the far corner

… and this is for you, Mom:

Check out the band Buke and Gass.  Their name comes from the instruments the only two members play: a bass ukulele and a fabricated thing combining a bass and a guitar.  Their sound is huge, the beats driving, the hooks hooky, and the vocals sweet.  They have a song available for free if you’d care to listen.

You can also learn more about them (as I did) from Radiolab and even download the podcast that featured them.  (On a side note, I highly recommend whole-hog subscribing to the Radiolab podcast).

JB out.

I’m going to the Arkansas backwoods to go catfish noodling.  And I’m bringing a unicycle.

That quote by my lovely better half as I was driving her up to the Amtrak station to depart upon the Empire Builder toward parts unknown.  She was trying to capture the strangeness and dreamlike nature of her not-quite-Quixotic journey to conquer the barren, lifeless tundra of north-central North Dakota, and I think she succeeded beautifully.  Later, she even sent me a pic:

On my drive back home, I heard a great song and downloaded it as soon as I got home, as well as this one that followed shortly on its heels.  So I’ll be checking out some more music by these guys.

I finished up the night watching Paranormal Activity (Blair Witch in a house) with a pair of snugly doodles and playing back the Olympic half-pipe finals on ye olde DVR.  I don’t know why they thought it would be a good idea to mike Shaun White’s coach so thoroughly after the former’s victory – that guy was cussing worse than I do when Violet drops her bone on my foot.  (You know, when it’s early and cold.  It’s a heavy bone.  And I like to swear.)  JB out!

I wouldn’t usually care to admit that I have some Maroon 5 in my iPod’s everyday-listening playlist, but for the purpose of this post, it’s worth the hit on my dignity.

I have 214 songs in the list, 14 of which are Maroon 5.  Therefore, Maroon 5 comprises 6.54% of this playlist’s content.  With my iPod set to “shuffle”, I should expect roughly every 15th song to be one of Maroon 5′s.  Again, this number is far too high, a predicament I have procrastinated in resolving – but I belabor the point.  In reality, my iPod spews forth Maroon 5 more than 10% of the time.  Here are three samplings:

• 4/37 (10.81%) – meaning 4 of the first 37 songs played were Maroon 5
• 5/50 (10%)
• 6/52 (11.54%)

This last, as may be gleaned from the short span between samples two and three, sent me over the edge and prompted this post.  The only feasible conclusion is that my sentient iPod is purposely misrepresenting my musical preference in an effort to coerce me into purging at least some Maroon 5 from Its playlist, if not Its library.  I have duly taken this under advisement.

I love me some cinema.  But I just watched The Incredible Hulk, and holy shit.  I don’t want to go all Jeremy Hotz, but what a miserable movie that was.  So, Liv Tyler survives a helicopter crash with just a scratch on her eye, while hardened soldiers instantly die on impact (with the inevitable trickle of blood from the corner of the mouth)?  We’re going to do the “powerful protagonist vs. the suddenly more powerful antagonist” deal?  Really?  At least bring it (see Iron Man). 

And what is William Hurt doing in a role that is a) beneath him, and b) clearly intended for Ted Levine?

This movie is a turd.

So, I’ve been playing this fantastic 2.5D sidescroller called Shadow Complex, and it got me all reminiscent about another game called Flashback from my youth.  Granted, at the time, the motion-capture aspects were top notch, but the point is that it still holds its own today.  So much so, that I found a site where you can get it for free.  I learned that Delphine Software (also developer of the great Another World) has been defunct since 2002.  As I play this new iteration of a resurrected genre, and lament the passing of its forerunners, I realize that truly good games are like truly good literature.  Fortunately, you don’t need DosBox to enjoy Hunter Thompson and Raymond Chandler.

That brings up another point: if the consumers accept the likes of the Kindle, could we be saddling our literature with an unintendedly shorter shelf-life?  Will we eventually need a Kindle-emulator to read Chaucer?  I don’t really think so, but it’s an interesting thought exercise.

The Bster is out of town for a couple of days and my inner lion, as is its custom, has come out of its cage.  This consists typically of scandalously eating nothing but fish (which is not my lovely wife’s bag) and watching horror movies.  Last night’s feature was Oscar-would-be Saw IV.  I laughed.  I cried.  You get the drift.

As a backdrop to the conduct of these underground vices, I have kept our nation’s political goings-on in my periphery.  I normally wouldn’t deign to comment on these much ados, but I’m seeing a cornucopia of disparate issues that, together, bear the dropping of my opinion, at least in this personal venue.

I am a 24-hour news junky, principally getting my fix from CNN.  That particular network is the least annoying to me.  That being said… Jesus Christ.  We have real issues to be concerned with, but the various 24-hour news networks, for ratings-related purposes, distill these issues into populist-palatable chunks of news meat scraps to be tossed, with all earnestness of course, into the hungry mob below.  I am a member of the mob, but I fancy that I stand among it arms crossed and head shaking, scrutinizing the dripping chunks for the truly meaningful bits.  My questions below are aimed rhetorically at these news sources.

Can we get off gas prices for a few moments?  We have had quite a run building our disposable McSociety on the shoulders of cheap oil, knowing all the while that oil is a commodity outside of our locus of control.  As an addict needs his fix, we need our oil.  Our politicians (see McCain’s and Clinton’s boneheaded Gas Tax Holiday) seem to believe that we believe that the people’s chief concern with respect to oil prices’ continuous upward trajectory is how much it will cost us to drive the kids to Six Flags this summer, or how our 2-hour commutes to our jobs are becoming mutually exclusive to how often we can eat at Ruby Tuesday.  How about we address the real problem?  Why do you think that all the goods we buy are inexpensive (and yes, they are inexpensive)?  How does Wal-Mart offer $12 jeans and 50 lb bags of rice for $3?  The answer: hugely cheap transportation costs.  What happens when those costs double?  Triple?  We’re seeing the answer.  Let’s do our best to figure a way forward with a combination of energy diversification and more local consumption.  But can we please stop decrying the cost of a gallon of fuel?  Any drop in oil prices will only result in more consumption of it, which will only delay our realization that we need to make some changes in our lives.  Let’s skip the denial, and go right to acceptance. 

