Kitty Pornography!

I caught our fat cat Flea expressing his love for Kitten. Look at the dude's belly! I just had to snap a photo of it.

Steve Eats Chick Food, Loses 15 lbs!!

I have never been a big person nor have I been overweight at any point of my life. But I am 32 and figure I should watch what I eat. I have one of those jobs where I am in a truck all day. And with that comes vast knowledge of fastfood restaurant menus.

I am also one of them picky eaters. I don't eat a whole lot of vegetables. But one thing I do like to eat a lot of: Cereal. Whole grain cereal even!

So, I started eating a load of Special K. Sometimes two meals a day. Sometimes even for a snack. I have been doing this for around six weeks. In October I went to the doctor for a concussion. I weighed 205 lbs. Today I went to the doctor and weighed 190 lbs. I didn't lift a finger for excercise either. Freaking amazing!

Special K however, can be very embarassing to buy at a grocery store if you are a dude. I do one better though. I'll order like a month's supply from Safeway.com when we order groceries. It's kinda awesome to have someone go get your food and bring it to you. Then you can order what you want.

Steve Vs. The Telemarketer

It appears that I have hurt myself yet once again. This time though I was not at work to which my company thanks me. Nope, yesterday I bent over to pick something up and well, I hurt my back pretty good. So good that I am laying flat on my back and typing this on a laptop. It really freaking hurts and I don't have any cool drugs to dull the pain. I left work for home at 12pm and all I want to do is lay back and find the position that doesn't hurt. (That didn't sound very G Rated)

So I am sitting here, laying back and look who calls: Blocked Caller. Now I am on that national do not call list but I recently switched carriers of my telephone service so I think the flood gates are back open. I am not sure at this point but I am gonna have to re-register I think. But anyhow, today, while watching videos on break.com, I got a call:

Steve: Hello
(dead silence)
Steve: Hello?
Telemarketer: (startled) uh... Hi can I please speak to, uh... Steve _____ and (wife's name)?
Steve: Um, no... I mean yeah, speaking.
Telemarketer: Hi, I am Jim from (unnamed) mortgage, do you own the property on (my address)
Steve: Well, not fully but I am making payments on it. ha ha ha...
Telemarketer: Ha, I see you have a mortgage with (original mortgagor I had like 3 years ago who sold it to someone else) with an estimated balance of $XXX,XXX. We can get you a lower rate and lower those---
Steve (interrupts): Did Bush put you up to this? Are you wiretapping me?
Telemarketer: Huh?
Steve: I knew it. You are tapping my lines. Dick? Dick Cheney? Is that you? He doesn't have his gun does he?
Telemarketer: (dead silent)
Steve: I mean seriously Jim, how could you possibly know what I owe on my house? Anything could have happened? I could have won the lottery and paid the sucker off. Who knows, maybe the last guy that called set me up with a good mortgage...
Telemarketer (still selling it): Well it's the mortgage we have on record. And we are proud to offer a new mortgage at 1.5%...
Steve (interrupts): Listen...
(I am quiet until Jim here is uncomfortable. I sigh a few times)
Telemarketer: Yeah?
Steve: What you are doing here is a crime?
Telemarketer: Goodbye, Mr...
Steve (interrupting again): 1.5% interest only? That is financial suicide. Sure you immediately drop my payment to some unheard of amount and then jack me when the interest rates go up in a year or so.
Telemarketer (still selling it): But yeah, you'll save...$15,000 over the next 18 months.
Steve: There is no savings if I have to refinance in a year when the market collapses and interest rates go up. (click)

30 seconds of fun for me. Thanks Jim, the telemarketer. Why the hell would someone be home at 12:30pm on a weekday and be in a position to have a mortgage unless they were retired?

The Meaner and Leaner: Steve's Blog

You likey the redesign? No?

Redesign done by Anna.

I said He-e-e-e-e-y-y--a-y-y..Yeah....Don't give yourself away

This is Crackersoul... it comes so easy!

