There’s a draft (or three) in here…

Like you, sometimes I find links to sites or have an idea for a blog post that I’ll pop into a draft entry to be finished off later. I usually don’t have more than 1 or 2 sitting out there, though, because I’m generally anal about keeping these things cleaned up.

Well, apparently, I’ve been a little less so this past year, because I took a peek at the outstanding posts and found 13 of the suckers. After deleting the ones that don’t make sense to finish off, here is some of the linky goodness I intended to share with you earlier…

The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated (A Library of Congress Exhibition) – Amazing color photographs of Imperial Russia by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii made between 1907 and 1915.

How to make a Green Lantern ring – “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight! Let those who worship evil’s might, beware my power.. Green Lantern’s light!” (via Brian)

U.S. Intelligence Community – After reading that the National Intelligence Estimate was made by “all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies,” I had to wonder, “16? How many spy groups does a country need? And how do we know there’s only 16? Aren’t some of them like secret and stuff? And is it a gated community? Is there a safehouse owners association?”

Caroline Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama and I Refuse to Buy into the Obama Hype (now a supporter) – A two-fer set of political links, ‘cuz I’m an irrational, moon-eyed Obama nut who doesn’t see past his pearly white teefs, don’tchaknow. Not that I’m bitter about being labeled a delusional, naive, zombie, fanboy or anything… in any case, the only reason I’ll torture my brain with another 6+ months of paying attention to this crap is the fact that it’s the best soap opera on TV (until Heroes comes back). I know who I’m voting for in November, and it sure as hell ain’t McBush.

Finally, here’s a little meme that I’m warping a tiny bit and calling the “3-2-1 Wiki Meme” (mostly because I don’t like the original instructions where you tag others).

This is what you do:

  1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday.
  2. Find 3 events that happened on that day.
  3. Find 2 other people who were born that day.
  4. Find 1 holiday that is celebrated on that day.

Here’s mine:

Three events that happened on this day.
1905 – Albert Einstein publishes the article “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, where he introduces special relativity.
1971 – Ohio ratifies the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, lowering the voting age to 18, thereby putting the amendment into effect.
1997 – First Harry Potter book is published.

Two birthdays.
1891 – Ed “Strangler” Lewis, American professional wrestler (d. 1966)
1934 – Harry Blackstone Jr., American magician (d. 1997)

One holiday.
Independence Day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

(via Kat )

Posted in Wouldya Lookit That! | 2 Comments

Party time! Excellent!

It’s been a while since I did any sort of “bloggy” type thing like link to a passel of other blogs just ‘cuz somebody told me to (not to mention how long it’s been since I used the word “passel”). Yet, here we are. After having had the designation “Excellent” thrust upon us like it’s supposed to be a good thing, I’m stuck with the task of naming 10 co-conspirators in the downfall of humanity. At least there’s cake.

What?? No cake? What kind of meme is this? What a rip off! I think I’ll just track back through all the so-called “excellent” blogs and see where this whole thing started…

A Light in the Dark was tagged by Textual Relations (who is excellent, despite his current habit of referring to himself in the third person)…

…who was tagged by Gullibility…. from Maryannaville… via cotojo… who was nailed by Real World Mom… who was tapped by The Inflatable Soapbox (her hubby)… via, um, Real World Mom… from Melinda Zook… via If Mom Says OK… thru Jogging in Circles… via Classy Chaos… and from there the trail goes cold.

I’m pretty sure that’s not the source of this whole mess, but I’ll blame her anyway.

So, without further ado (‘cuz just how much more ado can you stand?), here are my 10 victims picks:

Blithe
BrianKaneOnline
Busy Mom
***Dave Does the Blog
Flummel, Flummer, Flummo
Friday Fishwrap
good evening
SassyBlonde
Thudfactor
…You Are a Tree

You 10 should now go forth and multiply by each naming 10 of your own. And now my memely duties are done for another year.

Posted in Wouldya Lookit That! | 5 Comments

Revolver! Live!

Somehow down the course of the last 75 years, this tape of Revolver has survived, and somehow it wound up in my inbox via some bloody vikings.

There were actually two sets–one from a wedding reception we did in 1984 and one from when we were just starting out and set up in the living room of way-too-indulgent parents. I’m still working on carving out clips from the earlier one that won’t embarass the hell out of all concerned, but the 1984 set ain’t half bad.

So, here are some home movies of one of the funnest times of my life.

WIPE OUT and UNDER MY THUMB

TWILITE ZONE and WHITE WEDDING

Posted in Revolver Fan Club | 4 Comments

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

If you are not a regular listener of This American Life, you should be. After hearing the March 28 episode entitled The Audacity of Government, I think that the following words need to have the dust blown off them and shared amongst the populace again.

