I went and joined a darts league tonight. It's at a bar that a friend of mine bartends at occasionally, and when I was out there last wednesday we were invited to join the league as B players. A night's round consists of two pairs (one A, one B) playing four games of 501 and three games of cricket. I didn't do too badly, if I do say so myself. We won three of the four games of 501, and two of the three games of cricket. I even closed out two of the games of 501 that we won and one of the two cricket games we won. (Two bulls in a row on that one...)

I have to say, I'm a big fan of sports that you can drink and smoke while playing. Bowling I could still get into, but don't make it out to play much. I've decided that I'm just no good at pool. That leaves darts, and I think I actually could get decent at that. This should help.

The league is going to be running for the next fifteen weeks, so I'll keep you posted on when we finish it off. Should be fun. Damn it is smoky in there, though. I can still smell it now sitting downstairs in the computer room.

It's nice that I can still get my nicotine fix without having to smoke. There's plenty of secondhand in there for me... I have made it over a month now without a cigarette. Yay for me.

The Royals are undefeated!

Hey, that rocks. I got a link (well, one of many) from Kuro5hin over the weekend. They decided to run a quick story on the history of cigarette advertising, and found the scans I did of the ads from my old roommate's old Popular Mechanics.

Not quite an Instalanche, but I'll take it. Thanks for letting me destroy your vintage PM's, Phildo...

I originally posted this last friday, but pulled the link when I noticed that he was still in alpha test and asked people not to link him. He's in official beta now, so go buy some shares in your favorite weblog. (Shares in Gimpysoft should be available soon.)

-----

Over at Michele's place I found a link to Blogshares, where you can buy and sell shares in your favorite weblogs.

I used to do something similar at a place called "Rogue Market" back in 1997 or 1998. On that one, you bought and sold shares in celebrities and the prices were just based on market activity. I haven't read the manual for blogshares yet, but it looks like valuation for the weblogs is based on incoming and outgoing links. My outgoing links are currently worth $24.73.

With my initial money, I bought all the outstanding shares of The Flangy News. His shares were at $0.01, and he linked my site once. Since I own over 50% of his shares, does that mean I get to post to his site now?

I also bought a couple hundred shares of Juan Gato. His posting has been somewhat light lately, so I bet he's undervalued and due for a big increase in share value.

I haven't hit the threshold value of $1000 to have my IPO (I'm currently only worth $221.51), but since I've claimed my blog, I'll be listed anyway once they re-index my site.

Well, I have another $192.71 in cash to invest. I think I may have to diversify a bit with some Atrios...

For those interested in investment tips, my portfolio can be found here.

-----

A lot of improvements came in over the weekend. Check it out...

It really is very rare that I remember any of my dreams, and even more rare that I remember two dreams in a row...

Over in the Dreamlog...

Since when did Yahoo! start reprinting articles from the Weekly World News?

You are so naive. I bet you actually believe that this war is about "freedom". Or "terrorism". Or "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Or "Oil".

We all know it's actually about CDMA...

Gimpysoft is a Tofu-Eating Sniper Monkey with a Battle Rating of 4.1.
Unleash your own Food-Eating Battle Monkey.

James Lileks comments on war coverage:

I’ve kept track of the war via the radio and the web. Radio gives you the news of the moment; the web gives you detail and commentary. TV is useful for pictures - I get the feeling sometimes this should be called Operation Stock Footage - and it’s useful for seeing retired military people draw lines on maps. I am heartened by the maps that show where our troops are located - if the pictures are indeed drawn to scale, we have three soldiers on the ground, and each is about 135 miles tall; they have at their disposal four tanks, each of which is the size of Rhode Island.

Ah, but on whose side will the Dalai Lama enter?

Oh yeah, they're cute and all, but would you really want one living in your home? I know I wouldn't...

Judging from the cooing at a demonstration of Sony Corp.'s diminutive SDR robot, few would dispute just how cute the humanoid machine is. Its creator Masahiro Fujita, who called it "him" instead of "it," seemed to feel genuinely guilty as he pushed it over to show how easily it gets back up.

"I don't like this," he said.

"And I will have my revenge..."

Don't miss this Tim Cavanaugh story on Al Jazeera.

Myself, I haven't been watching much TV news. The little that I had been watching wasn't great, and I found myself wishing more than once that my cable system carried Al Jazeera, just so I could see what the coverage was like elsewhere.

