Jon's Book: William Shatner "Tekwar"

'THE AIRCAR, RENTED from a cousin of P.J. Ramirez started to sputter. Jake was, according to the instruments that were still working on the control panel, approximately twenty miles from his destination and two thousand feet from the ground....

The voxbox blurted something in slurred Spanish.

Jake didn't catch it. "Otra vez," he requested.

"The engine," said the Status voxbox in English this time, "having reached the guaranteed two hundred thousand airmiles, is about to give up the ghost."

"Install a replacement," he instructed the car.

"In this model aircar, that has to be done manually by the driver or by a qualified mechanic."

"Where are the spare engines housed?"

"There is an emergency engine, good for at least ten thousand airmiles, stored in the handy compartment beneath the driveseat."...

He pried it open and found only the remains of a picnic lunch from some months ago.

"Where do we store the food?"

"Compartment to your rear, opening now."

That was where the spare engine had been stored. It was a compact one, about the size of a brick. Jake carried it, listening uneasily to the explosive popping of the current engine, over to the floor compartment marked MOTOR.

He opened the id, studied the dying engine for a few seconds and then, gingerly, removed it.

The aircar fell silent.

He connected the emergency engine.

The aircar remained silent.

Jake gave the newly installed device a moderate punch with the left fist.
It took hold and started working; the aircar bounced twice in the rain-swept air.'

Rating: 3/10
Shall I keep it?: "Tekwar" belongs to the world.
Jon_, JonBook_

Andrew's Introduction

I have so much goddamned shit.

I am a pack rat by nature. Maybe I'm just obsessively nostalgic; maybe I'm just lazy. But I tend not to throw ANYTHING away. When I was in high I school, I kept a big disorganized binder of all the papers and work that I would receive in my classes. As the year would go on, I would never bother to clean it out. Eventually trying to find anything in it was sort of like an archaelogical expedition: the further you were to the outside of the binder, the newer it was; as you approached the core you began to find ancient documents from the dawn of time.

Things haven't changed much since then.

I may as well start documenting the bric-a-brac, folderal, and odds-ands-ends that I've accumulated before I crack one day and burn myself and all my possessions in my antebellum plantation manor.

Welcome to Gimcrackery! Andrew_, Introduction_

Stephen's CD: 8 1/2 Souvenirs "Happy Feet"

For some time in high school and college, I subscribed to CMJ New Music Monthly Magazine, valued not only because its reviews mandatorily suggested other similar artists for every album reviewed, but for the compilation CD that came with each issue. Although the magazines are long gone, the CDs still sit, just to my right as I type this, in their paper slipcases. I often have intended a purging of these items from my life (after, of course, making digital copies of the songs from each that are worth having). In fact, they have been migrated to a more conspicuous position for precisely this reason [see photo at right].

However, it is not these compilation CDs that I wish to write about.

Rather, it is the 8 1/2 Souvenirs' album "Happy Feet," which occupies at the moment the second slot of my alphabetized CD collection. Although I cannot prove it with certainty, I believe that I was tipped off to the swinging jazz sounds of the Austin-based Souvenirs by the appearance of "Happy Feet" on one of said compilations. I purchased the album in the flurry of excitement marking the late-90s revival of swing, big band and lounge, although listening to it now, it stands quite apart from the rest of the zoot-suit crowd.

The album is more "hot jazz" than the bulk of the other 2nd-wave swingsters' material, full of improvised solos and skillful playing on everyone's part, especially French-born guitarist Oliver Giraud. The single "Happy Feet" features Crysta Bell's vocals, which are sometimes more suited to the song than otherwise, although Giraud himself provides some rather pleasant French vocals on some of the tunes.

Although certainly a product of the retro impulses of the late 90s, this album actually still stands as a sincerely produced and played hot jazz album (even if it does skirt novelty at times, one might suggest that this was the case of much vocal jazz even in its original heyday in the 1920s-30s). Also, the CD also includes a version of "Brazil," a song that my obsession with the film Brazil nearly requires a positive reception on my part. Plus, at least two kazoo solos!

Rating: 8 1/2 out of 10 (alas, the CD is imprisoned in a jewel case)

Shall I keep it? Yes, I shall, as it is one of the few CDs that fits nearly any mood. Stephen_, StephenCD_

Jon's Introduction: A Few Words about Things

Objects tend to remain in our possession like magical, cursed artifacts due in most cases to their purely Newtonian tendency to stay exactly where they are if left alone. As I move through the orbit of my days and years little things trace unpredictable but almost universally closed epicycles around me. There is a mug sitting on my computer desk which I used over the winter break for brewing tea. Its brown earthenware, and it has a green pear painted on it in broad brushstrokes. I have no idea where it came from, I have more or less stopped using it, and now it moves about my desk whenever I get a fit of cleanliness and move,more or less ineffectually, everything around, seaching for a more pleasant arrangement of objects. Maybe one quarter of the books on my desk I picked up when a library or a professor was giving away things they no longer wanted to keep. Some of my text books are terrible (Huang's Statistical Mechanics, I am looking at you) and others are in fields which I have only a marginal connection to (I don't even know what a Reed-Solomon Code is). And all this is just what is at my desk at work.

