Now, I stumbled on something interesting today that I'd never heard before: a compelling argument why NOT to immediately talk to the police during an ongoing investigation. This is basically contrary to anything you may have ever heard before, but from a legal standpoint, it makes perfect sense. No use incriminating yourself because of your ignorance when you're completely innocent. I'm not saying it's good to stonewall the authorities, but from a constitutional standpoint, exercising your Fifth Amendment rights is probably a good idea.
Also interesting is the response from a police officer which... basically say he's right.
From DJ Earworm comes a mash-up of every song on the Billboard Top 25 for 2009. For a mash-up of songs I mostly didn't like throughout the year, this is sure catchy.
A friend of mine had asked what it was like to have 'snow' in St. George; this is the answer.
Snow can hit the ground temporarily, but it's more foggy than anything else. It was a surprise to wake up and see this today, though; last night it was crystal clear outside, and you could see for miles.
A couple of years ago, I bought the HP Photosmart 2575 printer. Don't click that link yet, because I don't want to spoil the surprise. I was in a rush, and there weren't really any reviews on Amazon, so I bought it because it was under $200 and seemed like it would be OK. For a couple weeks, the printer worked gloriously! It printed stuff, the scanner was fairly reliable, it was pretty nice.
Well, in less than a month, the printer broke. It stopped taking paper in, and when it would, it would jam easily. I went to Best Buy to return it, but without a receipt, I couldn't do anything. That's fine, I'll take it up with HP. So I contact HP, and talk to their customer service, who tells me this:
"Your printer is probably dirty."
Anyone who has ever been to my house knows this is the stupidest thing in the world. My house is clean, freakishly clean, so it's not a cleanliness issue. But I'm willing to try HP's solution, so I clean the rollers like they say. It does nothing. I contact customer support again, and say that their fix doesn't work. Their response?
"Unfortunately, there seems to be an issue with this printer. There is no repair policy at this time. Thank you for contacting HP!"
What?! Seriously? So I did the next best thing -- called my way up the corporate ladder. I started asking for managers, and managers of managers, until eventually (true story) I ended up with the secretary to the head of manufacturing. She asked me to explain my issues, so I did, and even told her that at this point their product had incredibly low reviews across the internet. She seemed patient, and genuinely surprised when I said how their printer just seems to stop working, and they have no way to fix it.
She vowed they would look into it, but that they couldn't promise anything. That was a long time ago.
I forgot about the printer. I stuck it on my shelf, like an expensive paperweight, until today.
See, Kathy needed to print some forms, and her printer broke. Out of desperation, I decided hey, why not hook up the old HP and see if maybe I can get it to work. So I took it off the shelf (where it wasn't even dusty), cleaned the rollers, and hooked it up. I put paper in, and holy crap, it cycles a piece of paper through! Maybe time fixed the printer! We click the Print button and... well... it didn't work. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to get it to work, culminating in the printer insisting a piece of paper was stuck even when I could see the entire inside of the printer.
It's a sign of mental illness to prescribe human attributes to inanimate objects. But I swear, when I look at that printer, it's like it's laughing at me. The printer is the Cthulhu of printers, a dark elder god with means and logic beyond my realm of comprehension.
HP, you guys suck. You guys suck so bad that I had to make an angry, semi-illiterate YouTube video. Two years later, this printer is so terrible that I still get angry thinking about it.
You guys suck so bad that if I have to tell everyone I know and love that you suck, I'll do it. I've posted that you suck on Facebook. I'm Twittering how badly you suck. I'm going to load up this video at a New Years Eve party and make sure that everyone I know discovers how badly you suck. I don't care if I become a social pariah, feared by school children and whispered about by old women. I will make it my personal quest to inform the entire world about how badly you guys suck at making printers.
One day I will be elected President, and when I do, my first act of business will be to hold a press conference announcing that HP makes the worst printers on the planet.
If I were to travel down to the river, mill some papyrus, spend a few hundred years refining it into paper, spend another 50 years learning to hand-letter in Helvetica... it would still be faster than trying to print a single piece of paper on your printer.
I don't think I can state my thesis any more clearly: HP sucks. Please go out of business, HP, and may whoever designed this printer end up homeless. On that day, they can light a fire in the carcass of the ABSOLUTELY AWFUL HP PHOTOSMART 2575, and it can maybe keep them warm on cold winter nights. But probably not; the printer will accidentally extinguish the fire, because it's the only printer in existence that purposely tries to sabotage itself.
