It's Christmas time!

I love this time of year but you know what I am already dreading? The last day of vacation and having to get ready for work the next day. Merry Christmas, everyone! Fuck that PC shit. MERRY CHRISTMAS.

This makes me want to barf

Halliburten is getting sued! Read this nasty shit-

"The lawsuit also accuses KBR of shipping ice in mortuary trucks that "still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice. This ice was served to U.S. forces."

Eller also accuses KBR of failing to maintain a medical incinerator at Joint Base Balad, which has been confirmed by two surgeons in interviews with Military Times about the Balad burn pit. Instead, according to the lawsuit and the physicians, medical waste, such as needles, amputated body parts and bloody bandages were burned in the open-air pit.

"Wild dogs in the area raided the burn pit and carried off human remains," the lawsuit states. "The wild dogs could be seen roaming the base with body parts in their mouths, to the great distress of the U.S. forces."

See original here-

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/military_kbr_lawsuit_121508w/

project i did for class

FYI it's super jumpy posted. It's better looking otherwise but you get the jist of it and I wanted to share anyway. This was done with Flash.

Facsimilie

Look at this email I received in response to a PDF menu I sent to someone-

"My computer couldn't deal with the fonts embedded in the PDF so the menu is unreadable. Is it possibe to fax it? My fax number is xxx-xxx-xxxx"


I did notice her area code to be Santa Cruz, so I guess I shouldn't be that surprised.

I love and hate fax machines. I love them because I think they're ridiculous. I hate them for a plethora of reasons including the noises it makes, the slow, slow whirring sound of paper being fed through it, and I really hate when you get a busy signal or accidentally call a live number not a fax number.

LEARN TO USE PDFs AND SCANNERS, PEOPLE!

I like the sexy one on the left

I came across this retarded article while looking up weather.

TV shows cause teen sex!

OMG!!!!!!!!!

Even though blaming the current administration is old and tired, I blame Bush. Under Bush, abstinence education trumped common sense. He put abstinence education in the budget in 2002, then in 2006 for the first time in 15 years the amount of pregger teens rose 3%. Correlation? Yah.

Yay!

Man, I can't remember the last time I was this happy. It's like a weight has been lifted. I feel like my little part in the process, no matter how small, was historic. Just thinking about last night when they said he was the 44th president was just.... beautiful. Everyone was jubilant. I CANNOT think of anytime recently that I have felt so wonderfully happy and joyous. It really has been a dark time and a lot of us sadly began to think that was status quo. It will stay dark for a while, but I am looking forward to our country being fucking AWESOME again.

I voted this morning

It took quite a while to vote, a little over an hour. Voting in San Francisco is always kinda funny- there was about a whole alphabet of items to vote for, 22, all the way up to the letter V. Most of them serious but often times there are joke items like naming the sewage plant after George W. Bush.
My waiting experience was nothing like what my sister Camille experienced in New Orleans. She voted early on a weekend, and it took 4.5 hours of waiting. The mayor was asking people why they were voting early, and she said most of them wanted to make sure that their vote counted.
What an exciting day!!! I hope Obama wins. I wore my Obama shirt under another shirt today for good luck. No on discrimination, oh I mean prop 8, no on 4, and no on naming the sewage plant in San Francisco George W Bush! (Albeit funny, it's too negative for my taste.)

i have too much time on my hands.

Occasionally I like to check out what's going on in other areas of this vast country. Here are three highlights from a quiet afternoon of web surfing really random websites.

Bill O'Reilly's website. Here's a fantastic piece of journalism, posted as a link smack in the middle of his website.
"Blondes make good girlfriends but brunettes better wives."

Utah interests me because we drove through SLC once and I recall their newspaper being 1000% fluff. The websites not as bad as I thought it would be but check out a local news station website- they POST the images of criminals!

I thought this fluff piece from Tennessee was especially awesome- man plays banjo during surgery. I think it served a purpose since it looked like some sort of brain procedure.

Enjoy. Or, not!

