Pumpy-Kins

It's that time of year again. If you recall, last year Shannon and I created Chester our hand-turkey-Thanksgiving-o-lantern. This year, we went a little more classic Halloween style. (Incidentally, that brings my lifetime pumpkin carving total up to 2, I believe.) I'll let Shannon post pictures of hers, but here are a few shots of mine:

And then we started having fun with the camera:

And then we decided to go extra freaky with the camera work. I think it's pretty cool.

Creeque Alley

Last night one line sent Shannon and I on a music history adventure. Shannon knew exactly one line from a song: "John and Mitchy were were gettin' kinda itchy" and I new one line more: "Everyone's gettin' fat, except Mama Cass".

It turns out the song is Creeque Alley by the Mamas & the Papas and has a wealth of stories hidden in it's lyrics. We already knew that Papa John and Mama Michelle were married, but that was about it.

As I started reading the lyrics, I wasn't sure they were talking about anything interesting until I reached the line: Sebastian and Zal formed the Spoonful. And I thought, 'These people they're singing about in the song, could they be the ones who formed The Lovin' Spoonful? It turns out that the song is about John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky who were in a band called The Mugwumps along with Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot. It turns out I know who those people are! They're Mama Cass and Papa Doherty! So half of the Mamas & the Papas and half of the Lovin' Spoonful were in a band together.

The song also makes several references to McGuinn and McGuire. Roger McGuinn was in the Byrds and Barry McGuire was a solo folk rock singer. The Mamas and the Papas certainly knew the Byrds, because Mama Michelle had an affair with one of the Byrds members.

Eventually, we discovered www.creequealley.com which has a bunch more information. We thought it was interesting, at least. Hopefully this post makes some sense, as I've written it one sentence at a time over the entire day.

Where was the band?

I'm not sure why more teams don't run this play. It was good for a 61 yard touchdown. I counted 15 laterals during the play that finally ended 58 seconds after time had expired.

Excuses, Part II

I haven't been posting because . . . we've been doing some shopping.

Out with the old . . .
(A/C compressor fried, needs new compressor, belt, tires, etc.)

And in with the new:
(2007 Honda Civic, purchased new with 5 miles on it. 40 mpg, cruise control, AUX in jack in stereo, nothing falling off, full tank of gas.)

Bugatti

I've been meaning to post this for a while, and now I finally am. It's stolen from Larrie, but everyone should see it. My favorite line is: "This is Germany, there are procedures to go through. I like procedures."

Movies

I know we have some readership overlap, so some of you will already have seen Adam's mention of the Minesweeper movie. But it is certainly good enough that everyone should see it.

In other news, 95° is about the limit for riding my bike to work and not needing a shower upon arrival. That's what I get for going to work at 2:30 in the afternoon I guess.

Newt Dance.

We've found something that might just rival the Ham. It's from Jeeves and Wooster, season 1, episode 4. The newt scene starts at the 7 minute mark in this video. Watch to the end, and pay attention to the people in the background in the last 30 seconds. The scene finishes with the first 30 seconds in the next clip from the episode. If the Newt doesn't work for you, I guess you can try these moves, too.

Voltaire, Candide and Leibniz

Back in high school, I was forced to read Candide, by Voltaire for my European History class. I don't recall a whole lot of it (I think I finished it) but I do remember my dear Dr. Pangloss. In the book, terrible things constantly befall Candide and his friends, among whom is Dr. Pangloss. However, Pangloss remains always optimistic, and continually assures Candide that they are in the "best of all possible worlds" even as they are being sold into slavery, burned, drowned, and separated from their loved ones.

But I always like Pangloss, because I interpreted his catch phrase to mean that while the world isn't perfect, and bad things happen to us, we are in the best possible world, i.e. a more prefect world would be un-creatable. This like for Pangloss made me like Voltaire.

However, a few years later, I was disappointed to learn that Voltaire didn't like Pangloss. Voltaire was a cynical, sarcastic man who included Pangloss in his book in order to make fun of him, and those who thought like him. Voltaire thought it was dumb to call this world "the best of all possible" when it was clearly terrible in so many ways. Not surprisingly, the characters in the book represent various people. And it turns out that Pangloss is Leibniz who indeed was famous (and famously mocked) for believing that we lived in "the best of all possible worlds".

In learning more about Leibniz, it turns out that it wasn't that Leibniz was trying to say that nothing bad happens in life, but that there isn't a possible world without problems, and that our world must have fewer problems than any other conceivable one. It was a theological statement for him, which happens to be exactly what I had interpreted it to mean in the first place.

So, in the end, I was right, but for the wrong reasons. Or, I managed to see through several layers of symbolism, caricature and satire with ease. All depends on how you look at it.

Kiwi!

By chance, I discovered this video of a cute little Kiwi on youtube. It's really quite good.

How do you dress for THIS?

It's been a slow posting week, but this is an interesting picture of winter melting into summer. I can't decide if living in this place would be ideal, or the worst of both worlds.

Conjoinment

I've found a new show that Jessica should watch that is way better than diminutive people redoing their floors before company comes to town. While flipping through the channels last night, I stopped by TLC to see a girl with two heads. More correctly, it is two girls with one body. I've seen conjoined twins before, but never like these girls. They have two heads, two hearts, three lungs, three kidneys, two stomachs, two small intestines, one large intestine, one bladder, two arms (born with 3 arms) and two legs. But for the most part, they rather look like a person with two heads.

And they're amazing! They're 16 years old. They can swim, play softball and they just got their drivers licences (2 of them). When they drive, one of them works the pedals, one works the gear shift, one works the turn signals, and they both steer. They each have use of one arm, and can't feel the other arm. But still, when one of them is embarrassed, both hands go up and cover her face. They clap along with music and can even type on a keyboard and play the piano. (Of course, I've been playing songs in such a way with my sisters or Shannon for years, so I guess that's actually easier than playing the piano with just one person.)

Shannon and I spent a good part of the evening wondering about all the possible things they do and how they ever manage to pull it off. It was pretty darn incredible.

It's CRUNCHY!

A recent post on Big Pickles provides a link to What Does 200 Calories Look Like? wherein someone has taken pictures of 200 Calorie portions of food. (It's Calorie, not calorie, but that's for another day.) But there, on the 13th row, first picture on the left is "Corn Bran Cereal". But unless mine eyes deceive me, it's not just corn bran cereal, and it's not just any corn bran cereal, it's Crunchy Corn Bran Cereal!!! Oh how I find myself craving it right now.

You know you've got an interesting job when you're working and suddenly you realize: "hmmm . . . I've only got 2 pairs of gloves on, that's probably not enough." So then you take off the outer pair, and put on two more to bring the total up to three.

Exciting chemical reaction for the day: (Never, never, never try this one at home.) Add 50-100 mL of room temperature HF to a piece of room temperature Ge. Wait 20 seconds. Suddenly, the HF is boiling vigorously and is REALLY HOT!

Again, I can't even begin to emphasize how you shouldn't even think about doing this in real life. (Unless you're a professional, like me.) (But again, I'm not kidding about those warnings.)

So relaxing . . .

Today I have discovered that work is much more enjoyable when you can relax on the beach and listen to the waves crashing on the rocks down shore.

A few days ago we discovered that our dumpster here at work had been filled with someone's crap. An ironing board, a baby stroller, boxes of crud. I haven't been out to look, but that's what they tell me. Well, I guess Stuart was taking inventory of how much stuff was out there, when he discovered a working soothing noise machine. So now in the office we can listen to ocean, brook, rain, heartbeat and a few other options.

Now I'm looking for a little contraption so I can feel the warm sand between my toes.