There were presidents day protests in Boston today. I would have joined them if I could, but I had to work. Today is a holiday that I don’t have off. Sucks. Not that I recognize the sitting president at all. The fascist states of america can have him, just keep his nazi ass out of my Massachusetts, please.
No Kings on presidents Day. Except maybe for the Los Angeles Kings, but that’s something completely different.
Today is the day. The day the American Experiment comes to a pathetic, self inflicted, fascist end.
I’m not going to watch the “inauguration”. Beyond the previous sentence, I plan to ignore it entirely and just try to pretend that it doesn’t happen even though that is just an old jerk being silly and deluding himself. There is an afternoon Bruins game today. It is Martin Luther King day and the B’s always play a day game. You would think that would make me feel a tiny bit better but the Bruins suck right now and MLK’s memory is being spit on by the other events.
Rest in peace, American democracy. 248 years was a good run, I guess. To the rest of the civilized world, I am so sorry.
Two thoughts on baseball. First, the Dodgers won the National League Pennant. Better the Dodgers (who aren’t from New York but used to be) than the Mets (who actually are from New York). When I was a kid there was a stretch of time where the World Series was the fucking Yankees vs the Dodgers over and over again. I just googled it and it was really only twice, 1978 and 1981. They met in 1977 too but that was before I started following the game. Whatever, it feels like the two teams have met in the World Series 10000 times.
Suffice to say that I am totally rooting for the Dodgers even though I really, really hate them. As much as I hate them, I don’t hate them nearly as much as I hate the fucking Yankees. There is no team in the sporting universe that I hate as much as I hate the fucking Yankees. My big question though is why the hell is Major League baseball waiting until Friday to start the series? The match up was set on Sunday and we’re not playing a game until Friday? Is the goal to make sure all of America forgets about baseball completely? Friday? Really?
Super subject change. It is October 21st. Early voting in Massachusetts started two days ago, on October 19th. I have not voted yet. I am hoping to get to it tomorrow (Tuesday). If not it will probably Thursday, or maybe over the weekend. If you live in Massachusetts, maybe you’ll join me in voting early. It’s fun and it takes some of the pressure off, even if the pressure doesn’t really exist and is only in your (my) head due to the whole fascist threat to democracy thing.
Vote.
Vote Blue.
Vote for Harris.
I can admit when I am wrong. It doesn’t happen often (that is sarcasm, it happens constantly) but when it does I can fess up to it.
When the media was going on and on about Joe Biden dropping out of the race I was very much a pissed off red head. No way. We held the primary. He won. That’s it. Yes he is old, but the nazi orange shit clown is old too and Joe is WAY more stable than that putz was even in his prime. I wanted Joe to stay in the race.
Then he dropped out. Shit. That’s when something I didn’t expect happened. Kamala Harris stepped up and somehow… magically… unified the entire party. Suddenly we were all on the same page and ready to go. Had that ever happened in my lifetime? Maybe late in Obama’s first run we might have felt something like this, but I don’t think it was this intense. Maybe it’s a social media echo chamber kind of thing where the algorithms are only bringing me people I agree with (yes, I know that’s a big part of this) but come one, folks. The transition from the Biden campaign to the Harris campaign was electric. It felt GREAT.
I will admit it. I was wrong about wanting Biden to stay in the race. Given what we know now, that would have been the wrong move.
Now we are adding Tim Walz to the ticket as Harris’ running mate and that unified feeling has intensified times a billion. Where has this guy been all of our lives? I feel so good about the state of things right now that I could almost be described as… I don’t want to say it but… I could almost be described as feeling patriotic. Almost. Who the hell saw that coming?
Harris/Walz in 2024. I might want to throw some more money at them. Bring it on!
So… Biden is dropping out of the presidential race. He endorsed Vice President Harris. I don’t know how that is going to work as far as the convention and the nomination process will work over the next few weeks but…
I was really pissed off and feeling like the universe was kicking me while I was down…
But then…
Depression turned to anger which then turned to passionate determination.
Kamala Harris is going to kick the shit out of that nazi fuck. She’s going to be a human fire hose who pressure washes the filth out of our country. Hell yes.
