Ginger or Johnson

I didn't intend to blog this week, trying to take the time off to spend with the family, but this was important. If you read the news, you must be aware that ol' man death has been on the move. Gerald Ford, James Brown, Saddam any day now... "Who next?" I hear you asking.

Well, I'll tell you. Our goldfish. We used to have two. Ginger and Johnson. My wife called Johnson "Johnce". We've had them since my birthday two and a half years ago. A couple weeks ago one of them died. I could never remember which one was which. I think it might have been Johnce. Well, tonight we came back from a little get-together at the Webb's to find that Ginger was laying at the bottom of the bowl. I think it's because we've forgotten to feed him (or her) for the past few weeks and she (or he) ate all the gunk that could be found on the side of the glass.

So we are pet-less.

And this will probably be all I'll post again until the New Year. And then, hang on. Good stuff to come. New Caedmon's record. Solo tour. And a stickie note full of random thoughts that I think will make good posts. Until then, hope you have a great week and I'll see you next year.

Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours, hope your day is peaceful and happy. And I hope somebody loved you enough to get you this. God's blessings to you all.

alien conspiracy theory

I'm surrounded by conspiracy theorists. A couple of my really good friends land squarely in this category. And that's a good thing. Or at least a really entertaining one. My friend Billy Cerveny feeds on this. We all joke that he might be in the CIA, but I'm pretty sure Cason really thinks he is. Casella's on the fence. So Billy always does and says weird, mysterious things that get them going. I love it.

Now, this isn't exactly a conspiracy, but it's a pretty great theory. My friend Kevin Twit told me this one, and I think I might even agree.

I was reminded of the theory because we gave Sadie a bath tonight. She's so tiny, now just over 8 pounds, and she doesn't do a whole lot besides sleep (in the day, of course) so she doesn't need them too often. Basically, we just cover her up in a towel, expose a tiny part, wash it, and move on to the next one. It's cute to see how little she is, and she gets all squirmy.

Now, Kevin's theory is related to this. The brain of a newborn is so undeveloped, as far as memory and association go, that they have no idea what they're seeing, and they can barely see anyway. At first they just see black and white, then red, then other colors follow. This is why toys for tiny babies have a lot of black and white on them.

The theory goes that some people's brains spit up memories of their birth, or early life, and the memories are filtered through how they think now. The bright lights, probes (thermometers?), faces that look like this...



The mind tries to make sense of it, put the barely visible details (and a healthy appreciation for Star Trek) together and: voila! Alien abduction.

Random, I know, but I always thought it was interesting, or at least comical. So, there you go.

Also, doing a Google Image search for "alien head" reminds me of three very important things:

1. The movie Alien was really, really freaking awesome.

2. So was Aliens (the sequel).

3. Seeing people's "alien" artwork (and tattoos) reminds me of just how weird some people are.

And now, I'm going to try to get a bit of sleep while both babies are conked out and quiet. Happy Friday.

hitting the links

So last night we got the first decent sleep since Sadie was born. Not amazing sleep, but real actual human-ish sleep. And Ella has Parents-Day-Out today, so we get to take naps, too. AWESOME.

I'm going to make sound clips of the VisualSound WorkHorse Pony amp today. That should be pretty fun. If I get anything really interesting, I'll post it for you.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks and I've ended up reading more on the web than writing. A little different for me. I thought we could have a little fun and I'd give you six links to things that seemed interesting to me. Enjoy at your leisure...

LINK 1

LINK 2

LINK 3

LINK 4

LINK 5

LINK 6

P.S. I forgot this one.

Christmas Sale and other tidbits

A quick bit of Christmas news for you. I'm having a sale on my album The Morning. I'll be selling it for $9.99 until Christmas. All my orders are taken care of through AwareStore.com, and they'll be shipping stuff out until the last minute. You can order a cd and have it shipped straight to a friend. Doesn't get a whole lot easier.

Except, of course, for the iTunes music store. All my albums are available there and you can send gift certificates over e-mail. You can even pick a certain song or album that can be downloaded as soon as the recipient enters the gift code. You can click on the link below, do a search for "Andrew Osenga" and pick any of my music to gift.

Click here for my webstore.

Click here to give an iTunes gift.

I make a decent portion of every sale through either store, so both choices are super helpful to me. I know some of you think about that, and I appreciate it, so I thought I'd let you know.

Also, you can still download my song "New Beginning" for free. Give it a listen. Give it to your friends, your neighbors and family.

Click here to download.

In completely unrelated news, my friend, Caedmon's drummer and our AO.com hero Todd Bragg had an accident yesterday. He was on a trampoline with his family and hit the ground through the trampoline. An ambulance had to take him to the emergency room where X-rays showed he cracked a vertabrae. He's in a lot of pain and won't be able to move nearly at all for the next few days. They say it will heal by itself, but will take 6 to 8 weeks for the bulk of it. He and his family could use your prayer and encouragement over the next couple of weeks. Add to that, today, Saturday the 16th, is his birthday.

And in further unrelated news, my blog hero Shaun Groves has just put up a new site that I think you all would enjoy. It's called the Shlog. He writes about music, theology, his family and pretty much anything else. It's the only blog I check every day. You should, too.

Well, the only other thing I have for you tonight is that after a good three or four months, our TV remote control showed up again tonight. It was under the arm of the couch that I swear I checked a hundred times. My brother-in-law Clay has longer arms, though. Thanks man. Now we can watch our six channels with complete volume and commercial-avoiding control. Which of course means I'm watching Justin Timberlake be both pretty actually funny and musically great on SNL. Smart guy. He hires GREAT bands. And now I should go to bed.