Fun in the sun!

Well, it's Memorial Day weekend, and you know what that means: Bratfest!

Madison is home to the world's largest bratwurst festival, and Anita and I went down to make our contribution to breaking the world record for most brats consumed at a single event. Last year they sold something over 189,000 brats in 4 days, or enough to stretch from here to Waunakee.


As you walk in, you are greeted by the sight of a small army of brat-grillers.


Not to mention, the world's largest grill!


And, of course, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. No Madison event is complete without it.


Mmmm, tasty!

Critters

Hey, look! Cute pictures of cats!

Kaiyo thinks Tobu makes a good pillow...


There's really nothing over there, guys.

I'm famous!

Point your internet to Dan Adinolfi's website and check out his latest podcast, featuring music by me! And I didn't pay him or anything!

Actually, regardless of your feelings about my playing, if you haven't been tuning into Dan's podcasts, you really should. I've been enjoying them a great deal. He does a nice mix of music, poetry, prose, and conversation, and really is developing a good voice for radio. For the Ithaca expatriates among us, it's also kind of a comforting connection to the old homeland. Jolly good work, Dan!

More attractive than some bacteria

Well, I've covered music, and we've certainly done marginalia, so here are some microbes:



That's about 6 liters of Rhodospirillum rubrum growing photosynthetically at 30° C. It's an odd bug. It grows photosynthetically without oxygen (notice that the bottles are filled right up to the top), or with oxygen in the dark, but if it has both oxygen and light at the same time, it dies. Haven't quite figured out the adaptive value of that one yet.

Sadly, about 6 hours after this picture was taken, all of those lovely cells had been reduced to a green scum dried on the bottom of one test tube. On the plus side, the data we got out of it was good, and now we know more than we did before. Go Science!

The mind boggles

On the way to the grocery store today I saw a car with a license plate that read "MOM OF 17".

I hardly know what to say. Does she have to keep getting new vanity plates every 9 months? Or is it a defence mechanism? "Sorry, dear, it's on the license plate. No more babies." You'd also think they'd need a bigger car. A 2-door sedan just doesn't seem like it would cut it.

Implements of destruction

So, in one of my martial arts classes, we do krabi krabong (which is Thai fencing) about once a month, and just this week I finally got my own daab song meu, or pair of swords.

Here I am looking dangerous:


And another, blocking a high blow:


It was quite an adventure getting them. It was a matter of, "I know a guy, who knows a guy, who I think has a box of swords in his garage that he might be willing to sell some of, if we ask him nicely, but he's kind of a weird guy..." Regardless, they turned out to be dirt cheap, and are a real workout for my arms and shoulders.

There's an interesting dynamic to working with swords. I'm a fundamentally peaceful guy, with no desire to hurt anybody, but here I am learning to fight with a pair of sabers. There's got to be some serious cognitive dissonance going on here.

I think this gets at a lot of why I enjoy martial arts, actually. It's play. There's no possibility that I'll ever get into an actual sword fight, so it's just fun to learn new skills and get a good workout. I know the men who developed these arts depended on them to survive, and that what I'm doing is never going to be as visceral or "real" as what it was intended to be. But that's all right. It's not about the fight, for me. It's about the cultivation of skill, and healthy exercise, and having fun with my friends.

And trying not to break the ceiling fan. That too.

New Music!

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, I just put a newly recorded song up on my archival website. It's an old Celtic song, "The Star of the County Down". I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Parenthetically, it turns out to be pretty easy to learn to play the pennywhistle. Who knew?

First post, by golly!

So, Anita is out of town this weekend, being a bridesmaid, so I've got too much free time. And Roman has a blog now. So, I thought I might as well jump on the old bandwagon. Stay tuned for all sorts of exciting adventures. Or at least a fair amount of blithering. I'm good at blithering.