blogrollin

Pretty much every blog that ever blogged in the blogosphere has a blogroll, a list of links to other blogs. Making this list is a task I’ve long put off because there are just so many cool sites to link to, I know I’ll miss someone. How could it ever be complete?

But I finally added linkage to some sites of interest in the far right column, under the Twitter updates, above the Flickr pictures, under the title Hi, Friends.

I’m starting with links to people who commented on this here humble site (many thanks!) and including a few news sites I like (tho Under The Radar Media and Lorelle on Wordpress actually each count as both). The blogroll is capped off with an Airspace Workshop link since I’m like their #1 mixtape fan and happen to be listening to their "called off because of rain" mix as I write this.

Watch that space, it’s gonna grow. And comment if you have a site and want to quickly link up with jeelago.net :~j

I’m forgetting something important….

it’s a wrap

Global food prices have risen dramatically, adding a new level of danger to the crisis of world hunger…. In the United States there has been a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months.

This according to Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, as part of an interview where she introduces the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System,” Raj Patel.

Patel outlines a perfect storm of conditions that are causing food shortages and riots globally, including:

• bad harvests, possibly related to climate change
• biofuels and ethanol driving up the price of commodities like sugar, corn, wheat
• increasing demand for meat leading to an increasing demand for grain to feed livestock, not people, and driving up the price of grain
• rising price of oil

Other stories in the news talk about how jobs are leaving and inflation is hitting everyone. Those stories scare me, even tho it hasn’t gotten to riot levels in the United States.

I see my grocery bill creeping higher and higher for the same amount of groceries. But I’m also becoming more savvy about wholesome, cheap meals and I feel like blogging about that :~j

I think of myself as a vegetarian with omnivore tendencies–I’d eat anything if I HAD to, most likely, or if it would be especially rude not to, or if I’m just curious about the dish. But I prefer not to for the most part. Officially I’m an ovo-lacto-pescatarian, meaning I will happily consume eggs, dairy and seafood in addition to starches, veggies, fruits and grains. I prefer simple foods.

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flower drum song, the musical

I’m always down for a live performance. Regardless of event type, seeing things live always adds a new dimension to appreciate, be it a baseball game, stand-up comedy routine or concert of any genre. Last week, I experienced a Broadway style musical, Flower Drum Song on an extended run at Diamond Head Theatre. These performers are working it, singing, dancing, acting… they have my full respect. Having a live, mini-orchestra there was also unexpected and fun.

This youtube clip of a 2006 performance looks like someone snuck it in the theater. Minus the thong(!) it is very much like what we saw at DHT. (The last minute or so appears to be some… thing… else….. perhaps was under the recording?)

The dailies of course loved the show. They love everything that’s locally produced; it’s the CODB in Hawaii. (see comments) Me I’m not really a “musicals person” (and yea those are “scare quotes”). LoL. But I tried to put that aside since I was there for a class assignment to think about the performance in terms of the reading we had done the previous week in a book by Coco Fusco called English is Broken Here.

The task was to consider what Fusco would say about the Flower Drum Song performance at DHT. As concerned as she is with Latino/a issues, I do not think Fusco would speak too directly to the content of a supposedly reappropriated (re-reappropriated?) performance of Asian otherness in a United Statesian* style in the illegally occupied Kingdom of Hawaii. But that’s an admittedly presumptuous guess.

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don’t look, I’m naked

I’ve decided to expose my <body> on the internet in honor of Naked Day ‘08 on April 9th. Thousands of other people are doing it, too, so I figured, why the heck not. You heard right: I’m stripping off my styles and going bare on the internet… that is, my website will be going bare on the internet, for all to see. What were YOU thinking? ;~p

My purpose in participating in Naked Day ‘08 is three-fold:

• Advocate web standards This is the official reason for Naked Day and a cause that I am fully down with but am much too lazy to explain here, mainly cuz I do it all the time at work! That’s what a good link is for anyway, right?
• Celebrate good design Trying to pick matching link colors and backgrounds and fonts for a site is not fun for me as a non-designer, and the results always underwhelming. The industry has come a long way, baby, and now hundreds of beautiful, free templates are available for Wordpress alone. The design I currently use is called Bluebird and it’s by Randa Clay. Many thanks, design people!
• Show off Wordpress The code for the Wordpress software that powers the blog is clean and standards compliant, meaning that even when you strip away the pretty work designers do, the site still makes sense.

Wordpress makes participating in Naked Day ‘08 super easy by providing a plugin that will automatically turn off my CSS template. The result should be a text-based, bare-bones-looking site. Not pretty but very usable…. at least I hope that’s what happens LoL… it’ll be a good experiment.

