Well, I'll be darned if it hasn't been the best one in awhile - certainly the best in the past 3 or 4. It's been wierd watching the various things that have been stripped from me in life slowly returning, one by one. And, getting even more, to boot.
Lots of stuff planned for '05 -- look for a marriage, a new move, a new career direction, and of course, as much martial arts training as I can cram...
Friday, December 31, 2004
Thursday, December 30, 2004
'Law & Order' star Jerry Orbach dies
Thursday, December 30, 2004
Tony Brown
Plain Dealer Theater Critic
Try to remember the kind of September when Lennie Briscoe was a romantic fellow. And if you remember, then sorrow. Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow.
Actor Jerry Orbach, a romantic leading man in Broadway musicals for more than two decades before becoming a TV icon as sardonic investigator Briscoe on...
The author of this message board post made this statement regarding the age-old debate on Empty Hand Defenses vs. Weapons:Also, most people create an image of having to fight a super hero on acid or Dan Inosanto. Most people you will come across don’t train, are drugged or drunk with dulled senses and are basically average people. Please train for overkill, but realise what you are most likely to...
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Here are some things I would have taken pictures of, had I a camera, and would have uploaded by now had that camera been digital:Every sign in Elmira, NY that E and I drove past that had any reference to Mark Twain.
The two front lawns we drove past that had deflated Christmas balloon-figures. It was a pretty ghastly looking scene.
That demonic "scary tire guy" that's on a sign a little ways south...
Monday, December 27, 2004
Christmas was nice at Ma's house (Henceforth, my mom is “Mom” and E's mom is “Ma.”), even though I've been denied watching "24 Hours of A Christmas Story" and managed to leave my copy of Chicago XXV (Full of Christmas music -- XXV, get it?) in Cleveland. There was no shortage of Christmas music here, though (i.e. 20 versions of the same 10 songs).
It might have been as much as I wanted, but I got...
Friday, December 24, 2004
About noon yesterday, E and I rolled into "Mark Twain Country" to spend Christmas with her mother. The first thing we did was sleep out of sheer exhaustion. We were up at the butt-crack o' dawn and made it here about 12:30 pm.
After all the naps, we had some food, lots of coffee and a game of Scrabble which I won because I had the rare fortune of using all of my tiles in one play. Now, I'll get...
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Tomorrow is going to be a fun drive. I called the folks earlier and gave them a false departure time, 90 minutes after we'll actually leave so that they won't get all jumpy. I think I inadvertently gave them an arrival time that was later than it should have, but it's all good.
Not sure how blogging's going to be, but I'm sure I'll make it on at some point.
Next post will be from somewhere other...
Tomorrow, I'll be on the road, so I'll have to do this now. I have to say that this test adequately reflects my state of mind.
You scored as Pissed at the World Cat. And here we have the next serial killer. Try having some cotton candy, it'll make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, Psycho.Pissed at the World...
Why do I relish the thought of moving to Ithaca, NY? Because as long as polls like this are being conducted there, I know that chances are, the place is liberal enough to have people that won't try to lynch me once the first stupid Filipino - whoever that might be - does something stupid and blows something up.Fear factor: 44 percent of Americans queried in Cornell national poll favor curtailing...
Monday, December 20, 2004
I had to stop at the nearest wireless hotspot... well, not quite the nearest, but the one that serves my favorite coffee, so that I could transfer some money into my checking account. Yeah, I know, I shouldn't be doing things like that over a wireless connection, but it's not like there's a lot in there for anyone to take, anyway.
Anyway, once I finish my coffee, off I'll go -- I just hope the things...
Saturday, December 18, 2004
At least for the next hour or so. The downside to getting the time off that I need for E and I to spend X-mas with family is the fact that the Diamond Mine crammed my shifts together between this week and the next schedule-week, so that today will be day 3 of 7 in a row, all 8 hours/day at varying start times, which preclude any chance of biorhythmic balance. Add to that the fact that once that...
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Monday, December 13, 2004
BWAH-hahahahahaha.... snicker... snicker... BWAHHHH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!Van Damme is a ‘superhero’
Jean Claude van Damme has described himself as a “superhero in bed” who performs for his wife every night.
The star, who is in the Romanian capital Bucharest looking at locations for his next film, said that although he kept to a punishing three hour fitness regime every day, he was never tired when it...
