Tried the Snickers "Adventure Bar". Disappointed to discover coconut flavor. The wrapper includes "Limited Edition" and picture of Indiana Jones aka Harrison Ford, but no mention of coconut. Probably no room for it.

takhisis' Sims are much more entertaining. I'm not sure if it's more surreal than listening to Heather Alexander and Alexander James Adams sing "The Holly & The Ivy" though...

This cartoon, however, is wonderfully accurate :)

• 16:32 You know it's a good Saturday when breakfast is at noon and lunch is at 3 ;)
• 19:31 Question: Do those with "locked" twitters get businesses following them too? (I assume they're adding me as an advertising measure)
• 21:00 Got Coulton's 'Baby Got Back' stuck in my head. 'I like big butts & I cannot lie...'

Automatically copied from http://www.twitter.com/jenk3 via LoudTwitter cause it's easy :)

• 16:22 The Three Lions people seem to be used to us having more friends show up over time. #


• 16:25 Last weekend was 80F. This weekend is in the 40s. Hi Spring. #


• 20:01 I have a copy of Vixy & Tony's new CD. Yay. But it would be a little rude to leave the live show to listen to the CD. Oops. #


• 20:04 ...and it's 8pm & Vixy is singing 'The Girl That's Never Been'. :) #


• 20:41 I'm never sure if 'Rich Fantasy Lives' is more sad or sweet. #

Automatically copied from http://www.twitter.com/jenk3 via LoudTwitter cause it's easy :)

(ETA links & some cleanup)

Daniel Glasser singing his song "Close Your Eyes" on stage at FilkOntario 16 in April, 2006 with Judi Miller doing the sign language interpretation.

Concert rocked. Hands down-worst seats I've ever had (behind the stage, second to the last row) even without the Drunk Young Republicans shouting behind us. But good.

Trapped, No Surrender, Darkness on the Edge of Town ... yay. Really, yay.

Oh yeah, they did Rosalita. It's not as special to me as it is for others, but it does have the line I used to use as a signature: "Closets are for hangers" :)

Permagrin, yeah. Happy, yeah. Dancing with jw1776, skydancer, dianthus for a couple hours, yeah.

Oh, and one Drunk Young Republican was very pissed that Bruce didn't sing Born in the USA. "I can't believe he didn't do USA! I only came to hear that song! How can he not do USA!" I thought about asking why he was so very very sure Bruce would do it when he hasn't done it since September, but decided I didn't want to deal with explaining things like "Bruce's website" to him.

(Could be worse. Once in L.A. a Clueless Drunkard learned over and asked me if I thought Bruce was going to do something more popular, like maybe Born in the USA ... while Bruce was performing his solo blues version of Born in the USA. *facepalm*)

Oh yeah: We left for Key Arena about 6pm. Fairly sunny, plum & cherry trees in bloom, green, springlike. Drive back home about midnight and find snow on the ground, slushy roads, etc. Kinda ... weird.

Going to the Seattle show with a few folks who haven't seen Bruce live before. I got them copies of Magic, since it's the new CD and is well-represented in the less-changing parts of the recent setlists. The rest of this is mostly for them, but hey, when do I skip a chance to 'splain Bruce?

( No, there isn't a tour setlist. )

So I looked through the recent setlists, and there's a few non-Magic songs that caught my eye as, "Gee, I think that's there for a REASON."

The first is Badlands. The opening track from 78's Darkness on the Edge of Town, this song has closed the first set each night this tour, following The Rising (about 9/11), Last to Die (Iraq) and Long Walk Home (Iraq / rebuilding). Badlands didn't crack top 40, but it's been highlighted in most of the the E Street Band tours, it's on the 3 live releases E Street made after Badlands was written, and it actually started the thinking that led to me quitting Microsoft. Ok, that part's personal. But it's a song that will have most people jumping and pumping fists. (Don't worry, they mean no harm.)

Lyrics are here. There's also a wikipedia article (that I did not write). This YouTube is from 95:



Second is Reason to Believe, the closing song of the 1982 album Nebraska (which a former co-worker described as "music to commit suicide to"). The song is a series of hard-luck stories about people who are betrayed or dealing with death, with the refrain:

Struck me kinda funny seem kinda funny sir to me
Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

Some reviewers saw it as a sign of hope and human spirit; others saw it as a baffled reaction to how people just don't know when they've lost. (Gee, I don't think there's a political statement in choosing that song for this tour, do you?) Lyrics are here. A recent YouTube is here.

And...okay, I'm including a few others, but ( I cut because I'm kind. )

...from Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream, on music:

Music with a quick tempo in a major key has been shown to produce in listeners many of the physical changes associated with joy: excitement, rapid heart beat, release of endorphins, goosebumps. Music of slow tempo in a minor key elicits changes linked with sadness, an experience of "negative" emotion that, oddly enough, is considered rewarding by most people and sought out as pleasurable and comforting.
[...S]cientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute asked a group of musicians to choose music that evoked such powerful responses, and then took PET scans of their brains as they listened to their choices.

