Month: June 2007

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Home Base Music

Dispatches from the Bizarro World

Jan recently got a call from the hospital to let us know that our evening childbirth classes, which were were signed up to take through July, have been cancelled due to lack of interest. Did people suddenly bring the baby-makin’ to a halt? Can I help? You know where to find me if you need me to repopulate the species in my own image. Seriously, I’m having a hard time buying that – lack of interest!? On the flipside of that, we were directed toward internet videos to replace the classes. This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite off-topic threads at Digital Press, the two best posts of which were as follows:

  1. anyone know a website that explains how to wield a katana? videos/pics whatever, like a Katana Wielding for Dummies type thing.

    thanks..

  2. I like your traditional ideals, learning the subtle beauty of the weapon the same way the samurai masters did a thousand years ago… through pictures… on the internet.

That thread sprang to mind immediately. I know humans have been pumping out babies since day one, without classes, but it’d be nice to have. Until then, I’ll just have to learn myself… through pictures… on the internet. (But when I’m not doing that, my offer of help still stands. Trust me, extinction’s uglier than I am. 😆 )

The summer of swimming continues, and I’ll admit that it’s probably slowing down my work on the baby room. But I’d forgotten how good it feels to just float around (and how much better it feels to put in some actual laps). When you’ve got skin problems like mine, there’s nothing like just being in water up to your ears for a couple of hours. On so many levels, it feels so much better.

Also, last but not least, I just gave Frost*’s cover of ELO’s “Here Is The News” a listen or three, and I’ve officially declared it brilliant. This is how you cover ELO – maintain the strengths of the original, and feel free to rock it the heck out where appropriate.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Funny Stuff Television & Movies

Little Green Man vs. the Man in Black

I don’t get into dream analysis too much, but this one’s funny. I had an utterly bizarre dream last night in which I was with a band that happened to be playing on an overpass to a reasonably large crowd below. Why there was no traffic trying to get across the overpass (or plowing through the reasonably large crowd below), I will never know. When I say I was with the band, I don’t mean I was playing in it – I was just…there. For some reason I was invited to step up to the microphone and sing one little verse of something, and for whatever reason made sense within the internal logic of this strange dream, I chose to sing like Johnny Cash (not something I can do on command, by the way), and sang something like “And now I’m standing on this bridge with some little guy named Earl.” That was my whole contribution to this shindig of the subconscious, from what I can tell. I actually woke up laughing, because even asleep, I thought it was funny as hell. What any of it means on some deeper level, I do not know and cannot even begin to speculate.

This week’s big project is to get the furniture that used to comprise my bedroom out of the baby room – cedar chest, bookshelf, and lots of boxes. To my amazement, my wife has given the thumbs up for me to move the chest into the game room, put a seat cushion on top of it, and wrap 0ne of my Pac-Man bedsheets around it to completely cover it and protect the wood from being damaged. And it’ll be guest perfect seating for playing games or what have you, facing the TV or facing the Avid. There’ll be a bookcase swap with the one that’s been right outside the bathroom since we moved into the house; the smaller one that’s been there for three years will go into the game room. And then the work can begin on painting the baby room, pulling up the carpet and putting some flooring down; originally the plan was to do this throughout the house, but at this rate I’ll be surprised if that gets any further than the baby room, the little hallway-ette outside the baby room/game room area, and at most the living room. We’re just running out of time and out of money.

Little plastic Time LordWith this past weekend’s episode of Doctor Who having shown us real live Time Lords (in a flashback), decked out in old-school, Tom-Baker-era Time Lord robes and headgear, I’m itching to get back to an idea that I’ve had since last year, which is basically to assemble the equivalent of these “catch-up specials” shown for Lost, Stargate or Galactica that lay out The Mythology So Far. Except that this would have to be structured a bit differently, since you’re dealing not with a couple of seasons, not with 10 seasons, but with a grand total of about 30 years of story (with the new series liberally grabbing storylines from the vaults of Virgin Publishing, Big Finish and whatnot, I’m not sure it even pays to try to include anything but the TV series there). Clips galore and music stretching from Tristram Cary to Murray Gold, all in brief segments outlining the history of such concepts as the TARDIS, the Time Lords, the Doctor’s refugee status, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Master, regeneration, UNIT, companions, and so forth, letting the clips speak for themselves and not leaning on a narrator to tell the story, just tying it all together.

