Dogs On Houses

Bill's Music Roundup: 2009 (Part Three--Misc. Debris)

2010-01-05T13:27:00.002-06:00

Honorable Mentions (which are all pretty great but didn't make my top ten)

Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest - Yeah, that's right: it didn't make the top ten. Replace a couple of the water-treading mood pieces with "Two-Weeks"-worthy singles and this would have been a contender for album of the year.
Dan Deacon, Bromst
St Vincent, Actor
Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Japandroids, Post-Nothing
Handsome Furs, Face Control
The Raveonettes, In and Out of Control

Thanks But No thanks

Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca - After five spins I gave up and admitted that hyper-arranged quirky vocal pop isn't for me.
Passion Pit, Manners - "Sleepyhead" makes me want to go back in time and destroy whatever caveman combination of tapping and grunting resulted in the creation of music.

Disappointments

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz! - Things that should never be uttered to Nick Zinner: "Would you mind playing less guitar on this one?"
Franz Ferdinand, Tonight! - Not exactly a pile of crap but nor can it hang with anything from their back catalog.
The Decemberists, Hazard of Love - We only care about shapeshifting forest dwellers and babykilling rakes if you've got the tunes to back them up, kids.
Muse, The Resistance - The beginning and end consists of some of their finest work to date, too bad about the uninspired stretch in the middle that seems to consist of B-sides from previous albums.

Top 10 Singles of the Year

10. Muse, "Uprising"
9. Grizzly Bear, "Two Weeks"
8. Das Racist, "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" (Wallpaper. remix)
7. Dorrough, "Ice Cream Paint Job"
6. The Lonely Island, "I'm On a Boat"
5. Jason Derülo, "Whatcha Say"
4. Kanye West, "Heartless"
3. Animal Collective, "My Girls"
2. Sean Jean, "Down"
1. HEALTH, "Die Slow"

And on that note, I believe I have finally exceeded my generous capacity to rank and write about music. Roll on 2010, and Happy New Year!

Bills Music Roundup: 2009 (Part Two)

2009-12-30T10:53:00.005-06:00

(Part One here)

5. Sunset Rubdown, Dragonslayer - The Boeckner/Krug songwriting team of Wolf Parade--think Lennon and McCartney but with less friction and tighter pants--spent most of 2009 splitting the difference with side projects, and Krug's dubiously named Sunset Rubdown can claim the cup (albeit only slightly--that Boeckner's Handsome Furs disc is a lot of fun, too). Sunset Rubdown is technically a fully functioning band but Dragonslayer is very much a Spencer Krug affair, overflowing with elegant melodies, abstract lyrics, and angular song structures that spin off unexpectedly in unusual directions that make perfect sense upon hindsight. There's a restless creativity at work here, a refusal to sit back and say "yeah, that'll do." Krug's quirky, affected voice can be something of a love it or hate it affair, true, but I fall firmly in the former, and frankly he could possess the pipes of Marge Simpson as long as he kept yelping out lyrical gems like "I hope that you die in a decent pair of shoes, you got a lot more walking to do where you re going to." Dragonslayer not only provides the perfect showcase for Krug's brilliance as a songwriter but also promotes Sunset Rubdown from Wolf Parade offshoot to confident equal. Sample: "Nightingale/December Song"
4. HEALTH, Get Color - HEALTH's eponymous debut was a disruptive and screeching ride that, while rewarding, didn't really have a base of appeal beyond a couple kids and that v-necked hipster sneering at you from behind the American Apparel counter. On their second proper album, HEALTH take a massive step towards, well, songs, and the results is a bit like witnessing an amphibian climbing on land for the first time. Lead single "Die Slow" is actually catchy enough for your girlfriend, and even more abrasive numbers tend to be softened with an expanded sense of melody. "Before Tigers," for example, sounds like great sheets of noise careening across a metal plain, and yet the androgynous vocals soar over the battlefield with pensive beauty. This softer, rounder sense of songwriting also provides greater contrast with the noise, as when the album escalates into the nightmarish "Eat Flesh," you really feel it ("Death+" doesn't exactly play nice, either). Get Color is a riotous journey that pulls between melody and cacophony and eventually pushes directly against you--hard--until expansive closer "In Violet" grants release. It isn't quite the best album of the year, but it was my personal soundtrack to 2009. Sample: "Die Slow"
3. The Flaming Lips, Embryonic - Embryonic's dizzying strengths don't exactly require context to be appreciated--for many the album will even serve as a point of entry into the weird world of the Lips--but its place in their discography is what rendered it such a surprise. 2006's At War with the Mystics was a tired, underwritten mess from a band that had made a career out of consistent, loopy brilliance. The Lips seemed more dedicated to their (admittedly great) carnival of a live show than to, you know, actually making music. As such, the fact that Embryonic is an unapologetically surreal and confrontational volley of weird with nary an uplifting crowdpleaser in sight is a shock that would border on career suicide were the album not so ridiculously good. Much has been made of the spastic freak-out jams that stretch across the double album (that still comes packaged as a single album--what?), but beneath it all is a center that holds it all together--you're never too far from a compelling melody, or a moment where the Lips' pop sensibilities squeak through. The album could be trimmed a bit, true, but its sprawling excess is part of its charm--this isn't a collection of songs so much as a hallucinatory experience. Even if you leave out all the accompanying visuals currently accompanying this album--that guy hitting the everloving shit out of the gong on their live shows, the fully naked people sliding out of a giant, spherical vagina in the video for "Watching the Planets"--the Flaming Lips have solved running out of gas by bolting a jet engine to the car's frame. The Lips are back and weirder than ever. Sample: "Watching the Planets (warning: very, very NSFW!)"
2. The Antlers, Hospice - "I wish that I had known in that first minute we met/ the unpayable debt that I owed you." And so begins 2009's most gorgeous yet unsettling album, which technically isn't the Antlers' debut but might as well be. Hospice is a story on two fronts, the story of its inception--it was more or less written in extreme isolation over the course of a year--and the story of the album's narrative itself, which is either an explicit first-person account of a cancer ward care provider falling in love with a terminal patient or a metaphorical examination of a claustrophobic and destructive relationship. Heavy stuff, sure, but even heavier than you think--generally speaking, if you're finding the going too easy then you probably aren't following along close enough. The lyrics are perhaps this year's best, unfolding and connected upon previous points with successive listens, sweeping yet compact with resonating truths (personal oh-shit-I've-been-there moment: "You say that, 'No one's gonna listen, and no one understands,' so there's no open doors and there's no way to get through, there's no other witnesses, just us two"). The generally gorgeous music doesn't really break any new ground--Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros are definitely taught this younger brother how to shave--but it locks in with the raw lyrics to produce a punch to the gut that lingers uneasily after the final notes, like the album's epilogue that explores the ghosts of traumatic relationships that haunt long after any attempts at a happy ending. The most visceral and emotional listening experience of the year. Sample: "Two"
1. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion - For awhile Hospice was going to get the top honors, but I couldn't do it. As great as that album is, I have to hand 2009 over to joy. To sheer celebration. To dancing with your loved one in a moment so private that the world outside swirls forgotten. To solving insomnia by holding hands and running through the streets in the middle of a hot summer night. To honoring the life of a deceased family member by cherishing and supporting those closest to you now. To the magic of shared moments of intimacy that belong solely to you and the one you love. To life and its habit of being horrible and then incredible and the fact that you need to deal with the former by embracing the latter. And, on a personal level, to the album that has been my constant companion throughout the many highlights of an incredible 2009. Here's to life, joy, love, and Merriweather Post Pavilion. Sample: "My Girls"

Bills Music Roundup: 2009 (Part One)

2009-12-17T09:51:00.009-06:00

Back by no demand, it's time for my annual ridiculous musical best-of list. I may be just another self-important opinion howling on the internet, but this is my corner of the internet and howl I will.

I've gone into a bit more detail with each album to (in part) make up for the fact that I've been remiss in my music blogging this past year, and to better handle this increased word count I've decided to things up over multiple posts. As such, I've only got entries 6-10 of my top ten for now, with more to come soon.

And so, without further ado:

Bill's Top Ten for 2009

10. The Mars Volta, Octahedron - I'm not sure you'll find many Mars Volta fans that weren't hanging on for dear life by their last album, the exhausting and busy Bedlam in Goliath which marked the near-unlistenable end point of five years of sonic experimentation. Surprisingly, the Mars Volta have now returned from the unforgiving prog wilds to deliver music that actually has appeal beyond amateur musicians practicing their mixolydian scales at the Guitar Center nearest you. Not only is Octahedron remarkably tasteful by Mars Volta standards--more good ideas survive the production than not--but the songs themselves are the most solid batch these guys have managed since their debut, with gorgeous melodies and hooks that are given enough breathing room to thrive. Not quite as ambitious as their past work, yes, but a much-needed palate cleanser before the Mars Volta head off into digital bagpipe arpeggios, or whatever the hell it is they decide to do next. Sample: "Since We've Been Wrong"
9. The xx, X - Making music that sounds like the way night feels is more difficult than it sounds. You have to capture the shadows, for one, and the dark areas they swallow between sparsely-places lights. And then there's the sensation of a landscape in transition, a hushed tone as the cheerful clamor of day closes shop and activity retreats inside. And, of course, lots not forget the possibility of sex, or of being alone, or of sex that turns against itself and leaves one alone. Effectively capturing all this on song isn't exactly new, of course, but what is stunning is that The xx, a group of four nondescript kids barely out of their teens, could rise out of nowhere to nail it with such deliberate perfection on the first try. Sad and sexy, X provides the surprise essential soundtrack for anyone who gets a second wind as dusk descends. Sample: "Crystalised"
8. Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport - Fuck Buttons always had two strikes against them in my book: the wall of gibbering vocals they employed to disruptive effect and, well, that name. They're still called Fuck Buttons, true, but they've ditched the meth-addict-behind-the-Shop-n-Go rants on their sophomore effort. What's more important, however, is that Fuck Buttons have expanded upon the strengths hinted on last year's debut and bolted for the horizon, creating an album of noise that twists upon itself to then explode into cathartic melody. Tarot Sport shrugs off unnecessary limitations--genre restrictions, who needs 'em?--and the results, from the wet, electronic pulse of "Rough Steez" to the shimmering, synth-drenched "Space Mountain," is an instrumental masterpiece with surprisingly broad appeal, band-name-being-"Fuck Buttons" notwithstanding. Sample: "Space Mountain"
7. Future of the Left, Travels with Myself and Another - Even the most patient of us have our breaking point--maybe it's trying to debate the moon landing with a conspiracy theorist, maybe it's discussing the tax-exempt status of churches, or maybe it's just when that meathead your friend is dating queues up Creed on the jukebox--but at a certain point social niceties collapse and you want to make it crystal clear exactly how much less you think of the intelligence and taste of the individual in question. Future of the Left make punishing music out of that disdain, that fury at the idiocy of others, but imbue it with a sharp and hilarious wit that renders it approachable, if not exactly good-natured. Smart-assed and sarcastic but never preachy, Travels with Myself and Another turns its guns from one target to another, regardless of politics (overly-sensitive earth hippies receive perhaps the most brutal takedown), and the result is a compact thirty minutes of pointy, pissed off rock for smart asses everywhere--well, smart asses who are cool enough to remain on the right side of Future of the Left's arsenal, which, honestly, probably excludes you. Sample (with goofy fan-made video): "Arming Eritrea"
6. The Lonely Island, Incredibad - Comedy albums are a tricky prospect, as songs that hinge on humor are typically worth only two listens at most--one for you and one for a friend, the end. The Lonely Island's brand of humor avoids this pitfall by typically involving a humorous concept that escalates via repetition until its inevitable horrible conclusion, each song a humorous micro-journey into the absurd that actually gets funnier with each subsequent listen. More importantly, though, The Lonely Island actually brought (and bought) the musical chops to represent on the music, with songs so pop perfect that the line between parody and mainstream radio is rendered meaningless. The opening volley of incredible tracks stack up to the giddy heights of an alternate universe greatest hits collection, and even gimmick tracks like "Sax Man" manage to understay their welcome and operate as breathers before the next onslaught of twisted top 40. Of course, it isn't all perfect--the skits are generally terrible and a few joke genre exercises like "Ras Trent" fall flat--but overall Incredibad managed to not only stand up to repeat listens but somehow become the album I've listened to the most all year. Sample: "I'm On a Boat"

TO BE CONTINUED (suspense!)

KSHHHT--Re-engaging Transmission

2009-12-16T14:06:00.006-06:00

Christ, where did all this now come from? One minute I'm writing about exploding rubber chickens and looming Summer and suddenly I'm up to my armpits in Winter, how exactly did this happen?

At any rate, it's time to kick the dust off this thing for some year end activity. I'm working on my best albums of 2009 list, which is horribly self indulgent and ridiculous and perfectly at home at Dogs On Houses.

In the meantime, however, I do have a little something-something for those in the Christmas spirit. Two years ago I assembled 20 track one hour mix CD of "cool" Christmas music that I distributed to friends and family. I wanted something a little off kilter that still stuck close enough to the spirit of the season, a collection appropriate for the whole family that also didn't make you want to die. There's some indie rock bands (Raveonettes, Eels, Bright Eyes) and some classics (Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Junior), but also a few curve balls (Run DMC, etc.) I tied it all together with samples from Gremlins, the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and snippets of 80's holiday commercials.

I've recently made it available for download, albeit as one hour long MP3 to make it, well, less illegal. Tracks are mixed into each other and I can't really imagine it all being of interest to anyone wanting to steal individual songs, but I do want to minimize the chance that this will put me on the wrong side of the powers that be.

Send your e-mail address to stitch@nospamthankspoly-p.com* if you're interested and I'll reply with a download link and an exact tracklisting. I'd post the link here directly but I do want to have some sort of screening process that will keep me clear of any trouble.

A frequent question I get is whether or not a sequel is in the works, and after barely missing the cutoff for this holiday season I believe I can go on record and say that next year it's going to happen. I've got most of the songs collected but I just need a bit more time.

At any rate, enjoy the 2007 mix and I hope you and your family find happiness, health, and no herpes this holiday season.

*minus the "nospamthanks" bit, of course.

Of Swollen Chickens

2009-07-07T15:58:00.003-05:00

Have you ever seen one of those squeezable rubber chickens?

Yeah, you know the one: crushing its frame causes its insides to balloon through its skin and form a clear spherical tumor, stretched grotesquely until the pressure is released and the wart can recede, no trace left.

Well.

Not five minutes ago I found a rubber chicken like this at work, and noticed that it had a tumor that never receded. It hung on its neck like a swollen bubble, the edges visibly irritated.

I squeezed the chicken, and this is what happened:

A second tumor began to swell directly next to the first, but with a shiver-inducing pop it released its load, the stretched rubber pimple ejaculating watery fluid through the air, great spurts arcing and falling and splatting across the tile floor with the wet sound of violent contact. I jumped back, startled, but by the time the glistening visuals travelled to my brain the chicken was already spent, hanging limply in my grip as a drop of juice trickled down my fingers.

This is not a metaphor.

I am traumatized.

NYC: Take One

2009-06-11T14:27:00.002-05:00

I have witnessed one common strain among all New Yorkers and it is this: they consider New York to be the city, with all other competing metropolises little more than barely mentionable also-rans. Oh sure, they'll show appreciation for other cities like Chicago or Los Angeles, but it's always accompanied with a half-smirk that makes it clear that you've got a cute city and all but let's not get too carried away, hmmm?

When I caught my first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline I texted my New Yorker buddy: "That's one hell of a skyline."

His reply: "The only one that matters."

It must be said, also, that this common strain has always struck me as incredibly annoying. New York is a big city, yeah, but for god's sake get over it. There's a world out there beyond the borders of your five boroughs.

While in New York City, though, I began to see that this New York superiority complex wasn't really the result of narrow-minded arrogance as previously suspected. New York really is the biggest, boldest city in America. Love it or hate it, New York has the population to push things further than any other city is capable of.

I am something of a connoisseur of dive bars. There's something about drinking cheap beer at a dimly-lit hole in the wall that resonates with me on a spiritual level. I've done a considerable amount of globetrotting during the past two years and a theme throughout has been a need to seek out the best of local dive bars. It's a way to take off the tourist hat for an hour or two and connect with the denizens of the city.

In New York I was taken to Mars Bar.

The hallway-like interior had no lighting except for that which emanated from the flickering neon beer sign in the window. The walls were white and covered in graffiti. I could see open pipes in the ceiling toward the back.

"What do you have on tap?" I asked the bartender.

"Nothing."

I paused. "What do you have bottled?"

She pointed wordlessly to the towers of beer boxes stacked against the wall.

I paused, and then noticed the smell from the bathroom.

This was New York City's answer to the dive bar.

It ain't boasting if you can back it up.

4:35 PM on a Tuesday

2009-05-19T16:40:00.003-05:00

I watched the brilliant day through the breakroom window, green trees saluting a sharp blue sky. Grass danced restlessly from the wind. Sunlight reflected a warm world both blinding and inviting.

"Incredible day," someone said.

I agreed.

I then retreated into a stark hallway, my eyes adjusting to darkness as phantom colors danced across my vision and plotted the course that could have been.

One down, five to go

2009-05-07T10:50:00.004-05:00

Warning: I am about to blather on about matter that is most likely uninteresting to anyone other than me, because I feel the need to mark the fact that last night I finished writing my book.

This is a pretty big deal in the world of me, you see.

True, I must pare back that accomplishment with a series of qualifiers. What I have written is still probably a little rough in places and at least a couple editing passes away from true completion. And then, of course, is the fact that it's a script for a graphic novel, so the book has incalculable hours of sketching, layout, drawing, inking, coloring, and lettering ahead before it can truly be considered complete. Add to that also that even then this is simply the first installment of a story that will (in theory) span six volumes.

You know what, though? Fuck the bigger picture. Four years of character development, world building, and meticulous planning followed by five months of obsessive and labor-intensive writing have finally has paid off in something more than a collection of notes. I have written a book that has a beginning, a middle, and an end (of sorts). The words and ideas and characters have survived the translation from thought and ambition to finished page.

I'm not sure I really can adequately sum up the feeling of blissful payoff. Chipping away at this monster night after night has turned into such an obsession that I hardly know what to do with myself otherwise. I work and sleep, yes, and take care of other things on the weekends, but I've adapted every other bit of free time into moments tuned toward producing finished pages of script. Evenings are essentially nothing but writing. My solitary commute to and from work is when I retreat into my brain and work out unresolved scenes. Even my cool down relaxation period before bed as turned into me lying in bed and editing dialogue on my netbook.

Writing is really such a self-absorbed and insular activity. Tapping into that corner of your brain that produces breathing worlds and living characters involves pulling the plug on the outside world, and as such I've spent the better part of the past six month firmly ensconced up my own ass. All things considered it's not too bad a place to be, but I'm looking forward to coming up for air.