(via Mr. Welch, who really needs to start pinging blo.gs so I know when he updates his site...)

In case you didn't click through the link over at Burnt Ends, the listing for Bill Esrey's house can be found here.

I'd have to guess that some folks further south would dispute Jane and Michael Stern's choice of Stroud's in Kansas City, MO as the World's Best Fried Chicken.

I haven't eaten there myself, but I'll definitely give it a shot now. I wonder if it's better than AQ...

There's a spiffy new look today over at the Central Plains Jambase Society. Nice work, guys!

It kind of pisses me off that I pay more in homeowner's association dues than Bill Esrey.

Last night was my last night of Steve Kimock Band shows for this tour. I caught Friday and Saturday's shows at Chester's Place down in Fayetteville, and last night caught the show at Liberty Hall over in Lawrence.

I've said before that I don't plan on missing any more Kimock shows at Chester's, but I think I'm getting to the point where I'd really rather just skip all shows that aren't at Chester's. The difference is really striking. Saturday's show at Chester's opened up with a beautiful Cole's Law, a song with a very quiet opening. I'd like to say that I've never heard a crowd so quiet and respectful, but I've been to shows at Chester's before, so that would be a lie. You couldn't hear anybody talking... The only sound was Steve's guitar and the occasional ringing of a cash register far in the back.

What we ended up getting out of those shows was the best I've seen out of that band in years. Again though, I haven't been to a show at Chester's in years either. That place is just magical.

Last night's show on the other hand was a bit weak, I thought. The transitions were sloppy, the band didn't really seem too into it, and the crowd was very noisy. I heard people try to shush the crowd several times at quiet moments. I didn't see nearly enough "Shut Up And Dance" stickers out last night. The sticker crew should have been a bit more proactive.

Alas, I am getting old, though. I didn't make it completely through any of the three shows I attended. Friday night I pooped out about halfway through the second set. I didn't get good sleep Friday night, so I didn't even make it past set break on Saturday night. I decided to take off at set break last night too, less because I was tired than because I have to work today. Oh well, such is life.

Not much for music coming up, at least not that I'm going to go to. An Irish band called The Clumsy Lovers is going to be in town this Thursday night, and I may go see that. I'll definitely be catching Big Smith next Friday, but I think I'll skip both the Drums & Tuba and Keller Williams shows next Wednesday.

Two weekends out of town have left me fiscally drained. Time to replenish the bank account over the next couple of weeks, so I guess that involves staying in town and going to places where the beer is cheap. Maybe I need to throw a party... I can do that on the cheap...

Vicky points out a survey on what the average Brit does while driving.

Now I suppose that burgers are a more of an American type of deal, but really... Are we actually supposed to believe that more Britons have received oral sex in their car (one in two) than have eaten a burger (four in ten)? Yikes.

How lame do you have to be to be booed by a group of Hollywood celebrities for criticizing the president?

Pretty lame, apparently...

See you at Chester's tonight...

I wasn't aware that this was going on, but apparently Perry Farrell has decided to bring back Lollapalooza this year. The lineup is acceptable, including Jane's Addiction, Audioslave, Incubus and Jurassic 5. I could see going if it isn't too expensive. Jurassic 5 puts on a great live show, and I really enjoyed Jane's Addiction when they did their reunion tour several years ago.

Dates here.

Since to my knowledge I've been wrong every time I've made a prediction about anything of this nature, I would like to declare now for the record that I believe that the tape of Saddam that was aired yesterday is authentic and Saddam is still alive.

According to the Official Iraqi News Agency, there isn't much news from Iraq these days...

I have nothing to say about any of this. I actually don't really feel like paying attention, but that isn't stopping me from reloading CNN's front page every twenty minutes or so.

Last night I tried to avoid war coverage by heading out to a bar with the special-lady and some friends. The bar we ended up at was a sports bar where you could see at least two TVs whichever direction you looked. So we'd be chatting and then you'd see some anti-aircraft going off over somebody's shoulder. We tried not to talk about the little war, but conversation invariably drifted back there. When Bush came on to make his speech, they cut the bar's sound system over to that away from the (surprisingly good) music they had been playing. Oh well...

I got home at a decent hour and listened to some radio coverage while I was trying to get to sleep. I did manage to get to sleep, but woke up at 3:30 and was unable to fall back asleep for almost another hour. That was odd. I just wasn't tired, and actually considered getting up and just coming in to work very, very early.

