retrieved from the WayBack Machine Archive of LostInLouisville circa Nov 2003…

incomplete, and in no particular order:

OutKast – Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
If only for the line “I don’t want to meet your daddy / I just want you in my caddy / I don’t want to meet your momma / I just want to make you cumma”. I can’t agree more with Rocko that Andre 3000 is the next incarnation of James Brown, Rick James, and Prince — but for my generation. I never felt much of a connection to any of the former — they were all fairly epic and troubled characters as I was growing up, but I heard echoes from long ago of guys that loved everything about women and made everyone dance and fall into freaky-ass love. Then they were either in jail, torturing hookers, or prostletizing. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen to our man Andre 3000. Big Boi’s album “Speakerboxxx” provides and a good counter-weight to Andre’s “The Love Below”, and these albums don’t get old when set on shuffle. (Side note: I love “She’s Alive”. It’s a love-letter to his single mother, I think. Nonetheless, it’s compelling and well-placed)

The Postal Service – Give Up
When folks ask me what this sounds like — I say “emo lyrics with electric beats”, and you’d think I’d just stepped on their toe and shoved a herring in their now-gaping maws. Seriously — this stuff is really great — so great that the real Postal Service has forced them to change their name.

The White Stripes – Elephant
I don’t need to tell you how much I love this album, you already know it. I will say this — I’m glad they are sticking to their guns and keeping up the whole red/white brother/sister thing. I really am. There are plenty of people out there who think they need to add some depth to their albums, or change their setup in some way — and while I think that has some merit — I think it would ruin this whole wonderfully concocted image they have. Jack has mentioned that they maybe have one more album in them, and I hope they do call it quits after that. The whole two-person thing doesn’t scale real well in big venues anyway.

Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlantacism
First, I love the album cover. Birds are great. Secondly, Gibbard is genius of giving good hooks to his music — so much of what other lo-fi sensitive-boy music is lacking. I envy him. See also: The Postal Service

My Morning Jacket – It Still Moves
My first real exposure to these local lads. All that forced listening to Boston and Kansas in my youth was not for naught! “It Still Moves” makes me realize what was good about that music. And you laughed at me for liking Lynyrd Skynyrd!

Skip James – Today
I’ll admit that the first time I heard a Skip James song (actually sung by Skip James) was while watching Wim Wender’s The Soul of a Man — one of the films in PBS’ The Blues series. This record was one of Skip James’ last records — recorded shortly after his surprising re-appearance at the 1964 Newport Folk festival gives new meaning to the “High and Lonesome”. His falsetto singing style and his solo style lend such depth to these remarkably clear recordings.

Anyone else? I’m looking for new stuff to listen to.

i’m in the process of getting thelocust.org’s DNS registered with a cheaper, faster company that eNom, so we may experience some discomfort in the near future!

I fooled around with jpg2asc (jpeg to ascii converter) today, and also with manipulating the output with CSS to make it look right… well, here are the results. pretty cool stuff, tho’ the original image is 6k and the asciified version is 25k!

The Courier-Journal has a 2003 Election Guide, with plenty of information and articles.

Don’t know where your voting location is? Never fear, citizen — check out the LOJIC’s Voter Connection.

Polls are open from 6AM to 6PM, and anyone in-line at 6PM will get a chance to vote.

The Beeb reports: US TV set for ‘Jesus wife’ storm.

A leading US TV news reporter has said her network is taking a risk with a news special which asks whether Jesus Christ had a wife.

That network is ABC and the show “Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci” is loosely based on Dan Brown’s best-selling mystery-history novel “The DaVinci Code”. Needless to say, the Catholic League isn’t really happy about all this — and I hope they try to “stick to the facts” on this, and try to keep the sensationalism to a minimum.

Meanwhile, Jesus is struck by lightning for the second time.

There was a story this AM on Ananova — Dolphin massacre turns sea blood red. The images were of an EXTREMELY red body of water, and men in small boats hauling in large amounts of dolphins. The photos were snapped by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and well, they look fake. The water is FAR to red, and the amount of blood in the water to make that happen would have to be up around… maybe 75% of the water’s volume? If these aren’t fake, then I think the only possibility is as I’ve created below:

The actual Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s site is down at the moment, so I’ll point you to Consumer Freedom’s overview of The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (with choice quotes from SSCS founder Paul Watson — e.g. “There’s nothing wrong with being a terrorist, as long as you win. Then you write the history.”)
(I should point out that I don’t know who Consumer Freedom is backed by, but they were one of the larger sources of info on the SSCS.)

Everyonce in a while, i’ll see someone i don’t often see, and they’ll ask me about something that I posted on my website. this happened this weekend, and i was thinking that i’d like to know who is just out there lurking and checking my site.

So, if you are one of these folks, then just drop a comment in the comments below! thanks!

Random confessions of every sort can be found at grouphug.us.

#980375231: In high school, my friends and I made it a point to carry around screwdrivers. Every day we would each remove a single screw from some piece of school equipment. By the end of the year everyone was involved and the school was falling apart. It was mean and cost someone lots of money, but I still think it was funny.

#592811178: I resent my wife and kids. I think I’m jealous of the closeness they enjoy while I’m out working to keep it all together.
I know it’s just how things are, and how things have been for centuries. I know it’s right and I’m wrong. But still…

Oddly compelling — but not in a voyeuristic way. Makes me think of all the regrettable things in my life. Note to self: don’t stare into the abyss!

more wacky test data…

Downy, you see, is a magic man. Oh yes, you see he’s got magic hands. Seriously. They are magic. Turns out the hand soap he bought at the corner store was actually enchanted by a wizard who works at the Colgate factory. Not really too much call for wizardry these days, especially in Southern Indiana. So now, not only are his hands always 99.9% clear of bacteria, but he can make quarters magically appear! (Due to legal restrictions, they are actually his quarters, though).

Yep, you can check it yourself. Even the Wayback Machine has no memory of it. I will never be able to read “QA Confidential” again! Oh, for sadness. I even donated once to Mr. Tristan Farnon, the genius that he was.

update: after doing a little googling, I noticed that not only has The Wayback Machine had its LeisureTown stuff removed/block, but so has TextFiles.com, at the behest of Tristan himself! Oh man. I don’t know what to think! It reminds me of that Internet/USEnet worm I heard about eons ago — where a guy wrote a worm that would find all of his postings on USEnet and destroy them, as he was in the depths of depression and bordering on suicide. I can’t say that much for Farnon, though…