Pingüimanía

This nuclear-grade edu-funk earworm from Zoológico Guadalajara got stuck in my head - thankfully the streams have it:

If you let the autoplay do its thing, it will probably go straight to "Pingüinos en la ciudad," nearly as potent.

Oregon Zoo, take notes!!!!!!

Porchfest July 31 / Parseword and cryptic crosswords

I'm playing a solo show! 7/31, Milwaukie, OR Porchfest. 4790 SE Logus Road (Kairos-Milwaukie UCC front yard). Solo CDs will be available. The Language Master will probably appear. I may stock the little free library with some choice books from my collection. If you are actually reading this blog, say hello.

*** 

I had always wanted to get into cryptic crosswords. As a young Games Magazine subscriber in the 80s, I loved the wordplay and bonkers poetry of a cryptic clue, but back then I was too young, and ever since then I hadn't found a chance to familiarize myself with their conventions. 

Fortunately, now there is Parseword. I've been doing it for a few months now. It does a really good job of gently lowering you, one puzzle per day, into the cryptic crossword solving process and mindset. You start out with some hints and guidance, but as you get better, you can take off the training wheels. And just now, I finished my first cryptic crossword without any hints. Feeling pretty good.

Oh yeah I'm playing Porchfest July 31st

July 31 2026 6:30-8:30 4790 SE Logus Rd Milwaukie, OR

I'm playing a Porchfest show. Will I bring out the Language Master? I probably will. If you are local and don't have physical copies of the newest CDs, c'mon out and I'll give them to you, donations to Trans Lifeline accepted. 

WCKR SPGT on the trail

Yesterday my wife went to a birthday party for our friend. They were making a beef cake. Boyo and I took advantage of the beautiful afternoon to visit the new library and then to take a little hike.

The idea of the beef cake, of course, got the WCKR SPGT song "Marriage at 30,000 Feet" stuck in my head pretty bad:

I got married at 30,000 feet
to the woman I love
for the parcel of meat
she had strapped to her back
made a horrible parachute.
Don't use meat for a parachute.
Meat chute
Wife lose.
I love you.
We traded our vows and the rings on our fingers.
A union sanctified by God.
In the marriage at 30,000 feet 

In case you were wondering, singing "MEAT! CHUTE! WIFE! LOSE! I LOVE YOU!" on the trail is perhaps the most mortifying thing you can do in the presence of a 9-year-old.

That whole album (Everybody's Dead (Oh, No)) is full of indescribable moments that get stuck in my head at the weirdest moments. As is, I guess, their whole discography. And it is always a joy to rediscover their webpage whenever I get one of those songs stuck in my head and I have to verify that, yes, that song does indeed contain the phrase "Meat chute/Wife lose/I love you."

 

Salad / Snoopy's wedding / Genesis 34

Tonight we had leftover salad with fennel. Good salad. I forgot to bring over a fork and my wife made a joke about eating salad like Snoopy.

Of course this sent me to peanuts-search.com to search for "salad," and as one might expect, there were a bunch of hits. One of them led me to a joke about Snoopy's wedding - wait, Snoopy got married?

OK, before you go further, read the August 1977 Peanuts strips in their entirety. It won't take long. Snoopy is a bad watchdog, Charlie Brown somehow ends up taking Snoopy's place guarding Peppermint Patty's house (!), Snoopy meets a brown-eyed beagle and falls in loooove, and then it gets even weirder.

Linus prepares a sermon based on Genesis 34:9, the innocuous-sounding:

Make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves.  

But of course Genesis 34 is the chapter where Jacob's daughter Dinah gets raped in their new homeland, Shechem the prince/rapist says he's in love and wants to get married, and Simeon and Levi say, oh, no big deal bro, glad you're in love, but maybe have all of your dudes get circumcised before you get married and our families start hanging out together? Rapist says, oh, sure, anything for love, and then when all the gentlemen are laid up, Simeon and Levi go out and slaughter all the males, and then the other brothers plunder the city. Ta-da! Of course this is dropped casually into a story about dogs getting married. I love it.

Also, August 1977 features a rare Charles Schulz misspelling. It's got it all!

Some more delights June 2026

1) Coup Dur. I found out about this young and spirited Belgian beat combo through the Jigsaw/My Vinyl Underground new releases page and their 10"* has not left my turntable since. Goofy, killer pop songs with a touch of yé-yé** that have me attempting to sing along in French frequently. Great hammy video too:

 2) Thirsty Suitors. This game about messy breakups, Indian/Sri Lankan cooking, family relationships, and skateboarding hits all the sweet spots. The writing is super sharp and the graphics and sound outlandish. I've laughted at it frequently.

3) S.B. Johnson Christie Malry's Own Double Entry. Crazy metafiction about accounting and everything else, very cheeky and very funny. Super grateful to the Ledding Library librarians for emphasizing it - will need to check out his other stuff.

*10" being an awful format, particularly at 45 rpm, but it DID fit in my bike bag more easily than a full 12"
** Yé-yé appearing being very cool among the pop hipster youth these days. I get it. I feel like I might have stumbled upon it back when I was exploring music through the much-missed Rdio, poking around the Ekipo archives and somehow stumbling upon Conchita Velasco's super hammy "Chica Yé-Yé."

Logo Parade: Canary Records

 

Pretty cute label logo and awesome font for "Compatible Stereo" from this Madrotter post - will report back when I actually listen to it: