It looks as though this friday, October 3, will be my last day of work before my extended hiatus. Expect much less blogging until January.

You know, after friday, that is.

But don't expect a complete lack of blogging. There'll be some.

Just, you know, not as much.

It will, however, probably be just as meaningless.

The wedding was as beautiful as one can be. We had a great time. The reception was tons of fun. Lots of drinking (courtesy of a margarita machine and a bathtub full of beer) and dancing (courtesy of Michael who finally gave in to our cries for Crazy in Love).

I was a zombie driving back yesterday as my winning streak of not being able sleep anywhere but alone in my own bed continues unabated. There's nothing like super heavy eyelids in the middle of the day on the interstate.

After an hour or two of fitful sleep I went to band practice for which I was fully asleep and out of it for a good hour. A guitar? How do you play this thing guitar?

So I'm off to Chris and Jennifer's wedding this weekend. In order to do so I'm skipping my ten year high school reunion. I figure if there was anyone who I really wanted to keep in touch with, I would have.

Weddings are nice. Receptions are better. If I am able to stand at the end of the evening, something will have gone wrong (that's a complete bluff, though, sadly I never get that far gone).

Did I mention anywhere on here that The Soft Set is playing at Emo's next month? So here's the lowdown...

Tuesday Oct 14 @ Emo's

Irving (from San Fran, I think)
Moonlight Towers (local)
The Soft Set

So sometimes I write things when I'm having a particularly bad time (either at home or work - I mainly write while at work but when the two coincide it gets to be a bit much on occasion) and then delete them for being overly pessimistic and dramatic but forget to republish this here blog. So apologies to anyone having read that bullshit that was up here earlier.

PS I just finished read The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis. Very funny and narcissistic. I also watched The Quiet American, based on a book by Graham Greene. I've been waiting to see this. Good stuff. No wonder Michael Caine almost won best actor for it.

I managed to make it to the acl festival in time for most of the Shins performance on sunday (the only day I went). They were amazingly great even on that huge stage. As always happens whenever I hear it, I have their song "New Slang" stuck in my brain like an icepick. They played some new songs but they didn't do much for me - I'm sure I'll dig em more when the new record comes out.

Also seen while standing in a huge field yesterday - Polyphonic Spree (whose music I never get into yet I always leave their show with a smile on my face), Yo La Tengo (who did choreographed dance moves) and Ween (who rocked way more than I would have thought they would).

Fcuknig amzanig: Perhaps others have seen this floating around the internet, but it is a first for me:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Fcuknig amzanig huh?

I added a link to the left to the homepage of Virginia Postrel who used to be the editor of Reason. She has all sorts of interesting theories but for now here is a link to an article she recently wrote about the end of Buffy entitled Why Buffy Kicked Ass.

I honestly don't remember much of this weekend and not because its blotted out in an alcoholic haze - I barely drank at all. I was just so blah. Now, don't get me wrong, I can be a pretty blah guy but I feel like I slept through the whole thing.

We (the soft set) played a show at the carousel lounge on sat which went ok. There were a few folks there which made it gratifying. I'm really enjoying playing the organ with the band. Playing music feels new again. After the show we made it over to the Centro-matic show for a couple of songs. I like those guys even if every single song sounds the same - its a good song.

As I was publishing that last update I learned that Johnny Cash died early this morning. I knew it was coming but goddamn. I'm speechless.

Remember a few weeks ago when I was lamenting the dissappearance of East River Pipe? Well, now he has a new record out called GARBAGEHEADS ON ENDLESS STUN. I can't wait to hear it.

I may have changed my mind about God's Grace since yesterday. I read the last third of the book and it left me feeling kinda icky and disturbed. Supposedly its all allegory but I don't care about what it means, I care about what it says. Its still a good book but it lost all the feel-good-ieness that I was liking about it.

Also, Beck's Sea Change is very nice.

I'm reading God's Grace by Bernard Malamud. So should you. This is a book I discovered while browsing at half-price. I'd never heard of it or him before but I'm quite happy with my choice. I came to find that he also wrote the Natural which the movie of the same name is based on. But back to God's Grace - you just have to love a book where one of the main conflicts is between a jewish human and christian chimp and their competing views of god and the world. Good read. Quick, too.

Ug. Fucking clouds (not the ones in the sky).

The site has a new pre-planned look thanks to the free blogger templates. I am quite proud of myself as this template didn't come with a space for links and I was able to figure out enough html code to insert the whole thing in there. I don't know why I never learned how to do websites, it seems like something I'd have done. I can do a bit but I always get mixed up while uploading them - as they say, its all in the file structure.

Also ~ there are archives now! The amazing disappearing archives have returned like sea turtles returning to the exact spot on the beach they born to spawn! Well, kinda like that except without the turtles and the spawning. and the beach.

Life is seeming better now that I bought the second Clutch record during lunch in anticipation of the show tonight which I'm not ever sure I'm going to. That makes sense, right?

Ok, so I may as well face it, soundbites is dead. I'll leave the corpse around for a bit.

This weekend sucked ass - mostly by default. I won't talk about it.

Things at work are tense. We got these new programs to work with and everyone is confused.

Do I sound bitter today? Its in the air lately and things tend to rub off on me way too much.

Errrg is the sound of me gritting my teeth right now. Its almost time for lunch. That's something anyway.

I need to move this to livejournal so I can use one of those little icons and it'll say "mood: utterly uninterested".

Good news to all! Friday Sept 19 is officially "Talk Like a Pirate Day" Information can be found here.

This may be one of the coolest things I've ever found on the web. Here is a link to handwritten notes by John Fahey on the use of the "open C" guitar tuning. I bought his album The Legend of Blind Joe Death while at lunch today. I highly recommend it. Between Fahey and my recent infatuation with Bert Jansch, I'm turning into a freak for 1960's folk guitarists.

Yet more reasons to suggest Michael Moore's movies are closer to Oliver Stone than to anything resembling documentary over at Spinsanty.org. The indignant, a-hem, filmmaker has made changes to his "documentary" for the DVD release of Bowling for Columbine. I am now endorsing the idea that his oscar should be revoked and given to Jackass: The Movie, which was clearly the better documentary. While Jackass makes you watch someone put a toy car up their own ass, Moore's movies actually make you feel like you already have one there.

PS. Just for the record, he's (moore) mostly right when he says its all right wingers picking his stuff apart (although spinsanity could hardly be classified as right wing) but just because people are politically motivated to a criticize the blatant factual errors and outright falsehoods in his movie doesn't negate the fact that these errors and falsehoods exist. He made a piece of propaganda masquerading as a documentary, he shouldn't be surprised when he's taken to task for it. I think there was plenty of material with which to make his argument without inventing it. Now all he's done is undermine the whole thing. Maybe its not fair to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater because of a few errors but these are not mistakes, they are purposefully misleading and makes one question the whole thing.

Ok ranting over. Something about that guy just gets me going. Arrrg. At the same time, obnoxiousness of his kind can be rather funny and entertaining.