If you haven't seen this movie ... (22:18 Jan. 18)

... you damn well oughta go buy it. Appaloosa - best damn Western I've seen in years (and that includes a recent viewing of the magic that is Once Upon A Time In The West), with pretty much flawless performances, direction, and everything else. Probably the best characters that Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen have ever played, an absolute master class in acting. Jeremy Irons plays the most amoral villain of his career, and Zellweger is close behind with her alpha male fixation. Harris' direction, the cinematography, music, perfect. Ranks with Eastwood's Unforgiven in the pantheon of Western films.

Oh, by the way - after doing this stuff for 10 years or more, I finally got started on the certification track, and can now officially display this:

As Eminem so famously said ... I'm gonna kill you ... (12:02 Jan. 13)

Hear ye, hear ye - writers of viruses, spyware, and other shit that I and millions like me have to spend hours upon hours attempting to fix. I will be meeting you FUCKING ASSHOLES in hell, where I have a special dispensation from Satan himself to boil you in your own piss while I jam various sharp implements sideways into each and every orifice on your body for the remainder of eternity. Think about that before you inflict any more stupidity on the world for another dollar.

The year may not be starting off as well as hoped ... (13:29 Jan. 11)

From somewhere to Facebook, courtesy of a redhead in a Mustang:

I love photography (01:18 Dec. 7)

While being directed to les enfants terribles by an old acquaintance of mine, I stumbled across Mr. Toledano. His "Days with my Father" gallery is a poignant and powerful examination of the joys and sorrows of watching your parents age, and his "Another Place" pictures are beautifully strange. I may be late to the party, but thought I'd share with any of you who might not know about them.

December, holy sh*t (18:23 Dec. 4)

The economy is in the toilet, we're embroiled in two wars, I've been through one downsizing and a lot of other stupidity this year, the weather is completely confused, and I woke up with cat hair in my eyebrows this morning. I am *so* ready for this year to be over with. Black coffee and caesar salad are a pretty good way to throw pounds off your ass, by the way ...

Sharing the good things (22:40 Nov. 30)

Almost December, holy shit. Just a short note for the wine drinkers in the house - Bianchi Petite Sirah - Paso Robles, Rancho Tierra Rejada - good stuff. Missing the dryness of some Syrah releases, mouth-filling body and flavor, excellent richness and depth. Beautiful by itself, even better with rich food, maybe a steak or a marsala chicken. Yum.

Are you f***ing kidding me? (19:41 Nov. 21)

Umm, asshole, there's an article you should read, and another one for comparison. Get out of my damn parking spot:

Slacking .. (21:55 Nov. 17)

No posts in a while as I've been doing nothing of interest even to me (that's pretty sad). Limbo continues ...

One bright spot - picked up the last White Stripes effort, and it is a tasty package of grease rock. If you get a chance to snag Icky Thump, do it - everything from acoustic country blues to Jack White channeling Robert Plant through a Moog. Muy bueno.

Chimay! (22:51 Nov. 5)

Made a trip to my new favorite non-house location - The Old Monk - where Chimay decided to host one of their many 146th birthday parties. My favorite neuroscientist waitress snuck three commemorative glasses my way (pics when I find my camera), and I talked her out of her emroidered apron. I am a beer knurd without any doubt. While I love schwag, I love Chimay more. It is still a phenomenal example of the Belgian abbey ales - balanced, smooth, complex, with just the right amount of bite. Each of the 3 varieties is a unique and definitive brew, all of which should be sampled with care and patience. Happy birthday!

chown -R us ./base (19:20 Nov. 5)

It has been one seriously shitty decade so far, with this last year ranking down there with 1997 on my personal list of years I would have been better off in hibernation, or being a quadruple amputee, or being fed to a goddamn shark. Divorces, war, terrorism, domestic political and financial suppression and thievery, a smirking chimp as our nominal leader surrounded by lying sycophants who give new meaning to that old chestnut, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! As noted further down the page, I had a couple of weeks where I was ready to pack my bags and take the slow boat to Australia.

