see the wheel turning round only empty heads bow down too much lager and a jukebox sound too much lager and a jukebox joviality see the wheel turning round what are we going to do? someone tell us what to do what are we going to do? someone to turn to, someone to turn to to rule us, to pay our tributes to baaah, baaah like a carrot before the donkey lead them to a better world well i don't believe in you or your world

You have to wonder whether the inventors of the laser listed "pointing at things" as one of its potential applications.

Made a dent in my Tivo backlog of movies last night by knocking off The Count of Monte Cristo. I read the book last year, mostly on the T despite the sheer mass of the novel. It's an excellent story of the betrayal of a simple Marseilles sailor, leading to his 13 year imprisonment in the fearsome Chateau D'If while his fiancee Mercedes marries his betrayer and his enemies prosper. He finally escapes with the aid of a fellow inmate, who reveals to him the existence of a fantastic treasure on the rocky island of Monte Cristo. He uses his newfound wealth to assume a position of prominence in French society, while intricately and slowly exacting his vengeance on those who wronged him, ruining them emotionally, financially, and physically. Long recap? I haven't told you the half of it.

I suppose the movie was about as good a two hour rendition of the novel as one could make. Obviously, much of the detailed story had to be condensed or omitted in order to bring the film in on time. The depth of Edmond's plot for revenge is almost completely lost, reduced to several simple tricks in which he ruins his enemies. His quest for vengeance is cast as an evil desire that he most overcome, as opposed to its treatment in the book where it is balanced by his devotion and caring for those who stood by him and his family while he suffered in the Chateau. In the closing stages of the novel, these two efforts come into conflict and it is his compassion that wins out. While the film shares this sentiment, it's conclusion demonstrates the obvious inclusion of a Hollywood-style moral.

All in all not a bad film, but if you're really interested, make the 1100 page commitment and read the book.

There's something about March Madness (the NCAA men's basketball championship, for those of you who are sports-impaired) ... something about the long-standing rivalries, about the 15th-seeded minnows knocking off the 2nd-seeded powerhouses in the first round, about the laboring over making picks for whatever pool you enter (reading loads upon loads of projections but always picking teams based on some strange karmic appeal), about the games on television for four days straight, about the delight of being able to root for your alma mater. Maybe the nation's infatuation with March Madness is derived from the fact that it is the largest non-professional sports event in the country, free of the ego and corruption that are devastating the pro leagues. Or maybe it's the nostalgia induced by watching those players (the vast majority of them) for whom this represents the close of their athletic career, remembering the last swim meet/baseball game/tennis match we played before moving on to "adult" pursuits. Or maybe, especially this year, it's all these things combined to distract ourselves from the depressing and frightening state of affairs in the world. Whatever the reason, it's March! Go Bears!

i spent sixteen months trying to forget you then a black and white film plays in my mind where we broke for the border in an open-top sportscar married in a town much like mine and we promised ourselves such implausible things told each other our impossible dreams oh you know, love is easy in my movie show oh, i want to forget you then i flash back flash back to a time of stolen memories we are tied by our lies, we are tied by history so we're handcuffed together, like it or not and drinking our dreams is all that we've got and the barman just smiles oh god he's seen it all before

I fixed our bedroom doorknob this weekend. Not earth-shattering news, but it just made me feel so extraordinarily competent, i'm practically beaming.

Looks like we're going to war. I'm not keen on how we're treating anyone who expresses a viewpoint contrary to that of the Bush administration ("freedom fries"??? Give me a f$@*ing break ...). To quote Janeane Garafalo in this month's People, "Dissent is not a bad word". But as war now seems unavoidable, i'm ready to support our armed forces in the task that has been assigned to them. It seems to me that too much of the anti-war movement gets directed at those who can do little or nothing about it, namely the ordinary American soldier and his family. Isn't their job hard enough without people always telling them everything they've done is wrong?

