Cold War, Warm Light

Photo of the Day
Tonight I saw the Cold War Kids with Matt Cleveland at Juanitas. What I once described as "stripped-down", sounded tight and well rehearsed sung by neatly cut, greasy haired young men at high volumes. This is a shot post-show of the Yamaha touring piano two out of three bands used tonight. Good time.

Here's what I wrote about the Cold War Kids after listening to their album Robbers and Cowards for a week over at a little thing we call "The Program."
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The Kids have me with their stripped-down simple rock and story-telling: “She’s laughin’ like a choir-girl… when she doubles over I hear ‘halleluiah!’” Particularly on ‘Saint John’ and ‘Hospital Beds,’ he gets at narratives that feels archetypal yet unfamiliar enough I’ve got to keep listening to find out what happens.

Shack

(A brief return to) Photo of the Day
Spotted this in Malvern yesterday across the tracks from the old sawmill. There's just something about it. Very Arkansas.

Ice Falls

A Winter hike to some waterfalls adjacent to the Williams Family's homestead.  B&W Kodak T-Max: hand processed, negatives scanned.
... See my Tabblo>

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This is a fun new way to share photos on the web while utilizing that eye for composition, balance, chiaroscuro and above all: control in how your images are displayed.

Spoiler warning: there are no pics of Eleanor at the above link.
-Matt

Chicken Music

Eleanor shares Matt's love of music, although sometimes she finds his selections a bit shocking.


Eleanor likes to eat. One night she couldn't seem to get enough chicken, so we just gave her the whole bird.

New Camera = More Pictures

Our new camera came on Friday. I'm really excited about all the possibilities. I'm still learning how to actually use all the settings, in which setting it's best to use shutter speed priority and which is best to use aperture priority. I've already learned how to change the ISO and the white balance. This camera thing can't be that complicated. Anyway, I'm sure none of you care about the camera stuff. Here's some pictures of Eleanor:

About 50 times a day, Eleanor will come to me with a concerned look on her face and point her fingers together. Finally I figured out this is how she lets me know she wants to sing The Itsy, Bitsy Spider.

 

She always gets excited when we sing it.


Last night during bath time, Eleanor was being modest, and very proud of her modesty.


Bed time has become a bit more interesting lately. It all started with a monkey that Eleanor got for Valentine's Day. Now she has to have eight to ten stuffed animals or dolls with her when she goes to bed. Today it was three babies, a Star-bellied Sneetch, a red monkey, a small teddy bear ("Bubba"), and Totoro (a character from a Japanese animated film).

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Daddy really likes the new camera too.

"Turkey babies!"

The adventures of the orange hooded adventure-girl continue. Thanks to Mimaw and Papaw Wyers (Matt's parents) for the borrowed camera and the turkey-house tour for Eleanor. More stellar photos to come when our own new Canon Digital Rebel XT arrives on Friday.

Happy Groundhog's Day!

Eleanor and I spent a long time this morning getting ready to go out and play in the snow. The total time we spent playing in the snow was less than five minutes. It had started melting by the time we went out and it was wet and mushy. The first thing she did was pick up a handful of snow (she has mittens, but hates wearing them).

Then she showed me the snow she found.

Then she was distressed that it didn't all get off of her. I think I should have called it ice, since that's a word she knows and loves.


In warmer news, Eleanor's Grandfather made this little desk for her. He had made little desks similar to this for my brother and me when we were little. I asked if those were still around. He found my old desk, but it was not good enough for Eleanor. She loves her little desk and will sit in it to read, eat, play with Play-Doh, play with other toys, or just to sit. She seems to have a system of "tables" now with her desk, the ottoman, the toilet lid, and a cabinet that used to hold our tv. All of the "tables" are about the same height. Various objects are constantly rotated through the system of "tables." The other day I walked into the bathroom and found waiting for me on the toilet lid a toy frog, a baby bottle, some lotion, a hair clip, and a tube of diaper rash cream.



