It always plagues me when I have to make a 100% They Might Be Giants mix.

There's always far too many, "Oh, I can't forget this song!" songs (that would end up making it a 3-CD mix if I were to include them all).

01. Fibber Island (2:10)
02. Counterfeit Faker (2:12)
03. Moving to the Sun (2:18)
04. My Man (3:07)
05. Pet Name (4:03)
06. Empty Bottle Collector (1:37)
07. Withered Hope (2:54)
08. We've Got A World That Swings (2:05)
09. Certain People I Could Name (3:30)
10. Sketchy Galore (2:18)
11. The Army's Tired Now (1:12)
12. I'm Sick (of this American life) (1:27)
13. Canada Haunts Me (1:04)
14. South Carolina (3:46)
15. Why Did You Grow a Beard? (1:05)
16. Unsupervised, I Hit My Head (2:56)
17. She Was A Hotel Detective (3:21)
18. We Live In a Dump (1:35)
19. Hypnotist of Ladies (1:41)
20. Weep Day [demo] (1:53)
21. Contrecoup [demo] (1:23)
22. Vestibule (2:00)
23. Window (1:00)
24. I've Got a Match (2:36)
25. I Am Not Your Broom (1:03)
26. Lie Still, Little Bottle (2:05)
27. Reprehensible (3:18)
28. Spiraling Shape (4:24)
29. Greasy Kid Stuff (1:38)
30. Fun Assassin (2:02)
31. Cast Your Pod to the Wind (1:21)
32. They'll Need a Crane (2:33)
33. Sleepwalkers (2:40)
34. The End of the Tour (3:18)

Can you tell I have neither the first album, Flood, Misc T, Venue Songs, nor any of the "Here Come" LPs on CD? I also like how, much like the way TMBG songs tend to sneak into any mix I make, I sneaked in two songs that are by either John or John, but not John & John.

So I spent a bit of my evening working on the wiki for ErfWorld, and I got to this page. Glancing over it, I noticed that there was no footnote citation of the "Rock Fall, Everybody Dies" quote, so I was about to cite the Something Positive (from 2002) that I had always thought was the origin. But then I got to thinking about how SP and EW using it might not be due to causation but instead might be a sort of parallel evolution, if they both got it from the same source. Trying to find the source took me to TV Tropes where they claim SP isn't the source, but instead cite other, earlier examples.

Now, I'm a bit iffy about this since the earlier examples don't use that exact quote but instead are just instances of folks meeting a sudden left-field demise. After all, it's the quote that's the important bit, here.

I also found it cute that starfangx and I had come up with a similar line back in 1997. Ok, so in the start of Season Two of Transformers: Beast Wars, they had to add some new characters (due to pressure from Hasbro) so they had to ditch a few of the Season One characters to make room for them. There was a big earthquake sort of thing, there were some lava fissures on the floor of the antagonists' base, and two of the folks (Terrorsaur and Scorponok) just sort of fall off a cliff, land in the lava, melt down into slag, and are seen nevermore. Yes, these are characters who had (relatively speaking, since this is a Transformers cartoon) serious character growth and interaction in the previous season...but their demise is just "...and they fell in some lava and died." And to add insult to injury painful flaming death, neither Terrorsaur nor Scorponok are even really mentioned as ever existing after that.

After that, she and I took to citing "...they fell in some lava and died." whenever a character was just suddenly and mysteriously written out of a book/show/film/campaign/et cetera.

I was talking with myself earlier today and I think I partially worked out why it's hard for me to be too thrilled by tattoos.

Ok, imagine either an article of clothing that doesn't serve much physical function (IE: has no pockets, doesn't work against any elements) or an item of jewelry, that was uncomfortable to put on and is very difficult to take off.

For me, the way I feel about tattoos is pretty much the same way I'd feel about something as described above.

I think this is why I found Noyes' "just a black circle" tattoo to be so charming; it's like if you had a ring or a necklace surgically attached, but the ring or necklace had a snap-on affair so you could have different things in display.



