I’m writing this post using a Ouija board, so imagine that each letter is being spelled out by a magic floating doo-hicky, even though NOBODY is MOVING IT!!!!!

It’s Halloween time again, and I’ve been having a… killer time! The boils and ghouls are out in full force, and if you gaze into the mists of the crystal ball, I will show the horrible images of the scene…

Look at the horror of it all, if you dare!!!

Crystal Ball #1 - the do512 Halloween Party at the Graveyard

Crystal Ball #2  - Halloween House Party

This is a quick test I made just to see how the costume looks. Tomorrow I’ll have to pick up some black gloves so that my hands aren’t as obvious, and I’m going to attach Pooh’s hunny bucket to his left hand, and then it should be ready to take on the town for Halloween festivities.

For best results, read this post in four part harmony.

This weekend was the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America’s Southwest District Fall 2007 Convention and Contest in Corpus Christi(it’s a long name so that when you say the whole thing, it’s a good vocal warm-up prior to singing). This was my first time going to a convention, as I was always too busy with other things to go during my years with the Harmony Kings. It was quite an exciting one, too, as there were a good number of groups there that are frequently seen competing at the international level.
My chorus, the Austin Chord Rangers ended up getting 6th place out of all the competing choruses, and 2nd place in the AA Plateu (plateus are based on how many people are in the chorus). That was much better than we thought going off stage - when we were back in the green room area most everyone was preparing for Very Bad News, but the judges apparently thought we were better than we thought we were.
The big winning chorus, which will go to Internationals, was the Heart of Texas chorus (unfortunately Vocal Majority was not competing this year, so I didn’t get to see them perform). Here is the Heart of Texas performing their winning songs at the quarter finals in Denver:

The first place quartet was Glory Days, and they were amazing. Here they are at quarter finals in Denver, as well:

(The “who are you guys?” joke is referring to the fact that he and the guy in glasses are famous for being in the quartet The Acoustix, while this is a newly formed quartet)
Second place was vanguard (no video, unfortunately).

Also performing, though not competing, was Saturday Evening Post, who placed 10th at last year’s International competition. Here they are at last year’s quartet finals:

In addition to being notable for being one of the best quartets in the world, it is also the current quartet of Tom Wilkie (singing bass), who was the director of the Federal Way Harmony Kings while I was a member.

In other news, still nothing heard from Esther’s Follies, but did get an e-mail asking me to submit a resume to Red Hat for their web designer job, so I did that last night, and so hopefully I will be gainfully employed before I run out of money.

And now, a bunch of pictures:
Unfortunately photography was not allowed where the actual singing was going on, so the only picture of anything Barbershop-y is from the afterglow on the last night. But, there are plenty of pictures from around Corpus Christi:

This was the first of several Mega Churches seen on the road from Austin to Corpus Christi

San Antonio’s version of the Space Needle

Tropical Foliage in Corpus Christi

The hotel I stayed in (the building on the left - not the bank building)

There were shrimp boats lining the pier selling fresh shrimp

A replica of one of the ships that Christopher Columbus used to sail the ocean blue in fourteen-hundred ninety-two

Same ship

Still the same ship

Not a ship - a group of birds, instead

That ship again - not a group of birds.

Neither a ship, nor a group of birds.

A dramatic sword fight, performed by fishes.

Upstairs at the convention center

What used to be a house

Invisible House!

Old courthouse - appears to have been shut down long ago

Palm trees, with the USS Lexington in the background

The USS Lexington, a famous aircraft carrier, as featured in "Pearl Harbor"

Corpus Christi art museum

A bridge, and a different Columbus ship

Normally that place would be flowing with water, but it was broken

A sculptural tribute to ceiling fans

Corpus Christi Bay

Outside the convention center

Saturday Evening Post - one of the top ten barbershop quartets in the world. The guy with the goatee is Tom Wilkie, former director of the Federal Way Harmony Kings, my first barbershop chorus.

Foliage

Black gold… Texas Tea

Episode Two!

I thought that the nobel prize would be announced at 3am my time, and since I was still up at 2, I decided to stick it out till three. However, I realized a few moments ago that it’s not actually till 4, and since it’s almost 3:30 now, I’m fighting the desire to fall asleep so that I can see if Gore wins it. Although, I do admit that I am not entirely sure why he’s up for the peace prize, rather than some sort of scientific award. Oh well - good luck to him anyways.

I’ve not got much news to report, but some items of note:

1) A slight update from Esther’s Follies: I’m still on the short list of people likely to join the cast, but apparently they still need to audition some people from out of state, so I don’t know how much longer I’ll have to wait to find out an actual result.

2) In other entertainment news, I met up with Sharrone and Meghan and we outlined a movie about the end of the world (using the ‘end of the world’ as a theme, and following a few characters as each of them experiences an end of the world of sorts). Next step is to write the script and storyboard it and cast it and film it and edit it.

3) On Tuesday after barbershop I went up to UT area to the Crow and Anchor pub for Hilary’s birthday. Almost all of the people there were from the Austin Poetry Slam group, so most of the conversation revolved around that. I was nearly convinced to go out and give slam poetry a try, until some of the people left, and those that remained then got into the dark side of poetry slam - apparently there is a ridiculous amount of drama and infighting that takes place within the slam poetry group, and apparently this strife occurs in the audience, backstage, onstage, on livejournal, on messageboards, and anywhere else they can badmouth one another. That pretty much turned me off of the idea there, but I may still go and have a look-see one of these weeks anyway.

