The Accidental Weblog

This show. Phoenix, AZ. Outfit called Soulcatcher, on a smallish stage. See also their site.

Observations: it’s fucking hot here. Way too hot for subarctic beasties like me. Passing through the desert heat between air conditioned car and air conditioned buildings is much like walking through fire. Doesn’t much look like I’m built too well for this sort of thing. My colleagues are wearying of scooping my melted substance off the pavement, placing me in an iced mug in a freezer so I regain some semblance of my original form.

But it’s incredibly pretty. Cacti, palm trees, mountains in the distance. Flora is spiky and generally not the sort of thing you’d want to touch, but thoroughly beautiful in that hostile way. There’s this desert botanical garden here I have to check out… Maybe if I wind up here sometime when it isn’t hot enough outside you could smelt iron just by leaving it on the sidewalk a few minutes.

And the band’s good. Watch the stream, if you catch this in time.

ETA: No, I lie. They’re more than good. But you know how it is. You’re sitting there thinking: okay, I’ve had a few, and clearly, this is affecting my judgement, as this makes absolutely no sense. As I’m currently in a sorta tony wine bar in the burbs of Phoenix, I can’t possibly be hearing this… The singer isn’t tearing his heart out and leaving it beating there on the stage, as what the hell would be the point on a Thursday night in this place? And the guy sitting next to him and doing the solos is not channelling Jimi, as that’s just ridiculous…

And if I go and say that actually, he was, and he is, you’re all just gonna think I drink too much. Which, okay, on occasion, maybe I do… And sure, you can blame it on the heat stroke, if you insist…

But no, scratch that. Don’t. As all of that changes nothing. I’m pretty sure I was mostly sober, most of the time, and also essentially lucid despite the heat, and I’m pretty sure it happened pretty much that way. So they’re very recommended, if you ever find yourself in a position to hear them live.

(Note: That live stream embed is now below the fold, as they do seem to fire it up pretty frequently, and it’s probably kinda heavy on those on dialup.)

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So as I’m writing this, I’m in my back yard. It’s one of those idyllic summer afternoons, sunny, but reasonably comfortable, a bit windy, cool enough for a subarctic beastie like me to tolerate half well. It’s actually nice to sit out here, which isn’t somethin’ you get all the time, ‘round here. Steamwhistle in a frosty mug in my right hand. This is the life.

Also, it’s insanely green. It’s been an absolute banner season around here for everything that does photosynthesis. The apple trees are an actual hazard: fruit drops at a rate that I figure I should probably put up a sign, kinda like those beware of falling rock things you see along highways in the shield, ‘cept the rocks would have stems. Sit here for half an hour, you’ll hear the sound of it: this drumming noise. Apples hitting the turf.

And I’ve got an Explorer rose in one of my front beds which is a freaking mutant or somethin’. I get out there to cull blooms every couple days, and they just never stop. Must have cut some 30 that had gone to seed off it just yesterday morning. Don’t get me wrong; it’s awesome. My serious, stay-at-home, full-time gardening neighbour is in awe of the thing. Except that I’m now having nightmares of being smothered by enormous, pale pink blooms…

(No, don’t analyze that. Please. Don’t go there. It’s really just the roses. The red one doesn’t scare me, for what it’s worth… That one seems to be from this planet, at least.)

Now sure, this is great. After three or four summers that were borderline drought, for a change, making things grow is relatively easy around here. My Bartlett pear is dripping with fruit, and just a year or two ago, I’d been worrying, wondering if the thing had some disease I just couldn’t spot. It looked healthy, but barren. Apparently, it just needed a season which involved something approximating normal rainfall. Out front, I’ve actually got a good 50 square feet of lawn or so turned into garden. And I’m getting bold, growing things you’d normally want to be (a) more experienced, or (b) retired to take a shot at. There’s some relatively more fragile (than the Explorers) climbing roses rambling like crazy in that patch. I’ve put thyme between the stones of a walk I tore up to level. It’s flowering. You just can’t go wrong, this season.

So, of course, I’m checking out ski reports.

Yes, I’m perverse. But they just had that crazy Tommy and Lefebvre pre-season gear sale blowout thing they do every year, and I did the dutiful father thing, set up my kids with their stuff. (And my lovely wife, who’s been reluctant to get onto the hills, prior to this, following an unpleasant adolescent experience… don’t ask, but I’m crossing my fingers we’ll cross that Rubicon this year). And now the little guy is clumping around the backyard in his boots…

Thing of wonder, this kid. Guy who fitted him is saying normally, at this age, you can’t get them into the things. I can’t get him out of them. I’m trying to explain this to him: there’s no snow, not in this hemisphere, not for a few months, at least. But he’s three. He absorbs this, looks thoughtful, then says, ‘But when are we going skiing?’

You’d think he had my genes or somethin’.

So anyway, I’m here sitting in the verdant glory of the midsummer afternoon, checking out the prognosis for the hills for December.

I mean, c’mon. You don’t want to make a three-year old wait, here.

Or me.

Looks like the DNS entry just rippled over to my ISP’s nameserver. Expect the rest of the world should be getting their refresh over the next little while…

Now. Where were we…

… or, then again, maybe you can. Seems my host has had some sorta major cockup doing a DNS migration, and I’ve mostly disappeared from DNS for more than a day—‘long with a whole lot of extremely irritated more commercial type users presumably somewhat more injured by this than am I… So whether or not you can see this probably depends on where you are in the world, how you connect, who your ISP is, so on.

Me, I hadda mess with my hosts file just to get here. And I’m not honestly sure if this is the real site or a server they’re in the process of replacing… But anyway, y’know… Apologies… If you can’t see this, I guess.

… seein’ as these are pretty much my fifth food group.

(Fortunately, I’m more partial to the pickled ones than fresh… Which may explain my continued survival.)

I’d like to say I hate superhero epics, and I loathe musicals. And thus, it is firmly holding my nose, and only due to the fact that Joss Whedon has kidnapped my poor hairless cat Razorburn and is holding him hostage, that I am recommending—no, insisting—that you go now and view Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.

Do. Please. Think of poor, poor hairless Razorburn.

(*Also, you’ve only got one more day to do it fer free… after which you may have to download it, and it may only be on iTunes or some damned thing. So y’know. Get over there.)

ETA: Wot!? PZ’s already got this, too…

Curse you, my nemesis!

… please attempt to smear me for posting this link…

(I need the publicity.)

Now, I know I’m not much of a public quantity (yet, but I’m ambitious) so my numerous embarrassing personal scandals may or may not already be a matter of easily obtained public record, and thus may not be the sorts of things your dogs can easily seize upon, run in the crawler next to yer normal ‘turning the corner… really this time!’ graphic… So I figure, hey, I’ll give you a few to get you started. Prime the pump, as it were. Wouldn’t want those boys now so used to living on administration press releases actually to have to do some genuine reporting now, would we…

So: for scandals, please consider any or all of the following as a modest beginning:


Thanks for your consideration. I look forward to your threatening to kill my dog hearing from you.