Gentleman's Choice

4mat: Surrender

2011-05-24T21:55:00.000-04:00

This came out a couple months ago. It is great.

Harold Camping's problem is the pain of separation from his siblings.

2011-05-24T11:36:00.003-04:00

The old fart who does such a great job of working folks into a stiff, foamy lather with dubious predictions of the world's end sure does look like a few other people. By "people," I mean, of course, an assortment of fictional characters.

A celebrated hack of a comedian, a filmmaker riding on the fumes of a thirty-some year old idea, and the product of a delusional redneck. Three's company, but four is a very happy crowd.

I Am Here....Now

2011-02-15T21:20:00.001-05:00

Well, well. Looks like the ol' GC is awakening from its slumber. Why, you ask? Why else? Breen.

Neil Breen, Las Vegas real estate agent and independent filmmaker well-known among the legions of Gentleman's Choice faithful, released another movie last year. It's called I Am Here.... Now. The Cinefamily film society in Los Angeles has scored a coup by booking Breen himself to appear at a screening on February 19.

I Am Here....Now (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.

This is pretty incredible, and I have to wonder what it took to lure Breen out of his desert bunker to make a public appearance.

I have seen I Am Here....Now, and was pretty let down. Trust me, the Cinefamily-made trailer above is so much more exciting than the movie itself. It bore all the Breen signatures as Double Down, like endless desert establishing shots, ponderous pseudo-philosophical narration, and acting that can charitably be called amateur. And while the last of those can be wonderfully entertaining (especially "Hell yeah!" guy), it's so overwhelmed by the former two that it turns into quite a slog. And this is coming from someone who's seen Double Down five times. It does feature dialogue exchanges that occur in the same frame, so that's an improvement. I fear that Breen is being pulled into a vortex of his own Breeniness. And while I wouldn't want him to lose those qualities that make him the singular voice he is, I kind of want him to take a screenwriting course or two.

Anyhow, for more on Breen, check out my posts here, here, here, and here.

Kerfuffle

2010-11-04T16:32:00.003-04:00

Kerfuffle. A fine word, and one that has popped up a few times this week. I started playing with it in Illustrator, and here's something that happened as a result.

The Glowing Wondercock!

2010-11-03T21:35:00.003-04:00

I love - love in italics - this cover for the newest Rascal Flatts album, Nothing Like This. Check this out. It's glorious.

If you walk into a Wal-Mart any time soon, you'll probably be greeted by this dudes' great glowing wondercock when you walk in. This cover works so well. The title: small, white, barely noticable. In other words, irrelevant. All that matters is that these three dudes are back, shot from a low angle against a wide open sky. And, of course, there's the glowing wondercock of lead singer Gary LeVox - that's seriously his name - enticing the ladies. It's an untouchable wondercock, of course, as he's a married man. It's his wife's glowing wondercock. But ladies, feel free to imagine its transcendence illuminating the deepest recesses of your womanhood.

This is how you sell records.

It's Halloween.

2010-10-31T00:00:00.001-04:00

From George Eastman House on Flickr.

Reptilian Fabric

2010-10-20T15:06:00.003-04:00

This is incredible. It's a textile pattern by UK industrial designer Christopher Dresser. In 1887.

Plenty

2010-10-07T19:05:00.002-04:00

Something of an experiment, but I liked it well enough to make it look like a real thing.

It Gets Better

2010-09-24T09:48:00.001-04:00

More.

I'm Nonplussed By Your High Dudgeon

2010-07-30T16:19:00.004-04:00

On her blog The Medium, NYT writer Virginia Heffernan takes to task bloggers who left ScienceBlogs.com in the wake of PepsiCo being given a food and nutrition blog. The situation was bad because there had been no effort from SB owner Seed Media Group to consult with the site's bloggers about the "advertorial" blog. I've written a longer piece on it at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs. Basically, the situation crossed the line. Heffernan got it wrong.

"I was nonplussed by the high dudgeon of the so-called SciBlings," Heffernan writes, a line so hilarious I knew it deserved to be a badge of honor, a catchphrase for science bloggers. So I made a bumper sticker at Zazzle.com. It's my first go at something there, though I've been meaning to set something up for a long time. Click the weird, huge image below to check it out!

I'm Nonplussed By Your High Dudgeon by anatotitan
Create bumper stickers online at zazzle.com

Critters

2010-07-28T11:59:00.003-04:00

Dig on the excellent photography of Halifax photographer Chris McVeigh. From his photoset Critters:

I am very into art that connects to the "mundane" nature at our fingertips every day - I think my appetite for it is fed when I'm standing in my moonlit backyard, in the shadows of my pines and maples.

I doff my jaunty little cap to David Tana of Superoceras.

Ricky

2010-07-12T14:17:00.001-04:00

From the LIFE Archives.

A hand in the book is worth two in the...

2010-06-29T09:12:00.003-04:00

I scour Google Books for 19th century drawing and architecture textbooks. Sometimes ol' rubber fingers pops in to say "hello."

Nice, but where are the bikini models?

2010-06-28T14:09:00.002-04:00

From Galt Museum & Archives.

My Dog. Mon Chien

2010-06-27T10:36:00.003-04:00

Do you follow Agence Eureka? It's a fine blog of old french packaging art and children's illustrations and assorted other goodies.

This one looks just like my own girl-dog, Mitzie.

Really, a dead ringer.

Add Agence Eureka to your blog routines and your lives will be better for it, ninjas.

Cotes Tat

2010-06-23T08:16:00.000-04:00

This is my Indiana. You can't have none of it. It's all mine.

Ole Bull

2010-06-22T10:27:00.004-04:00

Ole Bull isn't a brand of chaw. He's a Norwegian violinist. I can't speak to the quality of his playing, since it was played before recording technology. But these portraits from the Bergen Public Library are pretty nifty, illustrations and photos taken throughout his career. This is my favorite, a nineteenth century business card.

I think that whenever I get around to making my own business card, it will be just like this. Just swap out the violin with a Wacom tablet.

A Swan You Don't Want to Meet in a Dark Alley

2010-06-18T10:46:00.001-04:00

Based on the Leda and the Swan story, I'd reckon. You should spend a lot of time checking out the wealth of good historical typography at History of the Book.

Avuncular

2010-06-17T08:17:00.000-04:00

Working on a book cover right now that I'm basing partly off of this old poster, found at the National Archives. I'm really just using my own redraw of the Uncle Sam. I'm basing the typography off of proper propaganda (properganda?) posters from the same era, like this one.

Ashra

2010-06-16T09:12:00.002-04:00

Found this German electronic act through the ISO50 blog. Super nifty if you like bathing in waves of synthesized sounds. I'd love to link to Lala. Since that site's demise, I've been using Grooveshark, which is pretty hit n' miss. Try this link. If you've got a better site that plays streaming albums, let me know.

Crystal Eyes

2010-06-12T23:30:00.003-04:00

The trilobite Phacops had a remarkable set of eyes. Like those of all trilobites, it was made of crystals of the mineral calcite.

Photo by perry3212, via Flickr.

Kenneth M. Towe made a camera lens modeled after the phacopid eye. I'd love to see photos taken with it, but if there are any available, I haven't found them.

Spitzbergen

2010-06-11T13:26:00.001-04:00

From the LOC.

Plagued by Dreadfully Hollow Space

2010-06-10T17:06:00.001-04:00

From UK Vintage. Bowf of 'em.

Rob Lavinsky's Mineral Collection

2010-06-01T16:25:00.004-04:00

Mineral Collector Rob Lavinsky has donated a huge number of photographs to Wikimedia commons. Amazing stuff, doubly so if you get off on esoteric geological jargon the way I do. You dirty dog.

