Halloween Again

Today is Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Eve), the yearly celebration which uses “humor and ridicule to confront the power of death,” according to Sam Portaro in A Companion to the Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Are you now at work in costume? Did you pack a brown paper bag with soul cakes and an apple for lunch? Did you bring a thermos of hot apple cider – made with a dash of cinnamon? Me neither.

Tomorrow is the Gaelic festival of Samhain, marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the darker half of the year. Samhain starts at sunset on October 31 and ends at sunset November 1. From sunset until sunrise, this is a liminal time of year – a threshold in which the supernatural beings that walk amongst humans can more easily enter our world. Tonight, you should sit near a bonfire with your friends. It will help to keep away the Aos Sí – the survivors of the Tuatha Dé Danann – whom you certainly don’t want to anger or insult. To learn more about Samhain, the Aos Sí, and the Otherworld, consult your neopagan handbook. Or Google. Whatever.

Tasmin Archer

The song of the day is Sleeping Satellite from the 1992 album Great Expectations by English pop singer Tasmin Archer. This extended version video was edited by DJ Rafa Burgos (Rafael Burgos Hernández).

Pentatonix, the Album

After winning the third season of NBC’s a cappella talent competition, The Sing-Off, the singers of Pentatonix moved to Los Angeles to begin their music careers. Winning the competition meant the band had won a recording contract with a major record label, Epic Records. A week after moving to L.A., the label dropped them, telling the band, “An a cappella group will never make it in the music industry.”

Pentatonix didn’t agree. They forged ahead, posting songs to YouTube that garnered views – hundreds of millions of views. They distributed music through a small record label called Madison Gate Records. Their success attracted the attention of RCA Records, which bought Madison Gate’s contract with Pentatonix.

From 2012 to 2014, Pentatonix released three EPs, a compilation album, and two full-length albums of Christmas music. In 2014, their second holiday release, That's Christmas to Me, became the highest-charting holiday album since 1962 and the fourth-best-selling album in the United States. The band, with producer Ben Bram, won Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for "Daft Punk" at the 57th Grammy Awards.

Last week, Pentatonix released its latest album, self-titled Pentatonix. This week the numbers are in for the Billboard 200 album chart, and Pentatonix made history. Their album is the first a cappella album to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart.

In less than four years, Pentatonix have gone from hearing they “will never make it in the music industry” to being a Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling band. One could list a number of reasons for why it happened: talent, skill, astuteness with social media. But as important as any other reason, it happened because they believed in themselves. Congratulations, Pentatonix.

The Iran Deal

Iran deal.

In 2009, a week before Obama took office, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said, “Say no to everything he does, no matter what it is.” Is this the way government is supposed to work?

In 2010, when Obama issued a postelection invitation for Congressional leaders to join him for dinner to discuss “how we can move the American people’s agenda forward,” not one Republican from the House or Senate showed up. They said they just didn’t have the time.

Six countries have jointly negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran. Those countries are the five permanent members of the UN security council (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) plus Germany.

What does the deal require of Iran? Iran must eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium and reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%. For the next 15 years Iran may not buy any new uranium-enriching or heavy-water facilities.

A new poll finds that 59% of Americans support making a deal with Iran that restricts their nuclear program in exchange for loosening sanctions. Two thirds of Democrats and 47% of Republicans support a deal.

It isn’t just Obama that wants a deal; it’s also the other five world powers who have been negotiating with Iran. The deal is supported by 60 nuclear security experts and by more than 100 American ambassadors.

The deal requires Iran to get rid of 98% of their enriched uranium, reduce their number of centrifuges from 20,000 to the 6000 oldest centrifuges, and allow constant monitoring of their two big reactors. One of those reactors is inside a mountain and would likely not be destroyed by an air strike.

If we don’t do the deal, many of the sanctions are going to go away anyway, because the other countries are not going to continue them. So do the deal and get all the above, or do nothing and get nothing.

Ronald Reagan tried to trade weapons to Iran in return for hostages. We took Iran’s side in the Iran-Iraq war. We took Iraq’s side in Operation El Dorado Canyon. We shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 270 Iranian civilians.

Do nothing, do the deal, bomb, or invade are our four options. If we do the deal, the last two options are still available. If we do the deal, maybe we won’t have to use those last two options.

