Hville is the new Bham

Hey there. How are you? Good, I hope. I'm doing fine. I've been neglectful of this blog again, but that record is sounding so broken at this point that it's hardly worth mentioning. It's been a couple of weeks. Lots of stuff has happened. The most exciting thing was meeting probably my favorite blogger ever, Colleen Kane. She, her husband, and a friend of theirs drove to Birmingham last weekend to watch Sonic Youth play at Sloss Furnace. Totally. Awesome. People. F'real. They ended up having an extra ticket so I went along with them to the show. For one reason or another I've never listened to much of Sonic Youth's music. After having the opportunity to see them live I've acquired several of their albums and have enjoyed all of them thoroughly. If you've never seen them perform I would totally suggest that you do it when you get the chance. It may even be worth a 6+ hour drive, but you'd have to ask Colleen about that.

The light show was pretty incredible, but not very conducive to pictures.

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The weekend before that a friend and I went to Auburn for the 4th of July weekend. It'd been about 6 months since I'd been back and it's amazing what can change in so short a time. It was a good time. I think I'll be trying to go back at least once every couple of months now, especially since my friend is willing to go along and split gas money. There's an awesome video/cd/book store in Auburn called Hastings that I always make a point to stop in when I'm there. Why, you may ask? Because on top of having a rad selection they also have shit like this:

That's Mr. Bacon and M. Tofu to you, bud.

I feel like Mr. Bacon should come with a lady on each arm. Maybe Ms. Cigarette and Ms. Whiskey. And maybe M. Tofu comes with, like, I don't know, Mme. Impotence or something.

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I've joined a dating site, which I've been thinking about doing for a while now. I've gotta tell you I was a little put off at first. Honestly I still am. I don't like the idea of paying $27 a month for 6 months. Especially when the first 'compatible profiles' the site returned that were even remotely promising lived no less than 100 miles from Huntsville. If that doesn't tell you what the dating pool here is like then I don't know what does. The latest batch of matching profiles is only slightly better, but still not good enough to justify a $180 commitment. I think I'm going to switch to another site before I just give up and start a credit line with an escort service.

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I'm sure you've all heard or at least are tangentially aware of the current troubles that the space program is facing. I mention it regularly on my Twitter stream (that still sounds dirty to me). Basically they are giving even stronger consideration now to canceling the Ares 1 program. Full disclosure: that's the fucking rocket that I happen to be working on. I don't want them to cancel it. Not for the sake of job security, either. I think that if they cancel (or 'redirect' or however they want to spin it) a program that we've spent 4 years and $3 billion on we'll never fully regain the trust of the public. I've got a lot to say about this, so it's probably best that I don't get too far into it right now. Perhaps another blog post. One of these days.

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Lastly, I've been on a big new music kick recently. I've discovered several new faves, all of which I hope to someday write at length about. For now, though, I'll just leave you with this music video for "Stillness is the Move" off of the new Dirty Projectors album, Bitte Orca. It's a fantastic listen and I recommend it. A lot. Even though the video is a little awkward and, according to the description on YouTube, features rare llamas.

They say it's your birthday

This is going to have to be a really quick blog entry because I'm currently pilfering wireless from the video/book store while sequestered away in the kiddie fiction section. I'm in Auburn for the weekend and my gracious hosts didn't have gracious internets, but this place does! So fist off, Happy Birthday America! I like you sometimes, and with this new administration in place it seems that recently it's been more often than not. Though the idiots out there with their TEA parties can fuck right off. Not necessarily all of them, just the ones who are protesting simply for the sake of protesting without having a dime-store clue what they're talking about. So I hope everyone is enjoying their 4th of July celebrations and no one is losing fingers or any such thing.

More importantly though we should all wish this here blog a big ol' Happy 1st Birthday! Celebrations!

So what does one get a blog for it's first birthday? Well, I was planning on spending some time today giving my blog a total spa-treatment makeover with new widgets and colors and what-haves, but with my internets situation being less than ideal that'll just have to wait until tomorrow when I get back to Huntsville. Plus, honestly, every time I start fucking with html or xml or anything like that I just feel like a right damn idiot. Does not compute. So anyway I'm going to go because that family over there is starting to give me dirty looks. Maybe I'm a little too close to the Nancy Drew kiosk.

Happy First Birthday Blog!

What a way to make a livin'

I'm sitting at work without much to do and not doing much. I've got things I should be doing, I'm just not. Know what that's like? It's as though I don't feel compelled to complete the tasks set before me. I've thought about this a lot. I've seriously got a half-dozen things I could be doing right now. Part of me feels like doing them is really pointless, though. As if the tasks are unimportant. How do you get over that feeling? When I say unimportant I mean that I'm fairly confident that at least half of the shit on my to-do list could go undone ad infinitum and no one would notice. Maybe even more than half. I don't really like that feeling, you know? I like my job and I'm certainly glad to have one but there are plenty of times, such as now, when I feel like I'm just doing busy-work. I think it's the only work there is to be done right now, though. In 5 years will someone be looking at the work I've done and say, "I'm glad someone took the time to do that. It's really saved our asses"?

Believe you me, I enjoy getting a paycheck for browsing the damn internet. It's a sweet gig. But I shouldn't be browsing the internet. I should be working on this other shit. I just honestly feel like I'm making just as much of a difference either way. These past two weeks have been keeping me busy. And by that I mean that I've been kept away from the computer. Hence the lack of blogging. But now that I'm back in front of the computer at my desk with no fires to put out here I am blogging again. Go figure. I guess I don't really know why I'm writing all of this shit. Just something to do, I suppose.