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Another song from my childhood

2012-02-17T20:34:00.000-06:00

This is one of those songs that has been lurking around in the backroads of my memory for a long time. I liked it as a kid, but never knew who sang it or even what it's title was. Yesterday I was thinking about it again, for some reason, and G00gled some of the lyrics and found it quickly enough. (Leon Everette, "Hurricane").

But there was another one, a sort of country novelty song, that I've been looking for and can't come up with anything based on the lyrics that I remember. It's a story about a boy named Leon Rhodes (I think?, maybe Leon Rose?) who played the bugle. He went to church every Sunday, and the preacher there had an annoying habit of ending all of his sermons with, "Someday Gabriel's gonna blow his horn--I can almost hear him now." So one Sunday morning Leon decided to play a joke on the preacher.

One day little Leon Rhodes took his beat-up bugle along
Climbed up in that hot church attic and waited for the closing song
Well, Reverend Jones ended his sermon in the same old way
Said a few words about Gabriel, cupped his hand up behind his ear
And he said,
Someday Gabriel's gonna blow his horn, I can almost hear him now...

At this point Leon blows a little tune on his bugle, and "it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop." So Reverend Jones shakily repeated his thing about Gabriel, and Leon blew the little tune again. Then it goes something like:

Well, the people didn't waste no time gettin' out of that spooky place
The preacher rushed down from the pulpit with a worried look on his face
About that time little Leon Rhodes decided to save his hide
Took one step, fell down through that ceiling and he landed by the preacher's side

The preacher thinks Leon is Gabriel and he shouts something that I can't remember, and then:

...and he ran out the big front door
Far as I know that man's still runnin'
'Cause he ain't been seen no more

Then it goes on to tell how Leon grew up to be a great bugle player, and the song ends with a trumpet solo on the fade-out. I'm pretty sure it was a trumpet, not a bugle, based on how I remember it. Anyway.

If anyone reads this and knows what song I'm talking about, please let me know who sang it and what the title is.

Raze all the buildings and sow the ground with salt

2012-02-17T20:17:00.000-06:00

I took these a whole month ago when I was doing a partial route on the other side of highway 281 from my usual cycle 15. This route sucks. I had a partial on it again today, but a different part, and I was even more lost today that I was last month. I mean this route really just blows bloody raw chunks. I hate this route. 200 meters took me longer to do than my full route on the other side of the highway.

I had intended to take a specific photo of something today, but I got rained on all day so I didn't have my phone on me.

Movie review: Subspecies

2012-02-16T20:14:00.001-06:00

I watched this a few days ago. It had pretty good ratings on Netflix and since I have a penchant for vampire movies, I thought I'd give it a go.

Oh man. The acting was terrible. It was made in 1991 but the little imp-things were about as cutting-edge as Jason and the Argonauts. I realize that the Argonauts' special effects were cutting-edge for 1963, but 27 years later you'd of thought they could have improved slightly.

I had some hopes it would be a pretty good movie, because it was filmed on location in Romania and was produced by a bunch of guys whose last names all ended in "-escu." The "bad" vampire looked good--I mean, bad, of course--his horrific appearance gave me hope right at the beginning, but when he ripped off his own fingertips and strewed them around so they could transform into those imp-things, I lost hope. I fell asleep toward the end but I'm pretty sure the good vampire killed the bad vampire. In any case, by that time I just didn't care.

Also the love interest was kind of creepy because it looked like the girl and the guy (who was the "good" vampire, of course) were brother and sister. There were some nekkid br34sts, but frankly they weren't impressive enough to make up for the movie.

And now there's, what, five of these movies? Good grief. I would recommend dubbing them all onto an 8-hour videocassette and turning it on just as you go to bed. That way if you're lucky it will all be over with by the time you wake up in the morning.

I can't believe they're just giving this stuff away

2012-02-16T19:56:00.003-06:00

I'm back

2012-02-15T20:06:00.000-06:00

Bet you didn't even know I was gone. My internet went down yesterday and a tech came out today to see what was up. We figured out that apparently, when the last tech came out here to do an equipment upgrade, he hadn't firmly seated the coax cable into its jack, which resulted in some intermittent problems until yesterday when my daughter must have nudged it with her toe and popped it completely out. Today's tech dude went ahead and added a few tweaks while he was here, most importantly locking my system onto the antenna with the strongest signal.

I found this article somewhat interesting: 10 Most Bizarre Cargo Spills. A couple of times I hauled about 33,000 pounds of masa from Laredo up to a restaurant distribution place on the east side, and I bet that would have made an horrific mess if it had spilled. So now you also have some trivia you'll never need: the most masa you can pack in a 53-foot trailer is right at 33,000 pounds.

Once I was hauling 26,000 pounds of toilet paper (again, the most you can pack in a 53-foot trailer). That was the time I got stuck in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Wyoming for 2 days because of a winter storm. Everyone was sitting there bemoaning getting stuck there (if you're wheels aren't moving, you aren't making money). I broke in on the CB and said, "Well, I'm hauling 26,000 pounds of toilet paper, so if anybody needs some, it's ten dollars a roll." I don't know if anyone thought that was funny or not.

Another load with the potential for a big mess that I hauled was 30,000+ pounds of cat litter. There was another time I had a load of 16,000 pounds of empty cat food cans. Not a big potential for making a mess there, but it seemed funny to me at the time. That was my first trip into L.A, actually an industrial subdivision called Vernon, which I learned truckers often refer to as L.A., L.A.

Then there was the time I had a trailer full of Betty Crocker brownie mix. Cases and cases of it, although I don't recall the weight. One case got torn during unloading, so they said, "This one's yours." None of the individual boxes had been damaged--only the big case box itself. So I brought a whole case of Betty Crocker brownie mix home. I thought we would never eat all that stuff.

I can't imagine how this would work, nevertheless, I am intrigued

2012-02-13T19:13:00.002-06:00

I wasn't motivated enough even to write a weekend update this past week, but I remembered I still have a few work pix that I was saving for a rainy day. This was taken early in the morning about 3 weeks ago, on my regular cycle 14 on FM78. I was amused by the sign on the side of the truck.

I had a couple of opportunities for an interesting photo or two today, but unfortunately I had left my phone behind because I was getting rained on.

However I still want to mention something that I just discovered today and which has a website with plenty of pix. I had been by this place before, but the previous times I had seen it, there were no signs up saying what it was. It looked to me like a big hole in someone's backyard that had been fenced off to make a mini-park. I'm talking about the Robber Baron Cave, slap in the middle of a fairly densely-populated area on Nacogdoches not too far south of Loop 410. If you drive down Nacogdoches and you don't already know it's there, you'll probably never notice it.

The Warrior's Way

2012-02-05T08:54:00.001-06:00

Watched this movie yesterday. I enjoyed it a lot and gave it 5 stars on Netflix.

It's about a 19th-century assassin (ninja) named Yang who has sworn to kill all members of an enemy family, which he does until he comes to the last survivor: a baby girl. He suddenly changes heart and refuses to kill her, instead taking custody of her and caring for her. This makes him a renegade and enemy of his own clan. He tries to escape them by leaving the Orient and coming to the American West.

He goes to the small, crumbling town of Lode, where a friend of his had previously emigrated to. His friend has since died, so he takes over his friend's business of clothes washing. The town is almost dead, in the middle of the desert and isolated much like the town of Lago in High Plains Drifter. Lode is home to a dilapidated amusement park and is populated mostly by carnies and sideshow freaks. And, like Lago, it is periodically visited by a gang of murderous villains who terrorize the townsfolk.

Also among the townsfolk is a young woman named Lynne whose entire family was murdered by the gang about 10 years previous, and in fact Lynne herself had appeared to be mortally wounded at the time but miraculously recovered and now wants to personally kill the gang's leader, known as "the Colonel," to get her revenge. Lynne had been given some rudimentary sword training by Yang's old friend and Yang continues some further sword training with her after hearing her story.

Of course the Colonel's gang eventually reappears, leading to a climactic showdown. However, a large squad of ninjas who have been searching for Yang and the baby girl also appears. The climactic battle scene is quite the showdown.

Part Kung Fu (the TV series), part True Grit, part High Plains Drifter. All live-action but combat was definitely imitating anime. The far backgrounds (horizon, sky) appear to be CGI, giving it a somewhat fantastic feel. Humor, violence, mercy, revenge, love, heartbreak...it's all in there.

Bob and Ray on "Crooning"

2012-02-04T20:14:00.000-06:00

I had downloaded several old "Bob and Ray" radiio shows a few days ago and this clip was part of one show, so I put it on YouTube so I could share it. It struck me as very funny.

A collection of cool album covers

2012-02-02T19:20:00.000-06:00

I do not own all of these, but this is a duo I heard about because of their Lovecraft-themed albums.

Nox Arcana is the duo of Joseph Vargo and William Piotrowsky. Vargo is also a visual artist and he created all of this cover art. Vargo was also previously involved with a similar group called Midnight Syndicate.

The music? Well, Wikipedia calls their music neoclassical ambient. Most think of it as "dark ambient" or "darkwave." Instruments used are both electronic and acoustic, with some vocal choirs but almost never any lyrics.

Each of their albums has its own theme, and mostly to sort it out in my own mind, I'll go down the list here. So this is a list of album titles followed by who/what inspired them.

Darklore Manor (2003) - Inspired by a "haunted house" near Salem, Massachusetts.

Necronomicon (2004) - H.P. Lovecraft.

Winter's Knight (2005) - Gothic Christmas/Solstice music, with some inspiration from Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Transylvania (2005) - Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Carnival of Lost Souls (2006) - Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Blood of Angels (2006) - A collaboration with Michelle Belanger, who sings on all tracks. This album is the notable exception in having actual "songs" rather than instrumentals. (There are other lyrical songs throughout the whole collection, but they rare). Inspired by, and I quote, "ancient Enochian myths to tell a story about mythical Watcher Angels, who 'abandoned Heaven for a taste of mortal love.' According to the Enochian legend, the Watchers (also called Grigori or 'Fallen Angels') are celestial beings who were condemned to the earthly realm after uniting with mortals and sharing with them their mystical secrets." So there you go.

