Iced Tea Forever

So today at work my buddy Travis asked me how long it was yet. He asks me every week or several days. I said, less than three weeks!

He said, “Have you been wearing wool socks?!!”

I said, “Nooooo, I certainly haven’t!”

I generally do not like instrumentals. I’m an a cappella fanatic. But even those with superior tastes like me can appreciate the following.

Here’s a movie of a dude who gets more music out of a little guitar than you ever would have thought possible. Not only amazing skill, but incredible musicality as well. Jake Shimabukuro (NOTE: Monster file. This thing is 28MB. Sorry all you poor unfortunate dial-up users! Credit: Google Blogoscoped.)

Alternate link: Google Video

Note, this is not a regular guitar, it’s a little guitar. There are all kinds of guitars. Big guitars, little guitars, micro guitars, regular guitars, guitars with holes, guitars without holes, guitars you plug into the wall, guitars you don’t, guitars you hold, guitars you stand up, guitars you play flat, guitars you play with a bow, on and on. But the rarest guitar ever, one you rarely come across, is the one that is played in tune!

What’s the difference between a piano and a guitar?

The piano burns longer! Ha ha!

Actually, maybe just here. Notice the new “.com” in the ITF title. Not sure if I like that or not.

But, what it signifies is true. I have secured the domain www.icedteaforever.com. Kon should be happy now, it really bothered him before that he couldn’t type in icedteaforever and go to his favorite site.

Right now it’s set up to just redirect to ripchordpro.com/blog/. But it’s a lot easier to tell someone “iced tea forever dot com” rather than “ripsnort professional slashback blogger.”

I’m not sure how it’ll all come out in the wash. I don’t know if I want to migrate everything over to the new domain or what. Haven’t decided what all I want to do yet. I wish I would have done some things differently to start with, but that’s how you figure things out I guess. I didn’t know really what role the blog would end up playing, so far it’s exceeded my expectations.

Here’s a story, one of two requested by Hans. Occasionally when you’re on stage something will happen where you can hardly maintain your composure. But with great fortitude and courage, you must press on. This is story one.

We were in Lame Duck, Minnesota or somewhere, I forget. Wait, I think that was Blackduck. I don’t know. Make that Kitchi Pines maybe. Anyway, we were in Val Yoder’s church on one of our trips with Paul.

It was a relatively small church as I remember, with a somewhat unusual characteristic. There was a stairway down to the basement in the right front corner of the sanctuary.

A family with small children was sitting on the bench right next to the door of the stairway.

We were doing our part of the program and I stood there happily warbling away. I looked down on about the second bench, where this family was sitting, just in time to see one of the little kids lean forward and BLEEHHH throw up! It had hardly hit the floor and his Mom grabbed him and shot down those stairs. It happened so fast the other guys didn’t see anything!

And I had to stand there and keep singing like I didn’t see it either!

That was not easy, let me tell you.

It’s the middle of a nice warm afternoon and I was feeling sleepy. That isn’t conducive to production, so I thought I might go take a little walk.

I went out in my backyard, looked around a little bit, then decided that I was sufficiently stimulated. Five minutes of exercise is about right. I needed some more tea.

On the Utopian west coast, the Amish are a distant, exotic, unfamiliar novelty. They’re so far removed from us, little is known about them. But overall, they’re mostly viewed in a generally positive, noble way.

In Indiana, they’re everywhere. Living here is a great way to lose your respect for them in general. I don’t mean to offend all the Amish hanging out here at ITF, but there’s a lot of strange reasoning going on in that sect. Sure, there are many decent and good individuals in their ranks, I’m not discounting them.

The first time I saw an Amish dude smoking, I stared and stared with morbid fascination. I couldn’t believe it!

You get over that reaction.

It boggles the mind that people who completely devote their lives to shunning the world in every way they can imagine will:

• Smoke like chimneys
• Basically give their kids license to party down and do whatever they want (to my understanding)
• Dive in the linguistic gutter at work
• Etc.

Not impressed.

Buggies are a real annoyance too. Constantly a road hazard, and exhaust everywhere. Today I saw a buggy being pulled by a car! It looked hilarious. Maybe the horse went lame or something, I don’t know. At any rate, they must’ve needed a buggy tow.

Another thing I can’t figure out is why the boys and men are constantly wearing stocking caps. “Sipplekopps,” they’re called. (Don’t correct me on the spelling, I like it spelled that way. Not that I know the correct way.) But even when it is warm out, always a sipplekopp.

Anyway, no offense to the Amish. I don’t have any Amish buds yet, but I hope to sometime.

There are lots of them. People that leave comments anonymously, that is.

Let me make one thing crystal clear. If you prefer to be anonymous, keep commenting all you want. That’s fine.

But I do think that if you are going to stir the waters, be controversial, take issue with the blogger, make great and substantial comments, or just comment frequently, it’s much more polite to establish an identity online.

Mrs. Darling said it wonderfully over at Life in the Shoe. Some anon commenter (seventh comment down) inexplicably and astonishingly was troubled by the tone and attitude of LitS (I’m still completely bewildered how they ever came up with that doozy). Everybody started jumping to defend Dorcas, and Mrs. Darling gently chided the original instigator and another anon or two about posting the kind of things they were saying as anonymous.

Then of course they tried to turn it on her, but she brilliantly deflected their ridiculous statements. Basically, go right ahead if you want to be anon, but create an identity. Use initials, come up with a unique name, anything.

Like I told Darin, I love controversy on a blog. It makes it so much more interesting. I was a little afraid of writing this, because I don’t want to stifle a single comment. So if the only way you’ll make that bold and controversial comment attacking the blogger is if you do it completely anon, do it anyway! I like those kind of comments too much. But maybe think about creating an identity.

You see things like PFC, EG, The Baritone, Truthseeker, Peacefullady, atthecrux, and I’ve even seen ones such as Dave and Sharon! See, it can be done. And it’s probably painless.

Like last night, this comment came in signed by Anonymous Coward. This dude must have seen the comment I left over here. I love it! What a great sense of humor. See, and he’s creating an identity.

All this to draw attention to my own new proactively instigative anonner! This dude (dudette No one knows!!) laid into me on my political post, but he (she) must have been a little chicken because they waited until it was old and way down the page! I love these kinds of comments. I don’t think I’ve really gotten any like this before. So thanks, anon. Maybe I’ll have to come up with a name for you.

Hey, maybe he’s AC from that previous paragraph!

You all know I gave Ag her name, don’t you? That was way back in the good old days on the by-log, when we commenters out-wrote By by a 4 words to 1 margin. Come to think of it, Truthseeker does that now all by himself!! Ha ha! Just having fun with you, TS!