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January 31, 2001
So we got the new flag after all. One small step for race relations, one giant leap backwards for aesthetic considerations. No pride in our fraudulent president (I wonder if non-Christian churches are going to benefit from Dubya's new scheme?), no pride in our ugly flag. Oh, well.
Boortz has an amusing story from Danville, KY - the same town where UGA President Michael Adams cut his teeth on "learning how to be a jackass" - where a clerk at a Dairy Queen accepted a $200 bill. Now come on! How do you make it through this world without knowing that there's no such thing as a $200 bill. Even more amusing, this was a very recently printed piece with Cybermoron Dubya's smirking face on the front and "MORAL RESERVE NOTE" emblazoned on the front. Danville's Advocate Messenger (a silly name for a newspaper if ever I heard one) has a story which you can read (at least for a while) at http://www.amnews.com/news_htm/mon1.html.
What happened this weekend, in brief, is that Ivy's godparents split up. I'm still quite upset about that.
Now playing: Eurythmics: We Too are One
January 30, 2001
Uggggh! What an awful buncha days these have been. Owing to the not-quite public yet nature of some of them, I'll refrain from comment here.
Jinx'd got its first preview screenings this weekend. Ryan Cameron was really hilarious in his dual role. There were a few good laugh-out-loud moments, even if GSU's completely wretched sound system ruined some of the dialogue. Look for Jinx'd on the college circuit and support independent cinema!
Julian got me in trouble Saturday night. We had to stop by the tutoring office that afternoon and I, being stupid, thought it would be amusing for Julian to tell my disturbingly attractive boss that she was cute. He didn't, but instead just clammed up shy. But when Mommy got home… "We went to meet [name withheld]! Daddy says she's really cute!" Deb commented that if I must hit on women, that's fine… "but don't use my son." Ice wouldn't have melted on her tongue.
I've got a sinus infection, probably something mild wrong with my kidneys, too. Grrr.
On to the state flag then. My heaven, this new thing's ugly.
I don't have an objection to a flag that preserves and displays the good things about the south. But this thing? It's Six Flags Over Georgia – literally! It's a shame we couldn't have found a pre-war symbol that evokes all that's great about our heritage, whether you mean great southern writers like Flannery O'Connor or mint juleps or whatever. Why not the Arch in black on a crimson background, similar to our original flag (which was gold on blue and also ugly)?
Boortz nailed this one. He's been in amazingly stupid mode since Cybermoron Dubya's inauguration, for example hypocritically poking at Kennedy rather than pointing out Ashcroft's obscene deficiencies. But today he really made a great point on the flag issue. All these rednecks are whining that "no, no, the flag isn't about racism, it's heritage!" But where were they when the Klan decided to use it as a symbol of racism? Maybe if the not-at-all-racist hicks were spending the 1950s pelting marching Klansmen with rocks and garbage, screaming "Don't you dare use my flag that way!" then maybe the Confederate battle flag wouldn't have become a symbol of racism; rather it would be a symbol of state's rights (well, and armed rebellion against the democratically elected government, but that's another argument).
Now playing: The Beatles: Anthology 2
January 26, 2001
Disclaimer: in this entry, the expression "n---" shall be used to mean that state of dress where one is not wearing any clothes. You'll understand why I'm typing that way as you read.
So last week, I activated the statistics program for my sites that appear on 00page, a really great freeserver where you get 20MB of space as long as your content is not sexual. (You can sign up at www.00server.com. Naturally, I've been very curious about the traffic to the Mindspring pages, but since 00page is my "rollover office" of sorts, I haven't much cared to check there.
I learned yesterday that 00page has far more detailed reports than Mindspring offers me. Sadly, you can only view numbers from the past 7 days (instead of month-to-month like Mindspring), but you can learn a lot more about where your visitors are coming from. One of the reports shows the "referring page," that is, the last site a visitor was on before they came to my pages. Some of those pages have really long addresses because they are search engine pages, and many of them read something like google.yahoo.com something something something GMS + Legion something something something or such. A lot of silly letters and numbers, but the "item searched" at Yahoo or wherever - in this case GMS Legion, is clearly visible. In other words, I can tell how many people accessed my site as a result of one of my 00pages coming up on a search engine.
Figured out that disclaimer yet?
Now, I was initially amused to see the three times "draino" had been entered into search engines and people looked at one of my Legion pages. Draino is of course one of the Legion's regular foes; his name sounds like a certain product used for unclogging drains. I don't think any of this month's sales are gonna come from those three people.
birthdays.html, which is page one of The Funny Pictures, was accessed 23 times last week. 20 hits apparently came from the Popocalypse World of Fun. One came from a search for "beach+vacations" and one came from a search for (get this) "funny+pizza+buildings." I don't know what a funny pizza building would be, but I should point out that I'm using the quotes to distinguish that here in the diary. Search engines just look for pages that have the words you want somewhere in them, and the Funny Pictures page does indeed have those three words, but at entirely different places on the page. If the people using the engines had the sense to use quotes themselves, the forthcoming problem wouldn't have happened. The remaining hit on that page came from a search for Jessica. I can imagine some old classmate of hers looking her up and recoiling at the sight of that photo since I look absolutely and utterly moronic in it.
The big hits came at music1.html, which is the A-G of the record reviews, and which I noticed a few months ago was getting by far the most traffic of the review pages. In a given month on Mindspring, it was pulling close to 200 visitors compared to 90-100 for the others. I'd always figured people just started reading my reviews, decided they disliked them or got bored or something, but since it is a big page and I'd been having both space issues and "too much traffic" issues at Mindspring, I moved that one to 00page.
Last week, music1.html had 49 visitors. And here's part of the reason why: The review of Paula Cole's This Fire contains a reference to "the poor n--- photography" on the sleeve. Got it yet?
Here are some of the subjects people have been looking for which brings up that page:
neko+case+n--- , and also neko+case+n---+pictures
Ingrid+Chavez+n---
n---+photos+of+meryn+cadell
Dido+Armstrong+pictures+n---, and also dido+armstong+n---
Sheryl+Crow+n--- (search appeared five separate times)
sarah+mclachlan+n---
and, perhaps most amusing of all: Gorgeous+George+n--- … Gorgeous George is the name of an Edwyn Collins CD reviewed on my page. Please tell me there's not somebody out there looking for sexy piccies of the old wrestler of that name!!! EWWWWIEEEE!
