NBC gone mad?

Really, at 8:18 PST this the picture on www.nbc.com "There's something in the water!"

I am troubled as to which is the more "teh ghey"

Well... this is disconcerting for an "ALF" fan

but is this actual action figure any less gay?

and they named the goddamned thing "fisto!" I guess gay is what "he-man" is all about. ;-)

And I suppose "Crisco" was taken.

And you don't need to learn what I learned about the mistake of doing a GIS for "gay" and "fist"!!!

My Zevon Songs

f0r me of course..

but the three of you who email me intermittently might have a favorite to share. ;-)

Mr. Bad Example
Trouble Waiting To Happen
Even A Dog Can Shake Hands
Accidentally
Detox Mansion
I'll Sleep When
Lawyers Guns And Money
My Shits Fucked Up
Poor Poor Pitiful Me
Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
Vast indifference of Heaven

Kelo-idal

Unbelievable. The coporate criminals of New London have not only won their confiscatory eminent domain case, but now they are trying to charge the residents who lost, rent.

How does that make sense?

Oh - The PAIN the young feel

Alas poor Videl, who has loved, if not wisely, well.

My life is dead.

The person I loved, worried and caried about for 4 years of my life is out of my life now. He wished it. I left him beause it would make him happy. I hope he is happy in the long run. Maybe he will see that maybe I was good to him. I hope he lives a long time. I love him. but he dont feel anything for me. I move on. I said goodbye. I got rid of all my comments. I hope he one day feels how I did.

Dude! It's serious! She "got rid of all (her) comments!"

I guess that's the modern day equivalent of breaking the crockery and tossing the offending partner's clothes out the window.

How dull and drab technology makes a breakup.

And I won't even post the pictures (partly because I've never checked to see if Blogger has a TOS excluding porno) Videl is putting up on camwhores as she auditions for the next guy. ;-)

Putting the "I" in iPod

Further analysis of my iPod reveals

I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow
I Am a Revener
I Bombed Korea
I Can't Wait
I Don't Know What To Do With My Life
I Don't Like Mondays
I Don't want to go to Chelsea
I Fought the Law (Dead Kennedys)
I fought the law (Johnny Cash)
I Get So Excited
I Got A Gun
I Got A Line On You
I Hardly Ever Sing Beer Drinking Songs
I Love Rock&Roll
I Love The Sound Of Breaking
I Might Like you better (If we slept together)
I need a kiss
I Predict A Riot
I Saw the Light
I Spy (For the FBI)
I Stand Accused
I Stay Away
I touch Myself
I Walk The Line
I Wanna be Sedated
I Wanna Be Your Dog
I Wanna Riot
I Want Candy
I Was Wrong
I Will Dare
I'll Be You
I'll Buy
I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
I'll Stick Around
I'm A Believer (Bram Tchaikovsky)
I'm a Believer (Monkees)
I'm A Loser
I'm A Real Man
I'm Back
I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down
I'm In Love With My Car
I'm Looking Through You
I'm not in Love
I'm the One That's Leaving
I'm Waiting for the Man
I've Been Everywhere

Seems just about right, actually...

Do the Mathematicization George...

BOiNkee Teh Clowne....

Would like to entertain your children..




Other Clowns
Scabby
Hippie
Trauma

Buying a Ribbon to Heaven

From Fark, so it should be everywhere soon...

My iPod puts the "I" into the Pod-person that is me...

When my iPod rules the world we will do these things:

Do It Clean
Do That Stuff
Do Whatcha Want

Not do these things:

Don't Get Me Wrong
Don't Go Away Mad
Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me
Don't talk to strangers
Don't Touch Me There
Don't you ever leave me
Don't You Leave Me Baby

And no matter what we do we will

Die Die My Darling
Die With Your Boots On

Which…. horribly, is only the D's

Back to BASSics..

Bout to go to the liquor store and get a beverage and practice...

this reminded me that I have posted nothing about the bass recently.. so here's my quick version of how to tune a bass..

