Forth Iteration

Paramont can suck my ass through a bendy straw . . .

2006-08-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

What the fuck is up with people? Paramount drops their production deal with Tom Cruise because of . . .

"As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal," Redstone was quoted as saying in the Wall Street Journal report e-mailed to reporters. "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

Not that I can even be considered a big Tom Cruise fan, his movies are hit or miss and miss and miss to me, but shit, what has the guy done wrong? He fell in love, got excited about it, and professed a belief in his faith? That's unacceptable behavior? His last movie only made $500 million, so now he's a pariah at the box office? Jesus Fucking Christ.

Kid beauty pagents are F'd up . . .

2006-08-21T00:24:00.000-07:00

Saw "Little Miss Sunshine" tonight . . . great movie. I was ready to be disappointed like I was with "Sideways", but this movie killed. Cracked my ass up over and over again. Probably the best movie I've seen at the theater all year. Definitely has Oscar potential.

Kind of ironic that just as this movie is expanding, a movie that involves trying getting a girl to a kiddie beauty pagent, that the guy who supposedly killed that Ramsey girl get's taken into custody. Those pagents are F'd up, yo, and it's no surprise that they draw F'd up people into their sphere, because the actual parents are F'd up enough to begin with.

But forget that, go see Little Miss Sunshine. Not only will you see a great flick, but your moola will help encourage Hollywood to keep making movies like this. There's no doubt that Sunshine got made because of the success of Sideways and Napoleon Dynamite.

Funny the way things work . . .

2006-07-15T15:58:00.000-07:00

So this is the way things have gone for me recently . . .

A year ago, if you'd've asked me if I'd take a sales job, I'da said no way. Here I am now excited as all get out to start a new job within my company as a sales rep. The money will be insane, and it's actually going to be fun.

A year ago, if you'd've asked me if I was interested in roommates, I'da said no way. I've lived 13 years in a place by myself, and I've LOVED having my own place. But now I NEED to get away from my ex-girlfriend, and I want to buy a house next year. So I'm doing the "sharing a house thing" with a couple guys to save cash, and guess what? The two dudes I've met are cool as can be, and I actually see them ending up lifelong friends, so I'm totally stoked to move in with them next week.

Life's about trying new things, right? Seems that after nearly half a year of suck-i-tude, things are finally coming back my way.

So much music, so little time . . .

2006-06-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

Recent pick-ups (the first four are must gets):

Ron Sexsmith - Cobblestone Runway
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Infadels - We Are Not The Infadels

Islands - Return to the Seas
Old 97's - Early Tracks
Superchunk - No Pocky For Kitty
Beirut - Gulag Orkestar
Gomez - How We Operate
The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
Placebo - Meds
Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers - Four Unlike Before EP
Pearl Jam - Avocado
Elf Power - Back To The Web

Am I the only one who finds the Saw movies life affirming?

2006-05-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

Really.

I enjoy a horror movie as much as the next sic disturbed person, but I'd held off on seeing the Saw movies. I'm all for reckless senseless killing . . . it's all cheap thrills, but I'm not down with torture, and that's what I thought the Saw movies were about.

Surprise Surprise to me, that wasn't the case with the Saw movies. They were about choices. They're about somebody, twisted though he may be, putting people in a position where they have to choose how much life and the people around them mean to themselves.

You're a lowlife and you've lived like a piece of shit . . . are you willing to dig a key from behind your own eye to stay alive!?!

You're sneaking around behind your wife and kid . . . does it take being in a position where you have to cut your foot off to save their lives to get you to realize how much they actually mean to you!?!

We all have choices to make in life, and lots of times we choose not to make a choice, but as the great RUSH lyric goes, "thou you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice". Here's a movie where people are forced into a life or death situation to make a choice . . . it's not random horror . . . it's not random limb hacking . . . it's an exploration in What Are We Willing To Do To Live . . . and yeah, I find that life affirming.

They don't like Mexicans, but love cheap hedge trimming . . .

2006-04-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

I love that the Republicans are incharge while this whole immagration thing blows up. Those poor bastards have to be mentally and morally torn. Here's a group of people that hates anybody who's not a white male (even their white women hate themselves for not being white males). The last thing they want is to be surrounded by little brown people, BUT . . . . . . . damn they like cheap labor! Where else are they gonna find people who will clean their floors and toilets who'll only ask for $2 an hour + the opportunity to live in Walmart supply closets?

It's like, "My girlfriend drives me nuts 23 hours of the day, BUT . . . she gives me sex almost every night and . . . is it even possible to find another girl like that who's not crazy?" Decisions deFUCKINGcisions. Damn, what's a boy to do!?!

I also love that some of the RePubes are pushing to round up and deport all 12 MILLION illegals in this country. I mean, One, there's probably double that number. But two, and there are some big question they need to cram into their mellons . . .

- If you couldn't stop them from getting in the country, what makes you think you can round them up and ship them all across the border?

