Thought Sausage

(NOTE: I am nominating this post for cheesiest title)

Welp, another one down. 07 is in the books. All in all, 07 turned out to be one of my better years really. I'm still really happy with the company I work for, I'm in pretty good shape (well not today nor this weekend) and I have a lot of really good people around me.

The highs? Death Valley century was definitely one. The swim season in general was really good for/to me. I look forward to jumping back into that next week. At the risk of sounding cheesy, when I take stock of my friends, co-workers, family etc, the quality of people in my life is at an all-time high right now. So big ups to my peeps!

The lows? Well my grandpa dying is the big one. As much as you anticipate that kind of thing, it always takes the wind out of your sails.

Fucktard of the Year? I know I didn't mention him here much but that honor goes to O.J. Simpson. In the past 13 years, this guy hasn't been able to be brought up without doing something that makes me want to beat him with a shovel. This year, he rose to the occassion by getting himself into trouble and preempting the entire discourse of the media for like two months.

We went to Hogs and Honeys last night (cos we're classy you see). Good times, the VIP booth was basically the area to the left of the mechanical bull (yes mechanical bull). The "bar" was indeed a bar, but apparently they didn't mean to imply that it was stocked. So we had to go down to the regular bar (which was actually very well staffed) and get drinks. Ian had some friends in from Iowa, Wisconsin and Naperville. Most of which were really cool, but one served as proof that some people need to just stay in Iowa away from large metropolitan areas because they only bother people. I swear to christ I can't for the life of me understand how it is that there are places in that state where people in their mid to late 20's still think the wegro white-guy-dressed-like-a-black-rapper is hip (was it ever?). Add to that equation a few pints of whiskey and the picture in your head was in the flesh the last couple days. Luckily that guy didn't stick around long last night (and when he did talk to me, it was usually introducing himself over and over because he didn't remember that he'd been hanging around me and my date for the last two days).

Today Jo and I went to McDonalds...it was the first time I'd been to a McDonalds in years. I'm going to hazard a guess that the last time I was at a McDonalds was at an airport. But since the loop is pretty much a ghost town right now it was the only place open and I was in desparate need of grease. We were accosted by a homeless guy who clearly was mentally handicapped (to put it mildly). He proved it by showing me some wristband that I think was an ID they give people at mental hospitals. I had a Jack Daniels shirt on (cos why wouldn't I?) and he proceeded to deliver a monologue on how much he likes Jack Daniels and how he got drunk with Jack Daniels and his 'whore of a wife' (where he came up with that angle i'll never know). Then I think he threatened to shoot me (but he may have been reenacting something that happened to him) and then started talking about an address up on 7000 N Clark (for those keeping score, this would be somewhere up in Rogers Park). It was amusing, but I felt bad since it was new years day and we were sitting in a fucking MCD's so I gave him a few bucks to get a sandwich. Thus marks the one time I will give homeless people money this year...good thing I got that out of the way up front

is the name of the character on Law and Order that will be replacing Jack McCoy as the assistant district attorney. I was a little apprehensive about this one...I liked Fred Thompson as the DA, but since he decided to leave television and go make an asshat out of himself running for president, they had to do something. This certainly beats getting rid of McCoy altogether, but now that he's the DA, I guess we won't be seeing him own the fuck out of defendants in court anymore. This new guy played Bruce Wayne's dad in Batman Begins and he was pretty cool in that. So...meh

I still say Henry Rollins would have been a far superior choice for courtroom defendant pwnage.

Well Iowa had its 15 minutes of fame that occurs every 4 years. Huckabee and Obama came out as big winners.

I guess I'm not all that suprised at who won...I'm even stoked for Obama. That Obama/Edwards 1-2 punch is a great win for the Democrats. Having Hillary in 3rd in Iowa is "a good thing". Personally, I'd LOVE to see an Obama/Edwards ticket. As Ian put it, it would take a 60% vote from the legislative end for Obama to actually accomplish any of the bullshit-liberal-economic-ideas-that-sound-pretty-but-are-disastrous-in-real-life ideas. So there's that. My big issue with him is that he wants to Federalize health care. How the fuck he arrived at that idea is beyond me. Yeah, lets have the same people who run the post office and immmigration run hospitals. Cos god knows the Post Office is a model of efficiency and responsible fiscal management. If the post office were a real company that to compete in a real marketplace, their arbitrary price changes etc would run them into the ground. I can see why joe-doesn't-know-any-better would tend to think that if the Federal Government incurs the costs, then it's 'not his problem', but there's a reason 75% of the doctors in Canada come to America to have any major surgeries.

