First that hawk/eagle/falcon and the fox in my backyard, now this! I better not let Charlie outside unsupervised. He growled at the fox...that thing would have torn him a new one. The poor little fluffball thinks he's tough or something.

The fucking Boy Scouts are at it again! I know it's a private organization and all, but sheesh. This kid's done more good work for his community than most Christians do in a lifetime.

Jam Master Jay was killed, execution style, in a recording studio. That sucks.

The Democrats have decided that Walter "Fritz" Mondale is the savior of the party. Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one?

Ariel Sharon's government collapsed. Finally.

Harsh words. But not unwarranted. I'm glad the Angels won, but what a boring game 7! And what a badly pitched World Series in general! I'm glad someone came out and said it. Oh, wait, I did a while back...and so did the sports pundits before they started saying this was one of the best Series ever. Last year's World Series was truly great. This year...pretty good, but very sloppy. It really didn't look like two championship teams playing.

I came across this funny piece whilst doing research for a paper on gay marriages.

Blogger has not published about ten things I've written recently...what the hell is up?

I don't have the links right now, but I've read not one, but two news stories recently of Asian guys dying from playing video games too long. Huh? I've been on some marathon Dragon Quest sessions myself, but I stopped to eat and use bathroom and stuff. These guys were playing first-person shooters in internet cafes, it seems. Weird.

Cool. I just typed gogole.com and it took me to google.com anyway.

I think all of my faithful readers should enter this contest just as I have.

I chose the name Operation: Thunder Road.

Thanks to Brandon Butler and Sam Hunt for the HTML help. I hope this works.

Fleetwood Mac was the best fucking band (the second, famous, non-Peter Greene incarnation). Sean Rawls of the Masters of the Hemisphere has a philosophy that every bands wants (or should want) to be Fleetwood Mac. I can get behind that.

Why does the news media fail to cover the further problems in Afghanistan? We don't exactly have that situation sewn up. You wouldn't know by the lack of press coverage. The country is descending into a new civil war and only the Christian Science Monitor is there, it seems.

What about the other big terrorist nations? Sudan, Western Sahara, Peru, Colombia, Spain...why aren't we going after them? Oh, wait...they're not all Muslim are they...

It seems our War on Terrorism is not the War on All Terrorism, which is probably a smart move if you think about it. Do we really hope to eradicate it all? It seems like all it takes is some idiots with a sniper rifle to unleash "terror." Do we really hope to get every single nutjob out there? What about these domestic terrorists? If John Ashcroft and the Bush Administration didn't get a lot of their support from militia types, would we go after them?

Why am I so full of questions this morning?

I was just thinking: I really like these kind of movies where the plot focuses on one character and how his/her life careens out of control. I'm not really talking about road movies/spree crime movies exactly. I hated the Opposite of Sex and Buffalo '66 (the beginning of the end for Christina Ricci and me), wildly overplotted, yet plotless sets of one-liners and esoterica. I'm talking about the kind of movies where a character becomes unhinged over the course of the movie, like Punch-Drunk Love. Or Save the Tiger (Jack Lemmon's finest hour?). Or even Meet the Parents. Oooh, how could I forget After Hours?

I also enjoy lots of awkward tension, like in the aforementioned films or in stuff like Dog Day Afternoon. This is the kind of stuff that I try to avoid in real life if at all possible, but I really love to squirm through it when I'm watching movies. Go figure.

I saw Punch-Drunk Love last night (by myself!) and thought it was the most violent, off-kilter, and wonderful romantic comedy (?) I've seen in a long time. Contrary to what Brandon thought (ymsp82.blogspot.com), I enjoyed watching Adam Sandler's nerve-wracking performance, and I like that the movie didn't try to explain the love between Lina and Barry. It just happened, and there was no real "reason" for it. I like that a lot. You can say what you will about P.T. Anderson being a rip-off artist or whatever, but I think he is emerging as a true visual stylist, and there is not an ounce of cynicism in his work, which is kind of refreshing. He made warehouses look like heaven in this movie.

I would have like more Phillip Seymour Hoffman, though.

Boy, Blogger has been down every time I try to log on. All these other people have headings and pictures and stuff on their blogs, too, but I can't figure out how to do any of that stuff.