MØ

The song of the day is 2015's Kamikaze by Danish singer and songwriter MØ (Karen Marie Ørsted). The song was written by MØ for her upcoming second studio album and was produced by Diplo and Jr. Blender.

Outrage

People are outraged again, as is the fashion these days. This time the outrage is over a school resource officer who arrested a female high school student. The student was disruptive and refused to leave the class when asked to do so, so the officer was called to make the student leave. The officer asked the student to leave several times, but the student refused. So the officer tackled the student to the floor, handcuffed her, and took her away.

When I was a kid, that kind of thing wouldn’t happen. Every student knew that “acting-out” would result in a phone call from the teacher or principal to the student’s parents, and that phone call would result in the student being punished by a parent. Back then, punishment didn’t involve time-outs or being grounded. Punishment was corporeal and usually involved a leather belt or a switch.

But we live in more enlightened times and corporeal punishment is frowned upon. So what should the officer and/or teacher have done? It’s simple: make the student want to leave the room. Give her motivation. There are so many ways. A few that come to mind, from least to most unpleasant, are:

Encourage her to leave by giving her a wet willy. In both ears, if necessary.

Tell her, “If you want to stay, you can stay until your parents come and pick you up. They’ll love that.”

Threaten her with summer school.

Threaten her with a cream pie in the face. Show her the pie.

Put a tarantula on her desk.

Make her watch reruns of Hee Haw and The Brady Bunch until she begs for euthanasia.

With a little thought, anyone should be able to come up with a long list of effective motivations. When a teacher asks a student to stop misbehaving and the student says, “No,” – what the student is really saying is, “What’s my motivation?”

And if these motivations fail, well … did you know a cattle prod can be had for as little as 25 bucks? Batteries not included.

Broccoli Again?

The World Health Organization says processed meats like bacon and cold cuts cause cancer in humans. A 50-gram portion, equivalent to 2 or 3 slices of bacon, increases your chance of getting colorectal cancer by 18 percent. And cheese and sugar are as addictive as a drug. (There goes pizza and cola.) And don’t get me started on hotdogs. Too late, I already got started on hotdogs (see previous post).

Oh dear. What can we eat?

Doctors say, “Just replace all those bad things with broccoli.” It’s a healthy food and will “help you maintain a healthy weight and a thinner waist line.” Well, of course it will. Because every time you want to eat, you’ll look at your bag of broccoli and you’ll decide you’re not really that hungry. “Broccoli again? I’ll eat later … maybe.”

My advice is: eat what makes you happy. Life is a terminal condition. No matter how healthy you try to be, you’re going to die. You might as well enjoy yourself on the way to your funeral. Just keep in mind this line from Andria by 2nd century B.C. Roman playwright Terence: “Moderation in all things.”

Hot Dog News

In the news recently: a company called Clear Labs has been studying food using genetic analysis. The project is called Clear Food. Their first study was on hotdogs. If you love hotdogs, you may want to stop reading now.

Ok, you’re still with me. Here’s the result of their study: of 345 hotdogs and sausages from 75 brands analyzed for the hotdog report, 14.4% “were problematic in some way.”

Ten percent of vegetarian hotdogs contain meat. The study I read didn’t say how much meat.

Some hotdogs contain meat not listed on the label. Three percent contain unlisted pork. That doesn’t bother me personally. If a turkey dog contains a little chicken, I’m okay with that. If a beef hotdog contains a little turkey, I’m okay with that. If a hotdog contains cat or dog or armadillo, that is a problem.

Human DNA was found in two percent of hotdogs. I assume that’s from people coughing or sneezing or spitting on the meat. I’m not okay with human DNA in my hotdogs. On the other hand, it would not surprise me to learn that a lot of restaurant food contains human DNA.

Some companies exaggerate the amount of protein in their hotdogs by as much as 250 percent. My reaction: meh. People don’t eat hotdogs because they want protein. People eat hotdogs because with the appropriate toppings, they taste so darn good. Chili-with-onion dogs taste better than chili with onion. Slaw dogs taste better than coleslaw. You wouldn’t eat hotdog relish out of the jar, but put it on a hotdog and you have a tasty treat. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

Bottom line: enjoy your hotdogs. Don’t spoil the occasion by thinking about what you might really be eating.

