For almost as long as I can remember, first-contact stories have been among my favorite subgenre of science fiction. I’m not sure why, but I long suspected that it might have been a consequence of reading James P. Hogan’s Giants series at an impressionable age. Having recently been pointed at this bit of vintage Sesame Street, though, which I’d seen but long forgotten, I’ve been forced to wonder if I wasn’t in fact deeply imprinted at an even more impressionable age.
Uh huh uh huh uh huh.
If you own a mountain bike and don’t intend for every last bit of its maintenance to be handled by your local bike shop, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Lennard Zinn’s Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. In terms of “A-ha!” moments, to say nothing of damage likely spared to your components by the avoidance of stupid mistakes, it will pay for itself in a matter of hours.
It’s not just that Zinn’s explanations are detailed and his prose lucid, or that Todd Telander’s many excellent illustrations shed further light upon the subject, though all of these things are true. It also that pretty much every page makes clear how much Zinn loves the subject; how much of its lore he has absorbed over the years, to the point where understanding seems to seep from his very pores.
Orson Scott Card wrote that “the Maker is a part of what he makes.” Reading Zinn’s book, and surveying his handiwork, one glimpses just what that might mean in the real world.
…of the Reverend Horton Heat, who played at the Blank Club last night. Throw Rag and Horror Pops opened, and put on quite the rousing show in their own right. (Random aside/rant: why is it that band sites seem to be something akin to a roach motel for the utter dregs of wretched, user-hostile, late-nineties interface excess? Useless “front” pages. Self-resizing windows. Flash. “The list is long, with not a lot of smiles.”)
At any rate, lessons learned about attending a show at the Blank Club:
We had to leave a little early ’cause we were getting chilled. I think we’d both sort of expected the place to be a lot warmer than it ultimately was, just because that’s the usual result of packing warm bodies aplenty into a small space, even before you factor in the heat produced by the lights and other equipment. The Blank Club is pretty well ventilated, though. This is, on the whole, a good thing — if you’re properly prepared.
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…”