Halloween party on Friday

We are going to have people over, start your night with us around 8PM for drinks and tunes.

PS We want to be boring and end early. Think cocktail not rager. So come early (earlier than 8 even) or not at all! WUAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Halloweeny

Killian and I are going there. We are doing a couple costume.

Granted, it's mainly because I procrastinated too long and I don't know what else to be. So anyway below is a picture of us in our costumes, I'm Luigi.

darnit, they took my previous picture off the net. (I didn't really want that pic on my computer here at work.)

Here's another not as funny one-

An update for my friend cyberspace

UPDATE. I still don't like the new TV on the Radio. Sometimes first impressions are right, but I would never say that's true all the time with music. This time my shit music monitor was spot on.

For music that doesn't suck, check out Deerhunter. They are most definitely reverb happy, which normally annoys me, but it's still pretty good.


Last night Killian and I saw David Sedaris at the War Memorial Opera House. He told some funny jokes-

"what do you call nuts on a wall?" Answer- walnuts!

"what do you call nuts on your chest?" Answer- chestnuts!

"what do you call nuts on your chin?" Answer- a dick in your mouth!

oops

I've been using Vuze at work which I'm thinking might not be a good idea. I was looking for Stereolab albums and I found one. Well, turned out it wasn't one. It was 16 ALBUMS totaling 1.58 GB. Well at least I'm in Stereolab heaven. And I'm seeing them tonight! Woo Hoo!

You learn something new every day

I learned today "Miss Ann" is a term for a "woman of European descent who runs a household which employs female workers of African descent to perform tasks such as cooking, cleaning, ironing, etc."  Basically it's a term for a racist white bitch who took advantage of cheap black labor in the south, maybe even during slave times, and is a very negative term.  

Dammit!  

Until now I was only always embarrassed by the term "red-headed step child," since I literally was a red headed step child growing up!  NOW me, super white ANN, fits the definition of TWO shitty cliches.  Granted I personally don't employ black people but I am super white and my name is Ann, that's bad enough.

New actually original google tool

Good idea for those bad idea nights

Knock knock knocking on heaven's door

I am sort of a morbid person, that kinda happens to you if you lose someone close to you when you are a kid. But lately I feel like death is getting closer and closer to me! EEERRRIIEEEE!

There have been two fatal shootings on Treat Ave, my street, in the last two months. So, that sucks. Then, this 28 year old guy got hit by a drugged tranny at 21st and Mission at 8AM in the morning last weekend. The poor dude was just walking to work! 21st is my cross street. Finally, this SF girl was killed in New Orleans, where my sister lives. That's tragic. I only recently went to NO and get this- the girl was 25 like me and her birthday was Jan 22- she was two days older than me. And only yesterday Killian and I were discussing a cross country road trip, which is similar to what this girl was doing.

Luckily there are some LESSONS LEARNED- don't deal drugs on the street, don't join the Hell's Angels, don't walk on Mission Street and always be aware of traffic (don't turn iPod up too high) and finally, don't ride my bike through the Ninth ward in the middle of the night.

I don't really think I'm going to die today or tomorrow (knock on wood) but tragic deaths like these remind me to make the most of this life! Kids, wear your helmets, don't get too wasted and start fights, don't join motorcycle gangs, and always watch your back. Let's make it to at least 45 when its more about cancer and heart attacks.

BRUCE DERN IS THE BEST

I was originally going to write about John McCain, but why bother when people like actor BRUCE DERN are so much cooler?



Last night I watched "The Trip," a movie by Roger Corman about LSD starring Peter Fonda, costarring Dennis Hopper and Bruce Dern (of the HBO series Big Love and a personal favorite, The Burbs). It chronicles Peter Fonda taking acid and Bruce Dern is supposed to lead him through the "trip" but Peter wanders off and has lots of sex with a girl that's both a new love interest and his ex-wife. TRIIPPPYY!!!!



If you read Brucy's IMDB, you will learn the sad story of how he has been underutilized in his acting career. For example. Its been argued (by who I have no idea) he should have played the role of The Great Gatsby rather than Robert Redford. But, sadly, looking at the guy you see why.

