Either Amanda or myself snapped this outside of the Arclight, it's been too long for me to remember - it was the first time it had rained since last year...


The hotel room Amanda and I stayed in during her birthday in San Diego wasn't the best hotel we've ever visited... for example, when we looked behind the mini-fridge - because it wasn't plugged in - there were two empty beer cans behind it.


Just a random telephone pole I passed while on my way home.


On my birthday, Amanda and I took a hike up to the top of the Hollywood Hills.




I thought this was funny - no real story behind it.


The other night, Amanda and I headed downtown to see Syriana at the Grove... we left at four in the afternoon to make a five o'clock showing... and it's only a 20 minute drive, maybe 35 minutes with daytime traffic after getting off the 101. But - little did we know, there was a massive parade down Sunset Blvd, which by the way, is an amazing movie I just watched... anyways - on top of this, there was an accident on the Hollywood Bowl exit, "no big deal, we'll just take the next one", we thought. But the next exit was down because of the parade, so Vine was jam packed with two exit's worth of traffic.

Long story short - we had to drive for miles and miles out of our way, down back streets, to get around the event and we missed our 5 o'clock showing. Then the next showing, at 7, was sold out. So we had to buy tickets for 8... and then stand in line outside for 40 minutes. But - it was worth it, the movie was great.


Here's the band-geeks that ruined our night [no real offense to band-geeks]. They were from Ohio... or something. And kept shouting, "channel 5, channel 5!". Their 15 minutes of fame and they're wearing white top-hats with a bright red feather sticking out the front. How sad.




Amanda in front of the massive Santa's little workshop in-front of the Barnes and Noble... just for the record, I made her take this picture. I'm the dork... not her.


Around 7 o'clock they shoot this white-foam-snow-flake-stuff off all the roofs of the buildings surrounding the fountain. Which is kind of lame, since the foam just dissapears after hitting the ground - the coolest part of snowfall is when everything is covered in a brand new layer of white. But I suppose that would be a bitch to clean up every night after 7.

I think all the major news networks are too busy reporting on the "war on Christmas" to have mentioned this little tid-bit of info, but Freedom House, who has been conducting press freedom surveys in the media since the 80s, just released results ranking America as the 24th in "media independence".

This score is ranked by three categories: Legal environment, political pressures and economic factors. Now there are only 75 countries that are considered to be free in the media... the other 120-some contries fall into the categories of partly-free and not-free. So 24th out of 75, not the greatest, but hey, we still have a long ways to fall - so that's good news.

As for the countries that fell into the rankings 1 to 20: (1) Finland, Iceland, Sweden, (4) Denmark, Norway, (6) Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, (10) New Zealand, (11) Marshall Islands, Palau, (13) Andorra, Bahamas, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Portugal, (18) Ireland, Jamaica, (20) Germany, San Marino, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & Grenadines. Other countries that also scores 24th: Barbados, Canada, Dominica, Estonia, Latvia, and us... or U.S., depending on where you are reading from.

If you are interested in reading more about the results, click here to download their 'Freedom of the Press 2005' [pdf].

[Dr King:] "A time comes when silence is betrayal. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak out with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."

In the last four years, 108 detainees have died in our custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. In reference, 114 American POWs died in North Vietnamese captivity during the eleven years of the Vietnam War. How does this make you feel?

And don't forget that according to the international Red Cross, our own military intelligence estimates that "between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq have been arrested by mistake".

Not only have we found ourselves under a government that tortures... but a government that - undeniably - tortures innocent people to death. "A time comes when silence is betrayal".

President George W. Bush and the current administration have now borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined.

Throughout the first 224 years (1776-2000) of our nation’s history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In the past four years alone (2001-2005), the Bush Administration has borrowed a staggering $1.05 trillion.

It seems to be the new fad these last few weeks for republicans to go on air and brag about the 89... or 93... or somewhere in that range - American trained Iraq battalions. They often try to squeeze in there something along the lines of "the liberal media doesn't want to talk about this".

But my favorite part is, yes, I'll give it to them, there are what-ever number of Iraqi battalions... but only one, I repeat, one battalion - which consist of only 800 troops - is ready to operate without American troops. And that number used to be three. It's taken us over two years to train one battalion.