The day in/ day out slog of writing is also a continuous exercise in suppressing the urge to share excitement. When working on any extended creative work there are (hopefully) moments of inspired brilliance, and the urge is to reap instant reward by enthusiastically sharing it with others, but I firmly believe that giving in to this temptation dilutes the project and robs the people around you of the opportunity to experience the work in its intended form. This applies to any form of art or entertainment. Describing a song in progress reduces the finished song to be. Sharing a written exchange of dialogue starves the moment of context and accompanying visuals. The best course for anyone in the throes of creation is to shut up, buckle in, and let the finished work speak for itself.

As such, finishing this script is an odd exercise in celebration and reward on a purely personal level. Nobody but the necessary few will see it, and I'll have to wait months until the rest of the world can read so much as a single word in its intended art-accompanied glory.

Which, to some degree, just emphasizes my sense of accomplishment. The finished book, while obviously fiercely personal, is for everyone else.

Last night, however, was just for me.

Of voting attempts and church ladies

2009-04-07T10:17:00.002-05:00

This morning I voted.

My local polling place is the meeting room of a church, and as such the polls tend to be manned by elderly church goers.

There was one other voter present, just ahead of me with his young son in what technically counted as a line. He was identified and handed a ballot, the voting-specific transaction thus completed.

One of the eldery pollworkers--a woman--turned to the little kid as I waited in line (technically). She put on her beaming "talking to children" face and asked, "How old are you?"

"Five," he said.

"Wow! That's the same age as my grand-nephew! What's your name?"

"Max."

"Max?" she said, her voice rising in delighted pitch. "What a great name, Max!"

I didn't want to be rude, but I moved to draw attention to the fact that I was waiting. Her eyes connected with mine and then turned back to Max.

"Do you know the book Where the Wild Things Are, Max?"

"Yes," Max replied.

"I hear they're turning it into a movie," the father said, his empty ballot tucked under his arm.

"Oh really?" she asked.

I was already late for work.

"I'd like to vote," I said.

Max and his voting dad took the cue and walked away.

The woman held onto her "talking to children face" and addressed me. "And what is your last name?"

"Salisbury."

She began flipping through her registered voter list while continuing to address children. "S...E...L..."

"No," I said. "S..A..L..I..S..B..U..R..Y."

"S...E...L...I..."

"S..A..L..I," I corrected.

"S...A...I..." she turned from one page to another, having trouble finding the name that is not mine.

"No, S.A.L.I"

She looked up at me, said, "oh," and then turned back to the registered voter list. "S...A...I..."

The elderly church man sitting next to her interrupted her. "No, S.A.L.I."

"S...A..." she trailed off.

The man leaned over. "Top of page two."

She flipped one page, then another. "Uh..."

"Never mind, I'll do it, " the man said, crossing out my name.

I took the offered ballot and walked to a booth.

Go vote!

The Spiders and the Legend of the Beast

2009-04-04T14:50:00.004-05:00

The spiders that live in my basement have a tale that is passed down from generation to generation, a story presented as fact but only in the fashion that all children's stories are.

It is the telling of a massive roaring monster that appears but once every spider eon, a screaming, sucking beast that arrives without warning and massacres everything in its path. It's long tube-like mouth is unforgiving in its ability to reach even the deepest of spider hiding places, and even the biggest, strongest spider is sucked up with frightening ease. The beast destroys homes, slaughters families, and gobbles up even children with its bottomless hunger, and it isn't until the previously thriving spider population has been completely decimated that the sated beast finally retreats, lumbering off to god-knows-where to hibernate. The few survivors who managed to escape the beast's wrath have no choice but to pick up the pieces of their shattered civilization and attempt to rebuild.

Fear can't last forever, of course, and as the spider population begins to recover and generation after generation passes without a return from the beast, the story retreats into legend and transforms from frightening to sexy, something young spiderlings whisper about at slumber parties while shivering under their sleeping bags.

The spiders are mistaken, however, as the beast is real and the passing of time has only strengthened its hunger.

Today is the day the spiders once again learn.

Review: The Hazards of Love by the Decemberists

2009-03-30T15:07:00.003-05:00

On some level, Decemberists fans always assumed it would come to this. Original cast recording-style musical numbers were a hallmark of theirs as early as album two ("Shanty for the Arethusa," "The Chimbley Sweep"), and the band's obvious fascination with prog went from nascent on 2004's The Tain to full blown on the three-part fifteen minute eponymous suite on 2006's The Crane Wife. Honestly, a seventeen track rock opera about a shapeshifting forest dweller trying to rescue his true love from a villain called the Rake was pretty much an inevitability, and so it is that we have arrived at The Hazards of Love.

The Decemberists almost pull it off, too. Chief songwriter Colin Meloy is on comfortable and well-tread ground here, simply stretching his penchant for musical storytelling from song to full album. The labyrinthine plot takes numerous twists, and the music generally oscillates between the mildly pleasant and the demandingly compelling. Very few songs exist well enough on their own, but they are not without a certain cumulative power, a raw force that pulls you through and occasionally rises to heady peaks with standout tracks. Almost any band could call this an unqualified success.

And yet it isn't just any band, it's the Decemberists. Unfortunate expectations, perhaps, but once a band releases an album as perfect as Picaresque there's simply no dialing back to the realm where "mildly pleasant" is good enough.

The first sign that all is not right on The Hazards of Love is the baffling absence of that much beloved chestnut of musicals everywhere: the big opening number. The Decemberists have belted those out of the park before--"The Infanta," anyone?--and as such it's borderline unforgivable that the album whimpers in with a tonal drone that initially made me wonder if my CD was broken. From there the album limps into a couple of undercooked songs that are pleasant enough but never really build into anything on their own. It's a rock opera, fine, not every track is supposed to be a scorcher, but it isn't until ten minutes in that you get the first real hummable melody via the beautiful "Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)." It's a stunning song, yes, but it only illustrates that the first couple songs might as well be called "PLACEHOLDER MELODY: WRITE ROUSING OPENER SOON."

Other highlights manage to be decent additions to the Decemberists canon, but few could survive the Pepsi Challenge against virtually anything else they've recorded in the past five years. "The Rake Song" is a faux-heavy ode to infanticide that would be disturbing if it weren't so funny (regarding his progeny's birth: "first came Eziah with his crinkled little fingers/ then came Charlotte and that wretched girl Dawn/ ugly Myfanwy died on delivery/ mercifully taking her mother along, alright!"), but ultimately it sounds a bit like an inspired idea in search of a memorable chorus. "The Wanting Comes In Waves" is fairly standout-ish and yet it is punctuated with digressions (both musical and plot-wise) that render the song conflicted at best. Meloy is telling a story, I know, but is it really too much to ask for a tune that hangs together from start to finish?

"But it's not about the individual songs!" I hear the hardcore shout! "This is a concept rock opera, not a greatest hits collection!"

Except nobody wanted this all to work more than me. I love this kind of ridiculous high-concept shit. Prog-heavy opuses complete with interludes, four-part movements, and a dense backstory detailed in the booklet via eyeball-shattering microscopic font? Sign me up; I'm one of the few who still consider Mars Volta albums to be release day purchases, after all. But The Hazards of Love is caught in an odd rock opera middle ground where the songs aren't quite solid enough to survive on their own and yet the music doesn't form a swelling sonic journey to accompany the plot. It's a bizarre memento of a stage musical that doesn't exist (and probably wouldn't work very well if it did).

But it also must be stressed that The Hazards of Love--the album--does ultimately work, and it will almost certainly be embraced by a certain subset of their fanbase as The Decemberist's underrated masterpiece. Swap in a couple songs on the caliber of "We Both Go Down Together" and I might be inclined to agree, but prog epics are all about the balance between build up and payoff and The Hazards of Love rings up a little skimpy on the latter. It's a success, yeah, but only if you manage to ignore past Decemberists discs to keep from being reminded of what could have been.

Lunchtime at Target

2009-03-25T13:46:00.000-05:00

How do you sell a videogame?

I'll tell you how you sell a videogame.

I held it in my hands, strongly considering a purchase. The color palette (high contrast black, white, and--get this--red) appealed to me, as did its cartoonishly violent promise.

The clerk looked at me, considered his options, and proceeded to say the following: "You can pick up bad guys and toss them in a deep fat fryer and then they throw up."

Sold!

Cancún: round one

2009-03-08T17:19:00.004-05:00

Cancún, a summary to possibly be expanded upon later:

The plane trip to Cancún was filled bow to stern with douchebags and as such my vacation was off to a grumpy start.

"Someone's ready for some brewskis!" a woman behind me brayed.

"I'll get the first round once we land!" a nearby guy shouted. "Who's gonna to get the second?"

"I'll get the second, you get the first on the plane!" another guy answered.

"I'll get the first once we land," the first guy clarified.

"No, I mean the first on the plane," the second guy answered.

"When we land."

"I mean on the plane."

Behind me, the brewski woman decided a brewski was in order but then declined when she discovered that the only light beer options available on the plane was Bud Lite.

Yeah.

There was one saving grace on the plane and the saving grace was this: the woman sitting directly across the aisle from me was startlingly beautiful. I don't really remember what she looked like beyond a certain ethereal quality, but once I noticed her I wanted to do little more than gaze at her for the remainder of the trip, drinking in as much as I could before our time together drew to a close.

It was more of a visual fascination than an attraction, if that makes sense. It wasn't that she was beautiful so much as she was striking. I would have felt the same had she been shockingly ugly or adorned with a pig snout for a nose.

On second thought, the pig snout would have been more interesting.

********

Cancún was a surreal six days of complete removal from what can reasonably be called "The Normal Life." No snow, no job, no bills, no driving, no cooking, no appointments, just large expanses of white beach coupled with time stretching off into forever.

And a constant stream of alcohol.

It's not that much of the trip was spent drunk--far from it--but it was rare that an alcoholic drink of at least some potency wasn't being sipped on, regardless of the hour.

This has a bit of a cumulative effect.

"Reality is ripping at the seams," I said somewhere around the fifth day.

********

The lowlight of the trip, or perhaps the highlight, if you ask my friends, was when I awoke sleepwalking around the resort in my Batman underwear. I had no key-card slipped into my boxer-briefs and was therefore locked outside my room, so I tried to break in via the sliding side door but the chain latch actually proved to be an effective deterrent to breaking and entering, so I eventually had to resort to stumbling down to the front desk--in my Batman underwear, remember--to ask for a new key-card.

This is not the first time my Batman underwear has gotten me into trouble.

It might be time for me to admit I'm not Bruce Wayne.

********

My last plane back to Madison was on a tiny jet with ancient leather seats and landing gear that shook the plane violently with a deafening KRA-KOW whenever they were pried open or closed.

Things you do not want in a plane ride: deafening KRA-KOWS accompanied by violent shaking.

********

Mexico must have been very fond of me because Mexico is proving quite resistant to letting me go, and I apologize and beg for your sympathy if you know what I mean by this.

It started Friday morning and is still going strong, three days later. I do think I'm on the mend, but I still have to tear for the bathroom with clockwork regularity.

While in Cancún I told some fellow vacationers, "This resort is nice, but you've really got to get off the tourist strip to truly appreciate Mexico. Take the bus into downtown Cancún and find a small restaurant on a side street to eat a meal. Dine on some true Mexican food, and drink in the heartbeat of the city. You won't regret it."

You won't regret it.

KRA-KOW!

The State of Dogs On Houses

2009-02-11T17:13:00.003-06:00

I haven't written for this blog lately and the reason I haven't written for this blog lately is because I've been writing something that is not this blog.

Exactly.

Since the New Year I have been obsessively chipping away at the manuscript for a project that's been slow cooking for a couple years now. This is good, as it means I'm making nightly progress and at the end of every week I can look back and count the amount of new pages that have survived the laborious transition from brain to computer. Tangible progress is being made, to the extent that the finish line is in sight. Within a month or two I should have a completed manuscript that can be read from start to finish.

The downside to spending one's time writing, however, is that the only thing I then have to write about is this: writing. Only other writers would be interested in reading about that, and then only non-writing writers desperate to live vicariously through someone who manages to sit and stare at Microsoft Word for three hours a night while clicking on plastic keys.

Sit poorly, might I add. I hunch like I'm assembling a puzzle that forms a massage therapist ad.

Also: I guess I am lying when I say that things haven't been happening to me beyond writing. I wanted to write about my crippling guilt over abandoning my '98 Corolla for a shiny '08 Scion TC. I wanted to write about the overwhelming joy I felt on January 20th, and the ripples of pride I still feel when I hear the words "President Obama." I wanted to write about the queasy horror of reading about bush fires sliding all over an area of Australia I visited last October. I want to write a review of the Lonely Island CD.

I would write about all these things and more, but here's the catch: I am too busy destroying my back and staring at Microsoft Word for three hours a night while clicking on plastic keys.

You can't have everything.

America Twitters: standin n line @ the soup kitchen

2009-01-22T09:30:00.004-06:00

I had wondered what the most ominous economic quarter in recent history would do to the pricey gadget industry--Apple, more specifically--and as it turns out America is pretty eager to drown their unemployment fear in sexy tech, as Apple just posted record quarterly revenues.

We're probably not hurling toward the apocalypse, but if we are the canned food hoarding will be accompanied by ipod music and the rampaging raiders will be documented with our iphones.

The most accurate epitaph imaginable

2009-01-15T22:08:00.003-06:00

Something occurred to me tonight as I scrubbed the carpet again.

Someday I will die and there will be a headstone, and on my headstone should be inscribed this and only this:

C. Bill Salisbury

1975-????

"In his life

there sure was a lot of cat puke"

R.I.P.

While driving this morning

2008-12-17T15:17:00.002-06:00

I passed a car abandoned between the two lanes of the highway, its derailment undoubtedly the result of last night's storm. The lonely vehicle was door handle-deep in snow, and wrapped twice around its metal frame was a strip of yellow DO NOT CROSS police tape.

Perched upon the roof was an orange traffic cone, the car's personal dunce cap.

My Corolla snickered, but only slightly.

Uncle Stitch's Music Roundup: 2008

2008-12-16T13:18:00.009-06:00

Like drinking too much mulled wine and telling the inlaws what you really think, my musical best-of list is back by December tradition. My top ten, presented in reverse order for great suspense:

Top Ten

10. Death Cab for Cutie, Narrow Stairs - Reigning indie pop darlings of the OC set return with their bleakest yet most compelling disc so far.
9. No Age, Nouns - These two kids from LA may sound like a box of bees falling down a flight of stairs but underneath the grime and distortion and occasional ambient interludes are real songs with winning--if gradually revealed--hooks.
8. Black Keys, Attack & Release - Raw bluesters stretch out of their comfort zone by partnering with Danger Mouse and the brilliant results sprawl stylistically while remaining easily recognizable.
7. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular - Nobody else better converted your morning commute into tripping balls while dancing naked on the beach.
6. Hot Chip, Made in the Dark - While Made in the Dark's first half nails the electro dance pleasure principle perfectly, it's the ballads that forge new territory while quietly stealing the show.
5. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles may sound limited in concept, but their debut disc proves that there is a time for broken glass vocals over abrasive Nintendo beats and that time is fucking now. The full album is a few subtracted songs away from perfection, yeah, but Crystal Castles establishes its importance with sheer visceral intensity. The digital sugar punch of 2008.
4. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes - You are wandering lost in the mountains, your stomach aching with hunger as the temperature drops. Just as you begin contemplating curling in the snow and giving in, you barely make out a faint melody whistling through distant passages. Hope renewed, you follow the sound, traversing the frosty terrain as the singing grows louder and closer. Just as the four-part harmonies kick in, you turn a corner and find a group of musicians playing around a campfire glowing with generous warmth, the sound so inviting you wordlessly join and so nourishing your hunger disappears. This is Fleet Foxes.
3. Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer - Worried about repeating themselves, Wolf Parade dropped the Modest Mouse-ish indie stomp of their debut and struck out into darker, murkier territory for their sophomore disc. At Mount Zoomer finds two cracking songwriters operating at the top of their game, oscillating from the sublimely loopy ("Bang Your Drum") to outstanding torch-bearing rock ("Fine Young Cannibals"). Wolf Parade have recorded a rewarding disc that grows with each listen and firmly promotes them beyond "indie blog sensation of the month" territory. My personal soundtrack to 2008.
2. TV on the Radio, Dear Science - After a debut that was more promise than delivery and a sophomore disc that crackled with ideas but lacked memorable songwriting, TV on the Radio finally got it all right with Dear Science, an ear-twisting and exuberant album exploding with equal parts joy, anger, and lust. Dear Science is jaw-dropping enough to easily earn the status of album of the year, if only it weren't for a welcome return of one dormant veteran, which brings us to...
1. Portishead, Third - Who really expected this? On paper the return of Portishead sounds about as relevant as a new wave of hypercolor shirts, and yet these veterans deliver a suffocated, fractured masterpiece. By jettisoning the languid hiphop beats that made them famous but now sound like cologne ads, Portishead have crafted a timeless study of alienation and heartbreak that remains recognizable while sounding nothing like their previous material. Third pushes against the listener relentlessly, ending songs prematurely and squeezing moments into uncomfortable dissonance, creating a tense and jarring atmosphere of dread that reflects the lyrical content but--here's the kicker--somehow manages to be compulsively listenable and addicting. Portishead's Third certainly isn't for everyone--you can't have international spy sex to it, after all--but its uncompromising brilliance makes this one for the ages.

Honorable Mentions

Beck, Modern Guilt
The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
Vampire Weekend, Vampire weekend
HEALTH, DISCO

Disappointments

Sigur Rós, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Cold War Kids, Loyalty to Loyalty
Weezer, Red Album

Single of the Year

Hot Chip, "Ready for the Floor"

A solid year overall, with two incredibly strong contenders for album of the year. Still to pick up: the Deer bands (-hunter, -hoof) as well as whatever I discover on other year-end lists.

Roll on 2009.

On second thought: You know what, screw that. "Single of the Year" category is typically where disposable pop has its opportunity to shine, but Flo Rida's "In the Ayer" never attained more than "kicks ass with alcohol" status, so consider its title RESCINDED. Instead please find good sirs Hot Chip's "Ready for the Floor," which rocked my shit all summer long.

There and back again

2008-11-11T14:15:00.001-06:00

For awhile, my guitar made a daily trip from my closet door to the bed and back.

It's like this: after a few mishaps, I discovered that the nook where my closed closet door meets the door frame is ideal for leaning my guitar. Via this method the guitar touched only carpet (down below!) and indented wood (way up top!) so there was no danger of the guitar sliding loose and scratching arcs of black paint into the walls. Closed closet doors must be opened, of course, so a small daily commuting cycle was born in which I'd move the guitar from the door to my bed each morning when I needed my closet, and then each evening the guitar would make it back to the closet when I needed my bed.

