BAGHDAD, IRAQ—On almost every corner in Iraq's capital city, carolers are singing, trees are being trimmed, and shoppers are rushing home with their packages—all under the watchful eye of U.S. troops dedicated to bringing the magic of Christmas to Iraq by force.

I was just pondering what a year it's been for musician deaths. Sad and depressing.

Johnny Cunningham
Warren Zevon
Johnny Cash
Elliott Smith

Not to mention Robert Palmer, Barry White, June Carter Cash, and even Maurice Gibb.

Then there was Mr. Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, David Brinkley, Bob Hope ...

Can we have a better 2004, please?

So I came back from an otherwise enjoyable SoCal vacation (too much money spent at Ikea, but it's all good) to some sad news.

Johnny Cunningham died on Monday night.

Who's Johnny Cunningham? Well, he was perhaps the greatest Scottish fiddler of modern times as well as a producer, composer, writer, etc. If all of that weren't enough, and even if he weren't all of those other things, he was an incredibly warm and friendly person as well as one of the funniest personalities I've ever had the privelege of witnessing on-stage and meeting.

He was also something of a friend of our family's. On every swing through town, he'd call my mom and, when possible, they and/or my sister and/or (very rarely) me would get together for the day or for a dinner.

The New York Times link above is a good summation of his life and career, and notably borrows liberally from an article my mom wrote for the magazine Dirty Linen some years ago after a lengthy interview she conducted with him.

His viewing and wake were well attended, and if this page is any indication, there are thousands upon thousands of others whose lives were touched just as deeply.

He may have been young (only 46), but in his time he made an impressive impact on music and the world around him. The world was richer for his presence and is poorer for his passing.

So yeah, this seems like a laudable goal.

So I'll say it loud and say it proud, perhaps as much as once a day. George W. Bush is a miserable failure. A miserable failure is he.

Well, this was unexpected.


Thom: Design Doctor


Which Member from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is your type?
brought to you by Quizilla

So I just learned, by reading about some little campaign AmEx and the National Parks Service have going on to raise money to reopen it, that the Statue of Liberty is closed.

Yeah. I'm familiar with the Patriot Act. In so many ways, yet again, the Statue is a symbol of our nation.

Grumble grumble.

It is done. Look up and too the left. I'm quite pleased!

I'm closing on my NaNo goal! 43,358 words (as of this moment, according to MS Word) out of 50,000. Counting today, I have 5 days left in the month to write the remaining 6,600-some. Happy happy!

I have been keeping an eye out the whole way through this for people I know, and I was delighted this morning to see that I passed up Herefox (though who knows if he remembers me or not?).

So I've managed to work full time, run two small business, go to school full time AND carry on a social life and still, if I keep on my current pace, finish on or ahead of schedule.

Then, the book will sit on ice for at least a month, after which time I'll come back to it, edit it, flesh it out, then start looking for a publisher, or an agent.

Yes, seriously.

I think it's that good. Don't get me wrong, the first third of it or so sucks excrement, but its suckiness derives from the lackluster writing, not a bad story. The story's great. Just ask me ;^)!

Thank you, job. I've gotten more writing done there than I ever would at home.

Walking on sunshine, I am. At least today ...

Yeah. Well. Things calmed down. We talked things out last night. I still don't know where things are going and I'm not entirely satisfied, but I guess we're back from the brink and things are making a little more sense.

I'm optimistic.

On the bright side, my novel continues apace! I fell a little behind since I unexpectedly got invited to go see Simon & Garfunkel last night, but I figured that was a reasonably good reason to give writing a pass for the evening.

Surprisingly good show! Maybe later on today or so, I'll write about all that in more detail.

Meanwhile, I'm struggling to find scenes to insert in my novel on the way to big plot points that need to happen so that I don't run out of plot too quickly.