In all, people who were looking for n--- female singers accounted for 24% of the traffic on that page last week. Astonishingly, none of them were looking for Tori Amos, but I'm half tempted to keep a running tally. As it stands, five times as many people want to see Sheryl Crow sans clothing than they do Meryn Cadell. I suppose the n--- word must not appear on the Mindspring page with the Madonna reviews, otherwise traffic there would skyrocket…
But here's the funny thing… by order of their terms and conditions, I'm not allowed to post n--- photos of attractive singers, but 00server certainly gets a fair amount of visitors looking for them!
Now playing: Depeche Mode: A Broken Frame
January 25, 2001
Since becoming a MARTA commuter, my food choices have been quite limited. So it was great to go to Benny's Barbecue with Scott yesterday. It's possibly the best in Dekalb County and even the mixed sauce is raging spicy.
My number of students continues to dwindle and I'll have to keep turning down new ones until Deb gets moved to an earlier schedule. This week I saw out two more who are taking Saturday's SAT. I like my students so much, and I miss a couple of them. Great kids, all.
Last night, I sipped some of Deb's prescription cough syrup with codeine before I went to sleep. Hoo ha! If only I could stay doped up on that 24/7 like kids in Popular, which has apparently gotten disturbingly and disappointingly topical this season. I had oddly calming dreams of fires and floods and Deb says I was blathering long nonsense streams of sleeptalk for several minutes at a stretch. Around 1.30, Ivy woke us both up with a scream, and it felt like I'd already gotten a full night's sleep. And yet I had another four hours in which to stay in bed!! Well, I don't plan to be guzzling cough syrup when I don't need it, but it's nice to know that if I do, I'm assured of one very, very relaxed night's sleep.
This weekend's gonna be a busy one. Saturday I'm heading out to Augusta to attend Tyler and Kim's wedding. Oh, Kimmy's just the bestest drinking buddy ever. Then Sunday, Nomad Pictures' JINX'D is running at GSU - yeah, opposite the Super Bowl - in a special preview screening. Make sure you read all about it on the announcements page and come on down to the movie, if you're not too busy watching the Ravens get clobbered.
Now playing: Cat Power: The Covers Record
January 24, 2001
Tonight I had the last session with one of my students. She gave me a present from Bath & Body Works and a thank you card. I almost cried.
January 22, 2001
Speaking from Caracas, Noel Gallagher has called for the execution of the Backstreet Boys. "They should be shot," he says. Harsh but fair.
So this weekend, we did our small part to make sure the good employees of Sci-Trek keep their jobs a few more days. The museum's a pretty good one, actually, with lots of hands-on things that Julian got his hands all over. They also had a "history of video games" room with many free systems and old coin-ops. So I played Gyruss for the first time in years and years and got nailed by flying asteroids, but made up for it by making high score on Bosconian. Maybe if they sell that Bosconian machine to Dave, they can stay open another couple of days.
We took MARTA downtown and walked the three blocks to Sci-Trek in the freezing cold and light snow. Ivy didn't like that at all! I'd never been to the Civic Center station before. It's a no-frills model of efficiency, small, compacted, with no huge frescoes or murals or big open spaces. I bet if MARTA designed a few more like that, they could afford to build more.
So Saturday night, I did my constitutional duty and saw the film that just about everyone who's seen it has said is the best film of 2000, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. To my mind, it's not quite the best of the year, since there are strange pacing problems throughout the first reel, and not just the plot, but the entire structure, is so wholly unoriginal that I started predicting developments. In fact, a flashback sequence is so damn lengthy that it's immediately apparent that the only reason we're seeing these past events in such detail is because something will be introduced that will be used in the climax.
On the other hand, I don't think any film since Fight Club has enjoyed such audacious visuals. The fight scenes in Crouching Tiger are completely breathtaking. I love how it's taken absolutely for granted that some of the characters have developed superhuman abilities and can move at super speed, fly and walk on water. There's no explanation other than "training," and no looks of surprise that characters can do this. They just do, with stunning results. There's a fight in the treetops that defies gravity and is beautiful, and the "Invincible Sword Goddess" scene is possibly the best "action" sequence of any film in the last two years.
Having not seen any other foreign language films this year, I can't say whether it's the best and deserves the Oscar for that, but this definitely deserves a truckload of nominations for everything under the sun, and since Quills won't get anything (too weird, too small, too risque, too much of Geoffrey Rush naked), then I honestly can't think of a film to which the Academy could legitimately offer Best Picture instead.
Incidentally, I understand that Crouching Tiger is based on the third of a series of five novels. Given the events of this film and how everything established at the beginning of the movie is irreparably changed by the end, does anyone know what the fourth and fifth novels are about?
Pet peeve of the month: has anyone else noticed that whenever the forthcoming Tick TV series is mentioned on AICN or Usenet or anywhere, there's always some clueless pea-brain who has to jump in to whine about how this show is gonna suck because it doesn't have the characters from the Fox Kids cartoon called Die Fledermaus and American Maid, but instead has the similar characters Batmanuel and Captain Liberty?
If people were whining about this in August 2000, I could understand it. However, it seems that since then, the online fan press, the print fan press, the online gossip pages and New England Comics have devoted more words to explaining why (the non-comic characters who were introduced in the TV cartoon are the copyright of Fox Kids, and that company refused Columbia/TriStar's request to license the characters) than they have hyping the show! Geez, don't people read anymore? I realize the Tick cartoon has a helluva lotta fans - it was, after all, hilarious - but this "it's gonna suck" devotion, often expressed without seeing more than a promo photo, is so sad.
Anyway, here's my hype: there's a superhero comedy coming to Fox in March starring Patrick Warburton with some old Seinfeld producers and Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfield behind it. It's called The Tick, the first season will have eight episodes, and it should appeal to everyone who enjoyed 1999's Mystery Men feature. Check it out, because it sounds very funny.
Farscape wrapped up its three-part bank heist story Friday night. Holy anna, this show is too damn good for words! I still have an awful hard time calling the protagonists "heroes" since they were responsible for one heckuva body count before the hour was up. Fortunately, Claudia Karvan's remarkable character Natira (the blue Gigerfemme) seems to have escaped the carnage and I hope we see her again in season three. Before all the guns started blazing, she had unfurled her disturbing spider-appendages on her head (which are apparently used for both sex and torture) and ripped out one of the recurring character's eyes. That's much more shocking when seen on television than when I try drawing it in a comic book.
