A male-female set of fraternal twins who were adopted into separate families ended up marrying each other.
I have to think that lack of access to family medical history is a bigger problem for adoptees, though.
Creepy
January 11th, 2008Novelties
January 9th, 2008Swallow Hill will be hosting a Ukulele Festival in a few weeks. As far as I’m aware, it will be Denver’s first. Should be fun. I’m still trying to decide which ticket level I want to purchase, and what I want to practice up for the open stage (if I decide to get up on the open stage).
A couple of weeks earlier, we’ll have the regular Denver area ukulele group meeting at Swallow Hill. I missed the December meeting, at which musical themes were decided for the upcoming year. January’s theme is “Novelty Songs.” That happens to be the type of song that is probably my favorite – I know lots of them. Most, unfortunately, I can sing. As opposed to sing while playing, that is. Singing while playing is a skill I’m working on, complicated by the fact that I don’t know how to play many of the songs I can sing.
In any case, I have a few such I can already perform (such as Their Brains Were Small and They Died, Don’t Pet The Dog, and It’s Hard to be Humble), and I’m working on more. I can play and sing Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport – I just need to make them happen simultaneously. I’ve been working out the chords for The Witch Doctor Song (“Ting tang walla walla bing bang”). It was pretty straightforward getting the chorus to sound nice when I tried to play it in C, but I couldn’t make progress on the bridge until I retried it in A.
It’s a matter of finding the right sound, and I couldn’t find the right sounds up the neck in C. I’m actually better at working out chords on the banjo, but sometimes that doesn’t produce things that sound good to me on a uke. As an illustration, I found some chords online for Madiera, M’Dear, but I couldn’t get them to sound right on the uke. That may be due to the fact that I’m more familiar with a version by Dan Murphy, and not with the Flanders & Swann version.
To finish, here are a couple of novelty songs for your enjoyment. The first is via Bits and Pieces, and the second via The Last of the Few (site NSFW).
Do you point and laugh, or just try to get away unobserved?
January 8th, 2008The person your mother warned you about (not necessarily work-safe).
Via David J.
What’s up, Doc?
January 6th, 2008Last night, Marion and I went to see the Colorado Symphony perform “Bugs Bunny on Broadway.” This is a traveling show that’s been performed for 18 years. It’s a celebration of the classical music that was used in the old Warner Brothers cartoons. Some of them were played with the standard soundtrack; others had the symphony playing the musical backing.
Overall, it was quite an enjoyable evening, although the show wasn’t quite what I was expecting.
I don’t know if it’s a good resolution, but I think it’s a *great* resolution
January 3rd, 2008Phil Plait’s New Year’s resolution.
I wonder if I can match it?
You don’t expect to witness this sort of thing
January 2nd, 2008My daughter came over this evening, and we went to dinner together. On the way, we passed by the Oriental Theater (link on the right). The marquee read, “Carolyn, will you marry me.” Under the marquee was a nicely-dressed young woman with a bouquet of flowers and an astonished look, with a young man down on one knee in front of her. Very nice. If there’d been a place to park, I’d have stopped to congratulate them.
Assuming, of course, she accepted. We didn’t take long enough driving by to see, although I presume she did accept. There’s just something about a production of that magnitude that makes it difficult to turn down. Plus, the guy would have to be seriously deluded to try that without a serious expectation of acceptance.
Too bad I didn’t have a camera with me.
So, there I was …
December 29th, 2007Almost lying on my back. I went to a party the Saturday before Christmas. The party was in Evergreen, and the hosts had a steep, ice-covered driveway. I got partway up it and my front wheels started slipping. I put on the emergency brake, downshifted into first, then let out the clutch while I put on the gas and released the emergency brake.
I slid backwards and into the ditch.
When we got to the door, I asked Joe if he knew a good towing company, because I’d put my car into the ditch. He thought I was joking with him, because when they moved in, their U-Haul had ended up in the same ditch. Luckily, we got a very competent tow-truck driver who pulled the car out safely and expeditiously. We commented on his competence, and he replied that they’d had about 70 calls for just this sort of thing in the prior four days.
We had a good time at the party, though. I’m glad we went, even if I’m embarrassed about what happened getting there.
Ha! I laugh at your puny Turducken!
December 16th, 2007A gallimaufry of links and things
December 14th, 2007I’ve been busy, and haven’t kept up with posting recently. I have, however, marked a few things of interest:
Via Coyote Blog, we have the World’s Hardest Easy Geometry Problem.
Via Jed, we have some cookies that sound absolutely delicious. I think my daughter will try these, actually.
Via a Yahoo Group to which I belong, we have a delightful a cappella holiday music performance by Straight No Chaser:
If that performance inspires you, perhaps you will wish to make your own motivational poster.