I also don't agree with the idea that immediate withdraw from Iraq is a good idea. First of all, it's not fair to the Iraqi people. Think about it, we go in and screw up their country and any semblance of stability it had (Saddam was a "bad guy", but ya gotta admit, he DID manage to keep law and order) on false pretenses. How on earth can anybody think the "right thing to do" is leave all those people with the warzone we left their country in when it turned out our reasons for going there were wrong in the first place? I think we owe it to the Iraqi citizens to leave them with a safe environment where they can at least go to a cafe without fear of getting blown the fuck up. Don't get me wrong, an exit strategy makes sense, but it shouldn't be based on how quickly our troops can get out and let it be the Iraqi's problem...it should be how quickly/effectively we can clean up the mess we created in their house.

Huckabee is just plain scary. I didn't actually think people who think the earth is only 5,000 years old, that AIDS patients should be quarantined and convicted rapists should be released from prison because "they found christ" (only to go on to kill two more people) actually existed until this guy shuffled onto the scene. I'm not entirely suprised he won Iowa because he spent so much money there. I'm just glad he beat Romney cos well, Romney is a fucktard. I was definitely suprised to see Fred Thompson take 3rd place. Did he even campaign?

On Huckabee...if, on the off-chance he managed to get the GOP Nomination, he would be destroyed by whatever democrat is run up the flagpole. And when that day comes, when they release the audio of some of his sermons (southern baptists LOVE fire 'n brimstone), there'll be some interesting/humorous explanations coming from his camp.

Personally, I'm pulling for Guiliani or McCain (or a ticket of same against Obama/Edwards). It was good to see McCain take 4th...especially since he all but glossed over Iowa, as did Guiliani. It looks like McCain will in fact take New Hampshire and hopefully Huckabee's momentum is stilted.

But I guess @ the end of the day, Ian is probably right to say that the caucus campaigns don't really mean shit since all anybody is doing is trying to appeal to the hardcore right or left (who the fuck else goes to a caucus?).

Motobecane is quickly becoming my favoritist bike manufacturer. I mean fuck, they are selling the 400DS for $379.99! While you certainly are losing some ground in the way of that heavy-ish frame and it would be worth the extra 100 bucks to get the Dart 1 fork, that's a fuckload of bike for under 400 bucks. You could definitely do worse. I wasn't planning on getting a new mountain bike since my Wahoo certainly does the trick...prices like that and the advent of full suspension (with the knowledge that I'll probably be spending more time in Breckenridge Colorado in the summers since the 'rents decided to buy a condo there), I could definitely be arsed.

Came home last night (or this morning as the case is) and I'd left my laptop and ipod (which was connected) on the bed. I went to put 'em on the floor (cos where else would it go) only to take the ipod and put on top of my entertainment center. I noticed it said "No Songs Found" to which I thought to myself "Gee self, that's funny, because I coulda sworn there was around 30gigs of music on there". Upon further inspection I noticed that it didn't see any videos either (even though there are around 50 gigs of vids on there). Despite this, the "About" tab still showed that there was in fact data on the thing.

In short, this marks my first ipod problem. I had to upgrade the firmware and all that shit. Luckily I had all the music backed up (but not the vids, which served their purpose anyway). itunes decided I couldn't transfer a few Johnny Cash songs because I didn't "have the rights to them" (funny how commerce works, I thought when I bought American IV CD, I was buying the right to listen to the fucking songs on it). So basically by playing by the rules I fucked myself out of those songs? Is that correct? Thanks for that valuable lesson American Music Industry!

So this morning all 5000+ songs got transfered back to my reformatted ipod. I still have to get all the Thievery Corps stuff from Drew since, well, he's who I got it from. And I'm not about to work in the cubicle farm that is the office @ 225 Michigan Ave and not have me some Thievery Corps to go with my coffee. That'd just be downright crazy.

This is the first time something like this happened to me out of the 3 ipods I have. So I guess I'm not doing too bad...but fuck its a pain in the ass.

On an aside...it's 50+ degrees supposedly, there's no snow on the ground, and I'm not mountain biking. What the fuck is wrong with me?

And that shouldn't come as a shock to anybody. You see Wyoming is basically nothing but mormons and Ted Turner (or is that Montana?)...it's beefy in the way of "cool shit that occurs in nature" but Devil's Tower can't legally vote so that's neither here nor there for this issue.

Supposedly McCain isn't such a lock on New Hampshire, despite what everyone was saying on Tuesday. For shame. Mike "better future if you're a white straight baptist male" Huckabee will hopefully have a sound ass-whuppin and that's all that really counts.

No biking for me today. It would seem I'm coming down with some sorta cold. I'll fall back to my usual remedy of drinking a metric fuckton of orange juice and maybe a spell in the hot tub.

I just felt the need to infect as many people as I can with this

Note that a "gloomy day" in Mcdonaldland is when you can't have a shake....

Thanks Travis for the following observations:

[23:13] feanor319: grimace is what comes out of your ass in 20 minutes after you eat mcdonalds, if anything
[23:13] feanor319: damn that kid was run down back in the day

For the first time in like, years (decade even?) I put in Ministry's Filth Pig album and let it go from front to back. I totally forgot (or maybe even missed the boat) on how awesome this album was.

