A glimpse: the bookshelves

The whole shelving unit
Moving downstairs, we have the bookshelves. These are Metro shelves that we bought when we first moved into our first house - speaking of first houses, big congrats to my neighbor at school who just bought his first house - and needed somewhere to put all our books and cd's and television and kitchen implements. We've now got a dozen of the units (from more generic manufacturers than Metro) in our shed, our garage, our laundry room, and the downstairs family room. They're awesome, utilitarian shelves, but I'm starting to think that I'm at a point in life where I want some shelves that are more stylish, more solid, more wooden than these.

But that's for another day. For today, let's take a look in more detail at each part of the shelves.

Up top - only visible in the top photo - we have a dozen Kevin Smith Inaction Figures from Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Clerks. I gave up on the collection before Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back came out. I even have Walt, Steve Dave, and Dixie Cup Brodie 'cause I'm a completist like that. I did, however, pass on all the Kevin Smith figures.

...for which I'm a little sad from time to time...

And the cats are from World Market and were a gift to The Girl on her worst birthday with me yet. Good times that one - big fight, but that's for another day, too.

Now, moving downward to the top shelf, left to right...

Top left
The bobblehead is Frank Robinson, picked up a couple of years ago at Great American. A few books over is Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show which is a hell of a book and took a long route back to these shelves as I loaned it out to a student of mine at Mount Healthy. This past school year - about eight years later - Jason found himself as an observing teacher ed student at PHS and brought the book back to me. I never thought I'd get that book back, and I was okay with that. Book lent out should never be demanded back. Let them go, set them free. And when/if they come back, they're gifts.

Further across is another book that has had more of an effect on me - The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I read that one as a sophomore at Wabash as part of a course that every sophomore took (and still takes) and as a text that every Wabash student had read and discussed. I learned more about how a man can change - and Malcolm X made amazing changes in his lives - in his life and absolutely refute what he had so readily believed beforehand. I remember wondering - ignorantly - how Wabash could have a multi-cultural center named after Malcolm X who was - as I said at the time - against our country and in favor of violent revolution. A junior in the room asked me what I really knew about Malcolm X, politely but pointedly questioning my dogmatism, and I had little to back up my statement. A year later, after I had read The Autobiography, I knew much more and have tried not to make such stupid, assumptive statements since. People are much more complex than simple soundbites and historical snapshots could and do ever show.

Most of the rest of those books aren't mine. I'm not in the paperback fiction world for the most part. The silver cup - generic metal with a clear plastic base - holds sea glass collected on the beaches of Scotland and foreign coins brought back from my year overseas. I haven't looked in the cup for a long time, but it reassures me to know that it's there.

The other two books up there that matter to me are Brave New World and Slaughterhouse Five. The Vonnegut is probably my favorite book of all time though the Huxley is in the running as well. I read Slaughterhouse every couple of years and enjoy it more every time.

On the second shelf down is the lone book that I've ever stolen from a library - not accidentally kept, not lost, absolutely and intentionally stolen, kept, and paid for: Electric Brae. During my summers between college years, I was reading a whole lot, browsing the public library sort of at random, and I picked up Electric Brae a month or so before I headed to my junior year in Scotland. I began the book and found myself deep into a fantastic love triangle in and around Aberdeen where I was flying in a few short weeks. I didn't know the setting before I started reading the book. The coincidence caught me and meant something to me at the time.

A year later, I checked the book out again and found a bookmark inside it, left there by a previous reader. On the front of that bookmark was a phone number and name of a friend of mine, and on the back was another of each. I mentioned this in passing to The Girl, and she mentioned that she'd checked the book out on my recommendation and must've left her bookmark in it. I believed - or assumed or hoped - that somehow only she and I had checked the book out in the year. I kept the book and sent a letter and a check to the library explaining my choice.

The Harry Potters are ones I've read maybe half of. The rest I've listened to, enjoying Jim Dale's voices.

The "Really Really Dangerous" toy is The Box which tested The Tick on the first episode of his cartoon series. The toys weren't popular, and I've got every one. Actually, The Girl has every one as I bought them as gifts to her - collecting them on her behalf.

The figures are The Bride from Kill Bill, the Golgothan from Dogma, and a Crazy 88 killer also form Kill Bill.

Top right
The ceramic stein celebrates my high school's lone basketball state title from 1973, two years before I was born, and it sat on my parents' shelves for a couple of decades before I took it to college with me. I have no idea whether my parents know where that stein ever went. Mom, if you're reading, I've got it. Thanks.

Next shelf down, behind the Crazy 88 killer, you can see "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead", a play by Tom Stoppard based on "Hamlet". It's a hilarious, brilliant play but one that shouldn't be read until after you've digested and understood "Hamlet". I'll also recommend the movie version with Gary Oldman, Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfus.

The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by WP Kinsella - author of Shoeless Joe which became Field of Dreams. This one's a little more fantastical but no less marvelous. It tells the tale of a baseball fan and researcher who finds himself slipped back in time, playing in a game of a league that only he remembers existing, falling in love with a woman whose spirit echos that of his oft-absent wife. Around this tale weaves in and out the tale of a native American spirit who is using his every bit of magic to support the local team against the Chicago Cubs traveling team in a game that lasts forty days and nights while the clouds drop steady rain and the river rises, threatening to wipe away the ballfield. It's a magical ride and one I need to take again.

The far right - hanging up - is my Lambda Chi Alpha associate paddle (it's a pledge paddle but without the hazing). It was given to me by John Prince, the second Prince brother to go through my fraternity house. John and his brothers graduated from the same high school that I did, and John was a great mentor at Wabash and in the house. His elder brother, Steve, was the one who got me to first take a look at Wabash, and I owe him immensely for that.

Center left
the marbles came from my paternal grandparents' home, and I stupidly broke the first glass containers that I put them in. The big blue ball is LeRoy's favorite toy. He can't quite get his mouth all the way around it, so he can't pick it up and chew on it, but he loves to bat it around and scratch at it. It's annoying and hilarious.

Again, a bunch of books I don't care about and/or haven't read.

The wooden fish came from The Girl's grandmother's house. It's never held books in our house.

Flatland - behind the fish - is a dual book with Sphereland taking the story to another dimension. I first read Flatland as a seventh-grader in my English class with Sandra VanOsdol (sp?), a wonderful teacher whom I loved dearly.

