New Look, Same Great Blog

So I've changed the template of the blog. I've done this mostly because I got sick of the profile and archive links not appearing where they were supposed to and failing in every attempt to relocate them to the proper spot.
If a majority prefers the old look, I may consider changing the format back. I like the parchment look, but I don't like the 'old wallpaper' look behind it. See what you think. The picture in the profile is, of course, of the four symbols representing Page, Jones, Bonham, and Plant respectively, from right to left. I recently downloaded that Hello program because I tired of not being able to post pictures. So I'll be trying this for a while and seeing how it works. Unfortunately, I don't have any very recent pictures of me in digital or any other format, but if and when I get a hold of one that I deem worthy of representing me to the WWW, you'll see it up there in my profile. Or maybe I'll just put a picture of Robert Plant there instead.

My Unfailing Ability To Attract Undesirables

Let's hope the person serving as the inspiration for this story never reads this. I disavow any and all responsibility for her actions if she happens to see it.

So I went to a party on Friday night. It was my friend Steve's birthday party. His birthday had actually been Tuesday of that week. Anyway, it was a fairly typical college house party. Keg in the basement, beer-pong, people trying to 'hook-up', and I actually saw some people playing Jenga. I attended the party with Matt and Thom.

At a previous party attended by some of the same people, a girl had spent quite a bit of time talking to me, seemingly whether I liked it or not. She seems like a nice enough person, but she is loud, obnoxious, and has been pretty wasted every time I've seen her, with only one exception. I have absolutely zero attraction to this girl. If I had to compare her to an actress, I would say Cameron Diaz comes the closest. Same body type and roughly the same facial structure. Unfortunately for the girl, I loathe Cameron Diaz and have an extremely difficult time watching any movie in which she appears.

Perhaps due to the amount of alcohol this girl had consumed, she found herself utterly unable to correctly grasp the proper pronunciation of my name; she stumbled through variations of Wylet, Wiley, et cetera. This was cause for great amusement among the people who knew both of us. Some reports from the previous party had attributed the girl's crying at the end of the night to her inability to obtain my phone number. Luckily, she was able to gain consolation by sleeping with someone else.

At this party, I thought things would be different, since I had done my best to convey my lack of feelings for her. Again, alcohol seemed to play a role in making sure things would go very similarly to the way they went before. By the midpoint of the party, she had unilaterally decided to write down our names as a team for beer-pong. Since she had forced me into playing the same game against her at the last party, I had an idea of her skill-level, which is to say that I knew she sucked. In the game we played against each other, she failed to make one cup. When our turn came to play this time, she was nowhere to be found. Thom filled in for her and I made my first two shots. Fortune was not on my side for long, however, as she stumbled down the basement steps to join the game just as Thom was about to take a turn. Somewhat predictably, she failed to make a single shot, and I made only one more. Apparently, the fact that she wasn't going to make any shots dawned on her and she dragged Thom back in to the game. Despite a valiant effort from Thom to tie the game, we lost in overtime.

Sensing the situation and wanting to help me out, Matt and Thom had engaged the girl in conversation earlier. She failed to remember Matt even though she had spent about 90 minutes playing cards with him at the previous party at the same house. Thom let her know that his name was "Tobey - like Tobey Maguire. In fact, you should just call me Spider-Man." Well, Matt and Spidey's first tactic was to tell her that I was gay. When this 'revelation' failed to make an impact, they changed strategy and used a new favorite: they told her that I abused women with whom I had relationships. When I was informed of these efforts, I tried to act the part around her for the rest of the night. However, it was somewhat difficult to act both effeminate and threatening simultaneously, and I feared the ruse was not being accepted.

A side note here...while Matt and Thom were trying to save me from Cameron Diaz, I was becoming involved in a conversation near the keg. A guy had seen me approach and said, "Medieval History?" I replied in the affirmative and we bantered back and forth with anecdotes about the class and the professor. I, of course, held the advantage because I had held a certain story in reserve. When I told him about the woman I knew in the class, he exclaimed,
"the ADULT LEARNER?!"
I nodded.
He said, "I fuckin' HATE her! She laughs at all of his stupid jokes, and she's always raising her hand and asking stupid questions."
I replied that I felt sure the entire class would eventually feel the same way. Just give it time.