4) This week I’ve been using my hand-weights, pull-up bar, and have been using the gazelle for about an hour a day to start getting my weight down (as I realized that I’ve gained about 30 pounds since moving to Austin - plus what I had gained my last quarter while I was still at Western, and the result of this is that most of my clothes don’t fit anymore, and I would really like them to. Today I went to the Savers for their dollar tag day and picked up a hand full of shirts that I can wear (I picked up some bigger pants last time), as well as two 3-piece suits that I can look forward to fitting into once I drop this extra poundage. Also at the savers, I found a bag of assorted refrigerator magnets, so now my refrigerator is much more colorful than it was.

5) I recorded a second episode of Nathaniel Jones in the 23rd Century yesterday, but when I went to edit it I realized that you could see the reflection of my computer and stuff in my futuristic shades, so I either have to figure out a way to remove it (unlikely), or I’ll have to re-film it sans the shades (more likely).

6) Now I’m just wasting time waiting for the clock to hit 4am so that I can check the nobel results.

7) I’m currently waiting for that barbie interview I made to upload to youtube (I decided not to limit it only to associated content when they said they wouldn’t give me any money for it.) Which wll get here faster - youtube, or nobel prize? Let’s wait and see!

Here is the barbie interview:

9) It’s 4am, but the website hasn’t yet updated to show the prize winner. *refresh* And he won! Hoorah for Al Gore, Nobel Prize Winner (and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who also won - they each get half of the award. Or else, they just say that so that then whichever one says “no, don’t cut the prize in half - I would rather see it go to my competitor than see it split” and then that person is the real winner. I guess we’ll have to see about that later.

10) I am now asleep. Goodnight.

Since I don’t have a job yet, I’ve spent some time tinkering around with various electronics, and I am pleased to announce that I have stumbled on a way to use everyday household objects to travel through time! Yes indeed, simply by putting on a specially designed tin foil hat and visor, and sticking a fork into an electrical outlet, I traveled into the 23rd Century!

Now, I imagine that some of you may be skeptical of my claims, but of course I wouldn’t say such a thing if it weren’t true, and just to prove it to any doubting thomases, I made a video diary of my experiment. Since this is a video, you can be sure that there’s no way that anyone could possibly alter it to make it look like I went into the future if I hadn’t done it in reality. Watch, and believe!

I had many adventures while in the future, and I’ll have video diaries of those as well at some point.

Meanwhile in 2007:

Since I still haven’t heard from Esther’s Follies, I’m assuming the worst, but tomorrow I’ll call to try to get confirmation that either I am or am not in. We’ll see what happens with that. Until then I’m working on some new pages for etravels, so while I’m still running out of money, at least I’m not running out as fast as I would be otherwise.

In other news, I’ve put together a new mix CD of songs I’ve been listening to since my “summer” CD in March. And as an added bonus, I’m even uploading all of the songs so that you can listen to them, instead of just imagining what they might sound like! (Note: best to download now, as I’ll be taking down the file after a little while, so as to avoid being sued for copyright infringement)

“On The Road Again: Summer in Austin, 2007″
Track List:
1 - “Meaning to Say” - Now It’s Overhead
2 - “Odessa Medley” - Paul Cantelon (”Everything is Illuminated” soundtrack)
3 - “As You Wish” - Aqueduct
4 - “I Want to Break Free” - Queen
5 - “The Slow Descent into Alcoholism” - The New Pornographers
6 - “Mountain Music” - Alabama
7 - “Falling Slowly” - Glan Hansard and Marketa Irglova (”Once” soundtrack)
8 - “Breathe” - Dan Bern
9 - “On the Road Again” - Willie Nelson
10 - “Send Me On My Way” - Rusted Root
11 - “Death by Triple Fiddle” - Joshua Bell, Edgar Meyer, Sam Bush, Mike Marshall
12 - “Are You Ready for the Sex Girls” - Gleaming Spires
13 - “Breathless” - The Corrs
14 - “Say it to Me Now” - Glen Hansard (”Once” soundtrack)
15 - “Down on the Corner” - Creedence Clearwater Revival
16 - “Ramblin’ Man” - The Allman Brothers
17 - “Take me Home Country Roads” - John Denver
18 - “Bessa” - Tilly and the Wall
19 - “Hide and Seek” - Imogen Heap
(all of the songs, compressed as a RAR file. Right click and “save as” to download)

Now that you’ve got video and music, here are a couple cellphone pictures:

Here’s a picture from Sharrone’s birthday party a couple weeks ago

And here is a picture I took the other morning as I was walking around - I saw a giant bird swoop down - I thought that it was a hawk or an eagle or something, but as I get closer I saw that it was a real-life vulture! Unfortunately it flew up to that roof before I could get a picture when it was up close, so you can’t see it well, but you can trust me when I say it’s a vulture. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen one outside of cartoons, I think.

Unfortunately those are the only pictures I have from lately. I’ve often wished I had my camera - on Sunday I went to the Old Pecan Street Festival after church, and there were tons of great photo opportunities. Also, last night I went to an Aqueduct concert (see track #3 on the mix CD), but could take no pictures without my camera.

And now that you’ve got some video, audio, and photographs, I’m going to call an end to this post. More to come at some point soon.