Noto Bene: Obviously, I'm not saying that that's how tattoos are 100%, nor how everyone should view them, nor anything else silly like that. I just don't get how folks dress them up as being bigger than the aforementioned "uncomfortable to don, hard to doff" clothing/jewelry -- in my book, if you want to get all tribal, go off into the woods without any tools or supplies for a lunar month during a season you're comfortable with.

Mind, I'm also the same person who thinks it'd be pretty slick to have my Social Security number as tattoo.

So I'm finally getting to toy around with Google Wave (youngwilliamthe@googlewave.com by the way)!

Ok, so imagine instant messaging, but have it so you can have multiple folks in on the conversation -- so, like a chat-room (or so I presume, since I've never chat roomed. Or is it room chatted?). Now, have it so when you scope out a particular room (here, they're called "Waves") you aren't just seeing a live-feed but can also see what's been said earlier. Also, it's not just one bit of text after the next bit of text (here, the bits of text are called "Blips"), but you can instead hang a comment off of someone else's comment, like here in LiveJournal. And if need be, you can go back and edit those previous comments of yours.

Take that (with real-time typing display) and have the database of Waves be searchable so you can look for a particularly titled Wave or a Wave that mentions some particular topic. Obviously, one can also set a particular Wave to be private, so only invited folks can scope it out and/or talk on it.

Oh, and Google Gadgets can plug into it, so one can have a thing that inserts a poll or tosses in a Google Map reference or whatnot. This bit'll be handy for online text-based role-playing games, since then one can work up and plug in a Gadget for dice (unless, of course, one is doing it with some DM/GM sort of person who's making the die-calls). The RPG aspect also is what led me to posit my first suggestion to the Beta-testing board (at least, I -think- it was submitted): Being able to see the earlier versions of an edited blip. That way, Evil Larry can't go back and edit an earlier blipped-pose so he can say, "Dude! I totally had a lit lantern out already!"

Earlier today, someone online mentioned the idea (well, they more pitched the idea, looking for suggestions) concerning a 'Steampunk Belly-Dancing Outfit'. When I started to mull over it, I realized early on that one would first have to define what sort of 'steampunk' they're talking about.

Obviously, for better or for worse, some folks just go with "Add goggles & gears and call it good to go" (which really ought to be a meme-style summary-catchphrase in the Steampunk community). Myself though, I have a definition that stems more from the cyberpunk roots in the Speculative Fiction department (IE: from William Gibson to Paul Di Filippo's Steampunk Trilogy and Tim Powers and all).

Ok, so I've generally understood the idea of CyberPunk as stories set in a future where some select narrow fields of technology have advanced faster than others, and where the culture hasn't quite caught up to that level of technology, leading to stories focused around disenfranchised folks in that setting (that'd be the 'punk' part), or leading to stories focused around the general dystopia where everyone is disenfranchised. Obviously, this generally goes with a more recreational sort of technology (like the stories where folks are addicted to virtual reality), and/or with technology of convenience (an example would be that episode of Max Headroom where our hero's credit/ID cards were canceled, or the Tuttle/Buttle confusion in the film Brazil), and the dystopian aspect is how folks haven't quite learned how to adapt to the technology (and you know, the legislative aspects of the Anita Blake books' setting could be seen as a sort of MagicPunk if one wrote stories hinging on the particular focus of how there's some really poorly constructed preternatural legislation).

I'd guess that such a split could come up from extra-new tech that cropped up before folks could learn about it to teach their kids. You know? It seems that for a thing to be ingrained into society, you need to have the kids who are being raised on/around Thing X to have parents who were also familiar with Thing X as kids. I could see current real-world examples of that being the need for laws disallowing text-messaging while driving, or the whole 'netiquette' thing (since today's kids are being raised by folks who were, at best, kicking around BBS systems on their C-64s).

