ask_birdmad_2_point_o ever dumbening the other was getting a bit long. hope you don't mind. i'm listening to _black dialogue_ by the perceptionists right now. pretty solid, overall, not perfect, but solid. have you heard of them? i ask because i remember somewhere deep in blather history that you had written about the golden days of hiphop—late eighties, early nineties. any hiphop making your playlist these days? another great new cd i just bought is by a funk group from l.a. called breakestra. pretty much every track rips. there are other new bands playing old funk, but the songwriting doesn't quite hold up like it does with these guys. what other recent musical finds have you been digging? 051121 ... birdmad most recent hip-hop i've picked up lately is Atmosphere's "you can't imagine how much fun we're having" my biggest hip-hop buys in the last year or so have been Talib Kweli's "The Beautiful Struggle" Common's "Be" "The New Danger" from Mos Def and Kanye West's Late Registration, which i like quite a bit, but not as much as College Dropout I've heard of but not actually heard Breakestra, but, musically speaking i haven't had my feelers out very far of late so unfortunately i hadn't heard of the Perceptionists except for a brief glancing mention in the local alt-weekly. Most recently, i lucked into a ticket and a ride to the Bauhaus show (11/03) , which i had hoped would be somewhere other than Mesa Amphitheater again because it's such a drive out into the east-side, but the folks i rode with were even farther out in the west valley than i am so i was on their way to and from the show when i made it back to work the next day, i was pretty beat and my ears were ringing from making it up close to the front of where the crowds and the stage meet, but it was just what the doctor ordered. only bummer was that i found no sign of the Mia_Kirshner look-alike i occasionally run into at random intervals around the city. not that i have the slightest clue what i would say to her beyond another round of perfunctory small talk, what with me being the big, beat-up raggedy old (and keenly aware of it) bastich that i be 051121 ... birdmad Danger Doom " The Mouse and The Mask" fun stuff 051129 ... god ever listened to fela kuti? 051130 ... birdmad for a while, a long time back. one of my friends had a pretty wide library of stuff from Africa, so i remember hearing a lot of Fela Kuti and a fair amount of Youssou N'Dour and dozens of other acts who i enjoyed but whose names escape me now heh. memories of barbecues, beer and good herb with some of my less dangerous friends from back in the day 051130 ... god it's all i listen to anymore 051130 ... Do tell. Do you believe in things such as (include grain of salt) the Akashic_Records? 060310 ... Sidenote: I don't necessarily mean the Akashic_Records per se. I'm just wondering if you believe in that sort of thing, in general or whatever. 060310 ... birdmad interesting question one to which iu have no firm answer i hold no DEEP belief in anything in particular, but i don't necessarily rule anything out either. I know, that sounds like an overly politic answer, and maybe even highly pathological to some people, but by withholding all but the most superficial level of belief, i am able to preclude significant disappointment should any belief be controverted. As to the susbstance of the "Records" themselve, my own view is that we frequently court more trouble as people in the search for some broader, higher consciousness because we tend to try and sweep our baser, more animal aspects and instincts under the rug in the process, and that borders on the delusional. 060310 ... stork daddy do you like groo the wanderer? 060310 ... birdmad it's alright of course i used to like all of his old MAD magazine cartoon compilations when i was a kid (i'm that old) 060310 ... Lafiel What's sexier? Doritos or Fritos? I like both but I need a second opinion. Can you help birdmad? 060420 ... birdmad that depends totally on the day and on the choice of available dips that's the best i can manage on the subject of chips though a friend of mine did once suggest that chili cheese fritos tasted sort of like his girlfriend i did't see her slap him upside the head after that, but i did hear him fall out of his chair 060420 ... stork daddy cheap strip club or expensive strip club? 060420 ... birdmad average level to expensive unless i'm taking a gig as a bouncer, i avoid the cheap strip clubs though there was one that i avoided even throughout that career because a raving drunk friend took me there once and i discovered that based on what a dive that place was and the available talent pool, this was the place where libidos and stripping careers went to die the dancers were friendly enough but would have only appealed to a number of fringe, fetish clienteles...the women i generally associated with in those days left me pretty spoiled 060421 ... epitome of i asks existential questions And what do you like the best: dark, milk, or white chocolate? 060421 ... birdmad dark, then white, then milk in that order... though milk chocolate and white chocolate tend to leave me with a weird biting sensation in the back of my throat...something about the level of sweetness in those two types of chocolate that i find almost painful, however tasty the depth and richness of a good dark chocolate is almost always smooth unless i'm slumming and get something cheap on that note try this: take a good, preferably fresh-baked and still warm brownie, and in a double boiler, melt a small amount of butter and dark chocolate, as soon as it is melted, stir in either a splash of Grand Marnier or a raspberry liqeur if you can find one and pour that over the brownie, top with a good vanilla or sweet cream ice-cream and dig in (just thinking about it makes me need an insulin shot) 060421 ... log burning fire are indoor cats happy? 060421 ... birdmad they seem to be... the spaying helps. my dogs aren't so much a threat to them, but the neighbor's dogs on either side i don't trust also the one time Shadow got out, she came home that same night dirty and thirsty and scared...it had been the kind of hot day that kills unprotected people and unprotected pets. maybe i'm rationalizing, but since i can never truly ask them i have to guess and i would guess that mine seem happy enough 060421 ... ever dumbening are indoor people happy? 060421 ... birdmad turning down the thermostat around this desert, winter through spring find me wishing i was outside more often, but this bird is more than happy to be in a climate controlled habitat during the summers as for anyone else, however, i won't presume to know their trigger_for_happiness nor will i preach mine to them the warmer months are almost here and will be until near the end of october, so i can't break back in to my habit of roaming the streets on hot days in full suit and tie...my "Vincent Vega" period is long since passed 060421 what's it to you? who go blather from