I love Failbook

Comment moderation is back on

I've picked up a troll, someone who doesn't understand that he/she (this one goes by the moniker "Pub") doesn't have the right to spew whatever they like into a comment on MY blog, including name-calling directed at me. Sorry, but this is my place and you are not allowed to come here, call me names and insult me and my readers.

If you want to rant and rave against me and people you think are like me, and how much you hate people that you mentally lump in with me, you can do it on your own blog, or on facebook, or twitter, or myspace, or in your own little handwritten diary, but you can't do it in my comment space...

Damn SPAMN

I am turning on comment moderation, for awhile anyway. Every post I've put up lately receives comments in oriental characters (Chinese? probably) bearing links that you shouldn't even think of clicking... especially using Windows. Spyware, malware, viruses, trojan horses, evil evil evil.

[edit July 20] Bah. Turning off moderation. I'll just whack the SPAM as needed.

5ive years

1,885 posts, counting this one but not counting all those half-baked posts I'm still working on - some will actually see daylight and some will have to serve as therapy or something like that.

I'm all over the map here. I will blog anything that has my attention.

I devour politics everyday but only occasionally put up something political (during the Presidential election, things got very political around here, but now I usually just do a facepalm and wonder what's next). Music, movies, TV, activities, dysfunctional family rants, religion, humor, absurdity, work...

Thanks for stopping by, everybody. Thanks for the comments, the invites, the awards, the kudos, yada yada yada... the whole nine yards.

It is only by coincidence that I started this blog on my wedding anniversary. No connection there... seriously. Will spend it in front of the TV watching the unfulfilled sexual tension between Bones & Booth, then (Peter) Bishop & Dunham (and don't you miss Mulder & Scully?). Not very romantic, but it suits me fine. [update: Unresolved Sexual Tension (UST) a.k.a. Long Unresolved Sexual Tension (LUST)

I snagged the graphic from engrish.com

Next time, try 5 of them.
(who remembers where that quote came from?)

New decorations and venue plugging

I've done some housekeeping here at the blog. No, I didn't (knowingly) throw anything away, but I did make a little storage area further down the sidebar - a blogroll of places and people I like, but are not updated so often these days, so if it looks like you are missing you might be relocated. Also got a new banner up.Just like the previous one, it's a shot taken at Roadhouse Rags. You won't find a more "South Austin" place than that. Friendly, great music, BYOB, BYO dog (but there's already a pretty cool dog there), and they sell vintage clothes. Here you go, there's your backstage pass.

And, I have to add, that I've never in my life seen a prettier port-o-potty. This is the women's (obviously). I didn't photograph the men's.

Here's a previous post with some pretty cool photos of the place.

Jukebox playlist moved to new page

A little bonus for you folks with old computers or slow connections who may have been having trouble loading this blog - I've moved my music jukebox from profileplaylist.com and live365.com over to the Texas Oasis Jukebox blog. You're welcome. ;-)

So just click on over there, and be advised that it does autoplay, so adjust your volume accordingly.

Kittens make it better

Are you sick of the news? Sick of politics? But still obsessed with it so you can't stay away from your favorite current events sites? So much ugliness! Mark Sanford, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Sarah Palin (for crap's sake! Why the hell aren't they gone?) and the birthers, deathers and teabagger morans?

Here's a partial fix. Create a bookmark for this Kittenify link (drag to toolbar, right-click, control-click, whatever works).

Then go to any page you like, click your bookmark, and the images are replaced with pictures of kittens (or at least tagged as kitten) on Flickr.

[Created by Reload.Me (includes more details)]
[Found via J-Walk]

Pardon the dust

Another attempt to upgrade to Blogger Layouts. Might be looking plain around here, bizarre or even butt-ugly. Wait awhile and it will probably change.

P-Bucket hates artwork with butts showing

Awhile back I had to replace the above image stored on Photobucket that had been removed for obvious indecency (who's the censor over there? John Ashcroft?). It is called "Three Graces" and was painted during the Italian High Renaissance (around 1501) by Raphael. Well, just recently I discovered that they had also removed the one on the right - an ad (this one from 1958) that Coppertone has plastered all over magazines, billboards and in many other very public places using various versions of the same ad. We all grew up looking at this ad! I used it in a post from last Summer called "Heliophobia," where I also used the image below. So far, they have not removed that one... probably because it does not contain a classic painting or illustration featuring a female butt.

