A North Korean warship sunk a South Korean patrol boat. Where the fuck did this come from?

It's very hot right now, and my poor house's air conditioner doesn't seem to be doing too well keeping up. I hope this isn't a recurring problem. It got bad enough that I just shut it off and opened up the windows.

Last night I went out to some crappy bar with some friends. I figured I'd throw on my Bonnaroo T-Shirt since it was sitting in my car and I hadn't changed from work yet. I got out to the bar, and the bouncer said I couldn't come in since I got to go to the show and he didn't. In the short hour and a half I was there five people came up to me and asked me how the show was.

That was pretty cool.

Since the show, I've been wanting to download some music by some of the groups I saw out there. The Disco Biscuits were the first band I tried to snag, and the two shows I've downloaded were as good as I remember them being at Bonnaroo. I also grabbed the most recent Steve Kimock Band shows from Chester's Place in Fayetteville. I heard those were about the best shows on his most recent tour, and I promise you I will never miss Steve at Chester's again. Scout's honor.

Anyway, the last time I was trying to trade music, it involved the etree mailing list and a lot of FTP severs that were full 99% of the time. I stopped when my hard drive filled up and I just decided that it was a bit more effort than I was willing to put into it at the time.

Since the last time I traded, some new tools have showed up. Etree now has a new site called db.etree.org where you can generate a list of all the shows you have. You can then search a database of all the shows that are currently in circulation, add shows to your want list, and it will give you email addresses of people who have the shows you want and who want the shows that you have. You can then arrange an FTP trade or a physical CD trade.

That's pretty cool in and of itself, but there's another tool called Furthur, which is basically a Napster/Gnutella which restricts itself to trading of shows by bands who allow their shows to be taped and traded. If you have a fast internet connection and like that type of music, I'd highly recommend it. It's very easy to use, the search is flexible (search by venue, city, date, band, set list, etc.), and if somebody you're downloading from drops off the network while you're downloading, it'll find somebody else to resume from. I've had a couple of shows pause for a while, but I haven't started up one that hasn't finished yet.

Just over a month until pre-season football starts. Just under two months until the first televised Green Bay pre-season game. Just over two months until the regular season.

It is lovely to see the phrases "Houston at" and "at Houston" on the schedule.

Lambeau is almost done.

In many ways, the anticipation is almost as nice as the beginning of the season itself.

If you're going to go hiking in the Andes, be sure you have enough pre-paid minutes on your wireless phone.

The Onion AV Club, home of my favorite movie, book, video and film reviews, is taking the week off. In the place of their reviews, they're running an all interview issue. Don't miss this 1993 interview with Mr. T. He discusses a movie he was in around that time called Freaked. I've seen Freaked, and I highly recommend it.

Of course, I can never let anybody forget Mr. T's Be Somebody Or Be Somebody's Fool. If you'd like to see it, let me know. I have a copy.

I always feel cheap when I do a post that's nothing more than a search string that got somebody to this website, but this one was a bit too good to pass up. And you're in the right place. Somebody did a google search and got to Gimpysoft.com with:

Atreides Porn

Update 6/3/2003: Hooray, I got my car fixed! Still have an extra, though... (Who doesn't?) See you all there next week!

Update 5/29/2003: Since people still seem to be stumbling in here looking for info on this year's Bonnaroo, I figured this would be as good a place as any to post this. I have two tickets to this year's Tennessee festival and a car that I don't think I trust to head to Tennessee. If anyone will be heading through the Kansas City area, I'd love a ride to the show. I can even provide the spare ticket at a steep discount or possibly free in exchange for the ride. My travel plans are flexible, so if anyone is interested please email me and we can work something out. I haven't really had many takers on this offer, so it looks like I might just have a spare to sell. If interested in just buying the ticket at face value email me as well. And on to last year...

Well, so last weekend was the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tennessee. I first found out about this show when a friend forwarded me an email which I believe originated from a String Cheese Incident mailing list. Apparently there was going to be a big show with all the big names in the Jam Band scene. Widespread Panic, Trey Anastasio from Phish, Phil and Friends (Phil Lesh from the Grateful Dead and his band, with other Dead member Bob Weir sitting in). The list kept growing.

Now I'm certainly not as hard-core into this scene as many are. I try to catch the Steve Kimock Band whenever they're within a day's drive, and I trade music, though not as much as I'd like to. So this seemed like a perfect opportunity to catch all the big guys while camping out for a weekend with a lot of friendly folks who enjoyed the music.

I didn't find out until later that they did absolutely no advertising for this festival. They did an initial offering of tickets on the festival's website for the people that really wanted to go, then they were expecting to sell the rest through Ticketmaster. The initial offering of 50,000 sold out in about ten days at $100 a ticket. Several weeks later, they released another 15,000 or so which sold out almost instantly. They had a charity auction later, and the final tally on tickets sold came out to 70,000.

So then the day came. Last Thursday, I packed up my car and headed out to the festival. It took me about eight hours to get from Kansas City to close to the festival. At almost exactly 9:00PM, I hit traffic at exit 89 on southbound I-24. The exit for the festival was exit 111, so I figured there was no way this could possibly be concert traffic.

The plan was that I was going to bypass the concert and drive another thirty miles south to a rest area on northbound I-24. There I would rendezvous with a couple who came up from Texas and Alabama and we'd head in to the show together. We had it timed just about perfectly. They called me from the rest area about ten minutes before I hit the traffic at exit 89. I told them I got held up in some road construction, but I'd probably get to them by 10:00 or so.

As I said, I then hit traffic. I have never seen anything like that. I called my friend from Texas about every hour or so, and he asked me what mile marker I was at. I told him, and he told me that that's what I said an hour ago. Well, that was in fact true, I just hadn't moved in the last hour. By about 2:00AM, people were out of their cars, people had set up grills in the beds of their trucks and were selling food, coolers were in the middle of the road and people were getting to drinking.

Later in the festival, I ran into a guy who said that he was caught in the same traffic jam as the rest of us. He told me that one of the state troopers pulled up along side him on the shoulder and asked him how long he'd been stopped. He told the trooper that he'd been there for about three hours.

"You can drink a lot of beers in three hours!"

"No sir, I'm driving."

"Hell, you're not driving, you're parked. Have a beer."

Now I'm certainly not going to advocate drinking and driving, but the trooper did have a point. This was not driving. The car was in park about 95% of the time, and when you did have to move, it was one or two car lengths at a time. So basically the interstate turned into a parking lot/party. This is also illustrative of the fact that the cops in Tennessee are very, very cool.

I stopped checking in with my friend from Texas at about 2:00AM. I finally punched through the traffic at about 7:00 AM. It took me ten hours to go the thirty miles from exit 89 to exit 111. I was scared out of my mind that I was going to be in for the same wait once I found my friends and headed into the show from the south, but the northbound traffic wasn't backed up at all, and we were in and setting up our campsite by around 9:00 AM. The music started at about three o'clock, but it took us a while to get set up, eat, and relax a bit.

