My little brother, Dylan, had his second birthday this last Wednesday. For the party my brother, Nick, burnt a Beatles CD, starting with "They Say It's Your Birthday", which seemed like a decent enough fit for the short home-movie below.



Also there's a handful of pictures of Dylan and his birthday over at my Mom's blog.

So the buzz on the street... the internet street more specifically, is that Amanda Congdon of Rocketboom has been let go of by the show's producer... probably not a smart move on his part. Whether or not you were a big fan of the internet-show it's not much of an argument that Amanda was the face of RB and the driving-force behind it's popularity.

I'm a little slow on writing this - it's been almost a month since her last RB appearance - but I mention it for a different reason besides getting in on all the gossip. The company I work for deals in online video content, but from a internet-savvy perspective, it is doing so, in some areas, without fully embracing the current change in the internet.

When this company started, the sites was driven by content - but, from a personal point of view, I believe the internet has evolved, and sites are now driven more by community than content. For example there are twenty (a huge under-exaggeration) different online video sites - YouTube, Google Video, Blip TV, iKlipz, Yahoo!, etc, and most of them offer the same services and even video files free for download. So what keeps a person coming back? The site's openness and personal connection with it's users.

Rocketboom made good use of this, it was consistent (five shows every Monday through Friday), it was open in it's style, it was personal - each post had comments and they were good at utilizing those comments, 25% of the show's content was suggested by their own audience.

Note: This post has been saved as a draft for over three weeks now... I'm just gonna' wrap this up as quickly as possible.

Long story short - I persuaded my Boss that we should fly her out to LA and have her start up her own internet-show again and have it all paid for. He was very excited about it, all I had to do was get in touch with her. I thought, no problem, Amanda seems very responsive to her audience.

Well... like I said above, this post has been waiting to be published for over three weeks and I've yet to get a single response from her. Which is very, very frustrating.

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines... read on.

I understand that we have a recruiting problem, but:

"Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives," said Mark Potok, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project."We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution. Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh."

Originally posted at Project Pedal:

I won't lie to you - I've been hiding. I've been - sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously - avoiding 'Pedal'. It's been somewhat easy considering the last two weeks I've been visiting family in Michigan, more than 22-hundred miles from the half-edited pilot-footage waiting for me in North Hollywood.

It's no good, and it [the pilot-episode] needs to be re-shot. There are a number of problems with what we came back with after those very short and often rushed 5 days. Esthetics-wise: 99% of the shots are too wide, which tends to lack emotion. Emotion-wise: there isn't enough heart-tohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif-heart from the bicyclist, or even just honest dialogue, I feel there are a few different reasons for this:

Click here to finish reading this post...

This post is a mashing together of three separate post that have been saved-as-drafts for over a week, plus some other random notes. First of all, I'd like to cut & paste the comment Amanda left in the last post, but I'll leave out the mushy stuff:

yes the art fair was great and it made me proud to be from ypsi, as i often am, and it made me think that if i were to ever move back here i would live differently. i would be more active in my community and more like mark. ypsi is really suffering right now and i love that mark and others like him are working so hard to make a [difference] and a change for the better to bring ypsi back. that was my favorite part of the fair. it was inspiring. the only down side i noticed was that it needed to big held in a bigger place (so many people showed up that there was barely room to walk around) :)

I just thought it was a nice comment and it should be easier to stumble across. On a semi-related note, here are a few pictures I was finally able to send to flickr while I was in Jackson, I don't get service here in Onsted, the one of the little girl upside down is from the Shadow Art Fair, and the other two are from Ann Arbor later that night:







And speaking of "Ann Arbor later than night" here is a short out-of-focus video I took of a few Jesus-freaks doing a good job of scaring the general public. The entire 2 or 3 hours Amanda and I spent roaming the streets near campus they were set up and non-stop in their rambling, and they didn't look like they planned on packing up any time soon. I'm sure they mean well...

