Scare Tactics

I've seen some strange spam, most of it sexual in nature, but this one is just about the strangest I've ever seen. It came from "Expess Pharmacy" and in the subject line was this:

I don't know what could cause that (outside of getting on the bad side of Lorena Bobbitt), but I sure don't want it happening to me. I don't use mine for much, but I'm still fond of it.   I'm attached to it and I want it to remain attached to me.

Egypt Blocks YouTube

I normally don't delve into serious news or into religious issues, but when I read this earlier: Egypt court orders YouTube blocked for a month I had to see what all the fuss was about.  It seems the Egyptians are all butt-hurt over a movie, Innocence of Muslims.  I won't embed it, but here's the trailer (with a disclaimer by YouTube).

The following content has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive or inappropriate. Viewer discretion is advised.

The full-length movie has also been uploaded, so if you want to see it before it's taken down, you'd best hurry.

Those Muslims...they're always getting their panties in wad over something trivial in the grand scheme of things.   I see Christianity mocked all the time, from frequent segments on Family Guy and American Dad! to "artists" calling a crucifix in urine "art".  You didn't see ME rioting in the streets and you never will.  I doubt I'll ever even dash off an an angry email to the network.  I'm damn sure not blowing myself up and/or killing someone over it.

Oh well, what can you expect from a bunch of savages? I've done a lot of reading on Islam, but everything I really ever needed to know I learned on 9/11.

Someone better not tell them about THESE two videos;  they'd really get all bent out of shape.

King Tut - Steve Martin


Little Egypt - Elvis Presley

Igor Presnyakov

One of my newest subscribed-to channels on YouTube and rapidly becoming one of my favorites. Igor Presnyakov covers all sorts of tunes, from Metallica to Adele, from AC/DC to The Beatles in an inimitable fashion. If you like songs played with a finger-style guitar, then be sure to give Igor's channel a try!

From his official website: 

Born in Moscow, Russia, Igor Presnyakov studied classical music at a nearby academy and would eventually graduate as both a guitarist and a conductor for ensembles. He relocated to the Netherlands to further his career, which has now spanned over 35 years. His unique acoustic guitar-style is influenced by various musical genres from Reggae, Rock and Roll, R&B, Country-western, Jazz and Heavy Metal. His most noticeable attribute, is his creative style of “beating” the percussion of the song, onto the body of his acoustic guitar while playing. This replicates the sound of multiple musicians, while only Igor is playing. While he sometimes sings on many of his original and cover-songs, Igor is more famous for mimicking the vocal parts of a song, into guitar-solos, while often adding a softer, jazzier sound.

Igor’s popularity has risen since he first debuted on YouTube in 2007. He currently has over 132 million total upload views, in addition to over 256,000 subscribers.

I could have embedded any one of his 244 videos (at the time of this writing) but this is one of his latest and most beautiful.

Here Comes the Sun

For The Record, I'm a Guy

Not so sure about the rest of it, but....

You Are a Girl or Guy Next Door

You are as all American as apple pie, and you're so normal that you belong in a TV sitcom. And really, that's a pretty great thing. You're a solid person, and you pride yourself on being quite down to earth. You value your friends and family, and you don't need much in life to be content. You feel grateful for what you have. You are honest and you have a great work ethic. You believe in giving back as much as you can.

What's Your Stereotype?

Here's my favorite stereotype:

wiseGEEK Widgets

From wiseGeek, a couple of great widgets for your blog or website.

Did You Know?

This Day in History

I follow the site on Facebook as well as subscribe to it in my reader. They have all sorts of categories with some fascinating facts (and to be honest, some NOT so fascinating) For example, from today's posts, this question is posed:

Why Does It Hurt to Pull Off an Adhesive Bandage? They give you the explanation and also ask if you knew this fact: Did you know about 1.5 million injuries a year are caused by removing adhesive bandages? It's not just trivia; in this case, they explain the most pain-free way of removing a bandage.

Great site, great widgets!

Amazon Cloud

I got this email from Amazon the other day:

You may have noticed that songs from 11 CDs you have purchased from Amazon were added to your Cloud Player library. This means that high-quality MP3 versions of these songs are available for you to play or download from Cloud Player for FREE. You can find your songs in the "Purchased" playlist.

In addition, we're excited to announce AutoRip. Now when you buy any CD with the logo, the MP3 version of that album will instantly be delivered to your Amazon Cloud Player library for FREE.

I've been aware of the Cloud Player, but since I don't have a device (other than this computer) to play my songs on, I didn't use it.  I download free music from Amazon all the time and have purchased quite a few mp3 albums as well as a dozen or so CDs.  I can't remember when they started the Cloud feature, but I reached the limit quite some time back and deleted a lot of the songs that were in my Cloud as so to make room for new ones.  I already had them on my computer and couldn't see the need for my Cloud except as backup. 

It's nice that my purchased CD tunes are now in my Cloud. That will save me from having to rip the music to add to my mp3 jukebox.

On my Cloud page it says I have room for 250 more songs.  I could get more space if I bought it, but...The best thing about it is that it's much easier to download the songs now.  The settings were confusing and seemed to change on their own and when I got new songs, they sometimes didn't download to my computer but were instead put into my Cloud  Here's what's in my Cloud right now.

There are some duplicates in my mp3 jukebox, but I've been working to get rid of them. Some are dupes that happen to be on two albums by a particular artist or band and some are freebies I got from Amazon that happened to be in different collections. At last count, I had over 21,000 songs. Before updates to Windows Media Player, it tallied up the total size and time of all the mp3 files and I had enough to listen to music non-stop for a couple of weeks.