Guess what, HP? Your cunning little scheme didn't work. I just went and bought a new printer, and it's not from you, you indigent pieces of garbage and filth. You human excrement.
Let's all put on our nostalgia goggles and go back to a much more naive, optimistic time: 2000. Remember the year 2000? How we were all excited about all the cool stuff that the future would bring?
Well, it's been a decade or so, and now we're looking at entering 2010. If that doesn't immediately blow your mind, I don't know what will. The future is here, and it's nothing like we imagined it.
Some readers might remember this Superbowl commercial from 2000. I'd say it's funny how wrong it ended up being, but really, there's nothing funny about it at all. We were so bright-eyed about the future, and then the future ended up sucking.
So again, here we are: less than seven days away from the year 2010. We're at war overseas. Americans are dying from malnutrition, poverty and a lack of medical care. Virtually everybody's broke, and the people with money are one bad decision away from being broke too. I know what you're thinking, and no, robbing a bank and dying in a suicidal blaze of glory isn't the answer. We do need to make some commitments to the future, though. I've drafted a pretty solid three step plan for the upcoming decade.
Quit being a dick, everybody. I think the current trend over this decade was the 'Yeah, screw you, buddy' mentality that pervaded everything from work and business, to our culture, to even our politics. We did, and are still doing, some messed up stuff, America (don't click this link). Remember when being an American didn't have this massive screwed-up cultural cache attached to it? Yeah, the idea of American exceptionalism is unrealistic and outdated, but there was a period when we believed it, and we made some relatively good decisions. We need more of those! Less blowing stuff up! And don't get me started on each of us personally. You don't need to look much further than the comment section of any online newspaper or blog to see that as people, we're pretty awful. We somehow managed to elect a black guy to the office of President, and then watch as a large portion of crazies hurls racial slurs at him. What the crap, guys? Makes you wish we were back in the day, when disrespecting the President meant that he made a trip to your house and punched you in the nose. Give 'em hell, President Jackson! And the rising murder rates! Why, the last few weeks there have been three murder/suicides here in Utah where the father has murdered his family and then killed himself. That's messed up.
Stop messing with the planet, guys! If we're talking about bioengineering terror lizards to crush our foes, maybe, because that's pretty cool. Let's cut back on the whole 'screwing everything else up' plan. Like, let's stop cutting down rainforests, and causing global warming and stuff. I don't care if you think global warming is a manufactured controversy or not -- we should probably not be strip mining and exploiting the whole planet. Fifty years ago popular notion held that if we messed up Earth, we could just go to some other planet and start messin' it up. Considering that we don't even have jetpacks yet, I'm going to say that the 'colonize and exploit' option is off the table. So lets start taking care of what we have.
Let's change our priorities. Right now, as of this second, we've spent $712,823,638,283 waging war in Iraq. According to a recent study, that amount of money could have given everyone on the planet clean drinking water about 200 times over. Or, ooh, we could have dumped even a billion of that money into our schools and overhauled the educational system! We could have fed the poor, or worked towards AIDS/cancer cures. But nope, we used that to blow stuff up and make the middle east a little bit worse. Can we refocus our priorities over the next decade? Emphasize stuff like peace, and science, rather than war and destruction.
Ten years from now, I want to be able to say, Man, 2000 - 2009 sucked. Glad we didn't do that again.
Dear friends, I usually send these Christmas cards out. Anyone who knows me knows that this year has been a little more unusual than other--
Oh, who am I kidding, Christmas is always a nightmare for Hudsons. Regardless, I didn't send out physical Christmas cards this year, so you can settle for this picture which you can click on, and then print out and stare at or something!
I was trying to figure out how to explain the Lieberman situation to my mom. This was the best I could find.
The good news is, it looks like a crappy, weak version of the bill might actually get passed by my weak, ineffectual Democrat senator friends. Come on, guys, grow a pair.
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Heck, we don't even need to pretend. Let's travel back in time with the assistance of an old Pizza Hut commercial.
This bad boy used to play before my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VHS, and let me tell you what -- seeing it almost ten years later, I know it nearly by heart.
As an interesting editing experiment, YouTube user LEspritDeSeb took an episode of Friends and removed all of the canned laugh track. What's left? Some supremely awkward television.
BALCH SPRINGS, Texas (AP) -- Taylor Pugh has been suspended from pre-kindergarten because he likes his hair a little on the floppy side.