Blood of the Dragon (2006) - Swords & sorcery tales and Dungeons & Dragons.

Shadow of the Raven (2007) - Edgar Allen Poe.

Grimm Tales (2008) - The Brothers Grimm.

Phantoms of the High Seas (2008) - Pirate lore and stories of ghost ships.

Blackthorn Asylum (2009) - H.P. Lovecraft.

Zombie Influx (2009) - A zombie invasion mixed with faux news reports a la the The War of the Worlds thing. A collaboration with another musical project called BuzzWorks.

Winter's Eve (2009) - Another Gothic Christmas/Solstice collection.

Theater of Illusion (2010) - "An old theater haunted by a masked magician."

House of Nightmares (2010) - A old (haunted) manor house next to a cemetery. Another collaboration with BuzzWorks.

The Dark Tower (2011) - Vampires.

Pretty good stuff, if you're into "neoclassical ambient" with a heavy emphasis on minor keys.

This is the video I was trying to create yesterday

2012-02-01T20:53:00.001-06:00

Old church building

2012-01-31T20:11:00.002-06:00

The video clip in the previous post was another from my phone, of course, taken last week at Sunset Station. I tried to edit it with some humorous credits but for some reason Windows Movie Maker wouldn't save it.

So anyway here's an old church in the far background that I liked the looks of. I mostly took the picture to remind myself because I thought I might put it in a story. This was on the near southside, but I don't remember the street.

I have a few other work pix that I'll post soon, but I thought I'd spread them out into separate posts just to have something to do.

Train

2012-01-31T19:59:00.000-06:00

One example of a comment I'll delete

2012-01-29T20:18:00.002-06:00

A screen cap of a notification email for The Briar Files.

Good grief.

Weekend update (It's a Jeep thing)

2012-01-28T20:09:00.001-06:00

Knocked a couple of shows off the Netflix queue today, taking it easy on a Saturday afternoon.

First was Hobo With a Shotgun (2011). This is a ridiculously over-the-top vigilante movie starring Rutger Hauer, who is one of my favorite tough-guy actors. The gunplay is completely unrealistic and the gore technology is pure splatterpunk. Also for some reason they filmed it with a bunch of different weird color filters, so at times everything is green, other times blue, and sometimes...uh...there's a word for this I'm looking for...can't think of it right now but I mean almost cartoonishly garish and bright. Shotgun fu, lawn mower fu, noose fu, switchblade fu, and manhole cover fu. Actually I thought the thing with the manhole covers was quite clever.

If you want to see a fake trailer from 2007 for this movie, here it is. It pretty much encapsulates the whole movie in 2 minutes. NSFW.

The other thing I watched today was a documentary called A Film Unfinished (2010). It's about a Nazi propaganda film about the Warsaw ghetto which was never finished and was found--in bits and pieces--over the course of many years in the Nazi archives after the war. It was intended to show that Jews were living in a mixture of opulence and poverty in the ghetto--that is--some lived in opulence and crassly ignored those who were starving. Of course, it was all lies and manipulation and the scenes were staged; anyone who failed to perform to expectations was beaten or killed. Here's a trailer.

Some people might think they know enough about World War 2 and the aftermath. I think this is a foolish position. Many parts of the world are only a hair's breadth away from, and some have continued to engage in, genocides of various sorts. The Earth's population as a whole still hasn't learned. I highly recommend this documentary, but I will also warn that due to its graphic and realistic nature, it is absolutely not for children (just in case you're not smart enough to be aware of that on your own). Next up on my Nazi propaganda movie list is Triumph of the Will. I've heard a lot about it, but haven't seen it yet.

This past week I also finished up Star Trek: Enterprise. My old opinion that the writers just killed this show because they got tired and ran out of ideas was only reinforced by seeing the last season again. I was especially annoyed by the two "mirror universe" episodes which had no overlap with the "our universe" characters. Utterly pointless. I've now begun watching Farscape, which I've seen some of when it was being erratically aired on Sci-Fi, and which I liked a lot.

Well, I traded in my old Ford Ranger this week. It had 191,000+ miles on it, and had several problems, the most recent of which was the transmission was beginning to get funky. My wife and I went to DriveTime yesterday and got a Jeep Liberty, a small SUV. This one has a 4-cylinder and a manual transmission so it should get much better mileage than the Ranger did with its V-6 automatic. I somehow reached 22 mpg one time with the Ranger; most of the time I got 19-20. The Jeep is rated for 24 highway, and almost all of my driving is highway. This is our third vehicle from DriveTime so I guess that says something about them (first, a Dodge Durango for my wife, which we wore out and traded for her current Ford Freestar minivan). Oh yeah, one other problem with the Ranger was that the kids were having a hard time cramming themselves into it and I wanted something with room for them so no one had to climb into that back "extended cab" part. I finally have an air conditioner again! The a/c was one of the first things to go, about 2 years ago. A couple of months ago the fan also stopped blowing so I couldn't even heat the thing on cold days.

Another thing I like about the Jeep is that "it ain't got no power nothin'," as one of my in-laws has said. Mirrors, doors, windows, locks, seat adjustments...all manual. This is my first Jeep, so we'll see how it goes.

The Big Dog

2012-01-28T14:39:00.003-06:00

An animated gif that helps demonstrate how huge some stars are, here.

Scantily-clad, tattoed, fur-wearing, sword-twirling Russian redhead

2012-01-27T15:18:00.001-06:00

Best post title EVER!!! NSFW.

Genius...

2012-01-22T20:58:00.003-06:00

Art posters with the topic, "What if modern movies had been made decades ago?" Found here, along with several others of a similar ilk.

How to listen to classical music

2012-01-16T19:47:00.001-06:00

A 20-minute lecture/demonstration by conductor/pianist Benjamin Zander. I have known for a long time that my biggest problem with listening to classical music is because my musical attention span is too short, having grown up listening to pop (which includes country), and the phrases are much longer with most classical pieces.

This is informative and entertaining, and quite funny. I really liked the part about raising one's eyebrows to indicate a deceptive cadence. That really cracked me up. It reminds me of one time when someone at church asked me how I could hit the high notes when I'm leading singing. I told them, "I stand on my tiptoes." Which is partly a joke, and partly the literal truth.*

*But since I'm a tenor, hitting the high notes isn't that hard. The low notes are what really tear my voice up.

Oh... waugghhh!!! YEEEAAHHHH!!!

2012-01-16T16:32:00.003-06:00

If you can listen to this without laughing, you might want to get yourself checked.

David Lee Roth's vocal track isolated from the rest of the song on Runnin' with the Devil.

Good link: CBS Radio Mystery Theater

2012-01-15T16:18:00.001-06:00

I don't usually post unsolicited links that I receive by email, but this is an exception because I am definitely going to make use of it. I have taken to listening to old radio shows during my afternoon commute home, and I recently was sent the link for a very cool site: CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

Enjoy all 1,399 episodes of CBS Radio Mystery Theater old time radio free! You can stream or download old radio shows in MP3 format or copy radio shows to CD. We're big fans of Radio Mystery Theater and by offering shows from the golden age of radio for free, we keep the spirit of the old time radio alive!

Check it out.

Weekend update

2012-01-14T20:12:00.000-06:00

This has nothing to do with the Mayan calendar, but I think it must still surely be a sign of the end times.

I got behind on my usual blog reading this week due to just being too busy and working more than I rightly should. Also my internet service was out for a while last night, which was a real drag. However it was back at full force this morning and I did nothing but rest today. Finished watching the anime series "Claymore." Well, I gave it 3 stars. It started out with a halfway decent story and had some character development but the last half or so was pretty much just anime action without any real story. I read up a little about the original manga, and I think it would have been better if they'd more closely followed the manga and maybe made 52 episodes instead of only 26.

My wife's grandfather passed away this week, not unexpectedly since he'd been in declining health for a long time and had spent the last year in a nursing home. We inherited one of his few remaining possessions: a 26-inch flat-screen TV that he'd purchased about 3 years ago. So now I have a good TV in the bedroom, which is where I watch most of the shows that I like but no one else does (anime, for example).

The old TV I was using was the one I bought when I was truck driving, and it was a very small (15-inch, I think) conventional CRT model. The color had gone off some time ago and all the reds had pretty much shifted out, which made some things look kind of strange. For example, black & white shows were more of a purple-scale than a grayscale, and I didn't watch them. I think the last B&W thing I watched before it went bad was Nosferatu, and that was quite some time ago. So anyway, now I'm going to hit some of the old shows like the complete run of Twilight Zone. I hardly ever watched the show when it was rerun when I was a kid so most of it will be new to me.

I did see the one with Charles Bronson and Elizabeth Taylor, the one with Burgess Meredith when his glasses broke, the one with the good-looking woman who was the weird one because everyone else looked like monster pigs, and especially the one with the doll. You know which one. That one gave me nightmares when I was a kid, probably because I already had a very strong aversion to any dolls larger than an action figure G.I. Joe. I still don't like dolls. They creep me out. Also there was one with the guy who played Sargent Carter on Gomer Pyle that I remember spooking me quite a bit, too, way back then. I think I also saw the one with Captain Kirk and the gremlin, but I'm not sure. I did see the movie version with John Lithgow.

Also I just saw that Netflix now has the entire run of Rawhide, so I'm going to watch at least a few of those. I've never seen any of the shows with Clint Eastwood and I've always wanted to see those.

Another nice thing about the new TV is that it's big enough that I can now read subtitles, so it will be much easier to watch the subtitled anime from Crunchyroll. I might even watch "Le Femme Nikita" again now that I can read the subtitles.

Covers #3: Don't Fear the Reaper

2012-01-10T19:39:00.001-06:00

First of all, I am aware that all of these versions, including the original, need more cowbell. There: I said it, so you don't have to. Now, can we all agree that the cowbell skit was a great moment in SNL comedy and move on with our lives? Thanks.

Some of these versions aren't really noteworthy except to help the exceptions stand out.Original Blue Öyster Cult, from Agents of Fortune, 1976. This is the longer album version, not the radio edit.

Goo Goo Dolls (punk). Their 1987 eponymous album. Nothing new here, just a sped-up, punked-out style.