Well, racquetball tonight and then I need to get directly to sleep. Heading out at lunchtime for Fayetteville to catch an abbreviated two nights of the Steve Kimock Band. I will (probably) be heading back Sunday... After talking to some locals a couple of days ago I've heard that the entire weekend is sold out. That's good... It'll make it a bit easier for me to unload my ticket for Sunday night. (And if anybody wants that ticket email me...

Well, if interested in catching a bit, the happy hour set from 7:00-8:00 on Friday night isn't pre-sold, and if I remember right it's only a buck.

And no TVs at Chester's. Well, there are TVs, but I bet they'll be turned off.

Most of my (four) readers don't read all the political blogs, so they probably don't know about Salam Pax, the (maybe) Baghdad Blogger.

Yes, there are questions as to his authenticity, but it is an interesting read nevertheless.

All this food-related political nonsense is quickly getting to the point where it should just be ignored, but I can't help but to link to this story of French retaliation on the food front...

What do you know? The Gourds are in town this Thursday. Do I really need to go to concerts four nights in a row? Can I really afford it? At least Kimock for this weekend is paid for...

I hear that Bush made some sort of speech last night. I couldn't be bothered to listen since I was out doing the St. Patrick's Day thing with my lady-friend. I do need to keep my priorities in order.

We went out to Molloy Brothers Irish Pub first to catch The Elders. It was very busy when we got out there, so we waited for a bit then decided to grab a bite to eat and head up to Weston and go to O'Malley's Pub. Now that's a pretty cool place. I had been out there once before for last year's Irish festival. At that time, the parking lot was shut down and filled with seats, and was fairly full of people.

I saw O'Malley's there, but didn't bother even trying to go in since the bulding was so damn small. What I didn't know was that 90% of the pub is actually underground. It's built into an old winery, and there are three levels you can sit in. We spent most of the night in the lower level watching some music. Tullamore was there first, and they were pretty good. We'll have to go see them again sometime. Bob Reeder played next and we caught a fair amount of his set.

We both succumbed to old age though... We ended up heading out relatively early. I was home before midnight. I turned on the news briefly and saw a bit of Bush making his speech with the sound off. I didn't hear the speech, but he had that creepy I'm In The Clutches Of Satan empty look on his face. He seems to get that when he's making important speeches like this. It freaks me out.

Well, I suppose the missiles will be flying by the end of the week. Here's to hoping that:

A. As many Iraqi troops as possible surrender so we won't have to kill them. They're probably conscripts and don't particularly want to die for Saddam.

B. Saddam doesn't do anything stupid like gassing civilians as he falls from power.

C. As many of our troops as possible make it home safely.

I like the fact that you can vote on ratings for shows at Archive.org's Audio Archive, but the system isn't quite as useful as I think it ought to be. Personally, I'd like to see two things:

First, change the rating system from a single 1-5 star rating to a two dimension rating system. Have one rating for the quality of the recording and a second for the quality of the music. I suppose that that is sort of what Dankseeds was trying to do, but they only seem to rate recording quality, without making any judgements with respect to the quality of the performance. I'd like to see people who know a band rate tonight's show versus last nights. I get that on mailing lists for a few bands, but it's tougher pick a show to listen to when I'm looking to download something by somebody I'm not very familiar with.

Also, the rating system doesn't really work when you give every show five stars... I swear, probably 90% of the stuff out there that's been rated was given five stars. Don't be afraid to give a hit to a show if it's not a very good recording or if the band was having an off night...

?

Found over at Andrea's Place...

You will drink too much gin. Not the worst way to
die, but you won't remember too much of your
life. Hey, at least you made some people laugh!


What horrible Edward Gorey Death will you die?

brought to you by Quizilla

Spot-On...

Surprised I hadn't mentioned it? Well, I just don't want to torture myself...

My flight back from Dallas didn't get in until after 11:00 and I wasn't home until midnight last night, so I missed the first part of Sci-Fi's new Children of Dune miniseries. I'll miss tonight's repeat and new installment too since it's St. Patrick's Day and I feel an obligation to go out drinking. I'll have to free up some hard drive space and record it since it looks like this is the last time they're going to be showing part 1 until next Sunday, when they'll show all three back to back. I'll be in Arkansas watching Kimock then...

So those of you who did watch it, was it any good? To get your frame of reference, what were your thoughts on the first Sci-Fi miniseries? Hell, I have a lot of TV to catch up on this week. Since I was on the plane, I missed this week's Six Feet Under too. Damn me and my vacations!