- Even if you round them all up, where are you going to ship them to? How can you prove which Central or South American country they came from? It's not like you can just push them all into Mexico. And you think they're gonna cooperate and tell you what country they're from when they can SIT in our jail system and get a roof over their head and three square meals a day for a few months?

- Even if you can round them all up AND are able to ship them off to whatever country they're from, what's to stop them from coming right back across the border? You're gonna build a fucking fence across a thousand miles of border and ship enough troops out there to patrol it? You have hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle East and Korea, the military is so depleted that the state of Arizona (who has ZERO coast line by the way) in desperation looking to ask the COAST GUARD to help patrol it's border with Mexico . . . Who is going to patrol your 1000 miles of fence?

Lots of questions, and I'm sure the RePubes will delay delay delay a final decision until after the elections.

Silent Hill! Silent Hill! Silent Hill!

2006-04-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I'm going to take a moment to get some early buzz going about Silent Hill . . .

I haven't seen it, and I refuse to watch previews (I want to go into it fresh, so when those bastards run commercials or trailers I have to close my eyes and cover my ears . . . trust me, movies you KNOW you're going to see are better if you go in fresh . . . Jurassic Park was nothing like I expected it to be, so I think I was even more blown away while watching it than I would have been had I been unfresh), so I don't know if it'll be good or not. Another leap of faith for one day!?! Yep, I can't wait for it's release on April 21st.

The game pissed me off and annoyed me (why you ask? Because it pisses me off when early on in a game you explore say a deadend alley and find nothing, so shortly afterwards when you need to find a key you don't bother to look in that fucking alley because you already searched it, so after two fucking hours of roaming every fucking corner of the city you fucking give up and check an online tip guide and it tells you the key is in that fucking deadend alley that you'd already fucking been in, but at some undefined "magical" fucking point you crossed a line that made a key and all kinds of shit appear in that fucking alley! Well, fuck me in the goat ass. At least give us some reason why that shit magically appeared there other than bad game programming. Plus, it was nigh on impossible to swing your weapon with any accuracy . . . don't get me started), but so did the Resident Evil games, and I love those movies. I can't wait for the next. On the contrary, I loved the first Tomb Raider game, and those movies sucked some serious ass, so maybe it makes sense . . .

I think here's the deal . . . . . I love the feel of the Resident Evil games, I could tell there was a deep story, and Silent Hill was the same . . . I loved what they were going for, but actually playing the game was a pain in the ass. So, seeing a faithful movie adaptation is like getting the feel and enjoyment of the game without the frustration of playing it. Get it?

Yeah, so Silent Hill, I can't wait. Plus, it's got my boy Boromir in it (what's his real name . . . let me check IMDB.com . . . Sean Bean), and that guy is such an underrated actor . . . can't wait. See you all at the theater on the 21st!

You might as well honk behind a deaf person . . .

2006-04-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

So, me and the ex-girlfriend are on better terms. Though, we've been on better terms and a week later she goes schitzo again, but let's have some faith.

Anyways, she was complaining tonight about guys in their 20's coming on to her. Stopped just short of calling it a plague. Whether she's trying to mess with my head or not, I don't know, and I don't care. She's an attractive woman in her early 40's and I'm in my early 30's, so it doesn't seem odd to me that that kind of thing would happen.

She divorced 20 years ago, and she decided that the way to stop being hit on was to start wearing her old wedding ring. She figured that would be a sign to younger guys to leave her alone, but sadly I had to inform her that that wouldn't work.

See, us younger guys don't notice that shit. 80% of my workplace is women, and I can honestly say I've never noticed any of them wearing rings. Most of them are married, so I'm sure they must be . . . we just don't care. I see an attractive female at the store or wherever, the LAST place I'm looking is her "ring finger". Part of that is that we don't even know which finger is the magical "ring finger". I've been told I'm sure, but that knowledge goes in one ear and out my ass.

She said she was talking to a male her age at work who is a fundamentalist christian, and he said wearing the ring would work . . . lol, I asked her if she's felt vibes from any fundamentalist christians. Sha, right.

The reality is that there's only one type of person that will notice a woman wearing a wedding ring, and that's another woman. So basically the only base she's covered is to keep lesbians from hitting on her.

She asked me where this "Young guys hitting on older women" thing started. It'd be easy to give credit to the movie "The Graduate", but I don't. I place the credit firmly with "American Pie". That movie singlehandedly (pun intended) made the term MILF part of the vernacular of every male between the ages of 15 and 34. And within a year of American Pie coming out, the internet was suddenly flooded with MILF porn sites. Trust me, I was a one-handed keyboard jockey getting the research myself ;)

Today's science fiction can be tomorrow's past . . .

2006-03-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

Ok, I guess I wouldn't consider the movie "V for Vendetta" science fiction. I'd consider it an entertaining mining of relevant sources. Thank you, 1984. Thank you Fahrenheit 491. Thank you, Hitler. V the movie borrows from the best, and is an important movie to see if only to remind us that Governments have the capability of manufacturing situations to meet their ends.

