Thursday
Ok, so some problems with the full-content feed have arisen, mostly due to the fact that I don't actually know RSS. I may have fixed it. This post is a feeble attempt to see if I have, honestly. Don't hate me.
Not that there's nothing interesting to write about. As a matter of fact, we finally got a cat, a kitten. We named her (as though it matters with a cat) Shurpak, which I can't actually spell. She was a extremely shy for the first day and a half, which is understandable, since she just got spayed. Understandable, but frustrating, since she crawled behind the stove, through a hole in the drywall next to the gas line, and behind a couple studs. Fortunately, we were able to extricate her through an existing hole in the back of one of the cupboards, but it left all three of us grumpy and covered in dust. Since then, she also managed to get herself stuck in the gears of the fold-out couch. Twice. She also climbed into the undercarriage of another chair. But now all the holes are patched, she's learned to avoid the underside of the couch, and is starting to act like a normal cat, id est, climbing on top of things more than hiding in the smallest place she can find.
Which is good, because that couch is really heavy.
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
I am a stew-making fool, and it's a good thing, too, since I am also a stew-devouring fool. Those two activities have consumed what some might consider a disproportionally large amount of my weekend. I regret nothing.
But as fun as making two large batches of stew was, and as much fun as playing Portal was (If you are unfamiliar with Portal, watch the trailer. You will be entertained.), the highlight of my weekend was going downtown for the bonfire. Somewhere in the center of the city, there's a giant vacant lot. A giant vacant lot that lends itself well to bonfires. The bonfire lent itself well to shooting off fireworks, hanging out with old friends, meeting new people, et cetera. Good times.
We even had a limbo competition.
Saturday
So I was attacked the other day while riding my bike. A woman was crossing the street in front of me, and she hollers at me, "Want me to blow up your bike?"
"Does she mean my tires? Or does she mean, like, explode?" Considering the various options, I remained silent.
As I continue to approach, again she asks, "Want me to blow up your bike?"
"No, I'm fine," I finally reply as I start to pass her.
"I'll rip your head off!" she yells as she lunges at me, grabbing at my neck. Too alarmed to do anything else, I kept pedaling away. Thankfully, she lost her grip on my hood, and I made good my escape.
So the moral of the story is.... uh, maybe swerve to avoid crazy people? I don't know. I just thought the occurrence was interesting.
Friday
The vote has been tallied! And thus there are now two three feeds on Smallhouse:
I hope that satisfies people's needs. I intend to add some sore of sidebar with this information as well.
As a personal opinion, if anyone out there doesn't use any sort of feed reader, it's worth the small time investment to start. All blogger blogs, all livejournal journals, mainline newspapers, most webcomics, and any independent website worth its salt will have at least one feed you can subscribe to, informing you of, or directly providing you with, any new content on that site. Doesn't that sound nice? I use Google Reader and Google Homepage myself, but there are many other options. Some browsers even have built-in feed reading functionality. Even more browsers support feed auto-detection. See a little icon on the right end of your address bar? That means this website has an associated feed (in this case, the Smallhouse update feed, not the full-content log feed). Isn't technology wonderful?
Consider yourself inform'd!
Monday
"You look, ah.... you look like Roosevelt." -Big Knees, 09/20/2007
So. I suppose what I wrote yesterday wasn't terribly coherent for some of you. But here's the skinny: I spent a good deal of my free time this weekend using my new skills to greatly simplify the posting process for me, and to implement a comment system that doesn't depend on anything outside of Smallhouse. I hope to continue to improve on this new system, but I've tested it pretty solidly and I'm confident that it's in good running order.
Now, a question for those of you who use feed readers: Do you want full-content feeds, or partial-content feeds? I know I vastly prefer partial-content feeds myself, but I'm not really the one this feed is for. I could also create a second feed, and have one of each kind. Opinions?
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
This is the first post using the new system. I'm pretty psyched. I just hope it worked. You should totally submit a comment, because I programmed all this myself.
Do it. Seriously.
Seriously.
Saturday
LIES! There will be no sweeping critiques of the American South today, for instead I will arbitrate the case presented by The Electric Six last night at the Double Door.
