Wired Mesh

"Arrived Safely and Said I Do"

Such is the latest text-messaged word from my sister, who eloped yesterday morning with that fine young ruffian Richard Iserman. They departed the Chattanooga airport on a red-eye flight, off for a wintery honeymoon in some secret locale. They begin a life of exegetical, multilingual wedded bliss, and I am tremendously happy for them. Buy me a drink tonight: I have an extra reason to celebrate the new year.

Start the Year Off Right

Make a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the first international relief organization to reach Banda Aceh in Indonesia. Aceh is on Sumatra, the closest Indonesian island to Sunday's undersea earthquake that triggered a massive tidal wave. International officials estimate that the tsunami death toll in Aceh alone will reach 80,000, and survivors are huddling in makeshift camps set up in mosques. Indonesian officials have resigned themselves to digging mass graves in the mud to bury all the children.

I don't generally plug charities, and what you do with your money is your business. But I am aghast at the stories trickling in from Asia. The ocean simply rose above all its channels and overflowed all its banks, and swept to sea thousands upon thousands of children who were playing their Sunday morning games of cricket. I don't have any words about it, no pious assurances of comfort. But I remember that in Jewish theology we are described as God's hands to the inconsolable, and that the Pauline epistles tell us to care for the widows and orphans. So I ask you to consider that, before you offer your toasts to 2005.

Mini Me

Back from Florida, with an iPod mini -- a Christmas gift from my parents -- in tow. A shimering bit of blue metal, no longer than my index finger, but oh what fun. I had long admired the Pods as a pretty piece of gadgetry, but I didn't realize until the last week exactly what a giddy pleasure they are. Every child dreams, at one time or another, of having a soundtrack for his life: sad music moaning in the air in times of despair, a military march buzzing around his head when a task needed done. An iPod provides just that, but the daily soundtrack also influences my mood. At least twice today, a sound pulsed between my ears that made me want to abandon my smoke break and run across the parking lot to my car. So I did. I looked like an idiot, I'm sure, but no matter: I was in love.

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The Quiet Ones play their last show in two hours at Lamar's. It feels like the end of an era. A short era, maybe, but an great era nonetheless. So we'll say goodbye like we said hello. By rocking out. It was always too much rock for one hand.

This Really Brings Christmas Close to a Person

I was wandering around the Hamilton Place Mall last night, nursing a sour mood while Josiah shopped for Christmas presents. I thought maybe a cookie would cheer me up. So I walked over to one of those cookie stands where the baked goods are plagued with giantism. And there I saw it:

The Worst Christmas Idea Ever.

It was an oversized chocolate chip cookie, one of those monsters the size of a medium pizza. It was piped with neon icing -- red, blue, green, pink -- in the shape of a nativity scene, complete with a squirt of liquorice icing wrapped in swaddling clothes. Below this was a swirling line of text: "Tis the reason for the season."

Indeed, let us all refute the commercialism of the holidays and remember the miracle of the Incarnation... with a big cookie. Barf, the herald angels sing.

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Unfortunate Event, Number the Second: a hilarious bit of Johnsonian satire. Or satire of Johnson. Whatever.

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"I've been having trouble staying focused on anything this week," a friend of mine confided this afternoon. "I don't know if it's the holidays or something worse."

Jesus Sings

The Pulse published its Top Ten issue today. It's a handsome devil. Included is a list of top music singles. It was published anonymously, officially compiled by the Pulse staff entire. Far be it from me to say who wrote it, but I imagine you're not having trouble guessing. So here she is:

’04 on the Floor: The Year’s Top Ten Songs

In a year when truth seemed as clandestine as a campaign ad or a covert operation, the best singles of the year all concentrated on holding on to – or letting go of – the few things we thought we still knew.

Whether it was Sam Bean reminding a lover to remember him “when I’m gone away,” or Jeff Tweedy declaring that “no one is ever gonna take my life from me / I lay it down,” the question argued in pop music was whether we should cling to what we believed or admit how little we knew. The year’s sweetest tunes searched the heart of the much-bandied Blue State-Red State Divide, and found that America’s great challenge was finding a balance between doubt and belief. Little wonder that so many songwriters talked about (and walked about) Jesus for the first time in years.

