i’m up to 00 gauge, which is where i wanted to be before we go to portland, so that i can frighten my in-laws. i have a 00 gauge plug with a pentacle on it which i intend to wear. it’s not that unusual as an earring – certainly less unusual than it could be considering that it’s 00 gauge – and i’m wondering if they’ll even notice it, and if they do notice it, if they’ll say anything to me about it. <evil grin>
the fremont philharmonic had a very productive recording session last night. we started at 5:00 pm and went until well after midnight, and we recorded about 12 songs, which is 8 more than we did the last time we had a recording session… of course the last time we recorded, the composer of the music, the trombone player, and the recording engineer were the same person (which is guaranteed to result in little, if anything good on tape), and we were recording in his bedroom on the hottest day of the year and all of his recording equipment was malfunctioning because of the heat. this time we had a professional recording engineer whose job it was to get as much on tape as possible without regard to what else the rest of the band was doing, which meant that fred was free to be the composer and the trombone player, we were recording in the hale’s palladium, which is a BIG place that has room for an entire symphony orchestra… when it’s not being a beer warehouse… and it was cold enough last night that we had to take a break about every two hours or so and run the heaters so that the microphones wouldn’t freeze. also, the fact that he is a professional recording engineer means that we’re having a CD release party on sunday(!) instead of farting around “mixing” and “mastering” for more than a year before releasing our current CD at the oregon country fair last year. we’re playing for a private party tonight and we’re playing for the fremont solstice feast (it’s official, although i still haven’t gotten written confirmation) on wednesday… although it’s not in fremont this year, it’s somewhere near alaska way off of airport way, in the south part of seattle. weird.
thanks to
The spirit of Halloween at Christmas
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
The Christmas display in front of Joel Krupnik’s Manhattan brownstone has all the subtlety of a blood-splattered Santa.
Which, in fact, is what it is.
A knife-wielding Santa Claus holds a bloody head outside the home of Mildred Castellanos and Joel Krupnik. “It’s horrible, just terrible,” says neighbor Joe Nuccio, 79. “He’s got Santa Claus with a bloody knife in one hand and a doll’s head suspended in the other. That’s bloody, too.”
Bloody awful, for sure. But Krupnik, who couldn’t be reached Thursday, told the Associated Press it’s all to make this point: Christmas has become too commercial. Others have made similar points in Orlando (a gutted Rudolph dangling from a tree) and Miami (a hanged St. Nick).
And they’ve received similar reviews.
Estelle Farnsworth was so upset by the life-size Santa strung up in her Miami neighborhood that she called police. Santa’s hands were bound behind his back, his feet were tied together, and a noose was around his neck.
Have yourself a gory little Christmas, it seemed to say.
“I was absolutely furious,” says Farnsworth, 65. “Everybody was upset.”
A little girl in the neighborhood thought Santa had morphed into Satan and was going to get her, Farnsworth says.
Police told Farnsworth that desecrating Santa might be in poor taste but that it was constitutionally protected expression.
Like Krupnik, the neighbor who staged Santa’s mock execution wanted to express his dismay with the commercialization of the season, Farnsworth says.
Point taken, she says. But she believes it could have been done more tastefully.
“Why not put up a beautiful manger scene? He could have put up a sign on it that said, ‘This is the reason for the season of Christmas,’ ” she says. “Instead, he just lynched Santa Claus.”
Santa, mercifully, has been taken down in Miami, and Farnsworth’s neighborhood has returned to normal.
“It’s very well decorated now,” she says.
Not so in Nuccio’s neighborhood. Santa still leers at passersby, and Krupnik has a tree “decorated” with the heads of Barbie dolls.
Maybe Krupnik is bothered that Christmas has become too commercial, Nuccio says. “I am, too. All this nonsense about whether you should say ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays.’
“But he shouldn’t have done that to Santa.”
along the same lines, there’s the Animated Singing Santa Hack… have fun. 8)
dreaming is not illegal (yet), and i’d much rather be a dreamer than allow myself to get mired down in bush-mentality…
ah, unfortunately machines could never do the job as cheap as some little kids making designer trainers in an indian sweatshop, or chinese textile workers arguing with the EU to allow more than their allotment into the country.
If we became one world, one nation and finally resolve poverty, then I suppose machines could take away all humans jobs, but until then the machines will never have a chance!!!!
it’s a subtle attempt to make you less upset than i was when i posted this… 8/
unemployment is not a disease, unemployment is the cure!
Panexa sounds a bit like an attack on Prozac really. Or just the whole GP prescribing situation where the general public has to be high on something to be “normal” even with the debilitating side effects that can be frequently worse than the original symptoms, ie. can’t be bothered to get out of bed and go to work on monday, washing the dishes is a chore and we should have little intelligent monkeys to do it for ourselves, the battery ran out on the tv remote and getting out of our Ikea sofa is too darned difficult!!!
I’ve been feeding myself with Chuck Norris jokes recently, I’m worn out laughing now and need some pills to make me better and normal again. Please Sir! can i have some more?………………..
thanks for the laughs this morning.