As the night wore on, it became more and more obvious that my supposed homosexuality and tendencies toward domestic abuse were not enough to dissuade the girl from throwing herself at me. Of course, I was not the only target of the night. Matt and Thom later informed me that she had been seen making out with another random guy on the couch while I was downstairs. When she saw them, she looked mortified, caught 'red-handed' as the cliche goes.

And yet, even this was not enough.

Matt and 'Tobey' left to go to Sunny's and I stayed at the party, which was in retrospect a bad idea. Soon I was led by the hand into the now-vacated basement (the keg had been "kicked" about twenty minutes before and revelers now had to rely on the "Jungle Juice" concoction being served out of a large Rubbermaid storage container. I opted for some beer that had been hidden in the back of the refrigerator). 'Cameron' - as I shall now refer to the girl - was taking our solitude as an opportunity to express that she was "interested." I did my best to stifle my surprise. She then told me that she was going to give me her number. Suddenly, I remembered that I had to go upstairs. Right then. Somehow Cameron saw through her drunken haze and must have realized that I was trying to escape. As I was plotting my exit while in the bathroom, Cameron had been climbing the two flights of stairs to position herself directly in front of me so that she could thrust a quarter-sheet of notebook paper into my hand with a giggle. As I descended the stairs to open the front door and imbibe the cold night air, I looked down at the paper. It was covered on both sides with two variations of email addresses (Hotmail and her Fredonia account), two AOL Instant Messenger screen names, her phone number (once on each side), and her name.

Two days later, I heard that she had woken up in a car parked in a 24-hour lot with no memory of how she got there. This turned out to be an unfounded rumor. Sadly, it seemed eminently plausible when I heard it. The truth of the matter turned out to be that she had gone home with the guy with whom she had been making out earlier in the night.

This is merely one incident in a fairly well-established pattern in my life - my ability to consistently attract only women to whom I am not attracted. On rare occasions, this pattern has been broken. Most notably, this occurred when Destini approached me for the first time, in the cafeteria at JCC, where I had been sitting with Abe. Her mysterious comment to me and her rapid exit from the building led me to follow her out the door and two days later we were a couple. However, that kind of incident has unquestionably been the ultra-rare exception and not the rule.

I hope you enjoyed this story. If you haven't noticed, this blog has many functions, but a primary service it provides is the opportunity for my friends to take pleasure in the various misadventures to which I am subjected throughout my life.

Environmental Policy

Pro-Industry lobbyists have done much to shape the Bush Administration's stance on environmental policy. Bush himself has said that the jury's still out on whether global warming actually exists, and continually says that more research is needed. The only studies the Administration cites are bought and paid for by companies in the oil, coal, and factory farming industries - which is similar to relying on the results of a study on the health effects of smoking conducted by the tobacco companies.

After all, we know that the economy is much more important than the environment. Sure, the technology is available to make cars and even SUVs that get two to three times as many miles to the gallon, but that would cut into the automobile industry's profits.

Just think of all the American jobs that will be created when the air gets so dirty that we need to start building domed cities. What an economic bonanza!

If you'd like to read something depressing, pick up a copy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Crimes Against Nature. It gives an excellent synopsis of what regulations have been established and subsequently stripped, and it will give you an idea of what's to come in the next four years as humans continue to punish the planet that gave birth to them.

Here are two articles from the Times. One discusses the melting of Antarctica and the other shows how the United States operates now in negotiations with the rest of the world on environmental policy.

Here's a Real Democrat

This is what Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia had to say on the subject of Dr. Rice's confirmation. Byrd is at least 80 years old, and has repeatedly spoken out against the Bush Administration's abuses of power.

