Musings

So I have a site counter and tracker, and I get weekly emails and such about people's browsing habits on my site, where they go, how long they stay, things like that. I normally completely ignore them, and go on my merry way. As I was cleaning out my college email inbox, I decided to click and view the report for the last month. Apparently, about 1600-1800 times a month someone clicks on to my website. This raised many questions in my head:

1) Who the hell are you people? I know several of my real life and online friends view this here little blog, and I even know of a few people who like it, but wow. I know at least a hundred of them are me... but still, not even Hyz would reload this page that many times...

2) Did google clue into some risque offhand remark I've made and I get a random flow of powdered sugar pizza fetishists or something?

3) How can I make money off of this? I'm sure if each of you kicked in a dollar, I could start my own matrimonial reality gameshow, "Who Wants To Marry A Hundredaire?"

Maybe if I keep at this, I can have a huge following like Llew and have my own advice column. But I think I'm just lacking something that would help me have a big online fanclub. Namely: boobs. Then again, anyone who knows me could tell you I have a half decent rack going already.

sigh.

All good things...

Well, it's not usually my style to announce this kind of thing... but I seem to be not be dating someone. Her name was Audrey, she has anime hair, and I was quite smitten... what can I say.

Seems like every time one of my girlfriends goes on a trip, when they come back, things fall apart. So Audrey went to see her sister last week, and I busied myself with the usual... writing, thinking, working on a project or two. Went shopping, bought some new clothes and even some cologne... and got dumped within a few hours of her returning home. Apparently she's not in a place that she wants to be having a relationship... or as she put it, "my body is rejecting it [our relationship] like a donated organ". I can at least appreciate the turn of phrase.

Fittingly, Donnie Darko comes to mind,

Every living thing dies alone.

I've seen things.

In the spirit of the badger, mushroom, snake flash hypnosis things is this, the much more palatable neo marxist "I've seen things". Go here:

I've seen things

I’ve seen things,
I’ve seen them with my eyes,
I’ve seen things,
they’re often in disguise
like carrots handbags cheese
toilets russians planets hampsters
weddings poets stalin kula lumpur!
pygmies budgies kuala lumpur!

And if you haven't had enought, head out to White House West for a special Will Ferrell election special clip. I think Ferrell's send up of Dubya is one of the great comedy feats of our generation. I miss seeing it on SNL.

Random Thoughts.

(Overheard while James is servicing a trash compactor and changing out a dumpster)

"Hmmm, why was it I graduated from college again?"
"And to think I even paid for it!"

(Overheard in LDS Chat)

Some Girl Trying To Be Sarcastic: "Have you ever noticed online, that the guys who brag about having big dicks never have any kids or anything?"
Me: "YOU'RE RIGHT! Now that you mention it, I DON'T have any kids!

(overheard at Skye's wedding)
Skye: "James! I'm so glad you came!"
James: "Yeah, well I was in the neighborhood and all... so how's your weekend?"
Skye: "Oh good, got married, having a reception, gonna go on a honeymoon...."
James: "Ah, so the usual then?"
Skye: "Yeah, pretty much just another weekend..."
James: "Yeahhhh... I was getting married a few weeks ago, and I just thought, man I just wish I could get away for a weekend, you know what I mean?"
Skye: "Yeah... "
James: "Well, have a good one, email me in a couple months or something."

(overheard last week)
Audrey: "You're evil."
James: "no, I'm diet evil, it has only one calorie and half the carbs of regular evil, but still with the same great evil taste."
Audrey: "I'm impressed how that just rolled right off your tongue, did you have that ready?"
James: *sighs* "If only."

Progress report: me

I don't have a lot new to report. I work, I sleep, I hang out with the woman, and I eat. Living life on a graveyard schedule is interesting in some ways:

• I usually don't run into traffic driving into work at 7:30 pm or home at 4:30 am.
• I am dating a pretty understanding woman who makes time herself (she works two jobs)
• The only thing worth watching on TV when I get home from work is MacGuyver, which is still the shiznit.
• If I am going to eat anything other than nasty fast food on my "lunch" break, I have to get it early before places close.

