Slippin'

So it seems that the new thing is for wireless companies to make a phonebook for the wireless carriers of america. For years and years wireless customers have had the advantage of unpublished numbers to avoid telemarketers and advertisers (unless of course you gave your number out for everything).

Luckily it seems that the listing is going to be "voluntary" at first. Of all the major carriers, Verizon is the only hold out to this idea, and not surprisingly the largest provider of such service. I am sure they would jump in the saddle if the $$$ amount was right. As long as I can avoid being listed I will be so, having the ability to call me, where ever, when ever is a privilege not a right.

Oh, and a funny thing happened last night: I was told "Pete Rose is a great ball player." I have no idea where this came from, but it sparked some conversation for the briefest time. Sure he was a good player, but a terrible manager who bet on baseball and lied about it. He lied about it for like 13 years, and then he comes clean about it in hopes to repair his tarnished name!? He should remain banned from the game for the acts that he committed and lied about for all those years.

Strange Vibrations

You can see some of the strangest things while working out sometimes. There I was getting my cardio in, and on the TV they had the Olympics on, which is typically ok with me. They started off the program saying that it was going to be a night of air - diving, hurdles, pole vault, and long jump. So what would anyone expect for the show to kick off with, thats right synchronized swimming.

What the hell are these girls doing in the pool? First off they prance out there wearing tons of makeup, they would put clowns to shame (for those of you that watch the Simpsons, think to the episode where Homer invents the shotgun that applies makeup). Anyhow, they start prancing around doing these crazy little poses while on the edge of the pool before jumping into the water.

Now that they are actually in the water, they begin their herky-jerky production which isn’t short on splashes or the ability to tread water for long periods of time. If you take away the water and look at what they are really doing they look pretty silly. They don't have ballroom dancing as an olympic event, nor do they have lots of other things, so I don’t get how synchronized swimming makes the cut.

Then the cherry on top was the news that the USA mens basketball team failed to qualify for the gold medal game. The U.S. team, which entered the tournament with a 109-2 Olympic record, will play Lithuania for third place. This is deplorable to say the least, but it could have been better had the original players they wanted attended. Instead Stu Jackson and the rest of his crew decided that this would be a great marketing tool for the future of the NBA, and what it holds. What is that you ask?

A bunch of individuals who will cry for individual glory rather than team success, because team success won’t get you shoe deals or street credit. How many people are wearing a "Rip" Hamilton jersey, and then look around and see how many are wearing a LeBron James jersey. Self centered egotistical players who should have gone to school. The team was in essence a collegiate crew, with the exception of AI, Timmeh, and Marbury. They better at least meddle after this debacle!

"I think I need to change my attitude
I think I wanna change my oxygen
I think I wanna change my atmosphere
and I wanna reach out

bigger
better
bigger
better
bigger
better
bigger
better

I wanna be bigger stronger drive a faster car
at the touch of a button
I can go anywhere I wanna go" --Coldplay 'Bigger Stronger'

Where is the Playa?

The quest for an mp3 player has begun for me, and the immediate use for it would be to take to the gym. So for this purpose size will be an issue all but ruling out an iPod. Not only are they hella expensive, but not ideal for working out with (plus I would be pissed if I dropped it or broke it in some way while working out). So far the best one I have found is the Samsung Yepp, with 256 MB of memory. I figure this will be enough considering I lift for about an hour and then do some cardio.

On my way home today I was listening to NPR's "All Things Considered", and while I traveled in stop & go traffic they ran a story about fish. Thats right, there is now another reason not to eat the nasty vermin due to mercury levels that exist in them. They say that the smaller ones contain lower levels than larger breeds because they don't eat other fish that contain mercury. So watch the number of portions you have if you are a fish eater.

I also saw this today, not sure how much truth there is to it, but interesting none the less.
No Change

Clear Problem?

