Tub Ring

Ok, so it is well known that they are amongst my favorite bands, and I finally got a chance to see them play live this weekend. Most excellent show.

Haven't found any footage from the show I was at posted yet (and there were people filming), but this clip is from the night before.



I had a blast. Manya and I only lightly tormented the merch guys (who were edging towards going drag about halfway through the night), but were both totally wiped after the Tub Ring set. Fled before the headliner came on.

Next time they're in this area, I'll have to bring my own camera. They're easy enough to find that I can probably get one of them on film explaining why it's ok for me to talk about them (hey, smaller bands need all the promotion they can get, right?)

And yes, I put Working Class Rock Star into my NetFlix queue.

My weekend so far...

Wednesday: massive cleaning.

Thursday: thanksgiving.

Friday: met up with friends. Photographic evidence suggests it was a long week for the nice lady friend.


Saturday: Tub Ring


Planned for sunday. Sleep and catching up on some projects.

Next weekend may be even busier. Yow.

Please read this now.

I'm giving myself a one week moratorium on how I plan on acting upon it, but I figure it's good to get the information out, get conversations rolling, and act rationally.

Thus, go and read Groklaw's account of the potential fallout from the Lori Drew case

Economic Angst

Bailout(s) got you upset? Black Friday tramplings not enough?

How about something more shameless, this season's new decor presumably for the 'tweens, rethinking the piggy bank:

(Contexts.org via BoingBoing)

And when I said morning...

I meant continuously hitting the snooze button until I finally convinced myself to get out of bed at 1:30.

And so now to the coffee and then picking up my nice lady friend at 5...

Buy Nothing Day

Not actively participating this year. Probably coffee in the morning and dinner later on. Definitely not lining up in front of some store to buy merchandise that seems a lot more like shovelware this year.

Better, more coherent thoughts on the subject can be seen over here (courtesy of Consumatron), extra bonus read is his thoughts on it from last year

This year has done a lot to show us why BND might still have something to offer you, and I thank you for reading this far.

So let me reward you with this handy screen grab suggesting my local paper just doesn't get it:

Tam, River

swiped from jwz

I'm not sure I would call it a success.

Today's song

Deflation

So this article spells it out better than most, but I'm still a little confused.

Could somebody give me a better idea why deflation is a bad thing? Feel free to use analogies as necessary, but please, refrain from any appeal to authority, even a basic one like "everyone knows deflation would be horrible."

I'm curious, because I'm sort of a cash & carry sort of guy. My savings aren't huge, but they're still ahead of my debt, so I'm trying to get a better handle on why this is always viewed with such stigma.

Godspeed, Senator Tubes.

May your retirement be rewarding. Provided the appeals process goes well, or you get a friendly cellmate.

Dr. Steel

Oh, right, the fires.

Just to give you an idea of how crazy things got around these parts...

I took this picture at 1:12pm saturday, facing east.


Turning left to the north, a moment later:


Went into the comic shop for 20 minutes or so. Came out, took this picture (for reference, in the former, you can see the "rner" of the Time Warner Cable office at the corner of the building that's just right of Comics Unlimited.


And more...


And more...


And more...


By the time we'd gotten across the shopping center to go into Target, this was all the blue sky that was left

Feline Freak-out

For reasons I do not understand, my cat flipped out yesterday. I have a reliable eyewitness that can confirm that I wasn't tormenting her. I reached over and scratched her back, and she went apeshit.

The puncture wounds in the photo was what she did with her teeth. The other side of my hand has the effects of the claws.

She never goes outside, so I'm not off to get rabies inoculations yet, but it's got my noodle tangled trying to figure out what happened.

Angry. Again, but less so.

So you might've read this thing I wrote last month, and it seems that the meme has spread.

Ars Technica reports on the idea that efficiency is being seen as well...efficient, though it still comes across as rather renegade thought.

In the bigger picture, I like the idea of a free market, but in my mind, a completely free market would require that all other things are equal. That knowledge for buyers and sellers is immediate and accurate. That external pressures are nonexistent. Great on paper, but not always so practical.

I'm glad that there are businesses that are learning that cutting costs doesn't always mean "layoffs first".

It's a start.

By about page 3 of the article, they're leaning towards "But don't hold your breath."

I'm not, it's just nice to see that it's getting a little more awareness outside of the usual.

ok, maybe I need to back off from the electronic music.

I was watching videos of the nearby fires, and an encoding error caused this one to glitch out.

Which was strangely more interesting than watching the other clips.

song stuck in head...

Redemption Song - Joe Strummer

A song written by a man that is gone, played by a man that is gone.

Happiness through simplicity.

I didn't do any research to see if there's some greater reason to hate the Globetrotters, but sometimes, it's just silly things like this that are enough to get over a minor funk.

So I turn to cartoons:

Sigh...

What a fine country we live in.

Where children chant "Assasinate Obama"

Where a Roman Catholic priest warns his congregation not to take communion if they voted for Obama until they've done pennance (because Obama's pro-choice)

Where people try to incinerate their families, the term "Incest Father" barely even seems shocking anymore, and kids keep killing each other

Sigh.

