I turned 28.

Then, I time travelled 1 day into the future and completely skipped Friday, October 14th.

And then, I spent the next 10 days in Australia. Nearly 1/3rd of my October was in another hemisphere.

I destroyed the Melbourne sky line,

touched the Sydney Opera House,

assaulted a tired koala,

and hung out with kangaroo jack.

I really need to get back to Australia.

The downside of playing the guitar is that I notice a lot of boring guitar things. Like….

Today, Johnny Marr, of The Smiths, posted a picture to his twitter feed of him playing his Fender Jaguar wearing 7″s for headphones. You can tell it’s a Jaguar and not a Jazzmaster because of the switches to select the pickups.

On Monday, Wavves played a concert in Washington, D.C. and NPR made it available for streaming on their excellent “Live In Concert” website, along with some pictures. One of the pictures is of Nathan Williams playing the exact same Fender Jaguar Blacktop that I have.

Nathan Williams of Wavves playing a Fender Jaguar

That’s kind of unexpected because the Blacktop series are a entry level brand. You can tell this because 1) it’s way cheaper than the regular Jaguars and 2) it lacks the cool switches.

What’s the strange marking around October of 2011. Let’s zoom in Oh, I’m getting older

Sadly, it looks like I won’t be returning to Austin for Austin City Limits 2011. I’m not getting old, it’s just that I’ve been to ACL for 3 out of the past 4 years and it’s time for something new. Also, they’ve moved it to the middle of September. Why? I think C3 likes to play a game where they see how many concert goers suffer from heat stroke each day. The weather was perfect this time around. 2007 was a scorcher and 2009 was wet. 2010 was mild.

So what did I enjoy? A lot of it. My favorite show is between Spoon and Vampire Weekend. I wish they weren’t right after each other, so I could’ve gotten closer to Vampire Weekend. Spoon surprised me. I saw them in 2007, and I didn’t really think they were that great. It probably didn’t help that I was exhausted. I remember taking a nap during their set. But this year, they played and everything connected.

Early on Friday, I saw the Mountain Goats. And it was such a brilliant moment. I was sitting under a tree, drinking a Bud, the breeze was blowing, and there was hardly anyone in Zilker Park. I wanted that moment to last forever.

On Saturday, my favorite show was LCD Soundsystem. It was also this person’s favorite show as well.

I also saw Muse on Saturday. They were good, but not great. I was led to believe they used lasers in exciting ways, but it was just normal lasers. Nothing mind blowing. I mean lasers, c’mon. Would have I enjoyed M.I.A. more? I dunno. Maybe the crowd would’ve been nicer at M.I.A. The crowd at Muse were dicks.

The National was the last show on Sunday I saw, and what a show to end on. I’ve liked The National for a while now and thought they were alright, but wouldn’t say I loved them. But that changed after I saw them perform. They were amazing. They should’ve ended ACL, instead of The Eagles.

I finally saw The Flaming Lips on Sunday as well. I’ve been wanting to see them for a long time, just to experience the zaniness and confetti of Wayne Coyne. And it was more spectacle than concert. I only knew 2 songs, ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ and ‘Do You Realize?’ out of their set. But, I was glad I saw them. You know, checkbox checked.

I missed a few bands I wanted to see, but that’s always the case. If you try to do everything, you end up tired, rushing from one stage to the next, not getting a chance to enjoy yourself. Also, The Verve Pipe didn’t play ‘The Freshman’ which was supremely lame. Yes, I understand they were there for ‘Austin Kiddie Limits’, but c’mon.

Also on this trip, I finally went to The Salt Lick. This is a place I’ve been meaning to check out for what seemed like years. It was looking like I’ll never go, cause each trip to Austin, something would always come up. So the anticipation was building. Could it live up to it? No, it couldn’t. It was okay. I had ribs for the first time, like an American. That was probably the best thing – the experience of eating ribs.