Think that's "crazy conspiracy theorist non-sense"? Hmm. Then why are big wigs in the Republican party being investigated for manufacturing "evidence" in order to launch a war in the Middle East a couple years ago? Yeah, those WMD's never existed, but somebody needed to spin it like they did, or the Repubs don't get their war. Chaney's friends at Haliburton don't get a boundless contract to exploit. In a time of re-election Bush doesn't get to campaign as a Wartime president. But I digress.

You don't need to read science fiction to see the seeds of Totalitarianism. Try reading some state laws. South Dakota just voted in a law to overturn 1973's Roe vs. Wade. How many states have banned gay marriage in the past couple years? 11? Did you know that in Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia it's ILLEGAL to cohabitate with somebody you're not married to, even if it's a male and female? Don't even get me started on oral sex laws.

I think the one great hope that we have for freedom is that all the major religions hate each other! lol! Catholics have been fighting muslims form the beginning of time. Catholics have been fighting anglicans. Catholics have been fighting protestants. Muslims have been fighting Muslims and everybody else from the beginning of time. As evidenced by our friend Isaac Hayes, it's perfectly fine to attack christians and muslims and mormons in the South Park cartoons, but attack Scientology!?! For shame. Holy hypocrisy, Batman!

I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any of that shit, so I feel no need to abjuctly kill anybody who doesn't bow to the imaginary god that people are brainwashed from birth into believing in. I say let them all kill each other and us atheist can live in peace.

But, back to the V movie . . . cool flick. Dragged a bit at the end, but definitely a must see. Can't wait 'til it's on DVD, and hopefully half the dialogue won't be buried under the noise like it was at the theater. Oh, and this isn't a spoiler, just fair warning . . . the credits exit music . . . The Rolling Stone's "Street Fighting Man" !?! What in the fuck where they thinking? Lamest ending credit song choice EVER. May as well have just picked The Rascals "A Beautiful Morning" and gone for the total fuckup.

Anyways, go see V. Good flick. What's her name is hot. What's his deal is the perfect lead. John Hurt is the perfect villain. Despite some flaws (like, how can you take one of the skinniest girls in hollywood and find a shirt that's awkwardly too tight and unfitting for her) just enough action, plenty of plot and thought provoking. Thumbs up. Preferably right up Dick Chaney's ass.

She may be the man, but let's see some some . . .

2006-03-16T21:19:00.000-08:00

Wow, you can go forever without posting on this site and they keep your page open.

Nice.

Yeah, so here's my post for the day and it involves breasts. Or a flashing lack thereof.

There's this new movie out called "She's The Man", where Amanda Bynes, the latest teen-soon-to-turn-ho (Britney, Christina, Lohan, and SPECIAL thanks to Anne Hathaway (Don't miss the "Havoc" shots here)) stars as . . . hell, I don't know the story, I just know she plays a girl pretending to be a guy for whatever reason.

What I do know is that there's no way Bynes is to the point where she's flashing her breasts. So, with "Just One of the Guys" having the same premise and on video (a lame movie, but the lead pretending to be a guy flashes her gazonagas to prove she's a chick (magnificent by the way), why would anybody go to the theater to see this tit-less "She's The Man"?

No astronaut ever went to space with a gun to their head . . .

2006-01-28T07:50:00.000-08:00

I read a headline this morning that said "NASA Remembers Challenger 20 Years Later", and I thought, "Wow, has it been 20 years?" Man alive, I'm old. I was 12 when they interrupted classes and wheeled in TVs to show us live news coverage of the explosion.

It got me thinking this morning. Got me thinking the same thoughts I had after the last shuttle crash a couple years ago . . .

I don't see the tragedy.

I don't understand the mourning.

These astronauts knew the risks. There's hundreds of others who didn't get to go into space those days who can't wait to take the risk, who trained for over a decade to take that risk, and there's thousands of kids in college right now studying for the chance to take the risks. And don't cry because a regular teacher was on the Challenger. To my recollection she's the ONLY teacher ever let onto a shuttle mission, and she knew the advantages and risks too. NASA . . . we all remember the jokes . . . "What was the last thing Christa McAuliffe said? "What does this button do?"" . . . if we should mourn anything it's that a great program like NASA's publicity stunt blew up publicly in their face.

Point is, the CHOSEN few were never forced. No astronaut ever went to space with a gun to their head, because they've been dreaming of the opportunity since they were kids, since a time when astronauts were basically launched up in glorified tin cans.

Jesus, those early astronauts . . . they shot them up into space and didn't even have technology to land them! They could only let gravity plummet them into the ocean and hope that the impact didn't kill them . . .

Anyways, what I'm getting at is that nobody has died in these shuttle crashes that didn't know they could die. They get the glory and they knew the risks. Yeah, people died. Big whoop. Somebody dies every 3 seconds somewhere on this planet, and nobody gives a crap. Not only did these astronauts get to attempt their dreams, but they knew if they did die that they'd get the glory of the revered dead.

Yeah, they get a special place in history whether they live or die . . . tell me that's not worth the risk.

Of course, as we look ahead, that little special place is disappearing very quickly for future astronauts. They need to step up quick or they're going to miss their window . . .