The 1975

The song of the day is 2014's Chocolate by British rock band The 1975.

What’s In A Name

Today I was listening to a television news journalist and I heard, for the first time, someone correctly pronounce the name Fukushima. (Fukushima is the Japanese city that had a nuclear disaster after it was struck by a tsunami in 2011.)

It doesn’t surprise me that people mispronounce names. But in the age of Internet search engines, it’s so easy to learn the correct pronunciation of a word that it’s almost a mark of laziness when people don’t bother to do so. Especially if your job involves speaking to millions of people.

Ever since the nuclear accident, most Americans have pronounced Fukushima this way:

fuu kuu SHEEE ma

I suppose people do this to make it sound similar to another widely mispronounced name: Hiroshima. Most Americans pronounce that name this way:

hero SHEEE ma

Both pronunciations are wrong. Fukushima is correctly pronounced this way:

f’KUU sh’ma  (KUU is lightly accented.)

The schwa is an “uh” sound represented by the symbol ə. I replaced it with an apostrophe because Japanese speakers put so little stress on those syllables that the schwa sound virtually disappears and you only hear the consonant.

Similarly, Hiroshima is pronounced this way:

hih ROH she ma (The 1st i sounds like the i in sit; ROH is lightly accented.)

If you’re on television, try to get it right! It’s why you’re paid the big bucks.

Alessia Cara

The song of the day is Here from the 2015 EP Four Pink Walls by Alessia Cara (Alessia Caracciolo).

The Mohorovičić Discontinuity

Its name sounds like an episode of The Big Bang Theory. It’s a real thing. It’s a very real thing, though no one talks about it any more.

The Mohorovičić discontinuity (usually called the Moho) is named after Croation scientist Andrija Mohorovičić who discovered it in 1909. During the 1960s we planned a trip to the Moho. We spent several years and millions of dollars trying to get to the Mojo. But we failed. Then we decided that a trip to the Moon was easier and more photogenic. And perhaps for the planet, a whole lot safer. Who can say for certain what would have happened to our planet if humans had succeeded in getting to the Mojo? Nothing good, probably.

Oh, we’ll try again. Even now in some laboratory there is probably a scientist making plans to go to the Mojo. He’ll need funding from the government, of course, and the budget is tight, so we may be safe. Unless – he puts together a coalition of mad scientists to convince Big-Money Corporations that money can be made by going to the Mojo. If that happens, our planet could be screwed.

Reading over this post, I can’t help feeling like there is an important part of the story I’ve left out. Oh well. Hitting the Publish button, now.

James Bay

The song of the day is Hold Back The River from the 2014 album Chaos and the Calm by English singer-songwriter James Michael Bay.

Neon Trees

The song of the day is Songs I Can't Listen To by rock band Neon Trees.

Lawson

The song of the day is 2015's Roads by English pop rock band Lawson.

Awolnation

The song of the day is Sail from the 2011 album Megalithic Symphony by electronic rock band Awolnation.

Miami Horror

The song of the day is 2010's I Look To You by Australian band Miami Horror featuring New Zealand singer Kimbra.

Headlines

Headlines used to be informative. A headline would tell you what the story below it was about. Now, it seems, too many headlines are written just to sucker you into reading the story.

Headline: We spoke with the astronomers who discovered the 'alien' megastructure to find out if it's fact or fiction

Reality: No one has discovered an alien megastructure. There is a star named KIC 8462852 that is 1500 light years from Earth. This star’s brightness undergoes “irregularly shaped, aperiodic dips” of as much as 20%. An alien megastructure around the star is one possible explanation for the dips in brightness, but there are also possible natural causes, so the star’s changing brightness is not evidence, much less proof, of anything artificial.

Headline: City of Sodom Discovered: Archeological find gives insight into story of destruction

Reality: It’s true. Archeologists recently discovered a buried city in southern Jordan, along with a large sign that reads Welcome to Sin City and a smaller sign that reads Sodom Chamber of Commerce. Just kidding! It’s true that archeologists discovered an ancient city that was long buried. But hasn’t this happened before – lots of times? Anyway, the director of the archaeological team says he believes the city is the Biblical Sodom. Take that news with a grain of salt.

Headline: Gigantic Buddha statue on Mars ‘proves intelligent life existed there’

Reality: There’s no statue of Buddha on Mars. There are only rocks. The real question is: does intelligent life exist on Earth?

