Here's the cure for what ails you!

Everyone missed this but me - 'cause I'll go it alone if I have to.

Ladies and gentlemen, I pass on to you: Ed Hall, reunited, with both drummers!

Replaced:


Awesome.

The Tonight Show is making me ill.

I'm watching because tonight is the Flaming Lips' first Tonight Show appearance. But I've forgotten how utterly painful Jay Leno is to watch.

The monologue is like the Bataan Death March.

First guest - Dane Cook? Second question: "So, uh, you fly a lot, right?" Cue long bit on flying.

Coming up - Taylor Hicks. Sweet! I don't watch American Idol, but I bet it will be great too.

I should have recorded it. At least there was a Ken Lay joke or two...

Careful with that Heroin, Eugene

Interesting story on NPR's "All Things Considered" yesterday.

Click to hear about Heroin Impurities:


Also, I found this drug war info via a Dispatches from the Culture Wars post.

P.S. Lordi wins!

Eurovision official

Slate coverage

Amateur Fishtography

And my attempts at photographing our own fish:

Peter Gabriel was a stone cold weirdo.

Maybe I'll go into greater detail later, but I think the stuff I put up here is not necessarily representative of my current listening.

I think it's strange how modern releases get the royal treatment with videos, etc., all within a year. But a lot of the old stuff somehow gets overlooked, gathering dust because it's not currently hot. So, basically I've been checking out a lot of stuff that just wasn't available at the height of my interest. For instance?

I'm sure prog rock is not everyone's favorite, and Genesis probably makes most people want to spit up in their mouths.

But Youtube (of course) has a lot of classic Peter Gabriel-era stuff, back when Phil Collins stuck with his strong suit (drums).

Anyway, here's an Auld-tyme Genesis PlayeListe. Enjoy!

Congratulations, it's an aquarium!

Ok, no offense to the Gold White Clouds - I really like them. But today, you are an aquarium.

I'm not done, but I think the tank has reached that point. Here's a quick inventory, in order of acquisition:

10 Gold White Cloud Mountain Minnows - nice color, very active, voracious feeders


6 Rummy-Nose Tetras - bright red "nose," true schooling fish - they stick together constantly


3 Upside-Down Catfish - shy, but good personalities, swim upside down
Quick story: I asked the Fish Mart guy if they would be active out in the light - he pointed out their light was on (in the undecorated tank). I asked if they'd be okay with just one - he said they're not really social. I get one ("Flipside") and he's zealously nocturnal, and never came out from under the driftwood. Until I got two more. I did a better job of moving them in, and they're more active and hide less. Flipside now makes cameos now and then. Distrust everyone.



1 Inspector Pleco - shy bottom-feeder, but cool-looking, and FAST



~10 Algae-Eating Shrimp - for algae maintenance... mostly scoot around decorations, but swim around some
So far, two are down - probably the catfish couldn't resist

And today...
6 German Blue Rams - very, very cool-looking.

Greatest Party Anthem of the Early 80's

Seems like I can keep a theme going for 3 posts. So here's the third "Hard Rock" (Hallelujah!) post to round it out.

Try not to smile! Try not to grin! Try not to giggle just a little!


Flag search results

Corndogs!


Minutemen search results - no way to exclude creepy border militiamen.


What SST acts are left? Gone? Tom Troccoli's Dog? I'm taking requests here...

Sincere, ethical Metal freaks

I found an old Into Another mix tape while I was putting my stereo together. Tested out the casette deck with it. Hilarious.



They had a couple of videos - you can click on the title to see "Splinters" (1992).

The next morning.

I realized that last night I successfully linked to "Splinters," but kind of didn't say anything about this basically unknown band, except 'hilarious.' Anyway, I really like(d) them. They were a weird mixture - serious metal musicianship, serious quasi-operatic/hardcore vocals, utter sincerity, ethical topics. This bad live home video is of a pro-respecting women song.

Their songs were mostly heavy metal, but they always sounded pretty significantly different from one another. And the lyrics sounded as overblown as they seemed heartfelt. Song topics: sadistic demon lords, hypnotic love, space travel, various forms of abuse, murder mysteries, masochistic love, Catholicism, vegetarianism, awkward childhoods, psychological mutation, domestic violence, the lack of trust in society, that kind of thing...

Looks like a new video comp coming soon.
And the lead singer's mining some acoustic/sensistive singer/songwriter vein. New album this year? Weird.

'Coooore!

L O R D I ! ! !

I want a Lordi U.S. tour. I'd even settle for watching the Eurovision finals tonight, but I don't see it among my options. (Spurs-Mavericks TX showdown on now.)



