Two things that I've recently realized I hate, especially having a kid are documentaries and most DVD's. Documentaries I like but one thing I've come to accept. As much as I like to learn about things and no matter the intentions, the people who need to be affected by the documentaries won't ever watch it or will be critical against it and nothing happens. Two, having a child, I like to have things on where I don't have to pay attention to all the time. Almost all documentaries use words. Not just here and there but sometimes several paragraphs all throughout the film. If I wanted to read about it, I'd get the book or read articles about it. And it's not that I don't like to read. I read a lot and I watch a lot of foreign films. But when I do, I sit and watch or read knowing I'm getting into that.

The other thing are the DVD menus. Why do they get all fucking fancy? Get to the point. There's no award for "best DVD menu" or anything of the like. And people buy DVD's because of the film or what's included in the menu not how fucking animated and clever the menu is. Especially with kid who's fussy and you're trying to get them calm so you can get dinner together, I don't want to sit through a fucking Oompah-Loompah walking to pour chocolate to turn into the menu selection. I feel like smashing it.

Dumb Newspaper

Right now is probably the most interesting, important events going on that are seemingly so important as to take the current state of the entire world with what is going on with the governments in the Middle East. From Libya, Russia's involvement in that, Egypt's borders, Syria, Palestine's situation and them requesting entrance into the UN, Israel's state of being surrounded by newly and forming Arab governments, which directly involve Iran, Russia, the US and Great Britain and more. Added to that, you have Mladic's arrest and his being sent to the Hague to face war-crimes charges. The war in Iraq. The state of Pakistan post-bin-Ladin's capture and their questionable alliance with the US...

What's on the front page of our paper?! The valedictorian of Marian high school and Creighton Prep and how they're dating and their courtship, how they asked each other to prom, and their future. How pathetic! "He's real good at solving Rubic cubes so I put a 'p' on one side, 'r' and the other..." ON THE FRONT PAGE!!!! This should've been on the front page of community events or something. Not the front page of the headlines!

On top of that they've got that dumb-ass "Breaking Brad" section with humor that's worse than Larry the Cable Guy and this guy gets paid to do his not funny at all lampooning of news stories. Whose idea was this? People got fired from that paper the other year because of budget cuts. It makes me cringe everytime I think of fans from all over the nation coming for the College World Series and they read our paper and see that type of Journalism and Omaha's the biggest city in the state. This would make me even want to just read the USA Today as a news source. Luckily Cubby's sells the New York Times...and the Wall Street Journal.

Buy-Nothing Day

Even though I never submitted myself to the Black Friday ridiculousness, I even more so hated this dumb day. The reason being is the same as this other "Don't-buy-gas-day" or whatever it was. I was told this and had not read or heard of it but as a somewhat protest to the oil industry there was a national day not to buy gas.

It's yet another attempt to do something outrageous with no real impact or solutions. Not buying gas one day just gives them the money either the day before when you top off so as not to buy gas the next day or fill up the day after because you forgot to before and wanted to "stick to your guns," or whatever dumb "hell yeah" slogan you want to adhere to and feel good about.

If you really want to affect them, go a month or more without driving, with real intentions of utilizing public transportation or self-transportation in the future. That way you can lose all that weight and get more sense flowing through your brain. Walk to the grocery store with your dumb-ass, trendy green bag to buy your food for a day or two at a time.

I read an article about this couple from Toronto who are keeping their baby's sex a secret. I can't believe all the attention they're getting for this stupid un-spoken publicity stunt. Which is all it is, on top of being annoying. It's to possibly allow it to grow without limitations and hopefully turn this world into a non-sexed based society within its generation. That's also dumb. No matter if a million people did this, it will NEVER happen. It's just dumb, New Age, far to the left type of mentality that gets really annoying. You know, too, that everytime they get asked about the baby's sex they go through their whole song-and-dance about why they are keeping it a secret...I want to meet them and ask them that so when they start into it I just walk away.

I guess it was a good thing I didn't scrounge up enough money to try and go to the Foo Fighters concert, as the only major drawing point was they were playing with Motorhead. Motorhead didn't show up; only their drummer. Lemmy and crew were stuck in Dallas due to storms.

