Front Cover | MP3s

1. Dinosaurs – The Stills
2. Mistaken for Strangers – The National
3. I Don’t Have a God – Robots in Disguise
4. House Jam – Gang Gang Dance
5. The Prayer – Bloc Party
6. California Dreamer – Wolf Parade
7. Wintertime – Yeasayer
8. She Is Turning Into You – Snowman
9. Sing! Captain – Handsome Furs
10. Child-Heart Losers – Sunset Rubdown

The title was coined by a mouth-foaming pundit decrying the influence of “atheistic scientists and rational Satanists” on America. The phrase stuck with me – an “atheist” is just a nonbeliever, but an “atheistic” individual is a militant believer in a malevolent un-God.

These songs are spiritual, but not religious. Filled with faith and expectation, yet none of it pointed skyward. They hope to define a negative space without allowing a positive one to exist.

The election is tomorrow. I encourage you to vote for whoever you like (as long as it’s Barack Obama). And if you live in California, Vote NO on Proposition 8.

A distressing number of my Californian friends have no idea how close this proposition is to passing – they assume it will fail because, hey! We live in California! NO is fractionally ahead in polls, but within the margin of error – this proposition will be determined entirely by voter turnout.

Outside forces have spent $25 million dollars lying to Californians about what this divisive and hateful proposition means – Proposition 8 has seen the most advertising of any race or issue this cycle, outside the presidency. Unfortunately, this deluge of negative falsehoods means a 20-point advantage for common-sense decency has been slowly whittled away to little more than a rounding error. If Proposition 8 passes, gay rights will be set back by years, if not decades. The other side is treating this as the final battle of the culture war, and it’s up to us whose hearts aren’t ruled by hate to make sure that they don’t win.

I’m not going to tell you why Proposition 8 is wrong and must be defeated – you’re smart enough to figure that out for yourself. But you have to vote. I don’t care if MSNBC calls the election for Barack at 4 P.M. PST. Get your ass to the polls and vote. Vote.

Thank you.

I dressed up as Scott McCloud’s Zot! villain 9-Jack-9 for Halloween. This is the latest in my popular “awesome, yet unrecognizable” costume series. (Though, three people totally recognized me!) I’m extremely happy with how this turned out.

I learned a few important lessons from this costume, most importantly: don’t choose a costume that prevents you from drinking at a Halloween party. You will take your mask off twenty minutes into the party, and spend the rest of the evening explaining that no, you are not the Music Man, Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins, or Tucker Carlson.

Thanks to Joe for taking such nice photos.

I recently built the Taj Mahal out of LEGO bricks. It’s the biggest LEGO set ever made (over 5900 pieces) and completely awesome. It took about 15 hours to build from start to finish, and I took several photos to document the process.

All these pieces, just waiting to be built.
My workspace.
A piece of the base. (One of six.)
The base. (iPhone for scale.)
The minarets.
The central dome’s internal framework.
First story of the central dome complete.
Adding the second story of the central dome.
The central dome.
Central building, side segment. (One of four.)
Central building, corner segment. (One of four.)
The central building (base).
The central building (complete).
The Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal!

Last, but certainly not least: the building is hollow, so you can place a lamp inside to illuminate the structure.