On the jeelago.net index page, which is not powered by Wordpress, I manually strip-teased out the very minimal amount of CSS I’ve used to do things like align the text and set the width. Were my site more complicated and I more adept in php, I could use a script to strip, but that won’t be necessary this year.

Nirvana live at Pink’s Garage in Honolulu 1992

I was always kinda sick I missed this show. What you can see of the crowd in the flashes of light looks crazy. This is “Negative Creep” off their first album, Bleach.

grounds of turpitude

A few weeks ago Sebastian Horsley was headed to the U.S. to begin a media tour for his recently published memoir Dandy in the Underworld, in which he “chronicles his life as an artist, a junkie and a self-professed dandy. . . . painting himself as a misogynist, a sexual deviant and a narcissist.” [Publisher's Weekly] He was questioned by U.S. officials for eight hours at Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey before being sent back to England.

Lucille Cirillo, a spokeswoman for the New York office of United States Customs and Border Protection. . . in an e-mail message, said that under a waiver program that allows British citizens to enter the United States without a visa, “travelers who have been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude (which includes controlled-substance violations) or admit to previously having a drug addiction are not admissible.” [NY Times]

The “utterly appalling” nature of this denial is noted by the writer at the powerofnarrative.blogspot.com:

And now you are “not admissible” if you have been convicted of a “crime involving moral turpitude” — even if you have already suffered whatever penalty might have been imposed and are now free, although you are not free to enter the United States — or if you “admit to previously having a drug addiction.” Obviously, you should lie about it.

But obviously, if you’ve written a book about said turpitude, it becomes more difficult to lie, even, apparently, for a man who has gone on record saying, “It’s better to be quotable than honest.”

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fashion styles for people who seem to like being naked

So I never knew about Current TV til anasarca posted the Wax Poetics bit the other day. It’s really neat. I dig the interface, and I keep finding great little clips from all over the world.

Here’s a funny, honest look at fashion in Finnish Lapland. Love it! hahahaha

Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators

Anasarca at Asita Recordings points out that the closing music on a Current TV show featuring the inimitable Wax Poetics magazine(!) is a funk band from Finland called Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators. She messaged me:

“I just thought you might be interested in this band, if you haven’t heard of them already. They bring a brand of Finnish funk that is both joyous and soulful. It’s really easy for these new funk bands to sound cheesy but they definitely overcome that. Also look for Didier Sound Spectrum it was an older release from the 90’s that recently saw a reissue. More amazing funky Finnish music.”

No I hadn’t heard of them, thank you for the recommendation, girl!

Here goes the video for “If this ain’t love (don’t know what is).” Yea it’s a few years old, but this can bump all summer long.

Turns out Nicole Willis is originally from Brooklyn (with a solid musical resume), but has apparently studied in Lahti, Finland and blogged about her schoolwork, including philosophy essays and paintings she’s done?! I’m listing to the songs on their myspace and it is enticing me to order their album for real… oh look, here’s a link!

will my new phone prevent brain damage?

So apparently Mobile phones are ‘more dangerous than smoking.’ Great. [via Under the Radar Media del.icio.us news feed]

Guess it was a good idea to upgrade my busted up phone, even tho I had to betray Nokia for the $100 (w/contract) Pantech Duo.

This new phone easily encourages me to text message even more. I’m thinking that is a good thing, cuz it keeps the rays away from my gray matter. It’s a theory anyway.

If only I could stop complaining about the data package they sold me to go along with this phone, which basically doubles my monthly bill. I must be brain damaged already to pay that much!

But the old phone didn’t do important stuff, like ring. Or work as an alarm, or have a data cable. An upgrade was imperative.

The two are actually about the same size when the keypad is pushed in, and the same thickness, but the Pantech has another slider with a number pad that comes out the side. It does feel a little flimsy, and I don’t love Windows Mobile, but it has 3G, removable MicroSD memory and the lovely keyboard. I think it’ll hold me over til the day I maybe get my hands on an internet tablet, kick-ass PDA, or next generation iPhone.

That perfect device is just around the corner …right?

Wordpress upgrade, post popularity

The much anticipated Wordpress 2.5 upgrade has been installed and is working away to power this blog. There shouldn’t be any changes on the front end, but let me know if anything looks off. My cynical friend among many, took the time to highlight some of the improvements.

One of the things I had hoped to do after the upgrade was install the Popularity Contest plugin which would generate a list of the most trafficked posts. Unfortunately for me, that plugin is not working correctly with the new version yet. So I’m just going to guess.