The campsites were all in groups, with a group named after a TV show, and individual sites named after characters. We were in Camp Kramer, next to Camp Kostanza. I wish we had been in Camp Barakus, but those are just the breaks sometimes. They parked cars fairly close together side-by-side, but there was plenty of room (about forty feet) behind the cars to set up camp. Helicopters were circling the area almost the entire time, and I'm sure there are aerial photos of the entire grounds, but I haven't been able to find one yet. I can't quite describe how huge it was, but we were way in the back, and it was a bit of a walk out to the stage. It's a good thing we managed to hook up before the show, or we never would have found each other, probably even with cell phones.

We finally did head out, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band was the first band we took in. They were pretty good, but my brain wasn't quite working right, so I don't remember too much of it. We listened to a bit of DJ Logic's set after that, then former Primus front man and bassist Les Claypool's band was up.

His current band is called "Les Claypool's Flying Frog Brigade". They sounded somewhat Primus-like at times, but more mellow at times. Les tried to do a crowd participation type of deal at one point, but I never quite made out what it was we were supposed to be chanting. My brain still wasn't working. It's always tough when you go for the crowd participation and it never materializes.

I've seen it happen before, and if the artist doesn't back out quickly, it can get rather ugly. This got medium-ugly... It just fell flat, but he didn't get angry. I went to a They Might Be Giants concert once where John Flansburgh tried to get everybody to dance in a conga line. When the crowd didn't go along with it, he got noticeably agitated and started chanting, "Everybody Conga... I'm not fucking kidding... Everybody Conga... I'm not fucking kidding..." That was ugly. This wasn't that bad, but kind of sad nonetheless. Especially since Les had said that he was trying to get the chant going for the deceased bassist from the band Morphine.

Where was I again? Oh yeah... Les's band finished up... From there, we headed over to Gov't Mule. They were pretty good, but it was during their first set that I realized that the reason my brain wasn't working right was because I had been awake for over thirty-six hours and badly needed sleep. I felt like a wuss, but told my friends that I just wasn't going to make it (they had slept at the rest area while I was stuck in traffic), and went to sleep.

I was hoping to wake up for one of the late night shows, but I was surprised to wake up over twelve hours later at around 8:00 AM. Everything was wet because I had forgotten to put the rain flap on my tent, and dew had seeped in and dampened everything. I was saddened to discover that my camera had been dampened as well, so I didn't get any pictures the rest of the time.

Saturday morning, we did our best to wash up a bit in the sulphurous well water they were providing. It certainly was better than nothing, and I thank them for that. We finally made it out to catch Saturday's music during Ben Harper's set. He played acoustic guitar, I believe solo. He may have had a backup band, but after seeing so many bands over the weekend, they kind of run together a bit. He was pretty good, but didn't blow me away entirely.

After Ben Harper's set, we wandered over into one of the tents to catch the Lil' Rascals Brass Band. They're from New Orleans and I really enjoyed their show. I'm sure the shade from the tent helped, but they could play, and it was a fun show to watch. It was cool to hear funk without a bass. They used a tuba. It kicked ass.

After that show, we wandered back to the main stage where String Cheese Incident was playing. I only get this idea from various message boards I read about Bonnaroo, but it seems that there is a bit of animosity towards String Cheese fans, especially among Widespread Panic fans. Personally, I don't get it. I did see a couple people walking away from the SCI show pointing at their Widespread Panic shirts, and that seemed a bit uncalled for to me.

String Cheese was nice, but the songs never really seemed to go anywhere. Admittedly, we didn't stay for the whole show, and that statement may not seem to make sense in the context of a genre of music known for fifteen to thirty minute songs. Other bands (I use Steve Kimock as a reference point) seem to go off on jams that go through several different styles, different chord progressions, and usually build up and release tension in the solos. SCI seemed to kind of just noodle around a melody, and not necessarily build to anything. They seemed to be technically good players, but it was a bit light for my tastes.

We wandered back to the tent to catch a bit of the Disco Biscuits. This was the first band that really kicked my ass. The tent was packed, and we were sitting under a tree off to the side of the stage. We sat there in the shade and listened to the band for almost all the rest of their show, and I was impressed the whole time. I'm currently working on trying to find some of their shows to listen to. If you have some Disco Biscuits, check out my list and we can do a trade if you'd like.

We wandered over to the secondary outdoor stage and caught the hip-hop group Jurassic 5. They were cool. I like some rap, mainly early 90's Snoop and Dre and the like. These guys were a lot of fun to watch, and I guess they fit in with the jam band scene because some of their lyrics were freestyle. (Am I allowed to talk like this?) I certainly wouldn't know which were improvised and which were written in the song, but it was all fun, it had the crowd dancing, and the hula-hoop girls looked great hula-hooping to it.

After Jurassic 5, we caught a couple sets of Panic. They seemed good enough, but eight hours in the 90 degree heat had gotten to me, and I once again retired earlier than I would have liked to.

Just a quick word about that heat, while I'm thinking about it. It was hot. It was very hot. Two of the four stages were outdoors, and (though this was not a pretty sight) I wasn't wearing a shirt for most of the event. I did have the sense to put on sunblock, but I still got a bit of a sunburn. It never got painful, but it is peeling right now. Sun really saps your energy. We carried around backpacks with water, but there's really only so much sun you can take before you end up drained of all your energy.

So I went to bed during Panic on Saturday night and woke up on Sunday morning. We made it out back to the stage during Ween's set, but didn't really watch them. We headed to the smaller outdoor stage to catch Bela Fleck and Edger Meyer. Bela Fleck plays banjo and Edger Meyer plays upright bass. They were absolutely amazing. They played mostly classical-sounding stuff, Meyer was using a bow on his bass most of the time, and it was all really good. About twenty minutes into their set, we got some much welcomed rain. A few people grabbed their stuff and ran for cover, but most (us included) stayed and cooled off a bit. It felt great and really got our energy level up. The rain caused the band's monitors to go out, so they figured out some songs they could play without having to hear each other very well, and they worked well.

After Bela's set was over, we headed out to the main stage. The second-to-last show of the weekend was Phil Lesh and Friends w/ Very Special Guest Bob Weir. I'm sure that's the closest I'll ever get to seeing a real Grateful Dead show. I don't know much of the Dead's music, but the guy I was with knew some and said they were playing a lot of old Dead favorites. The thing that amazed me is that they absolutely never stopped playing. Of course, most of the bands play songs that can go on for a long, long time, but these guys just never stopped. One song transitioned into the next, and they only stopped for a set break and at the end before their encore. I really liked almost all of it, but the encore did start to get a bit tiresome for my tastes. Again, that was probably just my heat-sapped energy level.

After that show, we went back to the campsite briefly. I think we made some food and smoked some cigarettes, and mainly just relaxed a bit so we would be able to catch the last show of the night.

The last show was Trey Anastasio from Phish. He was very, very good, and I really want to find a copy of his set from the show. He apparently played some Phish favorites, but again, I don't know my Phish. They were good songs, though. He played two sets. We were sitting deeper into the crowd than for any of the other shows, and I spent a lot of time during the show wandering around trying to find my group after leaving to either get beer or use the bathroom. But it was cool. I danced with some lovely hippy ladies, and even talked with a couple.

Before Trey's encore, he came onto stage and spent probably ten minutes babbling about how cool the show was, how friendly everybody was, and how flattered he was that so many people came out.

He was right, there were a hell of a lot of people out there. I guess the final ticket sales were around 70,000. There's no telling how many people somehow snuck into the show. I've seen estimates of crowd size anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000. If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably in the neighborhood of 80,000.

