Interesting

All facts of the story itself aside, I always find it interesting how different news sources 'objectively' report the news.

Check out how the first and third news sites phrase their headlines, and then look at how the second does. I'm not swaying anyone to either side, I'm merely pointing out how much I like the fact that Google News shows the same story on multiple sources. For stories that are supposedly objective, there's alot of desrepancy in their perspectives.

Select-a-Candidate

Here's a work forward that I actually enjoyed getting.

If you're having trouble trying to decide which candidate to get behind this election, here's a tool that will help you out. Its only a few questions, and you just answer truthfully and then it gives you a breakdown on what candidate is closest to your political views and why. Great stuff.

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

I actually ended up with Dodd, only due to my light opposition to the death penalty. Had I gone for Capital (or is it capitol) Punishment, and not wanted to partition Iraq, I'd be directly in Obama's camp. Even though he's second on my list, I'll still be caucusing for him.

**Turn this country from an Abomination to an Obama-nation!**

(I just made that up! Its GOLDEN!)

Speaking of the man, Barak was in town this past weekend for an assembly at East High, and then canvassed in DSM afterwards. Here's a link to the flickr page slideshow with the great photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157602396552548/show/

Monterey Pop

Sorry for the lapse in blogs.
---------------------------
So I've got a couple projects going, but sine I've yet to get a different job, the expenditures are keeping reigned in. Therefore, my current project is a refinish of an existing squire strat I had lying around. Its all repainted and clear coated, but now I've got to wait a month before I wet sand it and buff it to gloss and add the hardware and neck. Here's what I started out with.
Its a cheap strat-type body and neck, and I'm using it as a practice run on the Monterey Pop strat replica. This is the original guitar that Jimi Hendrix hand painted, presumably with fingernail polish, then lit on fire and continured playing in the middle of Wild Thing at the Monterey Pop festival when he opened for The Who when nobody knew who this Jimi guy was. Suffice to say, people knew who he was after that show.

Here's where its at thus far. I sanded down the neck and refinished with Fender Neck Amber, giving it a more vintage strat from 1960-70s look, and relic'd the back of it for smoother play. The body I stripped using several chemical stippers and then a belt sander and sanding by hand. Suffice to say that I won't be attempting to stip any more Poly-finished guitars any time soon. Once I had it to the bare wood, I primed it a few times and let that dry, then sprayed the red and let that dry, then sprayed the white and let that dry. Then I drew on the artwork with light pencil and made sure I liked it before getting out the acrylic paints and doing Hendrix's doodles and 'love drops.' Once the artwork was done, I shellac'd the paint to keep it protected from the Nitrocellulose clear coat which would have melted it. Once sufficiently shellac'd, I hit it with about a million coats of nitro clear coat to bury the paint. Once the nitro cures (30+days) I'll wetsand it and buff out the body to a shiny gloss. Then add the neck and hardware. Right now its curing, and here's how it turned out.

I know I've got to work on the smoothness of the lines, but I'm not and have never claimed to be a painter. Still I think it turned out considerably better than I had expected it to. I'll have a wrap up post once its finished.

Roald Dahl

I saw today on Google that today is Roald Dahl's birthday. Growing up with a mother who's a reading teacher, all 3 of us kids were raised with his children's stories. I remember his books better than all the other children's books in our expansive library of literature in the house. Some of my personal favorites include:
Danny Champion of the World
The BFG
The Twits
James and the Giant Peach
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Matilda
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I found it pretty interesting to read his Wikipedia write up. He had a pretty crazy life. I laughed out loud when I saw that the man who'd written James and the Giant Peach also had written several short stories published in Playboy. Who would've thought?

Prisoner

Whoa oh prisoner
My pretty oh oh prisoner
A black ocean is the sky above
Tiny lights bob what star you from
Trapped in material plane
She wants to fly and they think she's insane
But she knows what she know
Give that girl wings and that's all she wrote

Twilight zone twilight zone I'm
Floating in the dark alone and
Is there any love out here let me know

A laser lights the top of my dome
Then through my body As if Scotty's
Beaming up a wayward soul
Mutant races in an ancient universe
Dark shadows humans rhymin' in a reggae verse
It's gone if you blink
I can see it as soon as you think it
Dancehalls crystal balls
On sidewalk malls
Psychic people outdoors reading palms
I believe that you know more
To survive the dimension is four
oh oh prisoner
my pretty oh oh prisoner
Look at the way she's searching
Trapped in a world that's hurting
So bad it makes her cry
But i won't let her say goodbye
--------------------------------------------------
Didn't get that job I wanted/needed.
My department got our official move date for when we're all being moved over to the craphole of a death sentence. Oct 5th. Can you tell I'm not very excited about it? Because I'm not. My department has essentially been 'blacklisted' from any decent positions within the region, to make sure none of us escape the move or get any job that isn't processing. Feel a little lost, like, what the hell am I doing at this insurance company? I can't get into any of the cool/important/not-pissant positions from where I'm at, so... what now? Do I quit and do something else for a while, then apply to those positions while NOT listing processing as a reference? I need to look into luthier school or something. I don't know. I'm just having one of those weeks. I don't get depressed very often, and I hate it. Nothing like realizing you made more money waiting tables 25 hours a week than you do at your corporate job working 38.75 hours.
Maybe I should take a hint from Ben Folds and think about the Army.