Lordi video, and songs.

Of course, The Arockalypse is on Youtube:



Where's the American Idol equivalent? Rawk!

New Feature

Towards the bottom of the salad bar, I've added a new icon for ClustrMaps - looks like this:



It shows the (meager) visits to the blog, graphically by origin, on a world map. Mostly Houston now, obviously, but watch my empire grow. Or don't. (Hey, just added: Australia?)

Other world maps: Google Earth, Map Machine, Endangered Species...

I like globes too:



Thanks to Goferboy's blog for pointing me to this!
(P.S. I meant the side bar...)

Haditha

This is very unfortunate on a number of levels.

Not only could this be Iraq's My Lai (which would be bad enough), but it could have a serious effect on our ability to stabilize Iraq. Which hasn't been all that solid to begin with. It even has an attempted cover-up.

Here's the text article.

Here's the audio story that informed me about this (from today's "All Things Considered" on NPR). I hadn't heard about it originally, or from the later Time article mentioned.

I'd hoped the Abu Graib leaks would end up being exagerrated. If anything, they seemed to be an appetizer, leaked specifically to take the sting out of the photos.

There are apparently photos and video of the aftermath here too. Obviously, our military deliberately killing a bunch of innocent civilians is bad enough for anyone, but I think the fallout from this could be very significant.

Edit: I think this is the Time article.


The next two stories on today's show dovetailed into the Human Rights theme...

Military Inquiry discussion: [audio] / [text]

U.N. on Guantanamo: [audio]

Last.fm

I just heard about this via the Linus Pauling Quartet Blog - last.fm.

As this entry states, you can get LP4 streaming audio, if you're a member.

Feel free to check it out. I can suggest "The Colour Out of Space" from Killing You With Rock (1998):


Also, "Switzer" from C6H8O6 (2003):


You can try out some downloads here too.

Buy it - somewhere:

Sliver Rocket

Apparently...

I was over at Cookie's Blog, and I saw some picture of SY. That reminded me of a video tape I have of their appearance on Night Music, which featured a great live video of "Never Loved a Man." And also featured Diamanda Galas.

So here's the "Silver Rocket" vid:


I've never seen this one, but Sister is probably my favorite Sonic album. "Beauty Lies"

Ok, back one more album, to classic set closer "Tom Violence" (tv).


This is the Aretha video that episode included. Badass...

Who's this Barry Bonds guy?

Nice, Astros. Three-game home stand vs. the SF Giants. Swept.
Total score: 34-5.

Sports Article

Bonds is still one HR behind Babe the Big Blue Ox, or whoever it is.

The big news of course was the fact that it took Russ Springer five pitches to plunk Bonds the Big Bald Head – well, it actually hit him near his oddly-musculatured neck.

Sports Article

I think Bonds has been a self-absorbed jerk well before The Steroid Story, or Chasing The Babe – so it’s not like I’m rooting for him. But I think he has to get caught breaking an MLB rule, or convicted of a performance-related crime, to put an asterisk by any record(s).



Now keeping him out of the HOF is another thing – that’s all up to the voters. And maybe MLB should ban him, for purity-of-the-game reasons.

I also will admit that I think a white jerk would not get the same hatred from some quarters, and if some (white) Cal Ripken-like superhero were in the same position, even less so. Also a really charismatic non-white player would be much better able to weather the storm. So, race matters. But so does Bonds being a complete tool.

[from work. Let’s see whether the normal links work...
Well, not so much... looks like evenings and weekend.
Cleaned-up some links and added the picture.]

Too many words!!!

From this hodgepodge playlist.

O yeah... Fish.

Well, I haven't really kept up with the story, have I? Oh, you don't mind? Ok. Better to compress 4 weeks into 2 or 3 paragraphs?
Well, alright.

If I learned one thing in putting the tank to rights, it's to read, and plan. Ok, that's two things.



But really only one - wait. There are a lot of questions than need answering before filling up the tank. From the most basic (saltwater or fresh?) to stuff that requires some more thought (which fish?).

Like, if I were to ask what you should do with gravel before putting it down... you might say, "I guess you'd basically just rinse it off." ..... Well, ok, smart guy - you win this round.

Some things I learned:
Rinse your gravel off before putting it in.

Decide whether you want live plants - from what I read it's not that tough, but now I can't just dump a bunch of substrate in on the fish's heads.

Make sure the area is ok, so you're not worrying 3 weeks about stress fractures.

Barely believe anything you read or hear about fish, from even the most reliable source. Almost everyone is misinformed, lying, thinking of the wrong fish, or had a really atypical experience. And there's no way to tell the honest, helpful people from these freaks. (No links, because this is universal. I'll get into specifics next time.)

