They will rape and kill your dog.

“When I got here we were laying on the deck looking at him and he had his pants down and he was doing sexual activity with the dog like a man would do to a woman.”

A Xanga blogger in Queens was killed by his sisters ex-boyfriend. His last blog entry mentions the boyfriend being in the house and making him “uncomfortable”.

This story sounds like bullshit, but I can’t find any info to disprove it.

In thirty-one years I haven’t learned that much about myself. One of the things I do know about my personality traits is that I seem to habitually clean up every aspect of my life for 1/2 year and spend the other half destroying all of the progress that I made.

I am currently in the former form. I am trying to clean up all of my bad habits. I am trying to eat better, pay bills on time pay bills, exercise, be nicer; just be a Better Person™, generally.

I have been going to the gym and feeling better for doing it. I am trying to get back into racquetball shape. I am also planning to quit smoking on July 15th, and I need to be proactively healthy, which makes the decision easier.

Even harder than quitting smoking is taking care of my finances. As a student, my income isn’t what it used to be, and it seems that all of my automatic bill pays suck the cash out of my account quicker than I can refill it.

I am also trying to learn things ,like CSS, that I always put off learning. I guess that by this point I am into the Web and Web Design enough to learn the ins & outs. Or maybe I am just bored by not being in school studying what I really love.

I want a boat. And I want to live on that boat. These guys did it. I have read their entire blog over the past couple of days and it is quite interesting/good.

The Spoon show was great. Bingo. I kept finding myself thinking that in a perfct world Spoon would be heralded universally as the worlds greatest rock band. Britt Daniel’s stage presence reminds me of what it must have been like to see The Rolling Stones in their prime. They are just rock & roll, the way it should be. No hype, no cross-promotional marketing; the music is the marketing. Small Stakes was the highlight of the show.

The Clientele opened. I have always liked them, but I think that they were misplaced opening for a band like Spoon. I described them to my accompanying friend as “500x more Belle & Sebastian than Belle & Sebastian”. They did play a few rather loud numbers. They were good, just out of context a bit.

Did anyone see the new Vice Magazine that gave the new Sleater-Kinney album a 0? I can’t say that I agree, but deeming the album “Led Zeppelin with PMS” is too funny to overlook. Surprisingly, they gave the new Belle & Sebastian compilation a 10.

On a different note.

My nautical itch has returned. Anyone in LA wanna take sailing lessons with me? Also. If anyone knows of any good sailing/living aboard/yacht design sites, please forward them to me. I have found a couple, but I am not informed enough to know exactly what to look for. It would be fantastic if the site had an RSS feed.

Links and news stuff tomorrow. I am going to sit by the pool all day and read magazines about boats.

That is the first house I remember living in. We moved there in 1977; to Allen, TX from Liberty, MO. I don’t remember much before I was 3. We lived in this house for probably 5 years. It, and the whole neighborhood, has turned in to quite a shithole. It was one of two neighborhoods in Allen at the time, and was a brand new Fox & Jacobs home when we bought it. I don’t have a lot of memories from this house. The three that come to mind are:
-Learning to ride a bike and I still have the scar on my right hand as a reminder.
-Saying “shit” after hearing John Travolta say it in the song “Greased Lightning” in the film Grease.
-The above-ground pool in the backyard. I think it was yellow.

The majority of my memories are in the house that we moved to next, which I will take a snapshot of when I drive by it.

And here I am decades later.

In front of my semester work, wearing all black.

In front of the Sydney Opera House, wearing all black.

Did I tell you that is was snowing/icing in New Mexico on my way out here. Seems out of season. It was hot as hell everywhere else except for this 15 mile stretch of iced highway.

And now the news. I am still loving my RSS reader in Thunderbird, but it is kind of a source of anxiety. Boing Boing seems to update 40 times a day, and my NPR and NYT feeds pile up too. I feel that if I am not constantly reading them I will get too far behind to catch up. But I’ll do it for you.

Decisions like this is why I really hate our government. It just doesn’t seem, umm, like Freedom. It is actually the exact opposite. And aren’t thousands of our own dying so other places can enjoy our Freedom?

Urban Underground Farming.

I am not going to talk about what the rest of the architectural blogosphere is blogging about.

Did I already mention that they have wi-fi at Texas Rest Areas. And they are lit and have security persons, so that you won’t get raped after/during/before you pee.

These are the people making sure that we don’t get blown out of the sky.

