Yvon Rocks

In case you didn't know, Yvon Chouinard is the man.

... Because he just won the inaugural award of OutDoor Celebrity of the Year. The jurors said he is renown for his “visionary business strategy and high degree of environmental awareness.� Stating he is “an outstanding figure above all because of his contributions to environmental protection.� Yvon is best known as the founder and owner of Patagonia, an outdoor clothing company, with over $240 million USD in annual sales. Yvon committed his company to only using organic cotton 10 years ago, even when there was no reliable supply. They had to built the infrastructure to obtain the fabrics they needed. He was also the first to convert his line of fleece jackets to using recycled PET bottles as feedstock. ...

Back when I was just coming out of college with a degree I had already pegged as useless to me, one job I thought I wanted a lot was doing anything for Black Diamond. Sometimes I still kind of wish I could work for them...

Giving Blood with Tattoos

New Illinois Tattoo Law

What's interesting about the law is that is was the result of lobbying by the Illinois Coalition of Community Blood Centers to increase the number of potential blood donors by allowing people to donate blood within a year of getting tattoos or piercings. The blood will still undergo rigorous testing, but abolishing the current year-long wait will no longer discourage the tattooed and pierced from donating -- and, overall, no longer make people feel like social pariahs.

Nice. I've been annoyed by the 12 month waiting period between getting a new tattoo and giving blood pretty much since I got my first tattoo. I have a semi-rare blood type and actually like to give blood. However, I also plan to continue getting tattoos (probably at least annually) for the near term.

I'm glad to see some lawmakers initiating a change. Hopefully Illinois will start a trend.

Pop Music

I'm only a little ashamed to admit that I'm really enjoying both "Put Your Records On" by Corrine Bailey Rae and "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield. Both are pure hooky pop, and I'm man enough to admit they make me boogie. Beyond the singles, I give the edge to Bailey Rae -- Bedingfield has maybe one other song I can groove to.

That said, my new favorite band right now is Horrorpops from Denmark. The Wife and I saw them open for the Reverend Horton Heat last Thursday and fell in love. They have punk rock go-go dancers!

KnuckleRockers.com Plan of Action

I've actually be having a lot of fun thinking about this and getting ready to move into planning and design. First and foremost, I'm going to use this as a learning exercise to teach myself some new technology, so don't expect a very rapid turn around. I figure I'll either build the site using Ruby on Rails or Django, so that'll be cool. I think I have the option of using PostreSQL on the backend, so I might do that, as well. (Not that I expect this to be a big test of a database...)

As for features, I think we want the following for submissions: tagging, commenting, searching, ranking, and maybe a "favorites" pool (favorites could work as a binary ranking system... the more a submission is "favorited", the more popular it is...). Ideally there would be an RSS/Atom feed for the latest submissions.

Users need profiles with optional links to blogs, Flickr accounts, MySpace pages, etc.. They could also have some semi-social functionality like "buddies", and so forth.

Hopefully we can run out some t-shirts/stickers/whatev from the best submissions. There's some vague potential for some actual goods, but that's nowhere near reality at this point.

What else do we want/need?

Buffalo Bill Day

Since, according to the Modern Drunkard's "365 Excuses To Get Soused" list, today is Buffalo Bill Day (which is disputable at best - he was born on July 4), I'd like to share a lovely little treat we experienced at the Buckhorn Exchange during Matt's bachelor party:

  • The Buffalo Bill Cocktail, which seems to consist purely of bourbon and apple juice. Proper proportions are unknown, but I'm sure every bourbon drinker out there could manage.

I'm a big fan - in fact, as a group we consumed 23 of the little beauties that night. The Drunkard recommends Buffalo Trace Whiskey to celebrate Buffalo Bill Day, but unless you're mixing that with apple juice, I wouldn't bother.

Knuckle Rockers

I enjoy thinking up (mostly ironic) ideas for knuckle tattoos. It's fun, you should try it. Here are a few to get you started, ranging from the classic to the silly (some borrowed from McSweeney's):

  • HOLD FAST -- Sailors were apparently dumb and needed the reminder.
  • LOVE HATE
  • GOOD EVIL
  • ROCK ROLL -- I'm generally not a fan. It loses a lot without the "&".
  • DEAD SEXY
  • LONE WOLF -- For the Chuck Norris fans.
  • THUG LIFE -- Tupac lives.
  • ROCK HARD
  • IRON FIST -- For the martial artists out there.
  • CODE FAST -- For the baddest geek in the world.

I know my brother-in-law, Chris, keeps a running list of knuckle rocker ideas, so hopefully he'll share a few gems.

Anyone else?

Oops upside your head!

Monkey on the Run in Virginia

A Japanese monkey aptly named Oops bolted from the Roanoke city zoo, sparking a park-wide shutdown as staff searched the surrounding forest where they could hear her in the trees.

The 20-pound Japanese macaque and her family were being moved from their holding cells to the exhibit for routine feeding and cleaning when she got away Sunday morning, said David Jobe, education curator at Mill Mountain Zoo. She was still on the run Monday morning.

"We hope that because they're active in the daytime, she slept last night and woke up this morning hungry," Jobe said. "We hope to take advantage of a hungry monkey."

If I had a dollar for everytime I've heard that...

The Weekend that Was

The big event of this weekend was of course, Matt & Jen's wedding. Some highlights from our perspective:

  • The entire wedding party was looking as sharp as ever. The happy couple were especially foxy.
  • Speaking of foxy, Matt's mother, Mary, was looking dynamite. She was representing her Italian roots in full effect.
  • Matt told me at some point during his bachelor's that we were to be seated at the so-called "Fun Table". Of course, that comes with some downsides:
    • For one thing, we were among the last to get "released" to the buffet.
    • For another, our table was actually sacrificed for room on the dance floor, so we lost it all together.
    • Finally, there's the pressure to perform, which turned out not to be a problem -- I really hope someone with a good sense of humor has the job of going through the disposable camera pictures...
  • The Wife has always had a problem coordinating outfits with me when we've gone to things like this. I would often get annoyed because our outfits would often even clash -- it's one thing to not match, it's another to go all black & white while I'm in earth tones... ;) Well, this time we worked it out: I wore my brown sharkskin suit with a red/purple shirt that matched Hezzy's top fairly closely. It paid off, too. The Wife was super-pleased by all the comments we got about our outfits -- the best of which was when one of the photographers came up to us and said "You guys are without a doubt the best dressed couple here." Score! So let that be a lesson, ladies: Treat your man like an accessory and take the time to coordinate his kit to yours (at least a bit).
  • At any rate, good times were had by all. Congrats to Matt & Jen on a fine wedding.

Other than that, I didn't do much. I ended up riding the Bonneville for about 70 miles yesterday, so that was cool.

Hank III

Assjack Originally uploaded by Jake Sutton.

Went out tonight with Sarah and Dave to see Hank Williams III. I have to say it was some of the best people watching I've had in a while. There were Greasers & Betties, Punkers, Cowboys (Buffalo Bill Cody was there - I swear!), at least one Skinhead, and many other sorts there.

Good times.

A close front-runner for the most interesting moment of the night was just the fact that the opening band, the Murder Junkies, actually had fans who knew their songs. WTF?! I guess this G.G. Allin guy had some fans...? Y'know, before he died, and stuff...