Grandma and Grandpa at Music Class

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Mom and Dad took the grandkids to Ms. Petra's class at the Austin Lyric Opera.

Flight of the Conchords' Lyrics are Bottomless

Rhymenocerous vs. HipHopoppotumus!

(hum to self) The Simp - Sons....

My brother, Shannon, sent me this.
What a perfect arrangement - that theme is FULL of string!
(my favorite parts: the dissonance at 1.06, and the bent Train Whistle
notes at 0.39)

Wow. Surreal. Tasty. MMMM!

Check out his "Toys and Other Oddities," too. I lobe eet!

Texas Highways Review of Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air

"Oglesby’s book shines a warm, bright light on these fascinating Texans
and their perspectives on West Texas’ shaping of their art and ambition."

And the Chronicle bestowed an honorary UT professorship to him:

"...In slightly more academic terms, University of Texas professor Christopher
Oglesby addresses similar misconceptions in Fire in the Water, Earth in the Air."

Awesome. Rock the hell on, you Texas press darling.

What Do You Get When You Cross a Madrassah with a HoJo's Ball Room?

Matt Taibi's take on Thomas Friedman's role in the Iraq debacle.

'You get a whole nation full of people who spend 99 percent of their free time worrying about their lawns or their short iron game, you convince them that they know something about something they actually know nothing about, and next thing you know, they're blundering into a 1,000-year blood feud between rival Islamic groups, shooting things left and right in a panic, and thinking that they can make it all right and correct each successive f****up by "keeping our noses to the grindstone" and "making lemons out of lemonade." '

Heh. I about fell out on page two; every time I see Friedman on DTC, I think, "Nice mustache, a**hole."

Counting Down the Bush Regime

Although, if I were a betting man, I'd put money on the whole fiasco going Nixon on us.
This administration is a face waiting to get shot in.

What I'm Listening to Right Now

Leonard Cohen and Anjani collaboration. Also, Lyrics and Clips.

It's Snowing

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After Scout and Mommy's walk, we made some hot chocolate.

I Need a New Wine Rack

My father-in-law is a cabinet maker and woodworker extraordinaire. I'm thinking of ordering one of these from him. I'm willing to pay ten thousand dollars.

Ignis Aurum Probat, Miseria Fortes Viros

B-Dot invited people over to his house last night to build penny alcohol stoves. It was all fun and drinking games until someone got hurt. Here's some actual footage of the event:

OK, now imagine Cleb's arm in that wedge of flame. We had an actual "stop, drop and roll" incident on our hands. Melted his shirt into his flesh. 1st and 2nd degree burns. Brazil wax effect from elbow to shoulder. Caleb, if you're still able to type, drop us a line. We're worried.

Senseless Waste of Company Time

This cracked me up. At Harcourt we used Lotus Notes, and it just about killed me (70 reasons LotusNotes sucks.com).

Perfect blend of Python nerd and tech geek jargonoff. Glayven!


The Export Shop Sketch (a parody)
(by Ben Langhinrichs, with thanks and apologies to Monty Python)


(a customer walks in the door.)

Customer: Good Morning.
Owner: Good morning, Sir. Welcome to the IBM Lotus Notes Export Facility!
Customer: Ah, thank you, my good man.
Owner: What can I do for you, Sir?
C: Well, I was, uh, sitting in the Beach Club lobby just now, skimming through the "Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible" by Brian Benz and Rocky Oliver, and I suddenly came over all timorous.
O: Timorous, sir?
C: Weak-kneed, spineless, panicky, mostly about whether I could get my multitudinous highly formatted documents out of Lotus Notes without data loss.
O: Eh?
C: 'Ee, Ah got the willies cuz I wanna get lots of stuff outa Notes widout it lookin loike shite!
O: Ah, indeed, sir!
C: So, then, bring on the fine export formats please, my good man.
O: (lustily) Certainly, sir. What would you like?
C: Well, eh, how about a nice flexible Open Document Format.
O: I'm, a-fraid we're fresh out of ODF, sir.
C: Oh, never mind, how are you on StarWriter 5.0?
O: I'm afraid we never have that at the end of the week, sir, we get it
fresh on Monday.
C: Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout yeoman, serve up a portion of XHTML, if
you please.
O: Ah! It's been on order, sir, for two weeks. Was expecting it this
morning.
C: 'T's Not my lucky day, is it? Aah, ordinary HTML 4.0?
O: Sorry, sir.
C: Works 6.0 or 7.0?
O: Normally, sir, yes. Today the van broke down.
C: Ah. Lotus WordPro?
O: Sorry.
C: Outlook Express .EML?
O: No.
C: Any Internet Explorer Web Archive .MHT, per chance?
O: No.
C: Word 97?
O: No.
C: Word 95?
O: No.
C: Microsoft RTF, perhaps?
O: Ah! We have Microsoft RTF, yessir.
C: (suprised) You do! Excellent.
O: Yessir. It's..ah,.....it's a bit rummy...
C: Oh, I like it rummy.
O: Well,.. It's very rummy, actually, sir.
C: No matter. Fetch hither le plus bas dénominateur commun ! Mmmwah!
O: I...think it's a bit rummier than you'll like it, sir.
C: I don't care how f***ing rummy it is. Hand it over with all speed.
O: Oooooooooohhh........!
C: What now?
O: It doesn't actually handle images, sir. They all turn grey. And bullets disappear.
C: Do they?
(pause)
C: You...do *have* some export filters that maintain fidelity, don't you?
O: (brightly) Of course, sir. It's a export filters facility, sir. We've got--
C: No no... don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.

Keep going...

Rob Paravonian will see Pachebel in Hell

I'm definitely learning that last medley.