I'm such a nerd. I was trying find out clever anagrams for the name of the main character in my novel (Peter 'Hotshot' Oaring [which is itself an anagram -- a free lunch to whoever figures it out first]).
TAO HEIGHTENS TORPOR
also: THERE HOPING TO ROAST
and: HITHERTO ATOP NEGROS
and: HOTTER GEISHA, PRONTO
and: TOGETHER ATOP RHINOS; SHOO, PARROT TEETHING; SEETHING RAPTOR HOOT; HENRI TATTOOS GOPHER; ORATOR HEIGHTENS POT; SHORTER POTATO HINGE; HIT SOPRANO TOGETHER; NATO: TIGHTROPE HEROS; and APRON GOES THITHERTO
Inexplicably: THE SONORA TIGHTROPE. And this just sound like something that should be in the next Tomb Raider movie: TAOIST GOPHER THRONE.
Something I only engage in when drunk: RASH TREETOP HOOTING

Sorry. I'm silly. I made my word quota for the novel today after all. I originally got about halfway and was going to give up out of frustration. But perseverance worked.

So yeah. Things with Mason are looking pretty bad just now. I may end up having a $750-a-month apartment I can barely afford. Yay.

BIG conversation coming when he comes back from his current trip, so things will either get MUCH better really quick or they'll totally collapse. But something has to change. A lot.

Perhaps needless to say, but I'm a bit angry and sad at the same time. I'll update as events warrant.

Studs Terkel

Oh my G-d, this man is funny! I want him for my grandpa.

"I'm agnostic. You know what that means? It means I'm a cowardly atheist!"

"I have a hearing impairment, but sometimes it works to my advantage. At the beginning of the war in Iraq, we heard a lot about embedded reporters and what a great adventure it was. Now, because of my hearing impairment, I heard 'embedded' as 'in bed with.' And I think that was pretty close to the truth."

He's not answering a single question he's being asked, he's just jabbering. But he ROCKS!

When they put it up to listen to, it'll be here.

Yeah, so, just because I caught a spark of curiosity from my sister's Blog, I've involved myself in yet another project for which I don't have the time. NaNoWriMo.

Start today! There's still time to catch up. I'll be starting a new blog soon to contain my updates, and updates will also go into livejournal as friends-only. It's gonna be crap, and it's more stress I don't need, I know, but it's fun.

Many, many things have changed, but nothing earth-shattering. It seems like a lifetime ago I updated this thing.

First off, I have a new job. I'm getting paid the same amount I was, but I'm spitting distance from home, I have next to no stress and more favorable (i.e., shorter) work hours, and I'm still with Banner, so I get to keep my PTO, seniority, etc. And I'll still be up for a raise in January. Life is good.

Grad school continues apace, and now that I'm not brain-dead every day when I come home from work, I can devote some time and attention to keeping my GPA somewhere higher than barely sufficient.

Likewise, I can devote time to the book and music businesses. The latter of these is getting liquidated, and getting liquidated at a fairly good pace thanks to Amazon.com. Mason seemed to have enjoyed himself helping me out at the Sebastopol Celtic Fest, so I've basically decided to continue vending at festivals. There still exists the need to liquidate all the old crap that's been filling up various closets for years, so that will continue, but I'll slowly add new releases and interesting stuff that won't get sold online. Eventually, I'll stop selling online outright.

So fast-forwarding to today, my friend Chris from California is coming for a visit! He'll be here for about a week. Of course, I'll still have to work and stuff, but it won't be as bad as the last time he visited, when I basically had about 2 or 3 hours with him a day for 5 or 6 days and just left him to his own devices in my dad's house. That was uncool. This should be fun.

Ach, well, work beckons. Maybe I'll be able to write more regularly. I have some interesting things that have been buzzing around my head lately and much to say.

I suck at updating this thing. I try and I try, oh how I try, but in the end I end up waiting months, writing 50 pages that no one wants to read, then falling silent again for another month or so. So I'll give a brief recap of recent days and leave it at that.

Travelling to NoCal this coming weekend. I AM vending at the Sebastopol Celtic Festival after all. Our disinclusion was an oversight. But this is likely to be the last festival we ever do. I've give some thought to just jettisoning the mail order/Internet sales part of the business and just doing festivals, but I haven't reached a decision there.

This'll also be the first such trip that I've made for the festival where I'm not staying with my friend Chris. Enough is enough and he deserves a break. More specifically, his dad deserves a break. He's done a great deal for me, and not gotten much in return, so it's time to visit just to say 'hi' and to take back the stuff they've been kind to keep for me since I moved back to Phoenix.