Gus Black (rock), 1996 from the Scream soundtrack. Very slow. Very somnolent. This one puts me to sleep.

HIM (metal, Finland), from Greatest Love Songs Vol. 666, 1997. Nice version this time. I like the heavy style and the female vocals.

Big Country (pop/rock, Scotland), from Undercover (an album of only cover versions), 2001. This is Big Country with their replacement lead singer after their original (Stuart Adamson) died. Not the same singer as on "In a Big Country" of 80s pop fame. I like Big Country, but this version isn't remarkable either. Mostly just an imitation of the original.

Unto Ashes (neo-medieval/darkwave), from Empty Into White, 2003. Of the covers, this is my favorite, with its dreamy, phantasmic atmosphere.

Wolf (Sweden, metal), from Evil Star, 2008. Nothing new to see here, either. In my opinion, Sweden (as well as Finland) has turned out some awesome doom metal bands, but this is just more generic heavy metal with high male vocals and this version doesn't really do anything new. They even keep that arpeggiated guitar break in the middle of the song.

Sever Your Ties (rock), from Safety in the Sea, 2008. There's really nothing new here, either, but I like this one better than the Wolf version, for some reason. There seems to be a greater sense of urgency in it.

Candlemass (Sweden, doom metal), from Don't Fear the Reaper (EP), 2010. As I was saying: Swedish doom metal, and Candlemass are among the best. Another of my favorites. I like the very slowed-down, heavy, almost ponderous tread of this one. Also, this is melodic doom metal, which means they actually sing and have vocal harmonies instead of just growling.

L.A. Guns, from Covered in Guns (another album of only covers), 2010. Pretty much a carbon-copy on this one.

So to recap, my favorites of the covers are:
1. Unto Ashes
2. Candlemass
3. HIM

There may well be others that I'm unaware of. And as I've said before, when it comes to these covers I'm interested only in the ones that made it to some kind of recorded medium; lousy camcorder recordings from some concert somewhere that you've posted on YouTube don't count. I'm aware, for example, that both Evanescence and R.E.M. have performed this in concert, but the videos I've seen have terrible audio and let's face it: the R.E.M. attempt is just sad and ugly.

Working

2012-01-09T21:11:00.001-06:00

I'm working on a new "covers" post, and I'm finding a lot of covers for this particular song--and it's not "Yesterday." I think I'll leave that one alone. Maybe a dozen so far? I didn't count. Anyway, I'm not finished researching it yet. Maybe tomorrow.

Found knives

2012-01-04T18:44:00.000-06:00

In the course of my job I often come across interesting items just a-layin' around. For example, yesterday I was in a neighborhood where they were doing junk collecting and I found a box full of random Lego pieces that someone was throwing out. I brought the whole box home, which to my son was like getting a late Christmas gift. I sometimes find cash, although it's most often coinage or dollar bills. On two occasions I've found a twenty and a five in close proximity, and once I found two twenties just blowing down the street one very windy day. I had to chase one of them.

I've also found several knives, however, most of them are Chinese junk. They have plastic bolsters, the blades are wobbly and the lock isn't positive. I do pick these up but just throw them in my toolbox. I wouldn't use them for anything but tackle box knives--by which I mean I wouldn't be bothered much if I accidentally dropped one in the creek while I'm fishing.

However, I have found two very good knives which I thought I'd show because one of them I found just today.

The upper knife in the photo I found last year sometime, and I carried it for a while even though the belt clip wasn't as tight as it should have been. And then I snagged the clip on something and bent it even worse, which you might be able to see in the photo. I haven't carried it since then, but if I can find a small enough Torx driver I can take the clip off and bend it back the way it should be. It's a Gerber with an assisted-opening 3" semi-serrated lockblade. It's a great general-purpose medium-duty knife, and I did use it several times to cut landscaping fabric that some idiots insist on covering their meters with. The blade locks both opened and closed, with a button on the bolster that releases it. So as soon as I can find a proper Torx driver, it will see use again.

The lower knife I found just today, and is a Swiss Army knife "Forester" model, if I read their website correctly. The knife blade and the large screwdriver/bottle opener both lock. There is nothing wrong with this knife except that it's missing the toothpick and the tweezer, and those can be replaced. I do need to clean it up a little and apply a tiny squirt of Rem oil or two to smooth out the action, but that's about it. I couldn't believe it when I saw this knife just lying in the street and immediately noticed the SAK logo on the bolster. They sell on the Victorinox website for $42. The blade and the saw are both still extremely sharp. I've never had a SAK that failed to hold an excellent edge.

P.S. And now I have TWO corkscrews!

Covers #2: Over the Hills and Far Away

2011-12-31T22:34:00.002-06:00

"Over the Hills and Far Away," one my favorite songs by Gary Moore, 1986.

Swedish "viking metal" band Thyrfing, 2000.

And by Nightwish (symphonic metal), 2010.

If you look this up on YouTube, there are versions accredited to other bands, but they are errors. The one alleged to be by Rammstein is actually Nightwish, and the one that's supposed to be Sonata Arctica is really Thyrfing.

Tarja Turunen

2011-12-31T22:16:00.000-06:00

I'm still going through all my stuff, building up my big "general favorites" list for my phone/mp3 player and I came across one track today that prompted more special interest. The video below isn't the track that was included on this particular Amazon sampler, but I think it's a good one.

Tarja Turunen is a Finnish classically-trained soprano who used to sing for a symphonic metal band called Nightwish (note: also need to look them up) but has since gone out on her own. Here's her official video for "Die Alive," which I like quite a lot.

And just for kicks, here she is performing with a band who you may recognize.

The first electronic hacker

2011-12-31T20:33:00.001-06:00

I found this to be very interesting.

LATE one June afternoon in 1903 a hush fell across an expectant audience in the Royal Institution's celebrated lecture theatre in London. Before the crowd, the physicist John Ambrose Fleming was adjusting arcane apparatus as he prepared to demonstrate an emerging technological wonder: a long-range wireless communication system developed by his boss, the Italian radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi. The aim was to showcase publicly for the first time that Morse code messages could be sent wirelessly over long distances. Around 300 miles away, Marconi was preparing to send a signal to London from a clifftop station in Poldhu, Cornwall, UK.

Yet before the demonstration could begin, the apparatus in the lecture theatre began to tap out a message. At first, it spelled out just one word repeated over and over. Then it changed into a facetious poem accusing Marconi of "diddling the public". Their demonstration had been hacked - and this was more than 100 years before the mischief playing out on the internet today. Who was the Royal Institution hacker? How did the cheeky messages get there? And why?

Read the whole thing at New Scientist.

And in hindsight, it seemed a very arrogant and condescening attitude from Marconi to claim "I can tune my instruments so that no other instrument that is not similarly tuned can tap my messages." Especially since the first spark-gap transmitters blanketed huge swaths of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The work

2011-12-28T20:36:00.002-06:00

I have been working on another installment of The Hunter Chronicles, which this time is set at Christmas-time, more or less. Almost finished but I think it will require some work before I'm ready for it to see the light of day. Less atmospherics in this one, and more action, along with some long-overdue character development and a glimpse of Hunter's true potential, which I referred to in a previous story but I don't think anyone really caught it. But then, at the time I didn't want anyone to catch it, yet. I'm also still looking for a good epigram for it. Haven't come across anything yet.

For no particular reason...

2011-12-27T19:38:00.000-06:00

"Dancing Bear" by The Mamas and The Papas. This turned up on the phone today when I was shuffling some tunes, and this has always been a favorite of mine. I like the sad, minor melody. I don't know for sure what that low-toned woodwind is that plays through this song, but it sure sounds like a bassoon to me.

The back-up pocket knife

2011-12-27T19:14:00.002-06:00

Since I had recently mentioned pocket knives, I thought I would post a photo of my back-up knife. I got this one from some mail-order military surplus place many years ago and have hardly ever used it. It's also made by Victorinox (the Swiss Army knife folks) but as you can see it's not a SAK. This one was made for the German military, I don't know what era, and is a good knife as every Victorinox knife I've ever had is. A standard blade, plus a saw blade. The piece of metal lying alongside the saw blade is a metal cover for the saw. I suppose they put that on there so you don't lose a finger when you use the bottle opener. My biggest complaint about it is that it doesn't have a Phillips head screwdriver. Slightly lesser complaints are no tweezer and no toothpick. I think this is probably the only corkscrew I own. It came with that lanyard rope that you see in the picture and I never bothered to remove it. By the way, I used this knife when I was teaching some Cub Scouts how to sharpen a knife for their whittling chips. Not that it has ever needed sharpening. It keeps an edge like Mournblade.

And just for kicks, two other tools that are always at my desk. Just above the knife is my good pipe tool which I use only here at my desk. Outside I use other, cheaper and easier-to-replace pipe tools. To the left is a Senior pipe reamer with the drill removed. The drill is used to clean out the air passage in the shank.

My phone doesn't take really good pictures, but you can click to enlarge if you want to.

Stop-action nightgaunts

2011-12-27T16:32:00.004-06:00

Along with a recitation of "Nightgaunts" from Lovecraft's "The Fungi from Yuggoth." Pretty cool. My only criticism is that I don't think the nightgaunts "faces" are as smooth and featureless as they should be.

Amusing and informative

2011-12-27T16:00:00.001-06:00

The 25 Most Powerful Songs of the Past 25 Years, according to mentalfloss.com. Interesting. I would've never guessed #1.

Weekend update

2011-12-25T22:12:00.001-06:00

I hope all my legions of readers had a safe and pleasant holiday season, although I guess technically it's not over until after the New Year.

By the way, I don't really think of the official New Year's Day as the beginning of the year. I know it's the beginning of our customary calendar year, but I have a more pagan outlook on it in that I always think of the year turning over on the winter solstice.

We had a fairly good Christmas this year, except that there were a few fewer people at my dad's place because so many relatives are getting advanced in age and don't get around much anymore. As for me personally, I got some money from my mom which I might use to buy a replacement pocket knife. I somehow managed to lose my favorite knife--a Tinker model Swiss Army knife which my wife gave me for Christmas the year we were married and which I've carried always for the past 18 years. It can easily be replaced, but there was sentimental value in the original. I might upgrade to the Super Tinker which is still small enough to be carried in the pocket but which has a couple of extra tools.

