A bit of randomness

So I'm brewing my afternoon pot 'o coffee, strictly for my survival, and I started thinking (and that's where it all went wrong): "Ecky Thump! Why are the 'coffee' colors for walls more creamy and tan than brown and dark black? Coffee fresh brewed isn't blonde. You have to make it that way. How many people drink their coffee unadulterated vs. adulderated?" So yeah, those were my thoughts of about 30 minutes ago.
Plus, I was thinking that this Sumatra sure does smell like cat whiz before you brew it. It's SO good though! (Don't worry Jules, it was half off...)

By ecky Thump!

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As you know, my darling White Stripes have decided to come back together, release an album, and do a little touring. I was seriously considering getting tickets to Bonaroo or a show that they are playing in Birmingham (???), AL, but I'm also seriously broke right now, so not only can I not pay for a ticket, forget about paying for the shots needed to visit each state. Naturally, I was very excited still for the album (see profile picture), and still even more excited to hear the first track "Icky Thump." When I found out, I txtd Feather, who I knew would be just as excited about the news as I was. As suspected, I was right and she also added, "Who comes up with their album names?" Obviously, they do, but still, where did this one come from? I immediately went wiki digging and found this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecky_thump

There, it explains three different possibilites, the third being the album "Icky Thump." First on the list was:

• A traditional phrase By ecky-thump! (an exclamation of surprise) in Lancashire dialect, described in the article Yorkshire dialect

From there, I followed the "Yorkshire dialect" link where I furthered my investigation and wiki told me: ecky is described as being Lancashire, not Yorkshire, slang equivalents of heck, itself slang for hell, in Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang, Penguin 1972, entry for Heck.

Why, thank you wiki. Still though, as many websites as I folloed, I was unable to find out where the "thump" came from, but it still sounds totally cool.

Also listed on the "Ecky Thump" Wiki page is this explaination:

• "Kung Fu Kapers", an episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies involving a secret Lancashire martial art known as "Ecky-Thump", which mostly revolves around hitting unsuspecting people with black puddings

I don't know about anyone else, but that sure sounds "Monty Python"-ish to me, and I will now be looking for this episode. Laughs will ensue.

So this is definitely my new cool phrase that will make me look like a total dork, but I'm still using it.

Also on the player are covers that Damien Rice did. Very cool. Very cool indeed.

The line rider

I think I'm begining to have waaay too much fun with the "edit" feature as far as my blog is concerned. It's just too neat to resist for someone like me that always likes to put their own touch on things. Oh and I'm trying to break my current record for number of posts in a month. Current

I just realized that it's Friday the 13th. Oh well.

Maybe this will be the last thing that I share with you all today...maybe. Or I could further abuse the fact that I finally was able to login. Mehsha showed us this site a few days ago. It's www.official-linerider.com. I've only had time to play with it a little bit, but it's defentitely another one of those time wasters but impossible to tear yourself away from sites, a la the jacksonpollock site that Poly had on his "just because" link a few months ago. Just check out this video and then go have some fun yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcu8ZdJ2dQo

All we could think of was...

Well, I have a few things to cover before I get to that.

I swore that I would never cook dinner for Contessa's dad, who shall now be Mountain Man- at least until I can think of something better, but microwaving some mac-n-cheese and steaming some veggies and picking up a rotisserie chicken isn't dinner. And even if you want to call it cooking dinner, I'm doing it for Contessa. Since her father has started seriously seeing a sister, she and I have really bonded. I got back from Atlanta and didn't get to pick her up until 4:30 from Deborah Clasky's house. Deborah babysits on Thursdays and was happy to pick her up for me and I was very grateful, since I was having a good time spending the rest of last month's pay check with peeps from Baltimore at the AmericasMart. When I picked her up, of course I walked right in and scared the beejesus out of Andy and she ran and jumped into my arms. Three months ago, that would have never happened. She and I are pretty good friends now, and I am so happy for that.

