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Marzocchi, I’ve discovered, still makes some suspension forks, notably the MX Comp, with one-inch steerers. Are they good? Are they crap? I don’t know. With luck, I’ll find out Monday.

Oh, and I’m well aware that only one person who reads this blog regularly is likely to even know what I’m talking about, and he’s going to smack me for doing something he explicitly told me not to do. I can only say that I had my reasons. (Maniacally stupid ones, quite possibly, but mine all the same.)

A while back, Greg flung me a link to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, which I very nearly lost later.

Most of the comics are merely highly amusing, but this one borders upon genius. Or maybe it’s just me. (“Personal relevance”? What’s that?)

It has been said of Jonathan Coulton that he writes songs that are “insanely clever without being too clever for their own good“, which sounds about right. He first came to Internet prominence, of a sort at least, with his eyebrow-raising acoustic cover of “Baby Got Back“, which was followed a while later by the goofy, yet endearing, “Code Monkey“. Digging back through the archives, I see that he’s also written Greg‘s theme song: “Skullcrusher Mountain“.

He’s outdone himself with the recent “Rock and Roll Boy“, though: starting with found audio of a six-year-old boy burbling a song into his a tape recorder and ending it with a dedication to his mother, he’s actually crafted an infectiously catchy pop tune. Joe Bob says check it out.

Now I owe Antonin Scalia for something: introducing me to the word “condign“.

I feel tainted.

God damnit.

In an attempt to forestall questions about the T-shirt I’m wearing today, I should explain that it’s from Wondermark. Specifically, #189: “In which tracks are covered”.

Pure, solid retro audio gold: Stevie Wonder delivers a hair-raising performance of “Superstition” on a Sesame Street guest appearance from the 1970s.  I’ve always loved that song; frankly, I think this version sounds even better than the album cut — Wonder’s voice comes across clearer and purer. I would pay good money for a cleaned-up, high-quality audio mix of this performance. Good money.

I made an offhand reference to Devo’s “Whip It” while chatting with Holly the other day, and she of course caught it instantly. But then she went looking for the full lyrics, realized that she’d been under a misimpression for years, and opted to do the honorable thing by confessing: she’d always mistaken “Try to detect it” for “Tattoo Detective.”

After thinking about it further, we concluded that “Tattoo Detective” would probably be a pretty interesting job. “Miss, could I see an up-to-date registration for that tramp stamp? Uh huh. I thought so. Come with me, please.”

Of course, being part of an elite unit wouldn’t lessen the need for smooth interdepartmental cooperation. “Sir? Excuse me, sir? This is Sergeant O’Hallorhan from the Cliche Squad. He’d like to have a word with you about the barbed-wire bracelet on your upper arm. Step this way, please…”

I watched Real Genius the other night with Holly. First time for her; first time in a while for me. It made me, as always, nostalgic for 80′s syntho-pop. Since the soundtrack was never released as such, and there’s no legal way to acquire the individual tracks, I was forced to become… resourceful.

One of the resources I encountered in the course of my search was Ron “Boogiemonster” Gerber’s Crap From The Past. It’s hard to decide just where to start loving this show and its host. With the fact that both exude deep affection for a wildly eclectic assortment of pop confections from the 1970s and 1980s? Or perhaps with the fact that the show’s website is a brilliantly executed homage to text-mode DOS interfaces, something at least half of today’s computer users wouldn’t even recognize?

Who knows? Who cares? The point is that it’s all good stuff. If you’re the sort of person who played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and periodically found himself jacking a car just to drive it around aimlessly and listen to the radio, this is the show for you.

“The graphic novel will either complement the original text, or profane it. The prophecies are vague.”

(I like the rendition of Unwyrm on the cover — enough not to be too scandalized that the Gebling King’s been omitted. No matter — I eagerly await seeing Geblings depicted within, to say nothing of Dwelfs and Gaunts.)