I really liked this article on Iraq by James Lileks, if only because he uses the word "mmmGLAVIN".
Well, once again I feel compelled to link to the latest wonderful bleat from James Lileks. I think it'll be a lot easier to just provide a permanent link, so I've done so on the left.
I live in a world which is proving, every day, that Nazism was not the summation of human perfidy. It was just the start. The Nazis had the basics - race hatred, death worship, a bland bureaucracy designed to handle the paperwork of mass extermination. But they lacked the patience of Saddam. It takes foresight and a keen instinct for the long-term to spray towns with chemicals that will kill the next generation of children - and do it as a research project.
Earlier in the piece he does an excellent job describing exactly how easy we really do have it over here... His site is rapidly becoming one of my favorite daily reads.
This just in: Saddam Hussein is a fucknut. Not that I really think we need it, but here is your proof that Iraq supports terrorism.
Ken Layne has a nice story on the Saddam Hussein suicide bomber payouts on Fox News today. The article includes a link to this gem describing Hussein's campaign to silence members of Iraqi opposition in exile by parading their families on satellite TV.
"Your father died because of your activity," said his mother Amel, dressed in the dark robes traditionally worn by Iraqi women in the south. "You have to think about us."
But I guess it's for the best to leave Saddam in power... We certainly wouldn't want to upset anybody by meddling in the affairs of other nations...
Lately, I've been stealing all my cool links from the Daypop Top 40, the list of the top 40 most linked sites from weblogs. Anyway, you could save yourself some time, and find a lot cooler links than you'll find here if you just go there, but I'll continue to post ones that I think are cool...
Like this cool Flash...
I also finished up Barrel Fever yesterday. That's my favorite David Sedaris book so far... Speaking of David Sedaris, he's coming to Kansas City on Sunday, April 14. I have a spare ticket, and if anybody is interested, email me and you can have it... I don't think I know anybody among my friends up here who would be interested in the show, and the show is sold out.
I think I'm trying to kill myself with these workouts. That leg workout I did last Thursday still had my legs sore today. I missed my Saturday workout because of it, and I was wondering if I was going to make today's. After a bit of
(painful) running on the treadmill, I was loose enough to get a good workout in today. (About three and a half hours... Damn...)
Of course I am a sissy, so replace anything that said "pain" on here with what you think of as "mild tenderness", and you can get an idea for what I'm going through.
I went to a little gaming party last Saturday. While I was there, I installed a copy of Medal of Honor Allied Assault. With my new video card, the graphics are quite impressive. I still get amazed
that 3D graphics can continue getting better and better without being quite photorealistic. I guess it's some sort of asymptotic relationship... (Heh heh... I got to use the word asymptotic on my web page...)
Anyway, the game is really cool. It's basically a World War II first person shooter. I've been playing a lot of the single player missions. The early ones were a lot of infiltration, and things where you'd meet up with other characte
rs who would get killed off quickly. I'm still not sure if it would have been possible to get the rest of the folks through the mission with me, but it felt like there were scripted moments where they were supposed to die.
But after the first set of missions, they put you on a transport landing at Omaha beach. It's a whole lot like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, but you're in control and have to work your way up the beach. I did it many, many times before I even figured out how to get myself out of the boat alive. The physics are a bit sketchy... To get up the beach, you take cover behind those big metal tank obstacles, which do a bit too good a job blocking machine gun fire... But it
's cool to go through. I'd guess I'm about halfway through the game, and it has one of the most fun multiplayer games I've played among first person shooters. Interesting missions, and some cool levels for just straight up deathmatch.
Ugh, but I am beat now. I'm going to get to sleep now.
Indirectly via ps-ef.com, why don't you just cook my sock?
Excuse for lack of drunken blogging #4: When you get drunk enough, you stop blogging and instead call friends of yours. For example, I just called a friend of mine and it looks like I'm heading down to Joplin, MO to see Big Sm
ith tomorrow night. Rock.
