Mar03

3-31-03 (02:04)

3-30-03 (00:16)

"Gwyneth Paltrow is so embarrassed about her new movie View From The Top - she's dubbed the film "A view from my a**". Paltrow stars alongside Christina Applegate, Mike Myers and Rob Lowe in the much-delayed romantic comedy about a woman's dream to become a flight attendant. Critics have not been kind to the film - which was released in America last week. A New York Post review called it "a dire stewardess comedy that's the movie equivalent of airline food." And it seems the movie's lead has similar opinions about her latest work. A source tells gossip site The Scoop, "Paltrow thought it was sort of awful even while she was shooting it. She was calling it that until she was asked to stop. The people making the movie thought it wasn't a very supportive thing to be doing.""

black backgrounds are so much easier on the eyes.

didn't do much today.

finally got the south park commentary in the mail though so now i can hear what was so awful that warner felt they should cut the commentary from the dvds.

the boondocks

the boondocks

The Dungey war formula

the nation april 11, 2002

"derrida queries deman" by mark tansey

3-29-03 (01:09)

updated movies list.

i've said it before and i'll say it again. ELO are an underrated band and el dorado is an underrated album. boy blue is a great song.

didn't do very well in this round of the tournament. maryland, pitt, duke and dayton were all losers and i picked all those teams to win so that sucks. i'm over it.

tomorrow is my sunday so i had better make good use of it.

3-28-03 (13:51)

"A plan by the California Public Utilities Commission to levy an "exit fee" against anyone who stops drawing electricity from the state's grid -- read: alternative energy users -- has come under fire by lawmakers, renewable energy producers, and consumers. The proposed exit fee is a holdover from the state's 2000-2001 energy crisis, when the commission tried to discourage people from jumping ship during the darkest days of deregulation. But the fee would also apply to people who installed solar energy panels after Jan. 17, 2001, effectively functioning as a disincentive to switch to green energy. Under one version of the plan, the fee would add anywhere from $2.50 to $13.50 per monthly utility bill. Happily, the CPUC seems likely to exempt renewable-energy users from the fee in the face of the firestorm of criticism. There are about 8,000 homes and small businesses powered by solar energy in California, many of them so efficient they pump surplus energy back into the state's grid.

3-28-03 (01:26)

i was wrong about the new baaba maal album...it's actually just a reissue (lam toro) and it's very good.

one good thing has come from losing zach and lucky. the boss told us today that we will get back our 8 hour shifts for the upcoming work week. he made it clear, though, that this was only for one week. once something like being able to work eight hour shifts or get a discount on used product is taken away it's extremely difficult to get those "benefits" back. and once the current employees are cycled out the new employees won't even know about how it used to be.

it's interesting to me that the word "news" is just the plural of "new," but we don't really think of it that way. if we did then we wouldn't say things like "oh that's old news." or "any new news about such and such?" the way i figure it "new news" is redundant and "old news" an oxymoron.

in these times i find it important to immerse myself in international music as much as possible. in doing so i'm reminded that there is more that exists than mcdonalds and britney spears. listening to afrobeat greats like tony allen and fela kuti or the music of the balkans or tabla beat science or baaba maal (of nigeria) provides perspective which is increasingly important now. i encourage you, too, to branch out from the johnny cash and jay-z that you may be listening to now.

"truth has three phases; the first is denial. the second is hostility. the third is universal acceptance because it's apparent." - Spinoza

the sage francis album is damn good.

an interview with mr. lif whose album "i, phantom" and EP "emergency rations" made for the number two album of 2002 on my top ten list.

3-27-03 (00:50)

"In a groundbreaking move, New York state has developed guidelines for ensuring that low-income and minority neighborhoods are not disproportionately subjected to environmental health risks by developers. The environmental-justice guidelines were drafted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to limit the ability of developers to build unpopular and potentially hazardous projects in communities that lack the necessary resources to oppose them. Under the new policy, a project with potential environmental-justice problems will receive additional scrutiny to determine how it will affect the proposed neighborhood. In addition, existing projects will be examined to determine their impact on local communities."

laws like that are the very definition of useful government.

today, zach (my favorite co-worker), quit. he was good friends with lucky and apparently was kicked out of his apartment by his roommates because of internal issues so he more or less decided to move to LA on a whim. 1) i wish i had that sort of flexibility 2) now work has taken on new lows. zach and lucky, although very different from me (both were party hard rock stars with the tattoos, hairstyles, and piercings to match), were (besides melanie) my favorite people in davis.