Jake Sargeant

2010-05-26T10:45:00.002-04:00

Jake Sargeant. These photos are from his Flickr.

More Diatoms

2010-05-25T13:17:00.003-04:00

From the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's Flickr.

Navicula speciosa

Coscinodiscus hallettii

Biddulphia cornigera

Auliscus palosverdes

If you're interested in this kind of stuff - you know, the whole geometry in nature thing - check out Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature.

Best Road Trip Ever

2010-05-22T23:21:00.003-04:00

Just something I scored at a rummage sale today. It's from this geological field report.

They're Back...

2010-05-21T20:49:00.007-04:00

Starlings. The new batch has been spawned, and they've once again taken over my yard and devoured the suet. I feel awful for the woodpeckers who come to the empty cage, but refilling it would be pointless. We'll have to ride out the invasion together.

For what comfort it can provide, here's a print by the great Charley Harper, who I featured today at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs. Harper captures the feel of a mindless flock of starlings quite well.

From the official Harper website. It can be yours!

In last year's post I expressed my wish to get over my deep-rooted hatred of starlings. It hasn't really worked, but really, the problem is that there's just so many. I'd probably dislike cardinals just as much if there were two or three dozen of them raising a ruckus in my yard every day.

Starlings are the equivalent of a show that lasts much longer than the inspiration of its writing staff. My favorite birds are more like a Ricky Gervais show - they capture your attention when they're around and never overstay their welcome. Like catbirds. Damn, I love catbirds. Here's one.

Image by Ken Blackwell, via Flickr.

Death in Five Boxes

2010-05-19T12:47:00.001-04:00

I like ebooks, but you can't deny that you lose more than paper.

Much more here.

I Want My Diploma

2010-04-12T09:26:00.001-04:00

Cavern carved by the sea in an ice wall near Commonwealth Bay, 1911-1914

2010-04-09T09:15:00.001-04:00

Tiny but potent...

From the State Library of New South Wales

Skeleton of sea-elephant & Harold Hamilton

2010-03-30T10:55:00.001-04:00

From the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Yum

2010-03-01T00:51:00.002-05:00

So, I'm teaching myself illustrator. Like a silly, I decided to continue my experiments with my first published illustration for the Indiana Daily Student. Well, the silly part wasn't the Illustrator part of it, really: vintage candy packaging design is pretty basic and geometrical. The silly part was that I did not know when I pitched the illustration ("illo" in the jargon), it would be needed two days before the story is running. So I ended up kind of having to rush myself, and I'm not altogether satisfied with the final product. Go figure.

I liked these well enough to save. They'll print pretty small in the final. I'm not braggin' though. This is little more than an exercise using limited a color pallette and simple shapes.

My Birds

2010-02-07T14:46:00.003-05:00

Northern Flicker by Ken Schneider, via flickr

Saw one of these dandies in my yard today and it got me to realizin': I've been meaning to take a bird census of our yard for a long time. So, here's an unofficial, subject-to-expansion list of all the birds Jennie and I have had the pleasure of hosting. Comin' right off the top of my noggin.

Northern Flicker
Downy Woodpecker
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Red-Headed Woodpecker
Brown Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird
Gray Catbird
Tufted Titmouse
Nuthatch
Northern Cardinal
Carolina Chickadee
Goldfinch
Red-Tailed Hawk
Turkey Vulture
European Starling
Brown-headed Cowbird
Crow
Blackbird
Robin
Carolina Wren
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
House Sparrow
House Finch
Song Sparrow
Chipping Sparrow
Mourning Dove
Blue Jay

Cactii

2010-02-04T21:18:00.005-05:00

The desert and the mountains are the landscape of my mind, an obsession quietly pulling at me all the time. The raw beauty, the thrill of geological time opening before me, the sense of being lost in the world that owns every last atom of my body: all weak attempts to plot out the simple wonder I've felt on the rare occasion I've had to visit these places. So I read Abbey, gaze at photos, and scheme to get back. Ever since that first western trip with my father, when I saw the Rockies crest over the horizon after looking up from my dog-eared copy of Jurassic Park, since driving through the badlands of South Dakota, since the blinding flatness in northern Utah, the West has been stuck to the inside of my skull like wallpaper.

More of these great New Mexico postcards at my wife's flickr stream, here.

Sooty Tern

2010-01-15T16:59:00.001-05:00

From an old Life.

Antonio Petruccelli

2009-12-14T13:39:00.004-05:00

Antonio Petruccelli was an artist who mainly worked for magazines during the middle of the last century. I first encountered him when researching the "Life Through the Ages" series published by LIFE magazine. Here's one of his pieces that I think exemplifies the quality of his work, a great chart by depicting the evolution of camels.

The website Fulltable features a series of galleries of Petruccelli's work, including background information on the artist himself. He was adept at a variety of styles, from playful to bold and propagandistic.

Till the River Runs Dry

2009-12-10T21:58:00.003-05:00

Had a "play night" in photoshop tonight as I try to figure out what I want to do with the design of my dinosaur blog, which I'd like to be more coherent and user friendly. I ended up with this.

Not totally thrilled with the sailor cap, but I decided to add it at the very end when I was ready to be done.

This is Mars

2009-11-08T19:09:00.002-05:00

The Martian South Pole. More here! Thx to The Loom.

Walking Naked/ Quilt

2009-11-05T17:32:00.000-05:00

Milk Music

2009-11-03T18:04:00.000-05:00

Library of Congress: Worker at Carbon Black Plant

2009-10-31T00:01:00.000-04:00

The kind of thing that I don't mind paying taxes for.

Happy Halloween.

National Archives: Man with Goat

2009-10-30T09:47:00.002-04:00

THIS NATIVE OF RANDOLPH CENTER, VERMONT, QUIT A JOB AS AN AUTO MECHANIC TO RETURN TO THE FAMILY FARM IN HOPES OF KEEPING IT RUNNING. IN ADDITION TO JERSEY COW MILK, HE AND HIS MOTHER SELL GOAT'S MILK TO PRIVATE CUSTOMERS AND A LOCAL NURSING HOME, 05/1974

I use the National Archives as a resource for new designs, sometimes for inspiration, sometimes as actual elements. The online images are low res and very small, but I usually only use parts of them - shapes, textures, and colors. Many of the photos are wonderful on their own though, so I think I'll feature some of my favorites here on a regular basis. This one is a farmer and his goat. The caption is taken from the Archives site, and the all caps is theirs. They're shouting it at you.

I also love the Library of Congress flickr stream. It can be counted on.

The Lady's Preference: Calendars

2009-10-30T08:00:00.001-04:00

I should maybe start off by introducing myself and letting you know what I plan on doing here. My name is Jennie and I'm the "Gentleman's" wife. I fill my days with lots of secretarial work and answering questions from college kids. Then, I come home and hang out with David and work on the stuff that makes me feel like I am alive and have some sort of artistic talent. I enjoy baking, crafting, looking at cool stuff on the internet, and procrastinating. My goal here on Gentleman's Choice is to provide a woman's touch and share interesting weekly posts. I hope you like me and don't decide to boo me off the stage.

So, I know it is still a long way off from the new year but calendars have been on my mind for a while now. We have gotten into the habit of making a family calendar for our family Christmas gifts every year. And when I say "gotten into the habit," I really mean our families threw a fit the year we didn't make one! So, David has started on some lovely design/illustration work (which I'm sure he'll share with you as it gets finished) and I have been surfing the internet. I'm kind of the slacker in this relationship. I have found some wonderfully designed calendar alternatives (if you don't feel up to designing your own) that you could easily give as Christmas/holiday gifts. For extra bonus points from grandma, mom, aunt, brother etc. add dates of family events (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.). It will make it so easy for your relatives to send you that birthday card (hopefully with some dolla billz in it!).