Anyway! Moving on! I see SteamPunk as a setting as being a similar thing to the CyberPunk setting, but set in an alternate dystopian past. A timeline where the Victorian world happened to have a few narrow-range leaps in technology, so you've clockwork horses and suchlike, but since the entire society didn't advance (since the parents didn't grow up with it so the next generation ran carte blanc) you still have shoeless orphans getting roped into coal-mining with those clockwork horses.

Alas, that doesn't help with the person's original query since by my yardstick, belly-dancing clothes would most likely be exactly the same (since, well...they're based on a style that is currently used and was used quite some time pre-Victorian, and I can't see a few tech-leaps really changing that, unless it's more easily constructed cloth or automaton dancers).

And speaking of convenience-tech, I was pleased to discover that one doesn't have to make an account at Last.FM to be able to listen to someone's library there! Which means...(drumroll)...anyone online with speakers can dial up my Last.FM profile and listen to a randomized selection of my bad music! Woo hoo!

Two mixes I've made for folks in the last month or so.

01. Loren Bouchard - Paint The Town Red (0:36)
02. The Aquabats - Attacked By Snakes! (5:01)
03. Gothic Archies - Freakshow (2:56)
04. They Might Be Giants - Boss of Me (2:58)
05. David Byrne - For You (3:19)
06. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians - Driving Aloud (Radio Storm) [Alternate Vocals] (4:00)
07. Jesca Hoop - Money (5:05)
08. Siouxsie & the Banshees - Peek-a-boo (3:08)
09. They Might Be Giants - Am I Awake (3:04)
10. Gabriela Robin - Cats on Mars (2:46)
11. Scraping Foetus off the Wheel - Lust for Death (3:37)
12. Iggy Pop - Lust For Life (5:13)
13. Paleface - Burn & Rob [acoustic] (2:39)
14. Camper Van Beethoven - 51-7 (5:00)
15. Lou Reed - This Magic Moment (3:23)
16. Monopuff - Creepy (3:11)
17. Tom Waits - Kommienezuspadt (3:10)
18. The Breeders - Divine Hammer (2:41)
19. The Pillows - Little Busters (3:44)
20. They Might Be Giants - With the Dark (3:17)

Lust for Death and Lust for Life not only look good next to each other on the playlist, but they also sound pretty spiffy right after each other.

01. David Byrne - Glass, Concrete, & Stone (4:13)
02. Paul Simon - Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean (3:55)
03. Harry Nilsson - Think About Your Troubles (2:48)
04. Michael Penn - Me Around [live] (2:32)
05. Tom Waits - On The Other Side Of The World (5:19)
06. Totom - The Fall Of Troy (3:48)
07. Regina Spektor - Hotel Song (3:29)
08. The Breeders - Bang On (2:03)
09. Jesca Hoop - Money (5:05)
10. Kate Bush - Rocket Man (5:02)
11. They Might Be Giants - Memo to Human Resources (2:02)
12. Michael Leviton - Summer's the Worst (3:31)
13. The Magnetic Fields - Old Orchard Beach (2:54)
14. Jane Siberry - Everything Reminds Me of My Dog (4:19)
15. Regina Spektor - Rejazz (3:37)
16. Robyn Hitchcock - Idonia (4:26)
17. Laurie Anderson - Poison (3:47)
18. Ed's Redeeming Qualities - Random (3:01)
19. John Linnell - New Hampshire (2:49)
20. Monopuff - Mr. Hughes Says (2:32)
21. Zooey Deschanel - Fabric Of My Life (2:42)
22. Aimee Mann - Nobody Does It Better (4:25)

Amusingly, I went through and picked out songs for the second one, checked how long the mix was so far, and gave myself a little pat on the back for it being *just* the right length. Then I remembered that CD-RWs are 80 minutes, and I'd composed it for a 90 minute tape (even though it was going on CD), so I had to whittle it down by ten minutes worth of music.

