Year: 2002

I would just like to say that anyone who decides who they should vote for based on campaign commercials on TV should be drug outside and shot.

This list makes a far more convincing argument for mozilla than I do. I even learned a few things. *grin*

In other news, Gay Sheep brains were dissected and compared to the brains of straight sheep. I guess it’s just furthering the argument that gayness is hereditary. Now what about bisexuals? What do our brains look like?

It is impossible to find information about the Judges that are going to be on my ballot later today… In general, I feel we should have more access to non-biased information on political candidates.

I wonder what the statistics are on number of people who end up actually voting for the “lesser” elections. I have no idea who any of these people are… it’s sad, really.

OK, so I was going to write about how we haven’t had heat all weekend because our furnace is busted, but if there’s anything that gets me all fired up more than being cold, it’s all the concerts that are coming up next-fucking-week!!!

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ok, the anxiety starts next tuesday the 11th:
I’d love to see Sigur Ro’s at the State Theater, but far more likely to be within my price range is Tahiti 80 at the 400 bar.

wed:
Haujobb, this awesome German techno group is playing at the Quest.

thurs:
nothing I want to see, although I know people who would want to see both Blues Traveler and GNR (Guns N’ Roses).

Fri:
FUUUCK. I gave up my opportunity to get tickets with Laura to see Ani Difranco (which is probably fine with me) because I thought I’d be seeing Peter Gabriel, but his tickets are $40 for the CHEAP seats. So screw that. Then I found out Lords of Acid is also playing that night… but I just found out their tickets are $23. Grrrr. I’ll probably stay home and save money.

Sat:
I have a party to go to, so I’ll probably miss this one too, but I’d love to see Beth Orton at the Fine Line.

Sun:
I will most definitely cough up $10 to see Lali Puna in the 7th Street Entry, so at least the week ends on a good note.

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The agony of this post brought to you today by The Twin Cities Alternative Shows List. Damn you for being so good and comprehensive!

PS. I feel I should also mention the Leslie Ball/Artists Emergency Relief Fund Benefit concert that is tonight, and again on wed. The one on wed is not a concert so much as a cabaret, and is also the one I’d more likely want to see. Unfortunately, I’ve had plans for this wed for a couple of weeks now, or else it’d totally be worth the $25. Wed is also the Halo Effect CD release party, which I would be interested in seeing, because I saw the lead singer play something solo at Balls last Sat, but alas, tis not to be.

I had a whoami moment this morning when read Naked Tiny’s most recent entry. (If I were really ambitious here, I would try and track back, maybe I’ll do that later.) Anyway, I was thinking about my father, and the ways that we associate ourselves with our parents. The inescapable parent-alikeness factor.

Am I destined to become a lazy schemer who’d rather read science fiction than actually do any of the work required for my get-rich-quick schemes? Is that really how I see my father? Because I think it describes me pretty well, actually.

Tiny and I have this weird past divergence thing happening. I submit: my father also taught Physics at a university when I was young! That’s pretty much where the similarities end though, because I played on an Apple computer when I was little as opposed to an Atari, and my dad went on to 20 years at a mediocre job in a field that didn’t explode in the 80s and 90s (oven technology) and was subsequently laid off about 5 years ago. Fortunately he dabbled in real-estate, or who knows what pathetic job he would’ve had to accept to make ends meet.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess it’s just history. Naked Marty. This is so far a pretty pathetic attempt. I’ll dig a little deeper.

I never wanted to be my father. I hated him, in fact, mostly for spending all of his time at his rental properties rather than with the family. Or at least that was the verbal manifestation our mother gave to his absence. I have no idea if that’s where he was, or if it even mattered to me. He just wasn’t there, and when he was, he mostly kept to himself and read books. My mother yelled at him for sneaking books to the dinner table and reading them while he ate. (I think I tried that trick once, and she got so upset I never did it again.)

Later on, I hated Dad for different reasons. We didn’t agree on things, and in ninth or tenth grade, I jumped out of a second story window to prove I didn’t have to listen to him lecturing me.

Strangely enough, it was not too long after that we started getting along better. Of course, he was still absent much of the time, and that’s also a murky time in my memory. I think in part because so much was happening. My parents got divorced. We changed houses several times. I was completely absorbed in school friends and getting laid for the first time. I think high school is a blur for most people. I know it was a crazy time for me.

