More photos

We have been getting hit with evening thunderstorms. There is plenty of moisture in the air, the ground is saturated and when it gets up into the 90s thunderheads start to build up. We are not having storms this evening, but we had some humdingers yesterday and the day before, including what might have been tornadoes down east of here.

Two days ago we had nice blue skies filled with puffy white clouds:

Well, as nice as that looks things can change:

The clouds built up and the sky got dark:

Stawm's a comin':

That last one is the one I wanted to post - that vertical streak was caused by a lightning strike - no, that's not the actual lightning, rather, it is the change in brightness recorded by the backplane sensor in my cell phone while I was taking a panorama shot of the sky. You might think "Good timing", rather it was hard not to get a picture of lighting in that storm. Now think about some wood chip and sawdust covered guy who doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain, standing in his back yard dodging lightning bolts. Yep, that's true dedication.

Tonight's musical interlude:

What else?

Glenn Gould has an odd vocal affect but what he says is brilliant and still rings true. Bonus points for identifying the host at 5:26.

So there I was, out in the shop...

...working, and I heard Beethoven's 5th symphony on the radio. I listen to the local station, WCPE (no relation to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, mind you) and after reading and thinking about architecture so much over the last couple of days I was reminded of one of my favorite Simpsons episodes, wherein - well, rather than describing it, see for yourself:

Link.

This two minutes and forty nine seconds sums up both how Gehry works and how his work is received by the public. That's nice work, boys...

And for those of you who would like to follow along at home WCPE has a website and all kind of up-to-date ways for people all over the world to listen to their musical offerings. They are commercial-free, all classical all the time, and are listener supported only - no state money, no university ties, just whatever people chip in. Give them a listen - I don't always like everything they play but it is rare that their selections are truly annoying. Today they celebrated the birthday of Erik Satie - click. Never need to listen to anything by him again, ever. But most of the time it is totally copacetic.

KLEM FM

Ein kleines bisschen Horrorschau...

link

Chip mentioned A Clockwork Orange and I mentioned Nadsat - the language used by the teens. Two Nadsat words appear in die Toten Hosen's song Hier Kommt Alex: Horrorshow and droogs. Burgess chose them for ironic effect.

Lyrics with English translation after the jump

"‘Calibration issue’ pops up on Maryland voting machines"

“When I first selected my candidate on the electronic machine, it would not put the ‘x’ on the candidate I chose — a Republican — but it would put the ‘x’ on the Democrat candidate above it,” Donna Hamilton said."

“This happened multiple times with multiple selections. Every time my choice flipped from Republican to Democrat. Sometimes it required four or five tries to get the ‘x’ to stay on my real selection,” the Frederick, Md., resident said last week."



Is a snug outfit conducive to better playing I wonder.

Top YouTube comment...
it is amazing how in 2 centuries, music has regressed to the likes of justin bieber and one direction. you would thought human evolution would be able to produce much better than that.