No, seriously!

Three years ago today, Kelly and I were married! It has been lots of fun and I love her just as much as I did the day I married her — but now the relationship has a desirable, rich patina to it. Perhaps a better metaphor is like a block of cheese — yes, the cheese has more mold on it, but the cheese is now more stinky. “How on earth is that better, Ben?!” Well, as you may know — the stinkier the cheese, the better the flavor.

So there you have it Kelly! I love our stinky relationship.

Kelly and I (along with Jackson and Medina) went to Headliners Music Hall last night to have a rockin’ good time with The Black Keys. Opening guest, The Hentchmen.

The Hentchmen, with someone who appears to be a young Andy Dick on guitar, threw down the sort of greaseball rat-fink rock jams you might expect out of the Dead Kennedys, had they been formed a decade or two earlier. Good stuff, and the crowd seemed to enjoy (as did I).

The Black Keys, however, despite being on two guys (Dan on the guitar and Patrick on the drums) seem to control the room like no others. Patrick positions his drums on the left, mere inches from the front of the stage, with Dan on the right. Patrick Carney possesses a fury and determination for the drums that is at both infectious and scary. He is a lanky 6-foot-something, and his drum kit seems dwarfed by his long frame. When he sits at the kit, it appears that he’s attempting to ride a tricycle that is far to small. When he plays, it’s as if he’s on that tricycle, but being attacked by bees. Keep in mind, he’s like inches from the edge of the stage — arms a-blur with the speed of a flip-book animation, but with power of a man swinging sledge and busting rocks. I feared for the safety of those in the front row. “Would they be rocked to death?!” I wondered. As a visual contrast, Dan Auerbach is a short man (in relation to Carney’s height), but possesses a presence, voice and talent beyond his years (not to mention vicious guitar face). Between the two of them, they convey this infectious power of rhythm. The best parts of blues and soul with the on-the-brink excitement that only the rawk can provide. It’s dangerously exciting stuff when you are right close to it, and a venue the size of Headliners fits that bill right nice.

I was truly rocked by their performance last night, and judging by other shows I have seen, this one was different. Wimmens was swaying their hips and dancing with theys men, you see. The crowd was genuinely into it (as was I), to the point where they were called back for two encores. Akron, Ohio represent!

A co-worker of mine, who dresses fabulously informed me that local Italian eatery Melillo’s is considering starting up a bocce league of some sort. It’s sort of gelling right now — and I’d say the time is nigh for such developments! Melillo’s already has a bocce pit behind their restaurant, so why not start a league there?

I don’t know why bocce hasn’t “caught on” around town – it really is a “sport” that can be done anywhere. Cholly and I regularly play in the gravel parking lot here at work! Also, it is a sport conducive to drinking (after all, the Italians did invent it). Bocce ball in one hand, glass of wine or pint of beer in the other! Fantastico!

There is a thread on the Louisville Hot Bytes forum entitled “bocce ball league“. If interested, check it out.

That, my little candy-cane children, is the name of the next (possibly last?) White Stripes album. It is due out June 7th, while the first single “Blue Orchid” is due out on radio in the US on April 19th.

The promo site for Get Behind Me, Satan has not yet “gone live”, and only holds a single image of a pale, white hand (Meg?) holding a white apple.

Further indications of awesomeness include Jack’s awesome mustache and long-hair combo from this year’s Grammy’s, where he stood aside Loretta Lynn when she picked up the statue for Best Country Album.

Pitchforkmedia has the tracklisting, fan site Triple Tremelo has the cover-art for Blue Orchid, and I am waiting breathlessly for this piece of man-made god-rawk to come tumbling from the heavens. Joy!

There are some people I know – even some readers of this not-so-anonymous blog – who blog about any number of things that would normally be confined to either their subconscious or chatted over a neighbor’s fence (perhaps over a fabulous martini). In the case of work-related gossip, I would wager that if you are going to involve yourself in such an endeavor, it is best to do this anonymously. So, whilst trolling through MeFi earlier this morning, I happened upon a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else).