VoicePost 177K 0:54

“Tony, Sean and I were talking and trying to call” Auto-Transcribed Voice Post - spoken through SpinVox

Tony Sohns and I were talking, trying to identify a certain piece of classical music that we -think- is from The Hunger. That's what started us talking about: the film, The Hunger. You know, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon and all that? [daniel jackson] But we're not sure what the name is and unfortunately there's no Google Sound Search [/daniel jackson]... *ahem* Al-Although that would be kind of nice at times like this, wouldn't it? Yeah... Anyway!

La la la

Urm, It's a lot like that; That's the key integral part.

La la la

Anyone out there in TV Land have -any- clue what that is?

Edit to Add: Bam! The Flower Duet

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Kirsten (Infanta of Fort Crevecoeu) for the conception, Brett for the hosting, Liz for the waitstaffing, Josh for the AV work, Mike Flannery for the impromptu PA assistance, and everyone who attended Giacomo's showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Well, "everyone" except for whoever stole my wig.

PS: If you see someone with a shoulder-length blond wig that smells like woodsmoke (actually, it smells like a housefire since it survived my house catching fire 10 years ago) and has a tag inside that says it was made in both China and Japan, beat them up, steal their wig, and send it to 42 Winter Street.

After watching the latest episode of StarGate:Universe on Hulu.com, I was perusing the discussion boards. Someone was griping about the stones (for those who haven't seen SG:U but have watched later-seasons of SG-1, they're the thingies that plugged into the Tardis-console looking affair that Vala used to contact us from Oriville) violating relativity by allowing instant info-transfer from very very afar.

I thought about this for a second (and restrained from pointing out how folks have pretty much learned to deal with Star Trek's "subspace radio" and how this isn't too far off from that) and posited that it might be due to some theoretical system akin to the Stargates' dialing program itself.

Namely, when you're on Planet Here and you're dialing up Planet There, There's gate's chevrons lock as you're plugging the address into the DHD; obviously, this is before a wormhole is established and yet there's still real-time interaction going on.

But this then got me to realize just how odd it is that the chevrons react like this. I mean, if I start plugging in a given address, it won't point to a particular gate until I put in the second to last chevron. Before that one, it could go anywhere (much like how if I were to rotary-dial a phone, there's no clear target until the last digit is dialed). As such, how could There's gate "know" that it's being dialed before the second to last chevron, since even Here's gate doesn't "know" that it's dialing There? If There's gate didn't start spinning and locking chevrons until between the 6th one dialed from Here, and did it between the 6th and 7th, I could understand. But from what I recall, of the times we've seen a gate with an incoming wormhole, it doesn't do it in a particularly hasty way.

It'd be very fun to imagine that every gate that matches the current combo spins and locks those chevrons, but I'm sure that would have led to far more planets out there realizing that the gate isn't just a weird object d'art.

PS: No fair quoting "If you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts, then repeat to yourself, "It's just a show, I should really just relax"." to me.

PPS: The subject? It's the chorus of TMBG's song "Weep Day".

Simultaneous events don't happen,
We are isolated temporally.
And the part is never called the whole thing,
Although it bothers us to know it's so.

Every man is made of two opinions.
Every woman has a second half.
It's Samba Time for Tambo,
Weep Day for Urine Man.

Subj: sex offender in cuero tall blonde goddess keith urban lifetime love
From: ken nomi (nomilawmzbajr@live.com)
Sent: Sat 10/31/09 3:39 AM

DailyOM Facing Problems: Running Away Versus Moving Forward ff Michigan Basketball in the polls http://theseeporn.com

Wearing the right colours makes you stand out in a crowd DjAlBBad singleparent411 single parent is a sole parent trying 2 make a diff& ensure their children hv a future/they R mom & dad< agree Enjoy your night igrewup The Halloween candy stash

Keep your friends updated— even when you’re not signed in.

Some FaceBook pal of mine mentioned earlier today that they had tossed together a cowgirl costume for some pre-Halloween party, tonight.

