The eight other songs Seth and I recorded at my homebrew studio setup right here in Arlington. All in all I think it’s his best yet, and my best recording/producing effort to date (though still pretty lo-fi).

I recorded his last albums too, you might remember.

Anyway here it is, right click + save as to keep the .mp3s forever:

1. Turn Off Your Radio
2. Pacific Ocean
3. The One that I Held in my Hand
4. River is Wide
5. Blood From a Stone
6. See Me Fall
7. Remember My Name
8. Bridges
9. Crab Apple Cider Blues

John 3:14 Sign

Check out that photo. That’s one of the best jokes I’ve seen in a long time. It’s weird, it’s simple, and it’s extremely oblique. I love it.

It’s from Kids in the Hall, season 3. A skit about Exhibition Shirling. Take a minute to watch it:

Shirling, the ‘exciting Gaelic/Italian tradition,’ is a ridiculous sport where teams try to dodge the poisonous spit of a scared cobra-type snake (you watched the video right? It’s a good sport too). It’s great and it’s absurd, and then comes our joke (above).

Ah yeah I’ve seen those signs before at sporting events. You could (like me) have seen this flash and just think that it’s funny that even at an event with hardly any people in attendance someone has the ubiquitous sign.

Or, you might realize that the sign we normally see references John 3:16. They got it wrong! A little funnier than before.

Actually, though, the Kids in the Hall are too smart for that. Watching this skit the other day Tim idly wondered, “What’s John 3:14?” I had a computer on my lap so I checked it out:

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up

How’s that for serendipity! And just two verses away from the stadium staple John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Bravo KITH.

“They play like, songs about dwarves and hobbits. And they’re crazy on the guitar.”

By little brothers looked at each other, and one asked me, “Yeah, but have you heard of Dragonforce?”

I hadn’t, so Daniel lent me a few of their albums.  I can’t say they’ve grown on me as much as Rhapsody, I will say that they’re one of the shreddingest bands I’ve ever heard.

But why’d they name their most recent album Ultra Beatdown? Listen to guitarist Herman Li explain:

“Since the second album, Sonic Firestorm, and the last album, Inhuman Rampage, we always had titles that are supposed to be original and no one used it before. So there isn’t a band, there isn’t a video game, there isn’t a song called Sonic Firestorm or Inhuman Rampage. Same for Ultra Beatdown as far as I know. Yeah? So we’re always trying to find an original title. There’s a reason that everyone hates the title when they first heard it, because they’s not familiar with the combination of those words.

“But it means basically the album is there to kick your ass, ultra kick your ass.”

Check them out, if just for the craft and the pageantry.

Of course, if overwrought European geek metal is too much for you, R. Kelly put out a new video today (but it’s lacking in ridiculous metaphor).

Sage Spätzle, Thirsty Bernie. Living in Germany as a boy, I fell in love with a lot of the local dishes. The US doesn’t yet have the technology to make a passable brötchen, and I’ve never had a jäger schnitzel here that lives up to my memory. But Thirsty Bernie has a bunch of Bavarian dishes in a laid-back bar atmosphere. I wouldn’t call any of them perfectly authentic or traditional, but most of them are better than any German-style fare I’ve had elsewhere. But the spätzle. Ahh the spätzle. It rivals what I remember. Get it as a side with their Austrian Chicken Sandwich.

Pork Sausage NZ Style, Cassatt’s Cafe. Cassatt’s specializes in food from New Zealand. Everything I know about New Zealand  I learned in the LOTR commentary, so I wouldn’t know if they’re making it all up, but they serve a lot of small animals like pigs and lambs and chickens, which seems plausible to me. Anyway, the tomato chutney makes this dish. I’ve never had it during dinner or lunch, but the pork sausage is my go to brunch choice.

