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Merry Christmas

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In the spirit of past Christmas videos (like the still-awesome Nicholas Was), I present to you Twas the Night by Norm Sherman of the Drabblecast.

I recommend listening to the audio, but if you prefer, here it is in text format:

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the edifice
Not a creature was stirring, neither mouse nor St. Nicolas
The stockings were hung by the aperture gaping
Where smoke, in it’s wisdom, had ‘ere been escaping

Downstairs my uncle was strapped down in bed
While visions of ichor danced round in his head
His nightmares of late had been growing much stronger
And sense dared not trespass his mind any longer

Once a learned professor at Brown University
My great-uncle had often, in secret, conversed with me
In his study at night, over manuscripts moldering
With a pipe at his lips, always lambent and smoldering

All that research of his, into cults esoteric
Strange symbols and glyphs and arcane numerics
Of that Dutch survey crew and their frenzied report
Of a vast arctic city filled with sunken faced dwarves

And that journal recovered from one ‘Ensign Lamar’
Which references “He that rides beasts through the stars”
Gloaming and heaving with corpulent dread
Bloated, batrachian and covered in red

And then there’s the relic in my uncle’s display:
A 4-sided top carved of wood, or some clay
With symbols engraved into each of its sides
That surely must tell of coming end times

I was pondering this manifold doom that would smite us
When out from my window shone a miasmal brightness
How the pale gibbous moon shown down on his back
Which bulged with the throngs of some hideous sack

With some alien ululations in a primordial tongue
He froze me in place, and unable to run
I was forced to bear witness to things vile and foul
So unspeakably horrid I can scarce speak them now

He summoned his steeds by their blasphemous names
And with his gangrenous grasp he pulled down on their reigns
Then suddenly upwards that noxious horde flew
That red bellied nightmare rising up from my view

Cacodemoniacal laughter I heard from my roof
And the lumbering clomps of thick octopoid hooves
Then repugnant and hoary, his stench filled the air
While he writhed down my chimney as I watched from the stairs

He spoke not a sound as then off from his back
He heaved up that thick throbbing cyst of a sack
And from it a stench came so charnel and dense
That I nearly passed out when he drew from it thence:

An Amazon Kindle, and a few pairs of nice socks
A sweater, a tie, and Call of Duty: Black Ops
Law and Order Season V on Blueray DVD
And an espresso machine,…hope he kept the receipt

Then all at once swung round this tenebrous being
And with dark ancient eyes of unfathomable seeing
Their biliferous blackness spanning eons extinct
Revealing my own maddening fate, with a wink

Then into that monolith of chimney he lurched
With the gelatinous frenzy of invertebrate birth
Ripping free to the roof he launched into the night
With a vow to return when the stars are just right

Burrito Bomber

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Sometimes technology takes such an amazing leap forward, that you just stand there, stunned. I give you the “world’s first airborne Mexican food delivery system”, the Burrito Bomber.

It works like this:

  1. You connect to the Burrito Bomber web-app and order a burrito. Your smartphone sends your current location to our server, which generates a waypoint file compatible with the drone’s autopilot.
  2. We upload the waypoint file to the drone and load your burrito in to our custom made Burrito Delivery Tube.
  3. The drone flies to your location and releases the Burrito Delivery Tube. The burrito parachutes down to you, the drone flies itself home, and you enjoy your carne asada.

Don’t believe me? See for yourself:

Unfortunately, the Burrito Bomber will not be available until 2015, when the FAA reforms its regulations in regards to unmanned drones. However, just the fact that a prototype exists gives me hope for this world.

What I’m Doing

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What I’m Listening To

The Sound of the Life of the Mind by Ben Folds Five.

You might expect that when a band has their first release in about 13 years, it might take them a minute to get their feet under them. Apparently, not so for Ben Folds Five. I don’t mean to say that they picked up where they left off exactly, but if you drew a line from Ben Folds Five to Whatever and Ever Amen to The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, and then extrapolated that line out, The Sound of the Life of the Mind would absolutely fall on that line. The album makes sense, and doesn’t rely on nostalgia. It’s just legitimately good music for people who used to like Ben Folds Five-style music.

Everything that made Ben Folds Five is present; they’re still the ironic nerd rockers they always were. Only Ben Folds Five could do a rock song describing the academic life as “rocking like a mother” (Rosa Parks and DNA, Joan of Arc and JFK), and then title their entire album after that song. Only Ben Folds could work a “don’t tase me bro” reference into a song, and the old Ben Folds Five irreverence is there too (If you can’t draw a crowd, draw d!c&s on the wall). All the old harmonies are there (listen to the first 30 seconds of “Michael Praytor, 5 Years Later”, and you’ll have no doubt which band you’re listening to).