Interestingly, his grandfather was a governor of Utah, which makes me think he's from Mormon decent. But that's speculation I have no idea. Bruce Dern's daughter is Laura Dern, of Jurrasic Park and Blue Velvet (with, again, Dennis Hopper). And what else? His god-mother was Eleanor Roosevelt and his son-in-law is Ben Harper. What a weird but awesome family.

This morning I was looking for a picture of McCain and I was struck by how much McCain looks like Bruce Dern in the pictures below. They don't look that much alike otherwise. Maybe you disagree, I dunno, the more I look at it the less I see it but that was my initial reaction.


Bruce Dern


John McCain

The reason I was looking for a picture of John McCain is because of this.

This is the conclusion of your much needed introduction to Bruce Dern. Did you ever think in your wildest dreams you would know so much about the man? You are welcome.

First impression of "Dear Science," TV on the Radio

Wow I can't believe this album is getting such positive reviews. It's pretty uninspired and pop-ish. "Family Tree" is like a wannabe Coldplay epic and "Dancing Choose" is a Dan Deacon ripoff. It makes me cringe a little it's so bad. They do this thing on a few songs where the music is discordant, which can be cool in certain situations. Here, to me, it just sounds wrong. Judge for yourself but my first impression here is "blah."

It's lacking the flirtations with darkness the other albums touched on. You can tell the studio quality is super high, which I think takes away from the great, gritty sound of the singer's voice and makes the instruments lack soul. I wanted to like it because I've enjoyed their other two albums but I can't talk myself into it. It has a good song here and there, "Golden Age" is fine, and the instruments get good on "Lover's Day," in an Arcade Fire, crescendoing way. "DLZ" progressively gets more interesting but the sort of singing/rapping reminds you of rap rock from the 90s. Too soon for that trend, I'm afraid. Overall a forgettable album. Pitchfork gave it a high number as well as Spin. They are plain wrong. Don't buy it, I'll give you my burned version if you want to give it a try.

I want to stress this is my first impression, because too many times to count in the past I've hated albums at first but then enjoyed them later on. So, I promise to listen to the album a few more times and then give an update. Not that you care, but I'm curious for myself to see if I'll change my mind.

Here's some gangsta shit

Instead of going out last night, I decided to watch a marathon of The Wire episodes I had on Netflix. The Wire, if you haven't seen it, is a great show about crime in Baltimore, Maryland that ranges from street level gang shit to corruption in local government.

So basically I was busy watching a cop show when I notice there are flashing lights hitting the blinds on my windows that face the street. I think it might be a tow truck, not caring much. But then I hear a megaphone of a woman saying "step out of the vehicle." I jump up and look out the window to see a black Acura with people in it right in front of our apartment, and 6 COP CARS in a row with their lights flashing (no sirens) behind the first cop car. The cops have their guns pulled.

I lose it. I run to the bathroom convinced a stray bullet is about to enter my apartment, and Killian, like the really smart guy he is, wants to film the event through our front window with his iPhone. The woman continues to tell the people to step out of the vehicle, and they aren't complying.

A little background- in the last month and a half, there have been two murders on Treat Avenue, my street. It's extremely unnerving because Treat is normally the calm amongst the storm that is the Mission District. There were two murders up our street recently and that's been creepy (one was the leader of the Hell's Angels in SF). And in addition to those two, there have been a lot more shootings around. I've seen countless cop cars patrolling the area. And I think most people have become more jumpy and aware of things; it's much quieter on the streets in the evenings.

So back to last night- I'm listening to the policewoman on the megaphone telling these people to get out of the car, and it was intense because you could tell she was trying to sound calm and authoritative but they weren't getting out of the car and who knows what was happening (I was in the bathroom, and I finally convinced Killian to get the fuck away from the window) but her voice would get excited and nervous and you could tell they didn't have control over the situation yet. I peek out and see a bit of the street from our bathroom window, and I see a cop running up the street with his gun drawn.