I also received a gift card to Best Buy, which I've already spent via their website. I kind of wanted to indulge in a game or two for myself for the Wii, but was reluctant to spend my own money on such a thing. I was able to get two pre-owned games for the value of the card plus a couple of extra dollars. One was Bleach: Shattered Blade which I've had on my hit list since I got the Wii for the kids last year. It got high reviews at Amazon and looks pretty interesting, with the ability to unlock extra characters who all have different powers and skills. Also I'm looking forward to annoying the kids by yelling getsuga tensho! every chance I get. I'm not sure if Ichigo's getsuga tensho attack is even in the game, but I'm going to yell it anyway. Also, bankai!

The other game also got very good reviews: Shiren the Wanderer, which is a "roguelike" fantasy role-playing game and which I found by searching for games that were similar to D&D. I had to look up "roguelike." I was aware that there had been a game called Rogue but I had never played it. It basically means that there is a lot of randomization built in so that nothing is ever exactly the same twice.

Tonight I have been using YouTube to fully explore an album that I had bookmarked some time ago: Digital Ghosts by Shadow Gallery. I like it a lot. They caught my ear because their song "With Honor" was included on a metal sampler that I downloaded from Amazon not long ago. Progressive metal driven by guitars but with plenty of keyboards too, and good harmony vocals. This is their most recent album, and the first since their original lead singer died. So I'll have to go back and listen to some of their older stuff, too. Here's "With Honor."

On second thought, get into things in cellars

2011-12-25T21:11:00.000-06:00

Now that it's nearing the end of the year, I was looking through a list of free samplers at Amazon.com to see what I had overlooked. I found this one from 2009.

Back then I was still using dial-up, and although I did download some stuff, I had to be careful and pick and choose. So the multiple bad reviews of this one was probably the reason I skipped it. Today I looked over those reviews again and downloaded it for a trial listen.

Heh. The reviews cracked me up. I especially liked the "cautionary tale." The sad thing is: I've heard worse. Not a great deal worse, but somewhat worse, yeah.

Here's the link, in case you want to experience it for yourself.

2011-12-25T00:01:00.000-06:00

Cleaning out the phone

2011-12-24T18:24:00.000-06:00

I thought I'd go ahead and clear out some phone pix that have been building up over the past month or so. Not all of these are work pix, but I'll file it under that category anyway.

This was taken somewhere on the east side on November 16. I don't remember what street I was on.

This one is from Thanksgiving Day, so I must have been at my father-in-law's house. I found it fascinating that Original Peanut Squares contains peanuts.

These two pix were from somewhere in the Great Northwest area of the city--probably in that area where all the streets are named Timber something. I was stunned to see all this red as I was coming up the street and thought a real poinsettia freak must live there. When I got closer I could see that it was all artificial. P.S. You can see the cover of their water meter at the bottom center of the bottom photo. From November 28.

I took this one because, of all the people in my company of employment who should know that new vehicles in Texas don't have to get inspected for TWO years after purchase, it would be the woman who sends out the emails reminding people that they need to get their truck inspected. I had taken this so I could send it in an email back to her to show her that my truck doesn't expire for another year, because I was tired of being bothered by her emails. But then the next day they made paper printout copies of all these emails and handed them to us as if we were all imbeciles who didn't know how to check their emails. I exploded a little bit, because every now and then I can't tolerate being treated like an idiot anymore (also, I had already notified several people both by email and by direct verbal communication about this). So I don't think I'll need this photo anymore.

Now why would I take a photo of part of a gas pump at H.E.B? Take a look at the slightly more close-up bottom photo for a hint.

Hayes Carll - "I'm Grateful for Christmas This Year"

2011-12-24T10:42:00.001-06:00

One of these is not like the others

2011-12-23T19:42:00.003-06:00

One of these just doesn't belong.

Let me put this very bluntly...

2011-12-22T18:00:00.002-06:00

Go to hell, you treasonous bastard. I'm sure Kim is waiting for you there.

And...Two of a Mind at The Forth Checkraise.

Chris Rea - The Road to Hell (1989)

2011-12-21T20:06:00.001-06:00

Well I'm standing by a river
But the water doesn't flow
It boils with every poison you can think of
And I'm underneath the streetlight
But the light of joy I know
Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows
And the perverted fear of violence
Chokes the smile on every face
And common sense is ringing out the bell
This ain't no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is the road to hell

When music is the topic and I mention this album, invariably the person with whom I'm speaking has never heard of it. Never heard of Chris Rea, never heard either of his two radio hits from this album. And it's a real shame.

In 1989 I was listening to Austin's KGSR quite a lot, which is how I heard of this album and these songs. I suppose if I had gone as far as Austin I might have found it in a music store there, but in all of Seguin, San Antonio, New Braunfels and San Marcos, there was nary a copy to be found. Take a look at the top 100 hits of 1989 and what do you see? Crap. Pure, unadulterated crap (except maybe for that one R.E.M. song). Just count how many times you see Milli Vanilli (Milli frikkin' Vanilli) on this list. When it came to music, 1989 was a terrible, terrible year.*

Of course, it hasn't gotten any better. Top pop hits continue to suck, but there's a good reason. It's because even back then, 22 years ago, as Chris Rea tried to tell us, we were already on the road to hell.

Chris Rea plays slide guitar and has a voice full of the warmth and soft roughness of a dirt road in the summertime. Once you hear it, you will not forget it. He's from England, and he wrote one of the best Texas songs I've ever heard.

But no radio station in S.A. ever played it, so if you lived here back then, I'm sure you never heard it. Unless you tweaked your antenna until you could pick up KGSR like I did.

He had two hits from this album, like I said. The first was called "The Road to Hell." The full version of "The Road to Hell" is 9+ minutes long, but it's divided into parts 1 & 2 on the album. Here's the full version to which someone has created their own video. "Part 2" begins at the 4:54 mark.

There was also a radio single version that's a little less than 7 minutes long, and which was used for the official video.

"Texas," the other radio release, also had a video. Here it is. However, the sound quality isn't all that great--there's some background hum. I think someone probably taped this from a TV show with a stereo VCR and oldfangled patch cables back in 1989. A better sound quality version with someone's personal slideshow follows.

Chris Rea began recording in 1978. He's made 23 studio albums--the most recent of which was released this past September--11 compilations, 1 live album, 1 soundtrack and has had 72 hit singles. And no one around here has ever heard of him. The road to hell, indeed.

This is one of my favorite albums. That's about all I have to say about it.

*As I've said before: The 1980s--the decade when all the music sucked.

Submitted for your entertainment

2011-12-20T18:12:00.001-06:00

Tastefully Offensive, which I discovered recently and has made me laugh a few times. It's where I found this:

This had me laughing for a long time yesterday. Must be the psychopathic streak in me.

My new favorite Christmas song

2011-12-19T17:23:00.003-06:00

From THE Joe Cartoon.

Must be new to the show

2011-12-18T21:03:00.001-06:00

Anyone who has watched Bleach for any amount of time will know the answer to this one.

P.S. The correct answer to this questions is: whatareyoukidding?

The customer is always stupid

2011-12-16T19:25:00.000-06:00

I was in a neighborhood off Woodlake Parkway today and, just to be clear, it rained quite a lot yesterday. I got to one point where there was a big puddle in the street, and some guy standing in his yard looking fierce with his arms crossed. He approached me and demanded:

"Who do I call about this?" And his arm swept sideways to indicate the street.

"You mean the water?" I asked.

"Yes!"

...(pause)..."It's rain water."

[Honestly, I know sometimes my answers sound dumb, but it's only because I'm so often stunned by preposterous questions. What I really meant by that was, "gravity dictates that water in the atmosphere is drawn to the earth; gravity further dictates that water on the earth is drawn to the lowest available elevation--once there, when it can't get any lower, it pools."]

"I know it's rain water, but it's just standing there!"

"I don't know," I said. "Public Works, I guess." And I went on my way.

I can just imagine the laughter at the City of S.A. when he calls them up and demands they rebuild an entire street just so water won't puddle in front of his house.

I don't call this a pet peeve

2011-12-15T21:25:00.000-06:00

Because that makes it sound like something I would enjoy being annoyed by. I don't enjoy being annoyed by anything, and in fact this is one that always makes me want to slap someone really hard, preferably while wearing a chainmail glove.

From The Telegraph:

An avalanche of more than 100 apples rained down over a main road in Keresley, Coventry on Monday night.

The street was left littered with apples after they pelted car windscreens and bonnets just after rush-hour.

The bizarre downpour may have been caused by a current of air that lifted the fruit from a garden or orchard, releasing it over the junction of Keresley Road and Kelmscote Road.

[...]

Jim Dale, senior meteorologist, from British Weather Services, said: "The weather we have at the moment is very volatile and we probably have more to come.

"Essentially these events are caused when a vortex of air, kind of like a mini tornado, lifts things off the ground rising up into the atmosphere until the air around it causes them to fall to earth again.

Items falling inexplicably from the sky is my favorite strange phenomena. Every time--every time--it happens, the first excuse the "experts" come up with is a "vortex" or "mini tornado" or some such thing.

And yet it was only apples. No leaves, no twigs, no other items that could just as easily have been swept up along with the apples. Only apples.

Every time I've seen a report of, let's say, falling frogs, it's only frogs. The excuse is that they were swept up out of their element by atmospheric phenomena, and yet it isn't a rain of frogs and the water they were living in along with a bunch of small fish and other debris. It's only frogs.

I'm not saying it isn't because of some unknown atmospheric phenomena. It's just that the intentional blindness of these people to the lameness of their own excuses always stuns me.

Enterprise sounds

2011-12-15T21:05:00.001-06:00

First read the comic so you know what sound I'm talking about.

Then download the sound here.

Vintage gun ad: Santa with a Stevens (1903)

2011-12-15T14:36:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Brer via email.

