What I'm Listening To Today - Mike Doughty and Soul Coughing

I used to listen to Soul Coughing like crazy when I was in college in the late nineties. Then they broke up, and I basically forgot about them. I still listened to their CDs, but I never considered what they might be doing these days.

Then we did the Broken Mirror Story Event, and one of our entries was inspired by a song by Mike Doughty, the erstwhile singer of Soul Coughing. I had to run out and check it out right away.

I loved that band so much, and it was almost as if they had new albums that I'd not heard yet. Mike Doughty's stuff is much less electronic and sample based. Instead, it's almost always got acoustic guitar throughout, but I like it just as much. It's still really good.

So this playlist is some of my favorite Mike Doughty songs as well as some of my favorite Soul Coughing songs. Check it out if you've never heard them before. You may find something you like.

Oh, Canada

On my trip to Canada for the next few weeks. It's been fun so far.

The radio guy says it's 22 degrees up here! 22 degrees! It doesn't really feel like 22 degrees though. More like 80 or 85. Maybe the radio guy's thermometer was broken...

At 10:00 the friggin' sun still hadn't set. What's worse, it's up by 5am. When is a person supposed to sleep? I need some darker shades in my room! Give me a break, Canada.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

We're on our vacation in the middle of the Canadian heartland, driving across an endless prairie, and my daughter speaks up from the back seat.

"We can't go to the ocean to swim."

"What is that, Kiddo," I ask.

"We can't go to the ocean to swim, because I would be afraid to go in the water. I'm afraid of sharks."

I'm nonplussed. We're not going to the ocean anytime soon; we're in Alberta, probably 500 miles from the closest salt water; and what did this stuff about sharks come from?

My son speaks up, "She's still afraid of Jaws."

It turns out that, while playing at a friend's house, my two older kids, nine years old and seven years old, watched Steven Spielberg's Jaws. My seven-year-old didn't make it all the way through the movie, but she was able to watch the terribly disturbing opening skinny dip/shark attack scene.

I didn't see that movie until I was probably 15 years old, and I was very disturbed, what can my poor little seven-year-old be thinking? This was the same movie that kept a whole nation away from the beach for at least a summer, and, in many people's cases, more. What can that poor little girl be thinking that she would randomly bring it up more than a week after watching the movie and more than 500 miles (oh wait it's Canada, 1000 kilometres) from the beach.

We are going to California to visit family next summer. I hope she's over it by then, because I'm planning on taking them to the beach.

Murphy Brown's Law

I don't know if everybody else's life is like this, but if it isn't then why does Loki, god of mischief, hate me so?

Here's an example for you. Today, I'm heading out the door to work, and I realize that there are no leftovers for me to take for my lunch. I've got to make something, and fast. I look in the fridge, and figure that the quickest thing I can do is whip up a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches.

I grab the ham and cheese from the fridge, and the bread from the cupboard. I'm going to need some mayonnaise on these sandwiches if I want them to be edible. So, I grab a butter knife to spread it, and the mayonnaise bottle from the fridge. Except the last person who used the mayonnaise just set the lid on top instead of screwing it on. The lid pops off the mayonnaise, and the bottle plunges to the floor. When it hits, about a cup of mayonnaise splatters across the kitchen floor. So much for being quick, now I've got to get out some paper towels and scoop/wipe this mess up.

But it doesn't end there. I get the sandwiches put together, and head to the pantry to grab some Ziplok bags to put the sandwiches in. I try to pull two bags out of the box that sits on the top shelf. I get one, but in trying to get the second one out, the box falls of the shelf, hitting the ground, and spewing its contents across the floor. Now I've got about 50 Ziplok bags to clean up. I grab them all fairly quickly, but they resist being shoved back into the box. Several of them slip out of my grasp, and I've got to pick them back up. Finally I wrestle them back into the box.

I put the sandwiches in my lunchbag, and start tossing the ingredients back into their places in the cupboard and refrigerator. I'm done right? Not quite. When I toss the ham and cheese into the fridge, they dislodge a bag of shredded carrots from its perch. It falls to the floor and spills its contents too.

Is it Loki? Is it Murphy? I don't know, but it's my life.

The Splash Zone

The lid on my mug wasn't on tight, like I thought it was, so I just dumped half of my 32oz mug full of Dr. Pepper all over myself and my workstation. My shorts are sopping wet, and everything I touch is sticky. I wonder how many weeks it'll be before that stickiness wears off.

Outside the Lines

New episode today. "The Edge of the Map" by Ian Creasey. And also check out our newest contest/promotion on the tail end of the episode.

For fun, I went ahead and changed my profile pic to go with the story.

Children Just Don't Understand

It seems like every person I've ever known who has a screwed-up life, be they my own friends or celebrities or whatever, always blames their messed-up life on their parents. Their parents didn't show them enough love, didn't take them to enough ballgames, didn't buy them enough popcorn at the ballgames that they did take them too, and so on. I wonder how many things these parents did for these nasty kids out of pure love, that they never even knew about or understood.

The reason I wonder is because my daughter lost her tooth yesterday. Back when my oldest son lost his first tooth, my wife, in a fit of spontaneity, gave him not only a dollar for the tooth, but also a box of Junior Mints. This established a precedent for our children. From then on, they would wonder what the heck happened to the Tooth Fairy, and why wasn't she doing what she's always done if they only got a dollar and no candy. So, in an effort to help our children's youth last as long as it can, we've always given both a dollar and some kind of candy treat. (Why the Tooth Fairy is giving candy is a topic for discussion all on it's own. Shouldn't she be promoting good oral health, which eating candy is not a part of? Or maybe it's a nefarious purpose. She wants the kids to lose more teeth, so she can wallpaper her living room with them, or whatever Tooth Fairies do with these teeth they collect).

Anyway, I was editing on the podcast last night. I was determined to get it done before I went to bed. I'm heading out for vacation at the end of the week, so I was running out of time. I ran out of gas somewhere around 1am, but I was still a ways from being done. I kept at it, because I was determined, and finally, bleary-eyed and utterly wasted, I finished editing at 2am. I went to my bedroom, undressed, and just as I was about to hop in bed, I realized that I hadn't taken care of Tooth Fairy duty. I put my clothes back on, and bleary-eyed and utterly wasted, I drove to the 24hr gas station to get her the candy that was expected to come from Fairyland.

I hope, someday, when she thinks it's cool to hate her dad and blame all her ills in life on me, she thinks about things like this, and understands just how much she is and was loved.

Seeing her face first thing in the morning as she marched into our bedroom at 7am to show us what the Tooth Fairy had brought made it all worth it, though. I only wish I hadn't been too tired to open my eyes for more than a split second to look before falling back into a fitful slumber.