So that goes on for a while. Then loudspeaker voice finally starts sounding like people got out of the car and are complying, so we go to our front door (which has a window out) and peek to see what's happening now. Five kids are getting handcuffed and the cops are looking in the car. Then Matt walks right up the stairs with his bike, and is in disbelief that he just came home to this. He said in addition to the 6 cop cars down the street, there are additional squad cars blocking the street up where we can't see.

So by this point we are outside standing on our porch, and the excitement is dying down, the kids are being put into squad cars. There are some cops checking the vehicle, and one opens the trunk of the car. All of the sudden, like 4 cops jump back and some draw their guns because there was a fucking kid in the trunk! He was lucky they didn't shoot him because you could tell he scared the shit out of everyone. Apparently he was in the trunk because there was no room in the car. THAT was funny.

What we deduced is the kids stole the car and were joy riding or something around the Mission. They may or may not have been gangsters, to me they just looked like high school kids being retarded, but unlucky for them bad timing because with all the recent murders, the cops are not taking any chances.

At first I started thinking, hmm, maybe we should consider moving, but then I thought, last night they put a total of 9 cop cars on one stolen vehicle that may or may not have been something really serious. So now I'm thinking, we are probably in the safest place!

Finally the world is right

Everything is now okay.

No more politics from me I promise

I will get a hernia if I bother to follow this presidential race every free second of my time. I've been having dreams about it and that's too far in my book. Reading the Daily Kos is more depressing than dead kittens. Hearing that people want to vote for McCain because Palin is a woman makes my blood boil. If I hear one more person say Obama isn't qualified, I will throw up. So then you'd rather vote for McCain, huh? That's your argument? Obama is a fucking self made success. Went to Harvard. Is clearly super intelligent. He's a senator. He loves this country and fuck if you're president, you HIRE the best people where you're shaky on the issues. I would love to have him as a representative for my America.
McCain married into money- to a woman who's family that distributes Budweiser. I love beer, but that's not bettering society now is it. He's 72 years old. He's really out of touch with America's economic problems. He's part of the party that's fucked it up for the last 8 years. He's insulted women by just picking any woman (a crazy woman) to be on the ticket. Clearly they're afraid of her too because they won't let the "bulldog" off the leash. Where is there even an issue here?

After this post I'm done being political. I'll keep this blog to irreverant humor. Modern government overall serves as a mechanism to suck money out of our pockets and find new and interesting ways to tax us little people to serve the interests of the rich. Doesn't matter what party. I'd like to think otherwise but the Democratic congress is doing jack shit right now, how's it really going to be different? Obama will be too busy cleaning up a mess to do anything fantastic.

Why won't they legalize weed? Can't tax it, too abundant. Why keep us dependent on oil? Can't tax solar energy, too abundant (they'll find a way to tax it I don't doubt). The modern U.S. is built on the rich, competitive, eat or be eaten, get power and stay in power at all costs, Rockefeller way of life. Federal government is important for civil liberties, but we are becoming too dependent on the idea that the federal government should have its hand in community issues like education and wealthfare. And our reps have little idea as well; they all come from money. So. Fuck it. Done and done.

Here's a cute picture of a kitten!!!!!

Polar bears? That's it. She's the devil.

"McCain's vice-presidential pick, Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin, sued the Bush Administration in federal court recently, charging it was too accepting of climate change studies which overstated the phenomenon's impact on polar bears. The result, she argued, would be a negative impact on her state's businesses, including oil and gas extraction."

See article here

Don't they understand how the internet works?

Palin- "Thanks, but no thanks!"

The only thing the Republican campaign is allowing Palin to claim is that she told Congress "thanks but no thanks" for the bridge to nowhere up in Alaska. Well above is a link to Palin specifically saying she would not change "progress" and she would allow Alaska to take the money.
As proven over and over thus far, the Republican party is having difficulty understanding how the internet works and that it is very easy to prove hypocrisy nowadays. Guess that's what happens when you're a huge bunch of richies who relied on their secretaries a little too much and managed to stay computer illiterate for decades.
She creeps me out. Can't wait for her to be allowed to speak for herself and sound like the crazy she is.