Yesterday on iTunes, I noticed one of my favorite bands Cracker had released a greatest hits album. I was excited because there was some new stuff on it but I probably wouldn't buy it. Today I was reading the reviews on iTunes for it and they were all one stars. One Star? Cracker? WTF? I thought.

Turns out the greatest hits album is a bit of a farce. See, their old label, Virgin Records was releasing the hits because they owned the rights to the recordings. Cracker is no longer on Virgin and is doing just find on it's own. (I mean seriously, Cracker was a side project from Lowery's other successful band, Camper Van Beethoven). Virgin therefore is paying minimal royalties for the album since it is pretty much being released for Virgin to make a little bit of money cheap off of Cracker's prior success. Cracker hasn't released an album for Virgin in nearly a decade but Virgin stands to make a million bucks if Cracker's album only sells a mere 100,000 copies. Cracker gets pennies for this.

So what do smart asses like David Lowery and John Hickman do?

Release re-recorded live in studio versions with a similar track list on their own label titled "Cracker Redux", THE SAME DAY!!! Freaking awesome. Who re-records their junk for a greatest hits these days? Completely awesome and when I get done with this post, I am jumping over to the Apple and downloading it! Plus there is a new Cracker song called what else, Redux.

If you like country grunge rock, here's your album in Greatest hits form. Here is Cracker's real cover so you don't buy the fake:



and the Virgin money making machine version,



Buy the real one here unless you have iTunes.

Prolonged Agony: The Strange Man at the Furniture Store

My wife and I have been saving for some time for new furniture in our living room. We've been married nearly 6 years and we're well passed the life expectancy of Cost Plus furniture. It was a good run with no cat scratches or stains and they'll make a nice addition to that empty bedroom downstairs filled with nothing.

We went for leather and Room Source here in Sacramento has cheap leather couches that hold up forever. Plus they love to give you a deal if you do their 90 days same as cash thing. They'll knock 200 bucks right off the top if you sign up. You had better pay though. 22.9% interest! Whoa boy! Writing the check as soon as they send the bill.

Anyhow, we hate shopping. We use the internet for everything. We even get our groceries online from Safeway. It saves us the time in strolling over there and dealing with the crowds.
But furniture is different. You keep it for awhile. You have to go and try it out. Lay on it. Jump up and down. Stuff like that. (I ain't going any further with descriptions)

When we made our decision we met with the man to go over the finances. What a cheeky fellow he was. A nice Filipino man in his 40's. Just kept talking... Ever met a salesman that after he sold ya something, he kept talking about it? I am in sales myself and this is the worst thing you can do. We made the decision and the dude kept selling the couch. How soft the leather is. How puncture proof it is. I kept thinking to myself, "I wonder what would he'd say if we bought that exotic leather couch in front of the store for ten grand and not the cheapest leather couch they had in the back of the store, next to the sky blue denim couches you'd only see on Trading Spaces in some redneck's house?" He even told us that the couch would fit into a mobile home!

Then he reviews the credit app. And the list of stupid questions start: "Oh looks good, I see you live in Sacramento, are you from Sacramento?" Ok, we live Sacramento, so we must be from around here. Who comes from out of state to buy furniture at a Sacramento based furniture store? He sees my wife's occupation. "Teacher....oh, do you teach?" And it just so happens, the man grew up around the block from my wife's school. Imagine that. Here come a bunch more stupid questions like, "How long have you been at that school?", which is clearly stated ON the freaking application next to years at job. The small talk then turned towards me. I had no idea what we were waiting for, the purchase was finished.

I mentioned earlier the man was Filipino. How can I possibly know this meeting the man for the first time? It was the accent. The accent I heard everyday growing up. You see, there is this rather large suburb south of San Francisco called Daly City. 90% of that city immigrated here from the Philipines. If you have lived there, you know the accent. And the conversation led all the way to where I was originally from, Daly City, he got all happy and cheery and said to me, " You're Filipino? So am I!! You are my people. My family is from there."

