Between the news about yesterday's mess of an evening commute and the impending blizzard, I think I have come up with the perfect name to describe winter in this area:

DCSnowpia

Pronounced "dis-snow-pia", it neatly fits "DC" and "snow" into "dystopia", which pretty much describes what the DC area turns into during a snowstorm.

This came to me at lunch today while reading sports news. To the obvious tune...

You picked a fine time to beat us, Lou Seal
It should be our team as champs on the field
I’m sure you had reasons
To speed our offseason
But this loss will take months to heal(*)
You picked a fine time to beat us, Lou Seal

(*) Until pitchers and catchers report next February, at the very least…

On behalf of the Conterpoint 2013 committee, I am delighted to announce this year's NEFilk convention will feature a special appearance by acclaimed Canadian folk-rock band Great Big Sea. In a press release, lead singer and guitarist Alan Doyle said "Great Big Sea is aware of our many fans in the filk community, so as part of our current US tour we have arranged to perform a concert at Conterpoint 2013."

Doyle added that NEFilk 23/Conterpoint 2013 Guests of Honor Stone Dragons are "close personal friends of the band," and that Great Big Sea did not want to miss this opportunity to celebrate Tom and Sue's contributions to Canadian music.

In addition to audience favorites such as "Ordinary Day," "Consequence Free" and "The Night Paddy Murphy Died," Great Big Sea will be playing selections from their new album, April Fool's Joke

According to the National Air & Space Museum's blog, today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Wernher von Braun.

And really, there is nothing I could say on the subject that Tom Lehrer didn't say better.

I'm not much of a gamer, but how can any self-respecting seanan_mcguire fan resist backing this velociraptor-inspired board & card game?

I don't usually observe most holidays in my LJ, but two links caught my eye this week worth posting on Labor Day itself.

First, on G+ Sherman Dorn linked to this site that reminds us what union workers have done for us. You can add your own items. I noted that union masonry and ironworkers made my job as an engineer easier. Projects I worked on that I know were done with union labor generally had far fewer site issues than projects that had non-union labor.

Second, catsittingstill posted a new union song for a friend in a bad work situation.

In other news, a few interesting things coming up on the local calendar.

The FSGW Getaway springs right off of Rosh Hashanah, September 29th - October 1st near Annapolis. Great event if you're into traditional folk music. Daytripping is possible, and not all that expensive ($40) if you bring your own food or venture out locally. I'm having fun adding songs to my repertoire for this year, including "The Green-Eyed Dragon", "San Francisco Bay Blues", and "Ballad of Alfred G Packer".

Meanwhile, fans of funny music may have already noticed that Weird Al is playing the beautiful and historic Warner Theatre in downtown DC on Wednesday, October 19th. We already have tickets.

And, for the MiSTies out there, Lisner Auditorium hosts Cinematic Titanic the following week on October 27th. This time, Ticketbastardmaster actually saw fit to inform me BEFORE THE DAY OF THE SHOW. So we're going to that too.

If these ponies met up with the ones from Kij Johnson's Hugo-nominated story, things would have turned out much differently.

Just sayin'.

I own two pairs of eyeglasses, my regular pair and a pair of prescription sunglasses I keep in my car. On sunny days (or even cloudy-yet-bright ones), I switch to my sunglasses when I get into the car in the morning and keep them on through the drive to Metro, the ride downtown, and the 4 block walk to work. I switch back to my regular glasses when I reach my desk. On summer evenings (and late spring, and early fall), I do the reverse.

Naturally, switching back to my regular glasses at the office requires me to have actually taken the case with me when I leave my car in the Metro parking lot. Which I failed to do this morning. So it was sunglasses in the office, all day.

Luckily, nobody at $EMPLOYER has read Feed, so I was able to avoid running a gauntlet of retinal Kellis-Amberlee jokes... 8-)

After the last two posts, we clearly need some humor around here. So I'll supply this little tidbit.

I was watching the World Cup matches quarterfinal matches earlier today. During the Argentina-Germany match, I called to the_sheryl, pointed to the score indicator in the upper left corner of the TV screen, and said, "Hey...look...GER...ARG..."

(Ducks to avoid a hail of peanuts)

While I work on the next piece of my Anticipation report, here's an amusing video of an attempted building demolition (in Turkey, IIRC) gone horribly wrong:

http://www.videowired.com/watch/?id=4048259603

Signs you stayed up too late last night watching election coverage:

#1: You bring up a glass of water when you return to your computer after practicing songs and proceed to pour the contents of the glass all over your computer desk.

(Luckily, I somehow managed to avoid any important electronic components...)

Since my f-list probably needs a break from election chatter, I will return to my usual role as the plucky comic relief.

Apparently, our friends to the north have discovered that those of us who enjoy a nice cold pint every now and then may be helping our bodies ward off cancer. Studies conducted over the past decade show that a natural product found in hops (a key flavouring agent used in beer) packs a powerful punch for both the prevention and treatment of certain types of cancer, says Dr. Jonathan Page, a research officer at the NRC Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon..