One thing they don’t mention here is that any traffic (read: email) that you send using your company’s email servers is their property and so you should not consider your work email “private”. That is what a Gmail account is for!

While they do mention “limiting the audience” of your blog, I have found that unless you restrict your readership manually, anyone and everyone you know will eventually stumble upon your blog. My furthest stretch has been the dairy farmer that lived down the country road in Botetourt County, Virginia, where my great-uncle Joe lives. He mentioned to my Uncle Joe that he had read a website about my and Kelly’s adventures in Eagle Rock, VA. This should underscore how important not giving away your particulars is when attempting to stay anonymous. The careful and intrepid information-seeker will no-doubt attempt to put together a sketch of you through the scraps of info they can find on the internet. For example — I once had a man keep calling my house and requesting that he speak with Pablo Escobar (the now-deceased Columbian druglord). After a pair of short calls, I decided to find out just who my caller was, only armed with his phone number. Thanks to reverse phone directories, Google, and some luck, I found his name, address, his AOL username (which could be contacted via AIM), his homepage, highschool, job history, etc, etc. That turned his next call into an hour-long tango of “I know more about you than you probably ever cared me to know”. I really just wanted the guy to quit calling the house at all hours, but I figured I might as well have fun with it.

So — take care out there on the Intarweb. It is a wild and wonderful place. But, as with most wild and wonderful places, you could be eaten by bears (and by eaten by bears, I mean your job or life could be mauled. Not by bears, but by people who just don’t get the joke).

“With super-powers comes super-responsibility”


– “The Amazing Strobe”

After nearly 6 months of building, I have finally completed my Allegro-Lite sailplane! I started at the beginning of November last year, and just this week finished it up. It’s a great feeling to finally get something like this done, and just in time for soaring season! To celebrate, I have started cleaning up my shop downstairs to make way for the ship I’m going to use for the Louisville Area Soaring Society’s Speed 400 F5J Electric Sailplane Competition coming up in August.

Anyway, back to the Allegro-Lite — it’s a really cool plane, from a completely nerdy point of view. You see — most “competitive” (meaning “efficient”) model sailplanes these days are really expensive — they involve things like hi-load foam, Kevlar, carbon-fiber, and generally a lot of expensive composite materials. Those materials can make things really strong, and yet really light — which is something you need for a really efficient wing on a plane. Well — the Allegro-Lite is an exception because A) it’s made from wood with some carbon fiber (not terribly expensive, B) it is really light and C) despite the previous two things, it is REALLY strong! The design is completely free to the public (courtesy of Dr. Mark Drela from MIT), and there are plenty of other Drela-devotees around to offer help, and in the case of the Allegro-Lite, a near-complete walkthrough. I’ve even pitched in myself with a build gallery with annotations.

So, this summer I intend on getting out and flying as much as I can, and competing as often as I can in regional contests. The Allegro-Lite will be along for the tow as well!

Well, I guess my blog has hit the big-time. Regular, observant visitors may have noticed some “SPAM” comments showing up recently on the “recent comments” over there to the right. Bankruptcy loans and Texas Hold-Em poker are the subjects du jour. Having done a little reasearch, I believe these comments to have been placed not by humans, but by robots. The mechanical bane of mankind, I say! Well, in an attempt to “nip [this problem] in the bud”, I have implemented ANTI-ROBOT MEASURES on the comment system. This system is know in the industry as a “CAPTCHA“.

What does CAPTCHA mean? Well, it stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart”. You know those little boxes with the squiggly letters and numbers you are asked to fill in before you can proceed with a form on the internet? That is a captcha. It’s used to prevent robots from crawling through, say, lists of available tickets on TicketMaster. The term “Turing Test” is a generic name for any test that is capable of determining if the subject being tested has the presence of mind or intelligence. (“Intelligence” in this case means being able to think on its own, and not have to follow a set of logic rules, as robots do).

