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… or rather TRYING to be musicking, and failing miserably.

But still I need to post, so here’s a picture I took yesterday of my exercise buddy, Gracie:

Gracie is a sweet little doggie on my walking route, a couple of blocks south of my street. I met her just less than two years ago when I had to start my walks to rebuild my lung power, and now she usually runs to the fence when she sees me coming, so I can pet her through the links (she’s too short for me to reach her over the fence).

I got to see her again today, since it was extra-warm again (record heat for this date! 84F!) and it might be the last warm day for a walk for a while. This time when I stood up after I petted her, she stood up too, and whined for more petting, and leaned against the fence so I could scratch behind her ears.

Yeah, I’m a sucker for puppies. But look at those beautiful brown eyes! Isn’t she sweet?

(BTW, I’ve talked to her owner a couple of times, that’s how I know Gracie’s name. I’m not going pet psychic or Dr. Doolittle or anything.)

Anyway, that oughta hold ya; now I’m going back to not being any good at doing music.

UPDATE: Welcome, new visitors from Pam’s Carnival of the Canines! Please bookmark the main page here and keep coming back!

It was almost 80 freaking degrees today!

Okay, okay, that’s not the announcement. But it was unseasonably warm for a February 3 (thus the word “unseasonably”), so I had to point that out now.

Seriously, it was warm. I went on my lung-walk without having to wait for it to warm up first, and afterward I got out in the back yard, put on a Cherish the Ladies CD, and trimmed the rose bushes for probably the first time since before my surgery (2 years ago next month!).

But I digress once again.

Here’s the major point here:

Even though it was probably inevitable, it feels like an announcement is in order:

I’ve decided to do the RPM Challenge that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

And after three days of noodling around on my Cakewalk software, I have come to an inescapable conclusion:

I am so over my head.

What have I gotten myself into??

I blame you, Yay-Kim! You got me into this!

No, but seriously: Everything I’ve ever accomplished seemed hopeless at one point or another: My karate test, my first time onstage doing comedy, my A+ Certification — Those things all looked totally out of reach, after I committed to them, but I pulled them all off.

How?

By panicking like an idiot.

Seriously. Panicking like an idiot is highly underrated.

I’ll just learn the program better, and study a little music theory, and practice writing tons of music of which I’ll only use ten percent, and when it’s all over, I feel confident that I will have risen to acceptable mediocrity, with minimal worldwide humiliation.

Let’s hope.

Specifically, this game:

Yes, I’ve been trying to catch the show every day while I’m “between opportunities”, and now they’re having an online tryout, and I’ve been so good at playing it when I watch that, by Gosh, I’m trying out.

Of course, the odds I’ll actually make it on air are approximately slim-divided-by-ridiculous, even if I don’t totally pooch the test, which I will, but hey, ya gotta try if you’re lucky enough to have the spare time.

After the test, I’ll try to let you know about something else I’m going to attempt now that I have the time (hint: Yay-Kim already knows!).

And it’ll be just my luck that I’ll ace the Jeopardy test and start the new project, then I’ll get a new job tomorrow.

Dang transferrable job skills …

I was updating my resume last night and trying to get up to date information on the credit union I worked at in Lubbock, but there was nothing about it on the Internet, so I emailed another credit union whose location was near a branch office I knew about.

It turns out that the one I emailed is the one I worked for, after many moves and mergers and name changes. In fact, the Executive Vice President started out as a receptionist when I was working there!

So here’s my shout-out to Kristi! I’ll try to find some embarassing Christmas party pictures and post them here!

Hey Vickie, you probably could have scooped me on this.

I took my wife’s shoes to the local shoe repair shop last week to have a new heel put on, and when I was there today picking them up, I heard the Spanish radio, blasting from the back room, and suddenly, within the torrent of Spanish that was too fast for me to translate, I heard the words “Heath Ledger”.

My first thought was, “He wasn’t nominated, was he?”, thinking I was hearing an Oscar report. (The Oscar noms came out this morning, for those of you reading this days or months later.) I couldn’t even remember anything he’d been in recently that was eligible, so I figured it was just celebrity gossip, or a drug arrest.

Then the cobbler (do they still call shoe-fixers that? It sounds so buggy-whip, so coal-oil-lamp to say “cobbler”) came out and said that the shoes weren’t ready yet (they were due last Saturday), but he could have them ready in five minutes. That knocked all thoughts of Hollywood actors and their frivolous doings out of my cold-addled brain.

Did I mention that it barely got above freezing today?

No. No, I did not.