I don't like anyone the World-Herald has for music reviewer. This guy has no real journalistic integrity or knowledge nor anything interesting to offer musically. It seems as if he was picked because based on the staff there he probably had the biggest iTunes library. For instance, heading towards SXSW he listed the acts he was looking forward to seeing and one of them being Dave Dondero. I like Dave, but the fact that this writer supposedly lives in Omaha, Dave's played here a million times. Within months of moving here in 2003 I had seen him play. I think he even played a benefit thing here last year I think.

Anyway, he talked about the Foo Fighters and that they played "Ace of Spades," which I bet the only way he knew the title was because Dave probably mentioned it before they played and he scribbled it on his notepad. Bravo to the Motorhead fans who, I liked to think, refused to go see the show as a result of Motorhead now playing and were trying to sell their tickets.

I'm about halfway through the Foo Fighters' new album and so far there's one tolerable song. But like the rest of their songs, it's about 2 minutes too long. the others sound the same as before with a lot of misuse of awesome, break-neck riffs that had tremendous potential. Their current single is horrible. This album was talked about by Dave as being their best and I'm sure he believes it, but with all the rest of the crap that's out there, it's drawing from not much.

I could say that from what's out there in the mainstream media, yeah, it's a departure. But I'm personally sick of music altogether. Grinderman's been one of the only exciting new band. I think a lot of bands have potential but verse, chorus verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, outro shouldn't be adhered to so much.

It's a wonder that the moneymakers seem to be reunion tours. But like cover songs becoming so overdone that songs from only a few years back are being covered, all these bands that never had much impact above high schoolers from a few years back are having reunions. Stop it! Stop being unimpressive and uninspirational. All the bands that matter carry on through time and create new musical projects that are good (Tommy Lee aside).

That being said, I'm looking forward to the Motley Crue/Poison/New York Dolls concert. I hope to see Guided by Voices. And I'm bummed about missing Primus Saturday.

The Sweet

About to take my final for my computer class. Reading A Moveable Feast and listening the Sweet - Hit Singles A's and B's.

I cannot wait to finish this quarter up so I can enjoy the nice days we've been having. I have to go to UNO this week which will be a nice bike ride. My computer's been dumb and had to restore it, but my anti-virus deal isn't fully working.

Why are people so addicted to apps? It's because of marketing. I've never seen (or noticed) people reacting with such frenzy to have ALL technological inventions no matter how inane they may be.

GPS ideally are a good idea, but I've navigated around the country in cars and a semi-truck via maps and logic. Sure, some places get hard such as downtown areas in big cities or places in the northeast, but it's nothing good common sense can cure. It's just another useless distraction.

When I first moved to Los Angeles I had a job mystery shopping all throughout the Valley, Glendale/Pasadena area and up the coast to and from Paso Robles, not too mention going to San Francisco several times. I did all those via a Thomas Guide (map book), no problem. You get cross streets, check for one ways, what streets are before your turn, different landmarks to ease that situation, two ways of approach in case you miss the turn, or check out the layout to see how to back track in case you miss the turn. It seems like a lot but it's not. It's everything I take in when viewing a map.

Some other logical things are avoiding left turns, especially if there's no turn lane. If it's a busy street, whether legal or not, it's not a good idea. New Jersey seems to be the only place that realized that people are dumb and, at least on the Pennsylvania border side, they have those u-turn/left turn loopy things.

If there's anything these GD-GPS things are good for is the advance notice they give you like "left turn - one mile ahead" will teach people what they should know well in advance, plan your driving route. I don't go anywhere without knowing where it is, what side of the street it is, etc. Or at least I try. Sometimes you cannot avoid heading into that situation. But I'm still not going to stop or slow in a 35-50 mph street to make a sudden left turn. I'll keep going and turn around. And I'm not going to drive 15 mph in said situation to not miss it.

I wish I could take a test with the OPD to pass all the driving safety courses and legally authorize me to pull over, ticket, and/or tell people how dumb they are or why what they did makes no sense at all and then slash their tires and leave.

