It has to be said...

Unfortunately, I don't think you'll hear many on the left say it, but I hope that the Iraqi elections go off without a hitch. I know that's an impossibility, and I see that there have already been attacks. The ability to choose, by some measure, one's government is a pretty amazing responsibility and a great privilege (and, on a side note, it just makes me more disgusted with the American voting populace to see Iraqis risking life and limb to vote in a barely legitimate election while people stay home in America because of a myriad idiotic reasons).

Now, if George W. Bush could just spread this love for democracy to the dictatorships he coddles in the former Soviet Union!

Couldn't let this post be too pro-Bush, could I? I'd lose my lefty membership! Maybe my next post should be about how things were better under Saddam...I hear they flew a lot of kites in those days!

Pneumonia update.

I am feeling much better. Thanks for asking!

I had to skip an Arcade Fire show last night. I don't think I could have handled all of that smoke and stuff. Band practice was fun, but it's been so long since we practiced heavy-duty that three blisters appeared on my right hand which summarily popped. Ouch!

This weekend I need to get the job search into overdrive. Ugh. I hate filling out applications almost as much as I hate the Pontiac Aztek.

Nerd alert! Resident Evil 4 is unbelievable.

Excessive sputum? Check!

I seem to have contracted either Bronchitis or Pneumonia, according to my doctor, who, apropos of nothing, asked me if I liked beer..still trying to figure out why that was necessary to my diagnosis. My medicine makes me alternately nauseated, crampy, exhausted, and wired. Sometimes at the same time!

My wife seems to have been afflicted with a case of Athenian Sleeping Sickness. She falls asleep with an almost Pavlovian immediacy when the TV is turned on, be it late afternoon or midnight. It's starting to freak me out.

In other Athens-related news, Mr. Sosebee's wonderful Banker Dog statue in front of Athens First Bank was pilfered. Stop, thief!

It seems that the guys from Penny Arcade had a...problem with an IKEA delivery guy. Check it out.

What you've got to do is FEED a cold!

I'm sorta under the weather, but nothing seems to have stemmed my insatiable thirst for Chinese food. I'm an unabashed lo mein junkie.

Super T!

So I'm hanging out at the Cookies Cafe this morning whilst my coworkers get their morning caffeine fix, and I happen to glance over at this morning's USA Today, specifically the Life section. And who should I see at the bottom of the page, but Tyrone Smith himself, AKA Super T, leader of the Tyrone Smith Revue out of Nashville. Now I've seen this guy play numerous times, and I have to say that the Revue shows were some of the best I saw in Mississippi, mostly 70s soul, funk, and R&B.

Well, it looks like the hometown boy has made good, as he is now playing George W. Bush's inauguration. Apparently, Jenna saw him somewhere in Austin (my guesses are at a frat party or a local cheesy nightclub) and invited them to play the White House last year.

Why did USA Today cover this? Who knows, but coworker JJ did point out that this very same publication consulted Fran Drescher ("I'm shocked...my jaw dropped") on the Aniston-Pitt breakup. Point well taken.

I'm just gonna come out and say it...

Guided By Voices has never been as good as they were circa 1992-1997, and I'm tired of late period album apologists. Great live band, sure, but their records became more tedious (read: too long songs) and Bob Pollard strikes as more depressing than rocking these days. I love that band and have seen them a billion times, but I'm glad they called it quits. So there.

And Universal Truths and Cycles is abysmally flat. So there.

And Do The Collapse is a freakin' embarrassment.

Something that Neal Boortz said that struck me as particularly contradictory

In reference to Ted Kennedy he said this on his website (emphasis mine):

Ted Kennedy is a true symbol of the weakness of a system that allows far too many people to vote. This "one man, one vote" nonsense is a death sentence for freedom and for America.

So everybody American over 18 getting to vote is a detriment to freedom? I report...you decide.

Has the world changed or have I changed?