And of course, there is the entire field of UFOs and the endless conspiracy theories about how “the government” is hiding proof that aliens are visiting Earth. Like this tantalizing headline:

A bronze pyramid UFO has appeared over Sao Paolo in Brazil – prompting fears that the aliens from semi-popular sci fi series ‘Stargate’ are invading Earth.

Wow – a pyramid shaped UFO! That must be something to behold. But then, buried in the article, we find this sentence:

We should also point out that the UFO was captured using a Nikon P600 zoomed to 60 times, so there is a small, but significant, chance the UFO is the size of a pigeon.

Which is more likely: the UFO is a kid’s drone, or the UFO is a craft from another star system? If you can’t figure this out (hint: the two scenarios are not equally likely), then there is a small, but significant, chance you wasted your time reading this post.

Lights

The song of the day is Second Go from the 2009 album The Listening by Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter Lights (Valerie Anne Poxleitner).

Snakes

The Gadsden flag (named after American general and statesman Christopher Gadsden) depicts a coiled rattlesnake on a yellow field with the words “Don’t Tread On Me”. The flag was popular during the American Revolution. And it is popular now.

The flag is so popular that the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles offers a Gadsden flag license plate. It looks like this:

I’ve seen a lot of these license plates lately. But now that the Revolutionary War is history and We the People live in a Constitutional Republic, I’m not sure what displaying a rattlesnake on one’s car is supposed to mean. Perhaps the driver wants to send the message I’m a snake. Snake is slang for someone who is treacherous and deceitful – a backstabber.

At any rate, it’s dangerous being a rattlesnake. People usually kill rattlesnakes when they see them. People go out of their way to kill rattlesnakes that are just minding their own business and not bothering anyone.

West Texas is a particularly bad place to be a rattlesnake. This year the town of Sweetwater, Texas, held its 57th annual rattlesnake roundup. A few years ago the roundup would bring in about 5,000 rattlers. Because of the drought, the snake haul is down to about 1,000 rattlers. The snakes would probably like to say (or hiss), “Don’t tread on me,” but the humans do far worse than tread on them. The humans lob off the snakes’ heads, strip their skin off, disembowel them, cut out their still-beating hearts and their gall bladders (which are set aside to be sold to China where they are used as aphrodisiacs) and finally the snakes’ bodies are thrown into a fryer to be cooked and sold as edible meat for $4 a plate.

Gadsden fans: you don’t want to be a rattlesnake. Be something truly terrifying. Be the absolute terror of the animal kingdom.

Be a human.

Passenger

The song of the day is Let Her Go from the 2012 album All the Little Lights by English folk rock singer-songwriter Passenger (Michael David Rosenberg).

Shawn Mendes

The song of the day is 2015's Stitches by Canadian singer-songwriter Shawn Peter Raul Mendes.

Disclosure & Lorde

The song of the day is Magnets from the 2015 album Caracal by English electronic music duo Disclosure (brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence) featuring vocals by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde.

Pentatonix

The song of the day is Can't Sleep Love from the self-titled 2015 album Pentatonix by Pentatonix. Fans of the a cappella group may enjoy their Behind the Scenes video showing the making of Can’t Sleep Love.

Zeds Dead & Oliver Heldens

The song of the day is You Know by Canadian electronic music duo Zeds Dead and Dutch electronic music producer Oliver Heldens.

Fono

The song of the day is Real Joy by Fono. The band formed in the UK under the name Seven but has been based in San Diego, California, since 2000. The band’s vocalist, Del Currie, has released a solo album under the name Zoo Seven.

Odd Stuff

I like my house, but odd stuff does occasionally happen in it. I’ve seen lamps turn on and off by themselves. I’ve heard loud noises of various kinds, from  loud bangs to loud, metallic clattering that sounds like a cascade of pots and pans falling to the floor. Inanimate objects have teleported instantly from room to room. My friends tell me there are reasonable explanations for these things.

Yesterday, I picked up an empty cranberry juice bottle, and I picked up its cap, and I screwed the cap onto the bottle, and I put the bottle on the floor out of the way. I turned around, took two steps, and I heard a noise. I looked back at the bottle and saw that its cap was now lying on the floor beside the bottle.