But - some are claiming that it's not the number of Iraqi troops that matters, but more their functions or abilities to multitask.

For example: the one operational-ready battalion is fully prepared to cook their own food, play the drums, and hold their "business" for up to three days. I'm not joking... which is the saddest part. These three things were the only three examples of why 800 Iraqi troops were just as good as... 8,000.

Now, I almost made this audio clip play automatically I thought it was so important that as many people as possible hear it... but I decided against it for now. But please, please take the four minutes and listen to the commanding officer of this 'one' Iraqi battalion... it's mind blowing, and very, very sad for the Iraqi people.


Also, is it just me, or does the commander keep calling Sam, the radio host, "ma'am"?

This is where I ate for Thanksgiving... it was a great night, the food was amazing, the conversation was entertaining, and the sunset was perfect.

If I had the time tonight - I would photoshop the cover of Home Alone, replacing Macaulay Culkin's face with Bush's. But, the night has gotten away from me - not to mention Culkin's little hands would be a nightmare to work around... anyways. Yesterday afternoon something was made public that... in my imagination, might have caused Bush to slap his face with both hands and scream out:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter. Con't reading...

Now - not only is this information important because it tears out the foundation of "failed intelligence", and doesn't fit well with the many times the administration claimed connection between Iraq and al Qaeda as an undisputed fact. But most importantly is the fact that Bush has done everything in his power, and probably even past that, to keep the daily-briefing info from the light of day... he has not allowed the Senate to see it... no one. Which kind of shoots down the argument that Bush keeps claiming: 'Everyone saw the same intellegence I saw'.

So lets recap - first, about a half a year ago, a stack of meeting minutes from a get-together with Tony Blair and Bush were leaked and became known as the "Downing Street Memos", which were comfermed by the British government - stating that Bush was, quote, "fixing" the intellegence around Iraq. Now, information comes out that Bush was told 10 days after 9/11 what he claimed to only find out a year after our "mission accomplished".

What a piece of shit.


By the way - in case it's been 15 years since you seen 'Home Alone', the title of this post: "This is it! Don't get scared now!", is a quote from the part when Culkin is loading the b.b. gun when the robbers are coming in. Just thought I'd clarify.

When I was in high school - my Dad took me to a bike shop in Jackson, Michigan, called 'On Two Wheels'. For a birthday/ Christmas gift he bought me a Trek 800 XC mountain bike... if I remember right, we couldn't tell my Mom exactly how much the bike was, he went a bit over budget... but that was our secret.

A year after I graduated high school - I rode that same bicycle across the country with my best friend, Tim, over 4,000-some miles, it took us 55 days to reach the Golden Gate bridge. It was the most euphoric moment of my life.

I didn't know it at the time but that bike would take on the entire meaning and experience of that trip... it symbolized the easy times, the hard times - the times I just laughed and laughed in the middle of an empty road stretching through a never-ending wheat field in North Dakota... or when I broke down physically and mentally all at once on my fourth day in the desert, crying, wondering if I would ever see anything but dead grass and heat waves again... a desert that I wouldn't wish any one to drive through, let alone ride a bike.

Four years later I would ride that same bike, along with my brother, Nick and my girlfriend of three years, Amanda, along the Pacific coast - preparing for a coast-to-coast bike trip that would become a documentary film.

And the bike took on even more meaning.


And then, a half-a-year later, today, I would walk downstairs to find that the lock, used to secure my bike behind our parking spot, had been cut with bolt cutters - and my bike missing.

Which, for the lack of a better word: sucks.

Some of you might have noticed a new tab near the head of the blog titled, 'SAD'. Also, some of you might have heard that this 4 time Emmy winning show is in danger... again... of being taken off the air due to lack of ratings. Apparently everyone is too busy watching Cops... or The Simple Life.

Anyway. It's a blog a few of us started to help spread the word about the show and also, the ultimate goal, to keep it on the air. Hey, it could happen, after all, sending letters and speaking out is what brought the show back in the first place.

While I was at the book store a week ago, shopping for my brother's birthday gifts, I stumbled onto a book titled, 'Bagdad Burning', which appeared to be a blog turned book, written by an anonymous 24 year girl living in Bagdad...

Seeing as how I was shopping for my brother and not myself, I didn't buy the book - but I did go straight home and visit the site, reading her first post from Sunday, August 17, 2003 - about three months after we invaded.

