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post 102

By anders pearson 18 Sep 2000

the network here has been seriously screwed up lately. last night i missed a deadline because of it. i was supposed to electronically submit some homework by midnight. so, of course, promptly at 23:00, the network goes down and doesn’t come back until some time after i give up and go to bed.

today it’s working in some places and completely screwed up in others. i can connect to columbia’s main server from my machine in my dorm no problem. from the main server, i can connect anywhere else pretty quickly. but trying to connect to another machine outside columbia (or even on a different subnet on campus) barely works. it does work, so i know it’s not just a problem with my routing tables; but it works with like 1byte/second rates. so right now i’m using lynx on the main server to make this entry.

post 101

By anders pearson 16 Sep 2000

last night, 6 or 7 of us went over to the east side for authentic cheap indian food at this little restaurant mimi’s punjabi friend Rich introduced us to. afterwards, a couple of us were going to split and go to the foetus (aka: foetus Under glass, you’ve got foetus on your breath, phillip and his foetus vibrations, foetus over frisco, foetus on the beach, scraping foetus off the wheel, foetus über frisco, wiseblood, the foetus of excellence, the foetus all-nude revue, the flesh volcano, clint ruin, foetus interruptus, foetus inc, garage monsters, steroid maximus, foetus in excelsis corruptus deluxe, etc) show at the Knitting Factory. the others were going to go to a movie but couldn’t decide what to see. somehow, they ended up all just coming to the foetus show (the dynamics of decision making in large groups of people is fascinating). when we got to the Knitting Factory, there was a line around the corner and down the block of people waiting to get in. what happened next, i don’t entirely understand, but i strongly suspect the intervention of the Ancient Bavarian Illuminati, or the Freemasons, or some other even more secret secret society. Rich noticed a necklace the bouncer was wearing. the bouncer recognized a bracelet Rich was wearing. a nod and a secret handshake later, we were all escorted past the line into the club and given the run of the place.

the people i was with seemed to enjoy the show despite not even knowing who foetus was. i was a little disappointed though. the sound was awful; you couldn’t hear the vocals at all (and Thirlwell’s voice is a really important part of the Foetus sound) and the guitars were feeding back painfully every few seconds. foetus albums are almost symphonic in their complex arrangements and layering of hundreds of instruments. live, there were only 5 people playing (including, i think Todd from Cop Shoot Cop on bass) so they just didn’t play a lot of the more complex songs and stripped down the arrangements on a lot of other songs. and they never played my favorite song “Verklemmt” :( aside from the sound though, it wasn’t a bad show.

post 98

By anders pearson 11 Sep 2000

from an article on Björk i was reading:

“Björk is something of a reluctant fashion icon; she claims to have ‘no memory’ of the glossy new look she sported for our photo session, preferring to sing the praises of Cannibal Corpse, the death-metal band she went to see the night before the interview.”

i knew that she was a death metal fan (she did have Carcass remix Isobel after all), but it’s still neat to see that she is willing to admit it in public. now i just wish i hadn’t been too busy to go to that show… how cool would it be to just run into Björk at a Cannibal Corpse concert…

post 97

By anders pearson 10 Sep 2000

while having a few drinks with my friend julintip in a local bar this evening, we noticed that one guy sitting up at the bar had a large green duffel bag on the floor next to him. then the bag started moving. there was definately something small and alive inside the bag. julintip assumed that it must be a small dog and thought that that was still a pretty weird thing to have in a bag. naturally, my hopeful mind figured that maybe it was a small child. i can see the adds now: “A revolutionary breakthrough in babysitting technology!”

he got up and left before we ever got a chance to figure out exactly what he had in the bag.

post 92

By anders pearson 07 Sep 2000

living in New York is surreal at times. Vaclav Havel (president of the Czech Republic), Emil Constantinescu (president of Romania), Elie Wiesel (author), and assorted other important people and their entourages (including lots of ominous looking black SUVs full of guys in dark suits) just passed by under my window.

post 88

By anders pearson 31 Aug 2000

i just scanned in and uploaded the ‘driftwood’ image to the portfolio. as i was typing in the date of the sketch, i noticed that i drew that one the day that tad was killed (well, he didn’t actually die until 3 days later if you want to split hairs). since i didn’t hear about it until a week or so later, it never registered. kind of creepy.