Great Show...

Gary and I had the pleasure of seeing Camper Van Beethoven last week, and opening up for them was The Hackensaw Boys - a really fantastic group of guys from Virginia playing old-timey music very, very well with a fierce, uplifting, and innebriated spirit. All IN all, it was a great time. And of course, Camper Van was fantastic. It is now my policy to see David Lowery at any opportunity I get.

The "Music" page has some good samples. Check these fellers out:
The Hackensaw Boys Band -- Roots Based Americana Music Direct from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia ::

Theo Jansen is Evolving a New Line of Animals...

Or so he would have us believe. What I do see here, are stunning and beautiful works of creativity. His masterful creatures are masterworks of kinetic sculpture. Here's a Wired article:
Wired News: Wild Things Are on the Beach

And his website itself:
www.strandbeest.com

And the page for his Animaris Rhinoceros Transport, complete with video.

Apparently Xenophobia is a Family Value

Does it mean that I'm dumb if this stuff never ceases to suprise me? I'd like to think that i'm just overestimating people.

James Dobson, the founder of the social conservative organization Focus on the Family has taken aim at SpongeBob's creators, claiming that he has been enlisted in a "pro-homosexual" video. As is usually the case when people "out" a cartoon figure, there appears to be little substance -- as if it would really matter if SpongeBob was gay.

The video is said by it's creators to celebrate the general notion of "tolerance" and features a wide variety of characters (including Barney, Jimmy Neutron, more) -- and it also makes no reference to "sexual preference" in any fashion. But Dobson and company are really, really upset about this message of tolerance.

On Wednesday... Paul Batura, assistant to Mr. Dobson at Focus on the Family, said the group stood by its accusation.

"We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids," he said. "It is a classic bait and switch."

Yeah. Because it would be really bad if kids were brainwashed into thinking that people who are different from them might be O.K.

I can't find a link to the clip anywhere online. Post it in a comment if you can find it. I'd love to see this dangerous message.
The New York Times > Washington > Conservatives Pick Soft Target: A Cartoon Sponge

Just a footnote, here: Let me point out, that sponges are asexual. I don't want to be the one to mention this to Bob himself, but I'm not sure that SpongeBob could be gay, even if he... er... it wanted to. It's an equipment issue.

All-Mom Bands Rock the House and Cradle

Lost of good things in the news today -- either that, or I'm really, really bored. But I think this is cool on any day -- everyone should be in a band. Especially mommies:
All-Mom Bands Rock the House and Cradle

I especially like the re-written version of "we got the beat" (since The Go Go's are a big deal with the toddler set in our house lately) entitled "We're Really Beat".

Weird Tide

California has to do everything different. They can't just have red tide like everyone else. It has to be Giant Squid.
Yahoo! News - Jumbo Squid Wash Onto California Beaches

Pictures from Titan: Cassini-Huygens

Humankind, if it's still credited with accomplishing things, has done something really, really fanstastic: we landed a robot on one of Saturn's moons, and it's taking pictures for us.

The more I think about it, the cooler, and the crazier it seems. The images are neat, and it's wonderful that we're getting a very close look at one of the most interesting locations in the Solar System.

Link: ESA - Cassini-Huygens Website

Villains! Reprobates! Faithless Scoundrels! Bastardos!

Wonderful. Yesterday, some criminal masterminds broke into several cars in the work parking lot, and one of them was our new minivan. They took nothing, because there was nothing of value (other than our irreplaceable DVD of The Back of Beyond: The Story of the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad, which would have been a tragic loss) but smashed the window and tore up the window run channel getting into the van. I'm annoyed, because even with insurance it's expensive, and doubly annoyed at their moronic plan. What sort of criminal geniuses break into a minivan and a bunch of old cars in a video-monitored parking lot of a large company in broad daylight? I guess we'll see if they get away with it. But I'd think with criminal intent and a large dose of hubris, they could have found a much easier and more lucrative target. Points off for style, boys.

Yahoo! News - Judge Rejects School Board Evolution Stand

What's most gratifying about this is that it's filed in with the Reuter's "Oddly Enough" weird news feed. Because, yes, it's bizarre that it happened in the first place.
Yahoo! News - Judge Rejects School Board Evolution Stand

Happy Birthday, Ana Tobin!

On this, the occasion of Ana Tobin's 2nd Birthday, we wish her all the best. This is what I got this morning when I said "SMILE!"



Mommy gave her a candle to blow out in her French toast...



And Edison wished her happy birthday, too:

Science as a verb

I just finished Jeff Klinkenberg's Seasons of Real Florida and I enjoyed it tremendously. I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in old-style Florida, and the glimpses of it that can be caught between Target and the gas station.

