Friday, November 30, 2007

Evel Knievel R.I.P.

One of the most roundly entertaining men that ever lived.

The Many Faces of Felix Leiter


the ipod is possibly destroyed for good. I need to think about replacing it with something I don't grow to loathe. Seriously, this is the last time I'm falling for those shenanigans.

Unfortunately, this means for the fifth or sixth time in as many weeks, I've lost a mix I was getting ready to post on here. The sad part is almost all of them were completely different and I don't remember what was on most of them. Hooray. I'm gonna try to send this thing off to that link that was kindly posted here not too long ago and hopefully I can save myself some money.

Anyway, because I've been such a turd, here are the two tracks I was the most excited about posting yesterday:

"The Itch" - Belleruche

This is a trio (guitar, turntables, female singer) from London whose album I was falling in love with before it was ripped from my ipod's cold, dead hands.

"Baby Don't You Know" - Vicki Anderson

Vicki Anderson (a/k/a Myra Barnes, Bobby Byrd's wife) was a backup singer for James Brown that ended up recording response songs for almost all of the Godfather's hits with his band, the JBs. She has a fantastic voice and the band (I'm not certain exactly when, but you can definitely hear Maceo Parker on this). This is about as good as early-mid 70s soul can get.

On a completely unrelated note, a quick word about the cat that lives in the nursery at my work. From what I can tell, nobody knows how old Cowboy is. He sort of stumbled into the garden about 10 years ago, and has had a nasty limp since he got here. He had been living on the properties (which is much more dangerous than it sounds. Coyotes and bobcats are plentiful here, as well as owls) for quite a while, which is downright amazing considering how mobility issues.
They weren't sure what to do with him, so they took him to a vet, who told them that someone had been using the cat as target practicve with a BB gun for a couple of years, and that he had pulled 9 BBs out of him. Since then, he's lived in the nursery as our mascot.
By the time I got here 3 months ago, Cowboy had aged considerable and his limp was a lot more evident. He looks like he's having a seizure when he walks, an ailment that only accupuncture (I know, I know) seems to relieve. He has bladder issues, and is pretty much filthy from the shoulders down. Not many people touch him.
I'm told that at least 3 times in the past 5 years they've made the decision to put him down. and that every time they walk in there the morning of, he's made incredible recovery at the last minute and escaped his fate. They decided that on Tuesday they're going to have to put him down, as it's apparent that he's in a lot of pain.
I really don't like cats. I grew up with dogs and to me they've always been a lot more lovable. But I've got a soft spot for pathetic (especially injured) animals. So I go down there once a day or so to pet him for a couple of minutes and make sure he has food/water, etc... He may or may not be going blind, and he smells like flaming hair that was put out with a wet fart and is one of the saddest looking animals you've ever seen, but he meows a lot and tries to follow me around, so I set next to him and pet him while I catch up with everyone that works down there.
Anyway, it's a bit harder to visit him now, knowing full well that he probably won't be here on wednesday. It's like he's on death row and all his appeals have run out. He's got an execution date and he doesn't even know it. Poor little guy. Everyone is pretty upset about it here, but as I've been saying, considering what we know he's been through, from getting shot at, presumably by his owners, and then fending for himself alone in a very dangerous place, he's had a pretty good life since. He's pet and fed and gets to go out and hunt chipmunks when he's up to it. He's beloved and that's pretty much what all domesticated animals crave, so we should be happy he didn't get eaten by a coyote years ago.

Sorry, that's sort of not useful and rather depressing, but I was just thinking about it and figured I might as well bring it up here since I've been absent all week.

In more depressing news, Youtube is fucking retarded.

Sponsored cop cars?

Chinese horsefighting!

I'll try to find something that's a lot funnier/not soul-crushing a bit later.

Monday, November 26, 2007


BoingBoing just totally convinced me to buy a book. an AWESOME book.

What's your favorite diving helmet? I'm really partial to #10, but I think that might be because it reminds me of those helmets that workers in victorian-era sanitariums used to wear.

Little else going on that I care to talk about. Made reservations to head home for the holiday. I think I might still be grouchy from too much turkey. That and I had a sudden urge last night to re-read Brian Lumley's Necroscope series, despite the considerable trouble I'd encounter tracking them all down on top of the suspicion that I'd probably lose interest about halfway through.



moral of the "story": Save every book you've ever owned.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Tuesday, November 20, 2007


Got to the doctor this morning. She still has no idea what bit me, but surmised that I "must be really allergic to it, whatever it is". Great. So I can "dog" off my list.

Later, as the nurse is giving me my benadryl shot:
Nurse: "You're gonna get it in the butt"
Me: "Yeah, it's pretty much how this week is going"

A few hours later, though, the swelling has gone down, and my back is starting to resemble a humanoid shape again, which is pretty effin' sweet, to be sure. Hopefully by the time I stuff my face I'll be able to sleep again.

I probably won't get the chance to make any sort of salient post between now and Thanksgiving (not that I'm counting this as one. I've been dragging here as of late and I know it), but i wanted to wish everyone a happy one if I don't get the chance to later. If only for a minute, I ask you just to think of a moment of how lucky you truly are. Stop wishing bodily harm on your family long enough to remember why you love them. Stop stuffing your face (this is for me more than anyone else) long enough to appreciate that you are not hungry. Stop downing wine long enough to remember that you have people to enjoy it with. These are the important things, and don't forget to remind you how lucky all of us are to have them. Enough sappy bullshit, I'm gonna duck out of work early and go listen to some Mavis Staples at an embarrassingly loud level, and try not to think about anything at all.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Just skip it. Trust me.

Today at work, I have been battered, exhausted, bruised, stabbed and poisoned.