Back and forth, each day. It's no trip across Europe while on tour with the Stones, but many a guitar has achieved less.

All of which came to a close a few months ago when I decided I didn't really need another sleep-delaying procrastination device in the bedroom. Down to the basement went my guitar, and the daily commute ended.

Except that now I find that another long, unwieldy device has resumed this daily trip between by bed and closet door. Yes, the commuting mantle has been passed from my electric guitar to a new item and that new item is this:

A full-size replica of Aragorn's sword.

I purchased it for a Halloween costume, you see.

Right.

Yeah, I'm not exactly comfortable with the direction my life seems to be taking.

At long last, we did it.

2008-11-07T10:56:00.003-06:00

So, it happened. President Elect Obama. We did it. In a hostile environment in which Obama's detractors attempted to paint him as a socialist Muslim (oh no!) with terrorist friends and an angry black wife, we cut through the fear mongering and put the candidate of change and hope into the White House.

Election Predictions

2008-11-03T11:15:00.001-06:00

One more day to go and the most interesting election of my lifetime draws to some kind of dramatic close, as no matter which way this one swings there's going to be a moment-defining story in play. Either Obama is going to sweep in on a history-making tidal wave or McCain is going to turn a bafflingly weak hand into a stunning upset underscored by dark implications.

I was tempted to call this one conservatively for Obama, but my gut feeling is we're going to have the following results:

Obama won't manage to pick up some of the Republican strongholds currently supposedly in play, such as AZ and IN. Those will go to McCain.

PA, despite McCain's efforts, will remain firmly out of his grasp.

Obama will pick up all the Kerry states by more decisive margins than Kerry pulled. That's 260 electoral votes right there, ten shy of the tipping point.

Obama will also pick up the swing states currently leaning in his direction. That's NH, CO, NV, FL, VA, and OH, bringing Obama up to 338 electoral votes, 68 past the 270 needed to declare victory.

All of the above is a pretty safe prediction, given the polls as they stand (and have stood for awhile). I also think Obama will pick up NC, though, bringing his final electoral count to 353.

Final prediction:

Obama: 353

McCain: 185

See you at the voting booth!

Two Weeks in Australia: a trip told in lists

2008-10-24T16:06:00.004-05:00

LIST ONE: FLIGHTS

I took the following flights during the two weeks that made up my trip:

Madison to St Louis
St Louis to Los Angeles
Los Angeles to Sydney*
Sydney to Brisbane
Brisbane to Sydney*
Sydney to Los Angeles
Los Angeles to Dallas*
Dallas to Madison

Running total: 8 flights

An asterisk (*) indicates a flight in which there was a crying baby.

Related note: I used to like flying.

LIST TWO: MOVIES

I watched the following bad movie while in transit via airplane:

The Happening

I watched the following mediocre movie while in transit via airplane:

Hancock

I watched the following good movie while in transit via airplane:

Speed Racer

I don't exactly believe it either.

LIST THREE: GO OZ

Here is a partial list of things Australia does better than the States:

Public transportation
Toilets
Bacon (!)
Food in general
Chocolate
The level of dress among the general populace, flipflops and sandals notwithstanding
Ovens
Currency
Radio personalities (Hamish and Andy are actually pretty funny)
Spectrum of popular music
Outlook on life
Slang

LIST FOUR: GO YANKS

Here is a partial list of things the States do better than Australia:

Price tags
Coffee
Soda
Hamburgers
Cheese
Highways
The availability of garbage cans
Baby carrots
Incorporation of the indiginous people (although to be honest the US has a ways to go as well)
Keeping a lid on Kings of Leon
Black people
Volume

LIST FIVE: KFC?

I observed the existence of following the fast food chains during my stay in Australia:

McDonald's
Subway
Hungry Jacks (Burger King)
KFC

It should be noted that KFCs are more popular than they are in the States. Australians are absolutely crazy about KFC, comparatively speaking.

Soul-crushingly absent:

Taco Bell

LIST INTERMISSION:

I had the following conversation many times while in Australia.

Aussie: So where are you from?

Me: The States.

Aussie: Yeah, but which state?

Me: Wisconsin.

Aussie: ...uh...

Me: Dairy state.

Aussie: ...erm...

Me: Midwest, right under Canada.

Aussie: Oh, right! wisconsin!

Me: Yeah, Wisconsin.

END INTERMISSION

LIST SIX: UNIQUE OZ EXPERIENCES

Things I did in Australia that I couldn't do in Wisconsin:

Coughed salt water out of my nose
Ate a meat pie
Paid four dollars for a dixie cup of black coffee
Encouraged overeating in kangaroos
Been mistaken for a member of a surfing gang
Taken a ferry back after a couple drinks at a pub
Drank a little too much beneath the Sydney Opera House
Drew sideways glances from passing pedestrians everytime I opened my mouth
Earned free drinks on accent alone
Started the day with fresh caught shrimp
Real Aussie Tucker
Saw a beatific Steve Irwin statue
Purchased candy branded with blackface imagery
Slept with the windows open in October
Consumed sushi travelling via conveyor belt
Heard MGMT in a grocery store
Visited locations with names like Wagga Wagga and Mooloolaba
Got harrassed by a two-foot tall bird in a mall food court
Turned away paper-waving activists with the explanation that "I'm about to fall off the planet in a couple days"
Attempted to hold a reasonable conversation while a nearby television flashes network full frontal nudity
Scratched a stinky koala

LIST SEVEN: AUSTRALIAN BEER

Australian beer brands sampled, and ranked (from best to worst):

James T Squire
Cooper's
Carlton Draught
Pure Blonde
Vic Bitter

Noticably absent:

Fosters

LIST EIGHT: BFFs

People I miss now that I've returned home:

Chris
Dominica
Hugh

Note: not necessarily in that order

Two things

2008-10-03T14:19:00.002-05:00

First off, my grandmother died, and at her funeral I read this:

When I was told that grandma had passed away, one of my first reactions, as odd as it may seem, was to want to bake a pie.

When I think of grandma, I think of food. I think of apple bars cooling on the counter as my sister and I entered the kitchen. I think of home-baked pies swollen with sugar and fruit, waiting to be consumed with little regard to portion control. I think of a surplus of daily meals more numerous than I had known to be possible, with the occasional intermittent tray of sandwiches in case you got hungry. I even think of a pantry full of the sweetest of multicolored breakfast cereal, the kind of which--and here's what made it really good--my mother strongly disapproved.

Simple stuff, perhaps, but I was a kid, and it is things like this that add up to legendary measures. Grandma wasn't just any grandma, she was the grandma, the kind of grandma you think of when you describe exactly how important a grandmother is. The grandma who always welcomes you in and encompasses you in love. The grandma who gives you support when needed, and plays a part of major milestones in your growth and maturity. A grandma who keeps you in line and yet isn't afraid to interpret the rules a little more loosely and spoil you from time to time.

It may seem shallow to remember grandma through the medium of food, but it runs much deeper than just eating things, as delicious as these things may have been. I was twenty or so the last time I tried to bake a pie, and I distinctly remember grandma assisting me in my mother's kitchen with warm authority. We operated as a team for a good half hour or so, and by the time we put the pie in the oven my black t-shirt was practically white with flour. She knew better, and wore an apron.

The pie, of course, was delicious.

Thank you grandma, I love you.

************

Secondly, I'm off to Australia for two weeks. Later.

Review: Hellboy

2008-09-23T09:30:00.005-05:00

Hellboy, Take One:

I finally saw Hellboy, and this is what I thought of it:

Two months ago my car had a rather peculiar electrical issue caused by a faulty headlight trigger that had some bizarre manifestations.

One bizarre manifestation was the dashboard emergency brake light sometimes blinked in time to the left turn signal.

Another bizarre manifestation was the engine wouldn't run unless the headlights were on.

Understandably, two months ago I got this fixed.

Another thing that happened two months ago: my dehumidifier broke. A wave of typical summer weather hit hard and my basement was like a catbox floating down the Amazon.

Understandably, two months ago I also purchased a new dehumidifier.

Cut to two weeks ago, when I noticed the emergency brake light blinking again in time to the left turn signal. Two days later the car wouldn't start reliably unless the headlights were on.

Strike One.

Last week at some point I realized that the new dehumidifier had slid from working quite well to barely working to not remotely working at all. I took the time on Friday night to sit down with the manual and troubleshoot every possible cause, finally settling on kicking it twice and waiting to see if that made any difference.

During this waiting period, I decided to rent and watch Hellboy, so I flipped my headlights on and drove over to the local rental place, brake lights blinking with every turn.

Halfway through Hellboy, my televisions screen went blank, except for the small text indicating that the DVD signal had been interrupted. Thinking the DVD perhaps had a scratch on it, I walked to the DVD player and noticed that its lights weren't on.

I plugged it into a different jack.

The DVD player sat silent and dim.

I removed the DVD player entirely and plugged it into a different outlet entirely.

The DVD player sat silent and dim.

My DVD player was dead.

Strike Two.

I walked back into the basement to check on the dehumidifier and see if my kick had jolted the condenser back into operation.

The bucket was as barren as my faith in appliance reliability.

Strike Three.

Hellboy could have been better.

Hellboy, Take Two:

Watching Hellboy (in its entirety) is a bit like reading a stunningly imaginative and inspired book that has terrible punctuation and sentences arranged in the wrong order.

Considering the general level of competence on display in Pan's Labyrinth, I'm guessing that Hellboy 2 is worth a look.

Pardon my preaching

2008-09-16T10:43:00.003-05:00

My stance on the election hasn't changed with the polls and I still think this one is Obama's to lose. Palin surprised me only in that she managed to energize the base behind McCain, but other than that she was only effective as a blank slate upon which Republicans could paint their ideal candidate, a quality that will fade as her details are colored in. In an empty news cycle she provided a likable (to many) breath of fresh air, but what's one thing that can change the dialog and make Palin excitement seem like yesterday's news?

The bottom dropping out of Wall Street, for one.

For months Obama is the only candidate who has really been addressing the economy at all, and now suddenly we have the dark possibilities of deregulation made manifest. Whoops on that.

McCain's campaign is desperately grabbing for whatever works, from co-opting Obama's message of change to baldly lying to engaging in dirty tactics like push polling and voter caging. This filthy kitchen sink approach isn't going to resonate this time, but here's the thing:

What if it does?

Countless friends and coworkers have come up to me and expressed concern over the tight polls, which is understandable, but here's the thing: this isn't really up to Obama or McCain at this point. How either candidate navigates the following two months will matter, yes, but the election now ultimately comes down to which side is more effective at reaching and swaying undecided voters and then following through with pushing them to the polls. This boils down to the on-the-ground field operation, which means this comes down to you.

You, and people exactly like you, are going to be the deciding force this election. There are undecided voters out there swallowed up by partisan noise and literally one canvas visit away from being pushed firmly in one camp or the other. An Obama volunteer might be out there now outpacing the McCain squad, but do you really want to leave that to chance?

This is bigger than left versus right as the truth is on Obama's side. The two biggest concerns facing middle America, the economy and the war in Iraq, are slam dunks for Democrats. All most undecided voters need is someone to help them cut through the partisan crap and understand both candidate's stances on the issues.

If you feel strongly enough about the election to fear a McCain presidency, there is no excuse for not participating at this point. We're talking about the future of our country, and the last eight years are proof enough of how much difference one president can make. I understand discomfort at the prospect of being an asshole with a clipboard, but there are countless ways in which you can help put Obama in the white house if only you take the time. Not everyone has to knock doors.

It's two-fold, really. There's the threat of looking back with regret at what you could have done to help avoid a McCain presidency, but better is the flipside of being a part of Obama's movement and feeling a sense of personal pride if he becomes the 44th commander in chief. Either scenario will be crafted, in part, by you.

To bring this full circle, in this climate of failing banks only one candidate has a history of describing himself as a deregulator.

The truth is on our side.

Boom Blox

2008-09-12T11:39:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I purchased a Wii game that involves throwing objects at towers of blocks in an attempt to inflict enough structural damage to cause collapse.

It wasn't until later that I saw the flags at half mast and realized the coincidence.

Well I never need to shop there again

2008-09-08T10:44:00.005-05:00

Having searched through local CD stores for the better part of summer, it was with a certain degree of triumph that I extracted the Crystal Castles album yesterday from the racks of B-Side Records, an independent local music store. I had been listening to the disc for months via illegal download, and I was glad to finally be able own a physical copy.

Still, the $14 price tag made me pause momentarily. I wanted to support the band, yes, but I knew I could order the album for a good five dollars cheaper online. Amazon.com has free shipping, after all.

"To hell with that," I sad outloud. "B-Side Records is stocking the album I've been looking for all summer, I'll support the independent local music store."

The clerk/shop owner rang up my purchase and then asked, offhand, "Would you like a bag for that?"

While not a huge fan of unnecessary waste, I recognized I was going to be going in more shops and didn't want to be carrying a loose CD around. "Yes, please."

The clerk continued the paperwork for my purchase and shot me a glance, raising an eyebrow and exhaling with disapproval. Apparently his question had been a trap.

I said, "You disapprove of bags, I take it."

He shook his head as if explaining the obvious. "I just really like trees."

At this point in time he was counting my money and making change, for the record.

I laughed. "I like trees as well but right now I happen to need a bag more than I like trees."

He pursed his lips like a school marm and handed me my purchase. "Well there you go, then"

"Thanks for the bag," I said, leaving.

There is an irony to all this, I mused while departing, and it is this: what's the biggest side product of driving all future music purchases into the hands of Amazon.com?

Lots of tree-shredding packaging.

McCain/Palin: a quick look

2008-08-29T15:16:00.001-05:00

McCain's VP pick of two year Alaskan governor Sarah Palin seems to be a pretty savvy attempt to snag some disenfranchised Hillary supporters, and you'd better believe the media is going to grab that ball and run with it relentlessly. Problem is Palin couldn't be further from Hillary on the social issues Hillary's supporters care about, so in the end only the insignificant batshit few will actually switch teams and vote for a pro-life ticket.

Beyond that, Palin is an odd "join 'em if you can't beat 'em" choice that I can't see playing out real well. She nullifies most of the McCain's recent attacks against Obama and yet doesn't really prevent Obama's team from flipping the script and making those same attacks against her. She has a lot of convincing to do within a very short amount of time.

I'll say this much, though: a Biden/Palin vice presidential debate should come with buttered popcorn. Let's do this.

All hail the Clintons, right?

2008-08-28T14:48:00.002-05:00

Hillary and Bill performed their roles perfectly at the DNC. Hillary's job was to talk her hardline supporters back from the brink and Bill's role was to turn them in the direction of Obama and push firmly. Hillary admonished her supporters gently that this wasn't about her, and Bill went on to refute most of the arguments commonly lobbied against Obama. Obama is ready to lead, and no less inexperienced than a certain Arkansas governor seeking the White House sixteen years ago.

I've got to admit it was thrilling to hear them finally going to bat for my guy, enough so that I could almost forget that all the attacks refuted by the Clintons were initially generated by--oh yeah, remember this?--them.

To hear the two of them speak, the primary mudslinging was nothing more than a feisty bit of Mario Kart smack talk and all current damage was caused by some mysterious other. Hillary reminded the Party Unity My Ass crowd that this wasn't about her, a refreshing bit of political theater in light of the fact that it was her who directly praised McCain over Obama and then wrapped herself in the battered feminist shawl once it began to fit. Bill Clinton said that "everything [he] learned in [his] eight years as President and in the work [he's] done since...has convinced [him] that Barack Obama is the man for this job," which is either laughably untrue--is there some "excluding the primaries" clause there?--or hinges disingenuously on the gender-specific nature of the word "man."

The fact is the Clintons adopted a scorched earth approach to the primaries and are now innocently shrugging their shoulders and saying "who, me?" I fully appreciate the fact that they're finally doing the right thing and placing the Democratic party before their egos, but doing your part to rebuild the house you just burned down only goes so far.

The Clintons had a job to do and they did it wonderfully, yes. Well played, no wonder they were once Democratic royalty. All the same, though, isn't it time they disappear in a 24 hour all-you-can-eat buffet and pantsuit sale?

The Phone Call

2008-08-22T14:18:00.002-05:00

As Vice President speculation reaches a fevered pitch, Obama has reportedly begun breaking the news via phone to the candidates that he didn't select.

Judging by the fact that I have yet to receive the call it looks like I'm still in the running.

Unfolding in Reverse: The Bigfoot Hoax of 2008

2008-08-21T13:06:00.003-05:00

August 20th, 2008

What happens when an unlikely and incredible claim gains such momentum that the eventual ridiculous truth can't help but be insulting? The Bigfoot Hoax of 2008 answered this question for three distinct demographic groups.

If you're an average person, you laugh and acknowledge that while proof of bigfoot would have been cool, the writing was on the wall for this one from the start.

If you're a legitimate cryptozoologist--don't laugh--you shake your head and wince at yet another blow to the reputation of your profession.

If you're Matt Whitton, one of the two perpetrators of the hoax, you lose your job as a Clayton County Police officer.

"Once he perpetrated a fraud, that goes into his credibility and integrity," Police Chief Jeff Turner would go on to say. "He has violated the duty of a police officer."^[1]

To be fair, it is unlikely that the Clayton County Police Department new hire handbook contains policy on mythical creatures, fabricated or otherwise.

August 19th , 2008

As the horrible truth behind the hoax becomes apparent, self-described “Real Bigfoot Hunter” and "35-year veteran of the Bigfoot business" Tom Biscardi^[2] begins to rethink the wisdom of hitching his wagon to Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two Georgia hikers who perpetuated the hoax by claiming to be in possession of a bigfoot corpse. Biscardi doesn't exactly have the most airtight of reputations in the bigfoot community--again, don't laugh--but Whitton and Dyer were little more than two amateurs selling questionable bigfoot tours from their dubious website. They were self-described "week end warriors" converted to bigfoot enthusiasts by a 2005 camping trip that turned into "something no body expected!"^[3]

Finding himself the butt of a hoax, Biscardi calls Whitton and Dyer, who freely admit their duplicitous role in the affair. Biscardi sets up a meeting with the two at a hotel and upon arrival discovers that they have fled.^[4]

It is entirely possible at this point that Biscardi tried reaching Whitton and Dyer via their long-running "24-Hour Sighting Hotline," which asks for tips related to "leprechauns, unicorns, large cats, dinosaurs," as well as "Jimmy Hoffa or Elvis."^[5]

August 18th, 2008

Biscardi knows his current shot at proving the existence of bigfoot hinges entirely on the frozen (alleged) corpse stored in an undisclosed location. The block of ice initially weighed an estimated 1500 pounds when it had arrived, but two days of thawing at room temperature (to avoid decomposition^[4]) had melted enough ice to expose hair.