Of those 80,000 people, with five days at the festival in 90+ degree heat, rampant beer consumption, rampant, um... substance consumption, and a general party atmosphere, the final tally was 19 hospitalizations. I guess nine of those were overdoses of some sort, and ten cases of dehydration. No deaths, no riots, no vandalism. I must also make a point of how clean the grounds actually were. People were taking care of their own trash, most were taking care of the small amount of trash that was left on the ground, and the site was absolutely pristine. No broken glass, no beer cans everywhere, no plastic cups everywhere. It was amazing. I've seen worse messes in most small clubs after a show.

The promoters, Superfly Productions, did an excellent job with the logistics. Security was present but friendly, there were adequate washing facilities, there were rarely lines for the restrooms, they provided ice, port-a-potties, and kept the trash cans emptied very well. The port-a-potties started to fill up on the last day, but I almost think that was just a bit of incentive to get the hell out, as we were supposed to.

Monday, we packed up and got in line to head out. After waiting in line for about an hour, we were told that one of the neighbors was taking money to let cars drive over her property onto some back roads to get out around the traffic. We decided that three hours of our time was worth the ten bucks she was charging and took her up on it. It was a pleasant drive home. But boy did I need a shower by the time I got there...

I guess that's about it. I have to quickly mention the old-school arcade they had set up (Q-Bert, Pac-Man, Gauntlet, Smash TV, Donkey Kong, Missile Command, Galaga, NFL Blitz, among many, many more, all working original machines), the food (a foot-long corn dog and greasy curly fries were excellent on saturday night), the playground they set up (adult-sized... Slides, climbing forts, and a big swing set), but it was all a bit too much. There was so much music you couldn't even take all that in. We spent a bit of time in the arcade, but never made it to the playground.

I do regret missing Del McCoury, Drums and Tuba, Galactic, Particle, Col. Bruce Hampton and the Code Talkers, Keller Williams, and I would have liked to catch at least one late night snow.

The locals didn't seem to mind us too much. I listened to a Manchester talk radio station on my way in to and out of the show, and they were just having people call in to talk about Bonnaroo, both locals and festival attenders. The festival goers all thanked the people of the town for letting them have the festival, and the locals all thanked the concert goers for coming to town and spending money. I heard many, many people invite the show back next year. I think it'll probably happen. The only snag all weekend was the traffic on the way in. They had a plan to deal with that, but it was just a bit bigger than they thought it would be, and they'll know better next year. A couple extra state troopers and they could have kept through traffic flowing and gotten the Bonnarooers in in a more orderly manner.

I think I could even handle going back next year.

Seeing as my camera was busted, I stole some pictures from Matt Veino and Andre Markarian. Hope you guys don't mind.

I really, really hate it when I'm typing a long blog entry into Movable Type and I hit escape. When you're editing a document in vi, hitting escape takes you out of text entry mode and into command mode where you can move your cursor around, delete text, and cut and paste. When you hit escape while entering text into a text area on a web page, everything you typed goes away irretrievably. I've been burned by this many, many times. Every time I do it, I have a tendency to submit the entry multiple times in "draft" mode as I'm adding to it. Then I forget and stop, then end up losing another multiple paragraph entry, much like I just did right now.

Well, when I make a long trip out of town (Mardi Gras, Bonnaroo), I usually get some pictures and have an idea for what I want to write in the blog. A combination of some perfectionism (hah hah) and a lot of laziness keeps me from actually sitting down and writing the post. As a result, it takes me a long time, and it's hopelessly out of date by the time I do write anything. I promise I will write it up tonight, and include what few pictures I was able to take before my camera was taken to an early grave by the early morning Tennessee dew. Of course, I promise a lot of things.

Until then, I've found a couple of links you may enjoy.

Firstly, I loved this blog's name: Check out Occam's Toothbrush.

If you go here you can buy "What Would Jeebus Do?" T-Shirts, coffee mugs, and mouse pads.

I'm sure it's not the first, but this is the first design proposal I've seen for the World Trade Center site. And I like it, other than the pyramid on the top. I don't know what I'd put up there, but I don't think I particularly like that up on top. (Thanks Raven wolf.)

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of the words "Under God". Yawn. The only thing that upsets me about this is the fact that I'm sure a lot of congressional time is going to be wasted on this issue. I'm an atheist myself, and if you ask me whether students should be compelled to say the pledge, I'd have to say no. But for Jeebus' sake, people give it a rest. Don't we have more important things to worry about right now?

Today my company is taking our group out to a baseball game. We get to see the Kansas City Royals take on the Detroit Tigers. Be still my beating heart. Kansas City is currently two games ahead of Detroit, who currently resides in dead last. So this will be an exciting game with Detroit trying to claw their way out of the basement and Kansas City trying to avoid the humiliation of last place. But don't worry, there's plenty of humiliation to go around.

I'll try to get that post about Bonnaroo up here this evening before my triumphant return to Racquetball.

Microsoft's News Channel declares that Linux is dead. Details at 11.

If you can't wait for my incredibly poignant insights into the Bonnaroo experience, this guy has collected links to a ton of reviews and news stories about the festival.

I certainly don't have time right now to write up all my experiences over five days at Bonnaroo, but for now I'll just say that I had a blast, I'm sunburned (but not overly so), and now I'm back. Probably the biggest disappointment of the show was that I broke my digital camera, so I didn't get many pictures. It's on the Best Buy 2 year replacement deal, so I'll be able to get it replaced, but I won't have too many pictures.

You can see some pictures at the festival's website if you're in to that kind of thing. You can also download some of the music from the show via Gateway here (starting tomorrow).

Anyway, I'll write a bit of a review this evening, but I have a lot of stuff to do now that I'm back in town.

Well, I'm about to get in the car and head on out to Bonnaroo. As usual, I feel like I'm forgetting something, but I've gone over my list a couple of times and I think I'm all set. I just need to get my oil changed, buy some beer and ice, then I'm on the road. Have a good weekend everybody, and I'll catch you when I get back Monday night.

Another from Aint It Cool News, some (admittedly shady) evidence that rumors that Bill Waterson has been working on an animated Calvin and Hobbes movie may be true. The "evidence" consists of a couple voice actors listing "Calvin and Hobbes" on their public resumes. I'm highly skeptical, but this would be very, very, very cool if it was true...

From Bill Waterson's statement when he announced the end of the C&H; comic strip:

This is not a recent or easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted, however, and I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises.

Nah, probably file this one under "too good to be true".

If Bubba Ho-Tep, the movie starring Bruce Campbell as an elderly Elvis Presley living in a retirement home and teaming up with John F. Kennedy to fight a mummy doesn't come to a theater near me I'm going to be very, very, very upset.

Did I mention it's from the writer/director of Phantasm and The Beastmaster? Or that it's official website can be found here?

I found one more domain name that it's still not too late for you to register:

yeathoughiwalkthroughthevalleyoftheshadowofdeathiwillfearnoevil.com

It's available!

I wish to call a man. Not you, my dear Duke, but the Baron. I've spoken to you already. You will be tied and drugged, but you can still make a phone call. You can Still... Make... A phone call... Remember the tooth... the tooth... the tooth...

Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura will not seek reelection.

