And this one goes out to my girl Geeta -- sorry we never got that Burritoville before you left.

'86 Peel Session, #33 on that year's Festive Fifty, more info here.

Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle - "I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch"

given that my musical food right now is old peel broadcasts, i've been having fun re/discovering all that english twaddle i used to dismiss for not being, er, something enough. this is how it feels to be proven wrong.

PHEAR my talent and desire to become a serious drawer of cartoon turtles urban documentary photographer. New set up on Flickr, called July 28, 2005 because that's when all this happened.

Jordan sez: "Students of New York City history and typography will be pleased to know that the entrance to the E line at the World Trade Center offers three examples of pre-9/11 iconography."

Meanwhile, I'm down on Grand Street digging old New York Telephone/NYNEX stickers and reading up on how the telco biz sure has changed since 1982.

Modern Plastics of 1955

Modern Plastics of 1955
Originally uploaded by scrubbles.

"Cover of the Modern Plastics Encycopedia, 1955 edition. Ass-kicking illustration by Alex Steinweiss."

I'm back in New York. Got in early yesterday evening and have been pretty jetlagged since -- I've mostly been sleeping and watching the TVLand Good Times marathon (and a few SCTV episodes last night). I'm sure I won't have anything worthwhile to say for at least a few days, so I hope I'm not your only source of entertainment.

Planning on flying with United Airlines soon? Know your rights (all three of 'em). Download the official United Contract of Carriage (you'll need a PDF reader). Print it out. Bring it to the airport and show it to any employee who gives you guff.

(Me, I've had mostly positive experiences flying United, except for a bomb scare at LAX, and that wasn't anyone's fault really, but the communication between crew and airport should have been much much much better organized. There was no reason why passengers should have had to wait onboard a stuffy plane for 90 minutes while it was parked safely on the tarmac and all other inbound and outbound flights were grounded. We were nowhere near the gate; where would we have run off to?)

The long hot summer continues...

Getting warmer
Originally uploaded by Capital I.

I'll be back in New York next Friday, and for the rest of the year temperatures like these will be the exception rather than the rule. (It actually hasn't been a dry heat lately... unbearably humid, in fact.)

too big to post in this space but well worth the click

Geotagging: helping good triumph over evil.

Nate Cool Out gave me the "tag, you're it" on this music list meme wotsit, and I've been procrastinating for what, two and a half weeks? There's fuck-all to do tonight, so now I have no excuse. Here goes.

Total volume of music files on my computer: My "mp3s" directory has 15.9 GB, 147 album folders, and 3,673 files. I have a few extra folders on my desktop: a "Let's All Get Crushed" mix a friend made and YSI'ed earlier this year (128 MB, 18 files), a collaborative thing called "Lars Ulrich Street Team" (570 MB, 117 files), and "unfiled music" (186 MB, 30 files), a catch-all for stray tracks that need retagging, etc.

Last CD I bought was... I honestly can't remember. The last LPs I bought were from the Salvation Army -- various private-press records by mom 'n' pop Christian groups, high school band camps, and Korean children's choirs. The last album I successfully d0wnl0@d3d was John Convertino's Ragland.

Song playing right now: Arthur Russell, "Let's Go Swimming (Arthur Gibbons Mix)"

Five songs I listen to a lot these days:

Tom Waits, "Burma Shave"
Gun Club, "St. John's Divine"
Out Hud, "Old Nude"
Bill Fay, "Garden Song"
Tuxedomoon, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"

Now I'm supposed to pass this on to someone else... I see o.nate at Face in the Crowd hasn't done one yet! Off you go, mate.

Ahh, nothing quells the boredom of a cruel summer quite like poorly produced reality television, and for that I've been turning to Beauty and the Geek. Since there's more than enough online reportage of this show (TVGasm and Television Without Pity are pretty good resources), I'll point n00bz to those and assume the rest of you have been watching right along with me. This is the part where you share in my excitement (is that the word?) that Shawn has a blog! And so does Joe, the recently eliminated shy albino with a secret love of hip-hop. Don't know much about the rest of them, although TVG and TWoP note that Lauren is (cough) an actress who sometimes turns up as an extra in other reality shows, Mindi was on her alma mater's dean's list, and that Richard (who I love with all my heart) is a recent Brandeis graduate from New Jersey.

Excerpt from a feature in the new Tucson Weekly about how one city administration can royally fuck future generations in the ass.

Thirty years ago, Tucson and Portland, Ore. were looking ahead. Pima County's metropolitan population was about 450,000, and the Oregon community had more than twice as many residents. Facing growing pains, both wanted to plan their futures.

In the end, the northwest city chose urbanization; the southwest one continued suburbanization. But for a brief moment, Tucson flirted with addressing leapfrog development.

In 1972, a local Comprehensive Planning Process was begun. Combining the forces of all the governmental jurisdictions in eastern Pima County, the goal was to devise a plan based on public input which would guide growth until the year 2000, when the area was projected to have a population between 1 and 1.4 million.

Included in a 1973 newspaper supplement entitled "Tell Tucson Where to Go," these were:

-Peripheral expansion. By allowing the status quo of unrestrained population increases and scattered new housing developments to continue, it was estimated the community would grow from 260 to 750 square miles in size.

-Activity centers. Through use of intense zoning around major street intersections, commercial, office and higher-density residential uses would be concentrated at specific locations across town.

-Contained growth. Establishing and enforcing a growth boundary to encircle Tucson, this option was intended to eliminate the prevalent leapfrog pattern of development.

-Satellite cities. The towns of Oracle, Green Valley and Benson were possible candidates for huge increases in population while steps would be taken to ensure the land between them and Tucson was not developed.

When the initial draft of the 561-page plan was finally released in 1975, it sent shock waves through the Tucson establishment. The proposal recommended managing the rate of growth so the population in 2000 would not exceed 800,000 people. It also suggested having future construction only occur within a 300-square-mile area containing numerous activity centers.

In addition, the draft CPP document called for new development to pay its own way while focusing taxpayer-funded infrastructure improvements at the core of the community. Other ideas were that Central Arizona Project water not be imported into Tucson; government support for tourism and economic development would be ended, and a decreasing reliance would be placed upon the automobile.

Not surprisingly, the community's power structure was outraged. Calling the plan "dangerous" and "dictatorial," they labeled the planners who had prepared it "socialists."