New low

For the first time in my life, I just voluntarily turned off an IU game before it was over. This has to be the lowest point in my history of loving IU basketball. And that goes back kind of far since one of my earliest memories is the party my parents threw when we won it all in 1976. But this year, geez, it is worse than a Mike Davis team because our offense is just as painful to watch but our defense is worse and we have more talent. Seriously, this has to be the most athletic and talented team since, heck, Cheaney's days, but Sampson doesn't appear to have the first clue about what they should do to score in the half court. It's humiliating. Well, as an IU fan it is humiliating. There are worse things in life than having your team suck. I'm just sayin'. I'm going sleepies now.

The real weather report.

Enough of this 6-10" snow prediction stuff. I am going to call it early tonight and predict that our actual total will fall in the 2-3" range, and result not in a cancellation, but in a 2-hr delay. That's my call. Looking at the radar trend, there is no other possibility. Why can't the forecasters be as smart as I am? It's tiring doing both my job and theirs, too.

Untrue or False

I think Burial's "Untrue" played in my livingroom on repeat from 9 to 5 yesterday, and then we drove around for an hour or two listening to it in the car as we shopped for a new tv. Sometimes I'd forget it was on, sometimes I'd stop what I was doing and just listen, but after a full day, I still can't decide how much I like it. Somehow, it's riding this perfect line between sublime and boring. Does it take some kind of genius to do that, or what? Still figuring that one out.

My first day as a DIY electronica musician.

Finally, via boing-boing, I discover a free way for me to realize my dream of becoming whatever you call a person who makes electronic music. This great link to aM Laboratory lets you tinker with all the knobs on the above virtual, vintage, Roland drum machine. I can't really figure out how to control it much yet. No idea what "decay" means or "shuffle," or what clicking those buttons on the bottom do, but still, I'm making music. Or beats, at least. Best time waster I've found in awhile.

2008 is happening.

Lake Caravan

That was a healthy break, there. This muddy looking image is from a few days before new year's at the in-law's lake place. The lake had been free of snow for a few days before and like glass and you could see the bottom like a window, like summer was still happening down there. You have to wonder if fish have any idea at all, where the boats go, where the worms go. I know a guy who walked out on the ice and found a fishing lure he'd lost last summer. Now he just needs to remember when he comes back in July.

What else.

I'm the first person I know who doesn't love Juno. And I don't have a cell phone. That makes me extremely rare, I think. There is something going on now where young whippersnappers want to use soundtracks as substitutes for film-making. Wes Anderson does it, and this movie does too, all over the place. Oh, and Garden State. It was well done in The Graduate, but that movie makes it look easy.

Still, the baby-birthin' scene made me tear up at the end of Juno. Once you're a dad, I guess, every time you see those you say "let's have us another one of those babies!" And then you snap out of it somewhat, or you don't, but you know that you have to stop having the babies at some point in life, let other people have some of them. It's hard.

Here is a new year's resolution: learn to juggle 4 things. You have been juggling 3 things for what, many years now? It is understandable to not know how to juggle, but to know how to juggle 3 and not learn 4 after 15 years or so just looks lazy.

Good news today is that Silver Jews have a new album coming out in late '08 and I had no idea. So excited. I love this excerpt from the Pitchfork interview with David Berman where I heard about the new album. They ask him what he does when he's not working, and he says this:

DB: I read a lot. I read, like, ten hours a day.

Pitchfork: Sounds perfect.

DB: I figure that's what I'm supposed to do when I'm not working. I think that I'm supposed to keep learning, in order to be useful in the event of an emergency, I don't know. I still have to learn how to make knots and all of that stuff. And why France collapsed so easily in 1940. There's a million things I have not caught up to.

I know the feeling.

Anyway, hello, 2008.