stAllio!'s way
more salon goodness:
republicans for kerry? highlights how moderate republicans are being forced out of the party by the radical right.
every so often i'll go to
salon & sit through the ad so i can get that elusive "day pass" that allows you to read their articles without subscribing (actually, at first i put up my hand to block the screen from view until it was over, but then i realized the ad was for the book
house of bush, house of saud, which i'm actually curious about, so then i watched the ad).
today's big story on salon is
an in-depth feature on justice anton scalia. the focus of the article is on how scalia has increasingly marginalized himself over the past few years, with his radical opinions & unwillingness to even acknowledge that those who disagree might not be out of their minds. (did i just forget that scalia actually had to recuse himself from the pledge of allegiance case because of some ridiculous off-the-cuff remark?)
there's also this interesting story (actually an AP story, but i read it on salon & today is "salon links day") about
a media squabble between cnn & david letterman. i haven't watched any late night show other than conan in years, but apparently on tuesday night, dave aired a video that "showed Bush at a March rally in Orlando, Fla., standing at a lectern with several listeners behind him -- among them, a boy in his early teens who could barely stay awake. While Bush spoke, the young man yawned, twisted his head, checked his watch and generally seemed dead on his feet."
the story continues:
Tuesday morning, CNN attempted to lighten its news mood by running the segment, credited to CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman,'' on its ``CNN Live Today.''
But then CNN host Daryn Kagan added: "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video, which would explain why the people around him weren't really reacting.''
Later, during CNN's "Live From ...,'' anchor Kyra Phillips reran the tape but cautioned viewers: "We're told that the kid was there at that event, but not necessarily standing behind the president.''
The truth was: The White House never complained, and the footage was real.
but
krugman at the nyt describes it differently:
But here's the really interesting part: CNN backed down, but it told Mr. Letterman that Ms. Kagan "misspoke," that the White House was not the source of the false claim. (So who was? And if the claim didn't come from the White House, why did CNN run with it without checking?)
In short, CNN passed along a smear that it attributed to the White House. When the smear backfired, it declared its previous statements inoperative and said the White House wasn't responsible. Sound familiar?
the AP article blindly accepts cnn's later statement that the white house was not the source, & with that seem content to let the story drop... or at least, AP goes on to hype up the "confusion" aspect, but does not follow up on
where the confusion actually came from. only krugman wonders who would actually make such a ridiculous accusation, if not the white house, or why cnn would bother airing it.
the yawning kid is
booked for tonight's letterman show, & his press is now handled
by the white house in a blatant bit of bush damage control (but it's nevertheless an amusing media tidbit).
(
krugman's column [if you can even
read it; registration req'd] also contains a nice [but short] rebuttal to bush flack jim wilkinson for his recent character assasination work against richard clarke... wilkinson gets
a much longer rebuke from buzzflash in a detailed piece that covers the highlights of wilkinson's career as a top bushco PR dude.)
oh yeah, getting back to salon, there's also a
nice interview with former senator gary hart, who personally warned powell, rice, & rumsfeld about terrorism in jan2k1. hart alleges that bushco sat on the idea of homeland security until after 9/11, among other things.
had an uneventful night at mom & dad's house last night... watching tv in the living room & sleeping in the guest room.
by this morning dad seemed to be feeling better. his fever never got too high. so the worst has probably passed (it does seem to be a fast flu, coming & going within a day or two)
& in a sign of what kind of day today will be at work, i went to get some coffee first thing, only to discover that someone had brewed a pot of coffee
without adding any coffee. they just stuck in an empty coffee filter & turned it on. (i dumped it out & brewed some real coffee, but not until after getting a witness)
some basic medical info about
pituitary tumors (apparently they're surprisingly common) and
hypopituitarism. i'm pretty sure dad has the "insufficient thyroid-stimulating hormone production" (aka
hypothyroidism). because the
thyroid regulates metabolism, the result is kinda, sorta, kinda like an immunodeficiency. kinda.
so last thursday i was sick. i mentioned that a couple posts ago. i wasn't even sure it was an actual "illness" until connie got sick the next evening. so it was pretty clearly a bug, & i'm guessing i caught it from unszene's kid (although that is only a guess).