But it's also gonna be kind of a vacation, with a couple of days' padding on either side of the festival. I need a vacation. Badly.

---

On that subject, sorta, had a really, really, really unpleasant weekend. Spent most of the longest 24 hours of my life (4pm Saturday to 4pm Sunday) figuring I was going to be single at the end of it. I shan't discuss details in this forum, but things are generally all better now. In a way, we're closer. But I'm kind of distracted even this week, so if I seem grumpy either in this journal or in person, that's why.

More soon, hopefully in small, digestible chunks. Make it a great day.

I had a mini-epiphany the other day. It's really actually not anything new, but I guess the full force of it hit me the other day and it's kind of a unifying theory. I like unifying theories.

It seems to me like a dominant theme in just about every current in society right now that worries me is fear. Well, fear and fear-mongering. It permeates everything from Paradise Valley's building a park but not calling it a park because they're afraid that would attract homeless people, to the backlash in Canada against gay marriage, to the War on Terrorism(TM), to gated communities.

And I know why it is, too. When you convince people to be afraid of something, you can mobilize them against it. You can control them.

Yeah, I know. Blinding Flash of the Obvious. But how do you counter fear? What's the antidote?

And for g-dsakes, I've been puzzling over this one for years, why are conservative Christians afraid of gay people? And make no mistake (sorry, Dubya, had to steal that phrase back). They are. Very. There's more to it than a simple moral objection or concerns about scripture. I mean, there are various scriptures that forbid eating pork, getting a divorce, wearing a red dress in church, etc., etc., etc. We don't hear much about that stuff.

What are they afraid of?

I refuse to be afraid. I refuse to be afraid of Bush, of the fearmongers, of The Corporation in toto that wants to turn us into mindless worker-drones and consumer units. I refuse to fear even fear itself.

Now I've just got to work on fear of failure. Hrmph.

The new Phoenix Coyotes logo and uniforms.

Nice new arena, though!

When is someone gonna do a Queer Eye lj quiz? I think I might actually do that one!

So has anyone but me noticed the recent glut of cover songs on the radio these days? I mean, what's happening? Our beloved popular musicians have been body-snatched by a bunch of bar-band aliens.

I mean ... "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" by Sugar Ray. "Big Yellow Yaxi" by Counting Crows. "Don't Dream It's Over" by Sixpence the mothertrucking Richer. "Boys of Summer" by one of the multitude of soundalike vaguely grunge crap-bands. Oh, yeah, and "Shout" by one of those faceless industrioheavymetal mutant soundalike bands.

What a load. If I were conspiracy-minded (and I indeed am, when it comes to major record labels. There's a special circle of hell reserved for them, in my opinion), I'd say that the big labels told these guys to do it because cover tunes are more instantly memorable, in an effort to revive flagging record sales at the expense of creativity.

The sooner online trading breaks the back of the music oligarchy and puts it back into the hands of small, laboring-in-the-back-room artists, the better. Keep the face, brothers and sisters! Solidarity! Our day will come!

*The Internationale plays*

(wait, is that the Dave Matthews Band playing The Internationale?! *scream of terror*)

Well, it certainly has been awhile. And there are many things to update, so this may be a long one. Funny how life moves along whether or not you're keeping tabs on it.

---

DCS

San Diego wasn't a bust, at least. Actually, it went surprisingly well. It was cloudy, cold and threatening rain all weekend. In a normal city, this would scare everyone away but in San Diego it seems to bring everyone out of their houses. Someone should do a study.

Neither was it a rousing success, either, though I did make enough money to go back home. It was about average. On the up side, I stumbled across the grand opening of San Diego's newest and coolest-looking Fry's Electronics, with a sort of Atlantis theme -- big tanks of exotic tropic fish, gigantic Tesla coil, runes, big marble ball floating on a fountain. All very wild.

But the weekend wasn't enough to salvage the Salt Lake City disaster, so I came to a difficult decision aided in no small part by the festival failures, partly by an item further down in this update and also partly by weariness and practicality.

I'm getting out of the retail music business. I'm going to liquidate it all, pay the debt I owe my mom from buying the business in the first place, then take what remains and start promoting concerts jointly with my mom and my sister.

