So after a long time, I finally restarted ColonialHoops, my GW basketball blog, on blogspot - colonialhoops.blogspot.com. Hopefully it's a temporary move and the other site will get fixed. Check it out if you like seeing Pops Mensah-Bonsu dunk, or are bored.

so this is another reason why I liked Wikipedia. This was in the article about Loudon County, Tennessee, the county next to mine. I should note that I didn't write this.

Little known outside of the area of Loudon, Tennessee is an incident where the Nazi army invaded the small American town in an attempt to seize large amounts of the advanced technology of Atlantis. Adolf Hitler theorized that Atlantis had in fact sunk underground where Loudon was built on top of.

General Stephen Douglas, who also ran for the presidency under the Democratic ticket, commanded Allied forces while Felix the Cat, a cartoon character of the 1920s, headed the Nazi army.

When the town was faced with the blitzkrieg, panic erupted amongst the startled townspeople, mostly consisting of white Baptists and some niggers. As the Luftwaffe bombarded local churches and bars, General Douglas summoned the power of Godzilla, who easily swatted the planes from the air. As Godzilla's attempts to stop the Nazis proved to be fruitful, local folklore says the Felix the Cat screamed "BRIDENKREUGMENTARGENZ." Loudonians have sinced named a street accordingly in a mainly Hispanic neighborhood.

However, the Nazis exposed Godzilla's weakness as being blues music. They imported a famous Scotish blues singer, Smitty McWetBiscuits, who graciously wailed on a nearby church organ. Godzilla exploded in sound waves which secured the fact that all Loudonians contract testicular cancer (even in females) for the next four centuries. McWetBiscuits' gracious wailing was ended abruptly by Bruce Lee who just demanded plainly that he stop.

The battle ensued for over three months, the forces of Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, Great Britain, and the USSR even being included in it. The battle ended when Jesus Christ emerged from the Heavens with the ancient Atlantian technology in hand. He forced each of the armies to their respective countries with a quirking of the brow and then erased everyone's memory with the help of an android Bigfoot nearby. This story is also told in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, the Book of Mormon, and by indigeous Indian tribes in South Africa.

So I got an mp3 in my email by this new band, Illinois. I really like it.

The name of the band reminds me of Sufjan Stevens, as does the production - really lush and rich, a big sound. They have a debut EP coming out soon on Ace Fu Records, with 4 of the 7 songs on their Myspace. They play fuzzy, semi-poppy indie, superficially like Weezer crossed with the Arcade Fire, but on repeated listens a lot more influences and bits come out. They're pretty hard to pin down, the four songs on Myspace are all 2 to 3 minutes and super-listenable but all different, reminiscent of a dozen other good bands - the singer's voice reminds me a little of the guy from Placebo, there's a bit of Ash's grandiose power pop on "One on One," rumbling fuzz, sing alongs and a little Neutral Milk Hotel on "Screen Door," some doo-doos and woo-hoo-hoos, and slower post-rock on "Alone Again." I was happy to listen to them over and over to try to figure out what else it reminded me of. They'll be at SXSW and it's hard to say whether a band will get some buzz or not, but they deserve to.

MP3: "Screen Door"

so I love the Fat Boys



I even wrote the Disorderlies article on Wikipedia

so I set up a webcam showing the view from my window towards Logan Circle. I'm doing it through Camstreams.com, which does free webcam streaming, pretty awesome.

Check it out below, and it's also at logancirclecam.camstreams.com

Free Live Webcams - solution by Camstreams

Not Coffee
Originally uploaded by merdeglace.

So I like coffee drinks. Espresso based stuff, lattes, mochas, etc. I've noticed though that a few times when I order a mocha, they give me a hot chocolate. It's happened a few places, the Au Bon Pain at Union Station, the Starbucks on U and 13th. I mean, it's easier to make and I guess they expect people not to notice, but it's annoying. I like the bite from the espresso, and it's pretty easy to notice when it's not there.

