Better than Most Musicians

Sure, at first this



just seems like a guy making farty noises with his hands, but give him a minute or two to blow your mind by playing Classical Gas pretty damn accurately with those farty hands. Amazing, if you ask me. Do hit the Youtube page link for other manualist action (yes, making farty noises with your hands makes you a Manualist) in the suggestions bar to the right of the screen. Awesome is the only word that fits.

That's Not Good

Well that sucks. I loves me some Coca-Cola. Now what the hell am I supposed to drink, iced frickin' tea?

I Didn't Know that Was Possible

From the Kircher Society, a gorgeous collection of origami by a gentleman named Richard Sweeney in a Flickr set that is utterly amazing.

I remember making origami on rainy days as a kid, my sisters were much better at it than I was but I did enjoy it and made some fairly decent swans and such. I never imagined anything like this was possible, and if I understand Mr. Sweeney's explanation, he didn't have any formal training in origami before he started to mess around with paper. All the best innovations come from people like that, people who don't care what has come before, who view the past as a prison that limits the future.

Good and Good for You

The Anchoress does the heavy lifting for us. Required reading for just about everybody.

I'm a Dork

I get such a kick out of this:



That has to be my second favorite National Anthem rendition. This



is my favorite of all time.

Convergence

How cool is this? It's a picture of a Swedish logging site from the air, won some kind of wildlife photo award. I stole it from McSweeney's, right here to be exact. Scroll down and hit one of the numbered links below (where it says "other winners") for more convergence photos.

Dear Jimmy Carter: Shut the F*ck Up

I've never hated a former politician as much as I hate Jimmy Carter. Easily the worst president of the last 100 years, he's now the worst ex-president in American history. Jimmy, please have a stroke or other medical incident incompatible with you being alive.

Tiny Cutie

It's weird to remember how small and fragile Sabrina used to be. Today she's solid as a rock and tough as nails, and she's so good at athletic stuff that we don't worry about her in groups of older kids. I remember being scared to hold and carry her, being scared to change her diaper, because she was just on a whole other scale of tininess and fragility than anything I had ever dealt with. Babies are heartbreakingly vulnerable at this stage and I found it utterly terrifying pretty much the whole time. I obsessed about the tragic possibilities, and I worried every second I held her, carried her or led her by the hands that I would injure her inadvertently just by not being gentle enough.

Which was ridiculous, of course, but you couldn't have convinced me otherwise. So it's nice now that she's solid, athletic and tough and I don't have to treat her like a cracked egg. Yay Sabrina!

Look What God Can Do

A comprehensively horrifying collection of Greensburg, KS twister coverage here at Tim Blair's, where he correctly points out that if a 40,000-lb. oil tanker gets thrown about like a twig, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the local 1,000-lb. meteorite is missing. See the aerial pics at bottom of Tim's post for a serious shock.

Here's hoping God will forgive me for mocking him and Oscar Winner Jennifer Hudson in the title of this post.

Wonder Baby

So let's review what's new with Sabrina the Wonder Baby: many new physical abilities, most of them frightening-looking; drumming in rhythm with Daddy, Mommy or music; dragging both of us onto the dance floor (meaning wherever the music's playing) whenever she wants to dance, which is pretty much always; lots of new words, and all the animal sounds to Old MacDonald at the right times; spinning around in both directions until she's unable to stand up; eating spicy food and not crying; and this week, having a cold that's keeping Daddy up for the last three nights. Gosh I'm tired.

That reminds me, two days ago I was showing a house and the guy who lived there, who should have gotten the hell out instead of shadowing us like Gollum the whole time, was an engineer who had experienced some sort of religious conversion and was pitching it all to become a Christian counselor. Of course I ended up saying G*ddamn three or four times and a couple of other blasphemies. I don't know that God minds, but I imagine the guy who just renounced material wealth to worship full-time probably does.

Picture by lovely and talented sister Genie.