Where is everybody?

What up? Halloween is going down in our apartment building. We've had zero visitors so far to our dwindling bowl of candy (that's an invitation if any of you have any kids to bring around). Last year we only had one group of kids and ended up giving them all the candy we hadn't eaten already. It was awesome.
So... the Redskins lost today. I can't say I'm too sad since this now means that Bush will also lose. Kerry has the "Royal British blood edge", too.

If you don't get the pun...

New Team name next season? I'm just playing around with ideas here, but it's never too early to get started.

Rumsfeld... Secretary of Evil

Don't know if anyone else was nerdy enough to skip five innings of the Boston game to watch the Frontline Rumsfeld documentary on pbs, but it was really informative and angering... mostly angering... so angering that I can't even think of another word for becoming angry.
After a troublesome first inning, it would appear that Pedro Martinez starts pitching well when I change the channel. Let's go non-yankees!

Ashlee Simpson (one too many "e"s and a lot of lipsynching

Please tell me that someone else was a big loser watching SNL and watched as Ashlee Simpson's voice track started playing before she had a microphone in front of her mouth and she walked off stage and they cut to a commercial. Afterwards she blamed the band for playing the wrong song. She was a good sport about it... but man, that was certainly amusing to watch.

Read this and be everso sad

Report from pipa (funny name, not funny report). Link is to a pdf file. If it doesn't work, go here and click on the Report Findings link at the bottom for the raw data.
Just a taste? "A large majority of Bush supporters believe that before the war Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or a major program for building them. A substantial majority of Bush supporters assume that most experts believe Iraq had WMD and that this was the conclusion of the recently released report by Charles Duelfer. A large majority of Bush supporters believes that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda and that clear evidence of this support has been found. A large majority believes that most experts also have this view, and a substantial majority believe that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Large majorities of Kerry supporters believe the opposite on all these points."
Dumbasses. They call it cognitive dissonance or "The realization of contradictions in one's own attitudes and behaviors."

Anosmia... A Sign of Weakness

Just kidding! Seriously, though.... that would be so disappointing if ZiCam caused you to lose your sense of smell and taste. Luckily, the oral version is about as harmful as one of the other causes of anosmia: The Common Cold. That's right. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. ZiCam makes the cold last for less time and might cause anosmia. The common cold could last longer and also might cause anosmia. My suggestion? Test your sense of smell every 5 minutes while you have a cold. Sniff gross stuff to see if you're still Anosmia-free. Wait. You can't smell when you have a cold anyway.... How would you ever know?
I looked up a bunch on this condition to find out more (why else would I look it up... do find out less?) Anyhoo, this site talks about it a bit and this site talks about zinc injection in general. I think the lesson from what I read is that it's only nasal ZiCam that might cause Anosmia and if you've ever smoked a cigarette or smelled some diesel fumes and thought "mmmm.. diesel" you've probably done more damage to your olfactories (or the "olfies" as I like to call them) than a few spritzes from my favorite cold remedy... ZiCam.

Sorry, Can't Talk. Need to go

buy a motorcycle and start driving/crashing around Chile and Peru.
The Motorcycle Diaries was excellent. I give it a "Girls-Really-Think-This-Lead-Actor-Guy-Is-Hot" Rating of +12 and an "I'm-Leaving-This-Bourgeois-Filled-Cesspool-for-Life-on-the-Road" rating of +18.
The cinematography, script and acting were excellent.
Also, it's in Spanish. So if you're rusty you can brush up and if you don't speak any Spanish you can read the subtitles and start thinking about how in 50 years knowing a little Spanish would probably be a good idea. (How else will you think of new ways to make fun of Jorge?) This notion should encourage all of us to get on motorcycle/scooters and drive down to Chile. I'll start lining up sponsors this afternoon.
I had a dream last night that I started working for another company and that a week after I'd started the new company was acquired by my old company and I ended up working for the same people again.

Many good bands

are out there. DCFC was the acronym that becky/peggy used on the blog for DeathCab For Cutie. It was quite clever.
Has anyone ever been to pitchforkmedia.com? It's a pretty good music site that would take years to read entirely. I barely get a chance to look at it, but they have pretty good reviews.
I hate to say it, but I downloaded to the new Green Day album off of allofmp3.com and it's really good.

A music plug, not Kickball related

Between this and the email tree, who needs to talk to anyone?
Those that are DCFC fans, you should check out The Postal Service. It is a guy from DCFC and someone else... the names escape me. Pretty good indie techy rock.
That's all I gots to say... no more at this time...

