Tuesday, November 30, 2004

SOMEONE HAS MARRIED LIL JON. WHAT?!

Let's all just take a moment
for this to sink in.

      *Her name is being withheld to
"respect her privacy," and the crunk
rapper's publicist and label rep declined
to comment at all, but word is that
a woman actually exchanged vows with
the chalice-toting producer Lil Jon in Puerto
Rico Saturday at the Wyndham El Conquistador
Resort and Golden Door Spa in Fajardo,
near San Juan. What?!?!
      According to MTV, the rapper
barked "I do" under a white columned
canopy in front of around 80 guests
on a field overlooking the ocean. The
mystery bride was reportedly dressed in
a Monique Lhuillier gown; the groom in
a white tuxedo. Three bridesmaids were
said to have worn mauve, while the
groomsmen wore white tuxedos.  
      An early-evening reception was
held poolside and an afterparty jumped
off later in the upper-level ballrooms
of the resort's Grand Hotel. Usher and
Snoop Dogg were among the rumored
witnesses to the nuptials.

from the EURWeb.
It's Official! 11.30.04

Joel and Julie sitting in a tree, f-i-a-n-c-é-e-uh, e. Congratulations on the engagement. Okay who wants to take bets that Silver cries at the wedding?

I've got 4:1 on "yes."

Monday, November 29, 2004

Turkey Weekend 11.29.04

Mr. Raycroft:

Saturday night—good times with Silver and your friend Chris. I’m wierded out about people who went to school in the deep south but he’s cool. I do have to say I was a little perturbed by your friend Julie. Lovely, lovely young woman but I hate people who “young” me once they find out I am a few years younger than they are. I think I do it myself, and I now plan on stopping.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Your Entertainment Dollars At Risk! 11.25.04

from Frank Rich's NYTimes article:

It's beginning to look a lot like "Groundhog Day." Ever since 22 percent of the country's voters said on Nov. 2 that they cared most about "moral values," opportunistic ayatollahs on the right have been working overtime to inflate this nonmandate into a landslide by ginning up cultural controversies that might induce censorship by a compliant F.C.C. and, failing that, self-censorship by TV networks. Seizing on a single overhyped poll result, they exaggerate their clout, hoping to grab power over the culture.... It took a British publication, The Economist, to point out that the percentage of American voters citing moral and ethical values as their prime concern is actually down from 2000 (35 percent) and 1996 (40 percent).

To see how the hucksters of the right work their scam, there could be no more illustrative example than the "Monday Night Football" episode in which Ms. Sheridan leaped into the arms of the Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens in order to give the declining weekly game (viewership is down 3 percent from 2003) a shot of Viagra. From the get-go, it was a manufactured scandal, as over-the-top as a dinner theater production of "The Crucible."

Rush Limbaugh, taking a break from the legal deliberations of his drug rap and third divorce, set the hysterical tone. "I was stunned!" he told his listeners. "I literally could not believe what I had seen. ... At various places on the Net you can see the video of this, and she's buck naked, folks. I mean when they dropped the towel she's naked. You see enough of her back and rear end to know that she was naked. There's no frontal nudity in the thing, but I mean you don't need that. ...I mean, there are some guys with their kids that sit down to watch 'Monday Night Football.' "

Yes, there are - some, anyway - but you wonder how many of them were as upset as Mr. Limbaugh, whose imagination led him to mistake a lower back for a rear end. (He also said that the Sheridan-Owens encounter reminded him of the Kobe Bryant case; let's not even go there.) The evidence suggests that Mr. Limbaugh's prurient mind is the exception, not the rule. Though seen nationwide, and as early as 6 p.m. on the West Coast, the spot initially caused so little stir that the next morning only two newspapers in the country, both in Philadelphia, reported on it. ABC's switchboards were not swamped by shocked viewers on Monday night. A spokesman for ABC Sports told The Philadelphia Inquirer that he hadn't received a single phone call or e-mail in the immediate aftermath of the broadcast.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

It's Like A Break. 11.24.04

Who did the song “I want to know what you’re thinking/ tell me what’s on your mind/ I want to know what you’re thinking/ there are some things you can’t hide”?

