Blog

• Girona, Spain! Heiko has splintered off the trip to return to Berlin. No show today, but we're on Spanish radio tonight. #
• In Toulouse, France. Played a very fun show with Schwervon! last night on a boat-turned-rock-club. #
• In Nantes, France. It's a beautiful day, we're meeting Rahim for breakfast soon. #
• @dee3nah Really? That's ridiculous and amazing. We just had a crazy jam in Mordelles, probably only a little more bearable... #

• doing my taxes in new jersey. uh oh... #
• @dee3nah i'm experimenting with a twitter program i downloaded, & i thought i was running a "help" command. no help needed, thanks! in reply to dee3nah #
• @bananakelly thanks for the easter cookie fun! happy easter! #
• @andyprice: #twyt 's my fave CLIent so far. thanks! I'm glad 0.9.2 has screen name in the status line, I had hacked mine to do that before. #
• Preparing to head to Europe, I'm headed to Sam Ash to get some guitar essentials. Last days are so crazy. #
• @mindelini Thanks! Glad you read 2001, I need to re-read. I just watched 1/2 the film this weekend, also a trip for the brain #
• Off to #madrid ! I arrive wednesday morning, what should I do during the day? I'm crazy and have no plans. #
• @skomputer I like the way you think. Consider it done :P #
• In Gijon Spain with Huggabroomstik, taking an internet break. Played in a Casino last night to 3 people! #
• RT @caseyholford I want to read this! http://tinyurl.com/c6eqyq #

Just found out there are some live recordings of myself and friends from the Welcome to Boog City festival. You can get all the recordings here: Welcome to Boog City audio page (link no longer valid).

Below is a recording of Preston and I playing a Lou Reed song. For fun, we switched it up such that Preston played guitar, and I played keyboard.

You can also download them here:

• Dibson T Hoffweiler, live at Sidewalk 2008 September 19
• Preston Spurlock and Dibson T Hoffweiler, live at Sidewalk 2008 September 19, performing Lou Reed songs

I moved to Brooklyn with a friend in the summer of 2003. It was quite an exciting time. My first apartment! Blackouts! There was only one problem: we had no place to put guests when they arrived.

Fortunately, down the street there was a furniture store. Unfortunately, the stuff was all pretty cheap. Fortunately, we were pretty cheap guys. For $100 dollars, a brutish man, an incredibly miniature "the hulk", carried a futon mattress 4 blocks to our apartment and up to the second floor. He then carried up a metal frame.

Seating sorrows solved, we had many guests sit their asses on the futon, and many guests spent many nights on it. On more than one occassion I myself have slept on it, and it was quite delightful. Surprisingly comfortable, actually. I don't know if I'd use it as a bed, but it's a great spot for guests and the occassional daytime nap.

Fast forward to 2006! I move to Ridgewood. My roommate's girlfriend doesn't like the futon, so they let me keep it. Score! One less thing to buy for the apartment. Many more guests sleep on it, it's proved super reliable.

Fast forward to today! I'm packing up the Ridgewood apartment, and preparing to put a lot of my stuff in storage. I love this futon; it has been worth more than the $100 it cost. I'll be travelling for about two months, and I don't think it makes sense to keep the futon somewhere for that long. I've had the thing for about 6 years. It's time to move on, but I can't bear the idea of kicking it to the curb. It's in good condition, and it's comfortable.

I'm leaving my apartment at the end of the month. Can you give this futon a good home? If you'd come pick it up and give me some money for it, I'd be tickled pink. I think it's more important that someone gets more use out of it. A pick of next Monday or Tuesday (Mar 30, 31) would be amazing for me.

See the crummy camera phone photos. In one it's bare, in the other it's dressed up in a comforter (COMFORTER NOT FOR SALE!!!). It'd make mom proud to have a nice cover on it! The thing also unfolds so that two could sleep comfortably on it, but I was too lazy to do that for a photo.