Have a good weekend everybody...

People having dreams about me is not a phenomenon with which I have much experience.

Nor do I have much experience with elevator engineering. I wish I did, though... One of the elevators here in the office has an alarm bell that buzzes loudly when the door is closing. It's pretty damn annoying.

I head to Fark for most of my photoshop contest needs, but I know that other places do it as well. Gurney just forwarded me to a site that does nothing but photoshops, Worth1000.com.

There's some pretty good stuff in there...

Well, I prefer to think of the Universe as just like StarCon, but I suppose that the idea's the same either way...

I still find it amazing that whatever old video game reference I pull out of my ass, there's a web page out there dedicated to it. With news from freakin' yesterday, no less...

I went and saw The Pianist last night. Overall it was a very good movie. My only complaint is that it was a bit slow in the middle. And that I wasn't particularly in the mood for a depressing Polish ghetto movie last night. I guess that's my fault, though...

It was briefly mildly amusing when that restaurant changed the name of their French Fries to Freedom Fries. But only mildly amusing. And only for a very, very short period of time. Then it was just dumb.

Dumb? Count me in! Fucking congressmen... Just get a load of that deadly serious expression on his face as he deals with the pressing matters of our time.

Yes, I thought that Sunday's Simpsons was one of the best in a long time. I was laughing so hard during the cutaway to Fox News that I missed most of the scroll along the bottom of the screen. Luckily, Mike has it up on his site.

I thought I had heard that we had military trained dolphins, but this is the first I've heard of attack Sea Lions.

The specially trained mammals have been deployed to the region to protect US and British warships against attacks from underwater saboteurs and mines.

These whiskered warriors are even capable of clamping a floating marker to the legs of an intruder, alerting troops to his position, who can then move in and haul the attacker out of the water.

Of course, PETA does not approve.

While I'm on the subject, I'd like to quickly throw out my list of people and organizations that should just be ignored, as that's the only way they're ever going to go away:

PETA
Mark Morford
Naked Protesters (Unless they're cute)
Ann Coulter

Thank you, your cooperation would be appreciated. I promise, none of these will ever be mentioned on here again. (Other than cute naked protesters.)

I got a subscription to Gourmet Magazine for Christmas, but I hadn't tried any of the recipes until last night. The most recent issue that came was a Rome themed issue, and included a recipe for Beef Rolls with Parmesan, Pine Nuts, Olives and Capers. I honestly haven't had anything with Capers before that I liked, but this one finally did it for me.

It wasn't too difficult to make, either, and I don't even have a food processor.

Of course, I would have to encourage the download of an mp3 from my site the one day that I leave Furthur running at home chewing up all my upstream bandwidth...

I noticed the other day that I have about a billion different versions of the gospel classic "I'll Fly Away" recorded by various artists. Since I haven't done anything gimmicky on here in quite a while (almost a week!) I figured I'd make a theme of it and post one every day this week.

We start today with Bob Marley and the Wailers, recorded October 31, 1973 at The Record Plant in Sausalito, CA. Setlist.com claims the name of this song as "Rastaman Chant", but it has includes a verse or so of I'll Fly Away, so it's close enough for my purposes. Enjoy, and check back tomorrow for the next...

Bob Marley and the Wailers - Rastaman Chant

"Happened" has one N.
"Occurred" has two Rs.

I can never keep those straight...

You know, the guys on Fox News Sunday had a good laugh about this story, too. I didn't find it particularly amusing then either...

Apparently some British troops were conducting live-fire exercises in Kuwait when some Iraqi soldiers crossed the border and attempted to surrender. The troops sent them back into Iraq telling them it was too early for that... They'd have to wait for the war to start.

Well first of all, I can't imagine that anything good happened to these soldiers upon their return to Iraq. Most likely they're dead now. On top of that, wouldn't it have been a good idea to accept their surrender and get a bit of information about Iraqi forces or plans?

Well, I got the ever elusive second date last weekend. Well, I'd have to call it a 1 1/2th date I suppose. Last Tuesday was supposed to be a group outing, but due to inclement weather none of my lady-friend's pals showed up and it ended up being just the two of us out that night, so it was a de facto sort of date. We made plans for Saturday that night... She wasn't supposed to be free Saturday night, so we were originally planning on an afternoon movie. It turns out she had some dates wrong, so she actually had the evening free.