After cleaning the apartment all day Saturday, Veronica and i headed to a party hosted by my labmate Vivek's girlfriend at her apartment in Brookline near Coolidge Corner. A lot of fun, especially given my excessive consumption of wine (cabernet, muscat, syrah ... if it was made of grapes in an oak barrel, i drank it). So despite a splitting headache Sunday morning, i headed off with Veronica to Soho in Brighton for a buffet brunch. Very nice way to spend a Sunday morning ... lovely 60° weather, good Irish breakfast selection, and the Red Sox and college basketball on TV. I had a flashback to mornings spent at Mad Dog in the Fog in San Francisco, eating a greedy bastard and watching soccer. Although whether that was leaning back contented in a comfy chair or seeing everything through a hangover, i don't know.

I watched about half of Queen of the Damned before nodding off to sleep last night. Man, was that terrible. I can forgive that they took extreme liberties in rewriting Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, but with such a rich body of work to draw from, couldn't the producers have made something a little less ... well ... stupid? All through the movie i kept remembering my friend Greg's account of when he saw it in the theater: a group of goths acted out the action in front of the screen, à la Rocky Horror Picture Show. Only too fitting. I also recently viewed Vanilla Sky, which i was greatly enjoying until the final twist, which completely ruined it for me. The Count of Monte Cristo and Waking Life are currently waiting for me on the Tivo.

Revisiting my consideration of random number generators in the context of shuffling songs in mp3 players, i found a nice summary of random number generation. I would imagine that Winamp employs a linear congruential generators of the type X_n+1 = (aX_n + c) mod m, which means that it generates a random number series in which the next number in the sequence is calculated deterministically from the number before it. Such series have interesting properties that relate back to my observations of Winamp's randomness, particularly when the constants a, c, and m are not selected wisely. Moreover, i found that Winamp has an option that lets you select the "shuffle window size", which supposedly dictates the percentage of the playlist that is shuffled over. I had it set at 33% for some reason, which may further explain why Winamp appeared to be randomly-challenged. This shuffle window size bears striking similarities to the properties of the constant m above. However, i can't imagine why you would want to restrict the number of songs over which Winamp shuffles.

Last night Veronica and i braved the driving snow (although by 7pm, it was not so much driving as it was faltering) and headed over towards Fenway and the Avalon to see Interpol and The Raveonettes. Also playing was Lifestyle, who have now opened for Interpol in Boston twice with their ultra-dated synth pop, but we timed our arrival comfortably after they finished performing. The Raveonettes, a Danish drone rock outfit, excelled in their thumping bass, wall of sound approach. I thoroughly enjoyed their set, although at times i couldn't help but feel they were the second coming of the Jesus and Mary Chain (or third coming, if you count B.R.M.C., or fourth or fifth coming if you count the several incarnations of the actual Jesus and Mary Chain). Still quite good though, definitely more interesting than the aforementioned B.R.M.C.'s indie kid-friendly version. I was particularly taken with the feedback-laden atonal rendition of Buddy Holly's "Rollercoaster" that opened and closed the set.

Our last experience with Interpol, at the Middle East in September, was somewhat lackluster, but i was willing to give them another chance to impress live. The opening song, "Untitled", did not instill me with confidence. This is probably my favorite song on their debut record Turn On The Bright Lights, a four minute, mostly instrumental number that centers on a delicate guitar piece offset by the lull of the bass, rising and falling with the drums and more visceral effects from the second guitarist. On record it has a certain emotion and resonance, but live the effects of the second guitar are removed (it plays a pointless backing track mirroring the first guitar) and the whole composition is destroyed. Some other songs sounded okay, notably "Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down", but the experience lacks a vitality present on the record. "PDA", their indie hit, sounded really awful. After seeing them twice, my conclusion is that whoever produced their record must be really talented. Moreover, the similarities to Joy Division that i initially dismissed are beginning to tick me off. The singer's channeling of Ian Curtis is undeniable, however it is not aided by the driving bass of a Peter Hook and its potential power falls flat. Nonetheless, the Avalon was sold out and the crowd was lapping it up, so any predictions i might harbor about their imminent fall from indie grace may only be hopeful.