The Sorting

This didn't fit into my sidebar, so its becoming a post. For those of you readers who read Harry Potter, you already know this drill. The sorting hat divides the first-year students into one of four houses. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has a certain set of character traits the students in it display. It was recently sorted online, and the result was exactly the same as I'd guessed I'd be before on several occasions.


Sort me!

Bad Idea = your first YouTube comment

YouTube is arguably one of the 'coolest' things on the planet right now, and I'll admit that I'm known to frequent its URL fairly often. Religiously, even. The sheer amount of stuff that's on there is in itself fairly amusing. Every single thing you could ever want or not want to see is on there. From 'Me Snuggling with Whiskers_homevideo.mpeg' to 'Thundercats - entire season 1'; 'My Own Personal Talk Show with Myself' to 'Instructional video - How to correctly shave your cat.' (Don't ask me, man. For some reason, YouTube seems to have an unusual number of videos dealing with cats.)
However, as much as I enjoy the videos on YouTube, the comments section is a dark and murky cesspool. Your first step into the muck pulls you in, as you read your first comment. Then you're sunk.
"That could be the dumbest shit I've ever read....
I must read on."
In every string of comments it's impossible to discern any order of newest to oldest, but that doesn't seem to stop the constant stream of hate, bad grammar, and ignorance. Sprinkled with a few genuine, 'good job, I liked that one.' Those people get ripped to shreds by the others, never to leave another positive comment again.
I know that you're tempted now to go directly to YouTube and whip up your favorite Spice Girls vid and read the first comment below but DON'T! Trust me, I'm doing you a favor.

Band of Gypsies

My last post was the 100th post on this blog! Yeah! Milestones.

Listening alot to the Band of Gypsies lately. This is EASILY Hendrix's best guitar work, and you can hear how much he enjoys this band. (Yes, you Hendrix buffs, Bold As Love is his best work as an artist/singer/songwriter, but BoG is a completely different band.) The story goes that Jimi was really struggling with his fanbase (mostly younger white college kids) and really wanted to form an all-black band. After the Experience broke up, he joined up with Billy Cox and Buddy Miles to form the Band of Gypsies. This set up was completely different than The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and was much more focused on freestyle jamming and instrumental work with fewer lyrics if any, while some just had 3-4 lines repeated and improv-ed upon. Buddy Miles helps Jimi with vocals on most of the songs. I dig on Hendrix, not just because he played blues-based rock, but because just like me, he could neither read or write music.

The Fillmore East show that was recorded on the Band of Gypsies album showcased one of the 4 shows played there that weekend. After the amazing show, fans went nuts and studio execs got worried. My favorite tracks are Who Knows, Machine Gun, and Power to Love.

The facts are this; the next set, Jimi couldn't play anything, the whole band struggled and couldn't pull anything together, Jimi apologized, weeping, and walked off stage. Friends and spectators all agree that Jimi was most definately on something, and the long standing rumor was that several people witnessed an exec (i forget his name) giving Jimi TWO tabs of acid just before the show, hoping to ruin the Band of Gypsies for the more lucrative Experience.

Either way, the Band of Gypsies disbanded, and the Experience was reformed. Not long after, Jimi was staying with his girlfriend and had a big show the next day so he took sleeping pills and went to sleep. In the night, he had thrown up and suffocated on his own vomit. A lot of people think that Hendrix overdosed on drugs due to his reputation, but that isn't the case. Jimi had written lyrics the night before he died and they were found on the table next to the bed.

"The story of life is quicker than the blink of an eye

The story of love is hello and goodbye

Until we meet again"

Vendo-land Blues

Nothing starts off a Monday right like getting screwed by the vending machine at 9am.

Me: "Hm, lets see, I'm tired and irritable, maybe an AMP'd Mt. Dew is in order. I'll just put my money in and put this button."
Pop Machine: "VENDING.... VENDING.... VENDING..."
Me: "It shouldn't take this long, Mr. Vending Machine... Is this how you do business, Hey! You're not 'vending' anymore. But I don't see my drink."
Pop Machine: "NO. AND I'M KEEPING YOUR TWO DOLLARS."
Me: "But... but, that's not how this is supposed to work, I give you money, you give me my taurine induced work seizure in a can. We've done this before."
Pop Machine: "TRUE, BUT I CAN SEE YOU'RE IN A BAD MOOD AND I FIGURED THIS MIGHT BE THE LAST STRAW FOR YOU. THERE'S A STACK OF PAPER OVER THERE, GO FALL IN IT, MAYBE YOU'LL GET CUT PRETTY BAD."
Me: "I hate Mondays."

Music Musings:
I've been listening to a ton of Tegan and Sara - The Con lately. Also Deathcab for Cutie and The Postal Service. Which is interesting, considering the electonica/keyboards/snyths are all done by the same guy; Chris Walla. He does cool stuff. Check him out. Another collaborator on the new Tegan and Sara album is Kaki King. I've been a fan since seeing her play at the M-Shop in college 2-3 times. Doesn't sing much (sometimes not at all) but she can play guitar like you've never seen. Seriously, she plays it like a drum, like a lap slide, like an open tuning, loops audio clips of herself, and does bluegrass fingerpicking pretty much all at the same time. She plays an instrument called a Kotar (a cross between a guitar and a koto) in some of the songs off The Con. Sounds japanese, you'll hear it.

Kaki King:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMQ2yNYQ_Z0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wsFeXWc82Y

They're tryin to make her go to rehab...

Amy Winehouse lives the life she sings about.