the problem with copying links without making a note as to what it they are is that now i have to go through all of them to see what the hell i’m linking to, and posting takes twice as long. i’m focused though, because i am the fucking focus king around here. sho-nuff.

speaking of sho-nuff, when the hell are the indie theaters gonna get on the ball and start showing fucking last dragon instead of moulin rouge and point break? no slight to those flicks, but come one, last dragon at midnight! who’d go?! me. me and anyone else with an ounce of taste. that’s right, get off your ass and prepare for reloy. you warmed up yit!?
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i guess it’s still only crazy people that think time-travel is possible. doc brown, james, and this guy. i’ve been checking through my spam to make sure i haven’t gotten an email from him. nothing yet.
:b:
but i did get news that the tumwater carling brewery closed down and moved down here to cali. what does this mean? it means B L A C K L A B E L in california. i like pabst and all, but BL is the shit. i’ll keep you posted on that one, i emailed someone at pabst and there’s supposed to keep me informed. hell yeah.
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got all caught up in coudal links today. watched the coudal photoshop matches go down. neat idea, but not as interesting as i’d hoped.

also, the pub rules link was nice. good info for the weary and thirsty, yet striving to remain polite.

where i really got caught up was in all the guest links for the music section, where i found many an entertaining item, including mena trott’s doolittle observations from the morning news. i love that album too, but it mostly reminds me of going camping at the beach and not being able to get corona bottles open because no one had a bottle opener. i did, however, have a lighter, and that’s where i taught myself (with starter tips from my bro) how to open beer bottles with a lighter. good stuff.
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if you’re ever planning on going to jail for a long time, be sure to get a copy of this book beforehand. if there’s no instructions for a shank in there, just remember, bed springs and pencils are you best friends.
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here’s an old interview by bill moyers with jon stewart. so funny, yet so humble. here’s an excerpt:

MOYERS: Which is funnier? CROSSFIRE or HARDBALL?

STEWART: CROSSFIRE or HARDBALL? Which is funnier? Which is more soul-crushing, do you mean? Both are equally dispiriting in theirÖ you know, the whole idea that political discourse has degenerated into shows that have to be entitled CROSSFIRE and HARDBALL. And you know, “I’m Gonna Beat Your Ass” or whatever they’re calling them these days is mind-boggling.

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i’m done. have a long weekend. err, i mean, a nice long weekend.

gushing: articulate lyrics, hooks for days, serious without being condescending, vivid without being overbearing. and just like any good album, reveals itself more fully after more plays.

it’s most definitely a mood album, and i have to admit to having not yet heard the end of it because i can’t get myself past the first six tracks without wanting to hear them again. the literary quality of the lyrics tend to paint pretty pictures i’d look at for days, regardless of accusations of forlorn nostalgia.

tonally, there’s a marked division between this and left and leaving; the levity is certainly there where the despair used to be, and that makes for a much less weighty album. but it still works. very much so. stream the album here.

a spectacular character-driven film, and when i say character-driven, i mean A character, as al pacino’s serpico is the only thing creating forward movement in the film.

sidney lumet’s directing is impressive, there’s a definite feel for his style in the film– everything moves forward so quickly without forfeiting the idea that no momentum is actually being recovered by serpico’s efforts to clean up law enforcement in new york.

this is impressive to me because similar films only manage to portray frustration to an audience only be effectively frustrating them. which is why i could see myself watching this movie again, while i would never watch anything that simply pissed me off twice.

and besides, serpico is a total bad-ass.

favorite brak show of all time is obvious: “war next door”, and it’s listed on the viewer’s choice list, which is up right now as all of september is viewer’s choice month leading up to the new episodes coming in october. if you haven’t seen all of them, go over and request some– the “goldfish” is hilarious (give him three hams!), and if you haven’t seen “war next door”, you’re missing out on classic, quality television programming. cee-lo guest starring on “brak street” is pretty good, too.

also over at the adult swim site is a preview of some new aqua teen stuff that is going to be on air next week. check out “super sirloin.
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i’m always a little bit troubled when i see an opponent of internet information versus library information. of course, there is always the question of credibility to information found on the internet, but one could argue the same for books and magazines– just because it’s in print doesn’t make it true. simple enough, right? regardless, i just stumbled upon (again) the wealth of information available over at eserver.org (which i’m pretty sure chris worked on a little while back). it’s filled with the sort of elitism and pretentiousness you’ve come to expect from higher learning.

there’s a huge section on philosophy writings, all freely available, including a good deal of david hume’s and kant’s writings. i mention this only because i picked up prolegomena to any future metaphysics recently, regardless of the fact i had not idea what “prolegomena” meant until i looked it up today.