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Not that rough, although it does show my age when getting up after staying out until 2:30 a.m. after an evening of marguaritas, beer, and greasy food is a bit difficult. No hangover, though, and I had more greasy food for breakfast.
It reminds me of a discussion I had with someone at the Diamond Mines lately as we reminisced about life north of Columbus. She remembered breakfasts of bacon and...
...but I'm glad I missed out on the sniper and stuff like this:Seminal Guitarist, 4 Others Die in Ohio Shooting
Thu Dec 9, 2004 02:04 PM ET
By Jim Leckrone
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - A man charged on stage and opened fire at a heavy metal band and fans at a crowded bar, killing four people and wounding two others before being killed by police, officials said on Thursday.
Among the dead was "Dimebag"...
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
No blogging, or anything else, for the past five days because I've been almost completely immersed in the Diamond Mines. But, I've got two days to look at this thing called daylight, and in the few hours I've been awake and online, have I got some stuff..
ITEM ONE
The teaser for the new Doctor Who series -- F**k yeah!
ITEM TWO
More controversial self-defense issues...
The Debate over Tasers and...
Friday, December 03, 2004
This is related to a rant on self-defense that I posted recently, linked here for my convenience. It's a thread from the message boards on the Defend.net forums about the "legitimacy" of Sayoc Kali. It doesn't get good until about the fourth post where the thread-starter makes the assertion:1. As far as the Sayoc training being like firearms training, I disagree for two fundamental reasons. First,...
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
My cousin (sort of) and her new husband.
This is a shot of the wedding that E and I attended a couple of weeks ago. This whole scene was part of what made E so nervous because not only was it a "church wedding," it was a Filipino wedding, and on top of that, it was done old-school Filipino style. For...
What do you do when your fiance is on a 7 day cleansing fast and she's jonesing for a pizza on the second day?
You rent the movie Supersize Me to remind her why she's doing this in the first place -- it worked better than I could have possibly imagined! Check it out. The movie got play at Sundance for a reas...
Thanks to my old friend FATHER_FRO, I guestimate that I've increased the value of my new computer at least 1.5 times, thanks to some more nifty new programs that he managed to find from... somewhere... and burn onto a DVD-R for me. There's easily a grand worth of programs on that thing, but I only needed two of them. Hey, E's going to need a video editor one day, and who knows, I may get tired of...
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Here are a couple of pics - the rest will go up on my self-restraint site when I get around to it. pics of the dinner are on the self-restraint site. The rest will follow.
E and I at the table.
A passing shot of Cleveland's clone of Columbus's Easton Town Centre, Legacy Village (of the Damned).&nb...
The following is a clip from the original Ocean's 11, starring the Rat Pack themselves - when they could be bothered to show up, sober, between shows, that is. I present this exchange between the characters played by Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, and (I think) Peter Lawford partly as social commentary, but mostly because it amuses me.
PLEASE DOWNLOAD, RATHER THAN STREAM - My free...
Friday, November 26, 2004
Among the items I dug up from my parents' house that I'm currently enjoying:The following episodes of Doctor Who that I taped from PBS over a decade ago: Destiny of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, and Rememberance of the Daleks. I missed a Dalek episode in there somewhere. There were actually about 2-3 other episodes per tape, but I'll get to those in due course. Watching Daleks totter...
I (think I) mentioned that E and I had our turkey earlier in the week with my parents in Clevesburg. E, not wanting to just sit and do nothing for the holiday, set up two tentative sets of plans with two sets of people, probably hoping one of them would pan out. Me -- I would've been happy to leave the Diamond Mine at 5:00, go home, eat some leftover turkey and chill for the rest of the evening....
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Twelve years in the US, and the Osbornes had it good and were relatively safe. Two months back in the UK, and they got jacked...
Reward for lost rocks as Osbournes face reality
The Times
November 25, 2004OZZY Osbourne declared Los Angeles safer than rural Buckinghamshire in southern England yesterday as he announced a pound stg. 100,000 ($237,700) reward for his wife's stolen jewellery.Some interesting...
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Well, E and I survived a long weekend with my family. Since my parents are leaving for the PI tomorrow, we had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Lots of food, including E's grandmother's recipe for Cranberry Relish! For perhaps the first time since I moved out, I feel sad to leave after a visit.