I may or may not have just donated a few bucks to the Harris for President campaign.
Maybe in some weird, unexpected way, all of this ridiculousness is going to unite us against the fascist scumbag. A boy can hope at least, right?
Trump went on his nazi social network today to tell us that he may be getting another indictment soon. This time for his actions on January 6, 2021.
Good.
Also, finally.
That’s what you get when you try to overthrow my country’s legally elected democratic government. I hope they throw him in jail for the rest of his life.
Granted, as much fun as all of these indictments are (this would make it three, and Georgia may soon make it four), I think the fun is wearing off. I think now what we need is some convictions. Especially convictions that are paired with long prison sentences.
Nazi filth like trump belong rotting in jail.
President Biden gave a pretty powerful speech tonight calling out MAGA as a threat to democracy. I just wish the people he was talking about were capable of grasping it.
March kinda sucks.
I go through this every year. I finish my February music projects and then feel this gaping hole in the universe during March. From reading blogs and forum posts on rpmchallenge.com I’m clearly not alone in feeling this way.
So what to do?
A few months ago I was working on a way to add the rest of my old myspace blog to this site. I started up on that again last night. WordPress.com is able to back date posts but it’s a royal pain in the ass to go back to 2007 and 2008. Instead, I created a Blogger account and I’ve been posting back dated entries there. Once I have them all I’ll export them to an .xml file and import them here. That should work fine. The myspace blog covered pretty much all of 2006 through November 2008. I had pulled all of 2006 into my previous wordpress.com site so those are all here already. As of last night the Blogger page has almost all of 2007. I think I have about 75 more posts to go.
I’m still going with my Flickr photo-a-day project. It suddenly feels difficult though. It was easy last month. There was always music happening so I could take pics of that, and Disney made things even easier. Now? What the hell do I take pictures of now? Where’s the cat when I need her?
Back in January Jen and I did a tutorial for a javascript extension (I think that’s the right way to describe it… a scripting language built on top of javascript). It was fun and interesting but my javascript knowledge is ancient and more or less nil at this point. I thought I might have gotten more out of it if I did a javascript tutorial first. I would like to try something like that in the coming weeks. I would like to be a better all around programmer than I am right now. My company’s development tools and programming languages are proprietary, so even if I’m firing on all cylinders at work it doesn’t really extend to the rest of the world.
Years ago I found a set of wordpress.com tutorials called Blogging University. There are various beginner and intermediate level courses to help you get the most out of your wordpress.com experience. There were classes for customization, writing, photography, and interacting with other blogs. I might give some of those a try again, just for schnitzengiggles. If I remember correctly they were mostly prompts. Things like, today you should write a better About page, or today you should take a picture of water. Stuff like that. The photo stuff would be fine to redo, as I just said I’m always looking for ideas for photo-a-day. The basic blogging stuff is probably too simple for this page, but there is always the lizardfishmusic.com page. I could make some changes there. I don’t think I’ve made any changes to the layout there since I first created it. Maybe a face lift would be fun?
Exercising should be an obvious target for new projects. I had a really bad night Weight Watchers wise last night and I’m feeling a little crummy about myself today. I got home from work and just started shoveling food into my face and I really didn’t stop until I fell asleep. I need to be better than that. The gym might help in that regard, or at least minimize the damage of any future bad days. Right now I am having a problem with one of my feet (again). My right foot feels a little swollen and it hurts to walk. It’s not the same thing I had a month or so ago, and it’s not nearly as bad, but it is slowing me down right now. Once that eases up I need to get back to the gym, and I need to get into a regular routine.
There is always more music to record, and more songs to learn for Lizardfish, and more practicing in general to do. Just because February is over doesn’t mean I can stop playing. I was doing pretty well with finding time to practice back in January. I need to keep up with it. I’m tired of feeling like the weak link in the band. I’m also thinking of trying something new gear wise. I want to try to run a two amp rig in the band, but most of the amps I have now are way too powerful and if I paired them up I’d be unable to not drown out the rest of the band during rehearsals. I keep looking at my 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker as the solution. If I could pair that with another lowish watt amp that could work. I am thinking about going to Guitar Center to inquire about trading my Fender Stratocaster in for a Vox AC15. I think that might be the key to making it all work. A Fender Princeton reissue could do it, but it’s only a 10 inch speaker and I’d prefer to stick to 12 inch speakers if I can. I just like them better. We’ll see.