For its incredible set design, great acting, ambiguously moral characters, brilliant effects and music and its absolute refusal to compromise to its audience with over-explanations (the backbone and the bane of American TV fantasy), I've about decided that Farscape is easily in the same class as Doctor Who and Sapphire & Steel. Who'd have guessed that the same writer who worked on the incredibly lame seaBore DSV could have worked on something as fab as this? I'm looking forward to the DVD sets coming out next month!
Just to jump on the bandwagon, I'm looking for new work now… I still have my job at GGL, but I'm just so sick of it that it hurts. The work is monotonous and could be done by a computer if the program I'm using had been written sometime since 1986. Some of the staff are pretty nice, including my cool boss, but for the most part I'm just left the hell alone and there have been plenty of days where I've gone from 7.30 to 4 without speaking even a sentence to anyone else here. I never receive any sort of feedback about the quality of my work, never mind praise. The result is demeaning and soul-destroying, since I'm just a body entering numbers. Deborah's made it worse by working for a company that seems to want to keep its employees happy and treat them like individuals. It's ridiculous that we can't even personalize our wallpaper, but the overriding feeling is that this would be "stealing from the company."
Last week, Ivy had to come home early from day care two days because of a fever. I missed five hours; four on Thursday and one on Friday. My boss is moving and was out of the office, so I had to tell his boss I was leaving. There was no sense of care or concern, certainly nothing like "well, thanks for all your hard work and I hope she's OK," which would be the bare minimum I'd have told any of my reps when I was supervising at the Dial. I just got a snide "we need to talk about this, because we expect you to be here." Never mind that I don't take breaks, keep my seat and stay focussed on my work, only doing crap like this diary because they've given me a pathetic, fifteen year old program to work on, never mind that I'm among the fastest and most efficient employees this company's ever seen. How can a corporation expect its employees to care about the job when the job doesn't care about them?
Sorry for ending on a bum note, but this infernal Dilbertland has been the source of much of my depression lately…
Now playing: Johnny Cash: God
January 19, 2001
If there is an uglier, more disturbing-looking mutant freak of nature than the sphynx, I just don't wanna know about it. Lugg, which came air freighted from somewhar in Florida by way of Houston, is the least attractive animal that God ever dreamt of. He's a sweet kitty, if a little skittish, but he's ugly in dimensions you didn't know could be measured in terms of ugly. He radiates weirdness and he just plain feels gross.
The name, incidentally, comes from Albert Campion's valet from Margery Allingham's novels. It was my turn to name a pet, and Deb said "something like a little bald man." Unfortunately, our Lugg is far sweeter than the acerbic sourpuss played by Brian Glover in the BBC adaptations of the books, so it doesn't really fit.
I feel like I travelled the full length of what can charitably be called "the metro area" last night. Lugg's flight was delayed to 7.30. Deb got off at 7 and took the train down to the airport. I left at about the same time, travelling south down 400. It was dark and raining and the radio reported several accidents, so I took the long way, around 285 on the east side of Atlanta through such regions as Clarkston and Avondale, where I never have cause to travel. At least the traffic wasn't bad at all. I finally made it down to the airport around 8.20. We took 85 north to 400 and were back home around 9.15. This animal ain't pretty enough for two hours in that weather.
Ivy's been running a teething fever for the last couple of days. Last night it finally broke and the poor tyke seems to have sweated it all out through her scalp. I've never seen hair like what she had this morning outside of cartoons. People spend hundreds on hairspray to approximate such a sight.
In local news, Sci-Trek has extended its life to mid-March thanks to four corporate donors who each ponied up $5000. However, several employees still had to be laid off and everyone else has had to take a pay cut. We're going to the museum tomorrow, and hope everyone local who reads this takes the time to stop in sometime before they shut their doors for good.
State School Superintendent Linda Schrenko - yeah, that twit - has been making waves about finding some big Republican sponsors and running against Roy Barnes for governor in 2002. She'll have the support of the teachers, because after all, that mean old Barnes is actually making them work to keep their tenure. God forbid a public school teacher be held accountable for what they teach! I'd rate Schrenko's chances of even getting the GOP nomination as about this side of zero. However, the GOP thinktank, if indeed there's a brain to be found there, considering how much money they've blown trying to get the governor's seat in the last twelve years, is probably going to play it safe and offer a sacrificial lamb in 2002. Barnes has done a pretty good job so far, has massive approval ratings, and surely the state GOP has to realize there's gonna be a Democratic sweep in 2002. Their fundraising efforts will be put to far better use trying to hold onto their US House and Senate seats. I fear Barr will keep his, for the people in West Cobb are fucking morons to a man and can't see what an embarassment Barr is to the state. (I know they're conservatives and I don't begrudge them that; can't they just find a Republican candidate who's a shade less reprehensible than Barr?)
Now playing: Miles Davis & Quincy Jones: Live in Montreaux
(part two)
Lest anyone doubt how reprehensible Bob Barr is, here are a few thoughts excerpted from Conservatively Incorrect, a wonderful online book © 1993-2001 by Rack Jite which appears at www.rackjite.com. Jite is not afraid of cruel humor, which I have edited here. Nothing is to be gained by calling the 104th Congress the "104th Reich," for instance, but his incredibly salient points, with a touch more professional tone, make for more compelling reading.
"With the demise of … Bob Dornan, I have been trying to decide who will take the mantle of Right-wing looneytoon in the House. Sadly, there is no one who can compare to the neurotic spitting, punching, swearing, insane, bigoted, drunken name calling antics Dornan became famous for, but after checking voting records and adding such variables as celebrity, access to media, committee power, extreme right-wing idealism and wholesale hypocrisy, I had to chose Bob Barr … as the premier Right-wing loon in the House.
"Bob Barr worked for the CIA in the 70's and was appointed as a US Attorney in drug enforcement by Ronald Reagan in 1986. Then with the help of his main player, the NRA, along with the John Birch Society, the Christian Coalition, the National Right to Life Committee, the Eagle Forum, Ed Meese, Bob Dornan, and Pat Buchanan, Barr became one of Newt's Freshman in the 104th [Congress] by squeaking by with 52% of the vote. His most important role is on the Judiciary Committee which he uses as his forum to push his NRA gungoonery, Pro Life extremism, homophobic bigotry and Clinton Hate. In his first year he was awarded Freshman of the Year by The American Conservative Union; and the Friend of the Family award from the Christian Coalition. He was also one of the members who got a $500 check from Brown & Williamson which Rep Boehner (R-FL) passed out on the House floor two years ago. Barr is one of the strongest voices to eliminate public broadcasting, and since Dornan is gone, he, along with "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) are the top homophobes in the House (Barr writes anti-gay columns for Insight Magazine which is the publication for Rev Moon's Unification Chruch). He wants to eliminate the Department of Education, repeal the Motor Voter law, totally deregulate the money end of the cable industry and is co-sponsoring amendments to repeal the Establishment and the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.