Bad Religion and Screaching Weasel. Both kick ass

I really signed in to tell Jorge's Burger King loving self that he would be happy to hear that Burger King has decided to pull all of its advertising on Sinclair stations all the live long day they're showing the anti-Kerry documentary. Finally, another reason to love the king.
And OH! I posted that other one too early and forgot to mention how delusional Bush is and how you know it for sure when The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, "We're not going to have any casualties."
Also, yes. I have heard of Screaching Weasel. They rock. Bad Religion rocks too, but lost me with The Gray Race. I saw them yelling about how much Bush sucks sometime recently and realized they've probably made some better music since.

Boston WINS!

Just as I pressed the publish button Ortiz hit a grounder to center field and brought Damon home. Sweet. Only 2 more wins in a row and the Red Sox will actually win. There are soooooo.... many drunk red sox fans hugging each other right now it makes me nauseous.

Stupid Yankees

If anyone else is stuck staying up late and watching this baseball game, you know what I mean.... then again, Boston's pretty dumb for not having scored yet.
Let's see.... looks like Thursday is out for watching the movie if there's a party to go to where there will be TWO (count them) TWO Toms. That's one more than one Tom and a good reason for excitement all around.
Eric sent me a link to Jon Stewart on Crossfire. It's important that everyone watch it... Immediately.
I also just noticed that Netflix will be delivering Rambo: First Blood to my doorstep (ok, not really the doorstep, but the mailbox downstairs) tomorrow afternoon. I feel that it's important that we all see this movie together, as a team.
If I see one more inning of Boston fans with their hands over their mouths praying and looking sad or Yankee players acting like total douchebags I think I might just start playing professional baseball myself to show these people a thing or two.

Oh yeah, pictures.

This here is a team photo from last Thursday. Everbody else email any other pics that you're too lazy to post yourself to me at elgreg@gmail.com or my other email address if you have it (but I do not like to post all over the internet for folks to see.. Who're you calling paranoid?) I'll see that those pictures are posted in a timely fashion.
I haven't seen Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, The Motorcycle Diaries, or any of the other bazillion movies that I always say "I really want to see that" about and then don't go see. So holla if you're off to see a film because I could obviously use the motivation... unless that film is Shall we Dance, which I view as so terrible that I refuse to even link to a website that mentions its name. I'm shuddering right now. I wish you could all see me... Shuddering.

You're damned right it's nice out.

I just got finished sifting through the Post from Fri, Sat and Sun while sitting on yee 'old balconie and listening to people yell at eachother on the street. It was awesome. The paper definitely piles up. I'm considering switching to Sunday only and reading it online the rest of the week... I mean, shit, I barely have time on weekday mornings (let alone the nonexistent evenings) and my neighbor is just going to steal the Sat. one anyway.
Later on I spent a few minutes trying to shoo a yellow-jacket out of the living room. That was also quite awesome. I'm not sure if he made it out, but he's not crawling around on the inside of the balcony door anymore, so that's good.
Jef asked me last night what the hell all of us were going to do on Thursday. He brings up a good point. What are we going to do now that kickball is "over"? I say, we come up with something else that involves drinking and hanging out together and just call it "kickball." That way we can tell our bosses that we have to punch out at 6 b/c we have "kickball" when we really just mean that we're going to go hang out with our kickball team. This week Jef and I came up with the ancient notion of all of us sitting around and watching Office Space. I hereby offer Rosanna and my apartment for the Thursday night watchivities, but also believe that its decentralized location sucks and would recommend other offerings of people with larger televisions... so... umm... yeah, let's hear those offers roll on in.
And for all you lawyers out there, have you read this Vanity Fair article about Supreme Court Clerks breaking their vows of silence. I had no idea that they were monks and clerks. That's nutty!

Kick a voting machine??

I had no idea I was playing kickball with such a hardcore group of politicos! You guys rock. You play kickball and have a social conscience. If you are into politics and music, visit Music For America. A friend of mine is the executive director and it's pretty cool. I ran into her last weekend in Montana and you can get into some sweet concerts for free if you volunteer with them to register voters. Visit the UnStore for some cool 'gifts' for your 'donation'.

Now, back to kickball. Peggy- That is the best little poem/prayer. You must have been bored! Well done. We are going to have fun tonight and play a sweet game of kickball- not dodgeball.
Don't tie the headband to tight tonight, we need all synapses operating at full capacity.
See ya on the field!

This is ridiculous

Remember when Bushie said that they have 75% of Al Qaeda dead or captured?
Wolf Blitzer of all people called out Condoleeza on the fact that they don't really know how many there are such that they could come up with a percentage:
(below taken from mediamatters.org)
RICE: We have broken up 75 percent of the Al Qaeda known leadership. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia fully --

BLITZER: Well, when you say "75 percent," of how many leaders are we talking -- 75 percent of a quantity of what? 30, 25?