Well, this has been an interesting World Cup. I guess I am paying a bit more attention since the US is doing pretty well, but teams that I had always thought were powerhouses are going down, and there are some interesting matchups coming up.

We just finished up the round of 16. Matchups that are left are England v. Brazil (that ought to be fun to watch), Senegal v. Turkey (eh...), Germany v. US, and Spain v. South Korea. Spain just barely got past Ireland after a 3-2 shootout, and South Korea managed to tie their game in the 88th minute, and score a goal late in overtime to win that match.

The next round gets started this Friday. England plays Brazil at 1:30 AM, followed by our match vs. Germany at 6:30. If we can sneak past Germany, we may just get a second shot at South Korea, who we tied during the round robin. Interesting. I hope I can catch some of the game from Manchester...

So you have a cat, and you have a computer. When your cat walks across the keyboard, do you worry that it may just accidentally close that important weblog entry you were working on all night without saving? Well, fear no more. Simply download and install PawSense and when your cat walks across the keyboard, its input will be ignored. The software can even be configured to play an annoying sound to train your cats to stay off the keyboard even when you aren't there.

Supplies:
Tent
Sleeping Bag
Pillow
Extra Blanket
Tarps
Hammer
Flashlight
Extra Batteries
Lantern ?
Campstove ?
Pan ?
Propane
Portable Grill
Charcoal
Clothesline
Trash Bags
Scrub Sponge

Consumables:
1 5-Gallon Water Bottle
3 Cases Beer (Boulevard, preferably)
1 Package rolls
Sandwich Meats
Cheese
2 Packages Hot-Dogs
2 Packages Hot-Dog Buns
1 Loaf Bread
Oranges
Apples
Mayo
Mustard
Bacon
Eggs
Salt
Pepper

Clothing:
Six Pairs Boxers
Six Pairs Socks
Two Pair Jeans
Three Pairs Shorts
Six T-Shirts
Tennis Shoes
Sandals

Toiletries:
8 Rolls TP
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Soap
Two Bath Towels
Two Rag Towels

Other:
CDs to trade

There's nothing particularly impressive about the Rate My Kitten website. You just rate pictures of cute kittens. However, I did really like this one. I can't tell if it's in a dollhouse, or if the image is photoshopped.

Thank god they found those bastards guilty. Capitalism doesn't work when you have institutional fraud...

Did I mention that I walked up and down the stairs so many times while cleaning and painting on Saturday that my legs are almost as sore as when I do a decent leg workout? Good think I'm finally getting back on my workout routine this evening...

Ken Layne's been posting a bit about those cool Nike commercials featuring 70's style basketball players, and George Clinton and the Masters of Funk playing with Snoop. You can apparently see the commercial here, but I forgot to take a look over the weekend. Ken says here that he's starting to hear rumors of a Clinton/P-Funk/Snoop album. Can the world take that much Funk? Good lord, I hope so...

Where can I pre-order?

The Taliban Wing of the Republican Party? Maybe that's not quite as crazy as you thought. An interesting article about an alliance between conservative Christian groups and hard-line Islamic governments to lobby the UN against expansion of gay rights and abortion rights.

Well, the party went fairly well. I didn't make too much of an ass out of myself, (Just the normal amount) and I still have plans for trivia with a real live female tomorrow night.

I woke up at 8:00AM on Saturday and immediately got to work trying to finish up lots of things on the house that I had been putting off. I got all the trim in my room finished, but there are still spots that need yet another coat. But it looks much better. I finally finished up painting the extra bedroom. It's now a nice uniform white, but I think I'm going to do the windowsill in maroon when I do the rest of the missed spots in my room.

After I finished up the painting, I got to cleaning. Lots of dishes, lots of laundry, vacuuming putting stuff away, cleaning bathrooms, etc. I was busy until around 6:00, then I decided to clean my shower and take a shower, I got all my stuff up there and turned on the water. I only got a trickle. That's odd, I thought. I checked that bathroom's sink, and it was working fine. The other shower was working fine and I ran out of ideas. How do you get a clog in both your hot and cold supply lines? I started to figure out how much it was going to cost to get a plumber out there, and I finally just took a shower in the other bathroom.

People started to arrive at around 8:00, but many didn't show until after 10. There was plenty to drink, I had hot dogs and hamburgers for those who wanted that sort of thing, and I had managed to shoo everybody off by 3 or so. It was fun, I don't think we disturbed the neighbors too much. Surprisingly, no red punch got spilled on the carpet, and nobody got in a fight. I guess there were some unpleasantries exchanged between some of the guests, but that was kind of in the background and I was fairly oblivious.

I woke up on Sunday and listened to some episodes of This American Life that I had missed over the last couple of months while doing a bit of clean-up and making breakfast. As I was cleaning, it occurred to me that I have one of those water-saver shut-off valves on my shower, so I went back upstairs and checked it. Sure enough, I must have accidentally bumped it to the off position when I was turning the shower off on Friday. I felt dumb, but at least I'm not going to have to pay a plumber anything. I spent just about all day Sunday finishing up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I really liked it, and have now started in on Ken Layne's Dot.Con. I don't think that'll take too long... It's shorter and reads much faster.

Chabon had single sentences in Kavalier and Clay that took up most of a page, and I often found myself having to scan back up to a page to remind myself what or who the subject of this sentence was by the time he got to the action. But I'll be the first to admit I have a short attention span. It made for slow reading of that book, and it was fairly long to boot. He had an interesting technique used a lot towards the end of the book where he would spend a chapter on a scene, the scenario would seem to come to a conclusion, and the next chapter would start. It wouldn't be until several chapters later that you realized that the last several chapters had been a flashback, and the scenario that appeared to have concluded was not in fact as simple as it seemed. It was very interesting, enough so for me to get through the final 250 pages or so yesterday (and I'm a slow reader...)

It was a good weekend, though. I didn't manage to stay up late enough last night to catch the US Soccer team's 2-0 victory over Mexico to make it to the quarterfinals in the World Cup. I actually woke up at around 2:15AM, looked at the clock, realized that the game was on, and almost got up to watch it. If I had a TV in my room, I probably would have flipped it on. Unfortunately I don't, so I missed the game. The next game will be against Germany Friday, June 21 at 6:30AM Central. By then, I'll be in central Tennessee at Bonnaroo. I don't think they'll have cable there, but maybe it'll be carried on the radio down there...

Can somebody going to Bonnaroo bring a soccer ball?

Live the glory that is World Cup Soccer with Pegball.

You know, I try to stay off of politics as much as I can. Other people do it much better than I do. But every once in a while, a story comes out that makes me just say "What the fuck?"

In this case, a Saudi television broadcast featuring a three year old girl being asked what she thinks about Jews:

Yes, and she doesn't like them because... "they're apes and pigs."

"Who said so?" the anchor asks.

"Our God," she replies adding that Allah says this "in the Quran."

Ick... I get the same feeling hearing that that I get when I watch those HBO documentaries with titles like "Inside the Aryan Nations". I remember seeing little four year old kids chanting "White Power" and doing little four year old nazi salutes... It makes you sad and angry, but those programs air here in the states because it's a window into a segment of our society that is thoroughly marginalized and that you don't encounter on a daily basis.

