One of the unfortuante side effects of working and playing darts at the bar that I work and play darts at is music exposure. Don't get me wrong, they have plenty of good music on the jukebox. A couple of weeks ago the guy who maintains the dartboards and the jukebox swapped out some CDs and we got Pink Floyd's "The Wall", Led Zeppelin's "BBC Sessions", and a best of Billie Holliday CD. There's Sinatra, an excellent Ray Charles CD, and a three disc 80's/70's/60's generic rock collection.

Unfortunately, there's also a lot of terrible music on there. There's a lot of Modern Country Music, and a Kid Rock CD that I'm sure I've heard front to back at least 30 times now, which is 32 more times than I would like to have heard it. I think the sappy country songs are the worst. One of my least favorites is "I'm In Love With A Married Woman" by Mark Chesnutt.

'Cause I'm in love with a married woman I don't care, I don't care who know it I'm in love with a married woman On her left there's a wedding band That she wears faithfully And I thank God she's married to me

Oh, I get it. We thought that you were talking about an adulterous affair, but you're really in love with your wife. Very clever. "Three Wooden Crosses" by Randy Travis and "Little Rock" by Collin Raye are two more that are in heavy rotation, much to my chagrin. Don't get me started on "Have You Forgotten".

There are a couple nice ones, though. The Toby Keith/Willie Nelson "Beer For My Horses" is a hell of a song, and I'll even play it when I put some music in. That'll go on my (very short) list of country songs that I not just tolerate, but actually like.

Country music still sucks, though...

The Foundation Upon Which Our Legal System Rests.

I didn't follow the hullabaloo over the dumbness in Alabama, but it did occur to me recently that the statement that our legal system rests on the ten commandments is just false. I mean, how many of the ten commandments is it even illegal to break?

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Well, that's not illegal, it just lands you in hell. Since I'm an atheist, I don't actually have any gods before this fella. Am I OK here?

2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Again, this activity isn't really illegal under the law. On the upside, I'm OK here too. My day-to-day activity doesn't really involve the worship of graven images. This whole "third and fourth generation" business seems terribly unfair, though. Of course, this may help to explain why I can't get a date. Damn you, Grandpa!

3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Maybe the ten commandments are just the foundation for FCC regulations specifically, rather than the law generally.

4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Hey, I'll do you one better. Just to cover my bases, I don't do any work on Saturday or Sunday. That's why my bathroom still isn't finished.

5. Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Hey, I like the mom and the pop. I have no problem with this one, but I still don't know how this translates into the law of the land. Although I wish somebody could have arrested that whiny kid I was stuck behind in line at the Price Chopper last night.

6. Thou shalt not kill.

Now we're talking. In most cases, this is indeed against the law.

7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Probably not advised, but again, certainly not illegal. Myself, I'll take what I can get. Which remains nothing. Damn you Grandpa!

8. Thou shalt not steal.

Check. We're two for eight at this point.

9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Perjury. OK, I'll give you that one... We're three for eight, batting .375. (Maybe that wasn't the best analogy... .375 is a pretty respectable batting average.)

10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.

I certainly do not covet my neighbor's wife. Most of the folks in my neighborhood are in their 50s and 60s. His ass, on the other hand...

Well, I suppose that out of the Ten Commandments Upon Which Our Legal System Is Founded, only three are actually crimes to break. But this was a silly exercise anyway...

So when is that Ray Moore jackhole going to run for national office? Anybody taking bets? I'd wager my neighbor's ox on him running for something in 2004.

Update 8/28/03 2:14PM: Damn you Christopher Hitchens for beating me to it and doing it better, and damn you Vodkapundit for pointing it out to me.

A friend forwarded me one of those "You might like" discounts from Amazon on Massive Attack's new CD "100th Window". (Sorry I didn't actually purchase it at Amazon, there was something else I needed to get and it was a hell of a lot cheaper at Playcentric.)

Anyway, I don't buy too much music these days. I don't really download illegally, either. Most of the music I download is live shows of Trade Friendly Bands. I guess that's what I mostly like, and I support the bands by catching them live whenever I get the chance. Hell, I've probably spent over $300 on Steve Kimock Band tickets alone over the last several years.