It's 11:30 at night, Michigan time, and I'm sitting on the floor of the spare bedroom at my Dad's house in Onsted. The window is fully open because the a/c isn't working, across the park I can hear the generators running what's left of the fair, every 20 minutes there seems to be a crash of metal and yelling as they have trouble taking down the 'Fun Slide' and 'Barrels of Fun' ride.

Amanda and I have been in Michigan since the 14th - and it's been nothing but dripping-hot the entire time - but I didn't start this post to bitch about the weather. On the 15th I spent the morning watching my sister, Mandy, play softball in Adrian until noon, then Amanda and I drove back to Ypsi to catch the Shadow Art Fair and say "hello" to Mark Maynard.

I have to say that the Shadow Art Fair was the best art fair I've ever been to... and no, I'm not just saying that because I think Mark will read the site, the Ann Arbor art fair, for example (as much as I love Ann Arbor), always feel very business like, the people never seem personable or there to do anything buy sell their generic wind chimes and yard ornaments.

But this Shadow Art Fair was so unique, the art was unique and one of kind, the artist were great and fun to talk to. I met the VG Kids who I had known about from their Democracy player t-shirts, everything on Tiffany Tomato's table was something I would buy if I could afford it... but I can't afford a stick of gum at the moment, so that's not saying she's overpriced... a different story for a different post.

Ugh, it's so hot.

While there I bought a copy of Mark's My Life in Ypsi collection and then I tried to buy an issue of Crimewave (with an interview with David Cross in it) but Mark wouldn't take money for it - then I bought a t-shirt from Growing Hope but they didn't have anything smaller than an XL for the color I wanted - so I'll be waiting for that to show up in the mail.


It was just a good experience - I'm incredibly glad I got to, and I'm looking forward to going again in the future. I tried to tell Mark, as I was leaving, that I thought what he was doing was really great - but it didn't come out quite right. And neither did that last sentence. I'll just say: that Ypsi is lucky to have Mark Maynard.

This is an interesting short artical I read on CNN while I was at work today, something the writer, Molly Ivins, forgets to mention is that the buying power of our minium wage is at a 51 year low:

I don't get it. What's the percentage in keeping the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour? After nine years? This is such an unnecessary and nasty Republican move. Congress has voted seven times to raise its own wages since last the minimum wage budged. Of course, Congress always raises its own salary in the dark of night, hoping no one will notice. But now it does the same with the minimum wage, quietly killing it.

Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers -- this is Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts.

According to the current issue of Mother Jones:


* One in four U.S. jobs pays less than a poverty-level income.

* Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any one time has risen steadily. Now, 13 percent -- 37 million Americans -- are officially poor.

* Bush's tax cuts (extended until 2010) save those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those making $1 million are saved $42,700.

* In 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, compared those who point out such statistics as the one above to Adolph Hitler (surely he meant Stalin?).

* Bush has diverted $750 million to "healthy marriages" by shifting funds from social services, mostly childcare.

* Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with disabilities by 50 percent.

A series of related stats -- starting with the news that two out of three new jobs are in the suburbs -- shows how the poor are further disadvantaged in the job hunt by lack of public or private transportation.

Meanwhile, for those who have been following the collapse of the pension system, please note a series in The Wall Street Journal by Ellen Schultz taking a hard look at executive pension obligations:

* "Benefits for executives now account for a significant share of pension obligations in the United States, an average of 8 percent (of large companies). Sometimes a company's obligation for a single executive's pension approaches $100 million."

* "These liabilities are largely hidden, because corporations don't distinguish them from overall pension obligations in their federal financial findings."

* "As a result, the savings that companies make by curtailing pensions of regular retirees -- which have totaled billions of dollars in recent years -- can mask a rising cost of benefits for executives."

* "Executive pensions, even when they won't be paid until years from now, drag down the earnings today. And they do so in a way that's disproportionate to their size, because they aren't funded with dedicated assets."


It seems to me that we've seen enough evidence over the years that the capitalist system is not going to be destroyed by an outside challenger like communism -- it will be destroyed by its own internal greed. Greed is the greatest danger as we develop an increasingly winner-take-all system. And voices like The Wall Street Journal's editorial page encourage this mentality by insisting that any form of regulation is bad. But for whom?

