Gift From Wisconsin

Zombied home from work per usual this evening and something out of the ordinary catches my eye. It's a little brown box on my front stoop. Close examination reveals it's a package from Christi back in ol' Wis-gon-sin and I immediately start thinking "cookies!" Pick the box up and it's too light. "Can't be cookies. What gives?" I like cookies. Anyways, bring the thing inside, get it open, and I find a letter (with a kung fu monkey graphic no less!) which is cool and the letter tells me to enjoy Al's spicy jerky (enclosed) which I will cos believe it or not it kicks ass for the lord. The letter also tells me to check out this CD by a honky tonk band out of Oregon, WI. The disc, called Hunker Down is by The Junkers and it's spinning now. I'm not all the way through it, but I love it enough already to give it wholehearted endorsement. With song titles like "It's Hard to Win a Woman (When You're Working for the Man)" & "The Pint of No Return" it's no doubt they've got the right idea, the question then is: can they deliver on the promise? Well, I'm not going to tell you they're revolutionizing anything; it's songs about booze and women and how much it sucks to wake up in the morning with a day of work starin' ya in the face. The singing hits all the right notes without too much twang like somone's puttin' a pose on, just a bit of homage. The band is tight and swingin' ... the extra autograph on my disc is by a keyboardist/accordionist who joined after the disc was released and knowing he's out there now makes me think these songs have a bit of a hole in 'em he's probably filling well. Nice to see the last song was recorded at one of my fave music spots in Mad-City, O-Cayz Corral. I'm guessing, and taking Christi's word for it, that they got the crowds movin' pretty good at the shows. You can get the disc at their shows, at some of the finer cd stores in Madison, or by visiting the website. It's $12 shipped and well worth it. Thanks Christi!!! OK, now the disc is done and I'm giving it another immediate play through...

Enterprise

How about Enterprise, eh? Who'd a thunk a cast could be blander than that of Voyager? (I'm still not sure if there are two indistinguishable white guys with made-for-TV accents or if there was just one and he couldn't keep his accent straight.) What the heck was the episode even about? Did it make any sense? Could the shower scene have been any more exploitive? And the opening theme music ... it was like getting kicked in the nuts by Jon Bon Jovi.

Melancholia

Revisiting a topic that had quite a run on this page some months ago, there's an interesting article reviewing three books about melancholia at the NYRB.

The Extent To Which The SCOTUS Screwed Us About To Become More Apparent

I'm more than a little afraid that Bush is the guy who decides how we will respond as a nation to the events of this past Tuesday. The group responsible for the attack should be held accountable. It appears we are finding out the identity of the perpetrators and may ultimately be able prove Osama bin Laden was behind the attack. If that is indeed the case, he (and anyone who helped in the planning and execution of the plan) should face severe justice. However, our pursuit of that justice shouldn't cost the lives of any innocent people. I heard a congressman (I wish I made note of his name) say that we shouldn't hesitate to use deadly force against the people responsible, even if it meant killing innocent civilians of another country because "they" didn't have any compunction about killing our innocents. Nevermind the obvious fact that he was lumping guilty and innocent together in his use of "they" (lumping all Muslims, Afghanis, or whoever he actually meant) as if the innocent civilians of some Arab nation ordered the attack, the very idea that perpetuating the cycle of violence, that creating more embittered orphans, would somehow make things right is patently ridiculous. Sickeningly ridiculous.


There's also the talk of holding the nations that harbor terrorists responsible for the actions of those terrorists. I agree that governments sponsoring or sheltering terrorists should be held accountable and complicit, but we should be very careful in determining how we deliver justice. Sparking a war that would cost more lives does nothing to honor our dead. Also, there is our government's role in the sponsorship of terrorism and oppression around the world to consider, specifically our prior support of bin Laden and our support of the Taliban -- there's that whole thing about glass-house dwellers and stone throwing.


Ethel the Blog has some excellent links and commentary, well worth checking out. I've written more (from a different angle) at my side-blog, Sports Takes. Mark has some commentary up now at Cheek.

Not Up To Much

Been a while since I posted, my last are about to drop off the page, so I figure it's about time I at least dropped a 'what I've been up to lately' blog to remind everyone I still exist.


Mega starts the moving out process today and this time next week I'll have a new roommate moving in. J.R. (the new guy) is a staunch Republican and a Shrub backer so he's going to find himseld being berated for spouting idiocy quite a bit. The good news is he's a sports junkie with the proper allegiances, which means I won't have to see Mega's Yankees cap lying about the place.


I've been missing Madison a bit more than usual the last couple weeks and wishing I'd made the time to take a trip out there this summer. In the span of a couple days KP wrote to talk baseball, Trish called to plan a trip out here in the fall (then, sadly, called back to cancel), Susan and Jennifer both sent emails, Christi sent a bacon recipe (you can never have enough), and one of the guys in my new-hire training class at work is from Sun Prairie -- so we've been talking about the Madison bar scene. Another year without going to Quivey's ... what a shame.


A couple of folks have asked recently how my niece is doing and I'm happy to report she's doing well and is one happy little toddler. We don't really have a good idea yet what her vision is like, until she starts talking it's hard to test, I guess. Jeremy and Kristy have decided to stick with contacts and glasses for a couple of years before considering intra-ocular surgery to have new lenses inserted to replace her natural ones, which were taken out when she was an infant so she could see at all. On a totally unrelated note, Jeremy's thinking about getting a tat of our family crest on his arm and I've got a half a mind to demonstrate a little brotherly solidarity and do the same. I don't suppose I actually Dread God as our motto dictates, but the more appropriate Get Hammered wouldn't fit into the design as well.


This weekend is kinda downtime. Next weekend I'm going out with a group of folks from work, the following weekend I'll be going back to CT to visit the bonedaddy compound, the weekend after that Desrosiers will be in NYC so I'll take a day to go down there and visit, and somewhere in there is the Built to Spill show -- I might try that a little less housed this year than when Mega, Steve, and I caught them on tour last year.