The Sphinx

I've stumbled upon another painting.  Not something that is as striking to me as yesterday's Lady Violet but nevertheless interesting.

oh hai.

Sphinx in the Desert, Marcus Waterman 1872

Looks a little different from the ol cat that we know now.  This is a prime example of Artistic License.  About 21% of people, myself included up until recently are under the impression that Napoleon shot the nose off of the Sphinx.  Target practice if you will.  This is false.  The nose has apparently been missing since around 1378 where a person by the name of Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr broke it off because he found locals offering tributes to the Sphinx hoping for a better harvest.  He broke it off and was hung for his monumental rhinoplasty.

This means that when Marcus painted this picture it was more a flight of fancy than a representation of an actual observable figure.  However we have to take into account what we actually see in the painting.  There is nothing in there that says that it was supposed to be a current representation.  Yes, the Sphinx was covered in sand up to the neck in 1870, there are plenty of photos backing that up but presumably, since it has been around for thousands of years I imagine there are several periods of history where it has just been a head sticking out of the sand.

I doubt Marcus had heard of al-Dahr though when he painted this.

Lady Violet

Every once and a while I run across something that causes pause.  This portrait is one of them.

Goodness

This is Lady Violet, The Duchess of Rutland  painted by Sir James Jebusa Shannon in 1896.  This morning I had no idea this painting existed.  I can't say exactly what about it grabbed me but it did.  Apparently Shannon painted her three times but looking at the other portraits I would have to say I like this one the most.  His other works can be found here.

One day I think I'd like to paint something like that.

5&1/2 Minute Hallway

My tastes in books, art or music tend to trend towards the content hinting at the inexplicable.  Either there is a larger and more fantastic mystery in the story or there is a narrative that is... disconcerting in the picture or there is a heart of sadness in the songs respectively.  Some of my favorite things are media that point to something larger.  Maybe it will be explained but I am perfectly happy 90% of the time if it is not.

One of my favorite books is called House of  Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.  A short synopsis: The narrator receives a trunk full of papers from an old man, Zampano, which tell the tale of a family that moves into a house that, after a time starts to change.  The physical dimensions of the house grow, hallways appear along with mysterious doors.  The father of the family is a film maker and he documents the events.  The narrator finds records of these, but nothing physical.  It points towards being elaborate fiction but it has the side effect of making him paranoid beyond belief.  The end of the book leaves it so that the events either were real and forgotten or completely made up by a mad old man.

The only reason this book came into my radar is thanks to his sister, Poe.  Her album Haunted was written as a companion to his book... or vice versa and both were in a sense made to deal with the passing of their father.  Both are... lonely and larger than they seem.  There are hints towards sadness and loss and coming to terms with those feelings in both.  Moreover they have that feeling of mystery.

Of course the album has to be considered in a different way.  Not all songs fit the narrative, this is not a rock opera or a concept album.  Songs like Not a Virgin, Control or Lemon Meringue don't provide the same atmosphere but act as catharsis.  Control in particular is a good song to play quite loud as you... I dunno, flip off an old job or something.

Now if she could only release a new album, its only been 14 (!) years since the last one.

Utah In Pop Culture Salty Edition

I live in Salt Lake City.  No duh, right?  A fairly metropolitan area that homes about a million and a half people.  It is hard to think that about an hours drive would bring you to what would be a wasteland by any definition.

Welcome to the Salt Flats.

Not pictured: Slugs, Pepper.

The Bonneville Salt Flats is a geological formation that is left over from the recession of Lake Bonneville.  Due to the hard pack nature of the salt and our altitude (lower air pressure) it makes it a wonderful place to go really fast and not die for the most part.

The Salt Flats has seen speed records set as far back as 1935 with the last major land speed record set back in 1970 and a car topping out at 622 mph, not quite the sound barrier.  

It's also been featured in a few movies, one of the most notable being Independence Day.  

 Salt for your popcorn flick.

An interesting (to ME anyway) thing is he wrecks his plane in the Grand Canyon and is able to walk, alien in tow to this place.  Now, measuring from about the highest place on the GC to the lowest on the SF we come up with 224 miles.  Will Smith, to cover that distance in a few hours walking?  That is a land speed record.

I had something else...

I've written something else for the post, but I don't think I will share it.  It was sad.  I'm not going to delete it but I don't think I will publish it.

We landed on a comet today, it was in every way Awesome.  Delicate orbital mechanics and ten years of work to place a 200lb lander on this chunk of ice and rock 500 million km away.

Cool stuff.

Those who can't, critique.

Art.  I think by now if you read this or if you know me in Meatspace know that I love it in just about every shape and form.  My most favorite art though has to be painting.  Any medium, most subjects and most movements are like catnip.  I love to see them and try to figure out how some people painted what they did and why.

That in mind I think I will take this time to critique a fairly well known artist, though he is not known primarily for his paintings.

George W. Bush.

43rd president of the USA, a first lieutenant in the national guard and staunch republican.  I didn't like him as a president as his policies seemed to favor rich friends over the rest of the country.  I didn't think we should have attacked Iraq and I find it offensive that Bin Laden wasn't caught during his run as president.  However I think it is good that he is pursuing art.  Undoubtedly he has a lot on his mind and painting is a grand way to relieve some stress.

Recently he reveled a portrait of himself and his father.

Not as bad as it might've been.

Art, at it's best should allow us for reflection in ourselves.  I look at this painting and I see mistakes that I have made in the past.  The blotch of white, probably completely unpainted canvas in Sr's coat.  Some sloppy color changes and thickness issues that take a lot of practice to really control.  I see my errors in this picture, a common struggle shared by novice artists. 

Some people may be turned off by the roughness of the painting.  Completely understandable. There are some bad colors in here that muddy the image.  But there are elements there that show he has improved since his Putin painting.  His forms are more defined and he is trying to push light and dark contrast.  Something that I have issues with.

It shows promise that with a lot of practice he, like anyone who practices, will get better, but I don't like the picture.  I'm certain there are people who do, I'm not one of them but I would not tell him to stop if I had the chance.

Unexpected finds.

We all love it when we find something new.  New to us, new to the world, sparkling and ready for us to consume.  These last few weeks have had a couple of discoveries that have been super pleasant and I'd like to share.

Firstly, and I've said this on my FB, I've apparently inherited some frying skill from my Scottish ancestors.  I've pulled off fried chicken and taqitos just by tossing what I feel would be tasty together and poof, exceptionally tasty but very bad for me foods.  Two things I've decided though, I need to invest in new tongs for removing said fried thingys and I need a gas stove.  Better heat control would equal better foods.

Nextly I've run across a couple of bands/songs that have added some good color to my playlists.
Aubrey Debauchery & The Puke Boots have a song called Whiskey Breath which is peppy.
BABYMETAL is a J-pop meets deathmetal group and they have infiltrated my Good Things playlist with a song called Doki Doki ☆ Morning as well as one called Gimme Chocolate!!  Good things.

I am hoping to work more on projects that I can post here and elsewhere.  I've set something up with The Wife where we should be able to do that easier.  We shall see, I am hopeful.

Monument Valley, or "Oh Yeah, that place!"

You've seen more of my humble berg than you know, you sly dog.  Tonight we go to Monument Valley, seen in every western ever.

You do recognize it right?  NO?  Well how about this?

Hrm, you are stubborn.  How about this?

Wait, that one is a video game.

