Recently, I read and reviewed ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

If that work is an introductory handbook to blogging as a potential home-based business — analogous to the way someone might raise chinchillas — The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging is more of a gospel of blogging, evangelizing the practice like a pseudo-religion with a lot of celebrity devotees, all ushering in a new, ecstatic world order.

The Cedar Waxwing is a striking bird, as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology notes:

... the Cedar Waxwing is a silky, shiny collection of brown, gray, and lemon-yellow, accented with a subdued crest, rakish black mask, and brilliant-red wax droplets on the wing feathers. In fall these birds gather by the hundreds to eat berries, filling the air with their high, thin, whistles. In summer you're as likely to find them flitting about over rivers in pursuit of flying insects, where they show off dazzling aeronautics for a forest bird.

The clip above is from their just-released CD/DVD combo Live from Austin, TX, recorded live at that legendary Texas PBS showcase, Austin City Limits.

The package features Drive-By Truckers' entire September 26, 2008, thirteen-song performance from their Brighter Than Creation's Dark tour — over an hour of music — in both CD and DVD form.

According to WhoCalled.Us, the caller was "Western Watts" (the correct spelling is actually Western Wats), which turns out to be an Orem, Utah-based market research / data collection company performing live interviewing, online surveys, automated telephony, and other misdemeanors.

Furthermore, a great many of the comments at WhoCalled.Us associated the mysterious call with recent work done by Kinko's or FedEx Kinko's (which is now FedEx Office).

There was something about this year's Fourth Fest Parade that was absolutely transcendent. Seeing so many Racinians and our guests, from all walks of life, gathering together on our charming Main Street in the Midwest — to simultaneously perform and spectate, to see and be seen, to display and witness slices of each other's humanity amidst the larger compass of America's history and its founding cornerstones of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" — was just incredibly elevating.

Here's just a very brief sample of Pet Lions' set at Summerfest. The video was recorded on our Flip Ultra HD, and clearly I'm not the Martin Scorsese of iMovie yet.

Amy called me around 12:30 on Monday afternoon. I wasn't surprised that she was crying, but I did not anticipate exactly what triggered it.

"That damn dog," she sobbed. "How do they know?"

Update: I just got off the phone with Cathy Jacobs from Time Warner Cable, who was holding a copy of this blog post. We had a mutually enlightening conversation, and she deleted the $30 fee and "past due" status, about which I was complaining.

The mistake was mine, but Ms. Jacobs agreed that my complaint was valid, and that Time Warner Cable's messaging about such transactions will be reviewed. She will also work to see that there is some access to the accounts receivable department when such access is warranted.

On Friday, I had pizza for breakfast, followed by pizza for lunch. Then for dinner, I had some more pizza, plus beer. Amy, by then, was already shunning pizza, leaving even more for me — including her anchovy pizza, which took on a slightly off-putting character in microwaved leftover form.

In between eating pizza and drinking beer, I was checking our Mileage Plus Dining accounts every few minutes, but seeing no reflection of our pizza purchase. What I did spot was an unsettling notice at the bottom of my account summary: "Please allow 5-10 days for miles to post." Gulp.

While American politicians bicker over whether to pass a clean energy bill, people in India are really feeling the heat these days. Today's Weather Underground forecast for New Delhi called for a high of 111° F. going up to 114° F. for Monday.

As death's irrevocability begins to sink in, there is next the problem of how to remember the person. Complexities and contradictions must be trimmed down into a small, neat picture — an icon — which captures that essence so we can store it in our memory and refer back to it from time to time in the future, or pass it to our posterity.

Tomorrow night (Friday, June 26), she'll perform on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Her latest album is called Far, and it's available in handy MP3 download form at Amazon.com.

I'm a bit of an ultraconservative in some ways. What did people do before central air turned us all into delicate wimps? How did The Greatest Generation cope when temperatures soared above 80?

They flipped on a fan, is what they did. Many of them, in fact, flipped on a Vornado fan that looks almost exactly like mine.

North Beach is an inspiring success story, and the Extreme Volleyball Professionals Tour is its showcase event. For the last two years, the players have voted Racine the best stop on the EVP Tour (see the video at Facebook).

Hoping to learn more about blogging strategies and methods, I recently purchased and read ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income at Amazon.com.

The book, published a little over a year ago, was co-written by Darren Rowse, founder of Problogger.com, and Chris Garrett, a blogging and Internet marketing consultant.

Curmudgeons rejoice! At long last, science suggests that the forced sunniness imposed by religious evangelists, sales motivators, and self-help books from The Power of Positive Thinking to The Secret can actually make you feel worse.

A little Googling reveals that back in May, Henin — known as "Juju" to many of her fans — was the subject of a reality show in her home country of Belgium called Les 12 travaux de Justine Henin — literally "the twelve travails," which some have also translated as "the twelve challenges" or "the twelve works."

Not speaking French, it's tough to make out all of the challenges, but they seem to include soccer, ski instructing, cooking, modeling, and acting in her favorite soap opera Plus belle la vie.

Overnight, I caught the Thursday's episode of The Strand on the BBC World Service on WUWM.

Listen to it, if you have a chance, before it gets replaced next week. Seventeen minutes into the audio file, host Mark Coles talks to Professor Declan Kiberd about James Joyce's Ulysses, sometimes called "the most unread literary masterpiece of all time."

A new Top Chef season premieres tonight at 9:00 Central on Bravo, Channel 70 on Time Warner Cable here in southeastern Wisconsin. However, it's not the regular Top Chef, but instead a spin-off series called Top Chef Masters.

On the positive side, instead of culinary climbers, this series features actual star chefs competing for charity — chefs like Hubert Keller, Michael Chiarello, Roy Yamaguchi, Rick Bayless, John Besh, and many more.

MSNBC morning host and former Florida congressman Joe Scarborough may be the electronic media's most tolerable conservative Republican. He may even have a new book, out just yesterday, urging his party back from radical recklessness to a more moderate temperment (The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise).

None of this, however, means that Joe Scarborough can gracefully handle a little pointed ribbing.