Hair is extracted and tested. When burned, the hair sample "[melts] into a ball uncharacteristic of hair."^[6]

Strike one.

Biscardi decides that speeding up the thawing via heat sources is perhaps in order.

Slowly the ice recedes enough to reveal a section of the head, which is "unusually hollow in one small section."^[6]

Strike two.

An hour later, the ice melts enough to expose the feet adequately for testing. The unusual nature of the feet becomes immediately apparent.

Unusual in that they are are made of rubber.^[6]

Biscardi's prized bigfoot corpse is, in fact, a rubber gorilla costume full of animal innards.^[5]

Strike three.

August 15th, 2008

While the block of ice was en route to an undisclosed location, Biscardi, Whitton, and Dyer hold a press conference. Biscardi had initially wanted to host the press conference after the (alleged) corpse had been examined by scientists, but Dyer and Whitton insisted addressing the press came first.

This is, presumably, because they wanted a press conference, which the discovery of a rubber gorilla costume full of animal innards doesn't typically merit.

Biscardi steps up to the podium and explains that while the (alleged) body won't be presented, he does have the results of tests done on DNA (allegedly) extracted from the (alleged) corpse.^[7] The press had been hoping for an actual body but this would have to do.

Flanked by Whitton and Dyer, Biscardi reveals that the three DNA samples have been identified as follows: one human, one possum, and one inconclusive.^[7]

Of note: none of the three belong to a strain of bigfoot.

Also of note: none of the three even belong to a rubber gorilla costume full of animal innards.

Biscardi suggests that perhaps the bigfoot specimen had eaten a possum shortly before death, which would account for the DNA. The proof is coming, though, and all skeptics will fall silent when Biscardi finally brandishes the corpse^[7]--for real this time--which is currently en route to an undisclosed location.

When how much money he expects to make from this (alleged) discovery, Biscardi replies, "As much as I possibly can."^[7]

On a perhaps unrelated note, it is around this time that Biscardi begins to charge for photos of the (alleged) corpse on his website.^[5]

August 14th, 2008

Also perhaps unrelated: Searching for Bigfoot, Inc, the group that Biscardi founded and leads as CEO, pays Whitton and Dyer an undisclosed sum for the (alleged) corpse.

Undisclosed, perhaps, but reports indicate that the proven market rate for a rubber gorilla costume full of animal innards is $50,000, give or take a bill or two.^[8]

August 1st, 2008

Biscardi travels to Georgia to inspect the alleged corpse. He meets Whitton and Dyer for the first time, having been placed in contact with them via Steve Kull, a fellow bigfoot enthusiast with a radio show.

Whitton and Dyer take Biscardi to the freezer where they've been storing their claim. Biscardi is impressed. "Be still my heart, I felt bad for the poor thing," Biscardi later said when recalling his first glimpse of the rubber gorilla costume full of animal innards. "After being in the industry for the past 30 years, I wondered: Was it diseased? Did it die of old age?"^[2]

Three days later Biscardi's Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. would enter a contract with Whitton and Dyer.

July 28, 2008

Due to mounting notoriety over a series of youtube videos, Whitton and Dyer agree to a phone interview on Steve Kulls' Sasquatchdetective Radio show. The two field questions for an hour and express interest in handing over their investigation to bigfoot authority Tom Biscardi.

Why Tom Biscardi, a man with a reputation that can charitably be described as lacking?

Dyer credits the internet. "You type in 'Bigfoot' and that's the name that comes up."^[2]

July 9th, 2008

Dyer and Whitton post a video on youtube claiming that they possess a bigfoot corpse and have been storing it for months in their freezer. They use this opportunity to boorishly boast to be "the best bigfoot trackers in the world."^[9]

A followup video is posted in which a scientist discusses examining the body. The scientist is shortly outed as Whitton's brother, a photographer.^[9]

The next video features a teddy bear doll with a can of nuts propped in its paws.

Why nuts?

So the teddy bear can goad bigfoot researchers into "play[ing] with them," of course.^[9]

One wonders if Biscardi watched these videos before committing involvement.

Interesting fact: $50,000 can buy roughly 12,500 cans of nuts.

May/June 2008

During his non-bigfoot-related day job as Clayton County Police officer, Whitton is "wounded in the line of duty while apprehending a suspect that had allegedly shot a woman in the head".^[8] Whitton is placed on temporary leave.

Whitton is faced with an uneventful summer containing entirely too much freetime.

Epilogue: August 19th, 2005

Tom Biscardi appears on the Coast to Coast AM radio show and announces a pay-per-view event in which people can view a captured bigfoot.

Refunds are announced five days later.^[9]

Sources

[1]11.com: Clayton Cop Fired After Bigfoot Hoax
[2]WSBTV.com: Georgia Bigfoot Hunters Reveal 'Evidence' At Press Conference
[3]www.bigfoottracker.com (now defunct)
[4]Searching for Bigfoot Discovers the Truth
[5]Fox News: Bigfoot Hoaxers Still On the Lam
[6]Chicago Tribune: Bigfoot revealed as big hoax
[7]Scientific American: Bigfoot Press Conference Yields Little Evidence, Lots of Scorn
[8]Fox News: Bigfoot Body Revealed to Be Halloween Costume
[9]Autumn Williams' Investigative Report: Anatomy of a Hoax

Note: all text quoted from sources is accurate at time of publishing, but I am not responsible for future changes by their parent news organizations.

Roll on President Obama

2008-08-06T10:06:00.003-05:00

We can pretty much call it: Obama is going to win big in November.

The liberal bloggers have been gloating over this for awhile, and while things looked promising I thought McCain still had the room to get back in the game.

Problem is he had the ball, looked at the hoop, and decided to head in the opposite direction.

It's not just Obama's immense popularity and the sheer energy of his swelling support base. This is why Obama will win, of course, but it isn't why McCain's loss can be predicted now.

From the start I always saw McCain as the sole Republican contender who could touch Obama. He was the only candidate on the right who could compete for the center in an election cycle defined by "change." McCain was in the best position to distance himself from a phenomenally unpopular administration and run as a common-sense, everyman candidate.

Which makes his decision to run as a dispirited Republican-by-numbers all the more baffling. He traded in his maverick status, his straight-shooting rep, his John-fucking-McCainness, for an empty party campaign that he clearly doesn't believe in.

You've got the left "all fired up, ready to go," and on the right you've got buyer's remorse for a confused, listless man appearing every one of his 71 years.

Fair enough, but the principled, driven McCain of ten years ago is still in there somewhere, right? He could still return and give Obama a run for his money?

With McCain's recent dip into the nasty, we can officially kiss that possibility goodbye. His decision to go hard negative with attacks on Obama is the final fork in his campaign.

Oh sure, the ads will work a bit, as we're currently seeing. They'll raise some doubts, and Obama will be knocked off message a bit. We'll see Obama's numbers bounce around and chicken littles will freak out and declare authoritatively that Obama has to reply in kind to stand a chance.

Thing is, McCain is selling out the entire reason he got to where he is in the first place. McCain's strength is in his appeal as one of the good guys, an honest and disciplined politician who isn't afraid to do the right thing. You know, the kind of man who wouldn't take an opponent's words out of context in an attempt to appeal to voters' basest instincts.

Oops on that.

And so it's over. The disillusionment of his former supporters is just getting started. Obama's numbers will sink a bit, yes, but McCain's will sink the nastier he gets.

Much like Hillary during the primary.

It's a bit of a perfect parallel, really. Hillary damaged Obama by going hard negative but sabotaged her own numbers in the process, and it wasn't until the final stretch that she dropped the ridiculous attacks and ran as herself and--surprise surprise--started to win. McCain could pull a similar maneuver if he wakes up in time, but even then he'll find that it's too late and the damage has already been done.

Kind of like Hillary.

Watch, you'll see.

August

2008-08-04T21:51:00.003-05:00

The trees glowed green against the pink-yellow sky tonight, the air heavy and pregnant with tense possibility.

I hope it fucking explodes.

Who watches the Watchmen?

2008-08-04T16:22:00.005-05:00

Warning: very minor Watchmen spoilers follow.

So how do you adapt the most celebrated graphic novel of all time, anyway?

Perhaps the definitive adult take on the superhero genre, Watchmen was the first comic to really deconstruct the concept of "people dressing up in tights to fight crime" and explore all the ramifications. If the various tropes of the costumed crimefighter/superhero genre existed in the real world, what would the results be?

Watchmen, that's what.

The problem with adapting Watchmen to film is that doing the source material justice would involve constructing the world's most expensive character-driven ensemble drama. Actors would walk from one budget-busting set to another, doing little more than, well, talking.

Occasionally in costume.

Judging from the preview, director Zack Snyder's approach to adapting Watchmen is to adhere fanboy-frothingly close to the source material while sexing each scene up as much as possible. The characters will spring directly from the pages and trace the well-familiar plot but with with explosions in slow motion and colors as saturated as possible.

Watchmen fanboys--a demographic that includes myself--have so far been pretty pleased with what promises to be a visually stirring faithful rendition of the most holy of comics, and as such I feel almost remiss in shitting on the party and reminding everyone that Watchmen really, really shouldn't be sexy.

Watchmen is a brutal, gritty book of characters either plagued with self doubt or driven by power to amorality. Characters fight, argue, and have sex, but to make them seductive is to place the audience too clearly on their side. Batman movies are about how cool it would be to be Batman--let's face it, for all the man-it's-tough-being-Batman shit you leave the theater wishing your parents had been gunned down in an alley--but Watchmen is about the self-conscious knowledge that dressing up to play vigilante is inherently kind of unhealthy. Watchmen is unflinching in its examination of the men behind the masks, and the need to dress up is constantly likened to a form of borderline-juvenile addiction. It is sexy, yes, but only to those weird enough to ignore the what-the-fuck of it all and feel the calling in the first place.

Not exactly helping matter is Zack Snyder himself. As he said in a recent piece published in Entertainment Weekly:

"In my movie, Superman doesn't care about humanity, Batman can't get it up, and the bad guy wants world peace," Snyder says with a smirk. "Will Watchmen be the end of superhero movies? Probably not. But it sure will kick them in the gut."

While everything Zack said is accurate in regards to the source material, his delivery promises badass transgressive entertainment, which is about as un-Watchmenlike as you can get. Superman doesn't care about humanity and it's cold and lonely. Batman can't get it up and it's linked to insecurity and addiction. The bad guy wants world peace, yes, but it's the introduction of a complex moral question.

Watchmen is a deconstruction of a genre. It is not "a kick in the gut."

Watchmen is not sexy.

Rorschach is debatably the Watchmen character that gains the most from his alias. His everyday life is pathetic and squalid, but there is a genuine power he derives from his alter-ego, and it's difficult not to sympathize with the nasty little shit's feelings of violation when he is unmasked.

And yet, even Rorschach eventually drops the alias and faces his fate as a man, not a superhero.

One wonders if such an action will make sense in Snyder's universe.

And in the end, who watches the Watchmen?

Me, whether it turns our good or not.

Review: The Dark Knight

2008-07-22T15:38:00.004-05:00

Riding ridiculous waves of hype, The Dark Knight was dubbed the greatest movie ever by nerds the world over and Oscar talk circled the late Heath Ledger for his take on the Joker, all for a film that nobody had actually seen yet. As such, now that The Dark Knight is actually out it's difficult to resist the urge to lash back at the hyperbole and lean on the film's many real flaws. Unsurprisingly, it's not perfect. It's too long and I left the theater largely dissatisfied.

But is it any good?

I'm one of the few who found series predecessor Batman Begins to be awkward and boring, an attempt to reinvent the series in a style that didn't exactly play to the source material's strengths. The film was so intent on taking itself seriously that it jettisoned the weirdness and color of a good Batman movie, and its few comic-booky moments felt like they were grafted in from an entirely different (and more playful) film. Not a bad film, exactly, but dull and disjointed.

Thankfully The Dark Knight is a massive step in the right direction on almost all fronts, in no small part due to the massive influx of color that his Heath Ledger's Joker. His comment that Gotham "needs a better class of criminal" holds true to the series as well, and his limping, lip-licking embodiment of chaos is the nerve center of the film. He isn't all that Joker, really--not prankish enough, and where's the twisted glee?--but just try to resist leaning forward in anticipation every time he appears on screen.

And yet part of the charm is his Joker is genuinely terrifying, a destructive nightmare of a villain. He isn't some likable antihero with plans to take over the world so much as an unhinged self-made terrorist. He's as repulsive as he is compelling, an uneasy wild card you wouldn't want in your backyard. He's not without a certain charisma, true, and he does draw laughs, but only of the most queasy and uncomfortable kind.

Ledger is a highlight, but the rest of the cast holds their own. Aaron Eckhart is great as Harvey Dent, all hard-nosed vulnerable bravado, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is the better Rachel Dawes in that unlike Katie Holmes she can actually act. Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, and Michael Caine all do their usual excellent work, despite being given some of the film's most awkward dialogue.

Yeah, about that: the script is largely rubbish, with far too many self-important monologues on being the hero the city needs or the nature of chaos and sixteen ways in which it can be presented. Even Ledger's seductive performance can't quite rescue some of the clunkers he's handed, all subtlety erased by the time he's done expounding on whatever the fuck. The film repeatedly swings for gravitas and utterly misses, hamstrung by ambition that frequently outstrips the writing.

And god is it too long, overstaying its welcome by at least a half hour. The last act is largely bungled, with Joker's arc unceremoniously dumped in favor of clumsily shoehorning in another villain. The offenses aren't on the level of Spider-man 3 but it's disheartening to see a film turn soggy and confused right when it should be soaring to a tidy conclusion.

Additionally, Nolan still can't quite nail the propulsive energy that defines truly infectious action sequences. Most of the big money scenes unfolded without cohesion and rhythm, getting enough right to squeak by but not exactly pulsing with infectious adrenaline. The climactic scene where Batman infiltrates a skyscraper with hostages, clowns, and a SWAT team (yes, you read that right) was passable, but I dare anyone to explain just what the hell was going on.

But in the end The Dark Knight is a success, an evil little mindfuck of a movie that settles in and refuses to leave. The movie is a study in chaos, with Ledger's Joker pushing the topic from lip service to vulgar display. There is a very real sense of society's safety net falling away, the situation spiraling out of control as the stakes keep escalating. Nolan's decision to de-sexify Gotham into a reskinned Chicago actually helps bring the chaos to a stage we can all relate to. We are the victims of the Joker, our friends and family nothing more than playthings for his violent whim. His reign of terror hits a little too close to home, which is why it just fucking gets under our skin.

The Dark Knight isn't a great movie by any stretch of the imagination. It certainly isn't film of the year material--hell, it wasn't even the best movie I saw this month. But it gets its hooks in you, growing spikes as it settles in. I left the theater largely glad it was over and yet I find myself increasingly thinking of chaos-ravaged Gotham and the depth of Ledger's madness. The Dark Knight wasn't up to the level of, say, Iron Man, and yet it struck a deep chord that only grows stronger over time.

I'm not exactly sure what to do with all this.

The trouble with cheese balls

2008-07-17T13:49:00.002-05:00

One thing my two year old nephew discovered this past weekend is that he really likes cheese balls.

Not actual balls of cheese, mind you. We're talking puffy round crisps of toxic waste that come in a big plastic barrel and were available at a family picnic this past Saturday. Little orange terrors that exist to make room for baby carrots.

My nephew couldn't get enough.

The problem with all this is an afternoon spent eating cheese balls results in an afternoon spent shitting cheese balls and my poor nephew was no exception. By the end of the day his poor butt was so sore from crapping cheese balls that my brother-in-law decided to slather him with vaseline for relief.

A further complication, though, was the cheese ball farts, which descended upon my nephew at that very moment. I heard him giggling like a little boy and then regrettably turned to see what was so funny. There he was, hoisted up by his feet and beaming while he repeatedly farted vaseline out of his anus.

I saw this.

There is an identical plastic barrel of cheese balls three cubicles down at work.

Quick Reviews: What Is the What by Dave Eggers and God's Middle Finger by Richard Grant

2008-07-10T14:48:00.008-05:00

What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng

Dave Eggers shelves his literary prankster aesthetic for What Is the What, the story of Valentino Achak Deng's perilous flight from his native Sudan and eventual rocky relocation to the States, split by a ten year stay in a bleak Kenyan refugee camp. While never less than readable, Eggers' decision to tell the tale in Deng's voice and bill it as an autobiography--perhaps Eggers hasn't quite shelved the prankster, after all--hamstrings the books; the events are extraordinary and heartrending but the storytelling is just too matter of fact and flat--this happened then that happened then this--for the prose to every really take flight. What Is the What provides a valuable education by presenting a true human story from war-torn Sudan, but one is left wishing Eggers had taken a little more initiative to arrange events into a compelling narrative. A book to read but not quite recommend.

God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

British journalist Richard Grant makes clear his "unfortunate fascination" with the Sierra Madre, the mountain range in Mexico that produces most of the marijuana and cocaine that crosses the border into the United States. God's Middle Finger documents Grant's attempt to travel down the spine of the mountains, a network of largely lawless territories marked by dangerous suspicion of outsiders enforced by a proliferation of AK-47s. Grant as narrator is likable, slightly gonzo but generally evenhanded as he tours places with names like El Contrabando and rubs shoulders with corrupt cops and coked-up druglords. Grant manages to (mostly) keep sensationalism at bay and present things fairly, although he finds special glee in kiss offs to the American/European mindset, such as the indigenous Tarahumara who excel at two things: binge drinking and long-distance running. Grant's decision to start things with an explosive scene of being hunted for sport by drugged-out Mexican hillbillies does create a promise that the rest of the book can't quite live up to, but overall God's Middle Finger is a fascinating study of a stretch of land most gringos wouldn't last two hours in.

Dram is too tightly

2008-07-07T13:23:00.000-05:00

I did something this past weekend that I swore I'd never do.

I've always built my personal computers from parts purchased individually. It was a point of pride, for one, and I also just liked the physical nature of laying one's computer on the operator table and rearranging its guts by hand. I enjoyed taking it apart, putting it back together again, and then finally powering it up.

Which transitions nicely to what i didn't like about assembling computers by hand: troubleshooting why it didn't power up successfully.

Let me relate to you a brief story.

Two years ago I was having problems starting up my computer. It would turn on but then hang before the BIOS options were even available. It would hang for several minutes until the following error message of tortured English appeared: "Dram timing is too tightly so reload timing"

I will never forget those words.

This problem was initially a minor inconvenience as the machine would power up after a false start or two, but eventually the situation got so bad that I once spent the better part of a Sunday evening trying to power up my computer.