If my glowing praises haven't sold ya (and I can't imagine how they wouldn't)...here's a live version of the Fall to sweeten the deal

Go forth, you know you want it.

I was going to save my response to this article by Gene Marks (who has to be the most misguided scribe in the history of journalism) for the company blog, but found myself unable to coagulate my thoughts into words that would be acceptable for company fodder.

Nevermind the fact that Gene's dumbass seems to know what an RSS feed is, but didn't get the memo that there's such a thing as an RSS Reader to read the 'endless stream of meaningless items displayed in an overly large browser window' , this editorial is a shining example of the attitude that just fucking kills small businesses. But just for fun, here's a few other gems that this whiny little pissant doled out:

"Let's face it: You're not going to eliminate spam in your business."

"But I do know the current group of antivirus software applications don't do the job for small businesses." (NOTE-I have a gut feeling Gene's small business is a conduit...no, gateway for any and all sql worms)

"If you don't have something new to say each day, no one's going to bother to stop by and check out your blog. It'll be, like, so lame. And if you do have something to say, just be careful you don't give away too much information."

"I forked over a bunch of dough to a firm in California that promised to get my company's name on "all the major search engines" when someone was looking for products that we sell. How did they plan to do this? I'm still not really sure, but it had something to do with spiders, black hats, and link farms."

"Mobile applications will be a great thing someday. Just like hovercrafts, telepods, and renewable energy. "

Well Gene, don't ya feel better now that you got that off your chest? Now excuse me while I build a mobile gadget for my clients that integrates with the RSS feed. Since most of 'em found me on Google because I optimized my site for a few choice long tail words, I want to preserve the niche as much as possible.

I could go on, as this article literally reads like a giant punchline. I'll say this much, the way your customers find you on the internet has and will continue to evolve. The way you communicate with them will change which is demonstratable. This is just plain disinformation by and large.

Seriously, go manage a Wendys or something and leave the discourse on web marketing to the grown folks you fucking moron.

UPDATE: Ian has posted this on the Fastservers.net blog...scrubbed for all you virgin eyes

Welp...McCain pulled through, and Hillary came back in New Hampshire tonight. Meh... Too bad for Obama, as that momentum he had going seemed like it'd carry through in NH. Oh well...the reckoning day will really come out on Super Tuesday. So long as Huckabee (who admittedly plays the "nice guy" role quite well) doesn't pull another win I'm cool.

Swim season started again for me tonight and boy fucking howdy what nearly a month will do to my abilities. I felt like I couldn't move water at all. It was sad really. I suppose I can attribute some of this to the fact I am suffering through the one cold I get all winter (so I talk all nasally...go figure I had to teach a couple classes today to n00bs too...love those 1st impressions!) The good news is that all the lifting does seem to pay off as I felt like I had more horsepower. Once I get my technique and stroke back in order, we'll see how that plays out. Some duel meets in February and then the Winter state meet are all I have going on race-wise.

Other than that, pretty uneventful day. I bought out Target's supply of men's crew socks after swimming. One of my biggest problems in life is that I wear the fuck out of my socks (quickly)...and my supply was in critical mass. This oughta keep me in order at least until summer.

It is good to be swimming again though...we didnt' have a very hard workout today...just more of a "get ready to get rid of all the fat you put on over the holidays" preamble sorta thing. So I'm not going to bed totally KO'd yet...but I feel it coming.

The song The Living Bubba has been stuck in my head all night (instead of any number of Tom Waits songs I bombarded Jo with last night and/or Filth Pig stuff). For the non Drive-By Truckers fans who don't know the lore behind that song (I'm guessing that's all of you), Patterson wrote it about a guy he knew back in the late 80's that was dying from AIDs but continued playing shows all the way up until a couple days before he died. Some shows they'd have to prop him up and stuff because he got so frail. Nevertheless, the imagery in this song reminds me of my days playin shows in places like The Reverb and some of the people who were still kicking in local bands well after their prime just for the sake of keepin' the rock alive. Patterson still thinks its one of the best songs he's ever written...I'd say it's at least top 3. If you wanna check it out, it's on the Gangstabilly album. This song is by far the best on it (they were pretty green back then), and you can always just buy the song on itunes (for that matter, I noticed itunes now has one of those "itunes compilations" things for DBT and it is an awesome selection...get it...run don't walk)

THE LIVING BUBBA
I wake up tired and I wake up pissed
wonder how I ended up like this
I wonder why things happen like they do
but I don't wonder long cuz I got a show to do

I'm sick at my stomach from the A.Z.T.
Broke at my bank cuz that shit ain't free
but I'm here to stay (at least another week or two)
I can't die now cuz I got another show to do

Don't give me no pity don't give me no grief
Wit till I die for sympathy
Just help me with this amp and a guitar or two
I can't die now cuz I got another show to do

Don't give me no preachin' no self servin'
I ain't no angel but nobody's deserving
I can dance on my own grave, Thank You!
but I can't die now cuz I got another show...

