Category Archives: Uncategorized

I Buy The Songs

Metallica - Master Of Puppets. Just backfilling my collection here. But wow, what an album. Half of the lyrics make no sense at all, but they sound good. The iPod absolutely loves it.

The Decembrists - Her Majesty. Neutral Milk Hotel meets the Smiths. An acceptable combination, since neither of those bands are doing anything with the styles they pioneered.

The Decembrists - The Crane Wife. Not as interesting as "Her Majesty". It's a lot less anachronistic and a bit more mainstream. It has its charms, but some of the songs ("Perfect Crime", "When The War Came") I find downright obnoxious.

Mission Of Burma - The Obliterati. I missed them the first time around, and have only heard a few songs from their early days - and I like what I've heard of them. But this record, released in 2006, sounds as if it could've been written back in the 80's, it's so chock-full of early post-punk goodness: loud, aggressive, defiant, angular, dissonant. It definitely doesn't at all sound like a band in its 24th year. And as a bonus, listening to this stuff puts other, later, loud post-punk bands like Polvo, Fugazi, the Pixes and even the mighty Sonic Youth into perspective. These guys were doing it first, and they're still doing it today.

Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow. There's a bit of the airy mystical chamber-folk of Nick Drake and a bit of the cheery modern pop-folk of Bright Eyes, a little Latin flavor, some hippy folk stuff. Innaresting.

Beatles - 65. This came from a bunch of LPs my father sent me to rip to CD. Great record. I wasn't sure about my fondness for early Beatles, but this is infectious, energetic stuff.

Gillian Welch - Black Star EP. Awesome. There are only three songs: Black Star, Pocahontas, White Freightliner Blues. I've had this for a long time, and I assumed the songs were all covers, but never bothered looking up who wrote the songs. Then, one day, "Black Star" popped-up on the iPod, but it was Radiohead... huh. Now I know. Gillian's version is a lot better, IMO - it's a great song, but the Radiohead version sounds busy, and compressed by comparison. "Pocahontas" is a Neil Young song, and again, Gillian's version is better. The third song is a Townes Van Zandt song, but I already knew that.

Robyn Hitchcock - Robyn Sings. Robyn sings Bob Dylan, to be accurate. It's a compilation of Robyn doing Bob Dylan covers. Some are good. Some are kind of rough. Some sound like bootlegs. Since Dylan, like Neil Young, is one of those songwriters I like better when other people do his songs, this is a nice way to sample a bunch of Dylan I'd probably otherwise never hear.

Wooh hoo!

El yay!

Waiting for the big Mexican drugs, fags, illegals and sodomy fest* to start, since our only hope of preventing it, Vernon Robinson, got his ass kicked last night.

* - not that I'll be partaking in all of the activities, of course.

Doppleganger

I got a little bright-yellow postcard in the mail yesterday, from the NC Secretary of State. It said, due to to violations of N.C.G.S. Section 105-230(a), the corporation of which I am president (and only employee), has been "suspended", pursuant to N.C.G.S. Section 105-232. There was no explanation of what any of that meant.

I was all like W.T.F.?!. What are those statutes, how did the corporation violate them, why is this the first time I've heard about any violations, what does is mean to be "suspended", is this really the kind of thing that belongs on a bright yellow postcard (not even worth an envelope) ? ? ? ?

Since it was 7PM, I didn't bother trying to call the State to see what was up - nobody was going to be working that late. So, I got on the net and searched for those statutes. But the only thing I could find was discussions about them, I couldn't find the text of the laws themselves. But I did figure out that the laws were somehow related to non-payment of taxes or licensing fees. I tried calling my accountant, just in case, but he wasn't in his office. So, I gave up for the night.

This morning, 8:05, I called the State to see WTF was going on. The nice gentleman on the phone asked me a few questions, spent a long time sighing over his computer, apologizing for taking so long, sighing some more, shuffling papers.... then he told me that for some reason, the State has two accounts set up for my one business; one of them is completely up to date on taxes and fees, and the other, obviously, has no record of any taxes or fees paid in the 8 years it's been around. And, that's why they suspended my business. He apologized.

Down with law

As a cover for my work as a superhero, I work for a giant international company which specializes in selling legal research tools and materials to lawyers. As part of a re-alignment of business units, we recently had to do a company-wide exercise where we got together in small groups and looked at these big posters of our business, brainstormed about what we found, and then picked one of our group to present our findings to the other groups. (Ugh.. awful. Hated it as much as you'd expect someone who owns a mug with this on it to hate something like that). Anyway, these posters are drawings of the business: the different business units, some competitors, the Goal, etc.. But, at the top of this poster is a group of people with labels on them: "Attorney", "Paralegal", "Partner", whatever, these are our customers; so over top of all of them, it says "Customers". And right below that, in smaller type, in parenthesis, it says "(Illustrative)". Because, you know, we wouldn't want to claim that all Attorneys are black women in green suits, or that every Partner is an Indian guy with square glasses - no, these are just illustrative representations of customers, an artist's impression, even. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental, etc..

Sheesh

You selected D, would you like R instead?

Vote D, get R, in FL

    Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.

    That's exactly the kind of problem that sends conspiracy theorists into high gear -- especially in South Florida, where a history of problems at the polls have made voters particularly skittish.

    A poll worker then helped Rudolf, but it took three tries to get it right, Reed said.

And it's not just FL:

    KFDM continues to get complaints from Jefferson County voters who say the electronic voting machines are not registering their votes correctly.
    Friday night, KFDM reported about people who had cast straight Democratic ticket ballots, but the touch-screen machines indicated they had voted a straight Republican ticket.

No, the Dems are not going to win.

(via BoingBoing)

Mouse Pad

After I quit my last job, I took the notebook I used when I pretended to take notes during meetings and scanned a bunch of the little doodles and scribbles I did. Then I went to CafePress and made a mousepad out of them. Now, I can remember all the horrible pointless meetings I had to sit through... fun! Here it is:

Yes, this is actually the image on the mousepad I use at home. No, I can't draw at all.

Vampire Dog

I don't know where Mrs Cleek got this picture (and the dozen or so other hilarious pets-in-costume pics she sent along with it), but I'm gonna post it here anyway.

Grrr!