Hell Money

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Art

In China, the word Hell doesn’t carry the same negative connotation as western Hell. The popular story has it that zealous Christian missionaries warned all non-Christian Chinese they’d “go to Hell” upon death.
In a classic case of misinterpretation, the Chinese believed Hell was the English term for the Afterlife. The word was incorporated and printed on the traditional Chinese Afterlife Monetary Offerings, otherwise known as Hell Bank Notes. Some also refer to the notes as Spirit Money.

Continue ReadingHell Money

80’s Music From Doug

98 compilation CDs. 662 Artists. 1352 Songs, 3.7 Days worth of music. 7.28 GB of disk space. Of course, there are duplicate songs, so the numbers on the final count will change, and I have quite a few 80’s CDs in my own collection. I still have to add the collections together and eliminate duplicates. And assess what might be missing.
But it’s going to be a kick-ass 80’s party. We’re looking at early October…
And Dan and Doug’s 70’s party will be Saturday, July 17th. Let me know if you want to attend. It’s the 10th Annual, so Doug and Dan have the music perfect every time.

Continue Reading80’s Music From Doug

Country Songs about Pickup Trucks

I made this mix to play in my pickup, because people kept joking about me becoming a country music fan after I bought one.

1 Redneck Woman – Gretchen Wilson – Redneck Woman – Single
2 What Was I Thinkin’ – Dierks Bentley – Dierks Bentley
3 Big Ol’ Truck – Toby Keith – Toby Keith: Greatest Hits, Vol.1
4 Pickup Man – Joe Diffie – Joe Diffie: Super Hits
5 Park the Pickup (Kiss the Girl) – Chad Brock – III
6 Passenger Seat – SHeDAISY – Passenger Seat – Single
7 She Want to Drive My Truck (Special Dance Mix Track) – Jim Wise – She Wants to Drive My Truck
8 That Ain’t My Truck (Back Porch Acoustic Version) – Rhett Akins – Friday Night in Dixie
9 My Ole Pickup Truck Never Lets Me Down – Doc Bates – You Should Be Here
10 The Truck Song – Lyle Lovett – My Baby Don’t Tolerate
11 Pickup Truck – Jason Spooner – Lost Houses
12 Ragged Old Truck – Johnny Paycheck – The Soul & The Edge – The Best of Johnny Paycheck
13 Corvette, Cadillac, Pickup Truck – Don Papillon – Corvette, Cadillac, Pickup Truck
14 Drive a Truck – J. Stephen Howard – Dreams
15 Girls in Pickups – Kent Earl Housman – Wham Bam Man
16 If This Old Truck Holds Out – Bryan James – Always Be Kind Pt.1
17 Love Like a Truck – Steve Goodbar – A Track in Time
18 My Truck – Pat Dailey – Freshwater
19 Pickup Truck – Rodney Carrington – Rodney Carrington: Greatest Hits
20 That Old Truck – J.C. Hyke – Fallin’
21 The More I Know About Women, the Better I Like My Truck – Tony Villar – Tima 2000
22 This Old Truck – John Williamson – John Williamson

Continue ReadingCountry Songs about Pickup Trucks

iPAL Portable Jukebox for iPod

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Art

From a review on the Cool Tools website of the Tivoli PAL unit, this cool little box is $129.99 from Amazon.com, which can plug into your iPod for an portable stereo experience.

“Several readers turned me onto the Tivoli PAL unit. This is a weatherized, rubber-coated radio/speaker that accepts an iPod (or any other music device with a mini-plug). The tiny PAL has an amazing rich and deep sound. You plug an iPod in, turn up the volume, and it uses its internal rechargeable battery to play your musical playlists longer than your iPod battery will last (I can get 8 hours on the PAL in one charge). Clear, marvelous sound from a small, rugged box that has survived rain and being dropped into a pool. That doesn’t usually happen because it is carefully designed with handy finger grips and a grippy covering. It comes with an adapter for running on AC. You have a choice of many bright colors, among them on iPod-ish pearl white — that version is now being sold as the iPAL (identical in all other respects to regular PALs.) With the same sonic guts as the Henry Kloss Tivoli One model, this cool unit gets rave reviews by audio snobs for its great sound. Its actually better than the built-in stereo in my office. And it serves as a highly sensitive FM/AM radio, too.”

Continue ReadingiPAL Portable Jukebox for iPod

Urban Tribes

  • Post author:
  • Post category:Art

I was bookstore shopping with Stephanie and she pointed out a book to me that her friends had talked about, called Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment by Ethan Watters. It’s a book that examines the cultural trend of young people getting married at a later age and of forming close tribe-like networks of friends that function as a family. I’ve only started the first chapter and it’s like a revelation; I recognize a lot of my friendships, and my own feelings about relationships and families. My impulse was to say, “oh, you have to read this book!” to my friends. So I am.
UPDATE: The more I read, the more intrigued I am about this book, and the more I identify with it. In the book he references the TV shows “Seinfeld” and “Friends” as onscreen examples of urban tribes, but “Sex and the City” and even “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” fit into this trend as well. Its also something to note that while the baby boomer generation and conservatives are lamenting the death of the “traditional family” and the of decline of people engaging in civic groups like the League of Women Voters, people in our generation are not lost socially or completely selfishly motivated… they just organize and perform altruistic, communal and civic acts in a different fashion than the generations before us.
Read more about the social trend and about the book here at the UrbanTribes.net website.

Continue ReadingUrban Tribes