dysfunctional robot

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

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The Cow

The cow is of the bovine ilk:
One end is moo, the other, milk.

Ogden Nash

To A Mouse

Small, sleek, cowering, timorous beast,
O, what a panic is in your breast!
You need not start away so hasty
With hurrying scamper!
I would be loath to run and chase you,
With murdering plough-staff.

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The inventor of Instant Ramen Noodles, Momofuku Ando died earlier today at age 96. This should strike anyone who barely survived through college on the stuff, as BIG news. Ando is actually of Taiwanese extraction, and moved to Japan in 1933, before the war. The Kyodo news agency writes:

Ando was inspired to develop the instant noodle after coming upon a long line of people on a cold night shortly after World War II waiting to buy freshly made ramen at a black market food stall, according to Nissin. The experience convinced him that “Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat,” it said.

The Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs recently announced its picks for the top 100 in Japanese media arts. Included in the four categories of Art, Entertainment, Animation and Manga are the usual suspects, with Taro Okamaoto topping Art and Miyazaki dominating the animation nominations. What I found intersting was that in the “entertainment” category two entries beat out Super Mario Brothers. The no.1 place went to “soft tank” a flash animation that was purpotedly very popular on the internets. The second place went to Pythagoraswitch, a children’s TV show I am very fond of. Pythagoraswitch is a 5 minute program. It usually features two new Rube Goldberd Machines for every episode, one at the begining and end of the show. The rest of the show has various rotating content such as the Algorithm March and Exercises, Framy the square dog, Today’s Robot…etc. I’m gonna post some content from Pythagora switch.

Here’s an Algorithm march featuring ninjas:

My friend Jeff Clarke and I often go fishing for Charles River Carp. There we often see the college crew members row up and down the river in a display of endurance and athleticism, while we get drunk and make barbeque chicken. Incidentally, my mother was a founding member of the Tokyo University of Foreign Languages (Gaigo) college rowing team. She served both as a rower and a coxswain. So by pedigree, I figured I should at least show some interest in the sport. So, having been blessed with the best New England autumn in years, I went to see the Head of the Charles regatta races yesterday for the very first time in all these many years around Cambridge.

I camped out on the foot bridge where Quentin Compson of William Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury had porportedly met his demise. All you college kids who have slogged through the wild jungle thickets of Modernism and literary criticism know what I’m talking about. Anyway, I took a bunch of photos, including this near catastrophic collision between the Peking University rowing team and some other crew.

I should qualify that the Beida (peking) team was not at fault. They were just rowing straight ahead, when the team in front cut across their path in a rather ungraceful move to out-flank everyone and use the river currents to their advantage. In my estimation, there seems to be a spot around Harvard where, near the banks of the river (right after the footbridge), the current is significantly weaker. The teams that are familiar with the river seem to take this route.

I had read a brief blurb in the Boston Globe the day before the races that the Beida team had had visa problems with their coxswain and had to come to the event a man short. They recruited a last-minute coxswain from MIT to compensate. Perhaps these unusal and unfamiliar settings had something to do with it, but unbeknownst to me then, the Beida team’s boat is later said to have sunk further up river. Check out this AP photo of the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe:

I feel bad for the Peking University team. They fly halfway around the world, only to be met with frustration and agony. It is the quintessential Boston experience. This place blows.

This year’s Good Design Award winners have been announced. Among the winners for the coveted award established by MITI, is a familiar entry: HAL, the robotic power suit with a name that inspires quiet discomfort for all Kubrik fans…

One of the nicer things about Portland Oregon, where I misspent seven years of my youth, was that there was no dearth of used book and record shops. There, one can find many relics of the wonderous near past, time capsules from the atomic and space ages. I doubt that Kyu Sakamoto’s original Sukiyaki release on vinyl would readily be available at a record store here in Boston. One of the more obscure and therefore more intersting aquisitions I made back then was a LP called Saloon Society. I had no idea of what it was about, but it was sitting in the spoken word section, and seemed to be about booze and beatniks. On the back cover there was a photo of a man with a cigarette in his mouth and a bottle of wine in his hand… I was sold. It turns out that the author of the LP, Bill Manville, also ran a column in the Village Voice under the same title. The LP was a collection of excerpts from his column which told the tales of the various exploits of those in the village scene (read:drunks and beatniks). Anyways, information on Bill Manville is scant, and I think the record has long been out of print, and had never been released on CD, so let me provide you with MP3s of the album.

Bill Manville’s Saloon Society

1. Saturday Morning

2. The Young Marrieds

3. Lady Effingham’s Eggs

4. Summer Affair

5. Uptown

6. Jersey Adventure

7. Jim Palm

8. Lou the Ladie’s Man

9. Maggie Singleton

note: I have no idea what the current copyright status of this album is. I’ve put this up for your online listening pleasure, but please be advised that downloading and (in particular) distribution of this material may constitute a violation of any number of laws.

Addendum: Looking around on the web, I have discovered that Bill Manville has in more recent years written a self-help book on kicking substance abuse. The book entitled Cool, Hip & Sober, looks to be very much in print, so if you enjoyed the above recordings, and want to support Mr. Manville, you can buy a copy of his book. Also, should you youngsters find the wino life glamorous and decide to follow in Mr. Manville’s reckless footsteps, just be forwarned that you might also find yourself in and out of rehab for 20 long years.

OK, as mentioned in my mass mailing / spam message from earlier today to many of you, I am flirting with the idea of joining the 11th World Wide Sketch Crawl. Unfortunately here in Boston other than myself it looks like only one other person has posted so far in the Sketch Crawl forums. Please join us and convice others to come along. Post your reply on the Boston thread, or email me.