Comparative Reality

And moving from funk to synth-pop: Ladytron. Who decided that sticking with the Witching Hour formula was a good idea, and I'm not going to fault them for that.

And darned if I don't agree with Pitchfork's review of the new album.

(As a geeky aside, I was listening to "Black Cat" a lot while coming up with the idea for my latest D & D character.)

Music: I know something about it, and my taste is verifiably better than yours.

(If pressed, I'll admit that I know less than I'd like to, and I'd point to people who know far, far more than I do. But at the moment, I'll admit no such thing.)

I figure that I can recommend at least one band every week. So this was going to be the Weekly Music Recommendation, but I think I can come up with a few this week.

First: King Khan and the Shrines. Retro funk/garage rock, and damned if they don't pour themselves into the music. Khan himself is...let's say that he's a bit of a showman.

Finally, they have an album available in the States.

And for Oso: A horn section!

In a recent post, Rekiwi admitted that he communes with devils, he burns plastic bags, he votes Republican out of spite, and he has a large, gold-framed portrait of Dick Cheney (on velvet, of course) hanging over his bed. At least, according to some dude in a Home Depot parking lot.

But, honestly, how can we assume that said dude is not an objective observer of the truth? Obviously, we must extend him the benefit of the doubt.

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Some painfully bad designs came out of the 60s, but this ain't one of 'em.

But they only built two. And they're both gone.

That's just unfair.

But at least they took pictures.

EDIT: And, uh...one in a museum. I was sure that I read somewhere that the remaining plane was scrapped. Damned unreliable Internet! Just one more reason to visit Wright-Patterson.

One bad idea is to say to yourself, "Before I go to bed, maybe I'll check out that NASA images site again..."

And then you really don't want to wander to, say, the Aeronautics section.

Because you'll just end up ogling beautiful pictures of beautiful aircraft. For way the hell too long. But, come on, you can't just find something like this and then stop, can you?

Not if you have any interest in aircraft, you can't.

Because then you'll come across this (with the B-24 in the background!). And this great group shot. And then maybe this one (stripped of that great paint job? Blashphemy!).

Then maybe you'll find a formation of late-50s Century Series fighters. And zoom in to gaze at the detail for a while.

If you're lucky, you'll realize that it's midnight, and you've only gotten 1/3 of the way through the pages. And call it a day.

Or a night.

Or, really, the next day.