Don't Sell Me Short

Don't sell me short
You've been wrong too long
And don't brush me off
Just because I don't belong

Pass me on by
Ignore my cry
Forget me when I die
Just don't sell me short
Not while I'm still alive.

Teabaggin' the White House

So tomorrow is the fabled day, with the Tea Parties planned. I'm excited to see this disaster and wish I had the free time or the inclination to go to one of them just to see the results. Protest is all well and good, and I encourage it, but the way American history has been fetishized disgusts me just a little.

The Boston Tea Party was an act that helped spark the American Revolution. A British act placed a tax on the tea, and the so-called Sons of Liberty decided that it was unfair to levy a tax without giving elected representation to those under the tax. This is where the famous "no taxation without representation" line comes from. