Things that happen to toads...

Right now Atlanta's getting a meteorological dry-hump. All thunder and lightning, no rain. I have a few minutes to spare right now before I write a book chapter about argumentation. (Come to think of it, I might go outside and manually test that lightning rod.)

A few bits of news. My guitar is still awesome, thanks for asking. I had so much fun tonight. I was struck by inspiration, not lightning, earlier when I had a neat sound and thought...that delay goes on too long, so I dialed it back and I got this doubling of the notes at about .2 secs (I'm guessing). I was running it through the Big Muff (fuzz pedal) and had forgotten to turn off the light chorus pedal, and I got this really fun sound. I wondered what this would sound like if I bounced around on a wah pedal with it, and it was pretty wild for a minute there. I did find something sort of cool just by being lazy, that you get this ethereal midrange tone if you just leave the wah pedal on but walk away from it when it's at mid-sweep. The guitar sounds...farther away. I don't know if that makes sense. When I added yet another pedal, a Digitech Whammy set to octave, it sounds like you're shooting a crossbow bolt through a dog, so I gave up on that pretty quick.

I got a letter from Leonard Pitts today. He thought I made too much out of his comment that there are no atheists in foxholes in a recent article on Bobby Jindal (I wrote a letter) and then suggested that it there was some literal truth to the phrase ("there are few atheists in foxholes," he thought he might write), so it was a mixed message. Mostly it was my fault for taking him seriously, he seemed to think, which is odd for someone who I presume would like to be taken seriously.

I'm going to be on the radio later this week (yay) sharing my expertise on conspiracy theories. I got a list of questions from the person who'll be interviewing me. One of them was "Are there any conspiracy theorists who have been right?" I can't think of one. Not on purpose. Not by following evidence. I mean, if you follow evidence, you become a journalist or a historian. It's like if your alternative medicine is shown to actually do something, then, by definition, it becomes actual medicine. But if you can think of a counterexample, let me know.

HJ