Casiotone

Last night, Uberjam and I went to a really cool show over at Super Happy Fun Land (yes, that's really a venue in Houston). It was a low-fi/electronica/pop show. The two highlights were the Buddy System and the headliner, Casio Tone For The Painfully Alone. The Buddy System was one guy (ironic, no?) and was composed of really nifty, glitchy, shimmering, shifting soundscapes that he seemed to be controlling / morphing via the computer. Maybe he was just playing a CD and looking busy, who knows. We picked up a CD and it is indeed pretty cool. CTFTPA is a longtime favorite of mine - a dude who makes sad, introspective little songs using nothing but old vintage casio-type keyboards (complete with weird little casio beats and everything). The concept could get old, but the songs really don't. His live show was more loud/effects-driven than I expected, but it was really good.

And now I'm listening to internet radio (the only bastion of online music I've got since the control freaks at my office shut down our access to all mp3s) and some live Herbie Hancock is on. Almost makes me happy to be here. Almost.

Outage

Sorry for the brief outage yesterday. My web host account expired, and they took the incredibly thoughtful step of not emailing me about it.

We Got Screwed

The friendly mechanic down at our neighborhood Shell station found this little bugger in Uberjam's tire today:



Public service announcement: please, everyone, keep better track of your screws.

Also today I had a visit from my friendly AAA road-side assistance guy, when a forgotten dome light in my van killed my battery. I guess it's been one of those tough car days. Not a really tough car day, just an annoying car day.

Victory, for now at least

The constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage has failed in the Senate. Phew. The most-idiotic-statement-ever award goes to Senator Rick Santorum:

"Isn't that the ultimate homeland security, standing up for marriage, defending the right of children to have moms and dads, to be raised in a loving environment," said Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who was a key sponsor. "That is what this debate is all about."

Excuse me? So ... if we let gay people who love each other get married ... ah, that's what I thought. The terrorists have already won. Damn those gay terrorists!

Morons.

You have developed into the worst blogger ever. Congratulations.

In the comments on my last thread, Nuje wrote:

You have developed into the worst blogger ever. Congratulations.

You're right! Mea culpa! I just got really busy at work suddenly a couple weeks ago, and, well ... you know how hard it is to get started when you've been out of it for a little while ... ah, excuses, excuses. Ya just gotta get back in the saddle.

So I'll come back swingin'. Here's a link you should all go to:

http://www.moveon.org/unitednotdivided/

The more conservative among you might want to flex those conservative muscles and conserve the fact that the constitution has never before been used to take away people's rights. Regardless of how you feel about gay people getting married, to make a constitutional amendment for something that is so clearly against the wishes of such a large portion of the population is not right.