Unfortunately I don't usually drink it until I've walked a ways, because it's hot, so I usually don't go back. The one time I did at the ABP, and the manager knew who did it immediately. It's pretty lame. Anybody else have this problem? I mean, if I order a beer at a bar, I expect not to get an O'Douls or something.

so I write about this every year: Valentine's Day is the stupidest holiday. You're supposed to buy your loved one crap they don't need, like teddy bears, boxes of chocolate, or jewelry, then take them out to eat at a restaurant that is two or three times as expensive, and two or three times as packed, as it normally would be. No thanks, I'm good.

It's such a vapid, commercialized holiday - how is being forced to buy somebody something because everybody else is doing it an expression of love? You should do nice things for your loved one whenever, not when some stupid holiday tells you to. I keep seeing ads for Vermont Teddy Bears - those motherfuckers are expensive! $60 and up! What, is it full of gold or something? Is it life size? Does it actually walk around and roar and grab salmon out of rivers? I might pay $60 for that.

I'm single, but I could care less about that. But another crappy thing about this holiday is that I always see people who are single feeling worse about themselves. Wow, great holiday, let's have more like that. "Hey everybody, it's feel shitty day! Let's have the opposite of a party!" Good thing Valentines Day doesn't come around every month.

so my other blog is down, but Dan Steinberg from the Washington Post's Sports Bog wrote a great piece on the GW women's baskteball team, which is ranked #8 in the country but only draws 627 fans. That's pitiful. It's pretty funny stuff, and it makes me want to go see them.

so I'm from Knoxville, TN. It's an alright place. But now there's all kinds of crazy, hilarious, and bizarre political shenanigans going on - we're talking Boss Hogg/Tammany Hall style. For the longest time, Sheriff Tim Hutchinson has had a sort of political machine in the county - he is kind of the boss of various politicians, has been involved in scandals, and so on, but nothing outright comical.

Now, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court finally ruled that the county government has to abide by a term limits law that the citizens passed in 1994. The politicians had been ignoring it and using various goofy defenses against it - they even tried to cancel the county charter. This means that Sheriff Tim, all his cronies, and most of the county commission will be out of a job soon. So with all legal remedies exhausted, they decided that rather than resign and hold elections, they'd do something else - appoint surrogates.

Commissioner Diane Jordan nominated her son Josh, who mows lawns for a living. Mark Cawood nominated his wife. Craig Leuthold's dad was appointed. Comission chair "Scoobie" Moore appointed his treasurer. Sheriff Tim appointed his chier deputy as sheriff, and he turned around and appointed Tim as chief deputy. And "Lumpy" Lambert asked another nominee to vote for his buddy in exchange for a seat on the commission. He refused, at least.

This stuff would be infuriating if it weren't so comical. It's genuine backwoods political shenanigans that really puts Knoxville in a good light, right up there with the time Knoxville Councilman Cas Walker was on the front of Life Magazine punching another city councilman (pitcured above).

But these shenanigans didn't come out of nowhere. A few years ago, they wrote up a nice resolution saying goodbye to a former councilwoman. However, the Metro Pulse reported that the first letter of each line spelled out "fat ass bitch". Of course, they all denied knowing this, and nobody admitted to writing the resolution.

Here's a good editorial, and for more, see the Knoxville News-Sentinel (who I think described it as "a circus where at any time, Boss Hogg of the Dukes of Hazzard was expected to enter the room") and Wikipedia.

so I heard this new band somewhere, the Fratellis, and I really like them. They're Scottish and if you wanted to compare them to a recent band, I'd say the Libertines were a good fit. However, to me they sound a lot more like the Jam or Stiff Little Fingers - loose, high energy, punky rock. The singer's voice also sounds a lot like a combo of the lead singers of those two bands, Paul Weller and Jake Burns.

Their Myspace has four songs, all of which are pretty good, with "Guterrati" the most Stiff Little Fingers-ish, and "Flathead," which is also on an iTunes commercial, which is more Jam-my.

And here's "Chelsea Dagger", which I think is their single. There's a video of them performing it too.

They only have an EP out in the US so far, their album comes out 3-3-07.