In late March, the Guardian reported (HT to Kottke) that a Kevlar flower observation deck will temporarily be added to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
 

My Photo, December 2007		Artist's Rendition

My initial reaction was utter disdain, considering I was already unimpressed with the "swarm of fireflies" lighting effect used in the evenings.  But it turns out that the artist came up with an unsolicited mock-up of something that could be done but hasn't been commissioned or selected. 

As much as I wanted to say that the Grauniad had once again earned its wings, they were really just following various architecture and design sites ... and the text accompanying the architect's own project site contributes mightily to the deception / confusion.

So where does that leave us?  Wondering what exactly a further modified Tower might actually be, hoping that it's Vegas that takes the leap instead of the Parisians.

SKM ... is thankful that his music library all fits in his VW Jetta.

I will have photos soon, but those who know me (and have helped move this collection in the past) can begin to form the mental pictures.  Here's a clue, though: I'm a former college radio DJ who once harbored the irrational (but far too common) desire to own a personal version of the station's library.  The pace of acquisition slowed considerably once I found other ways to occupy my time (see, e.g., the Malt & Barley Chronicles), but the weeding and winnowing has been a slow and arduous process.

And now that I'm moving for the first time in four years, from DC to NYC, with professional assistance that I don't trust, moving the records on my own has become an obsession of painful proportions.  On the plus side, I think I've got some reinforcements handy for ye olde Anti-Static podcast in the near future.

At the end of 2007, I was fortunate enough to spend three days wandering around Berlin... and with some tips from friends who have spent some quality time there, I had a fantastic time. I found it to be a very comfortable city, particularly when contrasted with Paris a few days later. Regrettably, I don't have any pictures from the various Christmas markets we visited along Unter den Linden, but here are a few mementos:

Remains of Berlin Wall, Mauerpark		Insane Climbing Apparatus, Mauerpark
The Unreal White and Gold Tree at Kaufhaus des Westens		View from KaDeWe Wintergarten down Tauentzienstraße

Coming soon: Thoughts on the national Eisbär obsession and other trademark goodies from Germany.

This extremely scary poster is being displayed on many bus shelters in my neighborhood recently ... yet another movie that screams out "what ever happened to the fine arts of animation and illustration?" or something along those lines.  More importantly, am I crazy or is there some unholy crossover leading to the leering visage above?

	+		=   WTF?
Horton Hears a Who		Joe Camel

Add Jim Carrey as the voice of our proud protagonist, and now I have all these uncomfortable thoughts about how purveyors of "adult entertainment" might parodize / satirize this one.  While an interest in both sides of that fence is not completely out of character for the dear departed Mr. Geisel, Dr. Seuss managed to maintain a firewall between the prurient and child-oriented that we would do well to respect today.  Ick.

My personal cognitive dissonance has been amplified, however, by going back 15+ years in the memory banks for a real screamer of a tune.  I had filed this one away under the title "Horton Hearts A Who" ... can't really explain it but for the Dr. Seuss sideways reference. My memory was wrong, but there's just as much confusion sown between the liner notes (putative lyrics never recorded) vs. the live performance (inspired in part by Pussy Galore's "HC Rebellion," a/k/a "the one where Julia Cafritz reads letters out of Maximum Rock'n'Roll" [Last.FM sample, review of the Groovy Hate F*ck EP]). Bottom line -- this one remains one of my favorite riot grrl-related songs.

Bikini Kill -- "Thurston Hearts The Who" (Self-titled EP, Kill Rock Stars, 1991 [eMusic])

Marking the passing of yet another crazed session of clock adjustment, the empirical research is starting to stack up against the institution of daylight saving time.  The New York Times has a nice resource page on the institution (frankly preferable to the Wikipedia version), while the naysayers started last spring in analyzing the 2007 extension  of DST in the United States (Ars Technica) and have picked up steam in the days leading up to today's "spring forward" (TreeHugger, Gizmodo).

Here's a more radical approach, born of my once-upon-a-time engineer's heart: why not abolish time zones entirely and switch to a single world clock?  The British established Greenwich Mean Time as a de facto world standard back when the sun never set on the British Empire, while today we've got UTC (Universal Time, Coordinated) which conveniently bolts atomic standards onto the Greenwich system.  The time zone I've inhabited most of my life, in the eastern United States, is variously UTC-5 (during standard time) or UTC-4 (during daylight savings).  As the world becomes flatter and more interconnected, it seems far easier to schedule and plan in UTC, rather than playing the whole "how many hours ahead/behind are you" game. 

Maybe I'm just reacting to the pain of scheduling cross-country conference calls in my day job, but I'm not all that attached to the "9 to 5" work-a-day convention.  Would it really be that difficult to switch gears to just designate all scheduled actions in UTC?  Or am I imagining some Star Trek dreamworld where time is even more arbitrary than it seems today?

Here's a brief musical interlude while I contemplate "ticking away the moments that make up a dull day" ...

Scrawl -- "Clock Song" (from Bloodsucker, Feel Good All Over, 1991 / Simple Machines, 1993)