in any case, if you’ve ever wanted to read academic papers on batman, now’s your chance.
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delusions of adequacy are looking for reviewers again. if you’re into it, drop them a line.

here’s that thing about itunes in actuality being a rip-off for artists. sure, it’s better than actual pirating, worse than actually buying a cd (unless of course, you’re buying direct from the band or artist, like at a show or something, which is good, but supporting your local record store gets the thumbs up, too).

related: musiclink.com is a project that is trying to give money straight back to the artists and avoid the major label b.s. downhillbattle.org is gonna hit in september, so check back there sometime for more information on how p2p file-sharing can and should benefit the artists and the ARTS, not the INDUSTRY. what is so infuriating to me is that the riaa is trying so hard to establish the thought that file-sharing is hurting the artists more than it is hurting the labels, when in actuality that many major labels have always hurt bands and music more than p2p file-sharing ever will.

my memory has been so wholly inefficient in the past few weeks, i can’t usually remember what i’ve done the night before. this may or may not be because last night’s activities were likely irrelevant in the last two weeks, but that’s beside the point. my point is this: eff.org/share which is a hub for those that want to share music, not steal. my charge is this: long-windedness. my plea is this: guilty.

the thing that really turned me on to linux was the whole open source thing, all the free programs, all the free apps, all the free information. all readily available and all within a community of linux users. i couldn’t hang with the nerd-curve, though. i like the idea of a pretty tight mac community, too. i want the same thing with music. community.
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speaking of community (and open-source), there’s this article on wired about MIT’s opencourseware program which in essence is a spectacular idea:

“It’s a profoundly simple idea that was not intuitive,” recalls Anne Margulies, the former Harvard assistant provost and executive director of information systems who was hired to be OpenCourseWare’s executive director. “At the time, the world was clamping down on information, limiting it to those who could pay for it.” Soon foundation money was gushing in to support the initiative. MIT earned the distinction as the only university forward-thinking enough to open-source itself. To test the concept, the university posted 50 courses last year.

here’s the list of current classes offered and all for free. i pilfered this link from kottke.org.

in actuality, i found few classes that i’d be interesting in taking, but there are some good ones, and come on, it’s free. MIT education at rock bottom prices: free.

aw, hell, pedro martinez is currently pitching for the bosox and he’s shut down the mariner offense AGAIN. six straight and oakland a step closer to taking the lead in the AL west. BOO!

i made the mistake last night of deciding to reorganize my cd collection around 9 o’clock. i took them all out of their shelves and laid them across the floor essentially building a fort around me as i arrange them. i decided first, to categorize according to genre, which proved to be practically impossible, since i had to get increasingly specific about the music in order for it to make any sense. i gave up on that. i then decided to organize alphabetically, like any normal person would, but shelved (ha! puns rule) the idea because it was so boring, regardless of the fact that i was an hour in to the job and needed to sleep.

i decided to then organize chronologically, essentially autobiographically, though not as involved as hi-fidelity, but probably equally as asinine and nerdy. i came up with a few different categories: early high school (mostly punk), late high school (northwest indie), early college (basically elliott smith and heatmiser), middle college (staple indies, superchunk, versus, etc.), late college (a startling amount of emo: braid, rainer maria, etc.), summer and fall fresh out of college (an amalgam), first year in l.a. (a bunch of crap records from the bargain bin at amoeba), and present (a lot of hip-hop and other assorted items).

it took a long time, but was considerably enjoyable for a freak like me. i got zero sleep last night, but ali comes home tonight, so i’m happy.
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i don’t know why i was looking at this or how i found it, but here’s a site that lists a bunch of movie shoot locations across world. there was one of petaluma, it looked weird.
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this was down when i initially tried to connect, but
it’s up now (though probably pretty prone to further outages, i dunno why), but you can search the subpoena list of the riaa. look for your friends! hell, look for yourself!
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oh, crap, i watched that new duck dodgers show on cartoon network saturday morning. it was pretty shitty, i’d not watch it again. we saw the dude that plays the new porky pig who was kind of an ass at the comic con. i don’t buy his voice, either, i’m sure he’s trying to put his own “spin” on the voice, but come on. WEAK.
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mariners, still getting crushed, 8-1. BOO!

tough muthafuckas.

