Misfits Tribute at KFNT

My large friend Corey went to this Ted Leo show at Kung Fu Necktie on Halloween. I shoulda joined him.

Pitchfork has 5 videos.

My favorite Misfits song:

Thinman 2, Squirrels 0

I need sleep. I have kids who’ve literally been waking me up at the crack of dawn for over 5 years now (except school days, of course). They’re FINALLY getting old enough to the point where they’re sleeping in until 7:15.

Just in time for the squirrels to move in.

Now, at exactly 6 am every morning these rodents start running around in the ceiling right above my bed. I spent hours upon hours and two entire Saturdays sealing every possible entry point in my eves that the criminally poor builders left wide-open to the elements, and they’re still finding a way in.

Since they’re only active in the morning I actually had to take a vacation day last week just to hunt the bastards. [By the way-save the hate mail- I recieved a bunch of it the last time I posted my hunting excursion]. keep in mind that I really am a pacifist or whatever- I don’t enjoy killing. But these varmints are really asking for it.

For some reason, even after tuning in the sites on my trusty Daisy pellet gun i still couldn’t manage to hit one of the bastards even at point blank range, so I borrowed my buddy’s high powered air rifle with a scope. I finally nailed the two culprits as they tore apart the large pumpkin in my back yard. Yes, it was sad, but it had to be done. The war is finally over.

Coincidentally enough, my old high school friend in Cleveland was going through the very same problem at the very same time, but his situation was worse: He was dealing with raccoons. Squirrels running around the drywall are LOUD. I can’t imagine how much louder a 10 pound carnivore would be.

I just happened to get this email today. I realize he sounds like some lunatic redneck madman. That’s because he is: he’s a brilliant, bragadocious, gun-loving ex-Army Ranger who daylights as a banker. Here’s his account, including pictures. His last sentence had me laughing till milk squirted out my nose:

From: Stacey, xxxxx
Subject: Stacey 2, Raccoon 0

Sunday morning 0700 HRS.  Broad daylight.

My son is eating breakfast at the kitchen table and sees another Tango
making his way across the back yard to gain access to the roof and
ultimately the attic of our house.  He bangs on the window and the Tango
gets distracted and actually climbs up the wrong trunk of the Magnolia
tree next to the house, which he (and his prior teammate, RIP) has been
using as a means of egress to the top of the house.  

Fatal error.

I have him literally “treed” right next to the house at the top of the
tree.

Let’s back up a bit.  From the below-listed incident from May, I learned
that firing a 12 gauge shotgun with 00 buckshot at night can be…an
item of concern with the neighbors….so I purchased and installed a 22
LR sub-cal kit into my Wilson Combat match-grade AR-15.  This basically
turns a world-class assault rifle into a relatively quiet varmint
plinker.  It’s like installing a pellet gun into the barrel of an
artillery piece, enabling a very fearsome-appearing weapon to shoot very
tiny bullets.

I grabbed the AR with the sub-cal device installed and went outside to
stalk and eliminate the Tango.

Then the wife starts yelling at me: “WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING? You’re outside with a MACHINE GUN! The NEIGHBORS! It’s Sunday morning! What’s WRONG with you?”

To quell her, I made sure the raccoon wasn’t going anywhere and went
back in the house, removed the screen from the kitchen window, then laid
down on my back on the kitchen floor where I had a clean shot of maybe
~50 feet.

Picked him off, he fell and gave two pretty loud screams before dying.

While not as majestic as a one-armed shot at ~140 feet in the pitch
black of night like the first one, the triumph of defeating these little
striped rats is still satisfying enough to share…

—–Original Message—–
From: Stacey, xxxxx
Subject: Stacey 1, Raccoon 0

Most of you know that we have had a raccoon in our attic, terrorizing
our house since last October.  It has caused a ton of damage to our
house including prying up an exhaust flange on the water heater piping
and causing water damage by allowing rainwater to destroy the drywall
over the master bedroom.  We have made numerous attempts to trap it
and/or drive it out, including hiring two different professional
trappers that have attempted, charged me for trapping “non target”
animals such as squirrels, and then given up when the little bastard
outcrafted them by stealing the bait and leaving the trap still set.

You have no idea how maddening this has been.  We could hear it every
night, brazenly stomping around in the attic right over our heads.  It
has been nothing short of a nightmare.

The saga is now over.

Tonight I armed myself and waited in the darkness of my neighbor’s yard
until I saw a shadow on the roof.

This was a truly amazing shot, if I do say so myself.  One shot, one
kill. 12 gauge shotgun with 00 buckshot, fired with one hand,
insupporting hand holding a 5-cell Maglite from about 140 feet.  I
picked him right off the roof, about 20 feet off the ground, as be
peaked over the edge of the roofline on the second story.

Yes, that is a center-mass shot AT NIGHT with a shotgun, with ONE HAND
with target acquisition in the split second of clicking the flashlight
on with the free hand.  It would have been impossible save the fact that
my shotgun is a police model with a pistol grip which allowed me to
fashion a one-handed assault.

The cops never showed up, and yes, I blew one of my gutters apart.

Totally worth it.

Miike Snow

MP3: Miike Snow-Cult Logic (c/o TheBurningEar)

MP3: Capleton-Hidden Secrets

Choose Blue

I wish I could find the original track sampled here…

MP3: Ghostface Killah- Stay (c/o fluxblog)

When I know that you with him, you ain’t calling me back
It be that thing down there that got me way off track

From Ghostface’s EXCELLENT new LP Ghostdini-Wizard Of Poetry In Emerald City

This Morn

I love October. There’s about 102 thing to do this weekend and next.
Dr. Dog tonight with Jeffrey Lewis, then my youngest turns five on Sunday.