But it was a Canadian band, The Arcade Fire, which provided the resonant instructions for 2005, warning us to simply keep our eyes open. We may not believe what we’ll see, but we should watch for it anyway.

1. The Arcade Fire – Rebellion (Lies)
Key line: “Sleeping is giving in… Every time you close your eyes: Lies! Lies!”

2. Iron and Wine – Each Coming Night
Key line: “Your face is faded but lingers on / ‘Cause light strikes a deal with each coming night.”

3. Modest Mouse – Float On
Key line: “Even if things end up a bit too heavy / We’ll all float on alright.”

4. Wilco – Theologians
Key line: “Illiterati lumen fidei / God is with us every day / That illiterate light / Is with us every night.”

5. Sufjan Stevens – The Transfiguration
Key line: “Lost in the cloud, a voice: Have no fear, we draw near.”

6. Kanye West – Jesus Walks
Key line: “To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers, even the strippers / Jesus walks with them.”

7. The Magnetic Fields – I Thought You Were My Boyfriend
Key line: “I thought I was just the guy for you and it would never end.”

8. Jon Brion – Knock Yourself Out
Key line: “Why we’re put in this mess / Is anybody’s guess / It might be a test / Or it might not be anything you need to worry about.”

9. Devendra Banhart – At the Hop
Key line: “Put me in your suitcase, let me help you pack / ‘Cause you’re never coming back.”

10. The Mountain Goats – Palmcorder Yanja
Key line: “Every couple minutes, someone says he can’t stand it anymore.”

Honorable mentions: The Quiet Ones – Come Back Home; Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out; The Dropkick Murphys – Tessie; Isaac Wardell – Happy All the Time; Loretta Lynn – Portland, Oregon

If You Seek a Pillow For Your Head

I hate Christmas music. Which is to say I find the vast majority of it absurd and maudulin, and so damned cheerful that I want to bludgeon myself with an icicle. The sole exceptions are the "Charlie Brown Christmas" soundtrack, a few choral hymns -- and Sufjan Steven's three Christmas EPs, which turn out to be so simple, so crystalline, that they actually seem to have something to do with Jesus. These songs are wonderful, like some honey-eating woodsman arriving out of the wilderness with a guitar and good news. Please listen to them.

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Also ran across a live Wilco cover of Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" this morning. It's been a good day for downloads.

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I promise my silence this week isn't a harbinger. The Pulse's Top Ten of 2004 issue won't write itself, and there are far too many Christmas parties to attend. Know that while I may be drinking wine, eating cheese and sharing cigarettes, I am secretly thinking of you.

Beautiful. I Wonder What They're Saying?

I drove out to Best Buy after work tonight to pick up my copy of the new Wes Anderson soundtrack, then hurried home to pop it in the tinny CD/radio I've had since high school. Tremendous stuff, as comforting and moving as a childhood blanket. Original tracks are recorded on the decks of ships; you can hear the waves breaking over guitar chords. Mothersbaugh toys with action-movie motifs and "Canon in D" variations, and by adding new influences he has found grown-up emotions in the notes. And leave it to Wes to dig up a protest song dedicated to Sacco and Vanzetti (written by Joan Baez and Enricco Moriconne, no less) and make it into the album's cathartic high point.

Consumables

I have over the past month, through some combination of obsession and a lazy palate, found myself conducting the Greater Chattanooga Chicken Fingers Experiment, ordering tenders at nearly every restaurant I visit.

I don't know why this has happened. Perhaps it's because chicken fingers were the only decent item on the Covenant College menu, and I now remember them as comforting. Perhaps I am turning into my father, who throughout my youth would order a filet mignon at any decent restaurant, then sadly and without fail remark that it did not compare to the dish created at a certain Miami steakhouse.

As a good postmodern, I have no such objective standard of comparison, and yet I remain disappointed: the chicken fingers at the Northshore Grille, the Mudpie, Taco Mac and Big River (where they are billed, with great pretension, as "chicken tenderloins") are all dreadful, and the servings at Durty Nelly's aren't as satisfying as they used to be. Somehow this bothers me.

