Now that we've had an HDTV for a while, I've come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of HD programming: shows made in HD, and shows made for HD. An example of the first type would be the Letterman show. To make the downsampling process easy, most all of the information is still in the center of the screen, and HD Letterman is just a wider and clearer version of normal Letterman.

Planet Earth is most decidedly of the second variety. I have a hard time putting in to words how well it was filmed, or the things they managed to capture, but take every "animals hunting and humping" show (as Elle so poetically put it) you've ever seen, roll them all up together, and none of the result would have the money shots from Planet Earth. There are things in this show so amazing (and amazingly filmed) that they literally brought tears to my eyes on at least three occasions during the three episodes we watched tonight.

Of particular note is the Birds Of Paradise section of the first episode, the snow leopard hunt in the second episode, and the scene with the dolphins herding baitfish in the third. On all three occasions, I literally could not believe what I was seeing. Absolutely amazing television, straight up.

I think the headline says it all. The Circus Is Coming! If they have a one-legged dwarf, I'm just gonna shit myself. At any rate, you know where the fuck I'll be on May 23rd. I'm gonna go to both shows.

And in other news, we've more or less got the radio and licensing house mailings for Bounte and the CR album done; our interns are exhausted from all the work, and can't barely stay awake. I caught them napping on the job today.

I finally was able to return the phone, but today I got a bill containing a "cancellation fee" of $200. So I called Sprint, spent 13 minutes and 22 seconds on hold, got a person on the phone finally (man, do I hate talking to their computer!) and the guy hung up on me after I got like 4 words out. And none of those words were "listen, you fucking retard..."

To fully describe the depth of my hatred for Sprint would take too much time, so let me say this: in 2007, having a phone at all fucking sucks. I'm just this side of canceling everything and going to some VoIP on the rare occasion I need to make calls. This shit is driving me over the edge.

Today we went to the museum that contains the Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' ginormous flight of fancy (literally.) It is located, for some inexplicable reason, in McMinnville, Oregon. No idea why.

I'd put up a picture of the plane itself, but I couldn't actually take a picture of it. That is to say that I couldn't get far enough away from it in the building to actually photograph the whole thing. To say it is huge is to understate the matter entirely. It is FUCKING HUGE. Like Holy Fucking Shit huge. The above photo is looking towards the back of the plane from inside on the main deck. To give you an idea of scale, you see that tiny door in the back? It is actually big enough for that fellow standing there to walk through without bending over.

There are a lot of cool planes there, if you're in to that sort of thing. Mostly WWII era, but they also have an SR71 Blackbird that you can basically get right up on. I've seen an SR71 in person before, at the Intrepid museum in NYC (or Jersey now, I guess), but you couldn't look in the cockpit or anything. On the one here, you can do everything but get inside it.

I'm wondering if ejecting counts as removing, and if the pilot should consult the manual before ejecting, as the text indicates. I suppose that would be a fairly good idea at Mach 3.

At any rate, if you're ever in McMinnville (I'm not sure why you would be) it's worth the trip to this museum just to see how fucking huge the Spruce Goose really is.

Oregon is a terribly odd state. On the one hand, you've got the Nike Campus, the absolute pinnacle of high tech, and not 150 miles away, you have the fire station for a small central Oregon town that looks like it has been more or less unchanged since the 1890s. (And yes, that's real, and yes, it is the fire station for Antelope.)

In other news, all pre-orders have shipped, and should have been received by now. We apologize for taking what is for us an inordinately long time with this, but whatcha gonna do? (Find a new pressing plant, that's what.) The next Positron release will be either the 2nd Atomica album, or Micronaut : Callisto, whichever one is done first. Unless something else comes along that peaks our interest.

So, all Bounte pre-orders will ship today. Thanks for being patient on that.

It was a beautiful day here today. I wouldn't be surprised if it scratched 70. But the clouds rolled in, as they tend to do, right when I was out taking some pictures of the various shit that is blooming in our yard. It amazes me how few flowers I know the names of. Elle and I refer to them with a color/size system, like so:

Elle: did you see those flowers that bloomed in the yard today?

Me: the yellow ones?

Her: yeah, the big yellow ones.

Me: oh, I thought you were talking about the small yellow ones.

The problem with this otherwise useful classification system is that we have about 25 different kinds of small white flowers. So they all get lumped in to a general "small white" descriptor that seems to serve the purpose.

In any case, I was out taking photos, and accidentally snapped one while the camera was pointed directly at the sun. Above is the result. Maybe I can sell it to David Fincher for a lobby card for his next movie.

Maybe someday the Bounte CDs will show up and I'll have something to do. This has turned in to a comedic sort of thing now. (I imagine it's not that funny to Dean, who is losing his mind a little bit, and justifiably so.) In any case, I think it's safe to say that our pressing plant we've used for almost ten years now, through many tens of thousands of CDs, has pretty much lost our future business. At the risk of jinxing things yet again, I'm willing to state for the record that the CDs will ship to us on Monday, we'll have them on Tuesday, and you'll have your copy before the week is out.

(Look for an exciting post exactly one week from today, where I eat those preceding words.)

Let's see... what else? My cousin Kaya is getting married in Hawaii in August, so we're planning a trip to the land of my birth to correspond with same. (Yes, I was born in Hawaii. No, I don't remember it.) It's worth noting that this will be the first time I've been on a plane since I swore off flying some time in the middle of the Burn tour. So that should be fun. If you have any valium, send me a couple. Seriously. PM me if you need my address. I'm not kidding. This is going to be a fucking big deal.

Also, we're taking a short vacation at the end of the month; we're going down to Ashland to see what's what in one of the most democratic cities in the nation (80.6% voted party line democrat in 2004.) We'll also take in some Shakespeare at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Looks like "As You Like It" is the one to see. I've never seen that, so it should be interesting.