01 K.G. | Love Is

02 Sukpatch | Hollow Tips

03 The Lucksmiths | Before the Sun Came up

04 Ted Leo | The Sword in the Stone

05 Sea and Cake | Station in the Valley

06 The Revolutionary Hydra | Charlie Lindbergh

07 Superchunk | Becoming a Speck

08 Doug Martsch | Kicked it in the Sun

stream

i’ve neglected my duty and came a day late to inform all of you in the pnw and east a ways that matt and the rest of cardinal are on tour. they played in montana last night, are in idaho tonight. be sure to check them out, i haven’t even had the pleasure to do so since they’ve only be playing up north since they started playing, but just go for crying out loud, and say hello for me. here’s the dates:

Friday August 22nd, at The Sotano House:
(119 n. 18th Street Boise, ID, ?pm, all-ages)
with Wyoming Band and…

Saturday August 23rd at Bennett’s House:
(Moscow, ID, ?pm, all-ages)
with guests…

Sunday August 24th at The Modern Zoo
(6635 N. Baltimore St, Portland, OR, ?pm, all-ages)
Tropix 2003 with tons of bands…

Monday August 25th at The Samurai:
(Eugene, OR, ?pm)
with guests…

i know there’s times missing, so check your local listings to be sure you don’t miss them.
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so, in vietnam they’re going to start imposing a $3 fine to anyone caught peeing in public. there was this one time a “friend” of mine peed in the parking garage under vancouver city hall. don’t ask him why he did that, he’ll just blush and tell you it wasn’t his fault. in fact, he’ll probably be all over me for even mentioning it. i don’t know why i did, but i’ll say that 3 bucks is a a cheap price to pay for not having soiled drawers.
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goddamn! our contact in prague has apparently let us down because yahoo scooped us on this story about a robot hanging out at some dinner with the czech prime minister. why is it that every robot has to be all prim and proper and shit (bender notwithstanding)? i wish they had the pimpbot up in there instead of aimo or whatever the hell is name was. he would make the prime minister loosen up quick.
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i found this site looking for an mp3 of debate exposes doubt, there’s a bunch of live tracks of death cab and ben gibbard solo at dcfc-tour.net.
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last but not least: ben and katie are getting married. congratulations all around, check after 4 my time, i’m going to try and get a playlist up for everyone to enjoy the weekend and celebrate the first triangler to get engaged. also: i have two gnarly pictures of brandon and rick getting into fights with the concrete, you’ll love them, but they’re at home, too.

running through a list of some of my favorite songwriters (ted leo, john k. samson, bob nanna, mac mccaughan, ben gibbard), i’ve realized that everyone one of these gentlemen have got (or just recently had) something new to offer. and there’s two streams: weakerthans and hey mercedes; two mp3’s: ted leo and superchunk, and if you look hard enough, you can already get your paws on the death cab album. i plan on buying all of the above. and they say the internet is killing music.

i found this brief interview of marty from the lucksmiths over at threeimaginarygirls.com, and remember going to the lucksmiths/tullycraft/benji cossa show there! so good, that was a long time ago– tullycraft used to live in that blue house across the street from the vw dealership in the u-district. good times, good times. rick and i flew a kite once with some girls we met there. long story, bad ending.
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remember when i was talking about flash mobs a little while back? yeah, i thought they were stupid, too, but mcsweeneys is making them hilarious. flash mob!
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the government wants to track homeless people, which is kinda wrong, and besides, since when did you need satellite to find out where all the homeless people hang out? i was looking at this page and saw the related links wired put up, one of which was this one about bums beating the shit out of each other. that one about the guy pulling the other guy’s tooth with pliers just about made me lose my lunch.
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time to nerd it up a little:

turns out that nietszche was right, about toxins, anyway. the jist says that hormesis (what a name!) is the adaptive process of the body strengthening itself when exposed to environmental contaminants. hooray for swallowing smog all the time in socal.

and for the astronomy geek in all of us (there is one in all of us, right? right, guys? shut up!), mars is going to be the closest to earth it’s been in 60,000 years (i think that dates is right). i’m not sure if i’ll be able to see it, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to know about it. i bet mr. wagner is up there breathing his crazy air in the valleys of mars right now. y’all remember that shit in red planet mission to mars where don cheadle (it was him, wasn’t it?) had that uber-dramatic line: “Yeah.”? that was the best. jerry o’connell was in that, too. boy does that guy suck, did you catch that cribs with him on it? man, that guy lives like a pig. P-I-G.
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i was gonna mention this and have some scathing line about how i hate phish and all, but then decided i’d just post the link and leave it at that, ’cause i mean, come on, dude got his eyeball punched in by a hell’s angel.
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lastly, the idiocy with the california recall continues. i hate taco bell for this. i occassionally frequented the place, i mean a few times a year, but this is like punching me in the belly and making me eat my lunch again right after i hurled (because of that homeless tooth-pulling thing). stupid taco bell.

