The Language Barrier

Don't mind me, I'm just: tired
Hey, that sounds like: Monster Magnet -- Crop Circle

• Busy weekend coming up: tonight is Bo-topia (a.k.a. wurdsome's birthday party) which I'm leaving for straight from work, then tomorrow evening I'm off to see Testament (and several other metal bands I've never heard of) as part of Powerfest 2008 in scenic Mokena, IL. And Sunday I'll spend doing the chores I should do Saturday, but won't because I have the excuse of the concert.



• My BushBucks have arrived! And it looks like I'll be stimulating the economy more than I thought. I decided to spend some of it on new books and somehow that turned into a $100 orgy of expenditure last night at SFBC.com -- they were having a sale, $9.99 per book after you buy two at regular price. I'm getting A Canticle For Leibowitz (which, inexcusably, I haven't read yet), World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, and the first six (!) books in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, which is projected to run to ten.



• And while I was being frivolous, I also spent another hundred bucks for a ticket to the Metal Masters Tour in August. Actually, make that $45 for the ticket, $30 for parking, and $25 in various fees and fuck-you charges. The headliners are Judas Priest and Heaven and Hell (which is basically Dio-era Black Sabbath, minus Bill Ward, plus Vinnie Appice) and the opening acts are Motörhead and Testament (again!) In a way this show will be me coming full circle in my concert-going history: the first concert I ever attended was a Judas Priest / Megadeth / Testament show at Rosemont Horizon in 1990. But to be totally honest, the thing that clinched it for me is "how many chances am I going to get to see Motörhead?"



• For those of you who are going to the Cubs game on 5/17 -- and neonhummingbird, I'm still counting you as a "yes" because stankow has volunteered to cover some of your ticket, so please let me know if you weren't aware of that and have made other plans -- and have been wondering how to reimburse me, I haven't been able to think of an easier means than PayPal to take care of that, unless you want to bring a personal check with you.
  
  Accordingly, my PayPal account is under exaustinite(at)hotmail.com, and the ticket price is $52.00, so whenever you're ready, willing, and fully-funded, let 'er rip. I'm covering all the taxes and fees and whatnot, to apologize for the crappiness and priciness of the seats, so don't worry about that. If you would prefer to send a personal check or something through snail mail, send an email to that address instead and I'll give you my meatspace coordinates. :)
  
  (Oh, and there's still one ticket left, by the by...)



• What else? Ah, yes. Those of you who were privy to my red light violation post back in March may be interested to know that I did go ahead and contest it by mail after all, but I ended up having to pay it anyway, as many including myself suspected I would.
  
  On the other hand, I also got a notice from the IL Tollway Authority a few days afterward, demanding $220.00 in unpaid tolls and fees, which I managed to deal with over the phone without having to pay a single cent for. Turns out the expiration date had run out on the credit card I had tied to my I-Pass account, and I didn't realize this for about a week. When I updated it, the account still showed a small balance, so I figured I'd gotten lucky, but alas this was not the case. The gentleman I spoke to on the phone was very helpful and waived all the fees -- as well as the unpaid toll charges, which turned out to have been paid automatically as soon as I corrected my info on the I-Pass Account. So thanks for the pointless scary mail, IL Tollway Authority.

Don't mind me, I'm just: tired
Hey, that sounds like: The Vapors -- Turning Japanese

• The downside of starting work at 10:00 AM? That last, precious forty-five minutes of sleep right before the alarm goes off gets interrupted by the roofers nailing particle-board over your bedroom window so they can start their day's work at what must have been around 7:30 but felt like dawn.



• A story I've been meaning to share, but inexplicably have not:
  
  A few months ago I was driving home on the expressway, and I happened to spy a blaze of fire-engine red hair driving a beat-up, broke-student-issue Tercel in the next lane. "Hey, cool," I thought to myself, remembering that the Illinois Institute of Art (Schaumburg) is only a few minutes away from where I work. "This looks like a quirky art student, female type. I wonder if she's cute."
  
  So I give it a little gas and pull up next to the car, and glance over to see...
  
  A clown.



• From my inbox:
  
  

  Thank you for using Microsoft® Outlook® Express. Our information indicates that you use Outlook Express to access a Windows Live™ Hotmail® e-mail account via a protocol called DAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol). DAV, like POP3 or IMAP, is the way that a mail client communicates with a web-based mail server.
  
  As a valued customer, we want to provide advanced notice that as of June 30, 2008, Microsoft is disabling the DAV protocol and you will no longer be able to access your Hotmail Inbox via Outlook Express. As an alternative, we recommend that you download Windows Live Mail, a free desktop e-mail client that has the familiarity of Outlook Express and much more.

