14 January

Division by Zero is possible after all!

Division by Zero (Volume One)OK, it’s not. But my latest musical creation, the 3-song EP ÷0 [Division by Zero] (Volume One), now has an official release date of January 15, 2008, and I’ve submitted it via TuneCore for online distribution through iTunes and a few other services. It will probably begin to show up in their catalogs sometime in March; I’ll post more about availability as I learn about it. In the meantime, you can read more about the project (and listen to medium-quality streaming versions of all of the tracks) here.

Also, special thanks to my spitting-image son for acting as a stand-in for my 1978 self in the cover photo taken (last summer) in one of my favorite places from that time, Two Harbors, Minnesota.

I’m a portmanteau-et and I didn’t even know it

Lewis CarrollI’ve been familiar with the term portmanteau for a while, although it had never occurred to me until this moment that, with my own personal tendency to combine words (at least in my head; I usually have the wherewithal to keep the results to myself), this is in fact what I am creating. (I had been carelessly and, knowing I was misusing the word, with some hint of regret referring to these habitual creations as puns.)

Certainly I do not have Mr. Dodgson’s gift for them, but still, it’s interesting to consider the potential of such hybrid words.

What’s that Smell?

Today has been an interesting day. I arrived at work this morning to notice that the strange smell some of us perceived yesterday in the office was even stronger today, and generally was of the natural gas variety. We called the gas company and they sent someone out to inspect our equipment. He found no gas leaks, and informed us that it was his “educated guess” that there was a dead animal somewhere in the building.

Sure enough… I moved aside a panel of drop-ceiling tile and looked inside, and about 2 feet from my face was a huge dead rat.

Another coworker, much bolder than myself, grabbed a plastic bag, and using the bag as both glove and receptacle, picked up the dead and now partially decomposed rodent, and took it out to the dumpster.

The most disturbing part, of course, is that it’s highly unlikely that this rat was working solo.