I’m still selling my RM1X. Buy it already. Here’s the ad from Craigslist.

OK, look. It’s been sitting in my apartment for months, unloved. I’ve decided I vastly prefer listening to music made by people who are decent at it than hacking away for hours on a drum pattern that I still don’t find inspiring.

This unit sells for $650 new. $350 on eBay. But you, you’re getting an awesome deal from me. Write me. Click on that link. You know you want to.

In other news, my next entry will be from Oregon, if I’m near a computer there.

The Pork Chop Express.

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OK.

I’m going to tell you guys a story. I just posted the majority this on the Dirty boards in the “Songs That Kill You” thread.

I done a woman wrong, once. Like in a blues song, that kind of wrong. We knew it was over, but we kept wanting to make it work. This was the year of Reverence by Faithless. The year of “Salve Mea” and “Insomnia.” The album had other depths, though. “Don’t Leave” was track two, and it’s a devastating piece of work. Jamie Catto sings the saddest, most miserable lyric ever, wanting his lover to stay.

We were in the car when we first heard the record. I remember distinctly looking out the window, trying to avoid her gaze during the song. When it was over, I saw her eyes running over with tears. I broke down with her and we cried for the next three songs before we straightened up and walked into the restaurant, where friends waited.

I still get moments where I feel like a bastard for doing that woman wrong and that song can still make me a weepy sister.

I’ve caught this show a few times in the mornings while flipping for news or weather. It’s almost a parody of morning chat shows – it’s so bad. I have no idea who either of these people are or why KingWorld thinks we need to see them. In fact, it almost seems like it’s a Mr Show sketch as compared to a real program that a television station actually paid to carry. One of the things that really flips my switches is how obvious the female host is when it’s time to bring up something from the show’s meeting. She pauses, glances to the stage manager, and flips her hair as she says “So, about the lunchladies that won the lottery…” or “Jack, I hear you really like unprotected anal sex with black transvestite hookers…” and it hits me as being even more fake that Sharon Osbourne.

Do not, under any circumstances, accidentally type “wwwblogger.com” into your browser. Trust me. I actually had to put my bagel down and try to keep the vomit at bay.

Connie Willis may be a spotty writer, but boy do I like To Say Nothing Of The Dog. Aaron pointed it out to me after I’d sent him a copy of Stephen Frye’s Making History, which I heartily recommend to those who want their science fiction without any of that pesky technobabble that so many writers indulge in. I picked up the Willis novel because I actually couldn’t bother to finish Architects of Emortality by Stableford. Something about naming your lead characters Charlotte Holmes and Oscar Wilde was a little twee, even for me, and I love Belle and Sebastian and Simon and Garfunkel.

Hey, I still can’t use scissors to save my life. It’s taken me thirty minutes to trim the track listing for the New Order CDs that I made for Doug and Kari. Kari told me that she’s only seen the video for “The Perfect Kiss” and it turned her off of the band, which I can understand, as they’re so dour. I actually had a fairly difficult time coming up with the track listing for this. I wanted to make sure that I hit the good singles (note – I managed to lose “State of the Nation” and “Thieves Like Us” in the shuffle) while highlighting album tracks, including my favorite song by the band, “Mr. Disco.” Now, if they don’t become fans, there’s no hope for them.

Work has been more than a bit insane; end of the month rush, don’t you know?

Download iTunes for your machine if you don’t have it already. Best. Application. Ever. And make sure you listen to Groove Salad under the Radio / Ambient category. It’s my preferred workday listening, as it doesn’t involve a morning zoo crew or any of that stuff.

More Fund Comics is out. It was the usual mixed bag that these sorts of anthologies are, but all the proceeds go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and that’s a fine group to support.

So, of late, some people I know have been stark raving mad.

They can stop that now.

I asked Aaron about this the other day. Should I have more loyalty to small business or to employees/workers? The reason this comes up is sort of silly – coffee. I’ve got limited coffee options near my workplace – Dunkin’ Donuts (which treats its employees like shit and is a huge company), Starbucks (which is a massive company that sued a cartoonist, but gives employees benefits right off the bat and does a lot for literacy), or Cafe Au Lait, which is a small business in which the middle-Eastern owner/manager treats his (mostly hispanic) staff like complete shit. Today, I saw said owner/manager throw ceramic cups around and grab a dishwasher by the collar, shaking him like Louise Woodward in a spastic fit. Starbucks wins, apparently, in downtown. They know my order (venti Mocha, extra shot), and always spend a second chatting to me. That means a lot.