I get the feeling that these programs in the middle east are presenting these children as the heroes of the next generation. I don't think that things are going to get any better over there until that mindset is as marginalized over there as the white supremacists are over here. I just don't think I see that happening any time soon...

Well, it's finally happenned. I just got word of my first confirmed case of being mistaken for gay. (Mistaken? Ha Ha... Thank you Raj and Ed...) I knew this would happen sooner or later. I'm perpetually single, I live with a male roommate who has "a girlfriend in another town", and in this particular case, I was at a Party Lite party. Basically, it's like a tupperware party, but with candles and candle-holders.

OK, let me back up a little further... I re-painted my bedroom a little while ago a rather dark shade of blue. As a result, I had to lose most of the decorations I had in the room, because they were all black and blended into the walls a bit too much. So I wanted to get some new silver or gray wrought-iron candle holders for my room. I was playing cards with the folks I play cards with, and the wife of a friend from work invites me to come out to the thing, so I agree. I've had a hard time finding the candle holders I want, and I figure that a catalog devoted to nothing but candles should have something close to what I need for my room.

Anyway, I got there and I am (of course) the only guy there... 95% of the stuff they do have there is far, far too girly for me. They did have some that looked nice, but were out of my price range, so I bought a couple more wrought-iron ones for the living room. Long story short, I'm at lunch with the guy whose wife invited me to the thing, and he tells me that the word going around after I left was that I was in fact gay. Which is unfortunate, because they were all engineers with stable jobs, a couple of them were rather cute, and most appeared to be single. And I forgot to pimp out this weekend's party...

OK, now that I've dug that hole deep enough, there is a bit of good news on the dating front. I actually have a date set up for next Tuesday. It's with a woman I met close to a month ago. She works at the same company as I do in a different building. We've been emailing back and forth occasionally since we met, but haven't really been able to get together. We had lunch once, but she has an eight year old daughter, she was planning her sister's wedding over the last couple of weeks, and I've been out of town three out of the last four weekends.

She'll be coming to the party at Fort Awesome on Saturday, and we're going to go out for some drinks and NTN trivia (her idea!) next Tuesday. Assuming I don't make an ass out of myself on Saturday. And you know what happens when you assume. I make an ass out of myself.

There's also one of those Facilidate parties this coming Wednesday, but I'm poor. If you haven't heard about those, it's where they get 30-40 single women and 30-40 single guys in the same room, and they set you up with each person for a quick three to four minute conversation. At the end, you turn in a scorecard with a yes or a no for each person you talked to, and they give you contact information for each person who you said yes to that also said yes to you. They also tell you how many people said yes to you but you callously rejected, but you don't get to know who or get their contact info.

This scheme costs $39 for the evening plus drinks... I am going to do it eventually, but with Bonnaroo coming up next weekend, I absolutely cannot afford to spend any money. The next Mid 20's to Mid 30's gathering isn't happenning until late July, but hopefully more will show up on the schedule. I hear they're actually somewhat popular... It sounds like a cool idea to me, and not any more desperate than anything else I've tried.

I'll let you know how it goes when I actually do it. Hell, I may actually break down and go to the one this Wednesday, even though I absolutely should not be spending the money. Five days out of town is going to be expensive, even if I am camping the whole time.

Well, I'll see you all out at the party at Fort Awesome this Saturday. E-Mail me for directions...

I heard about this yesterday. A mysterious orb washed up on a beach in South Carolina a couple of days ago, and nobody knows what it is. It's the end times! Head for the hills!

There's an African serval on the loose in my general vicinity. Be on the lookout for it when you head out to my party in Shawnee this evening, and for god's sake, keep your rabbits indoors!

I have far too many addictions. I need to work on these...

Cigarettes
Spending money on shit I don't need
Ellipses...
Going out of town when I can't afford it
Crack Cocaine
The Rabbit Blog

I need to cut down on all of those, but I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to cut down on the number of ellipses I use... Now excuse me, I need to go refresh the Rabbit Blog a few more times and buy a new crack pipe. (I hate how they clog up after only a couple weeks of use. Does anybody have any cleaning tips?)

I did manage to wake up this morning to catch probably the only US World Cup game I'll get to see in this tournament. Within the first three minutes Poland had already scored a Goooooooooooooooooooool! On the next possession, we drove and put in a Gooooooooooooooooool! ourselves, but it was called back... I guess the referee thought we made a bit too much contact when our guy went up to head the Gooooooooooooooooool! in. Poland almost immediately answered back, putting their team up 2-0 within five minutes.

Then Renya passes to the wing. Agoos back to center. Donovan holds it... Holds it! HOLDS IT!!!

Not too much action from there on out. We had possession for most of the first half, but Poland seemed to be playing good defense, and we didn't even get too many shots on goal... I made myself some eggs and got dressed. As I was eating my eggs I paid some attention to the game, but it was tough while eating eggs and getting ready for work. Finally I realized that I was going to be very, very late in to work if I didn't get going, so I hit the road.

I tried to find coverage of the game on the radio to no avail. I finally settled in on our local AM sports station, and they kept me updated. Poland scored another Gooooooooooooooool! to go up 3-0. We scored late, but the game ended with a Polish victory, 3-1. (Polish victory... There has to be a joke in there somewhere...)

Luckily, South Korea had our back. Korea upset Portugal 1-0, allowing our team to slink into the single-elimination tournament. We'll be playing Mexico Monda at 1:30AM Central. I doubt I'll be able to catch that one, but I'll try...

I'm heading out to see an Irish band tonight... They're called The Elders, and they'll be playing at a bar out here called Patty O'Quigley's. Fun fun fun...

Tomorrow I get to spend all day cleaning and painting, then I'm having that kickin' party Saturday night... Feel free to drop by Fort Awesome any time after 8:00 or so. If you need directions to Fort Awesome, drop me an E-Mail.

In other news, of course Raven Wolf did in fact win the Worlds Sexiest Female Blogger poll. And not only did she post a comment on this site, she also linked me from her front page. My first real link from a real blogger, and a damn sexy one at that. I have finally arrived.

Well, come on out to the party this Saturday. It's going to be big... Joe Piscopo big!

Rebounding quickly after her bitter last minute defeat in the Sexiest Female Blogger Contest, The Rabbit has vowed to post an entry to the Rabbit Blog every hour on the hour for the rest of the day. What consitutes the rest of the day? Is this a full twenty-four hours? Just until sundown? Until she gets tired and takes a nap? I need to know!

I guess the only thing I can do is refresh her web page every ten minutes instead of the every fifteen minutes I do on a normal day.

What is the proper way to denote the Nelson Muntz "Ha Ha" laugh in an email or on a web page? From looking at this Google search, it doesn't look like there's too much of a consensus. Of the ones I've found, I think I like "Ha-ha!" the most, but I'm not really sure that the exclamation point is really warranted.

Somebody else tried "Haaa-HA", but that seems more like the cry a swashbuckler would make after swinging onto a ship's deck to confront his nemesis. "HA ha!" looks pretty good too, but has the same problem with the exclamation point. "HA-ha" maybe? Your thoughts?

What's your mental age? I rang up at 18 years old. Sounds about right...

God knows why he isn't on the Telephone Advertising Hall of Shame yet, but apparently Alf wants his own talk show now. Sometimes we, as a society, need to band together and just say, "No!" Now is one of those times.