Actually, nothing has changed recently, but I'm gearing up for a major job search. That should be loads of fun. Watched a few episodes of The Wire this morning, and I'm already hooked. I was already a fan of Homicide and The Corner, so I'm kind of hardwired for sleazy Baltimore stories, John Waters excepted. My band played a pretty successful "acoustic" show last week, but I was on a drum riser that made me feel 40 feet tall, towering over my bandmates and making my strange drummer grimaces for God and everybody to enjoy. We're in the middle of mixing our first LP and things are going well, albeit slowly. I hate mixing, but my time in Pacific UV soured me a little bit on the tedium of the recording process in general.

Beyond that, not much to talk about. Sorry.

Pass it along! Solve the puzzle!

Help this poor guy identify this mixtape song of yore. This has happened to me before. It really stinks when you have no information about a song you love. Let's help him out. Gene Clark, I'm looking at you!

War Eagle...

...fly down the field! Ever to conquer, never to yield!

Let's hear it for my Auburn Tigers, who finished the season 13-0, screwed out of a chance to settle the debates on the field where they belong by a system that makes colleges actively avoid tough games, treats players like serfs, and fails to make a convincing case for its champion. If the college football system were applied to other sports it would sound ludicrous: last year, the Yanks and the Cardinals would've have played in the World Series (no Red Sox miracle season) and the Lakers and Celtics would have avoided each other in the 80s. I think parity is somewhat overrated, but c'mon--let's let these kids settle these BCS debates on the field, not in newspaper sports columns and computer programs.

Ah, no use being cynical.

The Tigers are champions in my book. War Damn Eagle!

And I don't want to hear anything about the two mascot thing, you Alabama fans! And Tarheel fans. And Georgia Tech fans...etc.

Fear of driving

I'm kind of a jerk when it comes to handling someone else's fear of flying. I just don't get it. I've tried my best to temper this annoyance because my wife--who is a brave and intelligent woman--is pretty scared of airline travel. I think, for her at least, part of it is a lack of control. You're at the mercy of the whims of the pilot. I tend to think that's a good thing, but I guess others like to be in charge of all of their travel.

These statistics should give anyone pause about traveling by car. Over 40,000 dead a year! Yet no one is really afraid of driving. Weird, huh?

More memorable stuff

--Spiderman 2
--Hellboy (good year for superheroes, all in all)
--that crazy Six Feet Under episode...you know the one
--The Grand Illusion
--the Denton, TX band Midlake
--the iTunes Music Store
--Edwin Starr
--Reno Melons' dance party
--my new grill
--Sunday night dinners (save one!)
--my pals
--four Christmas celebrations in one day!
--the north GA mountains
--my students
--my e-portfolio

Bright spots...

I'm not into the whole New Years=renewal thing like some of my compatriots, but I can understand feeling like a New Year can bring a whole new set of experiences, opportunities, etc. etc. I think that, as a media-addled society, we really too much on arbitrary temporal and ordinal distinctions to make ourselves feel like we've got our you-know-what together more than we do. We make meaningless top ten lists (often with 10.5s because we can't actually get our you-know-what together) and declare that so-and-so year was a "bad year" or a "good year" when it was probably neither or both. I'm as bad as anyone else with a lot of this, but I vow to stop limiting my lists to ten entries and discussing time in terms of decades and acting like different years have different personalities. Every year has its pros and cons in my book, and 2004 was no different, though I will say that--if I believed in giving years personalities and I don't--it was a "transitional year." Here is an unofficial, completely meaningless list of things that were memorable for me in 2004, most of them good (I will be expanding upon this list ad nauseum over the next few days as I think of "memorable" things that I forgot, thus casting their memorability into question):

--The Incredibles
--Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
--Menomena live and on record
--Venice Is Sinking
--The improptu parties at 666 Pulaski
--Anniversary #2
--the party where I acted like a real jerk
--graduating and getting my Masters Degree
--Collateral
--visiting The Agent
--The Arcade Fire
--becoming a publicist
--the Fiery Furnaces
--doing catering work for the first time and not sucking
--scanning documents
--the tsunamis
--the campaign
--the election
--Paul Brill's New Pagan Love Song
--college football
--the Braves' miracle season that went kaput
--the Red Sox's miracle season that...well, I still can't believe it happened

Is this starting to sound like a Billy Joel song or Larry King column?

I'll quit for now. New Years commentary to come soon.