E really seemed to like the areas of Cleveland that I showed her. It genuinely made her sad to...
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Talk about a phrase I haven't heard in ages.
So far this weekend, I've been taking E to see some of my old Cleveland haunts - streets I used to run, coffee shops I used to go to, stores, schools, etc. It's funny how much has changed.
Right now, we're sitting in a coffee shop near the campus of the University where I started graduate school. There's a big building on the parking lot that's blocking...
Friday, November 19, 2004
*Sigh* Yet another road trip to C-Town this weekend, this time to attend some wedding of a cousin of mine. I mean "cousin" in Filipino terms, i.e. a family member, two or more degrees removed, of a friend of a family member.
I'm sure I'll scrounge up internet access from somewhere up there. If not, I'll return to the world next Wednesd...
Thursday, November 18, 2004
I'm not saying I'll ever stop my little hobby of deconstructing the so-called "traditional martial arts" I know to see what useful nuggets I can glean. But, looking at guys like Kimbo Slice in action, someone who reportedly learned to fight in jail and on "th3 str33t" (I saw it posted like that on the martial arts forum I linked to below - I'm a lemming, sue me.) it sort of makes you wonder why one...
At the State of the Union? The War on Terror?
No, I got really nauseous last night playing the game Half Life. I was given a disk forever and a day ago, and mostly ignored it because trying to play it on my old and busted laptop never worked right at the best of times. So, in typical fashion, I forgot I even owned it until I heard that Half Life 2 was just released.
I suppose it could have been...
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Sunday, November 14, 2004
I spent 4 years and some change in the community mental health field providing one level of support or another, from a lowly grunt in direct care to a supervisor in direct care to community support case management. Not by choice or design, but all of my work happened to be exclusively with teenagers, and the majority of my caseloads were females. This didn't have anything to do with demographics...
Friday, November 12, 2004
I've got nothing constructive to write about, and I'm feeling a nice dose of ennui. So, in an effort to stir myself in some direction - any direction - I'll just B!tch, Moan and Whine about stuff.
ELECTION WOES
Hey, I didn't vote for him. I'd have sooner voted for Cobra Commander. Dubya won (arguably) fair and square, and there's really no one to blame but us. I was reading an op-ed by a poli-sci...
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Ashcroft, Evans Resign, White House SaysTue Nov 9, 6:05 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans resigned on Tuesday in a post-election shake-up of President Bush's Cabinet.
Ashcroft, a lightning rod of criticism by Democrats and civil liberties groups over the anti-terror policies implemented after Sept. 11, 2001, said in a handwritten...
Author Warren Ellis once wrote in his Old Bastard's Manifesto,...if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.Which he then followed up with:I am part of the problem. F**k you.From DATU_B:
Confessions of a Cultural ElitistBy UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE/TED RALL
Win or Lose, Kerry Voters Are Smarter Than Bush Voters
NEW YORK--Democratic hand wringing is surrealy out of hand. No...
Even with good ol' Windows XP, you're still as vulnerable to stuff as you are mindless when you cruise file sharing services. All I wanted was a copy of an old .38 Special song and got no less than three adware trojans for my trouble. It only took me two hours to clean it all out (on my old comp with Windows 98, it took me about five), and I didn't even have to reinstall anything.
I considered...
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
I just found out I'm a mere two degrees of separation away from two of the coolest cats on the planet. From an IM conversation with E:E: Dude
E: you're not gonna believe this
d: what what??
E: I'm chatting with one of my students from China - she's been in HK studying film
d: uh huh...?
E: guess who she's taking...
I didn't have too much blogging inspiration over the past few days. And, it wasn't for lack of time or material. Just had other things to focus on. What'd you miss?
ITEM ONE
If I read one more thing with the word "SUNY" in it (i.e. State University of New York), I'm going to scream.
ITEM TWO
I don't know when it happened, but two of the tiny screws that held the clip to my Sog tac folder have...
Some NPR-idge
Jon Stewart's interview on Fresh Air - I wonder if Jon felt short-changed since Terry wasn't in that day.
Musicians in Their Own Words: Cassandra WilsonWeekend Edition - Saturday, March 6, 2004 · Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson likes to experiment with her band, testing the limits of the music and finding new places for her voice in the mix. The group is somewhat unusual for a vocalist....
