where everything else goes - if i get a life someday, it will be this one

November 4, 2009

bird on a windshield

During the summer of 2001 I was with some students on a mission trip. We went out to the Pine Ridge reservation for a week and then headed to Rocky Mountain National Park for a couple of days.

On the way west across South Dakota a bird flew into the windshield of the 15 passenger van I was driving. During the five days that we were on the reservation, another bird flew into the windshield of the same van, again with me behind the wheel. Both of these birds hit us when we were traveling at about 70 miles/hour on the interstate. They neatly bounced off leaving barely a mark.

After we left South Dakota and had made our way down to Colorado, we were driving on a side street in a residential area when a third bird flew into the windshield of the van I was driving. This time we were only going about 35 and there was much spattering and splattering and the bird didn't quite die on impact.

One night in Rocky Mountain National Park, Sam and I composed a little tune to memorialize the dead birds. It was called Bird on a

Windshield.

Later the next summer as I was getting ready to move away and Sam and I were recording our songs, we sat down in the control room with a single microphone and two guitars. We added it to our CD without telling anyone we had done it and gave copies to our fellow mission team members. Some of them noticed the extra track and told others.

Now you can hear the secret track too by pressing the play button above.

Bird on a Windshield

I'm just a bird on a windshield

Feathers on the wiper

Blood on the glass

Stupid drivers never signal when they pass

I'm just a bird on a windshield

I'm just two birds on the windshield

I'm just three birds on the windshield

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November 4, 2009

hot pants from the archives

Here's something that came up in the shuffle today. It's an instrumental song called Hot Pants that I wrote and recorded with my friend Sam Getz. Sam is a very gifted guitar player who is now on tour with Stephen Kellog and the Sixers (here he is in live bearded mode:

).

Anyway, we recorded this on ADAT tape on a 24 channel Mackie board in a friends' basement studio. Everything is played by Sam and me. His guitar licks are the much better ones. That's me on bass and the occasional mediocre guitar lead. The little repeating guitar licks throughout the song are also played by me.

For the drums I ran a keyboard percussive bass sound through two large speaker cabinets, put the speakers in the booth and recorded them with a single Neumann 287 through a Joemeek mic preamp. We recorded Sam playing the snare separately from the drum fills and cymbals just for the heck of it, and I compressed the crap out of them with the Joemeek and then again in the final mix. The high hat is also a keyboard sample, and was recorded on yet another separate take. Sam was very patient with my eccentricities.

I forget who played the Egg, but they did a darn good job.

I engineered, mixed and produced. This was part of a three song (with a fourth bonus track added) project we did just before I moved from Ohio to PA. We called ourselves Wrath of the Mosquito; it was just a random name we came up with. Maybe later I'll post the bonus track, which is much more low-tech and based on a true story.

But for now, Hot Pants...

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November 2, 2009

pixelpipe works. try it!

For a while I was happy using ping.fm to post my status, microblog and other updates to multiple destinations. When ping started to go wonky a few months back (to be fair, ping.fm has improved significantly since implementing OAUTH a few weeks ago), I tried out hellotxt which offers way more flexibility but rarely works at all. Today I heard about pixelpipe, which I thought was simply a neat iphone app to upload photos to multiple sites. It is that, but as it turns out, it's a whole lot more. Set up your own 'pipes' by choosing from well over 100 services, including friendfeed and posterous. Post updates, microblogs, longer form blog entries, pics and even video. Use routing tags to post to specific services. I haven't really played with the iphone app yet (ironic considering I downloaded and set that up first before browsing pixelpipe.com) so I'm not sure if you can do video that way, but apparently you can push video with pixelpipe's android app. Sweet huh? I'm looking forward to the day when pixelpipe adds more functionality for its routing tags (or maybe that's there already but I haven't found it), but the service works. That's more than I can say for some others.

via Pixelpipe

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November 2, 2009

hellooooo... is this thing on?

via Pixelpipe

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October 31, 2009

I am the Scrooge of Halloween

After this overloaded week of wage slavery, greeting trick or treaters seemed like just another in a long list of unwanted obligations. Since one kid is away with her mother at a band competition and the other kid is spending the night with a trick-or-treating pal, I opted for some Mexican take out (from the excellent Los Aztecas here in Pottstown where the hostess was Halloweened to the nines) and some much needed sermon writing.

So there I was, writing away in a frenzy of theological inspiration, with every outside and inside light turned off save the one on my desk, when I heard adolescent voices outside, approaching the almost completely darkened house from down the street. It sounded like there were maybe three or four of them.

Most of the young trick-or-treaters stayed curbside, but one of them wasn't to be put off by the dark and risky walk to the front door. I could hear him responding to his friends who tried to dissuade him, "why not... why not.... WHY NOT." Clearly this young man was destined to be a lexicographer.

At the front door, he yelled back to his cohorts, "I can see the guy inside." Why yes, I AM sitting inside, I thought. Inside of MY house with most of the lights off and, by the way, no candy. What's it to ya?

Now, I realize that I was being anti-social and that it is Halloween after all, but I thought there was an unspoken rule which specifies that if a house is dark and has not a single Halloween decoration of any kind on it or anywhere near it, trick or treat etiquette dictates that that house be skipped. Plus I had no candy and who wants to answer the door and admit that?

Anyway, the kid never did knock and I didn't answer the door. Eventually he left and I turned the one remaining light off so that the only light in the house was emitted by the screen of the notebook computer on which I am typing this post.

P.S. I finished my sermon and will now go to a lengthy end-of-DST slumber. Goodnight.

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October 23, 2009

we went to Maine!

... plus a few other places. Here are some pics we took.

1. The B&B: Distant Sands in Ogunquit, ME

2. Clam Flats, Ogunquit

3. Panorama of the Hudson River Walkway in Poughkeepsie, NY

4. At least the disaster route is clearly marked

5. Nubble Lighthouse on Cape Neddick, ME -- no trespassing!

6. When in Maine...

7. Not quite alone on the beach, Ogunquit

8. Nubble Lighthouse and Cape Neddick panorama

9. Ocean Spray Ogunquit, ME

10. Sunrise, Ogunquit

11. Dude, it's just a bird

12. Preserve the clam flats, Ogunquit

13. Regatta on the Fore River in Portland, ME

14. A sentinel guards a lamppost in Portland, ME

15. Dunes at sunset, Ogunquit

16. Color! Ogunquit

17. It was brisk in Portland but not THAT cold!

Posted from ME, Ogunquit, ME and 1 more locations

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October 16, 2009

A guy just showed up

A guy just showed up at the bakery who lives on the route I will deliver tomorrow. He has no idea who I am. For some strange reason, I take a small amount of pleasure in this.

via hellotxt

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October 7, 2009