3-25-03 (01:41)

Lucky, a co-worker whose real name is bradley, was fired today. he was a good guy and i liked working with him. he was actually my second favorite co-worker. to be fair he wasn't the greatest worker, but it still sucks to see him go.

as a result i had to close with joe today. closing with your boss isn't fun. it wasn't awful, but it meant i had to look busy the whole night. i wanted to broach the topic of the boxes upon boxes of promotional cds that he stores under his desk, but couldn't figure out how to do it. you see those cds are supposed to be for the store and the employees...they are supposed to serve as educational tools for every employee. so when someone asks me how the new baaba maal cd is i can tell them my opinion. or when someone asks what's new and good i have more albums to draw from than the 10-15 that make it into the store playstock or those that i purchase. the way it works now we can request cds and he may or may not remember to pass those onto us if/when he gets them or if we see something on his desk we can ask to have it and again he may or may not give that to us. ideally all the cds that come into the store should be fair game for the in store playstock and open for employees to take home. i don't understand why that's not the case. i don't understand what purpose they serve under his desk. but maybe i'll just always find something to complain about. unproductive employees need to be fired and promos should be tightly monitored.

i should be asleep by now.

3-24-03 (01:10)

taped most of the oscars and fast forwarded to the good parts. got to see michael moore's speech. that was pretty much the highlight of the whole thing. i renew my rejection of the academy's importance.

i wish that philip glass would have won for the score to the hours.

the hours had potential to be a really good movie...the idea was good, but i think they chose a bad book (mrs. dalloway) and executed it poorly and some old lady who was shopping at tower the other day agrees with me so that makes at least two.

"And Warner Bros has announced that they'll be releasing the first four (in a series of ten) two-disc Chaplin Collection DVDs on July 1st: The Gold Rush, The Great Dictator, Limelight and Modern Times (SRP $29.95 each). Four more films in the series will follow in the fall (titles TBA)."

yay! modern times is one of the few titles on the afi top 100 that hasn't been released on dvd yet. the other one that i really care about is grapes of wrath.

i went 11-5 in the second round of the tourney. a drop percentage-wise, but still better than i expected.

city of davis against war.

i'm going to sleep now.

3-23-03 (01:16)

updated movies list.

3-22-03 (21:35)

i can't believe i have to go back to work tomorrow. i don't feel like i got two days worth of time off.

i worked on the car today. adjusted the valves and replaced the spark plugs. two of the plugs looked pretty black which means things aren't entirely kosher...either the plug wires are messed up or the compression is bad or something. no telling what the problem is, but they weren't completely caked in oil and carbon so it could be worse.

watched a couple good finishes in basketball today. the gonzaga game was very good and the wisconsin game was also good. both ended up going as i predicted, but they were nailbiters and that's what march madness is all about.

the kings game tonight was good, so was the one the other night when they beat the lakers.

plan on watching brotherhood of the wolf tonight. it's a french action flick that's gotten lots of praise and i'm finally getting around to seeing it. i like watching movies that have been on my list of movies to see for a long time. it feels like i'm getting something done when i watch a movie like that. i've seen most of the big classics like citizen kane, casablanca and the godfather, but i still have plenty of gaps to fill.

3-21-03 (23:38)

i've gone 27-5 so far in the ncaa tourney. that's amazing considering how few games i watched over the course of the year. i decided to make picks round by round rather than filling out an entire bracket at the beginning and i just did it for fun so i don't have any money or bragging rights riding on it. it's too bad too because so far i'm doing very well.

"The war against Iraq that began last night will lead to "massive and possibly irreversible" environmental damage to the Persian Gulf region and contribute significantly to global warming, experts cautioned this week. Environmentalists who have been monitoring the situation say the ecological destruction could be radically worse than the damage sustained during the 1991 Gulf War. In that conflict, Iraqi forces dumped 4 million barrels of crude oil into the Persian Gulf and set fire to more than 600 Kuwaiti oil wells, releasing almost a half-billion tons of carbon dioxide. A new war in the region could compound lingering problems from the 1991 conflict, while doing further harm to the environment, water resources, and endangered species. In a recent interview with MTV, Hans Blix, chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, called the environmental issue "more ominous than that of peace and war.""

yesterday papa john's pizza, which is new in town, had a special where you could get a large one topping pizza for the same amount of money as was the time of the day. for example at 1:45pm i ordered two pizzas and paid just over three bucks for them. pretty awesome deal and it's provided meals the last four times i've eaten.

when you don't have an exciting job and you're poor things like that seem even more fantastic.

