Someone actually made a recipe for lembas bread, from the Lord of the Rings. I really want to try making this stuff.

My friend Wes pointed out this essay about the merits of the Empire in Star Wars. It's oddly persuasive.

Interesting essay on Exotica. I still prefer the book, by David Toop. David Toop also did a very good book about Hip Hop, called Rap Attack 3 and one about Ambient music, called Ocean of Sound.

Reading Elevator Music by Joseph Lanza. If you are interested in odd or strange music, you should get your hands on this book.

A reviewer on Amazon said this:

"He also digs up many enlightening facts--for instance, that the term canned music was coined by John Philip Souza, and that the Muzak Corporation is based in Seattle, capital of the grunge-rock movement, and the founders of the grunge record label Sub Pop once worked for it."

Listening to tri repetae++ by Autechre. Probably some of the oddest, glitch filled music ever made.

I actually made, and ate, a salad today.

I also made some fettucine with alfredo sauce and a baked chicken breast with Singapore seasoning.

The cleaning yet continues. Hopefully soon the house will actually be presentable for company. The whole house, not just certain rooms.

So, funny story.

I had to go the Defensive Driving classes on Saturday at the Ramada Inn in Fayetteville to make sure that the speeding ticket that I got stays off my record, so my insurance doesn't go up and all that. Early Saturday morning, and I'd had no sleep because I stayed up late reading LOTR. So we start the class, and the instructor is this basically good old boy typically overweight cop. Nice guy, but a bit gruff. So he warns the class that he doesn't want anyone falling asleep, so I say to myself "oh crap, better try to stay awake." I can't exactly remember his name, but we'll call him Officer Thomas. So he continues with the class, we watch a video, have a discussion. Then we take a break. We get back, and he starts a class discussion again, and then he wanders up the aisle and points at someone and says "you better stay awake."

So we're having another class discussion, and then he says "does someone have their cell phone on vibrate?" We all look around at each other. Nope. "Is someone sleeping?" We all look at each other. No one is sleeping. "Quiet. Do you guys hear snoring?" We all listen, and this guy is the front row says "I think it's coming from under that table!" and points to this table at the front of the room by the window with this floor length white tablecloth on it. Officer Thomas goes over and lifts up the edge of the tablecloth and says "Do you want to join us?" This still probably quite drunk guy stumbles out, and says "Sorry Officer Thomas. I didn't want to interrupt your class, so I wanted to sneak out when you let everybody have a break, but not everybody left the room." Seems he got drunk at a party the night before and then instead of walking home drunk and cold, he slept under the table in that conference room. Then he stumbled out of the room.

The whole class busted up laughing. Officer Thomas said "I've never experienced something like that in 20 years of teaching this class."

And that made a pretty dreary day kind of funny.