Anyway: Since “ready in five minutes” usually turns to ten which evolves into 15, I killed time by going next door to Dollar General to find a cheap cheese slicer to replace our old one for which the wooden handle suddenly went kablooey (it’s a technical term) a couple of weeks ago; there was no suitable replacement at that establishment, it turned out.

Then I went to the nearby CVS to get the wife her sugar-free chocolate (I had a 2-for-1 coupon for Russell Stover’s! Woo-hoo!), then went back and retrieved the shoes, then back to the house to do some stuff before she got home.

Unfortunately, none of that “stuff” included watching the news on TV, or scanning Internet headlines.

When my wife came home, the first thing she said was, “They found Heath Ledger dead!”

I said, “Huh?”, even though I heard her, and my mind flashed back to the Spanish new chatter at La Casa del Zapatas, and, after she repeated her news, I said “Aha.”

Which, like “Huh”, is also a palindrome.

You’re welcome.

Anyway2: She said, “They think it might have been drug-related,” and I said, “I’m shocked — SHOCKED”, and she said “Yeah, right.”

I was going to re-post the video of Ledger’s disturbing portrait of The Joker in the new Dark Knight trailer that I posted a month ago … except that I never actually posted it. I realized that it was still in my Drafts folder.

D’oh.

Anyway, what I was going to say a month ago was that we went to see “I Am Legend” without knowing that we would be treated to the world premiere of that Batman preview.

Bonus!

Anyway, here it is. Even if you’ve already seen it, watch it again today, just to reacquant yourself with what we’ve lost:

1. First of all, I need to give a shout to Mindy, a recruiter who’s putting me in for a proposal coordinator/technical writer position. Hi Mindy!

It’s an unusual feeling to be touted by a headhunter, as opposed to doing it myself. It’s not unlike feeling like a product being hawked on an informercial. “Don’t answer yet — you’ll also get an extra refill kit at no extra charge!”

It’s not a bad feeling; there’s worse things to be than a Bedazzler.

2. Next: Because of the above-mentioned potential-employment transaction, I needed to scan in some of my old writing samples. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: That this Dostoevsky-grade prose should be able to stand on its on as a portfolio representative of my brilliance.

This client, however, is apparently more discriminating, so I had to get off my sweatpants-clad rump and get my scanner working again.

The trick was that I had to restring some USB cable to bypass a non-functioning hub, which required the finding of a longer cable and some tricky behind-the-massively-oversized-computer-hutch maneuvering, some of which involved a straightened coathanger and some twist-ties.

I’ve said before that one thing they never tell you when you’re preparing for computer technician certification is how much time said technician will spend rolling around on the floor under the furniture.

If I got a merit badge for this, the symbol would be a dust-bunny and a flashlight.

Anyway, the re-hooking worked, as if sometimes does, and I was able to scan my newspaper articles.

3. I was also able to scan other things I’ve been meaning to scan as well, such as this logo that I designed for Comics On Tap. I figured I need to get a lot of my memorabilia from that time (we were at our zenith 10 years ago) scanned into the computer and backed up on disc, before I lose track of all the bits and pieces.

Those times were the glory days, if indeed I ever had glory days. We were kissed up to by the local comedy community, since we represented one of the most open places in Dallas to get stage time, always a rare commodity for comics in their first few years.

And we were the first comedy venue in Dallas to ever have a website. Not even the Improv had a site before we did, which is pretty bizarre when you think about it.

As for the logo, we were about to give up and see if we could barter with some low-level graphic design professional, but I decided to give it one last shot — and this one worked. It might not look like much now, but it was pretty impressive back before every horror movie and soft drink marketing campaign used the same font. Again, few comedy clubs in Dallas had the design presence that we had.

Anyway, I’ll be scanning in more of our marketing materials in the weeks ahead, so stay tuned.

4. Finally, speaking of those days, my wife’s 2003 Honda Accord that she bought a few months ago still had the original battery, and it was starting to sputter on recent cold mornings, so I went to Walmart today and got a new battery.

What does that have to do with our old comedy group?

Have patience and you shall learn.

It seems that the geniuses at Honda began requiring a code to activate their car stereos — so as to theoretically make it harder for a stereo thief to operate the unit after stealing it.

Unfortunately for the legitimate owners, you have to have the stereo’s ID number and call the dealership to get the activation code.

And for some older models, that means taking out the unit to get the number, then reinstalling it, a process that could cost $100 to have it done right.

It’s also a process which wouldn’t bother thieves, since they would already have the unit out of the car.