Case in point: Did you see the movie "Catch Me If You Can" ? It took place at a time in American history where Airline pilots were revered the same way that astronauts have been revered for the past 40+ years. We see this sense of AWE about airline pilots, we see them getting special privileges, we see people fawning over them. Like celebrities, we see them giving out autographs and scoring chicks.

Fast forward to today . . . an Airline pilot is basically an overpaid bus driver in the sky. Most if not all of the "piloting" can and is done by computer (The only people who really work on a commercial plane are the steward crew). The passengers on planes are generally clean and polite and well behaved . . . make these pilots drive a city bus for a week . . . they couldn't give salary concessions fast enough to let them keep flying planes.

The pilot reality of today is in store for astronauts within my lifetime, if not within the next 20 years. Commercial "adventure" flights are already planned for the near future, and I doubt it will be long before commercial "adventure" landings are planned for the moon. Astronauts will become the bus drivers of space (if they're LUCKY and computers don't take over the task completely), so they need to suck up the glory while they still can.

Don't mourn for dead astronauts. They were fortunate enough to be allowed to reach for their dream, and unlike billions who have died since the beginning of human history; they slipped in a brief window where they'll be remembered for it. If anything smile for them, and get on with your own dreams.

Time Will Tell . . . My Favorite Albums of 2004

2005-12-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

Ah, the arrogance and ignorance of a Top Whatever of 2005 list coming out before the end of the year . . . maybe it’s just me, but, shouldn’t we take a moment to actually let some of 2005 sink in before we judge the year? Can't we at least wait until the END of the frickin' year!?! How many bloggers have called an album their “grower” of the year . . . the cd that they finally “got” after months of listening to it? And, if Stereogums best of list temporarily having 2004's Arcade Fire album on it is any indication, as we all know, some of the years best albums won’t be discovered until the next year.

I’d say that in all fairness, as we end 2005, we should be releasing our lists of Top Albums of 2004, now that they’ve had a proper and fair chance to expose themselves to us. So, with that in mind, here are my favorite albums of 2004:

1. Roger Clyne and The Peacemakers - Americano - Since I gave 2003 to Blur's Think Tank, I'd love to keep the crown in the family and give this slot to Graham Coxon, but I probably listened to Americano 20 times more than any other album of 2004 or 2005. RCPM is a two headed beast . . . great albums that sound completely different live, and both are awesome. Somehow they recorded their poppiest album while also recording some of their most daring songs.

2. Graham Coxon – Happiness in Magazines - Graham finally released the album we never figured he'd release . . . a top of the pops rock classic. Don't miss the b-sides Feel Right and Right To Pop.

3. The Hives – Tyrannosarus Hives - Big, fast, fun, precise, silly . . .

4. Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters - The perfect storm of all that should never be. If Vegas ever needs a house band, this is it.

5. Badly Drawn Boy – One Plus One Is One - Every BDB album is a “grower” for me. I’ve honestly disliked each one of his albums on first listen, but like each one of his other albums, I now love this one. The four song passage of Four Leaf Clover thru Stockport are the meat of this baby.

6. U2 – How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb - Though this is one of the albums I played the most in the past year, now that I try to think of great songs off the album . . . Vertigo of course, All Because of You . . . Fast Cars, oh wait, that was a B-side . . . Are You Gonna Wait Forever, oh wait, that was a B-side . . . Not that it’s bad, it’s just most of the album proper is a rehash of the previous album, and yeah, lots of it is forgettable. Not that it’s bad, just that album to album, I’d rather listen to Rattle/Achtung/Zooropa/Pop more. Still, 2004 was a weak year, so this makes it as high as it does.

7. Tramps and Thieves – Mill Avenue Cowboys EP - Great local band, funass live shows, full-on Tempe tradition. Check 'em out at http://www.aztrampsandthieves.com/

8. The Futureheads – The Futureheads

9. Green Day – American Idiot - Cool Album, love the F’Bushisms, but I still prefer 2000’s underrated Warning . . . hell, I prefer every album they’ve released (with the exception of Insomniac) to this. Not that this isn’t a cool album, it just shows how bad the rest of pop punk is and how great they’ve been.

10. The Unicorns – Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone - This gets points for a super fun live performance.

11. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand - I still don’t think this is All That, but it’s more All That than I thought it was at the end of 2004.

12. The Vines – Winning Days – This loses points for a horrible live performance.

13. The Cure – The Cure

14. Arcade Fire – Funeral - Sorry, I'm still not as sold on these peeps as the rest of Blogdom, but I am liking it. Snag a live recording of No Cars Go.

15. Hole – America’s Sweetheart - This album deserved a much better responce from the music public . . .

16. The Killers – Hot Fuss - Three, maybe four great songs do not a great album make. But hey, three, maybe four great songs can be better than alot of whole albums, and they do sell alot of albums, especially when Target is giving it away for $7 most of the year. This gets the Bruce Springsteen “The Rising” award for dumping cds cheap to boost total album sales.

