Are your eyes watering?

A few choice headlines from The Onion that made me 'lol' today:

(btw - the onion is a fake news source.)

Report: Most College Males Admit to Regularly Getting Stoked

Fritolaysia Cuts Off Chiplomatic Relations With Snakistan

Just say that last one out loud and try not to laugh.

...Didn't think so.

Catholic Row

This doesn't end well for anybody.

I'm scared for the future of the Catholic church - the dark ages where the church could make these decisions FOR people are over. The church has essentially thrown the gaunlet down: 'You're IN or you're OUT. What'll it be?'

I'm worried that most people will realize that it isn't a question. In between the lines, the church seems to be saying, "We've already kicked you out - you just keep coming on Sunday for some reason."

The Dead Weather

Jack White's 3rd band - is pretty freaking awesome.

*And has anyone else noticed its like a Gretsch commercial in there? And I am totally okay with that. Catch the cutom BillyBo on the stand sporting the custom III pickguard? I'm betting it has three pickups in it soon.

Good things/Bad things

Whats Good:

Seeing RENT for the first time. It was killer! Much better than the movie, I thought. Made more sense. I really dug the way the whole thing was staged - as a single static backdrop setup with rotating pieces of focus in the foreground. It made for some cool subtleties, like when Roger refuses to come out of the apartment. He's on stage the whole time in the "apt" area, always sitting on the table or around the table and fire barrel with a guitar. He's there almost the entire first act, even if not lit up. RENT is now #2 in my musical list just behind Les Miserable.

While leaving the show at the Civic Center, we walked right by a guy on a knee proposing to a girl as they came out of just seeing RENT. He took the message of the play: 'No day but today,' to heart, apparently. There was a crowd and a guy getting it on a small camera. She said yes. So that's cool. Good luck, guys.

Got two SWEET jackets @ the Mall: One black peacoat from the Gap for a winter work coat. Staying classy. One hipster sweater in blue. (Most people--> shoes, Me--> jackets) I love jackets.

Finally signed up for NetFlicks. Free trial period! w00t! I've been meaning to get my own account for some time. I enjoy Middleson's movie picks, too - the Baliwood, the Independent films, etc. But now I don't have to feel bad about getting movies like Resident Evil: Extinction.

(Not Good:)

Had a pretty jaw-droppingly bad experience at a GPB, an allegedly upscale local restaurant. Great food. Crazy good food. Had a bad waiter. We come in as 5 and get two tiny tables put together. There's two other tables of people in this place. There's about 20 tables, plus bar. Its 6:15. The 5th of our party ended up not being able to come for legitimate reasons. The waiter asked us to get up, and separate the tables again so as not to take up and extra table. Presumably when the restaurant was... busier than 15 people. It was awkard getting up and rearranging. Plus the resulting table was crammed so that the girls couldn't fit their wine glasses on the table with their plates at the same time. One asked for ketchup, and he brought out a 6-condiment dispenser of relishes, pulling up a spare chair to the table and sitting it on that.

........I'm gonna let that sink in. Pulled a chair up to our too full table to set the thing on. The words, "was that your 2nd dropped piece of silverware tonight?" "no - that was... the other table." were spoken. Ben Folds - stick to playing piano. Thanks for making a fun night start awkward.

Vintage Amp Aquisition

I've come into possession of a new amplifier. (Sorry Mom)

Its a cheap amp from 1966, a Sears Silvertone 1484. Most people have no idea what it is or how good it sounds. It looks cheap, it was cheap, and gets beat up easily. So most people write it off as a crap amp.

That is - until Jack White started using Silvertone 1485s in the White Stripes to get his gigantic, crunchy, blow-the-top-of-your-head-off sound. Suddenly, the market for Silvertone amps exploded and more than just the amp junkies realized that the Silvertone amps WERE cheap, but also had KILLER tone. They just don't look like much. Now - its tough to find a Sears Silvertone in decent condition. I've wanted one for a few years now - been looking at craigslist about once a week. A long story very short - a friend of mine found one and then realized he didn't really need it.

It also gave me a good reason to finally sell off all the random guitars and parts of guitars I had laying around not getting used which would more than pay for the amp. (Yes mother, I'll put the extra $$ left over into savings.) I'd like to end up with just two eletrics - a strat and a my epiphone - and one acoustic.

Anyways - I don't have any good pictures of it yet, but here's what a Sears Silvertone 1484 "Twin Twelve" looks like. This one is a little bit cleaner than mine, but I'll eventually get mine cleaned up and checked out by an amp tech.

Getting the message across

I guess the Governator is getting fed up with the bills coming to his desk. His posisition is that there are SERIOUS problems in California that the legislature can't seem to come to a consensus on and fix. They send him bills to fund more projects on the San Fransico waterfront. Apparently the author of this bill had shouted some obscene things at Arnold once, and the Governor's veto statement sounded innocuous when read aloud, but when seen on paper, an entirely different (read: more blunt) message appears.

Here's the .pdf of the veto statement.

Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much...

I love Obama. And the Obama administration. Not just for their policy, but for not beating around the bush.

They haven't minced words about FOXnooze, refusing to give interviews and the like. Somebody finally came out this weekend and stated the obvious - something that even FOXnews viewers who call themselves 'independent' or 'impartial' don't seem to understand. That FOXnews is just a shill for the republican party.

The best part is how FOX came back with, "whaaaaat?!?!?" Please, FOX - don't. Don't even.

Their official response was that people are confusing their news coverage with their opinion pieces. To which I respond: Bullshit. FOXnews deliberately splices parts of their incendiary commentors (opinion) into parts of the news (fact?) coverage in an attempt to make the conservative opinions sound more grounded and commonplace than they really are. FOX's ticker (the text at the bottom of the screen) is enough to make me sick to my stomach sometimes. Only FOX can stir up a tea-party protest (organized by affliates of FOXnews) then organize a rally for their 'news' program where they call the protesters "patriots." These patriots just happen to be carrying signs showing Obama as Hitler, and others with signs morphing Obama into Iran's president and text saying, "Death to the Dictator." But that didn't make it on TV, of course.

Smart conservatives everywhere are using this attack to compare Obama's administration with Nixon's - complaining that ONE network doesn't like him. Oh wait - did you just OPENLY ADMIT THAT YOU DON'T LIKE HIM?!? THEN STOP PRETENDING THAT YOU'RE NOT BIASED. Nobody is saying you should close your doors, FOXnews - its just people saying, "you're not fooling us into thinking you're a non-biased news source so we're not going to treat you like one." Quit acting like you've just been wronged. You chose your format - now live with it.