In other Big Smith news, I just noticed on their site that in early April they're opening for Emmylou Harris. Damn. Now that's a big name. Emmylou Harris. I'll be there. And I'll be in Joplin tomorrow night. See you all there....
Once again back to drunken blogging. In about two weeks I will have hit my two year anniversary for this site. For the first time in a Long Long time, I'm thinking it may be time to put it to bed. I do get hits, but more of them random than not, and very few people stick around. The few of you who visit regularly receive enough drunken phone calls from me that you generally know what's going on with me on a day-to-day basis. I keep thinking I want to do something interesting with the site, but I have neither the ideas nor the motivation to do anything other than run a mediocre web journal.
Hell, if somebody actually did want to link to one of my posts, they couldn't even do it. As much as I've been talking about it, I still haven't spent the time to convert this site to any sort of automated system that would make my p
ages anything other than long, long pages of text. Of course, an automated system would do very little to improve the content on here... Can't help you out there. If you want an interesting blog, why don't you go check out the Rabbit Blog or USS Clueless.
Ahh drunken blogging, how I've missed you. I've been missing out on drunken blogging for several reasons.
Excuse for lack of drunken blogging #1: I have a roommate now. When I do stay home, my roommate is usually here, and I can bitch at him rather than at the rest of the internet world.
Excuse for lack of drunken blogging #2: I've become somewhat adept at going out by myself. This is not to say that I'm going out by myself and being social, only that I'm now comfortable with going out by myself and being in a
public place alone and not feeling so uncomfortable that I go home early. I've been doing a pretty good job keeping the drinking under control when I go out by myself. I'm extremely paranoid about driving drunk, and if I'm even feeling slightly buzzed, I don't drive. So I usually know when to stop drinking so I can drive myself home. I've gotten in trouble a couple of times when the bartenders give me free beers. I've been going to a couple of bars so much lately that people at the bar know me, and the bartenders give me free beers if they mispour. This is where I get into trouble and end up having to call a cab to get myself the three blocks home. Two weeks from now, it's going to be warm enough outside that I can walk home. Until then, it's cabs.
Excuse for lack of drunken blogging #3: I actually haven't been drinking as much lately. I used to pride myself on my status as a functioning alcoholic, but the fact is that I've been to busy to drink too much lately. I used t
o get bored on a weekday evening and just start drinking beers when I got home from work, mostly just because I was thirsty. Well, you can get rapidly drunk doing that. And I often did. But now I have a busy schedule. On Monday nights I have Chest and Tricep day and I play racquetball. On Tuesday nights, I come home and watch 24. I
guess I ought to drink on Tuesdays, but I don't. On Wednesday nights, I'm playing racquetball with my new racquetball partner. On Thursday nights, I play racquetball and have my Leg Day. I bitched about leg day yesterday, but apparently among serious weightlifters, Leg Day and Nausea are closely intertwined. Not that I'm claiming to be a Serious Bodybuilder, I'm just saying. On Friday nights, I normally go out. I'm not tonight, therefore, drunken blogging. Ditto for Saturdays. Sundays I normally stay home for my Sunday Night Simpsons/Malcolm In The Middle or Sopranos/Space Ghost nights, but I've been going out Sunday nights lately. So you see, there isn't a wh
ole lot of time for drunken blogging these days....
Fuck leg workouts... I'm fucking dying here. I was fucking around with my computer before racquetball, so I didn't do my weights until after an hour and a half of racquetball. I stepped up the weight on my leg workout from last week, and I feel like I'm going to fucking puke. As a matter of fact, I'm still not sure that I'm not going to fucking puke.
Fuck.
Via ps-ef.com, don't miss tonight's documentary on Akira Kurosawa.
Like Kurosawa I make mad films. 'K I don't make films, but if I did they'd have a samurai.