Carolina Fried Chicken, Iota. This is the best fried chicken I’ve eaten. I’m craving it right now, actually. May be too salty for some tastes, but it’s not greasy at all and breaded perfectly. The greens that come with it are also good, but I try to switch out the macaroni and cheese for a big piece of cornbread if they have it. Not that it’s bad mac & cheese, but southern-style mac & cheese was never something I really was into (heresy, I know). I think they recently updated their menu, so it may not be right on their website.

In any case, they’ve come up twice in some cool stuff I’ve been looking at lately. Firstly, I caught this PBS special on colony collapse disorder one night by chance. Colony collapse disorder has apiologists (bee researchers) scared, as it (whatever it is) is killing whole colonies of bees in the US and increasingly throughout the world.

Scientists don’t know yet exactly what’s happening to the bees yet either. They just don’t come back to the hive and die.

Silence of the Bees, though, shown in full on PBS.org, explains a lot about what’s happening and where research is now on it. It’s not as dry as some PBS specials, I recommend giving it a look.

Secondly, Newsweek has a pretty interesting, short article on Parisian bees and all the cool pollen they come up with.

Testers have been surprised to find equatorial pollens from palm trees in [Paris beekeper] Darné’s honey pots. There’s evidence of a pollen that looks to be from the family of the baobab tree, the whimsical African colossus. “There aren’t any baobabs in the Greater Paris area, that’s for sure,” Darné says. Some pollens linger unidentified while researchers trade pollen photos over the Internet with colleagues in New Zealand and Madagascar. Olive tree, eucalyptus, the South African gazania flower, even cannabis is traceable in Seine-St-Denis hives, according to Yves Loublier, a pollen specialist with the French National Center for Scientific Research.

How does a reporter get a scoop? Nurturing contacts, wearing out shoe leather, poring over documents. And for some, the toolkit may include phone hacking, honeytraps and covert recording.

I remember hearing once that tabloids like the National Enquirer have some of the most robust fact-checking infrastructures, because the stakes and the likelihood of getting sued are so high. I don’t know how the British libel rules compare to the US, but check out what some of these reporters have done:

The exciting:

In 2003, Daily Mirror reporter Ryan Parry used false references to get a job as a footman in Buckingham Palace. His aim was to uncover security lapses at the Palace in the run-up to President George W Bush’s visit.

He revealed details of the President’s bedroom as well as the Queen’s breakfast habits. Eventually the Queen won a court order preventing the Mirror from revealing any more.

The worrying:

Tessa Mayes, who has worked as an investigative journalist for newspapers and TV shows, said… ‘If I had said no, I wouldn’t have got to work on those stories. It’s not unknown for journalists to sleep with their sources in order to meet a deadline. As it happens I haven’t needed or wanted to do that.’

The silly:

And it is widely claimed that in 1994 Rebekah Wade – then a News of the World reporter, now editor of the Sun – dressed as a cleaner and hid in a toilet for two hours in order to nab an early copy of the Sunday Times.

The Sunday Times, housed in the same building as the News of the World, was serialising a biography of Prince Charles, and NoTW editor Piers Morgan wanted to know what it said. John Witherow, editor of the Sunday Times, is alleged to have shouted at Morgan: ‘Theft isn’t journalism.’

Read the whole thing.

Isle quickly finds, though, that he may not be the only one new to the modern world, and his counterpart may be willing to go to greater extremes to get home.

How is this all connected? What happens to Isle? Does he ever get back home? Why Missouri?

Having recently finished the Journeys of Isle, I know all this. I recommend reading it and finding out for yourself.

Actually, though, it is a really cool book. A fun adventure/fantasy book that I thought was really well-plotted. Definitely a great read.

Go buy yourself a copy, or go check out the website to learn more about the book.

I probably should talk about this too much, but I have it on good authority that a pseudo-sequel is in the works and may be out in the next few months. From what I’ve seen of it, it’s even better than this, but I’d definitely read Journeys if you want to be on top of the next one.