Reality killed the Video Star

Wow, MTV sucks. I know this isn't news but I watched the VMAs yesterday a la DVR and I did a lot of fast forwarding. It's a shadow of what it once was.

I couldn't decide if maybe it always sucked and I grew out of it, or if it just sucks now. I've decided it was probably bad when I liked it, but it's definitely gotten worse. They don't show videos anymore, and the small stable of stars they work hard to promote mostly suck- Pink?! I didn't know she ever became famous and wow, that song of hers is absolutely horrendous. I'm guessing she wrote this song herself and thought it was super good.

lots of what's wrong with society

At least in the original Real World, they attempted to deal with issues like race, AIDs, homosexuality and world events. Now basically everything promotes a heavy consumerist life style of being rich and beautiful. It's so empty it's not even entertaining. I think the only show I sometimes watch on MTV is their True Life series. Death to MTV!

Image made for classs

Sorta fun. Didn't have my flash drive so ya'll get to see this crap.

Stand at your own wake

http://imgs.sfgate.com/n/pictures/2008/08/19/standing5.jpgDeath is no barrier to the party: The body of Angel Pantoja Medina, left, stands leaning against a wall during his wake in his mother's home in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The last wish of Medina, 24, was to be standing at his own wake. He was embalmed for the occasion.

PREGOREXIA

PREGOREXIA. Women who are obsessed with staying thin while incubating their spawn. I HATE THIS WORD, IT JUST SOUNDS STUPID.

I bet being pregnant sucks so fucking hard core. But you know what makes up for all the barfing, dilating of vaginas, stretching, ripping of skin and morphing of your never-to-be-the-same body? You get to eat a lot of food. That really has to be the only enticing thing to me about busting one out. All the ice cream, spicy chicken wings, nachos, and spaghetti I can eat.

Anyone dumb enough to starve themselves while pregnant does not deserve to procreate. THAT is what's wrong with America. Pregorexics.

Marieme

A coworker's niece is working as my "intern." Her name is Marieme, she is 17 and is trying to strengthen her English. Poor thing gets to do boring tasks but we've spent most of the time goofing off and discussing the differences between our cultures.

She taught me the word "beauf" which means dumbass or douche bag. It's for anyone that isn't with it or kind of backward. Her examples- Texas, rednecks or Johnny Halliday, a French singer, which she says is "King of the beauf"-



So we spent an afternoon looking at different people and deciding if they were "beauf." I thought David Hasselhoff, and she agreed.

She taught me the word "branche" (with accent over the e), which I'm a little shaky on, but basically it's like hipsters, but not the followers, the leaders. People who are cool but aren't following trends. She said Daft Punk is an example of that.

Another thing she showed me were tectonic dancers on YouTube. Apparently these guys battle each other. Here's an example-

Go here to see Tectonic dude

We also spent time looking at Sarkozy's wife, Carla Bruni, and checking out her music and lyrics. She has one song that translates to "You are my drug" and the lyrics say "you are more addictive than Columbian coke or Afghan heroin." We concluded she's the hottest President's wife in the world.



Marieme tried Root Beer for the first time, didn't like it. Same with cinnamon gum.

She told me you have to pay to be part of a political party in France. You can vote along party lines, but you must pay 20 Euro per year and then attend a meeting in your city. Also, their conservative party, the UMP, color is blue and the liberal party, the socialist party, is red. CRAZY!

I may learn more, we'll see.

No Blogs in July

I did not blog in July, on purpose, to raise awareness about Procrastination.

Procrastination is becoming a major epidemic. With constant access to the internet and way too many entertainment outlets, even the most disciplined individual can go on a procrastination stupor.

Do your part. Get shit done now.

Wall-E!

I saw Wall-E this weekend. It was really good. I totally fell for the cute as hell character, the emotionally charged, cheese-ball soundtrack, the thinly-veiled preachy "save the world!" theme, the cutesy Pixar humor and the love story between robots that can't actually mate. I recommend it.






