It's hard to know how to go about a post like this - you read a news story that sparks so many strong emotions and when you want badly to express how you feel... you draw a blank. I know I won't be able to do justice with this - but I'll do my best:

This morning I read an article titled 'Who Paid For The Refurbished And Upgraded Louisiana Superdome?' - which went into to detail on the $184 million spent on the Superdome alone. Most of it paid for by FEMA.

Looking at the 184 million a little closer it appears that FEMA put up $115 million, the State of Louisiana spent $13 million, the NFL was willing to pay for $15 million, and the rest was picked up by a LSED Bond for $41 Million. Which works out to 62.5% being paid for by our federal government - less than the 75% required by law. I strongly recommend reading the full breakdown.

But to put this story into perspective and why exactly it makes my stomach turn: on August 22nd two reporters, Matt Pascarella & Greg Palast, interviewed several of the 73,000 people still, over a year later, living "behind barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans". Apparently, people living inside these ghettos are not allowed to talk with media without FEMA personal present. Both reporters were charged by Homeland Security for filming a "critical national security structure" [aka - an embarrassing and tragic failure that Bush really doesn't want people thinking about].

Beyond these barbed wire fences - in New Orleans only half of the city has electricity. Half its hospitals still remain closed. Not even half the population has returned. There exist no real timetable for moving these people [out of the trailers] to more permanent housing. Insurance settlements are mired in red tape [on-top of red tape you have whistle-blowers revealing State Farm was systematically defrauding thousands of Katrina victims]. The city still has no overall rebuilding plan. And although a great deal of debris has been cleared - much remains untouched.

So we have Bush's photo-op on the now "pristine" beaches of New Orleans - we have Monday night football in the newly remodeled football stadium... and we are supposed to be stupid enough to assume or believe that Bush's promise of "the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen" is well underway? It's not - at all, and people should be rioting in the streets. Or I'd even settle for them being allowed to talk to media without FEMA breathing down their neck.

Yesterday, during an interview with Blitzer, Bush said, "I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma..."

Just a comma - this not-so-unusual quote from an overly-optimistic [to the point of being delusional] Bush, is interesting for a number of reasons, first off, it's staggeringly insensitive to the people who've lost someone because of this occupation. And I want to stress that when I say "people who've lost someone", I'm not narrowly referring to Americans - I'm referring to everyone who has been swooped up in this irreversible mess.

That "comma" apparently encapsulates the 2,700 plus US troops who are now dead - it en-capsules the 45,000 plus civilians who are now dead - the 19,910 injured for the rest of their lives - the 14,000 who have been imprisoned [the last 1 to 5 years] without reason, trial or access to habeas corpus.

Strangely that one comma somehow contains three of it's own commas... by that I mean the 317,451,180,000 dollars we have so far spent. But let's not forget that only days ago the Pentagon was reporting they were billions short for funding in Iraq.

If Bush were a sensible person he might have said, "this will go down in history as our country's greatest struggle" - which, just as much as the comma remark, would have been a huge lie, but still - it sounds a little better.

But this wasn't really a message to the people of this country - at least not all of us - he knows he's lost the huge majority and, in staying the course, isn't going to win us back, his message was to his "religious", if you can call them that, base. The people who would follow him even if... he started promoting torture. As Steve Gilliard notes:

When Bush said Iraq was a comma, he was speaking in dog whistle to the fundies. It comes from a saying "Never put a period where God puts a comma". Which means things will get better. Which is, of course, insane.

Yesterday a very helpful person from FireAnt.tv wrote me to let me know that my feed was capturing the wrong movie files from caliblog's post, to explain: the image you are used to seeing that read "click here to play movie" was actually a single movie frame [not an image], and when clicked it would swap out the single frame movie with the larger one. It's a trick that works with most RSS readers but probably a sloppy set-up.

So, I'm taking the advice of FireAnt and trying something new, the movie embedded below is now linked to a 'gif image and not a separate movie file. Please let me know if you have any issues viewing the movie - it will help me decide what method I'll stick with.

The video isn't very exciting - while Amanda & I were flying back to L.A. from Michigan we saw a lightening storm out the plane window... no music, no editing, just lightening. Enjoy.

PARIS (AFP) - European scientists voiced shock as they showed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole itself.


Perennial sea ice -- thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer -- had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles [about 84,000 sq. miles], ESA said.

"This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low-ice seasons," said Mark Drinkwater of ESA's Oceans/Ice Unit.