The four-year-old sat with a teacher's aide in a suburban Dallas school library Wednesday while his friends played and studied together in a classroom.
"They kicked me out that place," said Taylor, who prefers the nickname Tater Tot. "I miss my friends."
Taylor's locks - long on the front and sides, covering his earlobes and shirt collar - violate the school district's dress code. He has been punished with in-school suspension since late last month.
Uhhh, OK, I guess. Under what draconian ideal does the school board feel that growing your hair out for kids with cancer is wrong?
According to the district dress code, boys' hair must be kept out of the eyes and cannot extend below the bottom of earlobes or over the collar of a dress shirt. Hairstyles "designed to attract attention to the individual or to disrupt the orderly conduct of the classroom or campus (are) not permitted," the policy states.
...
On its Web site, the district defends its code, saying "students who dress and groom themselves neatly, and in an acceptable and appropriate manner, are more likely to become constructive members of the society in which we live."
YEAH, FOUR YEAR OLD. WAY TO CALL ATTENTION TO KIDS SUFFERING FROM CANCER, YOU JERK. Seriously, the reasoning behind this is borderline offensive. First, the fact that the kid has longer hair is somehow disruptive? The kid's four; four year old children can find a pencil rolling off a desk disruptive. I would know, I taught a herd of them for a couple years.
And then, with the implication that short hair leads to students who are more 'constructive members of society'? Screw that! The kid who is growing his hair out for cancer patients is a constructive member of society. I applaud the parents for sticking to their guns, especially over something as dumb and soul-numbing as a dress code for little children.
Nicely done, Floyd Elementary School. Surely your precious dress code is more important than acts of charity to sick children. Maybe once we get the dress code thing down pact, we can start work on banning certain words or ideas, because really, Communism is just disruptive and only calls attention to one's self. After that, why don't we take out all those pesky minority students, because surely a black face in a sea of white ones is a distraction. Long hair means the terrorists are winning, people!
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These are two of many findings shaking up the radio industry as it converts from measuring ratings through surveys to monitoring listeners electronically using so-called Portable People Meters.
The gist of the article is that people, men especially, lie about their radio listening habits. They say it's all hard rock and metal and stuff, but then they secretly tune in to the soft rock and easy listening channel.
I've gotta say, guilty as charged. I love the soft tones of AM Gold, and I'm proud to admit it. I think one of the most interesting notes in the article is this:
Ezra Feinberg, 33, a psychologist in San Francisco, listens to KOIT, a soft-rock station, on his commute. “One in 10 songs on soft-rock radio resonates, but it really resonates,” he said.
Very interesting observation. Maybe men have feelings too? We'll need to do more science to determine if this is a lie or not. In the meantime, we'll keep pretending we're listening to Megadeth on our iPod... just don't peek, please.
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So the second trailer for Tim Burton's new 'Alice In Wonderland' is loose in the wild. Take a minute to give it a look. It's a more fully fleshed version of the original trailer which hit earlier this year.
The movie looks interesting, to say the least. I'm willing to give Tim Burton the benefit of the doubt because of his mostly amazing track record, and because he gave us 'Big Fish'. I must admit, however, that I'm not very excited for the movie.
Part of the problem is Johnny Depp, of course. Call it Depp saturation, but over the last few years, he has been one of the most oversaturated actors in the business. I'm not denying that it's partly because of talent; Depp has turned in some incredible performances. By the same token...
If you want a Gary Busey performance, you hire Busey. If you want a Christopher Walken performance, you get Walken. If you want a Johnny Depp performance, you hire Johnny Depp. I'm not looking to disparage Depp's acting abilities; heaven knows he's a very talented actor and is popular for a reason. The problem is, Depp has become a very specific brand of offbeat. In that regard, Depp has become one of the safest 'risky choices' in Hollywood. And this movie looks like... well... Johnny Depp pretending to be weird at Tim Burton's request. For such a risky looking film, Depp feels like the one safe choice, as if Tim Burton said, 'Well, no matter how weird it gets, at least we still have Johnny Depp!'
That, and if I have to see another person doing a crappy Johnny Depp impersonation while dressed as one of his characters, I'm going to scream. Jack Sparrow was great after the first movie came out, but it seems like everyone with long brown hair and a container of eyeliner has said, 'Yeah, I can do a drunken pirate voice, I'll be Jack Sparrow!'
