Tarja Turunen

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

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

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...

"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

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

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

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

Weekend update

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

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.

Cleaning out the phone

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"

One of these is not like the others

One of these just doesn't belong.

Let me put this very bluntly...

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)

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.

Submitted for your entertainment

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

From THE Joe Cartoon.

Must be new to the show

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

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

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

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)

Thanks to Brer via email.

Treasure found on Wake Island

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

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

I'm number 1!

GunXSword opening theme

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

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

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.

More anime notes

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

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

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

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

link

Weird search hit

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!

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?

Of newts and salamanders

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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 ch*p*c*br*

But it sure looks weird.

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

15 of the world's weirdest museums

According to CNN.

50 Words for Snow pre-listen

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?

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

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

Documentaries

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

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

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

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

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

Via Tentaclii.

Charlie Brown and Schroeder

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

I finally understand the relationship between C3PO and Darth Vader.



Thanks to Regrettable Music.

Spite candy never tastes very good

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

By M.S. Corley.

'Tis the season for pagan folk metal

Work pix from Friday

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

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

Tonight

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...

Squishables squish you.

Via The Texian Partisan via email.

Insert evil laughter here

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

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

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!

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

And here it is.

Graphical adaptation of "Cool Air"

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

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

link

Murder ballads

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

see more Very Demotivational

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

Another stolen metal item: the manhole cover

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

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.

Forgot one

To this I would add:  people who hold up the line for 10 minutes trying to decide which lottery tickets to waste their money on when all I want to do is buy a frikkin' Mr. Pibb.

Whatever "this" is

I had mandatory OT today due to the periodic double-billing cycle, and found this sign near the corner of Lubbock and S. Flores.  I have no idea to what they are referring.

You can thank me later

History of the typewriter recited by Michael Winslow from SansGil—Gil Cocker on Vimeo.

Background info here.

Okay then

And no digging for fish bait, either.

The plumber knows

Peanut butter

At Sunset Station.  Don't ask me to explain.  I only record and report.

I am a quiet person

And as such, I would very much like it if everyone else would read this: 6 Misleading Assumptions You Make About Quiet People.

One common definition of the introvert/extrovert divide is that extroverts gain energy from being around people, whereas introverts spend energy when hanging around people. So parties make introverts tired, even if they like everyone there and are having a good time.

I cannot overemphasize how true this statement is.

Most of you who read this blog have never met me in person.  Those of you who have know that once I become familiar with you and find we have common interests, I can be quite talkative.  But I can handle other people only in small doses; being in a group with many people is very wearying for me.  I think it's because I want to see and hear so much that I become tired through excessive perceiving.

So if you ever see me sitting quietly, watching and listening to everything that is going on around me but saying nothing, I just want you to know it doesn't mean I hate you.  It doesn't mean I'm socially crippled and want desperately to join in.

It only means I am measuring up your weaknesses. Heh.  Just kidding.

Another 'nomicon'

I don't think I have yet mentioned another interesting site I subscribed to recently:  Propnomicon.  And with a name like that, how could I not subscribe to it?  A blog about incredibly cool things to want.  For example, this reproduction of a G'harne star-stone.

Funny and true

The Circle of Loathe at Dork Tower.  We're only three steps away from hippies again, no matter how you look at it.

Did not get selected for jury duty

I was so far down the queue that they never even got to me. I just sat there all day until they told me to go home.

Hornady ZMAX ammo

Hornady® Zombie Max ammunition make DEAD PERMANENT!
Disclaimer: Hornady® Zombie Max ammunition is NOT a toy (IT IS LIVE AMMUNITION), but is intended only to be used on ZOMBIES, also known as the living dead, undead, etc. No human being, plant, animal, vegetable or mineral should ever be shot with Hornady® Zombie Max ammunition. Again, we repeat, Hornady® Zombie Max ammunition is for use on ZOMBIES ONLY, and that’s not a nickname, phrase or cute way of referring to anybody, place or thing. When we say Zombies, we mean ZOMBIES!

At Midsouth Shooters. Video ad at the link.

Weekend update

This past Thursday, at my place of employment, everyone there had to gather in the conference room to watch an instructional video on harassment of various kinds. Before the video ran, the boss told us that a lot of it was going to seem funny, but it was really serious.

Apparently the desk drone who picked out this video had no sense of humor, and when they began showing it to the employees and everyone started laughing, they realized they had picked the wrong video. But by then they had already bought the rights to show it, and it was too late. Or something.

It was funny enough to be on a comedy skit show, if there were any comedy skit shows left that were still funny. My personal favorite part was when some white guy started ragging on an Arabic-looking guy for liking camel racing over baseball. Now I'm going to be asking everyone if they've seen any good camel races lately.

After it was over and we were standing in line waiting for our assignments, I told some of my co-workers, "I guess I shouldn't tell the joke about the Jew, the Mexican and the Iraqi who took a dumb blonde to a gay bar."

Netflix finally got--a couple of weeks ago--ST:DS9 available for streaming, and I have been watching and enjoying it. I didn't follow it well when it was on, only starting to watch it toward the end, so there are a lot of shows I have never seen before. In my opinion, this is the best of all the latter-day ST iterations. The characters are much more multi-faceted and internally conflicted, and there is a lot of humor in it, especially between Quark and Odo. I also like how it shows that a lot of peoples outside of the beloved Federation don't have a very high opinion of the Federation and sometimes even have outright contempt and/or hostility toward it--often somewhat justified.

