1. Bob Help! [video] - I have no idea why this makes me laugh so much. But it’s a short video involving screaming alpacas (?). How can you not?
2. The Bride Was Beautiful - Photographs of a bride on her wedding day, dying of cancer as she marries her childhood sweetheart. Heartbreaking. [via]
3. Silversun Pickups “Swoon” - I’m not going to write anything about this album because it wouldn’t do it justice. It’s that good.
4. Inspired Bicycles [video] - I’ve never seen anyone do stuff with a bike like Danny MacAskill. He rides like he’s on a tiny skateboard with how he maneuvers it. I keep watching this over and over looking for signs of forgery.
5. Fool All of the People - Art history is packed with gem stories like this one, but this is a wonderfully intriguing short read. A failed artist convinces the world he’s a master, until he meets the Nazis. The takeaway is basically that whatever scene is en vogue often turns it’s back on true talent. But true skill finds other ways of emerging.

1. Proposed high-speed railway - Forget the politics of it for a second and who’s administration this did/didn’t come from. I think this is an awesome idea. I love trains and I think having a network of high-speed rails is a wonderful idea. Now if they pull the little Louisville, KY dot off the map and decide not to connect us, I’ll think it’s a wretched idea. Just sayin’.
2. Santa Ynez home - This house has one beaucoup awards, and rightfully so. The design (like the landscape) is stunning. My only hesitation is that houses like this never feel inviting, simply because they are so carefully thought out and staged. I’d have a nervous breakdown if this were my house and I ever got anything out of perfect 90° alignment.
3. Know Your Meme - Finally I have a resource to give to people when they look at me strangely for making an obscure reference to a joke that only internet nerds get. This is a collection of all the popular memes with good explanations for lay folk on their origins. Yo dawg, I heard you like explanations…
4. “I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child” by Manchester Orchestra - This album has been my tiny musical obsession of the week. Dripping with earnestness and reflection, this album does a wonderful job of somehow rocking with a subtle frailty. Fits right into my catalog of albums next to late Nada Surf and Neutral Milk Hotel. And something about Andy Hull’s voice makes me think of The Rocket Summer. Wonderful album.
5. Flowers for dudes - Yesterday, The Wife™ and I celebrated 10 years together, which is kinda a big deal. She surprised me with an awesome floral arrangement. I hear the delivery guy was getting all sorts of strange looks when he dropped it off at my office.

Becoming a father has changed me (duh). Bringing Liam into this world, I naturally would do anything to shelter him from any harm or injury. But some things, as I’m learning, are simply beyond my control. In his first year alone he’s been surrounded by war, financial doom, food shortages, climate crises, natural disasters, skyrocketing unemployment rates. And Jonas.

Obviously I know I can’t protect my son from everything. I’m the type of dad that encourages him to explore his limits and boundaries, even if it means earning an enormous contusion a bump on his head trying. But some things I just cannot stand by and let himself be subjected to.

Look, I’m a really open guy. I discourage friends from being the “your music sucks” kind of people. Different tastes make the world go ‘round and all that jazz, right? Well not all the time. Friends, I’ve discovered something so heinous, so dangerous in it’s craptitude that I feel compelled to warn everyone I know about it so they too may run screaming down the streets sounding the alarms and waking the other townsfolk. So please, in the spirit of concern let me have one moment of snide contemptuousness to alert you to this very present danger.

What I’ve uncovered is a band called Brokencyde (get it? do you see what they did there? SO CLEVER.) I would say that I’ve found a genre, but that’s being far too generous since who the hell else would mash Crunk music with Screamo? One ‘artist’ does not a genre make. But seriously…crunk music and screamo. Separately, both of these genres (legit, they have many artists respectively assigned to each) hang by the barest threads of credibility. Together they create something so vile, so wicked that this, THIS I say is what should be the focus of our national attention. Forget the mortgage crisis and the tent cities sprouting up. We should make New Mexico secede from the US for birthing these young men. To hell with Texas.

Laugh at it. Cry in pain. Scream in horror. Vomit into that empty Coke can, even. But most importantly, protect your children. Don’t EVER let them listen to this music. Ever. They are our future and we need their sensibilities in tact to help get us out of this global economic apocalypse thing that will still be ravaging us in 50 years.

Warning: Somehow these young men have managed to take the seven actual words in the lyrics and make five of them not safe for work. Consider yourself warned.

1. Rules for my Unborn Son - “#243.There is no need to tell anyone you are leaving the bar. It’s called an Irish Goodbye. And it comes in handy.” Some gems in there.
2. Beer Wars (trailer) - C’mon. Everyone loves a good underdog story, right? Support your craft breweries if not simply for the fact that it shows that you still have the ability to make a choice as a consumer.
3. The best letter ever, from a soccer coach to his parents - How anyone could read this and not believe it was done with tongue firmly planted in cheek, I’m not sure. I’d let him coach my kid any day.
4. Smoked Oak wood floors - Drool. [via]
5. Google gives sneek peak behind their servers - I’ve often wondered what was behind the now familiar logo. Custom-designed servers with one helluva setup. Mind-boggling. “It was our Manhattan Project.”