Please, don't let this happen with the Mad Hatter now. I don't want to be driven into a homicidal rage.
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YouTube is considering offering users the option to pay for subscriptions in a bid to encourage more media companies to license premium TV shows and movies to the popular online video site, a senior executive said.
Let me get something out of the way. First, YouTube has been marching to it's death for over a year now. The reason is simple: YouTube is all about limiting content now.
Most egregious is YouTube's ultra-adherence to anything even resembling copyright. Look, I'm not saying the world wouldn't be a better place if all the awful anime/nu-rock AMVs disappeared. The problem becomes, videos with brief samples of songs disappear due to copyright claims. Have ten seconds of a song playing in the background of your video? Ouch, sorry, copyright claim deleted the entire thing. Nobody's getting rich off snippets, but YouTube enforces them with the same fury they do full song postings. I agree that users shouldn't upload entire songs just for your listening pleasure; if the songs are sampled, and used with other works... well, who cares.
The other factor is YouTube's unreliability. Want to upload a video? OK, here we go! Uploading... uploading... ooh, ouch, your upload stalled. Sorry! Try again? OK, here we go... and... oh, yeah, I uploaded it, but there's a weird artifacting error. Try again? Here we go, and... wait, your video is ten minutes and one second long? Sorry, we only allow ten minutes!
For a site that somehow wants to thrive on creative content, their system is unreliable a good portion of the time and their limits (videos less than ten minutes) is ridiculous.
And now YouTube is looking at monetizing further than the ads already on the site. They claim that this system would work almost like a Netflix instant view, where users would be able to pay and watch movies/television on demand. At the risk of invoking the slippery slope fallacy -- is this just the beginning? Given the site's trajectory over the last five years, it's not difficult to see a future where it costs $15 a month to upload videos to the site, or $5 to be able to watch them. This would cause users to flee to other sites, effectively killing YouTube, but really, it's not even a stretch at this point.
I personally have been disappointed with YouTube. They've pulled several copyright claims on songs that are public domain, or are played in passing. I lost a video journal, for instance, that had about three seconds of a song played on a radio in the background as I walked through a room.
Truth be told, I'm itching to find a replacement. Don't give me extra motivation to do so, YouTube.
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Friends, scientists and scholars, welcome and hello. Here at this blog, we seek to enrich and enhance your lives. We are relentless in this pursuit, and your edification is priority one. As such, this blog seeks to provide you with a valuable service -- namely, the publication and compilation of all verses of The Diarrhea Song. May this humble chronicle serve as a signpost for future generations, and a record by which to solve any lyrical diarrhea dispute.
So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado: the complete annotated Diarrhea Song.
Part I. An Introduction to Incontinence - and- The Baseball Motif
In this section, we join the first three verses of the Diarrhea Song. Herein we encounter the first sub-motif of the piece; namely, the baseball metaphor.
When you're sliding into first And your pants begin to burst Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're sliding into two And your pants are filled with goo Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're sliding into third And you feel a greasy turd Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're sliding into home And your pants are filled with foam Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
It is here that we encounter the conflict of the work, namely, man's fight against his inner nature. The struggle of man versus his primal self is nowhere more evident than the symbolic 'bursting' of the pants. Like the Incredible Hulk escaping into a primal rage, so does our protagonist's pants, indicating that perhaps our more animal needs are lurking just beneath the surface. This primal bubbling becomes more apparent in the second verse, when the titular diarrhea appears as a goo rather than a fully substantiated bowel movement. The bowel movement itself appears in our third verse, this time described vigorously as a 'greasy turd'. The language is course, naturally, to emphasize the primal nature of the action. Finally we are treated to a narrative resolution, as our protagonist arrives at home, completing his journey. His antagonist, the poop, has fled, leaving behind only traces. Our protagonist is changed from his journey, and not for the better. His defeat is very public, which he does not accept. We will revisit his struggle later in the work.
Part II. Breakfast: A Cautionary Tale
According to popular wisdom, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It is then understandable that diarrhea, as a primal force of nature, would interrupt the morning procession. In this way, the original author (whose name is lost to history) deftly demonstrates that even our most basic traditions can be disrupted by the unexpected.
When you're drinking Orange Juice And you feel something loose Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
Something's running down your leg Like a mushy scrambled egg Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
Referring back to the highly influential theories of Joseph Campbell, the author places eggs and juice as archetypes of the classic breakfast. Their inclusion is natural, and their interference all the more poignant for it. The same effect could not be achieved with any other meal, such as lunch or dinner. Only the classic 'breakfast' holds this type of power.
