Amanda and Todd had their Get Drunk and Buy Our Junk party, which was a lot of fun. I found out she's moving ten blocks (give or take) away from me. It'll be nice to see her more often. Raina was there, too. I hadn't seen her in an age.

It's currently 83 degrees outside. How odd for the first day of Fall.

At work printing out business cards for my mom. Takes hours so I'm killing time. Some theoretically random person found my site and went to the quotes pop-up, which had a lame quote.

I took the opportunity to change that. Now it's a Simpsons quote. With my geek status firmly intact, I can rest easy that no one will think I'm lame. I have a website with no real content and ramble endlessly about a life that isn't even fascinating. To make matters worse, I gotta grab one of the digital cameras and take a couple of shots. Action Jesus must be seen by the masses.

Here's another semi-interesting link:

Find out what obscure band you are

I'm Shonen Knife. Which means I'm cute and Japanese. Which, I suppose, is better than being The Strokes.

I tripped in the dark on my way to the bathroom and damn near broke my nose. My room is a mess. My nose is hideous. I am dumb.

It's Google's fourth birthday.

Tim Easton is playing the 400 tonight. I couldn't find anyone to go with me, so I'm not going to go. I wish I was braver at going to shows alone. I will regret not going a lot, I know.

I got an invite from Amanda. They are moving and want to get rid of a bunch of their stuff. It was something like "GET DRUNK and BUY our STUFF". I like it. I will definitely have to go.

5:15 pm
Heather just reminded me my nose is going to bruise up shortly. Great. I'm going to look like a battered wife. I should use the Amy Sedaris method of explaining facial bruises:

"I've never been this happy in my entire life! I finally found my true love."

I got nothing. Weekend highlights:

Went for sushi late Friday with Julie to celebrate getting everything on the web site finished. Turns out the entire floor at the MAC is now Martini Blu.

Took me a few minutes to notice what was playing on the tvs on the walls. Sex scenes from famous movies. I took my Christian publishing client to a sushi bar with sex everywhere. I had a minor seizure.

Luckily Julie was fine with it.

I'm building the HH site in Cold Fusion. It's so nice and easy to use. Especially when you have a freelance guy doing most of the work. But I've picked up a thing or two. Macromedia (well, originally Allaire) did a really nice job on this one.

There was a minor explosion at the U today. Jay was tooling around on rollerblades eating some free popcorn from the bookstore when he stopped to watch EMTs give CPR to one of the students.

So he tells me he's standing there just eating popcorn and watching all the action until he realized how callous it must look, so he slowly backed away.

Jay makes me laugh.

Last night I watched Frontline's two-hour documentary on the war in Afghanistan. It was really interesting.

I was struck by the teams that were on the ground over there, riding with the Northern Alliance on horseback. The soldiers said that the initial bombings left the Alliance skeptical as to whether the US could make any difference.

That changed when one special ops guy and a faction head climbed onto a communications tower and started pointing out actual homes of where Taliban officials lived. The Special Ops guy called up and asked if there were any planes nearby. He targeted the homes with lasers and, within a short period, surgical strikes were made that took out those exact targets.

The Afghani soldiers were pretty impressed. Frankly, I think people forget that the reason we can hit targets so precisely is that there are soldiers on the ground marking the targets. That's hardcore.

I was impressed by the level of cooperation all the different factions displayed. They must have been so tired of bloodshed and strife that there was really no other option for them.

Relatively dull day. Another car crash outside the window.

Jason sent me this link:

It's a pretty good site.

All right, I posted way too much yesterday. To atone for my sins I will only post the most fascinatingly brilliant and urbane rants. I swear.

Who am I kidding?

So Napster was either hacked or has faced up to reality. Their site has been updated. It's a shame that Napster failed. I had hoped it would be the wake up call the recording industry needed to realize that the current musical climate is shite, but they just looked at how it was affecting their bottom line.

