So FAST! Like a bear or a puma...

Bowling Motion, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Somebody call Dick Cheney!

Ok, wait, nobody call Dick Cheney. But that remains one of my favorite moments still from Will Ferrell's now classic White House West impersonation of George W. Bush. If you haven't seen it, check it out here.

Meanwhile, I don't know about you, but my weekend flew by! The photo above is from a recent visit to Boston, and I've actually been back to Boston since this candle pin bowling expidition, if you want to talk about time flying. Not this weekend, though, I was in New Haven all the weekend long. I did a bit of tidying around ye olde apartment, ran some boring old errands that started with a three item list and ended up taking over 4 hours out of Saturday.

Best of all, however, was Saturday night's trip to see Evil Dead 2 in downtown New Haven. Apparently there's this series that I believe is called Insomnia Theater, and as part of it they were showing the Bruce Campbell/Sam Rami classic. My roommate Andy and I took it in, and it did not dissappoint. It was tons of fun to see this Groovy B-horror classic on the big screen.

Well, now I'm off to continue my restful weekend by getting some shut-eye in preparation for what promises to be a somewhat hectic week.

Settle in this weekend, kick back, and enjoy a nice cold Obama

This appears to be the week of me picking up Wonkette content (Kenyans find Obama,'Really strong and very cheap...", so thanks to them for this great video of a CNN report about how Senator beer, a popular and cheap beer has been renamed Obama by Kenyans. Enjoy

TGIF

Wow... it's Friday, so get yourself out there and party like a Belgian who thinks he's a penguin.

Say what?

You know, like this guy:



via Andy's Blog

Caught in the Rain

Rainy Wednesday 02, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

Here's another fun picture from my rainy expedition yesterday. My post title is also the name of a reasonably fun and good song by Preston School of Industry, a band that spun out of the wreckage of Pavement.

HOORAY to the return of Photoblogging!

Video: The Folly of Attacking Iran

Holy day-of-posts Batman! Sorry, I can't stop finding things I want to post today. I was on Tom Tomorrow's website, This Modern World and while wandering around I took the 6 minutes required to watch this video that provides a super brief but interesting introduction to the history of America's involvement in Iran's affairs during the 20th Century. The information in the video provides a fascinating backdrop for the current debate about Iran, and a frightening counterpoint to the trumped up rhetoric of the administration. Now don't get me wrong, I think the situation is complex, and one of the things I would say to the credit of the video's producers is that I feel that's where they leave it at the end of 6 minutes. To present something brief that really strongly asserts the idea that this situation is complex and deserving of real care, thought, and delicacy is a pretty remarkable thing. If you have a minute or 6 check it out and leave me a comment with your thoughts.

Rainy Wednesday

Rainy Wednesday 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

I was playing with shutter speed for photo class today and snapped this photo. I wish the sharpness was a little better, but I kinda love it.

Crappy weather can breed great things, I suppose, and while the story of crappy weather resulting in breeding is an old one, I'm very happy with the new and happy drippiness of this particular result.

Black Velvet

So I've been reading a bunch of Wonkette lately, and if you're at all interested in politics then I highly recommend doing the same. The snarky hilarity cannot be matched. Anyway, they recently made mention of some rediculous velvet portraits of administration officials in a post that linked to an ebay store where such paintings are sold. I hopped on and was amazed by the other characters portrayed in this black velvet jungle of... awesomeness? You be the judge.

Shuffling through My Top Rated

I currently and temporarily lack access to a reliable version of photoshop so I decided it was quite a good time for an all-text post. There haven't been enough of these lately. So today, what with super-duper Tuesday looming and voting happening here in quaint ole Nutmegger State CT, with a wonderful conversation held this evening with a long-lost high school buddy, with the Super Bowl around the corner what will I write about?

Well it has been about a year that I've been an ipod addict, and tonight I thought it would be fun to liveblog a journey through the playlist My Top Rated.

I started off with an Elliott Smith tune called "In the Lost and Found (honky bach)," which has been a favorite of mine for years. Smith's melodies are remarkable, and while his most intensely melancholy songs are certainly striking I always enjoyed the songs where reverie pours in around the edges. In the Lost and Found is one of these songs.

The next tune up is "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts," off Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. Now, I should admit here that I'm in the midst of a Bob Dylan kick and I am really glad that this song came up, but it's also a tune of his that I'm a little new to, so I'll just say it is an 8-minute journey worth taking. The plodding rhythms, bizarre lyrics, and irresistible story hang together to form the musical equivalent of a visit to your neighbor's backyard trampoline. Even if you just bounce up and down tentatively you're far from sitting still feeling blue.

"The cabaret was empty now a sign said. "Closed for repair"
Lily had already taken all of the dye out of her hair
She was thinking about her father who she was rarely saw
Thinking about Rosemary and thinking about the law
But most of all she was thinking about the Jack of Hearts."

It's over now. Great song. Sure to be a regular listen for me, even well beyond my Dylan phase.

