Hmm

I'd really hoped to post a little something every day, but for some reason that's harder than it should be. For one thing, I'm sleeping in later than I used to. Is blogging worth getting up an hour earlier?

Not that it takes an hour to write a post (though it certainly can) but I like a little time elbow room, you know? Who wants to feel rushed?

1) So Cute! 2) What's wrong with me?

This penguin is super cute! I couldn't help thinking maybe he had a parasite on his butt that he was trying to shake off. Hopefully he was just a happy penguin.


Happy little penguin Celebrating The Holidays brought to you by Videobash

Um. Good to know?

Strange News

More than 1000 blackbirds fell dead from the sky over Arkansas. My theory is a sudden blast of freezing wind from a high altitude air current.

Also, we call Arkansas "Arkansaw" but Kansas is "KanSes". Did they call it "Kansaw" back in the day?

Rock Band

As with most trends, I have come late to Rock Band - I played for the first time a few weeks ago at friends Kelly and Brandon's house.

It's a surprisingly (expensive) fun game, considering all it really consists of is pressing a matching colored button when a moving blob of color hits just the right position onscreen - and repeat repeat repeat.


The fact that you're playing with controllers that seem to be the real thing is a big part of the immersion. If I wasn't playing with a very realistic guitar but instead just tapping buttons on a normal XBox controller, the impact would be a lot less and a lot different.


Somehow when I'm playing the guitar controller, it really feels as if I'm performing the song that's playing - it's a weird sensation especially since I have zero musical skills, no coordination or dexterity, and no rhythm. Playing a Jimi Hendrix song to a virtual crowd of screaming fans is not something my psyche was prepared for. Is this what a flying dream would feel like? I don't have flying dreams.

For the moment, I'm stuck on 'easy' mode, since my cold limp yellowed withered claw of a left hand is about as responsive as a coma patient. It's my own fault - my left hand does a little typing, a lot of scratching, and not much else. For some reason, chords that require two widely separated buttons to be pressed simultaneously are as out of my reach as a Nobel Prize (red and blue, my old nemesis, we meet again for the last time!). If I want to graduate to medium without making all my bandmates fail out, I might have to resort to the kid buttons closer to the body of the guitar.

We played for about five hours yesterday, and I'm ready for more!

Dec 31st? It's a myth!

Come on everyone! Together we can disprove this silly theory of a December 31st. It's an old wives tale. Disbelieve with me now, join hands...

Nom Nom Nom

How long has it been since you've had Pho?

If you're not familiar, it's a Vietnamese noodle soup, and is very delicious. Here's my bowl from last night, with tofu. I don't know if you can tell, but this is a huge bowl, and I devoured most of it.

Get a load of this article about Pho:

In the 1950s, writer Nguyen Tuan was condemned as a bourgeois reactionary and banned from publishing after he wrote an elegy to pho. Writers were supposed to focus on the glorious onward march of the revolution, not trivialities such as food. Mr. Tuan's essay was in fact a sly criticism of the Communist Party and the damage its thought police were inflicting on Vietnamese culture. Framing his attack in terms of pho was an effective way to tap into a deep vein of Vietnamese identity.

The Communist government closed most pho stalls back in the 1950s when they represented the insidious force of private enterprise. In the 1970s and 1980s, food was so scarce in Hanoi that most of the speakeasy soup joints that served pho in a semiclandestine way closed down...

Can you imagine having to sneak into an illegal back alley dive for some soup? Crazy.

Blog Template

After spending years making my blog template more and more busy - adding columns filled with links, widgets, and goo-gaws, I've decided it's time for a simple template.

I enjoyed learning the HTML and CSS I used to set up my custom template of about a year ago, but now I'm in a mood for simplicity.

Bad Idea

Here's a picture of a test flight from the first aircraft carrier - the whole prospect seems rickety at best.

What gets me is the little boat that is directly in the path of the biplane. I can appreciate having boats in the area to help the pilot if he splashes down, but directly in his path? Was this a dare? Was he planning to crash into the little boat?

Not Photoshopped

Click on the image to see it full size. The red looks almost like a cluster of blood colored butterflies. Probably the prettiest picture I've ever taken.

ANOTHER ONE?

Just how many chest freezers are too many chest freezers for a single guy living in a one bedroom apartment?

This neighbor is always coming and going at odd times. Shovels and black bags are a common sight in his back yard, I shit you not. Zero gardening.

At what point do we call the authorities? I mean really. He now has at least three chest freezers.