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Exploding Head Movie

This is the last time I try to squeeze a full week of meetings into three days. It's always intense when I visit the company HQ in Seattle, just because of the sheer concentration of people that work here, but this time has been the worst. I've been trying to shore up support for some of the things I need to do in my new position.

Between trying to figure out what I have to do, what I need to do it, and who I need to connect with, my head has swelled to like sixteen times its normal size and it feels like my brain has sprung a leak. I asked for it though, so I can't really complain. I had a choice of jobs a few months ago when my team reorganized, and I chose the more intense job for which I had the least experience. I'll sleep again someday, but maybe not someday soon.

At least I got the day off today to bum around town and go on a shopping spree before my flight. The weather was gorgeous, arclight sun and cobalt sky, the trees blazing with colors from fall-orange down into the infrareds. Seattle's a gorgeous town. I may move here someday.

Oh yeah, one thing I shopped for was my Halloween outfit. The plan was to get a lab coat, hospital mask and rubber chicken (so I'd be the bird flu). I found the lab coat but no rubber chicken. Where did all the rubber chickens go? Not sure why but I always thought that rubber chickens were universal things that you should be able to find if you really wanted one...

Anyway, I did find a basketball-sized evil-looking synthetic black vulture at a Halloween store in Redmond. My concern is that it might be over the top, I mean, a rubber chicken is cute and offbeat, whereas an evil synthetic black vulture is kinda weird and creepy.

I can't imagine what the customs people will think if they open my bag in Copenhagen.

Another hour and a half till my flight. Signing off and heading for the bar.

Seattle

On the way to Seattle. Quite literally so since I'm sitting in the first row up in the nose of an A340 soaring between Norway and Iceland. It's a pity because they're killing the in-air Internet on these planes, and the service will disappear around the turn of the year. Connexion, the company that runs the service, said that they couldn't be profitable with their current business model- reminds me of a lot of great ideas that were kicking around California around 99 and 2000 that died because the VC funding dried up. But for now at least, it's fun to say hi to the world and catch up from above the tropopause, twelve thousand meters above the GIUK gap.

I am a lucky man. I scored business class tickets for this trip and they've remodeled my A340 (The Astrid Viking--Scandinavian only has seven A340s so I know most of them by name by now). So now we get full flatbeds in biz class, with heated back massage and the whole works. I sit here with a bloody mary in one hand and typing with the other as I stare out into the rose-pink sky--the same gentle blush color the sky's been for almost three hours, since we're chasing the sun at this speed and latitude.

I'm very mindful and grateful for this, I can tell you. Fox knows I don't deserve it.

Moscow Coup Attempt Videos

Moscow Coup Attempt combines brooding dark ambient music with Conet Project samples. Now the band has released videos for all their tracks on YouTube.

Looks like they've recycled old science training and historical films from the 1940s as the backdrop to the music. It's a pity the sound quality isn't super- all the videos on YouTube are heavily compressed, so you don't get the nuances of how the music works together with the Conet samples. Interesting to watch nonetheless.

I'm addicted to Conet Project & sometimes listen to the recordings at work, especially when I really need to focus on what I'm working on and block out the rest of the world. Unintended side effect is that my co-workers think I'm out of my mind (which I guess could have been predictable).

I first heard Moscow Coup Attempt on Dave's Lounge a couple months ago (which is one of my best sources for new music these days). The repetitive dark ambient music is a good backdrop for the samples, and it's cool when you hear one of the samples break through the music... it's like, "hey, that's the East German Seven Gongs station!"

Missed connection

Grr... I tried to arrange a trip to the US this week so I'd be in San Francisco Monday night and catch the Ladytron show at the Fillmore, but it fell through when all the people I needed to meet turned out to be in Seattle next week. So it's off to Seattle I go, but Ladytron just played there last week, and they played Vancouver last night, which would have been another possibility.

Drat. Looks like I'm just not meant to see them. I booked a trip to New York two years ago to catch them there, but it turned out the dates on their site were wrong.

So I'll have to continue living vicariously. Hannah just saw them in Chicago, and I think Deborah might have caught them in Vancouver- and I've tried to convince everyone I know in San Franciso to go out tomorrow night.

Too much to ask for them to just come to Copenhagen, I guess...

It's even worse than I could have imagined

And speaking of books, I read last night in Rise of the Vulcans that Bush's pet nickname for Russian President Vladimir Putin--repeated often, apparently--is "Pootie Poot."

...And people still wonder how we ended up in the horrific mess we're in.

The New Gibson Book

...will be called Spook Country

The countdown begins.

Fiasco

I just finished reading Fiasco, by Thomas Ricks. I read it sraight in a couple of weeks, and I gotta say it's one of the best works of journalism I've ever encountered. Unlike a lot of Washington journalists that interview political figures and maybe some of the top generals about the war, Ricks has made many trips to Iraq, served with the guys out in the field, and gotten to know the company and battalion commanders that are sweating with their troops and getting shot at out there. He's interviewed guys like Rumsfeld, Franks and Bremer too, but it's a very different account than I've read before- both in its scope and in the level of detail.

It's also a somewhat depressing book because unlike politicians on both sides that claim to have an answwer, Ricks is saying that there's no easy answer. Basically, we've been screwed so badly by the poor decisionmaking that's been made up to this point, and we've made such a horrific mess of things in Iraq, that we can't really pull out now even if we want to because the consequences would be even worse than staying. He's not a complete pessimist though, because he records that--especially at the operational if not strategic level--we've learned from many of the mistakes we've made.

But it's going to be a long and bloody process of disengaging ourselves from Iraq in a way that doesn't create complete chaos and a power vacuum that can only be filled by the Iranians (which will light off a regional war as the Sunni countries around Iraq pour in forces to keep the Iranians from taking the whole country). And even if we get it right, and even if our luck holds, our best case scenario will still leave us with America in a heavily damaged state, deeply in debt and ill-prepared to deal with the winners of this conflict- Iran and Syria on one side, and the Sunni extremists on the other. And of course, untouched by all of this, an ever-rising and confident China.

It's bad news, but the book is well-researched, well-written, and it's serious. In serious times, this is the kind of reporting we need.

Have been looking forward to reading something escapist, maybe some science fiction. The last couple of months I've been pounding myself with dead serious works that just reinforce how much trouble we're in right now. But I'm hearing a lot of buzz about this new Bob Woodward book and will probably pick that up when I'm in Seattle next week.

So much for escapism.

Natalia Flickr page

Natalia has a Flickr site too, with an even larger selection of photos than on this site, including some more good stuff from the Arctic Circle.

Turns out she didn't make it to Franz Josef Land, but did get to Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen. Some amazing photos of Spitsbergen.

Iceland and Paris

Here's the latest installment of photos from Natalia, this time from a three month trip to Paris and Reykjavik.

Before she left for the summer, our adventuress mentioned she was planning on taking a ship up to the Franz Josef Land archipelago- northwest of Novaya Zemlya and just a few hundred klicks short of the North Pole. Natasha, tell me more!

Tiki party

Some pics from a Tiki party I threw at my new pad last month. A lotta booze, obviously.

Nuff said.