Treasure found on Wake Island

2011-12-13T19:16:00.002-06:00

12/5/2011 - WAKE ISLAND AIRFIELD, Alaska -- In a tale straight from an adventure book, personnel stationed at Wake Island Airfield in the mid-Pacific recently stumbled upon a vinyl record collection with an estimated value between $90,000 and $250,000.

The 611th Air Support Group's Detachment 1 is now making a comprehensive effort to preserve the nearly 9,000 vintage vinyl records and ship them to their rightful owner, the American Forces Radio and Television Network in Alexandria, Va., according to Master Sgt. Jean-Guy Fleury, infrastructure superintendent, who took over the project from the former Detachment 1 commander, Maj. Aaron Wilt.

No digging was required to access this treasure, as the records were cataloged and neatly organized on shelves in a small room on the second floor of the Wake Island Airfield base operations building. The door was conspicuously stenciled with the name of the radio station, KEAD, and a restricted area warning, which kept most people out.

"That's a locked room normally, but people in my department have known the records were there for years," said Colin Bradley, communications superintendent with Chugach Federal Solutions, Inc. CFSI is the contractor that currently manages operations on Wake Island with the oversight of Air Force quality assurance personnel.

"Because of the completeness of the collection, I assumed it was quite valuable. I have not run across a collection that well preserved or that intact in my career. It's a little time capsule," he said.

The collection includes a variety of vinyl albums and records specially made for military audiences and distributed monthly by the American Forces Radio and Television Network, as well as some commercially available records.

"In 1942, the American Forces Radio Service was started to get American music out to the troops overseas," said Larry Sichter, American Forces Network Broadcast Center Affiliate Relations Division chief. "Some of the radio productions were original, like GI Jill and Command Performance, and have significant value."

link

Very interesting. Read the whole thing.

I'll never have to buy another pair of blue jeans again

2011-12-13T18:42:00.000-06:00

I just want to say thank you to all the S.A. rate payers for supplying me with enough blue jeans to last me the rest of my life.

I have five pair that I wear on a regular weekly rotation, so they're faded, slightly torn, etc. One more pair that I wear rarely, only when I work a Saturday. A few more that I keep aside for "special" occasions when I want to wear nice, new-looking jeans, and 10 pair in the closet that I've never touched. I get measured for another 5 pair this week.

In the 4+ years I've worked there, I've worn out about 10 pair. Some of them were old jeans from before I started this job.

I thought I had kept the dog attack jeans from my previous job, just to show people what they looked like after a German Shepherd had mangled them, but I must have thrown those away. Or maybe my wife did. She might have gotten tired of seeing a pair of ripped up jeans with my blood stains still on them carefully folded and put up on the closet shelf.

They planned on buying one of those "goats in trees" calendars, probably

2011-12-11T20:57:00.001-06:00

I'm number 1!

GunXSword opening theme

2011-12-11T17:11:00.001-06:00

GunXSword, or perhaps more conventionally for English, Gun/Sword, is a mecha anime that is similar to Trigun in that it mixes science fiction elements with a setting resembling the American Old West. It's the story of a man named Van who is wandering the world on a quest of vengeance, looking for the man who killed his wife. His primary companion is a young girl named Wendy who is searching for her long-lost brother. I usually tend to avoid the mecha genre, but so far I've seen the first 17 episodes and the giant robot fights have been held to a fair minimum and I've been enjoying it.

This is another anime in which a powerful hero (or anti-hero) character is accompanied by a much younger and relatively powerless companion. This is a theme which is used fairly often, in my experience, for example it is also used in Claymore and Samurai Champloo.

Another similarity this show has with Trigun is that the opening theme is not an abbreviated version of a previously existing song. This opening theme was composed specifically for GunXSword and is simply titled "GunXSword." The graphics on this version are not great, but it's the only one I could find that wasn't just a slide show collection set to the theme music. Keeping in my that this story is western-themed, I think you should easily be able to hear where some of the inspiration for it came from. The composer is Kōtarō Nakagawa, who has created music for numerous anime and video games.

Funny 502 error

2011-12-09T14:50:00.001-06:00

Claymore opening theme: Raison d'ê·tre by Nightmare

2011-12-08T21:46:00.001-06:00

Claymore is an anime series about incredibly hot woman/monster hybrids who go around killing human-eating monsters with very large swords. It's is particularly about a single woman/monster hybrid named Clare who's on a quest for vengeance against an especially powerful monster that killed a friend of hers. That's all you really need to know about it. Sure, there are many more details to fill out the story, but that should be enough to get you interested. If not, then fine. The opening theme is another hard guitar-driven piece by the band Nightmare. Here's a "clean" opening (all credits removed). Note: I can't get this video to finish on my computer, it stops just before the end. I had to download it to be able to view the whole thing, but you should still get the idea.

I believe this falls into the "seinen" category of anime, that is, oriented more toward adults and older adolescents, without the comical facial expressions often used in shonen anime such as Bleach and Trigun.

The full version has an intriguing video. An English translation follows (found here).

Ahh traversing over many nights
Frozen dreams and fading tears
Warm me, warm me, wrap me

Once, I had forgotten everything, however
I hate this body that cannot love anymore

No matter how far I walk, I cannot see the end
Dragging along memories of the past
I wonder what color this body will be tainted by
I search for that answer

I can no longer return to those days free of bloodshed
These deep scars rooted within me will not disappear
Hide it, hide it, hide me

With these marred hands extended towards a discarded star
Alone, once again alone, I must return it to the sky

Even though I'm weak and miserable, I'm alone, just like that time
I am unable to signal here with my short breath
That's why I will always see a dream of tomorrow
While counting my caged fingers

It's alright to stay the same, without knowing the meaning of living
One day, I will do what I can to obtain those days of laughter

On that day, your words alone
Made my decision to become stronger
"No matter how much you change, you're fine the way you are now"

Now, because you're here, my heart has returned
I leave to walk ahead, only to be lost
Even though I cannot see the end, I think it's alright
I will leave on a journey at range, it's alright if I don't know the answer

More anime notes

2011-12-03T17:33:00.001-06:00

There's a new Fullmetal Alchemist movie: The Sacred Star of Milos. Trailer:

Since the story was pretty much finished--thoroughly and completely finished--unless they jump forward several years and make a new story about Ed's & Al's kids, I don't know where in the timeline this could possibly take place. But what the hey.

Also I read that there may be a Bleach live-action movie in the works, but it doesn't really excite me. They couldn't possibly do justice to that series in a two-hour movie. There's just too much "filler" (digression, arguments, flashbacks, counter-arguments, two-episode-long "life flashing before his eyes" death scenes, whatever). And they'll never find people who look just like the anime characters. I'd just be thinking "who are these imposters?" the whole time.

Had mandatory overtime today. Got rained on quite a bit, which always puts me in a bad mood.

Another great article about introverts

2011-12-02T19:52:00.001-06:00

Great article here: 10 Myths About Introverts. #4 is especially one of the truest truths I've ever seen. Next time someone asks me why I hate people, I'm going to say, "I don't. I'm just over-sensitive to dopamine. So **** off."

A few anime notes

2011-12-02T19:07:00.001-06:00

Several months ago, Netflix lost streaming rights to a bunch of anime shows that were all distributed by a certain American distributor. There were only two affected shows that I had in my queue, and I had never watched one of them, but the other was a favorite of mine and I noticed when it suddenly disappeared--we had just watched the first episode so my son could see it because I knew he'd like it.

Apparently the streaming rights have been reestablished because when I got home today, the shows were back in my queue. So...Netflix now has Trigun again.

In other anime news, I read that someone is making a live-action Akira. I got into the anime thing late, so I've never seen Akira. For such a legendary movie, it sure is hard to find.

I've caught up on Bleach lately, watching the subtitled versions on Crunchyroll. Finished up on episode #349 (which is about 100 episodes in the future of what they're currently airing on Adult Swim) and now I'll just wait a couple of months until they add more episodes.

I kind of wish Netflix would have Tokko on their streaming service. I'd like to see the versions that were not butchered for broadcast on Sci-Fi. They do have it on DVD. I might get the discs sometime when I don't have anything else I'd rather see.

Other than Bleach, I've lately been watching Claymore and GunXSword, both via Netflix. Claymore is a sort of human/monster hybrids going around killing demonic monsters with swords story (as is, by the way, Tokko). GunXSword is, I guess, technically mecha (hardy har har--technically mecha? get it?) which usually doesn't interest me, but in this one the human stories take greater precedence over the giant robot fights, so it's worth it.

Here's Bleach opening #15, which is the opening for the current series I've been watching. Sounds like a cool song, but unfortunately I haven't been able to find a full version of it yet. For some reason, every video of this one on YouTube is reversed. This opening shows all of Ichigo's family (his father and his two sisters--their mother died about 10 years before the series begins) followed by his high school friends, then follows that with a new group of humans-with-special-powers who he encounters. The song is by Scandal, a Japanese all-woman band.

I did just notice that one of Ichigo's friends--Sado (Chad)--is conspicuously absent from his other friends. However, he does appear briefly later on.

A couple of haunting tales

2011-12-01T20:02:00.000-06:00

In audiobook form. First, Snow, Glass, Apples is a twisted take on the Snow White story by Neil Gaiman. If the voice of the narrator sounds familiar, it's because it's Bebe Neuwirth, who most people are probably familiar with as Lilith from Cheers. Told from the point of view of the (allegedly) evil stepmother.

Next is "Murder Mysteries," also by Gaiman (part 1 and part 2). This tale-within-a-tale is especially engrossing and leaves the reader (listener) with a sensation of haunting disturbance.

Both of these audio versions were from Seeing Ear Theatre, a project of the Sci-Fi channel to produce SF audiobooks. This project has since folded (probably about the time they started showing frikkin' wrestling on "Syfy"*) but of course all the files are still floating around the internet in various places.

It goes in quotes on this blog, and I will use it only derogatorily until they change their name to something that doesn't look like urban slang for venereal disease.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Zoidberg R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

2011-12-01T19:52:00.001-06:00

link

Weird search hit

2011-11-29T21:04:00.001-06:00

I know why this string could result in my Briar Files blog turning up, so that's not the strange part. I just wonder what in the heck they were looking for.

