dsandler.org/wp

I should have worn my leather jacket today.

I wore my vinyl jacket instead (a little paranoia about the (nil) chance
of rain). On the way home, after parking the car, on the path to my
apartment, I re-encountered a very friendly neighborhood cat
(buff-colored, earning him the name “buffcat”). He recognized me, and
turned to meet me as I walked toward him. I leaned down to let him
sniff my fingers.

With a violent POP I released into the tip of his nose the thousands of
electrons my vinyl jacket had scraped off the synthetic upholstery of my
Civic.

He recoiled in pain and fright, and eventually slunk away down the path,
crying feebly. He seemed to say, as he looked back over his shoulder,
“Why? Why would you do this to me, you nice stranger? I thought you were
my friend! How can I ever trust you again?”

There’s a great indexed summary of
A Pattern Language, which is on Joel’s
(revised) reading list.

By the way, I took a few pictures last week: e. and I visited the City of San Mateo Japanese Garden last
Sunday, and unwrapped our new iMac as
well (full narration forthcoming).

Linked all over the place already, but the NYT mag has a fabulous
interview/analysis of Moby and his
ideas about the value of music when music is free, &c. He offers a few
tidbits about his own creative process, too:

“You know the song on ‘Play’ ‘Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?’ The song I
took the woman’s vocal from actually goes ‘glad,’ not ‘bad’ — it’s an
upbeat, happy song. But me being me, I guess, I put these minor chords under
it and manipulated the vocal, and it became something else.”

“I’m a megalomaniac, and this setup is perfectly suited for
megalomaniacs. ” He gestured to the wall of synthesizers. “All
these different musicians. They’re always here waiting to play. And they
never complain.”

When it came to sequencing the settled-upon tracks, he loaded them on an Apple
iPod in scores of differing orders and took his late-night walks.

It seems that 18, the new album due in May, borrows heavily from those
musical influences that most impacted a young Moby: the cutting edge of the
early eighties. “The first single from the album, ‘We Are All
Made of Stars,’ might have been called ‘This One Is for the
Cars.’” Oh, and I’ve linked it before, but Moby keeps a weblog.