ted leo, john k. samson, bob nanna, mac mccaughan, ben gibbard.

i thought i’d finally found something to write about to justify the return of the listening section, but now that i think about it, i don’t think this record has that kind of staying-power. i will however, say that the first two times i listened to it, it was exactly what i expected and wanted at the time: nice simple instrumentation and structuring on the songs, clean, tight recording and melodic lines.

that said, it’s really more of the same from them, but that’s not really something to complain about when you dug the EP as much as i did.

we’re counting down the days to the new weakerthans release, and i missed the newgroup post for this mutha so haven’t gotten it yet, but i did find out you can listen to the first 7 tracks off of reconstruction site right over in the e-card section. for those still unconvinced, they say a full stream will be available when the album comes out next tuesday (aug. 26th).

it looks like belle and sebastian are making their way to the states again, one here in l.a., and two more, one in berkeley (heads up chris!) and one in new york. the details:

August 19th, Prospect Park Bandshell, Brooklyn, NY. Tickets cost $35.00 each, subject to booking fees. i’m an idiot and didn’t look at the dates.
August 22nd, Greek Theatre on UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA. Tickets cost $32.50 each, subject to booking fees.
August 24th, Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA. Tickets cost $32.50 each, subject to booking fees.

more details at the b&s site, note that bright eyes is opening the l.a. dates, but i can’t be sure (but it’s likely) they’ll be opening for the others, too. you can get tickets without going through ticketmaster and paying those stupid fees, but they’re limited. again, check their site for details.

i honestly haven’t been impressed with belle and sebastian for a while now, especially since that sesame street sounding track off of legal man (maybe it was legal man) and stewart david left the group. just like when matt sharp left weezer, man, the magic just wasn’t there anymore.
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you suckers missed your chance on felix hernandez, he just got promoted to wisconsin low-a ball. maybe when he gets to tacoma, we’ll all get another chance.
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man, i’m sick of hearing bush in another fucking speech condemning terrorists and their cowardly acts. it’s all fucking lip service with that asshole.
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according to the activision website, the new tony hawk game t.h.u.g. is set to release next month and is completely different from the other tony hawk’s. you can view some screenshots here. there’s some cool things, like a trick editor and i guess you can upload your picture to play as yourself (though i dunno what the big deal with that is). seems like it’s gonna try and play more like grand theft auto, except probably no hookers or killing people (though you never know).
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recording update: another song finished, hit a snag with some drum tracks but will figure something out. i downloaded the reason 2.5 demo last night and it’s pretty sick, but it’s got a hefty price tag. some dude on craigslist is selling a copy for 10 bucks (yeah right!). anyhow, i plan on putting the next few tracks onto tape very soon, and i need to write just one more. rollin’.

everyone’s linking Blogstakes, so why shouldn’t i?

found this thing via something else, but for the life of me can’t remember what site. poops on me. anyway, it’s a cliche finder, which might be fun if you’re into making big sentences full of only cliches. i dunno, i thought it was cool at the time, but the more i think about it, not so much. i looked up three words and then moved on. you should too. move on, i mean, because i am.
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file in CARTOONS:

there’s some
new powerpuff girls episodes coming in september, my favorite description is this one:

Friday, September 19: “Toast of the Town” Trying to get his hair to grow, the Mayor rubs his scalp with Chemical X. But soon enough, he’s so big he can practically crush Townsville with one step. “Shotgun Wedding” The Professor tries to find out what a Lumpkin really is.

i was looking at the adult swim greeting cards and laughed out loud at my favorite one, where thundercleese is fishing in holland. when we were at the comic-con, there was a bunch of cels available that weren’t available on the cartoon network website. regretfully, i didn’t have 300 bucks to drop on that shit.

there’s more david cohen (futurama) interview stuff over at cinescape. it’s actually a pretty weak interview, nothing i haven’t seen before, except for the fact that the X in david x. cohen is fraudulent, because cohen had to join the writer’s guild and someone had already taken david s. cohen (which he used during the simpsons). that was really the most interesting thing, but if you don’t believe me, you can check out the rest of the interviews are here: part one and part two.

as if i wasn’t getting dangerously obsessed with futurama as it is, i rented the game yesterday for PS2 and judging by the lack of level advancement last night, either the game is hard or we just suck. there was indeed a lot of plot advancement scenes– a whole 20 minutes worth all together, so it’s like a new episode. the game play is a bit choppy and the animation isn’t as good as the show, which is to be expected, i suppose. fun, though if not frustrating.
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there’s a few dates up at barsuk for death cab for cutie and nada surf, i expect more dates to be announce soon. keep an eye open.

