Back in the day, file-sharing services were actually about discovering new music, not just about forcing Metallica to starve to death. Sites like Audiogalaxy were very good at helping new or obscure artists send their work out to the world, and listeners ended up being exposed to some great stuff we would have otherwise missed. Shine is one of those bands that never achieved any sort of widespread fame. They produced some very competent alt-rock tunes that I enjoyed a great deal. Unfortunately, I lost most of their material in the Great Crash of 2009, but "Remember This" survived.
Starry Night, by Iggy Pop. From the same 1990 album that had Iggy collaborating with Kate Pierson and John Hiatt, this is a fun, jangly tune that I can never quite get out of my head. I only have the digital version, so I lack liner notes, but I would be shocked if that's not David Lindley on guitar.
Kandi, by One Eskimo. Smooth, sad song by a new group I know nothing about. The video was a free download at Starbucks a couple weeks ago, and I finally got around to watching it:
It isn't all that rare for giant squid to become caught in deep-sea fishing rigs. What is rare is for the squid to still be alive when the fishermen figure out what happened.
On July 30, during routine test runs for an upcoming whale study, the team dipped their giant net more than a third of a mile (a half kilometer) down and came up with something "really crazy," said Anthony Martinez, a marine mammal scientist with the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service.
Measuring about 19.5 feet (6 meters) long and 103 pounds (47 kilograms), the likely juvenile giant squid was alive when netted but didn't survive the ascent to the surface.
Obviously, there are many reasons I wish that we didn't keep accidentally killing squid. Not least among them is the fact that it's incredibly difficult to advance scientific understanding of any animal if all you have to work with is a corpse. But I also don't like the situation because nobody ever made a terrible (terrible) horror movie about dead squid.
Yeah, I watched an atrocity the other day. It was a SciFi (SyFy!) Channel movie from 2006 about a 200-foot-long, freshwater squid that lived in some random North American lake for a couple decades, snacking on fishermen. I didn't pay close enough attention to figure out where this cinematic gem was set, nor did I see any reason presented for the squid's ability to survive in the lake. I can only assume that it was an incredibly deep lake with an overabundance of Pategonian toothfish swimming about, undiscovered for decades.
As a matter of fact, I didn't even catch the title of this movie. That's how bad it was.
Luckily, the squid was able to eat a couple teenagers and a salty old fisherman during the movie, providing some measure of vengeance for all the real squid hauled up to die in fishing nets.
A couple weeks ago, the external hard drive holding my music library crashed. It made some weird noises when I plugged it in, but other than that, it was completely dead.
No big deal. That's why I run nightly backups!
Except... the nightly backups, which had been running, would not restore to a freshly-purchased hard drive. Apparently in the two years I'd been running the backups, the software had actually overwritten the original backup index, and so didn't create a complete copy; just copies of files that had been modified in the last few months.
All of this resulted in me re-ripping a couple hundred CDs and contacting iTunes to ask if they would be so kind as to let me re-download my purchases. After several weeks of poking around, ripping, downloading, bargain-hunting on Amazon, and careful reconstruction, I have managed to restore about 90% of my music library. It's not as organized as I would like, and there are some embarassing omissions, but I finally feel as though I have a handle on things.
Of course, anytime one delves into one's music library, one is bound to rediscover things. Here's a couple of songs that I've unearthed:
"If You Were the Woman and I Was the Man" by the Cowboy Junkies and John Prine. If this song doesn't do anything for you, then you have no business listening to music.
"Love Hate" by Shannon McNally. From Shannon's very first EP, this cut grew out of the recording industry's desire to clone Alanis; I can see why a studio operating under that mandate would wait five years to release anything by this artist, because there's absolutely no resemblance. This is a laid-back southern groove, complete with lap steel and horns. It's a perfect showcase for Shannon's earthy voice and crazy accent. Plus, I love this lyrical turn:
I'm damned if I shoot I'm damned if I don't I can't go back with empty hands so maybe I just won't Go back at all
"Alright Guy" by Todd Snider. It's a little ridiculous that this song achieved some fame when it was recorded in 2001 by random country singer Bubba McTwang (okay, so his name is Gary Allan, but it's not like you've heard of him anyway). This is a typical Snider song, which I figure would alienate most country audiences... it's full of references to smoking pot, makes fun of hicks, and has an enormous dose of self-depreciation. It's a great song, and I especially love that it dates itself with a couple pop-culture references that would go right over the heads of a modern audience.
One version of a health care overhaul bill has passed out of its Senate committee on a strictly party-line vote. Was it because Democrats rammed it down the throats of the Republican minority, not allowing them to work toward a more bipartisan bill? Was it not watered-down enough by conservative interests?
We all know, via the fabulous Washington press corps, that the only way to produce good legislation is by making sure that Republicans -- who represent a whopping 25% of the country -- agree whole-heartedly with 100% of the provisions in any bill. It's called "bipartisanship," and it is the only thing that reporters care about.
So why in the world did those nasty Democrats shut the Republicans out of the process?
The panel has been in mark-up for weeks now, and along the way, has approved 160 Republican amendments--and for all that largesse, not a single member of the minority voted in its favor.
That's right... Senate Democrats gave the Republicans weeks of debate and one hundred and sixty amendments. They probably also washed and waxed several cars, all while apologizing for not doing more. And after all that bipartisanship, the vote is exactly the same as if Republicans hadn't been allowed to muck things up.
Two lessons here:
1) Republicans are not interested in governing. They're only interested in theater. 2) Democrats are suckers.
Let's hope at least one of those lessons gets through to Max Baucus before his committee tackles health care reform.
Now, I haven't seen the show in question, nor have I actually sat down and watched shows created by the same tag-team of creative juggernauts, but I still must sit in judgment of a new series called "Defying Gravity."
"Gravity," whose cast includes Laura Harris, Christina Cox, Malik Yoba and Florentine Lahme, is set in the near future and revolves around eight astronauts from five countries who undertake a mysterious six-year mission through the solar system.
Okay, fine. I'm all about near-future stuff, and even though I think claustrophobia and closed sets are cheap gimmicks, I'm usually pleased with the results.
But TV producers have a long and glorious history of taking plausible and promising premises and turning them into the offensive goo that oozes from millions of TV screens in America for too many millions of hours every week. This particular creative team has already produced such serious-minded television programming as "Gray's Anatomy," and "Desperate Housewives," which are acclaimed for their high standards, creative storytelling, and mature approaches to interesting societal issues.
But here's what jumped out at me. Not just its roots in the world of sex-oriented prime-time soap operas, but the actual stated direction of the show, straight from the mouth of a network exec:
He describes the show as "having a sci-fi premise but being told in a female-friendly way."
It is clear that "female-friendly" in this context means, "lots of sex, presumably between hot women and tubby middle-aged men who are married to other, equally hot women." And the "sci-fi premise" ensures that the sex will be conducted in microgravity.
After reading this review, I feel like I've already seen Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I had no intention of watching it, but odds were good that it would end up in by DVD queue someday, had my Transformers urge not been pre-sated by this review from io9.
It starts thus:
Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.