That said, I want to say thank you to the people of America for making history last night. I sincerely hope that Barack Obama lives up to (and exceeds) the promise of his words, but if he accomplishes nothing other than keeping America's candle burning through the next four years, that will be enough for me. America needs a leader who can inspire its people to believe in themselves and their country, and for the first time in a long time, I heard someone speak about our country in a way that gave me hope for not only us, but the rest of the world. If he can lead the United States with any part of the rationality, collected focus, calm, and inspiring persona that he has developed over the last two years, we are in good shape. If that same leadership can be extended to his (and by extension, our) relations with the rest of the world, there may be a light (that's not on the front of a freight train) at the end of the long, dark tunnel we've been hurtling through for the past several years. I have no illusions about the dijointed intersection of politics and reality and the effect they have had and will have on the coming administration, but for at least today, I'm proud to be an American.

Socialization Deux (19:57 Oct. 30)

Classmates.com, MySpace.com, Blogspot.com, blah, de blah, de blah. I'm about to go delete the Blogspot stuff, and the Windows Live pook, and probably the Classmates garbanzos. To see what I'm up to at MySpace, hit the Levi-Za link. We'll see how my patience lasts with the gawd-freakin'-awful UI over there.

Oh, and there's this small bottle of McWeakSauce:

Socialization (3:03 Oct. 26)

I want to state for the record that the concept of dating at age 35 is weird. I'm supposed to be married, kids, family holidays with the in-laws, et al, and now I'm going to be having to think about "is this woman going to meet the parental standards .. ". E-gad. I'm not there yet, but it's looming on the horizon. How are my 15 year-old and 13 year-old children going to react, how's my *date* going to react to three kids and two ex-wives .. ? Makes the shit Paulson and crew are going through look like a cakewalk.

Good news is there are intelligent humans out there. Met a waitress tonight who's working on a degree in neuroscience (?!?) and about to head to her master's program in Boston, and has a tattoo of a neuron on her back. Am I ever going to date her? Probably not, but there's hope that a propellerhead like me will meet someone who's interested in discussing something other than the front page of the daily newspaper.

WUI (22:00 Oct 5)

A country that imports this may not be completely clueless (22:48 Oct 1)

Another fine competitor in the "best of Belgium" Olympics I've been having with my liver for the last several years. A fine example of a dark Belgian ale on lees, along the lines of the phenomenal Delirium Tremens and Delirium Nocturnum from Brouwerij Huyghe (best damn beer site *ever*).

Time to pack it up .. (20:43 Oct 1)

My kids and family are going to hate to hear this, but when they get to college, I'm heading to Australia. I'll try and talk them into ex-patriation, not sure I can endorse any more of this shit by my participation in the American Kleptocracy. I'll let you guys know what my new phone number is.

What they gonna do? (19:57 Oct 1)

I e-mailed the concerned parties expressing my desire that they do their goddamn jobs and prevent us from being raped (again) by the predators stalking our last dollars. As they haven't done their jobs for the past 15 or 20 years, I'm pretty damn sure they are going to change, but I have the faintest hope that the 450 pages of padded shit wrapped around the Paulson dictum won't be enough to blind my representatives to the fact that a frosted, earmarked, tax break bandaged, throw-enough-words-at-the-proles-and-they'll-go-duh dog turd is still a dog turd.

Listening to the pathetic mewling of the spineless shits on C-SPAN trying to convince themselves and their co-horts that this bill flat *rawks*, I just don't know whether to laugh or cry. Vote is running now, we'll see.

UPDATE - 20:11 - Thus far, Cornyn and Hutchison from Texas have joined in the collective ass-rape, as has Biden. McCain and Obama are in, too. Looks like I'm going to be voting Green Party this year.

E we Elect them, E we Eject them .. (22:18 Sept 30)

Problem with the old Megadeth chestnut (one of Mustaine's rants against the magic of the PMRC) is that the illusion that voting for Democrats or Republicans means you have a choice and are participating in democracy is just that. An illusion. I think at this point if every single voter in America suddenly grew a brain and rejected the entire uni-party system, and actually voted every one of the bastards out, replacing them with a Libertarian, Green Party, Communist, or Dr. Seussian to the available seats, the powers that be would simply reject it as an invalid election and instate martial law. Some of the squirrels out there have been watching the Neo-con planners and found some interesting items spelled out in clear English - not real comforting to envision how quickly the war-gaming could turn into deployment of local security.