Here are my faves:

These tea towel calendars from Cicada Studio are a little on the pricier side of things at $42 a piece or $80 for the set. They do have the advantage of being a magnificent piece of art as well as a calendar though. With this style of calendar, you might have to add an extra cheat sheet for family events if you want to score those bonus points.

This calendar not only has a unique circular design it is also printed with soy-based inks on recycled cover stock. I love the fonts and patterns they've used! Check out Caitlin Keegan on etsy and pick up one of these calendars for just $20. A real deal!

Yee-Haw Industries have lots of designs to choose from when it comes to calendars. This one in particular is printed on recycled kraft card stock with a tear away calendar attached at the bottom for $35. I like the vintage feeling of this design. It reminds me of something I would find in my parent's weird antique collection.

Here are a few more links to calendars that I thought were pretty, interesting, and/or unique.

get this one here for $30

or this one here for $33

or print this one here for a steal of $6

Magnetic Movie!

2009-10-29T10:14:00.004-04:00

I was so enchanted by the visuals that I had to watch it again to absorb the content. But I'm a bit of a dimwit!

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

More videos by these folks at vimeo. Tip of the hat to Carl Zimmer's great science blog The Loom.

Lizard and Tit

2009-10-28T19:32:00.002-04:00

Holy mackerel, this photo is great.

Photo by Palomino95, via flickr

"Lizard and Tit" sounds like the title of a toothachingly twee webcomic, doesn't it?

Team Attic Hole Dismount

2009-10-26T08:51:00.000-04:00

Flannelgraph Records

2009-10-25T22:31:00.005-04:00

Here's a logo I created for my good friend Jared's Flannelgraph Records. He had an idea that he'd like to incorporate a slice of pie and cup of coffee into it, and I tried a few different ideas in that vein. I couldn't get them to quite work though; I wanted the logo to be easily visible when scaled down. After my fourth failed attempt, I decided to browse old magazines from the 1950's at Google Books for images of pie and coffee. This led me to an advertisement for the Foremost Dairy Company. The picture was great, but I wasn't really inspired by it until I saw the logo. It seemed to fit perfectly. Ergo, I shamelessly ripped it off.

Homemade Sweet and Sour Meatballs

2009-10-25T09:50:00.000-04:00

Snack Music

2009-10-24T11:04:00.000-04:00

We Cannot Party Without Favors

2009-10-23T09:02:00.000-04:00

The Second What

2009-10-22T16:18:00.000-04:00

Permian

2009-10-20T15:31:00.002-04:00

I'm very close to finishing work on my new Health Worldwide album, "Snacks and Milk." The last Health Worldwide music I recorded was the score for "The Gulf War Syndrome," the 2005 19th State short film. Over the last several months, I've recorded an album's worth of material. It's coming out on Crossroads of America Records sometime in the future. Before I nail down a date, I'm finishing up the artwork. The above piece and the one from my previous post, "Staring Into It," are the first two completed.

I'm using this music as a way to push my design skills further. Though the album will probably only be digital, I want it to be a total multimedia throwdown. So I'm working on these digital pieces for each song, which will be included in high-res form with downloads of "Snacks and Milk." More exciting, I'm learning proper web design (courtesy my incredibly generous friend Megan) and should have my first self-designed website, for this musical project, completed this week.

In the last year, since I got my first professional design job, I feel like I've really been playing catch-up. I am now doing what I believe I should have gone to school for out of high school, if it hadn't been for my general state of confusion and lack of proper guidance at the time. I'm forced to work within challenging (and frequently brain-slappingly stupid) boundaries at work, which is a good way to force myself to look for solutions I may not pursue when I am totally free. And when I can allow myself total freedom on my own time, it's a bit of "the old nice-nice." And, design is like, marketable, which makes me go yikes. Yikes.

Staring Into It

2009-10-14T00:33:00.003-04:00

The Shades of Death

2009-10-06T08:59:00.002-04:00

The first time I visited Shades was with my dad. I must have been about ten or eleven. The memory I hold is of us getting "lost" on the trails and ending up walking every single one of them. I put those quotes there because I'm pretty sure my dad wouldn't have actually gotten lost in an Indiana State Park. I hope not.

The park is overshadowed by nearby Turkey Run*, which is probably tied with Clifty Falls as the most magnificent natural areas in the state. The name doesn't help: it sounds like it would be another RV-centric glorified playground. Well, it's not that. Its docile name is actually a PR decision. The former name, Shades of Death, was deemed a bit too grim for a state park, so it was shortened. No one knows for sure where the name came from. There are conflicting stories of bloody murders, Indian battles, and so on, but the point is: settlers were creeped out by these woods.

The above image was shot looking up from the bottom of a ravine. It's sandstone that was deposited in the second half of the Carboniferous period of Earth's history, a little over 300 million years ago. At that time, the area was a great marshland where the ancient Michigan River emptied into the sea. The coal-bearing strata which power the housing developments, Wal-marts, and mini-malls of the region are testament to the great Carboniferous forests. They teemed with amphibians, the very earliest reptiles, scorpions, giant millipedes, and dragonflies grown huge due to an atmosphere richer in oxygen than ours today.

And all it took for this all to be revealed was thousands of years of running water. Thanks, glaciers.

* Check this nifty guide from the Indiana Geological Survey on the geology of Turkey Run.

Skinkin' at Shades

2009-10-05T22:42:00.003-04:00

Jennie and I headed to Indiana's Shades State Park this weekend. On the way there, the lady was beset by illness, but swore she would soldier on. She gave it her best shot, but we ended up only being able to tackle half of trail one.

Trail one consists of a short loop trail which connects via stairs to a creekbed below, one of the smaller streams which feeds into Sugar Creek. We took the stairs down to Silver Cascade falls. Because the knuckleheads at the DNR didn't post adequate signage at the bottom, we didn't realize that the trail connected to the "Devil's Punchbowl" feature via the creekbed. We climbed back up to the top, and by the time we figured out our error, she was pretty well through. Scrambling up and down the ravines was not in the cards.

As Jennie took a breather at the Hickory shelter, I noticed a little blue streak darting through the grass. I bent down to investigate and came up with this little guy.

It's an American Five-lined Skink, a juvenile. Always, always, always look down. Seriously, what little useful advice I have to give to fellow hikers is those two words. Look down.

Tired, about to succumb to a mean pasta coma. More on Shades tomorrow!

Kelvingrove

2009-10-04T10:55:00.000-04:00

The following is a passage from Richard Fortey's Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth. He's speaking of the Fossil Grove in Glasgow's Victoria Park, which I believe is in a part of town called Kelvingrove. It's also possible that he's mixing the name of Victoria Park with nearby Kelvingrove Park, but I've been unable to clear it up on my own. Anyway:

It is interesting how the Victorians reserved such monuments for the edification of the whole population. the belief that knowledge itself was good, and led to moral improvement, was also doubtless tinged with a measure of sentimental wishfulness, but as a goal it can scarcely be faulted. The things displayed are almost always the real thing. There is no notion of virtual reality, or of spectacular shows in which a little explanation is slipped in furtively, as a gangster might have dealt out a Mickey Finn. Rather, the objects are allowed their own eloquence. As I watched some of the indifferent bystanders in Kelvingrove failing, alas, to connect with the past I was driven to reflect that a welter of twentieth-century explaining may have blunted our capacity to respond directly to marvellous objects. We would rather watch the video that tells us what we ought to feel and think. It is possible to reconstruct these vanished forests in electronic ways that make them seem more real, more alive than grey, cold fossils sheltering beneath a Victorian canopy. But , like all such images, when the power is switched of the memory fades; what is fact gets blended in with all manner of fiction. This is why we should return to obstinate facts, forged in stone, like Kelvingrove.