And what would I do with this monster? I have no idea. Put it on the site? Maybe, but I might hear the BBC calling “Exterminate!” if I did that. Put it on YouTube? I’d rather not if I could help it, as I’m just not that crazy about YouTube, and we’re talking about something that would more or less be designed to be as long as an episode of the current series (~42 minutes). Try to see if Sci-Fi or BBC America or the BBC itself would want this as a video for their site(s)? Hey, that might not be a bad idea – and then they could do the heavy lifting on clearances for clips, music rights, and so on. (Ha! Good luck!) Why spend the time on it? Why, just to see if I can pull it off, and to keep myself in practice too. Why not? And maybe, just maybe, I might just convince my wife at some vague unspecified future juncture that it’s worth it to watch the original series. But the Time Lords’ appearance, in their vintage ’60s and ’70s duds, convinced me that this is something that can be done, and it can all be tied together. By some little guy named Earl.… Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Critters Gaming Music

Chillin’ like Obi

Here’s Oberon, chillin’ in my wife’s portable cooler bag:
CHILL, MAN 😆

So apparently the results of yesterday’s listening were as followed: almost no movement at all for the whole Carl Stalling Looney Toons music CD, but switch over to the Moody Blues, and the little guy started kicking. A lot. Whether this means “more cartoon music” or “more Moody Blues” or “make with the Katamari music”, there’s no telling.

In other news, I’m trying to round up a raiding party of folks from the Digital Press and Retroputing forums to storm the castl…erm, I mean, visit 1984 Arcade in Springfield, MO, on July 11th or 12th. (Leaning toward the 11th for a variety of reasons.) I’ve been wanting to go there since last year, but Rob’s recent visit has me positively salivating to go there now. In a way, this is going to be my “last fling” before I have to start preparing for baby on an almost full time basis. And if the kiddo likes these old games as much as I do, I’ll bet there’s another visit to 1984 down the road.

I wonder if they have a TV ad? 😉 … Read more

Categories
...And Little E Makes 3 Music

Evan’s wittle wistening womb

We decided to start giving little E a bit of listening time while he’s still swimmin’ around without a care in the world. This is what we’ve started him off with today:

  1. Days Of Future Passed – Moody Blues
  2. Eldorado – ELO
  3. True Colours – Split Enz
  4. The Carl Stalling Project Volume 1: Music From Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936-1958
  5. Katamari Fortissimo Damacy
  6. Reckless Nights & Turkish Twilights – Raymond Scott

Hey, he’s gonna be hanging out with the old man listening to this stuff all the time anyway. Might as well get a little bit of pre-programming done. (How his mother feels about listening to this stuff – and keep in mind, my wife (A) is under the impression that I don’t listen to anything that isn’t either instrumental or somehow related to the Beatles, and (B) doesn’t like most of my listening choices anyway – I’ll find out some unspecified future date. Probably quite loudly, I suspect.)

My criteria for this first round was: happy, bouncy stuff with some rhythm. Sure, rapidly changing rhythm, in the case of Stalling, but stuff with a clear rhythm. I’ve got all three volumes of Raymond Scott’s Soothing Sounds For Baby (yes, the ones packaged like a 1950s Gerber ad in a CD case with the subtitle “Your Infant’s Friend In Sound”), but those’ll drive mama crazy faster than the whole Katamari CD.

