So you wanna buy a guitar?

I stumbled across SoYouWanna while looking up, well, I can't remember what I was looking up.

The advice actually seems decent, so I will have to look into this to see if it is open source (something I believe in, like Wikkipedia).

Check out SoYouWanna.com if you want to:

Convert to Mormonism

Learn about Opera

Buy sneakers, the good kind, I guess...

Hold a séance

Dye your hair

Write a children's book

Rent a Tuxedo

...and quit smoking


I rented a tux this weekend, I was performing in a "roast." That was different. Since the tux isn't due until Monday, I think I should go out and garden in it, or wear it to church.

--gh

The B...

To see the other half of this image, click here.


--gh

Honey Bunny!

This game (Honey Bunny!) is not exactly addictive, except for the cute music, cute voices, and archaic action. It is worth playing, if only to hear the Princess encourage me with these words:

"YOU DON'T HAVE

ENOUGH HONEY,

BUNNY!  GO BUNNY, 

GO FOR THE HONEY!"

Leaves me all warm and cuddly inside...

--gh

Hello Summer!

I think we have had only two days above 90 degrees (F) this summer. I just opened the window, and it is downright chilly out there! Okay, 68 degrees isn't exactly chilly, but it is for July in the Midwest. We had three days above 90 in May, so that only makes five this year. I guess we are saving on the electricity for air-conditioning.

(Don't wear flip-flops around dog diarrhea.)

I am not planning to Hello this blog to death, in case you were wondering. It does give me the random opportunity to share images. But unless I get a digital camera, it would be purely derivative. (And this weblog is derivative enough for all seven of us, or however many read my ponderings.)

About 5 years ago I was addicted to a Persian radio station on the web. Every other day or so they would play a Farsi version of Another Brick in the Wall, part 2. It was worth waiting for. Man, I would pay good money to have a decent version of that right now.

I do pay for art. A few days ago I bought a napkin with the words "waisting ink" written over and over again. I admire the artist, because someone pointed out to him that he meant to write "wasting" and he just shrugged his shoulders. My pride would have been hurt over that, and I would have sought to destroy the work of art. It is now in my office, in a display case of PoMo items. (You know, the typical stuff: a piece of plaster from my home, part of the university library that almost hit me, a toy from my childhood, 5 lbs. of copper, some well-hidden mercury, a cigarette, slide rules, the usual items.)

My office is so clean it almost looks like a waiting room in a dentists office. I wonder how many jobs these days get to have a real office, with a door, and four solid walls. My brother has one, which is cool. And I think my sister does, too. Not sure about that. She lives several thousand miles away.

My sister thinks I tip too high at restaurants. I think I tip 20% because it is easier to calculate off the top of my head, and I am lazy that way. She is a strict 15%-er. However, I just read that a lousy tip is anything under 17%. So, I guess I am safe, but barely. Then again, this is from a website named bitterwaitress.com, so what should I expect.

(I searched for a link for www.bitterprofessor.com and came up empty handed. Blogger's spell checker does not have "blog," or "weblog" in it.)

--gh

A truly touching image, and a test for Hello... 

further broadening

Earlier I wrote about my musical tastes broadening, leaving only Enya and Cannibal Corpse. On the way to Jefferson City a yesterday, I learned to like Death Metal. That means I like everything in the world when it comes to music, except Enya. Someone told me that this means I have no taste in music since I don't discriminate. Sorry about that, maybe they're right. But I know more about music than most people, so maybe I am just tolerant.

Speaking of tolerant, also on this trip I realized that I can listen to just about ANYTHING on the radio. Mid-Missouri has talk-radio on FM (not even on AM up here, I don't think), and that doesn't drive me crazy. Neither does NPR (talking or eclectic). I can listen to a guy screaming about Bush's failed foreign policies, or some church sermon from a guy with a southern accent. Last year I could not stand church on the radio. I listened and sang along to country, easy listening, classic-rock, rap, pop, and of course my spanish-language channel. (On the way home I was singing so happily to Selena's Como la Flor that I just about lost my concentration on driving. Salena!) I sing about as good as Will Ferrell, if that helps you make the mental picture.

The only thing I don't like to hear on the radio is sports-talk. I like to hear sports, in fact that is the best way to enjoy baseball, since you can read or work. No, I mean those opinionated sports call-in shows.

I am not as open-minded about television. (I get a kick out of church-TV, which Amy detests). I only like 92% of the channels. This includes all the music channels, news & financial channels, shopping channels, and documentary channels. The problem is that my wife likes the other 8%. She doesn't have a bizarre taste in tv-viewing, either. She likes the networks, which I don't seem to watch for some reason, as much as Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNN/FoxNews (same channel, really), MTV, ShopNBC, or the History Channel. I miss television, I guess we will turn that back on in about 5-6 weeks. I can't wait to watch people selling knives, computers, or hand-creme on the QVC. I can't wait to watch Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. And of course the music channels. We have 5 or 6 of those, not including whatever videos are shown on BET or gala/univision.

