A Portrait of the Dumbass as an Old Man

$25 well spent

I splurged and spent $25 (2 @ 9.95 + 5.10 S&H) on ...

2 Flying Spaghetti Monster car emblems!!! Woo-hoo! One for my Prius, that I'm supposed to get back from my wife in the next few months, and one for the young coworker who first introduced me to the joy that is Pastafarianism. I think we've had reference to FSM in this forum before; regardless, when the idiocy gets you down and you need a good belly-laugh, it is available here: http://www.venganza.org

When my 4 kids were in high school we had a Darwin-fish emblem on one of the junkers they drove to school. I really think FSM is more appropriate. After all, Darwin was real .. (posted to KASES Forum earler today).

No biking today, radar threatened rain so I took a long walk instead. Got spit on a little.

Music-wise, some very good stuff lately:

• Bjork's latest, "Volta". I believe Ms. Gutmunsdottir is currently the world's greatest living composer. This kind of goes back to her techno roots, but keeps the heartbreaking melodies and odd textures she has consistently created lately. Another wonderful effort, 4 stars.
• At the recommendation of one of T.D.'s backup singers who was a Corinne Bailey Rae fan, got Joss Stone, "Introducing Joss Stone". Reminded me of Jamie Lidell, another white Brit deciding to do great R&B. 4 stars from me, but my youngest doesn't like it.
• Found out that eMusic.com has old Kinks stuff on it. Got "Muswell Hillbillies" (1971), which I also have on vinyl, 4 stars. Seems like most stuff I have on vinyl winds up at 4 stars when I reacquire it on a digital medium -- must be burned into the brain pretty good.
• Also got the Kinks "Preservation Act I" (1973). I had never heard before, I think part of 2 concept albums. 3 stars.
• Got Little Feat "Waiting for Columbus" (1979), an apparently legendary 2 disc live album. The 1st disc I was surprised at how many of the songs I recognized, mostly 4 stars here. The 2nd disc, not so many except for "Willin'", mostly 3 stars. Looked up Lowell George, guiding light of Little Feat. I thought these guys had been around well into the late '80s, and had backed up Bonnie Raitt, but George was apparently a real rocker and died in 1979 at age 34. He played with Zappa in the Mothers of Invention for a while ?!?!?

Haven't read much lately: two Black Widow graphic novels (multiple comic books repackaged) written by Richard K. Morgan, whose 4 recent novels have been very positively reviewed earlier in this blog. I guess they were good -- oh no, surely I'm not finally too old for comic books? Say it ain't so! One thing really comes across in these -- a nice level of British disgust for our current moronic president and his criminal foreign policies.

I never did get the other links into this new format. I may try that now. I am also, for fun, going to go back and tag all the posts. Be interesting to see what the breakdown is.