The only CDs I've bought this summer are Ken Layne's CD, Private Lounge 3 (A collection of international techno lounge music), Private Lounge 2 (3 was pretty damn good), and "100th Window".

One other reason I've been posting infrequently for the last week or so is that I recently bought a new 160Gb drive for my linux machine upstairs. I bought this drive for the express purpose of getting all my music in a central location, tied into my stereo, so I can put some music on during a party. Music that I either legally downloaded, or ripped from CDs I purchased.

Which brings me back to Massive Attack's "100th Window". Fucking copy protection. Can't rip it, and can't even play it on the Linux machine that's hooked up to my stereo. I'm sure if I looked around on the web I could figure out how to break their copy protection. If I wanted to listen to it at a party, I could stop the mp3 jukebox, switch the stereo to the DVD player and play it in there. (Although it's not entirely certain that even that would work.) But no, I don't think I will. If they want to make it difficult for me to listen to music I purchased legally, they can go straight to hell.

I've contacted Playcentric, and I certainly hope they let me return the CD. Apparently I'm not the only person pissed off about this dumb-ass copy protection scheme.

The dumbest part of all this is that I vaguely remember hearing about problems with the copy protection on this very CD earlier this year. I guess it just pisses me off that I should have to do research on whether I can use a CD how I want before I buy it. It certainly doesn't make me want to get back in the habit of buying music from the bigger commercial artists...

Geez, take a couple of days off posting and you start getting emails and text messages from your legions of fans asking if you're all right. No, I'm not dead. Like MC Hawking, I'm merely lazy. A couple of quick items, though...

A tip for the reader: You can tell how the Royals are doing by watching whether I'm talking about them on here. You may have noticed me not talking about them too much over the last week or so. Well, I'm talking now. We played the first of three games against the Texas Rangers last night. I wouldn't have know it if I hadn't gotten a phone call from Dallas, but the White Sox were playing the Yankees on WGN, so we could watch almost all the games that were important in this pennant race.

Well, the White Sox soundly thrashed the Yankees, so we're not going to make up any ground on them. The Royals did their bart though, beating the Rangers 9-2.

So the upshot is, no big change. The Royals are still in second, one game behind the White Sox. Minnesota is another half game back from there. So we've got an honest to god pennant race on our hands. The Royals are done playing Minnesota, but the White Sox have two series with them in September. There are plenty of opportunities for all three teams to build up their leads. It should be a fun September.

But Ryan, how can you spend time watching Baseball in September? Isn't that football season? Wow, you know I hadn't noticed... But it looks like the first regular season game is a week from tomorrow. (Everybody, remember to finalize your fantasy teams by Wednesday... Waiting until Saturday will be too late.)

I will be at Mulvaney's the Sunday after next with my jersey on... It's an 84 without a name on it. It was Sterling Sharpe back when my folks bought it, and it's Javon Walker's number now. He didn't do as well in the preseason as I was expecting him to. Season opener at Lambeau against those bastard Vikings.

I can understand not getting email from friends and relatives, but I was starting to feel pretty unloved when I wasn't even getting any of those virus emails that everyone's complaining about.

Fortunately, they're starting to roll in now. Hooray! They even waited to start coming in just as I had fixed my webmail program to train my Spam filter. Time to put it to the test...

Come on Gil... I mean, we love you and all, but don't do that...

Getting on the field for the first time since he ruptured his right biceps in the Packers' second preseason game, Brown took part in less than half of the afternoon practice, getting in a few reps during 9-on-7.

...

Having refused -- for the moment anyway -- surgery that would repair his arm but end his 2003 season, Brown is trying to prove that he can be a difference-maker on defense, even with his biceps detached at the elbow.

It shows heart, but we never doubted that you had it, Gil. Rest up and don't kill yourself...

Google rocks. Their search function now works as a calculator.

And it knows everything.

Achewood has quickly become one of my favorite things on this here internet. I hadn't heard of Songfight until last week, when they announced an Achewood-themed contest.

Songfight is a weekly contest where a title for a song is given, and bands have a week to come up with a song to match the title. MP3s of the songs are made available, and listeners vote for their favorites. This week's contest is songs with the title "What We Need More Of Is Science" as featured on the cool Roast Beef T-Shirt that I really need to get one of these days.