Thursday, November 04, 2004
I've been doing other things besides cruise the web and toil in the diamond mines.
UNO
I've been taking E on another journey through the second-best sci-fi TV show that ever was, Red Dwarf. She's seen most of seasons I and II (the original versions, not the re-edited Lucas-style ones) and all of season VII. I just grabbed what I could from the 'rents' house. We've got all of season VIII to keep...
Here are some interesting tidbits I found surfing the web.
ISA
The Onion's Interview with Christopher Walken
DALAWA
Someone who got in trouble for blogging their mind [Obtained via Zoe Trope and RBJ.]
TATLO
Some NPR pieces I listened to over the past few days:Picturing the Homeless, on Their Terms
All Things Considered, October 24, 2004 · Gary Clark doesn't call himself a photographer. But over...
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
No, not as in "Dominus! Rectus!"
I'm not a tremendous believer in astrology. I debunked that when I was about 8 years old when I did a simple experiment. I noted the horoscope for one sign, say Leo, said something like "You'll meet an interesting Libra, today." I simply looked over at Libra, and it didn't say jack about meeting any Leos. I was feeling pretty self-satisfied for 8 when I realized...
Monday, November 01, 2004
I had to spend most of Saturday night at the Diamond Mines, but even if I didn't, I was completely indifferent to the idea of spending time at A-Town's annual Halloween orgy of debauchery and violence that would make Caligula blush party. Today is the first I've been uptown since then, and I can't see any readily apparent evidence of negative effects. Then again, I haven't read any of the local...
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Chabon Falls For SnowPulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon will write Snow and the Seven, a martial-arts retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for Walt Disney Pictures, Variety reported. Yuen Wo Ping, the choreographer of groundbreaking action films The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, will direct the live-action movie.Wouldn't y...
Actually, pining for my old dog.
One item I came across during my last visit home was my old Iomega Pocket Zip drive and a couple of disks. I downloaded and reinstalled the software and got it running in pretty short order (I'm starting to really like this XP thing). Anyway, I pop in the disk I have, and found...
Thanks to some help from FATHER FRO, I about doubled the value of my computer in the space of an hour with some choice programs including the one I used to conceal his identity, a great archive extraction program, and something to take audio tracks from concert DVDs that I have/will have.
And, before you...
Friday, October 29, 2004
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
A couple of days ago, E and I have been joking about her recent Mira Nair kick. I have to say, her films seem more personal than many other filmmaker's. Anyway, my joke was that for all the beauty and depth of her films, she still takes an international backseat to John Woo, a male director who peddles in beautifully choreographed near-pornographic violence who pretty much beats the same theme to...
Monday, October 25, 2004
Well, it's not really all that bad of a Monday, but it's a great song. Anyway...
ITEM ONE
I've been slowly taking E on a video journey through the Blackadder series. All that's left is the second half of the first season and the whole of Blackadder Goes Fourth.
I used to have my favorite Blackadder quote in my email signatures in college.I, on the other hand, am a fully-rounded human being, with...
Friday, October 22, 2004
Six more signs until the Apocalypse, that is.Hooters coming to communist China
Chain known for wings and waitresses with next to no clothing set to open in Shanghai.
October 22, 2004: 3:13 PM EDT
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - In the clearest signal to date that China has made the leap from emerging economy to a global powerhouse, Hooters will open its first location in the communist country next week,...
[File under: martial arts]
Montage of Pencak Silat Mande Muda techniques
Note to self: Even though the techniques displayed represent the epitomy of why E doesn't appreciate South East Asian martial arts, check out the second sequence. Even though operator is on the ground, his foot sweep resembles path a crescent kick would travel. Enough reason to keep working on crescent kicks? Maybe. Maybe...
Thursday, October 21, 2004
I wanna hear another rendition of Lucy.Shatner Sings. Again.
Original Star Trek star William Shatner, who was ridiculed for his 1968 spoken-word album, will release a new 11-song CD of music this month, the Associated Press reported. Timed for Halloween, Shatner told the wire service that the release is no trick. "It's a treat for me," Shatner, 73, said by telephone from Los Angeles, where he was...
It's not everyday you come too close to a martial arts grandmaster. Every martial arts practitioner in A-Town knows that A-Town is Bando turf and that the North American grandmaster for the art lives here. Every time he passes through the Diamond Mines, I feel compelled to keep my distance, lest I inadvertently do something that would cause a kukrhi to slip over my throat region. Or, even that...