We went and caught The Life of David Gale. It was all right, but nothing to write home about. After the movie, we went and caught Drums & Tuba. Now they're probably the second weirdest band that I'm into (behind Tortoise, I suppose). The fact that she was willing to come out to the show and didn't look bored out of her mind was a good sign. The band didn't go on until after midnight, though. By 1:30 we were starting to drag a bit, so we didn't catch the whole show.

Surprisingly, she is still answering my phone calls and continuing to make plans with me. Good news so far. I'm out of town for the next couple weekends, so nothing but mid-week happy hours for a while. Nothing wrong with that, though...

Well, they gave out some weblog awards over the weekend. Blogcritics won for Best Weblog About Music. I'd like to think that it was my two wonderful posts that pushed it over the top.

Actually, it's probably my lack of posting over the last six months that helped to keep the overall quality of the site up last year.

One other thing, though. I'm sure I'm not the first person to bitch, but I didn't surf too much over the weekend, so I'll show up late to the party again. Fark for Best Political Weblog? Huh?

More Bonnaroo artists have been announced. Some that I'm excited about include Alison Krauss & Union Station, The Flaming Lips, and Leo Kottke. Still notably missing is any Les Claypool project (I'm hoping for Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains, myself...), and any Trey Anastasio related deal.

People are not counting on Phish showing up, but a lot of people seem to think that the Trey Anastasio Band will make it out again.

Back in the good old C=64 days, I used to play the hell out of Jumpman. Well, I just found The Jumpman Lounge, a shrine to Randy Glover's classic game.

You can also download a copy of "Jumpman Lives!", which I haven't checked out yet. They also have a full list of all sequels and ports. I thought I was the only person who played this game... It even has solutions to difficult levels, including Grand Puzzle III, which I believe I never made it past.

Does anybody need 512MB of Generic PC-2700 DDR RAM? I bought the wrong crap, and can't return it unless I pay a 20% restock fee. Anybody want to buy it cheap? Email me if interested...

Kaante is out on DVD soon...

Well, I've tried to sum up my feelings towards war in Iraq about four times in the last couple of months. I usually write a long post, try to edit it for clarity, feel dumb, then leave it in "draft" form and it never makes it onto the page.

I did it again this morning, and the result is that incoherent mess that follows this post. But, since Matt is specifically requesting such thoughts, I figured I'd let this one onto the page.

I'll just have to make sure to post a ton of fluff over the next couple of days to get this to scroll well away from the top of this site.

Any of my loyal readers have thoughts on the war? Or are you blissfully ignoring it? I should start doing that...

The one thing that really stuck with me about last night's press conference was definitely not a positive. He claimed outright that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons and that he is moving them around to evade the inspectors. He said:

Iraqi operatives continue to hide biological and chemical agents to avoid detection by inspectors.

In some cases, these materials have been moved to different locations every 12 to 24 hours or placed in vehicles that are in residential neighborhoods.

We've made these sorts of claims in the past as well. So far, the evidence we've presented to support these claims has been pretty pitiful.

I guess this is what has me so conflicted about this whole Iraq thing. Since the beginning, I'd have to say that my attitude has been one of hesitant trust in Bush. I support a war against Saddam mainly because I'd like to see Saddam gone and the people of Iraq no longer have to live under his thumb. If I was living under a repressive government like that, I would welcome outside intervention. It makes me literally sick to my stomach to hear people say either that it's "up to the Iraqi people to decide" whether they want Saddam, or that "Iraq is a sovereign nation" and we can't interfere in their affairs. When the Iraqi people decide that they don't want to live under Saddam, he obliges them by gassing their villages or chucking them in a vat of acid. The world will be better with him gone.

Or are those lies? I don't think so, but I think that these millions of people that don't support the war think that they might be. They simply don't trust Bush. And I suppose that's somewhat understandable. They've been less than forthcoming on some domestic issues. Cheney never did say who helped him out on his little energy task force. Enron still smells fishy. I at least am willing to hold my nose and support the president, as I think foreign policy really trumps all that crap these days. Also, I don't think this is just about oil. It is impossible to deny that that is part of it, but I intuitively don't believe that we're going to occupy Iraq for the forseeable future and sell all their crude to Exxon at a discount.