Oh a big "what up home fries" from the Mehsha corner. She misses you all in our dwindling blog land and if she had access to a compy, she would be blogging. There's plenty for her to say. And so much that I want to blog about, but just don't have the access to. Definetly like the new phone that I want to get and the mindless TV that I have finally indulged in and totally love. It's depressing, but so lets get one thing I wanted to blog about out of the way:
This Thanksgiving weekend, we drove to see my Grandmama T. She had her gallbladder taken out two weeks ago and we went to visit her and help her out. She went out for the first time today to go to the chiropractor. She feels great. It was an emergency surgery because she developed pancreatitis and that's pretty serious. People die from that. So we went to help her out this weekend and it was an OK trip. I knew it wasn't going to be a top ten, if anything a bottom ten trip. (I did find a spiffy brown corduroy blazer on sale that's perfect and there was no tax in SC. Don't know about here...) Overall, the best part about the trip was the ride we take now going and coming. We take I-20 to Columbia and then 521 I think is the number, but we do some bypassing now and go thru cities like Manning and Andrews that we didn't go by before. Manning is a cute city. We haven't stopped there yet, but it doesn't look as podunk as some of the other cities we drive thru (i.e.- Rembert and Salters). On the other side of Manning, there is this farm with goats. As we were going thru there on Thursday, there was this brown blob running across the road. It looked almost big enough to be a small horse, but we knew it wasn't. Man was it running fast. We got closer to see it was a fairly large goat and watched it hop the fence. Then there was a white and brown splotched one that hopped over after it that was even bigger. The brown one ran into the little shack there and all of the other goats (about 15) were just staring at the only brown one that had just run across four lanes of "traffic" and a wide median. Those of us in the car (mom, Mehsha, and me) were just dumb-founded at this event. All we could decide was that they were bored since nothing was open and it was Thanksgiving. The other splotched goats dared the smaller brown one to run across the road to the field across the street and eat some grass and then run back. The other goat that had hopped the fence but was still on the right side of the road was over the fence so that he could see and time the brown one because he had to do all of this in 30 seconds or less. That was the most logical explanation. When we came back through on Sunday, they were all laying down asleep, obviously still exhausted from the dare on Thursday.

Goats are not very cute farm animals and I couldn't ever move to South Carolina.

America Foils Again

My aunt Jules sent this to me and I realized that everyone that I would want to send this to that would understand why I think it's so funny, reads my blog. Instead of just clicking 'forward,' I clicked copy, paste and here's the joke:

New terrorist organisation

A public school teacher was arrested today at John F.Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney General John Ashcroft said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement.He did not identify the man, who has been charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of maths instruction. "Al-gebra is a problem for us," Ashcroft said. "They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, 'There are 3 sides to every triangle'."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of Maths instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the President.

Some visits from the homeland

Wow, the eighth visit to my blog today was from Israel. I would check and see how they found my blog, but my compy is on the fritz. It probably has to do with looking for a shmear distributor, or looking for relatives. Who knows? It could get a little scary though. Scary in a cool "hey I have had 5 site visits from Israel" kinda way. Will blog about pianos later. You see some cool ones in serivce. You can also find out that a good friend of yours has a Yamaha grand and has invited you to come play it. Sweet.

8. 12 September 14:24 Bezeq International, Israel

Blobber

Isn't he eerily cute? He's clear and nameless right now. Soon he'll be clear and with a name. P. June put one on her blog so I hope she doesn't mind me being so poser. All you see at the bottom of my blog now are these jumping eyes and a little bitty square with my page stats. If you click on my friend here, you go flying to spacefem.com where the totally useless quiz is. The box goes to some page that tells you I had a visit from someone in Spain to my blog (I suppose by way of H'n'B's blog, since we're all linked together). I'll post something of a different flavor later, but things won't settle down in my head right now enough to think about what I want to post. We have a house guest and lots of other things going on right now. This is my escape time. Shhh...mom thinks I'm writing essays. I have to get away from the bunnies and find a switch.

Stupid things like this should only happen at the beach

If I hadn't been at the meeting, lemme tell ya, I would have whipped out my cell phone and snapped a piccy of this absurd event. Most people ride in the backs of pick-up trucks, right? That's common knowledge. People do it every where, but more commonly at the beach. You're soaked. Grandaddy doesn't want your wet butt on the upholstery. Compromise: you and the thirty other people at the beach with you climb into the truck bed. It happens all the time. Well, this was a similar situation, only it was stupider. We're mid-paragraph in the book and this car comes cruising down the street. That's pretty common. It's a one way street and it's residential in the heart of our little village here, so most people don't fly down Jackson St. This car was different. It was a Ford Taurus, with two girls on the back bumper. They had their knees bent on the bumper and were gripping the trunk hood with their bent elbows. It seemed so obvious that one or the other wasn't going to make it to their destination. One was going to slip right off, if not both. At Dimwitt and Eliza's house, where we have the bookstudy, there are multitudes of windows across the front of the house so this was very distracting. Oh and it was SO stupid. Most of the time, people have idiotic ideas like this at the beach, but I keep forgetting, this is the other O.C. Slightly country where people have to amuse themselves. Just to let you guys know, I'm leaving Saturday for said beach and will be gone for a week. NO HARASSING FOR UPDATES!

What kind of smelly cheese is that?

Mom: "You got a solicitation from Rice University today. I think you should go. It really fits."

Affable Olive: "I know the Polyglot would eat that up. If they served rice, you know that would be my first pick."

CHEESE!? Gorgonzola!