We just got the call from Wendy. She will post a detailed story later, but let's just say she had one of the fastest deliveries I've heard of in a while. She checked in at the hospital at 6:45 and Cosette was born at 7:11. Wow!

Cosette is healthy, 19 inches long, and weighs 7 pounds 1 ounce. Congratulations to second-time parents, Josh and Wendy, and new big-brother, Connor. :) Wendy sounds like she's doing well and in good spirits, so praise God for a slightly crazy but safe delivery!

I'm sure photos will be coming along soon from the family. I'll be visiting tomorrow, so I'll take some pictures as well.

I just read an article in the latest Rolling Stone that perfectly captures what I like most about Wayne Coyne. Really, the photograph that accompanies the piece says it all. It's a picture of Wayne standing with a mop in his own kitchen. The caption says he bought the house fourteen years ago for $20,000.

A few facts about Wayne Coyne:
Wayne still lives and works in that house in the city where he grew up.
Wayne still mows his own lawn.
Upon arriving at a venue, Wayne is known to help the road crew unload the band's equipment from the truck.
Wayne still tunes his own guitar before the show starts.
One of the staples of The Flaming Lips' last two tours is a moment during "The Softest Bullet Ever Shot" when Wayne smears himself with fake blood, which drips onto his white suit. He scrubs the blood off the suit himself after every show, in his hotel room's bathtub.

This hands-on approach to Wayne Coyne's life permeates his art. He creates most of the band's album artwork himself. He directs all of the band's music videos, including "Do You Realize??", which was conceived and filmed in a matter of hours on virtually no budget, and is still one of the most original and memorable music videos I have ever seen. Wayne Coyne is currently finishing a feature-length film called Christmas on Mars, which he wrote, directed, stars in, and constructed sets for in his backyard.

This humble do-it-yourself mentality is precisely what has made The Flaming Lips such an interesting and exciting band for over 20 years. No matter how popular and successful they become they retain the mentality of a small independent rock band, and no matter how layered and electronic their music becomes it maintains a warm, personal charm.

Maybe not. According to this article, the NSA arranged domestic phone monitoring seven months before the 9/11 attacks. Let's see... 9-7=2, so if this report is right, the Bush administration initiated domestic spying a month after coming into power. They certainly don't waste time, do they?

This, together with reports of planned military action in the Middle East also before September 2001, creates a picture of a set of previously determined policies that were only justified by the terrorist attacks after the fact.

The united states of total paranoia

You need a permit to do everything in America. You even need a passport to buy a drink...

Also, you do not need a permit if you want — as I did — to transport a dead cow on the roof of your car through the Florida panhandle. That’s because this is banned by a state law.

Think about that. Someone has gone to all the bother and expense of drawing up a law that means that at some point lots of people were moving dead cows about on their cars. It must have been popular. Fashionable even.

You find this a lot in America. People way down the food chain are given the power to say yes or no to elaborately prepared plans, just so their bosses can’t be sued. One expression that simply doesn’t translate from English in these days of power without responsibility is “Ooh, I’m sure it’ll be fine”.