Today, as I sat at my computer I heard a noise very close to me. I stood up, looked around, and quickly found the source of the noise: a flashlight that had been standing vertically on the fireplace mantle had fallen and landed in a wicker basket which I had placed at that spot an hour earlier. The flashlight had been on the mantle for days. There had been no vibrations from passing vehicles, no air currents – nothing, as far as I know, to disturb the flashlight.

It doesn’t bother me. But if there is a ghost in my house, I wish it would do something useful – like, teleport the dust bunnies under the bed into the backyard. But then, ghosts don’t work that way. I’ll have to clean up those dust bunnies myself. In fact, I’ll do that now, while I’m thinking of it.

Till next time.

Ifwe

The song of the day is 2012's My Coast by St. Petersburg, Russia, dream pop band Ifwe (Misha and Sasha Pletnyov, and Dima Zvezdin).

Moral Equivalent

Recently, news outlets told the story of a drug called Daraprim, which is used to treat a life-threatening parasitic infection. Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up founded by 32-year-old former hedge-fund manage Martin Shkreli, bought the rights to make the pill and immediately raised the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill.

Obviously, many people won’t be able to pay that price, and some people who do will face financial ruin. When this was pointed out to Mr. Shkreli, he responded in a tweet, “aint my fault.” By this, he probably meant that it’s not his fault that poor people are not wealthy.

This story reminded me of another story in the news a number of years ago. A woman was raped; her rapist was caught. At his trial, the rapist’s defense was that the woman voluntarily chose to have sex with him. He admitted he told the woman that he would kill her unless she had sex with him. The fact that the woman chose to have sex rather than die, the rapist contended, made the sex act a voluntary choice rather than rape. The jury didn’t buy his argument and he was convicted.

Most people will try to pay any price demanded of them if the alternative is death. If people choose to pay an exorbitant price rather than die, that does not mean they are not being victimized.

According to dictionary.com, a profiteer is “a person who seeks or exacts exorbitant profits, especially through the sale of scarce or rationed goods.” Profiteering is illegal. When a hurricane or earthquake strikes, government officials will sometimes warn business owners that profiteers will be prosecuted. Taking advantage of people facing a life-or-death situation is widely considered immoral.

So why do drug companies get to do it?

Dreamtrak

The song of the day is 2014’s Contemporary by Londoner Dreamtrak (Oliver Horton) with visuals by UK artist Binster (Martin Binfield).

Poldoore

The song of the day is Ain't No Sunshine covered by Belgium artist Poldoore. The song was first recorded by Bill Withers in 1971 for his album Just As I Am. Other artists who have covered Ain’t No Sunshine include Michael Jackson, Joe Cocker, The Temptations, and Nancy Wilson. Poldoore samples Withers’s vocals throughout this cover. Other artists who have sampled Withers’s version include DMX and 2Pac. Withers’s version can be played here.

Delta Goodrem

The song of the day is Touch from the 2012 album Child of the Universe by Australian singer-songwriter Delta Lea Goodrem.

Walk The Moon

The song of the day is Shut Up and Dance from the 2014 album Talking Is Hard by Cincinnati-based indie rock band Walk the Moon.

Crossing the Milky Way

I was pondering this thought: how long would it take to cross the Milky Way (our home galaxy) in a spaceship under a constant acceleration of one standard earth gravity (1 g or 9.8 meters per second per second). Imagine we start on the edge of the galaxy and accelerate to some final velocity at the opposite edge of the galaxy.

There is no known practical way to produce a 1 g acceleration for the long time required to make the trip, so this is a thought experiment or (from German) a Gedankenexperiment.

An initial velocity of zero makes the formulas we need very simple:

d = 1/2 * a * t²   where d is distance, a is acceleration, and t is time,

and

v = a * t   where v is velocity, a is acceleration, and t is time.

The constants we need are the speed of light (3.0e+8 m/s) and the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy (100,000 LY).

I’ll skip the math and get straight to the answers.

Accelerating at one standard earth gravity, the trip would last four and a half centuries. How fast would our spaceship be traveling after undergoing four and a half centuries of acceleration at one standard earth gravity?

The answer is: 1.362e+11 meters per second.

