A Cosmic Cowgirl

The Latest (A Bulletted List)

• I'm in Portland, Oregon.
• (For semi-permanently).
• I'm working for The Oregon Bus Project.  I'm a "PolitiCorps Field Organizer" -- I pretty much help run their incredible summer leadership program.
• I work beastly hours and do good work for very little pay.
• I'll probably still be working here in September.
• Though, who knows?
• I'm about to sign my first-ever lease.  The house is gorgeous, the landlord fabulous, the neighborhood great, and my roommates stellar.  I'm excited, to say the least.
• I'm oh-so-happy.

Silly new meme.

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Gone for a few days...

My family and I will be heading down to the River for a few days, so no internet access for me! Until then, enjoy The TV Show Pitch Generator and other generators at Generator Land (via TV Squad).

Charles Nelson Reilly Passes Away

Charles Nelson Reilly passed away due to complications from pneumonia. As someone who grew up watching Match Game reruns and loved his campiness, I'll miss him.

Facebook API gets a tentative thumbs-up from Libby

After reading this post from Rob Curley's blog about Facebook's new API code "Facebook Platform,", and experimenting with some of the new add-ons that Facebook allows, I have to admit: I like the Platform. I definitely understand The ACLU's concerns. Having this many companies know SO much about me is dangerous. It almost has the potential to be a Google-like entity -- knowing pretty much my every search, move, whatever. I don't let that concern me too much, though I probably should.

One thing I'm not sure I entirely understand about the new platform is whether or not the third-parties actually have access to the data I put on facebook? Does that make sense? I know they can create the applications and use data received from those applications for functionality purposes, but can they actually see that data?

At any rate, I like what facebook has done. I'm excited that the layout of facebook remains clean and simple and uncustomizable, but that we can integrate exciting widgets -- pretty awesome. Facebook has taken the opposite route of Myspace (fighting widgets), and I think it's the smart move.

Oh, I'm still so college sometimes.

Quick link

Funny, funny political radio with Giuliani and ferrets from 1999.

Courtney!

Call me when you get a chance, sweetheart.

Fourteen Again, by Victoria Wood

I want to be fourteen again,
When sex was just called number ten,

And I was up to seven and a half.

Boys were for love, girls were for fun.
You burst out laughing if you saw a nun.

Sophistication was a sports car and a chiffon scarf.

I want to be fourteen again,
Tattoo my self with a fountain pen,

Pretend to like the taste of rum and Coke,

Chuck my school hat in a bush,
Spit on my mascara brush,

Buy Consulate and teach myself to smoke.

I want to be fourteen again,
Free rides on the waltzer off the fairground men

For a promise of a snog the last night of the fair—

French kissing as the kiosks shut
Behind the generators with your coconut,

The coloured lights reflected in the Brylcream on his hair.

I want to be fourteen again,
For all the things I didn't know then.

When I was funny, I was famous, I was never ignored,

I was a crazy girl, I had to laugh.
I had Ilya Kuriakin's autograph.

I had no idea you could wake up feeling bored.

A Quick Paper I Wrote on Coltrane with Graduation Looming

Thoughts on A Love Supreme
I’m currently in Bobby Bradford’s History of Jazz course; while the class is phenomenal, we rarely get to provide comments in class. Most of the course consists of Mr. Bradford speaking, which is AWESOME, but I thought I’d use this opportunity to write down a few of my thoughts on John Coltrane, particularly the album A Love Supreme since that is what we are discussing in both of my classes currently.
The first aspect of the music I want to discuss in Coltrane’s tenor sax. While Coltrane is always extremely expressive, on this album his tenor actually seems to be speaking. As hokey as that sounds, when combined with the elements of the album found in other music forms and cultures, his sax almost seems to be praying in another language.
The hard bop movement in jazz was about the African American community reconnecting to its roots. Unlike the pure intellectualism of Charlie Parker, the hard boppers attempted to reconcile different aspects of African American history. This is not to say that the music of the hard bop era is unintellectual, but to say that it also has aspects of spirituality and music elements that have found a more traditional home in other music forms, such as the Negro spiritual and West African Yoruba drumming. Parker had not quite figured out a way to reconcile the legacy of slavery with current jazz. While Parker’s jazz is sometimes political, it rarely encapsulates the same kind of longing, anger, love, and spirituality that hard boppers have.
A Love Supreme is a milestone in achieving tapping into the spiritual potential of jazz. Jazz is a uniquely American music form; while some Europeans eventually learned to play it, jazz stems (mostly) from two other music forms, the blues and ragtime. In a country with so much spiritual and racial baggage such as the United States, jazz became a way of expressing the complexities of the relationship between Americans, especially African Americans, and their country. The musical legacy found in A Love Supreme especially expresses this – at times Coltrane’s sax sounds like a person singing a work song or a spiritual. The percussive elements sometimes sound like a snake, winding its way through the history of African Americans in this country. Despite the musical baggage in the work, A Love Supreme ultimately offers a completely original and spiritual take on jazz. The music grows progressively more intense. This intensity is not angry, but hopeful and triumphant. The build-up of the album reflects the history of the United States, particularly in the 1960s – a time of struggling, but also of renewal and optimism.

I turned that in for a class. My professor's comments? "I named my first kid Colton after Trane. Thank you for this."

David Blaine

Finals week calls, but these are too funny.