  I've got two words for Microsoft®, and they're not "Happy birthday."
  
  Five'll getcha ten that the new client does not, in fact, have "the familiarity of Outlook Express" and that I will have absolutely no use for the "much more."



• Lastly, the Trib was full of tales of woe when I checked headlines last night. Shootings, stabbings, child abductions, an idiot suing Benny the Bull for getting a high-five, and what I'd thought was martial law -- last night's interim hed was "Sheriff's office takes over Ford Heights" -- but turned out to be something even more pathetic:

  The Ford Heights Police Department has stopped doing police work after running out of officers.
  
  Apparently $12 an hour isn't enough incentive to serve as the law in the downtrodden village. "A lot of them found jobs elsewhere," said Trustee Jimmy Viverette.
  
  The village has long been plagued by financial struggles, even before an ailing economy and rising foreclosure rate hit. A "gentlemen's club" that opened in 2006 was seen as injecting financial vitality, but it hasn't been enough. The loss of police service was just the latest blow to residents.

  Ladies and gentlemen, when even strippers can't keep your town in the black, it's time to hang it up. But it gets worse:

  This is not what we set out to do," [Cook County Sheriff Tom] Dart said at a news conference Monday outside the Ford Heights station. "This was thrust upon us."
  
  Neither Mayor Saul Beck nor Police Chief Earl Bridges was present.
  
  "Good question," Dart said when asked where they were. "The mayor is out of town, and the chief of police, I'm not sure where he is. . . . He was invited."
  
  Bridges said he was unable to attend due to a "very personal matter."

  If I were to guess that this very personal matter involved the aforementioned gentleman's club, I trust my readers would understand my cynicism.

Don't mind me, I'm just: amused
Hey, that sounds like: Dozer -- Calamari Sidetrip

Asked about the specifics of George Romney’s march with MLK, Mitt Romney’s campaign told the Phoenix that it took place in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. That jibes with the description proffered by David S. Broder in a Washington Post column written days after Mitt’s College Station speech.

But that account is incorrect. King never marched in Grosse Pointe, according to the Grosse Pointe Historical Society, and had not appeared in the town at all at the time the Broder book was published. “I’m quite certain of that,” says Suzy Berschback, curator of the Grosse Pointe Historical Society.

Had George Romney ever marched with Martin Luther King Jr., it almost certainly would have been documented. From the mid-’50s through 1962, Romney was one of the country’s most prominent business leaders — for him to travel South for a civil-rights march would have been remarkable. From January 1963 on, as governor of Michigan and a presumed Presidential candidate, Romney was one of the most visible political figures in the country.

A spokesperson for Mitt Romney now tells the Phoenix that George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched together in June, 1963 -- although possibly not on the same day or in the same city.

• ( Kitty progress report. )



• ( FTD's feckless floral follies. )



• Today is the 10th anniversary of the day I quit smoking: July 1, 1997.
  
  (It's also the 10th anniversary of the day Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese. No, I didn't quit as a symbolic protest -- it just happened to work out that way.)
  
  In an unfortunate coincidence, my good friend dogofthefuture recently revealed that his mother is about to undergo a difficult chemotherapy/surgery regimen to treat her lung cancer, caused by years of smoking. She's one of the lucky ones who is treatable, and thank goodness for that.
  
  As an ex-smoker, I've never been the kind to lecture people about smoking or complain when they want to do it around me. I know how harrassed smokers feel today, and I have better things to do than pile on, especially since my other good friend manda_x is better at it than I'll ever be.
  
  But if you're my friend, and you're reading this, and you're a smoker, and you're thinking about quitting, please do. It's hard, but not impossible (otherwise, how could a lazy-ass like myself do it?) and it improves your life almost immediately. And not just health-wise: major brands were $2.25 a pack when I quit ten years ago -- and $1.50 when I started. How much did you pay for your last pack?
  
  (Besides, this is now a Permanent Livejournal account and I don't want to be blogging in two or ten or twenty years about how you are starting a series of painful and debilitating chemo treatments.)



• About three years ago, I loaned $900 to a woman I knew only through the internet who desperately needed it. (More than I did, anyway.) I received a check in the mail on Thursday for $900. And as a thank-you gesture, she's offered to fly me out to Washington D.C. this summer so I can sightsee, and let me crash at her place three blocks from the Capitol.
  
  The lesson here is that not everyone on the internet with financial trouble is untrustworthy, and that what goes around often does come around. Unless it's those guys from Nigeria. Those guys can ES&D.

dogofthefuture

essentialsaltes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Los Angeles, CA

Can a reincarnated dog bring hope and renewed life to an owner suffering from multiple tragedies? That's what Lynda J. Austin, now a well-known writer on dog spirituality, discovered when her own dog Maxwell, a miniature schnauzer, returned to her when she was suffering from a debilitating depression due to a variety of loss including a double mastectomy, her mother's death, the loss of her husband of eighteen years, the loss of two beloved dogs within five weeks of each other, her father's death, and the close of a business. Though she got a new puppy, her heart was shattered.

