doug nelson: DISENGAGE!

(note: This is full of terrible hyperbole.)

MUSIC:
CocoRosie - I didn’t give these guys enough listen back when they were getting big. Wonnnderful.
Islands - Not as satisfying as condensed Unicorns-pop, but, they sure are close.
The Envelopes - ‘Is Your Sister In Love’ both rips off and raises the New Pornographers’ bet. If you can explain to me what that means, please, let me know.
The Juan Maclean - Something about every single song (much like with Alan Braxe) has such a cared-for, pristine quality. You can feel it in the back of your teeth.
Wolf Parade - This band is perfect.
Jens Lekman - ‘Maple Leaves’ is like some kind of glorious Magnetic Fields explosion. “You said we were just make-believe…but I thought you said ‘maple leaves.’” Insert swirling brown and orange here.

VIDEO:
The Prisoner - Classic ’60s sci-fi series. While the Prisoner has its bad moments (the trippier late-series ‘cowboy’ and ‘mind-swapping’ episodes), it has a much larger number of fantastic ones. Number Six takes on Number Two in order to figure out the meaning behind The Village.
Aeon Flux, The Complete Animated Collection - Being a baby, I didn’t grow up sneaking viewings of late-night MTV like the rest of you, so bear with my revelation: Aeon Flux is one of the most creative pieces of television I’ve ever seen. The plotlines and visuals are wildly, incredibly original.
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and The Media - This lengthy documentary follows Chomsky from place to place as he explains a credible and applicable theory about the media’s definition of debate sides. I was awed. Awed, everybody!
Lost - Even when it’s mucking about in personal drama, Lost stays fascinating with its clever internet campaigns and massive network of interlocking details. The emotional responses I’ve felt in recent episodes (most noteably: Locke’s failure to hit the button in time, and Henry’s confession) surpass almost anything else I’ve received from art/entertainment. Which either says something about me or Lost, you decide.

NEW JOBS:
Get one. I left MU today after four and a half years, and next week, I move on to a web design group in Alexandria. Let’s hope they let me bring the electric kettle.

NEWSVINE:
Increasingly impresses me. Newsvine seems to be web interaction perfectly governed: A site where users are not only encouraged (nearly forced) to debate rationally through a peer-reviewed process, but where commentors become columnists and challenges are almost always answered. Newsvine somehow solves the problem of the fire-and-forget commentor, drawing users back to monitor their articles and statements, either fighting back or conceding humbly (which is, on the internet, incredible to see). Part of this is their impossibly clever “new comments” feature, which allows you to monitor activity even in threads filled with specific, nested replies, and part of it is their “Positive Approval Rating,” a number that rises and dips depending on the popularity of your comments and articles (which seems much more strongly tied to your point-making ability than your partisan viewpoint).

Despite the in-site complaints of political threads going into discussion patterns, the discourse is actually incredible. Newsvine’s slogan is “Get Smarter Here,” and I absolutely agree…in responding to dissenting viewpoints, I’ve been forced to learn a lot more about the numerous issues than I ever would’ve otherwise (it turns out we DIDN’T sell Iraq the chemicals they used on the Kurds!). It’s like a whole new kind of internet.

All that, and it’s the best-designed site I’ve seen in two years. Go, Newsvine, Go!

GMAIL FILTERS:
I get a lot of spam, as well as legitimate e-mails. But there’s an in-between breed: E-mails I don’t want to archive or pop up as “new” in my inbox, but that I still wanted to review. Notifications from MoveOn or Myspace, daily ComicAlerts, sales at Banana Republic….these shouldn’t turn my mailbox blue, but they shouldn’t get dumped into “spam” either. Enter Filters, where I can send all e-mails from a large number of users into the “DeleteMe” folder, which I then review whenever I’m bored. Setting up filters that skip the inbox and go straight to “DeleteMe” is a great way to keep tabs on invoices, sales, newsletters, etc., without actually having to read them in order to get them out of your inbox.

JAPANESE:
Currently, I’m going through a beginner’s book I have, but I’ve come across a new idea: What if, instead of learning Japan’s three-prong writing system last, I learn it first, so I can improve and learn Japanese just by reading the news? Hence, I’ve made Hiragana (phonetic alphabet for connecting words, articles, etc.) and Katakana (phonetic alphabet for foreign words, much more boxy and pointed) flashcards, and begun using the amazing RealKana site to slowly add to my knowledge of these forms. And gee, just think, after I have the two phonetic languages down, I can begin learning the 50,000 kanji characters!

OLD FRIENDS:
In the past two weeks, three people (sorta) from my past have contacted me. We’re talking 7, 7, and 16 years past, here. Oddly, the two 7-years, although ENTIRELY UNCONNECTED to each other, contacted me in the same morning, and pretty much about the same subject. I guess there are some perks for breaking the top ten “Doug Nelson” results on Google (believe me, it took a while).

TYPING:
I’ve been using a fantastic program to help my touch-typing, but it’s so hard to remember to touch-type after, well, fifteen years of my 3-fingered superspeed madness. I’ll figure it out, though.

WORK:
I came home tonight and cranked out four projects for clients. It was easy, they look great, and it cuts a huge swath out of my pile of guilt. Maybe leaving MU is responsible, maybe it’s just watching The (American) Office, Season 2, but I am a workin’ Machine.

TV AGAIN:
Leina’ala was right, I was wrong: The American version of the Office is seriously (no, seriously) funnier than the original British version. This has no right to happen, but it has defied logic and happened anyway. The relationships are more complex, the humor is sharper, everything….everything just rules. My only complaint is that Steve Carell’s Michael lacks a some of the complexity and inadvertant charisma David Brent had, and episodes occasionally reduce his character to a more-cartoonish super-villain-boss than Brent was able to be seen as. Is this actually a problem? Nah. Carell’s boss is flawless when slamming Dwight, battling his own sexual harassment, and taking over every event he touches. I just miss a few of the jokes that took a little longer to realize, that’s all.

LAST.FM:
Thanks, Kseniya. Last.FM is the site everyone who reads this should use; it quietly monitors your music (through iTunes or the iPod), links them into a huge database of similar users, and lets you know what everyone like you is listening to that you’re not. Half of the good bands I’ve found in the past three months have been the direct result of Last.FM.

(Also, make sure you vote for my DJ Disengage photo! Pleeeeeease?)