The Life and Times of Elliot Pike

I was running through my iTunes library looking for something to play while I cleaned the apartment and crossed an old, obscure, strange album I once bought by The Residents called “Hell”. Just for fun I played what I think is the strangest song I’ve ever heard in my life, “Lizard Lady”. (M3U preview link) (I wish I could find a link so you could hear it. It’s seriously psychedelic.

It occurred to me to write here a quick blog note to ask my readers (both of you) what you think the weirdest song is you’ve ever heard. (The only other candidate I can think of right now is “Stop Eating my Brain” by Scratch Acid.)

Any candidates?

I just read a short Yahoo! News article about a recent polling result:

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly a quarter of Republicans are unwilling to back top-tier hopefuls Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, and no one candidate has emerged as the clear front-runner among Christian evangelicals. Such dissatisfaction underscores the volatility of the 2008 GOP nomination fight.

For some Democrats/Liberals this may be a continuation of the cheery news that the 2008 Presidential election is increasingly likely to swing Democratic. But I wonder if this news may be the harbinger of something more profound.
(more…)

I am really surprised I haven’t read anything (ever) in the news about this. But I’ve just finally come to a big realization: the September 11th attacks really had a devastating effect on the lives of New Yorkers—and I’m talking Post Traumatic Stress Disorder level effects.

In the last six years I’ve met a number of people, and I love talking to people about their careers, their lives, etc. I was talking to a guy this last weekend, just some new acquaintance that I made, and I was hearing a story about his career—about how he was working a high-paid corporate job and soon after 9/11 he left the job, became a freelancer, and his entire career after that just seemed to drift about with no direction. Now he’s trying to get back into the corporate workplace, but after being away so long, and after sort of “losing his nerve” he doesn’t think he could interview back into a similar (Vice President) position.
(more…)

I’m guessing I fit in with the “majority” out there when I say I’ve been sick of the iPhone obsession for a long time now. Frankly as a computer geek and a Mac fan, I was miffed when Steve Jobs spent the entire January Keynote talking about this phone and the only computer-related item was that the company was taking the word “Computer” out of its name. (Then I waited for the June WWDC Keynote, hoping he would make up for it with some cool Mac/OS X stuff and found myself again completely disappointed.)

Now the darned iPhone is out, and I grant you there is a lot about the device that looks cool. (Disclaimer: I still haven’t seen one in person, but I’ve read more than I care to about it.) Since I have a blog (and haven’t used it much) I figured I would write my initial reactions to what I believe the device is like.
(more…)

I suspect most everyone who isn’t a political junkie like myself is so sick of the strange “Attorney General Alberto Gonzolas and the Prosecutor Firings” ongoing news story as to have stopped paying attention altogether. And indeed, as most news pundits acknowledge, the actual firings aren’t as surprising as the Justice Department’s (and specifically Gonzolas’s) complete bungling of the issue.

For those of you who have already tuned out (or never tuned-in) the Senate is eating Gonzolas for lunch, Republican and Democrat alike. Why? Because all his testimonies and responses to our legislative branch have been full of sloppy lies and inconsistencies. In other words, they are responding to the sheer and utter contempt that the Bush Administration has had for the legislative branch since Day One.

For the first four years, the Bush Administration behaved with what I always perceived as complete disdain for the legislative (and judicial) branches of our government, but while the Republicans were in charge, they were far more concerned with keeping their own political party in power than sticking up for themselves. I was constantly sickened by their utter lack of self-respect or backbone—they are after all the sole voice of the people in the Federal Government.

So now Republican lawmakers are finally showing resentment, chagrin, backbone… whatever. It should come as no surprise. After all they’ve probably been secretly swallowing a steady diet of bile for the last six years, and now that there’s no Republican Majority to protect, they can stand behind the Democrats (who are finally doing the job) with tacit support.

In a way I pity them: it must really be lousy living life with no balls.