I think that's the difference between us more-or-less pro-war folks and the anti-types, though. They don't trust Bush, we still do. I also have to admit that he's done little to earn that trust, at least when it comes to Iraq. I think that Iraq probably does have chemical and biological weapons. However, I don't think that we actually have evidence to support Bush's claims that they're being "moved to different locations every 12 to 24 hours" or that they're being stored in vehicles in residential neighborhoods. If we have this evidence, why don't we show it to the world? Why don't we share it with the inspectors?

Yes, yes... I know the arguments. The inspectors see it as their job primarily to avert a war rather than to achieve disarmament. If we share intelligence with them, they may leak it to the Iraqis to avoid a confrontation that would lead to war. I somewhat buy this argument, but not entirely. Regardless, if that's why we're not sharing, couldn't we document the sharing of the intelligence, document Iraq's reaction, and present that as evidence that the inspections aren't working?

Maybe we don't want to present the evidence because we don't want to compromise sources. This may have worked in the past, but I don't think this works any more. We're weeks away at the most from removing Saddam to power. If we have sources in Iraq that could be compromised by going public with their information, we could warn them to go into hiding for a while as the cavalry is on the way. I don't know. Maybe it's not that simple.

It's just that the public and world opinion that could be gained by going public with this information if we actually had it is so great that I really can't come up with any good reason that we haven't gone public with it. Which leads me to believe that Bush is lying. That we don't actually have hard evidence to support his claims. If he's lying about this, what else is he lying about?

But I don't know... Still, I support the war. I just wish the dimlomatic effort hadn't been botched so badly.

Fleh...

Matt Welch points to this and calls it the "Funniest Political Blog Post in a Month".

Well he's a liar. I challenge you to find anything funnier than this written in the last six months. (Maybe seven...) If my entire aisle wasn't gone at lunch right now, they'd probably all be in here asking me what the hell I'm laughing at...

Well, it's been said before and will be said again, but now seems like as good a time as any to repeat the immortal words of Principal Seymour Skinner:

Order! Order! Do you kids wanna be like the real UN, or do you just want to squabble and waste time?

As annoying as Helen Thomas has been lately, I was kind of hoping she'd get to ask a question in last night's press conference. Apparently, she was snubbed, though.

(found via Matt)

Looks like it's finally time to break down and buy a PS2.

(via Robot Wisdom)

For those of you interested in my eating habits, I had my first fish taco last weekend. Apparently Baja Fresh is making quite a push into Kansas City. There's one just by my house, and one right across the street from work. I'm sure they're going to be claiming a significant percentage of my paycheck.

I will have to admit that the idea of a fish taco sounded downright terrible to me. I'm really not a big seafood fan at all. But the fried fish with whatever wonderful sauce it is they use on those is just a very good thing.

I didn't actually know Baja Fresh was a chain. In high school, I used to ride my bike around in Simi Valley, sometimes attempting to head over the hills to the west. A lot of times I'd stop at the Baja Fresh on the west side of town and grab some food before heading the rest of the way home.

Actually, looking closer at their website, it looks like the Simi Valley store was one of their first franchises. Apparently they started with a location in Newbury Park in 1990 and started franchising shortly thereafter. The one I used to eat at looks like it's actually Store ID 003. Good to see the guys followed me all the way out here to flyover country.

Since when did "sacked" become a word Americans used? I think I remember Greta Van Susteren using it on Fox News earlier this week too...

Though the actual leaflets dropped on Iraq by our troops can sometimes be funny, Fark's suggestions are funnier...

(It just occurred to me that I have actually caught this Fark thread at a point where it hasn't degenerated into a full-on flame war. I take no responsibility for the link becoming less amusing when the inevitable happens.)

Dave Matthews Band's summer tour is currently scheduled to start two days after Bonnaroo.

Of course, there was a rather suspicious hole in their tour at the time of Bonnaroo last year too...

Yeah, I had fun out at the bars with the chiroprachtor last night. Maybe I should ask her out for dinner sometime...

What the hell is this? We don't even have redesigned $1 bills yet and they're already changing the $20 again?

I'm still upset that the gold dollars didn't catch on. I would have loved to use them, but I can't think of one time that I got them as change from a store. Most of the soda machines around here won't even accept them. That's dumb...

(via Juan)

One unfortunate thing about going out on a Tuesday night is that I miss 24. And the guys in the next cube are talking about it. Time to put on the headphones and crank it up...

Well, my Fat Tuesday was fun, even if my alcohol intake was somewhat curbed by the 1/8" of ice and two inches of snow on the roads last night.