As you can image, I was also relentlessly troubleshooting this issue. I did a bit of googling and decided to replace the RAM.

That didn't help.

I decided to replace the power supply.

That seemed to help a bit, but the problem still persisted enough to suggest the power supply to be little more than a red herring.

Running out of options, I decided to replace the motherboard.

This ended up being a multi-step process as it wasn't until I had completely disassembled my computer that I realized the motherboard wasn't compatible with my processor.

I was due for an upgrade anyway, so I replaced my processor.

That didn't help.

What did help, though, was the diagnostics light grid on my new motherboard. As I sat there, utterly dispirited as my computer whirred away while doing nothing, I noticed the lights blinking at me, and looking up the pattern in the manual I realized the motherboard was reporting graphics card problems.

The graphics card, incidentally, being the one part left that I hadn't replaced.

And so I replaced the graphics card.

Which did help.

And so it was--via new RAM, power supply, motherboard, processor, and finally graphics card--that my computer could finally be reliably powered up.

And on that topic: I did something this past weekend that I swore I'd never do.

I bought a Dell.

I'm sorry mama, but tonight I'm cleaning out my error: joke expired 2002

2008-06-26T09:21:00.003-05:00

It is done.

I have ripped out the old shelving. I have spackled over the various nail holes and plaster rips. I have taped the woodwork and ceiling. I have painted most of a base coat of white, and then made an emergency paint trip to Home Depot so I could finish. I have waited a day and then painted the walls with two coats of dark, shitty brown. I have briefly wondered if perhaps a different color would have been more prudent. I have waited a day and then removed the tape, wondering how paint got there, for the love of god. I have assembled $200 worth of shelving and mounted it all to the walls with carefully drilled holes and plug mounts, a feat which took four times my initial estimation.

I have, in other words, spent every non-working waking hour over the past week struggling to some degree in the non-ventilated endurance test that is my closet, my uniform but a pair of shorts and a thick coat of sweat, dirt, and plaster dust.

It is done. The holes are spackled, the walls are painted, the shelves are mounted, the dust is vacuumed, and the sweat and dirt has been showered.

My closet is so clean, in fact, that I'm now terrified of actually putting anything in it.

McCain's risky gambit

2008-06-18T10:46:00.003-05:00

McCain's finally starting to make some bold moves, which is understandable as his previously feeble campaign was heading towards a November slaughter. And so we find him proposing that we start drilling offshore for oil, an attempt to gain the support of voters drained by high gas prices while simultaneously lining his pockets with big oil cash.

The problem with this suggestion isn't just the fact that offshore oil drilling wouldn't offer much relief (results wouldn't be seen until years from now and United States oil refineries are already maxed out). No, the larger problem (for him) is electoral: coastal states are violently opposed to opening up their shores to unsightly drilling rigs that would coat beaches with tar and choke currently thriving tourist industries. Some may see McCain's proposal as a willingness to actually do something to lessen gas prices, but it carries the risk of handing many states--including the ever-valued Florida--to Obama in November.

Still, it's high time McCain rolled up his sleeves and started taking big swings. Things are finally starting to get interesting.

The Closet Crisis of 2008

2008-06-17T21:17:00.007-05:00

My condo has a problem and the problem is this: a disorganized slob moved in four years ago.

Generally my condo appear to be somewhat clean and neat, but it is but an illusion barely kept in check by the fact that certain doors and drawers can be closed. All one has to do is peek in a closet or enter the basement storage room to realize that items were unpacked and placed with the unmistakable hand of a disorganized slob.

This disorganized slob is me, you see.

Take this evidence into account: a recent search for guest bed sheets in the upstairs hallway closet turned up--no joke--board games, lighter fluid, empty CD cases, colored pencils, mix tapes, network cables, notebooks, broken phones, silverware (clean), comic books (mostly clean), discarded motherboards, one Casio keyboard, one beach towel (clean), one canteen, and a multitude of Tranformers toys purchased amidst hope that the 2007 movie wouldn't be terrible (wrong).

Noticeably absent from the above list: guest sheets.

And so I find myself at the beginning of the epic quest that is going through every last cubic foot of my condo and finding a place for everything I can and getting rid of everything I can't. I decided to start on my bedroom closet, a considerable task since my closet has a severe shelving issue caused by improper mounting. To take care of this issue--and give me lots of practical place in which to put stuff--I now own $200 worth of shelves and drawers and racks and shoe organizers and belt hooks and clothes rods. Every inch of available closet space is ready to be converted into a vast network of utilitarian splendor.

Before I could install this vast network of utilitarian splendor, however, I had to completely empty my closet of four years of accumulated debris, and my bedroom was unfortunately the only logical temporary storage spot.

Before I could vast install this vast network of utilitarian splendor, however, I needed to rip out the old shelving, which revealed architect wall scribbling and many, many holes, some small (from nails) and some large (from chunks of drywall lodged loose when the old shelves started to fail).

In other words, before I could install this vast network of utilitarian splendor and do it right, the closet needed to be spackled and repainted.

More specifically, the closet needs to be spackled an repainted, a project which is realistically going to take through the weekend.

Fair enough, but my bedroom now has a problem and the problem is this:

If I am somewhat remiss in my Dogs On Houses duties it will not be without good reason.

The Battle of Bubble Bobble: May 31, 2008

2008-06-05T11:05:00.003-05:00

I had no idea what I was getting into when I bought a Game Boy Advance Bubble Bobble port as a birthday present for my younger sister, Katie.

She sat there, dazed. "This is the worst birthday present I have ever received."

I held my heads in my hands. "Fuck Bubble Bobble."

Rewind twenty years.

The Atari ST version of Bubble Bobble was quite the fixture at the Salisbury family household. Many hours were spent playing co-op with my sister, seeing how far we could get before our lives ran out. Bereft of any sort of documentation, we devised our own names for the various enemies in the game, like "toasters" and "buttkins."

As such, it seemed like the ideal birthday present seventeen years later, when my sister and I were spending a fair amount of time during my visits engaging in GBA multiplayer gaming. Unfortunately, she promptly lost the game cartridge and as such co-op Bubble Bobble remained firmly in our childhood, my few singleplayer attempts accomplishing nostalgia and little else.

And so it went on, year after year, until the forgotten birthday present reared its head a week ago when I received the following loaded text message from Katie:

"found bubble bobble. bring home your gba"

And so is was at 9:00 PM last Saturday night that we finally managed to power up our connected GBAs and engage in multiplayer Bubble Bobble for the first time in over twenty years.

My god, the music alone brought me back, although Katie made it clear that my singing along wasn't necessary. The cute dinosaurs, the various powerups, it all returned me to my childhood in a dizzying rush.

We knocked off the easy intro levels and proceeded into the ones that actually require some skill. We killed toasters, we slaughtered buttkins. We ate giant cakes that fell from the sky. We collected letters that spelled out "EXTEND."

We actually managed to progress well beyond the levels familiar from childhood, as the GBA port allowed us to continue from death by plugging in virtual quarters. "PRESS START!" our little dinosaurs would implore, awarding us with new life and a "THANK YOU!" when we complied. Uncommonly polite for a dinosaur.

One sweaty, eye-straining hour later we had passed level 80.

"How many levels do you think this game has?" Katie asked me.

"I really have no idea. 100, maybe? 150?"

The answer came five levels later when yet another dino death resulted in us both being dumped unceremoniously onto a GAME OVER screen that said we had beat 85 out of 100 levels.

"What the hell?"

The defeat music was taunting in its jauntiness.

I stood up and stretched, a little dazed from staring at a small screen and existing via twitch reflexes for well over an hour.

"Did the game end because we both died at the same time?"

"No idea," she said. "Maybe we ran out of attempts?"

"I kind of doubt it. But at least we know now that there are 100 levels. We almost made it."

"Almost isn't good enough."

"Yeah," I said, arching my back to work out the kinks earned from an hour of hunching.

"No, I mean it. Almost isn't good enough."

I turned to look at her.

"You're not going to want to do this, but it's my birthday, and an hour from now we're going to join the ranks of people who have beaten Bubble bobble.

"Oh god."

"I won't lie to you, it isn't going to be fun."

"Oh god."

"The first few levels are going to be painful."

"Oh god."

"But this is about something bigger than fun. This is about being able to look the world in the face and saying that yes, we conquered Bubble Bobble at 11:30, May 31st."

"Oh god."

"So go and slap a little water on your face or do whatever you have to do, because we're about to beat Bubble Bobble."

"We're about to beat Bubble Bobble," I said.

And so there we were, gritting out teeth and heading back into the cave of monsters at 10:30 on a Saturday night. We didn't want this second session to meet the same abrupt end as the previous one, so we did a bit of testing and determined that the permadeath was caused by both players running out of lives at exactly the same time. We quickly developed a system: when both of us were near our last lives, one of us would commit suicide and restart while the other stayed safe. It served us well, and we found ourselves making good progress.

We cleared level ten.

"Ten town, ninety to go," I said.

"Jesus Christ."

Katie didn't lie, it wasn't fun, although we churned through the levels with a certain workmanlike efficiency. Any power-up that ended the level quickly was pursued at all costs. The level-skipping umbrella was the holy grail, and allowed us to bypass a decent portion of the mid-20's.

There was a hypnotic groove we settled in, the levels flying by in an eyeball-straining blur. Level 36 brought a massive popsicle that gave me a ridiculous amount of points. Katie grabbed a potion somewhere in the 40's that killed all the enemies and filled the screen with collectible music notes.

We knocked off level 50 and I said, "Halfway there."

She grunted.

Nine levels later (59 down, 41 to go) the platform blocks spelled out "BR10."

"I don't even know what that's supposed to mean," I said.

My sister replied, "I'm well past caring."

Somewhere around level 65 I checked my watch. Almost 11:30, we had already been at this for an hour. Somehow it seemed like this journey had already occupied well more than sixty minutes, its true toll not easily measured by time.

Level 72 took us awhile, as just getting out of the starting gates required a certain bubble/jump combination that only I seemed capable of. It took many tries, and several deaths via the time-limit enforcers--dubbed "mousers" by us as children--before I managed to defeat all the enemies.

Level 73 was another tough one that required bubble jumps to even get to the elevated platform where the enemies were. I managed to break through and was on a tear, trapping baddie after baddie in bubbles.

Katie's voice carried a bit of alarm when she said, "Hey, you have to commit suicide!"

I scoffed and popped a bubble, destroying the trapped enemy. "Kicking too much ass to die."

"Okay fine, I'll do it."

And then the buttkin killed me, my dinosaur mirroring the same death spiral currently being performed by Katie's.

Shit.

We both hunched forward, rapidly pressing the Start button, everything hinging on some offset of syncopation in our deaths. We pressed, and pressed, and pressed, the rapid dual clicking of the button the only sound.

The only sound, that is, until the jaunty music of the GAME OVER screen Bubble bobble dumped us to.

We both screamed, Katie slamming her GBA down as I rolled off the couch onto the floor. I covered my face with my hands and either laughed or sobbed uncontrollably.

"I am so angry right now," Katie said.

"Oh my god," I said.

"We had a system," she said.

I just kept laughing and sobbing, my face still covered.

Katie shook her head, her voice deadpan. "You're my brother, and I love you, but right now I want so bad to kill you and carve onto your gravestone the words 'kicking too much ass to die'."

"Oh my god," I repeated. "I never want to see my GBA again."

She sat there, dazed. "This is the worst birthday present I have ever received."

I held my heads in my hands. "Fuck Bubble Bobble."

Obama the nominee

2008-06-04T15:16:00.003-05:00

So yeah, that's it.

Obama the nominee is a reality, not just an assured projection. The last of the primaries went down and the ensuing flood of superdelegate endorsements eradicated any doubt that the Democratic party no longer belongs to the Clintons.

Despite all this, though, the talking head chatter about Hillary as VP has been deafening, despite the fact that the concept is as ludicrous now as it ever was. Hillary campaigned--and failed--as an incumbent candidate at a time defined by a desire for change, and placing her on the ticket would completely undermine Obama's message and his movement. His core supporters would feel sold out and disenfranchised, and there's no indication the Hillary-or-we're-voting-McCain crowd would settle for anything less than the top spot. An Obama/Hillary ticket would be a directionless mess that wouldn't make anybody except Republicans happy.

Additionally, this is his first test as Democratic presidential nominee. Bucking to pressure would be a sign of weakness, an indication that he lacks the backbone to stand up to opposition. Has nobody been paying attention to the strong--yet tactful--manner in which he has navigated the various obstacles that have peppered his campaign? Do we really think he's waged a campaign with such intelligence and foresight only to buckle under now that he's won?

Obama clinched the nomination through a 50-state grassroots approach completely at odds with the Clinton's strategy of appealing to the powerful few. This moment belongs to us. Not Fox News, not Huffington Post bloggers, and certainly not Hillary. Let them say what they want, for we alone know where this is going.

And now for the fireworks

2008-06-01T23:04:00.003-05:00

Many have asked me why superdelegates haven't been flooding to Obama to put an end to the Democratic nomination process. Simple: they want to let the people finish voting in all the primaries--we've made it this far, after all--while also giving Hillary room for a graceful exit.

Problem is her window is growing smaller by the second.

And so she wins Puerto Rico, but not by enough to give any traction to her claims that she has won the popular vote (the truth is she and Obama are in a virtual tie if all contests are counted, Obama just barely edging her out with 17,961,368 to 17,916,763).

Camp Hillary's other last hope of seating Florida and Michigan was dashed on Saturday when the DNC Ways and Means committee decided to seat the delegates with half votes, denying Hillary the large delegate windfall needed to make the case that her campaign isn't dead. Her team is reserving the right to contest the committee's decision until the convention, but that's nothing more than meaningless hot air.

Wyoming and Montana will vote on Tuesday, and the moment those polls close the superdelegate hammer is going to drop and end this in such a way that any further restructuring of Michigan will be irrelevant. Nobody wants to drag this out, and the superdelegates are in the wings, waiting to make the will of the people official.

Hillary has two days to get out of this thing with dignity before her decision is made for her.

T-minus 48 hours and counting.

Revolt of the appliances!

2008-05-28T14:37:00.003-05:00

At about 8:00 PM I decided to show a little neighborly mercy and turn down the music that was providing the backdrop to my Memorial Day cookout. I stepped inside and crouched down to the bookshelf stereo, its speakers leaning outward against the window screens.

I turned the dial to the left and watched the digital volume readout increase, from 23 to 24. This wasn't quite what I was looking for so I reversed tactics and rotated the dial clockwise, at which point the volume audibly and visibly increased to 25, 26, and 27.

I paused, and checked the dial. Yes, it was labeled as "Volume."

I turned the dial counter-clockwise again and the volume began to thankfully subside--26, 25, 24--before suddenly doubling back and getting louder, 25, 26, 27, 28.

I rotated the dial back and forth in a desperate attempt to establish some causal relationship, but the volume mocked me and accelerated madly, the number scrolling up illegibly fast--past 30, past 35, past 40--the music now a distorted, predatory roar.

Panicked, I pressed the power button, and after a threatening second--I wasn't aware my stereo could even reach 45--the volume mercifully cut out, the distant sound of outside laughter pouring in to fill the void.

I sat there, staring at the empty readout.

When I pass the stereo now I can feel it watching me.

Off the grid: take 1

2008-05-20T09:45:00.003-05:00

I attended the farmer's market on Saturday, this time emboldened by purpose. I was a man of business, immune to the distracting frivolities of the goatee'd guy pushing cheese curds or the lady with the beehive hat.

It was the first step of my plan to start eating locally grown food. I had decided to remove myself from the national factory farm network and reduce the amount of resources my food consumes on its way to my plate.

I figured the resulting smarter-than-thou points would stack nicely with my NPR listening habits and utter disinterest in television.

So there I was, striding (with such purpose!) through the throng of like-minded individualistic sheep. Perusing the wares hawked in each stand revealed a snag in the grand plan, though, as I realized that a lifetime of supermarket shopping had caused a complete personal disconnect from the reality of seasonal crops. I was used to the convenience of buying red peppers and green beans at the drop of a hat, and yet neither were apparently in season.

What is actually in season, evidence suggested, is this:

Asparagus, asparagus, and asparagus.

I hope Madison pees behind closed windows this week.

Hillary's Saban problem

2008-05-19T16:16:00.001-05:00

Breaking big on Huffington Post is news that billionaire Haim Saban, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton's top financial supporters, "offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization's two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat."

Long story short: someone associated with Camp Hillary is accused of trying to bribe superdelegates.

Saban is denying it, of course, and Hillary has yet to issue a statement, but let's give Senator Clinton the benefit of the doubt for a second and assume that these accusations are either unfounded or disconnected from her.

Even so, this is the worst time possible for a story like this to break.

By every metric Hillary is done. She has no chance of catching up with Obama's pledged delegate count, and her popular vote claim hinges on some pretty selective interpretation. Even seating Michigan and Florida as is will only push Obama's delegate count ever closer to the magic victory line. Her sole path to victory rests on superdelegates breaking big for her, and yet they've been consistently flooding into Obama's camp.

As such, the last thing she needs right now is a bribery scandal that will taint by association any future superdelegate declarations. At a time when she's claiming to be the answer, Clinton can ill afford a controversy that raises questions about the legitimacy of her delegate support.

Something tells me Saban is no longer going to be invited to Pictionary night at the Clinton household.

After West Virginia

2008-05-14T13:48:00.003-05:00

So yeah, it's a good thing I didn't have any money riding on my prediction that Clinton would bow out from the victory podium.

Still, the superdelegate endorsements just keep coming for Obama, along with one from NARAL Pro-Choice America. Then there's the victory of Democrat Travis Childers in Mississippi, who won by an eight point spread despite the fact that Republicans tried to use the Wright controversy to smear him over his connections to Obama.

This will be wrapped up soon whether she concedes or not.

Miscellaneous debris

2008-05-12T10:38:00.004-05:00

Saturday night brought The Kills to Madison, a bluesy garage rock duo that makes heavy use of samples and drum machines. Bafflingly, they didn't augment their live show with other players, preferring instead to cue up each track and play along as a two piece. The problem with this approach is the show is only as good as the few performers' stage presence and showmanship, and The Kills proved that even an excess of this is no match for the electric chemistry of live musicians.

It turns out that dominating backing tracks are just as crippling to indie rock as they are to industrial and electro.

********

Two things political:

First, don't be surprised if the media starts second guessing Obama's nomination guarantee after he loses West Virginia tomorrow. Don't listen, it's still over, especially with Oregon looming on the horizon. We'll see if she bows out on Tuesday like I predicted.

And, on that topic, don't listen to the talking heads regarding Hillary being fused onto the ticket as Veep. Nobody except for the media actually thinks this is a good idea. Once Hillary withdraws and supports Obama--and she will--most of her supporters will fall in line, especially with Supreme Court Justice seats in play. As of that point, Hillary brings absolutely nothing to the ticket.