"The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Thomas Jefferson [in a letter to a Colonel Edward Carrington - January 16, 1787]

These pictures might make a little more sense if you've seen the movie 'Four Eyed Monsters' - Amanda and I bought t-shirts after the show last thursday to help support Arin and Susan's film. "Two heads... four eyes... eight limbs...":

I should warn everyone that this vlog post got a little lengthy - if you have trouble streaming it you can try right clicking this link and downloading it or viewing the flash version here.

Maybe while you're waiting - you could listen to 'Vanishing Act' by Monster Movie... I can't get enough of this song.

The first eight months of 2006 was the warmest in the continental United States since record-keeping began in 1895, NOAA officials said today.

The period of June through August was the second warmest on record.

Above-average rainfall last month in the central and southwestern parts of the country alleviated drought conditions in some areas, but moderate-to-extreme drought continued to affect 40 percent of the country, according to a statement from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

The average June-August 2006 temperature for the contiguous United States, based on preliminary data, was 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of 72.1 degrees. This summer, at an average of 74.5 degrees, was slightly cooler than the record of 74.7 degrees set in 1936 during the Dust Bowl era.

Eight of the past 10 summers have been warmer than the U.S. average for the same period going back to 1895.

Last year is thought to have been the warmest on record for the entire planet.

mike and i are house/cat sitting for my unlce thurm and his wife tricia this week. it has been nice to have a beautiful house all to ourselves. and the dishwasher, washer and dryer, pool, backyard patio and shower, with water pressure that doesn't feel like it's peeing on you, haven't been too bad either. their cat mabel is also very awesome and a joy to cuddle with.

Originally posted at Mockworthy...

Get your fix: We really could have gone with any of the most-recent Star Wars - I would argue it's a toss-up as to which is the worst. [23.9 MBs, 02:18'58, mp3 format] or play in iTunes.

After thoughts: I guess I should warn that if you have yet to watch 'Lost' and plan on doing so - you might want to avoid this commentary, what can we say, this is a long and uneventful movie and we got side-tracked... several times.

Details on 'said' film: Tagline: A Jedi Shall Not Know Anger. Nor Hatred. Nor Love. Directed by: George Lucas Writing credits: George Lucas & Jonathan Hales Genre: Action / Adventure / Fantasy / Mystery / Romance / Sci-Fi Plot summary: Anakin Skywalker shares a forbidden romance with Padmé Amidala while his teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, makes an investigation of a separatist assassination attempt on Padme which leads to the discovery of a secret Republican clone army. (more) Cast overview: Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Natalie Portman as Senator Padme Amidala, Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, Christopher Lee as Count Dooku... Awards: Won Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay by George Lucas & Jonathan Hales. Won Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor by Hayden Christensen.

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"Anyone who claims that I and others like me are "soft", or have "forgotten" the lessons of what happened here [Ground Zero] - is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante - and at worst, an idiot - whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President." - Keith Olbermann

I'm actually not sure what the name of this song is, I've been calling it 'Frozen Lake' but I keep forgetting to ask Eric. Either way, I recorded this last Saturday during their acoustic show at the Masquer's Cabaret in West Hollywood (just before the incident happened).



I have to say this song has snuck up on me - it's definitely my favorite 'Faulty Chromosome' song right now. I think it has a lot to do with the lyrics. Enjoy.

About two weeks ago Justin had me find a few episodes of the 2nd season of 'Lost' for him. I didn't get far - but later I did watch the 1st episode of season 2 with him and his girlfriend, Mollye. That's when it happened - I got hooked.



That same night I went to Blockbuster and rented disc 1 & 2 (out of 6) of season 1 and begged Amanda to watch at least the pilot episode with me. She was very, very reluctant at first to get into the show. Long story short, the both of us spent the next two weeks staying up until sometimes 3 in the morning catching up... only to regret having to watch just one episode a week when the 3rd season starts this October. I think I'll go crazy with curiosity if this isn't the last season - there are too many questions that need answering.

Saturday night Amanda & I headed straight home after watching our friends, A Faulty Chromosome' play at the Masquer's Cabaret in West Hollywood. Billy was up on his computer, watching movie trailers, when we walked in the door - both of us were starving and we started to make ourselves a late-dinner. Our cat, Avocado, was staring strangely out the screen-door to the balcony, I assumed he was just, as usual, waiting for his moment to sneak outside and visit his friend next door, Cricket (who is a cat... not an insect). When I leaned down to pick him up I looked up outside and at a stranger's face staring back at me.

Now our apartment isn't ground level, it's a second story apartment, this face wasn't just someone passing by, it was a man in the middle of pulling himself up onto our balcony. I dropped the cat and quickly threw open the screen door, he dropped down and I looked over the edge just in time to see him head towards the parking-lot behind the apartment.