The current issue of Rolling Stone has an interesting article about the utter dominance of Clear Channel in the greater media market.
*snip*
"In less than a decade, Clear Channel has become a music company on steroids - and
a company that increasingly under fire. Clear Channel uses its size to crush the
competition while force-feeding audiences the same play lists no matter where they
live. Bands, managers, and music-industry executives argue that Clear Channel has
ruined the concert business.
*snip*
"Some artist and managers also complain that Clear Channel stations use their control
of the airwaves to pressure acts into playing radio-promo concerts. A manager of a
top forty group says that his clients songs were pulled from a large
market station after the band refused to play a free promotion concert in 2000."
Article appears in Rolling Stone issue 956 authored by Damien Cave.

The article continues on to say that Clear Channel have interested in creating their own record label. Now this is a recipe for disaster because they will never make a record that flops. The will have the ability to force feed what ever garbage acts they decide to sign to their label through out the country on their thousands of stations, and millions of listeners until it is successful. The mere thought of something like this is enough to make me ill.

The only alternative to this currently is XM Radio, or Sirius - both of which are subscriber stations, which thankfully don't have to abide by all the FCC regulations and can let album versions of songs play. This is a niche market right now, and until it starts gaining more subscribers the radio industry shows no sign of recovery any time soon.

Coward or What?

Moqtada al Sadr is pulling either one of the smartest moves while waging this battle, or is an incredible coward. I'll take the latter over the former on this one becuase he is simply hiding out in the Imam Ali Shrine, one of the holiest places in the Musilm world. If the US forces went in there to get them, a significant amount of damage would be done to the shrine, which would cause a much larger uprising than what is currently going on.

Zoom Zoom?

So I test drove two cars today for shits & giggles, and one really didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. It started off in an Acura TSX, which I drove just for fun. I really prefer the TL, and will drive that soon enough also for fun. Anyhow, the transmission in the TSX was silly smooth; amazing to say the least. It had 5 gears utilizing the triptronic shifter, which is one additional gear than most.

The second car I drove was the Mazda 3, and I must say it surprised me a little bit. While its no TL, mazda seemed to have done a good job squeezing out power from the 2.0 4 cylinder engine. The cornering on it wasn't quite as good as I expected, and noticed some bad body roll when taking a turn at an underpass. Since its front wheel drive, I accelerated coming around the turn letting the front wheels to pull me around, well it worked but not quite to what I expected.

Personally, I don't see the car being worth as much as they are asking. It seems to be a popular car right now, and simple law of demand - if there is a high demand the price can increase some and people will continue to pay. The 3 seems to be a hot selling item right now, and they are making premium dollars off it.

The funniest part was the sales guy falling asleep in the back seat of the car while test-driving. The guy was personable and all, I even indulged some of his lies & rants that dealers will tell you to let them think that they are in fact hooking you up. It is after all a privilege that they are allowing you to purchase a car from them; right? I honestly don’t know how he expects to sell cars if he is falling asleep on the customers.

We expected more $$$

So it seems that Lenny Kravitz has pulled the plug on his latest tour that was scheduled to kick off in September. His father’s poor health is the reported reason for the bail out, but I would suspect poor ticket sales. He has gone down the tubes as a musician, and his latest single is terrible. I don't think he has enough talent to write a song more than 3 minutes right now.

Now before you jump on me telling me "there are really good 3 minute songs!", and I would agree with you. There really are good songs that are short, and terrible songs that are long. However Lenny's three-minute songs are no match for The Ramones. I digress though.

This isn't the first time in recent memory that this has happened. Various acts pulling out completely, or moving to small venues due to poor sales is a common trend now. So these promoters and entertainers are asking "why is this happening?". A few items come to mind pertaining to this topic, and here they come.

First off ticket prices are simply too high. I remember seeing Rage Against the Machine for $13.00 at The Sunken Gardens Theater when Evil Empire was just released. The most I ever spent on a ticket was to Roger Waters, about $56.00 or so, and simply because the guy is a rock icon (Pink Floyd for those of you who aren’t in the know). Now it seems that it is average for that kind of price to surface for mediocre acts at best. Then it seems that these spoiled entertainers get mad when they cant sell out an arena for that price. Do they realize that the economy isn't as strong as it once was?