Really, the food highlight of this trip was stopping by Spicy Pickle on the walk back from Zilker Park. There I had a pizza that was so amazing. It ranks with the first time I had the BBQ Chicken Pizza at Macaroni Grill. If you know me, you know that’s special. I could be greatly exaggerating the greatness of this pizza, considering it was at the end of the night and I was tired and hungry. But still, this pizza satisfied me. And that counts a lot.

So if not ACL in 2011, what then? Well, I’m thinking about Sasquatch.

And on the back of that receipt, Jessica’s phone number

I love finding little pieces of history like this.

Well I’m here for you and Future Raishad

First things

1. Get a Mac. (This is for the next step)
2. Install MacPorts
3. Install gifsicle (Really, you don’t need a Mac for gifsicle. But since you already got one, let’s continue and you can thank me later.)
4. Gather your source images. It will be helpful to name them sequentially
5. Use gifsicle to create your animated gif
   gifsicle image*.gif > animated.gif
6. Adjust the looping
   gifsicle -l animated.gif > looping.gif
7. Adjust the delay
   gifsicle -d 30 looping.gif > finished.gif

After all that hard work, you’ll have something as brilliant as this

Great news, right?

Well, for you. But not for me. Tuesdays and Thursdays I have class this fall. So I’ll be missing Frightened Rabbit again.

For those keeping track at home, this will be the fourth time this year I’ll be missing Frightened Rabbit.

I don’t think it was ever meant to be. Surely, me seeing Frightened Rabbit live will trigger an extinction level event.

Here’s some tour video to keep myself warm

Well after the disappointment of the Lone Star Comics warehouse sale, Long informed me of this and we headed over.

And I can see why the store is closing. It’s a very shallow store. It’s all store front. There is no depth to the store, literally. There is no “back room”, only a “front room off to the side”. Stepping in to the store feels unnatural. You’re put on display like a mannequin. I mean, if i was to see a mannequin that looked like me in a store window, I would head the other direction. Kidrobot should’ve made a test store. That is the lesson they should learn from this.

Anyways, it was now my chance to buy a case of Futurama blind boxes! But unfortunately, they only had 2 individual blind boxes. So I picked them up. You cant go wrong with everything 30% off.

There are 12 characters in the Futurama series. All I really wanted was Zoidberg. He is my favorite character from the show. And you know what, I got him! He was in my second box. In the first box, I got what nerds call a “rare chase” – Sal.

So yeah, if anyone wants to take me to Vegas, I’m on a hot streak.

So far I’ve gotten one reply from a David Woodgate, woodgate962@gmail.com It’s so obvious a scam, it’s a cliche.

His first email

Hello, I am very much interested in buying your item which i see on craigslist list.Is the item still up for sale?

What stands out? The terrible English? Maybe this person doesn’t speak English as his first language, so let’s ignore that. How about he doesn’t ask anything about the Dell? He refers to it by “item”.

Anyways, I reply. Maybe this guy is just an idiot.

Hi David, Yes the item is still up for sale.

His reply is even better

Thanks for your mail. i really appreciate your response to my mail. like i said i will like to buy this item from you and i want you withdraw the advert from craigslist. i’m using this opportunity to inform you that i wont be able to come and inspect the item or pay by cash cos i have been advice by craigslist never send payment via bank transfer ,check, money order or sending cash by post,that is why it will be safe and secure for us to complete this transaction through PayPal though i am a us citizen and i am willing to buy this item as a valentine gift for my cousin and i would appreciate it if i can pay through paypal.mean while i’m willing to offer you the sum $150 for the shipping.However if you don’t have paypal account you can just log on to www.paypal.com and set up an account it is easy and secure to pay and receive money through paypal.pls get back to me asap Thanks

My favorite part from that? Playing cautious by following best practices from Craigslist regarding money. Yet, Craigslist recommends dealing locally to avoid scammers. Also, I don’t know about you, but I constantly mention to people I’m a US Citizen. And I love that he’s paying half of my asking price in shipping.

So yea, anyone wants to buy a Vostro A90? It runs Mac OS X and (if you insist) XP.