i thought it would end there, but then on monday, my sister & brother in law got sick! & my brother in law even got more sick than i did. so on monday my sister had to leave work early & take my nephew over to visit his grandparents (my parents). then on tuesday they both laid around at home recovering. but they both seem better (my sister's at work now), so i was
sure that
now the cycle was complete & the illness could move on.
then today i got the email that now my parents are sick! hoo boy! & now a bit of history...
when i was in high school, one day my father awoke to discover that he could not open one of his eyes. i don't remember which eye (left or right), but i do know that it was his
good eye. so effectively he could not see unless he propped his eyeball open. good times. & that wasn't his only symptom either, only the most prominent one.
for obvious reasons he sought medical attention. & before long he was diagnosed with a tumor on his pituitary gland. if you don't know what the pituitary is, it's like the godfather of glands. it's very tiny, but with a little help from a couple other glands, the pituitary regulates pretty much everything in your body. not the ideal place to start growing tumors.
so he was out of commission in the hospital for awhile, & probably could have died (& almost certainly would have if things had not been discovered when they were). they cut out the tumor, but a significant chunk of the pituitary itself came off with it. so essentially there is a big hole in my father's brain, right in the control center. ever since, he's been prescribed a zesty cocktail of hormones that keep him alive. without his scripts he would almost certainly perish.
now those scripts work pretty well in normal conditions, but like i said his body can't really regulate on its own. so when things vary from situation normal, it gets all fucked up. the net result is that dad has a good old aids-style immunodeficiency. a common cold or flu bug can royally screw him up. the last couple times he caught an illness, he's ended up in the emergency room, half delirious.
so like i was saying before that arctangent... mom & dad have caught the illness. dad has a fever around 102. if his fever hits 103.5 he is supposed to go to the ER. but mom's sick too; she's puking aplenty. this is where i come in.
tonight i will most likely be staying at mom & dad's house. just hanging out, watching tv, reading comics, & if necessary, rushing dad to the emergency room at a moment's notice. because mom's sure not in any condition to do it.
someone posted the
prison bitch name generator on imn. of course, these name generators are usually pretty lame (though not as lame as the "which pizza topping are you?" type quizzes that clutter up livejournal), but the first name it generated for me was The Crack Killer, which is kinda cool (much better than Fuzzy Nuts or Cum Stain, which i got for entering other variations of my name).
but what caught my eye there was the animation of the woman stripping in the top banner. so i clicked it to go the
galleries, assuming that the galleries must be full of porn. i was fairly disappointed when the first gallery was just lame pictures of cycling.
yawn. eventually i did find a few pics of people flashing in the "ragbrai" galleries, but more interesting than those, i thought, was the
fan pics gallery.
how do these little websites get random strange women on the internet to write the site's name on their bodies & pose for nude photos? seriously, this would be a good skill to have. hell, even my own lovers tell me they're not interested in posing nude (not that i beg them for it; it just comes up. although it'd be super cool to have a couple shots of my lovely girlfriend, just something private to keep me warm on those lonesome nights at sea). so i can't even imagine what would be needed to inspire some woman i don't even know to write
stAllio! on her ass & flash her snatch for the camera. hell, i'd settle for some seminude shots of girls wearing
stAllio! thongs (which people keep telling me they're going to buy, but still don't)... ooh, or girls wearing
awia t-shirts & nothing underneath. i mean damn, is there just a certain type of exhibitionist woman who goes around submitting these types of fan pics, or is it just part of the phenomenon of fandom that some of your fans get so excited their clothes come off? because if it's the latter, i need some better fans.
(yes, before you say it, i did get a friend to pose topless for the cover of
maura's milk chocolate bath, but that was a very specific idea for an art project & photo shoot; she didn't just rip her blouse off because she loves me. very different scenarios.)
i mean, seriously, if people started sending me fan photos like the ones in that fanpix gallery, i would totally use them in the cover art for my next project, or print them for a collage on my wall, or
something. they would be used for something (more than just pleasuring myself). they wouldn't just take up space on my website.
or maybe it's just that my girlfriend lives far away, so since i can't look at her sexy body very often i just beg for personalized porn from my blog readers. but even if that's true, i would
totally get off on st! fan pics & try to do something productive/artistic with them.
for real.