17. Kings of Convenience – Riot on an Empty Street

18. Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose - Jack White my man, hook up with Amy Grant next. I seriously could splooge my pants just thinking about it.

19. Mosquitos - Sunshine Barato - What ever did happen to Komeda?

20. The Crimea – Lottery Winners on Acid EP - Never heard of them when I saw them as an opening act, but they won me over and I bought their EP after the show. Good stuff, especially the surf guitared sing along title track.

On the road again . . . freezing my nutsack on the road again . . .

2005-10-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

I was up in north for a wedding for 6 days this past weekend. One of my best friends. More than any of the boy's, he's the one who has desperately needed a wife to put his life in order. She seems cool, so I'm happy for him. And the whole wedding weekend went of great, tons of fun. I was truly impressed.

It was great to see everybody again, too. Been two years since I've journeyed to the frozen tundra. It was a bit strange being up there . . . lots of memories . . . when you lived someplace for 20 years, no matter where you go there's ghosts of happenings past. Good, bad, indifferent . . . but it's a bit of overload. That is one of the many reasons I needed to move . . . I needed to be someplace where everywhere I looked there wasn't a flashback.

What sucked the most was the weather. Here it is, early October, and I'm going from temps in the 90's to temps below freezing. Below freezing. Early Ocfuckingtober. This is why I live in the desert.

Actually, what sucked most was their computer. It is soooooooo jackt up with viruses, spyware and pop-ups that it's virutually unusable. We even went out an pickt up a great firewall/antivirus software package, and whatever is in there is so rooted and strong that it's not letting the software work properly. They're probably going to have to take it in to the geek squad or buy a new computer all together.

Another thing that sucked but didn't suck was that my dad bought me new luggage. For years and years I've been using this huge old boat of a suitcase. Gotta be at least 25 years old. Well, one of the clasps broke off, and so I had to use strong tape to hold the f'er closed. My dad apparently was so embarassed by it, that while I was at the wedding, he went out an bought me a very nice three piece luggage set, AND he burned the old suitcase in the fire pit. Yes, he literally set it on fire so that I'd have no choice but to accept the gift. The ol' man knows me well.

Anyways, it was good times overall. I'm thinking I'll have to plan on being back up there for Thanksgiving 2006 or 2007 . . .

Ooo, I wish I could see the titties on THAT car . . .

2005-10-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

So, I just don't get the whole "car bra" thing that losers put on their sports cars. I can maybe see if you were going on a roadtrip through bug choked highways, and you put on on temporarily, but it seems people keep them on ALL the time.

It's especially stupid down here in the desert. Doesn't the sun slowly fade your paint job? How stupid is it going to look when you remove that thing three years later and your car has tan lines?

I don't need more shows . . .

2005-09-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

I'm a recovering TV addict, and I try to limit the number of shows I get attached to. I've kept pretty good the past couple years, sticking to just Survivor and Lost, then last spring I added The Amazing Race because of the RobAmber factor.

And there's always the NFL games . . . That's where Claudia and I shine, so we don't miss those, but that's only for half the year.

As for this season . . .

I'm still on the Survivor/Lost tip. Goddamn I love those shows. But I'm thinking I may have to add My Name Is Earl to the list, as well as Invasion. Earl started out slow, but it built to a great finish. How can you not love Jason Lee? And Invasion, it's on right after Lost, so I'll give a few weeks and see if it grabs me. The debut was good, even if it revealed too much too fast.

Then there's Numb3rs, which has been good everytime I've seen it. And criminal minds, which was good, but yo, it's regular time is the same as Lost, so . . . queue me never watching it. Same goes for the Chris Rock show . . . it's on the same time as Survivor . . . I guess I'll catch that on DVD next summer.

TV is the devil. I'm so glad I don't have cable.

Life in slow motion . . .

2005-09-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Here I am, just chillin' out to the new David Gray, waiting for Claudia to come over for the evening. It's the DUAL SIDED version . . . ooooooo, spooky cool, right? While I do think there's a big future in the Dual Sided concept, and while the 20 minute 'documentary' (using that word VERY loosely), it was a bit of a let down . . . I guess I expected more. It was a nice little look into the making of the album, and it was interesting to see that Gray now has sooooooo much money that he was able to buy a recording studio complex of of that guy from the Eurythmics that happens to be a massive fucking old church, but . . . I guess I expected more features than that. Maybe I'm jaded from dvd's with great extra features. Glad I snagged it used for $9.

Last week Claudia and her sister decided to quit smoking . . . they've both been smoking since they were about 13, so you do the math on how hard it's been for them to quit. The first few days all C could say was "My lungs hurt", now she's to the coughing up black bits phase. All in all I'd say they're handling it very well, especially Claudia, who also decided to stop drinking at the same time. Not that she was a huge drinker, but she was fond of a couple/few glasses of wine in the evening. Let's just say she's been a bit distant for the past week, which I'm totally cool with because . . . lol . . . it's been said that I'm not the most comforting person . . . I'm more of a "If you're gonna do it, do it. Buck up" kind of person.