Now I have dinner with Dad (and the rest of the immediate family with the exception of my mother–who shows up later in the evening to pick up Christy) every Thursday night. It used to be at Dad’s place, but recently we’ve moved it to mine. (I’m more centrally located.) Dad and I get along fine. We all get along fine. Things are fine. Things are exceptionally fine.

[~] grid% whoami
grid

I will never listen to NPR on the way home again.

Yesterday I experienced what I can only assume was road rage. By the time I got home I had stopped shaking, but before that some kind of combination of forces has aligned in my body… the NPR interviews with political candidates, the HORRIBLE traffic, the guy who was inching into my lane–who I subsequently flicked off, and the fact that Laura and I have had a shaky last couple of days… all these things led me to an emotional state of heightened anger. I haven’t felt like that in ages, and I imagine that I can still feel the shock of it. (Although far more likely is that I have been eating candy straight for almost 24 hours, not including an eight hour sleep intermission, and that has caused the very blood in my veins to tremble with pent up sugar-energy.)

But I have also been shaken up emotionally. This morning I got an email from a friend, with the appropriate subject line: “FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”. He has been married for 5 years. Was dating his wife another 6 years before that. They lost their virginity together. I have not known the couple long, but from the exterior, they appeared to be happy and adjusted. They recently purchased a house together. Now this is all in jeopardy. I will not go into the details, but their future together is up in the air. One part of me thinks the situation is FUBAR. Another part of me thinks… 11 YEARS! they can salvage 11 years… can’t they? It’s not for me to say. But damn if it doesn’t make Laura and I’s petty squabbling look like nothing at all.

And on the inside, I’m still shaking.

yes. I am addicted to candy.

We dressed up at work, and had a little costume contest. I actually won 3rd place, despite putting very little effort into my costume (even less than last weekend)! I won a duffel bag.

Everyone brought candy, and I brought not one, but two of the horribly expensive candy grab bags that you only see around this time of year at gas stations and convenience stores. I stopped at the Walgreens that is a block from my house because it was convenient. Anyway, I couldn’t decide between the Sweet Tarts/Spree/Bit o’ Honey or the Willy Wanka bag. In the end, I had to get both, but I was seriously leaning towards the Willy Wonda because it had Bottlecaps in it! They don’t sell bottle caps ANYWHERE that I know of in minneapolis. Anyway, I’ve already eaten all the bottlecaps. I’m onto sweet tarts now.

I just got done helping irish-girl give her site a major overhaul. She’s using movable type now, and I was actually pretty impressed that it only took one night to do all the stuff we did. (7-ish to 12:45-ish) She had a design already, and the part I thought was going to take the longest was integrating that with the movable type templates. That turned out to be pretty painless, overall (although it was still what took the longest). I thought for sure we were going to mess stuff up left and right, but there was only one or maybe two misshaps the whole evening. Then again, I’m sure she’ll find more to change in the comming weeks.

The whole process reminded me how much I want to overhaul my own site. I haven’t really changed much of anything on my archives templates, in part because I liked the idea of keeping the “defaults” so much, but I’m a version behind on those already, so I should just break down and make the changes I’ve been wanting to make. (like adding comments links to the posts on the monthly pages, and maybe adding side nav on the individual archives pages…)

I really want to play some GTA: Vice City before going to bed, but it’s getting late… (I can’t believe I’m saying that.) So anyway, go visit meghan’s site–and update your bookmarks.. her blog is the index now.

There is a decent article on wireless hot spots in the twin cities area over at Pioneer Press, or should I say TwinCities.com. Whatever happened to Pioneer Planet anyway? I used to know a guy who claimed to have been its brainchild… wish I could remember his name… I remember looking him up a couple of years ago, and I never got around to emailing him. (It was when I was looking for a job, and then I got one…)

Anyway, wireless!!! Yay!

Note: I read this article yesterday, but due to some fluctuations in space time and n-dimensional space, I was not able to post until today.

It occurs to me this morning that, while movable type does a great job of keeping file sizes generally low (mostly because it is XHTML transitional) there are still a lot of files it creates, and (hence take up a lot of space) on my server. My first thought was that rendering pages dynamically via some kind of php script or something would cut back dramatically on the file sizes. But I’m not sure google likes to index dynamic pages… I realized that I actually knew next to nothing about this, so I wasted most of the morning reading about various methods of getting the ? out of your URL on dynamic pages. To make a long story short, there’s no way I’m going to actually do this, since it would require pretty much require re-writing movable type, (or at least writing an extensive plugin) but it’s fun to think about.

I’m also thinking about starting a photo blog. That would give me an excuse to carry around my digital camera again.