Seen for about 20 minutes on Counterpunch.org, my favorite leftist screed. Thought this just about perfectly summed up my feelings on the whole debacle:

Take THAT .. (18:40, Sept 29)

Yep. I realize that this colossal failure is going to hit me right in the pocketbook, right on my grocery bill, right in my mortgage. These thieving bastards have been running unfettered for so long that adjustment back to reality is going to be a 9.7 on the Richter scale. I've got a couple of items to add to the top of the bill:

• Top executives - let's take the top 5 - in companies that the government has to absorb - all face criminal prosecution for fraud, embezzlement, and stupidity. Innocent until proven guilty, if they're guilty, send 'em to federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.
• Any company holding a financial interest in any of the unregulated, invisible, and utterly worthless shit that the economy is now sinking into has to determine and publish the actual saleable cash value of their books - this will pretty much guarantee that the next 3 levels of management in these companies faces termination and prosecution, if not a lynch mob. There's a lot of available lampposts on Wall Street, I've seen 'em.
• Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke buy interest in every toxic piece of shit they expect the American public to take over - they get a piece of their own asses in the game, guarantee there'll be less enthusiasm to blow $250, $300, or more billions that "the next president gets to negotiate about".
• The companies responsible for this don't get to "opt in" - they get to play or they get taken over by the federal government and liquidated, just like any other trafficker in illicit goods. I don't see the government asking mob heads who get busted for selling stolen cars or tons of cocaine whether they want to give up their loot.

The way I see it, we can get saddled with 20 years of trying to prop this crap up, with the cost climbing into the trillions. I think the Japanese did that, they just finally got back above water last year. Or, we go ahead and admit that we're already in a *depression* (sorry, you've been lied to for at least the last 10 years or so). It's going to zero out a whole lot of people, all those who bought into the money-for-nothing mentality that has taken over America from the top down, and my generation is going to have their own Great Depression to live through. Instead of pissing $700 billion (or more) into the coffers of the shitheads who got us here, we can turn around and invest the money into the infrastructure of the United States (material, social, and human).

Oh yeah, and I want revenge for the past decade and a half that I've spent running up a gravel-covered slope trying to get to that plateau where my earnings are ahead of the cost of milk and gasoline, while those who could (because of my elected officials' laissez-faire stupidity) robbed the world blind. You can all kiss my ass.

Fiddling while Rome burns (01:03, Sept 28)

Can't spend all my time being pissed off about the continuing drain-circling - sometimes you gotta just blog like you give a shit! Next task is to decode the whole theme deal-i-o so I can make the blog look like the rest of this Courier-fonted waste of time.

I'm torn here .. (22:50, Sept 23)

Watching the election coverage and the econonmic death spiral that our country is flailing into, I'm just not sure it wouldn't be better to go ahead and elect Palin and McCain. That'll clear the way to bomb the shit out of Iran, Pakistan, or any other country-stan where the goddamned Islamic heathens hold sway. The suitcase nukes (PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU SCROLL DOWN ON THAT PAGE TO SEE THE ULTIMATE INSANITY - "SHARE AND ENJOY" - HOLY. SHIT.) can be deployed to NYC, LA, downtown Anchorage, and Denver (head start on the herd thinning there), the economy can slide off into the dark abyss it's leaning over now, and the American elite can reap the whirlwind they've sown over the last half century.

I'm pretty sure that democracy as an institution has been completely sold off and is now as defunct as Enron. It's basically going to take anarchic violence and destruction to clear the shit out of our political and financial sectors, and that won't do much for the dollar. The poor, huddled masses will take up those semi-automatic weapons they've been empowered to own and use and murder everyone with more than a dollar left to their name, and the ones they don't shoot to death (or dismember) they can behead at the top of the Reflecting Pool in DC. After we thin the population by a thousand-plus billionaires to reduce pressure on the economy and destroy the power concentration that has bled the country white, we can see if there's anything left to salvage. By that time, the Chinese will have finished their ascendancy - they can put up the fences and start lobbing the Zyklon-B over the wall to seal the deal.

Just think, after 100 years or so, instead of Europeans colonizing the wide empty spaces, the poor huddled masses from Southeast Asia can get on their own little Mayflowers and work their way west to east. By the time they get to NYC, the smog might have cleared.

You think I'm joking - I've got my AK-47, you have yours?

It's Late (00:44, Sept 20)

Going to bed, just thought you ought to know. If for some strange reason you've never seen Once Upon A Time In the West, wander down to your local Spend-O-Rama and pick it up. The DVD remastered edition is generally available for $9 or so. See what real film-making is about - a completely realized epic, with stylistic elements that continue to shape cinema today. Wow.