SENATOR ROBERT BYRD: To put it plainly, Dr. Rice has asserted that the president holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him. This doctrine of attacking countries before a threat has fully materialized was put into motion as soon as the National Security Strategy was released. Beginning in September 2002, Dr. Rice also took a position on the front lines of the administration's efforts to hype the danger of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the administration used to scare the American people into believing that there was an imminent threat from Iraq. On September 8, 2002, Dr. Rice conjured visions of American cities being consumed by mushroom clouds. On an appearance on CNN, she warned, "The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he (meaning Saddam) can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." That was Dr. Rice speaking. Dr. Rice also claimed that she had conclusive evidence about Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program. During that same interview, she also said, "We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there has been shipments going into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that are really only suited for nuclear weapons programs."
Well, my fellow senators, we now know that Iraq's nuclear program was a fiction. Charles Duelfer, the Chief Arms Inspector of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, reported on September 30, 2004 as follows: “Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program in 1991, following the Gulf War.” The Iraq Survey Group found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program. But Dr. Rice's statements in 2002 were not only wrong; they also did not accurately reflect the intelligence reports of the time. Declassified portions of the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate from October 2002 make it abundantly clear that there were disagreements among our intelligence analysts about the state of Iraq's nuclear program. But Dr. Rice seriously misrepresented their disputes when she categorically stated, "We do know that Saddam is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon." Her allegation also misrepresented to the American people the controversy in those same intelligence reports about the aluminum tubes. Again, Dr. Rice said that these tubes were really only suited for nuclear weapons programs. But intelligence experts at the State Department and the Department of Energy believed that those tubes had nothing to do with building a nuclear weapon, and they made their dissent known in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. This view, which was at odds with Dr. Rice's representations, was later confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and our own CIA arms inspectors.
Well, Dr. Rice made other statements that helped to build a case for war by implying a link -- a link -- between Iraq and September 11. On multiple occasions, Dr. Rice spoke about the supposed evidence that Saddam and al Qaeda were in league with each other. For example, on September 25, 2002, Dr. Rice said on the PBS Newshour, "No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11. So, we don't want to push this too far. But this is a story that is unfolding and it is getting clear, and we're learning more, but, yes, there clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented. There clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts, and that there is a relationship there." Well, what Dr. Rice did not say was that some of those supposed links were being called into question by our intelligence agencies such as the alleged meeting between a 9/11 ring leader and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague that has now been debunked. These attempts to connect Iraq and al Qaeda appear to be a prime example of cherry-picking intelligence to hype the supposed threat of Iraq, while keeping contrary evidence away from the American people, wrapped up in the red tape of top secret reports.
Dr. Rice pressed the point even further, creating scenarios that threatened tens of thousands of American lives, even when that threat was not supported by intelligence. On March 9, 2003, just 11 days before the invasion of Iraq, Dr. Rice appeared -- where? -- on "Face The Nation." What did she say? She said, "Now, the al Qaeda is an organization that's quite dispersed, and quite widespread in its effects be it clearly has had linked to the Iraqis, not to mention Iraqi links to all kinds of other terrorists. And what we do not want is the day when Saddam Hussein decides that he has had enough of dealing with sanctions, enough of dealing with, quote, unquote, containment, enough of dealing with America, and it is time to end it on his terms by transferring one of these weapons just a little vial of something, to a terrorist for blackmail or for worse." Now, how scary is that? But the intelligence community had already addressed this scenario with great skepticism. In fact, the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate from October, 2002, concluded that it had low confidence -- quote, “low confidence,” close quote -- that Saddam would ever transfer any weapons of mass destruction -- weapons that he did not have, as it turned out -- to anyone outside his control.
This is yet more evidence of an abuse of intelligence in order to build the case for an unprovoked war with Iraq. And what has been the effect of the first use of this reckless doctrine of preemptive war? In the most ironic and deadly twist, the false situation described by the administration before the war, namely that Iraq was a training ground for terrorists poised to attack the United States is exactly the situation that our war in Iraq has created. But it was this unjustified war that created the situation that the President claimed he was trying to prevent. Violent extremists have flooded into Iraq from all corners of the world. Iraqis have taken up arms themselves to fight against the continuing US occupation of their country.

Is Joe Lieberman Really a Democrat?

Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, as you may recall, was the Democratic nominee for Vice-President in the 2000 election.

He was also a presidential candidate in 2004. Throughout the campaign, he seemed to present himself as a full 2.5 degrees left of George W on the political spectrum. He seemed to agree with just about everything W had said or done. I got sick of listening to him.