But as she struggled to care for the puppy, she discovered that her dog Maxwell was reincarnating which led to the publication of her book: HEAVENLY PAWS - A BELOVED DOG IS REBORN, which not only saved her from the deepest despair, but has inspired countless others. And now this book has just gone into its second printing, plus Austin has just released her first children's picture book in a series -- LOVE ON A LEASH about a dog's return from the Afterlife to find his owner. He goes on to discover that he has wings and can fly, saves lives, and does many good deeds. . . .

hilker

1. Heraldry. A shield or shield-shaped emblem bearing a coat of arms.


2. An ornamental or protective plate, as for a keyhole.


3. Nautical. The plate on the stern of a ship inscribed with the ship's name.

I am seldom bothered by minor errors from a good writer, but Roberts' mistakes are so extensive, foolish, and revealing of his basic ignorance about the United States in particular, that it may be worth noting a few of those I caught in a fast read. The San Francisco earthquake did considerably more than $400,000 in damage. Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in 1941, did not write for Encounter, which began publication in 1953. The Proposition 13 Tax Revolt took place in the 1970s, not the 1980s—an important distinction because it presaged Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Michael Milken was not a "takeover arbitrageur," whatever that is. Roberts cannot know that there were 500 registered lobbyists in Washington during World War II because lobbyists weren't forced to register until 1946. Gregg Easterbrook is not the editor of the New Republic. "No man gets left behind" is a line from the film Black Hawk Down, not the motto of the U.S. Army Rangers; their actual motto is "Rangers Lead the Way." In a breathtaking peroration, Roberts point out that "as a proportion of the total number of Americans, only 0.008 percent died bringing democracy to important parts of the Middle East in 2003-5." Leaving aside the question of whether those deaths have brought anything like democracy to Iraq, 0.008 percent of 300 million people is 24,000—off by a factor of 10, which is typical of his arithmetic. If you looked closely enough, I expect you could find an error of one kind or another on every page of the book.

A NASA astronaut faces her first appearance before a judge this morning after police say she attacked her rival for another astronaut's attention at Orlando International Airport Monday.

Lisa Marie Nowak drove more than 12 hours from Texas to meet the 1 a.m. flight of a younger woman who had also been seeing the astronaut Nowak pined for, according to Orlando police. She is being held on no bond at Orange County Jail and has a court appearance at 9 a.m.

AH-CHOO!

1. Specious, deceptive, or oversubtle reasoning, esp. in questions of morality; fallacious or dishonest application of general principles; sophistry.


2. The application of general ethical principles to particular cases of conscience or conduct.

relentlesstoil

Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren't given due process, but they are traitors.

Some think it's the Statue of Liberty, some say it's the Constitution, but as for me, I know what my favourite symbol of freedom is. Here's a hint: It's midnight blue, it has leather seats and a gas-guzzling V8 engine, and it sits in my driveway. Yup- my car. And it's not just me; for millions of people, the car is the ultimate symbol of personal freedom. Let me out on an open road, with a full tank of gas and Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" on the radio, and I feel free. However, the effect only works if you actually like your car. An ugly or underperforming car just doesn't give you that same sense of enjoyment, and the lack of stylized or luxury-outfitted Federation spacecraft points to an absence of consumer choice.

theguiterrorist

Matt Yglesias is taking me to task for, in the process of delivering the Conor Oberst takedown America wants and needs, contending "that quality political tunes are impossible under present social conditions." Yglesias points to Sleater-Kinney, the Decemberists, Metric, and Le Tigre as bands that are all currently doing good political music.

A brief response. First, I don't think I actually ever argued that it's impossible for anyone to do good protest songs these days (although I do think it's probably more difficult than it was in the 60s, for the reasons I explained); and I agree with Yglesias that there are a few musicians out there currently doing some excellent political tunes. But I simply cannot countenance the notion that the Decemberists are among them. Colin Meloy, the Decemberists' lead singer, is (somewhat impossibly) even more precious and insufferable than Oberst! I don't think protest music need necessarily be angry, but it sure as hell shouldn't be tweecore.

P.S. And it's not just the Decemberists. Spencer Ackerman e-mails to point out: "Not only is Le Tigre not going to stop a war, if the face of the antiwar movement is a mustachioed transsexual singing about LGBT visibility, we can in all ugly likelihood expect Main Street to support the continuation of the war for another ten years."