The Approximately Infinite Blog

“…there burst the most appalling and daemoniac succession of cries…”

Chris Lay — Sat, 15 May 2010 05:39:09 +0000

After over a year of neglect, I find my attentions drawn once more to this newly-reanimated blog. Partly out of growing discontent with Facebook’s habit of resetting my privacy preferences to ’spreadeagled over a tableaux of tax records’, partly out of mounting horror at the number of my spoken sentences that can be written in 140 characters or less, I feel driven to take refuge in a domain firmly under my own control. This return to proper blogging will have several disadvantages, among them that I’ll lose the illusion that I’m not just talking to myself in hypertext, and that I’ll have to shoulder the burden of policing my own site for h4×0rz, trolls, pornbots, terroirists, kobolds, and teabaggers. Nonetheless, I am confident that I will not sell my own metadata to anyone with $10 and a hotmail account, and I have to think that routinely writing posts of nontrivial length will have a salutary effect on my withered writing skills.

Do Not Press This Button

Chris Lay — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:36:09 +0000

Hello spambots and lost souls! This blog, like its author, will be down for a metaphysical reset for the forseeable future. The management apologizes for any inconvenience resulting from not having done this sooner.

Rocks, rolls

Chris Lay — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:06:47 +0000

Though the laziness is strong, I managed to suppress it sufficiently to get out to the rumble at the Middle East last night. The Have Nots led off the night with a set of energetic ska-accented punk rock, which is really how every evening should start. The better to maximize my cognitive dissonance, I left that set early to catch Mark Pinansky next door at TT’s. Mark added further evidence to my theory that inside every hard-driving neoclassic rocker is an acoustic balladeer struggling to get out, and also convinced me that that is a good thing. Returning to the downstairs, I saw Sarah Rabdau and (1.5 or so) Self-Employed Assassins play a solid set but fail to exorcise the the restless spirits that haunt any begowned singing pianist / bevested drummer combo in New England. I saw The Lights Out give the room the Good News of the Rock & Roll Gospel with an explosive set. And I saw Gene Dante and the Future Starlets try very hard to convince the audience that they were in northern England in 1982; maybe it’s the recession, but I didn’t enjoy that particular cultural reference. Nonetheless, Gene et al won the round. Hearty congratulations to them, but I’m crossing fingers and toes for a Lights Out wild card spot in the files.

More bands tonight! I will see if more rock and roll will homeopathically cure this ringing in my ears…

Laziness trumps snark

Chris Lay — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:57:18 +0000

Last night’s installment of Session Americana’s dwindling residency at the Lizard Lounge (combined with my beverage consumption across the evening) delayed my entry into the waking world significantly this morning. Indolent individual that I am, I did not then follow through on my threat to join the pro-America, anti-arithmetic crowds at State House today. Fortunately, Bostonist turned out and captured the event in all its fractured glory.

Funemployment

Chris Lay — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:31:23 +0000

Chip done, job left, time on my hands… time for things like the second Boston Tea Party tomorrow on the Common! I’m bringing two placards, one reading ‘Clinton-era marginal tax rates = Tyranny’, and the other reading ‘Kittens = Pop Tarts’.

Prebloggery

Chris Lay — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:35:07 +0000

Tapeout (n,v): The act of sending an electronic circuit out for fabrication.

Probability of bloggery will increase significantly following tapeout.