Before listening to this album, I couldn’t have told you exactly how the “Ben Folds Five” sound differed from the Ben Folds solo-artist sound. But listening to it, there definitely is something different. Make no mistake, Mr. Folds has always been the one driving the truck as it were, but even though he used all the same tricks on his solo albums (harmonies, drum/bass backup, storytelling lyrics), it was different. The solo albums were definitely solo albums, and all of the non-Ben Folds, backup stuff really was just backup. You could have removed most of it without fundamentally changing the songs. Robert and Darren bring the bass and drums forward; without them the songs would be hollow.

“Do it Anyway” is a good first single, and showcases the fun side of the band, but for my money the best tracks are “Erase Me” and “The Sound of the Life of the Mind”.

And hey, if nothing else, they have Fraggles:

What I’m Watching

Written by a Kid on the Geek and Sundry youtube channel

When I last talked about Geek and Sundry, Written by a Kid had not yet premiered yet. Now it has, however, and it is awesome.

The premise is that they have a kid tell a story, and then they have someone direct the story however they see fit. Some of them are live action, some of the are animated, all of them are awesome.  The best part is that the directors take the story very seriously, with real actors and special effects as if this were some big budget Hollywood script, while at the same time directing something that makes absolutely no sense (such as the elite police “squat” team coming it to take out the monster). The kids are adorable, the stories are great, and the production value is through the roof. Take a quick stroll through Goth Boy, Scary Smash, Fire City, or Kendall the Knight to see what I mean.

While you’re over at Geek and Sundry, check out some of the other great shows. TableTop continues to be one of my favorites. For a sampler, check out the Fiasco episodes Setup, Part 1 and Part 2.

What I’m Reading

The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss

OMG you guys. Seriously.

Okay, I know that I’m a little late to the game, since these are super-well known (Wise Man’s Fear was a #1 New York Times Bestseller) but wow are these good. If you’re looking for the next big fantasy series, this is the one (er…the next big thing that’s already half way done, since it is a trilogy with 2 out of 3 books already out).

And when I say the next big fantasy series, I mean that literally (662 and 994 pages respectively). But I’m not joking to say that 1656 weren’t enough. Unfortunately, Mr. Rothfuss seems to be on the George R.R. Martin plan of book writing (making us wait forever and a day for the next gigantic, amazing book), so I think it will be awhile before we get book 3.

Hmm, what to say, what to say. If you’re into magic, and music, and plucky street kids, legends and how they are made, fairies and fighting and romantic interests, inn keepers, demons, and exotic foreign lands populated with secret ninja training, and (of course) a school for kids who do magic, then read these books. If you want to be swept up in an epic story with fantastic writing, then read these books. If you’re into fantasy, or not traditionally into fantasy but looking for a good intro into fantasy, read these books. I can’t imagine you wouldn’t like them.

Then come back here and we can discuss them. Highly recommended.

Balance Bike 2.0

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After Evie’s amazing success with the balance bike, we decided to give Ollie a try on it. It took a few days until he got it down, but now he goes like a maniac on that thing.

Not too shabby for a 2 1/2 year old!

With the two of them on bikes, I have to run to keep up. Ollie doesn’t like to put his feet on the pegs, he likes to pull them up behind him, but if he’s on a hill he can balance for a long time. Basically, he’s got the balancing down 100%, it’s just a question of how much speed he has.

Sing the Carillon Bells

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A short walk from our house lives the “single largest musical instrument ever built”. I guess it’s one of those things that’s too close to home, so you never appreciate it.

It was the last weekend of their summer concert series, and Sara said we should go check it out. I have to admit, I was a little reluctant. It just sort of seemed like a big to do, packing a picnic lunch and climbing all those stairs, not to mention that the kids were in particularly bad moods that day. All that just to see some bells?

I have to say, I totally had to eat my words.

Hiking up to the tiny little “performance room” to see the bells played was totally worth carrying Oliver up the 271 steps it took to get there. Seeing it played really was amazing. The tour guide said that the Carillon Bells were a “percussion instrument” and that was absolutely correct. I imagined someone playing a simple keyboard, but in actuality there are little mechanical wooden levers that must be struck. In order to play, you are literally striking the bells, and the harder you hit the levers, the louder the note.

The carillonist, James Fackenthal, did an amazing job, pounding away the 100 tons of bronze at an absolutely frantic pace, fists and sweat flying. I can’t really describe what is like seeing such an interesting and masterful performance in such an intimate room, high above the city of Chicago, for the price of $3. (that’s $3 total for all of us)

Even the kids enjoyed it, especially Oliver. At first we were sitting in front of the control console, and Oliver kept leaning around back to sneak peeks at Mr. Fackenthal playing. Evie enjoyed it, but after a few songs she was ready to move on. I think Oliver would have stayed and watched the entire concert.

Afterwards, we hiked up a few more stairs to the very top of the bell tower for some amazing views, before going back down to the bottom and listening to the rest of the concert from the ground. Even that seemed intimate, since the immense Rockefeller Chapel dwarfed the picnickers spread out in the grass below.

For anybody in the neighborhood, make sure you make it up to the top to see the performance at least once. Highly recommended.