Come to AIM room “debatingmonkeys” during the debates to trash and thrash.

Don’t like Bush, but you are choosing the path of least evil and voting Kerry despite you don’t like him either? Join up at Kerry Haters for Kerry.

I’ll freely admit I’m not tickled pink over Kerry, but I don’t dislike him either. (John Edwards however is pretty hot for a 50 year old babyface politico.) I think the word I am looking for is “meh”.

Lacking other viable options, he gets my wholehearted support because I’m fairly sure, unlike his competition, he’s not possessed by Dark King Lucifer.

I think a lot of it is the midwestern disdain for New Englanders (Sorry Dave. You guys think we’re redneck uncivilized yokels and we think you’re pompous effete douchebags - for the most part anyway. Dave does not fit into this model, BTW)

There I’ve said it. Go Kerry!

My mom got her hip replaced - scroll UP to read each new update, you HAVE to read the won on Oct 1. It’s a doozy.

I dunno if I ever said how it all turned out. Mom sought a lawyer almost as soon as she was out of the hospital. You have to do that now, the statute of limitations in Ohio is 1 year to the day. The lawyers started fast and within a few months even they were shocked at the offered appeasement (not a settlement), the hospital wiped 95% off the bill. Mom had to pay $5K basically room and board. The second ball is still in place, and may never require removing.

She recovered fast, so fast for the last six months she’s not even used so much as a cane. She’s gone now more than she is home. Which to be honest didn’t change much, “home” is a suggestion in mom’s case and has been for years. She comes home to sleep, thats about it, unless she’s off traveling or the like.

So. One year later Mom is fine. “Balls of steel” is her personal motto which she likes to repeat ad nauseum with a clenched fist. She’s a blur she’s on the move so much. There’s a nice update from the bad beginnings of a story.

Well in the weeks since I’ve switched the comments, requiring posters to preview first, the spam has reduced amazingly.

No more of that one guy hammering me 500 times in an hour, now it’s just one or two a day, some poor spammer who has to do all his evil hands on. That I can handle with blacklist, just hit the link as they come in. One I week I run Blacklist’s de-spam over it and pick up anything missed on Jim’s blog or the Ikea blog since I don’t get the notices on Jim’s blog.

So the experiment is a success, the spam level is down almost to the point of zero, comparatively. YA!

Remember this guy? I think I blogged him at one point here, but I’m hard pressed to find it.

Well he has a blog - as all goodly nerds of high caliber do. This is an entry where he talks about the price of internet stardom and the childishness of grown adults.

I thought his costume was Kick Ass!

So, today I am running around doing some shopping errands and I didn’t feel like pulling out the iPod. I hit the seek on the FM band and land on a NPR station. Fresh Air is on.

A lot of my friends and family listen to it during the day at work. I thought what the hell, it’s only going to be a few minutes, beside it’s just a few clicks from my itrip frequency of choice. So it was a move of laziness.

I grew up, quite literally, in a NPR station (the one on my radio actually). I worked the auctions and marathons from a young age. I spent summers inside the halls and in the music library (I sometimes miss vinyl). The programming has changed a lot since then. WYSO was more independant, with lots of individual local dj’s and custom programming in an eclectic mix of mostly folk music - they didn’t just suck off the NPR national teet all day as they do now. They just hook up the broadcast feed and go to lunch. Very sad, anyway…

I’ve heard a minute or two here and there of Fresh Air over the years before I moved to hit SEEK again. My friends and mom send me links to links to stories online. (I never pull them up) NPR as I’ve said many times is NOT my thing. It might be deep, but like a “bottomless” pit in the desert , however notable or newsworthy it might be it’s more than a little boring.

So I’m listening to Fresh Air as I dodge in and out of traffic. And narcolepsy nearly struck.

The entire tonal blankness of the “personalities”, it’s almost like they are reading the ingredients to aspirin not current events. They are discussing Tom Delay and possible felonious impropriety and they interview sounds as if they are having a soft whispery conversation in someone’s house over coffee so the they won’t wake the baby.

The “cool” jazz music in between segments is bordering on funeral dirge. I can almost feel my eyelids trying to shut. The long segways that lead to nothing that only feature even more terminally depressing music. You usually segway on radio to come in and out of commercials, why segway at if you dont have that? It would give you 5 more minutes an hour for more deep and meaningful breathing.

The next segment is about the underground rock in Austin in the 80’s , I’m like, Okay this might be good. I did some indie alt radio at a station back then, I know a lot of 80’s bands, I wonder who it’s talking about.

No one I’ve heard of, and no one I’d care to hear again from the boring, droning comatose tuneage coming out of the radio. It barely even has a beat. Beats ARE what rock is about, Rhythm, man! At this point I’m wondering how my friends don’t fall asleep and get QWERTY face at their desks and get themselves fired from this snoozefest.

It’s ROCK! Come on, does everything on NPR has to be low key and easy elevator atmospheric crap? Would it Kill them to play something that didn’t come with a Kenny G+10 level of sleep inducement? I am having a really hard time accepting this is one of NPR’s main beacons of their programming schedule. If you just want background noise put on some music. Some music to make you move, make your day go shorter, not make you think of all the pets you’ve had that have died.

I turned the radio off and drove in silence all the way home. My engine was more fascinating. I love my iPod. Damn.

And why can’t anyone talk on that network talk in a normal voice? How hard is that? You’re on the air for Christ’s sake, speak up!