Good game last night. I wasn’t sure which team I was for the entire series, this game included. I have always hated the Spurs, but I really like Robert Horry. It felt like I was for the Pistons, maybe. But then I was kind of happy when the Spurs won. So this is what it feels like to be neutral. Find your own link. ESPN might be a good place to start.

The Gutter hates everybody. But Libeskind is a very weird looking man. Actually, I hate Libeskind too.

I will be at the Gypsy Tea Room seeing Spoon tonight. I will probably stay down there tonight; in some girls bed, atheism-willing. Good Friday.

There are dragons to be chased.

I never do these. This one seems kinda interesting, and I can’t think of anything to write about because I just worked out for the first time in months and every portion of my body hurts. Via here via her.

Total number of books I’ve owned: it’s in the thousands. I worked at bookstores for a couple of years and bought way too much.

The last book I bought: Some Dreamweaver reference book yesterday.

The last book I read: No Place Like Utopia: Modern Architecture and the Company We kept by Peter Blake.

Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): The Eternal Husband by Dostoevsky; Tropic of Cancer by Miller; The Fountainhead by Rand; The Twilight Years: Paris in the 1930’s by Wiser; Several titles about the Basques/the destruction of Guernica/Spanish Civil War.

Total number of films I own on DVD and video: 50ish

Last film I bought: The Five Obstructions. I think.

Last film I watched: White Noise. Totally ungood.

Five films that I watch a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): Rushmore, The Graduate, The Five Obstructions, This is Spinal Tap, Hedwig & The Angry Inch.

If I could be any character portrayed in a movie, I would be: James Bond.

Total volume of music on my computer: 13 GB

Last CD I bought: Spoon Gimme Fiction.

Song currently playing: “Pissing In A River” by Patti Smith.

Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me: The Jam, it’s a tie between “The Modern World” and “In the City”; The Clash, “Straight to Hell”; The Who, “The Kids Are Alright”; Public Enemy, “Fight The Power”; Dinosaur Jr., “Freak Scene”.

I hate marijuana. I hate everything about it: the way it smells, the way it makes me feel, all the dumb culture that has grown around it (minus Cheech & Chong). Whenever I hear some idiot say 4:20 I want to grab them by the throat. And for the most part, my opinions on the legalization of marijuana have been, “I don’t really care either way”.

But. When you begin to take things from sick and terminally ill people, that’s another story. I wouldn’t care if scientists had every piece of evidence in the world proving that it wasn’t medically helpful; if these people think that it is helping them, or easing their pain, let them fucking smoke weed.

When I heard the supreme court ruling I thought it was kind of a thing that was just on paper and wouldn’t be a huge deal. I just thought they were wrong. But when they raid the home of a husband and wife (et al) that makes them more than wrong, that makes them assholes.

These are still happening.

The Long Winters’ John Roderick is interviewed in The Believer which is reviewed in the NYT. The article will be forever emblazoned on your third eye and you will masturbate about it until the apocalyptic end. (Read the article to understand that last sentence.)

And what has ever gone bad in Israel, Austria or Germany?

i’m still so fucking tired of the Cruise Holmes shit. It isn’t news.

Biggie’s trial has started. Can you believe that Ready To Die was released over 10 years ago?

I didn’t care for them the first time around.

I have a headache. I have been working on my new site all day. I have a few graphics finished, but more than anything else I have it well organized. A year in architecture school taught me the importance of file management. I would spend hours looking for a 3DS Max scene, but that is another story.

Little things have been happening with the source code for my main page.

Here it is in Internet Explorer.

Here it is in Firefox.

Do you see a subtle difference in the two? Firefox isn’t showing the 2 pixel black border abound the image. I have tried to fix this for the last 2 hours with no results.

Any suggestions? The page is here if anyone can look at the source code and fix it for me. And I will always love you.

I know it is the #1 cliche to post lyrics on a blog. I know it. But there are some Sleater Kinney lyrics from Entertain that I am liking so much right now.

Anyone who has read me for a bit knows my obsession with punk/alternative female singers; esp. when they say “fuck”. That alone kept me into Liz Phair in my 30’s (and well into her decline).

On a related note. I am loving the (Janet from SK produced)Eux Autres record. I have not instantly liked a band so much since I heard the New Pornographers a few years ago; both bands have fantastic female (co-)lead vocals. The New Pornographers have a new CD out soon, which reportedly leaked, but I have seen no sign of it in BitTorrent World.

Here’s the Black & Blue.

Not clever this morning, so all links.

Thank you Jimmy Palmer and thank you Google.

Eisenhower thinks Bush is stupid too.

So the news isn’t that clever this morning either. I will post more later. In the meantime, look at how good these pieces are.