Oh, by the way, I updated the weight chart yesterday, and I also had another dream that I remembered. That's two days in a row... That almost never happens.

Entertainment Weekly has a cool article on the new computer animated Yoda from Attack of the Clones. They talk about the animators being hesitant to allow Yoda to unleash as much whoop-ass as he did in the movie. One of the animators comments that he was worried that people would say ''the guy who did Jar-Jar has now f---ed up Yoda. Burn him!'' He also used the phrase "We're doomed..."

I'm tired... I need to work on getting pictures to lay out properly in my entries... In the meantime, I'm very, very tired, so I think I'm going to bed. Good night all...

So I'm driving home from work listening to All Things Considered when we come to the end of an hour. Local news comes on, and they mention that George was in town today. I knew he came to visit a water treatment plant to tell us how we needed to spend more money on terrorism prevention. He visited a high school and talked about the new government re-org they're doing... It turns out he also stopped in to do a fundraiser for Jim Talent, and we have our contingent of anarchist protesters out. I figure it's about time I did some on-site reporting, so I looked up where they were and headed downtown.

I first got out there and had trouble finding parking. Security was less tight than I thought it might be, but they did have the parking garages right next to the Marriott shut down. I found parking and it wasn't tough to find the protesters.

The protesters were in fact out. They were a small group of silly anarchists, greens, some guys protesting Social Security reform (is that still even on the table?), and one woman with a sign saying "15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. These are our friends?" A fair statement, if you ask me.

So I decide to go ahead and interview someone... I choose the guy holding the sign that reads "Bush Smells Fishy".

Derek: I'm Derek.
Ryan: I'm Ryan, what are you here about?
Derek: I'm here because I'm a concerned individual.
Ryan: What are you concerned about?
Derek: Lots of things. Uhh, free thought, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, speech and of being human and of doing the things that I want to do and that I have passion to do without having to be beaten down by The Man.
Ryan: Do you feel those are under threat right now?
Derek: Yeah, quite a lot and lots of other things are too, but I just like coming out and bringing humor to events that are usually very humor-less.
Ryan: Good deal, I had some friends that went out to the New York protests protesting protesters.
Derek: Yeah, I have some friends and we're thinking about starting an organized group... There's two of us right now, and we're thinking about protest.. protesting... wait.. Protest Protesting Protesters. There's two of us now, and we can't really come to an agreement so we're thinking about splitting into different factions.
Ryan: That's always how it goes, isn't it? Any good movement is going to factionalize like that.
Derek: Yeah...

After that I realized that my interview skills weren't really up to snuff, I just wasn't mixing too well with this crowd, and I was out of cigarettes besides, so I decided to wander around and find somewhere to buy cigarettes. I don't know if you've ever spent any time in downtown Kansas City (I hadn't before tonight), but it kind of dies after 5:00. I'm only assuming that it is alive during the day, but I had a hell of a time finding an open store to buy cigarettes. Finally I saw this bar, John's Upstairs. I had heard about it, and some friends of mine have told me that it's a fun place to hang out. So I decided to pop in there to buy some smokes.

While I was buying smokes, I had to go ahead and get one of those $1 margaritas. So I drank that down, smoked a cigarette, and prepared myself mentally to head back amidst the protesters.

The next guy I talked to was a candidate for the Progressive Party, which I guess is an offshoot of the Green Party.

Matt: My name's Matt Larson, I'm the Progressive Party candidate for the 51st district. I came out to support the people who believe what I believe, that this administration in the first place is illegal, because it was not rightfully elected, and the policies are completely out of sync with the way that most Americans, and most humans, see that the world should be.
Ryan: OK, so you're a candidate for the Progressive Party.
Matt: We're the green party, uh, uh, I hate to say franchise, but affiliate in Missouri.
Ryan: Is there an official Green party candidate running against you, or...
Matt: No, I'm working on signatures so I can get on the general election, so I don't have to deal with a primary. Right now there are only two of us running in the entire area, there's myself in the 51st, and theres Mel Scribner in the 50th, I believe.

Ryan: You're running for Congress?
Matt: The Missouri state house...
Ryan: Do you have any ideas of what you would want to do if you were elected?
Matt: I personally fell that my district, the western part of Independence, the eastern party of Kansas City and Sugar Creek, I feel that the state of Missouri has just neglected those areas. Truman Rd. and 23rd. St. are state highways, and they're falling to pieces. I know for one that I've had to replace my shocks and tires a lot sooner than I would have needed to if the state had felt the need to keep it up. Really, I'd love to see a decent, safe and affordable public transportation system, but until that time, we need to live up to our commitment to the roads.

On top of that, the Missouri river forms the northern boundary to my district. I grew up around it, and I've never been to the bank. I've never felt safe dipping my toes in the river that is such a part of this area. I'd like to see the river cleaned up, the streets safe, well those are the two main ones.
Ryan: Is the river particularly polluted? I'm new to the area, is there something upstream that's dumping into it?
Matt: The Missouri/Mississippi river system has consistently been ranked as one of the top five, if not the worst polluted and endangered river systems in the western hemisphere... I want to feel that it's safe to canoe down, drink from and fish in...
Ryan: That's not a bad thing, I used to live in Arkansas, and that it was nice that way...

It turns out that the Progressive Party is having an open pot-luck picnic June 23rd at Longview Lake. Maybe I'll head out there. Free food at the very least, and maybe it'll finally give me an excuse to smoke a brisket.

So after I got done talking to him, I milled around for a bit, then started to get bored again. I talked to an irish guy for a while... He was against the Bush administration generally. He said he was split between voting for Gore or Bush... I didn't tape my conversation with him, so it's fuzzy. He just seemed to think that we were going about this war in the wrong way, and that it was somewhat our fault. I do agree with him in some ways... I know we have been propping up ugly folks in the middle east to get their oil, and to say that that had nothing to do with breeding the anti-Americanism that has come back to bite us in the ass is disingenuous at best. The fact is that the anti-Americanism has been bred, and what do we now do about it? I'm not foreign policy scholar, but I haven't been too terribly upset with how the war has been handled so far. I worry about civil liberties, but haven't seen anything yet that's gotten me too worried. The protesters are out, the cops weren't fucking with them, and they get a chance to vote again in two years. We'll see what happens between now and then...

Anyway, by then I needed another beer, so I decided to wander again. I came across this group of Bush supporters. (In the interest of fairness, I will mention that it was a smaller group...) I crossed the street just as the street was closed off, and Bush's motorcade drove up the street.

He drove by very quickly, but I did get a picture of his car. He was looking out the window and waving.

I went to another bar a bit down the road and drank a beer. I wandered a while longer around downtown Kansas City, and finally noticed that a thunderstorm was rolling in. Oh yeah, that must be that tornado watch they were talking about when I was driving out here. I figured it was about time to get home. When I got home, my roommate had ordered pizza. I like pizza.

George W. is in town doing a fundraiser tonight, and I hear there are anarchist protesters down there. I'm heading out right now to hopefully get some pictures and maybe an interview or two.

I thought I had seen it all. I had not. Only in my darkest nightmares did I think I would ever come across Sprint PCS Guy Fan Fiction. At least it isn't Sprint PCS Guy slash.