3-21-03 (02:52)

updated movies list.

last night is started reading hawking's "the universe in a nutshell." i got through the first chapter okay, but the second chapter is about quantum mechanics and i can't wrap my brain around that stuff yet.

sage francis samples a piece of dialogue from "magnolia," gotta like that.

updated cdlist. year.

there are indications that the war might be over very shortly, namely that saddam might already be dead and that "we" are talking with iraqi leaders about surrender. a lot of people would change their mind about bush (and maybe the un), or at least the war, if that were the case. i think that the world needs the un in the long run and we need it to be strong.

if bush was responsible for taking down saddam and the regime with (what now appears to be) about as few casualties as possible then that alone could give him a very good shot at winning reelection in 2004. sad.

time to sleep.

3-20-03 (00:30)

important war news here.

south park just keeps getting better. the episode today was so great. not only is that show funny (which it always has been), but over time i think it gets more and more political which i certainly enjoy.

while at work today i heard we bombed baghdad. it really is a shame.

bombs over baghdad is a good song by outkast.

got my tax return today, that's pretty fitting.

it was a good day at work. i find that when i try not to think too much about the crap they've done to me and just try to get along with the people who i like, and get things done, then work is a lot better.

i think baaba maal has a new album coming out. so does tommy guerrero

with war on the immediate horizon i think orbital's "the box" is a good soundtrack for the next couple days. luckily i got the single today. it's a tough single to get your hands on, but it's worth it.

i also finally bought atmosphere's album "god loves ugly." another fitting choice for the day. i now have a ridiculous 810 albums on CD.

heard the new beastie boys single today. pretty decent song on the whole, though the chorus doesn't really do it for me. they're still the beastie boys in spirit and that's good to hear.

3-19-03 (00:34)

"With a quarter of a million troops amassing outside Iraq and the city of Baghdad preparing for Armageddon, it's tough to find anything resembling a silver lining in the headlines. But there was some good news yesterday in the environmental sector: Senate Republicans said they had probably come up short in their efforts to secure enough votes to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, the highly controversial cornerstone of President Bush's energy plan. The Senate will vote on the plan late this week or early next, and by all indicators, the pro-drilling faction is about two votes shy of a success. The expected failure is sure to be an embarrassment for Bush, who vowed while campaigning to undo President Clinton's refusal to drill in the refuge. Environmentalists said they were cautiously optimistic about the lay of the land, but weren't going to exhale until after the vote."

i told you it would go down before may first. i don't have much to say about the war.

i think that smart people can justify doing things they know aren't completely kosher. it's really easy to rationalize things to make them fit your world view or whim and it's difficult to separate "rationalizations" from honest and good choices. it seems, though, that many of the people who have big impacts in history don't necessarily have a problem deciding how they stand on things. when i watch documentaries on "great" historical figures i often find that one thing they have in common is being completely convinced that they are right in their course of action and thought from ayn rand to malcolm x to hitler. so i think that this state of mind is the most empowering thing a person might have. so maybe we should all either get on the same page or stop "having the courage of our convictions." i don't honestly know.

i officially didn't get the job for the city.

blackalicious might return to davis in late may. that would be good.

updated movies list.

3-17-03 (13:29)

updated movies list.

watched most of the kings/mavs game yesterday, but then i had to goto work. i hate that i can't watch basketball games because of my work schedule.

worked on my resume today. i'll keep hunting for jobs tomorrow.

joe came into work yesterday. he missed a few days last week so i guess he felt like he should make up for it by coming in on a sunday.

had a good weekend which made going back to work on sunday that much more difficult. played some golf with melanie's dad and brother who came up for the weekend. also we went to a series of performances from bands to poetry readings on saturday. some were really good and some were awful.

when high art tries to club you over the head with its greatness i find it obnoxious, but when it eases you in then i find it can be very efficacious. i guess what i mean is that i don't like it when someone steps up to the mic and starts in with all the poetic tricks in the book to try and impress me and move my soul right off the bat. you can't have an orgasm without some foreplay is all i'm saying.

3-14-03 (01:22)

i can't believe i always miss the big UCLA games. i actually watched most of the first half of the game today, but when the half was over they had blown their lead and were down by two. ucla is has the ability to come up with big upsets like that though...there's just something about certain schools in certain sports where even when the team is having a bad year you can't count them out.

i'm happy i didn't watch the kings game though.

i have my fantasy baseball draft tomorrow. that'll mark the beginning of a long season of making everyone else feel good.

aphex twin is proof that you can maintain artistic integrity and still make plenty of money. if i were an artist of his stature i'd like to appear to be as aloof and strange as he does. "James (aphex twin) was reported to have created remixes using none of the source material given, send along work at the last minute with no connection to the artist involved, and even play the middle-man for the productions of a flatmate."

henry ford did more to dehumanize people than hitler. i believe this for the same reason that i believe corporal punishment for criminals is more humane than imprisonment.

