Category: Life

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Krause birthday week wraps up

Loyal readers already know that today is my actual birthday, but one day is frankly not enough for anyone. While Bill HD claims that no one older 8 ought to be allowed to have such a perversion as a “birthday week,” I am of the opinion that it is exactly the opposite: the older you get, the longer you should be allowed to celebrate. Ultimately, most retirees are simply celebrating their birthdays year-round.

In any event, there were a few family snags with my usual birthday plans I won’t go into now, but all in all, a good time. I have received many fine wishes on Facebook, some family cards, I’ve had some cake (albeit a low-fat/low-calorie one), I’ve been able to goof off a little, I’ve enjoyed my new iPod Touch quite a bit, etc.

One kind of weird thing over the weekend though. This is a picture of the birthday card (and its contents) I received from my parents:

Torn Card

The black parts are my sloppy ways of blocking out address and other info; the problem here is that the envelope and enclosed card had about the bottom third of it sheared off. The whole thing came in a plastic bag from the post office that basically said “we’re really sorry, but this was damaged.” It does make you wonder why this sort of thing doesn’t happen more often– this is the first piece of mail I’ve ever received that was damaged like this– and my bank still cashed the check, so all is well.

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Birthday Week continues: my big gift comes early

I guess mostly as a result of my whining about it (because I knew what I was going to get) and partly because my actual birthday is on a night Annette is teaching, I got her and Will to give me my big birthday gift, an iPod Touch. Sweet! (Actually, I tried to post this from my new pod/touch yesterday, but I got tired of trying to make it work, so I’m posting this from a regular computer. But I’m still back dating the post).

For those not in the know, the pod/touch is basically the same as an iPhone but without the phone: that is, it’s an iPod, you can watch videos, and, assuming you have a wireless connection, you can track your stocks (my vast portfolio, of course), you can buy stuff from iTunes, check your mail, and sort of surf the web with Safari. When the iPhone first came out, my first reaction was “I don’t need a phone, but if I had something that had the rest of this stuff, that’d be cool.” Well, here ya go.

Anyway, I haven’t taken it out “in the wild” yet, so I don’t know how well it will respond/connect to wifi networks in coffee shops and stuff. I guess it’ll work fine. The email app works great, and the google sites I use all the time (reader, news, etc.) have iPod/Phone/Touch -specific versions, which is nice. And now there’s a whole bunch of web sites specifically made for the iPod/Phone/Touch, which is a potentially interesting topic of “Writing for the World Wide Web” this spring. I finally figured out how to use HandBrake to rip a DVD to an iPod/Phone/Touch format, meaning I can watch Spirited Away on a tiny screen in fantastic resolution. This is cool, but I am not sure I can watch a 2 hour movie like this– David Lynch probably has a point.

Oh yeah– it plays music too.

Anyway, mucho thanks to Annette and Will!

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Let the 42nd birthday week begin (or continue?): suprise CDs

My birthday is Tuesday, March 25, and so I’m getting a bit of a late start on my traditional birthday week/birthday month. I guess there really isn’t anything that “special” about 42, although, as this helpful entry on wikipedia points out, there’s a lot to good ol’ 42, including (and how did forget this?) the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

My actual birthday itself is Tuesday, and my big plan/gift/surprise to myself is I am taking the day off and I absolutely refuse to go anything school. My hope is to spend some time playing around with the “surprise” I know I’m getting. Since Annette teaches Tuesday (and hey, it’s the middle of the week too), we’re going out tomorrow, a real surprise for me. Stay tuned for the details on that.

This was on my mind because of the surprise CD set I received today, Vee-Jay: The Definitive Collection, was waiting for me. This was surprising for two reasons. First, I didn’t order/buy these CDs; rather, they were the extra/gift item we received for the donation for the WEMU fund raiser. What I’ve heard so far is pretty cool, but it isn’t the sort of thing I would have bought directly. Second, it seems like we sent in the pledge card about three days ago.

Anyway, surprise CDs are always good, birthday week or not.

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Here’s my contribution to a St. Patrick’s day celebration

Actually, it is boing-boing’s:

All I know is I was trying to find a place to do some reading and writing yesterday in downtown Ann Arbor and the place was a freakin’ zoo, in part because there was some kind of “fun run” kind of event, and also in part because I think a bunch of people were taking the Pope’s advice about celebrating before the holy week. Though I have a feeling some of those folks might sneak in a beer today.

Anyway, I might not even wear green. That’ll show ’em.

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Iggy Pop sings Madonna songs at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony

Here is the Ypsi Township native singing “Ray of Light:”

I think that MTV or VH1 is going to broadcast the show next weekend or something, but as the YouTube site tells it, Madonna apparently wanted Iggy and the Stooges to perform her songs instead of singing them herself, maybe because she thinks that Iggy and company have been snubbed by the Hall of Fame for too long, maybe she just wanted to do something different. The audience seems a little confused.

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Sweded version of Star Wars: so awesome, so many ideas

Via my friend Chris and via boing-boing comes this “Sweded” version of Star Wars:

Oh, where to begin?

First off, this is why I want to very much see the here and gone almost immediately movie, Be Kind Rewind. As the wikipedia entry suggests, the plot of the movie involves the characters remaking the videos in a rental store, and, when customers complain about the remakes, which are like the one above, the excuse offered is that the videos are from Sweden. Or something like that– I have yet to see the movie.

Second, I think this would be a fun way to spend the afternoon with Will and some of his friends. Not this particular afternoon, but I can see the film maker in me yet….

And third, I actually think this might be a kind of cool assignment for some of the writing classes I teach, particularly English 328. I am imagining something like asking students, working in small groups, to make a 2 minute or less “sweded” version of something. It could be a pop movie, or, if I wanted it to fit more in the theme of the class, maybe it could be of a style and/or grammar rule, maybe a writing “tip” of some sort. We have the cheap cameras and (I think?) things like iMovie to make this work. Then students would have to write about the experience in terms of the process, what this different kind of “writing” says about more conventional “words in a row” writing, etc.

I don’t know, I think this is just crazy enough to work.

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Can I get a napkin, please?

Tip o’ the hat to my friend Chris for this, though I would have come across it sooner than later since I have an RSS Feed set up to the fantastic site Improv Everywhere. Here’s video (and a link) to their latest, Food Court Musical:

The entry on the blog about this is interesting because it talks about some of the unusual steps they had to take to make this stunt happen. Funny stuff; reminded me of everyone’s favorite Buffy episode….