Next shelf down...lots of my books here. City and Pyramid by David McCauley are brilliant books, telling historical tales of ancient societies through graphical means. They're not for tiny kids, but they're certainly for certain kids in the mid- and upper-elementary grades, and I first found them then. They're in our artsy section of the shelves and are next to three Eschers and a Matisse. The Escher's are mine; the Mattise The Girl's.

She also owns the next few music books - Rolling Stone's encyclopedia, the Beatles book in black and pink. They're from college classes that she took at Indiana University. There are very few instances when I am or have been envious of people attending any school other than Wabash, but The Girl's three classes on the History of Rock (parts I and II plus the Beatles) were certainly those.

American Songs and Ballads is a collection that I should know better and that was passed down from mom's shelves.

We are Still Married is a collection of Garrison Keillor, and I brought it back for The Girl from Scotland, my lone gift for her and something I picked up from a used book store there. We weren't romantically involved at the time, but I apparently thought the title meant something and remembered listening to Prairie Home Companion on Sunday nights in Bloomington together.

Two more dog toys that we have to lift up and keep away from LeRoy for much of the time. He'd drive us bonkers and hurt himself if we didn't.

Center right
Past the fish now...all of my Hunter S Thompson books. The Great Shark Hunt is the best and most inconsistent of those. It has the best writing that Hunter ever put together and is one to read for anyone interested in checking out Hunter for the first time.

In the middle of the Thompson is Night by Elie Weisel, the hardest book that I've ever read. I read that the same year that I read Malcolm X, and I enjoyed Night far less. It moved me every bit as much, however, as it is a phenomenal account of a man's life.

There a bunch of cartoon books then. The Bloom County material has aged poorly, and I haven't read any of them in a long while. The Bus on the bother hand, is ageless, hilarious, and just weird.

Downward again...you get another book that came coincidentally to me. In my freshman year, we read Infinite in All Directions, a memoir by Freeman Dyson. It explored Dyson's thoughts on all sorts of aspects of science, and we looked at what he had to say on the morals of modern technology. I took the book with me to Aberdeen and began to re-read the tome on the airplane to Scotland. I noticed then that the book was built from a series of lectures given at the University of Aberdeen, where I was heading to spend a year. Another coincidence? Well, yeah, but it felt meaningful to me at the time.

Bottom left
Not much to look at here. There's a pile of books too big to fit upright on our shelves. There's In the Shadow of No Towers, a withering honesty, frighteningly personal reaction to the 9/11 attacks from Art Speigelman. It's not comics for children, and it's not even comics for most adults. It's worth a read, however.

There's another Escher at the bottom of that pile and a bunch of magazines between - Rolling Stones, National Geographic, Time, and others - including the two years of yearbooks from my junior high school years.


Bottom right
The two Sandman volumes have a matching first volume that's loaned out to TL right now. and they're the expensive, uber hardcover versions of Gaiman's masterwork series. They're expensive, and they're indulgent, but I love them.

The last books there - the furthest right - are the yearbooks from my first year at Mount Healthy and the my three years of high school yearbooks. At least I think they're mine. They could be The Girl's because we were in high school together.

Hmmm...rather anticlimactic. Sorry, folks...

Next week, my cd's...there are a bunch of them, so I don't know how much commentary I'll be offering.

An ode to muxtape

Look like Muxtape is no longer. In case Justin takes down his message explaining the situation, I'm posting the message he has here. It's an excellent glimpse into the issues that the music industry has at the moment as they try to open up their content to as many people as possible without freely opening up their content to as many people as possible.

I love music. I believe that for people who love music, the desire to share it is innate and crucial for music itself. When we find a song we love, we beckon our friends over to the turntable, we loan them the CD, we turn up the car stereo, we put it on a mixtape. We do this because music makes us feel and we want someone else to feel it, too.

The story of Muxtape began when I had a weekly show at my university’s radio station in Oregon. In addition to keeping the station’s regular log I compiled my playlists into a web page, with each show represented by a simple block that corresponded to a cassette recording for that week. At the time, mixtapes were already well into their twilight, but long after my show ended I couldn’t stop thinking about how the playlist page served a similar purpose, and in many ways served it better. Like a mixtape, each playlist was a curated group that was greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike a mixtape, it wasn’t constrained by any physical boundaries of dissemination, but… it also didn’t contain any actual music. Someone might come across the page and smile knowingly at the songs they knew, but shifting the burden of actually compiling the mix to its intended listener defeated the purpose entirely.

Five years later, internet technology had advanced significantly. I was working on experimental user interfaces for web sites when I started thinking about that playlist page again, and ultimately set out to bring it to life. My desire to share music (in the mixtape sense) hadn’t gone anywhere, but the channels to do so were becoming extinct. Popular blogging services allow you to post audio files in an ephemeral sort of way, but it wasn’t the context I was looking for. A physical cassette tape in your hands has such an insistent aesthetic; just holding one makes you want to find a tape player to fulfill its destiny. My goal with Muxtape’s design was to translate some of that tactility into the digital world, to build a context around the music that gave it a little extra spark of life and made the holder anxious to listen.

The first version was a one-page supplement to my tumblr, and was more or less identical to what it would become later. The feedback was great, and the number one question rapidly became “can you make one for me, too?” At first I started thinking about ways I could package the source code, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like massively wasted potential. Distributing the source would mean limiting access to the small niche of people who operate their own web server, whereas I wanted to make something that was accessible to anyone who loves music. The natural conclusion was a centralized service, which suddenly unfolded whole other dimensions of possibility for serendipitous music discovery. What seemed before like the hollow shell of a mixtape now seemed like its evolution. I knew I had to try building it. Three weeks of long nights later, I launched Muxtape.

It was successful very quickly. 8,685 users registered in the first 24 hours, 97,748 in the first month with 1.2 million unique visitors and a healthy growth rate. Lots of press. Rampant speculation. Tech rags either lauded it or declared it an instant failure. Everyone was excited. I was thrilled.

There was a popular misconception that Muxtape only survived because it was “flying under the radar,” and the moment the major labels found out about it it’d be shut down. In actuality, the labels and the RIAA read web sites like everyone else, and I heard from them both within a week or so. An RIAA notice arrived in triplicate, via email, registered mail, and FedEx overnight (with print and CD versions). They demanded that I take down six specific muxtapes they felt were infringing, so I did.

