7641. NC Gal (h203.10.21.98.dynamic.ip.windstream.net) – 22 Sep 2008 12:14:47 [ Bathroom? Mushroom! ]

My husband and I moved into a rental home with our 2 small children 1 year 1/2 ago and I immediately felt like the air was thick and musty in the house. I contributed that to the fact that the house is very old, yet it had been rented out previously so it was lived in. I began noticing a lot of moisture in the bathroom and that I had a harder time breathing in that room more so than the others. There were water rings around the baseboard of the bathroom. Then one day last year I noticed a small mushroom (not like the one in the picture) with a long white stem and small pinkish,tan little mushroom top on it. I thought it was interesting, but plucked it, cleaned the bathroom and moved on with my day. Last December I began developing breathing problems, wheezing, fatigue, etc. I noticed that the problem began after I tried cleaning what I thought was mold from the baseboard in the bathroom. In Feb of this year, I fell extremely ill and was diagnosed with pnemonia. I was on every antibiotic you could find and was on bedrest for 3 months. In June, I was diagnosed with asthma at 29 years old and was told by my doctor that the bathroom could have caused it. I went in the bathroom today and found another little mushroom growing from where the tub meets the wall. That is when I wanted to find out a little more and it led me to this site. We only have one bathroom and I realize that it will take extensive time for our landlord to fix this problem so I know that we will probably have to move. I wrote this for anyone who may not be taking the mold/mushroom thing seriously since I am currently suffering with a number of ailments at just 30 years old all steming (no pun intended) from the mold/mushroom in the bathroom.

7640. Tom 7 (72.14.228.1) – 21 Sep 2008 22:48:50 [ Inverse Mutton-chops! ]

Oh no, it's happening again ...

7639. chris casinghino, currently in san di... (cse-dhcp-10-158.ucsd.edu) – 21 Sep 2008 22:32:08 [ Inverse Mutton-chops! ]

SEX

7638. Anonymous (70-56-16-123.eugn.qwest.net) – 21 Sep 2008 20:19:27 [ Inverse Mutton-chops! ]

gross

7636. Mike Kenny (pool-70-19-231-84.bos.east.verizon.net) – 20 Sep 2008 21:53:42 [ DDFW ]

Yeah, I've heard that too Scott, the thing about 'depressive realism'. I'm inclined to believe it. I guess we humans tend to have a bias towards overconfidence in our judgments, and depression seems a natural tincture for that.

I guess my attitude is our minds are instrumental and if a certain way of thinking makes you miserable, it makes sense to try to stop it unless there's some compensating benefit. Thinking positive does actually really make you feel better. Thank you cognitive psychology!

It sounds like DFW had depression that was really intractable, given he was using electroshock therapy, which I guess is usually only used when two antidepressants don't work. DFW seemed smart enough to understand depression inside and out, so I'm inclined to think he was just up against a tough disease that got him and what can you do?

7635. Tom 7 (h-74-0-114-139.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 20 Sep 2008 14:49:23 [ Bathroom? Mushroom! ]

Yum, mushroom pizza!

7634. mushroom lasgna...yum! (pool-71-184-197-233.bstnma.fios.verizon.net) – 20 Sep 2008 13:57:05 [ Bathroom? Mushroom! ]

look up peziza domiciliana,

it is the "lasgna noodle mushroom" i have one in my bathroom too!

looks like it would be something edible, but it's NOT so dont even try!

7632. Cortney (pool-138-88-177-129.res.east.verizon.net) – 18 Sep 2008 20:50:05 [ DDFW ]

Given that drug treatment for depression often involves getting certain neurotransmitter levels up, or changing receptor efficiency, maybe there's some kind of brain chemistry connection between those that seem smart and developing depression?

7631. Scott/Graue (ip70-179-119-114.dc.dc.cox.net) – 18 Sep 2008 17:24:19 [ DDFW ]

When I was around 12 and being evaluated for possible depression, a counselor told me research had shown depressed people had more realistic worldviews than the rest of us. (Which of course led me to believe: Then I'm fine. Everyone else is an idiot.)

Nowadays, I don't believe that statement. I mean, there is stuff in life that's both bad and unavoidable, and it may take some smarts to realize that, but why make a big deal out of it?

Keeping things in perspective requires a different kind of intelligence that I guess even geniuses can struggle with.