"Daly City or the Philipines?" I ask, puzzled that this man could look me in my blue eyes and even have the slightest suspicion that I was born in the Philipines. I just wanted my couches. It was Saturday. Let's go, already.

"No", he laughs. "Daly City, part of my family moved there in the early 1970's off of Gellert Blvd on Warwick."

"Really?" I says, "I lived off Gellert too." I am just totally playing along now even though I really lived off of Gellert Blvd. He starts naming people, vague names I barely knew, Asian restaurants I hadn't the foggiest idea of their existence. I grin and play along. I made his day. Restaurants and people, he names on and on... over and over. His cousins went to my elementary school. It was like I was from the Old Country. I was an immigrant. He and I were brothers with the same roots...

What a strange experience. I thought was gonna get a brush up in my Tagalog.

Blog Re-design

This blog is in the process of being redesigned. That's right! There will be a new me here soon. Don't worry I ain't becoming a liberal, I am just freshening up the place. Gonna make it more appealing to the eyes, have a better place for links, a better side bar, the works. It's gonna be cool! It should be done by the weekend.

The Funniest Child Abuse You'll Ever See

I seriously laughed on the ground for ten minutes straight.

Check this link.

http://www.break.com/index/kidscaredgame.html

OH MY GOD!!!

Saddam's Hungerstrike

Some good comments are bound to come over on BIO as this is posted by me there..

Here we go now… Day one of the Saddam Hussein hungerstrike for peace.

Can’t you just see and predict how this is going to go down?

Day 1 through 4: No one notices or seems to care

Day 5: New York Times features article by some bleeding heart anti-war liberal, who is white and rich and drives a luxury SUV in Jersey. The author likens Saddam’s right to a fair trial to the recent freak snow storm caused by global warming.

Day 6: Al “I can’t shake the Stuart Smalley past” Franken picks up story and begins to comment on Bush or Cheney getting all the food they can eat while Saddam sits starving in a jail cell. He will comment on the ancillary effects or war and numerous civilian casualties. He’ll find a story of a terrorist family who cannot eat because the US troops have a blockade around the home.

Day 7: Jeanine Garafalo burns a bra. Sean Penn books “emergency” trip to Iraq to visit and comfort Saddam who hasn’t eaten in a week, except for those energy power shakes.

Day 8: Michael Moore camps out in front of a KFC and refuses to eat. He brings two kids from Columbine who lost two pet chickens in a slaughter house. The kids have 4 day old fried Chicken they want to return. Pamela Anderson shows up and looks really hot next to Michael Moore.

Day 9-12: A thinner Saddam begins to eat again. He cannot pass up Doritos dangled in front of his cell by our troops handling him. Quasi bleeding heart liberal, John McCain calls for the end of torture of Saddam. Celine Dion gives a repeat performance of “Let them touch those things!” on CNN.

Day 14: Cindy Sheehan is seen barbequeing a dog with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. They also make a sex tape which is downloaded by millions. Cindy answers her phone when the mayor of San Francisco calls during a particularly hot tantric session, ruining the moment.

Day 21: CNN’s Anderson Cooper is still outside Saddam’s jailhouse even though the hungerstrike has ended 10 or so days ago.

Day 50: CNN’s Anderson Cooper is still outside Saddam’s jailhouse. Saddam the Martyr has been hung for his crimes. A collage of photos featuring a defiant Saddam pointing his finger during the trial is played. Sarah Mclaughlin’s “I Will Remember You” is heard in the background.

Yeah, that’ll about do it.

Naproxsyn, Theragesic, and a Tall Glass of Knob Creek

...slowly disintegrating my liver...