I'm actually quite excited by the possibilities, and once I let go of the idea of DCS, I felt very liberated. I've enjoyed having it and doing it, but it really has been a tremendous money- and time-sink. I did manage to bring it back to life somewhat after my mom, but it really was akin to jolting a corpse with defibrillators. Reviving it would've taken great reserves of time, promotion and advertising and I couldn't really afford to time OR the money. So now we move on. It may take some time to clear everything out, and a lot of cassette tapes are dumpster-bound. Even a few CDs. That part does make me sad.

---

Car troubles

Cars hate me. It's that simple. I mean, even when I drive Mason's car it starts making strange noises it never made before and little things start falling off.

A radiator hose in my truck popped like a zit. I knew something like that was coming. Parked the car for awhile, pulled the radiator and checked the water pump. It seemed to be rotating OK, the bearings seemed to be fine, so I got the radiator rebuilt and put it back in. Truck still overheats. So OK, it must be either the water pump or the thermostat. Too tired to pull everything out again myself. Plus, I'm worried that there's major engine damage from all the times in the months prior when it was running hot and possibly routinely overheating unbeknownst to me. So it's sitting right now waiting for a nice bundle of cash to land in my lap so I can afford whatever contingencies may present themselves.

So for awhile I was driving the Bug, which of course spewed oil like an unclamped firehose owing to the small crack in its block. Some things JB Weld can't fix.

Eventually the clutch went all wonky, slipping all over the place. So it was parked for a couple of weeks and I was carless, trying to gather together the cash to get it fixed.

Fast forward to the end of last week. Now it has a (nearly brand spanking) new engine and new transmission mounts. The transmission's still crap and hard to shift, and will certainly only last for a while, but for the time being I have (reasonably) dependable transportation for the first time in a long time! No A/C, of course, but I'll live for now.

---

Books, Glorious Books

Why everybody's not doing this I have no idea. Mason and I hit on a home-based business idea that's doing very well for us. In fact, my sister and her husband have started doing it as well.

We're picking up used (and occasionally new) books reselling them on Amazon. True, sometimes we run into books that sell for less on Amazon than we pay, but occasionally we pick up books for $.35 that are listing for $35 or more. Can't beat that kind of profit margin with a stick.

True, it is a lot of work, which I suppose chases off the get-rich-quick crowd. Also true that most of the books sell for less than $10, usually even less than $6, so this is not just a gusher of cash. But over the past month and a half, we've built up to an inventory of 660+ books, CDs, videos and DVDs (the office is in chaos with all the piles, shelves, etc.), and the business supports itself. New inventory gets bought out of the money we get selling stuff. Last week, we sold an average of about $100 a day. Probably half or so of that is profit.

It paid for the Bug's new engine. It's taking us to Hawaii in October. It's actually kind of fun treasure-hunting on weekends, trying to guess which ones will sell the best. It's a good bonding experience for me and Mason, but also for the two of us and Kerry and Joe. I got to spend the entire day with my niece Saturday and I really enjoyed it. She's pretty cute.

I always feel bad going to the post office because I always have a big tub full of packages. And I have to chuckle at the two-foot-long receipts I get back. But the whole experience has been, in a word, awesome. I'm moving the DCS inventory off GEMM and onto Amazon (I was terminally pissed off with GEMM anyway, and they can't offer me a tenth the exposure I get from Amazon). I'm just hoping I can keep up with the sales.

---

Concerts I'm Looking Forward To

• David Gray this Thursday. May not make it, but I hope I do.
  
• Human League in Tucson August 28
  
• Fischerspooner in September!
  

There are so many concerts coming up I really can't recall most of the them, but those are the ones I'm most excited about. It's a big music summer here in the southwest. Now if only Poi Dog Pondering would come. Their new album is wonderful.

OK, that's surely enough for now. Signing off. Be excellent to each other.

This is too funny. Especially considering I just finished reading Memoir of a Geisha.





Take the Which Madonna Video Are You quiz.

You're more intelligent than 90% of the people you interact with. Academic and witty, you are an avid reader and thinker. You are artsy-fartsy and creative, and you have been or will be deeply inspired by the book, "Memoirs of a Geisha" and are fascinated with oriental culture and history. Many write you off as a geek, but don't listen to them. You have trouble relating to the "club-scene" and want a partner who's interested by the same topics as you. And remember: love is all we need.

