shout out to Barmecide

who's in the hospital having his bionic leg implants replaced. Get well soon, and enjoy your drugs in the meantime!

"a hot circle of garbage"

Office fans, check it out.

neato test

Are you right-brained or left-brained? Most people are left-brained, which means they see the dancer in the link moving counter-clockwise. I saw her moving clockwise, so I guess I'm right-brained (though I did get her to change direction!)

Apparently that means I'm big on these functions:

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

UPDATE: I'm starting to wonder if they didn't screw up this test. Sounds like everyone sees the dancer going clockwise.

GRRRRR!!!

This zoo ain't big enough for the two of us!

Thought for the Day

"And I think anybody who doesn't wear an Infallible Tikbalang Ward is a fool. Do you just want to be abducted by a Tikbalang? Think about it. Have you ever heard of anyone being led to their doom in the forest by a Tikbalang who was wearing an Infallible Tikbalang Ward? Of course not. That's why they call them infallible!"

Discuss.

record labels going bust

Couldn't have happened to nicer guys. Seriously, though, if touring and music production are still going strong, then this just looks like justice to me.

GO SPURS GO!!!

That's all I have to say about that.

they're dancin' dancin' dancin' machines watchemgitdown watchemgitdown

I promise not to do much posting on video games, but I've just always wondered where they got a lot of the dances in World of Warcraft.

That's worth 5 slaps

Nice. Watch this, you won't be sowry.

animated Bayeaux Tapestry

Have a look. Some people have too much time on their hands.

It's hard out there for a Saxon.

the death of the album

For you music lovers, here is a good Op-Ed from The New York Times on the dysfunctional relationship between record labels and the internet, and how that led to the dramatic drop in the popularity of cds, and by association, the bankruptcy of small music stores and even some of the giants like Tower Records. I know it was just another big chain, but I still think it's a shame; I spent a lot of time as a kid in the TR on Guadalupe in Austin, TX, and something was definitely lost in the transition to Best Buy and iTunes.

everyone's favorite pastime... developing top 10 lists

Now it seems the recording industry's doing it as a gimmick to sell albums. I wouldn't pay too much attention to their list, it makes little sense (except, as Salon notes, from a marketing standpoint). I'll join in the fun here, though, and I suggest you do, too.

First, a note about my hermeneutic. What factors should we use to evaluate albums: sales, influence, proportion of good tracks to filler, or stuff that just plain RAWKS? Obviously, many factors should be weighed, though I personally am going to give influence on later music a position of primacy, followed by "rockin'"-ness, then the other stuff. I'm also going to stick to rock, for fear of venturing too far out of my element.

1. The Beatles' White album
2. Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
3. The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland
4. The Sex Pistols' Nevermind the Bollocks
5. Grateful Dead's American Beauty
7. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here
8. U2's The Joshua Tree
9. Cream's Disraeli Gears
10. Nirvana's Nevermind

I've obviously missed glam rock entirely, and that did take up the better part of a decade's worth of rock, but I feel that, for one, it was a shitty era with no one worth replacing any of the albums above, and for two, the things worth remembering and that were worth passing along from glam were borrowed from Hendrix, Floyd, and Cream.

As with any list, there were albums I wanted to add but couldn't, so here's a quick and dirty 11-20, in the order I thought of them:
11. Tool, Anima
12. Metallica, Master of Puppets
13. Elvis Presley, self-titled
14. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
15. The Doors, self-titled
16. The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers
17. Led Zeppelin, IV
18. R.E.M., Green
19. The Pixies, Doolittle
20. fine, Bon Jovi, Slippery When Suck