(photo from www.thereasonwhy.org)
I think I heard a piece on NPR a while back about this new female phenom vocalist in the torch singer tradition, Rachael Yamagata. Wikipedia describes her as having a “dark, raspy alto.” Yum. Her myspace site is here. These are perhaps her three least torchy more poppy (but still raspy) songs from [...]

You know when Goyablog dips out of sight on the other side of the moon that things must be afoot with Goyaboy. As mentioned previously, the new semester has descended in full force, on top of a frantic series of job talks for a position in Chinese Literature, a search for which I am the [...]

iph you want a study in the immediate global economic ripple ephphects oph the announcement oph the iPhone, you need only a glance at this article. Cell phone handset makers’ stocks plummetted yesterday in a range oph 1.5-5%; Apple stock rose 8.9%. Stocks oph the German supplier oph the touchscreens, Balda, rose more than 9%. [...]

Finally, after 3+ years with my Cingular Sony Ericsson T810 (which I love), I will (in June, when it ships) be buying a new cell phone. Steve announced the long-awaited iPhone a few hours ago and it’s friggin’ sweet:

You can read the details here. And the pundits are right. It doesn’t matter how much it [...]

Just after a New Year’s flurry of posts Goyablog, humming with fresh momentum, goes silent for 4 days, sure sign that the new semester descends. Alas, classes start again for me this Thursday, but the extra busyness I feel now is related more to the three job candidates in Chinese literature we are inviting to [...]

On New Year’s Day I downloaded 4 of the 10 “NPR Best CDs of 2006.” The first was Adem’s “Love and Other Planets,” a swooningly gorgeous concept album involving, well, love and other planets:
You and Moon:

Spirals:

Waves:

As usual, if you don’t like my music, choose your own with Pandora:
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The last post about the demon-burning and recent ruminations about my own human frailties brought to mind the Cowboy Junkies song “To Love Is to Bury” (which contains the lines “They say to love is to bury/Those demons from which we all hide”). It’s a sad but beautiful song of a widow lamenting the [...]

Sara and I hosted a New Years Eve party last night, where, just before midnight we lit a bowlful of candles and had the guests write their demons for 2006 on slips of paper to burn and be rid of. All participated with gusto and the resultant flame set off the fire alarm and nearly [...]