********

When I complain about disconnected junk piles of cinematic ejaculate like Transformers and people ask what I expect out of a summer action movie, my answer henceforth shall be the following:

"I expect Iron Man."

********

I shaved off my mustache and am now completely free of facial hair for the first time in nearly six months.

I look like I'm fourteen.

Cleaning up the debris in a decided primary

2008-05-09T10:30:00.004-05:00

The jury is still out as to whether or not my prediction is correct and Clinton has shifted her attack from Obama, but the evidence isn't exactly in my favor.

Presented in reverse chronological order:

Exhibit A: Hillary's supporters have been deluging uncommitted superdelegates with e-mails attacking Obama. This concentrated effort hasn't been traced directly to the Clinton campaign, who have yet to comment.

Exhibit B: Hillary's comment yesterday that "Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again...." The media has really seized this quote, of course, because the narrative has changed and they smell blood in the water. The quote is factually inaccurate (a quick glance at primary exit polls shows that Obama is actually gaining with the blue collar white demographic) and smacks of race baiting. At best it seeks to divide the voters among race lines, at worst it implies that non-whites aren't hardworking. I tend to think the latter is unintentional on the part of Hillary, and I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on the former.

Obama supporters are understandably up in arms about all this, of course, but we really need to step back from the line drawn in the sand, even if the Hillary supporters as yet refuse to. She's not going to be on the ticket despite the vacuous chatter of talking heads, and she has been effectively neutralized as a threat. It's over, guys. She waged a nasty campaign, I know, but we have to bury the hatchet and welcome her supporters. What they've been saying is irrelevant as we need them to win in November.

Obama has been gracious in victory. As his supporters we need to do the same.

Edit: Also, I swear to god I'll blog about something other than politics sometime soon. This is getting ridiculous.

The day after: why Hillary is done but won't go public yet

2008-05-07T19:52:00.001-05:00

Everyone knows it's over, even if Camp Hillary is going through the motions of running toward the finish line. She's making appearances in West Virginia today and talking strong, even as the most ardent of her supporters are calling for her to drop out.

She will. She knows it's over. Her victory speech last night contained conciliatory rhetoric. She canceled all her morning show appearances. Perhaps most tellingly, last night's Hillary supporter mass e-mail didn't include a plea for money.

So if she's out, why won't she just make it public?

It all comes down to the fact that ending a political campaign is a messy business, especially when the preceding race has been as heated and protracted as this one.

First off is the sheer amount of debt Hillary's campaign is currently carrying. The moment she makes her departure public she changes irreversibly from a potential president to just another defeated candidate, a transformation that isn't exactly a fundraising draw. Who shoulders the debt then?

Even more important is the salvaging of her political future. Hillary has really dug in deep with this one and set fire to a few bridges, and she'll need to back away from the abyss in a way that appears to be a move forward. To call it right now would end things while in a position of weakness, whereas it would be far more advantageous to drop out from a position of strength. Saving face is everything.

So what is she going to do?

Assuming her supporters and donors don't pull the plug immediately, my prediction is she'll continue campaigning as if she's still in it to win it--see her comments today--but she'll switch her target to McCain while slowly backtracking from her criticism of Obama. Camp Hillary and Team Obama will privately meet to discuss concession conditions, such as Obama absorbing Hillary's debt and promising her a position in his cabinet. Hillary will then ride to an easy win in West Virginia next Tuesday and use the victory podium to magnanimously drop out for the good of the party.

And then?

At the top of President Obama's shortlist for Supreme Court Justice picks.

Hillary down, roll on McCain

2008-05-06T22:11:00.005-05:00

With a double digit blowout in North Carolina and a virtual tie in Indiana--possibly a win, but let's not get greedy--Obama has finally put this one to bed.

Just listen to his speech. Just listen to her words. Just listen to the chatter of the talking heads finally waking up to reality.

It's all about the exit strategy now.

The reality that spin can't ignore forever: Obama has this one in the bag.

2008-05-05T11:28:00.005-05:00

It's been difficult to remain optimistic as an Obama supporter due to the relentless spin coming from Camp Hillary and a media desperate to keep a good fight going.

Lets cut through the spin and see what we find:

The spin: Obama was showing strong in Indiana and Hillary has managed to close in on his lead, a victory from her a coup.

The reality: Obama never had the lead in Indiana, despite what a few junk polls indicated. Obama will almost certainly "lose" Indiana, but it won't really matter as the delegate split should end up being fairly even.

The spin: a victory in either state tomorrow will be a game-changer for Hillary

The reality: Obama will likely win North Carolina by a small margin to offset Hillary's likely minor Indiana victory. When all is said and done, Tuesday should result in Obama increasing his pledged delegate lead. The day will be a game-changer, but not in the way Hillary is spinning.

The spin: Hillary leads the popular vote.

The reality: Hillary leads the popular vote only if you add in Florida and Michigan, which is a distortion as Obama wasn't even on the Michigan ballot. If you charitably split the 238,168 Michigan "uncommitted" votes between Edwards and Obama, Obama easily retains his popular vote lead. This is all irrelevant, anyway, as the Democratic nominee is decided by delegates, not the popular vote.

The spin: this tightly contested race could be tossed to Hillary if superdelegates see her as the stronger candidate.

The reality: There is nothing tightly contested about this race. Obama's current delegate leads means that if we assume that the remaining pledged delegates split evenly between the two candidates, currently undecided superdelegates would have to break for Hillary in 3 to 1 numbers in order for her to pull even. Technically possible, but let's look at what's actually going on: Since Hillary's supposed Ohio/Texas blowout, Hillary has received the endorsement of 25 superdelegates. Not bad, but Obama has received 52, one of which is a prominent defection from Hillary (Joe Andrew). This superdelegate break for Hillary is simply not happening.

Ignore the spin for now, progressives. Hillary's strong hand is nothing but bluff and McCain is going to prove to be a startlingly weak candidate.

November is looking good.

God bless rich people!

2008-05-01T22:45:00.004-05:00

Since Hillary has reinvented herself as a blue collar everyman fit to toss accusations of elitism at Obama, I think she probably rather regrets saying, "rich people, god bless us" in her recent Fox interview.

Camp Clinton, of course, is spinning this as a misquote. She actually said, "rich people, god blessed us."

Right?

Yeah. Nice try.

As with her "screw 'em" comment, I really don't give a shit that she said this. It's a little hypocritical, of course, but if you listen to the rest of the interview--you know, the context--it's pretty clear she's clarifying that she understands the concerns of the wealthy as well as the middle class. No big deal.

It remains to be seen how this plays out in the media, but my predictions is that it doesn't. It'll get some blog coverage (hi, mom!) but then fade away in a day or two.

Here's the thing, though: if this comment had come from Obama you know it would have been looped ad nauseum on every major news outlet for the next three days while Hillary loudly decried "Richgate."

This, for the record, is what I give a shit about.

Overheard at Goodwill

2008-05-01T10:15:00.001-05:00

Two teenage girls were digging through secondhand t-shirts in the rack adjacent to me.

One held up a white t-shirt that sported the Beijing Olympics 2008 logo. She popped her gum and said, "Hey, are the Olympics in Beijing this year?"

The other girl looked up and pointed to the shirt. "Well they totally are now, right?"

"Like, totally," the first girl replied as she put the shirt in her purchase pile.

That's one powerful shirt.

Review: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

2008-04-29T14:06:00.002-05:00

History is a subject that often bears the charms of a box of saltines, a chore kids endure only because they know that recess is next. Unfortunate, really, because behind history's names and dates is a wealth of spellbinding stories that can enrich our perspective of the world via knowledge of what came before. As such, there is no better historian than the one who can sit down at the campfire and spin a fuckin' yarn, chief among them surely Erik Larson on the evidence of The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.

Yeah, that'll be abbreviated from here on out.

The Devil in the White City is historical nonfiction that relates three true stories. First, Larson details architect Daniel Burnham's struggle to orchestrate construction of the World's Columbian Expo held in Chicago in 1893. Secondly, the book delves into America's first serial killer, a certain H. H. Holmes who used the Expo as a preying ground for mostly female victims. Thirdly, The Devil in the White City tells the story of late 19th century Chicago, a filthy city bustling with equal parts vice and civic pride.

So, to tackle those in reverse order:

Larson paints the picture of turn of the century Chicago as an industrial giant of a city eager to prove its cultural capability to the rest of the world. Larson effectively captures the spirit of the city, its now-unthinkable civic pride that drove it to complete the impossible task of building the biggest world fair in record time. It's the details he provides, however, that lay bare the grim reality beneath it all: cholera outbreaks caused by tainted drinking water, corpses of horses and dogs rotting in the street, skies choked with coal dust. Chicago was a city booming, a city overwhelmed, a city whose growth had outstripped its morality.

As such, it offered the perfect environment in which a certain H. H. Holmes could murder a string of victims that may have numbered in the hundreds. The city was flush with visitors, so what's another missing person to the overworked Chicago police force? In handling Holmes Larson thankfully resists getting cheap and sensational, leaving the chilling facts to speak for themselves. What's perhaps most interesting about Holmes is not that he built a death-trap hotel and gave it a vigorous workout as much as the fact that he was an amoral charmer with an ungodly gift for manipulation. This was a man who borrowed $2500 from a great uncle-in-law and immediately forged a counterpart check. This was a man who registered his hotel's property to a fictitious name to facilitate deflecting debt collectors. This was a man who saw life insurance as a free paycheck to be invoked as often as he liked. The sheer audacity of this guy's evil chutzpah is staggering.

As for Daniel Burnham's role in building the expo, Larson tells the story of a group of people who pushed a mammoth project from concept to completion despite fires, storms, deaths, missed deadlines, and a bank-crushing financial crisis. It's the struggle to build an ambitious dream into reality, a story claimed bursting with universal appeal (despite ownership claims by America). Larson weaves the various threads of the tale with a novelist's penchant for storytelling, restructuring cold history into a compelling narrative. The flow of information is manipulated to build suspense for certain developments, case in point the night I couldn't stop reading until it was revealed what structural marvel Chicago built as a response to the Eiffel Tower, which I'll not spoil beyond saying it's only fitting that America's answer to Paris's landmark was a goddamn ride.

A ride in which some people died, by the way. In a fair in which other people died. In a fair that was built upon the occasional worker's death. Christ, there was a lot of death back then, wasn't there? One thing The Devil in the White City illustrates is just how less predictable death was back then. Practically every person in the book was touched by premature death, in either their own lives or the lives of loved ones, and if pneumonia and poor sanitation weren't enough there was a psychopathic animal like Holmes taking advantage of an inadequate criminal system. While modern medicine and current law enforcement certainly isn't perfect, it's difficult to walk away from The Devil in the White City without newfound appreciation for the last century of progress.

But what a place 1890's Chicago is to visit! Larson's enthusiasm for assembling a world out of historical documents yields a vivid landscape and his fascination with the time and its people is contagious. The Devil in the White City's paper trail of letters and news articles is even of interest, the lengthy bibliography a good read in and of itself. Larson operates completely transparently, tracing down the source of every last quote and providing his reasoning on the rare occurrence that he deviates from cold fact to make some educated guesses. Everything is either documented or fully justified.

So what is The Devil in the White City, anyway? It's nonfiction, yet it reads like a novel. It reads like a novel, and yet every quote can be traced to a direct source.

It's history, and it turns out that history kicks ass.

Who knew?

Adventures in solitude

2008-04-24T10:42:00.004-05:00

Part of what made last weekend's walk on State Street so enjoyable was the fact that I did it alone.

This goes completely against 33 years of accumulated belief. Yes, there are certain things you do alone, like reading or shopping for socks or engaging in any form of cardiovascular exercise. But activities of a less purposeful sort--heading to the park or cruising a farmer's market or hanging out at the mall, you know, activities that can be best described as going places to walk around and see what's going on--well, aren't they best experienced with someone else? Someone with which to chat and joke and riff when something unintentionally amusing occurs?

Sunday was warm with a dawning summer, the sky cloudless. Without any concrete plans for the day, I decided just to spend a couple hours downtown. I admit I had a little shopping to do, but the main draw was just getting out of the house and seeing what was going on. The rest of Madison apparently had the same idea as State Street was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with students and families and couples and people all unified in the desire to get out and enjoy the sunshine.

I saw three guys and two girls perform an island-inspired drum and dance routine on Library Mall. I saw a washboard player of indeterminate gender provide rhythm for a weathered steel guitarist. I saw a trio of aggressively fashionable Asian men wearing scarves and elf shoes. I saw at least forty bickering cyclists lapping Capital Square in some extended endurance race. I saw an enormous dog mortify its owner by happily dropping a shit in the middle of State Street.

I saw a lot of things, and at some point I realized I was enjoying the experience in part because I didn't have anyone to share it with. Without a partner, the city and its people and its bustle of activity became my companion.

I was reminded of last summer when I travelled solo to San Francisco. It was my first trip alone, and while I enjoyed the point each day in which I met up with other vacationing friends, I found myself treasuring the mornings spent wandering the streets by myself. Much like Sunday it was just me and the city and its people, and I don't think I would have connected with San Francisco nearly as much had I experienced it entirely with a travelling companion.

There is a certain raw power in not having someone else with which to build a zone of defense--it's just you and the world around you. Without your own bubble of social activity, you're more attuned to the details of your environment. You're free to truly connect with your surroundings and let yourself be tugged in whatever direction most pulses with life.

Which isn't to say that shared experiences aren't rewarding in their own way--my mornings in San Francisco wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable without the accompanying social periods in which the city was used as a launch pad for epic collaborative brilliance, after all. I am inherently a people person.

But I'm done assuming someone else is necessary for those moments when I want to get out of the house. I think I'll take myself to the farmer's market this Saturday just to walk around a bit and see what's going on, in fact. I'll wander without a plan and drift toward centers of activity.

I'll probably buy something, but I won't be disappointed if I don't.

Pennsylvania, addendum

2008-04-22T22:52:00.007-05:00

Ignore the talking heads on CNN. Tonight was actually a very, very bad night for Hillary.

She won, yes, and to a larger degree than I predicted. This will infuse new life into her campaign, cause a much-needed influx of cash, and possibly resuscitate talk of seating Michigan and Florida.

It doesn't matter. She already lost.

This was her peak, her sure bet, and Obama closed the gap enough to deny her the blowout victory necessary. She's still behind on pledged delegates and the remaining contests are either neutral or trending Obama. She is just going to keep falling further behind.

Her only recourse is to appeal to unpledged superdelegates, but this won't work because (1) superdelegates aren't going to overturn the will of the people, and (2) this strategy didn't work for her back when she was flush with victory from Ohio and Txeas while Pennsylvania gleamed promise on the horizon.

She can't catch up with pledged delegates and superdelegates weren't buying her story even when she was in a stronger position.

She's done.

Edit: Looks like when all is said and done she's only going to pick up an extra twelve delegates or so over Obama. In other words, Obama will still be leading by triple digits.

Pennsylvania

2008-04-22T10:03:00.003-05:00

Today is the day the battle for the Democratic nomination ends.

Make no mistake, it's already over. Superdelegates aren't breaking for Clinton to the degree necessary for the realization of her sole path to victory; indeed, if anything the remaining Democratic heavies are leaning toward Obama.

Today, however, is the day everyone stops humoring her delusions of electability.

Team Clinton is throwing everything they have at Obama. Hillary is denouncing Obama's comments that McCain would be better than Bush despite the fact that she praised McCain over Obama a month ago. Bill is again accusing Obama of playing the race card. Attack ads are airing featuring the same old 3AM phone call scaremongering upgraded with images of hurricane Katrina, Pearl Harbor, and--wait for it--Bin Laden.

Enough.

Hillary will win Pennsylvania today, but it won't matter. I predict her Pennsylvanian popular vote lead to be single digits, and, more importantly, her delegate gain to be single digits as well. If Philadelphian voters really come out in force Obama could potentially show even stronger, but right now I'm sticking to single digits.

This will be a stake through the heart of Hillary's campaign.

This will result in remaining superdelegates breaking hard for Obama.

This is the day it ends.

Enough.

A bitter battle, third and final/ springtime for facial hair

2008-04-18T23:04:00.005-05:00

Two days ago I posted about Hillary's "screw 'em" comment and said, quote, "I can't help but smile as this ghost from her past gets picked apart by the media over the next few days." I fully expected Fox News and CNN to seize upon her words and relentlessly hammer them into the consciousness of every last American.

Screwgate to Obama's Bittergate, right?

Um, I guess not.

Perhaps I overestimated the degree to which the two candidates are equally treated in the media. Perhaps Hillary's comment was past its shelf life and had lost its flavor. Perhaps the story just didn't happen to reach the eyes of the right media mogul.

Or perhaps it sank without a trace because Obama refused to compromise his values and inflate inconsequential comments into empty explosions.

Who knows?

********

On a personal note, I really need to shave off this Winter beard but I'm absolutely terrified of what I might find lurking beneath.

********

Edit: shaved, where the hell did my chin go?

A brief note from the management

2008-04-17T14:38:00.002-05:00

Dogs On Houses isn't even two months old and yet I've written more entries than I managed during the past two years on my LiveJournal. Part of this is due to the allure of a shiny new toy, I'm sure, but I've also got to admit it is nice to have a platform large enough to encompass more than just scatological humor.

On the topic of my now defunct LiveJournal, I'm thinking of sifting through those archives and polishing some of the better stories for inclusion on Dogs On Houses. I'll probably do it once a month or so as a means of giving a permanent home to the entries I deem worthy.

Generally speaking, though, I am more interested in writing new things than trying to patch leaks in old posts, so we'll see if I ever actually get around to doing this.

A bitter battle addendum: "Screw 'em!"

2008-04-16T16:15:00.005-05:00

I have so far refrained from simply posting news links as there are myriad existing sources specialized for that purpose, but I find this development interesting in light of yesterday's post.

Obama said rural Pennsylvanians are bitter, a quote which Hillary leaped upon and decried as elitist and condescending.

As reported today on the Huffington Post, though, back in 1995 she had a slightly different take on blue collar whites: "Screw 'em."

Per the source:

In January 1995, as the Clintons were licking their wounds from the 1994 congressional elections, a debate emerged at a retreat at Camp David. Should the administration make overtures to working class white southerners who had all but forsaken the Democratic Party? The then-first lady took a less than inclusive approach.

"Screw 'em," she told her husband. "You don't owe them a thing, Bill. They're doing nothing for you; you don't have to do anything for them."

The statement -- which author Benjamin Barber witnessed and wrote about in his book, "The Truth of Power: Intellectual Affairs in the Clinton White House" -- was prompted by another speaker raising the difficulties of reaching "Reagan Democrats." It stands in stark contrast to the attitude the New York Democrat has recently taken on the campaign trail, in which she has presented herself as the one candidate who understands the working-class needs.