Part III. Recreation: Pretty Much The Same Thing -or- Can You Believe You're Still Reading This?
But the protagonist's harassment does not end having left the breakfast table. Even in recreation, diarrhea strikes unpredictably, breaking the monotony of the day. These verses illuminate our inner struggle as well as provided a much-needed sense of whimsy to the work.
When you're swimming in the pool And you feel something cool Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're walking up a ladder And you feel something splatter Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're sittin' in your Chevy And your pants are getting heavy Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're shifting into gear And you feel a sudden smear Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're sittin' in your class And then something makes a splash Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're playing with your pet And you feel something wet Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When on the court you shoot a foul And there's a movement in your bowel Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're running down the road And your shorts begin to load Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're feeling pretty mellow But you see that brownish-yellow Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're looking at a map And you need to take a crap Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're sitting in your chair And you feel your butt cheeks tear Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you trip and take a tumble And you feel your belly rumble Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
When you're riding on a horse And you feel something coarse Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
As you can plainly see, these verses seek to illustrate that, in a variety of situations, diarrhea can occur without warning. Diarrhea here is a populist figure, not discriminating against anyone in particular. All are equal under diarrhea, and no-one is spared. Like an avenging angel, diarrhea strikes all. Symbolically, diarrhea can be considered a stand-in for death; both are inevitable, and both are considered divine forces of retribution. Also important is that these verses serve as a sort of Greek chorus for the final set, illuminating and adding on to the narrative without providing any real sense of resolution. The denouement of the piece occurs in the final section...
Part IV. The Bathroom Saga
Finally we arrive at the last section. This arc, known as The Bathroom Saga, tells the tale of a man who happens to be in an ideal situation to deal with diarrhea. Like a great tragic figure, our everyman realizes his fate and quickly comes to terms with it. In this section, the classic chorus/refrain is abandoned for the sake of storytelling.
When your stomach kinda hurts And you start to get the squirts
When you start to take a piss But you sense something amiss
When you're staring at your shoes And you feel a sudden ooze
When you sit down in the stall And then something starts to fall
And it comes out of your bum Like a bullet from a gun
Diarrhea, boom boom, diarrhea
This is the narrative climax of the work; our hero has finally made it to the bathroom to deal with his rampant diarrhea. He has overcome all obstacles and has made peace with the diarrhea. The story ends dramatically, and abruptly. We feel narrative relief.
Part V. Conclusions
As a great work of folk fiction, The Diarrhea Song has spread virally from playground to playground. The length and detail of the story changes with the teller, as do several key details. As such, a definitive version of The Diarrhea Song is impossible; any attempt at final documentation will only encourage future mutation and evolution. Hopefully this document will provide a guideline and reference to what can be considered the American Standard version of The Diarrhea Song; it can be used to settle any disputes, and as a scholarly source.
As Nietzsche once said: "Diarrhea isn't funny... unless it's happening to someone else."
Author Austin Hudson, is an independent journalist and researcher, as well as the world's premier expert on digestive lyricism. He is also perpetually ten years old.
Alright, it's headed into the final week, but I thought I'd give a good plug here anyway...
My BFFsies over at FBTBsies are currently running a Charity Drive, the proceeds of which go towards Child's Play, which is a great organization. The upside is, it's a raffle, and you can win some pretty sweet swag by donating $2 for a ticket.
For some reason I haven't had a haircut in a while, and now my hair's slowly turning into something shaggier than I've ever had.
I like my hair shorter, but at this point, I'm half-heartedly considering letting it go until I have a full McCartney, just so I could say I did it. This casual disregard for my own hair has called my physical hygiene into question, but rest assured, I am unstinky and well-bathed. I just have longer hair!
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Senator Lieberman, you are a bum and I don't much care for you. Nevermind that 45,000 people die a year from lack of insurance, it's much more important to be concerned about that national debt that nobody thought mattered ten years ago. There are ways to do this and have it be cost-effective, you old fart!
Friends, this is shaping up to be the most awful Christmas in recent memory, not just for me and mine, but on a national level. Take this article from the Wall Street Journal about how depressing it is to be Santa this year:
"That's what Jim Lewis did. A Santa at a Bass Pro Shop outdoor-goods store in Denver, he blanched when a blond girl in a red plaid dress recently asked for a pair of eyeglasses so she could see the classroom board. He recovered in time to motion over one of his elves, who told the girl's mother about the local Lions Club, which helps provide needy children with prescription glasses."