Not that the one in Davis Square will get my business. If Rusty from Diesel Cafe saw me there, she’d rush out with a broken bottle and gut me.

You should read Todd’s website as he does fine, fine comics and his daily journal makes me smile.

I can’t make this shit up. No, I’m not posting the link. It’s disgusting.

HERE AM PICTURES OF BIZARRO KEVIN AND KRISTIN AT BAD RESTAURANT BORDER CAFE.

So, the water cooler in the office. You know the type – big huge bottle on top, refrigeration mechanism inside so you can press down a button and get tasty spring water chilled to perfection. We’ve got a pair of them here at the office and they work nicely. I’ve worked with a few that could do piping hot water for your oatmeal or whatever, but these don’t have that ability. They just chill the water. Changing the bottles is a real pain, of course, but we suck up and try to do it. Some are better than others and like the whole lugging-the-jug thing and make the best effort to switch them out as quickly as possible.

Some aren’t so good at it.

Currently, there’s a nice-sized puddle and I hear people sloshing through it all the time. Nobody’s confessed to trying to switch out the bottle, either. (No, it’s not me. I’m a bottle ninja.)

I’ve got theories though. Unless Leo’s developed a bladder problem, he’s my suspected culprit.

Turn around, Melissa. Turn around so I can see you, the cop keeps thinking.

His palms are sweating. His knees are shaking.

This is fine reporting. From the Obscure Store, a more than decent newsmine.

they are the suckiest group on the planet. their music is total crap. they are inferior worthless wannabee stupid neo-new wave dumb-ass watered down tone-deaf soulless shitheads. I can’t believe I wasted $12 on a CD of theirs – I tried something new and got jacked! So what I want to do is take their stupid dumb CD with the stupid idiotic yellow cover, smash it into a thousand shards of plastic and jam it down their stupid throats. I have made better music in the bathroom than these fuckheads ever could in 20 fucking years. All your music programs could create random static and still come up with better music than this shit. I really wish I could sue them or mug them and get my damn money back for buying their CD. And yellow is a sucky color to put on a CD. No picture, just a big blank empty stupid yellow cover. Empty and dumb just like them and their music. Why did I buy it. Their stupidity is so vast it created a temporary disturbance in the space-time continuum which caused me to buy that fucking CD. I’ve injured myself on several occassions, but all those injuries were pure pleasure compared with listening to their CD for the first time. They can’t sing and their guitar playing sounds dumb and empty as well. Why do they exist? Why are they even breathing? I used to have faith in God but then I heard Joy Division and now I know there is no God if He would allow such a shitty band to exist. It should be illegal for Joy Division to make music – a constitutional amendment should be enacted that specifically prohibits Joy Division from making music.

To summarize, I hate Joy Division. Thank you.

So, you don’t like the band?

A new law enacted Sept. 15 outlaws those under 18 from using matchmaking sites and, for the first time, makes the children who advertise their sexual services on them liable for punishment such as fines of up to 1 million yen or trial before a family court.

The “enjo kosai” that Eriko refers to is the euphemistic name given to prostitution, usually by schoolgirls, which translates literally as “compensated dating.”

OK, seriously. Grant Morrison is kicking the living shit out of every X-Men writer since the halcyon days of Claremont / Byrne. Reading the latest issue of New X-Men last night with its widescreen action and beautiful art by Phil Jimenez. (I will say some of the coloring was odd – not over-rendered, really, but just overly enthusiastic.)

Finished Iain Bank’s Excession, which made my head hurts lot, but is a fine, fine science fiction novel that’s not quite space opera, not quite hard science fiction. The Culture reminds me of Brin’s Uplift universe but without the precious “look at what daddy built you” feel that writer seems to drip excessively over his work. Apparently, I should have read other Culture novels first, but I was fine with this one. It wasn’t hard to follow – you just had to concentrate more than one would with the average Star Wars novel, which tends to be as much science fiction as I normally read.

What? A man can read Star Wars novels, OK?

Ew. EW. Fine, ruin it for every other male out there. Don’t be surprised when your ass is kicked.

“We were standing in the kitchen when some guy opened up the back door, walked into the kitchen and started to masturbate,” Kraus said.

She identified the man as wearing khaki pants, a plaid shirt and an imitation of the mask used in the movie “Scream.” Kraus and Shannon said it took a minute for them to understand what was going on; they initially thought the person was a friend of theirs pulling a prank.

ASPlatinum1: the photo with the dog is hard to get one’s head around. he just doesn’t seem a dog person.