Anyway, I called my old Comics on Tap partner Bill (aha! the link!), who is now a high-muckity-muck at Lute Riley Honda where my wife bought the car, and he walked me through the process of getting the ID number, and promptly looked up our code so we could the radio turned back on.

Thanks much, Bill!

Couple of different things:

The Spook tells me that country singer Jake Kellen is backing Ron Paul for President, and has recorded a song (based on one of his existing songs) about how Congressman Paul is going to win in a landslide.

Eventually, it is assumed.

You can check out the song on the Ron Paul 2008 MySpace page.

The reason I mention this is because it gives me a chance to mention that I went to high school with Kellen’s mom, Debbie (who occasionally leaves comments here), and his uncle, Guy, who is also his producer and possibly his management Svengali. Also, it was my best bud from college that bankrolled Kellen’s first album, and it says so in the liner notes.

Seriously, this is the closest brush with fame I’ve ever had. We can’t all have a boss who ran for governor, you know …

Next: My wife likes Steve Zahn and what’s not to like?), who co-starred in the miniseries “Comanche Moon” this week. That gives me an opportunity to mention Zahn’s new movie, Strange Wilderness.

The reason I bring it up is because it gives me opportunity to show this part of the movies trailer — the part that had me cackling out loud:

Okay, okay, so it’s an acquired taste. Anyway, here’s the whole trailer, if you insist:

And finally, via Attack of the Show: Rubber band machine gun!

Let’s see if we can make this quick, starting with re-using my 5th Blogiversary bullet:

I was trying to run a boot-from-disk Linux distro on the computer I keep in the garage, and got this on the screen.

“Ok, booding dhe kebnel.” I thought the computer might be drunk …

Actually, it’s probably a corrupted RAM chip. I haven’t used the thing since last spring, so anything can happen with the temperature extremes we have around here. I’m sure I’ve got some suitable spare chips around here somewhere — what kind of geek would I be if I didn’t? — but they weren’t in any of my garage stashes, so I blew it off for tonight.

Anyway: “Gelcome do dhe KNO@@IH life Lineh-on-CD!” Click here for an easier-to-read view.

The reason I was trying to use the outside computer is that it was unseasonably warm today, probably close to 80F, and at least 20 degrees higher than the high yesterday. I finished raking the leaves in the back yard as my exercise (since my tendonitis was killing me from the fitness center treadmill yesterday). After I was done, it was still so nice out that I decided to sort out some of our (my wife’s) endless boxes of Christmas stuff in the garage so we could actually WALK out there, what a concept.

And by the time I was finished with that, the ABC News/Facebook debate was in full swing on TV and Thistle and Shamrock was starting on NPR, and since it was still a nice night and all that was still not enough stimulation (not that I have raging ADD or anything), I decided to boot up my “live” Knoppix games disk, since unlike some other distros I’ve got (like Ubuntu) it would work well on the 256 megs of RAM on the garage PC.

But alas, it was not to be.

Molly & Bristol “helped” me rake the leaves, and I got to show them off when a guy down the alley brought down his little girl who had begged him to take her down to see the two barking dogs. As a bonus, I also got some footage of Bristol bouncing like he’s spring-loaded as they were walking toward the yard, and it might be enough to make it worth editing a little and posting to YouTube. That new little Olympus of ours can do amazing video, as long as there’s enough light.

About 10 tonight we heard a police siren give a couple of blasts, like somebody was being pulled over, and it sounded very close. Then Molly started barking at the front door so I thought I’d check it out.

There was a fire truck, all its lights flashing, in the middle of the street in front of our house, an ambulance in front of it, and cop cars both in front of and behind those. Cars on both sides were forced to turn around and go back down the street from when they came.

It turns out that all the action was focused on the house to the east of ours, the family from Mexico. We never did figure out what was going on, but I’m going to ask around on our community bulletin board, because you just know there’s always got to be a Nosey Nellie monitoring the police scanner to be up on all the juicy goings-on.

Don’t you just love the Internet.

And finally some sad news today: I’m always mentioning the World’s Greatest Dentist, Dr. Mary; today her mother-in-law passed away. My wife was taking the news hard since her dad and Dr. Mary’s husband’s dad were friends from way back, and the families new each other well.

Sorry to end the day on a bummer note, people, but sometimes that happens.

It worked out so well on the previous two nights, so let’s continue celebrating my Five-Year Blogiversary by posting more random chatter:

Tomorrow is the day of the Iowa Caucuses. Someone who is not as civilized, polite or considerate as myself might say that tomorrow is the day that a bunch of bucktoothed cornshuckers tell the rest of the country who they can’t vote for.