Around the same time I got a call from the VP of anti-piracy at one of the majors. After I picked up the phone his first words were, “Justin, I just have one question for you: where do I send the summons and complaint?” The conversation picked up from there. There was no summons, it was an intimidation tactic setting the tone for the business development meeting he was proposing, the true reason for the call. Around the same time another one of the big four’s business developers reached out to me, too.

I spent the next month listening. I talked to a lot of very smart lawyers and other people whose opinions on the matter I respected, trying to gain a consensus for Muxtape’s legality. The only consensus seemed to be that there was no consensus. I had two dozen slightly different opinions that ran the gamut from “Muxtape is 100% legal and you’re on solid ground,” to “Muxtape is a cesspool of piracy and I hope you’re ready for a hundred million dollar lawsuit and a stint at Riker’s.”

In the end, Muxtape’s legality was moot. I didn’t have any money to defend against a lawsuit, just or not, so the major labels had an ax over my head either way. I always told myself I’d remove any artist or label that contacted me and objected, no questions asked. Not a single one ever did. On the contrary, every artist I heard from was a fan of the site and excited about its possibilities. I got calls from the marketing departments of big labels whose corporate parents were supposed to be outraged, wanting to know how they get could their latest acts on the home page. Smaller labels wanted to feature their content in other creative ways. It seemed obvious Muxtape had value for listeners and artists alike.

In May I had my first meeting with a major label, Universal Music Group. I went alone and prepared myself for the worst, having spent the last decade toeing the indie party line that the big labels were hopelessly obstinate luddites with no idea what was good for them. I’m here to tell you now that the labels understand their business a lot better than most people suspect, although they each have their own surprisingly distinct personality when it comes to how they approach the future. The gentlemen I met at Universal were incredibly receptive and tactful; I didn’t have to sell them on why Muxtape was good for them, they knew it was cool and just wanted to get paid. I sympathized with that. I told them I needed some time to get a proposal together and we left things in limbo.

A few weeks later I had a meeting with EMI, the character of which was much different. I walked into a conference room and shook eight or nine hands, sitting down at a conference table with a phonebook-thick file labeled “Muxtape” laying on it. The people I met formed a semi-circle around me like a split brain, legal on one side and business development on the other. The meeting alternated between an intense grilling from the legal side (“you are a willful infringer and we are mere hours from shutting you down”) and an awkward discussion with the business side (“assuming we don’t shut you down, how do you see us working together?”). I asked for two weeks to make a proposal, they gave me two days.

I had to make a decision. As I saw it I had three options. The first was to just shut everything down, which I never really considered. The second was to ban major label content entirely, which might have solved the immediate crisis, but had two strong points against it. The first, most visibly, was that it would prevent people from using the majority of available music in their mixes. The second was that it did nothing to address the deeper questions surrounding ownership and usage for everyone else who wasn’t a major label: mid-size labels and independent artists who have just as fundamental a right to address how their content is used as a large corporation, even if they don’t carry quite as big a stick.

The third option was to approach a fully licensed model, which I had been edging toward since I met with Universal. I knew other licensed services so far had met with mixed success, but I also knew Muxtape was different and that it was at least worth exploring. The question about whether or not the labels saw value in it had been answered, the new question was how much it was going to cost.

It was June. I approached a Fifth Ave law firm about representing me in licensing negotiations with the major labels, and they took me on. Two weeks later I met with all four, flanked by lawyers this time, and started the slow process of working out a deal. The first round of terms were stiff and complex, but not nearly as bad as I’d imagined, and I managed to convince them that allowing Muxtape to continue to operate was in everyone’s best interest. Things were going well. I spent the next two months talking with investors, designing the next phases of the site itself, and supervising the negotiations. A big concern was getting a deal that took into consideration the fact that Muxtape wasn’t a straightforward on-demand service, and should pay accordingly less than a service that was. Another reason I liked the licensing option from the outset was that it seemed like an uncommon win-win; I didn’t want the ability to search and stream any song at any given notice, and they were reluctant to offer it (for the price, anyway). Muxtape’s unusual limitations were its strength in more ways than one.

The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and “marketing opportunities.” I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted. I had been worried about Muxtape getting a fair deal, but my biggest concern all along was maintaing the integrity and experience of the site (one of the reasons I wanted to license in the first place). Now it wasn’t so simple; I had agreed to a variety of encroachments into Muxtape’s financials because I wanted to play ball, but giving up any kind of editorial or creative control was something I had a much harder time swallowing.

I was wrestling with this when, on August 15th, I received notice from Amazon Web Services (the platform that hosts Muxtape’s servers and files) that they had received a complaint from the RIAA. Per Amazon’s terms, I had one business day to remove an incredibly long list of songs or face having my servers shut down and data deleted. This came as a big surprise to me, as I’d been thinking that I hadn’t heard from the RIAA in a long time because I had an understanding with the labels. I had a panicked exchange of emails with Amazon, trying to explain that I was in the middle of a licensing deal, that I suspected it was a clerical error, and that I was doing everything I could to get someone to vouch for me on a summer Friday afternoon. My one business day extended over the weekend, and on Monday when I wasn’t able to produce the documentation Amazon wanted (or even get someone from the RIAA on the phone), the servers were shut down and I was locked out of the account. I moved the domain name to a new server with a short message and the very real expectation that I could get it sorted out. I still thought it was all just a big mistake. I was wrong.

Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations. I disagreed. The deals were still weeks or months away (an eternity on the internet) meaning that at best, Muxtape was going to be down until the end of year. There was also still the matter of how to pay for it; getting investment is hard enough in this volatile space even with a wildly successful and growing web site, it became an entirely different proposition with no web site at all.

And so I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced: I walked away from the licensing deals. They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They’d already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn’t get into this to build a big company as fast as I could no matter what the cost, I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music, and I plan to continue doing that. As promised, the site is coming back, but not as you’ve known. I’m taking a feature that was in development in the early stages and making it the new central focus.

Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks.

I realize this is a somewhat radical shift in functionality, but Muxtape’s core goals haven’t changed. I still want to challenge the way we experience music online, and I still want to work to enable what I think is the most interesting aspect of interconnected music: discovering new stuff.

Thank to you everyone who made Muxtape the incredible place it was in its first phase, it couldn’t have happened without your mixes. The industry will catch up some day, it pretty much has to.

Justin Ouellette
25 September 2008

I wish Justin well and will miss his service even though I didn't take advantage of it nearly often enough.