"Barr was the sponsor of the Marriage Defense Act which was wrongly named. It should have been more aptly named the No Marriage Benefits for [Homosexuals] bill. Barr's hypocrisy blares out on this one; divorced twice, failing to pay child support to the children of his second wife and while married to his present wife, photographed licking whipped cream off the [breasts] of a few buxom bimbos."
And that's before that whole nursing home debacle, which admittedly Roger Kahn tried to use without clearly stating what Barr actually voted on, but was still a darn shady little piece of legislation. When I moved back to the metro area, I joked that I was here to vote against Barr. Then I found out I was actually in the 6th district and moved to Alpharetta. Frankly, the farther I am from the right-wing imbeciles of Cobb County, the better I am.
January 18, 2001 (part one)
John Ashcroft… geez, what a piece of work this guy is. But the problem I'm having is that I'm not sure that we should oppose his nomination.
It's a rare day when I agree with the GOP, but Cybermoron Dubya was made president, and he should be able to choose his own cabinet. I was initially surprised to read, earlier this month, that our junior senator, Zell Miller, was going to support Ashcroft, but the more I read his argument, the more it makes sense. It is Dubya's cabinet, and not a Supreme Court nomination. The Senate shouldn't have any say-so in what team the executive branch puts together to serve itself. I don't see how it's the place of the legislative branch to decide whether or not someone is suitable for this post, unless there's some clause in the Constitution that I missed on this same subject. Anyone?
Chavez had the decency to step down, but only after a lot of personal nastiness was raised. My favorite part of that whole debacle? When one of Clinton's nominees, Zoe Baird, was being ripped up in 1992 for employing illegal immigrants, Chavez was apparently telling PBS that we should never let anyone who would dare do such a thing have a federal position, while at the same time housing her Guatemalan friend. Hypocritical little pea-brain.
Ashcroft, on top of all his other little "idiosyncrasies" that prove him massively unsuited to the post, didn't have the decency to either tell Dubya about his history of offensive jokes and his racism (disguised as concern for keeping pro-criminal judges off benches) or simply step down before the Dems in the Senate whacked him - and, by proxy, Dubya - in the face with his past. So he's a moron on top of a hardline conservative bigot.
But hey, as long as Dubya keeps giving us the ammo, we'll keep firing. The more imbeciles he surrounds himself with, the happier I am, since it will help assure a Democratic sweep in 2002. (On that note, Salon is selling "Re-elect Gore 2004" T-shirts. I need to get one!)
On the other hand, I'm massively concerned with Zell Miller's support of Phil Gramm's proposal for amnesty for illegal immigrants working in the US. Supporting anything Gramm does is worrying, since there's really nothing wrong with Phil Gramm that his being eaten by a lion wouldn't fix. But turning a blind eye to an estimated seven million south-of-the-border visitors living illegally in this country is the wrong damn thing to do.
I don't have a thing wrong with immigration -- legal immigration. If it was good for my poor Irish great-grandfather in the 1880s, it's good enough for everyone. But I don't visit your country without a passport or a relevant visa, and I don't work there without being eligible, so you don't do it in mine. Maybe they need to make me director of the INS, so I can authorize some sweeps of the onion patches in Vidalia. And it's precisely the Vidalia thing that persuades Miller - who was the best governor Georgia's had in my lifetime - to support Gramm in this. Oh well. I'm with him on one support of Republicans, but not this one.
Set on Edge played last night. Deb didn't get home until 8.30, so I missed them. Can't claim to be happy about that. I'm going to miss Gilmore Girls tonight since we have to go to the airport and pick up Lugg. Have you heard about Lugg? He's Deb's new Sphynx. You know those ugly-ass cats without fur, the ones that look like a Chihuahua turned inside out? Uh-huh. One of those. Hey, she's always wanted one, so at least she gets to have a dream come true!
Now playing: Erasure: The Innocents
(part two)
Five things I'm looking forward to in 2001:
1. Twenty-six new GMS Legion episodes in books 13 and 14
2. A new ABC Warriors series in 2000 AD, with art by Mike McMahon!
3. A new Bryan Ferry album.
4. The Tick TV series.
5. The Lord of the Rings movie.
January 17, 2001
I knew he was a Cyberman. I just knew it.
Ivy and Deb were both running massive fevers last night. She's missed enough work already this month and had to go on in; I stayed at home with Ivy since she can't go to day care sick. Now it's six and she's just fine and I wish mommy would come home because I'm about to declare nap time and I sort of intended to see Set on Edge tonight... Arggg!
Now playing: "Where? Where? Where? Where?" ... that's right, Ivy, and she's a broken record.
January 16, 2001
Can't I just once report some good news without it being tempered by something irritating?
The good news is that Deb and I bought a car. We got a new 2000 Mazda Protege, whose name appears to be Anna, after the Goodyear place let us know that Virgil was in really bad shape. I thought Anna's name might actually be Tracy, but when she roared to life down Medlock Bridge to the tune of ABBA's "Knowing Me, Knowing You," I realized Anna must be her name.
Anna is a great car; we got her for seven dollars down at John Thornton Chevy/Mazda/Isuzu in Lithia Springs out past Six Flags. Bear them in mind when you're in the market for a new car and ask for Carlos Perez. Virgil, meanwhile, is confined to "local action only" and I hope to get his ECM/spark plug wires/timing/power steering hoses/oil leak repaired ASAP.
The down side to the weekend is that Scott lost his dot-com position during a staff cutback Friday, dagnabbit. This comes when he should be celebrating the release of the fab new Brave Ulysses collection, Tempus Fugit, which collects sixteen songs that the fusion combo recorded throughout the year 2000. If you haven't ordered your copy yet, I can only assume it's because you only just heard about it right now. Find out why people in the know are already calling Brave Ulysses "the band of the `00s" by checking out their website post-haste!
But yeah, yeah, he lost his job and we hope he gets a new one PDQ.
I spent the weekend on an emergency GMS Legion job, plotting, scripting, pencilling and lettering eight pages in eight hours, and inking them over the course of Sunday. This came after a wonderfully relaxed morning in Athens, picking up the kids and spending a lazy day digging through used discs at Wuxtry, eating at the Mean Bean (still Earth's greatest restaurant) and chatting with Bria and Jena. We drove back in no rush and listened to the kids tell us all sorts of nonsensical kid things. Showing signs of future esteem issues, Julian was very concerned whether or not everybody and everything missed him ("Did you miss me? Did Mommy miss me? Did my toys miss me? Did my TV miss me?").
