It ain't me, babe

From today's junk mail intake. I think they sent it to the wrong house.

Chicken in a box

Shortly after we picked her up at the post office, and shortly before we released her (and her sister) into our yard.

I feel like I'm going to have to write a chicken-themed song soon.

The funmaker

Since I took my very first piano lesson in a Wurlitzer store in the 70s, it seems poetic that I managed to score a (gratis!) Wurlitzer Funmaker Custom Series 545 Organ yesterday.

You know, the one with the Leslie speakers! And the foot pedals! And it's in near mint condition!



Talk about luck: I had no real plan for getting this hefty beast home, and was unexpectedly assisted by the kindness of not one but two strangers in the process of getting it into and then back out of my Volvo station wagon.



A big shout-out to my awesome and beautiful wife for allowing my to drag this damned thing into our dining room. (She may or may not have seen it as a kind of "fee" for the chickens that are on their way to our house at this very moment.)



I can't be sure, but I suspect that this may be the very instrument used in soundtracks to many of the sci-fi and horror B-movies I seem to be addicted to these days.

And the kid likes it too!

Concerns about privacy...

...can sometimes lead to weirdness.



Ganked from "The Best of Google Street View" at the Times Online.

The caption: "Automatic face recognition obscures a Bobby Sands mural in Belfast." Does this mean the painting was so realistic that the machine thought it was an actual face? Maybe we'll never know.

Part of my (hopefully brief) foray into pseudo-photo-blogging. (This time it's not my photo.)

Read the fine print, cont'd

Ack! This is becoming the blog o' silly pictures. It's as if I thought a photo blog was the greatest thing since "slicded bread":



Backstory: I was in the store yesterday and had to decide between sourdough or French rolls. I went with the sourdough because of this downright delicious typo.

Keep off the grass

And while you're at it, be as delicate as possible in your piano-playing:



A sign directed at my students by a well-meaning adult (not me). Click the pic for more detail.

I'm having a hard time explaining to them how to play the instrument without running their fingers across the keys. Little Richard would be shit out of luck! Ah well.

What Thanksgiving means to me

Homemade raspberry chiffon pie, and the coolest, most beautiful little family in the world.

Do you want to see a grown man cry?

Get your Friday morning economic meltdown humor right here: The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog.

Whee! (Or something like that.)

Yes, we did

I'm not generally a "rally" guy, even when it comes to a phenomenal candidate like Obama. But when our adopted campaign worker got us some "VIP" tickets to today's Portland extravaganza (with opening act, the Decemberists), something compelled us to go check it out.

("VIP," we later learned, merely refers to the difference between being sorta far away from the candidate and being extremely far away from the candidate.)

Turns out this was the biggest rally the campaign has had -- 75,000 people is the estimate -- and there was more than a little of what I could only call "historical electricity" in the air. Here's how the Washington Post described the scene:

The sea of heads stretches for half a mile along the grassy embankment, while others watch from kayaks and power boats bobbing on the Willamette River. More hug the rails of the steel bridge that stretches across the water and crowds are even watching from jetties on the opposite shore.

The weather cooperated with the underlying theme of "change" -- shifting in recent days from a dismal cool cloudiness to full-on summer heat.

Daphne and I tried to snap pics from every phase of the three or so hours that we spent on the waterfront. They follow below, in chronological order, and are pretty much self-explanatory. (Click any pic to enlarge.)

Every time I think I'm finally convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket...

...my little girl discovers a rainbow.



See it? Ya gotta look close.

Some much-needed civility

Photo by Ian Boyd.

Via.

Images from the front

Bag News Notes contributor Alan Chin appears to be "photoliveblogging" (is that a word?) the race in Ohio today. Some amazing shots are up already.