Peanutch

For those of you who aren't familiar with musical instruments and might be a little confused my the sizing of these, I'll explain:

The pan flute is sitting in front of ukelele. The ukelele is sitting behind a chromatic harmonica.

Everyone by now knows how crazy I am about my ukelele (well, Isabella's ukelele, but I tune it and play it). Chromatic harmonicas are bigger than diatonic, and will not fit into the palm of your hand like a diatonic would. What many of you might not be aware of, however, is that I can't play a single note of that stupid pan flute. I don't have a flautist's lips, apparently.

Anyway, I meant to post a few days ago, but our internet was acting up. I fixed it by getting rid of my Spycatcher & Spysweeper programs. That's right, programs that are designed to make your internet work without pop-ups and suspicious file transfers that can affect connectivity made my internet not work and cut off my connectivity. Apparently my connection to the outside world was potentially dangerous to my basement computer, while my laptop was living it up with a connection through my router. Stupid technology.

That's also why I wasn't able to get this painting out sooner.

Anyway, for St Patty's Day, Karissa and I went to Fargo to see my Uncle Mark's concert (read a post or two down). Karissa and I got a suite at the Travelodge in Moorhead, which was a very nice room and cheap as hell (employee discount, April knows how sweet that is).

We had quite a bit of time Saturday, so we checked out what Moorhead had to offer for antique stores. The first one we hit looked like a huge shop full of junk hoarded over the years until someone finally decided to put price tags on some of it. I found a great little wooden Spanish ship for the bathroom, and a light fixture with a small bronze statuette of a naked lady which I wanted badly but didn't get (a little expensive for my tastes). I kept thinking that this is one of those buildings Bill Wray would go crazy for. Not very old, but comes with tons of junk in front.

After that, we found an antique mall that had tons of shit in it. On the one hand, I don't like antique malls, because when you leave, you're stuck with the realization that you felt like you only looked at one store, even when you really looked through 4 or 5. On the other hand, in some antique malls, you get lost, or at least are fooled by how much there really is to the store that you didn't originally see. Any store you can get lost in or find hidden rooms in is a store I wanted to keep coming back to. The coolest thing in that place was an old German WWII helmet which cost $350.

Mark's concert was awesome. My mom gave me her camera and had me take pictures while the band was playing. It's a film camera, though, so you'll have to wait until I can get them from her and scan them. After the camera was done, I just stayed up by the stage and got the best view in the house of the whole concert. Sweet Paulie T and the Blues Blasters opened, that was awesome, too. The drummer looked a little like Bill Mosely when he played Rufus Firefly in House of 1,000 Corpses, and I was given a whole new respect for trumpeters after seeing how fast and hard the one in this band played.
I also got to see John "Honeyboy" Hoover doing his harmonica thing up close. I'm not even a smoker, and I have trouble maintaining breath when playing a harmonica, this guy had a cigarette in his hand while he was playing. That's fuckin blues.
It sucks we can't see Mark play again for a while, but I'm excited to see where this new management takes him.
Well, I think I'm gonna go enjoy my Spring Break. I didn't know when it got here, it doesn't affect my work or study schedules in the slightest, but hey--it's officially spring, and that's cause for a little hoohaa.
--Just found out that Dennis Flynn, an old social studies teacher and wrestling coach for Devils Lake, did the other day. Wierd. Oh well. Not to make light of someone dying, but he was a dick and I won't waste my time missing him.
Quick note: Some issues with uploading the new Golden Brown comic. If you can't open the page off the internet, try saving it to your desktop then opening it. I don't know if that'll work, but some people (myself included) have found they couldn't enlarge it. Sorry!

I finally watched Uprising. Karissa & I rented it and it took us a couple days, but I did it. It was made in 2001, and is about the Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. It's one of the few stories/movies that actually made me want to get up and jump the bad guys in the tv (United 93 had the same effect on me).

By the way, if any of you can figure out what movie the title of this post is from, you're probably pretty fucked up for knowing it. It's one of the funniest, wierdest, stupidest movies I have EVER seen. I don't think I have ever laughed at a movie while at the same time feeling just a little disturbed. It's earned a place in my "Doug's greatest movies" list, right up there with 6-String Samurai. I will talk about this movie later, after Jason has seen it. I'm think I might be going for the title. So be warned.