My friends, Chris and Genni Greer, had a baby! Here are pictures: http://greer.dyndns.org/Ian
Congrats to them! Oh, by the way, Chris and Genni both seem to be ageless. They look exactly as I remember them when I first met them in 1993. Me...well, my ass just keeps getting bigger. I look completely different. They look exactly the same.

Hmm...other news...my sister got a job studying gangs for 12$/hr. She's already started talking street; she's all "raise the roof" and "you go" and "snap!" Seriously, this is a great thing for her as she's really interested in dealing with juvenile delinquency and stuff like that. I thought she was going to be a criminal profiler up until about last week, but this is probably a little more useful to society if not as exciting in a Hollywood sense.

How in the hell is Max Cleland a liberal Democrat? Neal Boortz and Rush Limbaugh both seem to think he is. Huh?

Paul Wellstone, probably the most principled member of the Senate, died in a plane crash today. I wrote something incredibly eloquent about my love for him, but it was lost by blogspot or blogger or something. I'm too tired to write much, but I will say that between this and Richard Harris dying, I'm really bummed out.

One thing that seems to be marring this World Series is awful pitching. I think I read somewhere (espn.com, maybe?) that the collective ERA for both teams is over 9.00. That sucks. I do love good pitching, despite the conventional wisdom that holds that sports fans only want to see offense (I think real sports fans like to see defense just as much if not more). To me, home runs have sorta lost their "wow!" appeal lately, but excellent pitching can still give me goosebumps.

This might be why I'm having such a hard time getting emotionally involved in this World Series. I think the Braves, playing at their peak, could have easily taken these two teams. That's neither here nor there, I understand, because they lost to the Giants, but I wish I could reverse time and have Chipper Jones not hit into that double play at the end of the ninth, Game 5.

Time reversal would be a cool power, but I still would love teleportation. Or super-speed.

Nothing to say, really, except that Dennis Wilson was consistently the most underacknowledged and underutilized Beach Boy and that's just depressing listening to his staggering post-Pet Sounds output. God, he was the only good one in the band in the late 70s.

Also, I got a Wurlitzer electric piano. I wrote a song that sounds sorta like "Evil Woman."

I can't help but root for the Angels, even with my utter hatred of the American League.

It's hard for me to care about the World Series, but last night's game seemed pretty good. I always root for National League, but in my heart, I'm really rooting for the Angels. I'm tired of hearing people give this argument for why the Giants should win: Barry Bonds deserves to win. Huh? That's absolute garbage: he deserves to win the fucking World Series when he WINS THE WORLD SERIES! Period. No one deserves to win a game in professional sports unless they actually do it, right? I've heard this argument--that somebody deserves to win some game--countless times and it always rankles me. Whoever played the best at the designated time of the game is the person/team that deserved to win.

Barry Bonds deserves nothing.

From Kurt Cobain's journals: "I hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend." Ouch.

Oh yeah, Elf Power was great: half originals/half covers, much drunkiness from me. Je Suis France are shaping up into a real fucking rock band with potential bursting out of the seams. And I've always liked them. Their new record could be a lot of people's rock record of the year. They've taken the whole 'return to rock' thing and turned it on its head. Hell, they were subverting it before it even started!

I just saw a hawk (falcon? eagle?) sitting on my back fence, not twenty feet from me. How cool is that? It was quite the austere creature, and I have to admit I was a little frightened. It's not every day that you encounter this kind of Wild Kingdom stuff in your own backyard! The animals we usually run across here in "civilization" are nice animals: squirrels, cats, dogs, the occasional possum and raccoon. But a big hawk with a three foot wingspan! That thing could do some serious damage to somebody. I saw a fox the other day in my backyard and have been obsessing about it...what family are foxes in? Are they related to raccoons? Weasels? Squirrels? I don't know, but it was just about the prettiest animal I have ever seen. I would love to have a pet fox. Courtnie is tired of hearing about it.

Missed Jeb Bishop 'cause the show started at 8:30, and I was still at work. 8:30?! What is this? New York?

