DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

This is a feel-good, walking-around groove, a march for people with 3.5 legs. It’s airy, it’s spacey, and it turns a corner just in the way that air and space do not. I call it Celebrity Dentist because it makes me smile — then it pokes me when I least expect it.

Playing odd meters slowly is a good way to get comfortable with them, as the slow tempo allows more time for counting. Also these grooves tend to express their intrinsic melodies in a way that faster, more note-y grooves may not.

      1   2   3   4   5   6   7    | 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   
7 RB  o   o   o   o   o   o   o    | o   o   o   o   o   o   o
- SD   o  OO O o o    OO O o o  OO |  o  OO O o o    OO O o o  O
8 KD  o o       o o         o o    | o o       o o         o o  o

Patronize these links, man:

• Virtual Drummer loop
• MIDI
• MP3

On a Fall day in 1996, walking through the Golden Gate National Recreational Area near the northernmost tip of the San Francisco peninsula, I joined a secret brotherhood. (Readers familiar with the area may wonder whether this event involved sex. Although we were not far from the nude end of Baker Beach, this brotherhood concerns itself with an altogether different kind of stones.)

I strolled along the path near the rocky part of the beach, and happened upon several unlikely, awesome vertical piles of rocks. I’m talking about single rocks stacked one on another, reaching heights of two to three feet. I was amazed at the precarious nature of the structures — I actually touched one to see if the stones were glued together. I felt awful when it toppled over.

Since that time, whenever Nature provides the raw materials, my wife and I like to build what we’ve come to call “stone sculptures.” Of course, height is the main goal, and aesthetics come in a close second. Except in special cases you need to have at least a half-dozen stones before you can begin to feel smug.

I left this sculpture near the Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park. (Here’s are some great QTVR panoramas of Athabasca Falls.)

The practice of building sculptures of native stone appears to have begun with Inuit tribes, whose sculptures are called inuksuit. (The singular of inuksuit is inukshuk or inuksuk, or if you’re Neil Peart, inukashuk.) Here are some photos of ancient inuksuit.

Here’s are newer articles about building stone sculptures in Germany and Vancouver.

I discovered this groove in one of the many stacks of scribbled transcriptions next to my drum kit. It may have began as an attempt to jot down the Apocalypse in 9/8 groove from memory, although I’d hate to think I’d forgotten what time signature Apocalypse in 9/8 is in.

This is a linear, 2-bar kick/snare rhythm, under a cymbal ostinato that moves from downbeats in the first bar to offbeats in the second. The offbeat section actually starts on the + of 7, a half-beat before you might expect it. This, and the rest on the first beat of the second bar, throws off the listener’s perception of where the 1 falls.

      1   2   3   4   5   6   7     1   2   3   4   5   6   7   
7  RB                           o |   o   o   o   o   o   o   o 
-  RC o   o   o   o   o   o   o   | 
8  SD     o   o         o   o     |     o   o       o     o
   KD o o   o   o   o o   o   o o |   o   o     o o     o    

Patronize these links, man:

• Virtual Drummer Loop
• MIDI
• MP3

It’s worse than Code Red — the NIMDA virus infects both Microsoft’s Outlook as well as Microsoft’s IIS webserver. My server has registered between 3500 and 10000 infection attempts per site today.

If you run an Apache site and have PHP available, you can use my Webserver Virus Warning Generator to send warning emails to owners of infected sites. I’ve updated the script to handle NIMDA as well as Code Red.

It’s little wonder that insurance companies have begun charging higher rates for users of NT and IIS… crappy products beget higher maintenance costs.

The surreality of yesterday’s tragedy continues. Life goes on — of course — and yet any communication that doesn’t acknowledge the disaster seems tainted, out of touch, as if only within the context of yesterday’s events can we move forward with our lives.

Today’s Chron ran an unprecedented full-page cover photo of the south tower of the WTC collapsing. Most of the newspaper’s content is devoted to coverage of the attack — news, analysis, opinion, images. Nearly every page shows a somber black banner across the top: America Under Attack.

But there was no such banner on the Food section. The headline reads Exotic Wraps and the subtitle announces that “banana leaves and other ingredients add panache to special dinners.” I can see that it’s perfectly reasonable for the newspaper to include this section today, but its glib headline and apparent ignorance of the day’s context is jarring.

The Business section showed a remarkably powerful photo of a man walking out of a dust cloud, in a well-tailored suit and tie, shoulders back, briefcase in hand, looking every bit the part of the world-beating investment banker — except for the look on his face, of pain and terrible grief. This image reminds me of Nick Ut’s 1972 photograph of children fleeing a napalm attack on a village outside Saigon.

Jon Carroll’s column is interesting: Welcome to the 21st Century

I think the best thing I’ve read about yesterday’s events so far is the account of the Jeremy Glick from Flight 93, as recounted on Jerry Pournelle’s website.

Here are good explanations of why the towers collapsed: BBC and David Perlman