RICE: Of its known leadership.

BLITZER: But how many --

RICE: I would suspect that that's in the tens to hundreds -- tens to 100.

Voting machines are...

about as accurate or less so than the machine you're using right now. A big public testing of machines in Florida crashed today. Dumb.

Stupid Swift Boats!

The key to this one is to alert people of how untrue it is and how partisan the people behind it are before it gets onto people's TVs. Spread the word that there's a really awful documentary out there that's lies, lies, lies.
Imagine what the GOP would say if we they were going to show videos of Bush choking on pretzels and falling off his bicycle the night before the election... that would be awesome wouldn't it?
In other news: Stop using iTunes. A Russian website is offering loads of different tracks for only 5 cents. That's right. Cents.
It's called allofmp3.com, it's run by Russians and it's LEGAL, you just join as a vip or whatever and then they charge you by the numbe of MB that you download ($0.01 per MB and most mp3s are under 5MB, hence the 5 cents). I just knew the profit margins were a bit high for iTunes, etc.

Sinclair the Conservative Dinosaur?

A new smear campaign is underway in the form of an anti-Kerry "documentary" that will be run in lieu of regular programming on 62 tv stations owned by one conservative jerkass, many in battleground states, only a few days before the election. This blog talks about it at length and the Guardian gives it some much needed attention. This would be akin to Michael Moore being allowed to show Farenheit 911 on national television instead of just pay-per-view as he's planning. I know, I know. It would be great if Moore owned 62 television stations, but even if he did, it would be kind of wrong to show such a partisan film and portray it as fact. Some are hoping that the Kerry film doesn't make a splash on the major news like the Veterans for "Truth" did, but I'm guessing it will.
And everybody please, please, please keep yelling at everyone you know about news stories like this.

Chin up Ballers!

I heard about the loss. I heard about the blood.
Let's just give a good chear about how kickass it is to have made someone really take it in the face.
Not sure if I'm going to make the debate on time tomorrow night. My flight gets into National at 8:55pm, but that's assuming that there won't be any delays on a Friday night (not likely).
Jefe. I trust in you to DVR that shit so that I can watch the beginning after I get there.
The rest of you. I'll see you tomorrow night for the later half of the debate. Posted some new pictures of Chicago on my other blog.
Peace out.

Oh Cheney, that was a dumb mistake.

Today someone mentioned that Cheney told people to visit factcheck.com last night during the debate. I was about to correct him (despite his higher level) to tell him that Cheney probably actually said factcheck.org, because he said it was a nonprofit University of Pennsylvania run site and anything with ".com" is commercial. I kept my mouth shut and then ran across this article, which explains that Cheney actually did say "dot com" and thereby pointed a 48,800 more people than normal to the antibush site georgesoros.com. I can't express in words how pleased I am.

Happy b-day sam-o!

A big happy one to Sambo. Sorry I won't be in town on Thurs, but I'll definitely be around on Friday for the debate. Jorge? Your Place? More people and a lot more drinking this time? At least, I'm pretty sure there's a debate on Friday.
Full Metal Jacket is on some channel in my hotel room. I'm assuming it's the HBO (pronounced "Hu-Bow", I belive) as I haven't seen a commercial in a bit.
I was super impressed (as usual) with Edwards in the debates tonight. Man does that guy have a head on his shoulders! Cheney stuck to rhetoric. Edwards talked about/defended himself. Cheney barely mentioned anything that he and Bushie had "accomplished". It seemed as though Cheney's points all focused around the "poor voting record" of Kerry, which I would just call good. Cheney has a tough time coming off as not evil. I noticed that when he brought up Edwards' votes, Edwards did not defend them.. Then again, I noticed that when Edwards' criticized Cheney, Cheney did not defend either. They're pretty much even on that one. Granted, Cheney's lies have directly aided in killing 1000+ Americans. Granted, Cheney mainly mentioned votes that Edwards had missed, whereas Edwards mentioned votes that Cheney cast against things like education and defense. I'm all for not funding defense, as I just think that they are budgeting the wrong things, but Edwards definitely has a point.
I especially liked when Cheney mentioned the $87 billion and Edwards was able to counter with the fact that it was a blank check and that Cheney had voted against some of the exact same defense programs when he was votin' about things.
Also when Edwards called the Bush admin out on being for and against the 9/11 comission, for and against homeland security, etc.
I thought the most telling part was when there was a question about the AIDS epidemic in the US and, after being all PC and referring to it as a "pandemic" and talking about broader issues, Cheney actually brought up the economic impact of AIDS on the US. Everyone knows that if people are dying there's going to be an economic impact, but how disgustingly tactless is it to actually talk about it that way. That's rhetorical. If someone asks you about the AIDS epidemic in the US and mentions that it's statistcally more pervasive amongst African Americans, you probably shouldn't only answer with some heart-string pulling crap about Russia and Africa and then say that AIDS is a drain on the economy. If you ever wondered whether Republicans seem to care about people or money, this should be a good hint. I'll try to find some links to Cheney's actual statement when I have some more time tomorrow evening.
Rock out y'all.