Lieberman had no problem with the war in Iraq - he voted to authorize the presidential use of force (does anyone notice that we don't actually DECLARE WAR anymore? That would take congressional approval. The last time war was declared was World War Two. There was no declaration of war for Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War, Afghanistan, or the newest Iraq war. Those "little wars" where US troops and advisers were sometimes used in Panama, Nicaragua, Grenada, et cetera? Fuhgettaboutit!).

What prompted this post? Well, it's the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State, something that's expected to happen tomorrow. There was a nine-hour debate in the Senate today, with many Democrats taking the opportunity to take the Bush Administration (and Rice in particular) to task for the claims that were made during the build-up to war in 2002-2003. Perhaps you remember Rice's foreboding statement in regard to the WMD that Iraq supposedly possessed: "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

If you don't remember, then the Administration has done a good job. As in Orwell's 1984, Bush's Ministry of Truth has been working overtime to revise many parts of history. No, the US didn't go to war because Iraq had WMD. We wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East. Riiiight. And we certainly don't want any of their oil. And we certainly won't be establishing our largest foreign military bases there. Sure.

Anyway, here's how Lieberman feels about the lovable Condi Rice:
'Lieberman, speaking on the Senate floor, said one of Rice's main strengths is that "the world knows that she has the president's trust and confidence." He urged the Senate to "resoundingly endorse this nomination and send the message to friend and foe alike that while we have our disagreements, ultimately what unites us around this very qualified nominee in this hour of war is much greater than what divides us."'

What a load of crap.

Here's the whole article.

Hey, Not All Christians are Intolerant Psycho Nutjobs...

Yes, I was surprised too.

The link below comes from www.talkingpointsmemo.com, which is one of my favorite sources for news and commentary.

Apparently, the United Church of Christ supports SpongeBob, and would like to welcome him into their fold. The UCC came under fire from more conservative Christian groups recently because of a commercial they intended to run. The ad emphasized the welcoming and accepting nature of Christ and made it known that UCC would welcome everyone, even (GASP!) gays and lesbians, to worship with them. Two television networks have refused to run the ad, claiming that it is "too controversial." With church membership and attendance dropping in virtually all industrialized nations (read: almost all of Europe, as well as Canada. The US rates for church attendance have been fairly stagnant over the past few decades), it seems like more churches would be willing to open their doors a little wider. Guess not.

From my limited knowledge of the New Testament and of Christ's teachings in general, the UCC certainly seems to be much more in tune with what Jesus had to say than some of the other more conservative denominations (read: Intolerant Psycho Nutjobs).

A quick search revealed that UCC also supports a woman's right to choose. Extraordinary. And check this out. Amazing.

More Right-Wing Extremism and Stupidity

Many of you have heard about this absurd 'controversy' over SpongeBob. This is an editorial by Maureen Dowd of the Times that is obviously written by a person with some sanity.

Medieval Nightmare

I think I mentioned previously that I was not looking forward to taking Medieval History II. I now have one more excellent reason to drop the class.

I walked into class with a kid I had two classes with last semester. We were talking about the professor. The kid (I believe his name is Michael Braxton) has had classes with him before. Dr. Thomas Morrissey. He seems rather eccentric. Anyway - he's not the problem.

I was about ten minutes early for class (funny how much my habits change from early in the semester to later on...). About three minutes after I got there, I heard my name exclaimed from the far side of the room. I hesitated to turn, not really believing my ears. I slowly turned toward the source of the outburst. It was as I feared. Standing and waving excitedly with a huge grin on her face (and her normal amount of eye make-up required for leaving the house) was Destini's mother, Lori.

Yep. My ex-girlfriend's mother is in my class. Does this kind of shit happen to anyone else? No? I didn't think so.

Before I go trashing the woman, I will say that at many points during and after my relationship with Des, Lori was nice to me. Not necessarily on a regular basis or anything, but there were occasions. She bought fifth-row tickets for Destini and I to see Robert Plant in Toronto. She also made sure to say before and after the event exactly how much she paid for the tickets... She could often be very generous, but she never quite let you forget about it, if you know what I mean. And many people are like that.
The problems that Destini and I usually had with her mother involved occasions when she wanted to exert her control over her daughter (Des and I were 19, 20, and 21 when we went out). She was one of the primary impetuses behind our attempted move to Durango, Colorado in August 2001. She was also the reason that Des decided to move in with her grandmother when we came back to New York instead of moving back into her house. I won't go over the many times when Lori would not allow Destini and I to see each other or the idiotic curfews she imposed from time to time. Those complaints will sound quite childish now. Essentially, she is almost a textbook example of a bipolar (manic depressive) person. She was directly responsible for many of Destini's mood swings as well, just by being very demanding and controlling. Des was a very sensitive person. I can't say what she's like now, although I know she's changed. But some of that blame must also be attributed to me.