[something] iversary

I didn't realize 4 years ago when I started this blog on May 6, that it was also my wedding anniversary! [Texas Oasis: Best wedding ever] I should be shot for being unromantic (it's my nature). The wedding happened 15 years ago, but I really think the day we met is more important to me: June 4, 1988. Besides, after you've lived together for a few years, the wedding itself doesn't bring so many changes.

Thanks for reading, guys, and a shout-out to MrB, the love of my life.

Blogger question

Has anyone converted an older Blogger blog to the relatively new Layouts format? And did you lose your archives or experience any other kind of hell? Someone mentioned that they lost all their older posts when they converted, and that's kept me from doing it.

I know I need to keep a copy of the template, etc. before doing anything rash.

Wordle

An enjoyable waste of time. They look fuzzy here, you have to click on them to go to the site where they look good. This is my recent post about sun protection:


This is the Flick Filosopher's review of Wanted:


Make your own.

Found via Blane Conklin's blog.

Arte y Pico!

Well!! I've been given an award! Utah Savage has bestowed this on me. It's a beauty, and features an angel in an evening gown. It has to be an angel in drag, since all the biblical angels I can think of were male. Of course, angels can wear what they damn please, and if you have anything to say about it, they'll happily kick your ass to Kingdom Come. (See the Lost Book of Petticoats, Chapt. 10: Verse 5).

The Arte y Pico blog from Uruguay is the originator of this award, and of course it makes me think of one of my favorite side dishes*, Pico de Gallo, which means "rooster comb," and fortunately for me does not contain any rooster comb, or it would be off my diet. Way off. Except that right now, I'm not sure those tomatoes are a good idea. Substitute red peppers. In fact, do that every time you use tomatoes, for awhile at least. (I'm a pepper.) "Arte y pico" seems to mean "Art and tip" or "Art and point" or "Art and sharp object" so this award is about sticking it to somebody.

These are the rules:
1) Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award which is here: Arte y Pico.

Dr. Monkey, a Tennessee soulmate, whose honorary doctorate should be awarded for Anthropological Monkeyness, for chronicling all those cultural treasures, like other people's family albums, or League of Mullets movie reviews. It's a daily read, and always great.
Dr. Don, who really IS a doctor of a sort. He always has a thought-provoking topic and discussion going.
Mando Mama, my fellow music enabler (her term, and it works). It's always worth your time to promote something that's GOOD for humanity in general, like music, for instance. She loves the traditional stuff, and so do I. Always good topics and good discussions.
John Good, who not only has all the up to the minute political dirt, but also features great caption-worthy pics and thorough music features on people who deserve a listen.
Ptelea, who is all about nature and nurture of same... and photography. Cat-lover, treehugger, fellow Eric Johnson fan. Do go back into the archives there and look through the photos of daily sunrises. Now that's Arte y pico, to the best of my translation abilities!
Nava, I am going to break the rules (just to make a point... or is it pico?) and pick 6. She is a wonderful artist (or shall we say "arte-ist"?), and often takes me back to my previous days when I was an art student.

*yes, I know it's a "dip", but I prefer to eat it as a salad. :-)

Now I'm wanting to go to Maria's Taco XPress.

Raphael, you slutmonger!

On my recent post about my 3-year blogiversary (is that word in the dictionary yet?), I snagged a bunch of images out on the 'net that had a "3" theme, and reposted them to my Photobucket space. I didn't think any of them were obscene. Apparently, Photobucket disagrees. They have a more "John Ashcroft" attitude about it. Here's the image below that caused them to replace it with the image on the right. Renaissance porno.

It is called "Three Graces" and was painted during the Italian High Renaissance (around 1501) by Raphael. Yes... I suppose it does contain nudity, so that violated the terms of service, and I respect that. It's a free service that they are offering to me, and they can make their own rules. I am not dissing them for that. I wonder if they would allow this image, since there is a naked baby Jesus in it?

EDIT later in the morning: I didn't even realize when I posted this that it was John Ashcroft's birthday! So that "IMAGE VIOLATION" thing was like Photobucket's Happy Birthday e-card to him. Here's mine.

Three

It's another blogiversary! This blog is 3 years old today. I never dreamed I would be a blogger, being the shy type with lots of baggage. Turns out, that's the perfect recipe for a blogger! who knew? I will also pass 1,200 posts this week. That 1,000th post went by unnoticed. I'm sure it was brilliant!! heh heh.

Originally, I intended this to be a weekly roundup of events, then it got to where it more than daily on the average. You know what it's like. It's habit-forming. All topics are fair game here. I write a lot about this town (Austin) and events that we take in here. I love the local music scene.