Thanks to our relative closeness to LA thanks to the grand I-15, a handful of other major roads and the fact that it is an absolutely spectacular natural location.  Monument Valley has appeared in at least 30 different films.  It is a solid icon of western America.

It is five square miles.

That's it.  That little plot of land on a Navajo reservation has defined Westerns and cowboy culture for getting close to ninety years.  That is pretty good by any metric.  It should be said that Utah does not hold it entirely.  Arizona holds some of it as well in their borders.  However the park is strictly Native American held.  The Navajo name for it is Tse'Bii'Ndzisgaii or Valley of the Rocks.  Rather apt, no?

Films that have been shot here include Easy Rider, Forrest Gump (see above), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (see the beginning of the movie) and Back To The Future pt III.  The drive in movie theater that Marty drives through was constructed specifically for that scene and torn down after.  Apparently no movies were shown and that is a shame.  That would've been a wonderful backdrop for an old west film.

TV has been no slouch when it comes to the Valley either.  Recently a few episodes of Doctor Who were shot in part at Monument Valley and we now hold the coveted "the Doctor kindof almost died here, for realsies" trophy.

It is a place that should be seen if you are on the great American road trip as there is little else that can humble you in quite the same way.  The natural beauty of the place is certainly something to marvel, or in my case gawk at.  (I gawk with the best.  Mouth agape, slight drooling, the whole thing.)

Additional fun note: In writing this I found that Wikipedia has Navajo as one of their languages

The next Utah in Pop Culture will deal with music I think. Yeah. Perhaps SLC Punk, perhaps just songs.  We'll see.

Utah, not as oppressive as it used to be.

Well, not all of Utah anyway.

I am writing of course about the Supreme Courts non-action regarding the appeal our local government tossed against the ruling that decided gay marriage bans were unconstitutional.  Our AG and Governor fumbled about quite badly following that decision as our AG was being arrested for bribery or somesuch.  It has been... interesting to say the least.

With the Court deciding not even to look at the appeal it essentially means that those that were married on Dec. 20th are still married, legally and binding as any other contract.  (side note, my wife and I also have a Dec. 20th anniversary.  It will be interesting to try and get a dinner date now).  Utah, specifically Salt Lake City has been more LGBTQ friendly in the past decade and this ruling helps a couple of couples I know feel better about life in general.  Good times.

It is interesting though, Its been like a day since it has become fully legal and I don't feel a need to leave my family and gay marry someone.  It's like I was being lied to when some prominent pontificators proclaimed profusely persistent platters of perpetual peril if something like this happened.

Buddha Machine

Some people cannot deal with repetitive sounds.  Drives them up the nearest wall, bonkers I tells ya.  I know a few who seek these sounds out with a fury usually reserved for household pests or political campaigns.

I don't mind them at all.

In fact at times I search them out.

Occasionally I find one that is wonderful.

Case in point, the Buddha Machine (available in the App store) is an ambient noise generator with different configurations you can play with to create looping repetitive musical background noise.  The reason why I find this so wonderful is the fact that I can get some really trippy dreams from listening to this during sleep.

From what I've read this happens because your brain starts to wander with these sort of noises.  White noise along with some other sensory deprivation has been shown to be able to create hallucinations quite reliably.  Once you've cancelled these other senses the brain just gets... bored?  It goes and starts chasing rabbits down holes if you will.  Sleep already is a form of sensory deprivation so it is logical that I can add other elements to get some vivid dreams.

I think the Buddha Machine works for me so well in this regard because you can alter the "texture" of the sound produced.  Looping guitar or piano combined with clicks or whooshes vs. wind or sea and hums. Experimenting with the different combinations and volumes can provide a vastly different experience for every listener.

Utah in Pop Culture

I think I will start a new feature here on this site where I will provide an example of Utah through the lens of pop culture.  I will provide clips or descriptions or links to things you may or may not have seen that my home state played some kind of a role in.

With that in mind I bring you DAMNATION ALLEY.

I'm sure that one of the first things you think of after an apocalypse is a road trip through America, am I right?  D.A. follows some of the people responsible for BILLIONS of deaths on their jaunt through the country on their way to New York.  Along the way they come to SLC and fulfill the unfortunate trope of The Black Guy Always Dies.  Clip below:

Judging by that clip I can see that it was filmed either on State Street or Main however it looks like it is either a composite shot or the statue that is visible at the beginning of the clip was moved at some point in time.  I would lean heavily towards composite as that statue is not that big.  

Damnation Alley, well, it didn't do well and as you can see the special effects were sad.  The swarms of cockroaches being pulled towards our heroes via piled sheet are vying for a top spot in my "least menacing ways to approach something menacingly" award.  Right up there with slow unicycle or juggling mime.

If you decide to watch the whole thing the SLC part comes up at about 47 minutes in.  As you would expect with a movie they play a bit with the geography so other than the piles of rubble and vicious bugs it is not an accurate representation of my current city.

Truthfully it is a little amusing to think that everyone in Salt Lake was devoured by radioactive flesh eating cockroaches.  There are some people here that fit that mold quite nicely.  I don't mean to say that all of my neighbors are radioactive horrors.  Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of nice people here but it is one of those "if  you've lived here, you understand" sort of things.

Next week I think we'll go south to Monument Valley.

The pros and cons of a snuggly child.

Our first child, The Boy, was not a particularly snuggly baby.  He was fine in a seat or a crib or whatever and though he did grump at times he was much more at home on his lonesome.  This may be due to the fact that at the time The Wife was going to school and driving 80 miles a day.  As such he was not held as much as we would've liked.  You wouldn't know it now though, he is a hug monster and full of crazy energy.

The Girl though, she is already showing signs of being as different from her brother as she can be.  She is a snugglebug of the highest caliber.  The wife and I have both held her for HOURS while we play our different console games.  Wife is working through Skyrim and I am going through Dragon Age Origins all the while holding this little bean in our arms that will certain let you know that she does not like being put down.

A bit of grand news to finish with.
The Girl had a blanket that we first swaddled her in, blue with stars on one side and sleeping animals in nightcaps on the other.  Unfortunately we only had it for three days.  We were heading to The Wife's family home to celebrate a birthday and Wife didn't tuck the blankie in with the baby or secure it in her purse.  We are both tired so don't notice that the blankie went AWOL until about two hours after we leave.  When we got back I scoured the parking at our apartment, I looked in the rubbish bins, I walk around the block to see if I can find this blankie.  It was gone.

So that evening I put up notes in our apartment's common areas with my phone number but no one responds and weeks go by with no word.  I noticed on Friday coming home that the note was missing from the board and I assumed that someone had taken it down to make room for another notice.  It happens, I sigh and move on.  That Saturday morning I get a call, someone found the blankie!  They have had it for a while and apparently just saw the notice.   We had hoped that whomever ended up with the blanket was happy with it but we had lost hope of it coming back.  Sometimes the Universe gives you a little back.

Music, who knew?

I've made a discovery about The Girl which has been successful in no less than three occasions now.  She apparently likes Electro Swing music.  For those not in the know, Electro Swing is a genre of music that combines modern electronic music and swing music.  Duh.  It is pretty enjoyable and some of the songs/bands that I've been turned onto have become staples in my playlists.

Anyhow, I was up late one night with The Girl who was fussing and crying.  I set her in her swing so I could do some dishes, it was 2 am, what else would I be doing?  Anyhow I know that music helps me calm down so I figured I would try with her.  Now, most of my saved playlists on Spotify have less than.... family friendly fare on rotation so I chose my Electroswing playlist.  It took her a moment to quiet down enough to actually hear the music but once she did her eyes opened and she went silent.  In less than ten minutes she was asleep.

