Apparently they came to hear our band once. So I was told. It was very mysterious.

Actually, this is The Residents, San Francisco’s reclusive mad genius band. If they ever came to hear us play, they probably looked like everyone else. They never showed their faces as The Residents, so nobody knew what they looked like. Kind of like Kiss if they were actually cool.

Just really wanted to hear this song and see this video again. It’s just like playing Battlezone back at the pizza parlor.

Beck – E-Pro

Had fun making blang-blang sounds with da boyz tonight. There’s just nothing quite like doing music. Of course, they’re all very silly, which is the best part. Loud and silly. Pretty much my autobiography.

Oh, by the way, you know all this soundbite-y, meme-driven, gotcha-seeking, shallow and extremely polarized political landscape we’re seeing? Get used to it, because it’s how modern communications is going to work. Nothing drives eyeballs back to a site like the basic human impulses, and after maybe greed and sex, anger is very close to the top. Anger and disagreement and quick changes of subject is what makes the system profitable, so that’s what we’ll get.

I’m registering another meme before someone else makes it: NFL referee with arms raised. Caption —

ERMAHGERD! TERCHDERN!

I’m not a Green Bay fan (because I’m a 49ers fan) but the number of ways they just got blatantly hosed by incompetent referees on the last play of the Monday night game was staggering. Boo, NFL. Sorry, but you didn’t win that one, Seattle, no matter what how they called it.

This is about the power and shortcomings of words and the incomplete nature of rational thought:

“With Oedipus, monster slaying splits in two: on the one hand, we have a perfectly conscious slaying, that of the words that destroy the Sphinx; on the other, a perfectly unconscious slaying, when Oedipus kills Laius in a brawl between travelers. From then on the lucidity we associate with consciousness is turned inside out in a way that can only bode ill. This is the monster’s revenge. The monster can pardon the hero who has killed him. But he will never pardon the hero who would not deign to touch him.”

– Roberto Calasso (trans. by Tim Parks)
“The Marriage of Cadmus and Hamony”

Today’s Question: Is it possible to make beloved Tad-family hero Wednesday Addams so creepy as to be downright disturbing? Answer: Yes. Yes it is.

That is not something that wants to burn you at the stake or shoot you with an arrow. That is something that wants to slurp your soul like drinking a milkshake.

It really is nifty. Watch it on full-screen. You’re looking at Mars. That is all you need to know.

Mars Curiosity Descent – Ultra HD 30fps Smooth-Motion

Okay, if atonement is what happens when you atone, and embarrassment is what happens when one is embarrassed, then sooner or later that tube in your handbag or medicine cabinet is going to oint, whether you’re ready for it or not.

“Don’t dab your eye, mein Herr,
Or wonder why, mein Herr.
I’ve always told you I was a rover.
You mustn’t knit your brow,
You should have known by now
You’d every cause to doubt me,
Mein Herr.”

And so, officially, the last day of a mild, slightly ineffectual summer sneaks out of NorCal without leaving a note. The tang of Autumn is on the wind.

For those of you who run with the neurobiological pack, a question: Do different types of cognition burn different amounts of calories? Are there modes of thinking (like remembering, or dreaming, or speaking, just as broad categories) that use more energy than others? Do we know this yet?

How come nobody sings “Fol-de-rol! Fol-de-ree! Fol-de-rol…!” and so on anymore? And how about “Roll Out the Barrel”? Do they sing that anywhere outside the seniors tent at the state fair?

I care nothing about Grand Theft Auto, but I could watch this video all day.

Grand Theft Auto IV – Giraffe (MOD)

You can watch this loris eating or you can watch something else. But you will be missing this loris eating rice. It’s lovely.

Slow Loris Eating Rice ball

He also said the 47 percent did not pay income taxes and that “my job is not to worry about those people.”

Because he sees them at the country club, so he’d know if they were having any problems. Like if they didn’t tip the caddy generously.

I love Randy Newman and have since 12 Songs. He nails the current election in one funny song.

Randy Newman – “I’m Dreaming”

Just wanted to remind folks: if you want someone to friend me, just have them ask me. I’ll say yes — I’m a known Facebook slut. I don’t friend on recommendations, though, (well, almost ever) not out of malice or mistrust, but just because I’ve got enough online friends that I want to make sure people are listening to my babble more or less by choice. Then the consequences are on their (and your) own heads.