Now I personally don't really have a problem with the fact that Hillary said this, or that it doesn't align perfectly with her rhetoric now. I'm not going to hold anyone to a private comment made thirteen years ago during a moment of frustration.

And yet I can't help but smile as this ghost from her past gets picked apart by the media over the next few days. It's the climax of an 80's movie where a powerful heavy is toppled by the public airing of damning video footage.

Up next: Obama sprints to the White House via a wacky montage set to "Working for the Weekend."

A bitter battle

2008-04-15T13:19:00.001-05:00

A few observations about the controversy that has blown up recently regarding the following words Obama said at a Californian fundraising event:

""You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

As can be expected, the media has gobbled this up and CNN is an endless parade of Pennsylvanian polls regarding whether or not locals are offended by being characterized as "bitter." Hillary has trumpeted this as proof that Obama is "elitist" and "condescending" and out of touch with the America she knows and loves.

But my god her talk makes me want to claw my eyes out. Her eagerness to take Obama's words out of context and twist them into destructive talking points absolutely fills me with disgust, especially as Clinton is undoubtedly smart enough to recognize that his comments, while poorly worded, are an accurate assessment of a disenfranchised demographic that flocks to wedge issues as a means of dealing with the fact that they've fallen through the gaps. People are bitter, and Clinton knows it.

What's truly odd is Clinton decided to capitalize on this controversy by spending a weekend reinventing herself as a parody of this rural demographic group. She tossed back whiskey shots and mugs of Old Style in a crowded bar and talked at length about her fondness for hunting. Considering the fact that she was raised in comfort in suburban Illinois, how can her adoption of this facade be seen as anything other than an insulting display of, well, elitism and condescension?

What's interesting is the media has jumped on the comment that rural Americans are "bitter" while largely ignoring the reference Obama made about them "cling[ing] to guns or religion," the latter a far more controversial statement that could do serious damage to his campaign were it to gain traction. Americans can be bitter, yeah, but don't you dare mess with our god or guns!

Oddly enough, the fact that Obama's words were removed from context actually does him a favor in that it strips away the one way in which his comments truly are offensive: the "bitter" statement was made to explain why Obama was having trouble connecting with rural voters. Implying that rural voters are left behind, bitter, and driven by wedge issues is fine, but claiming this as the sole reason they aren't flocking aboard the Obama train is slightly insulting. People who don't support Obama hitch their cart elsewhere because they simply don't think he's the best person for the job, not because they can be broadly characterized as "bitter."

Well, in the end none of this will matter much. The Wright controversy gave Obama's team much-needed experience navigating mine fields and they're well prepared to weather the storm. Obama will be on the ballot in November, but it remains to be seen how much more campaigning Hillary does for McCain before that happens.

The Mist, Addendum

2008-04-14T20:25:00.007-05:00

For both of you who actually care what I have to say about The Mist (beyond yesterday's already lengthy review), I have two more observations that are absolutely packed with film-shattering spoilers so for the love of god please proceed with extreme caution.

WARNING: HARDCORE SPOILERS FOR A CRAPPY MOVIE AHEAD

********

Observation The First:

I mentioned this in my review yesterday, but my god the people in this film are jaw-droppingly stupid. I can't quite stress how annoying it is to watch a two hour display of unrealistic decision making.

To wit:

Characters wrestle with alien tentacles coming through an open docking door for a good two minutes before someone decides to try closing the door.

Characters pile up bags of dog food to fortify the massive glass windows that make up the front wall of the store, despite the fact that everyone could be moved to the back docking room that is far less open and has doors that would be easy to barricade.

The protagonist's end plan involves piling everyone into his truck and driving until out of either gas or supernatural mist, whichever happens first. As opposed to, say, driving to a quarter of a tank and then siphoning gas from a stranded vehicle. As opposed to, say, trying to find enclosed suites of buildings like malls that might house other bands of survivors. As opposed to, say, any damn thing that makes sense.

Some may dismiss my complaints outright as expecting too much from a B movie, but the fact is everything hinges on the audience buying into the characters enough to experience the unfolding horror directly through them, and this illusion is shattered when characters earn loathing via a string of head-smacking decisions.

********

Observation the Second:

Yeah, the ending was great and all, but was it really the best ending for that particular film? The original novella had a slightly more ambiguous close featuring the protagonist heading for Hartford on vague indications of possible human activity. Darabont axes that in favor for the suicide-pact-gotcha, which completely changes the angle of the film by justifying the religious zealot's actions. She spilled the blood necessary to appease her god, and in the end her people are rescued while the disbelievers are damned to the darkest level of personal hell.

Far more satisfying, for me, would have been a compromise between the two, a vague ending that still suggests a bleak future for mankind. End directly after the protagonist and co. witness the massive, mountain-like alien crossing the highway, albeit punch it up slightly:

They near a major city in the search for civilization, truck suddenly sputtering on empty. Then the giant beast wanders over, the awed passengers visually following its path as it passes and--here's the money shot--the fog parts enough to reveal the first shots of the obviously empty city, another distant alien behemoth--this one even larger--carelessly knocking over a dark and dead skyscraper as it lumbers across the landscape.

The new management has arrived.

End.

********

This, for the record, is probably the most I've ever written about a movie I couldn't stand.

Review: The Mist (2007 film)

2008-04-13T21:59:00.004-05:00

Except for a spirited final five minutes, Frank Darabont's recent cinematic adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Mist is a complete loss.

Wait, back up.

Except for a spirited final five minutes and an earlier scene in which a bagboy is gorily eviscerated by an alien tentacle, Frank Darabont's recent cinematic adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Mist is a complete loss.

Let's try that one more time.

It's easy to see what Darabont is going for in The Mist: an urgent thriller about a group of people trapped in a supermarket surrounded by an ominous mist, the physical monsters spewing from the smoky depths outside reflecting the psychological monsters taking hold of the terrified people inside. Overgrown creepy crawlies will be gorily battled, terrified townfolk will be picked off one by one, and the building's four walls will begin to seem increasingly constricting as hysteria begins to boil with the rise of mob mentality.

So what went wrong? Well, including characters that behave and interact in a natural manner wouldn't have hurt. The first sign of trouble occurs early on as two local yokels lash out at Thomas Jane's everyman protagonist, deciding to belittle him and read class condescension into his cautious suggestions. It unfolds awkwardly and unearned, their words inexplicable. It's not that their behavior is impossible, just that the script, direction, and acting don't build enough to make the sale. The scene is reduced to a display of bizarro world behavior that destroys any suspension of disbelief.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a momentary gaffe as much as a template for things to come. Trapped townsfolk respond to a late-night invasion of giant insects by turning on all the lights. A tow-headed son tears from protective arms during a moment of danger for the express purpose of giving the protagonist someone to rescue. Characters saddle themselves with an elderly lady while walking as slowly as possible through the exposed parking lot during an expedition to an adjacent drug store. People repeatedly decide that the best way of reacting to life-threatening danger is to dancing around long enough to die, instead of, you know, getting the hell out.

The worst suspension of disbelief violation, however, is the third act that sees Marcia Gay Harden's religious old-testament crackpot reduce a store of normal townfolk to slathering cult fiends within a twelve hour period. It's a feasible plotline but the movie, again, fails to make the sale. Harden's cartoonish preacher is simply too nasty and crass, a shrill zealot bereft of any charisma whatsoever. Successful cult leaders berate and insult, yes, but don't they also occasionally tell you something you want to hear?

As if two hours of unbelievable people doing dumb things isn't bad enough, visually the movie is a clumsy, disorienting mess. Darabont seems to be attempting a cinéma-vérité style that unfolds like a true crime reality show, but the result is a disjointed television drama punctuated with mediocre CGI beasties. "Amateurish" isn't a word I would have previously associated with the man behind The Shawshank Redemption, but The Mist's numerous 180 degree rule violations and baffling crash zooms imply otherwise.

But then we get to the ending, a climax so relentlessly bleak that it deserves applause on some level. The previous two hours may be one misfire after another, but it takes true balls to foist such a soulcrusher on an unsuspecting audience. Advance warning had me waiting for it, but every time I thought we had reached the bottom Darabont yanked out the floor and tumbled things deeper. The black ending does carry a "gotcha!" that reduces the film somewhat to Twilight Zone episode territory, but ultimately the protagonist's fate is dark enough to graft itself to one's consciousness until it can be fully absorbed a few days later. As such, a success.

But imagine how much better that ending would have been had we actually cared.

My mother, always one step ahead of me

2008-04-10T11:31:00.001-05:00

A recent visit from my parents left me with a loaf of sourdough bread home-cooked in my mother's kitchen. A few nights ago I decided to toast a slice as an after-dinner snack.

I made a discovery when I tried to eat the first slice and the discovery was this: the crust of homemade bread operates as a conduit for heat in a manner completely unlike the mild-tempered variant found in supermarket aisles. Homemade bread crust could light cigarettes.

There was an audible sizzle as the crust fused to my upper lip.

okay.

I yanked the slice away but it tugged and broke in two, one piece dangling from my mouth.

Right.

I grabbed the crust directly and managed to peel it away from my lips, but not without losing some stowaway strips of burned skin.

And so.

I looked down and saw the bread burning a hole in the counter top, melting its way to the basement.

Maybe.

Things researched at work today

2008-04-04T18:00:00.001-05:00

Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, mustaches and penstaches are, in fact, mutually exclusive.

Inventory of a misspent youth

2008-04-02T21:51:00.009-05:00

I am sorting through boxes of leftovers from my childhood, piles and piles of evidence of how I spent my copious spare time before I started shaving and going on dates.

Just tonight, for example, I have seen the following:

Junior high skit scripts

Maps of imaginary continents with apostrophe-plagued city names

A manual for a video game I never got around to actually making

Character sheets for roleplaying games I would never actually play

An absolutely appalling 20 page prequel to an otherwise unwritten fantasy trilogy

Restaurant mat dinosaur artwork

A notebook drawing of Mt. Rushmore featuring the heads of famous cats

Recipes culled from the finest chefs of Mrs. Field's third grade class

Cinema titles parodies like "Indiana Jerk and the Pimple of Doom"

A drawing of a beach-loving gremlin in bermuda shorts with the caption "SURF'S UP!"

An uncompleted Ninja Turtles radio adaptation script that is nothing more than a direct transcription of dialogue from the comic book

Illustrations of bands I wanted to be in (complete with setlists of nonexistent songs)

Logo designs for "Monopoly III"

The worst lyrics ever fucking written

So many years of nerdy adolescent creativity stacked up in towers of graph paper and notebooks. What do I do with all this stuff?

The reluctant souvenir

2008-04-01T22:45:00.004-05:00

A coworker of mine recently brought in a collection of sea shells his family had picked during a recent cruise of St. Kitts.

He told me to keep one, if I wanted.

Later he sent me a photo of the St. Kitts beach from which the shells were selected. The sunlight poured down to warm the vast shores of sand, the surf white and gentle as it rolled in. Lush hills formed knuckles on a green finger curled around the bay, the peaks lost in distant, rolling clouds. A gull screeched somewhere, invisible in the endless sky.

I looked down at my transplanted sea shell, sitting on my desk in my cubicle in Madison, Wisconsin.

"This is bullshit," it said.

A bumper concrete crop

2008-03-30T20:38:00.002-05:00

So overwhelming was our winter that the beltline has multiple fallen exit ramp signs, all broken via icy car collision and then leaned against their supporting bases until summer construction can properly remount them.

The end result is a beltline garden of exit signs poking out of the ground, freshly planted and ready to grow with the assistance of a little water, sunshine, and time.

Exit 142 A has never looked so adorable.

A moment in time

2008-03-28T09:45:00.001-05:00

Saturday, 9:16 AM: A craving for orange juice resulted in an unplanned stop at a Sauk City gas station, Sauk City being a town rural enough to render half its name a lie.

I paid for my beverage and headed out to the parking lot where a man was engaged in easy conversation with a fellow local. He leaned his dusty frame over the hood of his Chevy, his face framed with a trucker hat and thick mustache. His squinting eyes folded over me, taking in my black peacoat, fingerless gloves, and white-rimmed oversized sunglasses.

He paused, mumbled something between a grunt and a laugh, and said, "How far are we from Hollywood, anyway?"

I smiled and said, "Only a few blocks west, head down this road a bit and you can't miss it."

He laughed and adjusted his cap.

Love that guy.

(sick)

2008-03-27T09:59:00.000-05:00

Today I am operating at about 80% capacity, which is astounding in comparison to the 10% I was at yesterday, for yesterday I was SICK

Riding a white-knuckle night of fever dreams, punctuated by waking up in sweats every hour on the hour.

SICK

Donning clothes amounting to a two part endeavor with a much-needed nap in between.

SICK

Shivering uncontrollably even when buried in enough blankets to smother a polar bear.

SICK

Fighting for the retention of every last calorie, lest it shoot out like a geyser from either end.

SICK

Crossing just slightly into Too Much Information territory in one's blog.

SICK

Passport 2008 Makeover

2008-03-19T22:06:00.003-05:00

BUY A GAL A DRINK SIR

(via virtual makeover)

Just words? Obama's race speech

2008-03-19T20:28:00.003-05:00

I finally watched Obama's race speech in its entirety, as opposed to reading small excerpts sprinkled with talking heads analysis.

Those familiar with my politics won't be surprised that I was utterly floored by his unprecedented willingness to explicitly address the squirm-inducing topic that is American race relations. He peeled back the surface of polite exchange to shed light on race-related anger while refusing to reduce the grays into simplistic blacks and whites.

Politicians just don't do this type of thing, for god's sake. What the hell was he thinking?

It's not what he was thinking, so much as what he was doing.

Hillary has attempted to paint Obama as a man of little more than words, an empty resume concealed by a silver tongue. Indeed, Hillary gave Obama's speech slight praise but then went on to stress that speeches matter less than the actions that follow. The problem is this argument hinges on treating the speech as nothing more than a collection of words formed in a vacuum, while the truth is the analysis, decision-making, and, yes, actions behind the speech reveal Obama to be the very leader in practice that he promises in words.

Obama was suffering a political crisis in the form of unearthed incendiary comments made by his ex-pastor and spiritual guide. Obama has generally tried to steer clear of the sticky topic of race and its relation to his candidacy, but the Wright controversy (along with Geraldine Ferraro's recent racially-charged statements) snowballed into a growing storm that threatened to consume Obama's candidacy.

Obama assessed the many nuances of an explosively messy situation and made the decision to ignore the safe and shallow roads in lieu of one that addressed the uncomfortable heart of the matter with unprecedented clarity and honesty. Obama navigated the tricky mine-strewn battleground that is racism in America and told us what he felt we needed--but not necessarily wanted--to hear. Obama opened negotiations with the people of America by placing the current reality of race issues on the table while asking us to give him the chance to lead us forward.

This is leadership in action: assessing complicated nuances, making tough decisions, communicating hard truths, and opening thorny negotiations. Obama is a man of words, yes, but for the first time we are seeing the action behind them.

Obama was reportedly up until 2 AM fine-tuning this entirely self-crafted speech. One more hour and he would've already been awake to answer that red phone.

A few thoughts about the election

2008-03-18T14:01:00.000-05:00

Well, we're certainly in the shit now.

Hillary and Bill's recent behind-closed-doors appeal to prominent Democrats to look beyond pledged delegate counts reinforces Camp Clinton's strategy: chip away at Obama until he seems nationally unelectable, overcome the delegate deficit by claiming status as the party vet who can win the big states, and then heal the fractures by tossing Obama the second rung on the ticket.

The problem with this strategy is it applies a scorched earth whatever-it-takes approach to winning the nomination that is increasingly alienating the party brass whose very support is crucial. There is much evidence that the weight of the Clinton brand is diminishing (see Pelosi's recent warning shot, as well as Obama's recent superdelegate gains), although Obama would do well to not underestimate said weight, as it is the only reason Hillary is still considered in the game.

The problem is she isn't. Obama is widening his delegate lead and the big-state argument is entirely without substance (in fact, a recent poll showed Obama more likely to carry Pennsylvania in a national election despite the fact that Hillary will almost certainly win their Democratic primary). The biggest problem with Hillary's strategy, though, is that overturning the popular vote with party tinkering would create a division so massive that offering a conciliatory Veep spot to Obama would be little more than a band-aid applied to a severed leg. One of Obama's largest accomplishments is his ability to bring a generation of young voters to the Democratic party, and this new voting powerhouse would disgustedly defect en masse if Clinton lays bare a rigged house.

As for Obama, the man is back after a few rocky weeks in which he fell off message (and displayed some questionable surrogate control). In the wake of a series of controversies (NAFTA, Rezko, Wright) Obama has taken the unusual tactic of operating as transparently as possible, from frankly discussing his Rezko ties to releasing his previous earmarks to addressing Wright and race in the stunningly frank speech delivered this morning. These are the actions of a leader.

Unfortunately, there are leaders and there are politicians, and it remains to be seen if this speech can survive the media cycle that delights in taking sound bites out of context and looping them ad nauseum. The speech is either going to slingshot Obama into the White House or forever destroy his chance on a national level.

Is America ready for a real leader?

March Lament

2008-03-14T21:12:00.003-05:00

While I love the stretch of warm weather we're having, I could really do without the snow resembling piles of dirty, melting elephants.

12:01 PM on Tuesday

2008-03-11T13:20:00.002-05:00

While waiting for my lunch at Cousin's I noticed that the wall was adorned with certificates from the Board of Health denoting stunning achievements in cleanliness and sanitation.

Comforting, that.

I then noticed that the certificates were awarded on a yearly basis and arranged in chronological order, which merely drew attention to the fact that they were administered like clockwork up until a year ago.

Right.

"Your sub is ready," they shouted.

I hold with those who favor fire

2008-03-10T22:57:00.002-05:00

I've been reading poetry lately.

This information, unfortunately, reads as if presented in a cursive font with a nice pastel background sporting some form of blooming flower.

Not so.

Returning to poetry after a ten year post-college lapse--if there's one thing that is easy to ignore outside the artificial bubble of academia, it is the existence of poetry--has shattered the popular misconception of poetry as a dreamy, feminine form of expression. Poetry isn't the cute, lovable VW Bug puttering through a meadow as much as it is a sports car running wild on a tankful of blood.

By its very nature poetry is the most immediate means of expressing something, be it a concept, emotion, moment, or story. Novelists have all the time imaginable to present their case, and short story writers have however many pages are granted by Playboy that month, but poets have to hit the ground running with the leanest prose possible in the race against the reader's attention span. Poets butcher their babies by carving off every ounce of fat, each individual word weighed and judged for inclusion. There is no form of communication with a higher blood-sweat-and-tears-to-words ratio than poetry.