Image by Shoot Them Later, via flickr

Ron F-ing Swanson

2009-10-03T10:11:00.002-04:00

Just because I missed him this week on Parks and Recreation. In a week of public declarations, I'm publically declaring my affection for this show. It is, as I figured it would, getting more comfortable and naturally funny with this new season: less worry about Lesley Knope's quest to turn the pit into a park. I suspect the pit will become a sort of character itself, rather than simply being the center of Lesley's political ambitions.

Amy Poehler's supporting cast was what gave me hope that the first six shaky episodes would blossom into something more, and now her character is becoming more fully fleshed out along with the others. I'm sure that basing episodes around events like this week's beauty pageant lends structure to the writing of the show, but the characters interact so well that just showing a typical day in the government building would probably work just fine. Even April is turning into something more than just a caricature of lazy modern teenagers, which is pretty unexpected. Louis CK joining in as a dim cop with eyes for Lesley is a welcome surprise, too. I hope he sticks around.

Finally, I've got to say that Parks and Recreation has the best TV theme music I've heard in a long time.

What I Listen To

2009-10-01T10:07:00.004-04:00

Lately, I've been listening to less music at work, and more podcasts. Podcasts butter my bread. They fill my head with thoughts. I count on them. You want to turn your brain into mine? If so, listen to...

1. Fresh Air. You can always rely on Terry Gross. While there was a recent lull in interesting topics, they've sprung back lately with guests such as Nick Hornby, Matt Damon, David Weigel, and Ted Danson.

2. Natural Selections. Nice, bite sized pieces of knowledge, centered around the natural environment of New York's Adirondack region. Me and a small but devoted group of followers argue endlessly about the sexual tension underlying the interactions of host Martha Foley and laconic naturalist Dr. Curt Stager.*

3. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History/ Common Sense. Carlin is to history and politics what Colin Cowherd is to sports: animated, opinionated, self deprecating, sometimes veering dangerously close to obnoxiousness. Which means for some people, he probably steps over that line. Far less than Cowherd, I'd imagine. But jeez, he's entertaining, informative, and his passion for history is infectious. I've pretty much devoured all of the available Hardcore History podcasts since discovering them a month ago, so now I join the rest of his audience in impatiently waiting for new entries.

Common Sense is a bit more like a political talk radio program, but Carlin is very independent - the kind of guy who is accused of being a conservative or a liberal depending on who's in office to get his criticism. And I've got to say... a lot of his opinions are in line with mine.

4. Radio Lab. Kind of the "This American Life" of science podcasts.

5. Best of Natural History Radio. A BBC program exploring the flora and fauna of Great Britain. Recorded on location, both conversational and in-depth. I especially enjoyed an episode on starfish from earlier this summer.

6. Dan Patrick. Why? I have no idea why. I don't watch or follow a lot of sports, though I manage to watch a couple football games every season. I like hearing people talk about it, as long as I like the personalities, and Dan and his small staff, called the Danettes, are an amiable bunch to hang with. And I can't deny the allure of a nice, buttery, deep radio voice like Dan's. When I was a kid, I used to record my own radio broadcasts on my cassette recorder, playing the parts of DJ, news anchor, weather and traffic reporters, and even the music, which resulted in the first musical composition I ever wrote, the a capella "Hoo Hoo Song" by a hot group called the Singing Hoo Hoo Hoo's.

* Ha ha ha, I'm kidding, silly heads.

The Sydney Dust Storm

2009-09-23T11:58:00.004-04:00

Sydney, Australia, is red with dust.

By AnnaCathryn, via Flickr

Like a vision of a populated Mars. More.

The Apache

2009-09-22T11:33:00.007-04:00

All images from the National Archives.

KFC, You've Topped Yourself

2009-09-16T11:13:00.007-04:00

Oh, wow. From the AV Club:

Surely even the sick fucks at Kentucky Fried Chicken, the mad scientists of fried poultry behind occasional A.V. Club contributor Patton Oswalt’s beloved Famous Bowl, would not be deranged enough to make a sandwich that substituted thick, greasy, deep-fried chicken-breast patties for buns.

Oh, yes they would. Instead of buns, fried chicken patties. Two of 'em. Encasing processed cheese and the finest slabs of bacon the industry can produce.

Better yet, this "sandwich," being test marketed in two cities, is called the Double Down. The Double Down! I can't think of a better product of the fast food industry to be named after my favorite modern B-Movie. I hope Neil Breen gets a chance to chomp down on one of these naughty devils and feel its fatty juices slide down his satisfied gullet.

UPDATED 4/9/10: Replaced previous photo, which had been baleted from Flickr.

G'wan Fooz

2009-09-04T23:53:00.003-04:00

This is another damn blog I do. Well, it's the banner graffik.

I know for a fact (a big one) that some of y'all hate the way I'm trying to "make the sense" all up in here. Well, at Cosmik Wolfpack, you ain't need to worry about that none! There is never sense made! Ever! And if there is? Well, it's not my sense, it might be yours, or probably it's nobody's. How many exclamation points is it gonna take for ya'll to jam yr sassie butts over there and click the friendly follow button! I'm not doin' this for my own good! It's just for no reason!

I think it also works really well with Bloglines or Google Reader. That way you can subscribe, and just every once in a while this thing pops up, and you read it, and whatever happens next happens. I don't know what that will be!

I recently read some nano-fiction similar to what I right at the CW (or see-dub as the army of admirers calls it) for a small crowd. It was a strange and nervy experience. It was. I am not used to doing it. I haven't read in front of people since school, really. That was five years ago at this point. Whoa. Maybe I'll do it more.

Album Covers: Health Worldwide

2009-09-04T10:30:00.003-04:00

this spring, I resurrected my old musical alias, Health Worldwide. I recorded several albums about ten years ago, most on cassette. I had a few other things I did, such as my band Star Patrol and the score to The Gulf War Syndrome, in the meantime. Then one day I got the bug to make some new HWW music and began playing around with some ideas. I recorded 14 new pieces using the Wizard Master Control Program, eventually whittling them down to 11 for a final tracklist. These new pieces consist entirely of sequenced MIDI voices with some text-to-speech dialogue thrown in for flavor.

Here are my three initial ideas for the album art. It will probably be a digital-only release, but these are all formatted as if they were going to be good old 12-inch vinyl.

These two are based on a photo of Justin Vollmar faking a quadrupal-kiss at some party or another. I guess I oughta ask him if it would be cool to use it!

This one is based on the photo I took recently of some big-ass slugs getting freaky on the side of my house. I like it a lot, but I'm not sure it fits the music as well as the first two options.

Just like I did with the tunes, I'll probably let these stew for a bit before I make a decision.

Sultan of Turkey

2009-08-19T15:56:00.003-04:00

I love that the Library of Congress is on flickr.

The Red Rocks

2009-08-18T20:01:00.003-04:00

Photo from SUWA, copyright Lin Alder

Visit the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance's website and urge your congressmen to cosponsor America's Red Rock Wilderness Act. I sent emails and faxes to Senators Bayh and Lugar (my representative, Baron Hill, is already a cosponsor). Amazingly, none of Utah's congressmen are listed as cosponsors.

I have passed through the red rocks region one time in my life, and if I remember correctly, my tongue looked like jerky by the time we passed through the state. Because my mouth hung slack the entire time. I so desperately want to get back, and spend a nice, long time there.

The Cheeks

2009-08-14T22:56:00.006-04:00

Man, I am really happy for my friends Jared Cheek and Annie Melton. They're getting married tomorrow. I'm ushing, which is a huge responsibility and absolutely critical to the smooth execution of the ceremony.

This was the first time I kind of realized that these two were an item, at the 2008 Maple Syrup Festival.