Why am I telling you this? Tomorrow's Pulse still isn't ready for its final edits, and I've already smoked my cigarette.

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The Simon, an online magazine, today published my 1,000-word essay on Jude Law. This is my first time being published nationally. I'm excited.

Aras!

I wanted to spend this cold, wet morning in bed, but instead I am sitting at my Pulse desk, reading through the collection at weirdfortunecookies.com. Which is hardly more productive, but mighty entertaining:

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Bill has just posted the 2004 Pulse Reader's Survey. If you read the Pulse, or use it to shine your shoes or wax your car, you should fill the questionaire out.

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The Chattanooga Time-Free Press: We don't just break the news, we make the news!

Sloth 1, Literacy 0

Charles Taylor is back at it: bagging on Lane, tossing off enthralingly contrarian sentiments ("nothing that is not pleasurable has a right to be considered art") and praising the literary criticism of Nick Hornby. My favorite line -- not least because it confirms my own undilligent habits:

"The surest way to spot a nonreader: someone who comes into your house, looks at your books and asks, "Have you read all these?'"

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Yet another reason why I should live in Chicago:

"WES ANDERSON ROCKS, a concert on Wednesday, the 15th of December at the Metro featuring The Autumn Defense playing songs from Wes Anderson movies, as well as an original mini-set. Show starts at 8:30."

Ah, to hear John Stirratt break into "Oh, Yoko." Heaven? No, Illinois.

Star-Crossed

Today's sign that my job is not helping my obsession with minutae: Bill and I have spent the day discussing, in various concerned whispers, what sort of crossword puzzle The Pulse should run. We are taking this very seriously. I have referenced "deciding factors." Bill has thrown things.

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The first reviews are trickling in for "The Life Aquatic." Michael Atkinson of the Village Voice is of a decidedly mixed mind.

I mean, everybody knows that Wes Anderson has crafted another brilliant work. What this review presupposes is, maybe he didn't?

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Meet Judith Reisman, anti-Kinsey activist.

My favorite sentence: "More recently, she has been active in the rise of abstinence-only education; in June, her colleagues gave her an Abstie Award for lifetime achievement." Man, if I had known they gave out awards for that, I might have reevaulated my life goals.

Oh Brad, Brad! Wherefore Art Thou Brad?

Attention English majors: perhaps slogging through that Moby-Dick assignment wouldn't be such a drag if, instead of reading about boring old Captain Ahab, you were reading about Captain Yourself! Fortunately, a company has arisen to fill this need. Customized Classics will print out paperback copies of famous novels, with your name replacing that of a lead character. This is product that sells itself, really, but in case you remain skeptical, just listen to the company's pitch:

Picture the thrill of classic lines personalized with you in them:

"Oh Brad, Brad. Wherefore art thou Brad?"

"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Helen is the sun."

You and me babe... how 'bout it? Really, you'd think that if your name were Helen, you wouldn't have much trouble finding a spot of famous lit with your name in it. But some people need a little extra help, I guess.

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If you hadn't noticed already, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou website has posted a series of clips from Wes Anderson's latest. Nice to see Owen Wilson rediscovering his southern roots. "I've never seen so many electric jellyfish in all my life!"

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So it looks like I'm going to try and get this blog started again on a regular basis. Heaven knows I obsess over enough links and downloads each day to keep things interesting. I hope to do a redesign, with a proper space for published work, in coming weeks. Please be patient as this fails to happen.

Nervous Writer Seeks Roommate for Long Walks on the Beach, Rent Money

As I have told a wide variety of curious minds lately, this blog will resume full function, hopefully with a new look and a separate page for film reviews, by the start of 2005. It will be pithy, daily, inconsequential, and awesome. Meanwhile, I am faced with an immediate need, and thought I'd toss it to the online community.

I need a roommate. The Barely Legal Programmer is headed for imminent married bliss, leaving my charming St. Elmo apartment lonesome and my pocketbook strained. Know anybody interested in homesteading at the Mesh pad, at the ever-competitive rate of $200 a month?