3-13-03 (01:17)

it's unfortunate that the media hasn't presented to us the other possible ways to proceed with iraq. on their spectrum of responses it seems like it goes from doing nothing to inspectors to war. i think there are more options in between, but those don't seem to be talked about very much.

i don't think that the rest of the world is necessarily opposed to war, they're just more insistent that it be applied as a last resort and are more patient about getting there. and when the push comes from the us i think that timeline lengthens because of our world image. personally i don't have a problem with that. i think we should just shut the fuck up and let the rest of the world decide what to do.

what's up with everyone getting mad at celebrities who espouse their political points of view? it seems that our society needs people to be politically aware and active. celebrities, who are people and as a result vote and have opinions, shouldn't be stifled just because they have the luxury of media coverage. if barbra streisand's political opinions really piss you off then turn off the tv or turn the page or something. claims that actors "should stick to acting" is inane because everyone's job is to be political and when i hear politicians saying otherwise it only makes me want to kill them more.

i wish people didn't take life and french (or freedom) fries so seriously.

3-12-03 (02:42)

updated movies list. seen 61 movies so far this year. 14 more in march and i'll be on pace for 300 in 2003.

3-11-03 (01:46)

updated movies list.

today went by quickly enough.

another big wig at tower got the boot.

there's a philip glass version of aphex twin's icct hedral, which appears on the (hard to find) donkey rhubarb single, that is quite fantastic. moments of it are even better than the original which is truly a piece of art.

heard from alex today...he's the loss prevention agent who was mysteriously asked to leave. as it turns out it was pretty much just joe not liking him that got him let go. that's what i suspected and he confirmed it for me today. in fact the loss prevention boss for northern california wanted to hire alex back to work at a sacramento store, but alex had already gotten a job elsewhere. it's a shame that i lost a(nother) friend because of joe. alex busted more people in a month than the previous LP agent at our store busted in over a year. in fact the previous agent worked at our store for about 14 months and he busted only 5 or 6 people. i've seen alex bust 2 and 3 people in a day. add to that the fact that he was always a positive person in the workplace and you have someone who deserves a little more respect than he received. if i get the job working for the city i'm not giving a two week notice.

fucking tower records.

3-10-03 (00:53)

i should find out this week whether or not i get to interview for the stock clerk position for the city.

updated movies list.

there are still so many great films that aren't on dvd yet. the star wars trilogy, the big one, roger and me, hoop dreams, grapes of wrath, los olvidados, modern times, celebration, etc. i guess the biggest reason i say that is because on a daily basis i see hundreds of truly stupid dvds that have been made and it just doesn't make sense that they would make a dvd for sleep away camp sorority sisters and pass up grapes of wrath or something along those lines.

in related news bowling for columbine is being pushed back to a later release date and the matrix special edition has been canceled.

there are some good warp records releases coming out this month and next month. unfortunately they are distributed by caroline distribution which has the most flaky representative i've known.

it hasn't rained very much this winter.

while at work today i found out that employees will no longer get discounts on used product. usually if we buy a cd from a customer for 3 dollars we will mark it up to 5.99 or more. so he markup t for used product is generally 100% or more. on new product the markup is about 35% so you can see how lucrative used product usually is. our employee discount for used product was 25% off the sticker price. so if we purchased a cd for 5 bucks and sell it for at least 10 the employee would buy it for no less than 7.50 thus the store stands to make at least 2.50 from an employee (which would be the same as if we marked up product 50% - still more than the markup on new product). personally i see this as just another sign of how far management is willing to go to make a buck...and once again it is at the expense of its employees. surely i can understand that in the long run the store stands to make hundreds of dollars as a result of implementing this new rule, but that doesn't make it right. the only justification we got was "this is how they do it at other stores too." at other stores they also give their employees full eight hour shifts. i wonder when joe is going to stop with this stuff. he already has one employee doing supervisor duties with out supervisor pay. will he eventually just have everyone working part-time to ensure no one gets benefits or overtime? will he pay everyone minimum wage and just find people who are willing to be supervisors for the same pay as clerks? will he eliminate employee discounts altogether? all of those make short term black and white business sense, but aren't necessarily good business. that is, sure using those tactics will make the bottom line look good in the short run, but angering your staff and not having consistency on the staff (having too much staff turnover) are not good and can lead to all sorts of problems which can affect the bottom line in unseen ways. my personal opinion is that staff morale is the cornerstone of running a good business and without it you can't run on all cylinders. i know that when i was happy with the people i was working with i worked harder and was a happier person. when i knew that management was working for me then i was willing to work for it.

i'm thirsty and tired.

