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Broad Perspective
I'm going through one of those overwhelming sadness moments where I feel bad that life has gotten so complicated for everyone that we never get to see each other any more.
Whether it be jobs, health, life, school, or something else, I miss the easier days when we could enjoy ourselves. Or we were happy. And looking towards the weekend didn't mean sitting at home in our seperate houses for whatever reasons.
Yeah. It's one of those days.
AOL Presidential Match Main
AOL Presidential Match Main
According to this site, Kucinich is my 100% my man. Is he still running? I've stopped paying attention. Up next was Sharpton at 97%. Huh.
Paper Thin
Get your quality QVC sword edge!
Comfort In, Comfort Out
Oh yeah. Did I mention it's REALLY FUCKING COLD here?
It is.
Traffic & Weather On The Ones
My last couple posts were over on my review portion of the site, you if you want to see a rant about how Lion King 1 1/2 is a child's version of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, head over there.
My weekend is currently consisting of laying around, possibly cleaning up enough to rearrange my room, and then seeing The Perfect Score and art supply shopping with MF.
Oooh. Just looked at the link to the movie. 20% fresh. Never a good sign. I have Better Luck Tomorrow in my Netflix queue. I know it's like a much darker version of the same story.
I've also become addicted to Starbucks Chai Lattes. I've had one nearly every day this week.
It's all in an effort to continue the health thing. Going into the hospital I weighed 236. With the steroids, I ballooned up to 253. And since leaving the hospital, and eating healthier than EVER before thanks to the steroid-induced taste bud change, I'm down to 230. I'm suppose to be at 200 apparently. So I'm getting there. I just to start working out, which is why I joined the local park district health club. I go in Tuesday for an orientation Q&A thing
And they have a pool! A POOL! That's what I'm looking for.
School work has consumed me as well, hence the lack of posts. Final portfolio time, and it's taking longer than I thought. But my teacher said my resume was one of the best, most thoughtful ones she's ever seen. So, hopefully, that will mean people will hire my away from the library from hell.
Hopefully.
Oh. Blog link of the day. Chaos Theory. Currently featuring a link to the dissection of Kelis' Milkshake.
Grargh!
Turns out my early morning rant proved a little to foreshadowy for my own good. Ended up being the only person there for an hour.
As predicted, one called in "because of the weather." The other was in the ER at 4:30 in the morning. So, I can't fault that. I've been there.
Early Morning Rant
This is dedicated to the coworkers that I unfortunately have to work with some days.
If you've lived in this state for the majority of your life, for you to call in "sick" or decide not to show up for work because there's a CHANCE for THREE inches of snow by the AFTERNOON, you need to leave the state.
If you clamor for snow, and then freak out once it comes because you don't know how to drive it, you need to leave the state.
If, I tell you that depending on my health, I may not be coming into work the next day, and with a serious look on your face flippantly respond, "Well, if it snows, I may not be coming in to work tomorrow," you need to leave my face area. Good things will not come if you are in my face area.
You can tell the types who have lived here awhile, and the ones who have REALLY lived here awhile. The last major snow storm we had, my family packed up my Toyota Matrix, and we headed out to the movie theater to catch Peter Pan.
There's a difference between driving safely, and forgetting that your car has wheels, once it starts to snow. But for some reason, winter hits in this state, and it becomes a weird orgy of headless chickens behind the driving wheel for two thirds of the population.
Red Morning Light
Another Sneak Peek. Got the JavaScript working. I'm proud I figured out that you can have a mouse rollover make a different part of the page appear and disappear.
It's sad I'm learning the majority of this on my own, and NOT through the 30K school I'm about to graduate.
In The Spotlight, Girl
Made a couple more link changes early this morning, since my dog from hell decided that 8:15 was a good time for me to be up. I'm contemplating renting a hotel room for a couple days. Nice little quiet place.
Anyway, I fixed the link for Messiah For Hire, where I post with an archaic frequency that makes my posts here look like a race.
And then I added a couple news sections, because, whether I want to admit it or not, current politics get my blood all soapy lathery angry. So, we have a couple "no spin" sites, discussing governments as non-partisan as possible: CJR Campaign Desk and Spinsanity.
And for completely deep felt, almost crazy "truth must be told" goodness, you have What Really Happened. I'm always concerned it's going to go into a full on conspiracy site sometimes with the level of his passion, but he's good at pointing out articles you wouldn't normally see.