I just watched Requiem for a Heavyweight, a thoroughly compelling and depressing movie. It is my understanding that the Jack Palance, made-for-TV version, is a little better, but this movie was really great. Anthony Quinn was fantastic, as was the whole cast. The first person fighting stuff was very interesting and must have had some influence on Raging Bull. Hell, the whole movie seems like a prototype of Raging Bull. Why are boxing movies usually sad? The Great White Hope, Raging Bull, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Rocky V...
Seriously. You should check this movie out. I mean, Mickey Rooney was heartbreaking in it. Rod Serling wrote both screenplays, by the way. He was inconsistent, but when he was on...sheesh. He and Richard Matheson both.

Whoa. Busy weekend. No time for schoolwork unfortunately. I'm going to see the Elf Power/Je Suis France show tonight as well as the Jeb Bishop Trio. Action packed! I missed Doug Martsch last night, but I have it on good authority that he blew the big one, which is a bit disappointing as I have heard mostly good things about the new solo record. Didn't like the last BTS record very much at all. Going through the motions.

I am taking care of Charlie, our dog, who is one of the cuter dogs in existence, and a friend's dog, named Sherman, who is a Brussels Griffin (sp?), also one of the cuter dogs in existence. They are getting along okay, but I can tell that Sherman annoys Charlie. Still, there is much cuteness around me.

One of the things I like most is the smell of Murphy's Oil Soap.

You know, before I go shave and clean, I need to tell you this: when you call up Customer Service at a company, there is a good chance (I'd say 75%) that you are not talking to that company at all. You are probably talking to a third-party customer service clearinghouse establishment, like the one I worked for, DialAmerica. We handled no less than 50 clients, and I would have to switch between them, some shady, like Lane Labs (may they rot in hell), some legit, like Bellsouth or Black Entertainment Television or Bank of America. They were still shady. One of the companies we handled, Blitz/Paradise Valley Discount Service, was a mob front, I'm pretty sure. Their office in Gardenia, CA was an empty storefront. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING ON TV. That is my warning to you.

Anyway, built into the system is you having to hold for customer service at these places. They actually wanted an abandonment rate (that means percentage of callers that hung up before being helped) of about 15% for some clients...meaning this: if people were hanging up, you were staying busy, which went they were getting their money's worth. Crazy, huh? What ever happened to helping out the customer? Not helping the customer was what we were all about, at least as a corporation. The clients purposely give you very little information to confuse and underinform customers, so they won't bug them at a higher level. It was ridiculous and evil, but I tried to make the best of it by helping people out as much as I could. I sympathized with them.

Someone please tell me what's wrong with a ballistics database for new guns? How in God's name is this going to infringe on gunowners' rights? It's fucking easier to buy a gun than it is to buy a car, cost notwithstanding. I can go to the J and J Flea Market on Hwy. 441 and pick up a shotgun for $200, no questions asked. The NRA actually has a few valid points which are rendered moot by the heaping piles of bullshit that Wayne LaPierre and Moses shovel on top of logic and reason. I used to work for the NRA at a customer service/telemarketing job, and I swear, to you, unscientific sample here, nearly a third of the people who called were absolutely not in touch with reality. Some people were principled Libertarian types, others knee-jerk conservatives, but one third or so were kooks. I mean, calling-me-from-pay-phones-so-the-black-helicopters-couldn't-get-them kooks. One guy would call me once a day to tell me he had "top secret information" for Charlton Heston. Listen, crankcase, Mr. Heston is an actor and a figurehead and can't help you in any way.

On a side note: at the same job, I once had a lady tell me that she wished I would die. I asked her if she really meant that. She said, "yes." My heinous crime: Bank of America sent her a credit card application. I worked under BOA as a credit card application taker. Only one other time in my life has someone wished death upon me (that story is for another day).

I have to shave right now. And I have to clean up. Courtnie's best friend of all time is coming into town tonight, and she wants everything to be perfect. I mentioned to her that we are essentially messy and disorganized individuals (she is in denial) and that cleaning up would be disingenuous as we were hiding our true nature. She didn't buy that argument. So now, it's off to clean up our wreck of a living room. Oh, yeah, can't forget to shave.

Some surly repairman is coming over to fix our dryer, too.