I'll probably write on this later, but I've learned a lot about aggression and compatibility - after I decided on all the cool fish I wanted.

After reading up, I'm shooting for some discuseses (left), and the coolest fish that won't stress them to death.

So, although I can't get gouramis, most loaches, or probably one of those awesome $40 angel cats Fish Mart just got in - I think it's gonna work out just fine...

Thanks, anonymous!

Looks like my traffic has gone way up! Or I've got a very serious stalker...

Wow! The feedback has been nothing but positive. Like this one (from "Suntory?"):

anonymous said...
This site is one of the best I have ever seen, wish I had one like this.

Super! I primarily started this blog so that others might be envious - it seems like my plan is working perfectly. What else? (from "Top 10's are Fun Stuff":)

anonymous said...
I love your website. It has a lot of great pictures and is very informative.

I must admit, that's the idea. I hope you have been duly informed, and enjoyed the pictures - which I also hope you find great. Wow, look at "Wow, look at Here!"'s:

anonymous said...
Your site is on top of my favourites - Great work I like it.

Well, favorites - sure. But on top?! Noooo, c'mon. Really? Apparently so, because 4 hours later, a verbatim repost of the same sentiment!

What's this? A comment on "More vids o' course"...

anonymous said...
What a great site, how do you build such a cool site, its excellent.

Jeeeeeezzz. Get a life, anonymous, and learn how to use freakin' punctuation. I believe "how do you build such a cool site" is supposed to be a question - am I right? Requiring a question mark... Let me demonstrate: "its" excellent? "its"?! For reals? Care for a run-on sentence much?

I hate you, anonymous. I wish I could ban you from reading Fishtankonia.

Whoop! Extra hassle...

Thanks to anon-o-bot, I've added Word Verification for commenting.

For the 1,000's of you clamoring to comment, you'll now have to read some randomly fonted word-image. Then attempt to type that word into a "verification field" of some sort. I imagine that will be followed by the clicking of something or someone.

After that, take a short break and try to remember what you originally intended to comment. If you can muster the recollection - have at it...

Thanks, anonymous!

Works of Art from the U.S.A.

The Noah's Ark art below was done in 1974 by Romare Bearden. This is one of his more rarely available pieces - or so I thought. I saw it at the High Museum in Atlanta around 1988 or so - still have the poster.

I linked the best image I could find, which was from Negro Artist. I like some of his art you can buy pretty easily, which are mostly Jazz scenes. But his page at this site is exhaustive. Gonna try to build a collage of the cooler new stuff I see.

Click on each section to see it all blown up:



Ok, almost done here... Some more info on Bearden.

In looking around for the image, I just knew the piece's name wasn't "Noah's Ark" - as everyone was calling it. It's not - it's called "Noah, Third Day."
(And according to the High Museum, it was 1972. Who knows?)

I've always been a proud Jew.

Over at Slate, David Plotz is Blogging the Bible.

Weirdly enough, he's starting at the beginning. The very beginning.

Genesis 1 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.



Seems pretty interesting, but I checked. 66 Books in the King James, 39 in the Old Testament. Seven chapters (of 50) in one day. So, maybe 273 days at this pace, with no days off, just for the OT. Something like that?



Alright, I can't think of anything more interesting to say about the Bible. One final thing, I love this guy's name is Plotz. It's always been one of my favorite Yiddish words, up there with magilla.

I was going to make up funny example sentences, but you can't beat:
"OMG!!! Genghis will plotz! Shira Brie's training covered..."
(from a Jedi fanfic forum)

And of course, "the whole magilla". Or something totally different.

Movie-related Trifecta!

The L.I.T. trailer text-over "Bob is an Actor" reminded me of Bob Arctor, so...

Courtesy of (Sol)Cookie's Blog Quick & To the Pointless almost 3 months ago.

Being a moderately huge Philip K. Dick fan, this may be the only must-see movie of the year. For me. At least so far - are they making a sequel to "Are We There Yet?" (Oh, Cube...)

Anyway, this is a great book, and the movie does look cool. Very possibly headache-inducing, but that's not inappropriate either.

Check out the info on the PKD homepage (click image). Just today, they posted about a new Trailer Remix Contest.



Written and directed by Richard Linklater. So that's good. I recently said that no-one is as capable of expressing the extreme depersonalization and frustrating confusion required of a PKD lead character as is Keanu. And I'll stand by that.

And there's a new trailer:



The similar, original trailer.

Bonus Edit!
The official Warners' website is very cool (for those with Flash 8, which it'll offer ya.)