All that said, Lori has not exactly had an easy go of it in life. She's had to deal with a lot of shitty things that have happened to her that were not her fault. Many times, she made me feel very much at home at their house, obviously those were the times when she was in a good mood. I have fond memories of sitting down to great dinners and being comfortable as part of the family.

See...when I encountered her today, it was mostly the bad things that I remembered, but when I looked back on the whole time I was with Des, I certainly can't dismiss her as an entirely negative force. However, she did make things difficult for us a significant amount of the time.

Anyway, so I felt that I had to cross the room and say hello. The first thing she did was hug me, tell me that I was looking good, and asked if I had been "pumping iron." Keep in mind that we were basically standing in front of one side of the class. Then picture my reaction to such an embarrassing interaction. Yeah. I'm sure people were staring, but I didn't have the guts to look around and confirm that suspicion. So then I got the update on everyone in the family (excluding Destini, who is presumably still living with the cokehead she moved in with after she and I broke up, although last I knew, she was not actually "with" him anymore. I guess she goes out a lot. Did I mention she's changed quite a bit?) and what she was doing in the class. I have very little recollection of the conversation, because I was just trying to reconcile this monstrous development in my life. Now I'm going to walk around campus dreading random unexpected encounters. I was completely thrown off for the remainder of the class, barely able to focus on what the professor was saying. I was able to hear her laugh above all others when Morrissey told amusing anecdotes. Later, she was the only one to raise her hand and offer some inconsequential tidbit about her own life - something about an aunt in 1962 - which might signal that besides her mere presence being an enormous distraction to me, she might also be one of those garrulous "adult learners"/"non-traditional students" who seeks to dominate every class discussion (and would therefore become a distraction to the entire class and not just to me).

I have this to look forward to three times every week. I'm not sure I can take it. It might be worth checking into alternatives that would satisy whatever history major requirement that this class is meeting for me.

What a Mess

During the 2004 Presidential campaign, you may recall that protesters were often surrounded by Bush supporters and drowned out by chants of "Four More Years." Yesterday at the inauguration, protesters were drowned out by chants of "USA, USA."

I could launch into the striking similarity between Bush supporters and fans of the WWF's Hacksaw Jim Duggan (who was a "good guy," but never a real intellectual...). Duggan's fans used to chant USA at every opportunity, somewhat confusingly, since his opponents were often from the same country.

We have officially reached a point where the president's supporters regard themselves as patriots, defenders of the faith, guardians of liberty, et cetera. This has, of course, been implied for years. It's just getting worse. Dissent and you are labeled anti-American.

I get so angry, but I feel like I am just saying the same things over and over with very little effect. People tend to fall into three categories when I make these types of statements. They either nod and agree and we step into a dialogue in which we basically just parrot the other person. Preaching to the choir.
Some people will argue, but not for long. Usually they pick one issue and repeat themselves endlessly in slightly different ways, and do not really listen to any opposing views. They may shut up for a few seconds, but only to think of a different way to say the same thing...
And other people will quietly back away because they don't know what the hell is going on.

I find this situation slightly analogous to one of many instances where my father offered some "words of wisdom." Sometimes what he says doesn't make a lot of sense at first, but often if you give it some thought, it turns out to be pretty accurate. I've grown to respect my dad a lot more over the years for his experience and his worldview. Anyway - he told me once that there were three kinds of people in the world:
There are the people who make things happen, people who watch what happens, and other people who have no idea what the fuck just happened.
I know - it's a slight variation of lead, follow, or get out of the way. But I like it.

Alright. I'm tired and I have three classes today. So I'm going to get some sleep. Maybe I'll get a little more ambitious and say something meaningful sometime. Maybe. Goodnight, folks.