It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less fair -- "justice for all" seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans have rigged the "lottery of life" in this country in ways we don't even know about yet. The new bankruptcy law is unfair, and the new college loan rules are worse. The system has been stacked so that large corporations have an inside track over small businesses in getting government contracts. We won't see the full consequences of this mean and careless legislation for years, but it starting to affect us already.

Last week we went to Fullerton to watch our friends, A Faulty Chromosome, play at the Santa Fe Express. At the end of the night, when it was just a few us left, and they were closing up the cafe', Eric started to play Belle & Sebastian's 'Get me away from here I'm dying'.


Which has a story behind it, over a year ago - wait, before I go on, I have to say that I have iTunes open and on shuffle, when I started to write this post it happen to be playing 'I fought in war', which is also by Belle & Sebastian, and right after that, it started to play 'I can't stop laughing', which is by A Faulty Chromosome. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Where was I? Right, the story behind the song: over a year ago, Amanda and I went to a party with mostly people from Ikea, Eric was there and had brought his guitar, none of us had heard his music at this point and I don't think Amanda had any idea that Eric was musically-talented at all. There were about 12 of us crammed onto a tiny balcony at 1 in the morning singing along to random songs while Eric played guitar - and one of those songs was 'Get me away from here I'm dying'. Amanda always brought up that night and how perfect it was...

For her birthday I managed to sweet-talk Eric into recording the song for Amanda as a surprise, which was a good thing because the rest of my gift ideas completely bombed, and even though he had to drive all the way to Long Beach from Burbank to see his girlfriend... for her birthday, if I remember right, he spent several hours recording the song until it was just right, well, I doubt he would call it "just right" (he's very self-critical, although I suppose everyone is), but Amanda loved it.

That's it - that's the story.

For the first time in two weeks the fridge is overflowing with food and drinks - most importantly: the drinks. All I've been guzzling lately is water, bottle after bottle, after glass, after jug, after glass... water, water, water. And now, there's a plethora of milk, Gatorade, pink lemonade, etc, and of course, water.


Since our wall mounted air-conditioner in the living room only cools a 4 foot bubble by the sliding glass door, the bedroom is baking hot, because of this I got the sudden urge to down a Gatoraid. And not just sip it to cool off, I was intending to guzzle that ice-cold sports drink until it brought on a brain-freeze, maybe splash it all over my face in slow-mo' like they do in the commercials.

I open the fridge, there's a few options to choose from, there's the orange-flavor I started working on yesterday, but there's also a red buried behind a pop-can and a bottle of water, I reach for the red. Failing to notice that the lid had already been opened, I lean back on the counter by the sink, and dive in.

I let the Gatoraid fill my mouth before I bother to take one big gulp, that's when I realize that this particular bottle of Gatoraid taste like shit... my tongue feels like I just dipped it in couch-syrup.

It took me a minute to piece together the mystery (after washing out my mouth in the sink) that I had just drank someone else's Gatoraid mixed with Rum... a lot of it. And seeing as how I've never really drank anything in my life... it wasn't what I was expecting. Not quite the cold, fresh, cooling sports drink I was gearing myself up for.

Oh God, I just burped rum... ugh.

Seriously, reading this actually makes me emotional... I feel so... powerless.

The Defense Department is sending St. Mary's University School of Law $1 million to help fight terrorism by studying ways to limit the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, a landmark open government law that celebrated its 40th anniversary Tuesday.

A very interesting six-part online look, by the BBC, at the future of our planet.

I had to see this to believe it, the below, familiar, statue was unveiled this 4th of July, in Memphis. This Lady Liberty stands 72 feet tall, cost $260,000, is dubbed "The Statue of Liberation Through Christ", and it was designed & paid for by the Mega-Church Apostle Alton R. Williams, who believes, quote, "Hurricane Katrina was retribution for New Orleans's embrace of sin", end-quote.

