Got in a Cowboy Junkies mood this weekend. No particular reason, the kid had asked me what I wanted for <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_28th” title=”my birthday”>my birthday</a>, so I mentioned their latest CD and that put them in my mind. Wandered over to their website and discovered that their offically unoffical archivist will make available a show of theirs available for download each month over at 4 the Llamas. Three shows have been uploaded so far, I’m downloading the first now, can’t wait.

Great, Great, GREAT post over at Signal Vs Noise on writing. Nothing is ever written, everything, EVERYTHING is rewritten. It doesn’t work the first time, so you keep writing to sharpen the idea to a point.

Slate link explains the real cost of movies..

Site containing info about watercolor painting; material, techniques, color theory etc, etc.

A passenger on New York’s subway system has been attacked and injured by a man wielding two hand-held power saws.

Not ONE power saw but TWO. What the hell is wrong with people these days? Mugging is bad enough but the power saws, that’s something….

There’s a post on 37 signals about work meetings and how they suck. Literally. They rob you of time, focus and energy that would be better spent doing what you need to do.

Dave Sim once wrote that the people who have meetings are the people who don’t have anything to do except go to meetings. He discovered this while meeting with various suits about his comic book Cerebus and whether they would adapt it, merchandise it, etc, etc. All the meetings did was suck up his time, time he could have spent drawing and at the end of the meeting there wasn’t anything to show for the time spent. So he quit having the meetings and concentrated on drawing.

Yay, Discovery launched into orbit! I always get a lump in my throat whenever people go off into space. For a few moments it seems like all is right with humanity and we’re working together to do great things.

…it’s Tuesday Morning — Cowboy Junkies.

Hey, hey, it’s America’s birtday! Usually I try to read the Declaration of Independence on the 4th, but I haven’t gotten there yet. I was sidetracked by Fredick Douglass’s “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, where he contrasts the spirit of the Constitution with the reality of slavery. It’s a bit long (Douglass can talk/write forever before getting to his point), sometimes repetitve but it’s worth thinking about for a moment. Whatever “good things” came from the American Revolution, the willingness to except slavery is something America will have to deal with for a long time. I don’t have any answers, no one really does, but it is, to me at least, an ugly fact that lurks behind much of what is good about America.

I’m not even sure it can be fixed. Black and white problems seem firmly rooted here, to levels almost unknown by either side. Time might be the only thing that actually solves it because there doesn’t seem to be a way to talk about it without anger and hate coming into play.

J.D. Roth, over at folded space.com, has uploaded 20 songs from 1901 to 1920, in MP3 format. Even better, he has links to further info about some of the artists.

Having a space shuttle must be neat. ‘Cept for when it’s raining, cause then you can’t use it.