It is, hands down, the most amazing, well-written, emotional blog I've ever read. I recommend... no, I insist, beg, that everyone takes a moment to read the first two entries on her site - it's all it will take to pull you in.

Actually, just in case a few of you, for what ever reason, don't follow the link, I will cut & paste the first two entries:

The Beginning... So this is the beginning for me, I guess. I never thought I'd start my own weblog... All I could think, every time I wanted to start one was "but who will read it?" I guess I've got nothing to lose... but I'm warning you- expect a lot of complaining and ranting. I looked for a 'rantlog' but this is the best Google came up with.

A little bit about myself: I'm female, Iraqi and 24. I survived the war. That's all you need to know. It's all that matters these days anyway.

Waking Up Waking up anywhere in Iraq these days is a trial. It happens in one of two ways: either slowly, or with a jolt. The slow process works like this: you're hanging in a place on the edge of consciousness, mentally grabbing at the fading fragments of a dream... something creeps up around, all over you- like a fog. A warm heavy fog. It's the heat... 120 F on the cooler nights. Your eyes flutter open and they search the dark in dismay- the electricity has gone off. The ceiling fan is slowing down and you are now fully awake. Trying to sleep in the stifling heat is about as productive as trying to wish the ceiling fan into motion with your brain. Impossible.

The other way to wake up, is to be jolted into reality with the sound of a gun-shot, explosion or yelling. You sit up, horrified and panicked, any dream or nightmare shattered to oblivion. What can it be? A burglar? A gang of looters? An attack? A bomb? Or maybe it's just an American midnight raid?

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." -Winston Churchill

"This spring, several members of Congress have introduced legislation designed to eliminate federal review of criminal cases for the stated purpose of speeding up executions. The legislation, known as the Streamlined Procedures Act, would effectively kill the right of habeas corpus by stripping federal courts of jurisdiction to consider cases in which a prisoner's constitutional rights may have been violated."

The Pentagon effectively signed off on a strategy that mimics Red Army methods. But those [illegal] tactics were not only inhumane, they were ineffective. For Communist interrogators, truth was beside the point: their aim was to force compliance to the point of false confession. Read more of: 'Doing Unto Others as They Did Unto Us'...

Even though this photo is from Amanda's flickr photo stream - I actually took the picture, but that morning I had forgotten my cellphone and Amanda gave me hers.

Anyways. I managed to catch the last four minutes of this sunset while walking out of work around 5 o'clock. It made me wish I could have spent the last hour up in the mountains behind Burbank watching the sky turn pink-purple.

I hope you had a great birthday weekend. It was so nice to get away with you. I love you, Mike.

I've talked about this here recently - and I made the prediction that... well, if you're interested, you can click here to read the original post - but today I stumbled onto an article talking about these same oil executives facing questions from the Senate about their "big profits". And by "big profits" they mean $750,000 a second, which I don't think "big" is the right word to use, but that's just me. Maybe "criminal" is more fitting?

Anyway, here is the first give-away that this is all coming down... well, the second give-away I suppose, the first being the money. Thanks to the insistence of a handful of republicans the oil-exec's were not required to talk about their profits under oath. Well, don't take my word for it - read a book - "reading rainbow"... I mean, play this audio clip of Senator Ted Stevens laying the first of many bricks in this investigation's stonewalling.

31,536,000 seconds ago... give or take a few hundred, I was born in one of the many maternity rooms inside Jackson, Michigan's Foote hospital. Where my mother now works as a nurse.

I wasted most of my day away today - mostly trying to think of something interesting to do on the day before my birthday - the highlight was a long walk after sunset around the neighborhood while listening to my top-rated mix on the ipod. If I had the car at the moment - I'd probably be driving to the ocean instead of writing this post, but Amanda is out tonight baby-sitting.


Both Amanda and I have the next four days off of work - our original plans were to take a road-trip to to Las Vegas and just relax - pig out at some buffets... maybe catch a show. But it turns out we have less money than we thought - so we had to cancel our reservations. Instead we plan on using our friend Jill's cabin - neither of us have ever been there, but I guess after you park your car, you have to walk 1 or 2 miles back into the woods... it's very, very secluded.