Amuse yourself with chunky soup trivia.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

turkeys 11.23.04

marge would be jealous. it's been a long drinking weekend. nathan was in town, i hung out with boy sammy, and the third part of the Oregon Boy Scout Raid radio triumvirate was in town for beers last night.

it's also been a long work/ school week and my novel is pretty much D.O.A. ah well. we'll see what i can get done...

one thing though-- is anyone around tomorrow night? i am going to victor + flor's gathering (you might have met them... might not. gully's friends) and i won't know anyone. i need a wing-person. please? please?

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

i mean thanks gulshan and alex.
thanks, alex!

you're my favorite cockknocker.
seriously... 11.16.04

can anyone tell me why all my posts are italicized? i can't figure out where i dropped an "< i >" tag incorrectly. but i don't have time to figure it out for a while... and also, i looked. like in spaceballs, "man, we ain't seen sh*t!"

thanks to silver and eben, enjoy peja drobnjak's sonics site. he was a center for the seattle supersonics and now for the atlanta hawks. and his site is hilarious. click on drobn-smack to hear him say "tonight, your uniform will be wet with the tears of sadness!"

Sunday, November 14, 2004

R.I.P. O.D.B. 11.14.04

He was damn crazy. And he birthed some babies. And he made one of the best... or most insane rap albums, N***a Please.

I hope it wasn't the cocaine that cleaned out his sinuses , and everything else. I also hope there is an archive or three of crazy-ass Ol' Dirty songs that leap across the line of "adventurous" into "sick and twisted."

from the song, n***a please:

I'm immune to all viruses
I get the cocaine it cleans out my sinuses
Just for slinging *nuh* I get a quarter a mil
I'll have it raining ice drops the size of automobiles
Kill all the government microchips in my body
I'm the paranoid n***a at your party
I kill all my enemies at birth!
Shut the f**k up!
Bitch and let my slide my hands up your skirt
N***a please!

Friday, November 12, 2004

a nuisance. 11.11.04

i was thinking about the furor over john kerry's "nuisance" statement.

it's not a particular touchstone to mark what went wrong, but here's the quote that didn't bother me so much:

''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life.''

organized crime is a good analogy. on the first link, a small victory, there is a long discussion which actually goes from the "kerry's an idiot" rantings of people who had long ago decided they want to stroke george bush gently, to the substance and heart of kerry's words. organized crime was a scourge. politicians could be bought. blocks of ozone park here in queens would be much safer because the mob bought influence and policemen, who would also look the other way depending on the crime and criminal.

that affects the fabric of the city, creates a shadow government with no accountability to the people the mob affects. and the work of dedicated law enforcement, along with the aging and obsolete community-based structure of the mob made them an annoyance.

[--read jerry capeci's mob column here--]

terrorism was an annoyance, despite what the above link says. there are extremists and crazies in the world. they kidnap and murder and we keep fighting. we won't just waltz into the mid east and suddenly eliminate terrorism. kerry wasn't saying he thought terrorism was a nuisance. it's a problem. isn't the goal to have a goddamned end to the "what's our threat level" terror battle? it should be the kind of thing the president worries about, the military strategists worry about, while we walk around all blissful, watching skinny singers on television and eating ourselves tubby.

if we're thinking "kill kill kill!" how will we know when we're done?

especially if what we're worried about is not the state itself, like the soviet union, but the actors who are raising multinational terrorist regimes. if saddam and osama were opposed to each other, as seems to be the case in this letter attributed to bin laden, then the enemy isn't saddam but something shadier, more below the surface.

iraq gives a launching pad for US operations, but also increases the the number of people who see the US as an invader, while increasing the importance and influence of small terrorists. effective terrorists, but small terrorists. if we eliminate the head of the most established terror network, and remain vigilant for new terrorists coming to fill in the vacuum, and don't extend our troops to the point of fatigue, terrorism will be... just a nuisance.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

updates 11.10.04

to the novel,

plus a new mix cd.

and when you're freaking out about your homework, putting together an event, and attempting to write on the side, hearing this:

It is clear to me that in light of the work already completed and the quick time frame that it was completed, that we will most definitely complete all three (3) of the projected desired outcomes, including number 3 (*******). We had initially discussed not completing them in we ran out of time, but that would not appear to be the case. Please note time frames for this in your workplan.