Perhaps I spoke too soon

So, Jean Schmidt is the US Rep from the 2nd Congressional district, and she was tagged in a hit-and-run over the weekend. She was out running in the foggy morning twilight, and the hit-and-runner whomped her into a ditch before driving onward.

Seems her independent opponent, David Kirkorian, had some doubts about the veracity of Representative Schmidt's story:

"Um, I’m going to say, we are – how do I put this – elements of the representative’s story do not add up," Krikorian said. "There is no way that at 6 a.m. in the morning, or 5:45 in the morning, she claims that a car was approaching her and it didn’t slow down. I’m assuming that it had its headlights on before it hit her, she turns her back. Two things that don’t make sense to me – One, she said she thought it was a gray car and a man was driving it. And I don’t see how you could make that assertion when it’s pitch black, foggy, and the headlights are facing her. You can’t tell what color the car is, and you certainly can’t tell who’s driving the car, especially if you turn your back.

“Secondly, she claims the car must have damage to it, based on it hitting her, yet apparently she was undamaged. All I can say is, you don’t get hit by a vehicle and walk away from it, and the vehicle has damage to it. I don’t see how she can make that assertion. I’ve talked to a lot of people who think the story’s phony. I’m not saying the story’s phony, but a lot of people out there think it is. And we’re looking into it.”

Then, after being informed of today's news, that Schmidt has two broken vertebra and two broken ribs:

“Well, that would certainly be new information that would then corroborate her story. But Jean Schmidt has a history of issues with the truth, and you know, I certainly don’t want to make an assertion where there’s none to be made, and the way it was initially reported in the paper doesn’t make a whole lot of sense."

"Now it makes sense. I had not heard that before. Now it seems like maybe she was hit. You can’t get hit by a car and not suffer injuries. Now we’re hearing reports that she did in fact suffer injuries, and if that’s the case, I wish her a speedy recovery.”

My favorite part there is how nasty and spiteful he was before "being informed of today's news, that Schmidt has two broken vertebra and two broken ribs."

Commence backpeddle...

Classy, man, very classy...

A kilometer tall

I stand by my statement and add Saudi Arabia to the attribution:

The people of Dubai (and Saudi Arabia) have more money than sense.

Seriously, a building more than a kilometer high? Insane...and kinda cool.

Oh, McGee...

No, I'm not making a Fibber McGee & Molly reference. For that, you'll have to tune in to WVXU.

Instead, I'm pointing out that the coolest cooking science guy out there has a blog. Harold McGee's The Curious Cook often is nothing more than pointing out that he has a new column in the New York Times, but that's cool enough in and of itself.

If you're not aware, McGee is an author who wrote the cooking science book On Food and Cooking, a resource that anyone interesting in how science effects cooking should absolutely commit to memory. It's a brilliant book.

And the blog idea is so cool. They even have a link to email McGee directly, which seems almost sacrilegious, almost like emailing Babe Ruth or Glen Seaborg or Abraham Lincoln directly.

A quick update

Yes, Jay Horrey does look kind of entertaining in that picture. And, yes, he did go to the same high school and college as I did. And, yes, The Pater Familias did coach him in high school.

And, yes, the Wabash football team's scores so far do look a lot like Mt Union's. I know that doesn't make them equals, but the Little Giants are ranked #7 and rolling.

Let's be childish

'Cause we should all thank the Children's Television Workshop more often...

How crayons are made...


Teeny Little Super Guy...


Block Civilization...


ice...


Russian dolls...


3 balls...


rolling ball...


three balls...


Phillip Glass animated...


counting...


And maybe my all-time favorite...Finding his way home...not embedable, sadly...

A field trip destination

I'm not a big booze hound, but I'm certainly going to help celebrate the passing of a new Ohio law allowing a very few microdistilleries to sell their product from their own business rather than having to go through a state store.

Looks like I'll be heading down to Evanston to Woodstone Creek.

Congrats, folks..

One-time only

One hit wonders...thanks to Yelp.com...OneHitWonderCentral.com...Glide Magazine...BlogCritics.org...Wikipedia...Amazon.com...

And I'm thinking that next week I'll start shortening up the lists...I'm guessing they're just too long for most folks to listen to, so we'll go with lists of ten songs or less next time...sound good to everybody?


SeeqPod - Playable Search

Just trying to get a reaction

Blogger in Draft has thrown up another new feature that I'm going to at list give a try. It's called reactions and allows readers to throw down a one-word comment about each blog post. I can customize which words show up, and for now at least, I have funny, interesting, meh, and too long so you can give me some feedback that's far quicker than posting an actual comment.

I don't think you have to be logged in to provide the reaction, either, so that may help our lurkers to provide a little feedback without actually creating an account.

If you folks use it, I'll keep it. If, after a while, nobody's using it, it'll go the way of the dodo.

a;kruhtksjgbkdfjg

The title makes about as much sense as does me playing around on various entertainment blogs that I'd pledged to give up because I was spending too much time on them.

But I'm weak...

I backslid today...

• In tribute to Katydid's dream career and recent list - Top 10 Uses of Pop Songs in Movies
• This year's best science images
• I Can Haz Politikz
• The graphic down low shows the gas prices in the Cincy area in the last month or so from the $4.03 high down to today's $2.94 up the road...and I don't understand it in the least
• Top 10 Paul Newman Movies
• The art of math
• Top 10 High Finance Movies
• Craig Ferguson's reasons to vote
• The world's largest record collection
• The Cincy area rocks fungus research
• the 150 best flash games on the web - to kill every bit of time you have...ever
• Some literary rules to avoid
• PB Slices - for the laziest people ever
• Holy Crap - coolest graph ever
• Google hacks videos
• Fat man defies the laws of physics
• Free energy comes to the world
• The biggest tv's anywhere

Doesn't this mimic a real post?

I dig those mixing bowls, at least the look of them. In all honesty, they aren't very comfortable to actually use because their handles are way too small to hold comfortably. If you're doing any significant amount of mixing, you're going to get a hand cramp.

So I'm going to suggest that you take any bowls you have of that sort, bleach out the color, run them through some sort of chipper/shredder, and then add them in to your milk.

Just to stretch things a little bit.

See, melamine is a chemical - a polymer, really, which is nothing but a a big molecule made up of smaller molecules. The small molecule - called a monomer - has the formula C₃H₆N₆, and we mix it with formaldahyde to make a resin that we can then cast into just about any shape possible. It's made into bowls and plates, ashtrays, plastic figures, any plastic that needs to be reasonably durable and inflexible.

