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It’s that time of year again. All the holiday hooplah is mostly over, and it’s time to start thinking about how to better yourself for the coming year. The calendar rolls over and starts back at 01 and you get to hold your head up high and say “this year, I do it better”. Lose weight, get more done, etc. This year is no different for me, and while I wouldn’t exactly say I have the resolve to fulfill my resolutions (after all, I have a miserable track record), I’m still going on ahead and declaring my list of To Do Betters.

• This year, I hope to lose 30 pounds. Seems everyone’s doing it, so why not me?
• Be more active on this blog. I think I went this whole year without posting anything…
• Finish all the projects I’ve started. This is a life long struggle for me.
• Be more productive at home and at work.

Sounds simple enough now that it’s in text. Come February, though, I’m sure it’ll be hard to even remember that I said to myself I’d do these things.

No one likes barking dogs, not even myself. If one is going to complain about said canines, my suggestion is to extend the common courtesy of leaving a note if you’re too sissy to talk about it face to face before you make that call to the police.  If nothing else, it gives me the chance to fix it before wasting our collective dollars on police visits.

One has to wonder if that wouldn’t go on Stuff White People Like, being passive aggressive and/or facelessly complaining without having to own your complaint.  Who knows, it might already be so.

Wikis are so great. I like Anatomy of a Ghost but not nearly as much as the author of aforelinked wiki article.

Anatomy of a Ghost, originally from Wasilla, Alaska, moved to Portland, Oregon where they gained notoriety. The Ghost recorded a full-length CD titled “Evanesce” for release May 2003.
Anatomy of a Ghost, while writing & recording creative progressive post-hardcore music (in the vein of Thrice and Coheed and Cambria), have developed a stage presence that is unparallel in the Pacific NW. Their shows began energetic and lively and have progressed into powerful, chaotic events that show goers talk about for days following the show. Their music is difficult to categorize: there are quiet moments of profound beauty amid the ferocious hardcore attack, elements of sugary pop buried beneath walls of guitar, and progressive metal/punk that provides a roller coaster of sounds and emotions. The sound-track to a post-everything world. There is a washed-out chalk line between decay and beauty within their songs, both disturbing and comforting.
They have seen enormous global response from their pre-production demo tracks on mp3.com. 20,000 plays in 4 months has led to interviews with zines from Netherlands, Great Britain, and Germany.
Singer/lyricist John Gourley has crafted a lush, intelligent storyline that weaves a web of wounded alienation and inner turmoil throughout the songs. Every detail is noticed and all vulnerabilities exposed… a masterwork of inner dialogue. The rhythm section of drummer Nick Simon and bassist Zach Carothers provides the pulse for this musical landscape. They shift from an ugly, brute force to rolling grooves and back again before the listener has had a chance to catch a breath: an unsettling rhythm attack. And then the chaos. Guitarists Joe Simon and Dewey Halpaus destroy all preconceived notions of what guitar interplay can and should be.
Combining moments of haunting simplicity with waves of crushing noise, timeless, pop-inflected riffing, the listener is sucked into a wall of noise that is startling and unforgettable. Anatomy of a Ghost is poised and destined to change minds about what rock and roll can and should be.

Anatomy of a Ghost disbanded in 2004, but it’s not completely over. John, Zach and Wes have a new project that they are working on called Portugal. The Man.

It’s great when one doesn’t even pretend to have an objective viewpoint.  It only gets in the way anyhow.

P.S. I’ve left it formatted the way it was on the page.

Today is indeed a red letter day.

I finally finished putting the final touches on my winter bike and took it for a spin. It rode well. I celebrated after my first bike ride by opening my cheap bottle of wine and drinking it out of a Dixie cup. I’m so Valley.

Liquor store conversations are the best. Here’s one that happened to me today. The scene: I’m looking for a cheap bottle of wine. I walk in and there’s one on the rack for five bucks. Decent price. I grab it.

Cashier: “Wow, that was fast”. Translation: I think you might be a wino. CONFIRM/DENY.
Me: “Well, the price can’t be beat”. Translation: I am indeed a wino.
Cashier: “That’s true”. Translation: I thought so.

Last night while chilling, Rachel sang a song to me about our forthcoming baby Josephine. It sounded really good and when Rachel said she needed to learn the last line I replied that she should because it’s a great song. Rachel then asked me to help her finish the song. I didn’t know what she meant so she explained that she had made the song up. I was really impressed because it sounded like something I heard somewhere once upon a time. Rachel finished the last line here although I think there’s plenty of room for more.

Josephine Jellybean, had a flying machine and where did Josephine go?
She went to the sea, with the help of the bees, and now has pollen all over her nose!

Josephine Jellybean, had a riding machine and where did Josephine go?
She went to the clouds and sings out aloud, a song that nobody knows!

Josephine Jellybean had a diving machine and where did Josephine go?
She went to a land and sought out a man, who danced on top of her toes!

Oh Josephine, Josephine, our little Jellybean, when will she please come home?
She’ll come back around, with a pig and a crown, and a clovers all over her clothes

Possible inspiration: “Come Josephine, in my flying machine …. “

waking up feeling healthy.

A number of years ago, one of my friends used to work for a Ford dealership.  He turned a wrench for them and for the most part, he loved his job.  One of the things that really got under his skin was Ford’s business model of, “scheduled maintenance”.  This wasn’t the kind of scheduled maintenance one might imagine where one looks at their meter and recognizes that it’s been sixty thousand miles since their last oil change.  This was closer to, “planned failure” than “scheduled maintenance”.  After working there for a few years, if you told him the make, model, and year you purchased the car he could tell you within a couple of weeks what would fail and when.  When I asked him what kinds of things led to these failures, he rattled off a lot of items but one that stuck out in my head was uneven gaskets.  An uneven gasket led to uneven pressure along the edge which led to catastophic failure (blowing a gasket).  He had mentioned he had been looking for another job for some time.  The next time I saw him, he announced he had gotten a new job and was way happier.  For whom did he work for now?  Toyota.

MyQuire has been acquired.  Mission accomplished.

My beef with Christianity is hardly new and definitely unoriginal.  You know, something along the lines of complete disregard for Christ’s teachings except for the members of their direct community (or if one is lucky, their extended communities), a focus on the so-called “Pauline” teachings, and a heavy dose of Old Testament thrown in.  Basically the sort of crimes you find human committing against each other with or without religion only in this case, it’s complete with the primitive form of thinking that one’s deity is on their side and so it’s okay what they’re about to do.

My friend Eric posted this link and I found the page therein partly refreshing.  I really liked the front page.  The graphic posted there just made me really happy.  It’s not that I doubted there were Christians (I wouldn’t call myself one *gasp*) out there that were aware of the really terrible things that have been done and are still being done in God’s name but that they can also put up a graphic and get attention for it.  Yet another reason why the internet is mostly pretty sweet.