We have some great guests lined up for you, amazing events, and so much more. Follow our tweets @theyardradio and just to hold you over, here’s a clip from our vault. Its Episode one, Season 3, in Hampton. Scroll to the 5min mark and hear the chat about tipping. Its classic, enjoy.

VIA: AJC: Just like Justin Bieber, Alpharetta native Tally Deushane has been discovered on YouTube.

Unlike Justin Bieber, who recently played the Gwinnett Arena, she’s pretty much staying on YouTube.

But that’s OK with Deushane, 20, a junior in creative writing at Agnes Scott College. Good things are coming from her YouTube performances:

Her ukulele-accompanied singing was mentioned by a blogger from Entertainment Weekly.

Her song “Four Chords” ended up earning 240,000 views after it was featured on the YouTube homepage.

And, best of all, her tune about the TV show “How I Met Your Mother” will be included in the DVD boxed set of the show’s fifth season, coming out Sept. 21.

She was in class, surreptitiously checking e-mail, when she found out that the show’s producers were following her on Twitter and loved her song. She tried not to scream out loud. More recently they closed the deal, paying her $300 for the right to use “A Daughter’s Lament” on the gag-reel disc within the set.

“They’re trying to keep costs down,” she said,

Those familiar with the show know that it consists of a never-ending flashback in which dad Ted Mosby explains his courtship years. Deushane’s song, “A Daughter’s Lament,” is from the point of view of the long-suffering girl tired (after five seasons) of hearing her father’s drawn-out tale. She sings:

“I don’t want to know every small detail, I don’t need to know everyone my uncle nailed/

“I don’t see the point of telling this at all, why must we keep hearing, let’s go to the mall.”

The 1,700 subscribers to Deushane’s YouTube channel can see her singing songs about “The Office,” “Arrested Development,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Star Trek,” “Castle” and other television shows, usually in her trademark black-framed glasses with her dark hair pulled back, playing one of her several ukuleles. (Viewers tell her she looks like Anne Hathaway. She doesn’t mind hearing that.)

Deushane sings of Television Land because she knows a lot about it.

“I have about 350 TV shows on DVDs,” she said. “I go to movie shops buy them used, really cheap. … I’m marathoning ‘Laverne and Shirley’ and ‘Bewitched’ right now.”

In fact you can see the first half of Deushane’s extensive library of recorded TV shows in the background of some of her videos. In the frame, over her left shoulder, on a shelf in her dorm room, are “Ace of Cakes” through “Mary Tyler Moore.” Out of view are “MASH” through “X-Files.”

Deushane is a prolific writer. She’s participated in National Novel Writing Month three times, cranking out a 50,000-word novel each November for the last three years. (She’s doing it again this winter.)

Her last book featured a ukulele-playing debate club member and so she wrote some songs for her character to sing. She is, she freely admits, channeling her own inner nerd. (She was a speech and debate club member in high school.)  That dorky personna will come into full flower this fall when she attends Dragon-Con as her favorite character from the Josh Whedon series, “Firefly,” with ukulele in hand.

On top of Lion's Head Mountain in South Africa

When I walked up to the library on the first day of school, I literally almost fell down when I saw “Blacks Only” and “Whites Only” signs on the library door. I was immediately offended, thinking that UCT was negligent in removing pre-1994 apartheid labeling. After talking to the students, I found out that these signs were actually an effort to promote unity and show how far South Africa has come from its hyper-racial apartheid history.

Race, race relations, stereotypes, and resulting spatial and health disparities are much more in your face here in Cape Town than I am used to. The downside of that is that people often out rightly made synonyms of Black/poor and White/rich. Conversely, the grand upside is that discrimination is discussed, not taboo, and not as subtle as in the US. I am refreshed to see white South Africans waving the new flag everywhere I go and I sadly reminisce about the Confederate flags still flapping all over the US south.

Segregation signs in front of UCT Library

During the first few weeks I got into several fights…well discussions…about my race. I am Black to me and in the United States. Here, instead of Black I classify as Coloured. Someone actually said to me, “Your eyes are hazel. You are Coloured. Black people have black eyes.” I was initially offended with my “Black Power coming back to the Motherland” self. But now that I have been here for a few more weeks, I have grown to understand that the historical environment here is just different. I need to stop thinking through my United States hegemony.

So, what is Coloured anyway you ask? The category is vast. Anyone with racial mixing in their ancestry counts as Coloured. During apartheid, they were their own separate “race” apart from Black, white, and Indian. The hierarchy during apartheid went White, Coloured, Indian, and finally African/Black. The de jure segregation during apartheid has caused these people of mix ancestry to grow to have their own unique culture and stereotypes.

Selfishly and superficially, I think one of the best things about being part of Coloured category is that all makeup selections take me into account. If you are a light-skinned Black person, take a trip to South Africa and visit MAC. All of the she shades come in half shades!! It’s GREAT! Stupid me bought an extra compact thinking I wasn’t going to find my color or a MAC store around here. What I really needed to do before I left was read a South African history book.

Although I am beginning to understand life in South Africa from a South African point of view, what I really want to do is slap up a sign that says “ALL RACES LOVED, VALUED, AND WELCOME” and put on a shirt that says “Forever Black.”

Song I’m playing right now: “Shades” by Wale