It’s short notice, but I got the call to play on short notice too!
I’ll be joining Tom Hood, playing good ol’ classic rock and folk tunes — him on ukulele, me on accordion, plus various other musicians — at The Honu, a fantastic tiki bar in Dunedin at 2:30 p.m.!
My plan is to show up at least an hour or more before the show to get a loco moco and an ube colada.
If you’re in the area, drop by, say hi, have a drink or some food and enjoy some tunes!
The encounter that led to the pregnancy is far more complicated than you might think. To keep things tasteful, let me simply say that while they used an air duct, there was no meeting of a (ahem) glorious sort.
Both Daisy Link and Joan Depaz (Joan is pronounced like “Juan”) were held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, with Daisy on the 4th floor and Joan on the 6th. So no, there was no (ahem) glorious congress.
They communicated by passing handwritten notes that were guided through the air ducts via a makeshift line fashioned out of their bedding. At some point, the relationship got serious enough for Depaz to wrap his semen in plastic wrap and deliver it to Link through their air duct system. I’m beyond impressed; when we first moved into our house, we had an air duct that was effectively a straight line yet could barely move air through it, never mind love notes and liquids.
The news reports don’t provide any details on how their line-through-the-air-ducts system worked, which is greatly disappointing to a techie like me. It occurred to me that since Depaz was two floors above Link, whatever he sent got a gravity assist. That’s when I started doing the math.
The velocity v of an object falling from height h when it finally hits the ground is…
…where g is acceleration due to gravity, which is 9.8 m/s2 on Earth.
Assuming…
…anything Depaz sent to Link would hit the ground at a speed of √(2 × 9.8 × 6) m/s, or a little over 10.8 meters per second. Expressed in Freedom Units, that’s 24.2 miles an hour. In this case, “splat” is an appropriate word for more than one reason; he must have wrapped up his stuff really well.
(I have theories on how they set up their ductwork communications system and how it applies to identity and networked systems, and if you meet up with me for a beer, I will happily expound.)
All this storytelling is for a purpose, and that purpose is to remind you that you shouldn’t let something deter you because it seems too difficult:
If these people can start a romance and a family in jail from two floors apart using only the material at hand, maybe you can find a solution to the problem you’re facing.
How did I not know about the existence of the Suzuki Andes 25F, an instrument that looks like a melodica…
…but sounds like a recorder or flute?
Here’s Suzuki’s official product video for the Andes 25F, and the only it could be more Japanese would be if it didn’t have English text:
(Also, I just learned that Suzuki trademarked the term “melodion”.)
It can be quirky…
It can be serious…
It can even be haunting, in a melancholic 1980s way…
Here are its innards
…and I’m thinking, “You know, with one of these, I could completely rule a Ren Faire!”
(It’s on my Amazon wishlist, in case you were wondering…)
Wendy’s new emo rock album, Songs to Listen to in a Wendy’s Parking Lot is probably my favorite fast food promo project since the anime-styled “choose your own adventure”/dating simulator game I Love You Colonel Sanders.
With songs produced by Matt Squire (credits include Panic! at the Disco, 3oh!3, All Time Low, Simple Plan and Sum 41) and featuring the following artists…
…it’s a fun listen, and even more fun because of silly Wendy’s-related lyrics like:
Alas, I haven’t found any lyrics about the chili yet.
Anyway, the album’s a better and more fun listen than I expected. Check it out!
You can find the songs on the usual streaming music services, as well as YouTube. I’ve posted them below:
I’m from a culture that mixes sweet and savory all the time (examples include marinades made out of Coke and Sprite, Filipino sweet spaghetti), and I once had a great appetizer that was essentially baked beans on top of pound cake, so I’d be down with the:
How about you?
There’s a guy who lives a short bike ride from our place who has an ongoing garage sale. It’s not on every day; just on weekends, and sometimes, the occasional weekday:His wares are set up on folding tables and shelves that seem to be set up all the time. There’s no indication that he takes them down or puts them away when he isn’t having a sale. It appears that he does cover the goods with tarps, shower curtains, and large trash bags when it rains.
The stuff is a mish-mash of household goods: mostly appliances and tools in various states of neglect or disrepair. There’s an impressive set of the rustiest drill bits I’ve ever seen. I once bought a pair of needle-nose pliers from him; they were a great deal at two bucks, and they’re hard to ruin through neglect.
Towards the back of the sale area was a set of metal shelves. Past a guitar amp that had seen better days were these items:
They they were, among a still-shrink-wrapped box of Lipton tea pages and an apparently-unopened box of face masks was an open box of Trojan condoms.
I tipped it on its side to see if it actually had condoms or something else…
Yup. Condoms. The box was half-full and appeared to have an assortment of condoms, not just the type marked on the box. Judging from the condition of the condom box and the boxes surrounding it, they’d been outside for weeks.
“Behind every item at a yard sale, there’s a story,” the saying goes. I wonder what this story was.
And because I know you’re wondering: No, I did not buy any.
Here’s a Facebook post from barely a couple of weeks ago:
Here’s one from a couple of years back:
And finally, here’s a Reddit post showcasing a vintage find:
And in case it’s not clear: Don’t buy yard sale condoms, folks.