Well, it turns out that I didn't need to wait for that chiropractor to return my calls as she actually answered the phone when I gave her a call on Monday. She had mentioned plans for going out on Tuesday when I met her on Saturday, so I got the details on the phone. We'll all meet out at the Irish pub in mid-town after work, maybe have dinner at the Cajun place on 39th, then head over to the Grand Emporium to see some Zydeco.

Well, God wasn't being cooperative. It started drizzling at around noon, and the temperature dropped below freezing sometime around 2:30. Roads got icy, and sleet started falling by 4:00. This was about when I was leaving work. The drive back to my place took nearly an hour, and it was almost another hour to get out to the Irish pub. I was pretty well convinced that nobody else would be dumb enough to brave those icy roads to go out drinking, but my friend was there shooting pool when I arrived. We shot a game of pool, then she got confirmation that 90% of the rest of the group had (probably wisely) decided not to take their chances with the elements.

One friend of hers worked close to the bar and came by for a bit after she finished up work. She joined us for dinner (mmm... Shepherd's Pie), but had to leave early in the evening to meet a friend for some work related type business. The two of us stayed back and chatted for a while until the music was turned up too loud to carry on a conversation.

We decided to skip the accordions and head up to The Phoenix, a downtown jazz bar I've been meaning to check out for a while now. It was a very cool place. By that, I mean poorly insulated. If you go during the winter be sure to get a seat away from the windows. They had a piano player accompanying a saxophonist when we first arrived, but they finished up about 45 minutes after we got there. We stayed a while longer, but both started to get tired around midnight.

But a good time was had by all. Or by me, at least. It turns out she lives less than a mile away from me, and we've actually met before through a mutual friend. That was quite a while ago, so I guess that's why I didn't recognize her. I'll need to find some time to see her again one of these days. It's not very often that I meet a fiddle playing sci-fi reading live-music watching woman.

Was cleaning my car at lunch and listening to that Sim Redmond Band show again.

Damn... That's good stuff.

With a cool island song... Or something like that.

I've been poking around Archive.org quite a bit lately. They've hooked up with etree and in addition to archiving the Internet, Film and Text, they now offer their ample hard drives for the storage of Live Music. They request explicit permission from every band included in the archive, and though several have opted-out, many bands are into the idea.

Etree used to be difficult... You'd get on a mailing list, spend hours trying to log into an FTP server, and grab shows occasionally. Furthur helped things a bit with their peer-to-peer system, but shows that aren't widely held were difficult to find as the downloads would often take a long time, and people wouldn't stay connected forever.

The music archive at Archive.org is amazing, though. As of right now, they're hosting 2,891 shows by 160 artists. I've found some stuff I used to have but had since lost, including my first Steve Kimock Band show, the Big Smith show I went to in Lawrence a couple of weeks ago, and lots more.

Though their connections are a bit slow, it's worth the wait since you can always get in, and you have the choice of downloading the shows via anonymous FTP or directly from their web page. If you use a good FTP program like SmartFTP you can queue up a couple shows and they'll come down overnight. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday clearing space on my hard drive so I could download some new stuff.

But back to that cool island song I promised you... Archive.org has a Show Spotlight section where they feature a show chosen by the site admins. This week's is one by the Sim Redmond Band. You can download the show here. This is one of the few times I've downloaded something without having even heard of the band. I think this is the first time I haven't been disappointed. The show opens up with some marimbas, and some light guitar is added. The first couple songs are instrumental, then there is an adequate male singer on the third song or so.

The female singer who comes in on the fourth song or so just has a gorgeous voice, though. Add the happy bouncy guitars and occasionally marimba, and I am very pleased with this download. Unfortunately, it looks like this band only plays in the northeast. Damn, not another one...

Anyway, I highly recommend you check it out if you have a decent internet connection. Also, Archive.org's music repository is the easiest way that I've found to get your hands on some live music. Check it out sometime.

Has anybody seen Ron Jeremy since this "Khalid" was arrested?

I've made it another two days without cigarettes and haven't even killed anybody yet. It'll be a week tomorrow morning.

I may be drunk right now.

Perhaps it's Mardi Gras Weekend and I'm not in New Orleans.

Perhaps my car will have been broken into when I pick it up tomorrow.

Maybe that cute chiropractor I met at the Elders' show won't return my calls.

I'm pretty sure I'll have a killer hangover tomorrow.

But I did not smoke a cigarette tonight.

Five days...