In short, I have a lot of things, many of which I am in possession of only nominally. Maybe Gimcrackery is about making that possession active, or maybe its about launching some of these satellites out of orbit. Jon_, Introduction_

Jon's Gadget: HP Pocket PC 4400

The Hewlett Packard Pocket PC is a somewhat stylish, somewhat bulky, and, in this particular case, somewhat scuffed rung on the ladder which leads to ever smaller and more functional computing devices. As ridiculous as it sounds I bought this the summer after my graduation with the specific intent of bringing it to France with me, where I hoped to use it to experiment with the ideas in
Soft Computing: Integrating Evolutionary, Neural, and Fuzzy Systems, a book which I will review later.

The pre-installed Windows CE operating system, while sufficient for most pocket organizer type tasks, had some severe and irritating limitations, such as the absence of any such concepts as a working directory or even a command line interface. Retrospectively, this makes a certain amount of sense, given that text entry with the device is slow and tedious no matter whether the user chooses to use the built in handwriting recognition system or a very tiny on screen keyboard. Nevertheless, a good deal of software was available, even for the Programmer on the go, including a stripped down version of Python and a fairly complete Scheme implementation with enough graphing facilities to enable some experimental computing.

These days I have installed, with some trepidation, a Linux distribution (Familiar) on it, and having finally made good on its promise to be a fully fledged, portable computer (it even has a C compiler), I have proceeded to use it strictly as a very expensive, highly customizable, wireless internet ready alarm clock.

Score: 6/10

Shall I Keep It?: Yes. I have wondered if I can't get Apache running on it and host a small web page. Plus, I am holding out for the next Familiar.

Jon_, JonGadget_

Stephen's CD: The 5.6.7.8's "The 5.6.7.8's"

I vaguely remember buying this CD on the suggestion of Mr. Christopher "Slim" Rodrigue (who currently plays bass and sings for The Transmission), although I cannot remember where I purchased it. In any case, the cover alone, which features the band's vintage gear left on stage in front of a shimmering golden curtain peppered with 45s, was enough to catch my eye at the time (maybe 2003?) with or without the suggestion from Slim. And on the back of the CD, amongst glowing text from Russell O' Day is a rather small photo of the three female members of the band, bedecked in fetching gowns, dolled-up, posing with their instruments, and being very Japanese. Brilliant already.

This CD is among the several in my collection that I typically neglect for some time, before turning an eye to it, wondering why I even have it, taking a listen, and remembering exactly why. There is no doubt that the 5.6.7.8's are among the best garage rock & roll bands around.

Is there some kitsch value to owning the record? Of course. Ronnie "Yoshiko" Fujiyama and Screaming "Omo" Chellio Panther's vocals do evoke a smirk at times, as their accents make many of the lyrics completely unintelligible (not that intelligibility is ever of high value for garage rock). The kitsch fest that is Kill Bill put the striking aspects of the band to good use, and although such things might be distracting, one should note that the gals can truly play, and do truly rock.

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10 (would be higher, but it's in a jewel case)

Shall I keep it? Yes, certainly. At least until the great jewel case purge of 2050 Stephen_, StephenCD_

Stephen's Introduction: An Explanation of Sorts

This blog is loosely centered around the idea that, to quote the King of All Cosmos, the world is full of things, many of these things are "owned" by someone, and those things have stories around and in them. Also, as a sort of a conceptual coda, there is also the idea that most people in the well-to-do West have too many things and should probably get rid of them. Wendel Barry has probably written about this somewhere.

I intially wanted to create a blog so that I could discuss (likely with no one but myself) the media that I own, having a sort of running conversation and even a debate, perhaps in the process, purging myself of things that I neither need nor actually want. Thus, that is what I'll be doing, most of the time, focussing on physical media, that is. I shall acknowledge out front that I likely have too much of just about everything, including books and CDs. But, I do not neccesarily think that a life of divestiture is the key to a happy life, although having a reasonable relationship with your things is an important step in the right direction. To quote another King who looked upon His creation: "It is good."

Anyhow, welcome and enjoy your stay, looking through all of our things.Stephen_, Introduction_