The United Methodist Church goes on record as opposing introduction of Creationism and Intelligent Design in public school science curricula.

As if biofuels didn’t have enough problems already, it turns out that many biofuel species are invasive.  (New Scientist)

From Richard Crawford: A poetic, heartfelt article about writers’ doubts and insecurities.

In the mid-1990s my best friend Scott Woodman began to build guitars, both as a business and as a labor of love. He began by making a few electric guitars for his band-mates Hank Decken and Mark Edgerly. When I say he made them, I don’t mean he screwed together some prefab parts from a kit. He carved the bodies and necks by hand, using jigs and saws and clamps that he had also hand-made. As with everything Scott puts his attention to, they were beautiful in every way. They sounded great, they played great, and they looked soooo pretty.

In the Fall of 1997 I decided I wanted one. I had a few ideas about what kind of guitar I wanted, and talked to Scott about some of the details. I wanted something a Stratocaster shape, with neck like “the blue Tele,” a gorgeous Telecaster-like guitar he had made, a maple neck with a rosewood fret board. (The blue Tele is now owned by Ttimm, my other best friend, who will probably hold onto it until he dies, which means I’ll have to kill him to get it.) And I wanted three pickups, including a bridge humbucker, and the usual five-way switch to select the pickups in various combinations. And floating tremolo bridge for vibrato and dive bombs.

I had one special request: I wanted it to sound somewhat mellower than the usual Stratocaster sound. Stratocasters are generally made with Alder wood, which is part of what gives them their signature brightness. Scott said he could make the body from mahogany, which would probably mellow it out. But in order not to make it too mellow, he could top it with a maple cap. Neither of us could guess how this would turn out, but we were both up for the experiment.

Scott asked, “What about the color? What kind of finish do you want?”

I thought about that for a few minutes, then said, “Think of me, and make it look how you imagine it looking when you think of me.”

I visited Maine at Christmastime that year, and asked Scott how the guitar was coming. He said he was still working on the finish. I asked if I could see it, and he said no, not until it was done. I know that Scott often likes to keep his projects under wraps until they’re completed, so I shrugged, disappointed, and resigned myself to waiting.

Two days later, the guitar appeared under Ttimm’s Christmas tree at our annual silly Christmas party. I opened it up and… it was striking. The cap was not just maple, but curly maple, a figured wood that has a wavy, three-dimensional pattern on its surface. The finish was a mellow brown, edged with a dark, smoky blue-green. I turned it over in my hands, staring at it. When I asked Scott to “think of me,” I had no idea what I meant. But he captured it—captured me—perfectly.

Then I noticed the label on the headstock. dale-o-caster. I’m still smiling about that.

It was a while before I could hear the dale-o-caster in its full glory. I flew home the day after Christmas (I was living in Oregon at the time) and Scott shipped it to me. I had a solid-state amplifier, through which the dale-o-caster sounded pretty good. I also had a Chunky TubeCube, a tube amp that made glorious sounds at high volume, and was just kinda okay at low volume. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the Chunky up to “glorious” volume without annoying my neighbors, so I played the dale-o-caster through the solid-state amp.

In 2002 I bought a Fender Cyber-Twin amp, plugged in the dale-o-caster, and was floored. Though it could play louder than the Chunky, the Cyber-Twin also sounded very nice at “good neighbor” volumes. And it coaxed all kinds of marvelous colors and nuances from the dale-o-caster and made it sing.

For nearly ten years now I’ve had this beautiful guitar made with love by my dear friend Scott. I cherish it.

Thank you, Scott, for this wonderful guitar!

Here are some pictures. Click them to see larger images.

I don’t know what a moof is, but one of them married my cousin, apparently voluntarily.

Last year I invented a new national holiday, Heartbreak Day. Heartbreak Day is the day when the Red Sox fall out of first place for good. Wouldn’t ya know, the Red Sox hadda pick that very year to reverse the curse. No Heartbreak Day in 2004.

This year for sure.

One trouble with Heartbreak Day is that you almost never know on Heartbreak Day that it’s Heartbreak day. Every now and then you can tell, such as when the Red Sox fall out of first place on the last day of the season (as in 1978—Hiya, Bucky!), or when they lose the nth game of an n-game post-season series (as in 1986—Hiya, Buckner!). If Heartbreak Day comes at any other time, there’s always a chance that the Sox will regain first place, thus postponing the inevitable for days or weeks.

So you never really know when to celebrate Heartbreak Day. Then again, Heartbreak Day ain’t exactly a celebratin’ holiday anyway.

There’s a good chance that Heartbreak Day will fall on September 20 this year.

Happy Heartbreak Day!

I’ll be offering franchises soon in these exciting new businesses:

• Just Broth
• Thermos Circus
• Jiffy Cart Emergency Shopping Cart Wheel Repair

Investment and business opportunities for you! Financial independence for me!

I find myself annoyed every time someone says, “Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Now, I find that definition annoying no matter who it’s attributed to, but attributing it to Einstein really takes the cake. I’ve done some searching, and I can’t find any credible evidence that Einstein ever said such a thing. My guess is that people attribute this definition to Einstein not because he said it, but because attributing it to Einstein gives it credibility. Bah.

Whether Einstein actually defined insanity that way or not, people attribute to Einstein all kinds of stuff that he never said. Over time, I’ve noticed a few patterns that I now want to immortalize as theories. And I want to put my name into the theories along with Einstein’s, because that will give me credibility.

Emery’s Einstein Aphorism Attribution Acquisition Theory: Any saying of uncertain origin will eventually be attributed to Einstein.

Emery’s Einstein Aphorism Attribution Adhesion Theory: Any saying, once attributed to Einstein, will be attributed to Einstein forever after.

If we combine these two theories, we arrive at a third:

Emery’s Einstein Aphorism Attribution Accretion Theory: Einstein will eventually have said everything.

Kinda like entropy, but in reverse.

I’ve posted seven more songs on my songs page:

• “At Christmastime” — A beautiful Christmas song by Scott Woodman.
• “Breakdown” — A country tune about a romantic dilemma.
• “Can’t Get Over You” — The joys of having a chubby sweetheart.
• “Can’t Stop Thinkin’” — The right girl? The wrong girl?
• “Hamburger Disguise” — Fast food gone wrong.
• “Never a Taxi” — There’s never a taxi when you need one.
• “Pardon Me” — A love song for a waitress.

I’ll write up the story of these songs eventually.

I’ve also re-posted all of the other songs. They now each have “mp3 tags” to identify the composer, the title, the artist, and other information. Also, each one now includes lyrics, so if your mp3 player can display lyrics, that will be just swell. And I’ve embedded Suzanne’s grave graphic into the mp3 file for Bury Me.

The other day, at the corner of Watt and Alta Arden in Sacramento, I saw a sign that said

NO U T RN

As I pondered the sign, I realized that it had become self-referential.