what are Mandolin Brothers smoking?

This from their website, and many more similarly strange blurbs lurk there too:

VINTAGE NEWS – OPEN BACK FIVE-STRING BANJOS
THE FEAGLE – OLD TIMEY ICON – FISHIE FROM THE PAST
A visitor to our Website (www.mandoweb.com) writes: “What is that critter engraved on the headstock of some A. C. Fairbanks and Vega banjos — the guy with an eagle’s head and the body of a snailfish? I thought it was a griffon (or gryphon) but the dictionary says that’s an eagle-lion crossbreed. – Bob Stepno, University of North Carolina. Bob wondered if this should be called a “Seagle” instead, for sea creature & eagle, but felt it sounded too much like “seagull”. We replied: It’s a “feagle” for fishie-eagle. We know this because we have obtained a bit of Albert Conant Fairbanks’ DNA (from when he had scraped himself on a bracket nut) and cloned him and have already set him up (a crude system but he remains upright and it works) in an old frame factory building in Boston, staffed with people who come to work every day in Victorian clothing. We tell him “The fire never happened. You still own the company.” Clones’ll believe anything. In his day feagles were prevalent. There were millions of ’em. They could swim and/or fly. They could eat plankton or small woodland animals. Unfortunately, in those days feagles were themselves eaten by banjo players and driven extinct. They tasted like soft-shell crab (this was in the days before soft-shell crab was eaten, because tartar sauce hadn’t been invented yet). Anybody with more information on feagles is welcome to send in (or email) what they know. For instance, we know that feagles wore tiny plaid sports jackets yet A. C. Fairbanks chose to depict them naked. What was he thinking?

not so shuffley

Coincidence, I know, but what’s the odds that, out of more than 460 songs, my nano just played “The Continental”, followed by “Cheat” – both by The Sadies, but different versions of the same tune from different albums? Whoah!

hey livejournal, quit claiming my content

Read this. Oddly familiar, huh? It would seem that LiveJournal is republishing my blog on its own site http://syndicated.livejournal.com/wesawachicken/.

The thing about syndicated publishing is that the author has at least given permission that it takes place. I gave LiveJournal no such permission. Sure, I have a public RSS feed, but I don’t expect people just to grab my whole site and publish it for their own ends. That’s not syndication, it’s theft.
They also have the gall to claim there’s a “syndicated user” wesawachicken. Again, I didn’t set that up. I wonder if I can make it implode by getting it to syndicate its own feed?

providing cannon fodder for empire since 1867

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the toll of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan is the price Canada is paying for playing a leadership role in world affairs.

I reckon that if I took a random street poll anywhere (anywhere outside Canada, that is), no more than 3 out of 10 people would consider Canada as having a leadership role. I do not wish to make light of the soldiers’ plight; I just don’t want them there in my name.

(I was going to make a comment about the nearest thing to a role to most Canadians would be a Swiss Chalet 1/4 chicken dinner, but that doesn’t work in a written context, and barely works when spoken.)

music of 2005

It’s getting towards the end of the year, so I’m thinking about what albums I enjoyed most. These are the 2005 albums I have in my collection:

  • A Hawk And A Hacksaw — Darkness At Noon
  • Aimee Mann — The Forgotten Arm
  • Animal Collective — Feels
  • Beck — Guero
  • Bettye Lavette — I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise
  • Bright Eyes — Digital Ash In a Digital Urn
  • Bright Eyes — I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning
  • Calexico / Iron & Wine — In the Reins
  • Caribou — Marino Audio
  • Dan Jones — Get Sounds Now
  • The Decemberists — Picaresque
  • Deerhoof — The Runners Four
  • Devendra Banhart — Cripple Crow
  • Dressy Bessy — Electrified
  • The Duhks — The Duhks
  • Eels — Blinking Lights And Other Revelations
  • Fiona Apple — Extraordinary Machine
  • Gorillaz — Demon Days
  • Grandaddy — Excerpts From The Diary Of Todd Zilla
  • Jennifer Gentle — Valende
  • John Parish — Once Upon a Little Time
  • Kate Bush — Aerial
  • Kate Rusby — The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly
  • Kimberley Rew — Essex Hideaway
  • Lazerlove5 — Flicker Mask
  • Lemon Jelly — ‘64–‘95
  • The Lollipop People — We Need a New F-Word
  • Malcolm Middleton — Into The Woods
  • Marbles — Expo
  • The Mountain Goats — The Sunset Tree
  • My Morning Jacket — Z
  • Of Montreal — The Sunlandic Twins
  • Sigur Rós — Takk …
  • Sleater-Kinney — The Woods
  • Sufjan Stevens — Illinois
  • The Vanity Project
  • Wolf Parade — Apologies to the Queen Mary

I know there are some that won’t make my list (Aerial, for one) but the rest of them all have their moments.