I hate Children's Music, but are my kids ready for Hip Hop?

A little while ago my friends at Urban Rhetoric, progenitors of all things cool, asked me to write a piece on being a parent and a fan of Hip Hop.  Below is a reprint of the original article.

Children's music is universally atrocious.   It is trite and tedious.  An endless sea of monotony that crushes ones humanity with unrelenting waves of banal tedium.  At first it laps gently at the shores of your sanity.  A barely felt current, swathing your new baby in passivity and lulling him to sleep.  Slowly it seeps into diaper changes and car rides, please touch museums and toy stores.  It's suddenly everywhere and you are caught in the swell of its undertow.  You gasp for Nas, Mos Def, Kanye, but it's too late, your lungs are already saturated with Three Blind Mice, Itsy Bitsy Spider and something called "Raffi". Children's music is devious.  It's born of  platitudes and gentle hell fire.  It's boring and insidious.  It is the incarnate soul of the devil.

Simple Photoshop Star Burst Effect

One effect that I really like, especially for a splashy or retro type feel, is the star burst effect.  I think the spinning color adds a lot of energy and can be a fun way to add a little pep.  There are many tutorials on the web but they seem to either be complicated or time consuming.  That said, the two linked above do provide additional flexibility.  The only advantage to this technique is that it is simple and fast.  So let’s start:

Greatest Game Ever Still Pretty Great

There are a number of criteria that reviewers use to mistakenly calculate the greatness of a game.  By "game", of course, I mean Video Game since I am writing this after 1982.  Some of these mistaken criteria are "Graphics Quality", "Story", or "Fun".  All of these are crocker.  There is only one criterion by which you can judge any game's true Greatness: hours played.

Resurfacing: It's not just for parking lots and Joan Rivers' face

Many years ago in a land far away I had a super long commute and a pressing need for the constant adulation that can only be provided by strangers commenting on my thoughts.  So, I started a blog. As it turns out, the pressing need persisted but the strangers' comments did not.  Actually, the strangers' comments never materialized (unless you count comment spam) and as you might expect the flow of unread posts dried up while the ads for fake Canadian Cialis kept popping up.