David Foster Wallace Killed Himself

I just heard from Dan Coffey Sunday night that David Foster Wallace killed himself over the weekend. I'm really heartbroken.

Heidi's Surprise

Heidi, the local chicken woman and former keeper of goats, had a surprise party for her 50th birthday on Saturday. Lots of out-of-towners, and members of some camp counselor cult from their teen years. (Here's the moment of surprise.) Local stellar musicians and good pals Annie Garretson and Barb Doyle (who were also gracious enough to open for David Rovics when we brought him here a year ago), serenaded Heidi with several songs about being aged and decrepit. Been there done that. Anyway, an Indigo Girls song is below, and you can follow these links to Barb's "What Would Our Mothers Do?" song, the Simon and Garfunkel trilogy of "Bookends," "America," and "Old Friends," an Annie original called "Where Does the Time Go?" and two Cheryl Wheeler songs, "Potato" and "Howl at the Moon." If your bandwith can stand it, I'd suggest you click on the YouTube option that says "Watch high quality," it's much higher resolution.

Secret "Cells"

Who could be opposed to a tutorial multimedia demonstration on the dangers of terrorism, right? Well, unless the sponsors of "The CELL" are closely tied to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, and are funded by the likes of the Dershowitz Group and the US Department of Homeland Security. The Colorado ACLU learned that this particular organization is closely tied to the Denver Performing Arts Center and the Mizel Museum. I'm not paranoid about AIPAC, but I'm worried that the presentation CELL will provide will be far from objective - and must a publicly-funded museum tout presentations from government security agencies? Thankfully, the online Colorado Independent paid attention to these disturbing aspects, because the rest of the Colorado media seemed to give it a free pass.

Icono-Wordled

My wonderful friend Bev Wordle-ized my blog, with the result above. You can try it too, at http://wordle.net.

What's Your Aura, Dude?

Fascinating article on recent research on migraine headaches in the August issue of Scientific American. The majority opinion no longer relates migraines directly with vascular or blood issues, but with cortical storms related to either the visual cortex, the brain stem, or both. In the article, the authors described the auras experienced by many migraine sufferers before an attack. While some are simple flashing lights, many are highly organized patterns of bright points, followed by a negative-image pattern of dark points. There is speculation that the sufferer might be seeing his/her own visual cortex firing pattern, or another internal neural network.

Eureka! Ever since I was a child, I've seen such moire patterns in dark rooms, and can bring them into my visual field at other times as well. They alternate as trapezoidal, hexagonal, or octagonal patterns of light firing. I thought everyone experienced it. I've never had migraine or epileptic symptoms, however. I visited a fascinating migraine aura web site maintained by German researchers, and realized there is a significant minority of people who experience moire-pattern auras without migraines. I don't have these experiences often as an adult, but if I concentrate, I can "will" the pattern to overlay my normal vision, like a scaffolding over the visual field. Says something interesting about visual perception and cortical storms, I guess. Do you see this? What's your aura?

Amy Goodman Arrested

Yeah, yeah, we've heard it before, if you're surrounded by Black Bloc types in bandanas throwing shit at you, restraint goes out the window, but arresting Amy Goodman? These Minn-St. Paul cops are just thugs, hope the twin cities are prepared to shell out some money to handle the court cases.

TUES PM: She's out, and gave the cops some much-needed crap.

RIP Adam Nodelman

I was just relishing the trio of live-in-Leeds CDs - Glik, Glak, Gluk - of the Boston bizarro collective Sunburned Hand of the Man, when I learned that Sunburned member Adam Nodelman died last week. You can find his obit on the band's MySpace page. Interesting to see that Adam also was a member of the legendary early-1980s jazz ensemble Borbetomagus when he was only 18! He leaves behind three daughters, how sad....Wow, even Pitchfork had a nice obit.