7630. Tom 7 (h-67-100-130-210.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 17 Sep 2008 21:38:47 [ DDFW ]

Yes, from the "Alas poor Yorick" line. I actually don't like the title of that book, though I will admit to feeling a little bit better about it with time. I am basically just not a Shakespeare fan. (Except that one of my all-time favorites is his, also from Hamlet: "Brevity is the soul of wit.")

I'd say the thing that's most disturbing to me (I mean suicide is almost always sad and it's sad to lose a great writer) is to see how frequently people that I consider much smarter than me, like people that I imagine really get it, end up depressed and sometimes suicidal. I am not close to that kind of bleak worldview, but I hate to think that if I were only able to understand something that I don't, that I would feel that way too?

7627. mike kenny (user-208-64-116-220.lahey.org) – 16 Sep 2008 08:55:27 [ DDFW ]

"...Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

"This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger."

--david foster wallace at his speech at kenyon college--the link: http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

death by being too cerebral? the tool of intelligence that seems a powerful tool ends up in some cases to cause some kind of terrible pain? the phrase "infinite jest" came from hamlet apparently, which is apropos.

7626. matus (adsl-75-11-173-86.dsl.sndg02.sbcglobal.net) – 16 Sep 2008 07:11:09 [ NEW: Still Yet More T7ES tunes, blah, blah ]

YES

7623. Tom 7 (h-67-100-132-200.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 16 Sep 2008 00:23:08 [ DDFW ]

Richard Wright today too! At least that dude was old.

7622. jetfuel (c-67-183-131-170.hsd1.wa.comcast.net) – 15 Sep 2008 23:12:14 [ DDFW ]

Scott: I feel that way too. Most recently happened to me with Mitch Hedberg. No idea such a funny guy existed until he didn't.

7620. Scott/Graue (ip70-179-119-114.dc.dc.cox.net) – 15 Sep 2008 22:49:11 [ DDFW ]

I'd never heard of him. Why do I only find out about cool people once they die?

Maybe someone could give me a list of novelists, comedians, and musicians to hurry and familiarize myself with before they die. I'd appreciate that.

7619. Jake (h-74-2-112-11.snfccasy.covad.net) – 15 Sep 2008 20:51:27 [ DDFW ]

Total shocker.

If you haven't read his essays, I recommend them highly. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is awesome; Consider the Lobster is pretty good too.

7618. Ryan (c-76-125-235-165.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) – 15 Sep 2008 20:32:57 [ DDFW ]

I guess he wasn't a genius.

7617. Cortney (pool-138-88-177-129.res.east.verizon.net) – 15 Sep 2008 20:31:13 [ DDFW ]

Did you finish Infinite Jest? If you haven't, perhaps that can be a final tribute to him?

7616. Mike Kenny (pool-70-22-134-200.bos.east.verizon.net) – 15 Sep 2008 20:23:29 [ DDFW ]

this was a real shock. i have read very little by him, but tried to get into him because i liked pynchon and nabokov and heard him linked to them. i liked him from npr and charlie rose interviews. it seemed like he did 'i want to really, really understand' better than anyone.

it's bothersome he couldn't use his smarts to survive and be happy--i don't mean to say this in a judgmental way, simply as an observation that sometimes smart people have trouble their smarts seem unable to deal with. with intelligence like his, i suppose i thought naively, any problem would crumble. i find it deeply bothersome this might not always be the case.

7613. Tom 7 (h-67-100-130-149.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 14 Sep 2008 10:00:33 [ Drink and Draw ]

Chris: Well, the iPod touch is 32gb, which is actually bigger than my music collection on the computer (but that's because I still use CDs for most albums). Flash memory is crazy cheap these days. I think you'll get your wish soon.

A: Hah, yeah, except for the fact that then it still returns overeager results. Personally I don't think it would be insane trouble to highlight all of the artists I know make instrumental music (mainly the electronic artists, but also say Dirty Three) and tag instrumental. This would be super useful for me when I'm working and I don't want words distracting me, I could randomize from the instrumental tag, or from highly-rated instrumental songs I haven't heard recently, etc. I think iTunes wants you to do this with playlists, which almost makes sense, except that you can't do (say) playlist intersections, and worst, you can't synchronize a playlist to your phone without getting all its contents, which means I'd have to have all of my instrumental music on my phone.