A year and a half later, they're getting hitched!

From now on, it's going to be "Lets have those Cheeks over for garlic bread and chili." Or "Let's pop in on the Cheeks!" Happiness. Awesome happiness.

My Ironweed

2009-08-13T19:02:00.004-04:00

We've got one of these fellows growing in the piney fringes of our backyard.

It is, I believe, Tall Ironweed, Vernonia gigantea (here's the wiki page on the genus Vernonia). Purple and green are a very fetching combination. Not as garish as red and green, though I don't necessarily mean garish in a negative way. There's a certain bittersweet quality to the contrast of purple on green; it speaks of escape. But not a fleeing escape. An escape of passing. Descent. Speaking to the mellowness of a sunset under a light blanket of clouds. Oh yeah: don't eat the leaves. They're bitter, and us mammals ain't hip to that.

I'm not the only admirer, either...

Good info fo tha curious here.

Jeremih Spoke of Ass Today

2009-08-12T21:20:00.003-04:00

The first time I heard this song, I was all like "Wha?? Is this dude singing about birfday sex?" Stupidly wonderful lyrics aside, I was almost more thrown off by the music. I just don't pay a ton of attention to club music, really. I hear something this minimal and I feel like I really do live in the 2000's. The future! When I heard it blasting from a boombox at the rigged free throw game at the Monroe County Fair, I was sold. Won over, the way "Lollipop" won me over. Jeremih, you done a good job with this jammin', slammin singo.

Thank you!

Jeremih is also a fellow member of the Columbia College Chicago family. Me, Sajak, and Jeremih. Not sure if he graduated, but it's pretty decent nonetheless. Also, Chicago's Mayor Daley picked Jeremih to, for some reason, convince kids to stay in school I guess so, sure. Why not. Maybe Jim Belushi could talk about wearing safety goggles. Maybe Mr. Chi-City is available to break down the new food pyramid.

John Ham

2009-08-11T10:37:00.002-04:00

This is hilarious.

Wow.

Bony Bald

2009-08-10T00:09:00.001-04:00

SmokeLong Quarterly

2009-08-09T23:59:00.003-04:00

You certainly, and I do mean certainly, have time for a little microfiction. Here's a quarterly on-line journal of microfiction. SmokeLong Quarterly. Read a piece or two while drinking a beverage if you want to.

I write poetry and microfictional type stuff here.

WIUX Alumni Weekend

2009-08-08T21:44:00.002-04:00

I love love love love love it when the WIUX Alumni weekend rolls around every year. The old-timers from the Indiana University campus radio station's past come in and play old tunes, share memories, and play promos, commercials, and various other things from the past. Just another reminder that radio used to be really, really, really cool and unpredictable. Today one of the guys reminisced about their old competitor, 93.1 WNAP from Indianapolis. He played clips of their DJs, commercials, and that sort of stuff. What I love about those old DJs were how full of personality they were. They weren't proper or overly reverent. They yelled and spouted slang off the cuff.

Driving through Pennsylvania a couple months ago, we found an AM station broadcasting old country music. Really old stuff, mountain music. It was like our radio had found some weird temporal anomaly and we were picking up a broadcast from sixty years ago. There's something extra-special about listening to an AM music broadcast. That extra layer of fuzz. There are songs I'm just not terribly interested in hearing on a CD or a modern FM broadcast, but something about the scruffy AM sound makes it work for me.

Hopefully as the unsustainability of our economy becomes more and more apparent and local systems become more vibrant, local radio will also make a comeback. Dude, it would be the ultimate. It would make everything better and no one would have to feel no pain no more. Honest.

I Also Want To Go To Here

2009-08-08T01:00:00.000-04:00

sheldonbranford @ flickr

I don't know what the idea is. Is my weak mind supposed to imagine what it was like to grow up at Chelly? I grew up chewing rust and drinking acid rain on the salted, weedy asphalt of Northwest Indiana. I grew up where anything wild is confined to cyclone fence and our most celebrated natural area is bookended by smokestacks. Even if those who grew up there, under that looming brow of sandstone, spoke English, I doubt we'd speak the same language.

I Want to Go to There

2009-08-07T13:34:00.004-04:00

Hypothetical roadtrip time. This is going to reflect my selfish needs, and if ever realized, would surely be edited to include Jennie's. Honestly though, she'd be game for this and I'd be game for her ideas, and that's part of the enduring awesomeness of our marriage. Onward.

We head south to Memphis. There, we check out Sun Studios. If time, Graceland, but it's not mandatory. I just want a black Sun tee shirt real bad. My black tee shirt supply is pretty ragged right now. Paint stains, holes, treacherously thin spots.

To Texas, where we check out what John Wells is doing at the Field Lab and see what he has to say. Cross our fingers that the diner he mentions so often, the GrubShack, has some thing yummy and meat-free for the lady.

Across Texas to Lubbock, where respects are paid to Buddy Holly.

Then it's New Mexico, New Mexico, that land of my dreams, that state with the finest flag. We wing it. Find interesting words on a map and suck it all in.

From there, west across New Mexico to Arizona and Utah, where we feel the stone of the Chinle Formation with our hands and bare feet and creep up and down its slopes and watch day turn into night turn into day turn into night as the light and the rock invent colors.As for the rest of the trip, well, we do whatever those rocks and their colors make us want to do.

Thx to Chinleana for inspiring this daydream.

Cook More

2009-08-05T09:36:00.008-04:00

"The french fry did not become the most popular vegetable in America, which it now is, until corporations relieved us of all the work of preparing them."

Another interesting interview with Michael Pollan on Fresh Air yesterday. Are you starting to get an idea of how I spend my days? Anyhow, it's a good interview. Last week, I listened to an interview with Pollan from last year. That's a lot of Pollan in a short period of time. Luckily I'm not allergic; what he's saying strikes me at a gut level as being pretty much the truth. He takes the issue of our food supply and demonstrates how it's tied to so many issues. Not just health, but energy independence, global warming, and poverty. He advocates a return to locally based food systems, removing the subsidies for big agribusiness, and in general people becoming more connected to the food they eat.

In yesterday's interview, he dealt with this by looking at TV cooking shows, in particular the Food Network, the way they, and other networks, have turned cooking into a sort of spectator sport; how they've made the kitchen safe for men by amping up the flames and rock and roll editing and creating athletic-style competitions. It's not an out-and-out bashing of the network, though. I myself have enjoyed the Food Network. Especially Marc Summers' love song to manufactured foods, Unwrapped, and Alton Brown's refreshing Good Eats. When we had cable, there was a span of time that the Food Network was the dominant televised entertainment in our house. And now, when visiting family or staying in a motel, I always flip to it to check it out. And usually smack into Guy Fieri's obnoxious mug and promptly flip away. One interesting paradox Pollan points out: many of us claim that we don't have the time to cook for ourselves, yet we do have time to watch other people do it. He contrasts modern food TV with Julia Child's original show, which was uncut. We waited for things to boil, for butter to melt.

The older episode I mentioned above dealt with Pollan's Open Letter to the Next President, published last October in the New York Times magazine's food issue, which is essential reading. As are his books I, imagine, which are on my short list.

By the way, if anyone has any good interview podcasts, tip me off. I'm rapidly exhausting the NPR archives.

Book Covers: Portnoy's Complaint

2009-08-04T21:13:00.007-04:00

For a design exercise at work, we were assigned to pick one novel off of Time Magazine's hundred greatest english language novels and design a cover for it. We had to abide by our printer's restrictions, so it wasn't complete freedom, but it was a nice little project nonetheless. I chose Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint. Here are two designs I came up with:

Cleavage. I like it because it's close up enough to see the pores and wrinkles, and I wanted it to be more grotesque than sexy. If you've read the novel, you'll know why. And if you haven't read it, you oughta. It's a fast read, one of those hundred pages in a sitting reads.