Lord of the Rings, my bookshelf

I was checking out my bookshelf the other day and I saw this.

Fellowship of the Ring: Read numerous times, lent to a bunch of friends, spine destroyed, taped back together.

Two Towers: Read once (maybe twice), some wear, a break in the spine.

Return of the King: Unread, though I started it once!

The Hobbit used to fit in this box too, but now it sits to the side, as the Fellowship is too large rebound.

This is the Internet

Twitter. I’ve been doing it for awhile now, and it’s what’s been taking up a lot of my blog-related mindspace the past few months. The great/terrible thing about it is that it’s so easy to just post a tweet. I think I have Twitter apps on every computer I use and my phone and my clock radio, so anywhere I am I can say whatever it is I’m compelled to share, with ease that leaves little time for self-censorship. It’s a strange phenomenon.

Media has really taken to Twitter, covering and participating in it. While the rehashed RSS feed accounts have their place, the best media twitterers are the real people, talking about what they cover in their own voices. This is how I wish the media had taken to blogs five years ago. If they had jumped on the blog-wagon like they are twitter, they’d be much further along as far as audience penetration, authority, and depth. Ah well, progress is slow (and Twitter’s a lot less work than a blog).

I recently tweeted my 1000th tweet (I hate writing tweet, I really wish we would call it something else), and here are a few of my favorites of mine. My favorites of other people are here. You can follow me if you’d like to get the inside scoop.

“hey, want to read an essay about john cage?” sure, that sounds cool. “hey, want to go to a john cage performance?” no, that sounds horrible 3:57 AM Mar 30th

seth calls this “THE GREATEST story of all time” and i can’t disagree: http://bit.ly/P1o3Y 4:14 AM Feb 23rd

seriously, what has Iran ever done for me? other than the Contra series and that Flock of Seagulls song, of course 3:09 AM Feb 17th

Q: why is that money staring at me? A: it’s stalker money 6:55 PM Jan 30th

i thought “i want a dr. to take your picture,” was the vapours being romantic, but it’s actually part of the japanese naturalization process 10:39 AM Dec 20th, 2008

I woke up about ten minutes ago, have already used the phrase ‘lou dobbs bubble bath slumber party.’. So yeah, things are going ok so far 3:14 PM Dec 5th, 2008

i’ve always wanted to adopt a highway, but i’m afraid i wouldn’t love it as much as my biological highways 11:17 PM Dec 3rd, 2008

When I die I want those faux bullet hole stickers on my casket 11:44 AM Oct 26th, 2008

saw tila tequila for the first time yesterday. haven’t seen it? imagine the most terrible show possible, now take out flavor flav 9:30 AM Jun 6th, 2008

And here’s what my roommate says should be my number one, had I ranked them:

Wizards vs magic. If this were anything other than basketball, I’d be all over it 8:40 PM Jan 6th

He and I have been working hard on the album for the past few months (he more than I), and I’m proud to say six of the ten songs on Seth’s second effort were recorded by none other than me.

Seth has a folky, lo-fi vibe (lo-fi mostly due to my meagre recording setup). You can probably catch him performing somewhere around Reston if you keep your eyes out.

Here are the mp3s for the new album (right click and “Save As” to keep). Those asterisked are the ones not recorded in my luxurious home studio. They’re collaborations with Micah Nagel. On the rest Seth plays all the instruments. I mostly clicked buttons and fondled knobs.

To start with, I suggest ‘When I Get Home,’ which is my favorite (I’m also liking ‘Yes, I Know’ a lot right now).

1. Green Eyed Gal*
2. Yes, I Know*
3. Brandywine
4. Occam’s Razor
5. Ten Foot Tall Blues
6. Lazarus, Rise*
7. Speed of Sound
8. Damsel With a Dulcimer
9. When I Get Home
10. Got a Mind to Go Out Walkin’*

I also recorded much of Seth’s first album back in 2007. I also highly recommend it.