Fell of the wagon yesterday folks, what can I say – it happens. Had a good hump-day, did an incredible amount of work at work – so much so that I fear, should something new not land on my desk tomorrow, that I’ve finished a week’s worth of work in a single day. Curse my exceptional efficiency! But, instead of writing an intro here, I’ll default to what I wrote yesterday. Yeah… I did write, but it wasn’t worth posting… just an intro. So here it is, I can’t stand tossing out effort.
Tuesday night finds both Sharaun and I in the computer room, her having made me mute some newly downloaded prospective tunes I was auditioning so she can listen to some bootlegged Justin Timberlake show where he plays songs of his upcoming album. Sounds terrible, like it was recorded in the engine room of a ship with a Fisher Price microphone – but I suppose I’m one to talk. She’s loves some Tenderlegs… and I must admit he has a team of good producers, but I’m just not a fan. Anyway… let’s move along to what little else there is this evening, shall we?
Cleaning up around my desk today, I found a wad of Taiwanese and Chinese bills. I know the rough conversion rates in my head, seems I’d have just about $100 in USD if I were to exchange it. Made a mental note to remember to bring it next time I’m in an international airport, so I can trade-up for some real Christian money, not that heathen BS that’s worthless in God’s country. Seeing the money there got me thinking: I had decided not to exchange it upon leaving the Orient the last time because I figured I’d be back soon enough to warrant holding onto it. I mean, I was there so many times last year, wracking up 100,000+ flyer miles going back and forth, that I just assumed I’d be back before too long. Turns out that my baby-instigated travel moratorium has been more successful that I envisioned – and I haven’t been back in nearly a year. This doesn’t bother me, actually; I’d now much rather stay put. I’m slowly accepting my new role as house-bound parent.
Printed a new picture of Keaton today, hung it on the fabric walls of my cubicle with the others. I feel like I need new pictures every so often, as she’s changing so much right now. The only problem is that having all those images of her looking at me and smiling make me want to be here even less. It’s not quite as bad as if I had a picture of a beckoning Natalie Portman under the sheets in my bedroom, but it’s close. Maybe that was a bad comparison, since the reason for wanting to leave isn’t shared across the two scenarios, but it’s what came to mind.
Ended up reading a bunch of indymedia.org reports on the Israel/Lebanon/Hezbollah conflict/war today, spurred by a comment Thom Yorke made on Radiohead’s official messageboard. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I actually stopped reading indymedia about six months ago. Overwhelmed by the limpwristed, milquetoast, liberalness of the articles; the tree-hugging, everthing’s-a-human-rights-violation dreamworld the authors presented was too over the top for even my strong liberal leanings. I mean, you can get a sense of what I mean from their “about” page mission-statement:
The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media’s distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity.
Sorry, I just puked up some chai tea and cous-cous.
I will admit, however, that I find it incredibly amazing to be able to read independent reports written from those sympathetic to the Lebanese side of the fighting really was interesting. Seems, rightfully so or not, that most of the international “mainstream” media reports are from Israel’s point of view. As thousands of refugees are being evacuated from Lebanon into southern Cyprus, the Cyprus “chapter” of indymedia is where you’ll find a lot of Lebanon-viewpoint reporting, and I’d recommend it just to get a different angle on things. For the interested, Thom’s comment pointed directly to this article (caution, link contains some graphic images) and urged Britain to “… throw Tony Blair out of office NOW.”
War is bad, missiles and death and broken families are bad; but we knew all that before reading the article, didn’t we? Let’s change subjects.
The iPod seemed to be stuck in some crazy Paul McCartney->Grateful Dead->Paul McCartney->Grateful Dead rut today; sometimes that “random” function is super fishy. Through some short-term data studying, I’ve decided I can get through about 100 songs a day on random. Of course, this includes a good deal of “I don’t feel like hearing this right now” skipping – but nevertheless, 100 songs/day isn’t a bad listening pace.
Goodnight people of the internets.
Also written on this day...
- winning the bread - 2011
- a five-by-five weekend - 2009
- a guy called filthy - 2007
- yet they still call - 2005
- seriously, for real? - 2004
My pod gets stuck in a Massive Attack rut.