INSTRUCTIONS:
How to tune a Bass Guitar

There are several ways to tune a bass guitar. These include "relative" tuning, "harmonic" tuning and using an electric tuning device. While the electric tuning device is the easiest, it doesn't work if you don't have an electric tuner. Every bass player should learn, in case they need the skill at a gig, to tune a bass without aid. The following instructions will allow you to tune a bass by "notes."

You will be tuning the bass so that it sounds in tune with itself. This is known as "relative tuning and that means your bass will sound adequate when you play, even though you might not be tuned exactly to pitch. To ensure that relative tunings are tuned to exact pitch, you might tune your first (E) string to a known good note on another instrument, or to a note on a synthesized instrument which cannot get "out" of tune.

I Holding your Bass and Knowing the Strings

When you hold a bass properly, you will see that the thickest string on the bass is closest to your head. This string is the E string and, tuned to a known good note or not, it is the string on which your tuning is based. The next string down is the A string. The string below that is the D string. Finally the bottom string is the G string.

II Tuning your First String

Relative tuning of a bass works because all the notes on a bass are the repetition of an octave pattern. If you don't understand that, don't worry, once you get to the theory of a bass it will make sense. For now just be aware there is a pattern of notes on the neck of the bass. The important pattern for us is that an open note on any string should sound like a played note on the 5th fret of the string above it. Sound hard? Not really. Watch.

To tune the 3rd string (A) relative to the 4th string (E), play the 4th string, 5th fret. Listen to that note, and using your tuner try to tune the open 3rd string until it matches that pitch (A). When the pitch matches, the 3rd string (A) is in tune.

III Tuning the Remaining Strings

The good news, as I mentioned above, is that this pattern repeats.

Repeat the process you used above with the 2nd (A) and 3rd (D) strings. Play the 3rd string, 5th fret. Listen to that note, and using your tuner tune the 2nd string until it matches that pitch (D). When the pitch matches, the 2nd string (D) is in tune.

Last, repeat the process with the 1st (G) and 2nd (D) strings. Play the 2nd string, 5th fret. Listen to that note, and using your tuner tune the 1st string until it matches that pitch (G). When the pitch matches, the 2nd string (G) is in tune.

III A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words/Notes

For those who have trouble with all the letters/notes I've used in this discussion, here are two graphic representations of the process.

SLATE and whiners

So I'm over at Slate reading @ a Cynthia Barnes in Tunisia and also reading the comments that her article has drawn. And the comments are predictable. Anyone who writes a diary-type piece for Slate must know going in that they will get comments from few besides bitter shut-ins who, unable to travel and write themselves, will question the motives and skills of the person who actually had the nerve to do it. A typical plaint might be Why did Slate send such a whiney bitch? by someone who reveals themselves as just as whiney a bitch, but clearly of the local variety.

One of the most common complaints that comes up with respect to this is the "the writer writes about what he/she knows and does not adequately understand the local people." A wonderfully representative quote here

The problem is that she went to Africa, complained about the conditions and missed the REAL story, which is the African people themselves. This story was all about HER, HER, HER

Which is, of course, idiotic. The story is the African people as Barnes sees them. If Slate wanted a story on the African people it would have asked an African person to write it - or an expert on African people. The story is titled, after all, Timbuktu for the Timid which should be a hint to even the densest reader about the subject matter. Some readers, I guess, are denser than others.

The other point here is of course the author complains, compares, and in fact appreciates from her own point of view. This is somewhere completely normal on the scale of possible reactions to foreign culture. It is a more benign version of what some Muslims are doing in London - moving in and hating the culture they have moved to (in that case, to the point of terrorism). This scale of reactions ranges from the "exterminate the brutes" approach of the right wingnuts ("bring them democracy" is nothing more than a barely disguised call to erase their existing culture) to the "going native" approach of stinking hippies and the insane. Cynthia Barnes is towards the middle of this continuum and not at all that excited by the whole problem (unlike, say, the London terrorists who are closer to the right on the continuum and extrermely pissed about the problem). So she writes what she was commissioned to do.

And the real whiners whine.