Posts

Posted on

The “Whirly-wind” explained

This weekend, while florence and I visited her (our) friends Sharon and Brad (and their lovely kids), I played around some with their Whirly-Wind. By the Whirly-Wind I mean the tube thing that you spin around and it makes that howling noise. I only call it a Whirly-Wind, because that’s what the Weakerthans call it in their liner notes.

Which brings me to the Weakerthans song that I mentioned to Brad at some point this weekend. It’s called “Elegy for Elsabit”, and is on their Left and Leaving album.

While searching online for what to call the “Whirly-Wind”, I discovered this lovely explanation for how the Whirly works. Enjoy!

Posted on

Prince Caspian life captions

I am re-reading Prince Caspian, (second in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series), before the movie opens this weekend. (We actually have sneak-preview tickets for Thursday.)

This morning on the bus, a cute girl sitting next to me asked me if I was re-reading it before the movie, and I acknowledged that yes, I hadn’t read it since high school. We exchanged a few more words before she then got off the bus.

But it occurred to me after that I was almost embarrassed admitting that I was reading it. I actually thought the girl was cuter before she said “It’s so good.” because it immediately made me wonder if the girl was into the books because she’s some religious nutjob.

This is, oddly enough, my fifth time experiencing this book. It was read to me when I was a kid, before I could read, and also happens to be one of the first things I read on my own, around preschool, I believe. I read it again sometime around fifth or sixth grade, and again in high school (when I HATED it because I couldn’t look past all the christian allegories). I actually may have only read the first book that last time, which would make this only my fourth reading of Prince Caspian. I can’t quite remember.

Apparently Prince Caspian in the movie is played by Ben Barnes, who is or was in a boy band called Hyrise.

Here is an interesting review/explaination of the book Planet Narnia’s take on Prince Caspian. Planet Narnia is a book written with the premise that each of the narnia books is about a different planet in our solar system.

Posted on

art, poetry, podcasts and porn

Well, first of all, I’ve been meaning to link to this video of an interview with my brother john since it was posted (last saturday?) over at the walker’s teen website/blog. His site has been getting a lot of traffic this week as a result, although it looks like a lot of it is coming from this woostercollective.com post about it rather than the walker.

While I was trolling the wooster collective looking for the link to brokencrow.com, I found the art of one Zak Smith, who created this incredible painting called 100 Girls and 100 Octopuses back in 2005. (Note, that link is NSFW, though it is totally awesome, and you should click on it anyway. Further note that Zak Smith also goes by the monkier Zak Sabbath.)

This month’s poem-a-day hasn’t been going as prolifically as I’d planned, although I’ve definitely been writing (and reading) more poetry this last month than has been usual the last couple of years. I’ve been really having to force it out when inspiration just isn’t forthcoming. Yesterday, for example, I just riffed on my mindblurbs page (you’ll have to search for the date “4.22.8”, since mindblurbs don’t have permalinks) on each of the major topics in this fascinating youtube video I found of a talk by Marissa Mayer. She’s apparently a google high-mucky-muck of some sort.

Finally, yesterday also marks my first foray into the land of podcasting. Jason, Mike, Florence and I sat around for about an hour to create the first ReadComics.org podcast. If you do end up listening to it, I’d love to hear any feedback you might have about any aspect of this dubious operation.

Posted on

Fire Playlist

Our office building had a fire today. We’re all back in the office and fine now. Here’s the playlist:

Prodigy – Firestarteer
Prodigy – Fuel My Fire
The Doors – Light My Fire
Semisonic – Down In Flames
Jimi Hendrix – Fire
Ash – Burn Baby Burn
ARKARNA – House On Fire
Talking Heads – Burning Down The House
McLachlan, Sarah – Into The Fire
Nirvana – Lake of Fire
Social Distortion – Ring Of Fire
Talking Heads – Love: Building On Fire
The Clientele – House on Fire
U2 – The Unforgettable Fire
M83 – Don’t Save Us From the Flames
The Wiseguys – Face The Flames
Vast – Flames
Daft Punk – Burnin’
M83 – Let Men Burn Stars

Feel free to add your favorite fire songs in the comments!

Posted on

Tetrisphere soundtrack by Neil Voss

Last night I was reminded of my fruitless search (back in 2002, I think) for the Tetrisphere soundtrack. Tetrisphere was (and still remains) one of my favorite games of all time. It was released for the N64. Sound for the game was done by this guy Neil D. Voss, I learned at the time, but Nintendo never actually released an official sountrack, even though the game won a “best soundtrack” award from Nintendo Power. Conspicuously the wikipedia link above doesn’t really say what Voss has been up to since then.

Anyway, you can find mp3 rips of the Tetrisphere Soundtrack and The New Tetris (which he also worked on) available at this random Galbadia Hotel site.

Also interesting is this IGN interview with Voss on the making of the Tetrisphere soundtrack (via wikipedia).