So I still haven’t figured out embedding video in this WordPress thing… Lame. Erica and I put up a couple of videos of ourselves on YouTube, though, which I think is pretty cool. Still lame that I don’t have the videos sitting nicely in the middle of this post.

So here is the bit Erica and I did for Girlie Q in August. We’re planning to keep developing it and performing it elsewhere.

And here is Bruce and me passing eleven balls. I’ve had it for a while and been meaning to put it up.. Bruce does a fancy kick after we mess up!

That’ll be all the videos for now.

Oh..I’m also lame because I didn’t log on here for so long and thus missed moderating Mark’s comment on the last entry.. Sorry Mark!

I always very much enjoy the start of winter in the midwest. Back at the end of high school, whenever I told anyone that I was considering attending college in Iowa, the first word out of their mouth would always be either “Why?” or “Cold!” It became pretty hyped up in my mind, and I had some trepidation that first year…would I be able to handle the Iowa winter?

Well it worked out fine. I loved the snow, the cold did not bother me, and I grew to like it more over time. It also became somewhat symbolic each year, as the weather turned from the familiar to something I had never encountered back in Austin, of moving away from home or even growing up. The temperature drops and I am reminded that I’m kind of an adult now, on my own in a new, or at least after these years different, place, and it’s in a way reassuring.

And I still have to go outside to see the first snowfall of the season, each year.

So the other day Erica and I were walking out of the apartment, when she paused to look through the mailbox.  I stood on the steps, heard a noise from the tree directly in front of me.  I turned to look just in time to see a bird of prey (hawk?� our guess..) come flying out of the tree towards me, holding a dead pigeon.  It veered off, landed on an suv half a block away, and dropped the bird.  We investigated, the hawk flew up to a building top, and we had a quick look at the pigeon.  All of its neck feathers were removed, leaving a strange skinny bit between shoulders and head.  We moved off quickly, and when we returned later in the evening, pigeon and hawk were gone.  A bit of wildlife in the city…it colored my whole day…

So about two years ago I decided that I wanted to write palindromes.  Off and on I work on it..rarely making much progress.  I haven’t been able to make any long ones that make sense.  Here are my best so far.  If you’ve heard them already, let me know.  sigh.

Drowsy sword

No parts strap on

Amoral aroma

God for evil onsets at ten; net tastes no liver of dog

So Weird Al has a new cd coming out in two days.. I’ve been enjoying and sharing his latest music video as I wait to rush out and make my purchase…it’s great! An excellent parody of Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’ Dirty” song…. Enjoy!

In fact..September seems to be a big media month for me.. Scott Mccloud has a new book out, Making Comics. I already picked it up and am in the middle of my second reading. Excellent stuff.. A comic about the craft and techniques involved in making sequential art.
And then, there’s the new Jet Li movie, Fearless. I’m hoping to catch it either this afternoon or tomorrow evening. Very excited..whenever Jet Li works with Yuen Wo Ping for fight choreography, I rest assured that the results will be very impressive.

I meant to blog about this in March, and never got around to it.  Now I’m all nervous after my last post!  Anyway..  A couple of months ago I was trucking along as usual, when I came a cross a link on one of my favorite blogs to a story about this.  The link goes to a current story, but I only heard one kernel of it back in March..It’s about the South Dakota abortion ban that’s coming through the works now.  The chief of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota said that if the abortion ban goes into effect, she will have an abortion clinic opened on tribal land.  In the state boundaries, but outside state jurisdiction.  I was in awe..here, finally, was a leader taking a strong and brave stand on something important!  She was in a unique position, and used it to stand up for women’s reproductive rights while thumbing her nose at the state government.  This was no photo-op-based maverick macho posturing, but the real thing..

Now, there are movements fighting the abortion ban every step of the way, and maybe the challenges will work, and/or maybe a court will strike the ban down…  But I remember what it felt like to read her words..and to see someone with the power and the capability to stand up to the anti-choice movement actually doing so, straightforward and unabashedly saying NO.  And I think I had a taste of what an actual leader does.

So it turns out that the Chtorr really are attacking. This mystery disease eerily reminds me of parts from that sci fi saga about aliens invading the earth first with their ecology… slowly turning the planet hospitable to them and in the process giving us horrible plagues and true ecological warfare. Yikes.

And Austin is a city with one of the highest rates of infection. Double yikes.

*Update*

So my mother took it upon herself to fact check this fantastical little story, and it seems, indeed, too out there to be true.   Sorry y’all..I just wasn’t skeptical enough…  Most likely delusions on the part of people involved, with maybe a little hoax mixed in on someone’s part.  She sent a link to this discussion board with some relevant comments..scroll through..halfway down or so some medical research folk pop in..  As an added bonus, we now know that I have a crack fact checking team backing this website up- my mom and, um, whoever else helps out!

When I was ten I thought Garfield was a great comic strip. Then, over the years, I watched it slowly degenerate around the same two jokes it always told.. (Or maybe as I grew older I simply noticed this. Exept I remember old Garfield strips that carried a storyline over a series of days..strips that actually involved changes of setting, pace, and activity.) Well I recently came across this forum where someone had taken old Garfield strips and removed all of the cat’s dialogue, creating a series of strips about a rather sad man talking to his cat.. It even becomes almost poignant at times! Well, apparently this has been done before with Garfield, and was taken down after some litiginous correspondence from PAWS inc. So check these out before they disappear..the manage to add quality to an otherwise soulless strip…

Check out this video of some amazing Christmas decorations. (Make sure you have sound). Again, I wish my life were more like this. Meanwhile, we have a nice little snowstorm in Chicago tonight..supposed to be getting seven inches of snow.. It was very pretty as I left work, although just windy enough to really get into your face too.

Erica and I saw Murderball last night. I really really enjoyed it. A movie that manages to be inspirational without being sappy.. For anyone unfamiliar with it..it’s about quadriplegic rugby. These guys in custom armored wheelchairs tearing around a basketball court, crashing into each other and knocking each other over, talking trash and all that other contact sport stuff…it’s amazing. These folks are tough, not delicate, and it was really interesting noting my own reactions as I saw that in the movie.