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A Kitten and Her Robot
Not much time for blogging these days. I am in a constant state of catch up with my work load. For now I leave you with another gratuitous cute kitten snap (courtesy of Grandpa Leach) and some good links.

In doing some research on diorama’s I ran across this and this.

The Bend Press

Pie of the Month

The Dime Museum

A trip to the Eames House

A review of The Overtones 7-inch that I found at a record show over the weekend. The b-side has an amazing surf instrumental called “The Calhoun Surf”, which if you live in Minneapolis Minnesota strikes you as damn funny.

Last week I got to see some fine paintings by Ta-coumba Aiken

Me Talk Kitty One Day
I now have three ladies to take care of. Two calico sisters from the same litter arrived on our door step last night. The misses and I have been looking for two kittens for a little while now and they have finally come home. One is watching me type this post right now. She enjoys watching the mouse fly across all the screens I have hooked up. How fun is this? As much as I love working at home, I was getting a little lonely during the days and I think these two girls will more than keep me busy.

We put a “Kittens Wanted” ad on Craig’s List earlier in the week and we were emailed fairly quickly by a gentleman who lives in Northfield Minnesota. He had two barn kittens that were in need of a good home. Apparently, he has lots of barn cats put these were the only two from a recent litter that were willing to play with humans. Pictures were sent, a love connection was made and before we knew it we were dashing off to the pet store to come home with the right provisions and other cat items that we needed.

We still haven’t come up with names yet, but for now one is being called Walkie-Talkie because it’s a little chatty cathy. They both talk a lot. They’ve got a lot on their mind. The other one just wants it’s little melon scratched all day, which is fine by me. I may need to learn to work with only one hand.

The Games We Play
Lately, the misses has been taking my ass back to the ‘Jack of Club’s School for Challenged Card Players’. Her game is Gin and she’s on a hot streak that can only be classified as merciless. On most nights, our mini tournaments will end after I’ve lost my eighth game in a row. As I am no fan of losing, even when money isn’t involved, I usually do something childish – throw cards across room, make wild accusations of cheating, misdealing, feeding me too much booze, etc. But seriously folks, I need a new strategy cause it’s getting ridiculous. I taught her the game not two months ago and now I’m beginning to regret it. Fortunately I think my luck will change after I purchase this typographical deck of cards put out by the P22 Type Foundry. Never has there been a prettier deck of cards. Fonts come save me.

While I’m at it, the Apple computer historians over at Folklore have a nice piece of history about the creation and naming of the first Apple font sets. Boy do I remember abusing a 14 point Geneva back in the old college days. That font single handily saved me hours of work on those twenty plus page papers. It was almost scary how quickly Geneva could turn a slacker effort fourteen pages into an epic twenty one page polemic blast.

Also, a funny video as metaphor for life.

Ice House Makeovers
It’s very possible that the whole redecorating/makeover reality television trend seriously jumped the shark this weekend. The local news was holding makeovers for people’s ice houses (those little shacks that Minnesotan’s spend their winter in attempting to catch fish through a small hole in the ice). Are we far from a redecorating show for Ice Palaces (snaps | web cam)?

A1 Records
A younger author at his favorite record spot in Los Angeles – A1 Record Finders. The good doctor and I easily killed a whole day at this joint. The guy who runs the spot is decently shady and has a keen understanding of his product. It took awhile but after he was buttered up and complimented enough times on his outstanding collection, he allowed us into an inner chamber where we got to see some records that we knew existed only as myth and had heard ghostly rumors about on the internet. He was pretty proud of this room and would point to random records and say things like. “Jay-Z rented that record from me last week.” and “Oh you like that record? It’s a good one. Biz Markie rents it from me from time to time.” Humbling.

Buen Cultura
It takes a lot to get me leave the warm comforts of my home during these frigid weeks, but this weekend a cultural perfect storm is coming to the city and I plan to catch as much of it as I can. Saturday night, George Thompson of Burlesquedesign will be having an opening at the ox-op gallery. Shortly afterwards, the talented boys in Hey Mercedes and Wheat will be gracing the 7th Street Entry stage. That right there would be a great weekend. But it only gets better Sunday when Maritime (ex Promise Ring, Dismemberment Plan) will play a set of songs in the Ascot Room.

Blogger Versus the Shovel
Over the last 36 hours, another 12 inches of the white stuff came strafing in over the high planes. I feel like I’ve spent half this winter shoveling the walk. Where were all these snow storms when I lived in an apartment and some poor bastard had to do all my snow removal bidding?