Opinionated people say that television is bad for your mind. But I don't think it is any worse than reading fiction.

--gh

My Bill Bixby haiku

A little over a decade ago, I participated in one of the top 100 Internet events, the Bill Bixby Memorial Haiku Bake-off. Here was my contribution, (to the newsgroup alt.radio-shack.bill.bixby.dead.dead.dead).

"My wife says 'He's nice.'

Santa Claus used to scare me,

Bill Bixby never did."

Remember when everything on the Internet was repeated three times? I think that actually had something to do with Lovecraft, or something. I never read that stuff. I laughed when I saw a domain name starting with "www" because I thought it was a reference to net culture. I did not know what this INITIALISM meant.

I still remember my first experience with the web. I was logged into a UNIX machine at the University of Idaho and one of my doctoral committee members, then a CS professor, asked if I had seen the web yet. He showed me to type "Mosaic" (capital letters, unix, case sensitive) and the program launched. There was no default page. He told me to type this in:
http://www.lego.com

I understood the power of the web immediately. There was LEGO history, art, and photos of intricate statues and buildings made from LEGOs. Better yet, if I remember correctly, there was a link to places you could WRITE TO to order LEGO sets.

That was in early 1993, I think. I had my own web page in less than a week!

Can you remember the first web page you went to?

--gh

Simply creepy

Okay, I just received a SPAM message that had some bizarre and creepy words at the bottom. I understand that random sentences are now inserted in junk mail to fool Bayesian SPAM filters. But come on, this just freaks me out:

"Unlike so many toothpicks who have made their 

ghastly mortician to us, dissidents remain lowly.

Any prime minister can avoid contact with defined 

by tape recorder, but it takes a real swamp to 

avocado pit for."

 

Perhaps there is some truth to it taking a "real swamp to avocado pit for," but I remain skeptical. If I were Dennis Miller or some literary fakester I would say this was like Franz Kafka, or say it was Kafka-esque. But I have actually read Kafka, and this is not how he wrote. I like Europeans.

Is it too early to predict that Nicolas Sarkozy will be the next French president? No, general elections have not been called, but it appears he is about to take over Chirac's UMP. What's his appeal? For one, he knows there are more countries in Europe besides Germany. Two, as current finance minister he is taking potshots at the 35-hour work week and high-minimum (oxymoron?) wage that has brought his dear country to 10% unemployment. Third, he opposed the Muslim scarf ban, (Chirac was appealing to the lowest common denominator in politics, bigotry and antisemitism, by supporting that ban). Finally, unfortunately for Chirac, he is younger.

Writing about political things does not seem so distasteful if it's regarding another continent. If you are a norte-americano, you might now be thinking "they have a 35-hour work week?" This was proposed a few years ago to decrease unemployment and increase production. It has done neither. If you are wondering what the work week was before 2001-2002, it was 39 hours. Of course, this is a middle-class argument. I bet the average hard-working Frenchman is busting out 60-70 hours a week, just like his compadres around the world.

I worked even harder than that last year, and don't care to repeat it. Starting a new graduate program, totally online -- and from scratch, is no easy task. I was responsible for two of those classes. This year should be better. Many of my colleagues (across the university, not my department) feel they are part of the working class. This is an insult to the real workers in this country. (A casual look at their uncalloused hands will tell you the real story.)

Are my hands calloused? Sure, but only because I have a garden and am renovating my house.

--gh

Welcome to McDonald's Asian Pacific Islander Americans - i'm lovin' it!

Okay, quick, name ALL the things wrong with this McDonald's website!

Some PR genius really thought this was cultural outreach. I understood that this was satire and social commentary. But this? Is it a joke? Do you think McDonald's will offer www.i-am-[insert ethnicity here].com for other hyphen-americans? I am so jealous.

If you don't get anything about this post, and have high-bandwidth connection, then click here.

--gh
If you want to know everything about Pacific Islander culture (according to McDonald's), click here. (Actually, it looks like only two things, and it is only Hawaiian...)

Cats watching cats watching cats...

Checking out the The Infinite Cat Project made me wish two things. 1) that I had a digital camera so I could steal a neighborhood cat and participate. 2) I wish for my own registered domain name. I just am too cheap and not that geek enough to do it, I guess.

Note that I did not wish for an actual cat. And giving proper respect: Mr. Pants lead me to the Infinite Cats...