Unfortunately, the comment is gone so I can't hang my hour-later thought about it off of the comment.

My thought is that they should wear it with the shirt (and I presume vest) backwards, the hat backwards, et cetera.

They could go as a "reverse cowgirl"!

...no, if you don't get the joke, I'm not going to explain it to you (and I'll warn now that a Google Image Search for it will be highly unsafe for work)...

Just now I was talking with Andy and Kirsten (the Empress Pro Temp of the Midwest) when Andy cited that more folks are being born without appendixes.

At first, I amused myself of thinking about it from a Lamarckian viewpoint, then realized that it'd make sense since those groups who are less likely to die from appendicitis before birthing age are more likely to pass the trait on. Although we've had appendectomies for a while now, we (as a race) have been snuffing it from appendicitis a whole lot longer. So there, Lamarck. Suck it.

Now, this is the tricky bit.

If that's true, and if we presume it'd also apply to personalities and behavioral traits (which has been often cited as happening -- particular personality/behavior traits existing for an evolutionary reason), and if we presume that the penchant for homosexuality is a trait one is born with... (drumroll) ...why wouldn't it be tapering off over the multi-centuries?

If you'll pardon the hyperbolic joke, if you're passing a penchant for homosexuality on to your kids, you're not doing this whole "gay" thing very well.

I know I've read some essays about it, but I can't recall what the general theory is for why something that all but eliminates the odds of procreation would continue on as a trait.

A picture of mine made it into the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (sic)!

If you look to the left of the sign, you can see my hand in my pocket. If you look between the two upper-case 'S's, you can see my dark tie on my light shirt.

PS: 134 over 92? 92?! That's just seriously weird. Mind, by the general UK blood-pressure standard, between 110-140 over 70-90 is perfectly fine (the US goes with a straight 120/80 as fine), and a little wiggle room is perfectly understandable (I've been known to wake up with 70-ish over something), but still...that's just bizarrely over-inflated for my usual rate. Bring on the leeches.

PPS: For those of you reading this via the RSS feed to FaceBook, I don't enter any of the pre-set "Moods" for my LiveJournal posts. Instead, I've been just listing my blood-pressure and heart-rate since mid-August, since I have an auto-sphygmomanometer right at hand.

You know Giacomo's? The place that's been opening at night, so I have a thing to do when I get out of work?

Tonight, when I walked by the (unfortunately closed on a Tuesday) store, I happened to glance at the window.

They're showing Rocky Horror at 1:30 AM, Halloween Night.



I had -so- better be getting out of work in time, or heads shall roll.

PS: I also need to call them tomorrow to find out if it's Audience Participation, or if folks'll look at me funny when I start yelling at the screen, "Describe your balls!" I also need to let Mo know, since she expressed an interest in going to see RHPS at some point (mind you, she was quite drunk at the time, but I hold folks to their drunken promises 100% of the time).

So it seems that, for some random reason, I'm one of the folks hit by this problem.



When it decides to kick in, the result is that I'm only shown feeds from things that have no privacy settings whatsoever (so, business/fan pages and only a small handful of folks). Fortunately, it only turns up on the basic FaceBook page (as seen below during one of the few times when it decided to act properly).



...while Facebook Lite...



...and Facebook Mobile...



...never suffer the same issue. Alas, both of those last two are bereft of some functionality that the primary page has (EG: tagging pictures, mid-text tagging, friend suggestions, being able to post a URL with a little preview picture, et cetera) so it's not exactly a perfect fix. And talking about fixes, I like how submitting a bug report asks how I can reproduce the error -- oh, I don't know, by visiting Facebook? That seems to reproduce it about 95% of the time! So yes, if I don't reply to a Chat message over on Facebook, it's because it won't let me (since it doesn't perceive that I know you, even though it realizes that you know me).

In other news, I remembered/realized that now that I'm using a Windows XP system instead of Windows 98, I can now "scrobble" things to Last.FM!

