It came from youtube

Let's see if I can post about some musical gems mined from the wasteland of piracy and morons that is youtube.

They also have a nice cover of Beat It.

For some reason I want to hear her sing the ballad of Clarice Starling :P

Nice little bit o godlessness from a pair of swedish siblings

Unfortunately in my html ineptitude I've broken the video as linkback feature, so I had to put links in.

Happy New Year!!

I normally sleep through the changeover, work night shift and during vacations enjoy the decadence of sleeping during my normal waking hours.

When I was younger there was a sort of family tradition, a new years eve meal. Hog jowls, collard greens and pinto beans. Something about insuring prosperity in the coming year. I hate beans in all but chilli form, can't abide boiled greens outside of spinich dip and hog jowls are plain proof that not all of the pig is edible. It is, it must be said, the un-bacon.

Classic piece of rustic animism. Treating prosperity as the caprice of an easily fooled anthropic entity. One that could be tricked into lingering and giving boons by pretending to be poor, eating shotgun shack fare at a critical juncture. Not that it was ever articulated in any such fashion. Obvious in retrospect.

I hated all that stuff and do not practice the tradition.

Had a nice seared ribeye, a baked potato and some texas toast. I'll ring in the new year with a slice of the blueberry black walnut amaretto cheesecake, which was baked from scratch by me earlier today. Hope it turned out well.

It would seem portentous if it didn't. :P

Are we reassured yet?

There's a nice little city killer asteroid that most likely won't hit us anytime soon, Apophis. There's a russian version of George 'Dubya' Bush with a laughably bad hairpiece. He will protect humanity from the quasi-threat by knocking  it away with the rusty revanant of the soviet space program.

Welcome to the 21st century, steadily plugging away at being just as tragi-comically fucked up as the 20th.

Mail Bag

Only on item of interest, but it's a beaut'.

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning last November's Presidential election:

Suffice to say the facts are made up and the professor had nothing to do with the email.

The most irksome part is that it isn't even a new piece of propaganda. Yep, it's post consumer propaganda, recycled from 2000. The names were just changed and the figures were altered, but still wrong.

More wailing, doomsaying and trafficking in political stereotyping. With the usual anti immigrant crap and the racist fantasy that most people on welfare aren't white and rural.

That time of year

The first frost of the 09-10 season. Order from chaos, swirling organic forms made of lifeless H two Oh. The eternal jump and jive of the cosmos settling into stable forms thanks to the lonely nuclei and seeking electrons exhibiting their mutual attractions and just so temperature and pressure.
A lot nicer to think about than the fact that I've lit the heater in my bedroom and the one in the dining room. About time to hit up the gas people to fill up the tank, there's a week and a half of my pay out the door with a phone call...sigh.
In the spirit of keeping it light here's one that's a bit more jaunty. I've never seen birds eating these seeds, inviting as their color is.

The sun came out

After what seems like three weeks of greyness the sun emerged. I stepped out into sunlight that hurt my eyes and looked around for wee beasties. Found lots on the purple leaves of maple saplings that faced south to the sun. Lots of grey stinkbugs, several different wasps, some flies large and small, a couple jumping spiders, several stick bugs. All getting warm on the dark leaves.

It looked like the equivalent to showing up at a funeral in a wedding gown to me.

Tanka for one of my favorite comfort foods

Chili in a bowl
air in my house spice infused
contented belly
grey day substitute sunshine
digesting mellow and still

Fallen

I pulled my coat out of the closet, it is resting in it's seasonal home on the back of a chair in my dining room. I put it on and went outside to take pictures of whatever on my acre of yard. Grey and damp, typical october. Not much to see. It's hard to get my little camera to focus on wee beasties. Took four shots of two different stinkbugs on two different maple saplings. Only one turned out okay. Little dude is cold and ever so slightly out of focus. :(

Stupid shit in my email

Item 1. - Fwd:Political cartoonists have finally awakened
Various political cartoons implying that the stimulus bill is Obama's baby and ignoring that it seems to be working tolerably well. The stimulus is probably the only thing of substance Dubya ever got right. The asinine suggestion that Obama has not been criticized by political cartoonists, especially stupid given there's a Mallard Fillmore comic amongst them. Right wingers live in a past so thoroughly fictionalized it doesn't include a segue from the recent.

There's something at the end that's supposed to be a quote from Abe Lincoln

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

Like so many quotes from historical notables in political emails, it's fake.

Item 2. - Fwd: Who Assigns Tail Numbers?

Shopped picture of air force one with NI66ER on the tail where 28000 or 29000 should be. A nice reminder that anyone who has ever prefaced a statement with "I ain't prejudiced but..." probably is.

Hello

Well, why am I here? On blogger that is. I have a myspace account, a facebook account, an atheist nexus account. I've blogged a good deal on myspace, but I have too many family members and friends on there to blog honestly.The interface for facebook is a drag to use, and the atheist nexus has a limiting feel to it in terms of potential audience.