Archive for January, 2008

It’s hard when you wake up choking

Monday, January 28th, 2008

I woke up this morning with problems caused by a body part I never expected to trouble me. To tell the truth, the public service spot makes it sound like it’s related to “female troubles,” but it appears to be more widespread than that.

It’s time for bed now, and it appears to be clearing up. I hope it’s gone by morning – it wasn’t a fun way to greet the day.

Some days, you just can’t win

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Rock, Paper, Scissors

From Pizdaus: Pics We Like

Music hath charms …

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Enough to Know Better, by Tusk

But this band doesn’t. Despite the peaceful image on the cover, Tusk plays loud, violent, atonal, and profane screeds. It’s hard to make out the lyrics, which are screamed by an adenoidal teenager with a grammar impediment, but the theme of the album appears to be “Environment good, technology bad,” which seems incongruous, given the amount of amplification they use.

I know people who enjoy “death metal” music, and even they think this album has no merit other than volume.

Recommendation: don’t buy it.

(more…)

What a long, strange trip it’s been

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

From friend to enemy.

I got the idea here.

Wanna play God?

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

Ever think that SimCity was a good game, but it would really rock if you could make some changes? Well, now you can.

Via Download Squad.

It’s been a while

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

Monday, January 13th, 1986, was my first day at my current job. The company had been in business about two years at the time. I never expected to be here that long.

Monstrous

Friday, January 11th, 2008

Information on the folk monsters of Japan.

Creepy

Friday, January 11th, 2008

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.

Novelties

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Swallow 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?

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

The person your mother warned you about (not necessarily work-safe).

Via David J.