"Sometimes even the best training can't keep Santa from being caught off guard. Mike Smith, who works as Santa at the Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, Ohio, says a 5-year-old girl wearing a Dora the Explorer sweat shirt last month hopped in his lap and asked, "Can you turn my daddy into an elf?" "Why?" he asked.
"Because my daddy's out of work, and we're about to lose our house," she said.
The girl's mother, standing by her little brother's stroller, burst into tears. A stunned Mr. Smith asked the girl if her father was good with a hammer, and the girl said yes. "I didn't know what to say after that, so we just took the picture," he says with regret."
"Kelly Crais, who plays Santa in the New Orleans area, says the children he sees at some parties still ask for a PlayStation 3, which starts at $299, and other wallet-busting gifts. But the children he sees for free at his local Harrah's Hotel & Casino have downgraded their lists from previous years. One 7-year-old boy recently asked for shoes. "Do you want Air Jordans?" Mr. Crais asked.
The boy responded, "No, school shoes. My shoes have holes in them.""
Hell in a hand basket, folks, we're in awful shape! When we can't even convince people dressed up as Santa to not be depressed, we've got a real problem.
Christmas is sorta tough anyway. Somewhere along the way we lost sight of the whole 'service and good feelings' aspect and instead turned it into a giant restructuring of capital -- you spend $100 on someone else, they give you $100 worth of something back, and it's like you bought yourself a gift. Not this year, though. It's a toned down Christmas.
Let's not kid: we're in an awful situation all over. I typically try to present a positive outlook on the blog, but come on, things suck right now. Even superfluous fluff, like my Christmas wish list this year, is all bogus. I have no money. Nobody I know has any real money. I've instructed everyone in my family, from direct family to grandparents, that I don't want anything this Christmas. They wouldn't accept that, so I said I wanted it donated to a charity. Somehow I don't think that'll happen either. I'd prefer they hold on to it themselves, to be honest; I think the best Christmas gift this year would be if nobody I know is homeless.
The tough one so far is gently breaking it to Andre that Christmas isn't going to be great this year. He's spending it over at his other mom's house, which is nice, but we still haven't come up with a delicate way of saying 'Hey, our Christmas gift this year is that we can pay the rent this month!'
Times will get better. Statistically speaking, they have to. But riding out the times in-between is awful. The last week or so has been full of bad news for this family in almost every conceivable way; hopefully you've fared a little better than us. Hell, maybe this Christmas is a time to get back to our roots. Hug your family a little more. Spend some time talking about fond memories. Nostalgia is free.
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I use the term 'dog surgery' in the loosest sense, of course. In actuality, our dogs Milo and Lucy are now six months old, so they're being spayed and neutered today.
Every dog we've ever had has been either spayed or neutered; the trouble is, I was always young enough that I never processed it before. But today, I feel bad about it. See, the dogs were really happy this morning, being very cuddly and licking like crazy. Usually they're cranky in the mornings, so everybody felt kinda bad when they were in such a sweet mood this morning.
I'm not sure how long the procedure takes, but it shouldn't be bad. I'm more concerned about their recovery; they're both very active little dogs, so I hope they don't burst their stitches or anything. I guess time will tell.
So Christmas is coming, and you know what that means -- the opportunity to buy yourself awesome stuff and say that it was a Christmas present! It's guilt free, it helps feed the great American consumer cycle, and you get really awesome stuff out of it. My problem with Christmas is, now that I'm an adult who works a job, I can basically buy myself whatever I want. The only stuff I don't have, then, is stuff that's tantalizingly outside of my price range. That's the stuff I waste time thinking about.
Now, as family members will attest, I sorta like collecting and playing musical instruments. Within arms reach from my desk I have two ukuleles and a harmonica. So the ever popular 'new instrument' gift is great. What do I have my eye on?
This puppy's pretty cool. It's a MIM (made in Mexico) Fender Stratocaster with Tex-Mex pick-ups. I'm not 100% sold on the pickups, so I might switch them out depending on how they sound. This is perfect, because it's just the right price to make me not feel terrible about buying myself a gift to celebrate Jesus. Oh, and it's yellow, which makes it awesome.