The parts of the brain stimulated? Those associated with pleasure - food, sex, and drugs. The author notes that other studies link listening to music with lower blood pressure.

Relationship Tragically Enters Going-To-Bathroom-With-Door-Open Stage (The Onion)

Are You An Unclutterer? (At Zen Habits, featuring Erin Doland from Unclutter.)

Links requested by divaprime during breakfast Monday:

• Jonathan Coulton - check out Re: Your Brains and IKEA.
  
• Two Lumps - we mentioned the squeezing under the door strips and the cats gambling sequence, but you could just order the Year One book, which not only comes with artist and writer commentary but might encourage takhisis / her partner / the publisher / whoever to do a Year Two book. (I want a Year Two book, didja guess? :)
  
• Harry & The Potters website. To get a quick listen, they have a few songs posted on their myspace, including Song for Death Eaters.
  
• Maine Coon Cats! Including Callan of "Callan's Song" fame!
  
• The free game I play is Puzzle Pirates! Sign up through this link and we both get gold :)

Finally, a quote:

"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work."
- Robert Frost

Cartoon here, notes (including cellos not being fun to draw) here.

Greetings from Bruceville - map of New Jersey constructed from Springsteen lyrics :)

( From con to mundane )

Yes, I went to my first filk con this weekend, largely to be support person for skydancer. Determined I need to learn more sound tech to be really helpful - I was fine for general setup and teardown, but didn't know, say, which mikes are better for which voice or instrument or how to position them, or how to run the board. Which meant Friday was a very long day for skydancer as editing and mixing for brunch bonus CD followed dinner followed concerts followed recording for brunch bonus CD. I was able to convince him to let me take over duplicating the CDs on Saturday during & right after brunch. He'd found a nifty solution for labels - CD blanks that are coated with an ink-absorbing substance so that we could print the labels right onto the CDs. The printing was pretty fast too - 80-some CDs in less than 3 hours of 1 printer printing, two laptops burning, and me shoveling CDs into cases.

I also danced, laughed, sang along, crocheted, and managed to bring home 10 CDs, despite somehow not grabbing a brunch CD ... shaddup ....

   -o-

Monday I didn't do much; I avoided snow silliness & caught up on laundry by working from home. Yay VPN. Also have been reading con reports in conflikt.

   -o-

jw1776 is not feeling well and will likely be working OT later this week...poor darlin'.

   -o-

Unlike her namesake, Rosie the roomba can slip right under the bed. Not just any bed, mind you, but the very heavy king-size cabinet-headboard bed of God custom-designed by sar_anon. Previously I had to move the mattress and box springs to vacuum under the thing. Hail Rosie, long may she putter along picking up particles.

I also figured out how to clean Rosie's innards, which is useful.

   -o-

I am waaay behind in the LordPeter mailing list discussion of Gaudy Night. Pooh.

   -o-

Several people I met at Conflikt added me recently. Hope you enjoy what I post - if not, no worries :)

It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin
And can't stand the company
Every fool's got a reason for feelin' sorry for himself
And turning his heart to stone
Tonight this fool's halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell
And I feel like I'm comin' home
- Better Days

Yeah, these are better days ;)

This is a very cool song of s00j's. It catapults me back to walking the main nave labyrinth at the cathedral last New Year's Eve. Even the fact that it's a Samhain song doesn't shake that association; if anything, it reinforces that it's about a New Year's ritual, just a different New Year.

(What's that Alec says about country and celtic being the same music, different whiskey?)

I'm calling it "Warm Fuzzies" ... ( Read more... ) (Yes, musicians who read this LJ may see themselves. ;)

Kids asleep in the backseat
We're just counting the miles, you and me
We don't measure the blood we've drawn anymore
We just stack the bodies outside the door

Who'll be the last to die for a mistake
The last to die for a mistake
Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break
Who'll be the last to die, for a mistake

The wise men were all fools, what to do

The sun sets in flames as the city burns
Another day gone down as the night turns
And I hold you here in my heart
As things fall apart

A downtown window flushed with light
Faces of the dead at five
Our martyr's silent eyes
Petition the drivers as we pass by

Who'll be the last to die for a mistake
The last to die for a mistake
Well Darlin' tyrants and kings fall to the same fate
Strung up at your city gates
Who'll be the last to die for a mistake
- Bruce Springsteen

Currently this song is between The Rising (about 9/11) and Long Walk Home in the setlist. No, really?

"For those who are walled up, everything is a wall . . . even an open door." in conveying this thought from the French poet René Char, I don't mean to imply that you're any more walled up than the rest of us, Taurus. My reason for mentioning it at this particular moment is to prod you into taking aggressive action to un-wall yourself in whatever ways you can. According to my reading of the omens, the cosmos will reward your efforts to topple facades that are obstructing your view and preventing you from being touched."
- Rob

"You shot through my anger and rage
To show me my prison was just an open cage
There were no keys no guards
Just one frightened man and some old shadows for bars"
- Living Proof

iTunes on random:

"Daughter of the Glade", Tricky Pixie, Live!
"Chickenman", Indigo Girls, 1200 Curfews
"Mal's Song", Michelle Dockrey, Basement Sessions
"This One's for the Girls", Martina McBride, Martina
"What A Good Boy", Barenaked Ladies, Gordon
"It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City", Bruce Springsteen, Live 1975-1985

I wouldn't have put those songs together. But I like it.

From the Harry Dresden book-before-last:

The room wasn't a big one — maybe the size of a large elementary-school classroom. There was a raised platform about a foot high at one end, with chairs on it behind a long table. More chairs faced it in rows. A sign, now discarded on the floor behind the door, declared that the room was scheduled for something called "filking" between noon and five o'clock today. "Filking" sounded suspiciously like it might be an activity somehow related to spawning salmon, or maybe some kind of bizarre mammalian discussion. I decided that it was probably one of those things I was happier not knowing.

Harry spends much of this book at a horror con. Somehow I think Jim Butcher knows all about filking ... hence the fun description ;)

(Yes, byrdie, we finally read them ;)

I finally broke down and got Bruce's Live in Dublin.

It has Blinded by the Light. A verra different, damn near head-'splodey version of Blinded by the Light (also on YouTube) that is WAY different from the '73 version or Manfred Mann's Earth Band '76 cover OR the other live versions I've heard. Not that the lyrics are any less weird ...

Well I jumped up, turnedaround, spit in the air, fell on the ground
Asked him which was the way back home
He said take a right at the light, keep goin' straight until night, and then boy, you're on your own

His enunciation ain't bad on the Live in Dublin version either. At least, not for me. Which may be kinda flawed as a test case. Anyway.

Overall, I think the movie did an enjoyable job of encapsulating the book. By the end, I was a bit surprised that Harry & The Potter's Song for Death Eaters wasn't playing over the end credits. It's not the world's best song - production is low and it rambles a bit. But it's got guts.

You feed on death but life is sweet
Have you tasted it?
Recently?
There's no life, no love in Azkaban
Will you miss it?
Or do you even know about love?

You can hear it here. I posted the lyrics a while ago.

May be a dupe to those of you on alexanderfans, but FYI, Alexander James Adams won't be at the Highland Games in Mount Vernon. Per Kore, he has to take care of things at Fae Hollow this weekend.

On the bright side, I'm importing Vitus Dance as I type this. :)

When the last child cries for a crust of bread
When the last man dies for just words that he said
When there's shelter over the poorest head
We shall be free

When the last thing we notice is the color of skin
And the first thing we look for is the beauty within
When the skies and the oceans are clean again
Then we shall be free

When we're free to love anyone we choose
When this world's big enough for all different views
When we all can worship from our own kind of pew
Then we shall be free
We shall be free

And when money talks for the very last time
And nobody walks a step behind
When there's only one race and that's mankind
Then we shall be free

- From We Shall Be Free by Stephanie Davis & Garth Brooks

YouTube

Horrorscope cartoons
Man foils attacker with deodorant
Teen pregnancy rate at 65-year low

And, Kevin & Kell: Born to Migrate CD cover (based on Born to Run).

Starbuck / March of Cambreadth video.

A Firefly video, mostly with "Our Mrs Reynolds". Okay, lots of those.

...using Heart's song "If Looks Could Kill". Okay, that's different.

You are warned... ;)

The State of Washington has a liquor monopoly - you can get beer and wine at grocery stores, but not liquor. And, for decades, liquor was not sold on Sundays. Until 2 years ago, when they decided to try it, figuring they'd collect $9.5 million.

As it turns out, Sunday sales have exceeded that forecast. By 60%.

A NY Times Sunday Magazine article on "reinventing middle age" references Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road:

“So you’re scared and you’re thinking/That maybe we ain’t that young anymore.” And then, being Springsteen, he immediately offers us a way out. “Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night.”

Is it relevant that Bruce first released that song in 1975, when he was, um, about 26?

Notes on edible container gardens.

And sometimes you don't have to believe in God to get a God's-eye perspective of things.

Why the violin is so hard to play, aka "what nobody told me when they shoved me into string class"
Get Rich Slowly
Washington State Legislature passed the domestic partnership bill
Charity Navigator

There's something about Peace Tonight that feels marvously subversive. I think it's that I first heard it at a 2005 concert and I didn't catch the verses so well - but the chorus came through loud and clear:

Let's make peace tonight
The moon is bare and shining bright
Let's make peace tonight in a good time

Of course the arrangement had something to do with that too; the chorus was done almost prayer-like.