The sexiest blogger contest went down to the wire. At the end, Heather Havrilesky of the Rabbit Blog and Raven Wolf were in a dead heat for first. The polls have closed, but Matt has yet to announce the results. The suspense is killing me. I've never seen Raven Wolf's blog before, but she seems rather upset about something. Results coming soon, I guess...

I had a full weekend. Friday evening I played racquetball with my reporter friend. I only managed to play two games, and I'm taking this week off entirely. My elbow has been bothering me when I play, and I just haven't given it enough time to heal properly. So I'll be taking this week off, trying to play next Monday, then I'll be at Bonnaroo for the next couple of sessions. The two weeks should be enough for me to heal up right, then I should be able to get back into my workout routine.

After racquetball on Friday night I spent the evening cleaning my room and the living room. My roommate called some friends of his from work and they came over for some beers, and we ended up staying up late Friday night.

Saturday morning was the Kansas City Scottish Highland Games. My reporter friend told me about it, and we were going to try to meet her and her boyfriend out there. She gave me their cell phone number, but I forgot to bring it with me to the games so we never did find them out there. The festival was interesting. They were holding several athletic competitions, as well as dancing, a massed bagpipe band, and lots of tents selling things. I ended up buying myself a sword. It's a nice Rapier looking sword, and it actually has a sharp blade on it. I've wanted a sword for a while, and the price was just a bit too good to pass up.

Saturday evening, we went out to the house of one of the guys I work with to watch the Tyson fight. I guess a more competitive fight might have been more interesting to watch, but all in all I got what I wanted. I got to see Tyson get beat to a bloody pulp. Tyson came out and tried to fight early, but by the second round all he was doing was taking punches. He was looking poor by the time he got knocked out... I'm just glad that the fight happenned. I'd rather that he not retire with there being any notion that he retired still dangerous, but The Man wouldn't let him fight. Saturday night's fight proved to us that he is done, and let us never speak of him again.

The girls from Phil's workplace came over after the fight, and we ended up going out to a dance type bar in Missouri. We stayed until they kicked us out, then back to my place where we stayed up until the sun came up. It's been a while since I've done that...

Sunday I layed around all day, napping occasionally then waking up to sit around and watch TV. I tried to go to bed early, but had trouble getting to sleep. I slept poorly, and did have one silly dream. Now I just have to spend this week not spending money and getting the place ready for Saturday night's party.

Be sure to read the amazing adventures of Captain Euro! A friend in Texas brought this to my attention. It centers around the adventures of The Captain as he strives towards greater European Unity. The folks in Texas decided to come up with some other nations' national superheros. To immortalize these for all posterity, I will post them here, without their permission, and without giving them credit. Ha!

Russia: "The Bear." His super powers include the ability to create economic chaos wherever he goes; the power to down stupendous quantities of extremely low-proof vodka; and solid hockey skills. In his alter-ego of Boris Yeltsin, he finds himself racked with doubts about everything, which he keeps at bay by getting as drunk as humanly possible. His every adventure involves defending Anna Kournikova, because that would rule.

Sweden: "Captain Viking." By day, he's a mild-mannered IW named Robert Bertrandt; by night he dons his horned helmet and cape and fights for truth (in a deconstructionist, postmodernist, Euro kind of way), justice (for everyone but Israel and the US), and the socialist way. His super powers include super mack-daddy suaveness ("don't you see me standing here?"), super strength, and the ability to sound exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger (who knows how often that could come in handy?). Given that he's in Sweden, though, he has to do 70% of his super-adventures for the government. He does get free health care, though.

Canada: "Captain Canada." Hampered by his inability to pronounce simple English words correctly, Captain Canada has been shunned by the superhero community. He is a bitter, angry little man who has vowed to give the other superheroes "something to cry aboot," but they only laugh at him. His battle cry is, "hey, f*ck you buddy!"

France: "The Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey." This superhero has a wide variety of powers: the ability to surrender at the speed of light; a super-fast tongue which can condemn "American imperialism" faster than a speeding bullet; the ability to go for weeks without bathing; and super-arrogance that allows him to believe that France is still a world power and is worth taking seriously. His battle cry is: "may I bring you more wine, Herr General?"

Here is an image of me as a character from South Park. You can make your own here.

I second that.

Those of you lucky enough to live in Texas, don't forget to head over to Austin this Saturday to catch Big Smith. They're only opening, but they get an hour and fifteen minute long set.

In other music news that only I care about, a guy I used to work with in Arkansas currently lives in Orlando, FL, and he's still writing the cool trance music that he used to play for me when I'd swing by his place occasionally. Only, he's gotten even better. You can check his stuff out at UFO Systems. The website says that he was expecting to release a CD in April, but I wasn't able to find it with a quick search online. I'm trying to get in touch with him to see if there's somewhere I can order the disc. In the meantime, you can download a bunch of mp3s here.

Another band I've had linked from here for a while is Red Shift Mantra. They're local to Orlando as well, and I knew one of the band members when I lived in Texas. They have a very mellow, ambient, tribal sort of sound. They currently have a CD out called Deep Field Image that I listen to when I'm trying to relax. I've heard they put on excellent live shows with lots of Floyd-esque visuals. If I'm ever in Orlando, I'd love to catch a show. They're music has been featured on the late-night PRI ambient music program Echoes.

Hey, if I can't be talented myself, I can at least say I have talented friends...

It's grillin' weather on Saturday... Feel free to swing by Fort Awesome for Brisket.

One more thing really quick. I haven't started reading it yet, but I did receive my copy of Ken Layne's book Dot.Con. It has at least motivated me to try to finish up one of the other two books I'm currently reading so I can get to it. I've heard nothing but good things about the book, and I rather enjoy Ken's blogging and Fox News columns. His writing has always seemed somewhat Gonzo-esque, and if I can look forward to the same from the book, I'm sure I'll enjoy it. And it's signed! "To Ryan (who should be reading this with a margarita under the palm trees in LA." Indeed...

Well, better finish up that other book pretty quick so I can move on. I think I'll get back to that now.

Did some work... I'm trying to make some sense of the local links under "Stuff" over there on the left. At least they're now somewhat organized into categories. I finally got archives working over there, but the links to anything before April just links to my old static pages with the old templates. I'll get around to importing them eventually, but I felt like doing more interesting work tonight...

I have the Riblog on the new design now. I may smoke a brisket this weekend, so that'll go up there if I get around to it. There is still a lot of grunt work to be done on this site to get everything on the new template, but once I get it done, I'll at least be able to change looks without having to edit every page again. Of course, I think that's what I said last time I redesigned...

I guess it's about time to go to bed.

I was in the kitchen
Seamus, that's the dog was outside.
Well, I was in the kitchen
Seamus, my old hound was outside.
Well, you know the sun was sinking slowly
But my old hound just sat right down and cried.

Heather Havrilesky is officially the sexiest female blogger. Or at least she has the most stalkers. Now pardon me, I need to go buy some new night vision goggles. Nothing upsets me more than a pair of night vision goggles that dies on you after only a month of nightly use... Whatever happened to quality in manufacturing?

Well, I have the opportunity to accompany my roommate to the farm of a co-worker of his and discharge firearms. I haven't been shooting since I lived in Texas four years ago. I used to go to a range called Top Guns in Houston. They always had several weapons you could rent, and I'd go in a group, we'd pick out two or three, buy bags of ammo and fire them until we had exhausted our ammo supply. It was always very theraputic, and I wasn't too terrible a shot, if I remember right. The only mishap I had was once when a girlfriend of mine got her hand caught somewhere on the slide of a Colt while cocking it. It cut her rather badly, and we had to leave. The lesson: Guns are dangerous...