Second, a lot of the new music out there is complete crap. So many acts are interested in making that one single, getting it played millions of times on multiple stations per city and cashing in (this leads into my complete utter disgust with radio right now which i don’t have the time or inclination to dive into at this moment). So the album is filled with filler, and a crappy single - I can call it a crappy single because if you take just about any song and put it on a station, play it once every hour people will start to like it. Reason: they will think its the trendy thing, not because they actually liked it before, but they don’t want to not like the "new trendy thing". It is this reason, and this reason alone that American Idol is able to roll out the kind of drivel they do, and they make that person successful; that paired with reasons I made prior.

Third, the acts touring right now aren’t all that good. Lolapalooza was cancelled this season, and I would say simply because it had a mediocre roster at best. Morrissey was a headliner, now I like Morrissey ok, but he has more of an underground following than mainstream. What was the last Morrissey song you heard on the radio? Ozzfest is filled with a bunch of 80s bands that personally don't care for, and I have been watching Ozzfest slowly decline in quality for quite some time.

I also tend to think that the quality of the shows is declining. Improvisations are quality things to look for in a live show, I don’t want to hear a straight album version live necessarily. These pop acts cant do this unless they dance, and then it will go into a sort of drum beat break down, which by itself is very boring to listen to, not to mention the canned shows that they have on tape because they cant dance and sing at the same time. Here is a tip, sacrifice some of the prancing around and belt out a few more lyrics and you may get higher attendance numbers, but then again if you do that more people will probably see you as the hack that you are! Dave Matthews Band does this quite well, Bruce Springsteen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Phish. I am no Phish head by any stretch of the imagination, but you have to admire their musicianship during their live acts. Stretching songs out to 30 minutes, but alas they are playing their last festival this weekend.

Plain and simple, shitty acts with bad albums are on tour right now. That paired with high-ticket prices and poor showman ship on the parts of the entertainers makes for poor shows, which is why tickets aren’t selling to their expectations. Why is it so important to fill arenas now anyhow, what happened to smaller venues or even in-between sized ones? I have ranted long enough on this, and I don’t think I mentioned all the reasons I have either, and it just scratched some of my huge disappointments with the music industry today.

H.S.I.O.W.

I realized that acronyms are used everywhere for no apparent reason other than they don’t want to say the entire phrase or they want to sound clever. The problem is the ones that I have recently been exposed to are simply not all that clever, nor do they make much sense, M.R., M.H., U.H.C.S, I.D.O.D.J.C. All right I made that last one up (or lifted it from a movie I don't remember which), but you get the drift.

Chaos is the only word that properly describes what is going on in my new department. I managed to get out of training without falling asleep, and I was exposed to some of the projects they have been working on. It isn’t so much the projects that are a real pain in the arse, rather what the systems and situation they are in. Blahh; enough of that.

I did manage to get the Dave Matthews Band entire two-day set they performed at the Gorge. There is an edited version available on retail shelves, which I did purchase, but this is the entire two day set spanning six discs.

Oh, and what is the deal with females not returning phone calls? I don't know if i'll ever really get that. Is it some game to see if the other person will really call back or what?

Its Online?

I competed a defensive driving course this weekend, which I had started a week ago. After talking to a an ex co-worker it seemed like the way to go. On one hand you have the option of spending six hours in a room with some hired geek to give these people buying their way out of having a ticket appear on their permanent record a lecture on alleged driver safety. Now I am sure they realize that some of the things they recommend in that class are impossible to obey.

For example, you are driving down the highway and there is a big rig in front of you. They suggest that you allow extra following distance (to the tune of 6 seconds) between you and the truck. Now if you actually did do this you would have a gigantic hole that about 2 or 3 cars would swerve into. Consider traffic and how tight it can get, are any of these alleged "preferred times" really applicable? If you did apply this you would be a hazard on the road for constantly having to slowdown to compensate for these people moving in front of you, then creating that space again. Maybe I am just a little bitter about having to take the thing.

