The Adventures of LitBoy: Bill Brent's Blog

Life imitates art.

Dang. Start by clicking HERE, for the first search-engine hit on MICHELLE OBAMA, as of the time of this posting.

Now look at the photo at Yahoo, where Michelle is with husband Barack. You can click on it to make it larger. Her expression bears an uncanny resemblance to another famous Michelle, IMHO:

Twin Michelles, both Married to the Mob?

Ha ha ha.

Seriously, READ THE ARTICLE. They're gonna shred poor Michelle Obama a new one. The paranoid power elitists really do want to control any independent-thinking person in a position of power, especially if she's a woman or a minority. Hey, do you think they'll make her swear allegiance to SKULL AND BONES, now that they've opened it up to women and minorities?

Welcome back to post-911 politics. Everything is up for grabs, including ethics. And, of course, the so-called right to free speech. Especially for candidates' wives who might have more than a few brain cells to rub together.

I mean, heck, wouldn't it be nice just to have a First Lady who didn't look like an also-ran for Annette Bening's "Real Estate Lady" role in American Beauty?

BTW, I called the Dems' race back on March 2. CLICK HERE for my commentary.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.06.12, 7:35 p.m. Hawaii time]

keywords: Michelle Obama, Michelle Pfeiffer, Democratic Party, Republican Party, mob rule, Presidential race, 2008 campaign, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Tipper Gore, gangster

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $200.00 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars and my annual goal of $200. Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

the '70s, redux

in our pursuit
to get loose
we then forgot
to hang tight

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.06.11, 7:15 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $200.00 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars and my annual goal of $200. Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

I shudnt otta post this.

RILLY, I SHUDNT.

It's nonconsensual and possibly exploitive to a cherished companion, a member of my household whose trust I value highly. Plus, I value his privacy. So it's quite rude of me to post this picture to the World Wide Web, where anyone and his brother can witness my trusted friend in a socially awkward and highly compromised position.

Besides, who here really needs to see one more picture of a katz posted to teh Internetz?

And yet I cud not rezzist teh temptationz.

Oh, well.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.05.23, 1:15 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $200.00 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

Combo organ oddness, part 2: follow-up to yesterday's post

Yes, I know you've all been wondering: "What if the Ventures took on 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen?"

It might go something like this <--clicky thingy!

[backup link]

[NOTE: This is the only .mp3 link I've ever bookmarked on my computer under the "drugs" category.]

HERE is some of the backstory.

[backup link]

Further, one of the bandmembers of The Thurston Lava Tube states, "the middle section was created entirely using the Elka X705 (about 12 overdubs)," which is that, uh, challenging double keyboard used toward the end of the video in MY PREVIOUS POST.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.05.18, 10:00 a.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $200.00 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars and my annual goal of $200. Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

Er, um, uh, COMBO ORGANS, EXPLAINED! Sorta.

The blithe / cheeky quality of this British woman "explaining" the appeal of the combo organ, an instrument that many find starkly obnoxious, is endearing -- in much the same way that, over forty years after their debut, many others still find combo organs quite endearing.

Got that?

Oh, hell, then, just listen:

MORE ABOUT COMBO ORGANS, HERE. Better yet, a follow-up LitBoy.com post, HERE.

I've been busy on multiple projects this month (yet ANOTHER new novel, among other things, and it's going great guns). Thus I am resorting to this, the blogger's fall-back trick of diverting the readers' attention to others, in order to shield my current lack of blogging-type expressiveness.

Got that?

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.5.18, 10:25 a.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $200 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

I AM INWINCIBLE!

GAH.

I go for my usual half-hour walk around 5:30 p.m. It is my first time this week without any head covering, so of course I get hit by a raincloud about eight minutes in. I run most of the way back home. The rain stops. Frustrated but determined to do something with my now pumped-up heart energy, I yank our shovel out of the ground, where it has been propping up a new sapling purchased at last week's Plant It Hawaii sale; the young potted tree is prone to falling over until I can get it in the ground.

I start digging into the lava cinder soil in the corner of our front lawn, a hole I have been digging for the last several days. Eight inches down, I have hit solid rock, as with everywhere here, so I decide to go for width rather than depth. Something tells me that if I persist within this particular spot, I will be rewarded.