Well, it's not nearly as dramatic as it sounds, but it should paint a pretty solid picture of exactly how bad today was, which was the capper for an extraordinarily shitty week. My great uncle died. Some bullshit Apple update wiped my ipod after I'd set everything up perfectly and had something like 2.65 GB of new music to listen to. and for once it wasn't even my fault! We found out that a Black Widow lives on our back stoop, where I (used to) sit in the dark every couple of nights to smoke a cigarette. and I woke up this morning looking like a family of scorpions had a street brawl on my back. I have no idea what bit me, I can't even see the bites. But I'm told that if it was the Black widow I'd be hallucinating by now. So I got that going for me.

Is it wrong to try to capture this thing to sell to high schoolers?

also, I'm working on Sunday. This should be great!

A few days ago someone mentioned New Years Eve, and it depressed me to no speakable degree to realize that not only do we not have any plans for NYE, but that there's no chance of us coming up with any between now and then. For my entire life I've had a pretty great fallback plan. One that I used for some 15 years or so. Thinking of it, While I'm not sure I ever had a party, I've hosted probably 20 new years' celebrations. This year I'm going to set our garbage on fire and drink beer until I can sleep through everyone else's fun.

Yeah, so I apologize for the unnecessarily whiny post but I had a spare minute and thought I'd mention that I'm feeling like crap. I'm hoping the worst is past.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007



I've been laughing at this for about ten minutes now.


I have a meeting in ten minutes that I'm dreading and possibly very under prepared for. So I thought I'd put up a link to this post on one of my new favorite blogs (this is still a word I cannot stand, and short of creating my new vernacular for it, I can't think of any way around it. Weblog? That almost seems worse) about girl-friendly tasers. I love that little blowfish guy, and following this link to look closer at it pointed me towards the bondage kewpie doll. There's something to be said here about the fetishization of mainstream sexuality*, but I don't have the time to make it right now because I'm late for the aforementioned meeting. Hopefully I'll get back to it later. Needless to say, I don't think it's a bad thing, but it's certainly going to get a lot weirder.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

GRHAWAARGH


English Russia has one of the most interesting stories I've read in quite some time. Basically, some construction workers in Russia discovered either a new or a previously thought extinct species of fish on a job site. Before smashing it to death with their tools. Check out the link though because the pictures are pretty amazing and you can only wonder how bitey these things might get. Remember that crazy Snakehead fish that everyone freaked out about a few years ago? Imagine if this thing was flapping around our suburbs...

I think I've figured out this Economist thing. I hope so anyway, because I've spend a whole day trying to figure out how and where to host this thing. I'm hoping to find somewhere else, because I don't like megaupload's software and the file is too big to use mediafire or rapidshare. So yeah, suggestions are welcome on that. Anyway, here's the audio podcast for the upcoming week's Economist. Please let me know if that link doesn't work, and I'll work out some sort of resolve. With fire. I usually skip about a quarter of it because, well, money bores me. But it's still an amazing source of information and perspective that I can't recommend highly enough.

I've been reading up on the cryptozoology again, specifically about yeti scalps and the Alma, Russia's counterpart to the Abominable Snowman. Someday, I swear, I will actually try to maintain some knowledge about something that is actually useful. Something that could prevent someone from getting sick or provide a nice little tax break or some damned thing.
But it won't be today. Because I'm currently about to sit down and spend a couple hours reading the compiled oral history of a fictional zombie war.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen returns on Wednesday with The Black Dossier, which I'm all too fucking excited for. Even with the knowledge that I've gleaned from the web, I still have no idea what sort of story it will tell and I can't wait to put my life on hold while I read through it.

off to read. enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Friday, November 09, 2007

Christopher Lee: Greatest IMDB trivia page of all time?

other great ones: Paul Newman, Yul Brynner, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Eli Wallach, Burt Lancaster, Jimmy Cagney, Peter Lorre, and of course, Vincent Price

of course, there's interesting pages for some of today's actors, but I always find these infinitely more entertaining. You really don't want to know how much time I spend over there...

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Worthless Post #311

my god it's been a pretty crazy week. and now, with some sort of walrus flu going around my workplace, I'm just trying to hold things down and take 5000 mg of vitamin C a day. I'll let you know how that works out. My wife is camped out across the street from death, so I don't have much hope.
I was reading some Doug Coupland earlier and it got me thinking how much of his earlier works convey a lot of the same anxieties, fears, joys, and general tones that I (and much of my generation, I would suspect) have felt at various stages in my life. Lately, not so much, but one of his most dominant themes, namely that our brains get filled with mush and leftover cereal ads and higher math and old Seinfeld episodes or whatever and after awhile we fail to capture new emotions or register new memories. That our brains get clogged up like an old hard drive and we're screwed with it.
I really do not want that to happen to me. Last night as I was doing laundry it occurred to me that I'm old enough to be casually drinking a beer in a laundromat as I fold laundry without anyone calling the cops. I'm pretty happy with that, and it's certainly a new feeling.

There's a Worthington, PA? huh...

Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani. Are you fucking kidding me? I don't know what the hell is going on here, but there's no way any good can come of it. Giuliani!

Japanese whiskey commercials are GREAT (via BoingBoing)

oh, and I'm gonna start putting that thing up here. I'm not sure when I'll get it, hopefully tonight, but expect it sometime this weekend.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007


I know I haven't updated this in awhile, and I wanted to actually wanted to talk about the presidential debates last week and a slew of other stupid things I noticed online. But My mother and grandmother have been out here and between them and work I'm pretty much a wreck. Tonight I decompress, tomorrow it's laundry, and then I might actually start finishing up this mix. Anyway in the meantime go here and get yourself a shitload of James Brown. Because seriously, you can never have too much.

Question: if I posted the weekly economist podcast here would anyone want it?