What was I talking about again? Oh yeah... Several of my coworkers are gun owners, and my roommate works with some folks who actually sell guns. So there are plenty around, and I've been meaning to get myself a membership at our local range, The Bullet Hole. Supposedly it's a very nice range. I've always wanted to collect guns, but that's an expensive habit. Certainly one I'm not ready for yet. I'm so broke from the many trips out of town over the last couple of months that I can't even afford ammo to go shooting tonight.

Well, I probably could afford ammo, but Bonnaroo is coming up faster and faster (I leave two weeks from tomorrow), and I need to get some money saved up. I have no idea how much that is going to cost, but I'm guessing that I'm going to need to spend at least $300 in addition to the $115 I spent on the ticket. I'll be trying to do it cheap, bringing my own food and drink, but things always come up. Luckily I just made a camping trip last weekend, so I at least have the camping supplies under control. I should bring my smoker, two beef briskets and sell BBQ sandwiches.

Details are still sketchy, but the crew I'm going to be with is starting to get nailed down. I'll be driving out from here, a friend will be driving up from Texas via Mississippi with his girlfriend, and another friend from Florida and his girlfriend may or may not be joining us. There are extra tickets floating around, so there may be some last minute joiners in the Texas party. The logistics of this trip still have me baffled. From what I've read, it sounds like there are going to be over fifty thousand people out at the show. We certainly can't count on just finding each other at the venue, and with that many people packed into what is certainly a rural setting, cell phone service is going to be spotty at best. One guy in the crew had the great idea of setting up a flagpole so it would be easy to find our campsites. I think that's a great idea. I've been wanting to design and make a Fort Awesome flag for a while now anyway... I'll try to get on that and hit the fabric store to make it sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Of course, your suggestions are welcome on the flag design.

Upcoming site news... Since I got my mail server set up here, I am handling mail sent to Gimpysoft.com myself now. I'm about to install a web based mail client on here, and have been thinking about offering @gimpysoft.com email addresses. If anybody's interested in that, let me know. Also, since I got Movable Type installed on here, it's been a lot easier to update the site. I'd be willing to set up and host a blog for you if you'd like one. Again, let me know.

And I like garlic.

Maybe you'll rethink giving that humorous graduation speech when you're living in a van down by the river.

Checking my logs I noticed somebody got here with a search for "Ride to Bonnaroo from Boston". Well, I can't help you there, but if anybody needs a ride from the Kansas City area, email me.

Also, the Dreams I Had page is now on the new template. I'm slowly getting everything switched. Very, very slowly.

Heather Havrilesky for Sexiest Female Blogger! She's currently in tenth place with 5.2%. She's just ahead of Virginia Postrel.

Update: 6/4/2002 12:35PM - Heather has moved up to seventh place, but has been passed by Virginia, who moves into fifth. Don't forget to vote!

Not really a dream, but I'll add it to the Dream Log this evening just for purposes of documentation. I haven't been neglecting the Dream Log, I just very, very rarely remember my dreams. I honestly haven't remembered one since the first entry on there.

Anyway, I had another occurrence of sleep paralysis last night. It's been quite a while since that's happened. I think that I might have to go back to Arkansas for the last time it did. Anyway, I was having a bit of trouble getting to sleep, and realized that I was asleep and dreaming just as I woke up. I tried to sit up and couldn't, and immediately realized what was going on. Now when this has happened in the past, I usually started to get scared just because it's a frightening situation. You try to move, and you can't, and that is scary in and of itself. This time was a bit different.

It's been my theory that Out of Body Experiences are actually closely related to this sleep paralysis thing. The first time I experienced this, I got out of bed and walked through another room into the bathroom to get a drink of water. It wasn't until I reached out to turn on the water that I realized I was still laying in bed. I'm not saying that I believe my sprit actually left my body and traveled to the bathroom... Most likely I had made that trip enough times that my mind could recreate it in that odd mental state. After I realized that I was trying to move and couldn't, I began to panic. This is how every other occurrence of this has gone. I try to move, eventually realize I can't, then panic and try to cry out until something snaps me out of it (usually a roommate hearing me trying to scream and coming into the room).

But as I said, this time was different. I realized what was happening immediately upon waking up. I relaxed and tried not to panic. I've tried to do this in the past just to experiment, but have never been able to. I figured that if I could get past the panic of being paralyzed, I'd be able to try the OBE thing. (Again, purely mental, I don't expect that I'd be able to actually tell you what you folks in Texas were doing the next day.) This time, I was able to relax past the mere fact of the paralysis and calm down just a bit. Almost immediately I became aware of a presence, just out of my vision. I could see something that looked like the edges of a fluttering sheet, almost like a cliché Halloween ghost. I looked up at the ceiling fan, and it was swinging madly back and forth, so much that I was surprised it hadn't broken off the ceiling yet, and I expected it to do so any moment.

So I went into another spiral of panic, back and forth between the impending breaking of the ceiling fan mount and the knowledge of the malevolent ghostly presence, until I again started trying to scream (and was unable to do so, of course). After about the fourth attempted shout, I was able to move again, but the panic hadn't subsided. It still looked to me like the ceiling fan was swinging more than it should have been, and I still felt that presence, though I could no longer see the sheet-like thing. I got up and got a drink of water, and turned on the BBC to listen to World Cup coverage to get my mind off everything.

Ugh... Perhaps experimenting with that state isn't the best thing to do. According to that link, the evil presence is not an uncommon reaction. Further, according to this page on that site, I can look forward to the sensation of this entity actually attacking and choking me at some point in the future. Hooray. I'm rather looking forward to that one.

The cool thing is the prevention and coping page on that site does describe the author's successful transition from sleep paralysis to an OBE/lucid dreaming state. That's been my goal since this started happening to me about eight years ago, and I came as close as I think I have last night. Maybe it'll be worth a shot again next time it happens.

Camping was cool last weekend. We couldn't have asked for better weather; It was sunny and hot, but not humid, all weekend. I unfortunately forgot to grab my camera, so no pictures but others did take some. I'll see if I can post some if I can find any decent ones.

Friday night, we just set up and did a bit of drinking. Well, more than a bit maybe, but we had recovered by noon on Saturday. Saturday was the twelve mile canoe trip. After some minor problems getting out to the launch site, we were on the water. The sun was out and I think I put just the right amount of sunblock on to get some color but not burn to a crisp. It's a damn good thing I did put some sunblock on because we were out on the water from noon until about 6:00 that evening. My shoulders are a bit red, and my scalp is burned a bit because I wasn't wearing a hat, but I came out of it all right, all in all.

It was a nice weekend, but I'm looking forward to just staying home the next two weeks. Camping was pretty cheap, but I need to spend some time trying to get some projects done around my house, do some cleaning, and just generally relax. Bonnaroo is getting closer and closer and I need to be sure that I'm prepared emotionally and financially for that long-ass trip. That's going to involve about a twelve hour drive each way, three days spent in the company of about 50,000 other campers, and a lot of late nights full of music.