We use malamine as a concrete additive to make the finished product more durable and resistant to chemical attacks. And we've used melamine as a fertilizer because it has those fun -NH₂ groups (called amines, hence the melamine name). According to Wikipedia, the fertilizer thing didn't work out too well, however, because the reactions that make that nitrogen available for use by the plants are too slow to be reliable and useful.

Which is the same reason why adding melamine to feedstocks didn't work out. The reactions in cows' stomachs aren't any faster, so the nitrogen didn't become available for the cattle to use to build proteins. I'm guessing that those reactions aren't exactly any faster inside the belly of a little baby, either.

Which is why melamine has been in the news lately. Apparently some folks in China (and I'm guessing in some other countries, as well), are adding melamine to their milk leading it to show up in Cadbury chocolate and baby formula.

See, from what I can gather, the milk industry in China isn't doing all that well. Apparently there's something about a butterfly flapping its wings here in the US. But no matter...what's important is that some of the milk producers have been watering down their milk, trying to sell a few extra gallons out of the supply. To make up for this, they then throw in something that will mimic a protein in the tests that are done on the milk.

Seems that the tests - apparently the Kjeldahl and Dumas tests - just measure how much nitrogen is in a sample, especially if that nitrogen is in a -NH₂ group like it is in proteins. You throw a little extra nitrogen-containing compound in there, and the tests can't tell the difference.

Sure, according to the World Health Organization...

While there are no direct human studies on the effect of melamine, data from animal studies can be used to predict adverse health effects. Melamine alone causes bladder stones in animal tests. When combined with cyanuric acid, which may also be present in melamine powder, melamine can form crystals that can give rise to kidney stones.

These small crystals can also block the small tubes in the kidney potentially stopping the production of urine, causing kidney failure and, in some cases, death. Melamine has also been shown to have carcinogenic effects in animals in certain circumstances, but there is insufficient evidence to make a judgment on carcinogenic risk in humans.

and the signs of melamine injestion would be [i]rritability, blood in urine, little or no urine, signs of kidney infection, high blood pressure

...but that's really no reason not to chop it up and stretch that hamburger helper just a little further, to stretch that pet food dollar just a little more.

Or you could just keep it as the bowl instead of in the bowl.

Thanks, by the way, to Time magazine, Scientific American, and WiseGeek for the additional research sources.

Radio Australia had an interesting interview in which a World Health Organization official had this to say in terms of what this problems means upon reflection and moving forward:

I think around 20 years ago, we had a huge scandal in Austria, where they put glycol in the wine , and as you know, we had mad cow disease in the UK , and we had contaminated olive oil in Spain, and most recently , cheese contamination in Italy. So there is a lot of experiences in other countries. EU has been very effective in trying to address and improve the issue. And China is very interested to learn from other countries, so that's something we bring to the table.

Joining the ranks

I'm not sure I'd get my own vote, but I'm throwing my hat into the ring.

Donation links will be available soon.

A glimpse: the fridge

The entire act of blogging is about as narcissistic as anything could ever be.

For some reason, I seem to believe that people would care about what I have to say, what I think, and what media I intake. And you people consistently prove me right - which probably isn't all that healthy for my ego.

And which leads me to do crap like this.

For the next few Wednesdays, I'll be providing a bit of glimpse into The Homestead where The Girl and I reside. I'll be posting a photo or two of some part of The Homestead that might give a little idea of the world where I reside.

Today it's my fridge door, where so much of our modern world ends up posted for ourselves to see.

Lets start in the bottom left and move upward, left to right pointing out some of the stuff...

Those polaroids are of Harlan's teeth. The vet wanted to point out how nasty they were before his last teeth cleaning and then how clean they were afterwards. That's been a couple of years now.

The blue-blanketed baby in the bottom right corner is the first of many birth announcements telling us that our friends have joined the breeder world while The Girl and I remain firmly as travelers (a friend of ours pointed out that some people are breeders...other are travelers). Hiya, Noah.

The magnet holding that photo card up says "I quilt...He cooks", and I'm slowly working on making the second part of the statement more true.

The pig and cow magnets came from Alton Brown's cookbook, one of the coolest science/cooking books I've read and one of the least useful cookbooks.

The red JOY card is another birth announcement - hiya, Henry.

The business card/calendar is for Terry Hartke with her lion's mane of hair. Terry sold us The Homestead and sells a bunch of houses in our neighborhood. We see her a few times a year when we visit all the open houses for the neat houses. Typically, we'll walk or ride our bikes.

The small trio family is one of my regular readers - Coldnorthgamer - and his wife and daughter. Gamer and I go way back, and he might be the person with the most photos on the fridge who doesn't live in The Homestead.

Jana Lewis is the assistant principal where The Girl worked for the past four years.

Another birth announcement. Hiya, Adelaide.

The lion is a souvenir from the summer's trip to New York.

One you reach a certain age, you aren't sending out birth announcements anymore. You're sending out "we bought a new house" announcements, and that's what a coworker (and good friend) did when he and his wife moved across the river to Northern Kentucky so they could live under the approaching jets.

The Disney postcard was sent to The Girl from some of the other runners after she completed her second marathon for Team in Training.

That's me on the right in the tux. Gamer's on the left and was the man of the day there. I was honored to be able to stand up for him.

The photo with the horrible glare - I'll post a better copy without the glare at the bottom of this post - is of the four national merit finalists in my graduating class. I'm in the green shirt, back left. Gamer's in the white shirt and the cast. It was a rough senior year for him.

That's me in the blue shirt and tie with The Girl in her grandmother's house. Must've been the Christmas that we spent there. Wow, that's been twelve years ago now.

#1 Nerd was a gift from The Girl to me.

In the cute bow sweater and the huge grin is Hannah. Hiya, Hannah.

The two pinwheels next to me and Gamer are from this summer on the Massachusetts part of the vacation. I'm all down with my spirographs.

I can happily endorse Grady Veterinary Hospital. They're awesome vets.

The receipt is from Lowe's and is for a Bancroft 4" CS LA which apparently cost $88.00. I have absolutely no idea what a Bancroft 4" CS LA is or why we still have that receipt.

Hiya, Matthew and Christopher. The only twins on the fridge.

I don't know Ashley or Richard very well at all. We got invited because the guy who bought the new house in Northern Kentucky is Ashley's dad, and I'm a good friend of his.

The Girl didn't look her best at the end of her training run for one of those marathons.