So we hung out a bit on my day off (after I picked her up from work... her car is broken down... fools may mock my minivan, but they shall mourn... for it runneth always, like the waters of the tao.) Went and saw Napoleon Dynamite, which was pretty darn funny in a Waiting for Guffman kind of way, and apparently twice as funny if you're from Idaho. I've been reviewing too many things lately on here, so I'll leave the Napoleon Dynamite rant for someone else.

Music Review: Pearl Jam Live at Benaroya Hall

So having been paid this weekend, I took the chance to actually buy something when I was grazing at Circuit city this weekend. I spied a brightly colored Pearl Jam bootleg. I've been a Pearl Jam fan since minute one (part and parcel of living in the Pacific Northwest). I had remembered reading about this show online.

Yes, it's another Pearl Jam live album. But no, it's not like their other 700 brown paper bag live albums. For one thing, it's an intimate, unplugged, home-town performance, almost full of rarer melodic songs. The most mainstream Pearl Jam song they play that night is "Daughter". For another, the set list is geared toward mellower, moodier fare like Low Light, Think Air and Immortality. For a third thing, the band had just recorded "Man of the Hour" for the Big Fish soundtrack a few days before and debuted the song publicly for the first time at this show. And for a fourth, part of the proceeds goes to charity.

The recording is truly excellent (better than the most recent DMB live at the gorge CD set I bought), the setlist is the most unique Pearl Jam has ever played, and on the whole, it's a remarkable musical performance. It's been fun to just buy this off the cuff and end up with an honestly incredible live CD set. This show goes instantly into my top 3 of live CD recordings, right with Dave Matthews Live @ Luther College and the Counting Crows VH1 Storytellers show. It's really that good.

So out of the 700 live Pearl Jam official bootlegs, this recording is a singular and unique experience. If you like Pearl Jam at all, buy this CD. It's that damn good.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Going to see the Voodoo Daddy baby, yeah.



T minus 4 hours and counting. I'm kind of glad the whole Gap khaki retro swing thing is mostly over with (except for some of the more quarantined parts of Utah which are just now hearing of this Django guy...). Anyway, I'm glad it's over with and I can enjoy the retro sound and not feel like I have to do that lame cloverleaf dance with some girl who wants to feel like she's connecting with something. Instead, I'm gonna go to the zoo, sit in the nice air outside, listen to some great musicianship, and probably not have to dance at all.

Last night

Little did I know, but last night was the peak night of the Leonid meteor shower. Being me, I was at home watching the Vanishing (the original foreign film, not the Jeff Bridges-Keifer Sutherland vehicle.) and catching Audrey up on Dead Like Me (I'm a television adulterer, what can I say). She announced at 12:30 we had to leave, so we went and snuck into a state park, spread out some blankets, and made splendor in the... er, watched the meteor shower. It was pretty cool. There weren't as many as I was expecting, but the ones that came down were very bright and intense. Good times.

Dead Like Me

On a whim this week as I was wandering through Fry's, I say this dvd packaging. I remembered hearing something about this show, so I picked it up, and on the back I could have swore I saw Mandy Patinkin in a picture on the back cover (turns out it WAS Mandy Patinkin, whom I worship, but I hate the Princess Bride... funny, eh?)

Dead Like Me takes a darkly comic look at mortality through the eyes of someone stuck between this life and the afterlife. "Bail bondsmen for the disembodied" is how Rube (Mandy Patinkin), the often exasperated Reaper foreman, explains it to disaffected 18-year-old George (short for Georgia) (Ellen Muth) after she’s vaporized by a falling toilet seat from the Mir space station and drafted into the ranks of the Reapers. It's now her job to take the souls of the doomed towards their final destination, not getting to actually go to the pearly gates herself. For a black comedy, this is actually pretty light and accessible. Patinkin is just awesome, and even though Muth whines and bitches like a teenager (which, I guess, she IS), she also is believable as someone being forced to discover who she is for the first time in her life. Highly recommended (and half the cost of 6 Feet Under... snoogans)

Serendipity

As it turns out, the location for my family reunion was about 15 minutes from one of the nicer casinos in Oregon, so naturally I availed myself of the chance to enjoy a little gaming type diversion. I finished up 40... which for playing 5 buck tables was alright for just having fun I guess.

Family reunion.

I'm going to a family reunion. I have very mixed feelings about it. Mostly of the obligation vs. laziness in my routine kind of thing. Doom 3 also comes out this week, and I won't be able to play it till I get back. This sucks.