What interests me most about poetry, however, is that there is also no other form of communication that so directly demands the participation of the reader. Good poetry doesn't just strip down to the compact essentials but instead goes one step further to eviscerate large chunks of content in the interest of forcing the listener to fill in the gaps. Explanation and exposition, who needs them? Or, more importantly, why pull the trigger when the reader is there to do it for you?

Take the following by Hemingway, which, while technically a short story, illustrates my point:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Taken at face value this is merely an ad for a pair of shoes, but once the reader jumps in the fray all sorts of staggeringly sad details begin to emerge.

Who created a situation in which a pair of baby shoes became prematurely unnecessary?

You did!

Who cursed someone with parental grief so deep another child seemed unbearable?

You did!

Who killed the poor infant in the first place?

You did!

Replace the cursive font with italicized urgency, backed with a pattern of mounting tension and headlines of bruised purple.

I've been reading poetry lately.

Justice was not being served

2008-03-08T00:05:00.004-06:00

As I prepared for bed and took off my sweater, I couldn't help but feel it horribly unfair that the Batman shirt underneath didn't make an appearance all day.

Cold weather managing victories beyond the Joker's grasp.

Tuesday Post-Mortem

2008-03-06T10:17:00.002-06:00

So Hillary's big night Tuesday has her poised as the Comeback Clinton, with the game suddenly blown wide open, right?

Nope. Despite the spin, Hillary is actually in worse shape than before, as she has barely made a dent in Barack's near-insurmountable pledged delegate lead. She needed to win huge on Tuesday to realistically stay in the game, but instead her pledged delegate deficit remains basically unchanged except that now there's even fewer unclaimed delegates with which she can hope to catch up.

What Hillary has done is create the illusion that she has bounced back and is ready to fight her way to the nomination. This perceived second wind should stop the trickle of superdelegates defecting from her camp, as well as give her a boost in national polls. If she manages to continue her quasi-winning streak and if national polls start to favor her over Obama, superdelegates might fall in line, thereby making her pledged delegate deficit irrelevant.

But that isn't going to happen.

My easy prediction is that Obama will sharpen his game this week and take Wyoming and Mississippi. There aren't a lot of delegates at stake but these victories will end talk of Hillary's comeback, and Obama will reclaim his easy lead in national polls.

My not-so-easy prediction: if this rumored block of 50 superdelegates actually jumps in Obama's camp, Obama will be leading in both pledged and superdelegates for the first time. Factor in victories in Wyoming and Mississippi and his momentum will be virtually unstoppable. This, combined with the fear that a protracted and bitter primary season will result in a divided party and crippled nominee, will cause the Democratic Party heavies to start pressuring Hillary to bow out.

If she does, it's over. If she doesn't, she will merely play the part of a nastier Huckabee, further alienating her party. Either way, the question isn't who will get the nomination, but instead how much damage can Hillary deal to Obama before finally bowing out?

Bill is dusting off the Tonya Harding club as we speak.

Anyone know a 9th level cleric?

2008-03-04T20:44:00.003-06:00

Gary Gygax, father of Dungeons and Dragons, dead as THAC0.

R.I.P. to the guy singlehandedly responsible for me spending my teenage years scribbling on graph paper instead of talking to girls.

Gary Gygax: 1938-2008. He pioneered new ways in which to pretend to be an elf.

Review: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

2008-03-04T16:03:00.003-06:00

There is a certain genre of novels, call it Book Club Fiction, that sell well due to buzz, word of mouth, and occasionally Oprah. These books come as trade paperbacks bearing four hundred plus pages of character-driven artful prose. There will be passages so lovely you'll want to bob along in the prose's warm embrace, and there will be turns so emotionally grueling you'll feel gutted and drained. There will be love, there will be pain, there will quite possibly be rape, and in the end there will be redemption, and all of this will be tied up in multiple layers ripe for discussion.

Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants really wants to be the latest sensation in Book Club Fiction, and at a glance it certainly looks the part. It comes bearing book club buzz, and even contains an interview with the author and an accompanying discussion guide. Much like prior Book Club sensation The Kite Runner, Water for Elephants is a coming of age story set in a meticulously researched historical environment, a tale of one man's growth mixed with equal parts love and tragedy. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll recommend the book to everyone at the salon.

There certainly is much to love about Water for Elephants, to be sure. Gruen masterfully resuscitates depression-era traveling circus life from the footnotes of history, and the result is a seductive world of dirty glamor that pulses with sleazy life. Gruen thoroughly paints this historical setting with a stunning attention to detail, and I could easily have spent twice as long in her carefully crafted universe of rubes and roustabouts, of side shows and speakeasies.

Problem is, a stage is set only to tell a story, and that's exactly where the cracks begin to show. Gruen's prose is at best serviceable and at worst prone to cliché, and for a three-time author she has a surprising tendency to tell not show. All too often the book feels condensed, with certain passages reading like expository Cliffs Notes summaries for what should have been fully-written chapters. It's not uncommon for a week to artlessly pass in the blink of a paragraph, robbing readers of the chance to play bystander to unfolding events.

Similarly, Gruen doesn't seem interested in any of the characters that aren't encased in carny grease, which is problematic as the story hinges on a romance that we aren't entirely sold on. Why is the protagonist in love with the star performer, and what exactly is it that she sees in him in return? With every unearned romantic escalation I couldn't help but wish Gruen would get back to the Polish elephant and alcohol raids.

And murders, for that matter. Gruen certainly isn't afraid of cheap melodrama, which occasionally overwhelms what narrative momentum she otherwise accumulates through character development. Several major side characters meet ill ends to provide little more than gotcha moments, their existences forgotten once the string stabs fade. Her roustabouts deserve better.

And yet the books succeeds, due to Gruen's contagious affection for this tatty world and its occupying degenerates. It's the details that stick with you--the drunkard with jake foot, the lemonade-stealing elephant, the hobos tying shoes to their feet--long after the mediocre prose and surface-thin plot have faded. Additionally, it can't be stressed enough that the book is never less than compulsively readable, with easy hooks and brisk pacing that create so much momentum you'll be hard-pressed to resist topping it off with the author's interview and slight discussion guide simply because they're there.

Ultimately Gruen hits enough of the right notes to enable overlooking the few lurking just out of her range. The halls of Book Club Fiction may not be opening its doors for another inductee, but Water for Elephants is a cracking read, and sometimes that's more than enough.

Surprise! New Music!

2008-03-03T14:14:00.001-06:00

Nine Inch Nails released a new instrumental double album last night.

Yeah, just like that. One minute their website had tour dates and the next it displayed a link to download this new album for five dollars.

Nobody really cares too much about instrumental albums, true, but the fact still stands: Nine Inch Nails, previously notorious for taking as many as six constipated years between releases, just dropped two hours of new music in the same way other bands might announce a new t-shirt design.

The internet has destroyed the traditional model of releasing new music.

It used to be so simple. A band would go in the studio, record a bunch of songs, and submit the cream of the crop to the record label, who would then package the album and release it to the public, sometimes after a lead single with accompanying video had been serviced to radio stations. Once the band had toured awhile and as much money had been squeezed out of the album as deemed possible, the band would start writing new material and the process would begin anew.

Not all bands in all genres followed this model, of course, but the point is new music was generally released every couple of years, with no small amount of accompanying fanfare and money burned. Each album took great financial investment. Each album was The Next One from the band that brought you The Last One.

Then along came the internet.

When Radiohead announced last fall that--surprise!--the new album was done and would be downloadable in a couple days I felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under me. What, no slow build-up of promotion and teasers? No lead in single, no video? No Tuesday lunch trip to Best buy on release day to hold the plastic jewelcase in my hands and study the track listing as I waited in line at the register? Does this album even count?

Hell yes it did. Not only did Radiohead release the album of the year, but by distributing it online they guaranteed that everyone would hear it.

And now Nine Inch Nails. Trent's been hinting about this for awhile, of course, and the Saul Williams disc was a dress rehearsal of sorts, but last night he did it, just like that.

"I've got a new album you had no idea I was working on and here it is."

A sudden instrumental double album (or, more appropriately, a quadruple-E.P.). Written over a tumultuous ten weeks and released without any of the surrounding fanfare and baggage, with hint of more on the horizon.

Can he do that? Does it even count?

The dying questions of an obsolete mindset.

Just like that.

The Ebb and Flow of Employment

2008-02-29T10:11:00.004-06:00

I am employed as a Quality Assurance Engineer. Validating systems in high-pressure release cycles is what I do.

On a good day.

My boss recently stopped by my office and asked if I had time. I minimized the paperwork I was reviewing and exclaimed, "Yes, I do!"

He asked me to label two cluster racks in the basement to mark them as "in use" for a certain project.

"I am on it RIGHT THIS SECOND," I told him as I stood, grabbing some labels and a Sharpie.

I strode downstairs with deliberate purpose and labeled the two racks, careful to keep my writing decisive and legible. I double-checked my work, and triple-checked that I had applied the labels to the correct racks.

I walked back upstairs and found my boss. "I TOTALLY LABELED those two cluster racks!"

He laughed and said, "Well that's good."

"Let me know if you've got any more LABELING NEEDS!"

"I will, thanks," he said.

"Or ANY other work at all!"

"Okay," he said.

I walked back to my cube and sat down.

I'm looking forward to the next high-pressure release cycle.

Downfall: an Examination of Hillary Clinton's Campaign

2008-02-28T13:47:00.002-06:00

As Obama's campaign increasingly resembles that familiar cartoon scene of a snowball rolling down an icy hill and gaining unstoppable dimensions, so does it look like in the end Hillary will be nothing more than an animated pair of legs sticking out of said snowball, skis popping off during one particularly treacherous rotation as Snowbama barrels toward the White House-shaped ski lodge at the bottom of the mountain.

As such, it's perhaps time for a few words about Hillary.

Ultimately, Hillary isn't the story here. The collapse of Camp Hillary will play footnote to the historic event that is Obama's meteoric rise, and if she does somehow manage to snag the nomination, it will only be due to a slipup on Obama's part. The nomination is now his to lose.

And in the interest of full disclosure: I support Obama. I voted for him in the primary. I donated to his campaign. I bundled up and braved frostbite to canvas for him in the bitter Wisconsin cold. My point in this is I am not exactly impartial.

I initially picked Barack because he's the only candidate preaching unity, something this country desperately needs. Hillary is a divisive figure, a fact for which she is only partially responsible (more on that later), and she would by default split the country in half. Hillary also pushed me away with the way she ran as an incumbent, arrogantly assuming the nomination was an inevitability. Last fall she assured us repeatedly that she would be the democratic nominee despite the fact that not a single vote had yet been cast.

That's not the way things work.

As this campaign season has matured, though, so has my general distaste for Hillary and the way she has chosen to make her case. Barack is soaring in popularity and support because he oozes natural leadership, a quality Hillary lacks, and so she's been forced to resort to her other strengths: her thirty-five years of experience, her mastery of policy, and her ability to play the Washington game dirtier than anybody else.

Let's look at those for a second.

The advantage of Hillary experience was nullified the moment Barack's campaign tapped into this nation-wide frustration with the status quo and established "change" as the campaign buzzword. Thirty-five years of experience, yes, but also thirty-five years of baggage, thirty-five years of bitter partisan politics, thirty-five years as part of the system that has led us to our current atrocious state. And does her experience really matter that much, anyway? History doesn't exactly suggest that generous pre-office experience corresponds in any way with the quality of a presidency, and ultimately if we were concerned with that level of experience we'd repeal the 22nd amendment.

A more direct quality that works to Hillary's favor is her ability to construct and implement policy well, an asset she should wield with pride. She has a thorough understanding of the labyrinthine rules and laws already in place and possesses the ability to take goals and construct actionable plans. This, however, doesn't actually make her a leader. Without being accompanied by charisma and communication skills, her policy mastery simply means that she would make a valuable member of another leader's cabinet.

As for her ability to play the Washington game to undermine her opponents, she was sunk the moment Barack decided to run a clean campaign. He's had a few missteps, sure, but next to Hillary he appears a paragon of virtue, her race to the bottom having blown up in her face and exposed her transparent eagerness to say and do anything to get elected. She has repeatedly taken Barack's words out of context and intentionally twisted them in an attempt to damage his message. She has changed with the wind to adopt whatever stance and angle she thought might give her an edge. She has sunk to the level of openly mocking his message of hope, a message that has captivated a nation and galvanized a generation.

Despite all this, she felt she had the ground to publicly shame him for, uh, mailers that attacked her stance on NAFTA. The flipside, of course, is that members of her campaign were caught distributing scare-mongering e-mails that listed lies about Obama's (non-existent) ties to Muslim extremism. Members of her campaign (reportedly) distributed a picture of Obama in Somali elder garb, a tactic that plays off America's ugly, bigoted fear of dark-skinned men in turbans. Members of her campaign have dealt in lies and smear.

Granted, these ties to her campaign have either been denied, or the offending campaigners were let go, but when I volunteered to campaign for Obama it was stressed that we were to show nothing but respect for Hillary. We were to keep Hillary out of our message entirely, as we were representatives of Obama and had to conduct ourselves as such.

It's difficult to imagine a similar courtesy being preached to Hillary campaigners.

And so here we are. Hillary's negative and mismanaged campaign has provided an unintended sneak peak into what her presidency would resemble. Is this really what we want in a president, this race to the bottom, this willingness to sink as low as necessary to win, this eagerness to adopt whatever stance seems advantageous at the time? I've seen her "results," and I don't want them. After her open mocking of Obama it isn't difficult to imagine her negotiating with Iran by repeating everything Ahmadinejad says in the dumb voice. I exaggerate, but the point still stands: how low do we want our president to go?

It didn't have to be like this. She has a great leader lurking in her somewhere, a supreme negotiator, a brilliant tactician. Where has this Hillary gone? Whenever she lets down her guard, jettisons the talking points, and stops playing politics she comes off as likable, commanding, and persuasive. In her attempt to stop Barack's star from rising she has utterly lost connection with the qualities that made her the frontrunner in the first place.

As a woman, she has had to put up with twice as much shit and work several times harder than her opponents. The distaste much of the country has for her most certainly stems from her actions, but the sheer level of hatred she receives is never equally extended to similarly ruthless politicians that don't happen to have a vagina. She's a bitch, she's a harpy, she's a shrew. She's a woman in power who has dealt with all this and could have been the next President of the United States of America.

Instead, middle-aged-to-elderly female voters remain the sole demographic block who have yet to abandon her tent and choose optimism and leadership over mudslinging and insincerity.

Hillary's last stand, her own private Alamo, is to adopt the "kitchen sink" approach and throw everything she's got at Obama while reinforcing the fact that she's a fighter.

This country has been led by fighters for far too long.

It's time we had a leader.

Let's get this started right

2008-02-26T21:01:00.002-06:00

2008 Passport:

1997 Passport:

My what a difference ten years make!

Something Old, Something New

2008-02-26T16:38:00.000-06:00

Six years ago I created a LiveJournal to chronicle all the ways in which I am a moron. It was intended to be a sounding board for the various ridiculous thoughts that filtered through my brain on a daily basis, dressed up and packaged as entertaining reads. This was eventually broadened to encompass anything humorous that transpired in my life that merited retelling.

I documented a weekend's worth of elevator stories. I documented a farting man with a tiny erection at my gym. I documented accidentally brushing my teeth with the cat vomit brush. And, in what some would consider to be that journal's crowning moment, I documented the time I plugged up a date's toilet with no plunger in sight.

Enough.

Stories of the awkward and humiliating moments in my life only take things so far. They still happen and they will continue to be written about but I have other things to say now.

Broadening the scope of my existing LiveJournal to encompass these new topics didn't seem appropriate. It was created by a different version of me in a different place in his life with different goals and interests; suddenly shoving in political essays between the vulgar bathroom stories hardly seemed appropriate. Additionally, I grew tired of the LiveJournal format itself, as I increasingly felt I was trying to shoehorn a would-be humor column into a public diary.

Enough.

It is time to write about everything in a place where people aren't almost exclusively writing about nothing.

This is, of course, pretty self-serious talk from a guy who still can't resist a good dick joke.

Dogs On Houses

Bill's Music Roundup: 2009 (Part Three--Misc. Debris)

Bills Music Roundup: 2009 (Part Two)

Bills Music Roundup: 2009 (Part One)

*KSHHHT*--Re-engaging Transmission

Of Swollen Chickens

NYC: Take One

4:35 PM on a Tuesday

One down, five to go

Of voting attempts and church ladies

The Spiders and the Legend of the Beast

Review: The Hazards of Love by the Decemberists

Lunchtime at Target

Cancún: round one

The State of Dogs On Houses

America Twitters: standin n line @ the soup kitchen

The most accurate epitaph imaginable

While driving this morning

Uncle Stitch's Music Roundup: 2008

There and back again

At long last, we did it.

Election Predictions

Two Weeks in Australia: a trip told in lists

Two things

Review: Hellboy

Pardon my preaching

Boom Blox

Well I never need to shop there again

McCain/Palin: a quick look

All hail the Clintons, right?

The Phone Call

Unfolding in Reverse: The Bigfoot Hoax of 2008

Roll on President Obama

August

Who watches the Watchmen?

Review: The Dark Knight

The trouble with cheese balls

Quick Reviews: What Is the What by Dave Eggers and God's Middle Finger by Richard Grant

Dram is too tightly

I'm sorry mama, but tonight I'm cleaning out my *error: joke expired 2002*

McCain's risky gambit

The Closet Crisis of 2008

The Battle of Bubble Bobble: May 31, 2008

Obama the nominee

And now for the fireworks

Revolt of the appliances!

Off the grid: take 1

Hillary's Saban problem

After West Virginia

Miscellaneous debris

Cleaning up the debris in a decided primary

The day after: why Hillary is done but won't go public yet

Hillary down, roll on McCain

The reality that spin can't ignore forever: Obama has this one in the bag.

God bless rich people!

Overheard at Goodwill

Review: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Adventures in solitude

Pennsylvania, addendum

Pennsylvania

A bitter battle, third and final/ springtime for facial hair

A brief note from the management

A bitter battle addendum: "Screw 'em!"

A bitter battle

The Mist, Addendum

Review: The Mist (2007 film)

My mother, always one step ahead of me

Things researched at work today

Inventory of a misspent youth

The reluctant souvenir

A bumper concrete crop

A moment in time

(sick)

Passport 2008 Makeover

Just words? Obama's race speech

A few thoughts about the election

March Lament

12:01 PM on Tuesday

I hold with those who favor fire

Justice was not being served

KSHHHT--Re-engaging Transmission

I'm sorry mama, but tonight I'm cleaning out my error: joke expired 2002