brykmantra.com

There’s just one main thing in this post, but if you watch and listen to it, then explore the two pages of links where I found this, it should keep you from doing anything useful for an hour or so.

Anyway, check this out: Crumbs, a song and music video made by splicing together three different musical-instruction videos together into a cohesive little jam.

And if you’ve ever watched musical-instruction videos, you’ll appreciate this even more.

And besides just being a cool accomplishment, the video gets the following Bonus Points: 1) Chick with a Guitar! 2) A Robert Forster lookalike with Moe Howard hair! and 3) A guy whose first name is Beaver!

Next: Curved-Air, the site that hosts the video is a great rock music blog, where you can download lots of obscure albums. I snagged myself a couple of early-psychedelic works just tonight.

And finally, check out Fazed, the links-heavy blog where I found the initial link to both of the above items. You’ll find lots of other bizarre and eclectic stuff there.

So go on: Get non-productive!

I’ve been occupied with the usual stuff tonight — trying to keep alive some St. Augustine grass I put down over Memorial Day, plus running in the house to strip off my house after stepping in some fire ants displaced by my watering of the lawn, plus going for my nightly doctor-mandated lung-walk, plus tweaking my refinements to an old stop-action animation, plus, and this is the biggie, making some major modifications to a reggae song I started on my loop editor back in February, which is going to be the soundtrack to the animation …

By the way: the reggae song isn’t yet ready for public consumption, but those of you who know me personally can request a private hearing, if you’re so inclined …

Anyway, just so this won’t be your standard rambling post, here’s something, by way of Look at This, for my readers Yay Kim and Fract_L and any other cat lovers out there: Kitten vs. Laptop Computer.

I’m sad to say that I’ve been too busy lately to read my normal regular blogs, but fortunately my readers still keep me informed, especially where it concerns me.

Every once in a while, you get the opportunity to post something unique, something that no other blogger has, and about three years ago that happened to me: The Spook (ol’ college bud, you probably know by now) sent pictures of this really cool pistol-shaped barbecue grill that he designed for a friend of his, J.W. Holtman. Last year I posted the pictures on Flickr, and this week Neat-O-Rama featured this grill (via my Flickr set) in a list of the world’s coolest BBQ grills.

And today our ol’ blogging bud Presurfer linked to the Neat-O-Rama post, possibly not realizing that one of those grills originally appeared here.

Then the Spook, dutifully keeping tabs on my blogroll (during his lunch hour, I’m sure), let me know today that Life As We Know It had come full circle.

Ah, the wonders of the cosmos …

Anyway, here are the specs on this work of art:

19 Foot Long
36″ x 60″ Primary Grill (2 Doors)
12″ x 36″ Secondary Grill (In Barrel)
Fire Box in Handle
Front Sight Damper
Ranger Star Damper
Hammer Damper (Hard to see)
Steam Pan
Handle Firebox
Stainless Steel Tray (Forward of Cylinder )
Weight 750 #

Okay, yeah, I didn’t post last night, shut up. I’ve got some things I might post about later, but for now here’s something to tide you over:

PhotographingSquirrels.com, a site dedicated to pictures of squirrels, who themselves are taking picture.

Cuterific!

(Via Attack of the Show.)

The local TV stations said it didn’t hit 100 today, but I’ve been a Texan all my life so I know better, so here comes the sun:

The Spook (who now has his own category here, you may have noticed) reports that he just finished reading Mark Twain’s Roughing It. I read it in high school, and of course, being Mark Twain, it was great. I especially remember a great little passage about a camel eating Twain’s overcoat and a manuscript it contained.

I recommended to Spook that he look up and read Twain’s 1601 — but to you, my other readers, I would advise caution, since this story was not published during the author’s lifetime, and is for mature audiences only …

Still, though, it’s highly enjoyable, so read it if you dare.

(You’ll need to look it up yourself on Project Gutenberg, because I’m pressed for time, but it will be well worth the effort …)

There was a great line on tonight’s Invader Zim: “Prepare your bladder for imminent release!”

The episode was “Room with a Moose”‘; click here to see it for yourself.