I want to say that on one hand, he has every right to do this - but on the other hand, it's very, very problematic. Williams believes that this country was founded upon Christianity - and that it needs to get back to those (non-existent) roots. Despite the following:

The Treaty of Tripoli (also known as, The Treaty of Peace and Friendship) was written in 1796 and then ratified by the United States on June 10, 1797, it reads: "...the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." - it was passed in the US Senate unanimously.

Ugh. I don't even want to go on about this - the statue is just misleading and... yeah.

Since I started working downtown - I've been riding the subway to and from work, when I leave the apartment: it's less than a mile bicycle ride to the North Hollywood redline, and after an 8 minute trip to the Hollywood & Highland station, underneath the Kodak theatre, it's not even a half a mile to ifilm.

The subway here is surprisenly clean and under-traveled. Most nights when I'm riding back home, there are only 2 or 3 other people in the same train car with me - maybe 30 or 40 people in total on the whole train, which has about 12 connected cars. Although the North Hollywood station is kept spotless, the Hollywood & Highland station, only at night it seems, has a few discarded metro-maps and an opened newspaper thrown on the ground.

But my favorite part is the wind - looking down the tunnel you can start to see the subway's lights and soon after the building rush of wind, the metro-maps and newspapers begin to dance around, and the air doesn't smell stale or feel off, it's actually a very fresh gust that gets sucked down from one station and pushed to the next. There's not much else to this story, I just wanted to say how much I anticipate the wind while riding the Metro... I know it's strange.

As Amanda and I were gathering up our clothes and left-over food from the her Uncle's pool/barbecue 4th of July party, I found myself alone with 5 older women, I don't say older to imply "old", just not 24 - and actually the 5 are very attractive older women, I'm not just saying that, it has a little bit to do with the story.

I was helping pick up the dozens of empty beer cans and water bottles scattered in every corner of their backyard - when one of the women, Mo (not her real name, but a nick-name) said that "as a speech therapist I would like to examine your vocal folds". Here's where the above 'attractive' comment comes in, the other 4 women around myself and Mo started to "ohh & ahh" in sexual-innuendo as to what "examining" my vocal folds really meant.

I actually wasn't sure what vocal "folds" were - turns our they are just another name, a more correct name, for vocal "cords" - I had to Wiki' it.

But I asked why she was interested in my voice... I then said it obviously has something to do with it being strange and difficult to hear for people not within my two-foot bubble. But then that self-insulting remark brought on a wave of "no, you're voice is so unique...", and I again added, "unique as in hard-as-hell-to-understand", and the 5 women came back with "no, it's very husky and beautiful... you should be a singer", by now I'm probably red in the face - seeing as how I can't take a compliment to save my life and ontop of that, I was cornered by 5 women focusing exclusivly on my voice - something I'm not always positive about. So I was probably blushing - from both the "husky" remark as well as the "ohhs & ahhs" from before.

I did learn though, while on Wiki', that: a person's voice pitch is determined by the resonant frequency of their vocal folds - a average man's frequency is 125 Hz, a woman's is 210 and a child's is 300... which leads me to assume mine is probably in the 70's.

I assumed that my "deep" and difficult-to-project voice would be from under-development folds, but Amanda argued that men's voices deepen as they get older, so perhaps I have over-developed folds. Now I'm curious - I want Mo to "examine" me... or my folds.

The other night I went over to Justin's apartment to watch 'Why we fight', which was very good, but not really important to this post - half through the documentary, something reminded him of (let's just call him) B', I used to work with B' and Justin still does. Apparently, B' refuses to go see the film 'Superman Returns' because it fails to say "truth, justice and the American way".

I didn't notice this during the movie, but according to B'; it's a big deal.

During his announcing the anti-American-Superman movie, he said, "love it or leave it". Now Justin told me this days ago... and I tried to forget it, to let it go, to not let it get under my skin. But I figure what good is a blog if you can't let something off your chest?


