The Pharyngula Mutating Genre

The Pharyngula Mutating Genre

Anon has tagged me for The Pharyngula mutating genre meme.There are a set of questions below that are all of the form:"The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…".Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations: You can leave them exactly as is. You can delete any one question. You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…" to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is…", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...". You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…". You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My Ancestry:

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.

My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.

My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.

My great-great-great-great-grandparent is archy.

My great-great-great-grandparent is Why Now?

My great-great-grandparent is Hipparchia.

My great-grandfathers are Archaeopteryx and Kiefus.

My grandfather is Catnapping.

My Mom is BirdAnonymous

My version of the questions:

• The best silly movie in comedy is: Young Frankenstein.

• The worst earworm in pop music is: Short People, by Randy Newman.

• The best alt-country album in country music is: Wailin Jennys, 40 Days.

To keep the meme alive, I'm passing it along to:

Another Tangential Thinker

Terry's Timeout

Who really cares anyway

My Avatar

Finally, Thanks to Ces, I am going to have an avatar. I couldn't figure out how to do this on my own, but Ces has made it seemingly simple. The first step of the Ces method is to publish the photo in a post. Since I don't have a painting of myself done by Ces, this is what I'd like to use, so here goes nothin!

Whale of a gift

I am a woodworker, this is my creative outlet of choice. I love designing and building furniture, but I also love the little personal things, that are fun to create. Things like signs, jewelry boxes, bird houses, frames, etc. At Christmastime, I love to give things I've made, if I can manage the time. One year I had visited a woodworking gallery with my girlfriend's parents. They had a lot of beautiful things there. Karen, my partner's mother, had expressed an interest in the napkin rings shaped like animals. They were basically flat cut outs of animals with a hole bored into them to hold a napkin. She said, "I'd love some napkin rings of whales, and if someone were to make them for me, I would need eight". This seemed like a pretty direct hint to me. She and her husband Jim had recently purchased a home on a cliff overlooking the Ocean in Northern California. They had to finish it, and they did so with natural maple moldings with cherry pegs. Even the kitchen was all cherry pegged maple. I decided to make the whales out of maple, with cherry pegs for eyes. I started by joining some maple planks together, then cut them into blocks. I designed them so the hole would not be through the whale, but where his tail would curl around to hold the napkin. I bored a napkin ring sized hole through the block, sketched out the shape of the whale, and then my girlfriend Elizabeth (who sanded a ton, and was a big help) and I, removed all the material that was not part of the whale. After we were done carving, we sanded them smooth, then waxed them. It was fun to do, and even more fun to give!

Still Wet Behind the Ears

This is me trying to figure out how to make a movie out of a series of pictures and add sound to it, the way Bird Anon does so well. I took these shots of some bluebirds through my mother's kitchen window last winter when they came out of their houses to eat some of the sumac we tied up in the tree.

I'm Famous?!

Susan Norfleet http://youtube.com/watch?v=3nnOqVgTsXY is an extremely intelligent, sharp witted, articulate comedian. I had been reading Susan's blog "Fairy Lady" regularly. Then she began writing for another blog I read often called "Queersighted" This is an AOL sponsored link from the AIM homepage. Yesterday I read Susan's post Christian "Think" Tank: Isn't That Special As always she made me laugh and laugh. She is brilliant! I left a comment, and she responded with a question. I responded back, and today I am featured prominently in her post A Side of Pride Fries With That Please. If you'd like to go check out my handiwork here's the link http://www.queersighted.com/?icid=one_click.M I am very excited about it!

A Glorious Fall Day

Today was a GOOD day. I am working in Westfield these days in my parent's new house. They have down sized and the house is well built, but very poorly decorated. I have been stripping wallpaper, washing and skimming walls. Removing casing at the top of walls meant to look like crown molding, sanding and taping woodwork in preparation for paint. Every inch will need to be painted. My mother (an interior designer) dislikes all the colors and finishes. I agree of course!

During a break, I decided to call that Indian mechanic, I got the number for the other day. He was friendly and knowledgeable. He told me that the oil leaking from Lucille was normal given the time she sat, so I can ride her. I was very happy.

I worked a while longer and decided since the universe was smiling on me today, I might call this woman I met back in February and ask her out. I have seen her on several occasions since we first met, but was never sure whether she was single or not. I've been trying to find out, but have been unsuccessful. The thought of rejection has frozen me for quite some time, but recently I saw a movie called "Train Man: Densha Otoko" It was a wonderful story about a socially inept computer geek who meets a woman on a train, and with the help of his Internet community asks her out and actually goes on a date with her, and then another, etc. If you don't mind subtitles, I highly recommend it! Not that I am in any way a socially inept computer geek, but his network of friends did remind me of this blogging community. Anyway, that also helped give me the courage to call and ask, and now we have a date. This may not seem like a big deal, but I have been so busy trying to get my business going, I haven't been on a date in nearly two years! :0

I feel optimistic, possibilities abound. This is the good stuff.

Service or Lip Service?

Thursday was a beautiful day here, and I know there aren't many of those left this year, so I thought I'd blow the dust off my Indian. All my tools and materials are already at the job site, so I could travel light. It's been a while since I to took Lucille for a ride, so I had her on the charger. I attempted to start her up, but I forgot the choke for the first few attempts, and by the time I remembered it was too late. I put her back on the charger, and decided to try again tomorrow. Then I glanced down at the floor and saw a puddle of oil forming. Oh crap! This is how she treats me when I don't take her out. Lucille hates to just sit. I haven't had any work done since I moved here from California, so I have not located a mechanic yet. This can be difficult, as they don't make Indians anymore, so there are no dealerships.

Indian was the first American motorcycle manufactured in 1901 in Springfield, MA They built bikes for the war, they built bikes for the police, and in 1953 shut down. In 1998, they reappeared, now built in Gilroy California until 2003 when they shut back down. Mine is a 2000.

I decided to stop at the nearby Harley Davidson shop to see if anyone in their service dept. was familiar with Indian. I waited quite a while at the service desk when finally one of the mechanics arrived, and asked if he could help me.

"I hope so, I'm wondering if anyone here knows their way around an Indian." I said almost pleadingly.

"Is it a REAL Indian, or a California Indian?" He snorted.

I was taken aback slightly, and all I could think was, what are the chances that I would come to a Harley dealership to have a 1953 or older collector's item worked on? So after a pause, I said, "You're kind of a jerk aren't you? I come in here asking for help, and you insult me. That must be good for business."

Now he was taken slightly aback, probably because he didn't expect a woman to stand up for herself. "I'll go ask" he said. Which left me wondering, was he going to ask if he's a jerk, or whether anyone can fix my bike? When he disappeared another woman who was in service waiting area, approached me and told me she knew a guy who works on Indians. She wrote down his name and number for me, and I thanked her very much, and left.

As a business owner, I am always appalled at this kind of treatment, and it leaves me with a very negative feeling for the whole shop, and a little tainted toward Harley Davidson, all because of one rude, disrespectful dolt!