So we languidly pulled back home and I was so looking forward to an afternoon and evening of laziness and then I realized I'd have to do a fill-in for a commission on my own book. Still, I think the result looks pretty good and it has more visual humor than I've had room for lately. It will appear in GMS Legion Book 13, unless by some miracle the promised original pages appear in the next few weeks.
Now playing: The Ellen James Society: The Survivors Parade
January 12, 2001
The last few days have been disturbingly slow. The hotmailbox seems a little short of input these days, specifically during the day when I do most of my typing (while waiting for Old Bessie, our computer system, to wake up from its torpidity, quit going "eh? whassat, sonny-boy? you need memory?" and execute a few commands).
We ate at a local Chinese/Japanese/everything buffet place called Mandarin Café the other night. Never again! Mind, I did get to have frog legs for the first time in my life, but they weren't any good. Neither was anything else on the menu. Y'know, I'm convinced that there must be an inexpensive, hole-in-the-wall, authentic Chinese restaurant somewhere in Atlanta. I don't need to pay for tablecloths and the waiters' tuxedoes while eating food that all tastes exactly the same as every other restaurant. Anyone know of a place that meets all three of those criteria? We used to have one in Athens before it got bought out by one of the corporate "everything tastes the same" factories and it was really good.
In a weird cosmic coincidence, only a couple of days after writing up my thoughts about the education crisis, one of my students took me up on my standing offer for help in history or English classes. I found that much of what was wrong in Cobb in the 80s is still wrong in north Fulton today. My student is being taught history by a football coach who breaks important movements down into trivial facts and figures. I was able to fill in a couple of blanks on her study sheet from memory, and gave her a couple of (hopefully) insightful comments about political ideas, but mainly I just listened to her vent about her distressingly uberfeminist lit teacher who believes that man's repression of feminity in The Scarlet Letter is the sole, lone and only theme in that book (rather than one of several), and how bored my student was getting by week three of transcendentalism, Thoreau and Emerson.
The use of "hopefully" in the preceding paragraph reminds me that, yesterday, Yahoo! reported Cybermoron Dubya's use of the new word "hopefuller." Beautifully, he coined this word in the same breath as calling for a "more literate" country. I figured he'll replace Yogi Berra's record of incredibly silly public statements, but Dave Prosser reminded me that, as Berra himself said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." At any rate, Bill Maher's gonna have a great four years, isn't he?
Speaking of politics, I agree with Neil Boortz less than half the time, but I listen to him because political discourse is more interesting than the latest stupid Morning X stunt, and Boortz, unlike his moronic talk show competitors, doesn't seem to make up his facts and has a brain. Yesterday, he was talking, in the wake of Matthew Moran's death, about the renewed drive to change teen driving regulations and make it harder for 16-year old Dunwoody kids like Matthew to borrow Dad's $86,000 Jag and launch it into a tree at an estimated 120 miles per hour. One of the plans calls for an absolute ban on anyone under 18 driving between 10 pm and 6 am.
Unfortunately, legislation on this issue has opposition from some south Georgia congressmen. One was quoted on (I believe) the channel 2 news as being against it, on account uh how they gotta lotta 15-yahr olds down thar what lahk t'go huntin' an' they done gotta be up a tree (in a "deer stand") afore 5.30 in the mornin' so's theys kin shoot uh deer! Boortz had a lot of fun with this, as well he should.
Finally today, Dave Prosser (again) passes along the news that Underoos are introducing new adult sized Batman tees and briefs. (Please. No jokes about Randy's next birthday present.) I figure they're not introducing a Flash version for a very valid reason. I mean, what kind of self-respecting adult male would wanna get undressed for bed sporting the logo of the fastest man alive?
…I'll get me coat…
Now playing: Beth Orton: Superpinkymandy
January 10, 2001
I started talking about bussing in Dekalb County and couldn't shut up for about four hours; I decided to make that a separate rant.
Scientists announced they've found two new planetary systems. One of them contains a big orbiting mass that's so big, they are not certain that it can be called a "planet." It's apparently 30 times the size of Jupiter.
Imagine if Earth was that big. King Ferdinand would have given Columbus three ships to test his crazy theory and, eighty-five years later, the sailor's grandkids would have come home to say "Yes, there is definitely land over there." The Europeans would decide that this was very interesting, but the new land was just too far away to worry about and they wouldn't bother again until steamships were invented, at which time it would be a four-year one way trip.
Boy, there's a novel in that.
Can you tell the day isn't exactly moving very quickly today?
Now playing: Bauhaus: Burning from the Inside. It really isn't very good at all.
January 9, 2001
It's snowing! Or freezing raining! Or something!
Of course, it won't stick. We're not that lucky, having this much snow in six weeks. Sure is a lot of snow in the sky, and that's nice and pretty. Among the many super powers I want is weather control. Maybe a four-mile wide band stretching from Dunwoody south to Ponce de Leon Avenue where it's six degrees and the snow comes down in blankets. Just to freak Kurt Melish out and make Guy Sharpe, comfortable in his retirement, even more convinced that the devils of Proctor & Gamble are out to get him.
Bad news in the city of Atlanta (again): Sci-Trek has announced that it will probably close, at least temporarily but maybe for good, due to a lack of finances. Out-of-towners who haven't heard of it should know that it's one of the city's best-kept secrets: a hands-on science museum geared towards schoolage kids. There's a similar, but superior one somewhere in North Carolina - Winston-Salem I think. Now admittedly this isn't a museum I can claim to have regularly visited, but I don't want it to close. It's in a good area of midtown, but there isn't anything else nearby except a pay lot (you don't have to pay to park at the zoo!). Maybe if they had built closer to the arts center area where the High Museum is, they would have got more traffic.
Oddly, the report I read said that a full 70% of the museum's capital comes from corporate sponsors. I guess the museum industry is one I don't quite understand then. It's not like Sci-Trek could have the same operating costs as the High, could it? I mean, I'm sure that great big plastic eyeball you sit in cost a lot, but hardly as much as the High has to shell out to get a Monet or a Rembrandt, right? And I imagine art thieves are far less likely to heist the eyeball than a Rembrandt, so the insurance overhead can't be as great.