"We got plenty tough force." ** Such an articulate gentleman. Especially when he's acting like a playground bully.

I don't know if it was the weather (95 degrees plus on Saturday), the new site (admitted a gorgeous new 'Cultural Celebration Center' in West Valley City) or the new staff that took over midway through preparations for the Highland Games and never quite publicized things right, but this weekend's festival trip to Salt Lake City was just a fortunate hair shy of a disaster. At least I made back the inventory and travel expenses that took me there, but just barely. Actually, in the final analysis I surely lost some money.

I did have a lovely weekend, and the drive was at times breathtakingly beautiful (especially the 'back road' I took to get across the mountains that took me over a 10,000-foot pass). And I still have enough money to get to San Diego next weekend (sure to be slightly more successful at least). So in the end it's not all bad. But it was kind of sad, since I usually sell about double what I did this weekend, and I had much more new and interesting inventory this time than I have the last couple of years. As an indication, for people who know about such things, I didn't sell a single Old Blind Dogs CD. Mind you, I just about sold out of Gordon Duncan CDs, so it was clearly a bagpipe crowd.

Unless I do a brisk business in San Diego, I may well fall short of my $2000 goal in aggregate for the two festivals. We'll see.

For the last couple of mornings, people at work here have gathered together to pray at 10 a.m. That in itself isn't so troubling, I suppose, though it does bug me a little having religious observances going on in my workplace.

What does bug me is that each morning when they do it, they go around and ask each person individually to participate. So each day I have to feel like a cad telling them no, thank you very much, I don't wish to participate.They're always polite and unruffled, but I'm still left with the whole 'fine, burn in Hell for all we care' feeling that I'm sure is totally in my head.

Rob's Amazing Poetry Generator

I might have to take the script and plunk it down on my own site.

From smirkingchimp.com:

"It violates democratic etiquette to call your fellow citizens "idiots." (Unless they're liberals -- "We all agree that liberals are stupid," writes Charles Krauthammer.) Fortunately, the PC wordworks has coined a new euphemism to replace the ugly word "retarded." It's "intellectually disabled," and we have it just in time. How else could we describe a majority that accepts the logic of "supporting the troops"? Protest as I might, a local columnist explained to me, once the soldiers are "locked and cocked" I owe them not only my prayers for their safe deliverance but unqualified endorsement of their mission, no matter how immoral and ill-advised it may seem to me.

"According to this woeful logic, whoever controls the armed forces in the country where you live owns your conscience and your soul. It mandates unanimous civilian support for King Herod's soldiers smashing Hebrew babies against doorposts. It holds our soldiers hostage to silence our common sense, independent judgment and moral autonomy -- the foundations of each thinking individual's self-respect, not to mention the foundations of every theory of democratic government.

"'To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public,' said President Theodore Roosevelt."

Well, looking at my engine last night, it's very obvious what caused the problem. The big-ass radiator hose on top busted open like Mr. Creosote. While that's clearly the immediate problem, I'm still wondering if the radiator's toast and if all this might be the fault of the water pump. A new radiator's $172 at Checker and a new water pump's $54. I have about $57 to my name right now, and that has to last me another week and a half.

My inclination is to take the radiator out to get to the water pump and check it out. Not supposed to work on cars at my apartment complex. Probably gonna, anyway.

Even if all of this is right and gets fixed, the engine still makes strange noises. But then, maybe the weird noises are just the water pump. But I can't imagine it'd be that loud. God only knows.

Progress is being made, and I'm not quite as depressed about this whole thing as I was. But.

Boy, have I been grumpy lately. Sorry. I think it's the car troubles and the generalized money troubles. Sorry, all!

I'm so sick of these things I could puke ... You know, those e-mails that say things like, "Congress is 5 days away from passing legislation that would make it legal for them to collect organs from all organ donors whenever they need them, whether you're still alive or not! E-mail blah@nowhere.gov to protest this. SEND THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS!"

Maybe I've just been online too long, but I don't fall for any of these anymore and it really bugs me that people who have my e-mail address do. I spend far too much time trying to debunk these things before they infect another 50,000 people's e-mail accounts. The best I can do is send out rebuttals as widely as I can, as quickly as I can so they don't all pass it on. But I don't know if I'm doing any good.