I received a notice from my internet service this past week that all customers are being bumped one tier up in their service level, although the monthly fee will remain the same. To me, this means that my speed has doubled, and I actually noticed it before I received the official notice. I haven't had any problems streaming videos for a couple of weeks now. I don't know why they did this.

I have been considering trying an audio blog (I don't want to go so far as to call it a podcast). To my knowledge, Blogger doesn't allow any audio uploads. However, Tumblr does, and I created an account over there to play around with some time ago, just to see how it works. I'm still working out technical details on actually creating an audio blog. So far it looks like editing one will take a lot of time, and that's after actually recording it. Or I might just create an audio-only "video" to upload to my YouTube channel. We'll see.

Heino!

Chances are, if you seen many lists of odd album covers, you've seen this one. I must say that this cover art has always been strangely compelling--or perhaps compellingly strange--to me. For one thing, I thought the dude was a woman.

Interesting article at Mental Floss about The True Stories Behind 10 Bad Album Covers. Good ol' Heinz Georg Kramm is the last, but certainly not the least, on the list. He's wildly famous and popular with 50 million albums sales to his credit. And he's still performing today.

The funny lumberjack. Or maybe the happy lumberjack. One of those.

What smells like blue?

Saturday my daughter told me something like this: "My stupid science teacher put macaroni and popcorn into the microwave at the same time, and it caught fire. We had to evacuate the building."

I didn't believe her. It sounded too ridiculous.

She just showed me the letter that was sent home with her from school. "Due to an incident involving a microwave on Friday the school was evacuated as a precaution. At no time were any students in actual danger."

So...apparently putting macaroni and popcorn into a microwave at the same time is almost as bad as popping Jiffy Pop in a microwave.

Also, her science teacher apparently can't use a microwave without setting off the fire alarms. Figures.

Rain report

We had right at 2 inches for the whole weekend at my house. Some people I know reported that they'd had around 3.

Stealing metal

Here's an article about some people who stole a 50-foot long steel bridge in Pennsylvania.

Metal thievery has been an increasing problem for a long time now, but it's reaching critical levels, and by that I mean levels at which the municipalities are no longer going to be able to just keep replacing stolen metal items, because they just can't afford it.

If you're ever walking around the city for some reason, look around you at the water meter covers. The vast majority--residential meters--have small metal plates & lids. They stopped buying these a few years ago and started replacing them with plastic lids that aren't worth stealing. But around businesses and wherever irrigation systems are in place, you will see larger meters that use what we call #1 and #2 lids. Both are rectangular; the #1 lids are the smaller of the two.

Your water company has reached a critical point at which it can no longer replace these stolen lids. It's just too expensive, and as soon as one gets replaced, it almost immediately gets stolen. The problem is that there is no plastic lid of a #2 size that can stand up to being driven over, which is often what happens with these meters because they're in driveways, parking lots, streets, etc. So you are going to see more and more sidewalk-sized barricades popping up everywhere--right on top of where someone stole a lid. They're only made from plastic and aren't worth stealing.

There will be no more metal meter lids in S.A. The thieves have literally stolen themselves out of business. If you have a rectangular meter lid on your property, I recommend taking matters into your own hands and welding a chain to one end of it--and welding the other end of the chain to the inside of the box--so it can still be opened but not as easily stolen. Because when it's stolen, it won't be replaced.

Also, no more writing "the" as "teh." It's not funny. It's just stupid.

The 5 Most Overused Jokes on the Internet.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Most of these...uh..."jokes" just make the writer look like an idiot. They ceased to be funny years ago and really you people should just get the **** over it learn to be more original anyway.

More work and stuff

Got drizzled on for a few hours this morning, then the sun came out and it became miserably steamy and humid.

Customer Service Week is over and done with for another year, thank G-d. What a stupid, pointless, insulting waste of time. I did get a free meal out of it, but I had to take it to go, which from what I saw and heard is what everyone did because they worked us so hard no one wanted to stay around and "relax."

I also saw and heard that one of the main organizers was pretty p.o.ed that we didn't all sit down together and have a meal like one big happy family. Apparently she thought we should have all stopped working at noon, come in to eat, then gone back out and finished afterwards. Only a true fat-assed office worker could think like that. So I'm glad she was unhappy. I wish they'd discontinue this b.s. tradition and leave us all the h*** alone.

One of my surprise "treats" was to find they'd snuck a Coke Zero into my truck overnight. A freakin' Coke Zero. WTH? Not only that, but it was only a 7.5 ounce can. A) I don't like Coke. B) I don't like diet drinks. C) 7.5 oz is barely enough for me to even notice I've swallowed something. Also, that stuff doesn't have caffeine, right? Why would I even bother drinking a soft drink with no caffeine in it?

And now I have jury duty coming up. This is the first time I've been summoned in about 20 years. Before that, I received 3 summons' within about 18 months, and one thing or another happened so I didn't get on the jury.

1st time: The guy who was going to trial opted to be tried before the judge only and forego the jury.

2nd time: I was in school and they let me go because of that.

3rd time: I got the summons, then about a week later got a follow-up de-summons, that is, a letter from the judge saying my services were no longer requested. All three of these were during 1990-91, or maybe 91-92, I'm not sure.

Lemons

Amusing but erroneous

The kid is drawing an Elder sign. That's the not the kind of thing he'd do if he were worshiping Cthulhu. So...either this kid has Randolph Carter-level resistance to insanity and is hitting the Big Guy with an eldritch magic sucker punch, or someone goofed when they were making this graphic.