Ballers Ho!

That's kind of a thundercat reference, I suppose. I think next season we should somehow for the Thundercats into our team name... but I so get to be Liono. The ladies will have to fight over the right to call herself Cheetarah.
Edwards' dad totally worked at a steel mill and that rocks! One could try taking a shot every time Edwards' uses his boyish charm to woo another independant... but that would be too many drinks.
Steve, VA sucks. I'm sorry. I don't want to get into one of those debates about one place being better than another, especially since I've never lived in VA, but yeah. I had to go down there for some "team outing" the other day and as soon as we got over the bridge into VA I felt like a wee little French boy dropped in Eastern Europe in 1982, except that there were lots of big scary cars and malls.
VA has its uses.... It's just that none occur to me right now. Oh wait! It houses Jeffe's mom. That's not bad!
Don't have much time for the blizzog up here in CHI, but have posted some stuff on my other blog here.
Hope y'all have great times yelling at Cheney's wackass on the TV tonight. I'm actually going to head out of town to visit one of my mom's old highschool friends to watch the debate and yell at the tv a bit myself (thank god they're liberal enough for me to do so).
Training is retarded. After only one day I'm ready to kill whoever thought powerpoint was a good instructinal tool (if you just read all of the bullets, what's the point of your lips flapping around?) and I'm really sick of one instructor saying "that's key." I don't think too many things can be "key". Actually, she said that so many things were key, I'm convinced that I won't be able to find a keyring big enough and should just give up and ask one of those janitor guys with that awesome keyring-on-a-wire thing to figure out all the key stuff for me.
I'm seriously considering the Nov. 2nd trip to FLA, but don't want to use my only two floating holidays. I know that selfish and unnoble (sic)... but those days are precious.
And I too dislike the trucker hat.
HOLLER.

What up y'all?
Jefe - I as well am totally befuddled and angered by the collar-up polo shirt. I just don't get it and it makes me want to hit something... preferrably the wearer of the shirt.
Rose and Claud went to see the Killers tonight while I had to do a team-building exercise here in Chicago. I'm extremely jealous as I heard it was a pretty good show.
The good part about this trip so far is that my hotel room has free wireless internet access, I rememberd the wireless card for my laptop, AND the room has cable TV!
I just got in touch with my adolescence by catching up on the MTV. It turns out that the Real World is still around and that it's now in Philadelphia. Somehow, I just don't care. I noticed how young the rest of the people at this new employee school were when they were asked about every having a "brush with greatness" and had at least two of 20 people say that their brush with greatness was meeting someone from the Real World. Granted, mine was having seen John Tesh at an airport, but I also ceded that I wouldn't call him "great".
Now I'm watching "Airplane" on spike tv. What a great movie. Watching a nun sing R-E-S-P-E-C-T to a Jive talking man who's throwing up is movie genius. And don't call me Shirley.

Just found a new site for concerts:

Check out www.bigyawn.net, which has a pretty nice calendar of shows in the DC area.
That's all I got!

The show last night

that the features put on was awesome. one-flip and Chris I... ummm.. "purchased" copies of the Features CD for you two after I stumbled in the door last night. I think the Features were actually better than the Kings of Leon (the headliner), but that may just be that I'd had enough beers to deafen my left ear by the time the main band went on stage. Does that happen to anyone else when they drink?
Tomorrow I'm off for that corporate brainwashing thing in the windy city and won't be able to make it to the game next week. Lame, I know. I'll be there in spirit and blog.
Holler.

Kerry kicks ass in Debates

Good lord did Kerry whup some ass in the debates! Hell yes! I'm so psyched. Listening to bush admit that the war was a mistake... that was classic. Listneing to him mispronounce "vociferously" was beautiful. Listening to him say "the wrong war in the wrong place at the right..wrong time"? Music to my ears.
Bush lost. Hands down.
The media, of course, will try to make up for Bush's inadequacies(did I spell that right?) by saying that he "did a good job", but really they just think that they're being fair, when being fair would be to say that Bush is an incompetant slob who deserves a good steel-toed boot to the ass on his way out of DC in '05.

Holler!