But I wouldn’t say that, because I’m too nice.

Seriously though, you know that I love every creature on God’s green planet, and I have nothing against Iowa. But let’s face it: Every election year, after Iowa and New Hampshire get through voting, half of the candidates of both parties are dropping out before the most populous states like California and New York — and yes, Texas — get a chance to have a say in the matter.

Not that I would probably like the candidates that would be hand-picked by the Big Apple and Wackyfornia; and the candidate I was rooting for in 2000 actually won in New Hampshire.

But it’s the prinicple of the thing: People in 48 of the states have to watch their favorites get plucked out of the race like feathers off a dead chicken, and these limited choices are dictated by these two tiny states (population-wise, anyway) that aren’t representative of America (not that any states are a microcosm of the whole nation).

And I think that at least one of my blogging friends might agree with me, since her candidate has been about 2% in Iowa.

Anyway, I’ll have more to say when all this is over.

The late night talk shows are back! The writer’s strike isn’t over, but the shows have either struck private deals, or figured out how to work without writers.

Letterman did fine during the strike of 1988, using what he called “Network Time Killers”, like a fountain that he would fill with various liquids, like milk or Scope mouthwash; he called in The Dancing Waters, until he discovered that someone else was using the name, and he changed it to The Prancing Fluids. Another NTK was the Del Rubio Triplets.

Anyway, I mention Letterman so that I can also say: He has a beard, a big gray bushy beard, and it looks awful. He looks like he just climbed off a package of old-timey cough drops.

Leno is trying to make it without writers, and it’s going about as well as Letterman beard looks. It’s a total amateur hour.

But at least he had the new Jibjab cartoon, and his first guest is Iowa front-runner Mike Huckabee, and my wife is actually interested in a candidate in the first time in all the years I’ve known her.

Anway, it’s good to have the talk shows back with new material; I know we can’t be the only ones with this end-of-the-day ritual …

One day this past weekend, when it was fairly warm, I raked half the leaves in our back yard; I would have raked more but I had completely filled our trash tote plus a 30-gallon paper leaf sack, so I figured that would be a good place to stop.

There was better weather to rake in a month ago, but all the leaves hadn’t fallen yet.

And finally: I’d like to welcome the newest addition to my blogroll, Kristie from Norway, a friend (or at least a reader) of RennyBA’s blog.

Welcome to the insanity, Kristie!

Continuing now with my Five-Year Blogiversary commemorations, here’s more yammering about personal things that nobody cares about, just like bloggers used to do it during The Golden Age:

I have several long-sleeve dark t-shirts that are among my favorite things to wear in the winter, because they’re comfortable, they’re relatively warm, most of them have pockets, and even I look better in dark colors.

The reason I bring this up is that, as of last night, I have one fewer of those shirts.

Well, I still have the shirt, but two places on the collar — right in the front, very prominent — have big chunks torn out of them.

Yes, Bristol Destructodog has struck again. We keep thinking that he’s over that phase, then we turn around and find something of ours with huge chunks forcibly removed by tiny but powerful little jaws.

Here’s a picture of some of his early work, along with a picture of the artist (inset):

You can click here to view a gallery of more of his destruction.

Speaking of pictures … But first, here’s a bit about one of my favorite films, Koyaanisqatsi. Throughout the movie, Hopi Indian prophecies are sung in their native language, and those songs are translated at the end. One of the prophecies is:

“Near the Day of Purification, cobwebs will be spun back and forth across the sky.”

Well, here’s a picture that I took on Christmas morning:

Click on the picture to see the large view, and click here to see all the pictures I took.

Pretty strange, huh?

“Day of Purification”, remember those words.

I made stuffed mushrooms tonight, for the first time in at least three years, and they were wonderful, probably my best ever.

No pictures, though, sorry.

We watched another movie today: Open Season (the one about the domesticated grizzly and the one-antlered elk [Martin Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher] trying to get back to civilization on the first day of hunting season. It wasn’t bad, but it’s no Pixar work. It seemed very derivative, and of second-tier works like Shrek and Madagascar.

I’ll bet you’re wondering what music I’m listening to right now on my Logitech USB headphones as I labor over this mess.

Well, since you ask, little Miss Nosey-Nose, I’m listening to Luscious Jackson‘s Fever In Fever Out.

‘Cause you know how I feel about Chicks with Guitars.

Here’s a video of their biggest hit, Naked Eye:

Well, that should be enough pointless Blogiversary blogging just to prove that I’ve still “got it”.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a New Year’s date.