In frustration, I start banging the metal shovel head against the rock floor, chipping away at an angle. The floor starts to give, breaking up a bit to yield several chunks small enough to fit within my palm. I excavate the chunks, along with the copious lava cinder generated by my widening. Then I sense a larger, looser chunk of rock at the base of this hole -- the true mother lode here. By digging on all sides, and widening out the hole even further, I determine that this boulder is nearly a foot across and quite deep. If only I could get Madam Pele to give it up.

So I get a small trowel to prop this giant, loosening chunk on one side while I attempt to pry it out with the shovel. It is growing dark, and so far I have a few small rocks, several shovelfuls' worth of cinder, and one mosquito bite to show for my efforts. Yet I persist; this is no longer about a hole in the ground; it is about my frustration with the Hawaiian elements, and my fierce determination to move on with my life. I am tired of digging holes. I want this bounteous Hawaiian earth to sustain us, and I especially want to enjoy someday a tall glass of lemonade taken from the tree that I am resolved to plant within this niche.

Five minutes more, and I feel a small blister forming beneath these garden gloves. I dig into the earth with my fingers and yank at the boulder. It yields. The hole is now a good six inches deeper, enough at last to plant this lemon tree. It is dark now. Tomorrow I will return to put this tree into the hole and nurture it within Pele's stubborn yet fecund earth.

--BB ... Angry White Male?

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.05.08, 8:30 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $200.00 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars and my annual goal of $200. Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

Link to Engineer's Guide to Cats

While we're still on this week's ever-popular themes of satire and cute cats, here's another video for you to enjoy -- roughly seven minutes on Man's Best Casual Acquaintance.

glumbert - Engineer's Guide to Cats

Aside from the overall execution of the core concept (outstanding), I love the 1960s Farfisa combo organ outro music over the closing credits. Nothing sounds quite like that. Well, unless it's a REALLY good simulation. (And now you know what kind of nerd *I* am. Well, one of several kinds, at least.)

And thus I pose to you a musical challenge: Can you name the heroic music that the producers of this video use to establish the mood, starting at 3:14 and ending at 3:40?

The first reader to post the correct answer (composer and title) to "Comments" below has the option of buying any item via the new link in the left sidebar, titled:

Please Shop At My Amazon Store.

...and receiving a $5 rebate from me on any purchase. I'll keep the contest open through April 20 and post the answer on April 21 if need be.

[FOLLOW-UP, May 17: Well, no one ever answered this one (shock!), so here's the answer: It is Verdi's Requiem. You can hear some clips of it HERE.]

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.05.17, 1:00 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $199.90 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

But why bother with the coins...

...when they could just build the pawn shops right into the gas stations?

It's so much more efficient.

To view this video, you must: CLICK HERE.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.04.16, 8:50 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

20.00 / $199.90 (10.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

Crash, Bang, Smash 'em Up....

The blithe quality of this stupid toy commercial (promoting violence and perpetuating racial stereotypes, oh my!) still tickles me, over thirty years later. I wish I had written that jingle!

The Kool-Aid guy smashing through the fence, if you can link to it from here, is goofy in a similarly devil-may-care way.

Where would I have gone for this before YouTube? I'm writing a novel set in the suburban 1970s and this is a very useful research tool for re-creating the TV reality.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2008.1.30, 8:05 a.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

0.00 / $199.90 (0.0%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.

Irony is so ironic sometimes...

...especially when you're at the end of composing a blogpost on gratitude and optimism when the computer crashes on you, refusing to copy and paste your wise words into its enormous memory buffer.

We'll try again tomorrow ... or not.

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Wishing you a beautiful day,

Bill Brent

[this page last updated: 2007.12.14, 6:18 p.m. Hawaii time]

LitBoy.com is a professional blog. Keeping it online costs me $200 per year. That's before paying me for my writing, photography, or anything else I do here. If you enjoy this blog, please use the Tip Jar at the top of this page. Your two-dollar minimum donation helps keep this banner-free site alive. It's quick and easy!

80.99 / $199.90 (40.5%)

This meter displays this year's contributions to date in U.S. dollars (after the funds processor takes its cut). Make a donation, watch the meter rise! Usually I post your contribution on my next blog post.

All original materials here on LitBoy.com (writing, photos, drawings, graphics, etc.) belong to Bill Brent. If you want to re-use something here, please ask. Higher resolution images are available.