Where’s the peanut butter?!

I didn’t send out Christmas cards this year but the next time I do, I hope they’ll be half as awesome as these from Gravity Creative.

These props transcend madness - my friends Eva and Adam just signed up for the 2008 Vancouver Marathon. Way to go!!

The wysiwyg wordpress editor has a habit of doing some munging of the youtube HTML embedding snippit such that it always winds up trashing my main page layout and making me go hack the source whenever I try to add youtube videos to my blog.  This is frustrating enough to bug me, but not frustrating enough for me to remember that it happens, which is really the perfect sweet spot for me to go slowly crazy…

Here are some bands I’d like to know better - a somewhat random selection based on who’s on KEXP’s year end countdown of their listener top 90.3 albums and from bands I don’t know well. I missed part of the middle of the countdown but this should keep me busy:

Film School - I can’t remember this so well but it sounded pretty good

Sigur Ros - I kind of know them but I heard more of their music on KUT in Austin and Hvarf-Heim just seems really, really good

Tullycraft - If you can not love “The Punks are Writing Love Songs” then you’re no friend of mine. But if you can listen to it twice in a row and not get annoyed, you’re probably about 16 years old.

Les Savy Fav - missed their Neumo’s show but these cats knock out some rockin jams.The Hold Steady - I think I was supposed to be really into Lifter Puller and can tell I’ll love these guys. Some day. For now, I know that “You Can Make Him Like You” from Boys & Girls in America is terrific.

The Twilight Sad - I feel pretty weenie to fall for a band with such a pretentious name (especially when the song I know by them is “And She Would Darken the Memories”) but boy these guys are hot.

Elliot Smith - yeah, I’m a little slow on this one…

Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings - bring that beat back!

Maps - Jesus and Mary Chain-y droning stuff I’m a sucker for lately

The Blakes - I really dig every song I’ve heard by these guys - why haven’t I seen them yet?

Cloud Cult - I’ve heard enough to think they might be a band I’m really not into, but not quite enough…

Animal Collective - Peacebone and its video really capture the nightmare experience. Not sure yet whether this is enjoyable but it’s definitely interesting.

Andrew Bird - is great.

Jose Gonzalez - covers Massive Attack? And he’s swedish? Wow…

Amy Winehouse - as far as coked-out looking H junkies go, she’s #1 in my book.

Okkervil River - they were one of my bands to check out in 2006, too, and I never got around to it.

The Shins - file alongside Elliot Smith, but I can’t deny that a couple weeks ago I heard a song on the radio that I liked before realizing it was the Shins.

MIA - I’m a total sucker for that Clash sample.

Wednesday afternoon I’m working in my parents’ dining room. All of a sudden, Hildy is getting a little wild over near the stove. From my angle I can’t quite tell what’s going on but I know 90 pounds of nine-month-old Bernese Mountain Dog puppy frolicking like that probably means trouble, so I go over to investigate.

I got there in time to get the scorpion out of her mouth before she ate it (and apparently before she got noticeably stung) but I’m reminded of the time Flora ate the lead curtain weights and a friend of my sister asked “Is that breed known for being especially bright?”

I hope the winning bidder’s ID was kept private on this auction so that it wouldn’t spoil my surprise!

In related news - Mr. F was probably the funniest single episode of Arrested Development, but I’m still amazed someone coughed up over $200 for one of the cardboard houses in this auction.

The road home - under and over, originally uploaded by Peru Tha Damaja.

Notes from today’s run…

…dusk - much busier under mopac than yesterday…”got my hair on my head, got my brains got my ears…”…bats under congress? at this time of year?…*not* so busy after congress - I guess this is what mom was warning me about…under I-35…what’s this guy doing back here with his dog? oh, is this a dead end? - “are you trying to get across the bridge?” “yeah” “you want to go back around the treatment plant” “ahh - thanks!” - that was obviously a handoff spot…whoa - a rabbit in a suit with sunglasses riding in an el camino! bitchin’ graffiti…hello, ruffians, please don’t beat me up…that smell is unmistakably water treatment…neat - town lake - the bridge feels like a prison, though…starting to get a little dark - better pick it up…hosteling international…which way to go? streets or cliff? streets…over I-35 - just 1170 miles to where I ran in high school…really getting dark - should have looked at a map…ahh - congress again! i’m not lost!…mile 0 and SRV - the Saturday meeting spot…ahh - here comes the trail of lights - can I get in for free? if I climb these rocks? yes!…this - is - awesome…back to mopac - 1:23:28…time to go home and make some dinner…

Here’s to feeling good, all the time, originally uploaded by Peru Tha Damaja.

I try pretty hard to be fairly clueless about pop culture. This earns me the mystique of being insightful (unless you know me well, and then I just seem clueless) but it also means that years after some entity has had its popularity heyday, I can “discover” it and then the entire creative body of work is waiting for me to catch up on. This applies to good music, good authors, and most recently, Seinfeld.

My friend Nick frequently uses the toast “Here’s to feeling good, all the time.” Last night I finally saw the Seinfeld episode it came from and it’s got to be one of the funniest minutes ever filmed. It’s better in context, but it’s still incredibly, incredibly funny. Click the picture for the whole clip.

There’s your problem, right there…, originally uploaded by Peru Tha Damaja.

Every trip home includes a couple rituals. Getting mauled by the dogs, cleaning the gutters, putting on a pound a day for the length of the trip, and fixing all the computers.

The last one was fun for a while but more and more it’s not something I look forward to - it would be really easy to spend the rest of my life fixing the same computers that get broken in the same ways and the marginal value-add of fixing the same computer always diminishes. Fixing a new computer or a new person’s computer is usually pretty interesting because of the different ways people use them, though.

Anyway, the current problem seems to have to do with periodic BSOD’s my dad’s been hitting. Usually when that a) happens b) intermittently and c) has recently started happening it indicates some kind of hardware problem. I haven’t finished conducting my exhaustive set of diagnostics, but I *think* I’m onto something here…

I’m continuing the extended process of cleaning through old papers and folders from my high school and college classes and going through my notes from 12th grade physics and found this exchange between me and my teacher, Larry Cannon:

Me (footnote): It’s been said that science “isn’t pretty” so keep the beauty of my myth-shattering diagram on the next page in mind when you grade this, OK?

Mr. Cannon: Science is pretty - it’s the most beautiful thing around (next to me, of course!)

It was this July while I was traveling in Alaska and I was at the hostel in Denali.  Cell and data coverage was awful and I would walk back to the road or the front desk wifi to make calls and check email when I got a message from Scott telling me that Larry had died. It’s pretty hard to get to absolutes when talking about teachers but Mr. Cannon was definitely one of the most important teachers of my life. He was one of the reasons I tried to major in physics in college and I consider the day he sacrificed his regular class lecture to talk with us about integrity one of the most influential days of my years in high school (that lecture would become the theme for my college application essays).

It’s moving to read the eulogies from his students and my classmates, but the assurance that his influence lives on through those of us who he touched is really uplifting.

So goodbye to my most beautiful high school physics teacher. I’ll miss you, Larry.