Remember back when I started this blog and I wrote about pain on this post? Of course not, none of you regulars like, lawryde, members of BIO, The Kevin Show, Donegal Express, Lingo Slinger, Michael the Archangel, my wife and her sisters, Tina, sometimes Neil and numerous others I am probably forgetting that will frag me for not including them, oh and Kurt (sorry man!).

And the title of this post really has to do with pain. I'm freaking in pain today. I cannot squeeze my hands tight, my fore arms hurt and so do my, toes, back and my neck. I went golfing yesterday for the first time since October where I had 2 birdies and 2 pars on the front nine in Hawaii and I still shot a 103. I don't wanna believe it's the golf causing all this though. (I am writing this as "Gotta Serve Somebody" by Bob Dylan is playing on the iPod, lol) I keep thinking it's something more.

Still, I'd press on golfing or even typing like I am doing now but damn, this crap hurts bad. Maybe it's work or some crazy stress from it or the baby on the way or because some liberal pissed me off on some other blog or something. Who knows? I can't play the guitar or the 360 right now. I even have lost patience on the training module I am building for my customers right now, even though they'll all be happy when I bring this out later this month.

The funny thing is, the only reason I am writing this post is because if you take Naproxyn, which is basically glorfied Aleve in horse tablet form, you aren't supposed to lay down. I thought of some nice quip on how I embraced Universal Healthcare paid for by the United States Government and tax payers. How everything would wonderful? Rich or poor, black or white, there'd be no pain because we'd all have this wonderful health care program like Europe to save us all. It'd be run by Cindy Sheehan, the Princess of Darkness and there'd be rainbows and it'd all be wonderful. People would still hurt though and you'd go to the doctor who'd only give you drugs to make you go away just like they do now. But I talked myself out of writing that post because it wouldn't work without jack all of our taxes to insane amounts, rich or poor, black or white.

I'll leave you with a classic:

Have You Ever Seen The Rain?

(J.C. Fogerty)

Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm
I know
It's been coming for some time
When it's over so they say
It'll rain on a sunny day
I know
Shining down like water

I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain?

Coming down on a sunny day
Yesterday and days before
Sun is cold and rain is hard
I know
It's been that way for all my time
Till forever on it goes
Through the circle fast and slow
I know
And it can't stop I wonder

I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain?

I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain?
I wanna know
Have you ever seen the rain?

Saturday Morning Post: The Chrome Horse Incident

Yeah, about 10 minutes ago I had one of those interesting life experiences. I am totally addicted to caffeine. If I could inject it I would. Seriously. I cannot start the day without a triple expresso. Peet’s Coffee had my attraction. Downtown Sacramento is one of those cool urbanesque areas with many little restaurants and cafes. A lot of unique coffee houses like Naked Coffee who’s signature drink is the Keith Richards. 4 shots of expresso iced over a Jolt Cola. Guarenteed to get you absolutely keyed. Today, as I said early, I chose the multi-million dollar conglomerate of Peet’s Coffee, who orignated in the 1960’s in the Mecca of Liberaldom, Berkeley California. Triple shot mocha with banana nut bread.

After picking up my caffeinated beverage of choice, I dumped off breakfast in the Hummer and proceded across the parking lot by the “chrome horse” to Safeway for a bottle of Knob Creek and some birthday cards. It’s a family birthday weekend with my sister in law’s birthday on the Valentine’s Day and my father in law’s sometime next week. It was the small honey-do list I needed to get done before today’s 10 AM tee time at the local 9-hole.

After picking up some funny cards and the bourbon, I headed for the express lane. There were only two lanes open in the whole store. The express lane was really short, in fact, they were just bagging groceries. I moved in to pay. And then the “incident” occurred. The checker, a wept kept lady in her 50’s looking Candace Bergen type looks totally disgruntled. She greets me alright but something was up. She apologizes as I sit and wait. An older gentleman and the store manager are arguing at the baggage area.

“So what’s up?” I ask the checker.

“Oh nothing.” “Candace” the checker replies.