An American in Paris - Thomas Friedman Editorial

Excerpt:
"Watching George Bush's second inaugural from a bistro in Paris is like watching the Red Sox win the World Series from a sports bar in New York City. Odds are that someone around you is celebrating - I mean, someone, somewhere in Europe must be happy about this - but it's not obvious.
Why are Europeans so blue over George Bush's re-election? Because Europe is the world's biggest "blue state." This whole region is a rhapsody in blue. These days, even the small group of anti-anti-Americans in the European Union is uncomfortable being associated with Mr. Bush. There are Euro-conservatives, but, aside from, maybe, the ruling party in Italy, there is nothing here that quite corresponds to the anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-tax, anti-national-health-care, anti-Kyoto, openly religious, pro-Iraq-war Bush Republican Party."
Read the whole editorial here.

Protests at the Inauguration

Back To School

I have class in ten hours or so. Just one class today. On Friday I'll have three, and on Mondays and Wednesdays, I'll have four. Good times? We'll see.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have The Cold War from 11am to 12:20pm. Looks like it may be a large class. Well, I just looked it up. Fifty people. I know that's not a large class at a big school, but it's a big class for an upper level course at Fredonia. It's being co-taught by two professors, one of whom I've had before. It should be an interesting class. This is pretty much my primary area of interest in history, and if I turn out to be a history teacher someday, this would be my ideal concentration.

On Monday, I'll start with Medieval History II at 11-11:50am. I'm not looking forward to this class. I can't really recall why I took it in the first place. The "Middle Ages" period is probably my least favorite period of history. Knights and castles are cool, but overall it's a very bleak time in my estimation. Perhaps I'll have have a change of heart after this class, but I'm not betting on it.
Then I have Science Fiction from 12-12:50pm, which is an English class. I read a ton of sci-fi books when I was younger, so I'm kind of looking forward to this class and I hope it won't be too writing-intensive. I'm looking to it as kind of a break from the essays and reports I'll be doing for my History and Poli-Sci classes. We'll see. I've already got the reading list for that class. Maybe I'll post it sometime. I've read two of the books already - Red Mars (which is book one of a trilogy) and Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, but I read both of them a long time ago. I'm in the class with Theresa from my Modern British Lit class from last semester. We got to be good friends, and I think Steve's in the class as well, so that should make it a lot more tolerable.
I have a break after that class, although just until 2pm, when I have Media and Politics until 2:50. That class should be great. Rankin is a very popular professor, and I think I have quite a bit to say on the subject. We'll see if others do as well, or if the professor happens to agree with my politics. But hey, he's educated and informed, so he must be a leftist, right?
On Mondays and Wednesdays, I'll also have a fourth class, from 3-4:20pm, which could be a killer if it's not interesting. I tend to fall asleep very quickly in classes where I'm not very "into it." But this class should be good. It's The 1960s with Richard Filipink. Filipink's kind of a young guy, and this is going to sound a little gay, but he's got hair like I'd like to have if and when I grow mine out again. Or at least he used to. He may have cut it. That was two years ago. I think he's from down south, but I'm not completely sure. Anyway, he's a good teacher and hopefully it'll be a good class.

So I should try to get some sleep. Perhaps I'll have something to say tomorrow.

Blogging on the Job

As the title of the post suggests, I'm at Sears right now. And you know it's incredibly busy if I'm doing this...

So let's talk about the Wendy-Amy-Aaron connection, shall we?

Let's go back to New Year's Eve at Turck's place. Turck was there of course (at least in body if not in mind after about 1:30 or so when he passed out downstairs). Also in attendance: Turck's girlfriend Lindsey, her friends, including Samantha Harris (formerly of Sears) wearing what looked to be a pink silk lingerie top under a tiny little coat (in other words, she was being herself)....Randy & Laura, Wendy & Joe, Matt, Thom, and then me.
According to an IM conversation relayed to me by Aaron, Amy Gustafson contended that I had acted in accordance with my usual "ass" personality at Turck's place and I supposedly punched Matt in his bad knee and was generally drunk and abusive. I use the phrase 'drunk and abusive' because it appears in The Big Lebowski, when The Dude is ejected from Jackie Treehorn's Garden Party and is assaulted by the chief of police of Malibu (peaceful beach community). "Jackie Treehorn draws a lot of water in this town, Lebowski. You don't draw shit."