Johnny 5 approves of nephew Wall-E.

BBC America. Holy hell

Guess what's actually a show on BBC America?

BRITAIN'S WORST TEETH

It is so hard to watch. On the episode I saw, a girl had plaque on her teeth that protruded a quarter of an inch under her tongue and the dentist picked it off. Then, her brother had to get 9 teeth removed that were rotting out of his skull.

To go the opposite route here, I'm going to show a picture of bad veneers, because I can't even stomach the image of rotting teeth.



Guess what other quality reality television shows are offered on the same channel?

TOO UGLY TO LOVE
TRANSVESTITE WIVES
MY SECRET FEMALE BODY

Awesome.

6 feet wash up to shore

Nike is great for one thing- other than cheap child labor- buoyant shoes. Read this bizarre article.

6 Feet wash up to shore in Canada

Balloon animals!

I was looking at a website that mentioned something about balloon animals, and I figured that's got to be something worth checking out in google images. Here is a handful.

Burka porn

Most people probably saw the Duncan Donuts ad of Rachel Ray wearing a scarf. The ad was pulled since people accused the paisley scarf of in fact being a keffieyeh, which is a national symbol of the Palestinian people, and a hot accessory of fashionistas all over who are supposedly political. Apparently Urban Outfitters had to pull the keffieyehs they were selling for similar reasons.
I actually like the way they look; I'd wear one if I could intelligently discuss the whole Palestinian Israeli conflict. But I can't. Which made me think of yamikas. Unfortunately for the Jewish, keffieyehs are just cooler looking and more easily wearable than yamikas.
When I looked up yamikas just now, this totally racist image popped up in the top images and I will post it now here-


Terrible. But anyway I started thinking about other middle eastern fashions that would be cool to appropriate for a future H&M purchase. The only item I know of is the Burka, and that's not too wearable.

So I got quite a surprise when I searched for burkas a la the "goog," and two of the three thumbnail images were burka porn. And let me tell you- HOTT! You go ahead and search, I'm not going to repost here in my PG-13 blog. (Yes racist images are PG-13).

Morals of the story- Darwinism proven wrong by Republicans. Religious items associated with political hot topics could be sold at Hot Topic. Racist images of Jews are so ridiculous and retarded, they're funny.

IKEA to start selling cars

A coworker sent this to me.



Ikea ha anunciat la seva intenció de vendre cotxes BONA SORT!!!!!

R.I.P. 4'3"/ Body Builder

Recently Matt Gibson and I had an interesting conversation about a Chronicle article re: the Berkeley stabbing of a 21-year old student last week. We had both noticed in the article that the reporter quoted stats from the dead boy's MySpace page. Here's the section of the article quoting myspace-

Wootton was active in his fraternity, serving as vice president and pledge educator.

"Nobody can have a better set of friends than I do," he wrote on his MySpace page. "I'm a Sigma Pi for life."

Wootton listed on MySpace the Bible as one of his favorite books and Jesus as one of his top interests.

Among his heroes, he listed "Jesus, my mom, my dad, my big brother, really wise people."

So what if you die and people look to your myspace page as a representation of you and as a source for quotes if you get brutally murdered? It's one thing to know people look there for job interviews, I can handle that, but when your body is cold and hard and you can't say "oh I was just kidding" or "being ironic", that kinda sucks.

I am currently lacking in obituary fluff. I currently "like most music," love the movie "Red Dawn", the show "Breaking Bad", "would like to meet- a gnome terrorizing fishermen in South America", and "About me- biding my time". I don't list influences like Jesus and my family. Maybe that means I'm not mature enough to die yet. Only the good die young. KNOCK ON WOOD.

If you feel like being morbid, you can check out MyDeathSpace.Com. It's a site that archives the myspace pages of people that have died. It's especially sad because it's mainly young people who died in car accidents and suicides.