Also: The second episode was “Hamstergeddon”, which featured the line, “The weiner tempts you!”

I just now heard this: Billy Preston has died. He was one of those artists that I wasn’t crazy about at the time, but now I like hearing his music for the nostalgia factor …

I uploaded some old pictures (from last November and October) to Flickr tonight, for no good reason, except that I’ve neglected to UL them before … so click on my Flickr box in the upper right to check them out …

More miscellaneous stuff:

1. Please don’t tell me that The Apprentice hasn’t wrapped up yet … ! Holy cats, this thing is dragging on longer than the basketball season …

2. And on that subject: Go Mavs! Woo-hoo!

Yes, yes, I don’t keep up with sports, but when a hometown team “represents”, as the kids say — when the local athletes bring the National Glory Spotlight shining down on the city — they deserve their “props” (another popular phrase among the young and hip), even from those of us who aren’t fond of the sport itself.

3. Now, back to what’s important: TV!

Everwood had its last episode tonight. I watched it pretty regularly for a season or two, when they were re-running episodes on Sunday afternoons, and it was pretty interesting. They had good character development — they even managed to make the dumb-jock supporting character multi-faceted — and likable actors, like Tom Amandes, the Jimmy Stewart lookalike that played the semi-cranky Dr. Abbott. And the dialogue was clever, without being aggressively witty like Gilmore Girls.

And when the romantic-storyline melodrama got too contrived, the Colorado scenery provided a nice distraction.

And now its over.

That figures. The WB can’t (couldn’t, since it’s merging and transforming) sustain a mainstream audience, and the establishment networks aren’t capable of approving anything that’s not stamped out of a mold.

4. And speaking of cookie-cutter TV, back to The Apprentice: I don’t know much about Sean, one of the two in contention for the big prize, but I do know that Lee doesn’t deserve to win.

He proved that during the 7-11 sandwich episode, when he blew a chance to sell 1000 sandwiches by demonstrating that he has no bargaining skills whatsoever.

He opened negotiations with his team’s rock bottom price, and was shocked when the potential buyer, who buys large-scale for a living, countered with a lower offer that Lee couldn’t even move toward.

The ability to at least try to strike a deal should be a bare minimum requirement for winning a contest fronted by Donald Trump, don’t you think?

5. And speaking of bargaining: I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor today, seven weeks after my last visit.

He said that the debilitating pain in the back and ribcage areas are perfectly normal for someone who had his ribs scrunched apart for five hours, just three months ago; in his own words, “You’re fine.”

He did renew my Get Out of Jail Free card, though — that is, he wrote me a note that said I don’t have to go back to working full days until July 5th.

Actually, it was more of a blank check: He said, “So when do you want to go back to work full time?”

And, silly me, instead of going for the gold — say one year, maybe two — I decided I’d better not push my luck with my bosses, and said let’s shoot for July 5th.

I’m already going in at eight, and, by skipping lunch and eating on my breaks, I’m getting in close to 8 hours.

But being able to hit the highways for the 27 mile drive home before rush hour hits does a lot to ease my pain. And my department boss wants to dot the corporate I’s by requiring a full doctor’s release before officially letting me work all day.

And besides, I can always try to renew my slack license a month from now, if it looks like I can get away with it.

Yeah, yeah, I skipped posting again yesterday; I have become weary of blogging.

No, I’m not quitting — dream on.

I’ve just been working on another project, as stated here previously.

In the meantime, we watched Aeon Flux tonight — that is, I watched most of it, while I was eating and feeding the dogs; in lieu of a post, here are some key points:

1. With recent Oscar-winner Charlize Theron in the lead, they chose to skimp on the supporting cast, with just about everybody else people you wouldn’t recognize. The only exceptions are fellow Oscar winner Frances McDormand and nominee Pete Postelthwaite (both of whom have very little screen time or speaking lines), and Jonny Lee Miller, who has been keeping an ultra-low profile, probably inadvertantly, since Hackers 11 years ago …

2. The movie wasn’t that bad overall — at least it wasn’t nearly as awful as the superhuman-in-Spandex movie that Halle Berry did after she won her Oscar.