Hooray! Cracker is coming to Lawrence, KS in late May. That means I won't have to drive three hours to St. Louis on Friday and not get home until 5:00 in the morning after the show... I can instead just sit around the house all weekend and not spend money. That's going to rule...
When will we learn? People, do not allow these robots into your home. I fear that it's already too late...
Do you keep forgetting where Cracker is going to be playing next on
their current tour? No? Well, do you know where Cracker is right now?
Somebody has been posting Hunter S. Thompson's unpublished work to the web under the name Asterisk, and Hunter is not too happy about it.
I can't believe I didn't notice until it was pointed out to me, but happy Pi Day.
Excellent post on the Rabbit Blog today... Hell, I could have written that letter on a bad day... I think I have fully gotten over my fear of going out by myself, and I'm doing better and better talking to people I don't know when I am around people I don't know. This weekend, my plans are:
Friday Night: Rent a movie, go to bed early.
Saturday Morning: Wake up, work out, go home, shower.
Saturday Afternoon: Head over to Lawrence, find a bar to watch the KU basketball game at, find someplace to hang out after that.
Saturday Night: Big Smith, sleep.
Sunday Morning: Wake up, listen to All Things Considered
Sunday Afternoon: Head into Kansas City for the St. Patrick's Day Parade
Sunday Night: Go to They Might Be Giants. I don't think I've ever had a beer at a TMBG show before...
The Department of Defense is developing combat exoskeletons. I can't wait for the mechs... I think my favorite is the picture where the soldier looks kind of likeRobocop.
Robocop... Dance 'till you drop, do the Robocop...
I've been ignoring the weight chart lately... It hasn't been because of the regrettable fact that I have been slowly gaining weight, but mostly because my computer is no longer in my bedroom. So in order to record my weight, just before I go to bed, I'd have to walk down three flights of stairs, record the weight, and walk back up. By the time I'm ready to go to bed, I'm ready to go to bed. And I'm lazy. Maybe that's why I'm gaining weight.
But I have been recording my weight on paper, and I will update the spreadsheet occasionally, like today. Like I said, I have been gaining weight. On the other hand, I have also been working out harder than I ever have before. I joined Gold's Gym two weeks ago, and so far I have been doing a good job getting in there three times a week for an hour of racquetball and the weight program that a trainer put together for me. It's a nice program, and something on me is sore just about constantly. I'd like to think that the weight gain is due to increased muscle mass, but I'm not going to believe that unt
il the fat starts melting off.
So how much you bench???
Before I go to sleep, I will mention that I finished up Fear and Loathing in America. I'm now working on Good Omens, which I keep bringing with me everywhere I go and leaving it... So I'm not making good progress on it.
I'm also reading Barrel Fever, by David Sedaris. The first book of his I read was Me Talk Pretty One Day, and I did Naked after that. Those were pretty straightforward auto-biographical humor. This one is a bit different. So far, it's all fictional short stories, and they're a bit different from his other books I've read. They're dark, nasty, depressing, and vile. Excellent work, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I highly recommend it for those of you who are not faint of heart. Five stars! Like the other David Sedaris books I've read, my only complaint is that it is too short.
Now I will indeed go to sleep, only after I read another of the stories in Barrel Fever...
I've been trying to avoid these since, to me, they seem to be a sorry excuse for a post. Nevertheless, Gimpysoft.com was found by an excellent search string the other day...
pictures of opossum inside of a taco
I don't know what to make of that, so I will go to sleep now.
A reader refers me to the Drive In Movie directory, specifically to this entry from El Paso, TX:
El Paso (El Paso) Texas Fiesta Drive-in:
915-857-0000
located at 13800 Montana Avenue Solo screen with a capacity for up to 500 cars; open year-round; screens X-rated films only.
I live in the wrong town...
