Small world

Nikon's Small World Gallery -- photo competition for microscopic images. Fascinating and beautiful stuff. This is the 9th place winner by Charles Krebs Photography, Issaquah, Washington.

It's the wing scales of a Sunset Moth.

- moth - insect - photography -

Slide-o-Rama

Saw an absolutely great show at the Cactus Cafe last night: Cindy Cashdollar's Slide-o-Rama, this time featuring the great Louisiana guitar player Sonny Landreth, with Redd Volkaert as a guest. Saw some good friends in the line that we hadn't seen for weeks, maybe months, and it was really nice to be able to do some catching up.

Mostly it was just Cindy and Sonny alone on the stage, just playing really beautiful guitar music, just awesome. It made me think about Eric Johnson, we haven't seen him play in several months and are really missing him, but Sonny Landreth sure did help to fill in that gap a little. The experience is enhanced by the Cactus being such a great listening room, it's a club, yes, but more than that it's like a music sanctuary. People are very attentive -- you don't have all that talking and glass clinking in spite of the fact that it has a full bar. Some performers are a little taken aback by that atmosphere. People usually don't dance in there (although a have seen it on one rare occasion - people stood up during an Alejandro Escovedo song and danced by their chairs), and I think Sonny is used to seeing more moving around.

Cindy Cashdollar is one of our local treasures. She's worked with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Dixie Chicks and a boatload more. That's her real name! Redd Volkaert is most commonly known as previously being Merle Haggard's guitar player. He was voted "Best Electric Guitarist" last year in the Austin Music Awards, taking the prize normally taken by Eric Johnson.

- Music - Austin - Texas - Texas Music -

Friday Cat - Open that door!!

Knock, knock!!

Who's there?

I said who's there???

Candygram.

hmmmm... on closer inspection, I'm not so sure there's any candy. Are you sure??

Knock, knock!!

Who's there?

...um...

...uh...

LAND SHARK!!!!

- Friday Ark - Carnival of the Cats - This week's carnival is at Pet's Garden Blog - Cats - Catblogging -

Vice President Thingy

Someone mentioned that they are sometimes dealing with a censoring filter that displays certain words as *expletive deleted*. Sometimes these things can produce funny results. One of my forums that I visit does that, and one of the words it won't display is "dick"... even if it's someone's name!! So our Vice President is *expletive deleted* Cheney. Well, that's certainly appropriate. but what about nice Dicks like Dick Cavett, Dick Clark, or Dick and Jane (really scraping to come up with some nice Dicks... I know they're out there)

I was the admin for a board, and rather than putting in the same old boring *expletive deleted* you could customize what word or phrase would be substituted for what. So if the user typed "asshole" or "arsehole", their post would say "not a very nice person". "Kiss my ass" was "I disagree" (everyone was very well-behaved there though, and the occasion for such a label never came up). All the male organs (including our dear old VP) would come up as "thingy", and then there was "girl thingy" for the others. "Slut" translated to "very 'friendly' person". "Ass" translated to "butt", and it was pretty weird seeing the word "bluegrass" translated to "bluegrbutt". (There was a separate setting for only doing the stand alone word, so I needed to change it right away. These subs were all the default settings).

How did you do on your exam?

I pbutted.

Why you little pregnant dog!

You very 'friendly' person!

I disagree!

No!! I disagree!!

- censorship - slang -

Eck a Leck Tick

Actual Bushism, interview with NBC's Brian Williams, New Orleans, La., Aug. 29, 2006
Watch video.

I'm callin' this as I see it.

Yes. This is one of my current pet peeves.

Burnt Orange Report has been the strongest source of all the dirt that's been dished on Kinky lately. It not made up stuff. They have posted (for now, so get it while it's still steamin') audio of the whole comedy routine from 1980 in Houston at the Rockefeller Club where Kinky tells all the racist jokes. They have also transcribed some of the most controversial stuff, in that post and in previous ones (look for them on BOR or click my previous post link at the bottom. It has links.)

a couple of the jokes:

"...the doctor told me, 'Kinky, we've had to give you a transfusion with the blood of a person of the Negro persuasion.' I said, 'well that's moderately unpleasant.' He said, 'well yes Kinky there's a good side to this, too. There's some good fringe benefits. Your welfare check will start coming in next month and your penis just grew 12 inches so these are some things you should think about...' "
"...then I come down to Houston, I went to a bowling alley. I couldn't go bowling, there were no bowling balls. The people here throw 'em all in the sea, thought they were ni**er eggs… thought they were ni**er eggs."

