News you Really Don't Expect to See

From ThinkProgress: Pentagon University Elects First Openly Gay Student President

For the first time, a Defense Department university has elected an openly gay student council president.

The student body of Uniformed Services University (USU), which includes uniformed personnel in the armed forces, this week voted for Patrick High to represent graduate students at the school. High served nine years in the Illinois Army National Guard and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at USU.

His election “is just the latest in a series of signs that those serving in our armed forces are ready to welcome openly gay colleagues,” said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

CD, Baby

Air Guitar

I'm off to work in a minute; read-throughs start today. Book goes to press on the 6th of September. Two weeks of snappy people (me included) ahead. Okay.

On the 20th or thereabouts, Christine and I are flying to San Francisco—then to Sydney. Damn. All I want is a long beach and to see wild kangaroos. That's all I'm asking.

Things I noticed...

Hey Joe, where you going with that primary in your hand.

"They have sound all over them..." New Dylan sounds like old Dylan.

Mexican fishermen ate raw catch, prayed, played air guitar

Kangaroos get the pill. (See you in September!)

The tents now cover a 12-kilometer (7.5 - mile) stretch of Paseo de la Reforma...

Things That Deserve a "War on…"

This is the kind of thing that should scare the hell out of everybody:

Even though the average American has more years of education than when Miller began his surveys 20 years ago, the percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005.

Can we get a "War on Stupid" now?

The Other Twins

"Two fully functional penes is unheard of even in medical literature. In the more common form of diphallus, one organ is rudimentary," the newspaper quoted a surgeon as saying.

You're probably thinking the same thing I thought: the plural of "penis" is "penes"? Who knew? All these years it's "penises". Boy, have I got a lot of correcting to do.

Bottomfeeders To The People

You can hear songs from my CD Bottomfeeders at Pure Volume, or over at PodSafe, or at the now ubiquitous to the point of annoying MySpace. Recommended track: I Can't Wait to Do a Tracheotomy. A love song.

Then, because you have a deep appreciation for artists whose works expresses feelings so fundamental that you blah blah fucking blah.

You can buy Bottomfeeders at CDBaby for $12.97. They're a good company, lots of great music over there, and they're very good to us musicians.

THE AMAZING PLAYERS ON THE CD:

Tom Freeman: producer, engineer; drums, other percussion (Freeman Sound Studio, Ashland)

Jeff Addicott, Karl Mansfield, and Peter Falbo: bass

Theresa McCoy: percussion

Bob Evonuik: dobro, vocals

Frank Sullivan: pedal steel (Sullivan Recording, Talent, Or.)

Brent Norton: electric guitar, vocals

Dennis Freese: woodwinds, vocals

Paul Jenny: trumpet, vocals

Emy Phelps: vocals

Sean McCoy: engineer (Oregon Sound, Medford, Oregon)

Little Thom: acoustic guitar, vocals

Bat Boy

I want to do learn how to do this.

Fourteen-year-old Ben Underwood of Sacramento, Calif., is one of the few people known to use echolocation as a primary means of navigating the world on land. There's not even a hint of light reaching his brain. His eyes are artificial, but his brain has adapted to allow him to appraise his environment. He makes a "clicking" sound to communicate with objects and people around him.

Crunchtime

Deep in deadline mania here and will be until the first week of September. Ouch. I'll be putting up small bits of strange news in the meantime.

Like this:

MUMBAI, India - A new restaurant in India’s financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler and promoted with posters showing the German leader and Nazi swastikas, has infuriated the country’s small Jewish community.

Hitler’s Cross, which opened last week, serves up a wide range of continental fare and a big helping of controversy, thanks to a name the owners say they chose to stand out among hundreds of Mumbai eateries.

“We wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people’s minds,” owner Punit Shablok told Reuters.

Pulp Non-Fiction

Holy crap somebody made the 9/11 Commsion Report into a comic book.

I've Been Comment Spammed

About 60 comments at once. All spam. I've had to activate word veriftication. Sucks.

CDBaby

Jus got my CDBaby account set up and they've set up my site. Very cool. I even got a bar code for the CD—for only $20. If you have your own music to sell, I recommend these guys.

Memory Lane is a Street on the Internet

Varanasi: I kept saying, "What the hell was that"? The crowds on the ghats and in the water, the colors and smell and the sound; nobody else in the boat would see them. They'd make a beautiful gentle curl out of the water, like the dolphins at Knossos, but they'd be gone so quick I'd only see them out of the corner of my eye; an imprint of a long-nosed water-ghost would be left on half my retina. Years later I was jawdropped, watching the Discovery channel or somthing: I'd been seeing Ganges River Dolphins. Unbelievable.