I guess I have a number of well-meaning but gullible friends. I don't want to have to start blocking their e-mails.

Really, I'm sick of driving. Sick, sick, sick. Pain in the ass all around. Can't afford to do it, can't afford not to. Public transportation in Phoenix sucks ass.

So my truck, which has been overheating for some time now and which I was praying would just survive long enough for me to get the money together to repair it, decided to commit suicide yesterday by way of an exploding radiator.

Our Bug, while in much better shape than it was when we bought it, is really not up to being a daily commuter, which probably means I'll end up running it into the ground as well.

And on top of everything else, someone broke into the truck last night and emptied out the glove box, which held not only the manual for the vehicle and all of its maintenance records dating back to 1989 (yes, it was very full), but also the insurance, registration and ...

*sigh*

the title.

I've been meaning to remove that for some time. This is bad. Of course, if whoever it was decides to acquire my truck from me, they deserve what they'll get. Talk about bad timing!

Human League in the US in August. What's more, in Tucson! Woohoo!

The trees of the forest weep with despair every time I approach the copying machine.

And I call myself an environmentalist. Bah.

I'm embarking on a big change. I'm tallying up all of my LPs and CDs, going through them to pull out the ones that I absolutely can't part with and the ones that are too scratched to sell, and putting the rest up for sale.

For too long, they've been accumulating in my closet taking up space. Too much of my money has gone into purchasing CDs that I haven't listened to more than twice in 10 years. There will be more music in the future.

And I'm really short of money.

In combination, it really seemed like the thing I needed to do. Now we'll see if anyone actually wants to buy what I have to sell.

It hurts, but it's a good hurt, lessening one's attachment to material possessions.

I'm not having a peak physical day today. But it's all good. Really.

First off, Mason and I had our first personal training session at Bally's. Mind you, we went and worked out the previous night, so I was sore to begin with. Today, I'm in some pain and can't really move very well. But it's a good hurt.

Second is nicotine withdrawal. I'm positively a raving bitch this morning. Paradoxically, I haven't actually raged at anyone yet. I'm just doing it in private where they can't see me. I figure if I make it to the end of the day without killing anyone and without succumbing to temptation, I'm OK.

Finished the first of two major final projects for school last night. Now I have five days to finish the other one. And I have a Nurses' Day Brunch to co-host tomorrow morning and I have to fix a bunch of stuff for my mom tomorrow afternoon and my niece's baptism is Sunday and Mother's Day is Sunday and our second personal training session is Tuesday and this assignment is due Wednesday. I'm screwed.

Beg pardon. I'll be all better in a day or two. Hope everyone's making the most of their lives.

So I got a quick trip to New York in this weekend, travelling with my man while he worked. Got to sit in first class for the first time at 31 years old. How deprived can you get?

We took in a show on Sunday (Mason's first Broadway show [or off-Broadway, as the case may be], oddly enough) -- Kate Mulgrew's one-woman show, Tea At Five, about Katherine Hepburn. It was very well written, designed, directed, etc., but special props go to Kate, who really had the whole Katherine Hepburn persona down, through, no doubt, some extensive research. She displayed that she's much more than a former-soap-star-turned-starship-captain. We were quite impressed.

Some brief but wonderful excursions shopping for music netted some wonderful finds ...

• Culture Club Don't Mind if I Do ... Finally!
  
• Vincent Clarke and Martyn Ware Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle 3D-audio relaxation music from two electronic pop music mavens -- Clarke from Erasure et al. and Ware from Heaven 17 and, long ago, Human League. Most unexpected!
  
• Fischerspooner #1 Holy f*#ck! Where have these guys been all my life. Straddling some ground somewhere in the vicinity of Wire (their second single was even a cover of a Wire song, "The 15th"), Soft Cell, Human League and Hedwig, their music is artsy, electronic and challenging and their image, videos and performances are ironic, over-the-top and just the slightest bit fabulous. And on the value-for-money front, the package comes with a bonus full-length DVD with several music videos, a documentary, about a dozen remixes and the entire contents of the album, functionally rendering the CD in the same case kinda moot.
  

No new Russian rock. I was too pleased with my other finds and was on a very, very tight budget. I even had to put back that Cabaret Voltaire CD I was coveting. Sad, very sad.

Just about the first, and probably last, of these silly little online quizzes I've done and will do.


Which OS are You?

As anyone who's paid even scant attention to my lj knows, I'm certainly no fan of this war. But I'm reminded of the black knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail every time I see that annoying Iraqi information minister or whatever the blazes he is.

As reporters and civilians report hearing the approaching invasion force in Baghdad, dude insists that not only are they nowhere near Baghdad, but the Americans are also losing the war. Does he honestly think anyone believes him?

"'Tis but a scratch!"
"Just a scratch? Your arm's off!"
"I've had worse."

Listening to a live Bruce Hornsby album this weekend, I became fascinated with a Grateful Dead song he covered, "Black Muddy River." The song really sounds much older than it is (it appeared on the same album as their hit, "Touch of Grey"). At least the way Hornsby performs it, it rests somewhere between a church hymn and a mournful folk song. Beautiful Robert Hunter lyrics. Beautiful Jerry Garcia melody.

Then I did some digging for the lyrics out of curiosity. I don't know if there are Dead fans out there who do this with every song, or Robert Hunter fans, but good lord! There must be a dozen sites with annotations, explanations, line-by-line exegeses, etc. of the song!

Talk about overanalysis.

It's still a lovely song. I'm gonna learn it.

OK, I'll admit to being a little bit of a sentimental wimp.

This morning on the way to work I heard of Mr. Roger's passing. For a brief moment I cried.

He was a good man, courageous and gentle, uncompromising of his beliefs and unparalleled in his devotion to children and the world they inhabit. Even when he stopped doing his show, he didn't stop his good work and never really retired, despite his illness.

He loomed large in my childhood and beyond, even as he became the butt of jokes because of his gentle manner and relentlessly positive attitude. And much the way we look at parents, even though I'd left him far behind, I suppose I'd always kind of expected him to be there.

I hope he knew how loved he was. And I'd like to say to him, though it's a little late now, thanks.

So as of Feb. 19, I'm an uncle. What's more surreal is that this means my sister is a mom. It's pretty cool.

Photos to follow soon, just to express my pride and show off. She's beautiful. She and my sister are both doing quite well post-c-section, and will be coming home soon.

We got to babysit some dogs for a few days around the event. That was fun. Sorta.

I'm really bad at updating lately, but I suppose it comes from the whole having-a-life thing. It's either that or my poor time management skills.

Anyway, much interestingness in the last couple of weeks. DCS got evicted from my mom's house through an elaborate drama that I won't go into here, but which has still left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. Consequently, I spent part of the weekend finding a storage facility where we could move all our crap, so the business stuff can fit unobtrusively in the apartment.

Spent Saturday morning at the peace rally here in Phoenix, which had a completely different tenor from last month's in San Francisco. The Phoenix people really seemed like they were out for a leisurely Saturday concert in the park. I would've liked to see just a little more anger, or at least motivation. Just a little.

Saturday night and most of Sunday were occupied by homework, which is a story in itself, one that I'm almost embarassed to relate. I drastically misread my assignment, thinking it called for ten examples of each of 15 things on the assignment sheet. After spending literally five hours on this Sunday, I realized that what it actually said was to find one example each of 10 of the 15. Allowing for the time that actually would've taken me, that's four hours of my life wasted that I'll never get back.

While I was killing myself over this assignment, Mason was insanely busy. He completely rearranged the office around me, including moving the large furniture pieces himself and storing away the inventory boxes, some of which weigh more than 100 lbs. each. When all was done, he was substantially less grumpy than I would've been under similar circumstances, but still very much the sourpuss, which didn't please me much either.

That said, the office looks amazingly good, organized, clean and tidy. He rocks!

Our new couch comes this Saturday. I'm very happy. Not counting beds, this is the first major piece of furniture I've ever bought. It's a quite nice red microfiber (like suede only armor-plated) number with ample room and comfort. It'll fit in rather nicely in the living room.

In other news, I wrote my first song in months. When finally recorded and everything, it'll exist somewhere in the abyss between industrial-type anger and '80s technopop. I hear lots of noisy synths and loud guitars. Joseph finally got his song. I don't think he'll like it very much.

