Happy Labor Day!

Labor Day is probably my favorite holiday. It’s just a day off with no strings attached. You don’t have to buy any cards or any presents. You don't have to decorate anything. Your family doesn’t have to travel all over in order to get together; if you do choose to get together it’s usually just a BBQ in the back yard. You don’t have to cook a giant feast. You don’t have to deal with nasty weather. You don’t have to remember its true meaning. You don’t have to deal with rampant commercialism except for the obligatory mattress sale. You don’t have to plan an elaborate surprise for somebody and take them out to a fancy dinner. You don’t have to give candy to children you don’t know and hope it doesn’t somehow turn into a lawsuit. There are no disputes about whether it’s racially/culturally/religiously acceptable. It’s just a day off for the sake of having a day off. So enjoy it.

Air Show

I went with Jeep & Princess Flip-Flop to the air show this weekend at the Air Force base. I had fun, saw some cool planes, took a tour through a few of them, got a little sunburned, saw some pretty awesome aerial acrobatics, and even bumped into Big Rig. But the highlight of my day came when we were walking through the crowd and saw a guy wearing a Dream Theater shirt. I gave him a double horned salute - \m/oo\m/ - and went about my day with a smile on my face, knowing that I had a prog-brother out there somewhere.

Featured Album: Oceansize

Album: Everyone Into Position

Artist: Oceansize

Year: 2005

Oceansize is a British alternative rock band that I would describe as artsy, spacey, and a bit on the commercial side of prog. They are excelent at creating a very spacious soundscape.
Here is the tracklist as well as my random comments regarding each song:

1. The Charm Offensive - Some funk, sounds like King's X at times (good)
2. Heaven Alive - Upbeat. Reminds me a bit of Collective Soul. Excellent vocal harmonies. Very good.
3. A Homage to a Shame - Musically reminds me of Tool - especially the bass. Some vocals remind me of Oblivious by James LaBrie
4. Meredith - Slow with a prominent bass line. Porcupine Tree meets Tears For Fears (good combo). Featured on an episode of The O.C. (not that I watch The O.C. but I read about it.)
5. Music for a Nurse - Very slow build. Starts out by simply playing the chord progression, slowly adds other elements. Reaches an intentionaly awkward plateau 3/4s through. Ending is conflicted, vocals rise up as they fade away. Music slowly touches back down to earth. Excellent musical symbolism if you have the patience. This song was used in a TV commercial for a cell phone company called Orange. Great song.
6. New Pin - Reminds me of Muse and some other modern mainstream act(s) I can't put my finger on since I've stopped listening to the radio.
7. No Tomorrow - A bit too mainstream for me. Vocals remind me of Daughtry (not good, too generic). Has good instrumental moments reminiscent of the band Tool, and Raise the Knife by DT. Ending reminds me of a song from Joe Satriani's Engines of Creation (good thing).
8. Mine Host - Very slow. At 4:09, it's the shortest song on the album by a full minute and yet tends to drag on because the song doesn't move much.
9. You Can't Keep a Bad Man Down - Very remeniscent of Spacehog (not a bad thing), but too repetative. Repeats same pattern until 4:15, suddenly breaks for a quiet section until 5:10, then goes back to the previous pattern with only a slight variation.
10. Ornament / The Last Wrongs - Very slowly builds on a theme. Calming. Available to hear at ProgArchives.

The Verdict: A couple parts are a bit too repetative/static for me, but it's still a very good disc. Great to listen to at work, or as background music around my less-proggy friends. It's mostly relaxed but has it's share of exciting moments. I would buy their other albums if I found them at the used music shop.

More Camping Pics

Jeep & Princess Flip-Flop in the '46.


Clockwise from driver: Caleep, J-9, Jet Li, Icrad in the '49.


Muddy wheel with a small albino grasshopper on the rim.


The '46

Even more pictures will come later.

Sidenote: I just noticed that the first day of our trip 8/06/2008 is EXACTLY a year to the day after the Dream Theater concert. Awesome things must happen on this date.