But they're doing good, which is good. Her and the sis are roadtripping up to Colorado for a couple of days . . . with the two dogs . . . eesh . . . there's nothing that could wrangle me into that insanity.

I know Illinoise is a big state, but 1.2 hours!

2005-09-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

As a music lover who was born in Peoria Illinois, As someone who left his heart in Chicago, the credible buzz made Sufjan Stevens' "Illinoise" album a must acquire. So, I acq'd it.

Is it the album of the year? Who can tell, it's too fucking long and deep!?!

1.2 hours, man, with nuance beyond reasoning . . . and don't get me started on mining the history lessons it has to offer . . . hell, I actually spent half an hour today online researching the history of Jacksonville Illinois because of the damned cd. The prospect of listening and absorbing it straight through is like walking into a restaurant and ordering everything on the menu, then going to nine other restaurants and doing the same thing . . . all within 1.2 hours. It's insanity.

Is it an oddball college elective class that explores music and history in the cd track by track? Yes.

Album of the Year? No. A great album to me is one that you can put on and be enthralled bell to bell, and "Illinoise" isn't. This is no slight to "Illinoise" . . . the album is just out of fucking control and on it's own playing field. Maybe 10 years down the line of listening to it I'll think differently.

PS

That leads me off on a tangent . . . are there still colleges offering classes on philosophical/religious/theoritical bits of The Matrix? Or did the third movie in the trilogy confuse us all to the point where we don't care?

O, O, O, O . . . the letter of the day is O . . .

2005-09-17T18:08:00.000-07:00

"O", as in your musical recommendations for the day:

Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy
Old 97's - Fight Songs

"O", as in O'shit, my girlfriend has decided to try and quit smoking. She's only smoked for the past 900 years.

"O", as in, O'christ, she's also trying to quit alcohol as well! She's only a "couple/few glass of wine to wind down the night" kind of girl, but still.

Yeah, her AND her sister. They've kind of quarentined themselves. You certainly don't want to be a fly on that wall.

She seems to be handling it pretty well. I imagine the nicotine patches and Paxil certainly help.

I've been very supportive of course, but that doesn't mean that me and my right hand haven't been like long lost friends for the past 4 days. I try to be helpful, try to find a Best of Both Worlds solution for us, but apparently saying "Well, if you need something to quell your oral fixation, I've got something you can put into your mouth" isn't helpful.

;)

Yup

2005-09-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

Music recommendations for the day:

Sondre Lerche - Faces Down
Sloan - Navy Blues
Bebel Gilberto - Tanto Tempo
Blur - Think Tank
The Aluminum Group - Plano
Iron & Wine - The Creek Drank The Cradle

Wham, Bam, It's a free for all . . .

2005-09-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

As the death toll mounts in the gulf, you have to wonder how many of the deaths were outright murders. There's definitely a good movie or two from this thought-line . . .

Think about it . . . here was a chance to get rid of somebody scot free. Maybe that husband or wife you grew to hate . . . or that abusive father . . . here was the chance for some heartleass greedy bastard to get rid of that rich old relative who just wouldn't die . . . here was a chance to get rid of that gang rival . . . how easy would it have been to knock a 2 x 4 upside somebody's head . . . how easy would it have been to hold them underwater and drown them . . . . . . if you were a psychopath to begin with it would have been like christmas . . .

With the city in complete disarray . . . it's still flooded a week later and the government is FINALLY getting around to collecting random dead bodies, and they've said they'll have to do a house by house search for bodies which'll take weeks . . . if they even bother, how long will it be before these deaths are investigated properly. A month? Three months? Six months? Ever?

With evidence disappearing every day, and with the hurricane and looters as legitimate excuses for somebody's death, how could a jury convict somebody beyond a resonable doubt?

No excuses that I know . . .

2005-09-02T22:03:00.000-07:00

Music recommendations for the night:

Mad Season - Above
Alice In Chains - Jar of Flies E.P.
Madness - Any Madness Greatest Hits, just make sure "House of Fun" is on it.

When the levee breaks, You'll have no place to stay . . .

2005-09-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

"Those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."

Here's what's going to happen: Once New Orleans dries out, they're gonna go in, fix what they can, demolish the rest, and rebuild. Then they'll say "Well, if we build a 30 ft high wall around the city instead of only 20 ft, that'll keep the water out through any storm". Then down the road the whole f'n city will be flooded again.

Here's what I propose: Rebuild the city somewhere up the river . . . someplace ABOVE sea level for fuck's sake. Get rid of as much chemical residue as possible, and the abandon the original city. Flood the f'er even more. Dig channels that allow gulf waters to feed in. Protect the new New Orleans 2.0 by diverting overflow/flood waters from the Mississippi into the new Lake New Orleans. Turn the whole city it into a biological preserve, scientific research area, and fish hatchery. Plus, it would act as a buffer, protecting greater Louisiana from future hurricanes!

Yep. Don't even tell me that's not a good idea. There's some wisdom right there, baby.

Ozone, Ozone . . . what happened to the love?

