saturday matinee

Keith is an amazing talent as a musician, guitarist and master luthier. He designed and built his Medley 27-string guitar in order to play the music in his head.

(stolen from)

saturday funny

for SXSW

Back in the days of my youth, I went to college at the University of Texas At Austin. So I was there at the beginning of SXSW. Back then, it was a regional music festival, a chance for bands from Texas and the states around to try and be seen by whatever music executives* could be lured into town. It went on all over Asutin, and for $25 or so you could get a pass and see a lot of good music in a very short time. And when I say "see", I actually mean "see". Ordinary people could actually get in and watch bands, not just high-falutin' executives, famous musicians, and various other monied hangers-on. SXSW these days is pretty much an industry love-in, where the next big band, already chosen, brushed up and made ready for marketing is, well, marketed.

You'll need to embiggen this to read it, though you probably wont recognize many of the bands when you do, which was the whole damn point of the thing! I can assure you, though, it was great, which is why, like most wonderful things, the money arrived and fucked the whole thing up for everyone but the folks with the money.
But hey, listen up you oh so cool folks, so pleased with yourself for being at SXSW and hanging with the bands and being fabulous and all. I was there before it was cool, which in modern terms makes me even cooler than you. So suck it! Bwa ha ha ha!
By the way, if you want to see something more like SXSW used to be, you gotta head north these days, to 35 Denton, which, sadly is done for this year.


* i.e., those who couldnt be arsed to go to regular shows in scattered locations, and were pleased to have the bands come to them. I call that lazy, myself.

for my anniversary

I need to have the wife do this tomorrow morning

type this into google and search:

sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

dont let me forget

it's true

It's Truuuuuuuuuuue!

a dichotomy

So, I was reading a facebook post of a conservative friend of mine, who was "informing" everyone about a bus-drivers strike in Tempe and Pheonix, AZ. Seems the drivers "make between $12 and 22.50 per hour, have a 401k program, five weeks paid vacation, 11 paid holidays and the ability to accrue 60 sick days a year as well as five consecutive years of wage increases". Here were some of the comments from his less liberal friends:

- "Man! I don't have any of that!"

- "[R]ight now they make between 12-22. They were offered a 1% raise per year for the next 5 years plus all the other perks.... Unions need to go"

- "RIDICULOUS!! Give me a break. Unions definately need to go. I don't get any of that either....However, I did choose to be self-employed."

Okay, let's ignore that a measly 1% doesnt even cover the normal increase in any year's rise in the cost of living. How about we move on to the fact that these are the same conservatives who talk about the "envy" and "jealousy" of liberals whenever there is a complaint about the high pay of CEOs or Wall Street pirates. How is it okay to begrudge some poor bastard who drives a bus (presumably because he belongs to a union), but it's not okay to complain about a well-connected company executive making 100s of times the pay of a typical worker?

Generally, I leave his posts alone, because I'm polite that way. It's Facebook, not Blogger, after all. At the same time, this kind of hypocrisy really gets on my tits. One wonders what'd happen if CEOs formed a union? Besides, I suspect that if I commented on his post, using the last line of the above paragraph, he'd simply deny that he'd ever said anything like that, and I simply dont care enough about him or what he thinks to go to the effort of digging up the proof that he has.

a thought

So, I've been thinking about this whole Limbaugh/Fluke flap a bit, and I think that maybe I've figured something out. Republicans have, when confronted with the misogyny that seems to permeate the GOP and conservative commentators, pointed to more liberal commentators like Bill Maher and their descriptions of some of the more prominent conservative women, such as Michelle Bachmann or Ann Coulter. And while they are perhaps correct to do so, it's curious that they only seem to do so when they are themselves are being attacked for their own harsh name-calling. As if, the rest of the time, they just dont care what's said about their women-folk, that it is only when they need a convenient defense for their own behavior that they turn to the Well You Do It Too defense, but are otherwise silent.

Maybe not, just a thought.

sunday funny

saturday matinee

Getting your bike in motion while someone is sitting on the rear rack is difficult because of the extra weight. You have to start moving your bike forward and then your passenger has to hop on the rear rack. The Dutch Side Saddle Hop - a three-step move to elegantly hop on the rear rack of a bike - makes it easy once you know how to do it.

(stolen - shamelessly - from The Presurfer)

By the way, check out all the bicycles everywhere. This obviously aint America.