What really blew me away about the contest was that the title of the song was good enough to bring MC Hawking out of his hiatus. Be sure to check out the new MC Hawking track over at the Songfight site.

Other tracks worth checking out include the ones by Brody, Tripped, Bob Genghis Kahn, and Heuristics, Inc. But MC Hawking gets my vote...

As usual, I have nothing to say. In order to fill some space on here, I was going to post about the ungodly hot weather up here in Kansas City. It's supposed to be over 100° for the next couple of days. 105° today, 103° tomorrow, and 102° Wednesday.

But seriously, who wants to read a post about the weather. I know my audience. What you really want to read about is the air conditioning in my building at work. For now, it sucks. Now mind you, I'm not in some falling down decrepit building that my company rents, but on their less than two years old new state-of-the-art corporate campus. As of right now, I am truly frightened. It's early, the sun is just barely up, and it is hot in my cube. As the temperature rises outside it had better get to dropping in here. Otherwise I'm going to get very cranky.

You wouldn't like me when I'm cranky. Or when I'm not. Honestly, you probably wouldn't like me much at all. Well you know what, I don't like you either.

Jackass.

We're never going to have equality between the sexes until we stop making these types of distinctions.

For example... Samantha Leigh O'Shea should not have a separate record for drunkest female driver ever caught in Australia. She should compete on a level playing field with the men. Her .401 just doesn't stack up against the current male record, at .497, set in 1998. Hell, she's in third behind a .423 set by a Melbourne grandfather in September 1999.

This is a non-story. Let me know when she's cracked the .480's...

This is by far the worst article on the new Microsoft worm I've read this week.

And they're off...

Be sure to head over to TBOTCOTW and vote for the Sexiest Female Blogger II.

I too witnessed the horror that was last night's Larry King special starring Gray Davis, Hillary Clinton and former energy secretary Bill Richardson. I wanted to post something witty about it's sheer awfulness, but I failed.

Good thing Mike Alissi did it for me just by posting transcripts...

KING: We take electricity for granted, don't we governor.

DAVIS: We do.

KING: We turn the switch, it goes on.

DAVIS: We do and we shouldn't. We can see what happens in terms of potential loss of life, tremendous inconvenience, and obviously there will be a huge economic loss associated with this.

KING: Governor Richardson, we take energy for granted, don't we?

RICHARDSON: Yes, we do.

KING: Going to be there!

RICHARDSON: We go around in this and big cars and that's fun. I'm not very good at it. I have an SUV for security.

KING: Oh!

Personally, I liked this part here where Hillary wastes no time trying to blame this on Republicans:

KING: Senator with us is the governor of California, Gray Davis, the governor of New Mexico and former energy secretary, Bill Richardson, and CNN correspondent and anchor, Wolf Blitzer.

And Governor Richardson and Governor Davis have said that this kind of thing should be preventable. Do you agree?

CLINTON: Absolutely. And of course both of them have firsthand experience over the last several years. And I believe that one of questions that we should answer, because of this, is not only how did it happen, but how is it going to be prevented in the future?

There were a couple of times during the past two and a half years in the Senate when a number of us tried to vote for taking action that would increase reliability within the system to try to protect the transmission systems that move energy from one part of our country to another. To have some more backup. We've not been successful up until now, but perhaps now because perhaps we will now be.

Also, I liked when Wolf Blitzer came on practically salivating over the thought of riots breaking out:

KING: Wolf, do you have a question for the senator?

BLITZER: Senator, the people of New York have responded well so far, but I have some concerns standing here on the streets of New York. It's dark, obviously, very dark right now. A lot of people are mulling around. I have seen a lot of crowds mulling around. Clearly for some -- for some misguided New Yorkers, there almost seems to be a festive atmosphere. A lot of people drink beer and other spirits up if you will.

Have New York law enforcement authorities done everything necessary to make sure it doesn't get ugly in parts of New York City tonight?

I'm especially referring to god forbid the possibility of looting or worse.

Am I the only one out here who's been really looking forward to Freddy vs. Jason?

The Neapolitan Shooter looks absolutely delicious. I think I'm going to make one of these at the bar tonight.

Wow. OK, I suppose it was wrong of me not to mention Tuesday night's 6-0 shellacking put on us by The Yankees.

Well, the rubber game of this series was last night, and the Royals came back strong.