Oops...published twice there, it seems. Fuck it. Something weird was going on with my blog. Overall, I'm very happy with Blogspot/Blogger, though I still can't figure out how to do a link. I know, Sam, you told me how.

My dearly departed bandmate, Brandon Butler, has a very thoughtful and entertaining blog: ymsp82.blogspot.com.
He thinks his is worse than mine, but he's got to be out of his goddamned mind. I talk about video games half the time, and he's talking about pragmatist Richard Rorty. Sheesh.

Bunny Kitty goes into the studio next week, and I swear to God we are going to make a good fucking record. About disease!

I've heard from "experts" on TV that the Washington sniper is probably olive-skinned, short, a Vietnam vet, and a player of (gasp!) video games. Or none of the above. Or some of them. Or something. 24 hour news has produced this atmosphere of conjecture that probably hasn't been seen since the Hearst era of yellow journalism. It's disgusting, and probably a real pain in the butt to law enforcement.

And video games? Man, what did they ever do to you? Whenever someone shoots someone else in a bizarre and particularly cold-hearted way, it's always the fault of video games. Listen, I played Goldeneye for the N64 for countless hours and I have no idea how to operate a sniper rifle. I'm pretty sure that most of America is the same way. These politicians and media types (and many of them are supposed liberals like Joe Lieberman, who is the reason I didn't vote for Gore, by the by) need to wake up and smell the NRA. The idea of a liberal bias in the media is possibly the greatest farce of the last 50 years. These alleged liberals are always doing stories on lurid subjects like children having tattoos (the horror!), teenage alcohol parties (for shame!), and video games where people get killed (it's like putting a gun in their hands!). It's like Reefer Madness played out on Dateline without the shitty actors. Gross.

I've heard from "experts" on TV that the Washington sniper is probably olive-skinned, short, a Vietnam vet, and a player of (gasp!) video games. Or none of the above. Or some of them. Or something. 24 hour news has produced this atmosphere of conjecture that probably hasn't been seen since the Hearst era of yellow journalism. It's disgusting, and probably a real pain in the butt to law enforcement.

And video games? Man, what did they ever do to you? Whenever someone shoots someone else in a bizarre and particularly cold-hearted way, it's always the fault of video games. Listen, I played Goldeneye for the N64 for countless hours and I have no idea how to operate a sniper rifle. I'm pretty sure that most of America is the same way. These politicians and media types (and many of them are supposed liberals like Joe Lieberman, who is the reason I didn't vote for Gore, by the by) need to wake up and smell the NRA. The idea of a liberal bias in the media is possibly the greatest farce of the last 50 years. These alleged liberals are always doing stories on lurid subjects like children having tattoos (the horror!), teenage alcohol parties (for shame!), and video games where people get killed (it's like putting a gun in their hands!). It's like Reefer Madness played out on Dateline without the shitty actors. Gross.

Hmmm...not much to talk about really. Here's my playlist from this week's edition of Crisis! on 90.5FM, WUOG. You can catch the webcast at www.wuog.org. It's an experimental show featuring lots of slowing-down/speeding-up, esoterica, and noise.

I played, in something resembling this order:

Peter Pan records rendition of, um, Peter Pan
The Sounds of North American Frogs
Merzbow/Gore Beyond Necropsy
Marcy Sings to the Children
Tomorrowland
Whitney Houston (backwards/forwards)
Dave Burgess and the Toppers (a 78 at 33)
101 Strings
Jerry Falwell
Raymond Scott
The Happy Hofbrau
The Hymns and Marches of Costa Rica
Cliff Richard and Cliff Barrows from the His Land sdtk.
Peter Brotzmann Group (1970 lineup)
The Training of the US Marines at Parris Island
Darren Copeland

In other news, I'm fat.

I rented Star Fox Adventures for the Gamecube, Rare's last game for Nintendo before the switch to Microsoft. I'm too poor to buy it, and to be honest, I'm glad I held back. I think the game is absolutely beautiful in every regard. Just the fur alone (don't laugh) is amazing. BUT...the flying levels suck, the story is ho-hum collecting spirits, etc., and the combat is VERY simple. Just tap the A button! I'm compelled to keep playing, but I find the whole experience frustratingly inert. The presentation is so magnificent, though...I don't know. The music is fantastic, too. I'm really conflicted here.

