Category: Uncategorized

referrer logs

Some of the finer search terms people like you used to find this site in November: “falwell water park ride photo,” “swedish freshman initiation,” “carrottop biography,” “where can i buy turducken,” “bono gets in debt,” “chewy and leia f—ing photo” (ewww), “old coins value indian head pennies,” “my tetris natalie portman edition,” “funny osama turkey,” “dallas debutantes,” “marlon brando personal email,” “sloan chris murphy girlfriend,” “charo+humanitarian,” “ricki and swing,” “osama’s desktop theme,” “how to ace bandage the wrist,” “kobe racing leather,” “download booty shaking contest,” “determination of benzoic acid in soy sauce,” “most frequented indian site porn,” “franklin planner daily scripture reading lds,” “12 most brilliant 3 on 3 football plays,” “pennsylvania chattanooga blog,” and my all-time favorite: “john stamos+socks.”

price is right

I had to go look over some documents at DISD headquarters this morning, and in the room where I was sitting, The Price is Right was on. I hadn’t seen the show in many years, but I was quietly pleased they’ve kept all the garish ancient sets, the ’70s typography on all the signs, and the technicolor-dream-coat back curtain behind the audience. (I was disappointed that they’re evidently requiring implants for the female “presenters” now; I see that two of the three of them are Playboy alums. Not that their predecessors were hired for their ability to deconstruct Sartre, but still.)
Needless to say, the Internet is home to at least one certifiable Price is Right obsessive.

wind chill

As you brace yourself for the brutal winter tumult tomorrow — or at least for what passes for “brutal winter tumult” in Texas — comfort yourself with one little reminder: it’s not as cold as it used to be. I’m not talking global warming; the National Weather Service has changed the way it calculates the wind chill factor. The original calculations were, kid you not, “based on measurements of heat flowing through a beaker of water in experiments in Antarctica in the 1940’s.” (Like so much in today’s society.) The new calculations take into account things like the heat-generation abilities of humans. The result is that things will look warmer than they used to. (AccuWeather has been pushing something called the RealFeel Temperature as a repaired wind chill for some time, despite its slightly pornographic name.)
(The other way to look at it is that our ancestors were a bunch of reverse braggarts who exaggerated how tough they had it. Those old stories about walking uphill both ways to school through a blinding blizzard can now be neatly answered: “But Grandpa, wasn’t it actually about ten degrees warmer than you claimed at the time?”)
This is retroactive. For Cowboys fans, the infamous Ice Bowl game against Green Bay wasn’t played in 46-below wind chill, as was reported at the time. Now, it’s just a downright balmy minus-35.

cut off my feet

Meet Paul Morgan. “Prepare yourself for an adventure like you have never before experienced,” says his web site. “In an unprecedented event… LIVE via webcam access… you can watch me amputate my legs with a homemade guillotine on November 30th!” (You may have seen this story before; we ran it in the DMN some months ago.)
Morgan has no feeling in his feet as a result of a childhood accident. And he can’t afford prosthetic feet. So he’s offering to chop them off — live and uncut! — if it’ll raise money for his surgery. (It’ll cost $20 to watch; while his web site hasn’t been updated, he’s postponed the event to Jan. 5.)
Favorite lines from his web page: “Now you may be wondering what kind of demented website you have found. People read the words AMPUTATE and GUILLOTINE and automatically freak. What I am doing may be a little untraditional but that doesn’t mean this is some kind of freak show.” Um, okay.

winter

I love winter weather. Always have. It’s odd, I know, coming from someone born and raised in south Louisiana, where heat indexes make the news more often than wind chills. But spending seven-plus years in Connecticut and Ohio convinced me that I’ve got some inner Nordic. I can’t stand heat — that was honestly one of the biggest mental obstacles I had to overcome before moving to Dallas. (It was 112 degrees on the day of my job interview. The hotel I was staying at was exactly one block from my future place of employment, but I drove to the interview instead of walking. I knew that if I walked, I’d be reduced, Wicked-Witch-like, to a mere puddle by the time I arrived.)

two shows upcoming

While I will again be out of town this weekend, two shows might be worthy of your collective interest here in the dee-eff-double-you area. Trees has Man or Astroman? and Trans Am on Friday night. Sez CMJ of MoA?’s last album: “This latest collection finds Coco The Electronic Monkey Wizard and company exploring the depths of math-rock angularity and effects-driven psychedelia without losing focus of their primordial style. The result is like mainlining a compound of high-power blotter acid and some Capri Sun into your inferior human cranium.” Make what you will of that. Trans Am is alternately brilliant and boring, but probably worth a little of your time. (Examples of their Teutonic flavor of brilliance: Play in the Summer and Let’s Take the Fresh Step Together/I Want It All.)
Then Saturday, the scene breaks out the big guns, with the Dismemberment Plan coming to Rubber Gloves. If any member of the crabwalk.com Denton contingent wanted to record the show, that person would get the favor of his or her choice from Site Management.
(Incidentally, to any Austinites out there, these two tours unite Sunday for a giganto show at Emo’s. Six bands, ten bucks — what a deal.)