One last thing, there's a main road here called Sorensen Parkway. It's 40 mph and when turning south on 72nd it's 40 mph. There's a huge shopping plaza to the right that spans about a half mile. There's a two lane left turn there. Three times in the past week I was in the left turn lane so when I get on 72nd I can stay in the left lane for the several miles I have to drive to avoid the stopping and going with people turning into driveways and other streets. Basically to safely regulate traffic. So upon turning onto 72nd, the cars (ALL WITH NO TURN SIGNALS!) slow to about five mph to turn into the first driveway into the shopping center.

Not only is that dumb, dangerous, and knowing that you are making a right turn upon turning onto 72nd you should've been in the right turning lane to start with as that goes with common logic of driving, but this shopping plaza's a half mile long at least. You have four or five other driveways to safely do this.

MAHA Festival.

One more addition makes in more probable for us to go and that would be the addition of J Mascis. The one band I would suggest (and did) they get that would bring many and would set in stone us purchasing tickets would be Grinderman. Although any of these bands I would much rather see in a closed venue, I would love to see Nick Cave at least once in my life time.

GD apps

The city of San Francisco spent time and money to creat an app to show available parking spaces. The reason was said that people looking and vying for spaces was a main cause of traffic in the downtown area.

First off, when people are told not to text while driving and people don't know how to talk on their phones while driving, why would a phone app make them drive even better or make them aware of what's going on around them. Secondly, why wouldn't they promote their really great public transportation system instead of spending money on a useless app? Doesn't the city get money from busfare and the BART?

It seems the recurring theme with people, not just in official positions, but in general, to think of new ideas that make no sense or don't work rather than critically think about solutions especially with things that already exist. Just like the car that can parallel park itself. Parallel parking's not that hard. Car's that tell you when you're driving too close to the car in front of you. You should keep a good, legal following distance anyway. If you need a computer to tell you you're too close, you don't deserve to drive.

Funny stuff...

I just read an old post from an old blog:

"blah, blah, blah
So I read in the paper yesterday that Avril Lavigne and Derek Whibley are getting married. Are you kidding me? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. They're going to have the dumbest kids. I fucking hate that stupid three foot tall, squishy-faced oompah-loompah mother fucker. You know what's awesome, though? I'll bet somewhere down the line, one or the other will come up with some fucking stupid idea that, "Hey, we should start a band together." Yeah, that's just what we need, two no talent fucking assholes writing more bad songs.

I'll bet all the mall punks and all the workers at Hot Topic are super excited.
posted by brett at 2:30 PM 0 comments"

It's just funny because of their recent divorce and my post on that.

Yes

So this is actually including December but in a situation that would work directly into January. I had just finished reading Medium Raw and since I would be in Oklahoma for a while, I brought some comfort books and Jeanne sent me one for my birthday:

A Cook's Tour, the Nasty Bits, and A Preferred Blur.


And I was reading Les Halles Cookbook and A Tuscan in the Kitchen.

By the way...

I've had ideas to take a piece of a puzzle at thrift stores and/or tear out pages of books there. I've never done it but it was always a fun thought. So in January I read Of Mice and Men which was bought used a while back from some bookstore via Amazon. Anyway, the last page was torn out. Or pages? George had just shot Lennie and simultaneously the mob was approaching then...

I guess it was a sort of cool way to end it. Does that count as finishing a book?

Speaking of count, Clerks played at the Dundee the other week. The Reader did a brief of it in the events portion of their issue and they, for some reason, mentioned the budget of the movie and blah, blah, blah...

Not only is that fact so overdone and boring, it was never relevant. It's a dialogue-based movie. It could've just as well been an audio book. If it were an action movie or something done for that budget, yeah, impressive. If he spent anymore than that it would've been pointless. Personally, $27,000 is much I think for that movie. They were all one-shots and he didn't have to pay much for set or actors...and production. Good movie, but the focus is always on the wrong thing.

Glengarry Glen Ross was pure dialogue as well, but I bet that budget flew through the roof because of the cast.

2011 Reading List

I need somewhere to keep track of this. Do text books count?

Down and Out in Paris and London

Kung Fu: History, Philosophy, & Techniques

Kitchen Confidential (third time reading this one)

A Farwell to Arms

A Dull Roar

America: Our Next Chapter

The Franklin Cover-up

Bone In The Throat

For some reason I think I'm missing one.

