Inspriation

I saw this a while ago and thought I had blogged it but apparently (looking back through posts) I haven't.

This is a weighty download (34 mb) but it is really worth it. The kicker? It was shot on a Nikon still camera. From the artist: "it was shot entirely out of sync with a little coolpix775 camera on its side, using the 15 seconds of 15fps video capture capabilities." My mind is boggling with how much time this must have taken.

Artist: Fredo
Song: Dad and Dog.

Video
Song

State of Republicans

Joel pointed me to this article in his paper (not really his, technically) where Garrison Keillor lights up the Republican party. A snippet:

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous.

Which makes me think about Cheney's latest announcement that he does not support the Republican's platform banning gay marriage. which makes me unhappy.

”But why?!,” you dear reader ask, “Isn't a prominent republican speaking out in your favor a good thing?” If I had any faith that this gesture was one out of sincerity, I would feel that way, but I don't. I feel this is just another variant of the "kind wife" trick that politicians have played for a long time. Take the death penalty for example -- politicians often get it both ways, with the politician playing up the masculine, tough-on-crime rhetoric, including the death penalty. But the wife will stand up against it -- and voters can see both ways, and choose to ignore the side they don't like. I fear this is deep trick to keep all the Log Cabin Republicans -- they now see a harbor for them to dock. But it is a lie. Where was Dick when the constitutional amendment was up? Where was Dick the previous 3 years? I call his bullshit. Which surprises me because I believe Darth Cheney really pulls the strings, I am way too cynical to believe that this is anything other than a scam.

ARGH!

Mantacular

Yay! Farscape is coming back!

Seeing that just made me want to google-stalk Ben Browder. One of the first items to come up is this page which has this bullet: "An animated gif I made of Ben Browder's butt. Because I'm a big homo." Name of the GIF? Mantacular.gif.

I love the internet.

Banded

It has been a while since I have posted anything of serious merit. All too often, I follow the same pattern of thinking about some witty topic, coming up with some bon mot and then I never get around to posting anything. The only things I post are short, blippy things that can be written up in mere minutes.

So here are some quickies that have built up in my mental inbox.

• There are some new musical artists that people should check out:
    Weevil - some delightful, light electronic music (think Postal Service). Here is the first song from their album. Unfortunately, I had to order it from the UK, but still, worth trying to hunt down.
    Sia - funky, Tori Amos sounding vocals. Interesting stuff. This is the first single, Breathe Me. I discovered her, hunting for anything by one of my chillout heroes Ulrich Schnauss, who did this remix of Breathe Me.
    The Trash Can Sinatras are coming out with a new album on Aug 31! Woot! only a decade later, but hey! I have pre-ordered mine, have you? Welcome Back indeed!

• HDTV. This is really a much, much longer post, but I did finally cave into my desires and picked up a new TV. It is indeed almost obscene (I am sure M. would remove the "almost" from the sentence). Now the real struggle is to get content. DirecTV is apallingly bad when it comes to having content, and there are such few alternatives, that in order to get local stations, we are adding an antenna to the top of our house, which just seems going the wrong direction. Suffice to say, that I love my HDTiVo and look forward to this fall when I will have the full range of content that we watch. Six Feet Under -- one of the few programs I get in HDTV -- really does rock my little world.

Now the main point of the post.

A few weeks ago, I rolled the odometer over to "30" -- it was a remarkably unpsychological event. I braced myself for self-inflicted drama, but *shrug* there was none. I had a great birthday, mostly responsible due to M.'s planning acumen. My birthday also happens to be our anniversary (8 years, or as he says, "8 fucking years.") and the birthday present was bands. Rings.

I had bugged him a little for this before, and he dimissed the idea, finding it a waste. "What does it matter what we have on our fingers? Does it change the nature of our relationship?" and when I answered, "Of course not" then he considered the topic closed. So as a surprise, he gave me a thin, titanium ring on the morning of my birthday. Aside from the meaning of the ring itself, the fact he finds wearing a ring as appealing as does a cat having tape on its paw, makes it all that much meaningful. (I have to admit, that for the first few days, it did feel like I had a bandaid on my hand.)

The day before I got my present, a friend of M's that knew he was going to give it to me, came up and said to M (out of my earshot) "I heard you got banded!" M. changed the topic of conversation, not wanting to spoil the surprise, but the phrase "got banded" (when he told me the story the next day) instantly made me think of migratory birds or humpback whales. Tagged, and now can be tracked via GPS.

Perhaps perversely, I have no desire to "get married" even though my parents would spring for the cost for the wedding like they did for my sister. The whole specticle of a wedding with sappy vows seems, well, maudlin. And neither of us are close to maudlin. So, that is enough for now. The symbolism does matter to me, even though I know it doesn't really change anything between us, it helps settle the demons of insecurity that live in my ribcage.