MP3: Dr. Dog- Ain’t it Strange

No Kids are playing three shows in the Philly area starting this Sunday. One of them will be held at my place of employment, Swarthmore College next Friday Oct. 30 w/ Mount Eerie.
I love this No Kids tune- its mellow indie with a dash of dubstep:

MP3: No Kids- The Beaches All Closed

More goods:

Post disco boogie TSOP from 1980:

MP3: Sugar Bear Johnson- When Your Jones Comes Down (re-edit)

MP3: Big Boi- Shine Blockas (c/o fluxblog)

I Woke up Today

I managed to get out of the house exactly one time all weekend and that was for the Sea Wolf / Port O’Brian show at the North Star Bar on Saturday:

Van Pierszalowski, the lead singer of Port O’Brian told me that the band has been living off the proceeds from this cute Australian paint commercial for two years. It features my favorite song of 2007:

Port O’Brian’s new LP Threadbare dropped just this month.

They added a couple members for this tour:

MP3: Port O’Brian- Sour Milk/Salt Water

Sara Lov was the opener. She was able to save a bit of money by pressing all of her backing instrumentation onto vinyl:

Sea Wolf was the headliner:

These pictures are a little late in coming, but I also managed to get to the North Star for a show two weeks ago.

Scotland’s We Were Promised Jetpacks:

England’s Brakes Brakes Brakes:

Sorry, I didn’t stay for Twilight Sad.

I took this picture of a woman standing in front of me by mistake but I remember thinking at the time that it’s nice seeing shows in Philly because everyone is so much shorter than people in the corn-fed Midwest where I grew up. After seeing the picture I notice that this woman has no neck… something I see more and more, most likely a product of our ever-fattening society. She looks like a snowman made with only two balls.

Before and After

I bought this ugly old desk when I first moved to Philly. Now it’s perfect for my daughter’s room.

Before:

Most of it is solid maple so I tried to strip and refinish it but the top isn’t original- it’s some sort of plastic laminate and the edges are raw cut with no veneer, so it didn’t look good. The only fix was to paint it.

During:

The final painted product, with new, more “girly” knobs:

Soon I’ll post “before and after” pictures of all of my other projects- a homemade TV stand, my basement den/ home theatre, and an after-market car roof rack are just a few of them.

Someday.

My Dad made this table for my sister’s wedding. There’s not a nail or screw in the entire thing:

Pears

This pear tree stands next to the road in Springfield PA. I’ve been riding my bike past it for 10 years now. Every fall it produces a tremendous amount of large and juicy fruit. Since most of it ends up on the ground for the ants to eat, I stop and help myself to a few as I go by.

This year, for the first time, it is absolutely bare. I’m sure it has something to do with the extremely wet spring and summer we had this year but you’d think there would be at least a couple shriveled nubs or something. There’s nothing. Not one.

Its leaves look a little more bare than usual too, but even if the tree were dying it would still produce fruit. I’ve seen plenty of dilapidated old fruit trees that looked barely alive but still drop fruit.

My 90 year old neighbor has had a vegetable garden in her back yard for most of her life. Last year the squirrels ate every last veggie in the garden. She said it was the first time in 50 years that had ever happened. We both figured we were in for a long cold winter but it turned out to be one of the mildest winters in a while, so I won’t make any predictions about this pear tree. Anyone else have any ideas?

MP3: Experimental Dental School- Argentine Pears

Idle Free Philadelphia

Philadelphia and the State of PA has a law on the books barring any vehicle from idling for more than 5 minutes.
This law is like most others in the City of Brotherly Love in that it is rarely enforced. It irks me to no end when I’m walking down the sidewalk on a hot summer day with my kids and have to walk through a cloud of cancer-causing diesel exhaust because some tool doesn’t feel like turning off his vehicle.

Every morning when I drop my kids off at school there’s at least one delivery truck and a line of buses all idling in in front of the school, with the school door wide open. The entire first floor which is full of little kids smells like exhaust.

Luckily today I got an email from the Clean Air Council notifying me of a new web-based mapping tool that allows residents to report illegal idling to the City of Philadelphia’s Air Management Services, as well as to the Clean Air Council and to identify locations where idling is a recurring problem.

Maybe this will help get the city to take action to clean up the quality of the air in our city.

NOTE: I fully understand that service vehicles like buses and ambulances may need to idle. I also understand that some vehicles may need to remain running in the winter.
Also, I understand that some right-leaning readers discount the effects of vehicle emissions on the environment. This tune is for you:

MP3: The Jesus Lizard-Mouth Breather

Waste

Office Basics is the main office supplies vendor where I work. They’re a local company and they have their own delivery truck and driver. We’ve complained to them more than once over the years about their excessive, almost comical overzealous use of packaging. Today they outdid themselves. These are actual pictures of today’s delivery:

ONE pen came in this box:

and ONE pad of paper in another:

Mind you, a third and fourth box were included in the shipment, so these two items could’ve easily been thrown into those boxes. Hell, even put them in an envelope. They’ve been doing this for years. Bout time we found a new vendor.

On a different note, I never get sick of this Bush. Now she gets a makover:

MP3: Kate Bush-Running Up That Hill (Late Nite Tuff Guy edit) (c/o waves at night)