Sometimes she even shares her desk with me.

Elephant Pancakes

Wow. I just realized how seldom I've been posting Eleanor updates. I didn't even do a Christmas post. Oh dear. I'll try to make up some of that now.

Eleanor is a lot of fun to be around these days. She's constantly interpreting the world in a new and interesting way. The way she categorizes things is great fun too. For example, anything on or above your head is a hat, anything round is a ball, and any bodily excretions are poo-poo. Her vocabulary is growing every day. Today her new word was "more." She learned "bear" this week as well, but it comes out "bu-bu." One day she found the bag of oranges on the floor and brought several to me one by one saying over and over "ball...ball...ball".

Eleanor likes to climb these days, but usually only in the nude. She's found that she can scale the ottoman in very little time. I know this picture isn't the best, but you get the idea.


Eleanor also really likes feeding things. This morning she found a toy bottle and fed Jack Sparrow, a chicken, a frog, and a snake. Then she put the frog in a shoe. Then the frog got a ride on the merry-go-round.

Matt sometimes lets Eleanor play with his iPod. She loves listening to the ear buds, even when they are not on. She also likes to listen to crayons, Christmas lights, and various other slender objects.


This is one of Eleanor's favorite ways to look at the world these days. Once she accidentally did a somersault.


Eleanor is learning to use her potty more consistently and only once as a hat.

The Program: Week 2

Who is this contemplative, distant young man? Click on over to Matt's new music blog to find out. It's an ongoing experiment in music, discipline and community. Can you take up the challenge of listening to only two albums per week, learning each song like knuckles on the back of your hand?

Don't worry, no one gets slapped.

Go ahead, click "Matt's Mog" to the right and hear this young man sing and hear what the two Matt's are listening to this week. Who knows, you may have one of the albums already and can give us some pointers on what to listen for.

The Program: or How Make Listening to Music Fun Again

No this isn't installment 28 in the iPod Rehabillitation unit series. I'm happy to report that all my electronic friends are functioning within acceptable parameters. However, my organic friend Matt Cleveland
and I noticed that our iPods were making us susceptable to another sickness: we weren't really listening to our music anymore. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, given that the iPod is meant to make your whole music library as portable as a thin bar of soap (albeit fragile $300 soap). But what we noticed was that since our mp3 collections were in digital form now for easy uploading and sharing, we were acquiring so much music, so quickly (from friends, relatives and perhaps less... savory means) that we really weren't giving each album the time it deserved. What was worse, we weren't enjoying what we were listening to because there was so much else to get through.

Our solution? The Program: Together the two Matts have made a pact to choose two albums with which we are not yet familiar and give those albums as many listens-through in one week as we can (at least 3-5). Indeed, we choose to listen to these albums as if we had paid our hard earned allowance-money for them. Matt describes it in greater detail in the link above. We'll be posting the albums of the week on our respective Mog - Music Blog sites along with our comments and the cumulative effect on our listening enjoyment and hopefully a renewed appreciation for those albums that only start to really shine after a few spins. Feel free to play along.

Albums this week:
Cold War Kids: Robbers and Cowards - Raw garage-rock with high-pitched, multiple storylines.

Dntel: Life is Full of Possibilities - Postal Service minus Ben Gibbard. Trippy ambient textures and analogue syths for your enjoyment.

Tattoos and Skateboards

Matt's Top 5 Albums for 2006

5. The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics

Oklahoma weird-rock from Wayne Coyne and friends. Not as strong as "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" but sonically and lyrically more direct. I mean, who else is still using the 'talk-box' guitar effect? Good album, even if the "mystics" they're at war with are religioius folk. "What would you do with all your power?"




4.Josh Ritter: The Animal Years

Third album from perhaps the best folk songwriter of my generation. Putting into practice advice from Pete Seeger, he settles into his rural Idaho roots. Beautiful poetry grappling with the great questions. "The keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom..."