I happen to meet the Programmer’s Dress Code. I do occasionally wear suspenders, though, and the only pair I saw there was in part 2. It wasn’t even worn by a programmer.
A few days ago, Slashdot noted that Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to finish the late Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. I have most, if not all of them, but I’ll freely admit that I haven’t read all of them, and I kind of lost interest around book 5 or 6. The best comment in the thread is this one:
Hansel and Gretel, outlined in the style of Robert Jordan:
Book 1: Hansel and Gretel live happily with their mother and father. Their mother falls ill and dies. The family mourns her loss. The father starts courting another woman in the village, to the dismay of Hansel and Gretel. At the end of the book, she wins over the hearts and minds of the two children and marries her father. They live happily ever after.
Book 2: Oh, wait, they don’t live happily after all. The stepmother turns out to be hateful and cruel. Ultimately, Hansel and Gretel resolve to run away from home. Gretel expresses fears about the wicked witch who is rumored to live in the Forest, but Hansel insists nothing could be worse than living at home with their stepmother. After much bickering, they depart.
Book 3: Hansel and Gretel cross the boundary between Village and Forest. Gretel reprises her misgivings about the dangers of the forest. Hansel reiterates his arguments in favor of running away. After much bickering, they agree to continue, using bread crumbs to mark their trail. They get lost. Gretel blames Hansel. Hansel stubbornly refuses to admit his mistake.
Book 4: Hansel and Gretel wander through the woods, lost and disoriented. Gretel continues to complain about the foolishness of running away from home. Hansel continues to insist it’s the right thing to do. Gretel continues to berate him about the bread crumbs fiasco. Hansel persists in his mule-headed self-righteousness. They meet a Wise Owl, who warns them about the Wicked Witch of the Forest.
Book 5: Hansel and Gretel wander through the woods, lost and disoriented. Gretel continues to complain about the foolishness of running away from home. Hansel continues to insist it’s the right thing to do. Gretel continues to berate him about the bread crumbs fiasco. Hansel persists in his mule-headed self-righteousness. They meet a Cunning Fox, who encourages them to visit the Wise Woman of the Forest.
Book 6: Hansel and Gretel wander through the woods, lost and disoriented. Gretel continues to complain about the foolishness of running away from home. Hansel continues to insist it’s the right thing to do. Gretel continues to berate him about the bread crumbs fiasco. Hansel persists in his mule-headed self-righteousness. They meet a Cryptic Raven, who warns them about the Wicked Witch of the Forest.
Book 7: Hansel and Gretel wander through the woods, lost and disoriented. Gretel continues to complain about the foolishness of running away from home. Hansel continues to insist it’s the right thing to do. Gretel continues to berate him about the bread crumbs fiasco. Hansel persists in his mule-headed self-righteousness. They meet a Devious Serpent, who encourages them to visit the Wise Woman of the Forest. … and that’s about the point where the Faithful Reader finally realizes that this hack has stretched a simple fairy tale into seven giant novels in which nothing actually happens.
And finally, Don Surber points us to to wacky warnings. Hie thee hence, and find out who won a copy of Remove Child Before Folding, and with what.
Is it because I don’t do erudite commentary, or does Dennis Miller not dance?
December 4th, 2007Friday evening, I pulled my tuxedo out of the closet, and Marion and I went to a black-tie optional Christmas dance. It was held that early because there are enough others that will happen in the next couple weeks that the organizers didn’t want to have to compete with any of the others.
It was an enjoyable time. They didn’t play any sambas or quicksteps, but they did almost everything else, including a couple of Argentine tangos. Lots of waltzes and rhumbas. Anyway, towards the end of the evening, a couple came over, and the man said he wanted to let me know how much they had enjoyed watching Marion and me dance … it was almost enough to make him ignore how much I looked like Dennis Miller.
I haven’t figured out if it was meant to be a compliment, yet.
Actually, it’s not the first time I’ve been told I looked like someone else. Not even the first time I’ve been compared to someone famous.
Back in 1974, I was in a group that got to hang out in Naples one afternoon with the wife of the American consul. One of the places she took us was a sculptor’s workshop. I soon found myself positioned at one end of his workshop, while she and the sculptor stood a couple dozen feet away and chattered together in Italian. Every time I tried to ask what was going on, he would reposition my head and she would tell me to be quiet. Eventually, I found out that he had positioned me under a bust he had done of JFK, and he was pointing out similarities to her.
Then, in the early 1980s, I had a boss who was convinced that I looked like Dan Ayckroyd. A few years ago, the blogger formerly and sometimes still known as Zombyboy saw my driver’s license photo (from my last license, not my current one) at a Blogger Bash and said I “totally looked like Saddam Hussein!”
Maybe, one of these days, someone will tell me that I look like myself.