Should I start looking into using in-ear monitors? One of the guys in the band uses them. One of the hosts of the Gig Gab podcast swears by them. So much so that he’s always inspiring the other host to try them, even though he has a hard time with them. I don’t really want to spend money on it, but we’re getting to the point where we’re going to be mic’ing the room during rehearsals and I always wear ear plugs anyway. Is it time? I’m trying to decide. I’m definitely on the fence. We’ll see.
I was hoping that by this point in 2020 I would be able to do something to help out with the Warren for President campaign. I guess that isn’t going to happen. At least it seems highly unlikely now. I can get behind Bernie Sanders, but the idea of a candidate in his late 70’s who has already suffered a heart attack during this campaign is a little depressing. Platform wise I can 100% get on board. Human wise… ugh. As for Joe Biden. He’s a great guy and I love him to pieces, but he’s literally my last choice of all of the candidates we’ve had. Dead last. Yet another guy in his late 70’s but this time one who just feels like a frat boy who got lucky. He just seems a little too dumb ass for the oval office, and we already have a total dumb ass in the office now. If he ends up with the nomination he’ll get 100% of my support… I was just hoping the rest of the country would jump on the Warren bandwagon, that’s all. Yet another reason to feel let down by my fellow Americans.
There are a crap ton of TV shows that I want to watch. February has resulted in me falling way behind on all of the CW super hero shows that I like to watch. I’m like two months behind on The Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman. I’ve been trying to get caught up on Star Trek Discovery. Season two is really good, I just haven’t had time to power through. The last season of Star Wars The Clone Wars is either about to come out or has just recently come out. I wanted to binge the whole series before I watched the new season but… Jar Jar… he kinda killed my interest in that. I want to finish season two of You even though it’s definitely meh. I want to watch Lock and Key and The Expanse and I still want to get back into Breaking Bad and Preacher. I’ve started both of them, but just haven’t been able to keep going. I’m not sure why, the are both good. I’m caught up on The Walking Dead, and the second spin off is just a month or so away. One show that I did not fall behind on in February is Star Trek Picard. It is so good. Just, so very good. I wish it was going to be a 25 episode season instead of 10 (I think it’s just going to be 10). I don’t want it to end… ever.
I’m sure there are other projects I can come up with that are just there for fun and a sense of creative accomplishment. If we get lucky and Spring actually gets here there are always day trips up to the mountains that I can drag my beloved Mrs to. There are so many waterfalls, and so many scenic views up there. They are all just sitting there, waiting for me and Jen and my camera to come and visit.
There’s also always Disney World. Or Disneyland. Or Euro-Disney, if that’s even still a thing. I’d say Tokyo Disney too but I have a co-worker who was supposed to go there next week and he told me it’s closed due to some global pandemic* thing. Maybe you’ve heard of it?
On an unrelated note, I am trying a new browser again. The same podcast that inspired me to try Brave has inspired me to try Vivaldi. This post is the first thing I’ve done with it. Isn’t that exciting? I’m just glad that the Last Pass plug in for Chrome works in Vivaldi too. That makes life a tiny bit easier.
*Go wash your hands. Seriously.
I cast ballot #26 in Methuen, MA Precinct #5.
I’m so hyper focused on music right now that the world is passing me by. What am I missing?
The New Hampshire primary was last night. The top three places were all held by people I could reasonably see myself voting for on Super Tuesday. Sanders was my pick last time around. Buttigieg seems fine to me. I’d like to see a little more grass roots and a little less big money, but policy wise he’s fine. My step son has done some volunteer work for his campaign and I am bursting with pride over it. Klobuchar was a surprise but I’ve liked her since the day she announced her candidacy. I have this vague image in my head of her beating the living shit (figuratively speaking) out of the people who are making a bad joke out of the Constitution. I see her as someone who could clean up the shit show.
