Take a look around and tell me what you think! Especially tell me if you notice any glaring problems or typos…
I know there are a few bugs to work out. IE7 is not playing well with chimPod in the blog for some reason, but it worls well everywhere else. Anyway, lots more to do, but I thought I’d let y’all see the reason for my sparsity of posts lately…
EDIT: winning the fight on some fronts. The annoying part is the chimPod files – they have to appear in all subfolders to work properly. I’m hoping to use PHP to keep the music flowing across page clicks. I think that will solve my problem…)
FURTHER EDIT:Your Monkey Librarian is on the way, but it’s almost 2AM now and I have to teach class tomorrow.

EVEN FURTHER EDIT: Please let me know if the text is a funky color. The titles should be orange, subtitles in blue, and main text in dark blue/black. It rendered differently on Aleks’s Mac, but I think I have it fixed…

The new site design is almost complete. The Monku boards will return, with an added level of security to prevent spam companies from crappign all over it (as is the case now) and the template will match the rest of the site.

My first post on the new blog will deal with the launch of my new project: The International Monkey Mania Growing Experiment. I really need a much better acronym for the project…

I found a lot of new (to me) bands this year. I’ll share some to close things out as I work feverishly on the new design. Also, Congrats to Jenny and Rick on their new baby!

Anyway, turn off the monkeytunes up top and takea look at these! We’ll start with Over the Rhine, a great folk group. Sorry for the poor video quality, but they don’t have much on YouTube. Great group!

Next, as a change of pace, Billy Talent, a Canadian punk group that rocked balls on the Conan O’Brien show. Here’s “Red Flag”

Erin McKeown is another great folksy musician. Someone spliced some home movie to her song “Born to Hum”. Check it out!

We’ll finish this post with Iron and Wine.”Southern Anthem is a great song evocative of Sam Beam’s best work. He wrote, produced, and played every instrument on this song (and every song on the album The Creek Drank the Cradle).

I thought I had an artist lined up for my new website, SurfMonkeyDesigns.com… I haven’t heard form him for a while, which is too bad because I like his stuff a lot. He had a style I really liked, kind of urban/manga/monkey thing… alas, it may never be now. I include it here for your viewing pleasure, and I open the offer to the public. I need surfing monkeys for my website…

EDIT… alas, I can’t even access the sketch off my server now… Boo hoo…

I’ll be updating for MonkeyTunes:The Christmas edition later today…
I’ve been out of town because of a family funeral. My wife’s grandma passed away at the age of 99. Words just can’t describe what a wonderful, energetic, hilarious, caring and loving person she was. So I’ll give you a picture instead:

Here’s a bit of fun for you. One of those uplifting, darkly humorous videos about what we’ll go through for love sometimes. And sometimes, what you’re chasing isn’t what’s right for you. And sometimes, when you stop looking, and you’ve been roughed up by the skull man and his friends, you find love. And sometimes, when you’re happiest, that beautiful dream from the past turns out to be a monster that comes back to haunt you. And it’s all told with the magic of rotoscoped teddy bears, with a catchy alt-pop song to boot! You may want to pause the monkeytunes up top for the ultimate listening experience.

I think January 1st will be the launch of an all-new Monkeywright.com. I’ve got a few things cooking, visual improvements, content, etc. Plus, the blog will be directly featured on the main page (which will help my google rankings. Does anyone like the Monkeytunes? I’m considering moving it sitewide…).

More importantly, I’ll be launching surfmonkeydesigns.com – my web design studio! I need to get some graphic work finished up, but I have a large enough portfolio that I think it’s time for the business to look like… well, a business.

The next two days will be rough. We’re driving to Tucson for Thanksgiving with Aleks’s friends, and then I’ve got to get up at 4AM to get over to BestBuy for a ridiculous good deal on a laptop. THEN, we have to find a CompUSA so Aleks can get more memory for her camera. I hate the crowds. I love the deals.

Yes! As I don’t speak German, I can’t be sure this is real. But man, oh man. I would just love to see a Tom Cruise action movie about these guys. A high rise tower under siege, spotlights paint the building. A drug crazed criminal pushes a flaming desk out of the top window, crashing onto a team of paramedics below. The sergeant on scene knows the situation has become too hot to handle. He grabs his walkie talkie and shouts, “Get me F.A.R.T.! I want F.A.R.T. all over this!”

http://f-a-r-t.net/blog/Team

We need some kind of tagline for the trailer – July 2007 – It will blow you away…
Or – July 2007 – Hold Your Breath…
Or -…? Let’s make a contest out of this…

Anyway.
I’ve discovered the drawback of working with small children is working with their diseases, which they’re all too happy to inadvertently pass on to me. So I’m off to a NyQuil induced coma. See you in a few weeks…