From monitoring my stats and eyeballing the numbers, rankings and search terms that bring people here, these are what I think are the most popular posts from my first eight months of blogging:

1. Lapp it up: Pamela Anderson’s Finnish heritage
2. the pop secret is out–microwave popcorn is super easy to make
3. watch the Boondocks
4. in search of the perfect travel backpack
5. reservations about Anthony Bourdain in Hawaii
6. supreme master moomin vision and the muumibuumi
7. the overwhelming cuteness of twin baby Bengali tigers born different colors
8. Barack Obama- Yes We Can

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Finnish design pwns my heart

Helsinki seems to be enjoying some springtime shine in the travel pages of the U.S. press.

There was the USA Today feature on Helsinki nightlife and a piece on Finnish design in the LA Times last month. Admittedly two articles don’t exactly equal a cavalcade of coverage, but hey, the sun shines weakly that far north, and is greatly appreciated! I love that the LA Times writer tours the central part of the city for its architectural and design riches, then tucks in for a sauna. Sounds like a fabulous day in Helsinki.

My credit card trembles at the thought of being in the Marimekko store during their annual sale. My plan of shopping attack in Helsinki includes Marimekko, the Moomin Shop, Akateeminen Kirjakauppa–Euro style notebooks in the basement–and Stockmann. And I’d have to hit Zara and H&M, too, cuz we don’t have those in Hawaii. Apparently H&M is collaborating with Marimekko this summer!

The shopping recommendations in the LA Times article are overall more upscale. I’m extra intrigued by these ergonomic chopsticks they mention, wonder how much they cost. “I wanted to design a totally new type of chopsticks that would be easy for everyone to hold. Entwined together the sticks also form a useful fork,” explains designer Mika Ihanus on the website of studio Kuudes Kerros. How very practical for the chopstick-challenged, i.e. my mother, who maintains she can’t eat with “them sticks.” I bet these would work for her in the same way Nokia understands how her brain works. ;~p

Also on the topic of Finnish design and travel, a little mini-documentary by PilotGirl™ about the Helsinki design district (read: expensive stores with cool stuff) was recently featured on the retail-sponsored Finnish design blog.

Really, my credit card is glad I am not there! It’s worth noting that many young people take pride in thrift-store shopping and home-made clothes cuz the Euro is no joke and the resulting styles are more unique. Which is fine for clothes, but please believe that when I have $50 to spare on a shower curtain, this baby is mine!

make it rain on your parade

Peace parades in Waikiki vary greatly in goals, turnout, funding

It caught my eye right away on Friday night as we’re driving into Waikiki to catch Johnny Fiasco at Lotus. There is a giant, blinking, orange sign right where Kuhio and Kalakaua split, a changing display that looked like: PEACE MARCH SUNDAY 6 PM ROAD CLOSED PEACE MARCH SUNDAY 6PM. Peace March? WTH? It struck me so odd that I twittered it.

Immediately conjured in my mind are earnest hippies in tank tops (armpit hair) and face paint playing drums and leading a small group in a tinny anti-war chant while sailors on leave curse and give them the finger. Some punk activists would probably be in the mix, cute revolutionaries with shaved heads and low-slung fatigues. But I’m thinking, isn’t the anniversary of the Iraq war past already? I put it out of mind, went to the club and danced the night away.

So Sunday around 6:20 PM, I bike into Waikiki expecting to see some hippies and home-made signs. I notice a fairly heavy police presence, with lots of the main roadways blocked. This must be some big-ass peace protest. It’s overcast and my hair is already wet from the swim I took earlier; I figure if I look a little bedraggled, I’ll blend. I picture myself riding alongside the protesters, easily mistaken for one of them, yet not slow to laugh if the street theatre gets too ridiculous.

As I head towards Kalakaua Ave, a red-bearded bum smiles and says “nice dreads.” Great, I guess I do blend. Just then surreality slaps me upside the head. A day-glo troupe comes dancing down the street, rows and rows of them, singing and smiling, looking like Falun Gong meets Up With People.

I’m a little frightened as I capture these short video clips. Focus!

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Finnish Ducktales lost in translation

This is the Ducktales theme song, Finnish version. The joker who posted it on youtube offers a, erm, unique transcription of the lyrics in English; I’ve included them below. Silly yes, but made me laugh, which is always good on a Monday.

Morphine makes the holy known
Uncle Lina!
Eyein’ up/down that sappy nun
Uncle Lina!
I’m going to stroke it
Your arms are BROKEN!
Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
If I’m not avail you, taco nazi!
Look around and count on Lassie!
Knit and dance and BAKE A CAKE!
Oh, Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
And sanskrit ain’t got hoot to say ’bout
Uncut! Ohh!

Real lyrics follow, courtesy of another youtube poster.
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