I went for Indian food yesterday during the worst of it. With a middle finger raised to the heavens, and Heavy anthems blaring from the stereo, good time was made rushing up 94 West to the Northern outskirts of town and to the best Indian food you can find under a mountain of Minnesota snow. The plows had given up keeping the interstate clean. The lanes were hidden under inches of snow. Looking back in the rearview mirror you saw soft yellow headlights trying to push their way through the blizzard. You could barely make out any shapes. The cars seemed like ghosts suspended in a white sea. My traveling companion, a Southerner, was loosing his hold on reality. He kept looking back frighteningly over his shoulder at the crowd of cars behind us. His posture was contorting as he crouched lower and lower in his seat. He kept on hollering, “This is some Mad Max type shit right here!!”. At Broadway Avenue we had to do some fancy driving to avoid the parade of cars that were spinning out of control. Through the front window the world looked like a giant pinpball game. One moment a car would be driving comfortably in front of us and then just like that it would spin 560 degrees and then carom off the cushion of a seven foot deep natural highway buffer. It was somewhat beautiful. Like ballet. At anytime we knew our number could be up and we’d be sliding across five lanes of traffic just to end up turned around staring down a Cub Foods semi. This is Minnesota. This is where the fun starts.

Frozen Solid
A quick check of the temperature this morning reveals a deadly Minnesota story and a plot driven by unbearable circumstances. It’s -24 degrees right now. My one goal for this morning, for the whole day really, was to get myself a bearclaw from the local bakery. That plan is shot. Four minutes outside in this air and any exposed skin becomes immediately frostbitten. I actually live in a part of the country where during certain months if you don’t dress properly or if you take too much time lollygagging outside you will die?!? I don’t think I need to read anymore of those epic books about people who endure Mount Everest and live to tell about it. Instead, I raise my glass to my neighbor, who has to start his fucking car in this nonsense. He realizes that he didn’t fill the gas tank last night hopping against nature that the weather would break by morning, now he’ll have to stop and take care of that. He curses a million times under his breath. He’s got to take his little one to daycare and then he’s got to sit on the interstate, frozen in his car, listening to the worst talk radio ever. A funeral procession. He thinks about his job, his mortgage payment, his car payment, the years left to retirement, the years left to the end, his buddies who are golfing in Hawaii right now without him. It’s a grim picture folks. I better raise my glass again to my neighbor. I salute you! Sucker!

As for me, I don’t have my bearclaw, but I do have my fireplace and I do have my computer. I’ll chuck out a few hours of work here while I put more wood on the fire. Then I’m going to put the machine down sit in my most comfortable chair, stare out the window and try not to think about anything for the rest of the day. T.G.I.F. baby.

Warm Pants
On cold days like this one, where the forecasted high is -2 degrees, I’m oh so pleased that I remembered to put my Adidas track pants on the radiator last night. They’ve been steeping all night. Putting them on is pure satisfaction. It’s so good in fact that I might have to buy five or six more pairs just like them. I could then leave one pair on each radiator in the house and change them frequently throughout the day. Or not.

Figures made from poop and more figures not made from poop (although one has poop on his paws).

A fine article in the Receiver from one of my favorite authors (and fine musician) David Toop about the creating the Sonic City:

“In 2002, the Touch label released “Ringtones”, a CD collection of sounds commissioned or collected from 99 artists and sources, ranging from Gilbert and George to sound recordist Doug Quin’s tapes of arrow frog and baboon…A number of composers were quick to realise the way in which mobile phones can introduce diverse and unpredictable sounds into public space…Golan Levin’s “Dialtones” (A Telesymphony) was a composition for 200 mobile phones. These belonged to audience members, who registered their personal phone numbers into a database, received new ringtones and were assigned seats, then sat amongst the ensuing sound as two live performers created tone combinations using custom software.”

The Silent Guest
Woke up this day to find a new blanket of white powder covering the walk and yard. When I went to bed last night it wasn’t even snowing. Unlike a good April thunderstorm that announce it’s arrival with pomp and circumstance, the winter storm is more mysterious and silent. It’s always a nice surprise. Everything is quiet again. There is a band of kids in the my alley. Their school must be starting late or not at all. I’m not sure what game they’re playing or if they’re playing an organized game at all. One kid, who is bundled up in a full-length ‘A Christmas Story’ style one-piece snowmobile suit has now been ditched by all the other kids. He’s walking really slowly down the ally looking between each of the houses to try and locate his friends. He takes long pauses and just stares down at his boots that are sunken in the snow. One of the other kids just ran through my yard. The snow deadens the sound of his escape. There goes another one. He runs directly over my flower-bed, where last fall I planted spring bulbs. I wince and hope he doesn’t disturb their hibernation. After wincing I realize I must be getting older. I have a chocolate donut that I’m excited to be eating for breakfast.

Last night I watched the Golden Globes with all the intensity of a good football game. When Bill Murray won I actually jumped out of my chair and made a squeal that was not unlike my response to Nathan Poole’s touchdown catch that sent the Green Bay Packers into the playoffs.

Now I’m procrastinating my work day by looking at old wistling records, other album covers and a collection of television commercials done by American actors for Japanese companies. In just a few minutes I hope to win an eBay bid on a camera lens I have been after for a good long time. John Vanderslice’s new album, ‘Cellar Door’ rocks the hi-fi.