Monday, October 18, 2004
E feels I was ripped off when I bought Created in Darkness, as very soon I could theoretically have the resorces to download all of McSweeney's and therefore have about 95% of the publication for free. But hey, I like the printed word - most times. Anyway, I came across this gem which is also, lo and behold, online...Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002,...
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Hoo ha. Oh, it wasn't a bad road trip yesterday up to C-Town to see a Tibetan rinpoche speak. Overall. Remember that scene in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones when Jango Fett is chasing Obi-Wan Kenobi in the asteroid belt and Obi Wan exclaims, "Blast, this is why I HATE flying!"?
Well, I know how he feels, especially when it comes to road trips. It really wasn't that bad a trip, except...
Yeah, sign me up because I got to see not one, but two speakers on intellectual and spiritual topics this past week. In the first, as part of a lecture series at the University, I saw NPR's Juan Williams discussing his works on Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and his impact on race relations 50 years after the Brown decision. Aside from Williams's message -- an exhortation to people to seize...
Over the weekend, I was in Columbus with E -- see below. Or rater, above, since I'll be posting about that next. Anyway, to counter the deepening depression of getting halfway through the stories of The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004, I broke down and bought Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category. Most of it is from the McSweeney's website, which...
Thursday, October 14, 2004
ITEM ONE
Among the mp3s I realized are pretty much lost for good and/or would take me too much time and effort to find again:A live recorded version of Resurrection Blues by Cassandra Wilson that she posted on her website a long time ago. It was a one-time thing, and it's long since gone.
The following Wesley Willis tunes: I Whupped Batman's Ass, I Whupped Superman's Ass, and Birdman Kicked My Ass....
That is to say, one of the authors of Cooking to Hook Up. AM has that whole bon vivant thing going with her life -- the kind of life I would like if I had more cash -- and she likes Fran Lebowitz, too. So, I'm guessing the book's bound to be good.
It's basically a cookbook with an agenda, just like the title...
Monday, October 11, 2004
(or, "Drug-Fueled Ramblings")
This weekend, E and I are going to up to Columbus to see friends and check out this lecture from a genuine Tibetan Buddhist monk. In the middle of it, I plan to run up the aisle leading up the the stage doing backflips and such and pit my Wudan kung fu against his Shaolin fist to see which is superior!
Speaking of disrupting lectures, I plan to go see NPR's Juan Williams...
...and he'll come back.Christopher Reeve, Actor in `Superman' Movies, Dies (Update3)
Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Christopher Reeve, known for his role as ``Superman'' in movies and later as an advocate for spinal cord research after a horse-riding accident left him paralyzed nine years ago, died yesterday of heart failure. He was 52.I hear about this today, not too long after being reminded of Kevin Smith's...
Friday, October 08, 2004
[Ed. note - I redid this here post as I've found, once again, that just because something looks right on MSIE doesn't mean it looks right on Mozilla or IE for Mac.]
I was wandering around uptown today because, dammit, it's too nice to be inside -- even though I'm sick as a dog right now. It didn't hit me until yesterday.
In any case, I had one of those "You Must Enter Here" moments as I walked...
Well, the person who sent me Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese wrote me back and had this to say...So did you receive your "megacheese" book? If you don't have it w/in a week, let me know so I can tear amazon.com a new @$$hole!
[Name Deleted]
PS, Don't worry, I'm not a creepy stalker. And the answer to your question is:
a) what's it to you, you're getting free stuff!
b) this is not...
Thursday, October 07, 2004
This probably won't surprise people, least of all E. In fact, it made her feel slightly nauseous. But my first ever DVD purchase was an episode of PBS's Soundstage featuring, you guessed it, Chicago! They had it at the Wally World, of all places. Now, I don't feel so bad about my laptop finally dying -- yes, it's truly dead, Jim -- and losing all the mp3s from their Live By Request show. That's...
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
It was pretty much inexcuseable behavior. Nevermind the many social, psychological, ethical and religious creeds I violated. It was a response that was entirely inappropriate for the situation.
I was slowing down at a traffic light when I noticed some young people trying to pull out of a driveway adjacent to the light. I had a Good Samaritan Moment and layed back to give the people room. I was...
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