Whatever; obviously we're gonna have to take Julian before they close. I think, since he's not quite four, a lot of it will go over his head, but he'll have fun sitting in the big eyeball anyway. We'll probably go on Saturday the 20th: Fraudulent Dubya's inauguration day. How apropos. I can't think of a better way to celebrate this moron's taking office than giving my kid a little education!
It's still snowing. It's not like my prayers have any laudable record of being answered (What was I last year? Two for ten thousand? I'm like the bloody Commodores offense.), but I sure would like the snow and the temperature to keep falling.
Oh look. The sun.
Now playing: Basia on Broadway
January 8, 2001
Thus beginneth, thus endeth.
Terrifically awesome news to pass along today, but unfortunately balanced by some bad news from Athens. Sadly, we can't report one without the other.
First, there's the wondrous, jaw-dropping hurrah-ness of Neal and Tim deciding to get as married as the law will allow, and they're planning a small, itty-bitty little ceremony in the fall. Neal's happy as a clam and is doing all the goofy pre-ceremony rituals that never made any sense to me. You know, registering, looking at engraved invites, holding two "swatches" together and going "oooooh, I just can't decide!" He's promised there won't be any Celine Dion "music" at the grand event. Sure there won't. And Deb's not buying him Tupperware either.
No, seriously, Deb and I are very, very happy for Neal and Tim. The English language simply lacks the words to express how happy we are. So we're gonna make fun of him every time he acts like a twenty-year old girl and goes "ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" unnecessarily.
The other side of the coin: I'm seriously unhappy to have heard that Suzuko and Dave Prosser have elected to call it a day. Well, "elected" doesn't seem like quite the word, in a "taxation without representation" sort of way. See, in the "whoa, you harsh woman" sweepstakes, I thought I had the booby prize when Young Mistress Rubin ended our whatever-the-fuck-it-was by e-mail on Christmas Day. The facts are hardly mine to relate, so suffice it to say that Suzuko, who spent the last four months doing doctoral studies in Germany, handled things in a way that made Young Mistress Rubin seem like the most gracious and agreeable woman who's ever dumped a joe. Higher stakes, deeper emotions, stronger commitment, same holiday. That Dave is still able to stand up proves he's a stronger man than me.
To say I hate this is an understatement. I remember their wedding, held in the early summer at the State Botanical Gardens, so fondly. We were the bums of the ceremony. Deb was a couple of months pregnant with Ivy at the time and, to her considerable chagrin, couldn't fit into the pants she was planning to wear, and in fact, since all her maternity wear was in my parents' attic, couldn't actually wear anything other than shorts and a pair of jeans. So the jeans it was. Then we went to dress Julian. And could only find one shoe. Nobody seemed to mind, but I was mortified that my 14-month or so old was running around barefoot. Sigh!
Absolutely typical that she's raced off back to Europe already. I've made a point several times last year about how friends have an obligation to not sit on the sidelines when shit happens, or more accurately when someone throws shit at another, and the first chance I have to step up to bat and show I'm serious, the shit-thrower's half a world away.
So yeah, I'm conflicted. And happy and upset. Best wishes to everyone.
Now playing: The Olivia Tremor Control: Animation Music vol.1
January 6, 2001
We had an unplanned day off yesterday. Deb's cold has developed into a major tonsil and ear infection so I had to take her to the doctor (back in Smoina) and nurse/pester her. At some point, we should get a new Primary Care Physician closer to us, but we like our PCP too much.
So we watched -- after so much expectation -- Black Scorpion last night. You know, the Roger Corman superhero show with the leather-bathing suit heroine fighting supervillains played by has-been actors and a bevy of Playboy models in tight spandex with plunging necklines? The show that can't possibly suck?
This show sucks.
Now, before I get into why, it's important to note that we caught a fair amount of a Babylon 5 that preceded it. This is a show I have no interest in at all after sampling a chunk of season one. What I saw confirmed the earlier theory: a bunch of humorless, uniformed people grimly facing the odds on a great big space station just doing a job. The show looks like work. It's devoid of fun, of grace, of light (well, literally: the station was surrounded by these Shadow things), and pretentiously is about Great Big Things. And like every other American space show, it's got that goddamn omnipresent noise in the background: the constant hum of the ship's engine that never lets us forget they're meant to be in space. In its defense, Babylon 5 is the most sumptuously produced of all the American space shows. It looks damn good, with great effects and sets (unlike all the shit from the Roddenberry stable) and the directors and editors know what they're doing, even if much of what they showed in the studio with actors was static and dull. I don't understand why the computer camera jumps and dances impressively all over the space station and the fighter ships and the Shadow ships but as soon as there are actors to light, they're all close-horned in tight close-ups.
So, Babylon 5: boring as shit but extremely competent. Black Scorpion, however, isn't just boring, it's the least-competently produced hour of TV I've seen in ages. It looks like it was made by college students, with agonizingly slow fight scenes, brainless scripting, woeful "comedy," hideous acting and an absolute lack of sense. This was Television 101: every single scene and development was as predictable as a Bryan Adams song. Eventually, the only reasons to continue watching were Michelle Lintel's cleavage and the game of "spot the stock footage" whenever anything expensive happened. And not necessarily in that order.
Well, next episode actually promises to have Black Scorpion up against a female foe, and the T&A quotient will be much higher. Should be cute for a night. After that, well, someone drop me a line when the Frank Gorshin episode is coming up, OK?
Since I was too bored to get up, I left the TV on and Deb woke up when Farscape started. And holy shit, that show is actually really amazingly good!! Who knew? And why didn't they tell me?
Farscape is shot in Australia using primarily local talent, with some of the Hercules and Xena production types. It's got effects -- and, sadly, Muppets -- handled by the Henson people and consequently doesn't look like anything on TV. The sets look like they've been lived in, unlike the antiseptic, static world of Babylon 5. The camera moves all over the place, the design is amazing, the costumes and aliens are wholly unlike anything American TV has shat at us.
Best of all, in stark contrast to the seaQuest-Andromeda-Babylon-Trek concept of everyone being bold and working humorlessly for some great good, last night's episode featured our "heroes" breaking into a fucking bank. And they were tense, and they were pissed, and they threatened to kill each other and the odds were absolutely and magnificently stacked against them. It was like watching an episode of Blake's 7, only one with good design, good sets, good direction, good costumes, good music and good acting, whereas all Blake's 7 had was the good scripts.