Camping!

Camping at Stockdale Park, Tuttle Creek Lake, Kansas 8/6/2008 - 8/9/2008

The Peeps:
Kevineb
Big Rig
Jet Li
J-9
Icrad
Princess Flip-Flop
Jeep
Steep (Jeep's brother)
Caleep (Jeep's brother)
Pistachio (Steep's flavor of the week)
Cinder (Jeep & Princess' dog)

The Willys:
1946 (black)
1948 (green)
1949 (red)

Day 1: Arrival
Princess Flip-Flop, Icrad, Jet Li, and J-9 left early to set up camp. Caleep, Steep, and Pistachio met them there towing both the 48 and the 49 behind Caleep's truck. Jeep, Big Rig, Cinder, and I left after work and towed the 46 on the trailer. We arrived shortly after dark, ate some foil dinners, made s'mores and talked around the campfire. The boys slept in the large tent I borrowed from my sister-in-law. She told me it was her baby and I would be in big trouble if anything happened to it. The girls slept in the other tent except for J-9 The Adventurous. J-9 slept under the stars with her sleeping bag on a tarp. In the morning she reports that she was greeted in the middle of the night by a frog and some furry woodland creature "larger than a squirrel."

Day 2: There Will Be Mud
I slept horribly. I may have gotten 3 or 4 hours of low quality sleep. I don't know if it was because of the weird curvature of the ground under my spot in the tent, or because space was a little cramped, or because there were other people around, but it was not a good night for me. After a lovely breakfast we head out for the off-road trails. I'm grateful that it was cloudy and not too hot. I started out in the back of the 48 next to Big Rig with Steep at the helm and Pistachio riding shotgun. To initiate us I suppose, Steep promptly drives us over the edge of a cliff. After bouncing off a few boulders we come to an abrupt stop facing down into the ravine with the jeep standing on the front bumper against a large rock and gasoline pouring out of the tank. We were able to push the rock away to let Caleep drive it down to the bottom.


Eventually I put the camera down and helped move the rock.

The jeep was stuck near where Big Rig is standing (yellow shirt). Sorry it's fuzzy.

Continuing on, Steep and Caleep show us how to get a jeep to climb vertical rocks that are nearly as tall as the tires. We lost the 46 with Jeep and Flip-Flop for most of the afternoon. I drove the 48 for a while with J-9 and Steep. It took me a while to trust the engine braking while going down steep slopes, but eventually I got the hang of it. The engine slows it down MUCH better than the lousy brakes. Icrad drove the 49 with Caleep and Pistachio. Big Rig drove his Dodge Ram for a while with Jet Li and Cinder while Jeep and Flip-Flop went for a spin in their Kia Sportage, somehow getting separated from the group again.

After dinner, Princess Flip-Flop, Jeep, Jet Li, Icrad, and J-9 went for a dip in the lake while Big Rig stood by on Life Guard Duty. Cinder and I went for a jog. My theory was that jogging would temporarily wake myself up, and would also ensure I was so exhausted I would have no choice but to sleep that night. Caleep built a fire while Steep and Pistachio wandered off to who-knows-where to do who-knows-what. I did sleep much better this night.

Day 3: The Little Engine That Almost Could
Friday was sunny and hot. I bathed myself in sunscreen over and over. We lost the 46 with Jeep and Flip-Flop again in the morning.

After lunch I rode in the back of the 46 next to Icrad with Jeep driving, Flip-Flop riding shotgun, and Cinder sitting in between the seats. It was quite exciting considering the rear seat in the 46 does not have any seatbelts yet. The 46 doesn't seem to like going up hills. Instead it likes to die about 3/4s of the way up, leaving us to roll down the hill backwards with only a hint of braking power (the 46 had NO brakes earlier, but Jeep "fixed" it so it had some brakes at this time.)

