Back to Our Roots

Happy Cinco de Mayo, friends! This year, it happened to fall on May 5th, which happens to be a hump day. Couldn’t have asked for better timing! And you can’t ask for a better topic than what I have for you today: music. I like music. In fact, some have said that I even “like it a lot”. I listen to all types of music, and don’t really tie myself down to one genre. Heck, I’m not even one of those guys who says, “I listen to everything except rap,” or “country”. I listen to it all – as long as it doesn’t sound like a bunch of untalented bullsh. There are some rap and even some R&B songs that I dig quite well. I’m very open-minded. Now one thing I cannot stand is that assy sounding crap where the R&B singer just holds out a syllable and tries to hit every note in the scale. You know what I’m talking about? Listen to the Fugees’ Killing Me Softly cover if you’re not sure. That crap makes me want to murder music in the face.

But other than that, yeah, I think I’ve made my point. I like music quite well. But here’s what this column is about: sometimes I like to break into a certain style reminiscent of times gone by. You know. Something like that. And here’s how I really explain it: I am not one who takes a radio with me when I go camping – even though I love and live and breathe music. I go camping to get away from techmology. I don’t want to be bothered by radio waves. But there is a growing list of music I would be okay with hearing while I sit round a campfire drinking Cold Ones and enjoying the sights and sounds of nature. Let me show you this list.

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Character Flaws

Smug bastard.Ever notice how smug the Quaker Oats guy looks? It doesn’t really make me want to buy their product, it makes me want to kick that pilgrim’s ass. He in fact looks like he’s trying not to laugh at you. And speaking of kicking ass, I’ve now settled my old hypothetical: Mr Clean would definitely kick the shit out of Mattress Giant.

But seriously, brand-name characters are either just really bad ass, or really bad. Bad ass? The Most Interesting Man in the World, for Dos Equis beer. That guy is bad ass. I mean, hell, his blood smells like cologne. Bad? Jared from Subway. Is this guy’s fifteen minutes not up yet? Will someone please run over his stupid ass? Look, Subway Marketing Campaign Advisor Guy, we all know he didn’t lose all that weight only eating Subway sandwiches. Sandwiches have bread. Bread has carbs. Carbs make people fat. We don’t buy it. So please. Retire his stupid ass and let’s move on. We’re all sick and tired of his birth-control face by now.

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Renewable Resources

In an effort to help better the world a little bit, I feel it is my duty as a writer to come up with some ideas. Some things we take for granted, or perhaps never even think about. I feel obligated to come up with some ways to help make this place a little easier to live in for our grandchildren, and our grandchildren’s grandchildren. And our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren. So here are some of my ideas that will perhaps help us to save or cut back on our usage of some of those resources that will soon go away.

First of all, and probably most importantly, is gasoline. We’re about to run out. And it costs a shitload of money right now. Patent pending, yo.For future generations, reading this post a hundred years from now, it costs an average of 3.95 per gallon right now. So I’ve come up with a method for propelling these beasts that suck up so much of our gas (and money! ha ha). See in this figure, an attachment to affix the contraption to your front bumper. Then you turn on the fan, and it blows air into the attached sail. This is the same principle of sail boating, except that we’re providing our own draft. Now, I know what you’re thinking. And to answer your question, before you ask it, no, it doesn’t have to come in those silly colors. Don’t be ridiculous.

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Still Life

Back from a crazy weekend. Sorry I’m tardy with the column. When you have a weekend as crazy as mine was, it’s hard to get up on Monday morning and write one before the sun comes up. It’s also damn near impossible to write one the night before because you’re tied up in the craziness of the weekend. I’m going to talk more about my camera though.

Oh, I didn’t tell you I got one? Well I told you I was going to get one. I got one. It’s only 6.1 megapixels. Not that impressive by number, right? But being an SLR, it really uses those on every picture. No digital zoom, no pixel interpolation, just plain bad ass pixelry. You like that word? Pixelry means ‘the ability to utilize pixels’. Anyway, this one is one of my favorites. Took Callie to the ice cream shoppe. And took 200 something pictures. Now keep in mind, I’ve sized these down to 800 by 600. The originals were 3000 by 2000. I hope none of the quality was lost.

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Faults Advertising

You know how you keep hearing that stupid commercial on the radio from a car salesman saying some shit like, “If you can find a better deal anywhere in Texas, we’ll just give it to ya!”? The very first time I heard it, I caught onto their sly antics. Obviously they’re not going to give you the car. It’s actually scary how wildly proper their grammar is in that sentence. It’s just that America is so dumbed down by now that no one gets it. The subject of that sentence is the word ‘deal’. So when they use the pronoun ‘it’ in the predicate, it refers back to the subject, just like it should. If you can find a better deal anywhere in Texas, they’re just going to give you that deal.