Herrmann Plumbing is a solid plumbing, heating, and air business that we don't use anymore because they have a significant trip charge to get out to where The Homestead is.

The burger is a coupon for a free White Castle hamburger. The coupon - and the other one in the top right corner - has long since expired.

Above that are a Papa Johns magnet (our second choice locally for pizza), a PLCH magnet, and a magnet for Amighetti Bakery in St. Louis. The library is the one that we far and away most frequently use.

The next guy is Gabrielle. Hiya, Gabe.

And then hiya to Taylor and Jillian.

The Christmas card is for the family that briefly lived in our basement a year ago. Hiya, Jake.

The ticket is for Lebowski Fest in Chicago, the one that I sadly got snowed into Cincinnati for.

Thankfully, we end with the Nerds are sweet stuff magnet.

Here's the unglared photo of me, Gamer, Richie, and Brant in from of our high school.


I'm thinking...for the next few Wednesdays...photos of our bookshelves...our keepsake shelves...my cd collection...our kitchen table (which is typically a huge pit)...the fridge's insides...the DVD collection...

A couple of questions...do you give a crap?...and are there any particular areas of The Homestead (short of the front view which The Girl has asked me to keep a bit private) that you'd be curious to see since I'm guessing most of you folks won't be visiting any time soon?

Unless you end up house sitting for us - we are travellers, after all. Joey, Katydid - how are you folks with cats and dogs?

In case you were wondering...

FactCheck.org has a posting up evaluating the veracity of some of the statements from last night's debate.

Our Year of Living Steakishly: September II, Mitchell's Fish Market

This is the second of our diversions from the purity of the top twelve steak houses in the Cincinnati/Dayton area, so I'm wondering whether we need to shift this to more than a year of living steakishly, but let's just rock with reviewing Mitchell's Fish Market on the Streets of West Chester.

The Girl's been wanting to try this one for a while because she's gotten to a Mitchell's Steak House up in Columbus and swears that it's the best steak she's ever had. Her thinking is that they're both Mitchell's restaurants, so the steaks should be from the same source.

Plus they sent us a coupon.

Seriously, a whole $15 off of two entrees. Like The Girl said, that's pretty much a buy one, get one free deal for us.

Yeah, with a whole bunch of rounding, maybe.

So we called up and set a reservation for 6:45 Friday evening, looking to get in just before the dinner rush. When we got there, there was a bit of a chill in the air, so we declined the offer to sit outside, and we were shown to our table without any waiting at all - always a bonus when reservation times are held and respected.

We had gone through the Mitchell's website and checked out the menu in advance, seeing that a number of their fish options were on the no-go list from Monterey and noticed that we didn't see any appetizers that tempted us - though, unsurprisingly, the bacon-wrapped shrimp was the closest - so we bypassed that and headed for a drink.

The Girl asked our waiter - whom she described as a bit of a hottie - for a recommendation between a couple of their "signature" drinks, and she was steered to the horrifically-named Fish Marketini with white grape juice, a sugar-rimmed glass, and champagne. The drink came out in a nice, solid martini glass but was so sickly sweet that The Girl couldn't possibly get halfway through the drink. I had a taste and was repelled pretty quickly.

When the waiter asked how she was enjoying the drink, she admitted that it was just ok, that she should have gotten a Manhattan instead. He quickly offered to get her a Manhattan on the house as he had made the recommendation that she didn't care for. Her second drink was much better, and the waiter actually cleared the cost of both drinks because, in his words, "that's just how we do things here." The Manhattan was a much more pleasant replacement.

Bonus points for Mitchell's...

With no appetizers to tempt us, we went ahead and ordered our meals.

• The Girl
  Strip steak, medium rare
  - fourteen ounces of strip steak
  - baked potato with sour cream
  - asparagus
  - hollandaise sauce, on the side
• ChemGuy
  Crab cakes
  - corn saute
  - mashed potatoes

I know, I'm supposed to be the strip steak guy, but it's a fish place. There had to be some seafood involved. Plus, we planned on splitting the two meals as soon as they came out...half strip for me, half crab cakes for The Girl.

The bread offering - note the shiny top
The bread, of course, beat the entrees to the table, and it was a nice, simple sourdough baguette partially sliced to make grabbing a piece a little easier. The top had been brushed with a bit of oil which didn't add anything to the taste but did make for a slightly prettier presentation. The two halves of our loaf clearly weren't initially joined as the angles didn't match, and I noticed that the rest of the tables' breads were the same ends rested together. I'm hoping that they used the middles of the baguettes for some other dish - my crab cakes, perhaps - and that they weren't just baking big baguettes so they could serve the ends.

The bread was slightly warm and tasted fresh and decently soft inside - other than on the two cut ends which had dried out a bit - with a nice crust. The bread certainly wasn't a star, but it was a solid offering without being in any way noteworthy on its own. It did come, of course, with a real butter florette, which is always a nice little touch.

While we waited for the entrees - not an unreasonable amount of time, especially when the restaurant was solidly filled as are most of the ones in the Union Center development on a Friday night - we looked around at the decor. As we entered, we passed through the bar area which I didn't honestly explore in any depth, just passing through on the way in and out. It looked simple enough with primarily dark wood and a nautical theme around the ovular bar in the center of the room.

The dining room was much larger and included a private dining room for large parties - which was hosting a birthday party replete with balloons and wrapped presents - as we left for the evening. The rest of the dining room is decorated in a fish market theme with model boats between the tables - and behind but not entirely enclosed by glass plates. There is a working fish market where you can buy fresh (flown in daily according to the menu and sign board) fish by the pound to take home and cook yourself and a live bar where you can choose your oysters from a half dozen destinations, none of which tempted me to try my first live shellfish.

The lighting in the dining room was a bit odd as the room, when viewed in its entirety, seemed a bit dim - though much brighter than the Pine Club - but was well lit at the individual tables. Each booth table had a wall-mounted sconce which provided very little light and a recessed ceiling light that provided ample illumination of the people in the booth, primarily focusing on the table itself.

And our table had a pepper grinder all its own...major bonus points for the Fish Market there. I think I've mentioned my love for fresh pepper before, and the fact that they let me control my own amount instead of grinding it for me until I say ok is a big, big plus in my book.

After a few minutes, the main courses came out, and they didn't disappoint in the least.