Database search for pictures of each on stage instance of each of Elvis’ many jumpsuits, pictures of him in them, notes on what belt he wore with it, songs he sang on stage when and any concert and where he was when at any given time - even by with tour or season… I call it ‘reverse stalking’.

Do it for the pictures of the jumpsuits, you know you want to.

Drops the paper weight requirement under public outcry

“Voting-rights advocates” jesus, this is america right? We shouldn’t NEED voting “voting-rights advocates”.

Blackwell is not done in the spotlight, his other very recent seedy rulings have been to NOT inform paroled felons they are eligible to vote again (which they are!), and barred Nader from the Ohio ticket.

Read more for the article announcing his backing down on this latest issue and some numbers on the new registrations.

(I promise not so many political posts from here on out, but as a an ohioan and a american I wanted to make sure the topic got google love. I’ll post some weird links for ya’ll later to make up for it)
(more…

Ohio Dems and ACT respond to Sec. Blackwell’s 80lb cardstock ruling

I personally notified the Ohio Campaign Director at the Kerry Nat’l HQ this morning about this whole boondoggle (first time I’ve ever used that word!). Boy was he stunned, kept asking questions, obviously taking notes. I told him this address, as well as to google news search for “Ken Blackwell”and he’d turn up a ton of hits on this. So if he’s reading, HI! I also called a few senators, media outlets ect… I have unlimited long distance it costs me nothing to spend an hour or three waiting on the phone.

I’ve done my civic duty! Gimme a gold star.

How To Cost Microsoft Money

Read it, do it.

I put an MP# below, here’s a feature on the Onion: Sixteen things I would be willing to vote for instead of George W. Bush

Time Magazine says Yusuf “Cat Stevens” Islam ejected from US over spelling mistake.

The mixed terrorist contributer Youssouf Islam with the guy who wrote Peacetrain Yusuf Islam.

US still being silent on reason, go figure.

You don’t have to be liberal to know that shutting out new voters is a bad thing. ACT, who helped greatly in reg’ing those new thousands at risk of being deleted over these last months, some of their people giving up their summer vacations to come to Ohio to register urban voters.

ACT has a petition! Put your name on it!

Witness the design of the new $50 bill

Yup, the only paper in Crawford Texas (W’s “hometown”, aka “whitehouse west”, the one one that backed him in 2000, a very conservative paper normally, endorses Kerryin this Bush-scathing endorsement.

Hey hey, it’s ’Barenaked’ variety show!

Everyone who lives in Ohio needs to stand up and scream on the phone in the next day or so. We can’t go down in history as “Florida of the Midwest”. Floridians are STILL apologizing for that last one.

Ohio Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell [Bio], a republican in a republican filled state house has decided to live up to his crooked crony conservative republican Cincinnati city council days where he was the Mayor, as he has issued a edict to de-validate thousands of new voter registrations for being on the wrong weight paper. Kid you not.

Here is a very very active thread, with lots of comments and emails on who to contact in the media, justice and political circles. One of them ain ones breaking this story wide open.

Here is the original Dayton Daily News story [Use my login: jen@verybigdesign.com - Pass: grizel]

Gee, I wonder why? Hrmm, democratic counties are being flooded with registrations — up 250% from previous elections. Republican counties only up 25%. Nah, that can’t be it!

NEWS UPDATE: LAW SUIT FILED On another Blackwell brain fart [Login: jen@verybigdesign.com - Pass: grizel]

Also, an Air America show has picked the story up.

Bold is what I will at least admit to in a court of law - Stolen from Gina:

01. Bought everyone in the pub a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula.
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said ˜I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Done a striptease
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris – Not yet! We’ll find out this month!
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Stayed up all night long, and watch the sun rise
15. Seen the Northern Lights
16. Gone to a huge sports game
17. Walked the stairs to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa
18. Grown and eaten my own vegetables
19. Touched an iceberg
20. Slept under the stars
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In honor of El Presidente Cacapantalones being in my local area (2 exits down and shutting off the exits and I-75 for 6 hours - gee thanks!) for a campaign stop. Too bad the stench from AK steel doesn’t blow quite that far way.

He stops in Cincinnati usually a couple times a year to do a couple high’dolla snob dinners at Stan Chesley’s house and slip him some presidential tongue and mess up the highways then too.

After this stop the moves under an hour away to my hometown (where Kerry has been twice as I wrote about here to HUGE crowds of about 8,000) to a application/invite only crowd of 4,000 butt sniffing event and shut the traffic on I-70 down. Springfield hasn’t had a presidential candidate for over 50 years, then we get BOTH in one year - hrmmm… Hope they don’t expect this kind of attention from here on out.

I hope they’ve fixed the sound in the new expo-center at the fairgrounds since the premiere of the building at the fair this year where it was little better than a megaphone with half dead batteries.

Nah, I don’t hope they fixed it just yet. And I hope it still smells like horse poop from being the horse judging venue during the fair.

Anyway, in “honor” of Bush messing up the entire Southwest Ohio traffic situation and just generally existing…

The Apple Product Cycle - a hilarious and depressingly accurate take on the online mac community, detrators, Jobs and gang, and the press. Lather, rinse, repeat… every year, twice a year it happens JUST this way.

Mac users will be snorting pop out their noses, PC folks will wonder what’s so funny/