Teddy Scares
Teddy Scares - Once Soft and Cuddly, Now Dead and Bloody.
Welcome To The O.D. Bitch
Sneak Peek at my new portfolio front page.
Goes with the new pill motif that is my life.
Feedback! I DEMAND FEEDBACK!
Note To Friend
MM, if you're reading this. Cars are coffins? If I had to ride a bike or even walk everywhere, you'd be visiting me in a REAL coffin. I have the body of an old Jewish man! At least I can put offensive liberal bumper stickers on my car. They wouldn't hold as much impact on a walker.
New New New
I got bored, so instead of laying down, I fixed all my links. Any music and books mentioned on the side now are Amazon links. They're not the crazy, click, purchase, and give me 10 cent links...yet. I highly doubt that there are enough people reading this to give me more than 20 cents a year, as is. So feel free to click away with the knowledge that I'm not secretly trying to sell you something.
I added a new comic in the comics section, Toothpaste For Dinner, thanks to HB sending a couple my way. I need to buy their "The floor is lava shirt" as soon as I have money.
And finally, I added a music site, Pitchforkmedia.com where you can get what seems to be decent music reviews and news. Any online site, mine included, tend to sound uppity with their reviews, but, at least they're not Chicago Reader uppity.
Sale Defying
Best Buy is very tricky tricky with their pricing and sales.
Yesterday, The Shins was 8.99. So, I decide to wait. Today? 14.99.
Bastards.
The Fringe Falls
I don't consider myself someone who lives on the "fringe" of musical society. I'm someone who for the most part, finds a good band, and is happy.
I don't have the energy to be the "indie artist" treasure hunt guy. I'm sure there's tons of music out there that I'm missing because I don't research enough, or am underground enough. I had friends who knew about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before me, and a few knew about them after me. Where did they find out about them? I have no idea.
The same goes for even friends like MF. Have you heard this so and so folk artist? Nope. I wouldn't even know where to look. I'm sure if I just sat down and browsed the internet, I'd find pages that scream out, "MIKE, we have found you a home!"
And I'm working on it.
This all started because I really like the new Stereolab CD. It's floaty, and loungy, and bouncy, and French New Wave. It's exactly what I need right now. I don't have to worry about the deepness of the lyrics, but I still get my music appreciation.
So, I spent two hours last night looking up their influences, bands like them, other music I'd like. And I came up with a smorgasboard (if that's even spelled right) of stuff I'd like to buy, download, what have you.
And for those interested, the illegal downloading of music has gotten so stupid and pointless that I'd prefer buying the music. Unless someone can come up with a better option than Kazaa or WinMx for me, I'm not interested. WinMX represents everything that is wrong with the whole system. It's an ugly mess.
But, feel free to e-mail me here about it.
So, here I am, all set to enjoy this great new selection of music I came up with. And for the sake of my sanity, I'm just linking my Amazon wish list, where I stored all their names. This isn't a desperate grab for people to buy me stuff, but I never say no to gifts. I'm not stupid.
Anyway, my first stop is iTunes, the LARGEST music store in the world. We rule! They claim. You know how many of the bands were listed? TWO. I'm sorry, THREE. The Shins. Thrills. Postal Service.
Does iTunes even HAVE an independent music section? Out of nearly 20 albums, they have THREE? BAH. They don't even have the new Air album. At least not last I checked.
So, I'm disillusioned. Next stop, because of the prices they offer, is Best Buy. They have one. The Shins. 8.99. I'll probably pick it up today.
And the last stop...Borders. Borders actually has quite a decent selection, if you're willing to pay 5-6 dollars higher on the CD. Which, I'm not. I want to hear April March, but not at 17 dollars. But Borders ended up having seven of the CDs I was looking for.
I'm desperate to hear the Mums and Boards of Canada. And will probably end up spending Borders price to hear them.
But, this all comes back round to the fact that, in Illinois, I currently have one indie music store I know of, Crow's Nest, near me. There's a second about an hour away, but, really, I'm not driving an hour in hopes they have one record.
The question is, did I secretly move to the fringe of the music society without knowing it? Or did the music shopping industry get so main stream that it will no longer carry anything smaller than a platinum seller, or the hottest new version of Alkaline Trio that sounds like the previous ten other nasally screaming kid bands?
And before anyone screams I like Alkaline Trio, but we've gone all cookie cutter again.
I guess it's time to place a very large Amazon order.
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