No Bankai!

2011-11-28T19:46:00.001-06:00

This cracks me up. If you watch the original Bleach episodes on DVD or streaming--that is, not the version that has been shortened a little for American television, they have these short, 30-second pieces tacked onto the end that are not considered canonical and are there only for humorous purposes. The phrase "Shinigami zukan!" at the beginning is translated in the English dub as "Illustrated Guide to Soul Reapers."* The old man in this one is Head Captain Yamamoto, the leader and most powerful of all the Soul Reapers.

So I realize if you're not a Bleach watcher it probably won't be very funny. The "bankai" is what a more powerful Soul Reaper can do to release his zanpakuto to its final, most powerful form. They do it only when the S is really hitting the F.

There is actually quite a lot of humor in Bleach, but you have to pay attention. Most of it is character-based, so it only works once you know the characters.

*The world "shinigami" is the same word that's translated in Death Note to "death god," but in Bleach it's translated as "soul reaper."

P.S. I think Yamamoto would make an awesome action figure. And the variations! There would be "Old Man Yammie" before he lost his left arm, after he lost is left arm, and with his zanpakuto disguised as a walking stick or released into its flaming blade form. Nice.

Who did you say?

2011-11-27T20:34:00.001-06:00

Of newts and salamanders

2011-11-27T20:27:00.001-06:00

Glenn B. writes an interesting post about newts and salamanders. His two newts remind me of a Lovecraftian critter which HPL never officially named but which for convenience sake is now referred to as a Deep One.

The Deep One was said to be immortal unless killed, and couldn't even starve to death, merely shrinking smaller and smaller but never dying, and regrowing to normal size when they get to eat again.

Not that that's related to anything except that it's what I was reminded of. Anyway, very interesting post by Glenn B., who shows a photo of his two newts and tells about them. Check it out.

Ah Pook The Destroyer - The Silver Key

2011-11-27T15:59:00.001-06:00

Ah Pook The Destroyer are a duo consisting of Paul Shapera on vocals, keyboards and percussion and Matthew Broyles on vocals, guitar, bass and vocoder. The Silver Key is their musical interpretation of the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same title. From their website:

When people think of H.P.Lovecraft, the first mental impression tends to arise from the dark depths of the Cthulhu mythos. But Lovecraft was also a philosopher, a true iconoclast untempered by the literary zeitgeist of his age. One of the clearest expressions of this aspect is the short story The Silver Key. Ostensibly belonging to his dream-tale canon, upon further examination this is actually in many ways a manifesto, an accounting of one man's attempt to understand the society into which he was born, and the judgment that it is found lacking.

The most interesting aspect of translating this story wasn't the actual storytelling, which was secondary. It was the soundscapes and depths of emotion that different ideas the story presented could lead to musically. This story lends itself particularly well towards being reconceived into music because it is not an event oriented tale. It's a rumination, which suggests music so very well.

As far as musical style, I would say it's safely within the genre of progressive rock. Too many attempts at "Lovecraftian music" fall into styles (death metal, for example) that are not easily accessible to most listener's ears, but this is not one of those. This album is a mixture of spoken narration and sung lyrics.

You can listen to the whole thing by streaming it online. Just go to Ah Pook The Destroyer and follow the links.

Run, Tommy! They're starting their tractors!

2011-11-26T19:30:00.001-06:00

Arnold was my favorite comic back in the 80s. It was probably the most twisted comic strip ever to make it into mainstream newspapers, and I was sad to see it end.

Fortunately, a few precious strips have been preserved for all to see. Here and here.

AIEEE!!!

Causing chaos at Wal-Mart and other things

2011-11-25T20:02:00.001-06:00

Pretty good holiday week here. On Sunday we went to my dad's house for an early Thanksgiving feast, in which there was no turkey but there was (H.E.B. smoked) brisket and spring rolls home-made by my technical step-brother's Filipino wife. I say "technical" because he is my dad's wife's son but we didn't grow up together and I hardly know him.

On the day itself we went to my father-in-law's house and did have turkey as well as ham. Most importantly, to me, were the desserts. I was able to have both key lime pie and lemon meringue pie. After I had let it settle for a while and taken a short walk to burn a little off, I topped it off with some cheesecake. Today I stayed far away from all the retail store mayhem and did nothing.

I have--at long last--finished uploading that whole album of First Quest: The Music to YouTube. So if you remember my old post on that subject and you want to sample some of the sounds, just go to my YouTube channel and they are all there (YouTube links on the sidebar). I've also uploaded a few tracks from another out-of-print album I've mentioned: Medieval Music by The Jaye Consort. I'm looking through my collection now and trying to find something else obscure and out of print to upload.

I did go to Wal-Mart on Wednesday for a few things, and used one of those hand baskets which have that little alert thingy affixed to the bottom of them. When I came out, there was no stack of them by the exit, so I just dropped it and walked through those alarm detector things, and suddenly this doorbell-sounding alarm started going off. Customers began backing up because the greeter couldn't figure out if someone was trying to steal something or what--it wasn't the same kind of alarm that goes off when they forget to demagnetize something. About a half-dozen drones were walking around chaotically because they couldn't figure out what was setting it off until finally someone else walked up and said it was that basket and moved it. Some old guy was standing there surveying the chaos with me and I told him, "Oh, you know what? I put that basket down too close to the exit. It must've been me that set it off." He laughed heartily at that. I thought it was pretty funny, too.

By the left frontal lobe of the Sky Demon!

2011-11-25T19:41:00.001-06:00

If you have a Netflix subscription that includes DVD rental, here's a tip for you. They do have Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet on DVD. This one is from the Tom Baker era, and features a cyborg pirate captain who swears oaths by various body parts of "the Sky Demon," whatever that is.

Most importantly, you should know that this adventure was written by the late, great Douglas Adams. It's quite funny.

Interesting and very cool trail cam photo

2011-11-22T20:23:00.001-06:00

This came to me via F*c*b**k, and I thought it worth passing on here.

This was taken by a trail cam near Jacksonville, Texas. Some of the comments seemed strange, to me, as if people were shocked to see such a thing. Jacksonville is over in eastern Texas, quite far from here, but as I may have told some of you before, cougars used to live around here, too. Some old-timer coyote hunters told me tales of their hounds trailing a "lion," as they called them, and I saw one myself in broad daylight when I was six years old. Scared the cr*p out of me, too.

Back then the school bus didn't go down our road, and we lived about two miles from the highway. So every day the bus would drop me off and I'd walk the two miles home. At that time, there were no other families with school-age kids living back there, and my sister was still only two years old, so I walked it alone every day. My grandmother lived with us then to baby-sit my sister, and she didn't drive so she didn't have a car. I had gone about a mile down the road, well out of sight of the highway, when I just happened to look behind me and saw one saunter across the road about 50 yards away. I knew what it was, since I'd seen pictures of them in books and movies, and like I said, I was a scared little six-year-old kid. I knew there was an elevated deer blind near the road not much farther along, and I considered maybe climbing into it and trying to hide until I heard a car coming, because I knew my dad would be coming home from work within an hour or so. I kept watching carefully for any signs of its approach, staying in the middle of the road where I'd have plenty of open space around me. By the time I got to the deer blind, I hadn't seen it again and I knew an old retired couple lived a little farther down the road, so I kept going until I got to their house. I knocked on their door and told them what I'd seen and that I was afraid to walk all the way home, and the old gentlemen gave me a ride the rest of the way.

That night, I told my dad what I'd seen. He asked me to describe it, and then he said, "Well, I've heard them screaming at night sometimes, but I didn't ever tell you because I didn't want to scare you."

That was the only time I ever saw one.

But it really happened

2011-11-22T20:08:00.001-06:00

Today I called a co-worker on the Nextel and told him, "I almost stumbled over a homeless guy crashed in the alley. He was lying on his sleeping bag reading a Stephen King book."

He answered, "That sounds like the beginning of a story."

It's not a chpcbr

2011-11-19T20:38:00.001-06:00

But it sure looks weird.

Via Weird Sh*t Blog, who also makes a ch-word joke.

15 of the world's weirdest museums

2011-11-17T15:14:00.001-06:00

According to CNN.

50 Words for Snow pre-listen

2011-11-16T14:42:00.001-06:00

Although it won't be released until November 21, you can listen to the entirety of Kate Bush's new album 50 Words for Snow at NPR. Just click.

NOTE: The popular adage that Eskimos have "50 words for snow" is a myth. They really have only one, and roughly translated into English it means "not this damn stuff again."

FOLLOW-UP: Disappointing and boring. It sounds like she's just noodling around on the piano and melodically muttering to herself for 65 minutes. Worst Kate Bush album ever.

CD on the way out?

2011-11-15T19:17:00.001-06:00

Interesting article at Daily Finance. Major music labels are unofficially saying the CD will be phased out in only a year? Seems too fast, to me. If so, I hope they begin packaging "digital booklets" with their downloads. I'd rather have a paper booklet, but a digital one will be better than nothing. I also hope more major digital retailers begin offering FLAC as a file format option.

I'm not snobby enough to have anything against the mp3, but when I buy a download album and then discover it's in only 256 kpbs, it kinda pisses me off.

I mean, I re-encode high bitrate mp3s that I plan on putting on my phone/mp3 player to a lower bitrate just so I can cram more on there, but the audio produced by these gadgets isn't good enough to bother with high bit rates anyway. But I still want the original high bit rate files for my home system, and if I pay full album price, I think it's not unreasonable to expect at least 320 kbps.

I think the answer is obvious

2011-11-14T19:37:00.001-06:00

But what if my favorite map projection is a great circle map with me in the center?

Documentaries

2011-11-12T18:49:00.001-06:00

First, I should say that I watched the entirety of Wyrd Sisters and enjoyed it very much. The three witches are some of my favorite Discworld characters, especially the interactions of Granny Weatherwax and Magrat. I had said before that the only actor I recognized was Christopher Lee, who played Death. However, I then also noticed Annette Crosbie, who I know best as Margret Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave, who performed the voice of Granny Weatherwax. A pleasant diversion, if you ever get a chance to watch it.