Take note of the T-Glass ... (21:00, Sept 15)

For those who didn't get to ride the rail to Active Directory and Exchange 2007 at the last project I was on, the "T-Glass" refers to those special windows in skyscrapers that are tempered glass versus the standard impact resistant safety glass. This allows you (or concerned fire-fighters) to knock these windows out to allow escape from whatever danger (fire, flood, alligators, managers ...) is threatening those inside. A running joke involved some problematic engineer or employee (or VP) being strategically led past one of these windows and "accidentally" exiting the building. After watching the blood-sucking leeches in the financial sectors of our economy draining the entire world dry for the past ten years, I sincerely hope there's a lot of T-Glass on Wall Street, and maybe, just maybe, these sorry f***ers will see fit to throw their own sorry asses through it.

! M E T A L L I C A ! (11:00, Sept 12)

If you are like me, a rabid fan of '86-era Metallica, when Master of Puppets signalled the rise of the greatest metal band ever, and like me, just got confused when the latent Bob Seger influence took over from Load through the muddy mess that was St. Anger, you should go now, not later, and pick up Death Magnetic. Believe the hype. 5 seconds into it you know that for once in their lives, sobriety (combined with the steady hand of Rick Rubin) is a good thing for the former members of Alcoholica. This is the band that hit you in the teeth with "Blackened" after you'd spent three years thrashing to "Damage, Inc." and "Leper Messiah". No Crisco-can drums here, Lars has figured out that the producers generally know how to make him sound like the Huns coming across the plains. Trujillo has disappeared back into the mix where he belongs - in Metallica, bass is intended to play octave-pedal to Hetfield's Mesa Boogie-generated brutality, making a low-end that keeps your woofers busy. Hammett appears to be intent on applying wah to every note. With leads ripping through the fretboard like an ADD victim on meth, his guitar comes screaming out of the mix, providing slashing counterpoints to the crunch below. And THANK GOD! Hetfield has figured out that the world didn't listen to Metallica to hear him sing. The growl that we all yelled along with through "Harvester of Sorrow" and "Creeping Death" was the perfect way to communicate lyrical content that might not always make sense, but sounded so f***ing cool. This was where Metallica always got the edge over bands like Anthrax and Megadeth - Mustaine had attitude to spare in every line of bile and sarcasm, and Belladonna put all the NYC edge he could into it, but there was never the feeling that you wanted to play alpha-male ape-man, smashing heads with a feral hog femur as you moshed.

Futzing around ... (00:43, Sept 03)

I don't really think there's anything left that Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for. To the topic at hand, have been snapping photos for several years now and tripped across a site that got me thinking about posting some pics for general consumption. How to do it? Well, ran a Google search on XHTML and filmstrip, landed at this guy's page, and generated this. I'm trying to dig in a bit deeper to CSS a la these magicians. Neat-o.

Limbo ... (21:04, Sept 01)

While I wouldn't call it Hell, Dictionary.com managed to nail it down pretty well:

3. an intermediate, transitional, or midway state or place.
4. a place or state of imprisonment or confinement.

Yee. Haw.

Have added the nav bar back but still aiming for KISS here. Get ready for color shock when you click through the content above, it's back to the greenage (and purple-age, and ...). Just click the escape button to return to the front gate.

Another day in paradise ... (22:30, Aug 22)

Despite the tone of my previous post, I'm not poised to slash wrists while stuffing my head into a gas oven. Entirely aside from the children I've got to keep healthy, wealthy, and wise, I've got a caffeine addiction to feed (as noted previously, 12000 hungry baristas are counting on me), and a new-ish vehicle to replace the fully-depreciated Korean magic mobile. Been getting some reading done, blistering my fingers on the real thing and the the fake thing.

Game over, man, game over ... (10:01, Aug 17)

In case you haven't heard, second marriage is kaput. Having that fun internal debate on whether I just have shitty taste in women, I'm an asshole, I'm wired wrong for the whole marriage thing, or some combination of the three. Pretty fucking depressing to be honest with you (which phrase a cohort of mine admonished me not to use - "So you've been lying to me all this time ... ?"). Spent the past 16 years trying to get things back on track, working my ass off to get the financial shit in line while trying to balance raising 3 kids in 2 families. Evidently I should have just fucked offtaken it easy and become a starving musician, might have saved everyone a lot of heartache.

More later, going with the whole B/W Courier motif while I figure out what else I'm gonna do.

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