In this essay, he's hanging out with Jim Loyd, an animal behaviorist known as "Firefly Doc" who studies fireflies as a professor at the University of Florida. There are many great moments, but I loved this quote about science:

"Science is not voodoo," he told me. "Amateurs should be able to do it. But a lot of students today think science requires lots of expensive technology and a laboratory." The accessibility of science was his favorite theme. He once wrote an essay about the subject, inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England transcendentalist who encouraged naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau:

"Foregoing generations of students beheld nature face to face; ours, through their eyes, poorly," Doc wrote, capturing the flavor of Emerson's nineteenth-century prose. "Why should not our students also enjoy an original relation with their universe? Why should not our learners have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a science by revelation to them, and not merely through the history of others? Surrounded in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through them, and will invite them by the invigoration they supply to actions that reach to achieve new heights of insight, why should our students grope among the dry bones of the past, or the molecules or electrons of some wanting future, and live themselves as role-playing facades they know from TV?"

"The sun shines today too. There are things to be explored and found again, fresh."

Fireflies, of course.

Right on. This part serves nicely to shore up Klinkenberg's argument in the book that those who don't see the seasons in Florida need to connect with the part of it that isn't climate-controlled and interior-designed. To me it's more than that, though - science and philosophy and poetry aren't just subjects to be studied, they're disciplines to be practiced. They're not nouns, they're verbs.

Y'all ought to read the book. Thanks to mom for loaning it to me!

Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle

Picked this up from William Gibson's blog -- this is the title of a series of government ads in North Korea exhorting gentlemen to keep their hair cropped short. It sounds like a great album title for the next Spiritualized album.

Quoth the BBC:

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy

One of my favorite parts of their campaign, this one from one of the North Korean newspapers:

"No matter how good the clothes, if one does not wear tidy shoes, one's personality will be downgraded."

There's actually something that Kim Jong Il and I can agree on.

LINK: BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | N Korea wages war on long hair

Coining a new phrase: ex podex

Once every few hundred years, someone stumbles across a stunning innovation that profoundly impacts the entire course of human history. But that has nothing to do with this:

Yesterday I was looking for a nice way to politely point out that someone was... (ahem) speaking beyond the boundaries of their knowldege and expertise... which is to say, I had to admit that I was talking out of my ass about something. But nobody wants to admit that, and it doesn't sound pretty, so nobody really wants to hear that either.

So I figured, there can't be a better way to remain pretentious while obfuscating my admission than to use Latin! I thought of the phrase "ex cathedra" [full definition] whose literal translation means "from the chair", but the current meaning is "With the authority derived from one's office or position". I needed the opposite of that... so with a quick trip to a Latin dictionary and the replacement of a basic noun, "ex cathedra" became ex podex - literally, "from the anus". The fact that underneath that glossy Latin exterior it's actually kind of gross only adds to the inherent appeal of the words. That, and it's fun to say.


Usage:

"Chadwick's advice on flanged hooberdoozits is completely ex podex. He has no ideas what he's talking about."

"At the risk of speaking ex podex, I'll give you my poorly informed opinion on the matter..."

Such as it is, this is my gift to the world. I am recruiting you to pass it on.

Use the expression freely, and think of me when you do. As if you wouldn't anyway.

KENNY MUHAMMAD AND THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

Killer Beatboxing with the New York Philharmonic. YEAH, boyee.
(Thanks to Gabe W. for sending this one on)

KENNY MUHAMMAD AND THE NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC

"Buffyisms" make an appearance in a PBS Documentary about the English language

The website for a PBS documentary about the rapid changes in American English entitled "do you speak American?" features a section on the impact of the language use in Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the American slang:

Do You Speak American -- Buffy & Co. Changed How Teens Talk. A Lot.

Apparently it's an excerpt from a book by Michael Adams entitled
Slayer Slang: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon

Super cool.

UPDATE: (1/7/5) The show, though good, was not as interesting as the articles on the website, IMHO.

Saved by Old Wisdom

I'm always interested in the function of folklore - and this time, it saved an entire village of "Sea Gypsies" from the Tsunami in Thailand. Sometimes it's better to save the questioning-the-conventional-wisdom for later.

"The elders told us that if the water recedes fast it will come back fast and will reappear in the same quantity in which it disappeared," says the 65-year-old sea gypsy.

Link to story in The Nation: Bangkok's Independent Newspaper :
SAVED BY OLD WISDOM: Gypsies know their sea

Snappy New Year

In the true spirit of Surrealism, I didn't realize that I had Surrealist predictions for the new year, until I wrote them in an email this morning. In case they come true, I'll post them here:

- A new virus will be unleashed that makes people grow Portuguese-speaking fish heads over their entire body

- Eight-legged snakes will take the place of the traders on the floor of the NYSE for one day

- The date of Tristan Tsara’s birthday celebration will be determined by cutting out numbers from the newspaper, mixing them up in a paper bag, and selecting 3 numbers at random

- President Bush will give a press conference wearing the head from a chicken suit, and the body of a gorilla suit. He will speak for 5 minutes, in a conversational tone, without using any consonants.

- After the instantaneous evaporation of Kathleen McGinty, the Creature from the Black Lagoon (a native Floridian, mind you) is named the Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection

- Two Words: Carbon Tree Fickle Note Frog Tasting

Cool Toys - The Rasterbator

The Rasterbator is a really, really cool toy - it will create a PDF of a half-tone printable poster of whatever image you feed into it, across the number of pages you specify. If you want a really cool, monochrome dot-poster of any photo you've got, use this really nifty tool. Free, of course.