It doesn't work every time, clearly more tests will need to be run but it seems like our wee Boo likes my music.  Good, goooooooood.

Blood for blood.

I am not the most articulate person I know.  That particular award has to go to my friend Kai who can argue with the best of them.  It is probably genetic as his father is a playwright and the whole family is smarter than a... group of... smart people.

It is frustrating then when someone at work or somewhere starts going off on a tangent that I find enraging.  This happened today, not twenty minutes ago where a person I work with started talking about ISIS or the guy that shut down the airports because he was trying to kill himself.  It quickly devolved into blood for blood, violence meeting violence and no room for sympathy or a different view.  It was loud and cold.

I wrote yesterday about how I lean towards the classical Stoic philosophy and I would like to clarify part of that thought.  I feel that in all honesty we are all collectively as good as our lowest/weakest actions.  When someone kills in hate or for fun we are all dragged down.  Revenge, theft... anger.  They drag us down.  So when someone says that blood is the only way to answer a problem or that they best way to solve immigration is to throw them out or away it infuriates me.  Something I've started to find is that the people that hold these views are people that have abused the system in their youth.

A person I knew in high school who did drugs and brought alcohol to classes now is a staunch Republican.  The person that was grumpin about the IMMAGANTS at work I know for a fact does abuse some of the same programs that he just bitched about.

I don't like that I can't really say to these people that they are being cold.  I hate that I can't cite to their satisfaction the reasons why they are wrong or that what they themselves are using for an argument is based on flawed data or rhetoric that has been proven as bad or misleading or incomplete.

I am sad and angry and hungry.

Duality

I have a problem sometimes with optimism.  Generally I am able to stay fairly optimistic, as a whole, while things may look down.  The best allegory I can think of would be in the Battlestar Galactica reboot where they keep searching for Earth, suffer through a bunch a crap and then they say 'screw it, good enough!'  That is my outlook at times, like now.

At heart I think though I am a Stoic, not the unemotional type but trying to find inner calm through outer control.  The old philosophy of it is something that I can relate to.  From Wikipedia:

"A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its cosmopolitanism: All people are manifestations of the one universal spirit and should, according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love and readily help one another. In the Discourses, Epictetus comments on man's relationship with the world: "Each human being is primarily a citizen of his own commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, whereof the city political is only a copy."^[30] This sentiment echoes that of Diogenes of Sinope, who said "I am not an Athenian or a Corinthian, but a citizen of the world."^[31]"

That echos quite nicely to me and it is something that I try to bring to my life though sometimes I fail, miserably.

I get angry, as we all do from time to time, but I get a lot more angry than I let on.  Rarely to the point of seeking to do actual harm to a person for whatever they'd done but more than once I've broken something in a pure red rage and felt quite fine with it.  Case in point, I've done this to my hand and in truth, I don't really regret it.  It still hurts sometimes but it serves as a reminder of a last resort and is as such useful.

I think I've babbled enough.

In which I am a glutton once again.

There is a podcast that I listen to, The Let's Go Eat Show.  It was started by on of the morning show hosts from Radio From Hell, Bill Allred.  Bill is an adamant supporter of local businesses and fond of good food and drink.  He also happens to be a great interviewer and quite knowledgeable, he does his homework and generally doesn't come off as a mook.  Anyhow, on The LGES's most recent show he talked to Froddy Volgger, the Sausage King.  As you may have guessed already I was interested in what this man had to say.

Two words.

Two words that made me drool.

Buffalo.  Pastrami.

I loves me a good pastrami and given the opportunity I usually don't shy away from taking a bite out of something new.  This sounds up my alley to be sure.  Unfortunately it seems it is a little difficult to get a hold of.  However in searching for this buttery sounding delicacy I've found jalapeno chedder buffalo brats, so not all is lost.

The Boy has been labouring under a cough for the last few days and it seems it has transferred to The Girl.  The wee thing does not like it when I suck her nose with the bulb but thankfully she calms quickly.  It didn't stop her from keeping me up quite a bit last night.  Burbling as babies are wont to do.

Mood music.

Everyone does it, either intentionally or not, but we all tend to associating music with moods or points in our life.  It adds color and brings back memories.  They've (the grand THEY, you know, scientists) done studies with Alzheimer's and found that songs from the patient's past allowed for greater recollection and function.  More information Here.  In short, music is powerful JuJu.

I find that I quite like the moods that certain music can give me.  Right now I am feeling the need for something melancholy and so I am listening to Pink Floyd's The Division Bell right at this moment.  It is close to what I want, but not quite there.  I have a Silent Hill station on Pandora that comes up with stuff that closer matches what I am looking for at the moment.  Something sad and lonely, lost in the fog, dark and beautiful.

I guess in review I am mopey and I wish to wallow.  Boo hoo, poor me. :P

The loneliness of a middle distance runner.

I am tired.  It is something to be expected with a newborn as any parent will share.  Its kind of like our version of scar stories.  You talk about how at X am so and so puked up and I had to scrub the floor in the dark or how it was like in the Exorcist when she puked but in your case it wasn't puke.  I feel guilty though because I know I get more sleep at night than my wife.  I've been averaging 5 hours, she is probably at 2.

We are getting there though, every day it seems like the Girl sleeps more at night and that is a victory of a kind.  She does however balance it out with 5 diapers in 5 minutes poop fests.  More poop for more sleep is apparently how it works out for this baby.  I'll take it, I'm not proud but I am sleepy.

It's Tuesday, that means food according to my tags and so I present to you an experiment that I am going to try soon.  I say experiment and that makes it sound grand however it really is just more laziness.  One of my favorite side dishes growing up was broccoli and cheese or green beans with cheese.  My mom would melt Velveeta on top of the veg as they cooked and I couldn't get enough.  What I am going to try is putting Alfredo sauce on top the veg as it would need much less cooking time/prep.  If it works it means a cheaper way of getting tasty vegetables with dairy goo and that is a good thing.

Also bacon, I've got bacon that I am going to add to it.

A moment,

I don't know sometimes what to make of the world.

Over the weekend a young black man was shot by the local police, several times.  From behind.  According to what I read there are witnesses that state the man was running away from the police.  He was also cosplaying at the time and part of his costume was a dummy sword.  Meanwhile there are white old dudes going around with guns openly carried and complaining quite loudly about the people that are uncomfortable with them doing so.

As I grow older I find that I have a larger aversion to guns than I used to have.  I think it is due to shootings like the one above.  Someone, regardless of whatever circumstances there are, decided that the easiest way to end it was with one or several bullets.  Not a taser or pepper spray, handcuffs or backup.  Just lead.  I don't have words for how exactly I feel about this.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten.

We've been parents to two children for two weeks now and I have something to share.
I had completely forgotten about how much wee babies like to be awake at horrid hours of the night.  I suppose it might've been an omen of sorts when on the night she came we did not sleep at all. The Boy had a marvelous time though, he was helping to do laundry and playing with his Aunt and Gramma.  He was only running off of maybe two hours sleep but it did not slow him down in the least.

Ah, youth.

While I am tired, I do have an entirely different perspective on the situation.  Between the two children I've gained more patience in some aspects of my life but I've found I'd lost it in others.  These last two weeks I did snap at my family and was depressed, still am a little but that is something that can be worked on.  What I am finding more patience with is with the crying.