Dang it... I just got my webcam in and it is even worse than the last one that I had. It won't focus at all, so it's going back. My best regards to Buy.com, though. This is easily the smoothest return experience I've ever had. They give you a pre-paid UPS return label, so in order to return the item, you just go to their website, fill out a form, print out the label, slap it on the box, and drop it off at a UPS location. I didn't have to talk to anybody, and I don't even have to pay for shipping. Hot damn... I thought that the days of these internet freebies were over...
But no camera for the foreseeable future. Maybe I'll go grab one at Best Buy sometime this weekend, but probably not. I think I'm going to be busy with Big Smith, They Might Be Giants, and the St. Patrick's day Parade. Maybe during
the day on Saturday, but I do need to get some work done on the house. I finally have all my X10 switches, so I can do that during the day Saturday. Then maybe I'll do the website work so that you'll be able to annoy me by turning my lights on and off again. Since I have a roommate, I can't give you access to the TV, though. I'll hook that up again once the roommate mov
es out, but I'm hoping to keep him around as long as possible.
Anyone want to go see Big Smith this weekend?
Big Smith News: On the band's new message board, they make an unofficial announcement that the live album, tentatively titled "Gig", should be available in April, barring any problems. Cool! I was hoping that the title of the album would have something to do with Pepper Spray, but no such luck. I can snag copies for anybody not lucky enough to live in Big Smith land, or I guess you could just order from their website. Watch for the album soon!
Man, I can't wait for Big Smith this weekend. My only reservation is that there are two opening acts, so I hope it doesn't cut into Big Smith's playing time. Plus, it's at a place in Lawrence that I've never been to, but have heard good things about. See you all there this Saturday...
You probably have seen this story about Attorney General John Ashcroft's patriotic singer/songwriter streak (I hear there's video of him singing here, but I haven't watched it yet...)
Well, The Smoking Gun has gone it one better, posting lyrics and links to one of the songs from Ashcroft's 1995 album "Gospel (Music) According to John". Some sample lyrics:
We got hot-shot jocks explainin' How eatin' right and trainin' Gonna save you from yourself and make you free But just buildin' up your body With kung-fu and karate Ain't no ticket to a bright eternity
Tell it, John!
Glenn Reynolds, writer of the InstaPundit weblog has an excellent <
a href="http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?ID=1051-350&CID=1051-031302A">column today at Tech Central Station on patriotism, conformity, and the fragility of authoritarian regimes. I like it.
I like the memorial. I hope they integrate it into the permanent one.
Two of the many things I miss about California are my two favorite burger joints, Tommy's, where everything is slathered in delicious chili, and In-N-Out. For those of you lucky enough to still live in California, you'll find all the secret In-N-Out menu items here.
I had a 5 by 5 once, but that's as far as I ever went.
Two new features you will notice on the left are the Dreamlog and the Riblog. I need to keep a record of my attempts at making ribs so I can figure out what I'm doing right and wrong. Dreams, I just want to keep a record of the ones that I remember.
There is some sort of parade today. I live across the street from the fire station, and my roommate and I just watched the entire fire station empty out for the parade. All the firefighters, all the trucks and the ambulance. What if my house catches on fire? I guess I'm just SOL. At least I smoked the ribs yesterday... I'd better be careful with those matches today.
Behold the glory that is the Rubber Band Machine Gun.
Leave it to the Germans. Two german designers have developed The Painstation, a two player console Pong machine, with the added bonus that when you miss a point, pain is inflicted on your hand. The game continues until one of the players removes his hand from the Pain Amplifier.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little... death... THE PAIN!!!
Just a quick update... I have indeed been off the coffin nails since last friday. As usual, I have failed to
follow through on my promises of more content. I still expect to get the store going sometime soon, but I think that the qui
tters page will not come about. I didn't get enough volutneers (Only one besides me). Of course, I will humiliate either mys
elf or the other guy who quit if either of us crack. I still haven't, and the increased oxygen flow and lingering tension/an
ger really helped my racquetball game on Monday. I'll be playing again tonight. I haven't won a game in a while...
