Things I've purchased recently (now with my patented Null ratings):

• Viva Voce - Get Yr Blood Sucked Out. Live, these two came across like a stripped-down stoner-rock band. On record, that heavy stomp is almost nowhere to be found. I still like it, it's just not what I was expecting. 3 Nulls ∅∅∅.
• Blonde Redhead - 23. Continuing to distance themselves from the raw guitar attack of their first three records, they make another electronics-heavy record. Highlights include some MBV-ish guitar wash on one of the songs. 2 Nulls ∅∅.
• Neil Young - Live at Massey Hall. This is an acoustic set from '71. It's good. I like it. It's a nice contrast to the all-electric live record from the same period that he put out last year. ∅∅∅∅.
• The Oxford Collapse - Remember the Night Parties. In the same vein as, oh I dunno, the louder bits of British Sea Power and The Good, The Bad and The Queen - but tighter, more direct, more rocking, heavy on the The Archers Of Loaf. And they're not British, they're from Brooklyn - and that surprised me. Sometimes it sounds like they keep playing that one song I really like over and over. ∅∅∅
• Yo La Tengo - Painful. Don't know why I waited so long to get this one. It's YLT right in the sweet spot of their guitar-centered years. Love it. ∅∅∅∅.
• Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha. It's not as immediately catchy as his last one, so it's taking me a while to get into. But, it's looking good so far. ∅∅∅

I Heart Tripods

Don't Steep Tigers

Had a dream we bought an old Victorian house - tall, ornate, worn-down, like an Addams Family house without the S&M installations. The floors were covered in beetle-green velvet rugs that had almost completely worn down to the backing. I thought about replacing them with new versions of the same - would that look bad? I couldn't decide. Water dripped on my head from somewhere. There was a leak in a 3rd-floor toilet. I looked up through a hole in the 2nd-floor ceiling to talk with the plumber, Simon Cowell. He tightened the big plastic nut on the bottom of the flapper valve, and declared the job finished.

No more Sanjaya.

Bobby's good at this. Go listen.

*gurglegurglegurgle...exhale*

"Dude, dude. So check this out. So, if there's nothing but molecules in the universe, then there can't be any such thing as "evil". "

"Whaaa?"

"No, listen, this is good. So you can't, like touch "evil", right? "

"OK, yeah.... keep going."

"Right. So that means it's all in your mind. It's not real. And then there can't be any such thing as "good", either. I mean, you can't touch a chunk of "good"."

"Dude, your sister is good. And I touched her. Ohhh yeah..."

"No fucker, listen. You can't touch "good" - it's not real. And you can't make a pile of "evil", or "red" or "fast". None of that exists! It's all abstract. It's all in your mind!"

*gurglegurglegurgle...exhale*

"Cooool, dude!"

"Right! Nothing but reality exists. It's just us and the void."

"Duuuude... That's awesome! Gimme that back! ...

*gurglegurglegurgle...exhale*

"So does that mean there's no such thing as "dumb", or "conservative", or "demagoguery" ?"

"Dude, no. Unfortunately, no. Those are real, and evil, too."

There's an interesting story on SlashDot about a guy who keeps suing spammers but finds himself up against lazy, ignorant judges who won't even read his documents before dismissing his case.

We thought we were safe, but the pet food problems have appeared in the brand that Tricksey eats - and I just ordered three cases last week! (not of the types they're recalling right now... but two days ago they weren't recalling any of them... so who knows)

Reportedly, rice gluten protein concentrate from a US company is the problem this time, not wheat gluten from China; so I can't blame the Chinese. Oh well.

Maybe Mrs. Cleek was right when she joked that we'd have to feed Tricksey only tortilla chips and deli ham (both of which she loves).

James Wolcott:

It never seems to occur to our national simplifiers that many of the homicides in this country are not committed by career Bad People but by seemingly Good People who psychotically snap or lose their tempers in an altercation; and that there are plenty of Bad People in this country who, while expressing their destructive impulses in a myriad of ways, manage not to pick up a weapon and leave a multiple death toll. The notion that the answer to gun violence is to allow Good People to arm themselves and to keep guns out of the itchy paws of Bad People is a fatuous fantasy, particularly since the gun lobby and gun merchants work so strenuously to keep laws and regulations lax and loosy-goosy, regardless of the human consequences.

Sometimes I just can't get anything done.

Sure, I come into the office, putter around, check my email every ten seconds, read the web, even do a few brainless tasks like paying the American Express bill. But getting back into the flow of writing code just doesn't happen.

These bouts of unproductiveness usually last for a day or two. But there have been times in my career as a developer when I went for weeks at a time without being able to get anything done. As they say, I'm not in flow. I'm not in the zone. I'm not anywhere.

From an old Joel on Software article.

There's a pile of work orders assigned to me, each one as apparently-insurmountable as the next. Fuck 'em. I just ain't got the jam to do that shit today.