Anyone who knows me well would probably say that the photo above is not something they ever really expected to see in this space.
Hank Hill to Christian rocker: “Can’t you see that you’re not making Christianity better? You’re just making rock and roll worse.”
Best “King of the Hill” quote ever…
Things are moving along nicely here at Murdering Stream Estates. We should be able to get most of the remaining odds and ends out of the Charlotte apartment in one more trip; most of what’s left there is the other half of my rather large collection of vinyl and a few small kitchen appliances.
Mark‘s office is set up quite nicely, while mine is awaiting a new desk, which may be chosen tomorrow. Yes, we each have our own offices, each of which is about half again as big as any single room in our old apartment in San Francisco. Mine should be very comfy as it also contains most of my old childhood bedroom suite, including the bed.
The washer and dryer, which had for some reason been disconnected and moved to the garage, are now in their proper places and again are functional, if a bit loud. The guest bedroom now has its bed, and the kitchen is fully stocked, with Libby Hill leftovers in the refrigerator.
I like our house.
I had no idea until this weekend that we have The Documentary Channel. It’s pretty cool.
Some thoughts related to some recent semi-accidental lapses into the commercial radio universe while driving the 70-odd miles between Winston-Salem and Charlotte two or three times a week:
- Kelly Clarkson sounds like Pink being gang-fucked by Alanis Morissette and Melissa Etheridge wearing strap-ons. Which is an entertaining image on some level, but the music still doesn’t do much for me.
- 98.7 Simon: We play everything. As long as it’s “Wild Thing” by Tone Loc, over and over and over again.
- “Land of Confusion” by Disturbed: way to take a song that wasn’t very good to begin with (though it had a good video) and make it even worse. I was surprised to see that the name of the band wasn’t spelled “Disturbd” à la Staind. They were both hatched out of the same focus group, weren’t they?
- The above would have been less notworthy had it not been the only song played on the station we were listening to between 5 and 6 PM yeterday. The rest of the hour was filled with three boring people talking more or less about nothing.
- I’ll be missing this now that we’ve moved to Winston-Salem. But I may enjoy being reunited with this and this.
I’ve been hearing stories about the death of commercial radio for two decades now. I finally believe them. And I’m starting to think that killing it off quickly would be the humane thing to do.
Dottie’s Diner on Stratford Road will be closing this weekend.
Open since 1990, the place still bears a strong resemblance to its predecessor of 30-plus years: Your House, a central North Carolina chain that operated from the 1950s through the 1990s. At least one location is still open, on Greensboro’s Battleground Avenue in a replica of its original building. Your House was a 24-hour diner, something of a knockoff of the Toddle House and Hull-Dobbs chains that were found all over the country in those days, and a precursor to the Waffle House of today.
I grew up eating at the Your House on High Point Road with my dad. We’d very often go there on Saturday mornings for waffles. My dad would meet his friends there in the evenings to sit at the counter, chat, drink coffee, and harmlessly flirt with the waitresses. In my early twenties, I’d go there with my own friends for the double cheeseburger that seemed so necessary at 2:30 in the morning after a night of drinking cheap draft beer somewhere.
I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this except to say that these little diners are the real 1950s diners, and not some gay-ass imitation with fake neon and old records nailed to the wall. A sizable portion of our male population once got a significant portion of its sustenance from them, and from places like these, and it’s sad to see these little dives go.
I’ll also miss it because it was one of the first places Mark and I ate breakfast in Winston on one of our first exploratory trips here last winter. And they have really good grits.
Outcry that 1,000 rats were euthanized:
Tina Bird of Campbell said rat fanciers were in the process of mobilizing when the rodents were killed.
“Maybe they would have been better advised to leave the animals in their horrible conditions until we, the rat community, had a few days to get moving,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Be sure that animal lovers across the United States will be scrutinizing Petaluma’s actions and culpability for this slaughter.”
I’m sure Petaluma is just shaking to its very foundations in fear. Maybe Tina should’ve gotten into her Volvo and driven the 1000 diseased and damaged rats down to her house in Campbell. The “rat community” indeed. Fucking morons.
New homeowner paranoia. We have a small water leak related to one of the showers that I’m trying to get fixed. A few minutes ago, right after taking a shower and lying down in bed, I heard this sort of rumble, followed by the sound of rushing water.
Panic-stricken, I ran into the hall just in time to remember that I’d set the timer on the dishwasher to start right as I’d be going to bed. Which, of course, explained the noise I’d just heard.
It’ll get less scary soon, right?
Happy birthday to the cutest baby in the world.
Of course you all realize I love him something fierce, right?
Funny, I was just about to write this same journal entry, almost word for word, particularly with respect to cheesy Geocities and Tripod sites from eight or nine years ago. I’ve never seen a MySpace page that wasn’t absolutely horrible and ugly and tacky and annoying.
The only difference is that I would’ve mentioned how annoying it is that random MySpacers are always trying to do inline links to my graphics from their godawful sucktastic monstrosities, thus stealing the bandwidth I pay for. But I’ve pretty much thwarted those attempts, with a few lines of code.
I also would’ve added this quote from the original article:
Or perhaps it’s MySpace’s “social” element that disturbs me. I’m a misanthrope. Everyone on MySpace seems young and happy and excited and flip and approachable, and this upsets me. Still, at least the teenage MySpacers are getting on with the business of being young and alive, unlike the fustier elements of the “blogosphere”, who just waste the world’s time banging on and on about how important the “blogosphere” is and how it spells the end of every old notion ever, when the truth is that, as with absolutely every form of media ever, 99% of the “blogosphere” is rubbish created by idiots.
Especially the word “blogosphere”. A word I refuse to write without sneery ironic quote marks either side of it. Because I hate it and it’s crap and I JUST DON’T WANT TO KNOW.
I think I like this cranky Brit…