the story of how michael moore's book nearly missed publication is kinda scary. i'm glad he refused to back down.

dammit, as much as i want to maintain my curmudgeonly attitude about the olympics...i had a blast watching the men's and women's skeleton last night. seeing tiny little tristan gale fly down the track headfirst reminded me of all the fun i had on my flexible flyer way back when.

john ashcroft:

Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for Him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends His son to die for you.

...well isn't that nice

so i'm watching this show on vh1 about so-called "hate rock". it's fricken scary. basically hardcore done by guys in the white power movement. you can almost feel sorry for them, if they weren't so dangerous. (i did say 'almost').

salon, a formerly great new/opinion website, takes a bad turn.

ya, ya, it's valentine's day....but it's also my mom's birthday. happy birthday mom!

in this article, the author describes the winter games as "Hockey, and a bunch of Sports That Suck".

ok, i don't really agree. but it did make me laugh out loud.

sign seen carved in granite outside of a momument shop in bangor, maine:

Please Drive Carefully. I Can Wait.

heh...

this isn't quite up the to the "Jerry Garcia plays hoop with the Lakers" dream but...

a bunch of us are going on one of those sea kayak trips. we've arrived at our destination and are unloading the kayaks off of the trailer. but...my old friend gene has a 'special' kayak. it's extra long, painted in several extremely bright colors and has retractable wheels on the bottom. not a big deal, right? well, gene has put on some sort of superhero costume (complete with mask) with colors matching his 'super-kayak'.

maybe i didn't need that third beer last night in portsmouth.

ah, who care's if they allow the WTC flag to fly?!

it's embarassing that salt lake city is being allowed to host the games. can we get nbc to superimpose "bribery" over the waving flag? probably not.

yup...Bono, at the world economic forum, referred to bill gates as the "Pope of Software". now, i think it's kinda cool that these two are teaming up to fight against the global issues of poverty and aids but....gees, callin' bill gates the "Pope of Software" is as absurd as calling, well...bill gates the "pope of software"!

wait...lemme draw a parallel...let's see...the pope deals with the issue of world overpopulation by sticking with a ban on birth control...and...bill gates says that it's good for competition when he buys up his competitors.

ya, that's it.

a while back i was thinking about what it means when a recording/book/movie is pretentious. i mean, i know what the word means. it's just that when people complain about something being pretentious, aren't they assuming they know a lot more about the motives of the author than they really do? then i run into this on one of my mailing lists:

You know, Eric's excellent description of this amazing and deliciously weird record (excerpted below) reminds me of why I despise the liberal use of the pejorative "pretentious". My god what we could do if we weren't worried about pretention! Are not lofty goals and an unfettered id the preconditions of so much that is at least delightfully beyond-fucked, if not really interesting, beautiful, and/or brain-challenging? But of course, I am _reacting_ (as I am wont to do) to the proliferation of the nasty little P-word in so much popular critical pap. (And I'm one who _likes_ critical.) But I wax rhapsodic.

yea! somebody who thinks like me.

it seems to me that 'chunks of art' are put out there for you to enjoy. get out of them what you can. if it's not to your liking, oh well.

i saw Leo Kottke perform on saturday night. i tell ya, that man plays guitar like no other. maybe its because i don't use a lot of alternate/open tunings when i play...but what he's doing on the fretboard never ceases to amaze. it's not just technical prowess either. some of his instumental passages are romantic enough to bring tears to your eyes. check out "Corrina, Corrina" from Standing In My Shoes to see what i mean.

you'd think we live in frickin' texas or something if you listen to the folks screaming on the television this morning: "it's very dangerous out here...", "...which will fall in the form of rain and freeze on untreated road surfaces...".

give me a break! this is new england fer cryin' out loud.