Crab cake entree - before
The crab cakes were well sized with two being more than enough for an entree. The cakes were far more crab and less cake than most of the crab cakes you'll get in a restaurant, and the crab pieces were pretty large - appropriate since the menu said the meat was jumbo lump crab meat. The crab cakes were nicely sweet - primarily, I think, from the crab meat itself - and had a nice, crisp crust. They came with a cup of tartar sauce which was also nicely spiced though a little light on the relish.

The corn saute was excellent, a mixture of corn, peppers, and green onions. The simple sauteing enhanced the corn's sweetness and put a few crisp edges on the kernels. I'll be trying to recreate this at home at some point. The scallion mashed potatoes were excellent as well. A bit of a step down from the Oakwood Club's, perhaps, because of the lack of rosemary, but still very good. They were mashed but still had pieces of potato throughout giving the dish some nice texture.

My entree choice was excellent and well portioned, satisfying me but leaving a bit of room for dessert. The flavors were well balanced and the side dishes well paired with the main dish.

Crab strip steak entree - before
The Girl's steak - which we did split fairly easily - was a revelation, however. The meat was marvelously aged and very flavorful. It was char-broiled at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit - something that is going to be tough to match when The Girl tries to make her own version at home at the end of our Year - and had a very nice crust on about half of the steak. The inside of the steak was certainly on the rare side of medium-rare and might actually lead me to order a medium from Mitchell's in the future.

The steak was outstanding. Excellent. Easily topping the Oakwood Club and every bit the equal if not slightly superior to the Pine Club's. If the rich, brown crust had been a little more prevalent, then this steak would have easily been the best yet. As it was, my strip steak at the Pine Club is pretty close to being its equal.

The Girl reports that the asparagus was good, well cooked and fairly simple, sauted in a bit of oil and not much more. The steak was rafted on top of the three fat stalks and beside a baked potato that was lavished with sour cream. At first, the potato looked a bit on the small side, but once it was opened up, it turned out to be a whole lot larger, particularly after The Girl's consumption of the steak and the asparagus. The potato skin wasn't as crisp as she would have liked, but her guess is that it might've been a bit crisper when first out of the kitchen.

Crab cake entree - after (sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the strip steak afterwards...trust me, nothing but half a spud left)
The waiter boxed up the remaining potato and offered us a perusal of the dessert menu. As we each were in need of some small sweet treat to finish our meal completely, we were tempted enough to look through the menu and found two options that intrigued: the creme brulee and the key lime pie. As we didn't want anything too sweet, we opted to split the key lime pie.

Key Lime Pie - after splitting and taking a bite or two each...(it was tasty, I forgot to take the photo initially)
The pie was a nice yellow/green color - always a good sign in a key lime dish. If it's green, it's fake and hence no good. The graham cracker crust had a bit of macadamia nut crumbled in, and there were a few more nut pieces atop. The pie was tart and balanced well with the sweeter whipped cream on the edge. A single piece was certainly enough for the two of us after the generous portion sizes of the entrees and side dishes. I felt good about the swap of dessert for appetizer from the Clubs so far.

Key lime pie - after...(That bite left is from The Girl who is not a member of the clean plate club this time)
After clearing the dessert plate, our waiter returned with the happiest surprise of our evening - the check. He had already taken off the two drinks' charges as well as subtracted out the fifteen-dollar coupon that had initially brought us into the restaurant. After the deductions, our check came to $48.

Seriously, $48 for probably the best meal of the three restaurants so far.

We felt like bank robbers, and tipped the waiter generously.

I'll score things as though we had paid full price, however, of $63 (adding in the $15 coupon but not the $7 drink) for the meal and dessert plus what would likely have been a $15 or so tip meaning the rankings will reflect a meal at $78, still a great price.

So, to the rankings...

• AppetizersDessert - 7 - good, solid, house-made dessert finished things well
• Steak - 9 - Outstanding...great crust...great flavor...the crab cakes come in here, too, and probably deserve a 7 because they were good but not spectacular, though this is all about the steak
• Side dishes - 7 - corn was the star, though everything was very good
• Atmosphere - 7 - I couldn't see a television from where I sat (good) and liked the general fish market feel, though it is clearly a suburban restaurant - family friendly so not exactly elegant
• Cost - 6.5 - we paid $68 with tip, but that's with the coupon, so I'm ranking this as though we paid $87 and giving it a half point for the coupon and the comped drinks
• Service - 8 - The waiter was cute (according to The Girl) and very though not officiously friendly...he was entertained at the photo-taking and at our explanation of the Year of Living Steakishly tour idea...he did recommend another steak restaurant in Dayton for us to try (Fleming's at The Greene)
• Total score - 44.5 (out of 60)

And our new leader is Mitchell's Fish Market - oddly now owned by Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.

Next month we're to Carlo & Johnny's, I promise.

Chuckle...

I kind of agree with the first commenter on this article about the suspicious package that John Boehner's office received today. The Enquirer's reportage continues to sink lower and lower as they have fewer trained reporters and hand over more and more of the work to untrained rubes.

I have no idea whether The Enquirer was ever a quality paper, but it certainly is not that now.

But it's still funny that somebody shipped Boehner bacon.

And his name's funny, too. It rhymes with moaner and cloner and it's spelled all funny.

Cardinology

So there was this concert thing last Friday (10/3/08) with this band with this lead singer guy...

Apparently Ryan Adams is working hard on subsuming himself into The Cardinals and didn't want his name at the front of anything from here on out. Hence, I got to see The Cardinals w/ Ryan Adams down at the Taft.

Thankfully, www.cardinology.com posted a setlist so I don't have to just pray and try to remember what hethey performed.

• Cobwebs
• Everybody Knows
• Come Pick Me Up
• Wonderwall
• Fix It
• La Cieniga
• Goodnight Rose
• Sun Also Sets
• OMG Whatever Etc..
• Magic
• Desire
• Let It Ride
• Please Do Not Let Me Go
• Love Is Hell
• Crossed Out Names
• Afraid Not Scared
• Natural Ghost Two
• Rescue Blues
• Sink Ships
• Stars Go Blue
• How Do You Keep Love Alive
• Shakedown
• Mockingbird
• Off Broadway
• Note To Self
• Please Don’t Die
• Cold Roses (encore)
• Bartering Lines (encore)
• Meadowlake (encore)
• This Is It (encore)

For a guy who's trying to bury himself into the whole band thing, the stage set-up was a little odd with Ryan on the left side and the rest of the band taking up the center and right, almost as though he had segregated himself from the rest of the Cardinals.