How fast is 1.362e+11 meters per second? It’s over 450 times the speed of light! Oops! Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light! Obviously, we need to account for the effect that traveling at relativistic speeds will have on the mass of the ship. The closer the ship’s speed gets to the speed of light, the more massive the ship becomes.

The mass of an object at relativistic speeds is computed as
m = m₀/((1 - v²/c²))^1/2 where m₀ is rest mass, v is velocity, and c is the speed of light.

Assume the ship’s mass is 1000 kg. As its speed increases, so does its mass. In the table below are some sample velocities with their associated relativistic mass.

Percent of light-speed	Mass
0	1000
10	1005
50	1155
90	2294
95	3203
99	7089
99.9	22,370
99.99	70,710
99.999	223,600

What we need is not constant acceleration but constant propulsive force. For our thought experiment, that force will produce an acceleration of one earth gravity at the start of the trip, but acceleration will decrease as the ship reaches relativistic speeds due to the increased relativistic mass.

Let’s re-compute. Our spaceship is going to cross our galaxy, starting with zero velocity, and with a constant propulsive force that produces a 1g initial acceleration. How long will the trip take? How fast will the spaceship be traveling when it reaches the opposite edge of the galaxy?

In order to take into account the constantly changing mass at relativistic speeds, the computation requires integral calculus. There is one more complication. There are two frames of reference: the stationary frame (centered on the galaxy) and the acceleration frame (centered on the spaceship). As the ship reaches relativistic speed, it not only becomes more massive but the passage of time slows aboard the ship. This time dilation is described by the Lorentz transformation.

With a constant force producing a 1g initial acceleration, the trip will appear to earthbound observers to take 100,000 years, but to an observer on the ship the trip will appear to take 11.8 years. Our final velocity will be 0.99999999995 of light-speed. The ship’s relativistic mass will be five orders of magnitude (100,000 times) larger than its rest mass.

Despite the optimists who create science fiction space adventures, it appears that galactic travel is not in the cards for humans. Even if we invent a way to travel significant distances in our galaxy, everyone back on Earth will be long dead by the time we reach our destination and return. (We have to accelerate outbound and also decelerate outbound, and then accelerate on the return trip, and decelerate as well.) Earth could send out galactic explorers but we wouldn’t hear from them for millions of years. And if it takes that long to hear from them, would Earth send them out in the first place? In a million years, humans will have evolved into something not human, or else we will have followed the dinosaurs into oblivion.

JJ Cale

The song of the day is Call Me the Breeze from the 1972 album Naturally by legendary singer-songwriter JJ Cale (John Weldon Cale). The video shows a live performance from 1986. Like many of Cale’s songs, Call Me the Breeze has been covered many times by an assortment of musicians. Cale died in 2013 at age 74.

Paula Cole

The song of the day is Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? from the 1996 album This Fire by singer-songwriter Paula Cole.

ROZES

The song of the day is 2015's R U Mine (StéLouse remix) by ROZES.

Cooking the Fish

I cooked a fish filet for lunch today. I tried pan-frying the fish, but the cooking oil splattered everywhere. Tiny droplets shot straight up into the range hood and rained down onto the stovetop. I decided to abort the operation; I would finish cooking the fish using a different method. So I put the partly cooked fish on a plate, covered it with a paper towel, and put it into the microwave. I gave it one minute.

Did you know fish can explode?

It’s true. This fish exploded in only 55 seconds. I knew then that the fish was done. When I lifted the paper towel, it looked bad. Little fish-bits caught by the paper towel littered the exposed side of the fillet, so I turned the fillet over to hide that side. I put salt and butter on it, and it was tasty. And it was completely cooked.

I’ve written about the disaster called carving a chicken. I’ve written about filling my house with smoke from the toaster. I’ve even written about breaking the toaster – which I wasn’t even using at the time, although I was near the toaster and attempting to prepare food. Apparently, the area around me while I’m engaged in food preparation constitutes a kind of danger zone.

I imagine my neighbors sitting in their living room:

(A faint boom is heard.)
Husband: Did you hear that? I wonder what it was.
Wife: It was just the guy next door cooking something.

I should probably stick to fish sticks baked in my oven. And for a side vegetable: a bag of potato chips. It sounds like a bullet-proof meal, but I’m confident I have the talent to screw it up. I’m that good.

