Latest GravityBomb is up.

"Hoist with one's own petard." Great phrase.

And while we're on the subject.

Off a week-long vacation that consisted almost exclusively of video games and sleep. Talking with a long-lost (kinda) ex who is one of the coolest people I've ever met. Also, easily the most talented artist I've ever known.

I hope she doesn't read this.

Great visit with Bek. Still trying to break through the "if the radio doesn't play it, it sucks" meme.

New music. New music tools. And back to learning the guitar, if only to learn that one song.

And making some financial headway.

So yeah, things are going well. Now I just need to lose all the weight I dropped but I've decided to lay off the vegetarian thing. Too expensive to eat "correctly" when you don't much care for veggies or beans 24/7.

So ...tuna. Lots of tuna.

And the second best winter I've ever experienced. Christ I needed this.

Rope-a-dope?

Most of you know that I abhor commercials. Detest, like an illness.

I think this might be the best commercial I've ever seen.

The song is Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez. It's a cover of the same song by The Knife.

I'm going to drill this song into the ground.

"We'd like him to stay in power.
 I mean, we'd like to stay in office.
 He is in power;
 we'd like him to stay in office."

     - George Bush, when asked what he thought about the possibility of Mahmoud Abbas resigning.

I can't make this shit up, folks. Not in a million years if I tried.

"So Bush is saying that even though elections are democracy and democracy is good and powerful, it has produced unacceptable results in this case, and so the resulting Hamas government will lack the legitimacy necessary to allow the United States to deal with it or go forward in any peace process."

     - Juan Cole, Salon

"Irony!"

     - me

[00:14] bodhiFive: holy shit.
[00:14] bodhiFive: Keri, holy fucking shit.
[00:14] bodhiFive: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Countdown-nsa-Hayden.wmv
[00:15] ninebugs: hold on, give me a sec
[00:16] bodhiFive: I can't even believe I just saw that.
[00:18] bodhiFive: This may have just sunked Alito.
[00:19] ninebean: having trouble with the sound...hold on
[00:19] bodhiFive: If this doesn't hit the media over the next few days like a bad case of fleas, I don't know what would...
[00:20] bodhiFive: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!
[00:20] bodhiFive: It gets worse!
[00:21] bodhiFive: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Today-Bush-Hamas.wmv
[00:21] bodhiFive: I'll bet you a crisp five dollar bill that the planet doesn't make it through the weekend.
[00:28] bodhiFive: THIS IS OUR GODDAMN PRESIDENT.
[00:28] bodhiFive: WE HAVE A MONKEY FOR A PRESIDENT, KERI!
[00:28] ninebean: breathe, jay

I'm on a blogging strike. I'm not posting until Keri gets one.

Bek: What's that song?
Dad: Lemmie see ...uh, no, you can't listen to that one.
Bek: Why not?
Dad: It's about a girl who goes to a party and accidentally eats a whole bag of shrooms.
Bek: Shrooms?
Dad: Yeah, mushrooms.
Bek: [confused look] Did she have an allergic reaction?
Dad: [Pepsi shoots out nose]

My daughter has been hereby commanded to stay eleven forever.

I wonder what Denish thinks about.

Someone left me a $100 tip today. Kinda.

A store regular with a seriously thick Irish accent -- a fisherman (we get a lot of those, we are in Gloucester) -- brought in his home theatre system for repair. Said he wanted another one for his boat so I showed him the options and he pretty much let me pick which one I thought was the best.

We finally track down the box and it's f'ing huge. Says he doesn't want it.

So I'm ringing up the sale and out pops a rebate receipt. He doesn't know there is a rebate. The box, which has the vital UPC barcode (required for obtaining a rebate) is in my backroom. Of course it enters my head that I could just shut up and make out with $100. But my conscience kicks in and I tell him about the rebate and head out back to cut out the UPC for the guy.

"Ah, I'm not going to mail it in any way. You want it?"

So that's my $100 tip story. I already mailed the !@#$%er out because if I didn't, that little scrap of paper would disappear into the black hole that is my desk area.

I should point out that Jamie has far more interesting blog posts than I do.

I hooked up the A/V system for a '79-'83-era post-punk then-famous band named Gang of Four. I'd never heard anything by them but some of my i-should-have-guessed-they'd-know-this-band friends do. Really nice guy, too. And they're all about the anti-consumerism which is a hoot because that's my core schtick.

I'm learning German. Slowly. Very slowly. Kim will be amused.

Over the next few weeks you'll be hearing a lot about the recent Medicare overhaul. Supposed to be Bush's crowing achievement. It's turning into a substantial health emergency with many elderly unable to get the drugs they're supposed to due to a host of glitches with the program.

But like all the other Bush fuckups, and as more observant bloggers have pointed out, this scandal will follow a now-familiar path; cronies with jobs-for-political-favors will be outed (see Great Job Brownie/FEMA), people will die because they can't afford the $200/mo retail pricetag for each of the 15 drugs they're taking (which is the average, believe it or not).

Bush will tell us it will be fixed, just like Katrina. It won't. Just like Katrina.

And then everyone will forget.

Just like Katrina.

Afghanistan and all it's assocaited promises has been abandoned.

Iraq is a disaster and the Republicans, who accused the Dems of being cut-and-runners, are now laying out 2006 withdraw timetables. They don't CALL it that, but you know what they say about "looking and walking like a duck."

Warrantless phone taps. He's spying on Quakers. What makes you so sure he's not spying on you?

White phosphorus, judiciously and pragmatically re-dubbed "freedom dust."

A Commander-in-Thief who can't be bothered to plan a war much less protect the troops going into it.

Alito, a shoo-in for the Supreme Court is a demonstrable liar. Think about that. The man says Roe v. Wade is a question mark for fuck sake.

Meyers. Enough said. So much for demanding an up-or-down vote.

Rove. Libby/Plamegate. DeLay. Abramoff. Scanlon. Cunningham. Ney. The GOP is in full-on meltdown.

And I've just picked out the colossal Bush fuck-ups. And yet he can push his agenda.

How?

Because Democrats are a gaggle of inept pussies.

Watching the Dems practically carry Scalito through the hearings while giving him a nice friendly reach-around was nauseating. I almost hope they lose seats in the next race. Because they sure deserve it.

Sometimes I think this republic needs to go the way of the phoenix, and quickly.

They say that if you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. I went to a bar with some friends and lo!, I got drunk.

I'm told that I chatted with a ridiculously popular and attractive girl (who doesn't talk to anyone) and bought her a drink. For the life of me I can't remember which one she was. Or what she looked like. I find this very, very funny.

And I had a cuban cigar, which I've never had before.

My prime New Year resolution was to kill off all my debts in 2006. I'm two weeks into 2006 and I've covered about a third of it. This is a good omen.

Some of you might remember that on 9/11 I captured about 3,400 blogs and newssites to save the reaction for posterity.

Around 2AM, breaking news hit that 12 of the 13 trapped miners had been found alive. Because of the transient nature of the web -- once the page is updated, the information is generally lost -- I have a weird preoccupation with capturing websites. So when the news hit, I took screenshots of a number of news sites.

This morning I woke to find that the news of the rescue was some sort of stunningly cruel miscommunication so I took screenshots of those same news sites again. It's surreal for obvious reasons. Almost like an "alternate universe" sci-fi story.

As far as I know I'm the only person who has something like this so I'm making them public. Inasmuch as I can offer the copyright, I offer these screenshots up to be freely distributable.

Here's the directory.

I'll set up a thumbnail page when I have the time.