Kansas City Royals: 11
New York Yankees: 0

Hell yeah. Well, now that we've dispached michele, we get a day off before Minnesota heads to town for the weekend. Lileks, we come for you!

Bengals.
Lions.
Pre-season.

Ugh.

Matt Moore of The Blog Of The Century Of The Week is making a blatant bid for attention with the Second Annual Sexiest Female Blogger Poll.

Head on over and put your nominations in.

Well, it is just a basic caption contest, but the cartoons are drawn by Terry Colon, so it has to be cool.

Check out What's Your Line? over at Lafftracker.com.

(found at Burnt Ends)

The new Del McCoury Band CD "It's Just The Night" is out today. The Onion has a decent review.

New York Yankees: 9
Kansas City Royals: 12

Kick ass...

An AL record for most doubles in a game was set (19).

Another tonight...

Hooray for new worms. Connections to Gimpysoft will be intermittent while every single Windows box on my cable system attempts to infect all my machines.

Good thing I left my firewall running on the machine downstairs. I almost always turn it off when I'm playing a game or something and forget to turn it back on. It looks like all the windows machines here are clean, but the connection out from here is a bit flaky due to all the traffic, I assume.

Daniel Gold of An Honest Tune writes two nice articles on the changes taking place at Chester's Place.

The first is an interview style overview of the changes soon to take place, and the second is a retrospective of some of the bands who helped to make Chester's famous. Big Smith and Steve Kimock are featured prominently.

I'll see you down there Sept. 11-13 for Steve's goodbye show...

Somebody remind me to download this moe./Particle Halloween show from last year. Wow! Check out that setlist!

In short:

My hero Big Gil is out for the season. Torn biceps. Damn. Gilbert will be missed in there...

I know it's only preseason, but it's still nice to see the Cowboys getting schooled by the Cardinals.

Also, Jeremy Shockey is an asshole.

The Royals split their four games over the weekend with Tampa. We remain 1/2 game ahead of the White Sox, 2 1/2 ahead of the Twins, and we start four games at home against the Yankees tonight. Wish us luck.

Gimpysoft.com: All Sports, All The Time!

Even marc's jaded heart should melt reading the story of the space wedding.

I thought that Steve's girlfriend was going to turn out to not exist until a couple weeks ago when Miranda had to help with the birthday cake. I guess I'm still not totally convinced.

Miranda and Steve have to end up together, don't they?

Update: Damn, I guess that's what I get for updating during the show...

I'll say this for Arnold... Anybody who Rush Limbaugh doesn't like can't be all that bad.

Is it me, or does Rush look a whole lot creepier now that he's lost some weight?

Apparently the evacuation of the building this morning was actually a bomb threat, which was completely unrelated to the car fire in the garage.

That's good to know.

There's a wonderfully nonsensical column by Steve Martin in the New York Times today. At the bottom, I see that he has a new novella coming out, The Pleasure of My Company.

He needs to write more.

Well, we got into the office this morning and noticed smoke coming up from one of the parking garages. About half an hour later, the fire alarms started going off and we were evacuated from the building. Apparently there were a couple of cars on fire in a parking garage.

After about half an hour outside, they let us back in the building. Unfortunately, the all clear still hasn't been given, so I suppose we're expeceted to stay here and work with the fire sirens going off all over the floor every ten seconds.

Screw this, I'm going to lunch.

Wheeee!

If I had known about the Table of Condiments that Periodically Go Bad I might not have tried to serve year-and-a-half-old mayonaise at my party last weekend.

(found at Metafilter)

Sorry, I've had a bit of Chase on the brain lately. (Speaking of which, I really need to get one of those sweet T-Shirts with the "Get It On" score.)

But that's not what I came here to say today. So where is the master list of candidates for California Governor? So far we have:

Larry Flynt
Gary Coleman
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Recall architect Darrell Issa
Brian Flemming, who promises to resign if elected, giving the governorship to Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante
The lead singer of T.S.O.L. (That's T.S.O.L., not F.S.O.L.)
Joe Guzzardi, anti-immigration jackhole
Audie Bock - Democrat
Arianna Huffington
Her Ex-Husband Michael Huffington
Libertarian candidates (looks like Jack Hickey or Ned Roscoe)

And that's just what I came up with with a Google search for "for Governor of California")

Is there a state site out there with the actual official listing? According to this story the filing deadline is this Saturday. I suppose we'll have a completely official list by then. Wow. This should be fun couple of months in California.