As I was with Jeep's group he somehow got separated from the group again. In our absence the rest of the group had some fun. As I understand the story, Caleep drove the 48 down a hill and got sucked into a deep rut, nearly tipping the jeep on its side and steering it toward a tree. The front of the jeep passed by the tree, but the taller roll bar crashed into a large branch as a smaller branch poked through the windshield. The impact caused major damage to the frame and separated part of the body at the driver's "door". I'll post pictures of the damage later when I get copies from the others.

Caleep, Steep, and Pistachio had to leave after lunch, taking the 48 and the 49 with them, thus ending the off-roading portion of our trip.


Steep, Pistachio, Jet Li, Icrad, Caleep, J-9, Big Rig, Kevineb, Princess Flip-Flop, Jeep, Cinder

Somehow the previous swimmers convinced Big Rig and I to go swimming with them. I don't swim very often or very well, but we had a lot of fun. We skipped rocks, launched each other out of the water, and played chicken. The girls were tough enough to have the guys on their shoulders for a while too.

Friday night we all decided to sleep under the stars on the tarp. Well, all of us except for Big Rig who went to get his pillow and sleeping bag out of the tent and was so tempted to take a nap first that he never came back out. Icrad and I stayed up pretty late talking to each other, which was really nice because we don't see each other very often. We overheard a man in a truck from the park service tell the group next to us to clean up their food because there have been many reports about raccoons. We decided not to share this information with J-9 who had the encounter with the mystery creature on the first night.

Day 4: Evacuation
After Flip-Flop yelled at us sometime around 3:00am, Icrad and I decided to shut up and go to sleep. I slept well for the first couple hours, but woke up at about 5:00am. I heard thunder in the distance and since I couldn't get back to sleep I figured I would wait to see if it would rain so I could warn the others. The rain started at 5:30am and we all scrambled to the tents. At 7:00am the girls awoke and discovered their tent was filling with water, so they joined us in the larger tent. We continued dozing in and out of sleep for about another hour; or at least I did, so I'm guess everybody else did too. We were having a breakfast of yogurt and granola bars when the wind started to get pretty strong and the walls of the tent started billowing inward. Having fought a good fight, at 9:00am the wall of the tent came down.

We evacuated the tent and quickly packed everything up. I was folding up a tarp with two corners in each hand and the wind nearly lifted me off the ground like a parasail. The force of the wind split three of the fiberglass tent poles, broke two stakes - one by snapping the head off and the other by ripping it apart like pealing a banana. The stakes are pounded through metal rings that resemble large key rings - a single metal piece coiled around twice. The force of the wind pulling the tent away from the stake pulled one of the rings out of shape until it was one big loop.

By 10:00am we were on the road heading back home.

In the tent shortly before the collapse.
Big Rig (throwing rock horns to the camera, our traditional salute), Jet Li, J-9 (a bit sun burned), Icrad, and Kevineb
You've got to love these girls. They hadn't seen a real shower in days, they were unpleasantly awakened at 5:30am and again at 7:00, makeup is the furthest thing from their minds, and yet early in the morning they still look fantastic.

Quotes:
- You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass of yourself and some guy named Umption. (Jeep fails on his delivery.)
- Let me look at this first. I wouldn't want to pull a Steep. (Caleep's final words before he nearly broke the 48 in half.)
- You may not realize this, but I took my shorts off 15 minutes ago. (Kevineb joking to Icrad while swimming in the lake.)
- Come here, baby. Kiss me. (Kevineb's secret to winning a game of Chicken.)
- Somebody go check on Pistachio. Make sure she's not purging. (Many times by many people.)
- You wouldn't happen to know anything about jeeps, would you? (Stranger in distress speaking to Jeep.)
- I've never slept outside before. (Pistachio)
- I've never driven on a dirt road before. (Pistachio)
- I've never used a toilet that doesn't flush before. (Pistachio)
- Oh look! A vacuum hose! (Jeep finds the exact piece he needs to fix the Kia's 4-wheel-drive out lying along the trail.)
- Wow, after this I think I have a new respect for Browning tents. (Icrad, just seconds before the poles snapped, the stakes broke, and the tent collapsed.)
- This trip just went from Awesome to Epic, and is quickly approaching Legendary status. (Kevineb)

More pictures will be posted later.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRINCESS!