When they were first mentioned in the radio piece, I thought it would be interesting to see how many offenses attributed to the earlier George could be applied to our own King George. Now that I’ve looked, I think I’m a bit scared…

Continue reading

Posted in Rants 'n' Whines | 2 Comments

God, I love RiffTrax

Posted in Strangeness | 1 Comment

Geek Tragedy

Last night we went to see Spamalot. It was our surprise Christmas present for the kids (which really came from out of the blue, as we’re not frequent attendees of touring Broadway shows).

A splendid time was had all-around. We stopped downtown for dinner at a fancy schmancy bistro, and we enjoyed the show immensely. So, just stop reading now if you don’t want to hear any of my whining.

The problems that I had with it were two-fold, and they both stem from exactly the weird place that you think of when you say “Monty Python musical.”

On the one hand, if Monty Python were really doing a musical, I doubt it would have looked much like this one. True, the involvement of Eric Idle lent a smidge of credibility to the proceedings (as did John Cleese as the voice of God). However, a re-hashed version of something they did 30 years ago isn’t exactly what I’d expect (no matter how brilliant the original source material).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I laughed. A lot. But it was mainly at the new stuff. The bits that they played straight from the movie kinda fell flat. And I really, really cringed at their use of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” as a cheer-up song for Arthur. The main impact of that song came from the fact that it’s sung by a chorus of the crucified trying to cheer up Brian the mistaken Messiah in Life of Brian. Here it’s just cheesy and has no irony whatsoever.

So, the first problem I had was a slight disappointment that the show wasn’t exactly up to some mythical Python standard. That was easy to get over, because the show is fast-paced enough to know when to “skip a bit, brother” and get to something new and funny.

The second problem was the audience. Most of them were like Clay Aiken (the newest member of the actual Broadway cast) who “until about three months ago thought Monty Python was a person.” (Of course, this brings me back to point A–is it really a Python work if Clay Aiken feels comfortable in it?)

The rest of the audience were the ones who dragged the others to the show and chattered on incessantly explaining all the bits to their bewildered dates. We had to restrain Pepperkat from turning around and hitting one of them with a full-strength spray of sarcasm. (“You mean this was a movie before it was a play? No wuh-hay!”)

BUT (and it’s a big but) we still had a really, really good time, and I’m seriously thinking of squirreling away some pennies to go to another show. I think I’d like to see Wicked or Avenue Q. Or both!

Posted in Life, the Universe and Everything | 5 Comments

Series 4 is coming!

UPDATE: “Because of the way that the BBC is funded in the UK through the licence fee, we cannot make videos available outside of the UK.”

Grrr. What a load of crap. When will media companies realize that there is no “outside of the UK” anymore and that there’s a difference between protecting intellectual property because it’s valuable and just being stubborn asses?

You can watch the Doctor Who Series 4 trailer at the BBC website. Oy vey.

Posted in Yo! Listen Up! | 5 Comments

Geek Heaven(s)

It’s not enough that I have the Earth, Moon and Mars to explore, now you send me the entire sky! Thanks, Google!

My only problem is that when I search for Vulcan or Tatooine, it doesn’t find any results. I thought these maps were a little more complete than that. At least you’ve got all the fake moon landing sites in the right place. That’s a start.

Digg – Google Sky Released

Posted in Wouldya Lookit That! | 3 Comments

Demented and sad, but social.

Gone but not forgotten, Gary Gygax is given credit for inventing our universe in the New York Times by Adam Rogers in his piece called Geek Love (with chart-y goodness!).

It’s a little bit of a stretch to say that Dungeons and Dragons is at the heart of all things modern culture has wrought, but not really by much when you think about it (says the man who posts under the pseudonym of his favorite D&D character).

About my only real argument with Mr. Rogers is in his example near the end. I mean, “Iron Man” instead of “The Dark Knight”??? The man is clearly desperately poor and/or insane.

[ via Hodg-man ]

Posted in Life, the Universe and Everything | 3 Comments

That nerve-wracking trip to the dentist? Um, not so much.

See, Doctor Pain actually turned out to be Doctor Why-Rip-Out-Teeth-When-They’re-Not-Hurting?

Yes, he’d like me to get a root canal on said tooth (if I have $2,000 to spend), but he’d rather not pull it if it is feeling fine. And if I did decide to come back, then it would be better to gank it out along with 2 other ones all at the same time. (I’ve got a broken wisdom tooth from years back and a baby tooth that never fell out.)

Bottom line: Don’t do anything unless you’re going to go big time.

So, for now, I’ll just start taking advantage of my free twice-a-year cleanings and keep on trucking.

Posted in Life, the Universe and Everything | 2 Comments