2005-09-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a quote from an article by Juliana Barbassa . . .

"Wineries have come under scrutiny because the fermentation process that turns grape sugars to alcohol releases ethanol, methanol and other organic compounds into the atmosphere, where they react with sunlight and heat to form ozone, one of the components of smog, air regulators said. "

Umm . . . haven't we spent the past 15 years bitching that there were massive holes in the ozone layer that were causing global warming which will lead to the destruction of the human race? Now some peeps, in the process of creating liquid goodness mind you, have "accidentaly" found a way to release ORGANIC compounds into the atmosphere that help replenish the ozone layer, and the government is trying to stop it?

wtf?

Charge $50 a gallon, I don't care . . .

2005-08-31T21:13:00.000-07:00

Part of my plan when I moved here almost two years ago, was to consolidate myself where everything was close by . . . an urban area without it being in a downtown area. Home, work, concert venues, indie music store, library, etc. And that plan is pretty much at fruition. I was spending about $40 a week on gas (at $2.25 a gallon), now with the job less than 3 miles away, I bike nearly everywhere (including work) and walk when I can.

The result? Since April 19th, over 4 months ago . . . I've spent a total of $10 on gas.

10

Dollars

y'all.

And that's without using mass transit.

Speaking of mass transit . . . the buses here have bike racks on the front of them. Each holds two bikes. Cool idea right? You can bike to the bus, ride it miles away, then you have a short ride to work or school or wherever.

I saw the problem with that recently. As I was riding past a bus stop, some poor bastard was ranting that three buses in a row had come by, and each had full bike racks. How much would that suck? If it happened to me once, I'd never even try again.

Corporate America has lost it's fucking mind . . .

2005-08-29T21:01:00.000-07:00

First Target uses "Baby Got Back" to market to kids and parents, now Burger King has created a mock Slipnot-like group called COQ-ROQ to sell their chicken fries?

Cock Rock, y'all.

Cock

Rock

y'all

You couldn't even make that kind of thing up.

lol, Cock Rock! I can't get over it. It's so wrong it's beautiful. I suppose the name Chicken Hawk already had a copywrite.

I get knocked down, but I get up again . . .

2005-08-23T18:13:00.000-07:00

I was hit by a car while riding my bike to work last week. I was on the sidewalk, the driver came from behind and turned into the apartment complex I was passing . . . guess she didn't see me. The front corner of her car hit my front tire snapping it in half while me and the bike rolled across the hood of her mid-size sedan. Nice.

It was sort of surreal, because when everything stopped moving, I was on my back on the ground practically under the front of her car with the bike on top of me, and the woman was all scared and speaking in spanish. Luckily I walked away with only scrapes and bruises up one side of my leg, one forearm, and my left shoulder, with some internal bruising to both my knees. I've been hurt worse playing street hockey in the alley, so basically I'm fine and I got off easy.

Same for my bike. Just a snapped rim, even the tire and tube were salvageable. What sucks is she had licence plates from Sonora Mexico, and didn't appear to speak english, so I had to eat the $50 cost or replacing the rim. Real nice.

Immigrants and old people . . . no wonder insurance is so high here.

Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls . . .

2005-08-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

More scientific hypothoselizing . . .

I just finished reading the second Jurassic Park book. If you've only seen the movies and haven't read the books, what you're missing is that Crichton goes into a touch of depth on various scientific theories. Chaos Mathematics is personally my favorite, but his thoughts on evolution/Darwinism are provoking too.

Last night I was thinking that if a species evolves through survival of the fittest, passed on from generation to generation, then if homosexuality is purely a gene based trait, that means that gays will eventually be bred out of humanity due simply to their lack of breeding. I have nothing against gays, this is just an ethnological observation. I mean, think about it . . . sure there's a handful of lesbian couples that have one of them invitro fertilized, but gay male couples aren't using their own sperm to have children. And if those traits aren't being passed on, then eventually they'll disappear from the genome.

If gayness is simply gene based, it's understandable why the gene hasn't been bred out yet. We're only about 40 years past where it first became even slightly acceptable to be openly gay, so back then you still had most gays pretending and living the basic nuclear family life, and they were breeding children by default. But jump ahead to today, and that's quickly becoming less and less, and 40 years from now, being openly gay probably won't even be an issue, so you won't have many situations where gays are married to straights for fear of social acceptance.

The reallity is that, if homosexuality is purely gene based then the tragic truth is that open social acceptance of gays will eventually behaviorally lead to their genetic demise. The irony is that homophobes should be doing everthing in their power to encourage openness to gays. Gays would be their own worst enemy, they'd eventually make themselves extinct by not breeding.

The ocean is a desert with it's life underground . . .

2005-08-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

You have one group of scientists cry about the ocean levels rising and how it's going to cause low lying coastal areas and cities to be sunk below the sea. Goodbye Vienna, Sydney, Cairo, New Orleans, New York, etc. Legitimate beef.

At the same time you have scientists crying about rising heatwaves and droughts in the continental interiors. Central Europe, Central Africa, the US Red States, etc. Also a legitimate beef.