You see, with the Boy I had never really handled babies, never changed a diaper, fed them or tried to calm one.  His was a steep learning curve and I can remember on more than one occasion getting angry enough with his crying to hit something.  Never him, but usually a wall or something else.  He was a loud baby and I can still remember getting sick to the gut with anger when there seemed to be nothing I could do to calm him.  Remembering it makes me more than a little sad.

I have found with the Girl, so far, that I don't get angry or concerned.  I just talk and eventually, so far, it has worked.  Fingers crossed.

I am trying hard not to get angry or sad with being tired.  I don't like being angry and over the last week I've been trying some different methods of countering that rising red sea.  My family doesn't need me angry and I feel awful when I do become so.  They don't deserve it and I don't need it.

And so.

3:14 am, 8/28/14.

My Boo.

Wherein there is endurance.

Monday we went to the place where we are supposed to have The Girl.  We were there till 3am and my little princess was a no show.  We still wait.

The Wife is holding together as well as she can but we are in a different gear than before.  She is resting, I am doing what I can to keep her and The Boy fed and taken care of.  I know how I feel, I cannot imagine how she feels right now.  

I know for a fact that we were spoiled before when The Boy was induced.  There was no waiting or false starts or month of contractions.  It was a relatively simple process that still managed to suck, no doubt it sucked, but it was over and done in a day.

I do look forward to the day she finally comes.  To a ceasing of hostilities on my wife's body. to the ability to hold her for a while while everyone else rests.  I look forward to introducing our Boy to The Girl, to teaching him how to play with her.  I look forward to a SLIGHTLY more restful night of sleep though I doubt that one will happen for a while yet.

Maybe tomorrow.

How do you do it?

At this point in time, Monday morning, 11:27 am on Aug 25th, The Girl has not yet arrived.  Her due date is the 29th.

Maybe we are just being impatient or we were spoiled with our first child, who due to medical reasons had to be induced early.  Ergo we did not go through the last month of pregnancy and all of the "fun" that brings. However The Wife has been having contractions for three weeks.

We are tired.  Well, I should amend that.  I am tired, she is exhausted.  We are starting to get that glaze that says "maybe today, but probably not" and we sigh and go back to what we were doing.

I know it is for the best that she is getting more incubation time, I do and I know that I am being selfish when I say I want this baby out.  I want us all to have some rest.

Maybe tomorrow.

In which we continue to wait.

My birthday has come and gone and still no baby.  I was hoping that she would be born on that day but alas and alack, no go.  The Wife and I have started to resign ourselves to the fact that despite all of the fun practice contractions, The Girl will not be showing up any time soon.  The Wife and I have developed the stares that prisoners give each other.  We are resigned to a fate we cannot change.

The Birthday was good though.  I am now 31, but care very little about the number. I think it is slightly more significant that the light from 61 Ursae Majoris will be reaching us very soon.  According to wikipedia we are 31.1 ish lightyears from that star meaning that in something like 1.2 months light from it from when I was born will reach us.  Memory Alpha tells us that the NX-01 was sent to investigate the star close up and one of the planets in the system is named for Johnathan Archer, Archer IV.

I like measuring time in Light Travel time.  

Still waiting.

While The Girl is not yet technically due and we should be waiting patiently for the due date, we're done.  I don't think I've been as prepared for anything as we are for the Girl.  The Wife and I were talking about it this weekend and pretty much landed on the fact that if we still had something major to do then maybe, MAYBE the waiting wouldn't be so bad.

I would call this weekend rather successful though, in spite of not spawning a new Overlord.  I purchased a birthday gift for The Wife and The Boy received his first comic book.  Its Angry Birds and while I may not have selected it, he loves it.  He slept with it last night.  Every time he was up to use the bathroom, when I tucked him back in he had to have it.  Its like it is in his blood or something...

Additionally I've had the opportunity to give myself a lot of work, which I did and now must find the time to do.  That will be interesting once the Girl decides to finally make an appearance, but doable.  All it takes is the determination to do it.

And now I am a potato.

We are still on Babywatch.  The top favorite for a replacement word for F**K is Braxton-Higgs.  At this point, from a non-incubator perspective, it is kind of like watching a Wife size pot of water come to a boil.  It takes forever, you can easily burn yourself and just when you think you get to the point where you can cook your food the stove explodes because you have placed an irresponsible amount of hot water on a tiny stove.

What was I saying?  Oh yeah, FRUSTRATION.  As bad as the waiting is for me, it is much worse on The Wife.  I at least don't have a wee thing inside of me, wriggling about and keeping me awake, having to use the bathroom and punching me intestines/bones.  I joke with my wife that she does not have patience at the best of times but that's not true.  Right now what she is doing I'm not certain I could do.  The little sleep, the changes in taste and smells.  The aches and discomfort that only seem to subside but never leave.  I think I would be driven mad.

Again, just being on the outside of the process is frustrating.  I can't control when the baby comes or how smoothly it can go.  I can't know beforehand if something I do will set off a pregnancy related discomfort with my wife.  The lack of control is hard.  Whenever The Girl comes it will be a little easier.  I will be able to hold her and let my wife rest.  I will be able to feed her or give some quiet time.  I know how to handle babies now and even though less sleep and more stress are a certainty I welcome it.  Heck, I'm even looking forward to it.

Where I live.

Utah is a place that, sometimes rightly so, is the butt of many jokes.  The Simpsons where Bart challenges Millhouse, "Race you to Utah".  Broken Arrow where they boast about if they ever go to war with Utah.  Yadda yadda yadda.  Point is Utah gets more pokes than say.... Montana or Idaho.  That being said there are some very cool things here that I love.

Did you ever see the TV movie of The Stand?  Most of what wasn't shot in Vegas was done here.  The first public meeting that they hold in "Bolder" in the third episode is the Union Pacific building.  An absolutely stunning building that is now part of "The Gateway", a mall in the center of the city that hosts our St Patrick's Day parade.  The airbase that Trash wrecks is actually the Wendover Airfield close to the Salt Flats.

Remember The Sandlot?  The actual sandlot is located a couple of blocks from my gramma's house.  Down south a ways is the pool and park where they filmed the carnival and pool scene, you know the one.  My dad was even cut from the movie.  True story.

The iconic dog chase scene, where Benny outruns Herc causing all kinds of mayhem, well I know for a fact that they filmed much more than they ended up using.  It happens in movies, of course it does but I am sad that me da was cut from this one.  Anyhow, my dad in his prime was one of the most recognizable faces in the Western Scottish Pipe Band Association.  A Drum Major.  He and the band he was working with at the time, I believe it was the Salt Lake Scotts were hired to be extras during filming on that scene.  The dog and Benny were to run through them and they were all to fall or scatter or whatever.  Less than five seconds of screen time really.  One of the drummers damaged his instrument during the filming, dented it all up.

All the while I'm sitting there under a tree, watching all these people make a big fuss over lights and cameras.  I petted a big dog and played with some kids.  Every so often the dog would be moved to go to the cameras and then come back.  Once the dog came back a little scuffed up.  Apparently the dog trainer tumbled and so the dog thought to do the same.  I petted him and helped give him water.  I had no idea that the kids I played with or the dog I sat with under the tree were the stars of the movie.  All I knew at the time was my dad was doing a job with his band and it would help us go to Disneyland.

It kind of salts my butter though.  They filmed the cake part of that scene the same day.  That made it in but me da didn't.

I've gotten off on a tangent so I guess I will end here.  I'll talk more on Utah later.