Those two web sites justify the existence of the Internet. If you could take this back to me in 1984 at Chantilly High School and say "in the future, there will be a world-wide communications network that can link mostly anything," all you would need to do is show Mr. Pants, and then I would have understood.

--gh

Let this randomizer choose which band you SHOULD be in.

As you can see, my dog should be the guitarest for Marilyn Manson. 

Which Band Should You Be In? by couplandesque
Your Name
Band Name	Marilyn Manson
Role	Guitarist
Trademark	Loves Fan Interaction
Love Interest	The Vocalist
Created with the ORIGINAL MemeGen!

Comment if you get a good one.
--gh

A review of Abbey Road, (a nice 'Porduction')

I was writing with an old friend about my favorite Beatles album, Abbey Road.

Oddly enough, later I also decided to look deeper into the Star Wars Kid phenomenon. I wanted to check out the blog-page of one of the people that brought this to the forefront (and apparently raised money for this poor kid's devastating future).

Well, waxy.org describes a game almost as alluring as a GIS for hot names, or not so hot names. (Note to self, GIS for names is leaking some stuff that is TOO HOT, even with "safe mode on." I guess that's a warning.)

Basically, the game is to sort Amazon.com reviews of popular, classic, or historical music, art, or literature by WORST first. Read through some of them for a good time. But my favorite was for Abbey Road. I checked, and it was there. Here are some excerpts:

"I bought this album because I totally thought 

the guy on the right was Kate Hudson's husband. 

So I mean, I THOUGHT I was scoring some QUALITY 

stoner grooves or like, something kinda White Stripey."

...

"And those lyrics...they don't take it from the 

streets to the suburbs (props to Eminem) or the 

suburbs to the suburbs (shout out to tha Kid)

--in fact THEY DON'T RAP AT ALL."

...

"Confusing. Give Me your body is a wonderland any day."

...

"Speaking of heavy, forget slammin' tracks

--these guys are ENGLISH, so they don't hit 

it like like Korn or Limp Bizkit or Phantom Planet."

...

"So, in summary, check out a real band like Incubus."

And that was from just one review.
Another poor fellow states that he "heard they don't tour anymore."

Here are a few more from another budding Beatles fan:

"I heard the Beatles album "Rubber Soul", the one 

with their one hit 'Norwegian Wood'."

...

"I always saw these guys as a one hit wonder."

...

"Apparently this band was an influence for great 

bands like Herman's Hermits and New Order and 

stuff, so, I thought, okay...if I can find it, 

i'"ll chekc it out. I found it. Checked it out. 

Uh...Ever heard of a word called 'Porduction', lads?"

...

"There's a reason you never hear of these guys 

any more. They're probably all living in a shack 

trying to live on their little checks for 'Norwegian Wood'."

--gh

a 25-year-old wish (warning: tree mutilation story here)

When I was 4 or 5, I was told to make a wish on a star. It was not a shooting star, or even the "first star" of the evening, (which usually are planets). However, with an official adult-approval for a wish, I closed my eyes and wished as hard as I could. What did I wish for? Well, I wanted to fly. But being the stupid kid that I was, I wished for these beautiful and glorious white feathery wings. I knew they would be impractible at times, but maybe they would be worth it for all of the grand flying I would be doing. If I wasn't such an idiot, I could have just wished for an ability to fly, and not some avian means by which flying could be possible.

Later on, I grew less stupid, and my dreams became more practical. I was the first boy in the fifth grade to admit at the lunch table that I wanted to get married, and become a dad. (Of course, I was still partially stupid, because I also told my classmates that I wanted to be a farmer. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.) But this issue of legacy hit me at a young stage. Later that summer, I carved my name into a tree in the woods behind my house. My wish, at age 11, was that someday my own children would see this very carving. It is close to 25 years later, and my children just spent a week with their grandparents. This is an excerpt from a postcard that I received today:

"Tyler & I have been exploring 

in the woods.  We have found

a tree with your name on it."

It really made my day. (And I have already had such a great day to begin with!)
--gh

Embarassing the kids...

I was writing to Mark about my disire to ride a bike to work again and he warned me not to consider something that would embarass the kids. So, here are my choices. Please comment on this thread to voice your opinion.

Here is a classic from Schwinn, my personal choice the Cruiser Deluxe:


On the other hand, here is the Revive from Giant with even more comfortable seats:


And finally Giant offers this Stilleto model:


Whaddayathink?

--gh

Santos City, Brazil

Ah, isn't this a pretty 14-story building? Is it an office building, a hotel, a spa?

Uh, no, actually it is a mausoleum in Brazil. The links says they are planning a 40-story version, ready in 3-yrs...

--gh

Messages from email...

Just testing the message sending from email thing.