"Love it or leave it" has to be the most chicken-shit response I've ever heard, how much of a push-around do you have to be to hold to the mindset where you see something that's wrong, or could be better, and you don't do or say anything about it? Maybe in a dictatorship, I can see that phrase being applicable - because, yes, there's nothing you can do; it's not a responsive government.

But a democracy? Is that why we supposedly have elected representatives - so that we can just "love it or leave it"? No. That's the biggest line of bullshit, and it warrants a strong punch to the face from a founding-father. If you see something that can be better in a democracy: you speak out, you get off your lazy-ass and contact your local, state or federal representatives. You don't just pack up and shuffle your feet to somewhere else, I mean you can, I could care less if a person moves out of the country, but that 'comeback' to American-related critism, or suggestion or (in this case) non-nationalistic themes (the film wasn't even anti-US, it just didn't say anything at all) is rediculous.

I don't know why, but this whole thing has really gotten me upset - B' just always seemed more thoughtful than "love it or leave it"... and that phrase, or saying, or whatever you would call it, is, for a lack of a better word, just weak.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

it's been so hot lately. the cat has taken to sleeping in the bathroom sink again. something he hasn't done since he was a kitten.



also, mike noticed, a few weeks ago, that some birds had made a nest in our blinds on the balcony. when i first went to check it out i didn't see anything inside. and i figured they must've decided, after building it, that it was too dangerous of a spot. but last weekend i noticed two birds sitting on the blinds near it and flying back and forth from the trees across the way to it. then i realized that they were bringing food to a baby. i stepped out onto the balcony to get a better look and closed the door all the way behind me (because i wanted to keep the cool air in). then the door locked and i was stuck. mike and billy were both at work. after about 10 minutes of sweating my ass off (the a/c unit was blaring hot air at me) i called out to my neighbors. thank god she was home and my apartment door was open so she could come over and let me in.



anyway... back to my story. so i have been watching them now... the birds, not my neighbors. and they are so cool. there are at least 2 babies and they get bigger and bigger everyday. at first i couldn't see them at all, then the next day i saw just their beaks, the next day their whole heads, and now today i could see all the way down to their fuzzy little shoulders and stuff. they are so cute. i enjoy watching the parents bring them food all day. and i feel awful that we are blasting them with hot hot air from our a/c unit that doesn't even cool our apartment down.



so, they are cute and i will just continue to watch them grow and fly away and hope they have a good life.

This news clip ties in very tightly with the below artical I mentioned.

This is a great artical from 2004 that I found buried in Common Dreams, it was written by Thom Hartmann. Enjoy:

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"

Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan.

"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."

In this, Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" - the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)

As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."

Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People - instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.

[...]

Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out in his 1944 Times article his concern about the same happening here in America:

[...]

"If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."

[...]

Finally, Wallace said, "The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. ... Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels."

I've made about 100 copies of the Shadow Art Fair flyer, that you too can download for free from their site, and I'm trying to think of decenct places to post them. Help spread the word!

Last Thursday I tagged a long with a few friends to see the new film 'Superman Returns', leading up to it's release - I was "ehh" about seeing it, which just means: like most major-movies (Superman Returns, Pirates, etc) coming out soon, I'm sure I'll probably see them, but I wouldn't freak out if I just never got around to it for no-good-reason.

Not that I'm assuming they are going to bad movies - it's just something about seeing them plastered everywhere I look seems to take the fun out of it. Yes, I know that's strange.


But, where was I? I had actually started getting excited about seeing 'Superman' the night before - I think I was just in anticipation of seeing a big-budget movie that might not suck (mostly due to it's talented director). As far as the movie and it's star - I didn't really recall having any feelings towards Superman when I was younger, I've seen most of the original four, but I was, as far as I remember, always much more into 'Thundercats'.


Anyways, I watched the movie, I enjoyed it - a day went by and I realized that I really, really enjoyed it. The movie seemed to bring out an inner-child in me and it was just an exciting experience at the movies. I guess Superman had more of an impact on me as a child than I let on, during half the scenes I just wanted to yell out "Go Superman!", as dorky as that sounds. That's it, that's my review.