It's also a Strat, but it's a MIA (made in America) Strat, which means the materials will be higher quality and of better construction. Also, it's gotta be in the rosewood neck, because come on, rosewood is the best wood. I'll hear no arguments for maple, people. They're a little pricey for me; I can't justify paying over $1k for a guitar when I'm more of a casual player than anything else. It'd be an awesome gift though, HINT HINT millionaire girlfriend.
But if we're pretending that I have a millionaire girlfriend, the real winner is this beauty: a Rickenbacker 4003 bass.
It's got that awesome Rickenbacker sound; unfortunately, it's painfully expensive. It's so expensive that most websites won't tell you how much it costs. That's how much. Needless to say, I could buy both of those guys up there for the cost of one of these bad boys.
Of course, there are other possibilities. My long-serving bedroom TV, on which I watch all of my evening television, is on the way out. The picture's started getting funky sometimes, which is to be expected, since A) it's like 12 years old and B) I accidentally dropped it from six feet up a few months ago. The TV's still a champ, I think the drop just made it realize it's age. So I could buy myself a swanky new TV.
Oh the holiday season. My credit card will cry this year.
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Some people collect movies, or CDs. Some people collect old stamps. Some people fly around the globe, never leaving the airport, to accumulate frequent flier miles. This is a brief documentary about those people.
Weezer, for the tragically unhip (or would it be for the ultrahip?) is a California alternative rock band formed in 1992. They had a breakout success with their first album, 1994's self titled (dubbed The Blue Album), before going on to create what many fans consider to be their best work, Pinkerton. From there... well, that's anybody's ballgame.
The case against Weezer is something like this: following the release of Pinkerton, bassist Matt Sharp left the band (for reasons which will probably never be clear). Rivers Cuomo attempted to replace him, but the efforts didn't go so well. Unable to write songs quite the way he and Matt used to, Rivers got depressed, the band went on a hiatus, and after a while they came back with The Green Album, which wasn't that great, and they've sucked ever since.
Some of these things are beyond dispute. The band did go on a long hiatus, there was a pretty nasty falling out between Sharp and Cuomo, and the band has yet to recapture exactly what was on The Blue Album. General consensus even agrees with this, as the Metacritic data for the last few albums goes progressively down with each new release. Does this mean that Weezer sucks? Not necessarily.
I think the easiest explanation for this is, Weezer is the kind of band you would have if you got famous. No, not you, metal freak kid with the scary tee-shirt. But you, the dorky kid who fiddles around with instruments. Weezer is your band.
The fact of the matter is, Weezer has grown to increasingly embrace the rock star lifestyle or, more precisely, what Rivers thinks the rock star lifestyle is. Most of the major missteps in the band's life (ridiculous guest performers on tracks, generic 'radio ready' tracks) are all signs of rockers getting older. Like an overgrown kid, they gleefully add whoever is currently popular on to their album because, heck, we can get Lil' Wayne to sing on our CD! Time itself backs me up on this, as Rivers turned 39 this year and will soon be looking at the big 4-0. If you view the band's most recent release, Raditude, as a professional mid-life crisis from an aging power pop alt. rocker, several of the previously inexplicable decisions make a lot more sense.
Besides, from the time they got big, Weezer has been about playing with the concept of being a stereotypical 'big rock band'. They have their band symbol illuminated behind them in flashing lights at concerts, dangit! It's sorta like Van Halen!
If Weezer awoke collectively tomorrow and said, It is time to record The Blue Album 2, it would be awesome. It would also tank commercially. The Blue Album still sounds great because it was a product of it's time -- it wasn't overproduced, and it felt like a genuine effort. The same thing wouldn't be as well received today, in a musical landscape where everything is auto-tuned and pitch corrected. The album would come out sounding more like, well, Raditude.
Don't tell Weezer they suck. For every album they release, no matter how bad you think it is, there are always memorable tracks. Maybe one day they'll release the Great American Album or something, but then again, maybe they won't. But the point is, it doesn't make sense to dismiss an artist for a series of weak releases. If that was the case, we'd be saying David Bowie sucked because of his somewhat weaker output in the late 80's and 90's. Just appreciate the albums you like and forget about the ones you don't.
And if you see Matt Sharp, try and convince him to rejoin the band.
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My television viewing habits are well documented on certain parts of the internet. One of my favorite moments of the day is getting in bed at night and firing up whatever TV show I'm currently watching. I average an episode or two a night, and I usually end up knocking out entire series (although there are some that I cannot finish).