OK, those are offensive jokes, the exact same kind of humor on this Nazi page [brace yourself if you click, it's disgusting], and I'm not kidding -- it's raw white power hatred, and the "kinkster", as he's affectionately called, could have gone somewhere like that for this "funny" material, it fits right in.

Kinky's claims that he was satirizing racism with this, and that he is just being honest.

"I don't eat tamales in the barrio; I don't eat fried chicken in the ghetto; I don't eat bagels with the Jews for breakfast," Kinky said. "That, to me, is true racism."

OK, yeah. How about telling anti-black jokes to a bunch of rich white rednecks? By his own definition, does that qualify?

He is possibly getting a boost in the polls from all this, it's a lot of press and he's well-liked anyway. He's still very popular in Austin partly because of his weirdness. I like the weirdness too, but certain things just turn me waaayy off. All I want is for him to quit trying to paint this in some bizarre way. I'm calling bullshit.


Previous Kinky post

- Austin - Texas - Kinky -

Band name of the week

Austin's own:

SHIT HOWDY

Actually haven't seen them yet. They sound pretty good though. Check out their Myspace for some music, I don't think they have a "real" website yet. Acoustic soul, very living room laid back.

With a name like that though... I mean, it's fun! I want a T-shirt... but they are probably not going to be featured on Austin City Limits any time soon... but that's such a lofty goal you might as well go ahead and call yourself Shit Howdy.

Remember how people used to refuse to say "Butthole Surfers" (coincidentally, another Austin band), and they'd censor the name in the CD bins, blah blah blah. Now it's perfectly OK to say butthole. I'm not picturing the morning news crew saying, "Stay tuned for our special musical guests, Shit Howdy! Back after these messages."

- Music - Austin - Texas - Texas Music -

A mad tea party

Iowa woman finds drowned bat in tea cup.

Something is really not right with this story. She's been drinking from the cup all day. Finds the little bat at the bottom. Now, does the bat have no taste? Maybe she has no taste (buds)? How did the poor little guy get in there?

Must have been some funky tea.

Photoshop from this page.

- bats - tea -

I wonder what kept me out of Delaware?

Such a tiny-looking little unvisited place, you'd think I could have just stuck a toe over the state line or something. If my father had lived, we would have been stationed in Grand Forks, North Dakota, but instead ND has remained unvisited.

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

And you thought you had a bad job...

I've had some pretty bad ones. The worst one was doing laundry in a nursing home. The laundry room was down in the basement, and all the stuff just constantly came down a big shute to us. If you have ever visited a nursing home, you can imagine what the laundry is like, it's rubber gloves stuff. Housekeeping in the nursing home was a step up from that, not quite as filthy and more job satisfaction. Those jobs paid little more than minimum wage.

From Engrish.com, new Engrish posted every weekday.

- Engrish -- work -

The New American Way

By "Be Nice", we mean become hopelessly indebted, allow the USA, World Bank, and Corporations pillage your land and resources, and install a leader for your country who will cooperate fully with all these things.

From Carry a Big Sticker.

Beer head

You Are Guinness

You know beer well, and you'll only drink the best beers in the world. Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them. When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don't know well. But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.

What's Your Beer Personality?

I really do like beers with a lot of taste, stout or amber, drawing the line somewhere this side of triple-bock. I can't remember the last time I actually got drunk. I don't let that happen, I hate being out of control and disgusting (I spent quite a few of my younger days being out of control and disgusting, so I straightened up and just drink maybe one a day... or two... three is not recommended)

I'm not really a know-it-all, even when tipsy. I know a little about a lot of things, a lot about a few things, and am the first to admit it when I don't know something, or that I was wrong about something. I hate it when people pretend to know more than they do.

Friday Cat - Jax is a peaceful little jaguar

Here is Jax looking peaceful, and he is a very contented cat most of the time. Looks jaguar-like, except he's fat. Here he is below proudly showing off his lick-shaved elbow. Nothing stands out like a bald patch on a black cat.


EDIT 9/24: Congratulations to sweet little Heart, our baby neighbor, who is Catmodel of the Week at Carnival of the Cats this week!

- Friday Ark - Carnival of the Cats - This week's carnival is at House of Chaos - Cats - Catblogging -