Right now in the living room, there is a stack of birthday presents on the table that put all of my gifts for Amanda over the last three years combined to shame. It looks like Christmas out there...



I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this - don't get me wrong, I'm excited to open them, and I know I'm going to love them all - but that's half the problem, to explain:

Amanda's birthday was a month ago, on the 5th, and I don't know what I was thinking but I didn't get any of the things she had suggested for gift-ideas, I suppose I wanted to come up with something to surprise her... or something. Long story short, it bombed, and although she insist she likes her gifts... which I'm sure has some truth to it, I know none of them topped any of her would-be suggestions. As Ross says about Rachel, "always stick to the list". Damn! I can't believe I have that in my head - curse Amanda and Billy for their week-long-friends-marathons.

So, as you might guess, I'm a little afraid of being shown-up tomorrow when I open all my gifts only to find that they are great... and knowing that her gifts were "ehh".



As a joke, a friend, Bobby, from work, bought me this mini robo-raptor - I would go into that, but that's a different story for a different time.


We are still trying to come up with something to do tomorrow for my actual birthday - Jill doesn't get back from New York until tomorrow night, so we have to wait until then to get the key. If any of you have any suggestions - I'm up for anything... except clubbin'.

DTV is a new, free and open-source platform for internet television and video. An intuitive interface lets users subscribe to channels, watch video, and build a video library.

Our publishing software lets you broadcast full-screen video to thousands of people at virtually no cost. The project is non-profit, free and open source, and built on open standards. A Windows version of DTV and a full website are well underway and will arrive in the next several weeks.

This is for video what iTunes is for podcasting. The door for independent filmmakers or aspiring Jon Stewart's has just been opened - now, you can literally show your work to thousands, and thousands of people at no cost. The entertainment industry must be in a panic about this, and if they aren't, they shoud be.

These images are from piece called "Architecture of Density", by photographer, Michael Wolf. All were taken in Hong Kong, where Wolf has lived and worked for over ten years, one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas in the world, with an overall density of nearly 6,700 people per square kilometer.

I'd love to see each of these images blown up on a ten foot canvas. That's it - just thought I'd share, enjoy.

"Peter, what's happening - didn't you get the memo"?

This morning, while coming down the stairs to work, I noticed a large piece of cardboard from an empty pallet - probably 3 feet wide by 4 or 5 feet deep - with this drawn on the back of it.

Ten minutes later someone came by on a mini-fork-lift and took away to be trashed.

This morning I sent an email to the Agriculture Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte asking:

I was hoping you could help me understand your logic and/or motivation behind cutting food-benefits for 40,000-some children? Thanks.

I'm not holding-my-breath for a response, but it felt good write the letter. If you would like to write your representative, then you can click here to look them up via zip code. Or if you would like to contact one of the house committee members for the agriculture board, then you can click here for a list.

Amanda wanted me to post this for her - at the moment she is too mad and upset to type. The most amazing part of this low-blow budget cut is how chump-change this is in our record-breaking deficit. What is it now? I don't even remember - I can't keep up... I think it's around $318 billion.

And this administration finds it necessary to cut a measly $844 million from the poorest of the poor - taking away some people's only opportunity to buy food, and it even affects free lunches for kids in school. This is simply an asshole move - and I'm at a loss for words...

On a party-line vote, a Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives committee voted to cut food stamps by $844 million on Friday, just hours after a new government report showed more Americans are struggling to put food on the table.

About 300,000 Americans would lose benefits due to tighter eligibility rules for food stamps, the major U.S. antihunger program, under the House plan. The cuts would be part of $3.7 billion pared from Agriculture Department programs over five years as part of government-wide spending reductions.

(...)

"This is not a giveaway program that results in windfall profits," said North Carolina Democrat G.K. Butterfield in opposing the cuts. "That is not moral. That is not American."

Antihunger activists said hunger rates were up for the fifth year in a row, so the cuts were a mistake.

(...)

North Dakota Democrat Earl Pomeroy complained that 40,000 children would lose free meals at school because of that provision.

(...)

USDA said 11.9 percent of households, "at some time during the year, had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources."

Also, on a related note - a podcast I listened to yesterday from John Edwards talked about the fact that more than a million Americans slipped into poverty in 2004 (ontop of the 35.9 million in 2003).