Now I just need to get one of those Handheld PDAs that can blog.

I dropped my Palm V this morning, on my oak floor. That is probably drop
#20. No problems whatsoever. I know that it is old and busted, and half
the buttons have cracked fallen out, but show me a new PDA that can take
that kind of abuse!

--gh

Sitio Oficial

Ah, I found it. If you want to hear the alure of banda music, check out this swf file at the homepage for Los Horoscopos de Durango!

If you can listen to that and say that it hasn't changed your life, then you just aren't trying...

Now I need to find out which version of "Mesa Que Mas Aplauda" that I like. KBBX plays two, and one is much better.

--gh

Clarinet (www.sneezy.org?)

Earlier I mentioned that I started to play the Clarinet. After two days, Amy told me that I was almost at the level of the 6th-graders after a full year of band. This leads me to the following conclusions:

I am a music genius. By next weekend I will be able to play like Arty Shaw.

My wife likes to flatter me.

Sixth-grade band is not as complicated as I thought it was.

I don't have any aspirations like being the next Acker Bilk, but I have been desiring to do this for over 15 years. I have access to music students and professors that I can ask questions, so I am not planning on formal lessons or anything.

So, I guess I can encourage those who have waited over a decade to start an instrument. I don't believe that it is hard to do as an adult (like people say about languages), so grab that harmonica, guitar, harp, or pipe-organ and start learning now!

I began teaching guitar lessons last week. This is something that I have wanted to do for about 15 years as well. Before I saw it as a source of income, but since I took a professional job, I have no desire to teach lessons for money. I don't feel that I have the time for that, either. So I decided that I would teach any youth at my church for about an hour before their evening service. I guess you can join my church's youth group if you want free guitar lessons.

--gh

Indiana

I have been most satisfied with using pictures of buildings as my desktop wallpaper. For instance, here are some shots of Indianapolis, Indiana that almost fill the need. (Not big enough, though.)

For some huge building pictures, check out the Sky Scraper City forums. Gotta search around, but right now I have this great shot of South Bend, Indiana:


Perhaps my fixation on buildings lies in my non-suburban surroundings. Sure I live in a "city" (and Maryville's city lots are 66x132ft.) But, if I want nature I can go stand in my garden (nearly the size of one of those city lots... 70x80ft.)

But you may be more puzzled by my geo-lust for Indiana. I am not even sure if I can understand it. It is, in my opinion, the most perfect state/place on the surface of this planet. I have not been to Bolivia, or Elko, NV, but I am pretty sure that Indiana ranks right up there. Why? I have no clue. But I have never had an unpleasant experience in Indiana. It has always been beautiful staying or passing through this state. I like the landscape, the weather, the architecture, and the people. I will probably never get to live there.

I know a couple of people from there and they do not share my impression. They say it is much like Missouri.

--gh

My sister hates whistling so much.

Ah, here are the Top 30 Greatest Moments of Rock & Roll Whistling.

We picked up a clarinet today. Just started playing it.
--gh

LeTtER HEaD

This is the type of letter that I would write if I had my own Governor letter-head stationary.

Remember when EVERYBODY wanted Lay's money? Ah, the 1990s...

--gh

GIS for "Art"

Does anyone else think it is weird that a Google Image Search (GIS) for the word "Art" leads to a web page called: toothpaste for dinner? Yeah, this picture is LINK #2!

---

Just busted out laughing when my wife joined in on the chorus of Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like We Do?"

--gh

Truth

Without being too political, I have to get something off of my mind. You might know what I am talking about if you follow politics, entertainment, and the dangerous combination of those two.

There is no temperature at which TRUTH burns.

Truth is constant. Truth is absolute. Truth does not need to transcend, it just is.

Truth.

--gh

Musical tastes just broadened by spontaneous generation...

In my teens, I had to start defining my musical tastes by what I didn't like, rather than what I liked. Of course, the list had about 20 styles in it, but out of thousands, that's not too bad.
I just realized that my disdain for Contemporary Christian Music ended. I mean, it just ended, five minutes ago. No, I did not go out and order DC Talk or Newsboys CDs, but I won't cringe anymore when I hear it. I think I stopped disliking that too-white (sorry) over-compressed praise music as well.

Now I am down to disliking only two musical styles. So, that just leaves me with New-Age-Euro music and Death Metal. In short, if it sounds like Enya or Cannibal Corpse, I still don't like it. But believe me, I like EVERYTHING ELSE.

There's a combination for ya...

--gh

World Music does not sound like Reggae

Thanks to the blues-like styles of Ali Farke Toure and Habib Koite, the World can now know that reggae is not universal.

Not that I have anything against Reggae, but music from Mali has the edge recently.

--gh