A subtle reminder

We really are living in a sci-fi world.

Everyone who reads this is taking part in the world of tomorrow as well.  You are probably reading this on a screen that is no thicker than three inches and possibly even something that is a quarter inch thick.  It is much more power efficient than ten years ago when we were still going away from the CRT beasts of yore.

Other people have a Kindle with E-Ink.  Ink that changes size to make words or images on a page.  A paper page mind, not a crazy screen but something that is more like paper in a book than not.  We are developing OLED screens that one day can give you a real time HUD on your car or turn every wall in your house to a vivid landscape.

We have a nuclear powered, laser equipped science lab the size of a car on Mars that has been happily doing tests for two years with no real signs of stopping that we landed there using a frakkin flying saucer. We know more about how the universe works and we are using that to our advantage.  The NIF in California is a prime example of this.  Heck, that place is so Sci-Fi they used it as the warp core in the last Star Trek.

Point is, I am happy to be here.  I'm glad you can join me.  Lets learn about something fantastic.

Taking bets.

I've started a little pool.  I am asking friends and family when they think The Girl will be born.  She is due this month and I thought it would be nice to treat someone to a lunch for getting it right.

Interestingly enough most people are going for the 15th and after.  Something is telling me that it is going to happen sooner rather than later though.  She has dropped and is showing other signs of it being an IMMINENT EVENT.

All looming portends of terror aside, I am looking forward to ending this phase and moving on to the active Daddy phase.  I am hoping to get The Boy as involved as possible.  He already loves to help and I want to make sure that he is protective of his little sister.  Some people may not like the approach we are taking but I do want him to feel responsible for her.  I hope it will help him not feel envious of all the attention that she is going to get.

After she is born I am also going to take the time to spend some time one on one with him.  My biggest fear is that he starts to feel less important.  I never want him to feel that way and I am going to do what I can to play with him and show him lots of love.

No pressure.

Music Monday

If atheists are right and God in whatever form does not exist, if we are alone in the universe and there is nothing out there but dust and echos and light, how much more wonderful is music?  Existence in general but music particularly.  Motes of dust upon a mote of dust hurling through infinity and all the while we sing.  We pound out patterns.  We pluck notes.  We toot a flute.  Cradled in our only home.

We scream at the darkness.  We compose complex melodies that mean something only to those that can hear it and even then it can mean very different things. We come from the dirt, we make something wonderful or share in something wonderful and then we go back.

Recently, in a cosmological sense, we've been beaming these songs and our voices out to the universe at large.  It may never be deciphered but we've added our voice to the background radiation of existence.  Part of us will never ever die and in a way it is one of the more honest parts of ourselves.  Music born from pain, joy and love.  Music made to make money.  Talk shows that illustrate what we found important at the time.  Comedy, propaganda, secret messages.  Each and all going out to infinity, possibly never to be seen again but never really gone.

Kind of makes bad music worthwhile, doesn't it?

It feels like summer again, but not in a good way.

After a while, and I am sure that anyone who writes or blogs in a non professional fashion can agree on this, life gets in the way and your ability or desire to blabber on teh interwebs takes a nosedive.  I have obviously not written as much as I'd like and I do feel bad about that.

The Girl gets closer.  She kicks and wiggles and squiggles and we wait.  OOOooooooh how we wait.  Fortunately at this writing we have 2 days and 4 hours to go have her where we would like.  In no time flat we will be on the home stretch and we will see what happens to my productivity then!

Working on two or three different projects now.  One I am thinking would be best done in water colors, one in acrylic and the other/s digitally.  I will keep at them even after The Girl comes.  I have too.  I want to make good things for my family. 

Blargo

Well that was an expensive weekend.

The Boy had his birthday party on Saturday and while it was great fun it was tinged with great financial loss.  You see my car, MoMo, decided that it did not like having a functioning alternator and so it crapped out.  MoMo is not a cheap car, per se and so the parts therein are not cheap either.  $400 later and the car functions but still.  OW.

He loved his birthday though.  We got him Monsters Inc and Univ toys. He received blocks and planes and playdough.  More food than I could have imagined and he was a very good boy.  His cake though, was wonderful.  We had a friend make it and she did a bang up job.  The cake was two layers, white cake below, chocolate above.  She was able to make them in the style of Monsters Inc.  The bottom layer was Sully's fur and the top was Mike Wazowski.  The Boy had fingers in it before we had even sung Happy Birthday.

Additionally: The Wife has been having a fair number of contractions.  Apparently Braxton-Higgs are more common in pregnancies after the first.  She has been pulling through with a combination of perseverance and tasty foods.  Berries and melons.... cookies.  You know, the essentials.  I am not worried though, The Girl will come when she is ready, these are just warm ups.

Final Martian.

I've finished, or at least hit the point where I don't want to work on this thing anymore.

BEHOLD, MARTIAN.

I am fairly certain the brain line thingys killed me.  So many dadgum little lines to squiggle and wiggle and slither about.    It is a lot of work when you are a lazy person!

I see a lot that I could have worked more on but I could loose myself in tiny details and I don't want to do that.  I am going to find the next thing to work on and I am going to complete it in less than four weeks.

That's all for tonight.  Go'way.

The Rosedales

Alternate title could be "How the hell do I keep finding neat bands after they've stopped".

I seriously have a talent for finding bands that have a unique flavor years after they've halted the majority of their creative output.  In the case of The Rosedales, they haven't updated their band page in a year or so, their last album was released in 2009 and their social media presence is next to nothing.  But I've latched onto their albums on Spotify and have loved them.  I've been trying to analyse why and the best I can come up with is broken down into a couple of different categories.

1. Subject matter.
The Rosedales are a horror pop/punk style group similar to Koffin Kats, The Creepshow or Bloodsucking Zombies From Outer Space.  Ergo the lyrics are packed with spooky imagery along with the song titles.  Never Coming Home, Murder of Crows, Frozen Ghost etc.

2. A different sound from the genre.
Instead of the harsher sounds that permeates the genre, The Rosedales sounds a bit more... I hesitate to say softer.  More atmospheric?  It allows for a different mood to form and produces some very sing-a-long-able tunes.  To describe it I can only think about some of the alternative pop that came from the 80's.  Less Synth, more vocalization.

I was listening to one of their songs the other day, So Ordinary from their 2003 album Raise Your Spirits and I realized that this song is I am Legend.

"I came to the other day, man my eyes were dark and grey So I cried up to the sky, whoa Then I wandered around this town not another soul around I'm the last man on earth

Life seems so ordinary, without you mine feels so scary I feel so dead and buried, without you I feel so ordinary now So ordinary now

Three years have gone by, every night I hear the cries All those mutants left behind, whoa Could things get any worse, now I'm driving in a hearse They only come out at night

Life seems so ordinary, without you mine feels so scary I feel so dead and buried, without you I feel so ordinary now"

If you are unfamiliar with the story thanks to the Will Smith movie from a few years back, the lyrics above is pretty much the first half.  However I don't recall if in the book Robert Neville drove in a hearse.  I think that is lifted from the pretty great The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price.  Come to think of it the whole song probably is an homage to the movie, what with that last man on earth lyric.

In short, give them a listen.  I enjoy them, if more people rediscover them then maybe we will get another album.

The memories of food.

As I continue writing these posts I feel that having one day a week where I talk about food strikes me as a bit... glutton-y?  I like food, I really do but I don't wish to give the impression that it is all I think about.  This may be the last Tuesday Foods post for some time.  We'll see.