On the subject of documentaries, I watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait. It was made in 1988, so it's already somewhat old, and it consists entirely of interviews with the people who played the Chainsaw family, but not with any of the actors who played the victims. It was still interesting, as they gave many details regarding the making of the movie, and I think the most interesting (and entertaining) interviewee was Edwin Neal, who played "the hitchhiker." Also tacked onto the end was some very brief commentary by Forry (as in Forrest J.) Ackerman, who had something to do with it. He wrote the original screenplay? Anyway he's not officially credited on the movie itself, as far as I can tell. Filming the movie was a very grueling experience, and some of them didn't finish it without injuries. Neal was in two scenes which I thought should have been included but which were cut from the movie and which they showed brief clips of. One funny thing I learned was that Tobe Hooper was trying to film it so that it would also look good on television, and Neal laughed about this because he knew it could never be shown on TV. So if you're interested at all in this seminal horror flick, it should be interesting to you. It runs 64 minutes.

The second documentary I watched was H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer, from 2004. I thought it was odd that I had never heard of him because of the books I've read on serial killers in general, but there you go. Holmes' real name was Herman Mudgett, and his story is amazing, because of what he got away with. He was an actual physician who started out just being one of the world's best ever con men. He built a "castle" in Chicago near the site of the 1893 World's Fair, and would offer lodging in his "castle" to tourists who were in town to attend the fair. Since he focused so heavily on tourists, no one even knew they had gone missing. He had numerous secret rooms and passages in his "castle," which was a combination of his own home, some offices and some alleged "hotel rooms" available for rent. He built a secret system of gas pipes which he could control from his master room to asphyxiate people who rented rooms from him. In the basement he had a veritable torture chamber. He was able to afford building this huge place mostly by defrauding his contractors and suppliers, and rarely paid anyone for anything--and somehow got away with it. And for a real kicker: after he killed someone he would clean and mount the skeleton and sell it to medical schools and hospitals. No one knows how many people he killed because of his method of choosing mostly tourists, but he was eventually caught and hanged. Watch the show if you want to find out how, because I shouldn't give away everything. It's a fascinating story of someone who was operating during the same time frame as Jack the Ripper, killed many times more people than the Ripper did, but today is almost unknown. This one also runs 64 minutes.

Oh, and I almost forgot. I also watched Dracula: The Vampire and the Voivode. From 2008, running time 84 minutes. It starts out with a biography of Bram Stoker, then has a lot of information about Vlad Tepes, then spends a lot of time showing how Tepes was not the inspiration for Stoker's Dracula except for the name. It also tells about the discrepancies between Stoker's Dracula and the real Transylvania and finishes up with the modern day legacy of Dracula. I already knew most of this stuff, but one thing that I was amused to learn was the Dracula was banned as "decadent Western literature" in communist Romania but was one of the first western books published after the death of Ceaușescu. These days, modern Romania makes big tourist bucks because of that book. Not a bad documentary, but it would probably be more interesting to someone who hadn't already spent a lot of time reading about this stuff.

This & that

2011-11-10T21:55:00.001-06:00

I have a holiday tomorrow. I mention this only because it's the first time in my working life that I've ever had a holiday on Veteran's Day. I didn't even know about it until this past Monday, and in fact there were still a few people in my department who didn't find out about it until just this morning. I lost the list of our scheduled holidays for this year, but I already have next year's and it isn't on the list for next year. So I don't know what's going on. Maybe they decided to add it at the last minute? I don't know.

I got in a fresh pound of Bayou Night today, which as I have mentioned is my favorite pipe tobacco. My substitute that was made simply by mixing up some Virginia and Perique was okay, but I had gone overboard with the Perique and was running out, so the last batch I mixed didn't have much in it. Straight bulk Virginia is kind of bland and sweet. Better than nothing (better than straight burley, for example [in my opinion]), but pretty boring.

I discovered on Netflix yesterday that there are two animated series made from Discworld books: Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music. Made in the U.K. The first is made up of six 24-minute episodes, the second is seven 24-minute episodes. I've read Wyrd Sisters so I decided to watch it first. So far I've watched only the first episode--tried to watch episode 2 today but I was feeling quite drained and fell asleep. Of course they aren't as good as the books, because Pratchett is so good at describing things, and his method doesn't translate well to the screen. Still, I enjoyed that one episode that I did watch and am looking forward to seeing the rest. Christopher Lee does the voice of Death, although his voice is electronically altered--deepened and echoed. I don't recognize any of the other voice actors. The animation is a little odd, especially in the way the characters' faces look--there seems to be a preponderance of reddened noses. By the way, the TV versions of The Colour of Magic and Hogfather are also available for streaming on Netflix--two 2-hour episodes each.

I found a site called 19 Nocturne Boulevard that does "radio" dramas. Today I listened to part 1 of their version of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" and I liked it. It isn't just a straight reading of the story, but has been adapted to sound like a real radio drama, although made for downloading rather than broadcasting. You can find it here. It's in four episodes of about 33 minutes each. They don't focus exclusively on Lovecraft, but on horror tales in general.

The cooler weather has made working much easier and nicer. I got rained on a little Tuesday when that norther blew through, but not much. The funny thing about Tuesday was, I went from using the air conditioner in my company truck to using the heater and then back to the a/c again before the day was over.

We are in the middle of a project of changing out old meters with new ones, so if you have a meter that's more than 15 years old there's a good chance it will be swapped with a new one before we're done. I did my cycle 11 route yesterday--that's the one that's all alleys at Rittiman & Harry Wurzbach. It's the worst foot route I've ever done and mentioning it can make meter readers wince if they've ever done it before. My previous best time on it was 3 1/2 hours, and that was in the summer of 2009 when it didn't rain at all for a long time and nothing was growing in the alleys all summer long. This time, because of all the new meters that had been installed, I did it in my fastest ever time of 3 1/4 hours. Previously this year it was taking me 4 hours or longer. That was the route where I attempted the video the other day. By the way, a meter is supposed to be swapped out with a new one when it reaches 15 years or 1200 units (1200 centicubic feet). There were quite a lot of 30-year-old (and some older) meters out there before this project started.

And if you live around here I'm sure you've already heard that the other w4t3r company has been dissolved and will be taken over by my company of employment. I don't know anything about that and if I did I wouldn't be allowed to talk about it, so don't bother asking.

Work video

2011-11-09T14:54:00.001-06:00

Well, that didn't come out too well. I tried taking a video of some dogs today with my non-smart phone just to see if it would work, but the sun glare was so bad I couldn't see what was on the screen. Decent audio, though.

rklyeh

2011-11-08T18:36:00.002-06:00

BobG mentioned this in a comment to the previous post, but I thought it was worth its own post.

Amusing. However, I don't agree with this pronunciation of R'lyeh. It's much too elegant, simple and human-sounding. I think the apostrophe should be used as a sort of glottal stop or perhaps a fricative, and the whole word should sound like you're trying to gag up something distasteful.

Voting for the greatest evil

2011-11-07T19:43:00.001-06:00

Of course, that depends on your definition of "evil." Anyway, here's a collection of past & present Cthulhu/Lovecraft election posters at The Lovecraftsman.

Ia R'lyeh Sigmund ftaghn

2011-11-05T19:13:00.001-05:00

Via Tentaclii.

Covers #1: Seven Bridges Road

2011-11-04T20:59:00.000-05:00

Click to read and hear more about this song.

So there you have the earliest version of "Seven Bridges Road." It was written by Steve Young, and recorded by him for the first time for his 1969 album Rock Salt and Nails. As far as I know, Steve Young hasn't had any major hits of his own performance, but he has written some famous songs--other than this one. For example, "Montgomery in the Rain," which was recorded by Hank Williams Jr., and "Lonesome Orn'ry and Mean," recorded by Waylon Jennings.

Some technical stuff about Seven Bridges Road. This original version is in the key of B major. It's in 3/4, or at least some kind of triple time. The tempo is about 87 bpm, and it runs about 3 minutes and 40 seconds. The key the song is pitched in isn't really that important, though, because the artist usually pitches a song to his or her vocal range. So what I mean is, the key isn't usually a part of that artist's interpretation, it's more a matter of practicality. But as we get on down the road we'll find one artist that made a major change to this song and turned it into what we usually hear today if we're listening to classic rock radio. But we'll get to that later.

"Seven Bridges Road" was released three more times during the following four years. In 1970 it was released by the Manfred Mann of folk music, the woman who can't stand to let a good song go unruined, that's right, ladies and gentlemen: Joan Baez. From her 1970 album One Day at a Time.

For the most part, the lyrics of these various versions weren't changed in any significant way, except for this one. So, whereas Steve Young says, "There are stars in the southern sky, southward as you go. There is moonlight and moss in the trees down the seven bridges road," Baez says, "There are stars in the southern sky, if southward as you go. There is moonlight and moss in the trees. On the seven bridges road I go."

This is nit-picking, I guess, but since it's my blog I get to nit-pick. Baez' version loses some strength and coherence. Her first statement makes sense, but then she says, "There is moonlight and moss in the trees. Period. On the seven bridges road I go." Okay, Joan? Where are we now? Is the moonlight and moss here? Or is it on the seven bridges road? Do we follow you on the seven bridges road to get away from the moonlight and moss? What's going on here? Anyway, she ends every one of these stanzas with "On the seven bridges road I GO" which just annoys me. Another small change she made was to the verse, "like some lonesome child." Ms. Baez sings it, "like a motherless child," which I suppose resonated more with her folk audience who were already familiar with the song "Motherless Child," famously performed by Richie Havens at Woodstock.

The male accompaniment vocals are by Jeffrey Shurtleff, who performed with her often back then (also taking the stage with her at Woodstock). He recorded a few albums of his own but never got really famous, and at present doesn't even merit a page at Wikipedia.

Technical stuff: key of A, 3/4 time, temp about 99 bpm, a little faster than Steve Young's original. "Countrified" by adding a steel guitar, most prominent there at the beginning and again at the end, which I must admit I kind of like.

