Where's My Head?

I love it when someone you think you have pegged totally surprises you. The specific case in point at the moment is Stephen Fry, the renowned British actor, comedian and writer who had perhaps his greatest success with P.G. Wodehouse's character Jeeves alongside Hugh Laurie - that's right, folks, House himself. The pair also worked together in a sketch comedy show called A Bit of Fry and Laurie and again in some of the Blackadder episodes.

But in all things, for the most part at least, you always see Mr. Fry as a very proper - not stuffy, mind you, just proper - Englishman. His voice is very clear and distinct and his pronunciation all but impeccable. His audiobook reading of Hitchhiker's Guide is great and I'm looking forward to hearing more audio books from him.

Anyway - I've always liked his work so when I found out that he's on Twitter, I followed him. He's currently on an expedition in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda checking out gorillas and most of his updates have been - well - proper sounding. A prime example is this:

Just about to set off on gorilla trek and -miracle- a signal! Awaiting news from advance trackers as to where group is.

But this morning I woke up, checked the overnight Twitter updates and saw this:

w00t! Grillaz like totally PWN the jungle, innit

Unexpected and very funny.

Boy, was I wrong! The latest comes in the form of this $700B crap sandwich that they've sold as the only way to save humanity. Not only is it a lousy attempt at a solution that won't work - it perpetuates the problem. And then comes the salt in the wound!!!

Instead of voting on this thing on its merits - after all, we're only shelling out over 25% of the total budget for the upcoming year, what's a few hundred billion between friends, huh? - the wastes of flesh in the House and Senate have loaded bloated it up with a veritable smorgasbord of pork in exchange for their support.

Here's a thought, gang! Have some stones. Grow a spine. Come somewhere close to having principles and standing on them. If this thing isn't good enough to vote for on it's own, it certainly doesn't magically get better by adding $192M in tax benefits for Caribbean rum producers.

I'm so glad that I dropped my party affiliation a while ago. I don't want to be associated with any of these people.

Oh - by the way - the new job brings with it a new phone number. In fact, the entire family has changed numbers. So if you have a phone number for me, it will cease to work at some point in the very near future. To get the new one, please email me (assuming you have my email address) and I'll send you the new number. If that's not possible, submit a comment to this post and I'll figure out a way to get it to you.

Goodness me, my lovely readers, it's been way too long since I actually updated this thing. So here's what's been going on since we last shared this little time together...

Official Timesink Warning: If you've got some time to kill, check out GraphJam for a few good laughs. People submit graphs they have to explain pop culture ideas, everything from song lyrics to movie & TV plots to cliches. Some of them are quite funny.

So far, my favorites are Parental IQ versus Child’s Age, The United States According To Network Executives and words that Rhyme With Texas, but I'm only on page 4 so far.

Oh - and if they don't make sense, look at the Cheat Sheet if one's available for that graph.

As a drummer — and I've said this before but, so what? — I love music made from things that are thought of as musical. Things like Stomp!, street drummers or whatever have always fascinated me. We even have professional musicians singing with nothing to accompany them but what we called the Senior Cup Trick in college.

So when I come across something like this video, I just sit enthralled for nine and a half minutes. I hope you enjoy it as well.

From the looks of it right now, I've made up my mind who to vote for.

I can't totally rule out a change in that stance but I haven't yet seen anything that'll convince me that either one of these guys will provide any meaningful leadership and not drag us ever closer to a Socialist/Marxist nanny state.

I've changed the look of the blog. The old one was just thrown up as a quick solution when I switched to a different CMS and I've never been truly happy with it. Until now I hadn't found anything that I liked any better though. This one I kinda like, at least as a starting point.

Only a couple points of contention that need to be dealt with.

I know this goes back quite a few years, but I love this song and was recently reminded of it.

If you've never heard it, read the lyrics and sing along at http://filkertom-itom.blogspot.com/2008/03/sounds-familiar-sheep-marketi....

If you heard it years ago, just relax, sit back and revel in all of it's sheepy goodness.

For whatever reason, I've started playing with Twitter. I'm still not sure why.

No - that's not entirely true. It started out with the thought that it might be an interesting way to keep folks informed about what my business is doing. So I set up an account under my company name. Then I figured I might as well set one up for personal stuff too. Why not, huh?

So if you're among the Twitter-inclined (and have any desire to do so), you can follow me at http://twitter.com/lorenlang. And if you want to follow developments at my company, go to http://twitter.com/jwsinteractive.