YAAAY!! Today Princess Flip-Flop is ... um ... exactly the same age she was at this time last year. Have a great birthday, Flip-Flop!

Jewel of Creation

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This much is commonly known; He separated the light and the dark, created the land, the water, mountains, rivers, oceans, deserts, trees and flowers and other plants, fish, birds, and land animals, etc.

Then He created Man. The design for Man is a basic, tried and true format. God merely had to look in the mirror for a prototype. Men are simple and rugged, like a single-speed bicycle; the seemingly primitive components performing well at their specified functions. They may not be very fancy, devoid of bells and whistles, but they work well and are easy to maintain.

Then as a companion to Man, in the final moments of the Creation, He created the piece de resistance … Woman - which when translated means "New Man", or "Man v2.0 Upgrade Patch." This new model was to compensate for the shortcomings of the original design, mainly the man's inability to bear offspring and raise them into adulthood.

(Footnote 1: There was a little known prototype called Man v1.4 that could self-reproduce, but was otherwise still male. This design failed when it was realized that none of the next generation ever survived into adulthood. The adult male would either fail to care for the young, abandoning them to be devoured by beasts, or when the adult found that the child was not very productive at obtaining its share of food, he would do what he deemed to be most efficient for his own survival … he ate the young himself.)

The Software Team quickly went to work writing code for the Woman's psyche that would allow her to be more caring and nurturing. The female mind was programmed to be vastly different than the Man's. The Man made decisions by logically analyzing sets of facts. The Woman was less logical, but instead she was blessed with intuition, compassion, and empathy; concepts that Men are still trying to grasp ages later.

(Footnote 2: The Woman's diminished aptitude for logical reasoning is often misunderstood, and in fact many "modern" philosophers claim that women are equally, if not more logical than men. The truth is that this so-called "flaw" was personally suggested by God to solve a critical problem. Namely, if Women were highly logical they would never be attracted to Men; they would completely avoid the ugly, odorous brutes altogether. Women would congregate together in civilized, well-decorated societies until the species died off. Some women claim they have highly superior logical skills and demonstrate this by being attracted to other women - just as the men are. Yet these women are attracted to women that look, sound, and behave much like men, thus reaping the worst of both situations: failing to further the species and also being fond of unattractive hairy beasts, thus proving themselves to have inferior intelligence and lacking any logic at all.)

God put his best team of Exterior Designers on the task of modeling the female appearance. This team had already designed mountains, waterfalls, forests, flowers, kittens, coral reefs, and even experimented in the deep sea with fish that would brightly light up with different colors. The bar was set high: This was to be the crowning glory of the Earth's creation. In addition to that, it must be something that could tame the savage Men while simultaneously filling them with passion, for this plan required both parties to participate together and Man does not like to admit to needing the assistance of another being.

The Exterior Design team were true artists and succeeded in creating the most beautiful sight in all of the Creation. Balance was achieved as her bodily form and gracefulness could drive a man wild, yet her enchanting eyes could stop him in his tracks and melt him into a puddle of goo. God was so pleased with this design that He instructed all other teams to fit their systems into this body without allowing any aesthetic changes. And thus began the everlasting conflict between artists and engineers: Form vs. Function.

Every mechanical engineer knows not to finalize the exterior specifications first because the required parts may not fit into the shape provided. The deadline was fast approaching, and on top of it all, it was the last day before God left on vacation so His head was not in the game, especially after the unveiling of the female's exterior design.

The Reproduction Team was under the most pressure. With the deadline so near, they had very little time to test the new system with the other systems of the body. In a scene that most engineers, designers, and builders are familiar with, as the clock ticked toward the final deadline their attitude changed from "This will be the greatest thing ever!" to "Just cram it in there and hope it works." The hormones used to regulate the reproductive system were not completely compatible with the brains operating system, resulting in various bugs and glitches.