Oh, shuffle, you did your magic there didn't ya!?! "Don't let money change ya! Da de da dadadeda da de da dadadeda" and with that Blackalicious' "Deception" (Nia) kicks in. There's something just inexplicably great about this track. It's got an old-skool rap delivery, especially in the verses and while there are many ways that the allegory gets laid down a little thick, it's still enjoyable if only for the chorus that repeats the same warning that starts the song. Simple, enjoyable, classic? Some might say yes. You might count me as one.

Beck's "Paper Tiger" (off Sea Change) is next, a Dave Liss favorite, but tonight it's a little more mellow than my mood. Still, I didn't skip it in the time it took me to type up this little, "I'm going to move on." While I was typing I was pulled into the remarkably well combination of a moderately funky bassline, some well delivered orchestration, and a consistent beat that stays back but holds it all together. Beck plays some usual tricks, with voice mod effects pulling into the chorus at various places, but it's funny, this song makes me think something that popped into my mind during Elliott Smith and that is this:

Both of these guys use the tools that other musicians can't handle so well. Elliott Smith has the whole emo toolbox (and toolbox was chosen for a reason here) but he doesn't smother you in goppy fake ugly sad whatever it is that makes that whole game so played out. By the same token Beck uses so many tools that others simply can't handle well, and even on a song I thought I would skip he uses them to pull you in and treat your ears every time. Or that's, at least, what he does for me.

"Forget the Flowers" a song off Being There, which I will simply describe as some simpler Wilco from a simpler time. I picked up this double disk in High School and was wooed by the Sesame Street styling of the song, "Outta Mind, Outta Sight." These two discs are chock full of great reasons why Wilco is still associated with alt-country even after all their (wonderful in my opinion) noisy experiments. Banjo and all!

Wow... I think this post has run its course. I'm going to run off, but not before I at least rattle off the next few choices brought to you by the joy of ipod:

Pavement's "Shady Lane," off Brighten the Corners [so fantastically good I just couldn't tell you all the ways, even if I gave this song its own whole paragraph]
"Holiday" by Weezer off Weezer, the Blue Album... wow, the songs I love are really some songs that I truly love. Who rated these top rated? Oh wait! That was me. wow... this post is becoming crap right quick.
"Let's Explode" by Clem Snide off The Ghost of Fashion. Great lyrics, "love is only for the lovely - and such a glamorous thing to waste - wait, I have to fix my makeup..."
and... last but not least:
"Punk Rock Girl" by the Dead Milkmen. Ah, the shout-out to Zipperhead, "If you don't got mojo nixon, then your store could use some fixin!"


encore? Yeah, right.

Here it is anyway:
"Dynamite" by the unbeatable unbelievable Roots Crew ... nothing like closing out a post with these sweet sounds.

Weekend Activities pt. 2

Come Out At Night, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

I started to write a post that I then decided was becoming long, rambling, and generally boring. It died, now you get a short post with a new picture I really like. More text soon, or at least some more photos I like.

Weekend Activities

Afternoon Hike Frozen Water Bottle, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So... last weekend I was out in the woods of Pennsylvania and this weekend I'm headed north to Boston to visit a Sci-Fi convention with two great friends of mine from growing up. I'm imagining it should be pretty fun, and I'm hoping it will end up somewhat hilarious. Bottom line, however, is that I am really anticipating capturing some good photos this weekend.

Meanwhile, the above is one of my favorites from last weekend, out in the woods. We had hiked around a good bit and Bill noticed that his water bottle had frozen a bit. Soon after we all stopped and realized many of our bottles had frozen. While Sarah was holding his bottle up in the air, I thought the sunlight coming through the wavy patterns in the ice was quite remarkable, and captured this photo. There's a minimal amount of photoshop manipulation on this one. The color and look of the ice was pretty unbelievable.

FRIDAY!

Kick 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So... I recently ordered some tshirts... on a whim really. This one just came in today, more quickly than I necessarily expected, and between the excitement of the shirt itself (Narwhal riding a segway! Come on, how did I find this genius shirt!?!?!?) and the fact that the weekend is coming I decided I had much fodder for some fun photos.

This is my fav.

TGIF people, T-G-I-F

Hope you have a wonderful weekend as I wander off to play with some friends in the woods.

Looks like

West Park 01, originally uploaded by Chambo25.

So last night it was snowing outside and I decided to try and take some superfun long exposure shots from the front porch here. I wanted to capture the play of snowflakes under the streetlights, and in a sense I did. The resulting images were much different than what I expected for two reasons:

1. the incandescent bulb in the street light created the beautiful orange glow you see, a shade of lighting that my eyes had adjusted to drown out quite a bit and balance into a much more blue-hued tone

2. the exposure was long enough that the flakes I saw drifting downward as individual specks became streaks that almost look like rain.

Still, in spite of the differences between the photos I imagined I would take and what actually came out, I am very happy with this one in particular. If you click on it Flickr gives you an option to view "all sizes" where you can see a much bigger version of it. One thing that becomes clearer at full size is that the green of the street sign actually does read through the orange that saturates nearly the entire frame.

You can also see the snow accumulating on wires, branches etc.

I hope you like this photo as much as I do. Sure, my fingers and toes were a bit chilly when I wandered back inside, but it was worth it! Happy January!