A few months back i commented that i felt my iPod was much more adept at selecting random songs than Winamp. The reason for this was a combination of science and emotion: for starters, it seemed that the i was much happier with the song selection on the iPod than on Winamp. However, on a more technically tangible level, it seems that Winamp's song selection isn't all that random, that i will hear the same song two or three times in a day, which seems highly unlikely given that in theory, Winamp is playing me maybe 30 or 40 songs per day, selected supposedly at random from a library of almost 4000 songs. If selection is truly random, playing a specific song should occur with a probability of approximately 0.025%. Therefore, if i hear say, New Order's "Blue Monday" once, the probability of hearing it again that day is 1 minus the probability that all 30 other songs that day are not "Blue Monday": 1 - (3999/4000)³⁰, or 0.7%. The probability of it being played three times is even more ridiculous: 0.007(1 - (3999/4000)²⁹) = 0.0054%. So what's going on here?

There are several reasons why Winamp's performance might deviate from normal statistics. First, i start and stop Winamp typically five to ten times a day. Assuming it is using a random number generator, this process could potentially reset the random number seed and influence the randomness of the numbers selected. Second, when i start up Winamp each day, i typically press play first, which begins playing the first song on the playlist. This may be how Winamp gets its random number seed, so if i may be biasing the seed, leading to non-randomness in the song selection. Compare this to how the iPod operates: you select a song from a playlist, and then prior to playing, the entire playlist is randomized. This prevents the possibility of hearing the same song twice during a single playlist, as the song order is fixed during this process, until you manually select a different song, then the playlist is randomized anew.

Sorry, i just couldn't resist. After learning all about random number theory in relation to Monte Carlo simulations, this practical application seemed interesting to me. Now i need to turn to my experimentalist side and conduct investigations of the random songs played my Winamp under different conditions. Or maybe i just go look at the Winamp source code. Nah, too easy.

Had a bit of doorknob-related barney on Saturday morning. Veronica and i were just finishing getting dressed to go out to have lunch. She was amusing herself by mussing up my hair, in an endless quest to find a semi-suave hairstyle for me. At one point i felt it was sticking straight up, à la Kramer, so i left the room and shut the door, preparing to do a suitably Kramer-esque entrance. I intended to open the door abruptly and slide in, but i didn't turn the knob far enough and ended up just slamming into the door. I must've damaged the knob however, because after that, no matter how hard Veronica or i turned the knob, the latch wouldn't release. So Veronica was trapped inside the bedroom, while i was outside with, of course, all the tools necessary to disassemble the lock. That can only be disassembled from inside. Luckily, after some ingenuity with shoelaces, our second-floor bedroom window, and a screwdriver, Veronica succeeded in removing the doorknob and freeing herself. Only to us, i tell ya, only to us.

We did eventually make it to lunch, at the Paris Creperie in Coolidge Corner. Afterwards, we had a walk around lovely Brookline, then hopped in the car for a jaunt. We headed off down Beacon Street out to the Reservoir, then turned south down Chestnut Hill Ave., then headed west on Route 9. No particular destination, just listening to music, talking, and relaxing. We ended up at the Atrium Mall, where we did a bit of shopping. Looked at some housewares in Pottery Barn, Veronica picked up some lipgloss at MAC, and we both bought a DVD at Borders: The Complete Jam for me, and Depeche Mode's Videos 86>98 for Veronica. Haven't seen the latter yet, but the former is excellent. Having only gotten into The Jam five years ago at the prodding of my friend Michael, i'd never seen any of their live performances before. You can hear the sheer talent of Paul Weller and Bruce Foxton in the recordings, but live ... it's just unbelievable how full a sound this power trio could generate. The DVD contains a wealth of TV appearances as well as a number of videos, which I was surprised to find i was quite familiar with. Where i caught the video for "The Bitterest Pill (I Ever Had To Swallow)" i have no idea. It's a cheesy early 80's flick with some really horrible acting by Paul, but it somehow oddly accentuates the emotion of the song.