"Bush Offers Taxpayers Another $300 If We Go To War"

courtesy of theonion.com 3-8-3 (14:37)

updated movies list. "what time is it there?" is a really hard movie to make sense of. i don't even want to think about it anymore because it's got my mind too twisted. it's not that the plot was hard to follow...it wasn't one of those david mamet masturbation sessions. it's more twisted because i'm not sure how all the pieces fit into the theme of the story and i can't identify exactly where it all went wrong.

some reviews of gods and generals.

3-6-03 (00:36)

updated movies list.

my email hasn't been working all day which is a bummer. i hope the problem fixes itself by tomorrow (later today).

i have been listening mostly to electronica music lately, but broke out some metallica last night and that's carried over to tonight. their epics are quite good and make me remember why "hard rock" will always have a place in my heart.

the daily show just gets better as bush comes into his own. in a somewhat related issue...

i remember freshman year i was first introduced to the satirical newspaper known as the onion by jon who had an article from their webpage pulled up on doc's notebook computer (which later met an untimely death). the headline said something like "congress passes no talking in public statute." after i read it i went on about how fucking lame the government was and how i couldn't believe they were doing something as obviously anti-free speech as that. of course i soon realized that it was a joke and that i had been a bit gullible. i felt pretty stupid for that, but during bush's presidency there have been some headlines nearly as unbelievable as the one i saw that day five years ago.

the newest installment is the story of a man who was arrested for wearing a shirt that said "give peace a chance" (or something to that effect) while visiting his local mall. not only is that frighteningly orwellian, but it also reminds me of my run-in with Amtrak. that run-in with Amtrak was the result of the bug breaking down which brings this story full circle because today i was woken up by the mechanic telling me more bad news about the bug. the bug has built an amazing amount of character. if i hadn't ever gotten it i'd be hundreds of dollars richer and have more hair, but i'd probably be as two dimensional as a frat boy. what a headache.

the three greatest soundtracks of all-time are from the movies koyaanisqatsi, the good bad and the ugly, and pi. just thinking about the combined power of those three soundtracks makes me weep. the pi soundtrack not only creates the perfect atmosphere for that movie, but also takes particular meaning for me because it opened me up to some of (what have become) my favorite electronic artists (especially orbital, aphex twin, and autechre). in fact i'd say that it's the album that shaped my musical tastes more than any other, with the possible exception of appetite for destruction because that was the first album i really owned.

today was mostly lame because a) i had to goto work b) i woke up after only 5 hours of sleep to bad news from the mechanic c) i didn't find a million bucks under my bed.

the kings won, but as is the usual i wasn't able to watch the game.

after waking up this morning i put my name in for a sacramento business that finds general laborers for local businesses. so if on fridays i happen to be awake at 5:30 in the morning i can drive to sacramento with a push broom and shovel (which i'll have to purchase) hoping that they can find work for me that day. it was probably a waste of time, but it's an option.

i've been up for a quite some time now so i should get some rest. tomorrow is my friday and that's the best news i've gotten this week.

it's interesting to me that the word "news" is just the plural of "new." and furthermore has become its own word virtually unrelated to its singular form. ya dig?

3-5-03 (00:29)

jon got me the answer on that nonprofit vs. not-for-profit question. here.

fantasy baseball is around the corner. another season of ups and downs and downs.

last month i bought 12 pairs of socks so my socks crisis is no longer a problem.

sometimes i feel like i'm never going to find a job and i'll end up homeless. i guess i've only been looking for work for a couple weeks, but i get easily discouraged.