I have very specific hourly total requirements for what I understand from ****** as far as how many hours each of you must work on this project. I want to make sure that you all reach this goal.


from a project we are working on, a project where
*you have yet to agree on a work plan;
*when we have agreed on a degree of "as long as deadlines are met" autonomy;
*when we had previously agreed to not require specific in-office hours unless necessary;
*when we are well ahead of schedule;
*when this email is sent outside of protocol (to the whole group not just the assigned contact);
*when this email is an out-of-nowhere bitch slap on a project we're ahead of time,

makes a fella want to use the business end of a baseball bat in ways not intended by the manufacturer. damned micro-managers.
what are you doing next april? 11.10.04

as we all know, american troops are working hard to make iraq safe for democracy, or really, capitalism. i do hope tghat when this is all said and done, if it is ever done, that many people will have the opportunity and education to take advantage of all the iraq will have to offer. maybe when we're done rebuilding the schools (thanks for reminding me, j-rich) and the roads, and the power, and the food-generating capabilities, the iraqi people won't ask themselves if they've traded one devil for another.

to put it another way-- let's invest in the new iraq! i can smell the tax breaks already. all we have to do is come up with a good plan and get some willing, out of work americans to be our bodyguards and take bullets for us.

like damon wayans once said, mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!
y not? 11.10.04

the procrastination is strong in this one.

while i should have been re-learning all sorts of analytical tools, and about cost management, i took a late run into manhattan,

where i ran into a computer lab to deliver copies,

and over to pianos to check out raycroft's friends in the band Y. while they are of the indie rock/ new wave sound that i am getting damned sick of the band was good. we got hushed in the middle of the show:

-(skinny woman puts her arm around me) excuse me, are [myself/ raycroft/ rachel/ elana] rock fans?
-sure.
-*something incomprehensible* and the singer is a friend of mine.
-that's cool, we're just enjoying the--
-i'm sure he'd love you to listen.

and i would have told the women i'm too old for this "rock and roll respect" crap, but they were in their 30's, damned bitter rock and roll lifers. and no, raycroft is not my "babe," don't let anyone tell you different.

p.s. from the illadelph daily news: o canada, we secede to thee.

p.p.s. it's condeleeza rice cold out there, damn!

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

divorce rates. 11.09.04

the lowest divorce rate in the union-- and therefore, the people who uphold marriage the most-- is the everybody gets their rights, like i thought we agreed in the constitution, state of massachussetts.

and one of many ridiculous (yet funny) rants out there.
crosstown beef is like crosstown traffic: a compilation of a web "argument" 11.09.04

gully mentioned to me how much he dislikes internet beef. i think it's mostly silly myself, but i was excited when the previously mentioned sebas and "the general" mentioned me on their weblogs. aww, how sweet! it's not the love that my imaginary friends new top and que sera sera get, or the loser who stole a post from pixel and posted it as her own, but it's cute.

however, i do take issue with something the general said. here is a comment i left on sebas' blog:

"hey, sebas, have a go at commenting. it'd help if you were creative. and spelled "pseudo" right. how are you going to get your point across if you can't spell, and you always write drunk? try using "dirty sanchez" or "feltching" next time."

to which the general posts (read here).

funny, because i don't disagree with all of his politics. besides the spelling, the obnoxious gonzo style is tired, it's volume over substance. it's like an MTV VJ yelling about the good time they're having and the camera zooming in an out on some nubile teenager, but the crap they are playing is objectively limp music. i think he saw my comment on scarletpimp's site.

as for his commentary, well.