Meanwhile, ideas are percolating for some at least slightly happier dance music at the request of the Masonoid. I think he'll get a song, too, but I think he'll be more pleased with his.

Now I've just got to set up the office recording studio ... if the boy will let me. If he won't, there will be words.

RE: Hydrogen Fuel Cells * I can just see it, some years into the future:

"This is a city traffic advisory. City officials are asking everyone to brave traffic, to get out on the roads and drive in an effort to help avert drought by increasing the moisture content in the air. Please turn on every appliance in your home to increase the power load on your neighborhood generator, as well."

On the other hand, there's the prospect of 110 degree days in Phoenix with 50% humidity. *shudder*

From forces involved in a major screwup with our paychecks' not being Direct Deposited this morning:

"As I indicated, we are sincerely sorry for this situation. ... We are committed to making this situation as inconvenient as possible to our customers."

Back now from my weekend, I've been taking some time to reflect on things, most principally the anti-war demostration in which I took part in San Francisco.

First of all, how many people do have to show up before the Powers That Be take notice? We witnessed what I think may be the largest ever preemptive anti-war protest in American history and the administration declined even to notice that it had happened. I mean, probably close to a million people braved bad weather and/or the prospect of demostrating in post-Patriot Act America to call attention to the issue.

There are ways to resolve this crisis (and I'll break with many of my comrades by saying that these other ways may indeed include military action) that don't involve the appearance of unilaterally deciding world policy and obstinately ignoring both the other 95% of the world and the effects of such unilateral action on the overall peace and stability of the region, which I'm convinced will be adversely affected by such a war.

It is my strong feeling that this war, if it's conducted the way it looks like they want to, will endanger Americans since it will raise world ire against us. It will destabilize the region, possibly growing into a larger war that will kill many people and solve nothing.

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OK, so anyway, the other day I also ran smack into the old "love it or leave it" crap, and this is what really got me to pondering.

In everyday political and social life we're encouraged to let our voice be heard. The strength of democracy, we're told, is in the multiplicity of voices.

But I begin to notice that just the opposite is true when we're talking about war and other military action. On that subject, any dissent is viewed instinctively as treasonous disloyalty. What I really don't yet understand is why.

I should not have to, nor will I any longer, defend my right to express my opinion, because it is my patriotic duty to do so. It is because I love my country that I express my opposition to what I believe are unwise courses of action. If I didn't, I'd just keep my mouth shut and let whatever happens happen, unexamined. End of discussion.

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So on to a completely different subject. Tivo.

Tivo completely changes the way you watch television. Never again do you miss your show because it's on at a different time or what-not. Not only that, but when you watch something, you're watching it largely because you actually want to, since you pick it from the menu, not just because you're home and bored and the TV's on. It's a subtle psychological shift, but it's pretty cool.

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School begins. And now, just as I was taking a lighter course load to rest a bit after the exhaustion of last semester, there comes word that my school may be going away. I actually need to be ramping up, because I'm sure I won't have much time to finish up once the axe falls. "Focused Excellence" my hairy, spotted ass.

Government's chief responsibility is to make life better for the people it serves. There is no better way than education. Further, more people take advantage of economic downturn to improve their education so that when things do improve they're in a better position to do well by themselves and society. The universities need more money, not less, particularly in bad economic times.

But short-sighted conservative bureaucrats see higher education as unnecessary to the creation of armies of blue-collar drones.

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I'm growing angry.

Two things are dominating my attention these days. Well, three if you count the impending school semester. Scholarly Communications and Controlled Vocabularies. Yummy!

• DirecTiVo (Hughes HDVR2) This brain-sucking, time-wasting pile of plastic and metal is our current obsession. No more missed shows. Pause live TV. Find shows and movies you didn't even knw about. All that stuff everybody already knows. Integrated with two DirecTV tuners (for simultaneous taping of two shows [possibly even at the same time as watching a previously recorded one!] or recording one and watching another, etc.). This thing rocks!
  
• The protest in SF this weekend. Headed out on the plane this evening. Won't be in SF long, but long enough to fight the good fight and see a couple of friends.
  

Busy but fulfilled. Too busy to write in complete sentences, even! More soon, I hope.