For this one, I used this close up of a baby suckling his mamma's nip. I liked that the baby is looking right at the camera. I had to crop it so the baby's hair was not in the image, as he's blonde, and the titular (ha ha ha) character in the novel is a dark haired fellow of the Jewish orientation. He's a Jew. That wasn't so hard, was it? Alexander Portnoy is a Jew consumed with sexual obsession and an extreme love-hate relationship with his overbearing mother. I felt like using this photo was sort of a nice twist. It really wouldn't work if the baby wasn't looking into the camera. Or maybe it still doesn't. Let me know.

One thing for sure, before I turn this in, I'm taking all but one of the names off of the spine. I thought it was cool, but now that I look at it, it is not. I had to leave space at the bottom of the spine and the back cover for logos and a barcode. Maybe the repetition of the name would work better if it could cover the whole spine. I don't know, and it doesn't matter, so I will wash my hands of it.

I think I'll be posting more of my design stuff here. I've got some plans a-workin' to do some light freelance design work, and it makes good sound sense to use this blog for that.

UPDATED: This was the one I ended up turning in:

John Cage on Fresh Air

2009-08-03T10:22:00.006-04:00

I love it when Fresh Air pulls episodes deep from the vault. In the wake of choreographer and dancer Merce Cunningham's death last week, the show took the opportunity to bring up an interview with him from the eighties, and also one with John Cage, who was Cunningham's partner in life and art.

Man, I don't know much about Cage. I know he influenced Sonic Youth and Stereolab. He wrote a piece consisting of silence. But based on this interview, I need to change that. I'm so curious about so much he says in this interview; he asserts that an act of creativity can be an act of curiosity rather than an act of self assertion. This is a man who destroys the idea of limitations.

Eternal Now

2009-07-30T14:15:00.003-04:00

Eternal Now - oil
Originally uploaded by Patrick Redman

I've been poking around on Flickr recently for Paleoart to feature on the new dinosaur blog. I used an Oviraptor painting by Patrick Redman in my introductory post, and I really like a lot of his artwork. If you've ever seen the Newman's Own mints with the circus-like packaging, Redman did the animals on those. Here's his description of this one:

When I was working with Dr. Robert Bakker as a paleontological field instructor in Wyoming, I stumbled across this eagle in the badlands. It couldn't fly away, and simply watched me with resignation as I circled it, looking to see if it was in a trap or bound somehow. It wasn't. There was a state fish hatchery a few miles away, so I went there to report the sick bird, but by the time we returned, the eagle had disappeared.

Lucky dude! I love Dr. Bakker. You may know of him - he's the bearded, portly paleontologist who's featured on many dinosaur documentaries.

Bone Slugs N Harmony

2009-07-29T17:57:00.004-04:00

Last night I noticed a long, dark shape on the side of the house. A quick scan through my memory revealed no known cause. I broke out the wind-up flashlight to investigate and was utterly delighted to find these two:

A couple honkin' big slugs! I think they're great grey slugs, to be specific. That's the most likely ID based on the pictures I've found online. These two may have in the beginning stages of mating. It sounds fun! From wiki:

The mating habits of Limax maximus are considered unusual among slugs: the hermaphrodite slugs court, usually for hours, by circling and licking each other. After this, the slugs will climb into a tree or other high area and then, entwined together, lower themselves on a thick string of mucus, evert their white translucent mating organs (penises) from their gonopores (openings on the right side of the head), entwine these organs, and exchange sperm. Both participants will later lay hundreds of eggs.

A commonly seen practice among many slugs is apophallation, when one or both of the slugs chews off the other's penis. The penis of these species is curled like a cork-screw and often becomes entangled in their mate's genitalia in the process of exchanging sperm. When all else fails, apophallation allows the slugs to separate themselves. Once its penis has been removed, a slug is still able to participate in mating subsequently, but only using the female parts of its reproductive system.

Yikes! Sounds like the mollusks have their own version of the kama sutra! Since you surely want to see this happen:

For bonus viewing pleasure, here's a video of a snake trying to eat a banana slug.

Loons, Beautiful Loons

2009-07-28T17:33:00.004-04:00

By Odd and Even, via Flickr

I truly, madly, deeply enjoy BBC4's Natural History Radio podcasts, and this week they did one about loons. Loons are good birds, and you would be well-advised not to underestimate them. The always charismatic Paul Evans meets up with conservation biologist David Evers to teach you the proper respect, homeboy.

The Average Kid!

2009-07-27T23:04:00.004-04:00

Goetze's Candy, jolly makers of the everpopular Cow Tails candy, have a really nifty site for the kids! There's something special about the sites companies make for kids. Based on the intro audio, which consists of various kids describing the customs and mores of the average kid, scored by some sweet grooving alt-rock guitar, it looks like Goetz is trying to help keep kids active and away from the old obesity monster.

Well, the best way to drive the point home to modern kids is with tubular video games, of course. I particularly enjoy their "Pac Man" parody "Candy Crunch" most of all. The obesity-discouraging point of the game is to eat all of the Goetz's caramel cream candies while avoiding the evil TV sets. If you touch a TV, you get smacked down for "watching to much TV" (sic). Yowza! Time to go play some stickball, chubby!

Seriouzly, who knew Goetze's would have such an elaborate and pretty website? The blog is even updated regularly.

Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs

2009-07-26T12:35:00.002-04:00

Good people, I invite you to my new all-dinosaur blog. I've named it Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs (Chasmosaurus was a relative of Triceratops). Out of the many I brainstormed, it was the one title to survive a few days of contemplation. I thought, maybe just picking a cool-sounding dinosaur name would be good. I wanted the title to reflect that the blog would cover more than strictly the science of dinosaurs - it would cover pop culture stuff as well, from serious to silly. So I picked a literary reference, and off we go.

So if it seems like the sort of thing you'd want to follow, subscribe to your little heart's content. That's actually a bit of a deliberate understatement. I know you've got a very big heart.

Now, off to sunny Monticello, Indiana, where Jennie is going to pick up her mother's dress form so she can take photos of all of the great vintage clothing she's been buying, and get it up for sale. Huzzah!

Dino Friday: Tyrant

2009-07-24T23:11:00.005-04:00

It's a stinkin' crime that Steve Bissette's Tyrant only made four issues. But from what I've seen, a glorious four issues they are. Me want.

Buy 'em bundled here.

In other news, I'm just about ready to launch the all dinosaur blog! I'm not revealing the name quite yet, but I will say that it's a literary reference. And deals with a ceratopsian. Soon!

Now Rhyme "Punctuated Equilibrium," Smart Ass

2009-07-22T17:04:00.002-04:00

The Naked Scientists, a British science podcast, has a special episode centering around the Darwin bicentennial, and it's pretty entertaining. Based on a previous hip hop examination of Chaucer, a Canadian rapper named Baba Brinkman was commissioned to create a similar piece about Darwin for the Darwin Festival. "The Rap guide To Evolution" is hit or miss, but the hits are pretty solid, and as he notes, it was peer-reviewed, so it the science is solid, too.

Gear

2009-07-21T15:36:00.003-04:00

I don't think it's gear that makes a hiking or camping trip. So I don't pay too much attention to new products.

Cold Splinters has a guest post at A Continuous Lean in which he lists his ten essential pieces of gear for a camping trip, and it's characteristically practical and no-nonsense. Stuff like a copy of Ed Abbey's Desert Solitaire, to which I say "yup!" Actually, don't wait to go camping to read it. Read it now.

I can do without the beer - I never went through the hard-drinking phase that seems to embed a love of it in a dude's life. But what I don't want to go without for much longer are these:

Vasque Sundowners. That's a pretty piece of footwear.