Some people keep saying I can't last long
but I got my bands I got my songs,
liquor, beer, and nicotine to help me along
and I'm drunk and stubborn as they come
chain smoking, guitar picking, til I'm gone

I ain't got no political agenda
Ain't got no message for the youth of America
'cept "Wear a rubber and be careful who you screw"
and come see me next Friday cuz I got another show...

Some people stop living long before they die
Work a dead end job just to scrape on by
but I keep living just to bend that note in two
and I can't die now cuz I got another show...

lyrics by Patterson Hood
music by Drive-by Truckers (Cooley, Hood, Howell, Lane, Neff)
©1998 Soul Dump Music

Live version from San Fran this year

Awesome

Nevermind my ventings earlier...turns out my bank wasn't "releasing" the money because they are fucking idiots.

Nevertheless, its' all sorted now, and the above picture is officially my new noble racing steed.

They aren't actually shipping until March, but whateva...not like i'm going to subject it to the elements anyway. But man oh man March won't come soon enough.

Getting back into swimming after the break is kicking my ass. I feel so out of shape. We moved today though...had some sprint sets. Overall, I think the lifting is helping me move more water, but I probably need to do more drills / sets to get back to where I'm cool racing again (give me a month...that's basically what I'm sayin).

In other news, I've fired up the Rox box again and am playing music in earnest. Mostly just trying to jot down as many riffs / musical ideas as possible. A good springboard seems to be reworking old IK stuff into a non-electronic setting. One thing that's painfully obvious to me is that my current non-organic workflow is extremely inefficient. Basically non of my softsynth stuff ports into Sonar, meaning that everytime I decide to go rework a pattern, I gotta re-import the audio. I know Rewire was made for Reason for that exact purpose, however I don't have the patience to learn the interface of Reason, and I'm not a mac guy so I guess that's out. I like Sonar fine for what it is...but needless to say, I'm pretty sure anything usable will take me way longer than somebody else.

I'm still in this aimless "come whatever may" mode. If things blow, they blow. I'm definitely content with the guitar tones I'm getting though. a lot more raw than anything I've laid down in the past, and that's a good thing (verses the static-ish 80's new wave that was the red IK album...right Schmudde?! :-)

That said, I wanted to try covering some things 'my way' (whatever the fuck that means). Basically I wanna take songs I like that I know there's no way in hell I could faithfully reproduce, but take a liberal whack @ 'em anyway. Things that come to mind (you may notice a theme here):

-Dum Dum Boys -Iggy Pop
-Mass Production -Iggy Pop
-TV Eye -The Stooges
-Hey Bulldog -The Beatles
-The Highwayman -Johnny Cash

Once again Michael Martinez woes us with his concrete evidence to support his iron-clad blog on a "search engine optimization strategy". Oh wait, I mean to say, he did that exact opposite of that.

I trolled through his treatise on links (for reasons passing understand, maybe the title caught my eye? I dunno).

The weird thing is, I don't necessarily disagree with anything Martinez says here. I just think he's a fucking tool. Some quotes that are tool-ish:

"If a search engine algorithm update is going to hurt your rankings, the odds are pretty good that you achieved your rankings through links and that means you did it wrong." (Oh really, I suppose you're going to tell us how to 'do it right'? Oh wait, this is SEO, there isn't a right/wrong way, there's what works and what doesn't)

"If links are the foundation of your search engine strategy, you don’t have a search engine strategy." (I know many a black hat who'd beg to differ, but they are too busy counting all the money they make to dick around with Xena stalkers like you)

"But if you hit the competitive SERPs because you thought other people were making money from them, you did it wrong." (lemme guess, the Xena the Warrior Princess market you cornered is RLY where the money is?)

Then, he inexplicably gives some nuggets for where to find links (advice straight outta 1995):

If you really want links, you don’t have far to look for potential linking sources:

Your own Web sites
Your family’s Web sites
Your friends’ Web sites
Community Web sites
Business Directories
Professional organization Web sites
Business partner Web sites
The usual plethora of self-promotional Web sites

Family websites? Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah dude, I'm gonna go to one of the Fortune 500 clients I work with and see if the Director of Marketing's mom will link to the site cos that'll git 'r done.

Dude seriously, you're so fucking out of touch with the way the world turns it's laughable. The sad part is I know there's probably a legion of followers that believe your bullshit (I know of one). Let me give you some advice...when you're running a Xena fansite and claiming that good links come from "self-promotional website", you'd be well advised to tone down the righteous indignation. It makes you sound like a bigger tool than you already are. You may also wanna avoid talking out of your ass, cos well, you talk out of your ass.

Cos sometimes you just gotta lay the smack down.