It’s probably safe to expect a seismic shift in what kind of music gets reviewed in the music section here late this year. 😆 We’ll see how long it takes Evan to figure out that the Enz’s “Nobody Takes Me Seriously” is his daddy’s theme song.

If you’ll excuse me now, I’m gonna go swim around without a care in the world.… Read more

Categories
Funny Stuff

CNN: mostly trusted name near news

STS-117I really worry about the standards of journalism sometimes. As more and more people are going to the web for news, I’d think it falls upon the shoulders of full-time, nothing-but-news web sites to ensure that their writing is of a slightly higher standard than a high schooler’s latest “texting” spree. But…I guess I’m alone there. From CNN.com today, in their article about the shuttle landing in California:

Lands in California means it will cost $1.7 million and take up to 10 days to get it home to Florida aboard a jumbo jet.

Y’know, I’m fully aware that I’ve written some almost completely incoherent stuff from time to time – most of which I’ve tried to go back and fix later – but then, this isn’t a full-time serious news site with people who are paid to know how to write, and other people who are paid to proofread the stuff delivered by the people who know how to write. (Allegedly.) (Come to think of it, I’ll bet there’s a whole extra raft of people there who are paid to know when to drop the word “allegedly” into their stories…)

Makes no sense means it’s increasingly hard to take “professional news organizations” seriously. Disappoints me! 😆… Read more

Categories
Critters

Dustin Hoffman in convenient cat form

My wife gets up at something like 4:30ish in the morning to get ready for work. All I can say to anyone who gets up at such an ungodly hour is “uh…more power to you?” But this also means that the kitty kids get up and make their first appearance at about the same time, so after spending all night sleeping on my back, Othello has someone to play with.

Tuesdays are my wife’s day off, so she likes to sleep in. Can’t say I blame her one bit. This morning at about 5:45, though, something furry started persistently hitting my face. A black cat paw. Pat pat pat pat pat. Pat pat pat pat pat. I know what it was. Othello had plenty of food and water. What he was missing was his daily morning kitty playtime. There was a slightly unnerving “Wapner’s on at five”-ishness to this behavior. Ah well, Rain Cat turns 13 years old in about a month, so I suppose he’s entitled to a little bit of eccentricity.… Read more

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Spamatozoa

Doesn’t that mean he was laying down!?

Best Nigerian scam e-mail I’ve seen in months. 😆

My name is Cox Peter Jnr, a resident of London and an attorney to Late Mr. Nelson Lawrence, he was a prone oil dealer in Saudi Arabia, he died in Taiwan hospital along side with his two kids by a car crash. He left behind legacies and estates since 2002, which lead me to contact you today for a help of signing Form “M” of the security company beholding the sum of $60.2MUSD. According to records only his relatives can make a withdrawal of the fund from my late client’s account in the security bank in London.

Thanks for the laughs, “Cox Peter Jnr”. I’ll give you a “help” of something all right. 😛… Read more

Categories
Cooking With Code ToyBox

Bust open that blister bubble

(Wow, that sounds nasty, now that I look at it. I mean the blister bubbles that seal action figures to their cards. Ick. What were you thinking!?)

Work on the WordPress conversion of the site’s Toybox section is finally complete, and it’s ready for your browsing pleasure. That’s the third major section of the site this year to be completely converted into its new database format this year, which certainly makes me happy. Consider this my Father’s Day present to all the dads and dads-to-be out there around my age who grew up with this stuff. You might also notice the “random fictional toy store photo of the moment” – which I discussed taking something like a year ago. Yeesh. That didn’t take much time, did it? 😆 All of the video segments from the old Toybox section have made the transition, and, of course, the beautiful thing about WP is that I’ve already got new stuff written and photographed that’ll post itself at the appointed hour, right on cue, between now and the end of the year. I can also safely predict that last year’s Christmas tree went over so well that it’ll be back this year…with a lot more toys under it. (And perhaps a more attractive star for the top of the tree…)

Enjoy the new section. And hey, let’s be careful out there.… Read more