Now, I had been having a Bad Day. I had been working on my project for Networks, an IM server, and I was a little stressed about it. Then a good friend accosted me angrily for blowing off her party for the concert. This was a bit hard to take, as I had told her about the concert a month ago, and she herself had even considered going, whereas the party had been organised earlier in the week. I left that conversation somewhat cranky. Next, about four hours before the concert, I got an e-mail from someone who had been planning to come to the concert, telling me she was going out with friends instead. I was severely non-plussed by this, but assumed it would be easy enough to find someone else eager to attend. It was not. Everyone was either out of town, had family visiting town, or unresponsive in the short window between my offer and the time I left for the concert.
On my way to the concert, I was thinking, "At least the day can't get any worse." I was, in fact, running through scenarios in my mind, trying to find one that would make the day worse. Get mugged and tickets get stolen? No prob, just go to the party. Get mugged and killed? No prob, I'm ready for that. But there was one possibility I hadn't even considered: Crappy opening band. This band, We Are the Fury, almost tipped me over the edge. A little prayer and the promise of the rockening to come keep me going, though. But this band. This band. Their instrumentation was actually pretty tight, but the songs themselves were uninspiring. The vocalist was no good, and the band's showmanship was bland when it was not outright disturbing. Maybe Brian and I just weren't their target audience, but we agreed on all these points.
Not so with the next band, the Gore Gore Girls. They were tight all around, from their tight riffs to their tight black vinyl dresses. Instumentation, stage banter, vocals, lyrical content, the Gore Gore Girls were spot on for their niche. It just happened to be a niche that I wasn't interested in. They were wedged tightly into the type of hard fast classic rock that lies directly in the gap between "classic rock that I like" and "classic rock that I like". Brian had no such disaffection, but we were able to agree that what they did, they did well. We disagreed, however, about whether the bassist or the lead guitar was cuter.
Then came a fast, efficient set change followed by an extremely long wait for the Electric Six to arrive on stage. I finally resorted to the cigarette trick to get them up and in action. Brian was skeptical on this method, but was proven correct. Within a minute, the band was onstage and jamming, the frontman wearing a purple cape with gold lettering spelling out SHOWTIME. They ripped straight into the lead-off track on the new album, "Showtime". Almost needless to say, their set was fantastic, full of energy. They played a well-formed mix of new songs and hits, keeping the crowd enthusiasm high. All the water in my body was gradually replaced with pure unleaded rockoline (0.08% ethanol). This lead to being pretty dehydrated, which, combined with the great heat of the packed venue and an especially vigourous and prolonged bout of headbanging, almost caused me to pass out at one point. Thankfully, I recovered and reined myself back just a little bit, since (a) I didn't want to miss the rest of the show and (b) I had by that point worked myself forward in the crowd to an area where the floor seemed to be covered in broken glass. Also, (c) I've never had to drink Pedialyte, and I don't intend to start at this point in my life. But, gasp, the set ended with a few hits still unplayed? How could this be?
Well, since they were obviously fishing for an encore, the crowd tried to do their part and cheer, hollar, and otherwise demand one. But, much like their original enterance to the stage, they were much delayed, to the point where the crowd had mostly given up and were starting to move away when the stage door re-opened. But what an encore it was! They took us to a gay bar and infected us with a dance epidemic, and warned us of the dire germanic threat to our southern neighbors. The chorus of "Sing, everybody, Deutsche Deutsche, vaya con Dios, amigos!" went on for almost five minutes, and I loved every second of it. When the four song encore (one from each album so far) was over, the crowd dispersed and I drank about a litre of water. With a copy of the new CD in my hand, I walked out into the night. Brian, Meredith, Hudak, and Nicolle were nowhere to be seen. I made my way home (after stopping to talk with some friend who I happened to run into) hung up the clothes I'd been wearing to dry, and took a shower. The only articles of clothing (including, I may point out, my necktie) not soaked through were my socks, and even those somehow smelled like cigarette smoke.
So, certainly not the best concert I've ever been to, but the Electric Six, at least, were exactly what I needed and wanted. As the arbiter of justice, I find in their favor.
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