Although they've yet to arrive in the mail, I bought my first DVDs! Now, I actually already have DVDs, but none that I bought -- I've Faulty Towers (sent to me by my mom), a few that folks burnt for me (Santa & the Ice Cream Bunny, and the first two seasons of the new Doctor Who), and a few that I found (Bowling for Columbine, Slaughterhouse Five, and one or two others). Still, the ones on their way are Twitch City and The Iron Giant, both of which together were under $25, and both of which I've wanted to show to folks over the last few years, but said folks whined about my copies being on VHS instead of DVD. I also scoped out how much Walker was on DVD these days, and was surprised to find that it's $40-something. Really now!? The VHS used to be $80-something and even the DVD is a few times the price of any other film? Does Alex Cox hand-craft them in his basement when you order them? It can't be due to the obscurity, since even the entire series of Fishing With John costs less than Walker (which reminds me, I should see if they have Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends on DVD on Amazon).

In other news, I was thinking about chakras last night while falling asleep and somehow remembered to follow-up on my research this morning. The bit that irks me about chakras is when folks attribute the colors of the rainbow to them. Most of them, I'm fine with, except for indigo. Ooooh, that indigo! *insert fist-shake here* I'd always suspected that indigo was purely a Western World construct, and Wikipedia backs up that notion of mine.

Indigo was defined as a spectral color by Sir Isaac Newton when he divided up the optical spectrum, which has a continuum of wavelengths. He specifically named seven colors primarily to match the seven notes of a western major scale, because he believed sound and light were physically similar, but also to link colors with the (known) planets, days of the week, and other lists that had seven items.

The human eye is relatively insensitive to hue changes in the wavelengths between blue and violet, where Newton defined indigo to be; most individuals do not distinguish indigo from blue and violet. For this reason, some commentators, including Isaac Asimov, hold that indigo should not be regarded as a color in its own right, but merely as a hue of blue or violet.

So the whole indigo thing was purely Sir Isaac tossing it in for some kinky Freemasonic alchemical conjunction setup. Oh, and while I was scoping out the Wiki article on indigo, I came upon this other neat bit:

One can see spectral indigo by looking at the reflection of a fluorescent tube on the underside of a non-recorded compact disc. This occurs because the CD functions as a diffraction grating, and a fluorescent lamp generally has a peak at 435.833 nm (from mercury), as is visible on the fluorescent lamp spectrum.

Which is exactly the sort of Mr.Wizard thing folks expect me to know.

Paul: How're you, Will?
Me: Not bad.
Paul: So, good?
Me: Not good enough to do a little dance about, but not bad enough to [insert pantomime of my slitting my right wrist with my left thumbnail] *schnickt*

Paul: So somewhere between dancing and wrist-cutting.
Me: Pretty much! Although it's not like the two are mutually exclusive. I'm pretty sure I've seen folks combine the two at Zoots or some goth club.

So on the way home from Giacomo's after work, tonight (about fifteen minutes ago, actually!), as I was hitting the corner of Court and Ohio, I heard this odd tappety-tap sound. Before too long, I noticed it was a skunk that'd torn open a trash bag. No biggie, since skunks seem to never consider me a spray-worthy threat. As I walked past the skunk, I noticed something odd -- the something that was causing the tappety-tap sound.

The skunk had a clear plastic cup stuck on its head.

Actually, I should say that in all likelihood the skunk has a cup stuck on its head, since I stood there for about five minutes trying to work out the best way to remove the cup (that wouldn't result in my being a foot away from a scared skunk) and it didn't have any cup-removal progress during that time.

All I can think of is if I had some spray-proof thing to toss over the skunk (like an old raincoat), then remove the cup with tongs, then dash off before the skunk can get out from under the raincoat. Alas, I don't think we have any old raincoats around the house.

I called Bangor's Animal Control, but they're closed at night. I called the Bangor Police Department, and they were/are just as stymied as I was/am at how to de-cup the skunk.