My latest TV addition took the form of 'Six Feet Under', the critically acclaimed HBO series about a family of mortuary owners and their lives. The series on the whole was very good; it was joyful, and happy, and bitterly sad all at the same time. That's a difficult road to walk, but somehow they managed to make it happen.
While gathering my own thoughts about the series, I did a quick Google search to see what other people thought and their reactions to the last episode (which was amazing). It was there that I realized something I probably should have figured out somewhere along the way: we were supposed to have a main character, and he was supposed to be Nate.
Let's talk about Nate Fisher the character. Played by Peter Krause, Nate rejoins the family funeral home at the beginning of the series after a long stint as the 'assistant manager at the largest food co-op in Seattle'. Herein lies my problem -- we're supposed to like Nate. Consensus across the internet is that Nate is a likable guy. Peter Krause receives top billing on the show, and most summaries of the show invoke Nate in their first lines.
But Nate's a dick. I don't like him.
'Six Feet Under' is, first and foremost, an ensemble show. All of the Fisher family is given equal weight in terms of story-telling, and are often dedicated their own episodes. From this, though, it's made clear that we're supposed to care about Nate especially.
The irony to me is, despite that we're supposed to like Nate, he doesn't really do anything particularly admirable. Time and again, Nate engages in risky, hurtful or simply selfish behaviors. Note: The rest of this write-up features heavy spoilers; highlight to read.
In the very first episode, we meet Nate getting off an airplane. He's come home for Christmas, and he's pissed about it. Look, I can understand if you don't like your family, or if you left on bad terms. But the instant he's off the plane, he's complaining about how much he hates his family and how messed up they all are. Obviously, over the course of the series, we see how much he loves them. But still, here's your first impression of Nate! He follows this up with anonymous, unprotected sex with a stranger as soon as he finds out his dad died. Good job, Nate, making the smart decisions. But this can be written off as his moment of grief, so let's give him a pass for that one.
Next, he arrives at the Fisher home, and immediately lets everyone know how pissed off he is that A) he's home for Christmas and B) his dad's dead. He takes a brief moment to announce self-importantly that he's the assistant manager of the second largest food co-op in Seattle, and then returns to complaining. And complaining. And making a rude phone call to Brenda. Then back to complaining.
And this is the main character.
He doesn't get much better over the show. Everyone in 'Six Feet Under' makes mistakes. One of the delicious truths of the show is the portrayal of their characters as living, breathing people. Nate just seems to make more mistakes (of varying severity) than anyone else in the cast. He's cold, callous and/or rude to almost every member of the cast on a regular basis. For a decent portion of the show, he'd rather smoke pot than spend time with his wife. He has extramarital affairs on the drop of a hat, even breaking up committed relationships. He's kind of a jerk.
Look, I get that you want Nate to be conflicted. He doesn't come off as conflicted, though. He comes off as an immature child, drifting through life doing whatever feels good and whatever will inconvenience him the least. Where other characters take the high ground, Nate refuses to take the ground at all. Viewers and the internet seem to love Nate, and seem genuinely sad when he dies at the end of the series. Not me, though, mainly because the last thing he did before dying was cheating on his pregnant wife because he felt an 'emotional connection' to someone else. He then breaks up with her from his hospital bed before dying. This is not a lovable character! If your character breaks up with his pregnant wife on his deathbed because he feels a 'connection' to a one night stand that he is, by law, related to? That's messed up!
On the whole I sided more with David Fisher (played by Michael C. Hall). David is the better example of what the writers were attempting to do with Nate; he's conflicted, he's not always right, but he's a lovable person. For every dark moment he has ('That's My Dog'), he has another amazing moment, like early in the series when David finally tells the Kroehner Death Care representative that he will murder him if he continues to mess with his family. David doesn't come off smelling like roses, and he's far from perfect. But he comes across as human, and genuinely a nice person. Nate... well, I can't be too sure about him.
I guess that's the beauty of good writing. So many people fell in love with the character of Nate, and I just didn't like him. It's unusual watching a television series where you don't like the main character; it can happen to some extent to any well-written show (later seasons of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' do little to make the main character as endearing as she once was).
Again, I guess it's a good reflection on human life. So many people cried for Nate, and celebrated with him. Not me, though. I was more of a David man.
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There are few things as empowering as a really well-delivered speech with some straight talk. Common sense dictates that if you're not in favor of same-sex civil unions by the end of this, you should probably have your head checked.