Currently reading:
Palestine: Peace, Not Aparthied

the Jungle

A Moveable Feast

Hawaii

I guess the Maha festival is only $30 and we can bring Ayana so we probably will go. Looking forward to seeing Guided by Voices even if it's outdoors. Primus is playing at the Waiting Room outside as well.

I don't like going to the mall for a plethora of reasons. Anthony Bourdain,along with his praise for Vietnamese food and with his travels which usually start in the market places, gave his solution for fast food in America. It's to get rid of those fastfood things in the mall food courts and replace them with vendors of International persuasions to serve fresh, cheap, good-tasting, healthy food. I was just thinking in places I'd like to go and things I'd like to do and thought of Ala Moana shopping center. It's a tolerable place to visit, but I was thinking about their food court and how it is sort of like that.

I wonder if people in Hawaii realize how good they've got it on those levels? We should all take a hint from that. So many good cultures and not enough people go there until it's on TV. And on several sides of that TV spectrum, I have a problem with based on first hand experience...more on that some other time.

I missed seeing Guided by Voices in Iowa a month back, but I just noticed that they are playing the Maha festival here. Good deal...We can bring Ayana but it's a festival. As much as I'd like to see them with this line up, I'll have to see who else is playing because I don't want to pay that much to just see them and a bunch of crap bands. It'd be nice if they were headlining so they can play longer.

I noticed that we have the Onion down at Ted & Wally's. I'm not sure what I think about that. I liked the Onion but for what they do, they're getting carried away. First was that bad movie, though the audio book was all right. Now they have a show on IFC!?

People just read the headlines. That's all that's funny. I never take the time to read them except the short snippets. The only time I read the actual whole thing I think I was at a Greyhound station in Denver and that was the only thing I had to read. Which was the first time in years that I realized they had ads for local stuff.

Which brings me to the next thing that they asks Joe to advertise with them. First off, they're twice as much as the well-establihed Reader. Secondly, the demographic in Omaha is not going to get the Onion. The ones that will already come to the shop. Also,visitors are more likely to pick up the Reader. I wonder if it's some money-bags dude here that read a copy and figures it'll do well. All the hipsters like it. They'll just go online.

Had to miss Jonathan Richman on Cinco de Mayo. Couldn't get a babysitter that late. Too many good shows coming up.

One good thing about this Osama thing, though, is that it takes (or should) away from all that unnecessary hoopla about that pointless, non-event the royal wedding.

I have been slacking in writing my personal journal and staying away from Facebook more than I used to. School is all right and Dragon Arts is good. I need to put more time into that training.

I've been getting a lot of stretching done and need to hit the hamstrings and butterfly harder. I've beeen holding those for about five minues a piece and hopefully within a few weeks I'll be able to do splits and then get my full, proper stretching done for my workouts.

My back is getting better but not all the way.

I listened and read a little bit of the Osama deal yesterday. Enough to inform me about what happened and some people's opinions but stayed away from all news sources. It just makes me upset to hear people's thoughts on things. "I hoped it said Obama but it was Osama." Really?! Your ignorant loyalty to corporate news media makes you hate opposition that much that you wish they were dead? Isn't that Nazi type of mentality?

The whole birth certificate thing was always dumb to me and can't believe it went so far. People's ignorance to Constitutional rights is dumb as well. Even if he was born outside of the US, his mom being a citizen would have still made him a citizen, so what's the argument. Either way he's legit.

I finished building the book shelf and need to start on two others but lack the cash to do so. I registered for next quarter and find out today about my last math test. It was more reasonable than the last one. I like math and am majoring in it for Secondary education but the teacher tests us on things well beyond what we're learning in class. I appreciate being able to critically think about functions and other type of equations but when you're taught them at the text book level and nothing above that,and you do the homework twice and the chapter review and tests, and then you take the test and get a 70%?

I left two answers blank and I never do that. I can at least work my way through it somehow but when you're presented problems in a way you've never even touched, nor had any idea where to look for that, it's bad. I asked if he could give us more homework that would help us to think on the level of what we get tested on and he refused. He even said he doesn't like the level of difficulty of the text book we're using but if that's the case, we need to change that and learn from something along the lines of testing standards.

Drinking black coffee and gonna read some of A Dull Roar and finish my English assignment. I also need to transplant my plants.