The recurring villain in Farscape is a pissed old cyborg named Scorpius, who stomps around showing off his disturbing PVC fetish. He apparently requires these rods to be regularly inserted into his head. So, upon learning Scorpius was in the bank, the heroes elected to kill him by replacing one of his rods with one that would heat up and explode inside his skull. I can't think of a less honorable way to kill someone. Captain Kirk would not approve, the big fucking pansy.
The other thing I really loved was the constant attention to background details. In one shot, it was seen to be raining outside the bank. When Scorpius finally got the bomb-rod out of his head, it had done enough damage to cause a small river of blood and oil to pour down the side of his mask. And best of all was the bank propreitress, a stacked Giger-femme with dangerous heels and fingers like daggers. So vivid was her costume, design and make-up that she made the oft-praised "Borg Queen" from Star Trek look like the BBC had built her. During one lengthy session, she was engaged in disturbing foreplay with Scorpius, leaning over and licking his face. The camera was in so intimately tight -- and you didn't want to be intimate with these two -- that you could see every drop of spit from the actress's tongue moistening Scorpius's eyes and nose.
Deborah and I were absolutely rivetted by this show, despite the Muppets, and as you probably know, damn little on television has ever rivetted her. If the rest of the series is half as good, we're hooked. They're airing four episodes Sunday night; reckon we'll watch a few.
There is, incidentally, more serious and emotionally involving news to report from some friends, but I am hardly in enough of a serious or emotional enough mood to discuss them. Maybe Monday.
Now playing: David Bowie: Diamond Dogs
January 4, 2001 (part one)
Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepy! Oh, this is awful! I hate getting up at 5! Worse, last night, I'm right in the middle of my recurring nightmare and I hear this terrible engine noise. So my dream self walks to the window of the home he is in…
…and then I wake up and I'm already standing at my window at 2.07 am and there's a carpet cleaning van about two buildings over with some motor running in the back and lots of people moving around frantically. When we left for the bus three-odd hours later, there was a frozen river of ice down the parking lot. My heart goes out to the poor souls who backed up whatever they backed up to cause that mess.
Things didn't improve standing in the 18 degree weather waiting for the bus. It was really late. I ended up missing the connection with the #140 and had to decide: stand in the cold for another 15 minutes waiting for the next #140 and ride 5 minutes to the train station, or just sit on this bus as it will, in half an hour, eventually make it to the same station. I opted for warmth. Unfortunately, I also missed the Ravinia shuttle bus and had to sit in the windtorn bottom of the parking deck for fifteen minutes waiting for it to come back.
So please forgive me if all I want to do is sleep. And I have a lesson tonight! Argggh! Maybe I can nap between the two…
Now playing: Miles Davis: In a Silent Way (which isn't helping my somnabulism)
(part two)
Mmmm. Skittles, coke and the angst-ridden vocals of that moron Gavin Rossdale. Now I'm awake. But why did I bring Deb's stupid Bush CD with me? And of all the bitter British acts to hit with angsty teens in the last decade, why these guys and not Suede? (I am informed, for what it's worth, that Brett Anderson is even much better looking than Gavin. However, Gavin has all that "Never Known Shampoo" thing going. Maybe girls like that more…)
Speaking of music and complaining about teens, I was at Wal-Mart last night. Dear Lord, please prevent me from ever having to go in one ever again. Seriously, I swear it's not like I intend to cultivate some indie rock snob attitude! After all, most of the indie rock snobs I've met aren't very fun to be around. However, five minutes in the electronics department waiting for Deb to get a key cut and I wanted to live on another planet.
The TVs were set to "The Wal-Mart Channel," advertising the latest wares from all your favorite artists. Now, this particular Wal-Mart stocks some of the teen popster dolls in the music department. So I'm trying to decide whether Mandy or Britney has the uglier doll when the Wal-Mart channel explodes with fireworks and the announcer booms "BRITNEY SPEARS IS A CULTURAL PHENOMENON!!!"
So, being curious about "cultural phenomenons," I quickly turned. After all, I so greatly fear being labelled "uncool" by not being in on this cultural phenomenon. It turns out Ms. Spears has a new live video out. It's full of dancing and fireworks and costume changes and it's called "Live and More." Oh, dear Britney, we're so glad you thought so long and hard to come up with that title. If you had scrimped, you might have just come up with something that sucked. And all I could think of is: This girl needs a stern talking to by Lydia Lunch and she needs it now.
So, always on the lookout for very cheap CDs, as though I haven't enough already, I looked at Wal-Mart's cheap bins. They don't have cut-outs however, they just have these incredibly cheapo compilations shat out by some nobody label that licensed the rights from CBS and paid a guy minimum wage and gave him ten minutes to design a sleeve. TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART: THE ALL-TIME GREATEST HITS OF BONNIE TYLER or THE VERY VERY VERY BEST OF LOGGINS & MESSINA or BORN IN THE 70s. I actually saw one of these for Cyndi Lauper once. Whatever shit label did it apparently couldn't afford the rights to any of her singles and so they just filled it with ten other random LP tracks that were never played on the radio.
What else did I bitch about yesterday? Oh, yes, "New rock" 99x played "The One I Love." Recorded almost fourteen years ago; not new. And this new Pop Stars series which starts on the WB on January 12 and which can't possibly be any good. Apparently it follows the trials and tribulations of several hundred thousand teenage girls as they are whittled down to five and an eventual unveiling before a sellout stadium crowd as America's version of the Spice Girls and a record contract. The ads are full of crying girls dancing and saying things like "My entire life… all those violin lessons… they've all brought me here. My whole life has been about getting me to this point!" It's like Felicity crossed with Survivor by way of S Club 7.
I didn't set out to be an indie rock snob. It just sort of happened.
Now playing: Nina Gordon: Tonight and the Rest of My Life
(part three)
Read this. Twice.
"By adding the following yet another coinciding event to the mix, we begin to see clearer the ritualistic aspect of the events. On March 25, perfectly coinciding with the 'Heaven's Gate' incident and Hale-Bopp's closest approach to Earth (March 22), former president George Bush jumped off a plane and fell to the earth - he did skydiving. It took place in Arizona - where the 'Phoenix Lights' occurred in the same month. At the time Bush was 72 years old (there it is again, # '72'). The 'ritual' aspect of the event is strengthened by the fact that Bush is identified as a member of a shadowy fraternity 'Skull and Bones'. The name, 'Skull and Bones', could easily relate to one of the symbols the legendary Knights Templar, to which various secret societies seem to have some kind of connection, used. Therefore, it doesn't seem to be just a happy coincidence that Bush's skydiving was accompanied by the members of the Army's precision parachuting team called the 'Golden Knights'." -- Goro Adachi, from http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/1999.htm
Hoo boy.