Apollo 11

2009-07-20T23:40:00.002-04:00

"This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way."

Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.

July 20, 1969

Dino Friday: Centrosaurus Bone Beds!

2009-07-17T14:06:00.005-04:00

Paleoblog has posted some photos of a Southern Alberta Dinosaur Project dig over the last week. They're pullin' big hunks of Centrosaurus out of the ground. Centrosaurus was a ceratopsian, not as famous as Triceratops or as gloriously adorned as Styracosaurus, but certainly deserving of its fair measure of respect. Its "nose" horn is massive, making up for relatively diminutive "brow" horns. A good journeyman ceratopsian, certainly preferable to old raptor-bait Protoceratops. Though it's admittedly foolish of me to diss one of the stars of my favoritest fossil.

Anyway, there's a beautiful print being sold by the Southern Alberta Dinosaur Research Group to fund their efforts. It's by Mark Schultz, and it bears repeating: It's beautiful.Dino Friday will be continuing until I get my new dino-blog up and running, by the way. I'll announce it when it's ready to be announced. Still working on a title, then I'll be designing it. Then it will be ready to fly.

Bye Bye, Birdie

2009-07-16T13:55:00.005-04:00

In a daring attempt to flirt with the idea of an actual readership, I'm going to be starting a new, daily blog. Dedicated solely to dinosaurs. Bloggin', like pimpin', ain't easy, and I'm sort of curious to see what might happen if I do a single-topic blog dealing with a subject empirically demonstrated to possess total awesomeness. So if you're sick of those mesozoic misfits popping up all the time here, no worries. They'll be shuffling off to a nice new home of their own soon enough. Electrified barriers will be erected to keep them confined. We know from experience that electric fences are by far the most reliable way to keep dinosaurs in check.

All I need to figure out now is the perfect title. Intensely brainstorming this one. Rock and roll.

On to other matters. I'm reading Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff currently. I'd forgotten just how captivating a good hot helping of Wolfe can be. I'd kind of absorbed the stuff I learned from his books and essays in college into the great pool of collected influence in my head.

He dives into a story, emerges amazed, and does nothing to tamp down that amazement. Thus, the hedonistic barrage of exclamation marks. The momentum-generating run-ons. I love how he'll whip out a playful, irreverent description of something and then repeat it, sometimes word for word, a page or two later. It establishes a gut-level connection to patterns and routines, making them entertaining rather than monotonous.

The Right Stuff deals with the test pilots of the forties and fifties, and their involvement in the budding space program. In the opening chapter, we look at it from a wife's perspective, the constant worry, the dread that one day a minister or officer is going to come walking up to her door with the News. Then it's in to Chuck Yeager, the best of the test pilots, and the culture he epitomized. The massive egos, the lack of self-awareness necessary to push oneself to the limits of human experience. In the scene when Yeager breaks the sound barrier and suddenly finds himself staring into outer space, it all makes sense. It's not a job your average grocer is going to step into when looking for a fresh start. It's a subject for which Wolfe is a perfect fit. Larger than life stuff, quintessentially American.

I'm just about to begin the bulk of the book, which deals with the guys below. And then I'll be watching the movie. Can't wait.

Another Reason to Visit Cincinnati

2009-07-15T14:06:00.004-04:00

Okay. So there are some crummy athletic franchises, Bloomington's closest IKEA, and pretty cheap fancy hotels. All fine reasons to visit Cincinnati.

Here's an even better one: baby velociraptors. The Cincinnati Museum is hiding them all over town this summer.

Looks like it's stirring up quite a ruckus, too. Here's a message from "Mesozoic Matt" on the museum's Facebook page:

G'day everyone! Mesozoic Matt here. We've gotten some complaints this week and last from local business owners who are being inundated with phone calls and having trespassing on private property. The Dino Detective team would like to remind you that we are the only three people who have any clue as to where the dinos are hiding; so please just follow our clues, because no one else has any information! Thanks!

Viral Sucker Punch

2009-07-14T21:51:00.003-04:00

So, it's Sunday evening. The 19th State crew is here to film the ending of the Vollmar video we're working on. And my hands start feeling weak and my joints start in with a subtly intensifying throb. And I'm tired as a dog's hind end. Before the shoot's done, the chills have begun and I know I won't be working come eight o'clock Monday morning.

It wasn't really one of those kick-back-and-chill kind of sick days, either. More like an every-joint-in-my-body-is-so-sore-I-can't-get-comfortable-no-how kind of sick day. Wretched.

And then I wake up this morning and it's gone. Strange how that works.

Other than that, it was a really good weekend. Met up with Jennie's brother and our sister-in-law in Indy and checked out a bunch of Goodwills. Procured a few records, including a couple by Bobby Bare, who was just a solid country singer in the '60s and '70s. Also a collection of Indian dance music from the '60s, when all things exotic were the rage. I'm really intrigued by a record called Country Gold by Joe Paul Nichols, which looks like it's from the '60s, was released in the early 80's, and purports to hearken back to the sounds of the '40s. Memo to self: get turntable fixed.

Went to a couple of antique stores in Bedford on Sunday and picked up this beauty:

I'm a sucker for a purty face.

Dino Friday: Hadro Hi-Jinks

2009-07-10T15:08:00.004-04:00

The dinosaurs we grew up knowing as "duckbills" are more formally known as Hadrosaurs. I've always liked the hadrosaurs. I frequently use one of their names, Anatotitan, as my username on various places around the internet. It means "giant duck," and it's one of the great-sounding dinosaur names. Anatotitan had one of the most "duck-like" snouts of the hadrosaurs, but they were not actually bills, as we would recognize them in modern ducks. Rather, they had a horny "beak" at the end of their snouts, ideal for clipping off vegetation.

Anatotitan

Hadrosaurs have been in the news recently for a couple reasons:

First, there's "Dakota," an Edmontosaurus whose skin was preserved as a cast, similar to previous dinosaur "mummies." After two years of study, a paper has been published on Dakota in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The microscopic structure of Dakota's skin was preserved remarkably well. More info at Smithsonian Magazine.

Hadrosaurs' chewing habits have also received some attention lately. One study suggests a novel way of chewing. The upper jaw, if I understand this correctly, looks like it sort of "splayed out" so the upper battery of teeth ground sideways against the lower. More studies are required of course, and DinoGoss points out a confusing inconsistency in media reports about the findings.

New York Times Photoshop Disaster

2009-07-09T13:45:00.005-04:00

Dot Earth has an interesting-looking post about a photo essay that ran in The New York Times Magazine last weekend. It covered real estate developments across the country which were halted due to the economic mess. Interstitial spaces interest me, the nooks and crannies the civilized world doesn't have a use for. Here, litter gathers, puddles form, and nature improvises ecosystems. I hadn't given much thought to the topic of the photo essay, and I was intrigued by images of stunted buildings, unfinished frames left to the weather.

Unfortunately, the photographer was a total boner, and in a triumph of the scrappy blogger over the stodgy and confused newspaperman, the images were revealed to be digitally altered (the NYT has pulled the slideshow). This, despite the photographer claiming a deep aversion to post production fiddlin' around (as quoted by the E and P Pub). The Metafilter discussion of the discovery is here. It's not like he corrected color or cloned out a dead possum. MF user Unixrat has offered up an animated gif of the picture that tipped him off, and though it's subtle, it really is Photoshop Disasters quality stuff. The staircases in particular make no sense.

Better yet, Photo District News has a damning post on the photos, in which the problems are more obvious, and very well demonstrated.

Bad news for the NYT, which just looks clueless.