tonight was the special saturday-night breakcore/punk/dnb event at the melody inn. good turnout, especially considering it was saturday at the mel yet it was not "punk rock night".
got there early; not sure who was spinning at the time but they played a lot of 2-step & slightly more "accessible" dnb. not too bad, but i've definitely heard better in my (limited) experience at dnb night.
after that was
the sump pumps. they are basically a punk rock band with a synth player. the synth player alternated between a moog & a "key-tar". since i generally don't like punk rock, it should be no surprise that i was not feeling these guys, but it seemed like everyone else in the room was, so i have to give them credit for that. i did like what i heard of the synths though. & their cd apparently comes packaged inside an old 5 1/4" floppy (yes, i've seen it before, but it's still a cool packaging idea).
next up was the skumfux (dj tagteam between jahba & sumone). they spun some good hard ragga jungle, with maybe a dash of breakcore (i have no idea where the line is between hard jungle & breakcore). they also spun a couple of their dub plates, which sounded pretty good.
throughout all this i sat by myself at a table drinking woodchucks & watching either the stage or the handful of hotties in the club, not speaking to anyone except enduser for a minute (& there was also a girl there who reminded me of a girl i met at goth night there 4 years ago & went on a date with... on the date i was really mopey & talked a lot about my loneliness for some reason... when she later rejected me in an email [which in hindsight probably shouldn't have been a surprise] i blew up & went on a rant... anyway, i have no idea if this was the same girl or not, but at one point we made eye contact & she asked if my name was alex. maybe it was her & she just couldn't place me).
when
enduser took the stage i ran up to the front & stayed there, pretty much directly in front of him, dancing & rocking out for his set. he did a great ragga breakcore set like i expected.
maybe 30-40 minutes into his set i developed some gas pain, but i don't trust the melody bathroom enough to sit there as long as would be necessary. the pain didn't want to go away either. but i stayed right at the front of the stage supporting enduser like a good bwoy.
after enduser, 9mm took the decks. jahba announced on the mic that 9mm deserves our respect because he drives 5-6 hours to get in indy (from cleveland) & he's already been in indy 3x this month. that's all well & good; he sounded good; & he sounded good when i heard him previously on tuesday as well. but like i said to enduser: "my stomach hurts. i have to go." so i picked up some
sonicterror merch, gave enduser a
recycle shirt, & headed home to the commode. that was like 1:30. now it's 4am, i'm listening to my new acquisitions, & i'm up too late writing emails & blog entries...
i took connie to the bus station yesterday afternoon. it was depressing; we weren't ready to part yet, but i guess that's how it goes. at least we'll see each other again in two months.
all in all it was a great vacation & a great visit. she says she loves indiana (not sure how i managed that), & we had lots of good times & good meals. nice restaurants, a couple shows and/or club nights, & a trip to the
new indiana state museum (which is actually pretty cool).
on thursday morning (the day before she left) i vomited. morning sickness isn't
too unusual for me; it happens once every month or two just from exhaustion, hunger, & my weird digestive system. but the nausea didn't quite go away, which
is a bit unusual, & i had other nasty symptoms like diarrhea, which gave way to gas & gas pain (how does that work?)
thursday nights are goth night, & i had committed to a couple people that we would be there, so all day thursday we just sat around watching tv & listening to records, hoping that i would feel fine again in time to go to the club. i thought i was going pretty well until i vomited again at 8:30pm (& once more later, dry heaves even). that was enough to tell me we weren't going out.
friday morn i felt mostly better, though my appetite didn't really return until dinnertime. i'm still not really sure what it was. one theory was just bad diet from being on vacation. another was that i picked up some bug when we were visiting unszene (since i thought i heard that his wife & kid had been sick recently). another theory was that it was just nerves because i was upset connie would leave again. most likely it was a combination of nerves & something else (connie apparently felt ill last night & this morning, so it seems unlikely to have been nerves alone).
but anyway, the illness wasn't so bad it invalidated the vacation or anything. overall i'm still really happy with the past week; there are just a couple illness-type details i wish i could've avoided.
(oh yeah, the show on the 20th was fun, although it was during spring break in bloomington so we got only about 14 paying customers at the door. but lots of great music, & i traded some test pressings for great bad taste t-shirts & buttons... look out for those soon!)