(Footnote 3: Various effects of the glitches resulting from the incompatibility of the reproductive hormones with the main operating system include: extreme mood swings ranging from sweet and amorous to Raging She-Beast, weeping for no apparent reason, bloating, cramps, and the desire to watch movies with excessive dialog and no explosions or fart jokes.)

A subcommittee had been tasked to make the system maintenance free, but in a tragic turn of events the entire committee called in sick that day.

The Reproductive Team had also been working together with the Software team to develop a program that would disable the brain's pain receptors during child birth, but unfortunately there was not enough time to include this into the final design.

The final product is a Woman that is part goddess and part human. Although the Woman did not work out quite as perfectly as God had envisioned, the plan is still a success. Men love Women and - for some reason - Women love Men. In fact they love each other's strengths deeply enough to put up with, and in some cases even forgive the other's weaknesses.

Words of Wisdom

If you wear headphones while you work, remember this one thing when you try to hold back a fart:
Just because you didn't hear it, does not mean everyone else didn't hear it.

Featured Album: Godspeed

Victory is mine! The latest addition to my music collection is a band called Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and if you think the band’s name is strange, we've only gotten started.

The album title is Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. How do I begin to describe it: Spacey, psychedelic, avant-garde art rock with guitars (electric and acoustic), upright bass, cellos, violins, glockenspiel, and an extra large dose of Weird. It’s mostly instrumental with a few spoken word audio clips thrown in: an old man reminiscing about Conney Island, a little girl singing in French, a crazy cult preacher, etc.

The album consists of 2 discs with 2 tracks on each disc. Each track has several movements within it, each with its own name. The shortest track is 19 minutes long.

The passive nature of this album should allow it to serve well as background music while I do other things that require more mental focus such as work or talk with friends. My usual Prog Metal is so intricate that it requires a certain amount of attention simply to listen to it. This album is more relaxing, although it does have its intense and/or intricate moments.

As I was waiting for CD Tradepost to open Saturday morning I stopped at the Goodwill across the street. There I bought a Venaculas CD for $3. Remember, the 1 CD a Month rule is more of a guideline. It was only $3 and they are pretty descent for a local band.

Thrill of the Chase

As you know I’m a big music-lover, but my taste is a bit obscure and unique, which makes it very difficult to find CDs that I like. The types of music I listen to are not played on the radio and are rarely found in mainstream music stores, so for me, looking for CDs is like being Indiana Jones searching for ancient relics. There is a process that involves researching the band, hunting for the CDs, and then verifying that they will suit my taste.

I try to limit myself to 1 CD a month – although this is more of a guideline than a rule - so it is an honor for a CD to be chosen to join my elite collection. I thought it might be fun each month to write a review of my latest find. …Well, fun for me anyway. I know most of you will have no idea who these bands are, but you know me … I’m always willing to share.

Yesterday I was stoked. CD Tradepost’s online inventory indicated they had an album that I really wanted to try out. This is a very unique band that I was interested in hearing and sharing the experience with the rest of you (I’ll reveal what it is later). I went straight there after work, but the CD was nowhere to be found. I asked the cashier about it, he verified that the computer indicated the CD was at this store, and he helped me look around. We checked all the other sections of the store, just in case it was put in the wrong category, and I even checked the rows next to the places where it could be, just in case somebody picked it up out of curiosity and then accidentally returned it one or two rows away from where they got it.

But alas, this rarity eluded us. The cashier said he would call me if it resurfaces, but I know that this is unlikely.

I won’t give up. The hunt is on. The target has made its presence known, and has mocked me by walking through my crosshairs while my weapon malfunctioned. Now it dares to run and hide. But I will continue to track my prey. It will be mine. … Oh yes … It will be mine.

To be continued … hopefully…