Anyway, the thing is that nothing happened that could even have been taken out of context and misconstrued into something like this (or so I thought). Wendy has subsequently admitted to "possibly" allowing Amy to draw some incorrect conclusions about what took place on New Year's Eve.

Matt was at my apartment when Aaron called and told me about his IM conversation. Matt decided that he must have "battered-wife syndrome" and consequently was able to block the entire event out of his memory.

In the meantime, however...I think I do a good enough job of acting like a jerk on my own without someone having to make things up about me and telling other people about it. Maybe I'm wrong. Excuse me while I beat these elderly people with this crowbar. First I'll crack up those oxygen tanks they were wheeling around with them.

Oh. No, that didn't really happen. Did it?

I just wanted to publicly thank everyone who may or may not have been involved with that little incident.

Sincerely,

me

So...

So I've had quite a few ideas for posts lately, but with no computer, it's been kind of tough to get them on the site. And now, unfortunately, is not really the time. I'm over at Brett's house and Brett is passed out on his couch (too much Adult Swim on Cartoon Network) and it's a little late.

So I'm going to be driving home now. Perhaps I'll be able to get to a computer sometime next week. Just in time to get back to school. Yay.

Art's Broke

So this was on the Everclear mailing list...



From Today's edition of The Oregonian

(http://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/entertain

ment/110518934484020.xml)



Rocker Art Alexakis files for bankruptcy in California court



Portland's biggest rock star has filed for bankruptcy.



Art Alexakis, who as the leader of the band Everclear has toured the world

and made million-selling CDs, filed for Chapter 11 debt reorganization last

week in United States Bankruptcy Court, Central District of California.

ALEXAKIS



The filing last Tuesday, under the name Arthur Paul Alexakis, listed a

Venice, Calif., address, though it also contains items related to his

Southeast Portland residence.



An outgoing message on Alexakis' voice mail said he was in Mexico. The

singer, his manager and his attorney for the bankruptcy did not immediately

return calls seeking comment.



According to the filing, Alexakis owes a federal tax bill for the years

1999, 2001 and 2002 of $2.75 million, as well as nearly $230,000 to the

Oregon Department of Revenue and more than $120,000 in credit card debt

spread over several accounts.



Although Alexakis was divorced last year for the third time, there is no

indication in the filings that alimony or child support have played a role

in his financial straits.



In an interview with The Oregonian last August, Alexakis repeatedly said

that the past year had been difficult, and that stress had contributed to

his losing 40 pounds. An outspoken supporter of Democratic candidates and

causes, he said that he wasn't able to make political campaign contributions

as large as he had in the past.



During the period when his tax debt originated, Alexakis was experiencing

his greatest commercial success. The album "So Much for the Afterglow,"

released in October of 1997, was certified double-platinum (indicating U.S.

sales of 2 million copies) by the following year, and the group was doing

strong business as a touring act. "Songs From an American Movie, Vol. 1:

Learning How to Smile," from 2000 also went platinum, the third Everclear

release to reach that status.



But the band's album sales have since plummeted. According to figures

supplied by Capitol Records, 2003's "Slow Motion Daydream" has sold a little

more than 100,000 copies, and "Ten Years Gone: The Best of Everclear

1994-2004" has sold less than 40,000 copies since it came out in October. --

Marty Hughley







Eric Keown



Hungry & Hollow



http://www.hungryandhollow.com

Hmmmmm

So I'm away for a few days...my profile disappears and so apparently have all my posts before December 13. I'm going to go ahead and blame Brett for this, because I'm sure he'll appreciate it. We tried to move my recalcitrant profile up from the bottom of the screen and everything looked great. Now, a few days later, everything's gone.

I haven't been keeping up with the news much without a computer. I've been up in Fredonia watching 3 or 4 movies per day, going to bed at 3 or 4am and rising at just after 2pm. I'm at my parents' house now, preparing to go to The Office to meet....well, we'll see who shows up, I guess. Matt's not going - he claims it's too nasty outside. Well, I drove from Fredonia. It wasn't a picnic, but I made it.

I don't know if this post will go through or not, or whether it will kick my profile back on the page. I don't know what happened.