if you’re lucky, you’re in seattle and should go see joel r.l. phelps at the croc tomorrow night. ali’s going. shouldn’t you?
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for those of you who cannot stop wondering when someone’s visiting your site and constantly look at referrer logs to see when the visitor struck, visit no more, because here’s a script that will IM you every time someone comes around. pretty cool, but possibly excessive. you be the judge. via magnetbox.
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i requested leave today. keep your fingers crossed.

a laundry list of excuses why last week’s thursday and friday posts never made it to the internet, and the leftover links:
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last week that album that everyone’s talking about by the blues clues guy came out, as you’ve probably heard you can stream the whole thing over at his site (www.steveswebpage.com). a few points on this: the gratutious name-dropping has gotten annoying and in most cases would be a flagrant foul, but then again, if you’re the blues clues guy and everyone keeps calling you the blues clues guy and you’d rather from now on be known as the flaming lips/blues clues guy, then two points for you. i ultimately think the album is entirely to derivative, the big drums and fuzzy bass wasn’t enough to make up for the weak voice and ho-hum melodies. i’ll pass, but if you’re the “can’t get enough flaming lips, mercury rev, etc. type,” i imagine you wouldn’t be disappointed. in actuality, i’m incredibly torn about this. hell, if you’re not me, you might not be disappointed. what am i even doing here? what–? who the hell are you?! get off my property!
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i was measuring my collection of toys and gadgets to that of gizmodo’s editor rojas, and found i came up more than a little short, but decided to make a serious inquiry into vonage the dsl phone company. aside from making our phone bill cheaper, it would also be sticking it to verizon and their sucky service. i’ll pull that out of the hat at the next meeting, see if it hops.
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a long list of a few shows and free live mp3’s over at binaryops, including elliott smith’s last few performances here in los angeles. the echo spaceland show is a little annoying, what with the fans being embarrassingly overzealous in requests and their overprotective nature of smith. there’s a few new tracks squeeze in there from the 7″ on suicide squeeze, too, give ‘em a listen.
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this article on republicans have “a set of neuroses rooted in ‘fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity’” is pretty funny. bush is considered a textbook case.

on the other hand, kucinich is always screened at airports, because he buys one way tickets. i like his reply when he’s being searched: “i’m running against george bush.”
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i, like collapsing, also enjoyed bob’s mini-essay on p2p file-sharing. now if only other riaa artists would start thinking like this. regardless, it’s not exactly the artists that are in charge of this, am i right? checking the riaa radar, the search results show that the vagrant albums hey mercedes has released are from members of the riaa, so regardless of whether or not bob thinks we should be sued by the riaa (which he doesn’t, obviously), we’re still susceptible to the lawsuits if we’re caught downloading and the riaa chooses to pursue legal action. in any case, it’s seemingly random the way they choose their next target, but i doubt they’re gonna nail your for trading some hey mercedes, i think it’s a qualifier that you have to be listening to bad music to get it.
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—–Original Message—–
From: Logan
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 10:09 AM
To: Tim
Subject: freddy v jason

logan: gonna go this weekend?

tim: ha, no. are you?

hell, no.

i’m gonna go see open range, then grind, then uptown girls, then maybe i’ll catch jason vs. freddy.

did you ever see “fresh”?

no, but it sounds 80’s. also, kc can do westerns, but that’s about it, i think that’s why he’s giving open range a shot, but that line, “peope are gonna die here today…i’m gonna kill ‘em.” puhhhhleeaase.

it was good, but the director seems to have lost his way. he directed remember the titans and now uptown girls.

fresh.

fuck you.


:b:
i been seeing that nissan quest minivan commercial with modest mouse and flipping my lid every time. a fucking minivan?! “ooooooohhhh gotta see, gotta know right now…..” yeah, i remember the coors light commercial, too, which i understand, but picture issac in a minivan yelling into his guitar and fucked up on sumfin’, like coors light. i’m just sayin’.

last thursday my domain expired and i didn’t renew until after it had expired, thus the errors you were getting on friday. why didn’t i renew earlier? because i was broke until after midnight friday, that’s why. of course, that doesn’t explain why i didn’t post on thursday, but i have a good reason for that, too, which brings me to my last point.

recording update: one more song done (unmixed), one more in the process of recording, which should be done in a couple of days, and one more written. at this rate, i will actually at least have enough for a 5-song release, i only need to write one more, which is the hardest part, you know, the writing shit. you know you care.

wha’ happened?! this post is too long, i’m likely to come up empty tomorrow. no, i won’t, for real, come back, i swear you fuckers!