1. kerry, as i stated later in the post, wouldn't have the chance to be an activist president. especially in terms of his supreme court posts. with a republican majority in the senate, he couldn't get anything but a slightly liberal judge in there. that's obvious. i don't even know why people think kerry would be such a far left president. he was nominated by the Dem Committee because he was more of a centrist than Dean.

2. we in the populous "blue states" are the people who should be afraid. let's look at new york. after all, if you actually look at a map, or come to new york, queens is across the water from manhattan. not much water. on september 11th, no one could get around the area. people in brooklyn and queens were covered in falling ash for days. we WORK in manhattan. brooklyn touts being the 4th largest city in the nation at 2,465,326, queens is physically bigger and in terms of people, not far behind at 2.2 million (but we don't woof about it enough to have it published).

the airports are in queens. there are many brown people in queens. if there is another al qaeda attack in the states, maybe it will be somewhere different; but one never knows. we've got a 30 mile radius of densely populated suburbs, filled with people not just important to the US as people, but also the financial heart of the nation. as DC is the political heart of the nation.

ergo, much bigger target....

3. my imaginary friends are quite nice folks. but i can't find time to write on a saturday night. i do see people, i don't have a cat, i do eat lunch and write my blog, i don't watch the transformers (but i was thinking of making a starscream outfit for halloween. just to go "megatron! megatron!") darth vader? son, where do you get this stuff?

Monday, November 08, 2004

the district sleeps together. 11.08.04

good times were had on saturday w/ raycroft, his cousin dylan, and thorne (college people, you remember him?) at a "it's going to be ok" party down on the lower east side. i think i might have agreed to go dancing with some kids who i met, too. i don't know how that happened. i don't remember saying "say, i'd like to go dancing!"

in other news, thanks to schnappie for bring this to my attention-- the US Postal Service and the band, the Postal Service, in a promotional agreement.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

standing like a statue. 11.06.04

this morning i found myself out in the cold for hours, loading up boxes into my father's mammoth dodge ram. it couldn't have been more that 45 degrees. i blew into my fingers, wrapped in baseball gloves. crawled along the truck bed to secure items. taught myself what i think is a hangman's knot. looked into the sky and tried to locate constellations i knew in my youth, standing next to boxes and a file cabinet, lovingly roped into place. i wished my father adieu, and my brother and mother who are accompanying him south, as if on a life changing journey (into the redlands?), then i realized i promised raycroft that i would meet him early.

it's midday. early didn't happen.

marge, i know you have cindy visiting-- she's really freakin' cool, isn't she-- but don't get all filthy with her. she might slap you. actually, i think she'd laugh. have fun! and be nice, not the suckass cloying sycophant you tend to be.

Friday, November 05, 2004

why's it gotta be a poor rich thing? 11.05.04

damn, one more political comment.

watching this latino fella on a talk show. two good points:

1. again, bush voters feel that kerry said what each audience wanted to hear. he's a senator. that's what they do.

2. the idea of a volunteer draft is a funny thing. i've often thought that a major issue facing us is less of race and more of class. that the "back-door draft" idea is supported-- who joins ROTC, who joins the reserves? people looking for some extra money for school, on weekends. there are ample benefits to be had. as well there should be. these cats have their lives on the line.

but rich kids don't need these benefits. middle class kids don't need their benefits; they have their college loans paid off, a safety net through their parents and extended family. but scraping by is scraping by-- it's not having extra income to support your wayward 19 year old, not stellar college material son, the one who didn't attract the attention of schools with their SAT scores or social service commitment. and even some of those who do attract that attention can't pay for it.

hence, ROTC. the army reserve. it's great that they're doing it for the country. but bush and most senators (i believe one has a son in the army) don't have children there but are sending our troops out. my cousin is in iraq (again) and i hope she doesn't get killed. and i hope that the administration sits down, gets new cabinet members who think ahead, try to improve the world instead of making us scared. and stop intellectualizing and hiding the costs of war.