The band sounded tight, which makes sense as they're about halfway through their tour, and they came out at 8:35 for a scheduled 8:30 start time - always good to see somebody being prompt and five minutes late is prompt for a concert. No opening act at all - with which I'm also pretty good.

And they played a nice, tidy two-hour set before departing after a four-song encore. Adams did probably three quarters of the speaking between songs, almost all of which was unintelligible to me as the crowd was amazingly chatty all around us - a big problem for me as I'm there to hear the music not talk to The Girl (or the other friend who went with us). He did let the between-song breaks drag a bit long much of the time, killing some of the momentum that the more up tempo songs would build.

The concert sequencing was also a bit quizzical as the up tempo, crowd pleasing numbers were often followed by tracks from the new album - which understandably got less applause and enthusiasm - or more low key songs that squandered any momentum the band could possibly be building. But that's Ryan, I guess. Just Manny being Manny.

Heck, I'm happy that he didn't get racked off at the crowd's constant chattering - especially during his occasionally soft song intros - and leave the concert short. Thankfully, the band sounded great, and that's what the concert is all about.

The use of the pedal steel was understated only showing up at the forefront a few times. The bass player managed a number of solid power stances, and the lead guitarist (I really should learn some names from the Cardinals or from Wilco, honestly, other than just the lead guys) throw down a number of nice not-quite-solos. Drums were solid as well, pounding the driving bass drum, especially on some of the harder rockers.

And "Rescue Blues" with Adams on organ was an absolute highlight, a knockout.

Sadly, I couldn't find that one online, but I did manage to find one song from the Cincy concert on YouTube.


The Cardinals in Cincy - "When the Stars Go Blue"

I also found another tune from the Cardinology website as well as a number of decent fan videos from Albany about a week before the Cincy show.

Plus I stole a couple of concert pics from their official website that I'm just throwing in here to show what the set looked like...



Good stuff, folks, and I'm looking forward to getting their new album when it comes out October 28th (or sooner since I did register to win the album and get the password so I could check out their private videos on the website - it's ghost, by the way.)

Oh - and I found this while searching for the power stance link. Why is there a Kurt Cobain Unplugged action figure that apparently just came out?

Still living In Living Color...for this week, at least

Continuing last week's In Living Color theme...continuing the clips of a television show that is surprisingly dated...

Homey the Clown


Vera de Milo


"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"


Oswald Bates proclivicates


"Men on Books"


A little MC Hammer


"Am I Black or White"


"Dirty Dozens" with Nick Bakai and some bad sound synching


"The Dating Game"


Basic Instank


Arsenio Halls of Justice


And as a bonus..."Cult of Personality"

An underapreciated gem

Warren Zevon, folks...a songwriter of much talent and not nearly enough regard...

Ya may know "Werewolves of London" and...um...there's probably not much else you might know, but I'd like to particularly recommend "Exciteable Boy", "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", and "Splendid Isolation" as some of my other favorites. Feel free, however, to listen to all of these...


SeeqPod - Playable Search

And if the list tempts you to check out more, I'd recommend starting with Learning to Flinch.

Catch alls

All of these have been sitting around gathering dust while I tried to come up with full posts about them, but no such posts have been coming, so you get a catch-all post...

• Katydid pointed out the coolness of downloading a Wilco song in exchange for your promise to vote in the coming election. She's kinda awesome.
• The Girl and I continue to try to be better to the world, and we've moved to eating seafood that is supposedly friendly to the oceans. Here's Monterey Bay Aquarium's site which has the list that we've started using. We need to print it out, but we haven't gotten that far. She did buy shrimp from Texas at The Jungle this weekend (at $10.99 per pound for about fifteen shrimp) instead of the Asian shrimp that are much smaller but about $9.99 for a two-pound bag. It's not without cost - including never getting to eat sea bass (my favorite fish) again - but it's something that's worth doing for us.
• Forbes's list of Best American Colleges came out recently - as pointed out by Coach Sullivan (thanks, man). Wabash College (my awesome alma mater) came in at a solid twelve overall. The methods are a little different from those of US News, but I like these rankings way better. If ever you had any doubt as to how awesome Wabash is, let those doubts disappear.
• I'm likely to get a nearly totally blind student in my chemistry classes next year, and I'm at a loss as to how to deal with that. But I am finding - sometimes through The Girl - more and more cool books designed to help sighted people experience a little bit of what blindness could be like.
• I love Entertainment Weekly's lists. But I hate the manner in which they typically present them: single-slide-per-entry lists that you have to click your way through. Some of the lists - the 100 new classic movies, for example, are so cool that they must be clicked through, however.
• Ah, a local Hamilton boy gets told to take off his makeup. I know the male assistance principal mentioned, and I'm fairly familiar with the district. This is a total non-story that managed to bumble its way to cnn's website. Meh.
• Reduce, reuse, recycle via Bedrock Industries with their glass tiles and mulch.
• I finally got around to winning Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the Wii and then went striahgt for the cheat codes so I could see all the rockin' outfits and powers that I hadn't taken the time to unlock yet. The game is now even more awesome even though I don't really have any bad guys to fight anymore.
• Funny stuff happens in Middletown sometimes.
• The photo up top is of Hollis Thomas, former N'awlins defensive tackle. I can't link to the site that I found it, but it's a funny picture, i'nit?

Continuing to stumble around blindly...

Ran into that cartoon in stumbling around the world wide intertubes this week...

As I did all of these...

• How to build invisible shelves (nothing revelatory, but kinda neatly shown)
• Metronome Online - which helped me figure out that "Merry Happy" by Kate Nash has about 168 beats per minute
• Movie & music fonts - which are kinda cool
• A fabulous steak recipe - the first on the page
• Check out a few movie trailers
• Try not to click...g'head...try

More upcoming concerts that intrigue

And, thankfully, some of them are on weekend nights, so I'm in the clear...

• Old Crow Medicine Show - Fri, Oct 24 - Madison Theater, which I totally hate because it's a smoking venue
• Yonder Mountain String Band - Tues, Oct 14 - Madison Theater
• Black Keys - Fri, Oct 10 - Madison Theater
• Tannahill Weavers - Sat, Jan 24 - Canal Street Tavern, Dayton

Now, if I could just get the Beastie Boys, Chris Isaak, Richard Thompson, Wilco, Jeff Tweedy (solo), U2, Sufjan Stevens, James McMurtry, and a few others to come to town...