3-4-3 (01:18)

updated movies list.

had an interesting day at work. joe had been accumulating a bunch of issues that he had with me over the course of the last couple months and presented them to me today all at one time. they ranged from mediocre to absolutely petty missteps on my part. some were tiny acts of rebellion (like not filling out this or that form), others were pure forgetfulness and one was me just being a mean guy (which, of the 6 or 7 items, he raised i agreed was actually worth addressing).

i guess the straw that broke his back was the email i sent last week. recently we've been getting lots of emails from management which have been entirely negative...mostly "you guys aren't do a, b, and c and that's bad." or "you guys haven't been paying very good attention lately as evidenced by the fact that pen caps haven't been returned to their proper resting place on the top of the pen (or some other such small quibble)." as a result of the recent glut of negative emails i sent joke email that makes a reference to a popular film (office space) wherein an employee gets berated frequently for not attaching a cover sheet to the company's "TPS reports." the bosses (he has several bosses) all give him a hard time about not attaching said cover sheet and conclude their conversation with by saying they'll send him the memo again. there is another scene in the film wherein a waitress is confronted by her boss about the number of pins she has on her uniform. the boss tells her that she should strive to be a better employee by showing more zest and thus having more "flair" or pins on her uniform. so i sent an email to all the local staff that said "i'm tired of telling everyone how to do their job. you should all know by now that the TPS reports need cover sheets. also everyone should make sure to wear their flair at all times." when joe laid that piece of evidence before me he asked "what's this all about?" i told him that i thought it would be a nice change to get a funny email rather than the regular abuse we normally get. i went on to say that everyone (at the management level) thinks their shit doesn't stink and that they're basically kidding themselves. everyone screws up on a regular basis and i don't think it's a good thing for morale to point out every time someone forgets to tear off an expired sale tag or something equally small. he then told me to keep email for strictly informational/official business purposes only.

he also made mention of the fact that every time there is a change in policy or an addition of new paperwork i'm the toughest own to get to conform. he added "you should be the easiest one..." i don't remember why he said i should be the easiest one because i wasn't listening at that point...i was too pleased with myself (on this issue) to pay attention. i told him that right makes might, not vise versa. that if there is good reason for a change i'm behind it, but i'm not going to just accept your decision to add to my workload because you tell me to do something.

we came to an agreement to wipe the slate clean, but the truth of the matter is that that's impossible; and even if it weren't we fundamentally disagree on how a workplace should be run, on how people should be treated, on how the world works, and what has priority in life. so we've ironed over this patch, but it's just a matter of time before his policies or the policies of tower enrage me again to the point where i sent out rebellious emails or i don't fill out the proper paperwork as a tiny act of rebellion. i find it funny that with all ill-mannered and shady characters we have working at tower i'm somehow seen as this awful guy by joe. the way he laid one paper (a copy of my dastardly email or a copy of a form filled out sarcastically or...) on me after another really made me feel like a criminal. of course i deserved some of it, but i honestly feel like most of it was not and not to that degree.

learned a lot about kurosawa today. after i went to the mechanic to drop off the car i watched a documentary on kurosawa which i felt did a really good job of incorporating scenes from his films. it also had a nice balance of personal and professional information and related those two aspects of his life rather well.

the kings won today.

it's abundantly clear that i need to find new employment. i think about my shitty job far more often than i should and it's changed my lifestyle to an unacceptable level...i now wake up past noon almost every day, i watch fewer films, listen to less music at home, earn less money (thanks to the hours being cut) and am largely unhappy with my time spent there.

i've been having trouble sleeping lately. i don't know if it's because i have a lot on my mind or because my body hasn't gotten used to falling asleep without the aid of vicodin - which i was taking for a few days after my wisdom teeth were pulled.

heard a nice little essay on npr today about the pictures we take in life. the woman who wrote the essay was talking about her families quest to document everything their kids do, but she came to the conclusion that after awhile they chose to only capture the nice moments in life. that's why, she said, we don't take pictures of uncle ernie getting over his weekend bender. it's true that often, in pictures, we censor the things we'd rather not document. when a significant other leaves we sometimes cut them out of the pictures in some sort of symbolic ritual. good points.

i'd like to live in canada one day.

if anyone has the answer to this next one i'd be very happy to hear it...i've noticed that some companies have the designation of being "not-for-profit" and others are "non-profit." my cynical outlook has me thinking that it's a trick by some to seem as though they are non-profit when they really aren't. i know that non-profit organizations fall under certain tax laws and aren't allowed to make any profit - they must either run a loss or break exactly even. if anyone knows if there is a legal distinction (tax-wise or otherwise) between the two wordings i'd like to hear about it.

planes, trains, and automobiles is such a funny movie.

i remember these two before they moved their business to ebay. back then they just had a big list of cds that they sent out to people with a set price and it was first come first serve. i don't remember how i got on the mailing list in the first place, but i remember it was voluntary and was at least three years ago. now they're super huge on ebay.