Weird Wide Web in Creative Loafing alerted me to this. If you haven't visited Etemenanki yet, you are missing out on the most head-swimmingly mind-shockingly gobsmacking site I have ever seen. It's the conspiracy theory to end all of them, and reading it will take you a minimum of an hour. Absorbing it might take slightly longer. Only four days in, and I think this might be the funniest site anyone finds all year.
OK, so we're descended from aliens. Nothing new there, and nothing The X Files doesn't bounce around all the time. But this thing starts with Nostradamus, ancient Greece and Atlantis, winds its way through Thor, Carl Sagan, Nazi scientists, JFK, the Holy Grail, NASA, John Glenn, the Ark of the Covenenant, the planet that used to be between Mars and Jupiter, both of Saturn's moons, the Rosicrucians and Hale-Bopp before taking us through the films Jurassic Park, Star Wars and Contact before winding up (I think) with Columbine, Madeline Kahn and the bird costume Steven Tyler wore in the video for "I Wouldn't Miss a Thing." Of course, Clinton's in on it. He comes from Arkansas. The state can be abbrieviated as "Ark"! Bad news for Catholics, though. The Pope will be retiring soon. His successor will not last long, and the joe following him will be the last. The Roman Catholic Church will probably dissolve in your lifetime.
Like a lot of prophecy and conspiracy bores, the author has a knack for turning anything that has ever happened into proof of his massive million-year investigation. Nostradamus said something about something at 45 will burn. Well, the capital of Switzerland is Bern and a SuissAir flight went down around the 45th parallel! But nobody I've seen has done it with such flair and such an absolute disregard for even the possibility of coincidence. The result is something that starts with giggling and ends with your jaw on the floor as the mountain of "evidence" just keeps climbing and you gradually realize it isn't a parody of conspiracy theory and think "Sweet Jesus, no! This guy is actually serious!"
Well, if it is a parody, he went way too far. If it's not, then like, ummm, he needs to hook up with that guy who claims he wrote every movie that has the word "lucky" in the dialogue. I'm sure they'll have much to discuss.
And Elian Gonzales? Moses. For real.
Now playing: October Project: Falling Farther In
January 3, 2001
We have no babies! Deb, who started her job today, sent the terror two up t'Athens to stay with her parents for a week and a half until we can get them started in a wonderful center she found. This has left our cat, Louis, completely freaked out. He knows the kids are missing; it's thrown his sense of organization and security.
Most of you readers don't have kids and so you don't know how incredibly strange it feels to have a quiet dinner and not be going "No, sit in your seat! Get off the floor!" because to you, that's second nature. And an evening for us just isn't complete without a chorus of "Leave your sister alone / leave the cat alone / go night-night / no, you can't play with that / I said go night-night / give Mommy some privacy / who's there / ready or not here I come / for the love of the angels please go night-night!"
I'm certain we'll find lots of creative uses for this new free time. We might, like, you know, sleep uninterrupted by Ivy, who moans "Mama…bottle…Louis…go way Louis…mama…" I still kind of like that one of Ivy's very few sentences is "Go way Louis."
Monday morning I thought that I might be having a recurrence of my eye infection. Mercifully it went away, and we think it might have just been lingering irritation from moving dust on Saturday. Yup, it finally happened: one of my friends bought a house. Matt Murray owns a very nice place in a quiet neighborhood right outside the Lilburn city limits. Now, the actual tale of the move isn't really mine to tell, but I can say that I did absorb all the bad moving karma from Matt's end of the journey. Efficient and prompt, we were completely outta his old place inside two hours, which was astonishing. Then we got to the new place. Hoo boy.
The previous tenant of the home Matt bought still wasn't out of there. And a surly, grumpy lady she was, too. She had started moving, and indeed had removed her furniture, but left behind rooms full of unpacked filth, hats, linens and Better Homes & Gardens. She was apparently abandoned mid-move by all of her friends and two ex-husbands, none of whom would help her. We know this because she told one or more of us about her miserable week at least four times an hour. I asked if the fridge in the garage still worked; she told me it was full of food she hadn't cleaned out and that she'd been moving carloads by herself for eight hours. CB asked her if a certain bag had trash or things she wanted to take; she said she wanted to go through it again and that all of her friends bailed on her. Buffington asked her about the attic; she told him about it and about just how many trips she'd made to her new Duluth home that morning. Having heard quite enough about her miserable existence, we were really about out of sympathy by the time we found her porn stash and her pot.
At least the discovery of the marijuana sparked the quote of the month: "Now, see, if that was oregano, then it would be in a jar in the kitchen. But it's not. It's in a bag in the bedroom."
Incidentally, I had already left and was not present for the subsequent discovery of the unpleasant woman's stash of amateur porn, reportedly of the lowest possible caliber and starring her unpleasant self. You know, it's just simple moving ettiquette that when you go somewhere, you box up the sexually oriented material yourself and you move it yourself and you don't let any of your helpers – heaven forbid a bunch of complete strangers – find saucy things buried in a box of crap in the bathroom vanity. Unless… ew, gross! What if she wanted us to find them?! Ewwwie!
There is some less revolting news, I'm extremely pleased to say. Unfortunately, without a formal announcement, I really shouldn't talk about it yet, but once the someone at its epicenter speaks up, I'll convey it here. Suffice it to say that it's the sort of news that makes otherwise rational girls smile real big and go "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" at each other, which is a dashed peculiar thing to do.
Now playing: Q's The Best Tracks from the Best Albums of 2000
January 2, 2001
News from Nashville that's sad for Tory but good for planet Earth: her ole car is dead. This loveable beast was emitting so many dangerous toxins that her local emissions tester couldn't even measure them all, and a single crank was wiping out an acre of rainforest half a world away.
I didn't make any new year's resolutions. I figure I did that in November when we started Popocalypse anyway. I am going to be massively revamping the plans for the bootleg CDs though. I've just heard more than a couple of horror stories from people "in the know" about being tracked down and busted, so it would behoove me to not do anything so stupid as to put the name of my venture on the thing where anybody can stick it in a search engine and find me. (Oddly, the only other published use of the term seems to be the title of Swedish metal act Supermodel's album "Popocalypse Now.")
That was one long weekend, though. I think we should have every Monday off!
Now playing: Echo & the Bunnymen: Evergreen
Go on back to the pop page or hit the diary page.