I feel really bad about leaving the poor skunk to blunder about with a cup on its head, but I honestly can't think of any route that won't get me sprayed (save for poking the skunk with a broom to force it to spray, hoping to expend all of its spray, before I pluck the cup off if its head). At least I tried, given the phone calls.

Sorry, skunk.

In the last week, my iPod (I think it's a '4GB Nano 2nd Generation' as shown in the hyperlinkage? That's the closest and quickest online picture of it could find. If it's any help, the About screen says it's Version 1.4.1 and Model M9800LL) has gone from holding a charge worth about 16 hours of music to about 8 hours. This is, I presume, not a temporary thing that'll heal on its own.

EDIT: It's this!

Were I to send it in to the shop, would/could they just replace the battery or will they basically hem and haw and try to con me into buying something far more complex that I really don't need?

---

Oh! And speaking of work, I typically wear a particular tuxedo vest here (for no good reason other than style). Today when I came in, I noticed I'd forgotten to put it on before leaving my house. I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if there were a spare vest around here, somewhere?" and after poking around for a few seconds, I found my vest.

Here.
Still at work.
Not at home.

I guess I must have left it in the office after I left last night?

However it happened, I wish that this was how Coincidental Magic in *WoD Mage was defined. Namely, even the person responsible for it can't really prove if it was luck or magic. The only problem with it (other than folks claiming it'd "nerf" mage) is exactly how one would get better at a particular field of magic when one can't prove to even oneself that one is actually doing magic.

---

And back in reality (sort of), a space along Harlow Street that used to hold a club called Gemini was recently reopened as Club Ice. Gemini had a backlit sign in the marquee, but apparently the Club Icers haven't had time to get their own. Instead, they just flipped the Gemini one around in a way that basically mirror-reversed it vertically. As such, it looks like the club is a very subtly displayed "dewihi" (the font for the 'G' is funky so it looks like a lower-case 'd' when upside down, and the 'n' is a short upper-case so it looks a bit like a short upper-case 'h' as well).

Shame they didn't name the club after flipping the sign around around, so it was Club DeWihi instead of Club Ice -- could've saved a few bucks on signage, there.

Claire: [to her father] You always have a plan!
Me: No no, that's Benjamin Linus.

Claire: You need a job.
Claire's Dad: Where would I work?
Me: At a box company!
Claire's Dad: What would I do?
Me: You'd make boxes!

I guess Tammi was right; I turn every show into an Audience Participation version. Or, at least, a Morphed with Lost version.

Oh! And I ordered new boots and new Stabilicers the other week!

New Boots


Old Boots


(no, I don't know why my cell phone decided to put a yellow tone on the picture of the old boots)

Stabilicers


And in checking the Stabilicers' website, it seems that part of the problem for the previous pair dying so soon may have been that they were Medium, and Medium is supposed to be used for up to size 9. My boots? Ten and a half.

So it turns out that two folks I half-know are actually the same person.

Long ago and far away, someone named Jocelyn (who looked like if Kara Thrace had a sister) introduced herself to me at work and, a couple of at-work meetings later, she mentioned having cats and half-suggested I should visit at some point. Somehow I found out that Laura knew her and gave her props.

Later, a blonde someone with glasses who came in to work on Wednesday nights (when Eric Green was playing) started talking to me and it wasn't too long before I'd set aside some of my cookie experiments for her. In asking around, someone thought her name was Janelle. Last time I talked with Janelle she said she'd bring some of her pumpkin & chocolate chip cookies.

Tonight, Jocelyn showed up with the cookies that Janelle had mentioned she'd bring in -- amazing the difference glasses can make!

After getting out of work, I popped over to Giacomo's.