3.Derek Webb: Mockingbird

Derek's most confrontational writing yet. Sparse guitar and piano behind words as hard as canon-balls aimed at breaking down the walls of Pharisaism and apathy growing up among us church folk. "Don't teach me about moderation and liberty, I prefer a shot of grape juice." "Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication..."




2.Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

Neko used to tour with the New Pornographers but has since taken her golden floodgate of a voice from their line-up to sing lovely, southern-gospel tinged, imagistic songs of love, loss and a madman with a dirty knife dug into his spine: "He sings nursery rhymes to paralyze the wolves that eddy 'round the corners of his eyes..."




1.Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere

Hip Hop producer DJ Dangermouse (of Gorillaz and the Beatles/JayZ mashup 'the grey album') and Rap/Soul vocalist Ceelo found a perfect match in one another for this collaboration. It's rare a pop album gets spun on my iPod but this is one of those rare pop albums that's sells becuase it's actually good music. Besides, this is also Eleanor's favorite album of 2006. If she even sees the album art on the screen she'll start smiling, bouncing and making the hi-hat sound from "Crazy": "Tsht tsh tsh tsh." Needless to say, we've heard it way too many times and I've yet to get tired of it; the true test of a great album. "Who do you, who do you, who do you whodyou think you are, ah hah hah, bless your soul, you really think you're in control?"



Honorable Mention The Raconteurs: Broken Boy Soldiers

After catching Jack White (the tall one) and Brandon Bensen (the skinny one) at Austic City Limits Music Fest, Jack is my guitar-hero. The man is a physical giant who seems to enjoy himself every time he picks up a guitar. This is a great disc to throw on, plug in the guitar, turn the amp to "ten" and jam along with Jack. The fun is contagious. "My baby's on the level, I try to read her mind, she's on the straight and narrow, I'm guessin' all the time..."

Christmas Shopping

I guess it's about time for a new post. We are still alive, just busy. Do you think it's strange that I find Santas creepy? I hid from the one at the mall today. I also hid from the guy who tries to sell fingernail treatments. I didn't hide from Chic-Fil-A, where I got a free sandwich in exchange for a pint of my blood.

Eleanor's been Christmas shopping in her own way. She likes all the flyer's that come in the mail. She picked out a new camera from Radio Shack and some bananas from Kroger, all while on the phone--what a multitasker!

Advent Aegis

In the old days the church ordered it's life around the events of the gospels, the events of Christ's life. Some still do. One key time is the time of advent: the time we anticipate the coming of Christ, the incarnation of God in a little baby.

To remember Advent Melody and I will be contributing brief devotions to a another blog called Advent Aegis. In the old days (of our time at First Southern Magnet Cove) we contributed to a print version that Shane and Diane put together. This was still his doing, only we're going a bit digital this time as they're in Slovakia. Amy Sickle, another former FSBC Magnet Cover, will round out our team. So check it out and read along with us through the lectionary texts as we remember and anticipate what comes next.

Also you can navigate there by clicking the link to the right.

Hay Ride

The much anticipated (at least by me) hay ride took place on Saturday. Some folks in our church have this amazing farm on the river. Every year they host a hay ride. Here is our gracious hostess, who made very good chicken and dumplings. Belle is the dog. Eleanor was so happy to play with Belle, but Belle wasn't so sure.

We went on a hay ride last year too, but Eleanor enjoyed this one much more (she slept through most of it last year). When we first got on the trailer, Eleanor carefully examined the boards and saw a crack wide enough to see the ground. She was still examining it when we started moving. She was much suprised and excited to go and was happy for most of the ride.

These are pictures of people riding on hay.



In other news, Eleanor slept over 13 hours last night and did not act as my alarm clock (as is her habit) this morning causing me to almost miss a breakfast appointment. She has learned to bark like a seal, hiss like a snake, and moo like a cow. Today she tried to cut her own toenails.