days of speed and slow time mondays, pissing down with rain on a boring wednesday, watching the news and not eating your tea, a freezing cold flat and damp on the walls, i say that's entertainment

I tried watching a bootleg copy of Daredevil earlier Saturday morning. I downloaded it last week, as two 130 MB avi files. It was obviously recorded on a camcorder in a theater, but the quality actually isn't so bad. The movie is. Daredevil was an interesting enough superhero and deserved a better big screen showing, especially with someone playing him who wasn't a vacuous pretty boy like Ben Affleck. I'm looking forward to X-Men 2, which should be much better. I can't wait to see Alan Cumming's turn as Nightcrawler. Even better, i spotted my favorite X-Man, Russian metalman Colossus, in a trailer that was shown on Fox a few weeks back.

I went on an mp3 rampage last week, downloading between 10 and 15 albums. I was growing increasingly alarmed that i didn't recognize many of the names being thrown around in the indie circles, being insulated from new music through my focus on things like The Jam, Pale Fountains, and The Stooges. So, being the logical science-type person i am, i went through the available albums one-by-one, checking with AllMusic for a synopsis of those i hadn't heard of, and downloading them when they sounded faintly interesting. On the whole a very worthwhile experience, as the vast majority of my downloads turned out to be fantastic. Rob encouraged me to check out Dntel, a sort of indie electronica, which i did and am now in love with. The Postal Service, a side project of the man behind Dntel, is also fab. The lounge pop of The Aluminum Group has me captivated. Monster Movie is some of the best shoegazing/space rock i've heard since ... well ... since Interpol, although they've been gradually losing my attention. I'm seeing them on Thursday, which may either slow or accelerate the rate of decay of my interest in them.

Veronica and i spent our Sunday night watching Storytelling, the 2001 film by Todd Solondz. I must admit that before watching it, the only thing i knew about the movie was that the soundtrack was done by Scottish twee heroes Belle & Sebastian. The film is split into two segments: the first, "Fiction", deals with a white female grad student in literature and her experiences with her boyfriend, suffering from cerebral palsy, and her acerbic creative writing instructor, a black man with whom she has an affair. The second, focal portion of the movie, "Nonfiction", follows an aspiring documentary filmmaker as he attempts to document the experience of American adolescence through an upper-middle class Jewish family and their stoner son Scooby. The essence of the film is in its comments on the storyteller/subject and storyteller/audience relationships, although what those comments are i have no idea. Characters seem to bounce from one exaggerated stereotype to the next, stopping to spew dialog that smacks of pretension, as if Solondz expects his audience to hang on each spoken word. Events unfold in a bizarre unnatural fashion, again serving to advance the enigmatic, potentially absent message of the movie. Case in point: a ten year old boy hypnotizes his father, successfully, so that he will shower him with attention. After having seen it, i think knowing that Belle & Sebastian did the soundtrack is still the most relevant piece of information you can draw from the movie.

and in the morning when you rise
sure to know your destiny, 'cause it's all worthwhile
the man across the street ain't wise
you know if he was wise, he'd be on the other side
reach, head for the sky, to know what it's like
we'll try

Roughly seven years after beginning it, i finally finished Interview With The Vampire this morning while grabbing some breakfast before work. I began it while an undergrad at Berkeley, borrowing it from my sometimes gothic roommate Jayson, but gave it up after a hundred pages or so because i was bored silly listening to the whining of nouveau vampire Louis. I've always been interested in the story though, so i picked up Veronica's copy a week ago to read on the T. I'm going to continue with the Vampire Chronicles, but my opinion of Louis hasn't changed. It's odd how he embodies so many traits i find maddening: the unsubstantiated presumption that you're wiser than others with vastly more experience, complaining about the state of affairs but doing nothing to change it, exposing personality flaws in others that are equally or more apparent in yourself. Veronica tells me that The Vampire Lestat centers less on whining and more on hedonism and wickedness, so that will hopefully be less grating.