Scared yet??

What if I told you the pumpkin carved itself...?

Mightier than the pen...?

In the interest of raising the visibility of that sliver of higher educators who blog about our common triumphs, trials, and temptations--bringing them to 2.75 additional readers; that'll ingratiate me--here is a short list of professorial blogs.

• Professors Who Blog
• University Diaries
• Phantom Professor
• Inside Higher Ed
• A Gentleman's C
• Educated & Poor
• Slaves of Academe
• Rate Your Students
• SCSU Scholars
• Sex Ed in Higher Ed
• Cranky Epistles
• Untenured No-No
• Oxymoron/Redundancy
• This Academic Life
• Academic Coach
• What the Hell is Wrong With You?

Drum. Machine.

I wasn't sold on YouTube before. (Now it's been sold to Google, so my chance has passed.) One can only take so many meatheads wrasslin' in the backyard, Asian guys lip-synching to boy band numbers, pets frolicking in out-of-focus home videos.

But recently I chanced upon a video that thrilled me to my nerdy core:
a CGI Neal Peart--Ayn Rand aficionado and virtuosic timekeeper of progressive power trio Rush--thrashing out a realistically rendered, note-perfect accompaniment to the band's instrumental "YYZ."

N.B.: this is NOT a clip of any of the college rockers, or the band themselves, cranking out the tune, though many versions of each can be had. Nor is it the perplexingly named P.E.A.R.T. mechanical farrago that at one time beat skins by virtue of a laptop USB hook-up. (Engineering students.)

This is, quite simply, too cool in too many was to attempt to capture here. If you don't know why, you better ask somebody...Canadian.

Let it suffice to note the unstinting craftsmanship and dedication and unadulterated monomania that went into such a digital devotional.

Beauty, eh!

Dum dum de dum

A hearty congratulations to my sister and her newly-minted Mr. on the recent imposition of the holy bonds of macaroni.

Our cats, Shoggoth and Tsathoggua, rejoice that their dog-in-law is no longer a bastard.