Wes Anderson alert

Two articles in Slate today on Wes Anderson. Both regarding something I hadn't seen - a commercial.

Culturebox

Ad Report Card

And here's the commercial itself:


Pretty cool, I guess...

Just for the record, I liked "Rushmore" (filmed in Houston) and "The Royal Tenenbaums." Fell asleep during "The Life Aquatic," and still haven't gotten "Bottle Rocket." Although James Caan is certainly cool.

Suntory? Domo.

A couple of dudes share some common interests, some whiskey.



Possible inspiration?

The product(s).

Here's a watchdog site with more than you probably need. And a BBC article with still more.

I couldn't find an article I had read (probably around the LIT release) about how much more acceptable it is for really big stars to do this in Japan. And all of this criticism or attention does seem to be from the West, about what "their" stars are doing in the East. And those stars' attempts to hide it from home.

I mean, c'mon. It's not like this is Neil goes to Thailand or anything!

Wait a second! Did Coppola make a halfway decent movie after this?! Actually, he did. But nothing like Kurosawa.


What the ...?

I ♥ "wildly speculative rumors!"

Linked in this week's Top 10 Conservative Idiots (mentioned here last night).

Click for wildness, speculations, and rumormongering:


Some background...

O boy! I feel like I'm six years old and it's December 24th!

Top 10's are Fun Stuff

It would be so sweet if I had my own Top Ten top 10 lists, but I only have 38.50% of a baker's dozen.

1. Weekly reading for me: Democatic Underground's






2. I play poker: Maybe I should know this stuff






3. Double-time: Top 20 TV'ed Sports moments






4. The truth is way out there: Weird Space Things






5. What the hell...: Some video game crap...

Wow, look at Here!

Thought I was done for the day, but no sense saving something I want to share.

Everyone's seen this Austin Chronicle article on Pong.

But I found another good, recent one - here!

And now there's an interview I'd never seen. Com The Mutants Grito-Fora! ("With Os Mutantes Shout-out!")

Embarassment of Riches, Part II.



Hear samples from "Bubble City" here.

More vids o' course

Here's a Live VU/Welk video mash-up. Quite nice.



In a similar vein (located via the Houston Press Youtube article):

Geto/Jedi

Office Space/Hedgehog

H-town reprazent!

Fish of the Week

I was at Village Tropical yesterday - as I often am. And they're getting these in this week!

From Live Aquaria

German Blue Ram




They were on the list.

The Weird World of the Web

One of my favorite sections of the great (and often offensive) Something Awful is the high-larious (and always disturbing) Weekend Web. It all boils down to eavesdropping on "special" interest forums on the interweb, and laughing at people.




I also enjoy Your Band Sucks. Of course, it all started with taking sacred cows to the killing floor. ("Don't let the name throw you, Jimmy. It's not really a floor, it's more of a steel grating that allows material to sluice through so it can be collected and exported.")

But it has expanded to include: stupid reader hate mail, music scene field guides, hipster advice columns, and more!

Even though they don't have it on the front page anymore, I'll admit to discovering the site as an EverQuest player, via this article.

Movies (are something) I Like

Here are two movies I like:



They're, like, totally obscure and no-one's ever seen them.

Apparently, 2nd Sundays of each month (the Tomorrowth of May) The Proletariat shows a movie - something based on one of those bound collection of pages with words all over them. Oh, lame unlinkability.

Sunday, May 14th, 2006
The Movies' Better Than The Book Club

Do you like books? Can you read this: Si Hoc Legere Scis, Nimium Eruditionis Habes? Then this is not for you. This week:
Blade Runner

On the 2nd sunday of every month at 8pm there will be a FREE MOVIE SHOWING at The Proletariat.

New Addition

Been pretty busy today, so not much time to add on here. We did add to the aquarium though.

So far, only an upside-down catfish, which has made a place for himself in the Malaysian Driftwood Cave (lower left front - dark brown). Name withheld to protect the upside-down... (or TBD.)

Prepare your ears to be violated.




Also, found this place for Fish Videos - for future reference.

An embarassment of riches...

Ok, so this is turning into nothing but a video-linking blog. I don't care.

I make no bones that I think Winsor McCay was THE MAN. Little Nemo was a superhuman artistic achievement, and Rarebit Fiend was just a step behind.

Click images for source articles:



I've seen a couple of his animated shorts, but this is jaw-dropping. 1911!!!




This is probably the most famous one. 1914!!!





Some bio-graphical info:



And Google has some science and historical cartoons, and 4 Rarebit Fiend pieces from 1921. Here.

Ok, maybe it's just me... and the New York Times: