Last fall, someone I didn't know msg'd me on Facebook.  He wanted to ask about band I was in in the early 90s. Said he had a copy of a 45 we put out and was wondering if we had recorded anything else. I said indeed we did, and gave him a link. Then he said he was from a record label and was interested in putting out a new release of all of our stuff, remastered, repackaged, stamped onto 12" vinyl. Paid for by the label.

"The fuck!?" I exclaimed. Surely this is a scam? But, I asked around and it turns out that the guy was legit. He is a friend of a friend and he is re-releasing records from bands who were active in the early 90s in the city where I went to college.

So, I contacted the other guys from the band, and we all agreed to do it. How very exciting to learn that someone liked our 20 year old songs enough to spend their own money to put them on vinyl!

There was quarter-serious talk of a reunion. But with which bass player? They're both on the recordings. Awkward!

Then the holidays came and interrupted progress. OK. That's expected. But then the new year came there was no word. So we inquired and the label told us they didn't have any money to do our record. Maybe next year.

And that's the last we've heard from them.

Almost a star, again.

The Charlotte Observer:

In a matter of minutes, the state House on Thursday morning overrode the governor’s veto of the same-sex marriage bill that allows magistrates to decline to perform marriages.

The Senate overrode the bill earlier this month, and now it is law. As a result, magistrates and employees of registers of deeds can opt out of performing marriage duties if they cite a religious objection. County offices in North Carolina must have established hours for performing weddings, as well.

I assume it's illegal to discriminate against people based on their personal religious views when hiring them to be magistrates. How can it be legal for magistrates to then use their personal religious views to discriminate while performing their jobs?

You were hired without regard to religion because the expectation is that your religion is irrelevant to the job and that you have to serve the whole community, not just your own!

Pat Robertson tells a grieving mother to assume a positive mental attitude about her young child's death:

As far as God’s concerned, He knows the end from the beginning and He sees a little baby and that little baby could grow up to be Adolf Hitler, he could grow up to be Joseph Stalin, he could grow up to be some serial killer, or he could grow up to die of a hideous disease. God sees all of that, and for that life to be terminated while he’s a baby, he’s going to be with God forever in Heaven so it isn’t a bad thing.

Thanks for calling!

The Crying Of Lot 49 would be a much shorter book if the world in which Oedipa lived had had access to Wikipedia.

Looks up "W.A.S.T.E.".

Clicks link to "Tristero".

"Oh, OK, cool."

The End.

Last week I came up with a groovy little chord progression, built around tight clusters of notes on the top three strings of my guitar. Very unsettled, jazzy, and fun to play. But it needed just a little something. Something was missing. I needed a little hook or a sting or something to make it pop. And I spent all weekend trying to find just the right little tweak. I tried adding a bass line, a second guitar. Some snappy percussion. And then I found it! I needed this one little five note lick at the end. DeeDeeDee Dee Deeeee.

And then a vocal line popped into my head! Holy crap. And then words!

And then... a voice.

It was Bono's voice.

I'd accidentally figured out a Muzak version of the closing bit from the Red Rocks version of 11 O'Clock Tick Tock.

Shortly after leaving the island, they are lifted up by a whirlwind and after seven days deposited on the Moon. There they find themselves embroiled in a full-scale war between the king of the Moon and the king of the Sun over colonization of the Morning Star, involving armies including such exotica as stalk-and-mushroom men, acorn-dogs ("dog-faced men fighting on winged acorns"), and cloud-centaurs. Unusually, the Sun, Moon, stars and planets are portrayed as locales, each with its unique geographic details and inhabitants. The war is finally won by the Sun's armies clouding the Moon over. Details of the Moon follow; there are no women, and children grow inside the calf of men.

After returning to Earth, the adventurers become trapped in a giant whale; inside the 200-mile-long animal, there live many groups of people whom they rout in war. They also reach a sea of milk, an island of cheese and the isle of the blessed.

That's a summary of part of True Stories, a tale written by Lucian, in the second century.

To make "sourdough" bread, you need sourdough starter. It's a mixture of yeast and good bacteria that you add to your dough in order to flavor and leaven the bread. You can buy it, or you can make it. To make it, you need to carefully tend a batch of flour and water in order to cultivate a stable colony of wild yeast and lacto-bacteria. The yeast provide the lift and some flavor, the bacteria provide the sour. The basic process is pretty simple to describe: mix a specific ratio of flour and water, cover and let it sit. There are wild yeast all over flour, especially whole grain flour, so most starter recipes say to start with whole rye or whole wheat flour. And to get your starter started, you just need to encourage this wild yeast to grow. The next day, it will hopefully smell like beer. Then you discard some of the original mixture and feed the remains with generic all-purpose flour and water. Repeat, discarding and feeding for a week or so, until the mixture is just right. And that 'just right' is the trick. Done right, the yeast and the good bacteria will create a mutually beneficial environment: just acidic enough to keep out unwanted critters, but not acidic enough to kill the good critters. Done wrong, the unwanted critters set up shop and out-compete the good ones.

The ratio of water to flour in the feedings is important. The frequency of feedings is important. The temperature of the water is important. The ambient temperature is important. And it all just depends.

A month or so ago I managed to make a viable sourdough starter. I made one decent loaf of bread with it, then my starter got contaminated by something and I had to throw it out. So, I've been trying for weeks now to get another starter up to speed.

They all looked promising on their first and second days. They rose up vigorously and smelled like beer (yeast in action) and pleasantly sour yogurt (bacteria). But by day four or five, the yeast gave up - no more rise, just a few bubbles (bacteria emit CO2 and H2, just not in the quantity that yeast does). And then they all started to smell nasty - not rotting nasty, but chemically nasty - nail polish remover. I think that was due to a bacterium called Clostridium acetobutylicum, which out-competed the other bacteria and was happily turning the sugars and starches in the flour into acetone. And acetone kills yeast. The reason, as best I can tell, is that our kitchen is slightly too warm which that gives the acetone makers a slight edge over the lactic acid makers. And in the 2-cup Pyrex Thunderdome where this is all taking place, every advantage is taken.

So, the AC temp is down to 72 (not 74) today. And try #5 is bubbling away on the counter. It's day three. When I get home today, it should be funky and bubbly. But it better not smell like muthafunkin acetone! If it does, I'm going to give up and stick with insipid commercial yeast.

Paint fades. When we see paintings in museums we're often not seeing what paintings originally looked like: what the artist intended.

via David Byrne

Is MSG safe ?

Science says : Yes.

Also, it's what your tongue is sensing when you taste 'umami'.

Last summer, after a year without running and no prospect of starting up again, I was gaining weight. Because I'm a pretty slim fella, this wasn't exactly an emergency. But, my wedding ring had started to get tight, so I had it sized up a tiny bit. Then, last November I started running again. And now, six months later, I've lost ten pounds.

In the past month, my wedding ring has simply fallen off my finger, twice. Like, I moved my hand and my just ring fell off. I should've paid closer attention to that. Saturday, somewhere between Mad Max (awesome!), the Singaporean restaurant (awesome!) and the after dinner drinks, I lost my wedding ring. Almost 19 years!

Luckily for me, Mrs. lost hers ten years ago - so I didn't have to be the first.