Can we also stop investing so much time and resources in the Democratic nomination process?  Clinton and Obama are both great candidates, who are almost certain to be leaps and bounds superior to our current Dunderhead-in-Chief.  Both of these candidates spend millions upon millions in their effort to clinch the nomination.  This is not their fault, but rather the nomination process that requires it.  Let’s shorten the primary/caucus season and require that sitting government officials running for office perform their actual job duties at least 75% of the time.  Are the three senators currently running really able to govern effectively given the monetary, time, and mental requirements of the current system?  Are they doing as much good for their states as they given if they were not running?  I assert that they cannot.  If I spent the majority of my time at work trying to get a promotion, I would get fired for ignoring my job duties.  Should we not expect the same from the potential leaders of our country?

We also need to stop talking about the recession for 5 minutes.  By continuing to tell Americans that they are downtrodden, they need help, their jobs are in danger, etc, we are exacerbating the problem.  I’m not saying that we bury our heads in the sand, but why do these news sources need to convince me that I and my neighbors are in bad shape?  This is only so easy to link back to gas prices.  The rhetoric goes like this: “America is in recession, but this $600 will make you happy, right?  Except that unemployment is way up, so you’ll probably be laid off.  Oil prices hit another record high.  People are starving in Africa.  Every school kid brings a 9mm to class, probably because test scores are way too low and drop-out rates are way too high.  If you bought your home with an ARM, you are so fucked.  Are you shitting yourself yet?”  Let’s all just take a collective deep breath, and keep doing our best.  Oh wait, that’s what we would be doing in the absence of the propaganda anyway.

Ah.  I feel better.

I am not, as a rule, a sports fan.  There’s just too darn much baggage that goes along with that moniker.  If, for example, I claim that I am a “football fan”, am a “football watcher”, or have “heard of a sport called football”, suddenly everyone with a y chromosome wants to share on Monday morning. Not so much about the great play we all witnessed during the previous game.  Not about how a particular quarterback has an “arm” or is a “chicken” or what have you.  They would rather discuss how the Obscurehawks new back’s, let’s say “Boogy Williams”, average rushing yards per game this season are sure to surpass the league’s all-time record for those occurring on at least 3 connsecutive Sunday games west of the Mississippi.  Don’t you think?!  Umm…

However, I do like me some hockey.  Don’t ask me why.  Specifically, I enjoy the Minnesota Wild.  As a wedding gift to my bride to be, I presented two matching Wild hocket jerseys (don’t worry, she likes the Wild too).  I have never had the urge to don any part of a sports uniform unless I was playing said sport.  Certainly never a sport to which a professional league is attached.  But I get excited about Wild hockey.

This season feels good.  Six and oh so far.  This may be due in part to the hiring of a shutout robot.  Their backup goalie didn’t do to shabby Sunday night either, shutting out the Ducks (who, coincidently, let the loss flow right off their backs).

I’m moving my jersey a couple more spots closer to the front of my closet. 

Brandy and I took a day off earlier this week to attend ValleyFair.  Now, I enjoy rides as much as the next person, but… wait.  No I don’t.  Not really.  Once I’ve actually ridden, that’s when I squeal with glee.  It’s like taking medicine for me – facing my fears and such. 

 The thing I loathe the most about any ride is falling.  Especially if I’m facing the ground while falling, watching death coming to greet me at 5000 miles per hour.  Few rides have distilled this particular experience down quite so well as this one.  Believe it or not, I managed to keep a smile on my face almost the entire time, with fingernails digging into my palms and bladder barely holding steady.  But once again, I live!

I haven’t spoken of it much (if at all?) but we’re laying sod this upcoming weekend.  I even went to the trouble of hiring teenagers, which if television is to be believed, should look something like this. 

We had planned on doing it last weekend, but God evidently had other plans.  Our summer weather has been, heretofore, dry.  Dry, dry, dry.  However, starting at the beginning of “Sod Week”, the heavens sent forth quite little deluge.  So, the sprinkler people couldn’t install the sprinklers, the sodding people couldn’t bring me sod, and I couldn’t bark orders at my oddly mature-looking child labor.  Dammit!  Plus, most of my employees that I hired for last weekend were busy this weekend with graduation parties so they couldn’t re-enlist.  Not to worry, my new crew is positively chomping at the bit.

By the way, have I talked to you yet about how much TMNT business pisses me off?  I’ll go so far as to label it both nonsense and malarchy.  Who are these sleek-looking animated hucksters?  I’m not sure about when and where this latest incarnation was birthed, but it seems to me that one needs to endure a certain duration of fanboy-dom, a waiting period if you will, before being privy to an acronym.  But this abomination splashed directly onto some rap scallion’s lunchbox in its abbreviated form, arrogantly asserting itself into the 5th grader’s vernacular.  I guaran-goddamn-tee you that if I grabbed that self same 5th grade lunchbox owner by the shirt and demanded, “Hey! What do those letters mean?  You don’t know, do you?!  What did you think of the original movies, or series, or comics?!?!  Didn’t know they existed, did you?! STOP TRYING TO TARNISH MY CHILDHOOD, YOU CHILDHOOD TARNISHER!!” he wouldn’t have an answer.  So yeah.  This is pretty funny, though.