Unfortunately, the chemical in question, xanthohumol, tends to burn off in the brewing process, but according to the article some European brewers have found a way to add the chemical back in at the end of the process.

OK you home-brewers out there, get working! ;-)

Do I want to know why there is a guy in a Super Mario suit standing outside the Westin across from my building?

(Especially since I'm sure the princess is in another castle hotel...)

Both in that I need my morning caffeine, and in that a certain Nova-kitty likes to try and drink out of my glasses and mugs.

(I'll note the kitteh in the picture looks more like Luna, however.)

Today was FSGW's Midwinter Festival (formerly the FSGW Mini-Fest) over at Takoma Park Middle School. An interesting mix of stuff this year. We started the day at the Pub Sing, where we stumbled our way through "Old Black Rum" and "Old Dun Cow", respectively. (Neither of us had actually planned to sing anything, but it was a fairly small circle.) After lunch (Subway, serving out of the school's cafeteria line) and some CD- and merchant-browsing (but no buying), we wound up in a doumbek workshop. Thanks to House of Musical Traditions for their shrewd marketing ploy of letting the workshop borrow their stash of doumbeks.

Next up were The Chromatics, who we had not seen in a long time. They have a new album, "Committed", which we acquired. I was amused that their youngest member, whose day job is architecture (rather than astrophysics), wrote a song called "Suburban Dream", a wry look at the ups and downs of suburban living, long commutes, McMansions, and other modern diversions. An excellent set, as always, with favorites like "Doppler Shift", "Buns and Muffins" and "Dance of the Planets" among the songs. Their mid-song antics are getting increasingly creative and amusing. Especially their set-closing cover of "Safety Dance", in which they throw in little tidbits of many other dances including the Hokey-Pokey, Macarena, and Chicken Dance. For those locals not Boskone-bound, they are performing at Farpoint.

After the Chromies set, we hung around the same room where Flawn Williams led an hour of doo-wop songs. This is a workshop that's been smashingly popular at the last couple of FSGW Getaways. Lots of predictable offerings including "Blue Moon", "Under the Boardwalk", and "Poison Ivy". Lots of lively audience participation.

For dinner we went to Sushi Damo, a recent addition to the dining options in Rockville Town Center. It being a cool night, we started with tea and miso soup. Us being hungry, we then proceeded to demolish three rolls: a standard Rainbow roll, a Sakura roll (shrimp tempura and cucumber in the roll; spicy tuna, tobiko and sauce on top), and a Haru roll (Plum, cucumber, and squid in the roll; ooba leaves on top--eat Cthulu before he eats you!).

While dining, we could (partially) see the TV in the bar area showing ESPN SportsCenter, with captions. The anchors, of course, are in Phoenix for the Super Bowl. One of them was expounding on the beauty of the area, particularly a certain well-known topographic feature in the city. The closed-captioner identified this feature as "Campbellback Mountain". *facepalm* *headdesk*

So, a QUESTION for my readers: How many songs can you think of that would qualify as Filk Doo-Wop?

I wonder...if I could strap a pedometer on our kitty, how many steps would she record in a day?

(Nova is currently scrambling around the bedroom playing with the left-over cup from a bottle of cough medicine.)

Went to the local Panera Bread for lunch, as we frequently do. The guy in front of me got order number 666.

Which meant, of course, that I got number 667.

You can imagine what song was floating through my brain the rest of lunch...

While reading job-related news articles at work today, I stumbled across this alleged tale of vampires in Afghanistan. A reporter from Oregon's KPTV FOX-12 and Salem-News.com picked up the tale while on assignment with our troops last winter.

I poked around to see if I could find any other mentions of such a story or folk tale. Didn't turn up much in a brief Googling, but apparently, the folk legend has made it into a comic and a pending movie. Strangely, I don't specifically recall any of the comic or movie addicts on my f-list mentioning either one (although that could be my swiss cheese brain...).

Anyway, figured I'd submit this for your amusement...

Today's spam from Ticketbastardsmaster was advertising tickets for Pop-Tarts Presents American Idol Live!

Insert your own joke here...

Passed on from tth who told me about it at tonight's Balticon meeting...apparently a small piece of space junk has fallen down on New Jersey.

Paging Mr. Burnside-Clapp... 8-)

So there I was, in Lakeforest Mall, engaging in a bit of Mother's Day shopping. And naturally, I stopped in at the Hallmark store to pick up a card. As I entered, I noticed a display hawking a line of musical Mother's Day cards that play bits of songs when you open them.

One of these cards uses "Mother's Little Helper". The Rolling Stones song.

Oh yes, a song about a stressed-out mom who OD's on drugs and dies is exactly how I want to say "Happy Mother's Day, Mom!"

Apparently whoever is designing this line of cards is the same person who convinced Ronald Reagan "Born In The USA" was a patriotic song and convinced Bill Gates that "Start Me Up" would make a perfect song to introduce Windows 95...

One of the things I get to do in my job is participate in the development and updating of various design standards. A packet of information for one standards committee arrived today with a list of suggested items to pursue and topics to discuss at the committee's next meeting.

One of the suggested items was "Correction of typo's in document"

D'OH!