Pepper of the Earth – The Home Office Record & Mostly Daily Gazette

Much as I’d like to tell you that I was snatched by space aliens and bamfed off on a hyperspace tour of the seedy backwater planets in our wing of the universe, during which I did not have internet access and couldn’t update the blog, the truth is that I blame March.

It was like this, see. March came in like a lion. Then it clawed the furniture like a lion. Then it mauled around like a lion, took a rest like a lion, and decided to go out like a lion. So it’s been all over lions. And no, this sudden spate of 50° business on March 30th does not qualify for lamb status, April is the lamb, you don’t get to change your mind and suddenly be all lamby. You made your den, go lie in it.

We flew back from South by Southwest on the 21st, and catch-up kept me crunched for a few days. As soon as I had enough time to look around I realized I was sick (this is the Wile E. Coyote method of personal diagnosis, and it’s followed by a stretchy visual with a kind of “going” sound effect and ultimately a Linus-shaped impact hole at the bottom of winter’s cliff).

While we’re waiting for my brain to reboot, you can thumb through a little picture gallery of two of my favorite burlesque characters, Creamy Stevens and Little Brooklyn. Brooklyn and Creamy — yes, those are their real names — produce the terrific Starshine Burlesque show every Thursday in the East Village. The galleries are theoretically safe for work, if girls in lingerie are safe for where you work. Like at a circus, mebbe.

This morning, at the crack of dawn, Music Standard Time (10 a.m. or so) our intrepid team from Home Office Records went to a breakfast presentation by MIDEM, the huge music industry conference that takes place every winter in Cannes, France.

After the introductory speech, the promo movie, the testimonials from satisfied participants, there was a raffle. And I Won! Yes, me! Me who’s never even won a school fundraising raffle, I’m going to Cannes next January to rub shoulders with all the big fishes in the big pond of the music business. Yeah!

Jess of Blind Cavefish points out via her crazy-in-a-fun-way friend Julie that today is Pi day, by which we mean that it’s March 14, or 3.14, which is how the famous irrational ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle begins its long march into infinitesimalcy. It’s also my Dad’s birthday. Happy Pi Day, Dad.

Much as I’d love to do a long piece on pi here — and I would, you know — it’s Monday at the Office, and it’s also Friday at the Office, since tomorrow I fly down to Austin for a week for our annual visitation at the SXSW Music Conference. So it’s all week in a single day. We’ll be writing and blogging from down there, much as we did last year but with more digital cameras.

As far as Pi Day goes, though, I get to trot out my favorite annual mathematical parlor trick. Since you’re not here you’ll have to take my word for it, but I know pi by heart to 22 decimal places. I don’t remember why I went and memorized this in the first place, but it’s been sitting in there taking up valuable memory space for a few decades now. As I say, you’ll need to take my word for it, but this is from memory and it’s not a cut-and-paste job:

3.1415926535897932384626

Pi takes the path of ultimate sensibility: it’s irrational, it’s infinitely non-repeating, and it’s real. I have similar aspirations. Take a moment to revel in the mystery today at 1:59.

• The Pi Pages – Pi, the tech specs. More detail than you could ever possibly want to know about pi, plus an annoying applet that calculates it, in French, on the main page.
• More Pi – When some pi just ain’t enough.

Again — again — it’s snowing outside. Not any kind of heavy weather, but isn’t it enuffawreddy? I know all about “comes in like a lion.” We’ve had the lions. Time to get over it.

An Open Letter to Winter

Dear Winter,

You had your shot in December and January. It’s not my problem if you weren’t ready. You blew it then, and this is no time to take it out on us. Now please knock it off.

Love,

Linus

Pierre spends a lot more time on Usenet than I do — I used to go rafting there, but when the spam got ridiculous I paddled to shore and rarely go back in more than ankle deep.

Since we both got digital cameras last week, Pierre has been keeping up with the e-Joneses in their newsgroups. Today he sends along this gem from rec.photo.digital.

A wag by the handle of Cynicor posts,

After we got some snow here earlier this week, I realized that my eyes have slightly different white balance. My left eye tends to see things with a slightly yellowish cast compared with my right eye, which tends to be a bit bluer. Have others noticed slight differences like this, or do I have a serious medical condition that requires immediate assistance? (I haven’t been able to find my manual white balance menu setting yet.)

A concerned reader wonders if it might be a cataract problem, and Cynicor zips back:

God, I hope not. I’m not even 40. Although I did look at a lot of loud rock music in my youth.

Zing! Post of the day.

Under the rumpled hands of heavy snow, New York finds a rare quiet. Our last nor’easter was a nighttime proposition, seen above in a few frames from lower Brooklyn Heights.

As near as I can figure it, today’s snowstorm snuck by the gatekeepers in the guise of a little late-winter “snow mixed with rain,” then tossed off its innocent rags and rampaged through the afternoon as a lash of “freezing cold icy snow right in your face you sucka muahaha.” Temps obligingly shot down into the 20’s (windchill right now is 7° above), and tonight is a black ice night. The radio weather just now announced that wind is “howling” through the City. They’re not wrong.

My Day Job office is across the street from the Cass Gilbert U.S. Customs House building, pictured above, and from the coddled indoor bird’s-eye safety of the 10th floor we watched the snow pelt down outside. Last week I took night snowstorm and morning aftermath photos of what we thought would be the last icy roar of the season. I’ll post a few those soon, if I can.