I don't know why it's taken me this long, but I've finally added a link to SnapThrow, a Kansas City sports blog. I think one of the guys from Burnt Ends blogs there in addition to the fella who started up the site. Check it out for lots of good Chiefs/Royals action this season.

The Royals got schooled by Chicago. We lost five of six on the two series we've played with them over the last couple of weeks. We do get to head out to Tampa for some (hopefully) easy wins, but then we head back to town to host the Yankees. Chicago has the A's this weekend, so hopefully they'll drop a couple while we pick up a few in Tampa.

The schedule for the remainder of the month is a mixed bag. Of course there is this home series of three games with the Yankees, then we host Minnesota for three, head to New York for three more, then head to Minnesota for four. We did all right against Minnesota in June and July, winning four of six. We're a bit beat up right now and our starting pitching has been looking shabby. But after Minnesota we have a fairly easy run to finish out August, with three games at home against Texas and three more at home against Anaheim.

On the other hand, Chicago is set up to go on a tear in August. They're red-hot as it is, and other than the three games against Oakland this weekend and three at the Yankees late in the month their schedule is easy. Seven games agains Anaheim, seven against Texas and three at Detroit. I doubt we're going to come out of August still in first, unless Chicago slumps a bit and we pick it up against the good teams we still have to play.

However, the $64,000 question is whether I'll still be able to pay any attention to the Royals once Football season cranks up in September. Can I actually follow two sports at the same time? Only time will tell. Stay tuned.

OK, I suppose this has now officially run its course. We have Friendster, Introvertster and coming soon, the inevitable Enemyster.

It just occurred to me that I only have one mortal enemy (that I know of) these days. I need to work on that...

When Arnold announces tonight that he's not going to run for Governor of California, I hope he endorses somebody.

In particular, I hope he endorses Gary Coleman.

The buzz has already started...

Of course, the kicker:

Gary believes that if the NFL puts an expansion team in Los Angeles, the citizens should own it, just like the good citizens of Green Bay, Wisconsin do.

I'm sold.

Further signs of westernization in Iran. They now have their very own stock market bubble.

The head of Iran's stock market has outlawed share price increases for two weeks after sharp gains led to concern the market was overheating and vulnerable to a crash, the exchange and brokers said Wednesday.

...

The meteoric rise of Tehran's stock market, which has 346 listed companies and a market capitalization of $28.5 billion, has puzzled many analysts.

Maybe after their stock market crashes they'll outsource all their jobs to the US.

Go here to get Linux drivers for TV In/Out to your video card, then go here and install Myth TV so you can have your own little Linux media center.

And get a bigger hard drive.

I guess it was a bad storm, but I still don't think I'm comfortable with the idea of a football game being called for rain.

Between the first night of the summer darts league and the Royals game on the other TV, I don't remember too much of the game. I do remember Javon Walker dropping a very catchable pass, but I can't remember seeing Donald Driver at all.

I guess Pederson threw an interception, and Priest Holmes got to touch the ball a couple of times, running for 14 yards in 5 carries.

There was some ugliness when Chiefs Offensive Tackle Willie Jones went immobile after a play, and was wheeled off the field still motionless. It turns out it was a neck sprain and he's getting feeling back in his arms and legs now. Looks like he's going to be OK.

The Royals won one last night against the White Sox. We're now back to three games ahead of Chicago and 4 1/2 ahead of Minnesota. I had my dates screwed up and through we played the Yankees tonight. That's not actuall until next Tuesday, after the end of these three games in Chicago and three more lead-extenders in Tampa. I'm heading out to the Yankees game next Wednesday. Should be fun.

Is Friendster not for you? Maybe you'd prefer signing up for Introvertster.

(Found at Burnt Ends.)

Update: The link now points to the correct site, rather than to this Reason article that I wanted to link to simply because it had such a cool headline.

For once, a reason to watch Jay Leno.

I want to join The Handlebar Moustache Club.

I guess I'd better read up on how to grow one here.

You know, it's the little things that keep me reading Reason. Like the terrific headlines.