On the bright side, it's looking like Senator Tubes might not win after all.

A side effect of fall

I know the TV thing these days is big into serialized dramas. 24, Lost, Heroes, BSG, etc.

But they still haven't gotten the market on weird cornered the way Lynch did in 1990, and damn if it doesn't feel like the time of year to watch it.

I get the urge to watch Twin Peaks.

Maybe I'll do a marathon of it this time.

Of course, I'll be basically incompatible with social interaction for a few days after. I get that way when I watch too much of anything at once.

A little evening music..

Underworld |MTV Music

So this is pretty much how my day felt...

ugh.

Some people say to me "Hey, are you into World of Warcraft?"


I should start responding with "I've got standards."

I'm not a terribly religious man...

I have my beliefs. One of them is in a higher power with a sense of humor.

Somehow, an article titled: Holocaust survivors to Mormons: Stop baptisms of dead Jews just seems like a level of absurdity that mere jokes wouldn't be able to capture.

But, if you want to try, the comments section is open.

From 2005...

Pres. Obama introduces us to his new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel

Something To Think About.

Favorites.

Every once in a while somebody asks me who my favorite author is, or my favorite movie, or my favorite food, or whatnot.

I usually dodge the question because I don't have many favorites, and the ones I internally think of, well, it's complicated (my favorite author writes books that I struggle to read, usually spending most of the time trudging through, but when the payoff happens, it's so good I forget the beginning drudgery.)

My base state is that life is too complex to have many favorites, but I got to thinking about it a little bit ago, and I'm willing to state my favorite album. "Disintegration" by The Cure. I can't say I care much about them as a band, I'm surprised they're still doing their thing. I have little interest in their larger body of work.

But put in the context of "Stuck on a desert island, you can only listen to this one thing", it'd be the one I'd take with me.

The Cure |MTV Music

alright, I went too far.

I probably shouldn't have dropped the f-bomb a few times. I probably shouldn't have referred to people that were excited by his ideas as shitheads.



I watched another in the spirit of being reasoned, thoughtful in my response, and I realized that I didn't appropriately recognize the tactics he was portraying. It's like a bad infomercial, stealing the style of a certain cable-news pundit (minus the triggered sound effects), appealing to an underdog spirit that if you watch his routine, that you're fighting against the status quo.

Look, I think the internet has opened up larger audiences for anyone that wants to be heard. You're reading this, right?

I'll leave it that. I might watch a few more of these things to see if he gets frenetic enough to invoke an aneurysm, but the thing I should've said instead of getting caught up in the emotion of it....caveat emptor. (watch for the air quotes)

oh, you have got to be kidding me.

I just watched a little video from a guy named Gary Vaynerchuk.



Either I'm too tired to get his point, or this guy epitomizes the same values that makes me hate spammers, product placement on television/cinema/pop music, all the shitheads on myspace/facebook/whatever that keep sending me crap about how important your brand is and how they've got a blog/meetup/pyramid scheme/conference/fleecing that I need to become a part of to understand the importance of myspace/facebook/whatever (or more often, how it'll teach me the importance of blog/meetup/pyramid scheme/conference/fleecing/whatever)

My usual stance on these things is to say that I'll give it another chance. Watch it again when I'm not so tired.

But no, just this once, I'm going to roll with it.

Fuck you, Gary.

I do not need more advertisements in my life telling me the importance of vitamin water or red bull or cracker jacks or ketchup. I do not need more spam from people that I know telling me how important their life's work keeping a livejournal is. I do not to be goaded into thinking "Oh, I could be smarter than those short-sighted executives that are working for their next bonus instead of promoting their brand."

Fuck you. Fuck the next generation of spammers you're programming.

At some point in the future, I am going to die. Chances are good that history is going to forget me. Chances are good that you'll hold on to the historic significance of Jay Van Andel or Rich DeVos. Great to the true believers, but absolute garbage to the "Shit, you're really going to try to push that Amway bullshit on me again? Why do I invite you over?" crowd.

But what's really brilliant about my plan is that my friends are my friends. They aren't customers to me. They aren't consumers of my product. They're human beings, they're people I care about, and I hope that I'm living my life in such a way that I don't have to constantly sell them the idea that I'm worth talking or listening to.

so...damn...tired...

alright, so the election has come and gone, and there have been good moments (electing the smart guy) and bad moments (californee deciding some people are more equal than others), but either way, I'm burnt out.



I've read too much, I think. I am beginning the great purge of my RSS reader now.

Can I ask you a favor?

As someone living in the US, I am immensely thankful for everyone that's gotten involved in this year's election, whether they've volunteered their time for a campaign, or have informally just talked to people they know about issues they care about, to people that have stepped up to the duties of helping the process succeed in the next dozen hours (the precinct workers, the observers, everyone.)

Thank you. We can disagree on the specifics, but I'm truly glad to know that there are people that care enough to put in the time and effort they do.

And for everyone, please, if you haven't already made your feelings heard through early voting or absentee ballot, get out there and vote today. Please.

-transiit

Ok, I'm sorry.

For anyone that put up with yesterday's Bon Jovi clip, let me make it up to you.

Sorry, no explanation given.