Thanks Drew

Well don't bother attempting to have any intelligent discussions with about 70% of the people you know for the next few months. This show is back on tonight, thus disrupting the entire discourse of the nation while a bunch of handpicked jackasses attempt to win a karaoke contest. I can't stand this show, if for anything because of the ridiculous amount of people that cease to discuss anything else while it's in swing. I've TRIED to get into this show, and I'll admit, the people who end up on the cutting floor in the initial stages can be amusing, but once this thing gets rolling with actual contestants it becomes a watered down cookie cutter fest. This show is proof the singer/songwriter revolution is deader than Elvis.

As Sam would (and does) say "I"m pretty sure I don't even resemble somebody who gives a shit about American Idol"

It's been awhile since we've done this. But even though he threw the "greatest party anyone ever knew" his entire demeanor screams "Slam my testicles in a door".

...went down today. I've always been something of a packrat. Per the advice of Jo and Ryan (who has been telling me this for going on around 8 years now), I purged myself of all the shit in there I just plain don't need/use. the net result was probably about 10 garbage bags of clothes and random shit. Prior to today I was thinking I'd eventually make it to Goodwill or something, but today I came to the inevitable conclusion that I would never actually get around to doing that. So fuck it...to the trash chute they go. Tons of old books I don't ever read, odd bank shit from accounts that have long been closed among other things. I even threw away my old music tower (since Roxbox is well over 10x as powerful and has all pertinent shit on it), but Drew salvaged it and is busy installing Linux on it, for the sheer geek factor of it (who wouldn't want an old tower with an Iomega Zip drive...yeah remember those?). It was taking up space for me ever since I stopped making music on it which was nearly 3 years ago. He also informed me that one of the drives contained a young guns DVD, which I know I've purchased at least 3 times since I powered that rig down thinking it was lost. Nifty...

Along with the massive clean, I dug out all my old school t-shirts and organized them as if I worked at the Gap. So now everything is all sorted and organized. How 'bout that!

The net result of which is that I have an actual organized and clean closet for the first time in my adult life. It's quite nice. I feel like some huge burden has been lifted. Probably sometime this weekend, I'm going to attack all the shit under the bed.

Man...its nice not being 'cluttered'.

Good practice (swimming) tonight, save for the fact it was an IM night and somewhat crowded, which makes it near impossible to get solid fly in due to the waves and multiple people in lanes. It was cool that a lot of the people from the party (one guy's b-day was sat) made it out...and even nicer to know I was far less hungover than they were. Nevertheless, I'm laying here with that super nice ''beat with a sack of quarters' weariness.

I'm finally really coming around to Jason Isbell's solo album Sirens of the Ditch. Not that I ever disliked it, but now it is in constant rotation. It's a grower for sure. This dude is just the business for pure American songwriting talent. 'Hurricane and Hand Grenades' and 'Grown' could very well become blues/folk standards. I love everything he did in Drive-by Truckers, and this is a much lighter pop outing, but fuck...it rocks. You'll wanna pick this one up if you appreciate songwriting and lyrics that don't suck. Also available on itunes if the signed copy doesn't win your fancy.

I was following this story with some curiosity, but then today, it turned out my assumptions were correct.

To that whole thing I say good fucking riddance. Sorry to be so harsh, but if you are dumb enough to get drunk and go taunt a 350lb animal (behind a cage or not), then you deserve what becomes of you when/if said animal happens to be in the same area as you. You ain't so fuckin' cocky now are ya?

SRSLY, I'm not like, some vegan, and having castrated pigs and spent time in a slaughterhouse in my younger days, I probably don't seem like an animal rights activist, but there's necessity and there's cruelty. And this is squarely in the latter.

If I were in charge, they would have tasered the animal and it would have lived. And just for the sake of poetic justice, those kids parents would be more than welcome to face whom they are accusing. Mom and dad, meet Tatiana. We'll go ahead and leave you alone as I'm sure you have much to discuss.

Awe...sheer awe

I have no comment...other than to say there's only about 500 one-liner quotes I'll be using on unsuspecting co-workers, friends and random women for the next couple months.

Through the infinite wisdom that is the OMC overlords, we have ourselves a 3 day weekend this weekend to observe Martin Luther King day. So instead of like, sleeping or something, I'm just pulling myself away from the Roxbox and hitting the hay. I've tried to shake up my workflow a bit to help jog some new ideas. I made a whole shitload of 16 track audio files with varying drum beats, tempos, and so forth. Then I just jam away and pick out riffs/sounds that aren't throwaways. Prior to this, I built drumbeats around riffs and I think that leads to shit sounding less natural and contrived. This is somewhat like what I did in the late 90's when I'd jam against presets in an MC-505 until something usable came out. It sorta worked. I always did what I thought was the strongest shit when I'd jam something out with Ryan. So this is sort of my way of putting Ryan in a box (and now he never overplays! har har har). I did a lot of downtempo shit tonight and maybe something useful will come of it. Definitely felt like there were some things floating around in there that could turn into something.

