Ask Uncle Matt

I'm really enjoying answering the responses I got from yesterday's journal entry about the LJ meme in which people ask me anonymous questions. I'm going to preface the questions with "Dear Uncle Matt", and make up names for you, just to show that this LJ meme is not the boss of me!

Dear Uncle Matt,
If you could be any type of sandwich, what type of sandwich would you be and why?
For instance, I would be a peanut butter and jelly, because I am both sweet and nutty.
*Where's Bob Ubanks when you need him? :P
-PBJ

Dear PBJ,
1. You must be part of the cult of Hank!( Read more... )

Dear Uncle Matt,
have a question i keep meaning to ask you but keep forgeting when i see you on line do you view technology as a way to increase your social interaction and increase awerness of things social or do you view social interaction as a way to increase your knowledge of technology and increase awerness of things technological?
-Emperor Penguin

Dear Penguin,
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is, they make each other better.( Read more... )

Dear Uncle Matt,
also, if you were forced to choose, which would you keep freinds and social interaction (no tech, just you in a room with food to live on and freinds to hang out with) or your technology(assuming that there would be no one at the other end, just you. no one to blog with, no one to read your web sites.)
-Emperor Penguin

I'd take the friends and social interaction, but I'd probably also put up a cork board and start tacking messages and drawings on it.( Read more... )

Dear Uncle Matt,
What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?
-DNA

Dear DNA,
I am as much of a Douglas Adams fan as anybody. I even named a messageboard "The Electric Monk" and dedicated it to him. But the answer's not "42," I'll tell you that much. Ever tried to actually use "42" as the meaning of your life?
( Read more... )

Dear Uncle Matt,
Did YOU send those monkeys after her?!?!?!
-Dorothy

Dear Dorothy,
Deny, deny, deny. However, the monkeys are everywhere and read everything, so now you've given them a clue to her location. The monkeys are probably seeking an injunction and a search warrant right at this very moment. Nice going.
-Uncle Matt

And while we're on the topic of stalker animals:

Dear Uncle Matt,
Hummming....Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
-Hummming

Dear Hummming,
I wish Alfred Hitchcock were alive, because I'd ask him. Night and day they hound me. I looked out the peephole in my front door just last week and saw this:

AAAARGH!
Fortunately most of the birds are penguins, since I help to run Penguicon. I say "fortunately" because penguins can't fly and thus have a lot of trouble appearing suddenly. They tend to appear gradually from the horizon and I can evade them if I keep moving.
-Uncle Matt

OK guys and gals, you can keep those questions coming by commenting on my last journal entry. If you have a comment on the answers, comment to this entry.

Philip Glass vs. Hiphop

Boingboing.net reports: "A collection of old skool hip-hop tracks smushed together with the compositions of Philip Glass."

Philip Glass writes opera music which resembles bizarre performance art, such as the emotionless voices chanting "1, 2, 3, 4" in Einstein on the Beach, and the cold sythesizer and piano in Ankhnaten. It can make you feel like you are in an ivory tower, staring into the angsty depths of your vacant and dessicated soul; lost in thought -- spiraling into a hypnotic vortex in your own navel... crying out, what is the greater purpose? Is this why I exist? To suffer? Will I ever escape this endless loop of the same two seconds of sound? Will the higher purpose of this music become clear in the end? And then you realize, as Goethe said, "Man must strive, and in striving he must err."

Hearing this overlaid with vulgar, mysoginistic thugs using the "n" word and talking about cops, whores and record deals on the streets is disturbing. Yet each of them are energized and dramatized by the other. The pathos of Glass actually makes the rappers not seem superficial and thoughtless anymore. The gritty realism brings the opera down to earth. It would have been oddly fitting for the movie version of I, Robot had Will Smith done this. You're probably not going to save this to disk for the future, but it would be worth a listen. Try "Crystal Glass" specifically.