The arguing is getting more intense and it seems to be directed at two twelve packs of Sprite. It seems the other day, Sprite was on sale and the store ran out. The gentleman apparently thinks he having to pay more for the Sprite than quoted on the rain check. He is going back and forth on having to pay a whopping 31 cents more than he intended to pay. 31 cents! His total bill is like 31 bucks and he is arguing over 31 cents? I mean, he looks like an average guy, with average intelligence and average wealth. What could possibly be the problem. He was being really unreasonable and belligerent. He offered no evidence of his claim either.

“WTF!!” I think to myself. I wanted to say it out loud but I have a bit of morality in public.

Five minutes has now passed. I sit and watch this incident. I don’t want to move because in the next line is an old lady with a check book and we all know how long that is gonna take. (I save my thoughts on the advent of the ATM Card for another post). With my patience wearing a bit thin on the 31 cents, I decide to act, NOW.

I calmly reach into my pocket and pull out a crisp new $1 Bill, JD Power had sent me the other day because I bought a GM vehicle and they wanted to hear about it. I place it on top of the two twelve packs of Sprite and don’t say a word. Another minute or so passes and the man says to me, “What’s that for? Money isn’t the point. These people intentionally ripped me off.”

“The dollar isn’t for your Sprite sir, it’s for you to call someone who actually cares. I’ve got a tee time to hit and you are bugging the hell out of me and wasting my day. You are ripping me off!” The kid on the other register is trying so hard not to bust up and “Candace” the checker is turning redder and redder.

The gentleman just dogged me while I just stared back with my best impression of the “liberal smirk” I could come up with. Three bucks for a 12 pack is pretty God damned cheap if you ask me.

A True Life Story of Perserverance

Eighteen years in a traveling band
Seen a lot of one night stands
And still I found myself so very much alone

And it took those years to find myself
Wasn't lookin' for no one else
And then I found you girl
But you were there all along

And we'll spend each day like it's the last day of the rest of our lives

I'll be the king you'll be my wife
Gonna make it thru this thing called life
Gonna raise these kids on our own
The very best we can

And sixteen hours is a long, long time
When you gotta love that's on your mind
Can you tell that I'm not right?
I'm a little distraught

And we'll spend each day like it's the last day of the rest of our lives
Everyday we'll fall in love just a little more
For the rest of our lives

Sittin' here in the county jail
Ain't no one to go my bail
I shoulda been there with you
For some sympathy and tea

And eighteen years in at traveling band
Seen a lot of one night stands
And still I found myself so very much alone

Mike Ness... Social Distortion

I was laying in bed last night grooving to my iPod. Well, you really can't groove to an iPod while lying in bed... or could you? Not important really... The point is, I laid awake thinking about my life. You know how it is... Your best thoughts and biggest dreams come to you during insomnia. I had fear of waking my wife and running down stairs to blog about what I was thinking so I waited until now. It struck me to write this story about a life experience when the song above from Mike Ness from Social Distortion's first solo album, came up on my iPod. The country twang, a lightly distorted hollow body guitar and the lap steel guitar and then the words out of Mike's gravelly throat, "18 years in a travelling band..."

18 years. That really hit me. 18 years ago this week, my life changed forever. I have this really solid family. My parents have been married for 40 years. Both of my brothers have good marriages, great kids and fantastic careers. My parents have a lot to be proud of. I married a sweet girl and of course, as many of you know, we're expecting. But what started 18 years ago really is a bit of hardship, loneliness and actually a quite a bit of heartache. It was a very short time in retrospect but back then it seemed like an eternity. My parents moved me and my family from the big city out to the country.

I was 14 and in 8th grade. Our family had roots in that big city. We had friends. We had some family. Jobs, good schools and familiarity. It was all there. But it was the urge in my father to move us out to the "boonies". Life would be better. We had better weather, open space, no crowds, no traffic and no noise. Only one casualty, me...