I bolted from the balcony to the front door, calling for Billy for to follow me, but I tend to have trouble projecting and neither Billy or Amanda heard what I said. I sprinted towards the back but I tripped the motion-sensor lights and realized I was running the wrong way.

I hurried out to the street and tried to find some kind of motion on the dark - when I spotted a white t-shirt 300 feet away heading towards Magnolia Blvd, but he was walking now, I started to sprint after - holding my right hand over my thigh to keep the 2 bucks in change from making any noise.

I hadn't even made it the entire 400-something feet down the street before I felt it, my lungs were starting to burn, my limbs felt heavy, I obviously wasn't pumping enough air into my blood-stream and it was filling the void with lactic-acid. I was pissed at myself, very pissed, I knew I was out of shape, but even worse I knew just four years ago I would have been able to sprint at top-speed for a half a mile before feeling it. I was close, in a full sprint, he was still walking, just making the corner of Magnolia - I was five feet away and at the point in my mind where I realized I didn't know what I was going to do next. My instinct was to throw myself, superman style, into his torso. I'm not a big guy, but I've taken down people much bigger than myself with the whole self-catapult-thingy - but I didn't have time, without even turning around he bolted off.

At first the both of us stuck to the sidewalk, he was fast, very fast, and was slowly but surely pulling away - then he rushed into the traffic. It must have looked very strange to all the cars passing by - a tall, thin black man with shoulder-length dreads sprinting away from some pissed-looking white guy with no shoes on...

We ran down the yellow-line for a few hundred feet before he headed back to the sidewalk - I followed but I was at least 60 feet behind by then. He headed into the parking lot of Ralph's and by the time I turned the corner I lost him. I started to head inside the store but I knew he was still running and I needed a car - I didn't have my cell phone on me, so I used the pay phone to call Amanda but both her and Billy were in the street trying to figure out why in the hell I sprinted out of the front door and never came back.

Long story short - I lost him, I ran back to the apartment and jumped in the car to go looking for him but didn't have any luck. If only I wasn't out of shape - I could have kept up. And if only I was wearing shoes my heels wouldn't be so bruised.

Last week my Uncle Brian, aka, The Rooster, happened to be in town for the day, so Amanda and I took him around. First, we ran him back to our place to show him our apartment - then if was off to Hollywood hills that give a great bird's eye view of... well, almost everything.


After the hills we hurried to 'The Rocks' to watch the sunset - Brian had never seen the Pacific ocean before. A great bonus to the beach was when seven good-sized seals popped up near the shore. And, of course, what visit would be complete without dinner at 'Birds'.

It was really a lot of fun and I wish we had more than a half-a-day to hang out - I guess we'll have to wait 'till next time. Come back soon.

The percent of Americans that, still to this day, believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Five years later and the best our news-media can do is 43%.

I suppose it could be worse - considering the recent Zogby poll revealing that 85% of US troops in Iraq still believe Saddam was involved with 9/11. That is simply tragic. What are we waiting for? When do we plan on telling them the truth? What reason is there to keep them in the dark?

I thought I would embed this clip of Bush during a press conference where, when asked what Iraq had to do with 9/11, he snaps back "nothing".


There's an artical on the Huffington Post by Cenk Uygur, from Young Turks, that is worth the quick read, here's a blurp:

Now that the myth that "everyone already knows" is punctured, what is the press going to do about it? My guess is absolutely zero. They will pretend that since they know and the people they hang out with know that everyone should know even if they never do a single cover story or TV broadcast on the issue. There is no excuse for this failure.

I've used Firefox for as long as I can remember - for really no other reason besides security. Not to mention IE for mac is the lamest browser I've ever seen. But my point is, I used Firefox out of necessity. Two nights ago I stumbled onto a browser called Flock, it's built off of Firefox, so the safety is still there, but it's designed around blogging and picture-sharing in a way that borders genius.

The way it integrates flickr is probably my favorite feature - you can tell in the screen-shot below that a drawer slides down between your tool-bar and page-content, from here you can simply drag and drop your pictures (or anyone else's) to a blog-post, comments, myspace, etc... anything. And their batch uploader is pretty fancy to, but I'll stick with iPhoto's exporter for now.

Also, the blogging tool is designed very well, I'd probably be much more excited about it if I had a laptop - to explain: To write a post in blogger, wordpress, etc, you simply click a button in the tool-bar and a window pops up, from there you can write your post and drag pictures to it - but you don't have to be connected to the internet. The browser will save them locally on your computer until later.

It's search engine is much, much better than Firefox's - it seems to work more like 'spotlight' than a normal search field. As you type you get automatic results for your favorites, from you history, the entire web, and all with search engines you can customize.

