The timestamp says I took this picture 12 years ago.
After nine attempts, the City of Ithaca received state funding to invest in housing and businesses from the Commons down to Meadow Street.
As Foretold in the Ancient Murals…
“So it has to be Good Friday…”
Call it ex-Catholic guilt for feeling about that I totally spaced on Good Friday last year when my boy Rubin has been at it for 37 years straight.
In years past, it’s become the time of year where I reflect on that part of my life, on the role my culture and background have played into my life while listening to the song “Good Friday” by the Black Crowes.
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – Hundreds of devotees trooped to this city to witness Maleldo or the reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday.Ruben Enaje, 65, was nailed to the cross on his 37th year portraying Christ in Barangay San Pedro Cutud. Two other penitents were also nailed to the cross alongside Enaje.
Huney Knuckles feat. Skylar Tang
The last time I bought music after 5 minutes of listening to a band I’d never heard of up until that point was Miss Velvet and the Blue Wolf back in 2021.
But you know how I get when a new-to-me trumpet player catches my ears. After seeing this video of saxophonist Joshua Redman and trumpeter Skylar Tang, I did some fast searching on Bandcamp and found Tang along with the band Huney Knuckles. Two songs in, I was downloading this album, and their first one Huney Knuckle Scuffle.
I haven’t had a chance to do a deep dive on these cats yet, but if I understand correctly Huney Knuckles, at least, is Oakland-based(?). It sounds like it tracks to me!
Analog-to-Digital Underground
Who remembers Dead Drops, from back in the day when some of us were rocking netbooks in our messenger bags that we’d just bust out at a moment’s notice? Has it really been long enough for folks to start waxing nostalgic?
These cryptic storage drives are known as Dead Drops, taking their name from an anonymous drop-off technique used by spies. It started as a guerrilla art project created by artist Aram Bartholl back in 2010, creating an anonymous file-sharing system that anyone can interact with, in any location. Its premise is simple: all you need to do is take your laptop to one of the Dead Drops and plug it in to either retrieve whatever’s on it, or to leave something there for the next person to find. It’s kind of like a digital scavenger hunt, where you can leave treasure just as easily as you can find it.
I never encountered Dead Drops personally or really went out of my way to find one, but I was always fascinated by the concept. Same with the Pirate Box–remember those?? Different method, but the same concept: a way for people to share curated material anonymously, off of the established grid.
Having come up well after the peak of pirate radio, I harbored a fantasy of being part of one of these networks. This was about the time I got myself an OG Raspberry Pi I never did anything with. In the end though, in terms of my day-to-day life, these were always solutions in search of problems I didn’t have.
Still, who hasn’t fantasized about the thrill of being part of a shady, but not necessarily Dark Web shady underground, sharing cool shit for its own sake, under everyone’s nose?
Submitted For Your Approval…
It’s been awhile since I’ve run into something Rod Serling-related that I wasn’t familiar with.
From the PeriscopeFilm archive…
The writer and actor Rod Serling, best known for his famed sci-fi series “The Twilight Zone”, hosts “The Alcoholism Film” (1974). This color public service film produced by Sandler Institutional Films, Inc. was meant to spread awareness of the symptoms, signs, psychological roots, and dangers of alcoholism. The film is composed of various short interviews with alcoholics, medical professionals, recovering alcoholics, as well as colleagues and family members whose lives have been impacted by alcoholism. The film makes the point that one in ten drinkers, can be considered an alcoholic.
2025 Reading
So, here’s my 2025 longform reading list. Books I actually finished are in bold. Not as many, percentage-wise, as last year, but I exposed myself to a lot of different stuff. And I’m still plugging away!
- BITTERSWEET by Susan Cain
- GUILT & GINATAAN by Mia P. Manansala
- LET THIS RADICALIZE YOU by Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
- READING THE WAVES by Lidia Yuknavitch
- SPRING, SUMMER, ASTEROID, BIRD by Henry Lien
- NONWHITE AND WOMAN: 131 MICRO ESSAYS ON BEING IN THE WORLD by Darien Hsu Gee & Carla Crujido (eds.)
- THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER by Lidia Yuknavitch
- PRANKSTERS VS. AUTOCRATS by Srdja Popovic and Sophia A. McClennen
- LOVE AND INDUSTRY by Sonya Huber
- DEAD NOTE by Victor Manibo
- AUTOCORRECT by Etgar Keret
- THE BOOK OF ALCHEMY by Suleika Jaouad
- THE ASK by Sam Lipsyte
- THE BOOK OF JOAN by Lidia Yuknavitch
- THE STORY CURE by Dinty W. Moore
- A CATALOG OF STORMS by Fran Wilde
- WHIMSY: A LITERARY DOOM AND GLOOM ANTIDOTE by Naomi Daniluk (ed.)
- UNRELIABLE NARRATOR by Aparna Nancherla
- POWER: WHY SOME PEOPLE HAVE IT AND OTHERS DON’T by Jeffrey Pfeffer
- SOME PEOPLE NEED KILLING by Patricia Evangelista
- WEIRDSCAPES: AN OTHERWORLDLY ANTHOLOGY by Kyle Thompson (ed.)
- UNCERTAIN SONS by Thomas Ha
- DEATH BY DUMPLING by Vivien Chien
- CATCHING THE BIG FISH by David Lynch
- THE SUBJECT STEVE by Sam Lipsyte
- FRIDAY BLACK by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyan
- NEXT OF KIN: A MEMOIR by Gabrielle Hamilton
- JOYRIDE: A MEMOIR by Susan Orlean
- THE ANTHONY BOURDAIN READER: NEW, CLASSIC, AND RESDISCOVERED WRITING by Kimberly Witherspoon (ed.)
Looks like I’m going to start 2026 a little behind the 8-ball. And that doesn’t even include the stack I got for Christmas that I have yet to crack open!
Say Up Jump the Boogie…
Here’s an exercise I came across in Brevity the other day…
So here’s a challenge I have for each of you. Find an instrumental online of a rap song that you like. Then, freestyle to it until the beat stops. How did that feel? You might even find, if you make this a practice like I have, that you have go-to instrumentals. Why do you think that is?
You know, I do have the album ENTER THE 37TH CHAMBER by the El Michels Affair and wonder if I can go Wu-Tang on it…
Weeknotes S05 E08: Platform Reset
Pondering the continued enshittification of just about every social media platform, I realized that I’ve got a space that I tend to forget about until I get an email reminder to renew my domain name and webhosting. With money. I bet you can look at my posting patterns and figure out when I get those emails.
So I got it into my head to work on a little platform reset, pinning potential reference material here rather than somewhere I can get a quick like or reply. Hence the recent increase in non-weeknotes posts. Sure, it’s slightly more effort but again, I am paying for ::waves hands:: all this.
Anyway, here are some things that caught my attention last week, currently marinating in my brain:
1
I guess we should bahala na si Batman!!
67.21% of passengers offered their seats in the presence of Batman, or more than two out of three, compared to 37.66% in the control experiment, or just over one out of three.
2
If I’ve ever seen a setup for a DATELINE episode, this is it…
Days after an Atlanta man died in a scuba diving accident in Hawaii, authorities said they found the skeletal remains of his son who had gone missing four years prior in a tree house in his backyard.
3
With the assault from the government on one side and the threat of AI from another, I’ll take all the reminders I can get that art can survive. Unsurprisingly, it takes the form of the legacy of a Black woman completely unknown to me previously.
The arts remind us that none of the current truisms are absolutes—that there are other ways of living, existing, and being. Arts can exist outside of a tech lord’s algorithm.
As you can see, I’ve been playing around with Quotebacks. Jury’s still out, but so far I’m liking the convenience. Anyway, I’m not completely off the socials–you can find me on Bluesky these days–but I’ll be shooting for more cross-over. Let’s see how this goes!
The Men Who Stare at Aswang
How did I go 52 years into my Filipino-American life and not know Aswang was used as a PSYOP by the CIA in the Philippines??
Wait, was that where the trope came from…?
I’ve even been to The Aswang Project website before, and somehow I still missed it!
Now I’m waiting to be visited in the night–not by an aswang but by someone looking to revoke my Filipino card.
Yacht Rock Imitating Life
To commemorate the 45th anniversary of the release of Yacht Rock classic “Ride Like The Wind” by Christopher Cross in 1980, an official music video was finally produced!
But there are other ways to celebrate the occasion, I guess. Like live-action re-enactment:
A minivan driver fleeing police drove 173 miles across four Southern California counties Monday before escaping into Mexico in a chase spanning more than two hours.
via the Los Angeles Times