In other news, Roly got his ass back to the US soil after being in the UK for the last month or so. So we celebrated that by getting retarded drunk the past couple days in various bars/clubs throughout Chicago. That went well....I guess...can it ever go bad?

McCain took South Carolina, which I think is a good thing. If Huckabee can't rally there (although he had a close one), he's going ot have a tough time on Super Tuesday.

I had an epiphany this week on the whole political landscape (at least with young yuppie liberals). The talking heads are all saying the big issues for voters this year are going to be the economy and Iraq. Yet, the big things that get hammered on are things like a candidate's views on gay marriage, their 'moral compass' and other (arguably) not-as-pressing stuff.

I believe when people can't see how things affect them in front of their face, they pay more attention to the novelty issues (and yes, to me, whether or not gay couples can get married is a novelty when compared to the health of the economy, our troops in Iraq and the health care situation). The net result is that the conversations had on the left don't seem to be straight-talk (to borrow one of McCain's buzzwords). They throw out buzzwords and pie-in-the-sky solutions without any evidence to back them up. SRSLY, even a glance at what Obama is proposing for federalizing health care shows that its entirely unrealistic and, if ever actually implemented would be a bureacratic nightmare. Any reasonable person could look at how NAFTA has been huge for promoting international trade and see how absurd John Edwards call to repeal it is. And all the leading candidates on the left that seem to think we'll "pull all the troops out of Iraq" in a year after being elected are ignoring the physics of war our 200+ years as a nation has taught us. While they're at it, maybe they can get around to getting us out of Korea and Europe since we're still holding a presence there because of wars that ended over 50 years ago. No the REALITY (that is, the one a single president doesn't have the authority or capability of altering all that much) is that we've entered a situation in Iraq where we'll always have a military presence there. The dialog needs to be about how that is going to be shaped, and less about nonsense ideas like how we're just going to 'pull out' of there. Any talk of pulling the troops entirely out as some sort of 'end goal' within a year is nothing more than pandering to people who really don't understand the situation. this same thing happened in the 04 elections with democrats too. It's like I -want- to be one of the cool hip liberal yuppie kids and support somebody like Obama because he's not a homophobe...but unfortunately, him accepting gays or not has very little to do with his position on things that have much larger effects on the future of our country. And, unlike the whole hollywood/liberal camp, I have a little bit better handle on how those bigger not-sexy issues will affect my daily life.

Spent my day off in the burbs. Before that I went to the dentist. Turns out there's a few "procedures" the dentist thinks I should get sooner than later. Out of pocket, insurance covers around 50% but it still leaves me with around 1300 bucks in bills. Whoopdie Freaky Fucky doo! I'm getting to a point in my life where I don't really fear going to the dentist because they might drill in my mouth...my fear resides in the pending bill he'll try to slap me with. And what the fuck do you say to a dentist? Like with an auto mechanic, I know enough about cars to know when the guy is bullshitting me, but shit, what the fuck do I know about teeth? I break 'em a lot. Perhaps that's bad. I know one of the cracked ones he wants to crown in the back is the result of a few beer bottles (and why I always have an opener handy now). But that was years ago and this is the first guy to have any issues with it (since moving to Chicago I've gone through 3 dentists for various reasons...ah no good 'ol stand-by like Dr. Schreiner here in town yet).

In other news, apparently the futures market took a massive nose-dive last night. This makes for some interesting things to happen this week. I'm told by persons who would know that Bank of America will be reporting Q4 earnings tomorrow which they've already warned will "not be good". So that could make tomorrow a shitty day.

Other than that...today was mostly spent out in the suburbs (post dentist) with Horowitz galvanting around all the suburban north shore stuff. Saw where all the retardedly rich people buy their TV's and stereos (should the event ever arise where i need to drop 75k on a TV). Also scouted some sports stores and the Performance Bike out there. they didn't have any tri-bikes in (for shame!!).

Got home and ran a dismal 10k. I had a calzone sitting in me so, yeah, we'll go ahead and blame that. Took me 54 minutes. It was snowing like hell too so maybe that fucked things up. Running on snow sucks. You feel like you're running on eggshells so I'm sure that shortens the stride. Either way, for a guy who wants to be running these around 40minutes in races...this isn't helping.

I have zero strategy to accomplish everything I need to do for work this week. Is that bad?

By Oingo Boingo has literally been lodged in my head for 20 years and I couldn't figure out who the fuck it was. It's featured on the opening credits of That Was Then This is Now. That movie isn't exactly ubiquitous, despite being awesome even if it is a really shitty unfaithful interpretation of the quite amazing book.

Good god, today is a day of reckoning. Rest assured said song is procured and on my ipod as of right now. I may need to write me a cover of this tune.