Disturbing trend- old people's past sex lives

There must be a lack of vaginas being flashed because all of the sudden the big news in the celebrity world is "who I had sex with in '78". And then the press shows you a hot picture of the said individual at the time of the affair, which yes, makes it more interesting.





But let's not forget that this is all not current news. If this was current news, it would go like this.

Carrie Fisher humped....

Harrison Ford.

Barbara Walters did it with...


US. Senator Edward Brooke




Jimi Hendrix made a sex tape with...



these women



I hope some young starlets start up some booze and coke habits because I would rather read that than about this dusty, boring gossip.

Someone really thinks the world needs this product

So do you ever really take a look at the ads to the right of your google search? This one caught my eye-

My Sweet Pee

Killian and me on the news

Killian and I went to Best Buy on Sunday. I bought a cheap vacuum to replace our broken one, and Killian bought MarioKart for his Wii and two additional steering wheels for the game. As we left Best Buy, we were interviewed by ABC 7 news. They asked us if we were going to receive a rebate, and what would we spend the money on. Thank God for editing, because both us gave terrible responses. And I strongly doubt he believed our answers as we left Best Buy with tons of packages. And I didn't know that my face was so fat. Healthy diet starts NOW. Watch it-

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=6107005

Vampire Weekend? More like Vampire POO

Am I the only person in the world that thinks this band is overrated? They're not bad, but a lot of people LOVE them, ERGO I loathe them. They do not deserve as much admiration as they are receiving.




The stylings of Vampire Weekend appropriate an array of different sounds, including but not limited to Wolf Parade's beats and melodies (the portion of the music which tricks people into thinking they're worthwhile), Paul Simon's Graceland, Sting vocals... and it may just be the upbeat tone of the music or the fact that they will be a one-record-of-the-summer wonder, but they remind me of Sugar Ray.




I am also (admittedly unfairly) biased against the fact that they are from an Ivy league school. Come on, leave the rock and roll to us poor people! Little fucks.



I took the below review from "Ivy Tunes," what seems to be a student-run blog called "Ivy Gate." It inadvertently describes Vampire Turds to the T - (from http://www.ivygateblog.com/blog/2006/12/ivytunes_what_is_this_strange_positive_emotion_that_has_come_over_me.html)

"Usually, Ivy League acts are bad because they're Ivy League. You know: competent but uninspired. No rough edges. Irrationally sure of themselves. And totally derivative. If you're smart enough, talented enough or connected enough to get into an Ivy, you probably don't need rock 'n' roll to save your life. At that point it's just another extracurricular.

But Vampire Weekend manages, against all odds, to make its Iviness a virtue. In rock, brainy usually means bad. Here, it's thrilling..."

WHAT? Should have stopped before the "BUT." Well that's my rant for the day.

Panda panda panda

Drop acid and do it in the cemetery

We visited a New Orleans cemetery in the Garden district in March (down the street from Emeril's first stomping grounds, the Commander's Palace. BAM.) When you drive from the airport, one of the first things you see are a whole bunch of modern, above ground cemeteries. The one we saw dates back to the 1800s.




Cemeteries are above ground because New Orleans is below sea level. You may know this bit of information from a little thing called Hurricane Katrina. At first, they would bury the dead by trying to weigh down coffins with stones, or bore holes in the wood, but inevitably, the bodies would pop up, and then everyone would get sick because of yellow fever and other fun, old timey diseases like that. So, they settled for the Spanish style of cemetery- the vault.



The body is placed in a family tomb when the person dies on the top shelf. After a year of decomposing, the body is then pushed down into a hole in the back and falls into a pile that is your dead lineage. If two people die in the same family in the same year, they have these temporary vaults where you sit for a year.



The best thing about old cemeteries is seeing the great last names that probably disappeared when that person died- like the "Apffel", "Egdorff" or "Guth"- or seeing last names that are so New Orleanian- "Deshautreaux" "Sirjacques" and "Abade".



Societies like the Masons and others would build massive tombs. They also had charity tombs for the free black people and orphans. Probably would have been cooler to just give them the money when they were alive, but whatevs.