Warren has been my main focus and I’m a little disappointed at her showing so far. I saw this primary as a Warren vs Sanders showdown with Biden kinda peeking in from the sidelines. There’s still time for Warren to improve relative to the others, but if we have to settle for her as our esteemed US Senator, I’m fine with that.
Realistically, whoever ends up winning the nomination is getting my vote and at least a chunk of my money. That nazi piece of shit in the white house has to go. Of course he won’t. The Senate has already approved his attempts at rigging the election, so the very concept of a legitimate election has already been flushed down the toilet. He’ll rig it and he will win it. Our democracy is already dead, I’m just clinging to the tiny shreds that are left behind. Mostly just out of habit.
At least the Bruins are still doing well. That awful dip in the standings prior to the all star break is going to bite them on the ass. Their huge lead is gone and Tampa is right on their heels. I was very pleased with their play of late, but losing to Detroit really grinds my gears. We get the Canadiens tonight. There are few things that could cheer me up as my country descends into a fascist dictatorship as much as watching the Bruins beat the holy hell out of Montreal. No pressure though, okay Bruins. You just go out there and have fun.
A week or so ago, Larry and I were having a discussion about various Quentin Tarantino movies and he made a joke about a scene in Kill Bill and it went right over my head. I saw both volumes in the theater and had never re-watched them. I thought they were both fantastic and I loved every second of them… I just never revisited them again. I fixed that error over the weekend and watched both movies. They are just so good. The violence is way over the top and the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but every scene is perfect. I forgot about so much. In my memory the first movie is just blahblahblah Crazy 88’s and the second movie is just blahblahblah Superman’s disguise. I forgot about all the other twistedly delightful stuff. I kinda want to watch them both again, but instead I’ll watch the two movies I still haven’t seen: Hateful 8 and Django Unchained.
Note: I don’t think “twistedly” is actually a word.
Okay, I have to mention music again. I can’t avoid it right now. I did some recording this morning. After being late to work on Monday because I stayed home a little too long, and late to work on Tuesday even though I left on time, I came up with something to try and keep me on track. After I set up my laptop to record some voice parts, I brought up Waze on my phone. I put in my work address as my destination and I left the phone on the table next to me. As I worked through the two songs for today I kept an eye on the estimated time of arrival. When it reached 8:45 I packed up and left. It worked. I was on time today.
Unfortunately when I was packing up I put my MacBook onto the stand on which it sits on my desk in the office (grammar, bitches), turned off the lights, and left the room. A couple of minutes later I heard a bang. What? My laptop FELL OFF THE STAND! It was still working okay, but it scared the crap out of me. I managed to back up this morning’s work onto an external drive, but if my lappy is dead I might be in big musical trouble. I know it’s not dead, everything was functioning within normal parameters… still… how scary is that. BANG!
Friday is Valentine’s Day. We don’t have any plans. I’ll see if my beloved love wants to do anything after work. It’s also a kid weekend so my step son will be around. He went to a mock UN weekend last week and I can’t wait to hear about it. Tonight will be the first time I see him since he came back.
I went to the gym last night. I am planning on going again tonight and tomorrow night and as many days as I can between now and Disney World. I need to build up some stamina for long walks. I’m still stuck at the 15-minutes-before-my-back-starts-complaining point. Every little bit helps though.
What else… I’m thinking about playing a little saxophone tonight. If you hear crying it means I can’t pull it off anymore. I was a music major and sax was my primary instrument of study. I haven’t touched it in years, but normally when I start playing again a lot of the old skill is there. What isn’t there is the muscles in my jaw. I get a few minutes of solid playing followed by fatigue so bad I can’t play anymore. My plan for the next week and a half is play a little, rest a little, repeat. That’s assuming I’ve still got it. Boy, do I hope I’ve still got it.
When you are 48 years old the phrase, “Boy, do I hope I’ve still got it” comes into play almost every day for a seemingly infinite number of topics, wouldn’t you say?
Inside the Red Head's Head 