Am givin this my first listen though (although proper listen will be tomorrow @ work throughout the day to see how well it sits in my daily rhythm). So far so good I suppose. Lots of weird ambient noises and strange intros compared to other albums. Not sure what to make of that just yet. Definitely noticed the absence of Jason Isbell, but what ya gonna do? At least we got Sirens of the Ditch outta that departure. Lots more female vocals too. Not a bad thing, insofar. This one sounds, I dunno, more reflective? slower? somethin like that.

Anyway, it's worth more money than you're gonna pay for it, so go forth (also available on itunes and Amazon).

So that happened...prolly the only good news to come out of today. Heath Ledger went off to that brokeback mountain in the sky today. For shame, I was starting to like him, especially given that his role as The Joker looks like nothing short of a masterpiece. It certainly projects a different light on what's already the most anticipated (by me) movie of the summer.

Fred Thompson also dropped out of the race for the republican nomination today. Did he even campaign? Like did he do anything other than go on Leno and post a few Youtube vids? Pretty lame way to blow through 20 million dollars. I see the power play that went down here though. He most likely took votes of uber-conservatives and evangelicals that would have gone to Huckabee in South Carolina, so rather than risk splitting the Super Tuesday votes, he dropped out now to centralize those votes on Huckabee (who's clearly a front winner). This is the POLAR OPPOSITE of what I was hoping he'd do. Ideally, he would have stuck around through super Tuesday and kept that vote de-centralized. So that makes things all the much tougher for McCain in the next couple months (whom IM oh so HO, is the voice of reason amidst all this political gibberish---Guiliani's scandalous ass included). Meanwhile on the democrat side, their front-runners and only hope of actually taking control of the executive branch are too busy taking pot shots at each other to notice if they are alienating the independants or not. Jesus Christ how on earth do they get away with calling themselves the liberal/intellectuals? There are high school student council campaigns run with more tact and strategy than these idiots'. Democrats are making that same fucking mistake they've made the past 2 elections...they seem to think the race is between two democrats and ignoring the republicans completely.

Make no mistake, if its Huckabee, or if its McCain, the democratic nominee WILL be up against a very formidable opponent. FACT: Republicans vote..Democrats by and large do not. This in of itself will prove to be very crucial given the state of economic affairs. Furthermore, as dumb as Bush is labeled (and appears to look), he's gone round for round with Kerry and Gore in the debates. Both democratic candidates were supposedly primo debaters and ended up walking away the (arguably) loser in those things (I remember all my super left-wing friends getting all pissed cos those candidates didn't "go in for the kill"). John McCain and Mike Huckabee are way ahead of GWB in terms of debate skills. Based on what we've seen so far, either of 'em could more than handle their own against Hillary or Obama because they've both consistently taken the high road on personal attacks. Not only that, but as kooky and creepy as Mike Huckabee is with his southern baptist views...you can't deny the man has a social presence that is currently unmatched by Hillary or Barak. He's personable. Old folks will like that. And old folks vote. Hillary looks like she's all but cringing to be around people...Barak is good, but he doesn't have that good 'ol boy charm Huckabee does. And McCain, as I said is the one guy who pretty much is reasonable and not too far right or left, so I would wager he's got the best shot at securing the independants (at this juncture).

Point is..regardless of who beats who in teh democratic party...either candidate will have quite a challenge. They need to take a few notes from the way the republican campaign is being conducted and get back to the issues. Look kids, in these times of woe and want, straight talk works. Stupid pot shots like all the dumbass pundits take (on either side) are retarded and mind-numbing. Those pundits are figures engineered by the people running their programs for idiots who simply don't understand the issues and need personalities to inspire them to be excited or pissed (but at the end of the day, all they really need is for you to tune in and watch). Don't get me wrong, I have that demented part of my brain that gets pleasure out of getting pissed off at Ann Coulter just like everyone else. But Ann Coulter doesn't answer to teh same responsibilities or people a president does. We don't need a president who sinks to that level. Never did never will.

Had a time trial in swimming today. 30 minute continuous swim. I put away 2125 meters in that time. Slower than I was around mid September, but I totally wasn't prepared to be fair :-)

Oh, and I need to get on a bike trainer or somethin. It's been windy as shit on the rides home (yes, I commute daily by bike rain/snow/sleet/shine) lately and I am feelin it even in flat-ass Chicago! I'm guessing not-so-flat Alaska and southern Michigan won't be so forgiving.

Also began getting things in order with the financeers for this mortgage business. "CREDIT IS KING THESE DAYS" = exact quote from 5 different people. Not that I have bad credit, but jesus, ya really gotta throw that at me every time?

