Disks in Rotation:
DVD • Plymptoons
CD-ROM • D2X
CD Carousel
• Gruntruck - Push
• Life of Agony -  River Runs Red
• Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion II
• Fat Boy Slim - Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars
• Megadeth - Cryptic Writings

Books Lying Open
• Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grim

Soul-Devouring Worry
• Hot is forever.

When I Grow Up:
• Ice cream will melt in your mouth, not in your hands.

Curse of the Day:
• May you run dangerously short on vitamin C.

Daily Update
I did nothing Monday but work on website stuff.  Primarily the band names section for this site, but there was idiot email galore to wade through for the d2 site, and I worked on some content for it also.  Got a lot accomplished, but did nothing that's even approaching interesting to mention in a blog update.  As this paragraph should attest.

In other exciting news, I actually slept pretty well the last two nights, and didn't wake up after 5 hours with itchy eyes and an inability to remain horizontal.  Ahh, a good night's sleep, as the mattress commercials say.

Maybe we should just do some news items now, before I lose ever single reader...

• Two words: Crotch wigs.  Not that I recommend this, mind you.

• Interesting article about how geckos are able to cling to any surface.  They can walk up walls, glass doors, across the ceiling, etc. One of the better features of your rental in Hawaii. Scientists have been pondering this for thousands of years (literally).

The answer involves the geometry, not the biochemistry, of the lizard's feet, meaning scientists may be able to duplicate the same geometric principles to create things such as robots that can walk on any surface in any direction, the researchers say. Another possibility is something as simple as Band-Aids that hold tight but don't stick when they're peeled off.

Geckos have millions of microscopic hairs on the bottoms of their feet that are narrower than human hairs, and each splits off into 1,000 tips that are so small they cannot be seen with a conventional microscope and can be detected only with an electron microscope.

The shape of the hairtips also is critical, allowing the small lizard to scamper up walls and across ceilings by sticking its toes to nearly any smooth surface in less than one eight-thousandth of a second and unsticking them in half that time.

"What we discovered was the angle the little shaft of the hair makes with the surface is the critical variable," Autumn said.

"The gecko has this really unique way of taking its feet off the wall — it peels its toes like tape," he said. "When that angle reaches 30 degrees, the hair pops off."

• Not much of an article, but the guy's quote is worth a bonus point.  Fisherman notices human body parts bobbing along in the ocean.

The men used a gaff to fish the head out of the water and placed it in a garbage bag. Then they kept right on fishing.

"We didn't want to come in right away, so we just put it in a bag in a bucket. It'd been out there awhile. What's a couple of hours?" Trabulsy said.

he Band Names page continues.  It's over half way finished now, but I'm getting antsy to finish.  I was talking about part of it with a friend last night, and her response amused and encouraged me greatly.  Which says more about me than the page.

I sent her a quote of a portion of the Monkees entry, and she replied, "What a toad!  I love the Beatles!" She didn't realize it was from my writing, you see.  She's generally open-minded about things, and has a decent sense of humor, so for her to get outraged so quickly bodes very well:

Ok, well, have fun. I can't see the point of writing, or reading, a bunch of nasty comments from an ignorant and uneducated fool. I don't turn to you for commentary on many things, as you do not turn to me, since our opinions and our personalities make seeing eye to eye entirely pointless.

The promise of furious emails from readers, dripping (the emails) with righteous indignation about how I could possibly say something so mean/untrue about their favorite band, thrills me to no end.  This is perfect as psychological exercise, as well as for the humor and trivia of it.

The psychological aspect is that people have no sense of humor about things that hit close to the bone for them, and they (the people) are generally oblivious to this.  You hear that on any sort of controversial humor show.  Howard Stern show constantly has that, where something I'll find hilarious will generate some totally outraged callers who have personal issues with the topic.  They always say something like, "Howard, you're usually so funny, but this time it's just wrong.  This isn't funny!  My dad/son/mother had a car crash/hemorrhoids/was kidnapped by aliens, and it's not something you can joke about!"  Of course it is, 99% of the listeners love it.  If something upsets you, you need to examine yourself to see why.  As it happens the very first blog I ever wrote was sort of about that topic.

Since people email 90% more often about things they don't like or feel are wrong, than they do about things they enjoy, and the band names section has, by design, something mean to say about virtually every band listed, you can probably imagine the sort of feedback it will get.  With any luck. *cackles with anticipation*

Damn I wish I were further than "N", I want it online now.  It'll suck if I just put up half of it, since every page has links to other pages, so there would be broken links galore, and I'm not going to go and redo navigation and links on every single page now just to put it up a few days sooner.  So I'll just soldier on and hope to finish later this week.  Perhaps I should just do say 5 bands per page now, and list the others to be added below, so it can be online, and then I can touch it up over time.

Of course after I wrote this bit last night, I went ahead and finished the M's, all 24 of them.

• Macy Gray 
• Madonna
• Mamas and Papas
• Mariah Carey
• Marilyn Manson
• Massive Attack
• Matchbox Twenty
• Megadeth 
• Menudo
• Metallica
• Michael Bolton
• Michael Jackson
• Ministry
• Moby
• The Monkees
• Monster Magnet
• The Moody Blues
• Morrissey
• Mötley Crüe
• Motorhead
• Mr. Bungle
• Mudhoney
• Mystikal

And I'm sure there will be others added over time, as readers point out ones I've thus far forgotten.

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