My world got twisted 18 years ago this week. It's kind of a surreal event really. The first day at the new middle school. Life as I knew it was over. In retrospect it was like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. I went from the hustle and bustle of my former life of skateboards, junior high dances, hanging at the 7-11 playing video games and other debaucherous stuff that I still cannot admit to. I was a mediocre student under achieving at mediocrity as well... Now I was in a country school, with school busses that hauled you 40 miles in two hours to school. New cliques. New cliches. A new hierarchy, new challenges and new peers. Scary shit to put a kid through. I was made fun of 5 minutes after opening my mouth in the 2nd period PE because I admitted to where I was from, near San Francisco. A 14 year old kid moving to the country should never admit to being from San Francisco. EVER!!!

The abuse was on... Getting pushed around, challenged to fights in the school yard, itching powder down my shirt on April Fool's Day, getting tripped, spit on... left out in the cold, pulled off railings, stolen books and back packs only to be found later in garbage cans all over campus... The list goes on and on. And it wasn't just a bully or one kid. It was the ENTIRE student body. The memory carries on. All because of the stigma of being from San Francisco.

It followed me through summer school that year to high school. My mother thought it would be great to take summer school to skip up in math by taking Algebra that summer and for me to meet more people. Wrong!! It carried on there at the high school because someone knew me from middle school. The school bus, upper classman, and PE. "Steve's gay. Steve's a fag... because he's from San Francisco." Times got violent. I fought back and drew blood but they kept coming and coming. I never was big enough or strong enough, just average... I was very good at running fast. I was very good at being scared shitless.

This era 18 years ago or so back, and the subsequent 1 or 2 years that followed could have ended me. I could have been lost forever. I could have gone Columbine. I could have just ended it. I could have gotten into drugs. I wasn't an athlete. I wasn't that smart. I didn't have a religion to run to. Hell, I didn't even have friends. In the Eastwood movie called, "Unforgiven" there is a line Clint says, "It's a shame killing man, you take all he has, and all he ever will have." They literally were killing me. But at least I had one thing still... my music. (okay...?)

Seriously. This whole time I am going through this, I did two things everyday. I went to band at least one period a day at school and practiced my baritone horn at night for an hour or two. Daily. Everyday. I took lessons and had a great teacher who convinced me to sort of reach for the sky, metaphorically speaking. A year after I moved out to the country, I was in my second semester of being a freshman in high school, a place I saw as hell on Earth. Speaking of hell, our school colors were mainly red and gold which was a bit ironic. But a year after living in this foreign world, I had about had it. However, my private music teacher taught me otherwise. He had me enroll in this solo festival they have regionally in California for the California Music Educators Association. Basically, kids from elementary school to high school play their chosen instrument by themselves or in a quartet or something and get judged. Sort of like an American Idol for band geeks but more formalized. So here I am, a year in living hell later at some state college, with my shiny, dented baritone horn, my teacher, my parents, scared to death and totally freaked out about walking up and playing my horn in front of this judge and a small crowd of people. I was seriously terrified and just wanted to GO!!! But I stayed to play. What happens next changes my life forever...

Contemporary band music is kind of different than normal, symphonic type music. You have all these Andrew Lloyd Webber and John Williams wannabes write music for kids to play. They have these random titles and even more random melodies that you can barely associate with any familiarity to classical or romantic period music. The title of the piece I was going to play on horn was called, "Achilles" which now has more irony to this story than ever.

I put my music up on the stand, take a deep breath and begin to play, scared shitless, but playing. Dry mouthed. Shaking. Sweating. Nervous, but screw it, I am playing. Things are going along fine. I get about half way through and the judge suddenly has this very disgruntled look on his face. He stops me from playing. Very Simon Cowell like, he asks what I think I am doing? He asks me to start again without the music because it was obvious I didn't need it and that I was hiding behind it. Also I needed to find the dynamics and emotion (the different sound volumes) in the music.