UPDATE: Better Than Creation's Dark is in fact, t3h Awesome. After a few solid listens I can't put the damn thing down. It's a total character driven album in the most awesome way. Some fuckin rockers, some mellow shit and total character all the way through. Makes me wanna buy it on vinyl (which i can supposedly do next month)

So it looks like we'll be going through the center of the state this year (the smart money was on it being a southern route, which is really hilly). We've got a couple big cities to avoid. We'll probably duck Ames like the plague unless Ian knows some hookups that get us away from the masses (larger towns are a clusterfuck of the worst order).

I must say even the jersey looks pretty cool this year. I may have to scare me up one of those before the ride (even though it'll be half off afterwards).

I had a sprint workout tonight (swimming) and split a 24.5 for a 50 Fly. In layman's terms, that's pretty fucking fast for an old guy. I was pleasantly suprised. It certainly gives me some confidence. I don't have any meets on the horizon that would require me to swim fly fast, but I guess when the situation arises, I'll be ready. All that liftin' as of late seems to be payin off.

Also, for those interested (and I'm guessin very little), I'm one of the appointed authors over on the Resolution Media Blog. And my first post went over the wire today (an admittedly tertiary and somewhat naive observation of Ruby on Rails). Go check it out if you are into that sorta thing...otherwise you'll find the regularly scheduled programming of phenominally stupid shit on the web and random ramblings here.

Speaking of, my favorite sweaty neo-con pundit wannabe, the Ultimate Warrior shot his mouth off about Heath Ledger yesterday and summarily got his site hacked the fuck out for a good few hours earlier today. Way to go champ. Even TMZ caught wind of it. I guess any publicity is good publicity when you're a down and out latently homosexual (c'mon who can't see that closet case a mile away?) ex-pro wrestler who likes to push buttons. Thanks Mike.

Finally...if you had any sort of notion that the music industry has just recently gotten fucked up, check out this vid the Turtles (those people who wrote "So Happy Together") made circa 1990:

The internetz are crawling around here. Some motherfucker is gonna get their head thumped over at Multiband if this shit is goin on tomorrow that much I can assure you. The simplest explanation is that some moron on floor that is sharing the bandwidth for the building (we're all wired through the same system) spent the day playing World of Warcraft or some lame shit. If I ever come to find that the idiot clogging our 'net and the jackass who complains to the front desk just about every time I attempt to listen to a mix with drums in it are in fact, one in the same...I'm gonna have to stock up on some tar and feathers, go over to his place and get some shit sorted out.

This weekend flew by. It was like one minute i was leaving work, the next I'm in my room typing this. This week is prolly gonna be a monster as well. We've got a couple major deliverables due...which engenders all sorts of last minute requests for me to look over shit (said requests usually occur right when I'm trying to get something else started). Fair 'enough I suppose....but goddamn ya know?

So despite that...some cool things did happen this weekend. I'm finally getting to where I feel like my drum/programming chops are as good, if not better than they were before. I think its all that drive by truckers I've been listening to, as things tend to sound more "live" now, without a big phat shuffle algorithm all over everything. Nice.

Interestingly enough, Chris Randall doled out what has to be one of the most down-to-earth 'this is the way shit is' comments on his blog the other day. Anybody who's at all ever attempted to turn a profit with their music oughta read that.

I did a really half-assed run on a treadmill today. I haven't run on a treadmill forever. I couldn't hang...I duno, its just not my thing. I petered out after about 5k and decided it wasn't gonna happen.

So anyways...same old same old 'round here.

Today's schedule was pretty full. Early morning crossfit (as per the routine Monday through Thursday), then work (tending to said urgent matters from yesterday mostly) till roundabouts 6:30. I would have been home earlier except the chain on Bertha finally bit the dust, causing me to walk a mile or so home. I guess I can't complain...it survived two winters and countless rains with me not oiling it all but maybe 2-3 times. Then we had a pretty solid workout tonight, which was fun considering Chicago's weather gods decided to whip out a flash blizzard...nothin like sitting in a car after spending 2 hours in chlorine water to keep your windows perpetually fogged up. Come home, see that McCain took Florida, work on some drum tracks for a few riffs I've been tinkering with for a few hours till midnight, read up on what all went down in Florida's primary today, then type blog. In other words...this is why I'm the last person to talk about what good sitcoms and/or other primetime tele is on during the week.

But...what of that McCain victory? Must be a registered Republican to vote today...and he STILL edged out Romney (and kicked Huck's ass). Furthermore, the exit polls say the economy was far more of a concern to voters than the war in Iraq. And McCain STILL beat Romney (granted by a smidge). Things that ya go hmmm. The smart money seems to be saying this cements McCain as the guy to beat. Drew says I'm being presumptuous in calling McCain the Republican candidate...but I think as long as the pundits keep calling him the man who can beat Hillary or Obama, then, as fuckin' wacky as they are, the Conservative right is gonna line up for him. Plus now that Guiliani has announced he's going to endorse McCain, it may go to really push him next Tuesday (which is where Rudy has supposedly been spending all his time).

Hillary took the democrat side, but nobody cares since there were no delegates. Yawn.