Someone had to say it:

http://salon.com/politics/feature/2002/10/10/stark/index.html

I don't really have much to say about this: I watched the video backwards, forward, and in slow motion, and I still don't know what to think about it. It's my Zapruder film: "back and to the left."

http://www.speedstacks.com/videos/emily.htm

Oh, I'm procrastinating, alright. Courtnie has a list of chores for me to do and I ain't done a single one. It's like I'm in Junior High again!

Dammit...I just realized I forgot to put out the recycling and the truck just drove by. Shit.

Tennessee: keeping it real...backward.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/EDUCATION/10/08/tennessee.schools.ap/index.html

Also: for video game super-geeks out there...and I mean hardcore geeks this is the best site on the web:

www.penny-arcade.com

Read the comics.

Chipper/Sheffield...que es esto? Shit. Fuck. Damn. The Braves lost. Fuck.

This may be the last inning for Glavine or Maddux or both in a Braves uniform. Kinda sad, really. I'd love to see: Maddux relieving in extra innings for the save! Hell, I'd love to see the Braves win it.

Ugh. Rob Nen is up and the Braves are hitting like crap. Ugh. It doesn't look good. At least it's been a great baseball game so far. A real struggle/test of wills type game. Ordinary during the regular season maybe, but exciting when elimination is at stake. It's been a pretty great season, too: the Braves should not have won 103 games! Oh, well...sigh...I hope it's Cardinals/Angels in the Series.

Wow! Who would've thought Blanco would've been such an asset right about now? He picks off Barry Bonds AND makes this crazy-ass throw to first bass from, I don't know, the upper deck or something? Crazy...

Good God! What was Mike Remlinger doing out there? I can't believe we made it out of the sixth inning with SF only scoring one run. I have no fingernails left. No cuticles for that matter.

This Braves-Giants Game 5 is going to give me a fucking heartattack.

Oh, another thing about that "REM" show the other night...they played "Superman!" How could I have forgotten?

You know, I was just thinking that Jackie Sherrill is one of the last old school coaches in the SEC, along with Fulmer at Tennessee. The old guard will be gone with his departure. Oh, whoops, forgot about Lou Holtz, but he comes from a different tradition in my opinion. Still, not many of those Joe Paterno/Pat Dye/Bear Bryant types left. Bobby Bowden's there. Steve Spurrier's gone...or is he?

I was really drunk when I wrote that thing about the REM show. One of those it-kicks-in-an-hour-later drunks. Weird. I'm surprised my grammar held up. And Texarkana...how beautiful. REM never played that live, not once.

On a sports tip:
I think Jackie Sherrill will be gone from MSUbefore the end of the season, especially considering how well Ole Miss is doing. MSU has the same record as Vandy! That's fucking pathetic. They might not win another game. Seriously. But besides State, what a great day for me as a sports fan: the Yankees lose, the Braves win, the Diamondbacks lose/the Cards win, Georgia beats Alabama in an amazing game, and Georgia Tech loses to Wake Forest!?! Wow. I want a rematch of the Twins/Braves World Series from 1991. Revenge for Kent Hrbek pulling Ron Gant off 1st base. And the Mets finished last place this season! Haha! Good times. I hope the Braves kill SF tomorrow...I wouldn't really mind losing to the Cardinals, but not San Francisco. The Cardinals lost Darryl Kile and Jack Buck; the Giants had Barry Bonds mouthing off. Something about the Giants has always bugged me. They've always felt second tier to me, kinda like the Padres. Sorta good, but then sorta not. I can't put my finger on it.

For the first time in my life, I think, Nebraska is not good. Weird.

It wasn't exactly an REM show...

but Mike Mills sang Texarkana with the Possibilities backing him up.

Mike Mills, William Tongs, Bill Berry (!) et al. cover Eve of Destruction and Who'll Stop the Rain, and a bunch of Neil Young stuff.

Michael Stipe came onstage to join them in a rousing cover of "So Happy Together!"

My blog has been sick for the past few days...sorry.

I am about to go to a surprise REM show...with Bill Berry playing drums! No Peter, maybe, but still...

I love Athens.

Hello?