Anyhow, in general the course was a breeze. I only actually read about the first 3 chapters like a "good student". The others i would load the page, wait for the timer to expire and move on. They ask you intermittent questions, but they are common sense. The final was a little trickier than the chapter exams, but i passed in one shot. So that’s over and done with. If you need it for some reason its here
I Drive Safely :)

This was a little scary today too, two bombs went off in Istanbul Turkey today, the same city where the US Mens basketball team is staying and has a game scheduled for tomorrow. Scary

I saw this over the week end also, an interesting article written by The Guardian. If you are at all curious about the war, and don't buy Bush's reasons of "They hate our freedom" or "they have weapons of mass destruction, and have links to Osama bin-Laden" then take a moment and check it out here In a way tied to this, it seems that Ahmad Chalabi is now wanted in Iraq as well as Jordan. He was a source of information for the Bush administration on information of Iraqs weapons capabilities, and they seemed to take his opinion over that of their own intelligence agencies. look for Chalabi

Ok, thats it for tonight i need to go to sleep for more alleged training at the new work place. Ciao!

Hold My Drink Bitch; I'm Rick James!

Dave Chapelle brought laughter into many people’s homes with his parody of Rick James and Charlie Murphy in season 2 of Comedy Centrals “Chapelle's Show”. Now the super freak is dead of reported "natural causes". I am not sure what natural could be considered given his prior drug abuse (cocaine).

I officially left work today as a "former employee". I will not have to report there any longer, and the monkey can have his job back. I am the first of a wave of people that will be leaving the department; one leaves the country, and another is transferring departments. After rumors of the department growing in size, it has almost withered away to nothing, and I can't say that I am surprised. Warning - rant to follow:

The positions that they are looking to fill are in fact monkey jobs. Simply follow the script that is neatly put together in a three ring binder, and press return after typing the command. There have been openings for these types of positions for about two months now, and they have only hired one person...3 people had left; this is prior to me leaving by the way. Anyhow, the person that they hired first apparently didn't make the cut and was released after the 30 day probationary period. The second guy they hired quit two days after arriving, and they are now on number three. See, when you pay a minuscule amount for a position, they help you may get may not be to grade; either that or the expectations of what they expect from the position based on the people who filled them prior was set too high for these people to obtain. So they want highly skilled people to fill these positions, but don’t want to compensate them financially. They want people to work full time, but if these people are expected to provide for a family (let alone themselves) they are going to have a hard time doing so. As you know, lower wages means it’s hard to keep a good staff on board (and honest). So because these lower wages exist, there isn’t much incentive for these people to stay on board too long before they say enough. That’s what I say ~ enough of this.

Oh, those klazy Saudi royal family are such wonderful friends to the Bush family. Saudi Prince Gives $127,000 in Gifts to Bush Family

Also "Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has called off his two-month-old truce with the US-backed forces and called for a holy war against the US and other coalition troops." Mission accomplished ehh W? There have been some people saying that Iraq is in total chaos right now, and it shows no signs of improving. See what happens when we go to war, preemptively with out an exit strategy?

Rock & Roll

The last election year Pearl Jam held a benefit concert for their nominee Ralph Nader (then of the Green Party) at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Well, here we are four years later and PJ wants to get the word out again and he is armed to the teeth.

Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Dave Matthews Band, and Jurassic 5 to name a few. They intend to hold concerts to promote voting this November. Unfortunately the plan is for the individual bands to hit "swing states" so that of course means no Texas dates, which is predicted to go W's way. That doesn’t mean it has to though.
Moveonpac

Eddie Vedder appeared on The Majority Report. During the interview Janeane asked Eddie about the incident in Denver where he allegedly impaled a mic stand with a W. mask rested on it. According to Eddie, when it was reported it was blown out of proportion. The truth is probably some where in the middle.

This was also strange today: Leonard Peltier was nominated for president of the United States by the California Peace and Freedom Party; although he remains in prison. If memory serves me correctly Rage Against the Machine wrote the song "Killing In the Name" in response to Peltier’s false imprisonment for allegdly killing FBI agents.
It is here, look for Peltier

What Color Today?

The terror level was raised to orange for the New York, Newark, and DC areas of the United States as Al Qaeda want to target financial intuitions. Though it seems that the information leading to this increased level of security was three or four years old.

NyTimes Article
The Guardian

Some of the information in these reports is reported to date prior to the attacks on September 11, 2001. The analysis of the information continues.

"The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either." --Benjamin Franklin