Things I want that I will probably never have:

A string section at my beck and call. Seriously. Massed strings are absolutely beautiful.

A castle. Without the peasants.

A mogwai. No gremlins, though.

Glow-in-the-dark orbs for mood lighting. Preferably green and blue.

A hovercraft.

I've been making a fair bit of sushi lately (I even made some after work tonight), and I've hit upon a very good recipe for sushi rice. In your pot, add 2 parts sushi or short grain rice to 1 part jasmine rice. Add water until it's about an inch above your rice. Then cook until the water starts to disappear. Turn off the heat and put a cover on your rice. Add some rice vinegar, some salt and a little sugar. After about 10 minutes it's ready for plating for cooling.

My favorite roll is to use some imitation crab meat, some smoked salmon, avocado and cream cheese. It's nummirific.

This link is some guy lambasting the Fox News idiots over the so-called 'War on Christmas' over-hyped rhetoric bullshit. Filthy, but hilarious.

A short little taste:

That’s right, that Yuletide cheer you’re spreading? What exactly do you think Yule is? It's the fucking Pagan celebration of solstice. And those “Christmas” traditions? They’re not just like Pagan rituals, they fucking are Pagan rituals. Way before your Jesus got all magical with the bread and fishes, the Romans were celebrating the birth of Mithra on . . . guess? Go on – guess. December fucking twenty fifth. What a weird coincidence. Practically the whole thing is ripped off from the fucking Druids and the Romans. Twelve days? Check. Exchanging gifts? Check. Mistletoe? Check. And you’d better fucking believe that those decorated trees that Gibson and Co. are so bent out of shape over are as Pagan as the Rune and Crystal Shack at Pentagramfest 2005. You might as well be building miniature fucking Stonehenges in your den.

I found the whole thing incredibly hilarious.

In other news, pomellos kind of suck. They're like slightly less tart grapefruits with incredibly thick skins. Ugh.

Listening to Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabete's new album, In The Heart of the Moon. I love all sorts of music from Africa, but the music from Mali has to be my favorite. It's so rhythmic, melodic, stately, beautiful. It touches this spot in my heart that nothing else really does. It's like a cold glass of water, quenches a thirst I didn't even know I had. Hard to believe that it's only a gourd and some strings, and a guitar.

So, apparently I'm old and out of touch, and not really connected to the whole 'Indie rock', or 'hipster doofus' scene as I like to call it.

But...

Through some wandering through Myspace, I found a band called Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. They're hella cool. Very catchy. I highly recommend you give them a listen if you want to hear something that kind of makes you hum, or bob your head up and down.

Oh yeah, they're going to be on Conan O'brien on the 16th.

Kind of reminds me of the Talking Heads (I'm sure everyone says that), but it also kind of reminds me of the Lemonheads. Not in and of themselves, but there was a time not so incredibly long ago when I was somehow cooler (it's that whole 'slack' thing again), and listened to power pop punk bands. I was even known to get crazy in a mosh pit or two.

It kind of makes me sad to think about what's happened to Fayetteville. Or maybe it's just me. I was very innocent when I came here. I'm not saying I'm not innocent now, but I'm definitely very much more crochety and curmudgeonly.

Holy crap! Amy Yasbeck is on Craig Ferguson's show.

I hate to do this to you people, and I'm obviously pandering to my wife's tastes here, but if you're day is kind of crappy and you REALLY need to see some cute photos of some bunnies, hamsters, kittens, puppies, or some combination of them all, go here. Nothing else of substance here today. Move along.