Say, "what," again!

I double-dare the airline to change my departure gate again!

Heterochromia

Due to the recent popularity of certain pop, dance, neo-soul, and novelty acts, I have taken time to ponder the genre sometimes called, "blue-eyed soul." Like any curmudgeon worth his salt, I tend to resist the popularity fast rising stars. I may even deride them for no reason except that they are new and popular. Enter Joss Stone.

I saw a couple of her performances on late night television while she was promoting her most recent album, "Introducing Joss Stone." Her brand of neo-soul was rather captivating--almost too much so. I allowed some time to pass and stumbled across a couple of her videos on an Internet based video service and found myself hooked, so I purchased the album without doing a whole lot of research beforehand. "Introducing Joss Stone" turned out to be quite the purchase and found itself in moderate rotation.

About this time I did some research to find out more about the album and discovered that most of the writing and production was done by Raphael Saddiq (a.k.a.: Raphael Wiggins, Charlie Ray Wiggins). This made it clear that the deep allure of the album was it sounded like one of the lost Tony! Toni! Tone! albums: "Star Kitty's Revenge" (Joi), "Brown Sugar" (D'Angelo), "Lucy Pearl" (Lucy Pearl). I found this a little reassuring that what hooked me on the album was not so much a white girl from the U.K. singing neo-soul, but rather Raphael Saddiq's intoxicating, unique mix of Soul, Rock, Funk, New Jack Swing, and je ne sais quois. After all, the album includes cameos by Lauryn Hill and Common [Sense].

The bottom line on the album is that between Saddiq's music and Joss Stone's sound it is a good listen. It is a little draining to listen to love song after love song, but the music is good enough that you can tune out the words and still enjoy it. As I said before, the album made its way into moderate rotation.

On This Date in Caralina Negro History

On or about this date in 1896 my great-grandfather, Black James William, mortgaged his land--formerly belonging to his wife, my great-grandmother-- to buy a horse/mule or two. This story has been a part of the family legacy for over 100 years mainly because James William died sometime between signing the promissory note in September of 1896 and my grandfather's birth in 1897. This led to my great-grandmother having to work not only to raise three children-- aged two, four, and six according to the 1900 census-- but also to pay James William's debt.

Now I have no knowledge of what led to James William's demise after the mortgage was signed, but I have often speculated. I imagine someone incensed in that James William-- a Negro not even 30 years old, in rural South Carolina in the fall or 1896-- had a "mare about 4 years old" and a note on which he had signed his own name. This was less than twenty years after Rutherford B. Hayes brought an end to reconstruction; A Negro who could read and cipher was perceived as a treat; a Negro who had more property or assets that a white man was considered an affront to common decency: Men were lynched for doing less.

Speculation aside, I need to do more research and see if there is a death certificate in the state archives. The family narative requires clarification.

Rustic

Fried Fish and Hot Sauce,
originally uploaded by wilmars.

Keeping it real with fried fish and hot sauce. I was unable to find the sliced white bread to complete the experience.

Licentious

test,
originally uploaded by wilmars.

Little Cat Feet

Mark Twain has been incorrectly credited with the quote: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." I never really appreciated this assertion until I spent a July weekend tooling around the City by the Bay. My previous trips had been in the spring and winter. Cool air, fog, and wind aside I took a great exploratory walk from the Mission to Golden Gate park to visit the de Young Museum.

While the museum was quite stimulating and comes with my personal recommendation, the surprisingly interesting part of the excursion was walking from the Mission to Golden Gate park. I got lost en route and had the chance to walk through two neighborhoods I may not have seen on foot otherwise. Luckily, I sincerely believe that a great way to see a city is to get lost in the middle of the day when it is not raining. The glaring exception would be Los Angeles. The City of Angels is a terrible pedestrian experience.

Heisenberg

Today, during a typical geeky e-mail exchange, Ranting Nerd and I switched places for moment on the quantum level. He posed to question to Zetetical and me that normally I would pose to the former two. I later answered with a response that the Nerd may have actually given me in the past.

The Problem: Applying anti-spam rules for personal (user@) and administrative (root@, webmaster@, postmaster@, etc.) e-mail that arrive in the same mailbox is a logical nightmare.

The Answer: Maintain separate mailboxes for personal e-mail versus administrative e-mail.

Why this works: There's a whole lotta spam!

Why this *really* works: On a bad spam day an individual mailbox can get flooded to the point that the piled up e-mail has a DoS effect. I.e. the spam pushes a mailbox past a disk space quota. Directing all the RFC necessitated recipients to your personal mailbox invites this to happen sooner than later. It would be teh suck if personal e-mail bounced or was hidden beneth a slew of "spoofed header" bounces to postmaster@mydomain.