And so... I was dumbfounded. Very, very scared now but I was sort of pissed. Here at 15 now, I was just standing there thinking to myself, what in the hell did I do deserve all of this? I mean, seriously, the crap at school with the evil children picking on me, living in the boonies with barbed wire fences, rattlesnakes and no cement for my skateboard and now this? This judge? Who does he think he is, tampering with what I have left? He found my Achilles heal! I'd soon show him...

Well, I finished to some applause and the judge was very complimentary with the "new" performance since restarting. They had a rating system. A Good, meant you showed up and knew how to put your horn together. An Excellent, meant you got through the music ok and it sounded good but you missed some things. A Superior, meant you did an outstanding job. The top award, the Command Performance, means you totally dominated the music and judges rarely gave this out during the festival if at all. If you were not the top award, you had to sit and wait for them to post your score. If you earned the top achievement they told you on the spot. As I was putting my horn away and greeting my parents and teacher, and getting all those good jobs and it's ok's people you know give you when you are a kid. The judge turns around in a pretty delayed reaction and says, "I almost forgot... HERE!!!" I didn't know what to say. I was speechless. I went back to the festival three more times during high school and only earned a Command Performance once more time and it was the only one that judge the next time gave out that year.

I was so confident that early spring day, winning that command performance, I signed up for football when I got back to school the next week... Seriously... but that is another true life story, called redemption or salvation or perhaps maybe, isolation... desecration? Let it go... Steve...

The Passion of What???

I opened the mail box when I got home and I saw this. Life is sooooo freaking hard and tragic I wanted to puke cry when I saw this article. Well... not really.

The victim:

Kanye West, rap star thug extraordinaire who, proudly ackwardly proclaimed on TV with Mike Myers during the Hurricane Katrina, Hollywood-type "feel good" telethon for hope thing they put on after the tragedy, that George Bush hates black people. Well, he's doing the Jesus victim thing on Rolling Stone this month. What a victim too. Millions of dollars, pimping songs to suburban white kids, after writing lyrics on his leather couch. Pop music is so translucent it should be a crime.

And then there is Rolling Stone and their "A"game. Typical big photo in the center of the mag that vaguely relates to the title caricature on the cover. The baby pictures. The story of trouble and agony... but wait this one is different. Sure his parents divorced (dude's dad was a Black Panther) and that's gotta be a rough experience but right there, page 43 next to the big "W" it says it: Raised in a middle class family. His mom was the chair of the English department at Chicago State University. Oh then he was picked on as a kid. Who the hell wasn't? Where's the freaking adversity? No trailer park. No loss of a sibling in a wicked drowning accident. No parent died. No walking barefoot in the Alaskan snow while yodeling through absurdly crooked teeth. But the crown of thorns fits this king of rap, eh? Winning all those potential Grammy's this month. Oh I am so sad... So sad. Bush hates black people.

Folks, Kanye writes rap songs. He's a rapper. An artist. Someone with a talent. A big mouth with some big balls to go along with it. So why do we put these people in their .49 cent Jesus pose to sell magazines? It's kind of pathetic. Liberals will deny the concept of the "liberal media" until they hit their graves. Yet, they can't recognize the absurdity of a wealthy rapper who can buy all the mac and cheese he could ever want, looking like the victim.

Pathetic.

Cross posted on my diary at BIO.

The iPod Craze...

If you don't have one, get one. They are cool. Yet it looks as though people are stupid when they use them. Just look at this headline. Please people can you just turn them down? My God! I tossed my ear buds. Actually the cat ate them so I got some heavy duty one's for jogging. That is if I ever take up jogging? Jogging? Sheesh.

The coolest thing on iTunes right now is the Coldplay live album with video from Austin City Limits. Pretty awesome stuff especially the version of Kingdom Come when they cover Ring of Fire from my favorite, Johnny Cash.


But dude, just turn the volume down.