Jeff Tweedy's got a new side project. From the Drag City site:

THE NAME OF THIS BAND IS LOOSE FUR

Hey gang! Here's a new name to roll around on your tongue: Loose Fur. Got it? Start using it in a sentence or two, would you? Because Loose Fur is that heart-stopping aggregate of Glenn Kotche, Jim O'Rourke and Jeff Tweedy.... They made history when they all worked on Wilco's last masterwork, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Yeah for awhile they were getting busy with all the history and masterworks and so forth. But what did they do when they went home at night? Make history, what else!.... [T]hey'd run down to the studio, arriving no earlier than the stroke of midnight.... They'd plot and plan and rock and jam until the break of day, stopping only then to go their separate ways. Then, a couple of months later, it would begin all over again. Nobody knew what to call it, but finally they had enough things recorded to be called a record.

Flash forward to the present.... The band is called Loose Fur. And their album should be in stores no earlier than January 2003.

Rhett Miller was just on a promo for the radio. Weird wild wacky. If the song they're playing right after is his solo stuff... uh... hm. I'll give it a minute, but... hm.

As we near a pretty sad one-year anniversary I was digging thru my folder on the events. Found this quote:

"I feel this way about it. World trade means world peace and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York ... had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace... beyond the compelling need to make this a monument to world peace, the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men, and through cooperation, his ability to find greatness."

—Minoru Yamasaki, chief architect
of the World Trade Center

There's an article on Ryan Adams in ICE today. This quote is priceless::

I didn’t think all four records should exist,"
Adams tells ICE. "Not for right now… not for awhile… maybe later on, if people are really interested.
Had I in fact had the chance to release all of them,
I would’ve been one of those artists that have had
a long slew of bad albums."

—RYAN ADAMS, on changing Demolition
from a four-album set to a single CD

Uh, sure Ryan. None of your albums have been bad yet. Phtphtphtpthphtpht.

Found out Mark Spencer is playing for Kelly Willis on this tour. He is insanely skilled at what he does. I fell in love with him when he was playing for Jay Farrar.

What a long weekend. It's official. I'm finally done with Nightmare (ex) Roommate forever. As predicted, she was rude to me when I went to clean on Saturday. I skipped out on her on Friday because her idea of cleaning was to basically clean every single nook and cranny of the entire apartment. I've lived in enough places to know what's gonna fly with management companies. I knew she wouldn't listen to me, so I admit it, I bailed on Friday.

Anyway, I told NR that I was tired of dealing with her attitude and that I guaranteed she would get her full deposit back if she would just leave right then and there and let me deal with it. Which she didn't want to do, but at least it calmed her down.

So I proceed to finish cleaning my room. Her aunt (who is very nice) shows up and starts walking thru the apartment to see if it passes muster. I decline her offer to walk thru my room and bathroom because I figure if she's as anal as NR she'll tell me my bathroom is "filthy" (NR's favorite word to describe my room and my stuff).

She walks into NR's bathroom and stops. "This isn't going to pass inspection." Stopped me in my tracks and so I wander over to Amy's bathroom.

Okay, here's the thing:
NR cleaned her bathroom about every two weeks. She would pull everything out and spend the day cleaning. It smelled chemical-ly and was annoying. And she was condescending to me about how I cleaned. I HATE cleaning. I just keep stuff picked up and wipe spills up as they happen. Life is too short to spend so much time cleaning.

I never went into her bathroom as I had my own. I never saw her bathroom. I always assumed it was spotless, as her cleaning efforts would suggest.

So I walk into her bathroom and the tub and tile walls are GRAY with dirt. Hardcore grime build-up. DISGUSTING. I would not shower in that tub, it was that bad. Alan's shower was cleaner, for goodness sake. That's how bad it was.

NR's aunt had it clean in 15 minutes. I can't believe she couldn't figure out how to get that dirt off.

I think that's my final penultimate NR-irony. She considered the way I lived "filthy" and I would not use a tub in the condition she kept hers. I lived a markedly cleaner life than Amy, and I didn't even care about that apartment. HA!

So then I was like, "Hey, check my bathroom and let me know what you think." Hee hee. Her response: "Oh, you should have no problems. Looks great!" Hee hee hee hee hee hee.