war is messy. but it's upsetting when it's close to you. and when your commander in chief is very eager to send people into harm's way-- with the idea that anyone will be showering our troops with gifts and hookers.

p.s. i promise to talk more about parties and the novel from here on out. nah, i'm pulling a WMD. you know, overestimating. read from the CIA, right here.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

one more note. 11.04.04

i just spent half an hour while the OC is on talking with my cost management professor, who is right in the middle of the fence. and an economist. who pointed out something i have hated to admit-- while we were riding high as kites in the late '90's, bill clinton's SEC should have stepped in and done something about inflated IPO's and about Al Qaeda, who were attacking at the time (remember, the USS Cole). and perhaps would have left a better legacy. i disagree that he was the consummate chameleon but he did drift from side to side to make sure he was popular--

which is, in a sense, what a leader should do. but not what our modern leaders need to project.

i have no problem with bill, because i am a new yorker and it's true, we're fag-loving service-expecting city folks. which is different morally than some people; and we are often concerned with being magnanimous, with dialogue, with being intelligent and well thought out.

it's our country too. and in the next few years, as we make more balanced yet, as we make still-incendiary documentaries, as we try to pull the nation in general to a more leftist ideal, we have to temper our optimism and ideals with the idea that there are people out there who place high importance on moral value--

and we have to let them know that we do too.
OC!!!!!

shit, where are we gonna watch the OC!
Happy Moment-- UUUGGGHH! 11.04.04

Gothamist, you are great, for exposing me to a site devoted to mocking the NY Times wedding announcements -- another example of how ridiculously elitist and status conscious the NY Times is.
How Will We Unite? 11.04.04

from the nytimes-- a fractured nation.

or from the national review-- bush doesn't need a mandate.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

aw, crap. 11.03.04

there is a lot to say about the election, but oh crap kind of does it.

not that i thought that kerry would make great changes, or last a second term; the senate and house would stonewall him in the same way they stonewalled president clinton. it's okay to have opposition; we're not all the same in this country. but it is not okay to have an activist president who wants to insert an interesting, warlike, old school God, "I am right and you are not" into the proceedings-- you know, the big guy he talks to on affairs of war.

whose voice sounds ridiculously like dick cheney's?

there are the domestic issues -- the economy that neither candidate could really change (but it would be nice to leave some cash in the coffers, especially when in a long, protracted elective war), the tax cuts whose effect we can't agree on, civil liberties issues, the legislation of marriage institutions...

but, looking at the red states and the blue states, i can't get past the fact that all the attractive targets are voting blue, democratic. those diverse metropolitan areas? blue. except for texas, and florida. we're the people who should be afraid.

and while the rest of the nation is posturing on being tough on terrorism from their cul-de-sacs, w is stirring up more terrorists in iraq. where were those iraqi terrorists before our occupation?

for the guy who will likely write a moronic comment (wait for this one, folks, it'll be funny), i am not a "kerry-style pseudo intellectual whiner." i am my own whiner. not as loud and crass a whiner as you. but this nation-building crap has never worked. see: central america, vietnam, koreas. it works even less when you try to impose our democratic, judeo-christian values on an islamic nation whose non-violent members aren't hot on American influence. aren't they people too?

kicking osama's ass? good. getting him out of afghanistan, a nation that did support al-qaeda? good. overthrowing saddam? a distraction when we could try more subtle or better planned methods to keep down terrorist threats. the axis of evil? rogue nations? polarizing, simple-minded ideas made for sound bites, spin meisters, and people whose sole purpose in life is to think they kick ass.



whichever. this is barely a political blog. but i live in an actual threat zone and i don't want more people trying to come up with ingenious ways to blow me up. we could have taken the threats on in a systematic way.

hey, anyone want to guess what w will do with his four more years?