7612. Adhesion (92.50.74.144) – 14 Sep 2008 08:33:56 [ Drink and Draw ]

Re: tags and queries: you could actually do something similar in foobar, since one of the components has a search/filter box that is total overkill in the results it returns - apparently it searches all tag fields as well as properties of the file. Eg, if I search for 'loss' looking for Theme from Loss I get... everything in my music collection, I guess because everything's either lossy or lossless, and I get totally unrelated songs when I search for certain words in song titles because some random mp3s I have have the whole lyrics in the tags. I think one album even had a whole Amazon review in it, so that one comes up a lot. So if you went to the insane trouble of tagging everything with every genre/category it fit into, you could have something semi-smart.

7609. Chris (c-76-99-55-118.hsd1.pa.comcast.net) – 13 Sep 2008 18:48:09 [ Drink and Draw ]

Tom: understandable. Amarok does have support for lots of media devices, including ipods, but I think not iphones (at least, not yet). I use it with my little Samsung YP-U3, and it's convenient enough. I used to have a nice big 60GB ipod, but the disk was always getting fucked up and I had to have it repaired constantly. I can't wait for giant flash drives, because figuring out what 2GB of music I want to have with me all the time is a disaster. If apple is the first to bring out nice big solid state players, I might go back.

I totally agree on itunes retarded model for what music is playing. Though, I do appreciate its library organization and browsing features. When it came out for windows back in 2003 (I think?) it was the first or nearly the first to do that kind of stuff. Amarok does better with allowing you to browse the library while still viewing and manipulating the currently active playlist, and double clicking adds songs to the current playlist, as it should be.

7608. Tom 7 (h-67-100-47-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 13 Sep 2008 17:36:24 [ Tom 7 live @ Open Mic Night, 5 Sep 2008 ]

Like a solo Sonic Youth, huh? It's a super pain in the ass to haul around and prepare (e.g. tune) gear, to be honest. This is why I've been restricting myself to standard tuning as much as possible. I agree it would be sweet, though. On my old shitty Fender I have restrung it in an interesting way, the fruits of which I hope to share on an upcoming album. (Quite contrary to what I just said about restricting myself to standard tuning, ahhh..)

7607. Tom 7 (h-67-100-47-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 13 Sep 2008 17:33:50 [ Drink and Draw ]

Nels: My favorite karaoke so far is Bowleoke at Arsenal, because you can bowl when the karaoke is bad and it's lower pressure for the karaokeists. Brillobox post-eoke sounds pretty fun. Is that place no-smokey now that supposedly Pittsburgh has banned smoking except in exceptions? Because it was really smokey.

7606. Tom 7 (h-67-100-47-227.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 13 Sep 2008 17:28:29 [ Drink and Draw ]

Other Chris: Well, thing is, I really need my music player to be able to synchronize with my phone, which is now one of the major ways I listen to music. Otherwise, I would still be using winamp. iTunes is really crummy, IMO, one of the worst Apple apps. (Specifically, I think its model for how it has some hidden internal notion of what song is going to be played next, rather than how winamp and other players work, where there is a single main playlist that authoritatively determines the song that'll be next, is really annoying. And actually confusing, even to people who know how computers work. Particularly, when I'm listening to a song and didn't have the foresight to use On-The-Go playlist or party shuffle, then there's no way for me to queue up stuff to play next. I have to interrupt the music. How many times have I been at a party and someone accidentally double-clicks a song and there goes the dance party? Interrupting the music should never be the default behavior.) It's especially painfully slow on Windows. But working with my phone is important enough that I've basically switched over now.

By the way, I have to take back my "absolutely fucking worthless" comment about Genius. I think that when I first started using this morning it I had some transient network issues or otherwise today it has been learning more zeitgeist from all the people trying it, because now it at least knows about GBV and a couple other bands that it was giving me bingo results on before, so at least it is not useless. The results are now what I'd call mediocre; it seems to know the difference between my two major threads of music in my collection (being the electronic music and the indie-rock) although it gives Iron & Wine results for Aphex Twin songs, which is fine by me but hard to explain in terms of relative feel. I wish I could just tag my shit "instrumental" "electronica" "chill" and then make ad hoc queries, like it's 2004.

Why am I so bitter today? Must be the humidity.