And last, but not least, we have a shameless plug for Eleanor's cuteness brought to you by EPR Team (Eleanor's Public Relations Team, that is).

iBook Rehabilitation Unit: iFixit

A few weeks back, Melody's aunt, B, suffered a great loss: her hard drive on her G3 iBook failed. B is a writer by proffession and she has been using her iBook nigh daily since 2001. It was only a matter of time. Fortunately for a nominal fee she was able to salvage most of the data. However it was time to upgrade and she soon had a shiny new 13in. Intel Core Duo Powered MacBook with which to ply her trade.

Since we suffered a similar loss earlier in the year and had our hard drive replaced, I asked what was to become of the old G3 iBook. B replied that she supposed she would bring it to me to see what I could do with it. I had entertained notions of doing the hard drive replacement myself but when I waded into the internet walk-through tutorials for it I discovered that the hard drives in this generation of Mac laptops are not very easy to get to. So I payed CompUSA to do it for me. But now I had the chance to test my nerdish mettle. I was resolved. I would replace this hard drive myself.

I'll not bore you with all the tedious details but a few photos taken over the four hours it took to get it taken apart enough to get to the drive, replace the drive and put it all back together again. I couldn't have done it without the exceptional guide from iFixit.



I find it somewhat strange how much this sort of thing appeals to me. I suppose it's a sort of puzzle. I think it has more to do with the clearly defined goals and outcomes. The problems I deal with at work are anything but clearly defined. I think it's therapeutic to really fix something and know what you've done.






Voila! Two working iBooks. B's computer begins new life as a dedicated, portable music machine. Believe it or not this is the abbreviated pictorial version. For the full 4 hour process check out my Yahoo! Photos ablum in a few days.



And Eleanor is still cute. This morning she went over and pulled the Yoda hat from the shelf and had me put it on her. A cute and darling baby she is. Maybe she can use the laptop for college.

Everybody Poops

Eleanor has begun her gentle journey into using the potty. So far she has used her new little potty for a holder of books, a diaper, various toys, and finally pee and poop. Our first day of toilet learning went something like this (only in English):



If the video doesn't work for you on our site, you can click here to see it.

A Challenge from Tig

Here's a pic to grab your attention. I was Lincoln at the Hospital Halloween Web-Design Nerd Party. It was very "The Office".

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So I have this nurse friend. She's got a blog and she's thrown the guantlett down with this challenge:

"Here are the rules:1. Grab the nearest book.2. Open the book to page 123.3. Find the fifth sentence.4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog, along with these instructions.5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest!"

So here goes. I had to pass up the bible and a collection of kids poetry (the bible because that would just be too chaplainy and the poetry book because it hadn't 123 pages). So I admit this happens to be the last book I finished and one of my favorites from this year, and granted a little (pseudo-)intellectual sounding, but it literally was closest to match the description.

David Dark, The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-Blessed, Christ-Haunted Idea.

"I hasten to add that there is probably a place for both and I'll try to describe the difference with a story of a viewing experience. There is a moving scene in "Patch Adams" (1998) in which Robin Williams's Hunter "Patch" Adams, a medical practitioner, has painstakingly arranged a dream come true for an elderly woman whose confinement to hospitals has, in recen years, obstructed her pursuit of happiness. She has long dreamt of swimming in a pool of noodles, "Patch" discovers, and as I sat in the dark theatre watching teh slow-motion sequence in which she finally has her fantasy fulfilled, I turned to my wife with tears in my eyes and said, "I hate this movie.

"Please understand, I didn't begrudge the woman her moment or wish that the tale (based on a true story) had never been told, but there was something in teh sequencing that felt a little like an insult, a way of cuing sentiment, and a pressing of certain heart buttons that had me feeling a little tricked."

Boy does Mr. Dark use his sentences. So there, consider the guantlett thrown down upon your blogs' toes.