Maybe a Dino Ate Your Baby

2009-07-08T12:59:00.009-04:00

The big dinosaur news this week comes from Australia, where three new species have been described: Wintonotitan wattsi, Diamantinasaurus matildae, and Australovenator wintonensis (I'm really impressed by how quickly those wiki pages went up). The former two are titanosauriform sauropods -early relatives of the famous Brachiosaurus. Australovenator is a theropod which looks to be related to Megaraptor (anytime you see -venator in a dinosaur name, you can bet it's a meat-eating theropod, as the word means "hunter").

Diamantinasaurus by T. Tischler, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History

Australia bears few outcrops of sedimentary rocks which would provide easy access to fossils. These dinosaurs were found in a formation buried shallowly under a grassy plain. I've often wondered what we might find if it was reasonable to strip away layers of rock we know conceal fossil-bearing formations. Here, it was reasonable, and the result is a richer picture of Cretaceous Australia. The reporting has been pretty decent - the only sketchy detail I saw in the AP article was that Australovenator "stalked the Outback," which gives the impression that Queensland was basically the same a hundred million years ago. At that time, the area was a floodplain located on the edge of an inland sea, quite different than the Outback.

More details at Dracovenator, Nat Geo, and the AAOD Museum of Natural History.

If you're in the mood for some Australian dinosaur facts given in Comic Sans, head here. The animated dinosaur gif at the top looks like he's been working out with Billy Blanks. Classic Tae Bo move.

Sweating

2009-07-07T22:12:00.004-04:00

Today I dealt with temperature regulation systems. First, I had a couple gentlemen from Keller Heating and Cooling stop by to check out our central air. Jennie and I tried our hardest to not use the A/C during June, but eventually we caved. It was too hot to sleep a couple of nights. And although we stayed over at our friends the Adamses' house the night before our big group yard sale, I couldn't in good conscience leave the dogs to roast in the house. When we found ice accumulating on the unit later that weekend, we had to turn it off. Luckily, it was at the tail end of the heat wave. Looks like the old thing is leaking freon. It'll need to be replaced completely within the next couple years.

On the other hand, my body's cooling mechanism is working fine. I gave it a good workout today. First, I slammed home a completely wicked Tae Bo session. I think it's called the Atomic Cardio Explosion or something like that. I'm amazed by how much feeling up on his stepdaughter Billy accomplishes between his deranged drill sergeant rantings. "Put it on, just like you put on your pants!" is my favorite. Lots of jammin' dance tunes, too. Some of his moves are completely ludicrous, and I find myself concentrating too much on trying to keep up or maintain balance or the right posture. And I refuse to do the jump punch. Real life martial artists who actually employ a jump punch as part of your arsenal, please raise your hands. Anyone?

Though I felt plenty raunchy after that, I hadn't had enough perspiring. So I mowed the lawn at 9:30. One of the advantages of the reel mower: no one's gonna holler at a guy for mowing at a ridiculous hour.

The Injustice of the Corporate Media Shall Be Destroyed Forthwith

2009-07-06T20:44:00.005-04:00

I think we're a lucky people to be living in a time when the internet has brought the concept of a true meritocracy into being. While large corporations still spend a lot of money to create and nurture marketable quote-unquote entertainers, at least internet websites like Youtube.com, a revolutionary video sharing service (FREE OF CHARGE NO LESS) allows we, the people to post OUR work, OUR way, for OUR peers to judge. People like this guy:

"The first guy I meet is the mayor. The second guy I meet is a police officer who says he HATES THE MAYOR! Crazy hick towns over here..."

"I became a star on the ship. It's like I'm a star on the internet world and I'm a star out here, guys."

"I'm like, I'm not a son of a BEEEEE-ITCH! I'm a SON OF A BASTARD!"

And my personal favorite:

"Army training sir! Army training sir! We are gonna pull out the GREEN DILDO! Army training sir!"

Comedian Daniel Songer, folks.

Dino Friday: America, America This is Sue

2009-07-03T19:08:00.004-04:00

I reckon there ain't nothin' more American than McDonald's and Disney tagteaming to buy a big-ass Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton for the Field Museum of Natural History. To make the story even more American, this occurred after the fossils were initially found on an indian reservation by a private corporation, then seized in an FBI raid, then argued over in court, then returned to the landowner.

Sue.

Argentine Ants

2009-07-02T14:00:00.003-04:00

The BBC is running a story about the invasive Argentine Ant. Argentines are the ass-kickingest ants out there. They'll swarm a competitor, grab its legs, and dismantle it. They've all but wiped out native species in California. With a little help from the bipedal mammals with whom they share the planet (and likely outnumber), Argentines have been able to establish huge colonies in Europe and Japan.

As reported by the BBC, even though neighboring colonies of Argentines may fight over territory, when far-flung members of the supercolony are introduced to each other, they don't fight. They just chill. They're well on their way to global domination, and they seem to be a bit more civil than the aforementioned bipeds.

Tufted Titmouse

2009-07-01T20:26:00.004-04:00

Presently, I'm watching one of these dandy little lads nibble on the suet outside my living room window:

A Tufted Titmouse. Baeolophus bicolor. Another simple, elegant little bird. They nest in holes, and apparently have been known to pluck hair from dogs for nesting material. Not sure how Gregory would react to that. But I'd be thrilled to find out. Titmice are related to chickadees, also a frequent visitor to the Orr Suet Bar. It's been getting such regular business lately that I'll occasionally wait with my faces inches from the screen, and soon enough I'll get a very close up view of a bird feeding. If you're so inclined, check out some videos at the Internet Bird Collection.

The Next Best Thing to a Goat

2009-06-29T13:07:00.004-04:00

Since moving into our new house last August, I've been trying to figure out what to do about our lawn mower situation. Jennie's dad had given us an old Lawn Boy that had been given to him, and it got us through the end of the mowing season. It was smoky and loud and I only intended to use it for a little while.

As long as the Lawn Boy was running fine, I didn't feel much urgency to replace it. I'd always figured I'd switch to a reel mower; the idea of not having to buy gasoline and two-cycle oil was attractive, and I just like the idea of using muscle power whenever possible. I also like the idea of landscaping so that grass is not such a big part of the yard, but that's a work in progress. I would mention it in conversation occasionally. Reel mowers, I found, have a bad reputation for being a huge pain in the butt. You'd think I was pondering cutting the lawn with my teeth.

I didn't run out and buy a reel mower when the Lawn Boy started giving me trouble because I was bitten by the DIY bug again. I figured, why not try to repair this old trooper? I pictured myself taking it apart, fixing what needed fixing, reassembling it, pulling the cord and feeling a great gush of satisfaction when it started and ran smooth and clean.

When I started researching the ins and outs of the two stroke engine, I quickly became dispossessed of the idea. A two stroke engine is a pretty simple device, but it's also crude, and emits a lot of grossness. Besides the smoke, it's unavoidable that oil and gas will leak out of the exhaust port. I'd be doing a bunch of work I have very little experience in, and even if it all worked out, I'd still be stuck with a messy, polluting machine.

So I went to Bloomington Hardware and picked up a 20 inch reel mower by Scotts. Since I'd let the grass grow for three weeks, I borrowed a gas mower from a friend and chopped it down to manageable size. One of the drawbacks of a reel mower is that the grass can't get too tall - I did the backyard with it the night I bought it, and it resulted in a shaggy, inconsistent cut. Also, you have to remember that without forward momentum, cutting doesn't happen.

Other than that, I really see no other huge inconvenience. Yes, the blades have to be sharpened. But I imagine that the same holds true for traditional mowers. It's lighter, cleaner, quieter, and easier to maintain. It's a heck of a lot easier to pick up and haul to the basement than the Lawn Boy. And now I don't have to feel like the world's crappiest neighbor for filling the neighborhood with noxious smoke every time I cut the grass. Win win win win win.