A small chuckle

Those guys at woot.com are masters of satire. Here's an excerpt from their live blog of Steve Ballmer's keynote at CES yesterday:

A musical-comedy interlude was provided by Aussie-sounding acoustic trio Tripod, who lifted their shtick from Flight of the Conchords the way Windows has lifted a lot of its shtick from Apple. We give MS points for hiring an act whose name includes the letters "ipod".

A Horrid Forward

One of the most ridiculous e-mail forwards I've seen in some time:

*Three **Bullets*
>
>
> **With God all things are possible*-Matthew ** 19:26 *
>
> There once was a man who had nothing for his family to eat.
> He had an old rifle and three bullets.
> So, he decided that he would go out hunting
> and kill some wild game for dinner.
>
> As he went down the road, he saw a rabbit.
> He shot at the rabbit and missed it.
> The rabbit ran away.
>
> Then he saw a squirrel and fired a shot at the squirrel but
> missed it.
> The squirrel disappeared into a hole in a cottonwood tree.
>
> As he went further, he saw a large wild 'Tom'
> turkey in the tree,
> but he had only one bullet remaining.
>
> A voice spoke to him and said, *
> 'Pray first, aim high, and stay focused.*
>
> However, at the same time, he saw a deer
> which was a better kill.
>
> He brought the gun down and aimed at the deer.
> But, then he saw a rattlesnake between his legs about to
> bite him,
> so he naturally brought the gun down further to shoot the
> rattlesnake.
>
> Still, the voice said again to him, *
> 'I said, 'Pray, Aim high, and Stay focused.'*
>
> So, the man decided to listen to God's voice.
>
> He prayed, then aimed the gun high up in the tree,
> and shot the wild turkey.
>
> The bullet bounced off the turkey and killed the deer.
[huh???]>
> The handle fell off the gun, hit the snake in the head, and
> killed it. [um...]
> And, when the gun had gone off, it knocked him into a pond.
>
> When he stood up to look around,
> he had fish in all his pockets, [Well, of course.]
> a dead deer, and a turkey for his family to eat.
>
> The snake (Satan) was dead simply because
> the man listened to God. *
>
> Moral of the story:* *
>
> Pray first before you do anything,* *
> aim and shoot high in your goals,* *
> and stay focused on God.*
>

I guess I give them credit for resisting the urge to tack on a bunch of guilt-tripping at the end about "If you love Jesus, forward this. If you regularly slaughter babies as satanic sacrifices, delete it." I guess this e-mail was originally written by someone who thought it would be inspiring??? And here's the kicker - apparently there are some people I know who DID.

I can't take this kind of thing before 11 on a Monday.

Music

So I'm wondering what's new in the music world that's worth a listen. If anyone has input, feel free to contribute.

One of my youth group guys just discovered "Falling Slowly" a song from the indie film Once that won the Oscar for Best Original Song this year. I still haven't found the film, but I would like to. The song is decent, and the premise seems promising. (A promising premise! Eh? Eh?) [update 1/8/09: I got the film on DVD for cheap, and it's pretty great. Lots of f-words, but I think that's because Irish people say f-words just to make sure they're still breathing. Great plot and some very funny moments.]

Ben Folds' newest effort is a fine one, but then whaddya expect? One of my favorites was the collab with Regina Spektor called "You Don't Know Me." It's quirky and fun. Beware the language though...

Speaking of Regina Spektor, the soundtrack from Prince Caspian also contained her song "The Call." She didn't write it, but her performance is meltingly lovely. Her voice is doing some pretty technical stuff and making it sound effortless.

On the strength of those two songs, we got Spektor's latest album Begin to Hope. It's a bit esoteric at times, but her musicianship and songwriting are pretty impressive. That, and she draws on her eclectic heritage as a Russian-born Jewish-American for inspiration. "Apres Moi" is one of my favorites on the album. We got the iTunes version, which includes a few bonus tracks.

One of the surprisingly good albums I've found lately is Chris Rice's newest, What A Heart Is Beating For. Despite the fact some precise personalities might insist that a more correct title would be That For Which A Heart Is Beating, this is a good album. Even more encouragingly, it's getting no radio play on KLOVE that I've heard. "Here Come Those Eyes" is great stuff for romantic occasions, and "Punch Lines and Ironies" has some of that great lyric and melody combination I love about Chris. "So Much For My Sad Song" is a warm tune that Cindy refers to as "anti-emo." I think the world could do with a bit more music of that description.

Not especially new, but still good, is the latest from Sanctus Real, We Need Each Other. This guy's voice is one of the best, and their songwriting is very solid. This is a band that I would hit the road with as a touring keyboardist tomorrow if they called. From the offbeat timing of the opening rocker "Turning on the Lights" to the solid ballad "Lay Down My Guns," this album is in danger of getting over-played on my iTunes playlist.

I could go on ad nauseum, but I'm curious about your input.

Too Soon...

Today, the day after Halloween, Wal-Mart is playing Christmas music in the overhead speakers. Also, it's the "Jingle Bell Rock" variety, not the classy jazz/orchestral type. I have not the words...

Funny stuff

This blog entry had me chuckling:

http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/05/208-christianizing-your-facebook.html

The rest of this blog is pretty consistently funny as well.

Coffee Shops

El Dorado Springs has a bit of an odd tradition. For decades the elderly gentlemen of the town (and the surrounding area) used to meet every morning at a ridiculously early hour to drink coffee, read the newspaper, and express opinions on all manner of topics at a place colloquially known as Clem's, or just "the coffee shop." The official name of the place was Casey's Honeybee Restaurant, but nobody called it that. The coffee was cheap and good, and the regulars and semi-regulars could count on reliable service and Clem Casey, the proprietor, keeping the flow of conversation going. Then Clem retired and sold his restaurant to a couple rumored to have moved to town from California. Within two months, the place had closed its doors, and has now sat vacant for more than two years.