Damn. Gotta go to work. I've also gotta go through the old photo albums, see what I can find. Here's a Gosainkund extra. I got altitude sickness, decided to lie down in the snow, take off my socks and warm my feet for a while. Godamighty, I don't know how I made it down. When I did the two nice young girls who were the only inhabitants of the chesse-factory town made me omelets, with mushrooms they'd picked "in the jungle."

There are More Coming Home

John Prine's Sam Stone

A Sage Enters the Net Neutrality Fray

Sage Meadows wants you. (Would you rather be had by this guy?) And she recommends these links:



Hey, wait a second. I forgot to tell you that the world would be a better place if every single person on the planet sat down and heard Sage sing. Honest.

I Just Thought About Warren Zevon

So I went and found a clip. 1989. Enjoy. (Comes in loud.)



So many good ones! Here's another one, just having a good time in the studio with Bruce Springsteen.

Anyone know where I can find a video of Mohammed's Radio?

It's a Little World

An anecdote, if I may.

So I'm downtown with Christine last week just walking and looking and we run into Bob and Danella the Evoniuks—Bob played the amazing dobro on my CD Bottomfeeders, as well as singing backup on the title track—and Danella says, "Oh my God, I've wanted to see you! I was driving to Seattle a couple of weeks ago..."

Background now needed. I have several songs up on The PodSafe Music Network, a place where podcasters from around the globe can grab songs of their choosing for their podcasts. I've been grabbed by 30 or 40 so far over the months from various locales around the world, such as The Hour of Dave from right here at home, Antecubital Liposuction from I don't know where, the JuLi Podcast from Zülpich, Germany, and MadPod with JADonnelly out of NYC.

And a knitting podcast out of Wales.

Yup. A Knitting podcast. "Popular knitting culture deconstructed, news, views and podsafe Knit-Tunes. Hosted by Brenda Dayne."

Brenda has quite a following and does an excellent show, so I'm told. She played my song Inside Joke for her listeners in early June. (Many thanks, Brenda Dayne.)

So back to Danella. Christine and I run into Bob and Danella as we're walking and looking downtown in small town Oregon and Danella says, "Oh my God, I've wanted to see you!" Seems she was driving up to Seattle in early June, and, like any normal person, she was listening to her favorite podcast.

A knitting podcast.

Out of Wales…

Things like that make my skin crawl.

Lazy Sunday

Republic of Dogs says Happy Canada Day to our friends up North.

Bra of the Week and so much more from Avedon Carol.

Glenn Greenwald on the latest NYTimes plot discovered by right-wing bloggers. Hint: they're helping the terrorist's assassinate Cheney and Rumsfeld…in their vacation homes!

Talking Points Memo on the Air Force's new program: “Automated Ontologically-Based Link Analysis of International Web Logs for the Timely Discovery of Relevant and Credible Information.” Translation: They read the blogs.

TalkLeft on Addington's Disease.

France beats Brazil. Steve Gilliard kicks it in.

Dengre at DKos on Abramoff, and the Inspector General's just released report.

Little Thom's Blog Has Hit the Big Time!

Well, that's it peasants. I'll so leave you and your furry shoes behind. I just found a comment in each of my last two posts…from Shara:

Shara said...
Hi, You are interested in Music!!! :)
I like your information. please visit the links:
Do you like t.i music ?
I think It is usefull, t.i music

A bit time to relax:
Do you want to try Poker?

I think it is useful too, Shara, this t.i music.

I'm assuming you mean "tit and intestine" music. My fave.

I have so made it.

Harriet the Tortoise

Well dang. I wrote about Harriet at that other outfit I write for and loved her story, so I was bummed when I read That Harriet the Tortoise has died.

Harriet the tortoise, one of the world's oldest known living creatures, has died in Australia aged about 175.

Senior vet Dr John Hangar told Australia's ABC that Harriet, a Giant Galapagos tortoise, had died of heart failure after a short illness.

"She had a very fairly acute heart attack and thankfully passed away quietly overnight," Dr Hangar said.

Last year staff at Australia Zoo, where Harriet had lived for 17 years, held a party to celebrate her 175th birthday.

Some people believe that Harriet was studied by British naturalist Charles Darwin.

Darwin took several young Giant Galapagos tortoises back to London after his epic voyage on board HMS Beagle.

What a life, even if she didn't meet Darwin. And she wasn't named "Harriet" until she was quite old; she was "Harry" until they figured out why tryng to breed her with female tortoises wasn't going so well. Here's a slideshow of Harriet doing all things tortoise.

Loudon Wainwright III

I remember seeing this guy way back when as a teenager I watched M*A*S*H every day after school. Little did I know he'd be up there with John Prine on the list of my all time favorite songwriters.