I hesitate to cut this out though because so many shared memories come from meals or food experiences with friends.  I love sharp cheddar because it is something that my grandpa shared with me.  Its special.  I have a fondness for mac 'n' cheese with corn on the cob because it is one of my favorite meals that my mom made when I was growing up.  I imagine that anyone reading this has similar memories that they could share.  It's another of those connections that seems, no matter where you grew up, to be similar for everyone.  Is it genetic?  Who knows.  Maybe it comes from far back when we huddled together under the stars and told tales by the fire while sharing food.

If I were to replace the food section I would probably switch it out with something geeky, seeing as that is the sort of thing that I enjoy and it is my blog.  Honestly I probably should use it as an update day for the comic that has been languishing.  Maybe I will use it as a review day?  I don't know.  I need to think about these things in advance rather than stream of thought-ing them.

Soon, soon.

The Girl is coming soon.

The Earth trembles at the coming child.  Men weep and children run.  Soon she will lay waste to all and make all bow before her....
In like a month.  In the mean time Wife and I are gathering up the baby accessories like clothes, diapers and battle-borg teddy bears.  You know, the essentials.  So in an effort to allow my wife, the Wife, to gestate in peace I've been trying to take our son out more.  This last weekend we went down south to the Payson Scottish Festival.  Fun was had by all.  I had a Scottish Egg for a bit of second breakfast.  For those unfamiliar, a Scottish Egg is a hard boiled egg, wrapped in sausage and deep fried.  Billions of calories, nae a hint of vegitables, DEEP FRIED.  Scottish Food.

Also got some Ginger Beer, because of course I did.  How could I not?  Especially when the salesperson that handed me my two bottles was about the ginger-y ginger you could ever ask for.  I applaud the lad.  It takes some bravery to go out on a limb, sell the drink and put up with the barrage of comments that his complexion would invite.

In a way I will be quite glad when the new baby is born.  In a way I will also be rather sad. It is pretty neat to feel them kick but I want to meet her now.  I want the Boy to meet his sister and for us to grow as a family.  Moreover I want to continue to take my family to festivals and expose them to fun flavors and sights.

Just about another month now.

Utah Trivia.

Well, in those days Mars was a dreary, uninhabitable wasteland, much like Utah. But unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made liveable when the university was founded in 2636.

I have a love/hate relationship with my state.

It's true.  There are things about Utah that I absolutely love and there are things that make me wish I could live on Mars, far far away from the crappola that happens in our little/not so little state.  The good things include some ridiculously good hospitals and research institutes, a thriving geek/art/music community.  A lot of very kind neighbors/ random folks.  The bad things are people who put their ideals of their religion ahead of the actual teaching of said religion, a general intolerance in some circles of "different" individuals.  Etc.  Every state has their problems but outside of New Jersey few have as many jokes made about them.

Presented here are some facts of my home state that are cool or frustrating... or both.

1.Utah's 65% or so comprised of Federal land.  IE we have a lot of really big national parks, forests, monuments and military facilities.  Quite simply you can get lost and die in a million acre forest just two hours outside of our major metropolitan areas.

2. We are home to Pando, The Trembling Giant. Quite possibly the largest organism (due to weight) on the planet.  It is a bloody great tree y'all.

3. Several land speed records were set at the Bonneville Salt Flats.  An area that is exactly what the name describes.  An absolutely massive bed of salt that in the summer is hard packed and really good for going very fast upon.  I've been out there after a great spring storm and the water stretched for miles all around, perfectly still and flat.  Wonderful.

I won't take up the time to grump about the things that upset me.  That only gives them power.  This weekend I am going to the Payson Scottish Festival and I am going to have a fine time. 

Car drawing.

The first drawing I ever made any money on was of a blue 60 something Chevy. It was a pencil drawing on 8.5x11 paper and it sold for a whopping $20 cash.  We did a quick and dirty seal on it with some hairspray and that was that.  I spent a few hours working on it before the owner of the car ever saw it and quite honestly I had no intention of selling it.  Since then I've painted some planes and cars, mostly for my father some just for me.

I like drawing machines like cars or planes because they are ever so geometric.  The shapes that make them up are very easy to see and to translate onto a page.  One of the first things I've been told in my art classes is to squint.  You remove surface details and the basic shape of the subject comes forward.  From there you can construct the drawing as you see fit and it should work because the foundation is there.  I'm thinking that by this time next year I would like to be able to go to car shows with a portfolio of my pictures and sell commissions.

I think it would be good for me for a few reasons.
1. More practice never hurts.
2. More travel with the family never hurts.
3. If the car owner likes my stuff and decides to buy then that is money in my pocket.
4. If the car owner shows it off it could mean potential new business.

I don't want to come off as sounding like money would be the only reason because it wouldn't be.  If you've never gone to a car show and spoken with the owners then you would understand that any complement to their car is very much like a complement to them.  They spend hours and thousands of dollars in order to make their car exactly what they wanted and very rarely is it anything other than a labor of love.

My father, in my lifetime has rebuilt 5 cars from scrap or better to functional and pretty road machines.  He's been doing it for a very long time.  His baby though, the one that took him ten years is actually a copy of a car that he customized when he was younger.  A 53 Studebaker that he chopped the top off of.  He was forced to sell it by his father after one too many speeding tickets.  It goes without saying that the guy he sold it to totaled it soon after.  Me Da Frankenstein'd the replacement together from 4 or 5 other Studebakers.  I quite distinctly remember that one was used for short track racing.

Ten years, who knows how much money over that time.  I painted him a picture of it for his birthday some years ago.  It still hangs with pride in their house. The point is that these sorts of people love to see their hard work appreciated and I personally like letting people know that sort of thing.  

BAGPIPES.

To anyone that knows me there is no surprise when I say that I love the bagpipe.  It is a cultural thing, a family thing.  They have been present for the happier and the sadder times in my life.  My grandpa on my mom's side played them, my uncle, a cousin (two or three in a pipe band at any given time, just not all on the 'pipes) a dozen friends of the family.  Long story short, they've always been there.

It pleases me when I hear them pop up in popular media like movies or tv but it usually is just a few seconds of pipes before whatever bass riff or dance music they had resumes.  One of the worst offenders I've found is Cloud Age Symphony (the opening tune to Last Exile)


Warning, lack of pipes.

To me it is akin to someone opening a chest containing a pile of beautiful raspberries and only pulling one out to give to you and just before they do hand it over, they squish it a little.  This is nothing against Last Exile, mind.  I rather enjoyed the show and art direction.  Just that opening bothers me.  It is not consistent with the tone of the show and it makes me wonder why they even bothered with the five seconds of bagpipe in the first place.

Then there is the opening that stays perfectly in line with a show.

Warning, laughing cartoon people.
Creepy and weird, huh?  That's Paranoia Agent to a T.  Not for everyone, certainly but nevertheless an interesting show that had some serious thought put to it.  From the theme and opening crawl to the end credits and everything in between.

Bit of a tangent but the point is kind of there.  Don't start of with something and go off to left field without having or making a reason.  It is certainly something that I need to be cognizant of in my writing and art as I tend to start with one path and end up going through the brambles to another.

Thoughts I need to keep in place for future projects:
1. I need to keep a story diary. A pulped paper hard copy for everything.
2. Everything has a reason in a good story, but not required in art.
3.Keep the theme steady.  Don't be bogus bagpipes.
4. Bogus Bagpipes sounds like a 1950's superhero catchphrase. Like if Banshee was made by DC two decades earlier.