The odd thing is that since Casey's sat next to the local McDonald's, and since McDonald's offers decent prices on a cup of coffee for senior citizens, the older gentlemen have unofficially shifted their early-morning custom to McDonald's. And now, when you hear one of these pillars of the community talk about going to "the coffee shop" in the mornings, they are actually talking about McDonald's. But McDonald's is only called "the coffee shop" in the early mornings. After about 9 am, they refer to it as McDonald's again like the rest of the world.

I have mixed feelings about this phenomenon. On the one hand, I am in favor of any tradition like this where people can gather and share a sense of community. On the other hand, something in me rebels against a major national chain serving as a host to this kind of thing. I even typically eschew Starbuck's or Caribou coffee in favor of local establishments. Clem's was never a coffee shop to fit the modern definition - their idea of innovative variety was to brew both regular and decaf - but I respected the culture and local flavor of the place. And there are other local establishments in town that could serve as "the coffee shop." I wish McD's weren't getting that revenue.

The McDonald's corporation has absolutely no idea what great fodder for advertising they have here. They're trying to introduce the coffee-shop vibe into their restaurants in several test markets, including ours. They're redecorating, including in several cases constructing separate rooms with couches and coffee tables to promote the atmosphere. If they realized what is going on with the elderly gentlemen in our town, I'm convinced some advertising wheeze at the corporate level would just turn backflips of yuppie glee.

Still Lazy After All These Years

When I was small, my mom told me over and over again that if I just sat around reading and daydreaming and if I just spent all my time riding my bike and pretending to be the Lone Ranger or Michael Knight or a secret agent or a sea captain, I would never get my homework done. She was a cruel, cruel mother who forced me to practice my piano lesson - sometimes up to an hour per day! She consistently squelched my creativity and crushed my spirit by regularly assigning such drudgery as putting away the dishes from the dishwasher, mowing the lawn, folding laundry, vacuuming the carpet, and (horrors!) putting my toys away!

I remember one incident in particular where I was lounging in the recliner and reading an Important Book, probably from the Sugar Creek Gang series. There were various items of dubious origin scattered across the living room floor, and my mom told me to come and pick up my things. I said "Okay," and of course returned to my Important Book. By the time thirty seconds or so had elapsed, I could no longer even remember the conversation, except for a vague nagging sensation that I needed to remember something when I finished the book. When she returned after a few minutes and saw me unmoved from my literary repose, she let me know that the time was now. "Come and put away your things RIGHT NOW." I decided to take the obvious blame-shifting maneuver. "But, Moooom!" I wailed, "NONE of this stuff is MINE!" My mother's response to that brilliant bit of rhetoric will shock you. The Dorothy Purtle that most people know and love have never seen the side of her that so despises Important Books that she would resort to what Stuart Scott so insightfully diagnoses as "playa-hatin'." She began walking around the room, picking up all the things that actually did belong to me. Some of these things were very important to me, like Woofy the stuffed dog, my lever-action Daisy toy rifle that sounded and kicked almost like a real gun when fired, and others. My mother took all these items into her room and put them on the top shelf of her closet. She told me that I would get them back the day I turned 65 (or some other date equally distant in the mind of a ten-year-old - it may possibly have just been a week). A heartless woman, my mother.

She even went so far as to tell me that if I developed the habit of being lazy, I would be lazy when I grew up, and it would be difficult to cope in the "real world." Well, most of the "real world" I've experienced has been much kinder than the one for which I was prepared. You don't get fired from your minimum-wage job if you show up a couple of minutes late. You don't even get fired if you just don't show up one day, as long as you only do that once a year or so. But my mom was right about one thing: I am still lazy. I turned thirty on Tuesday, and I now officially have no excuses for not behaving as an adult should. But I'm still lazy. I have to pretty much zap myself with 110-volt current to get myself to wash dishes or vacuum floors. But I am pretty energetic and motivated when it comes to my job, and that's something only a small percentage of the global work force can claim.

I haven't really gotten much teasing about starting my fourth decade. This one is probably not as annoying as the big four-oh. The most depressing thing about my age is that I can no longer hear the "teacher-proof ring tone." The typical teacher-proof ring tone is about 17 kHz, and my hearing now tops out about 14.5 kHz. As recently as two years ago, I could still hear it. Where does your hearing top out? Check here. (Remember that if you have cheap computer speakers you probably won't be able to hear anything above 15k or so. Try a good set of headphones.)


In other news, my hot wife had Governor Matt Blunt visit her Calculus class on Tuesday. He was coming to observe Cindy teaching using her new SmartBoard, which his METS education initiative helped to fund. Cindy was very nervous, but when the governor showed up, she just coolly taught Calculus and used the SmartBoard to its best advantage. The governor stayed for about fifteen minutes and made the class nervous. Then he and his entourage left. Everyone laughed, because they were relieved and because of how silly it was to pretend that it was just another normal Calculus class with The Governor standing there and a dozen cameras in the back of the room. Cindy gets extra kudos for putting up the giant "Don't Panic" sign, printed in large friendly letters on the wall over the SmartBoard.

Tonight, we're planting flowers, the kind that you plant in the fall. I have no idea about that kind of thing - I'm just going to dig where Cindy tells me to dig. I dig flowers.