I’ve never had a really high readership, it has leveled out at around 50 a day, with a few occasional bump-ups when I’ve pissed off someone’s fan base, made someone’s fan base happy, or gotten a linkback from CNN or The Darwin Awards.

This blog is occasionally personal. I did have a very unusual childhood, and adulthood too. When I mention family here, I want to stress that I mean MY family and not MrB’s.

I love the news of the weird. Bizarre, tacky, absurd. I also write about religion, the weirdness that happens because of it, and the right to not believe. I respect everyone’s beliefs unless they involve hurting others, but at the same time I am quite irreverent and cynical toward them.

I do cat blogging every week, and have not missed many. I enter the weekly posts in Carnivals, and I always keep them free of politics, religion, or any ideology other than pure cat-worship. I am a big animal-lover.

Lastly, there’s the subject of politics, which is coming up more than I want right now because of this damned Democratic nomination race. I want that part to be over ASAP so we can end McCain’s vacation and start making him work for the prize he wants (and will get by default if we don’t stop this bloodletting)

Thank you all for reading.

To cap off the “threme”, here’s Christopher Walken reading the story of the Three Little Pigs, as only he can tell it.

Jukebox

Found this music player app over at Hill's place (see the "play jukebox" link on the sidebar). Danged thing seems to take forever to load for me. That's why I put it in a new window (so you can still listen while you read) instead of embedded on the blog here. Maybe I need to cut down the number of things on it. Feedback?

Also, let me know if you find any tracks that are just samples instead of whole songs.

Blogger Play

Have you checked out "Blogger Play"? It's a never-ending slideshow of images that are being uploaded to blogs. You can click on any image as it goes by (or click the back button if you miss it) and see the blog posting it and see the context.

http://play.blogger.com/

It is addictive. You have been warned!!

Neil Shakespeare

Welcome back, Neil Shakespeare! Sorry about the run-in with those bloody pirates!

Search terms of endearment

I've got this new counter installed here that lets me look at statistics, like search terms that brought people here. Very entertaining for someone like me is easily amused. Sometimes your search terms will land you in a very different place than you were probably hoping to be. For example, someone searching for "cute nipple blogs" found this. I would not personally have been disappointed.

"29 boys in the shower" brought someone to this post. "I need a picture of jesus that no one has seen before" also led to that one... not surprising in that case. (29 boys in the shower? Is this a phenomenon I've never heard about, like clowns in a Volkswagen Beetle?)

Some other things that people were seeking that landed on my archive pages for some reason:

"bounty hunter font issues"
Bounty hunters have font issues? I have font issues but didn't know that bounty hunters had them.

"dan blocker mural in dekalb texas"
Dan Blocker has a mural in DeKalb?

"myspace fart graphic"
Farts have a MySpace page? Well, if it's good enough for Beergas and John McCain...

"looking for condoms that are for lease in dallas, tx"
Uhh... I hope you mean "condos".

Blogiversary X2

I started blogging 2 years ago today. I never thought I would be blogger in a million years. In public forums I was always very shy and would hold back my real opinion to the point where you couldn't beat it out of me. This blog has helped me to come out of my shell a bit (OK, Ok, some of ya'll know that I have been keeping a personal website since... er... about 1997, but I'm very well-behaved over there. The website is more of a "display window", and this blog is kind of like "my house"... a place where I can let my hair down and say what I like.

Up until the "middle ages" of my personal history, I always tried to leave no footprints, make very little impact on the world around me, and I was very close to doing that. I was an only child whose parents had been dead for years, and I bore no children. I am also a military kid who grew up all over the place so I'm not even "from" anywhere. Because of all the weirdos who affected my life, I wanted to affect no one. I think that I reached a turning point where I started wanting to leave something behind. Just a memory if nothing else. Basically, not a lot of people have ever cared about me one way or the other, and I knew that when I died, people would not know enough about me to even come up with a eulogy, I'm extremely introverted and hard to get to know, much less understand -- and besides, why would they bother? I believe I reached a turning point in the last few years where I decided to at least introduce myself to the world. For what it's worth. for what I'm worth, which I don't think is much, I'm just a person who will not leave much behind except a bunch of odd collectables that nobody will know how to sell (Helloooo Goodwill!!!)

There's very little about me that dwells in the "average" areas, I live out there on the edges of the bell curves... where it's weird and non-standard. But that's where I belong. I got used to the fact that hardly anyone ever agrees with me. I just live with it. I don't need their agreement, I accept the fact that my opinion on the issue at hand is likely to be different than the other person's, especially people I deal with in my daily face life.

You are all welcome here. All readers are welcome to leave a comment. Just say hi.