Please give the comments system a run-through, and feel free to email me if you have any problems.

For you, gentle reader, I bring recommendations of rock…

• …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Worlds Apart

  They got my unpublished “Best Name in Rock” award back in 2004, and yeah, so I gave their prior album “Source Tags & Codes” about 2 minutes of attention back in 2003(?), and never listened to it again. Looks like I’m making another of my apologies to rock bands again… Worlds Apart rules in so many varied ways. They’ve got a sorta nerdy thing going on, but they bring the rock right along with it. Archaeology + sociology + rockology = AYWKUBTTOD?

• Death From Above 1979, You’re A Woman, I’m a Machine

  DFA 1979 is two Canadian guys with a synthesizer and a bass guitar. Now, normally, that is usually just spelled out D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R, but not this time, oh no! I think I described it to Najati as “dance-inspired noise rawk”, and I think that just about sums it up. Like 75% noise rawk, 25% ass-shakery. It’s all good.

• Sleater-Kinney, The Woods (Advance Copy)

  Yeah, so I got a copy of this via a lil’ birdie. The girls of Sleater-Kinney have asked very nicely for those folks who are currently dealing it over the intarweb to kindly cut it out. However, since my deed has already been done, and I have listened to it in its entirety — I’ll say this: It rules. In their letter to the pirates, they mentioned that the record “is a response to the deadening and watering down of music”, and I can’t agree more. It’s noisy, loud and far more thrashing as any of their previous records. We likes it very much.

• Sunday Nights – The Songs of Junior Kimbrough

  Junior Kimbrough is credited by Dan Auerbach of the Blakc Keys as “his first record purchase”, and he has created a number of contemporary blues classics that inspired many, from Iggy Pop (who appears on the album with The Stooges) to the White Stripes (not to mention the Black Keys). This various-artists tribute lines up like a hipster funeral wake for Kimbrough. Cat Power, Iggy Pop & The Stooges, Mark Lanegan, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, etc. Some really fantastic tracks on here, especially from The Stooges, Cat Power and The Black Keys.

…I am in no way a white supremacist or a member of any Aryan group. Further, I would like to thank the intarweb at large for making me have to make statements like that.

It would seem that someone from the intarweb took my posting entitled “the pride of the species” to mean that I endorse Aryanism. Long story short on that posting was that the The Smoking Gun had posted a photo about the “scariest con ever”, and I had related that to my own overly-elaborate plan for the now-legendary “Goat House“, which is (of course) a reality TV-show wherein Death Row inmates battle it out each week in a bleek, unadorned house for a goat which is inserted (dropped through the ceiling) weekly.

You may notice comments from a “Callie” on the sidebar over there. Well, I also received a strange email from a one Calista Alvaraz, the contents are here exposed:

From: Calista Alvaraz

Date: 3/8/2005 5:42 PM

To: ben@XXXXXX

are you proud to be who you are?? i am in jail rite now… doin time for hate crimes are you about you skin as you put out???? let me know what is your deal.. pride power justice supremacy or what?? i am skin for life from a orginization called save our skins or S.O.S hit me up …

So – for the record – I don’t endorse such things, and frankly I don’t see how you could assume that I endorse Aryanism or any sort of white-power credo. I talked about putting him on a show called “Goat House” wherein death-row inmates battled it out for a goat a week for chrissakes. So, sorry, I gave at the office.

P.S. – If you should happen to make it to Death Row, please do contact me regarding “Ladies Goat House”

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Man — not a month goes by that I don’t find myself apologizing to one band or another for not listening. I’ve publically acknowledged this before, but now I’ve got to do it again. This time, it’s Death from Above 1979. I had seen their music being bandied about with furious intensity over on IndieTorrents, and I had read the Pitchfork review of You’re a woman, I’m a machine a while back. I thought that it was probably just a bunch of indie-hipster saber-rattling, but o’ how I was wrong. These pair of canucks throw down the beat-infused noise rawk! Go and find yourself a show or a file on their website.