I have decided to start smoking this Saturday, though. Smoking ribs that is! (sorry for that one) I have my recipe, and I'll be going out to buy two to four racks of ribs and all the stuff I need to make the BBQ sauce and the dry rub. Then, barring horrible weather on Saturday, I will get to use my smoker for the first time. It's ribs this weekend, but I think I'll try a brisket next weekend. If this stuff turns out good, I bet I'll be making barbecue every weekend. My own chili and my own barbecue sauce are the two things I've always wanted to make.
Jackpot! A recurring feature on the Rabbit Blog is the Personal
ity Disorder of the Week. I've been close on many of the past entries, but I finally hit the jackpot this week and can diagnose myself with Avoidant Personality Disorder. I'm not really sure how to fix it, and if the fix involves taking a job at an organic hippie grocery store, Ithink I'll pass. Not that I have anything against organic hippie grocery stores, but that 5:30 AM start time kind of puts me off a bit.
One of the seven signs of avoidant personality disorder (sign 6, as a matter of fact) is "views self as socially inept, personally appealing, or inferior to others." Definitely have that one, but I am working on it... Unfortunately, in combination with feelings of inferiority I also have unfortunate tendencies towards feelings of superiority towards many. This manifests itself in a willingness to cut large groups of people out of my life if the groups contain one member that I don't get along with, or just plain don't like. This leads to weekends like last weekend, where I only left the house twice, once for beer and movies and once to get some plumbing fixtures and return the movies.
Bitch, bitch, bitch... Fuck it, though. I'm in a bitch-friendly mood right now, and at least I have trivia night tonight. And I get my bonus soon, and my tax refund should show up any day now. I will cease bitching now.
So do you still deny the existence of the anti-gravity chamber, NASA boy?
I finally got started on my painting.
Update: Doh... That's what I get for not checking my work before I leave. I'll fix the link when I get home...
Update: It's fixed now.
Hooray! Heather Havrilesky is going to be on All Things Considered tonight. I nominate Heather to fill in for Noah Adams during his leave of absence. Unfortunately, since Noah is no longer on the sho
w, I will never get to hear him say "Heather Havrilesky runs a weblog at Double-U Double-U Double-U dot Tiny Little Penis, dot Com." I'm always hoping for that after one of her commentaries.
Matt Drachenberg, Northwest Arkansas area blogger, s
uggests that he host a Central US Blogger Soiree. (He even offers free beer and pork rinds!!!) I would suggest that he host the Soiree when Big Smith is in town, but I guess that's just me.
I would have to assume that Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit fame falls into the category of "Central US Bloggers", but I'm not sure that we can guarantee the safety of a Tennessee Volunteer in Hog Country...
Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless has posted some mildly amusing Frequently Asked Questions. I don't really think I've mentioned him on here too much, but I highly recommend his site. It's always interesting.
Heh... Well, I saw the scoop on that Monica Lewinsky blog... All the quotes are genuine Monica Lewinsky nuggets of wisdom, but the blog is actually put together by this guy.
I just got back from Home Depot with a new smoker. I'm going to make ribs or a brisket this weekend. I heard on the radio this morning that we had a wind chill of -10 degrees. I don't think it's smoking weather right now, but this snow should have melted by next weekend.
Since I moved close to a fire and police station, my wireless audio transmitter doesn't work any more. So I spent some time yesterday splicing wires together so I could get my computer hooked up to the stereo upstairs. I finally succeeded, but the wire isn't quite long enough to run anywhere decent, so for now it hangs across my computer room. But I can now listen to This American Life and Radio Paradise on the big stereo when my roommate isn't home.
Damn, I was just trying to put that smoker together, and it has a big dent in the main peice. So I can't put it together. Damn, back to Home Depot...
A post from Wil Wheaton's blog. I know I'm not the only one that remembers the Contra 99 lives cheat code...
There is no way to verify its authenticity, but apparently Monica Lewinsky has a blog.
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