Naked Futon

Dressed Up Futon

I made a recording of the second song I wrote inspired by Flatland. Although inspired by the book, the spark was listening to Susan play her Flatland song while at the show.

Download She's So One-Dimensional (acutey)

First post in quite a while! Here we go.

The Bushwick Book Club has performances monthly at Goodbye Blue Monday where each songwriter presents a song about/lifted from/inspired by the book of the month. This month's book was Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot.

I had the good fortune of playing a tune that night. Here it is:

You can download it: Holy Ghost

download: Wish You Were A Girl

It's an Of Montreal cover by me and my sister, april. I just rediscovered the recording. This was going to be the secret track for dibs bleeds books, but in the rush to finish it, I forgot to include it.

The day we recorded the song, she also recorded the ukulele on Sugar Factory. It was really fun to do both, and I want to work with her more.

I've been biking to work each day for the past three weeks. It's very empowering to use your own body to get from one place to another. Whenever I don't bike for a while, I'm always surprised at how it feels the first day.

After arriving to my destination, I feel sort of high, and I see things differently - probably my body is in a state of shock from so much exertion. I'm glad I'm doing it now, since I'll probably have to stop for the winter.

This week there has been a lot of roadkill for some reason.

• 2 rats
• 2 pigeons
• 1 squirrel
• 1 skunk

I had never seen a skunk in the city before.

This past weekend, Liv and I have been cleaning out our apartment of anonymous stuff that we've accumulated over the years. Our place is a lot cleaner and neater already. We moved in together in April, and at that time we each got rid of a lot of stuff to make the move easier. It's alarming that we didn't do this good a job the first time around.

photo from Merrick Brown, via flickr

I've put more clothing in bags to give away - they'll probably mostly go to Housing Works, where Liv just started working last week. I now have one closet's worth of clothing. When I left my last apartment I had a footlocker and a trashbag of clothes for the thrift stores.

I've gone through all the notebooks I kept from college - I was determined to trash a lot of my notes. Most of the good stuff was from computer courses. I was convinced I could get rid of it because...

1. my notations would be (are?) obsolete
2. if my notations are not obsolete, they are surely available to me on the internet somewhere

I got rid of most of them. I did this by tearing the notes out of my notebook. Along with the notes, what I ended up with was a stack of mostly unused notebooks. I'm holding onto some of my old notes for now (which makes it less surprising that I've gone through this process before).

Getting rid of books I don't care terribly much for. Getting rid of all the odd cables that I don't need because I already have backups for the backups in case I lose them. Put out the plastic container/drawers that I've had for years. They took up much more space than the objects I kept inside of them. I have a bin of stuff that's usable and that I'll try to give away.

It's so much work to go over all these objects. And in the end, I'm left with... less objects. Which is what I want, but it leaves me feeling a bit empty (har har). I cannot describe the feeling, but I tried to express it to Daoud. He said he's cleaned out his stuff three times in the past year, and "I guess you do it so you don't have to think about it." I have piles of stuff, and each pile is a todo list I don't want to do. So I have less piles now.

And I'm past that stuff now, and I feel good about it all. But now I can't believe I have the luxury to get rid of stuff when so many people don't have enough.

Oh, the French! I don't know who made up the phrase the "french good-bye." I first learned of it from Sibsi, who ran into Sidewalk and said, "I really have to go, but I didn't want to do the French Goodbye." We exchanged goodbyes, and he promptly left.

I don't approve of not saying goodbye, but I think it's an important option - especially when involved with a community whose events can go on for over four hours, several evenings a week. If it's already difficult to find time alone, being polite with goodbyes can cost you more of that alone time.

I suppose one should not be offended, and not worry about offending with such a non-goodbye. Which means people are bound to be upset no matter what: "Ugh, I can't leave." "Why won't she leave? We need to go." "Wait, he left already?"

original photo by flickr user franz88.