3. It was really different from the animated shorts on MTV’s Liquid Television in the early 90s, which was my first exposure, but which a lot of people, including my wife, have never heard of.

In case you’re one of those people, here’s a sample of what you’ve missed. This clip is from the later MTV series and is different from the LTV shorts, in that the latter consisted mostly of Aeon running through huge building complexes and killing hundreds of armed agents (and dying at the end of the mission), but at least this clip gives a good idea of her original costume, which was basically just a bunch of straps.

The movie played it safe in that regard.

1. Note to self: Jot down a quick list of all the quirky little things that have happened in the past couple of weeks that I’ve been meaning to blog about — like the lawn thing.

2. Also: Hey, Self, “get around to” finding the season finale of My Name is Earl on the video tapes (yeah, yeah, we’re the only household on the planet without TV, and its monthly fees) and watch it.

3. I backed up a DVD’s worth of stuff on my hard drive tonight, with the main objective being to preserve my recent hard-won progress in teaching myself Flash animation, but also to save a bunch of other files in anticipation on installing the 300GB hard drive that I bought a couple of months ago, at a great sale price.

Installing it will allow me to do a much needed backup of my MP3s (some 60 gigs worth, these days), and photos, and my massive clip art collection that I loaded from 24 CDs to a partition on a secondary drive in order to keep it from being a massive pain in the but-tocks to have to search clip art.

Oh yeah, and all my sound loop files, which I’ve loaded onto another partition for pretty much the same reason.

But mainly, installing the new, larger drive, will allow me to do something else I’ve been meaning to do, which is to Firewire all my hours of digital video tape to disk, which will give me all sorts of video editing fodder, now that I’ve recently acquired that bug.

It’ll be quite a chore to digitize all that, but it needs to be done, and it’ll be a good feeling to have all that video stock in one place, rather than “somewhere” on a shelf, amongst many dusty tapes …

4. My mom has been visiting my cousins down in Austin this past week, and last night she went to a Bob Wills tribute, which she enjoyed thoroughly. The reason I bring it up is because she and my cousins met an actor who has worked with Jaston Williams, the co-creator of the small-town-Texas-lampooning Greater Tuna series — and, more to the point, the guy whose mom was my fifth grade teacher, which means that the fictinal Tuna, Texas, is at least partly based on my hometown.

Yay, I grew up in a national laughingstock! Whee!

Anyway: I was trying to look up the trilogy, and the actors, on Wikipedia, but, aside from a couple of mentions in awards lists, there’s NOTHING in the way of articles on the whole thing.

Which is kind of ridiculous when you consider that every single member of Bon Jovi (even Tico Torres!) has their own Wikipedia article.

I think I need to start something, even if I can do little but paraphrase the press releases on the Tuna website. At least that would get the momentum started, and there would be something there besides, “There is no article on Jaston Williams at this time ….”

The Word of the Day is “ursprache”.

If you don’t know why it’s the word of the day, do a Google News search to find out.

You might “bee” surprised …

I didn’t post yesterday because I was too “tired” …

Ha! That’s a joke! A lame joke!

See, my wife came home and said that her front right tire (see, I was TIRED, get it?!), or as I like to call it, her curb finder, was coming apart, so I set out to get her a new one, but it was too late, so it needed to be changed, but my back is still in no shape to be loosening lugnuts, so she asked this guy from our church, a handyman who did some work for her shop last month, to help me change it, and he did, and was even insulted that I tried to pay him 20 dollars.

I told him I knew he wouldn’t take it, so he shouldn’t feel so insulted, but I felt obligated to offer.

You know, protocol must be followed on both sides.

ANYWAY: Long story short, I went back out this afternoon and succeded in getting a new curb finder, grabbing a bite to eat at the nearby IHOP while I waited.

Then I worked on my animation program some more, then I went for a walk, then I animated some more.

And here we are.

But I feel I should post something, so here and here are a couple of pictures that The Spook sent me today, with the notation, “Only in Lubbock”.

Be sure to view the larger sizes of both pictures to get the full effect …