A triple espresso, a pancetta ham, mozzarella, tomato, romaine, & red onion sandwich on a croissant, followed up by a dark-roast coffee, with the background music of REM, the Cure, and the Talking Heads playing in the background -- all at 2 AM while seated on the sidewalk-side tables. [insert contented sigh here]

I guess Toby was correct in his observation last week that all I had to do was wait until a thing cropped up in Bangor that would cater to my whims, instead of having to modify my whims to cater to Bangor. Now I just have to prompt more locals to hit the place between 1 and 3 AM. *prompt*prompt*

Oh, and in getting home, I caught the first episode of the "Witches of Eastwick: The Series" thing by way of Hulu. It wasn't too horrible up until the bit where they end up in the fountain; from that point on, things were a little extra-special cheesy. Not sure how they'll milk a series out of the concept, though. The demon character reminds me of what you'd get if House's Wilson was possessed by the spirit of Robert Wagner.

And now that I've started using my auto-sphygmomanometer for the "Mood" field here, I've noticed that drinking actual coffee instead of decaf seems to raise my blood pressure by about 10-15 mmHg (each time you see it here in the 130-something/80-something range, that's been a day that I had actual coffee. The times with it in the 120-ish/70-something range are the days with nothing but decaf).

One of the features really caught my eye.

Invisible Girlfriend
Friday, October 2nd, Noon
Bayview Street Cinema

Directed by David Redmon & Ashley Sabin. 70 minutes.

Charles is in love with his invisible girlfriend, Joan of Arc, so he decides to ride his big red bicycle 400 miles from Monroe through Louisiana to find her in a New Orleans bar. Along the way he encounters a farmer, a witch, a tin man, and a man who honors the dead. Working within the tradition of creative non-fiction, "Invisible Girlfriend" is a Southern tale that transcends literal interpretations of images in order to open up rich, loamy textures of humor and drama. The cinematography is startling in its intensity and violent beauty, representing an optical trope that offsets the desperate love that Charles sets off on his journey to find.

So I managed to see the Decemberists, tonight!

As of early Thursday, I was unsure if I'd be catching a ride off of Emily Burnham, Emily Dexter, or Priscilla. As of early today (for me, that means Friday), I was pretty sure it was just going to be one of the Emilys, since Priscilla had yet to pick up a ticket and didn't seem to be too eager to call the box office and order them or see if there were still unsold seats. That was later trimmed down to Emily B. since Emily D. was waiting for confirmation for a sitter for her child.

Emily B. showed up, we popped on down, she picked up her comp ticket at the window, we ran into Emily D., I picked up a t-shirt, and in we went to our respective seats.

Opening act was Laura Veirs and the Hall of Flames. Not a bad little band of about 4 folks, usually with three playing instruments at the time.

In between the opening act and the show-proper, they played Pink Floyd's The Final Cut (with When the Tigers Broke Free tossed in there for some alien reason) while setting up the stage. Also around this time, I noticed someone with a Laurie Anderson haircut sitting one row behind me and a few seats over -- after a bit of trying to not look like I was staring, it turned out to be a late-arriving Priscilla!

( The Decemberists played & I didn't eat until three AM. )

Hopefully, when I grow up and become an adult, I'll be able to actually make plans at least a day in advance and have folks attempt to stick to those plans. Enough folks over the years have expected me to follow through with their advance plans, I ought to be able to do it in return.

PS: Photographs and footage of the show can be found over here.

So let's say one had an Italian café and one decided to have it open late-late at night (pushing 3 AM) to appeal to the espresso crowd. Now much like squatty hipster coffeehouses that stay open that late, it's presumed one would have little pastries as well; for the squatty hipster coffeehouses, it'd be like cookies, muffins, scones, et cetera, but those don't quite fit the gist for an Italian café.

What seems good, quick, and easy options for pastries? Note that although I'd adore pizzelles, that rather requires the equipment for it.

Yes, I've started talking with some of the folks at Giacomo's and pitched the idea of my whipping up pastries here at the New Moon Luna Bar & Grill for them (after working out what's wanted for pastries, working out how much the ingredients cost, then working out how much of that goes to Paul, how much goes to Giacomo's and how much (if any) goes to me).