Here's what drives me nuts: You have one group crying about us having TOO MUCH water, and another crying about having TOO LITTLE water . . . why don't they realize that each side is the solution to the othersides problems?

So, here's some scientific theory for you: On a massive scale you build tons of desalinization plants on the coastlines in areas affected by drought, and you use solar power as much as possible to fuel the plants. Then you pipe the water into the interior areas for farming/drinking water/etc. This distribution will lower the ocean levels, while at the same time ending drought. Seems simple to me.

This especially needs to be done in Arizona, but unfortunately Arizona is landlocked. So here's the plan. You build desalinization plants along the northern Gulf coast and Baja coast in Mexico, and then pump the water up through Tucson and Phoenix. This provides AZ with all the water we could ever possibly need, AND it creates tens of thousands of job opportunities in Mexico, which, as we've seen in China and the far east, is helping to raise the standard of living in those countries and lessen the gap between the rich and the poor. Again, seems simple to me.

Target Goes BaXXX To School

2005-08-02T17:52:00.000-07:00

It’s August, and of course that means the barrage of Back to School ads arrive with jaunty force, full of color and fun and catchy pop music. This year K-Mart chose to have a song specially written for their TV ads, Wal-Mart's ad was unmemerable, and Target decided to borrow a huge hit song of the early 90’s and re-record it with new lyrics . . . not an uncommon practice in the increasingly uncreative world of corporate advertising.

Unfortunately for Target, somehow they’ve unwhittingly unleashed what SHOULD be a public relations nightmare.

See, the lyrics they wrote specially for the ad are normal and harmless. Something like "I like big backpacks . . .”, and sung along with the music it lends Target an undeniably hip edge in the Back 2 School ad-wars. Problem is, the original lyrics are just a tad racier: “I like big butts and I cannot lie / you other brothas can’t deny / when you see a girl with an itty bitty waist / and a round thing in your face / you get sprung”.

“Sprung”, a euphemism for ERECTION. It’d be tasteless in an ad for an adult product like Cialis, but to be one of dozens of such euphemisms in the original source material of a song exploited for an ad directed at children and parents . . . ?

The song they’ve based their ad on, an ad chock full of gradeschoolers and pre-teens being playful and whatnot, is non-other than “Baby Got Back” by Sir-Mix-Alot, one of the most notoriously raunchy smash hits in the history of pop music. The most famous Ode to the pure sensory and sexual enjoyment of the rear-end of black females ever, with a music video that rivals stripclubs for visual voyerism and cock-teasing. It’s a song filled with naughty double entendres and outright blatant XXX boastings. It includes a sound clip of a woman moaning (presumably from a pornographic movie), and even a sound sample from the notorious 2 Live Crew's “Me So Horny”, a cheeky nod to a song which single handedly kicked off a firestorm of music censorship against sexually explicit lyrics that spread from Florida to the rest of the country like wildfire in the late 80’s and made Tipper Gore a household name.

So, in an era where corporations have lawyers that scrutinize their advertising for the slightest whiff of controversy and often denude it down to inoffensive pap, how does something like this slip threw to be part of a crucial seasonal multi-million dollar ad campaign of a major retailer? And can't you just see your 8 year old walking around saying "My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns, hon!"

Ohhhhh . . . my head hurts like that . . .

2005-07-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I ordered my precalculus books. Retail cost: $130. What I paid for them used from Bookbyte.com and Amazon: $16. New textbooks are the biggest scam since Girl Scout Cookies. The bookbyte.com one I saved $90 on, and it arrived Friday, so kudos to them.

Anyways, now the fun begins. I need re-learn precalc and get through the 36 chapters/640+ pages in less than a month, so I can pass the test to be allowed to take regular Calculus. The plan is do a chapter a day/2 chapters a day on F/S/Su, which is a great plan until I opened up the book and the first chapter was 36 pages with 23 sub-lessons. Ouch.

Arrest this man, he talks in maths

2005-07-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today, that a great way to "improve" the longterm propects of the Earth would be to sterilize anybody who doesn't have a copy of Radiohead's "OK Computer".

Unrelated to mass sterilization, I'm coming to terms with the new Coldplay. As an album, it's nothing new from them, but I'm starting to love the last half of X&Y. Particularly "Kingdom Come" and especially "Swallowed in the Sea". Good shit.

Can you say "shit" on blogger? Can you swear here? I guess I'll find out the hard way if you can't.

The pursuit of finishing the Masters Degree prereqs hit a revelation today, and kicked things into a potentially wild area. It's been 14 years (HOLY SHIT) since high school, so in the next month I need to re-learn Algebra/Geometry/Algebra 2/Math Analysis so I can pass the Calc placement test. Should be fun, and I do have some other crazy ideas about taking Calc 1 and testing out of Calc 2 and 3 by the end of January, but we'll speak of that as things progress :)

"Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear" - Dr. Ian Malcolm

2005-07-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

Testing, Testing . . . one, two, free . . .