Fabio XB & Liuck

The song of the day is Back to You by Italian producers Fabio XB and Liuck (Fabio Carrara and Luca Facchini) featuring British DJ and vocalist Christina Novelli. This music was remixed by Tunisian DJ Wach (Oussama Mlaouhia).

Charli XCX

The song of the day is Famous from the 2014 album Sucker by English singer and songwriter Charli XCX (Charlotte Emma Aitchison).

House Ghost

Something just happened that begs to be shared.

I’ve been trying to get started on a house-cleaning project all week. I want to do a thorough, top-to-bottom cleaning and sprucing up of my house. It’s the kind of job that is probably going to require a week, maybe two, and it’s been my intention, every day this week, to get started on it. But my powers of procrastination are greater than my desire to clean, so the cleaning project has been on hold. I’ve watched TV, I’ve surfed the Internet, I’ve blogged; in short, I’ve done anything but the cleaning that I’ve known lies ahead of me.

This morning I got out of bed and walked to the living room. I sat at the computer and checked email, video-chatted with a friend, and read the news. I watched the first half of the Texas-TCU game (TCU outscored Texas by 30-0 in the first quarter!). Once again, my procrastination was winning.

Then something strange happened. I got up and walked to my bedroom. I walked through the bedroom doorway and I sat down on the edge of my bed, thinking how nice it would be to take a short nap. I happened to glance toward the open bedroom doorway and I saw, on the floor in the dead center of the doorway, a can of Ajax cleanser. It wasn’t there 10 seconds earlier. I know this because if it had been there when I entered the room, I would have seen it – and if somehow I had not seen it, I very likely would have stumbled over it and probably kicked it across the room.

No one besides me has been in my house all week. I have not touched the can of Ajax today – or even this week. How did the Ajax get from the bathroom to my bedroom doorway? House ghost? Poltergeist?

I knew what was happening. The house wants me to start cleaning and put the Ajax in my doorway as a hint. So I grabbed the Ajax, took it to the bathroom, and cleaned the tub. Thanks, house. It was the push I needed.

I have to stop here. No more blogging for me today. I have cleaning to do, and the house is waiting.

Uppermost

The song of the day is Flow, the lead track on the 2012 album Control by French electronic music producer Uppermost (Behdad Nejatbakhshe). The full album can be played here.

Joaquin

It’s raining. It rained yesterday. It rained the day before yesterday. And the day before that day. And so on. Today is the eighth consecutive day of rain in central Virginia. More is on the way. Days more.

At the moment, Joaquin the Hurricane is lolling amongst the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Those who study such things say that soon Joaquin will leave that area and head northeast, paralleling the East Coast, though it may – may – veer into the Carolinas or Virginia. There’s a small chance Joaquin could pass right over my house, like a blimp, though with considerably more wind and rain than you get with a blimp.

I imagine a few brave airmen (and possibly brave airwomen) have been flying airplanes into Joaquin to study the storm so that weather boffins can make more accurate predictions about it. (These brave aircrews are called hurricane hunters. Five aircrews have been lost during such missions since the missions began.) Thank you, brave airpersons.

My small city has seen multiple hurricanes during the last decade. In 2012, a nearby house had it’s metal roof peeled back like the lid of a sardine tin. Trees were toppled; some fell onto homes. Electric wires went down. Grocery stores ran out of food. Ice machines ran out of ice. Gas stations couldn’t pump gas. And that storm, called Sandy, only grazed us. When it came ashore in New Jersey, it was so destructive that it earned the nickname “Superstorm Sandy.”

What will Joaquin do? Weather boffins say, “It will probably go this way, but it might go that way.” Translation: “It’s too early to say.” Those who might be in its path will stock up on food, fill water jugs, check flashlights, fuel their cars, charge mobile phones. And then … wait.

Garbage

The song of the day is Temptation Waits from the 1998 album Version 2.0 by alternative rock band Garbage with vocals by Scottish musician Shirley Ann Manson. This performance was recorded on June 20, 1998, at the Rockpalast Open Air Festival in the Freilichtbühne Loreley (Loreley Open-Air Theatre), an amphitheatre located on top of the Lorelei rock in St. Goarshausen, Germany.

Daya

The song of the day is Back to Me from the 2015 self-titled album Daya by 16 year old singer, songwriter, and pianist Daya (pronounced “Day-uh”).