Sing Us a Song, You're the Piano Man

In honor of the Christmas, excuse me, holiday season, I would like to present one of my favorite McSweeney's stories: What I Would Be Thinking About If I Were Billy Joel Driving Toward a Holiday Party Where I Knew There Was Going to Be a Piano.

XBXRX

After hearing a recommendation from a reliable source, I decided to start listening to a fairly new (to me) punk band from Alabama called XBXRX.

Their sound has been described as new wave-influenced, improvised and desconstructed. I don't know what that means. To me it's just really exciting, fast and bordering on pure noise at certain points. Which means, of course, I freakin' love it.

But what's wonderful about them is something so simple — they're still a band, they still tour and they make records. So many of my favorite bands are broken up that I never get into "new" music.

If you're interested in listening to them, several tracks from their latest album, Wars, can be heard here.

Doh!

I'd like to thank simpsonizeme.com for helping me fulfill one of my dreams — becoming a cartoon character in The Simpsons universe.

By visiting their site, you can upload a photo of yourself and magically transform it into a Simpsons style cartoon, yellow skin and all. Then you can go back and tweak your character to make it look like you as much as possible. They have a decent amount of options of adjustment to chose from including hair style, eyes. mouth, etc.

I have always wondered what I would look like if I was dropped into The Simpsons world, and now I do. This is only getting me more excited to go see the movie.

Back and on the Attack

Who doesn't love a redesign? Me. That's who. But i figured this would be a good time to retool Solipsism a leetle beet. You know, so it integrates better with my branding and mission statement.

Latest Casey highlights:

• After a few recommendations, I am trying to get into the HBO show The Wire. It's a pretty raw cop show. As if we need another one of those. But so far I like what I see.

• I am headed to Milwaukee in July for my friends Matt wedding.

• I got a new bike that is tre cool.

• I helped my buddy ken move to Kansas City for his medical residency.

More details as this story unfolds ...

My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable

After watching a podcast by David Rees, I have really been getting into his comic strip My New fighting Technique is Unstoppable. At first I didn't quite know what to make of it. It took a couple of strips before I started "getting" the humor.

The strip basically consists of clip-art karate guys saying a bunch of violent, crazy shit to each other. That's it. Brilliant!

And please excuse the blog hiatus. I've been mastering my Ghost Fog Saber Technique (which is a cure for your disease of Not Getting Enough Ass Kicking).

Happy Armageddon

Last night I watched this show on the History Channel called "Last Days on Earth". The show ranked and discussed all the different ways in which the human species could be eradicated.

The threats were informally divided into natural disasters like black holes, gamma rays, asteroids and comets and more man-made or at least man-influenced threats like artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, viruses and global warming. The chances for each specific threat vary, but one thing is for certain: they all do have the potential to destroy us.

I didn't sleep very well that night.

It is interesting/distressing to me to think about what force will eventually bring down the human race. I would honestly hope it will be something that was out of our control like an asteroid collision. It would make me sad to think that we brought about our own demise.

But even if we do dodge all of these bullets, in 5 billion years the sun will burn out and render the earth unlivable.

Happy new year everybody.

This season on Lost: My Cell Phone

I lost my cell phone either yesterday or the day before. I can't really remember.

I have always been afraid something like this would happen. As someone without a landline at home, it was pretty crippling for me. Luckily, I'm getting a new one sent to me by Monday, but until then no texting, no calling, no nothing.

For the next few days my main communication device will be e-mail. E-mail is great, but I think the response time expectation is much slower when compared to the telephone. If you e-mail me and I write you back two days later, that's pretty normal. If you call me and leave a message and I call you back two days later, that's pretty late.

Actually, I was thinking about not getting a new phone and just hanging out with all the people I know all the time. This way when someone wants to talk to me, all they have to do is say is "Casey" and then I'll just go "What?"