So for a little more technical stuff before we go on to the next recording. You may have heard the old saying "three chords and an old guitar." Well, this song is written in only three chords, although they aren't the same three the old saying refers to. The basic chord progression is from a I chord to a flat major VII chord, to a IV chord, and back to I (which gives the whole song a kind of "falling" or at least "going down the stairs" feeling--a mood of sweet resignation). So in the original Young version, it starts in D major, then C major, then G major, then back to D. Unlike many old country and folk songs, there is no V chord anywhere to be found in this song. The middle bridge ("Sometimes there's a part of me") part simply goes back and forth between D and G (that is, I and IV), if my ears don't fail me. But, the different artists didn't always do it exactly the same.It got a little more interesting in 1971.

That's Rita Coolidge from her 1971 debut album Rita Coolidge. She slows it down even slower than the original at about 77 bpm, but still keeps it in 3/4 time. Her version is the longest I know of: a combination of the slower tempo, the orchestral instrumental breaks, and a long fade out during which she repeats the title line several times, finally finishing up with a tenor sax solo on the fade-out, which I also like. I think this version moved the song more out of the country/folk category and toward more of a pop sound.

Steve Young re-released the song in an almost identical version to the original in 1972 on his album Seven Bridges Road. Same key, same tempo, same time. The biggest difference I can hear is that the string accompaniment was lowered an octave and is a little more prominent throughout the song than on the original.

That probably sounds more familiar to most folks. That's from the 1973 album Valley Hi by Ian Matthews. Here we have the pattern that most of us are familiar with: an a capella beginning and, perhaps more significantly, the time has been changed to 4/4. Matthews sings it in the key of D with a zippier tempo of about 97 bpm. This is my own personal favorite version. I like the atmospheric spaciness of the guitar (played by Michael Nesmith, by the way) and the way Matthews' voice often "falls off" at the end of a phrase.

And then no one recorded this song for a while...

Until the Eagles performed it live and recorded the performance for their 1980 album, Eagles Live. Although in their introduction to the song they claimed to have learned it from Steve Young, their rendition is a near carbon-copy of Ian Matthews' version. Same key of D, same time of 4/4 (like Matthews and unlike Young). The a capella parts at the beginning an end are close to Matthews' tempo of 97 bpm (Eagles tempos of about 94 and 96 respectively), but with a slightly faster internal section of around 115 bpm, perhaps more fitting for their rock-oriented audience.

Several others have performed it since then. I don't know if any of them have actually committed their performance to a recorded album and I mostly don't care to find out. You can look them up on YouTube. Alan Jackson, Keith Urban with Sugarland, Keith Urban with Lady Antebellum, Keith Urban with Julio Iglesias,* G-d knows who else. All of them who I've heard are essentially just copies of the Eagles version, which itself is a copy of the Matthews version.

There's only one more version that I know was recorded and released as part of an album, and here it is.

From Dolly Parton's 2001 bluegrass album Little Sparrow. Pitched in A♭ for Dolly's vocal range, once again in 4/4 time. A quite slow tempo of 87 or so bpm for the beginning--reflecting Steve Young's original--which rockets up to a flying 150 bpm for the rest of the song. Anyone who reads this blog much already knows of my penchant for bluegrass and I have nothing to complain about regarding this version of the song.

So...that's what I've learned about this song because a long time ago I heard Ian Matthews' version on the radio and liked it more than the Eagles version, and went hunting for information about who sang it and what they did.

*For the humor-impaired (and I know you're out there): that was a joke.

Charlie Brown and Schroeder

2011-11-03T20:05:00.002-05:00

How did Schroeder begin playing the piano anyway? And how young was he at the time? He was introduced to it by Charlie Brown, of course, before he even learned to talk.

And how began his obsession with Beethoven? Charlie Brown, again.

And who gave him his first bust of Beethoven? Who do you think?

Charlie Brown and Schroeder. They go way back.

Now it all makes sense

2011-11-02T15:37:00.002-05:00

I finally understand the relationship between C3PO and Darth Vader.

Thanks to Regrettable Music.

Spite candy never tastes very good

2011-11-01T20:52:00.001-05:00

I've just discovered what appears to be the full run of Peanuts at GoComics.com. I'm going to busy for a while.

A very eldritch Great Pumpkin

2011-11-01T13:41:00.002-05:00

By M.S. Corley.

'Tis the season for pagan folk metal

2011-10-31T13:14:00.000-05:00

Work pix from Friday

2011-10-30T18:06:00.002-05:00

These are from my regular cycle 4, which I did Friday, and which centers on the area of Cincinnati and Zarzamora. I've always thought a sign advertising colon therapy with an "info tube" was funny.

And from the other side of the same route, someone has just discovered Gloria ~~Gainer~~ Gaynor.

Some fantastic Deep One art

2011-10-29T22:09:00.001-05:00

By Bryan Wynia. A very high level of realism in these, in my opinion.

Tonight

2011-10-29T21:56:00.000-05:00

We had our Halloween festival at church tonight, and they put on a pretty good spook house. I went through it with my daughter because they wouldn't let kids go through it unaccompanied. But as I told her, they don't scare me or even spook me. They just irritate me because I don't like loud noises and the strobe lights make me feel sick.

A 20-something girl behind us freaked out and went back about 1/3 through. My son (who is 10) went through with another adult and said it was scary. My daughter (who is 12) said it wasn't scary. She laughed most of the time, which is what I was doing. After we came out, I heard her tell a friend of hers: "I don't scream. I either laugh or stab."* G-d I feel sorry for any future boyfriend(s) of hers.

I still think they need something at least a little Lovecraftian in it. Maybe next year I'll see if I can come up with a Cthulhu mask. I think it would work okay for "the thing that crawls out of the well."

*Can I get that on a t-shirt?

In R'lyeh...

2011-10-29T21:43:00.004-05:00

Squishables squish you.

Via The Texian Partisan via email.

Insert evil laughter here

2011-10-28T20:55:00.000-05:00

Click to enlarge. Well, I was one of the drones who filled out this survey, and believe me, I was not instrumental in having your w4t3r company selected as a top place to work. I didn't say anything really bad about it, but I didn't say anything very good, either.

Anyhow, I already had my two original floating holidays scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, so I just scheduled the new one for Wednesday. So I have a long 5-day weekend coming up, followed by a super-short 2-day work week.

And even though I've been telling them for months that they need to let me train more people on certain cycle 5 & 6 routes, they haven't. Which means when that 6 comes up next week, it's going to be a major clusterf*** because guess who's the only person there who knows the route.

I was snickering sardonically about it all day today.

James Branch Cabell could tell you

2011-10-28T20:42:00.002-05:00

I don't know if this is now considered obsolete usage, or if it's just one of those things where so many people kept getting it wrong that everyone now thinks it's right. I hear this usage on the radio often and it always bugs me.

"He strolled down the street in a leisurely manner."

"He strolled down the street leisurely."

The first is correct. The second is not. It should be, "He strolled down the street leisurelily." Whenever I hear someone speak this way, it makes me wince as if I'd heard a flat note in a song.

If anyone wants to correct me on this, you better be a super hard-core English nerd with some serious academic credentials if you expect to change my mind.

And two months later, he was gone

2011-10-28T20:15:00.001-05:00

Via San Antonio Remembers:

1913
Ambrose Bierce, American author, is visiting San Antonio before starting a trip through Mexico. Bierce said he may make the Mexico tour by horseback.

Somebody find out where he stayed. He's sure to be haunting it.

Popcorn!

2011-10-26T15:05:00.001-05:00

My son is a Webelos and it's popcorn season. I just want to give my legions of readers the opportunity to help support his scouting activities. He's just a little short of his $600 goal and our local area has been pretty much exhausted as far as sales possibilites.

Even if you don't want any popcorn, you can also use this to support our military. Just click on the "military donation" button and your donation will be used to send popcorn to our troops.

Thanks!

Click here

I know true horror when I see it

2011-10-25T15:48:00.003-05:00

And here it is.

Graphical adaptation of "Cool Air"

2011-10-24T19:54:00.003-05:00

Originally published in Eerie magazine in 1975, created by Berni Wrightson. H.P. Lovecraft's "Cool Air."

link

Of interest to Ghost in the Shell fans

2011-10-24T19:32:00.003-05:00

NSFW. No actual nekkididity, but still I'm sure it's NSFW.

link

Murder ballads

2011-10-24T16:16:00.003-05:00

Farce the Music has posted another collection of parody album covers, one of which is something I have actually thought about.

Although I don't think Alfred E. Neumann could really handle it, the one about "Murder Ballads of the Appalachians" is something that someone should really do.

I have specifically wondered how hard it would be to research, track down and create my own collection of folk, bluegrass and old-time country songs about murder. There seems especially to be a recurring theme of the singer having killed a woman (usually his girlfriend), for example "Knoxville Girl."* Unfortunately that's the only one I can think of right now off the top of my head, but I know there are others. There's even a Wikipedia entry on it.

*Read those lyrics and then feel free to think: WTF?

I didn't make this one

2011-10-24T15:48:00.003-05:00

see more Very Demotivational

But I really like it so I'm going to post it.

Another stolen metal item: the manhole cover

2011-10-23T19:46:00.000-05:00

In my nightmares, and possibly in some future story, this is where vampires hide out during the day when they get caught too far from shelter.

This is an open storm drain--because someone stole the manhole cover. I saw two of these in one day last week. You can expect to see this more and more in the coming years because the more easily stolen meter box lids won't be around to steal anymore.

The most popular chord progression in pop music

2011-10-22T20:59:00.001-05:00

I was already conscious of this. You might want to not watch this video if you choose to remain a more passive music listener, because after this you'll probably at least smirk quietly in recognition any time you hear a song like this.

The chord progression in question is I-V-vi-IV, that is, Do-Mi-So to So-Ti-Re to La-Do-Mi to Fa-La-Do and back again. The upper case Roman numerals indicate a major chord, the lower case a minor chord.

I've had a sort of sub-genre of songs like this in my head for a long time. Yes, sometimes I'm listening to a song and I think, "Oh, this is one of those one-five-six-four songs." Almost as popular is a very similar progression, I-vi-IV-V.

Anyway, this video is a great demonstration of what seems to be an extremely popular, if not the most popular chord progression in pop music.

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