Category: Links

Video Amusement.

DmentD

In leiu of anything of substance, I give you the accumulation of more valueless internet fluff.  Entertaining fluff, at the least.

The Slap Chop/Rap Chop remix:

The JetLev water-propelled jetpack:

Stand By Me – Playing for Change: Peace Through Music

Trailers for The Hunt For Gollum (click-through for the trailers), an unauthorized 45-minute fan-film set in the Lord of the Rings universe.  The story was inspired by an appendix to Lord of the Rings, in which Tolkien explains “what Aragorn and Gollum got up to before the trilogy began.”  The whole thing is being produced for £3000.

All You Texan Voters…

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Most people I know have already been told about this, however, there is a bill trying to be passed to allow baking businesses from home in Texas.  Obviously Sweets and I are very eager for this to be passed.

Tonight this bill made it from the Public Health Committee to the Calendars Committee.  There is a call out now to inundate and overwhelm the Chair and members of the Calendars committee (and for the record Representative Lois W. Kolkhorst is one of the committee members actively, vehemently trying to oppose this — she’s a ball breaker — do what you will with that bit of information), with phone calls requesting that HB 3282 be put on the calendar immediately for floor debate and vote.  It must be out of committee by May 11 or it will die.  There are 7,000 bills filed this session, we must be BIGGER and LOUDER than all the others to get pushed to the front of the pack.

Please, please, please call them, it all helps, we want this to be passed.

Shameless Plugging Of Much Coolness.

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I stumbled across Martin Whitmore‘s site quite by accident… but isn’t that how the internet works most of the time?  Once there I was hooked, and determined to throw money at him (he does one hell of a pole-dance).

What does he do?  He’s an illustrator who has recently abandoned his day job in order to pursue making a living from his jeebus given talents alone — and those talents are abundant.  I can support that.

He’s in Austin, so that makes him a local artist, and moves him further up my list when I’m choosing things to buy to put on the wall or on me.  I can support that.

He’s got a dark sense of humor, and isn’t afraid to laugh at himself.  I can support that.

He’s got a zombie, and zombie-huntress pinup fetish.  I will support that.

I’ve already picked up the Cephalopocalypse t-shirt (seen worn at Christmas), the Chaos & Order Fairies prints (soon to be coming to a wall near me) and the Cephalopocalypse sticker (soon to be appearing all over town… on the back of my truck).

Go.  Buy his wares, commission original work from him, shower him with moolah.  Not just because he’s trying to make good by supporting himself with his talents, but because his stuff is fucking cool.  Do it now, or I will withhold crawfish from you unwashed heathens… I’ll do it, I swear to Bob!

Readings.

DmentD

In a William Gibson mood these days… getting back to the father of cyberpunk’s roots.  Finished re-reading Burning Chrome and Neuromancer.  I have a huge literacrush on Molly Millions.

Sadly, I devoured the latest Discworld book, Making Money far too quickly.  I dig Terry Pratchett, and the entirety of the Discworld… world.  His characters are so flesh and blood real, and his writing just keeps getting better.  He’s not afraid to tackle serious topics, and his humor is both light and dark, and that suits me just fine.  Also read Nation, his latest non-Discworld book, and ripped through the Bromeliad trilogy, both of which are billed as “young adult” literature, but addresses some very adult topics (just like Pixar makes “kiddie” animated features… yeah, right).

Currently in the middle of re-reading David Sedaris′ When You Are Engulfed In Flames.  Such acid wit, razor sharp and wilting… especially when he turns the beam on himself.  I think when I finish this I’ll be in the right frame of mind for…

Kurt Vonnegut.  What a fantastic writer, but so dark and sorrowful.  I have to be in the right frame of mind to read Vonnegut, I have to brace myself mentally before diving in to keep from being drug down with him.

Where Them Wild Things Be.

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You know, I never entertained the thought that the book Where the Wild Things Are would ever be anything other than the book it is.  Not that I disbelieved it could be translated to another medium (and it has already, frankly, in animated form — but it never took hold in the imaginations of the kids who loved the book), or that it was sacred or anything, but just… well… I dunno.

It’s always been that book I loved as a kid (along with the little known, but utterly fantastic How to Care for Your Monster), and that I still really adore to this day.  The monsters are beautifully drawn, and I have always had an affinity for Moishe (and he is, incidentally, hanging upside down in my office at work creating mischief… and reminding me to do the same), who I am just noticing I bear a resemblance to.

Well, they’ve been working on a movie adaptation of it for a little while now, and there is now a trailer out.  It’s still too early to tell, even from the sketchy trailer, if it has potential to be entertaining.  I’m holding on to guarded optimism.

This Guy Just Won The Internet.

DmentD

Courtesy of Joshuah Bearman, by way of BoingBoing, I have just had my mind blown:

“The guy peruses god knows how many clips of songs, historical performances, homemade bedroom noodling, high school band recitals, and low budget YouTube instrumental instructional videos, and combines them to form his own songs. The result is seven diverse — and good! — songs of various genres. That first one arranges some fairly active and original funk out of dozens of different instruments and melodies, including a guy with a mullet playing a theremin.”

Here’s MORE of that guy’s work.

Carnival Starvation.

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It’s starting.   Can you feel it?

That jittery flutter in my brain has been making my skull itch for about a week now.  It’s carnival season, and I can feel the pull in my very bones.  It’s something I’ve taken for granted my entire life — sometimes loving it for the joy of the sensation of community and being with my friends acting like a fool, sometimes loathing it for its intrusion into my life, sometimes avoiding it like the plague for fear of going homicidal on the the mass idiot crowds — but it has always been there.

I miss it.  And I never realized how much I would until it was no longer a part of the background noise of my life.  I’ve been away from NOLA long enough now for that sensation of something… missing, right around the beginning of the year, to become prominent.  The colors are duller around Austin, the air is missing the tinkle of the familiar old carnival classics — the ones we’ve been playing for well over 40 years now, and nobody ever questions why that tired old music from 50’s, 60’s and 70’s is still the signature music of the season… it just is.  It’s part of the DNA of the city.

Rifling through my music collection, I was heartbroken to find that none of my Mardi Gras music survived the flood, and I had never converted any to digital.  I have been asked no less than four times in the last few weeks if I had any to play… and I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t.  I just got the faithful old classic, Mardi Gras In New Orleans, and have been listening to it and smiling so broadly, I swear my grin is going to meet in the back, and pop the top of my head clean off.  I’m putting out a call for anyone with more of the same to help me bulk up my collection, pleaseandthankyou.

The itch is scratched, but it’s not gone.  It’s gonna take being shoulder to shoulder with a rowdy rabble of the unwashed masses, watching the lights, smelling the diesel, screaming my throat raw, and reaching higher to grab the useless — and ultimately worthless except to my starving soul — trinkets that symbolize not just a season, but a part of my life that won’t ever fade.

“Every year, at carnival time, we get a new zoot!”
– The Wild Magnolias