And speaking of grammar, of which I know you’re all so fond… Look at how we write things like Texas’ Best Hot Dogs! And Dallas’ Hottest Titty Bar! It’s not technically improper to put an apostrophe without an additional s at the end of a possessive. But in formal writing, it is highly recommended. Ever hear of Strunk and White? Yeah. They say “Always put an s at the end.” So it should be Texas’s Hottest, or Dallas’s Biggest. And my point in telling you this is that people have for so long been omitting that additional s at the end, that we’ve begun to pronounce it the way it’s written. So when you hear these commercials on the air, it sounds phonetically like this: Come check out Dallas finest set of tits! And yeah, I do have a problem with that.

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Copperwound Chronicles Vol. 3

Here in the last week, my band has spent fifteen hours in the studio, recording cuts from our second album. We’re really knocking them out, too. We’ve recorded three complete tracks for the album in that relatively short amount of time. We also recorded a fourth song, which won’t be on the album. It’s a promotional thing for an event planning company. So technically, we’ve recorded four complete songs in fifteen hours. But let me tell you a little bit about what goes on in the studio.

People all the time ask if they can come hang out with us while we’re recording. Somewhere remote in their minds, I think people associate music studios with cocaine and strippers. It’s a helluva good time, all of us hanging out, snorting off their bellies and popping champagne into the air, confetti everywhere, a big wild orgy. It’s off the hook! But yeah, no, yeah, it’s really not like that. (more…)

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Take the Mall by Voice

In my never-ending quest to find and archive things I’ve written, I’ve come across a little gem here about a friend of mine we all know. And rather than posting it with the date I wrote it, I’ll just post it as current and tell you when it happened, because I remember when it happened. But not when I wrote it. This was back in July of 2002. This story is about Katy 80. Sweet little Katy Fanning, who almost never writes here, but always has something to say. Or in this case, to sing. She had just turned fifteen.

I work at a web hosting company, building the web servers. I often go into work at midnight or later and grab my stack of server build sheets and stay until five or so knocking them all out. My boss doesn’t care when I come in or leave, so long as I get them all built by their due date. And I work better at night. This frees up most of my days to do more important things like baseball games, beer drinking and, well, whatever I want. I live in Flower Mound, but work in Las Colinas. My friend Kim and her sister live in Coppell, and we often have lunch together when Katy has decided to skip school or is off for a teacher’s work day. Oh the glorious Teacher’s Work Day. Yes, that should be capitalized. I think she told her big sister she was out for TWDs a lot more often than they really were. On Friday of last week though, we were all off. It was the day after Independence Day, so everyone was off. And most of the world was at the Vista Ridge Mall. Which is, for whatever reason, where we decided we should head for lunch.

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I just got drawn.

Katy 80 rolled into town last night for her old high school homecoming game. I expected to get to see her at the volleyball game, because – as luck would have it – Heather’s girls were playing Katy’s old school. She called me and let me know last minute that she was coming into town – at around two o’clock I got the call, and I was like hey wow, how convenient, swing by the volleyball game and say hi, and maybe you’ll even get to say hi to some old teammates amirite? I wasn’t going to go. But hey, Katy’s gonna be there. So I went.

And I sat in the stands by myself. For like ninety minutes. Well, Callie was with me. Running around, being her usual butterfly self. Because the same vehicle I raved about so proudly last month was the very vehicle she was driving in up from Austin. And that’s just a beating of a drive in a Jeep. So she was late.

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Finally, Hitchhiker’s Released on DVD

Today is a great day for mankind. And dolphins. Yes, my Earth friends, today was the release of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on DVD. Please notice I’ve made a convenient link to the movie at Amazon on that image, so you can order your own copy of the film.

Hitchhiker's Guide DVD!This film I think was underrated in a big way. I don’t think it was the best film ever made, by any means. And I think there were parts that could have been done a lot better, had they not sucked the humor right out of them like an Arcturan Mega Vacuum. But I do think it’s worthy of watching, and – well, for me, owning a copy or two.

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A Welcome Rain

It would seem that all life has come to a standstill in this drab parsed land we call the flats. There are no trees, just dust. No water lets, just empty, dry barren dirt that once flourished with green effervescence. The cracked thirsty earth stretches as far as my weak eyes can see, and without the full strength of the sun, this distance is spanned twice over by the sounds of the howling wind. Clinging to my thread-bare bag and its dwindling contents of basic sustenance, I grit my teeth against the dry wind, my lips chapped and burning, and my eyes fiery red from the dry dust. Ahead lies what looks to be a tower, but only its silhouette present against the dark red sun. My feet like broken pendulums, I trudge up the rocky trail, shadowed by the dark, lurking precipices high above. I can see only that which is just ahead of me now, and it’s finally getting dark.

The sounds of the wind seem to be backing down ever so slightly. As I glimpse at the trek that lies ahead, the sun says its final words and melts beyond the desert landscape, big as a world in the sky. With darkness rolling in, all sound and motion suddenly ceases. I can hear nothing now but my dry raspy breath, and the beating of my tired heart.

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