Berry delicious!

Last night was a mixed bag.

On the plus side I was able to get a treat for my family.  Strawberries and some of our favorite drinks.  On the minus side my phone was bricked due to staying in my pocket when I went swimming last night.  The less said about that the better, aye?

The Wife and I love berries and I am pleased to report that The Boy does as well.  Wife and Boy both tore into the strawberries like they were going out of style.  There were some monster ones in the container, bigger than a toddler's fist and all I could think of was 'Thanks genetic modification!'

Keeping it short today due to being tired.

A father's day of sorts.

Hullo.

Radio silence has been broken.  It was initiated mostly because the last week or so have been rather... busy? There really is no excuse that would be adequate or sound like anything other than a "whoops" so I won't insult your intelligence.

I had the rather immense pleasure this last Friday (the 4th) to spend the day with my son and to give my wife a much needed day of rest.  I hear that she watched a lot of stuff and napped, so that was a success.  We went to a park that we had never played in before.  It had large shades covering the play area so we could romp in the 100+ degree day without getting a sunburn.  Plenty of water was had by all.  I would like to go back to this park because it had a nice stream with a duck family and several more play areas and climbing walls.

Its been recently where I've started to see glimpses of the man my child might become.  Hints in his face, small mannerisms that he has picked up from family.  The apparent never ending stretching of his limbs.

He will be four in less than two weeks.  He will have a sibling in less than ten.

I am only rarely scared of what might happen with them.

However it is days like the 4th that give me comfort.  We played, we watched a fun movie together (Mr Peabody and Sherman), we ate and talked and played some more.  I think that even if I go early then he has something to remember me by, something pleasant.  Days like today as well.  As soon as I got home he insisted that Mommy and I go swimming with him.  Afterwords I made dinner and we tucked Mommy into bed before I tucked him in.  He is a good boy.  A good helper.  In him I understand my parents more.  What they went through to get me to where I am.

It's days like these that keep me going.  

Romance isn't dead, its just resting.

Years ago I had someone tell me that I was a romantic.  Not the "ooooh flowers leading to champagne and candles" sort of romantic but the sort of person that gravitates towards either idealized concepts or stories that bleed into your imagination and let it run away.  At the time I thought it was a small complement and nothing more.  As I've grown since then I've found that it is less of a compliment and more of an observation. IE: "You've got jam on  your shirt".  

Thinking back on it I feel kind of dumb because it is that blindingly obvious that I am a romantic.  From the games and movies I enjoy to the books and music.  It is no more mysterious than when someone cold reads an audience and finds that someone knew someone who died recently, ala psychics.  Just someone picking up the clues and putting two and two together.  Does it lessen my enjoyment of fantastical things?  HEAVENS NO.  It just means that I can recognize a pattern.

In that vein I'd like to talk about the Romantic movement in art.  (1800-1850ish)

This period was defined by people breaking rules or telling more obtuse stories in their pictures.  Something that by the virtue of a pose and some props would allow the viewer to ponder upon what may be happening or just be lost in the spectacle.  This is probably best illustrated by Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog"

Apparently the French enjoyed showing doomed heroes or useless struggles.  

"Massacre of the Innocents"

Both paintings, in their way and just by the virtue of being, tell a similar story but the kicker as with most Romantic art is that you choose that story.  Maybe that is why I like Mass Effect.  We might know where it goes, but how it gets there is up to us.  I don't know.  I think I may be done for today.

Whensday?

Today's post comes to you today by the letter P.  As in my son swallowed a penny and freaked us out a little.

We've told him before not to stick stuff like that in his mouth but I guess today was one of those days where the three year old brain decided to say 'screw it, imma put this in mah mouf.'  See, we aren't even 100% certain that he did actually swallow ol' Abe.  He may have been just saying stuff and then we primed him with questions.  So now we have to check his poo....

*jazz hands* GLAMOUR.

We are re-watching DS9, like you do, and I've been thinking about what the show did right and where it hit the wall with some random unneeded weirdness.  Last night we watched the first half of the episode which introduced the Defiant. 2nd season, 1st episode.  The Dominion is weighing heavy on all of their thoughts and the crew is going over different battle scenarios when The Defiant de-cloaks and we get treated to a Romulan being a stereotypical Romulan.

The part that struck me and stuck with me in the episode though comes when Jake and Commander Sisko are getting re-settled and they talk about how the station has become home.  They take the time to show the two pulling their comfort items close and settling in.  Despite the looming problems with The Dominion, Jake has his spice pudding, Ben unpacks his collection of ancient African art.  It is a good touch and it helped to deepen one of the already best elements of the show.  Jake and his father have a fantastic relationship and just this small scene of them settling back into their home is just about perfect.

Contrast this with say, Voyager.  This show had a promising concept but took so little time to actually develop the characters or really explore the situation they were in.  It was more of a monster of the week than a possible look at what people could do when faced with what would be a horrible problem. They might never get home.  They barely touched upon it in a few episodes (Year of Hell would have been great had it stayed in the timeline).  At least Voyager broke a couple of Star Trek ideas by having a Vulcan security chief and a Klingon engineer.

This is what I do, examine the stories of decades old television shows whilst waiting for my son to play slot machine....   Hrm.

Raspberries

One of my favorite experiences from my childhood was of eating the stuff that came from my mother's garden.  We would grow corn on occasion and decided that the very best way to have corn was to pop it off the stalk, shuck it and plop it in the pot.  Corn on the cob that was picked no more than a half hour ago.  mmmmm.  We would have Mac 'n' Cheese along side and for some reason, my parents would have a shimp salad.

However.  The tip top.  The best to my little child hands was the raspberries.  So tart, a little squishy at times, ever so messy.  These are the hallmarks of a good finger food, at least to the young me.  I loved when they came in and was really sad, probably more than I let on, when my mom decided to stop growing them.

Imagine then my surprise this last weekend when we went to Bear Lake and found that everything was raspberried to death.  Raspberry shakes at every food joint.  Berry stands (unfortunately closed, not berry season yet).  It was delightful and, in all honesty, comforting.  I am twenty years beyond picking those berries from my mother's garden and yet I am right back there once again when I have a really good raspberry.

That, I think, is part of why we can enjoy food.  We tie memories into the experience and when we smell those familiar smells or see the colors of our favorite foods.  When we get that taste we are reminded of those better times,of our friends, our family or our childhood.  We can all get those sorts of experiences and that is pretty wonderful.  Not only does it allow us a way to revisit our past but it is a fully repeatable thing.  New friends, new foods, new experiences and opportunities to share and remember.

In which we played in sand.

What a weekend.  This was perhaps the busiest and most tiring one we've had and are likely to have until The Girl arrives.  We were invited by our friends to join them in a rental condo up in the mountains at a place called Bear Lake.

For those not in the know, like I was, Bear Lake straddles the Utah Idaho border and apparently has a huge thing for raspberries.  The lake is pretty big in terms of mountain lakes and the drive was stunning.  Everything was still blooming up there so it was mottled with yellow, blue and white wildflowers.  The condo we stayed in had three floors, easy access to a swimming pool and was close enough to the lake that you could see it very well from the windows.

