Duck You Snapper!

These turtles were alarmed when I passed by them when I was kayaking in the Pine Barrens. In the first picture you'll see a happy family of them sitting on a log. When I got too close they all jumped into the water except one. As I left them and went farther down the river they did start to come back onto the log.

This was a few weeks ago in early June. I don't know what the species was, but their bellies had a bright red and black pattern. This area of the Mullica River seemed to be their favorite hangout because the water became a deep pool with low current--ideal for fish hunting (if that's what turtles actually hunt).

"Remix"

I've been trying to "remix" an old song by Peter Buchak, the Retron theme song "Insane," and I'm having a devil of a time doing it. By the way, I put "remix" in quotes because I'm not using any of the original material, and in fact I doubt if most "remixers" (aka "DJs") do either. However, while this term strikes me as a bit of dance culture silliness, it's probably the best to describe what I'm doing. If my computer wasn't so rickety, it would probably be a lot easier and more fun.

Dance Music Intelligence

My co-worker [Baby Terminator] today recommended a website, www.somafm.com, which has a number of internet radio channels, including one particularly interesting electronic one: "blips and bleeps with electronic beats." There were in fact no electronic beats at the time, just a kind of "quiet" non-melodic texture, at times jazz-influenced. I liked the odd moments of silence. I guess you could call it ambient. I came to appreciate ambient when a college rock radio station played a track from Music For Airports on repeat for a 24 hour period. I would periodically check in when I was driving--yep, still there, same few bars of piano. The heavy metal DJ finally put an end to it. Anyway, it's cool when music has a structure to it that's basically opaque, but you can still sense that it's there (even if there actually isn't one).