The only beef I have with Flock, and I'm keeping in mind that it's still beta right now, is the bookmark-bar doesn't allow for folders, so that greatly limits the number of bookmarks I can easily get to. But apparently this is something they are working on for an upcoming release.

I would also love to see the same kind of integration with videos as they have with pictures. If the same way you can drag and drop pictures was possible, but with movies (from blip.tv, google, YouTube, iFilm, etc), then I would have a hard time hiding my "dorkiness". Not that I've done a good job so far.

I highly, highly recommend Flock for anyone who ever writes a blog post. And if you have a flickr account - well then that's just a huge added bonus. Seriously... go download it.

Update: I just recieved an email from Will Pate, the 'Community Ambassador' for Flock, saying this: [...] Oh yeah - we're going to have video intergration in the next major version, starting with YouYube. Even in its rough implementation in the developer builds, it's sweet.

I wear a shoe string around my left wrist. I have for the last five or six years, it's a piece of shoe string from the racing-spikes I wore when I ran at State Finals my senior year of high school for Cross Country. I guess I wear it to remind myself of the four long years of training and discipline it took to lead me to those short 17 minutes and 6 seconds.

My shoe string is wearing thin, it's double-knotted in places it's unraveled and pinched together with a few lines of the metal that are inside the little plastic bag ties from grocery stores. I guess lately I 'feel' like it looks - worn thin, held together with double-knots and pieces of flimsy wire.



But I suppose the way I feel now is the very reason I wear this string, I'm in the middle of, not training, but, a project that is drawing upon discipline and patience I sometimes feel I don't have.


Amanda told me tonight that lately I've been lethargic... bored... and I suppose unambitious, she didn't use that word but it's probably true. I feel bored, especially with 'Pedal', not bored of the idea, not bored of film itself, but bored of the build-up. After I announced publicly that the film's producer was out, and after I posted a rough-edit of some footage I had been working on, I received an email back from Matt, the ex-producer. Basically saying he very much liked what I had edited, and that he felt I should do the film myself and my way, and that he might just find a way to pay for it.

Since then, over a month ago, I've been wasting the days, killing time, waiting to see if the blank check for the film arrives or not. And it's burning me out. Maybe I feel like I'm waiting for something that will, unintentionally, take away a piece of 'Pedal' that I want to earn. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not sure if it has to do with anything really. Sorry to be so vague, but I'm mostly thinking out-loud.

I think I need to focus on other aspects... of 'Pedal'... of my day-to-day. I need to keep "training", I need to feel self-disciplined - not dependent and in-limbo.

In the middle of checking my email this morning my monitor went crazy and now I have a crazy block - about four inches high - that spans from one side of my monitor to the other. I suppose that's what I get for buying a cheap-o $100 Envision monitor from Comp USA. I haven't even had this thing a year yet... suck.

About five minutes ago Amanda finished dyeing her hair red - and she claims to hate it.







You can especially tell in the last picture how grumpy she's being about it - I personally think it looks cool. I'm sure our friend, Paul, will help her feel better about it tomorrow at the party we're going to.

As promised, the short video of Mike Keeper getting down in the beginning of 'Jackie-O' from last Thursday's show at the Zen Sushi. Prepare yourself to be blown away by moves that would leave... some... really good dancer person... as blank-faced as a deer in headlights. That was a terribly stupid metaphor.

This last thursday Amanda, Billy & I went to Silverlake to watch our friends, A Faulty Chromosome, play at the Zen Sushi.



Afterwards we all headed over to our favorite Cafe' only to find out they have new hours and had closed at one! So instead we headed over to the 101, the diner, not the highway. We didn't leave until 2:30'ish, I felt bad for Amanda since she had to baby-sit at 8, but she had taken a three hour nap before we went to the show and she fine.



So I just re-read that last paragraph and wow, it was pretty boring. Sorry about that. I need to clear up some hard-drive space on my computer so I can import the show - especially the part where Mike does a dance that puts Napoleon Dynamite to shame.



I'm alone at the office right now, trying, with no luck, to drown out the sound of a lone but persistent cricket with my iPod. I keep going over to the corner and throwing a plastic cup at the ceiling, but he's sneaky and, I'm convinced, messing with me.


I want to direct everyone's attention to two new things on Caliblog, first off, in the sidebar; I added an 'about', just click the "what is this site?" link. But don't get your hopes up too high, it's a very short & simple explanation. Secondly, if you look at the left-side of the header, next to the RSS icon, you see a "is that all you got?" link, if you click that, the header drops down and has a ton of different ways to subscribe to this site.

Now if you'll excuse me - the main theme from 'Beverly Hills Cop' just started playing on iTunes.