Friday night we made the drive up there and enjoyed the early evening forest (Cache National).  Dinner was a spicy chicken alfredo with ziti.  It was quite good.  The Wife and I were in charge of breakfasts and so I had to make a little trip to the local market.  It was a tiny thing, maybe 1000 ftsq. I purchased what we needed for foods and we went back and slept.  Saturday we swam, but were toasted after that so we stayed in and played Magic.  Sunday we took a small drive and played in the sand at the beach.  The Boy had so much fun, flitting about and digging with all of us.  We made a sand volcano, it was taller than the lad.  I then did this to him.

Thoughts taken from this weekend:

The Boy was very good.  He listened very well and he only had to go into Time-Out once when he refused to go to bed.  However, that was pretty minor.

I really need to get a griddle.  The one I cooked on was very cheap but I made it work quite well.  Sausage, eggs and bacon all turned out quite well.  The hashbrowns however were better in a skillet.

This is the last trip thingy we are taking until The Girl comes.  The change in altitude and environment was not kind to The Wife.  We are going to be home bodies for a while. 

What a delightful new species.... NOMNOMNOM.

We are animals.

No matter what trapping we give ourselves, no matter how many gold baubles or techie gadgets or surgeries we perform.  No matter how fast we go, how high, no matter what we do, we are animals.  And sometimes it is delightful.

I mean that in the same sort of way as if you were watching a dog, growl at the TV because the doorbell rang on a show or how you laugh as a cat chases a laser pointer.  Its cute because it is kind of something the animal can't control.  It is just... part of them.  We are animals.  Moreover we are animals driven by our love of food.  People go gaga over vittles of all sorts.  It's fun to see because we all like to eat and given the chance there are a lot of us that would try just about anything put in front of us provided it was edible.

From Wikipedia:

US Navy captain David Porter declared that, "after once tasting the Galapagos tortoises, every other animal food fell off greatly in our estimation ... The meat of this animal is the easiest of digestion, and a quantity of it, exceeding that of any other food, can be eaten without experiencing the slightest of inconvenience."

This is not an uncommon thing.  It seems like history is littered with "oh, such a magnificent creature.  Who's hungry? *nomnomnom*"  In the past few years I've read about how new and exciting species of animals are found... in the meat markets.

From the WWF:

WWF released the report on World Environment Day, highlighting creatures both bizarre and beautiful. Among the 15 species highlighted is a new species of flying squirrel (Biswamoyopterus laoensis), discovered based on a single animal collected from a bush meat market in Laos. With its distinctive red and white fur, the Laotian giant flying squirrel is also the first record of the genus from Southeast Asia. 

We love to eat and God help anything that gets in our way.
We are Galactus....

Why art?

Why not?

Part of the reason why I love visual arts like drawing, painting or photography is because they provide a snap of what was important to those who came before.  Mythological figures, biblical, political, animals, food.  It's all there and it provides a unifying experience.  It helps show us that we all, deep inside, worry about the same things and that we can find beauty in many different places.

There is a website that I am hooked on called www.the-athenaeum.org/ which is constantly updated with thousands of artworks.  There is a section where you can just have it load random art and the themes and stories above are repeated over and over again.  There are nudes, shipwrecks, landscapes, illustrations and portraits.

The thing I find most interesting is the different interpretations of the same theme.  Judith Beheading Holofernes is an oddly popular one.

DON'T CLICK IF YOU DON'T WISH TO SEE A DUDE GETTING HIS NOGGIN CHOPPED OFF.

Caravaggio has one:
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=25919#

Artemisia Gentileschi:
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/full.php?ID=101893
A couple actually:
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=101892

Titian:
http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=36919

There are thousands of paintings that cover bible scenes.  There are many for Shakespeare, for Greek myths.  The same scene put through different hands.  They produce something familiar and yet unique in their own way.  Each showing a different way to observe a scene that reflects the artist's culture, background and interests.  Art is amazing.

Not just visual art, though that is what I love the most, but all kinds of art.  I might talk more on it later, but I think I've gone on long enough. Carry on. 

The Phenomenauts. Escape Velocity

I think it was around 2006 or 05 that I was blasted into this bands orbit.  You see I had gone to see the Aquabats, as you do, and the opening act was The Phenomenauts.  It was fun, punky music that was a little rough and undeniably geeky.  Songs with titles like "Welcome Back" and the accompanying "Space Girl" (A Simpsons quote that I confirmed with the Robot at another show.) in addition to the undeniable "Earth Is The Best" prime you for a space themed post punk ride.  I've seen them only twice, but they were great shows.  The other time I saw them I was introduced to The Epoxies, but that is a whole other post.

Well, they have come out with a new album. "Escape Velocity".  I haven't given it enough plays to make a strong opinion, but initial impressions indicate impressive increases in album structure and themes.  IE, they have grown up a little.  The first song on the album is an indicator of that, "I  don't care whether Earth is the best (I love it anyway)" and it grows from there.  Previous albums had one major voice but this one seems to have more reliance on other voices helping to fill in and flesh out the songs.  This impression is deepened by "Theme for Oakland" which features The Bay Area Cadet Chorus.  Admittedly I have no idea who that is, without doing the bare minimum of googling it I assume it is probably some fans they've gathered. I've only been able to catch this album on Spotify and they don't support liner notes and I am Lazy.... :( HOWEVER, it gives additional voices to the bands message and that message seems to be, together we can make it, and thrive, but only together.

And then they sing about the "Broken Robot Jerk".  Calm down, it's a dance.

I am going to be putting this into my regular rotation and I think I will be buying this as soon as I can afford it.  They are good tunes.  There is no cussing so its good for when the Boy, Wife and eventual Girl are in the car with Dad and they have no means of escape.

The album also has a guest appearance by Kepi Ghoulie of the Groovy Ghoulies on "When Greed Nearly Destroyed the World".  Always good to hear from Kepi.  Additionally there is a redo of a song from their 2003 album "Rockets and Robots", "10,000 Light Years".  It further illustrates that the band has grown in their abilities and matured.  The earlier version's tone can be best described as an album filler of a do-wop song.  The new version is peppier, tighter and, while still somewhat structured like the earlier one, integrates more rock and roll elements making for a much more enjoyable tune.

The Phenomenauts have come a long way in a short time.  They've provided great songs, a unique voice and I hope they keep making music for a long time to come.  Give "Escape Velocity" a listen.  If you don't like it, that's okay.  I just won't like you as much.

The hunt.

For a while, I searched.  I sought an answer to an age old question.  Who has the best cheese filled hot dog?  I received a hint that they could be found at High Grade Meats.  A local meat packer of some renown who had, by luck or a deal with INFERNUS ET GOMMME had the BEST hot dogs.  They had these cheddar filled jalepeno monsters that were just soooo melty and grand.

They went out of business.

A while ago...

So long that I've settled for lesser dogs.  Knockoffs..... Guy Fierri branded links tempted me... I've resisted them so far.  I would love to have a great dog like that once more. So if anyone has any tips or hints as to where I might be able to find a delicious juicy, cheesy, melty, spicy.......... Just let me know, okay?

OKAY?

------

I've contemplated getting a meat grinder and making my own hot dogs but the biggest thing stopping me is the fact that my kitchen is about nine square feet.  It is a very tiny kitchen that has tiled countertops and is about fifty years old.  The joys of apartment living....  It has made it so I have a requirement of my kitchen of the future.  There must be an island, perhaps with a bar.  At the very least there should be at least four feet of countertop that I could use to make various treats and tasty meals.

This isn't the best post, I know.  It has been a rough couple of days.  I promise that I will be better and less distracted by hot dogs.  LESS. That's the ticket.