really, i think we will perservere. we'll maintain our dominance in the world. because we are huge. that terrorist guy could never take our freedom. none of them can. there have been terrorists for years and years. the original AD 200 christians ran around in caves and hid their faith. we've fostered terrorist regimes to fight the soviets. israel has been dealing with terrorist with a lot less than we have. emerging nations deal with chaos all the time, struggling, as we should, to maintain what makes us great and appealing in the first place. not our huge cocks, but our actual freedoms of expression. for all people.

they can only goad us into using our power like a big slab of meat. into losing our legitimacy, which a few years ago would have afforded us to easily obtain-- or shame and cajole-- the rest of the world into making the middle east a more secure place.

they can only goad us into being scared of each other. into increasing our polarization within and without, and into taking out a few of our and their citizens while sending us home years later asking what happened.

and they are doing a good job.

we'd still be at war with kerry in office. it's funny that people think he's so different than bush (and his people who have the actual opinions); he would never be able to push forward a completely liberal mandate. he would be able to get our reservists some help, calm down fears of our imperialist desires, and perhaps reach some resolution-- versus a war with no exit strategy, a vietnam-esque quagmire that was brought up in some circles prior to the decision on iraq.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004



the internet is a wonderful and entertaining place to catch up with your friends, and make new buddies. but when some asscrack from georgia, some sarcastic and angry fucker, some guy who i think is trying to joke in that vice magazine sort of way, but isn't very funny, assaults your friend in commentary, that's not very nice. some of you know her, some of you don't, but hear me out.

take a moment out of your day. read this post and the rest of Sebas' blog (real name is apparently Sebastian Daskawicz-Davis and he goes to Georgia Tech, according to his shirt. he obviously does not get enough head. hence the anger at women and the puking.)

it is not right for a person to drop nasty commentary and not catch some shit back his way. so, marge, silver, eben, pixel, new top, brown boy, marla, annas, nate, raycroft, gully, et cetera, please look at his blog. laugh. maybe leave a mean comment. whatever the humorists' corollary to baby fat is, there's a lot to poke at. have a go at him. like his two friends do when he's drunk.

obviously he needs the attention. so maybe it's not even worth your time.
already there. 11.02.04

6 am found me cursing the radio and the dark, wondering exactly why i was so dedicated to early voting, and what was on my radio. apparently it was this don imus fellow in the morning; i had never forgotten to reset my radio from a football game to news radio in the AM. but mr. imus is a bit of a kerry partisan, so it sets a good goal.

the polls were busy but not as hectic as they probably are in manhattan. everything moved smoothly, and it's kinda cold outside.

now i can't sleep but maybe i will take my lightly sore throat and my four hours of sleep and actually start my novel, hoping that what comes out doesn't belong in the turd pile.

Monday, November 01, 2004

plus. 11.01.04

updates on yout novel and pics of hot women are always appreciated.
it's already begun. 11.01.04

november 1st and i am consumed with doubt. my novel already feels corny and i have yet to write a word. i am stuck in hypotheticals and can't get myself to do. and not just with the novel, of course; i feel swamped in classes and in my internship and i have no idea how to categorize things to make them better.

this, my friends, is why i want to leave the city and live on a farm. upstate. with a tractor and a snow plow.

thinking that spelling it out in public would make me feel better, i started this post. didn't help. i'll take the rest of my time to announce two things:

1. the novel has started. check out pieces of it on this site.

2. i am hoping to have guest bloggers rant about... whichever. i've tapped arroz the rice-a-homie's sister, who i will refer to as kiri until she comes up with a cooler or dorkier handle.

3. saturday night i didn't make it out to many places-- getting around was slow. but i did hang out with ray ray and her sister sarah (say-say?) and their friend caroline at kash-money's gathering.

of interest to gully-- as we were ending our night on the confusing and loud corner at lafayette and houston, where the puck building's party was letting out noise and chaos, i ran into mariella. it was 4 in the morning (3 adjusted for daylight savings) and we went on a half hour trek in search of a gary party. he'd left but we made nice with the kids.

word.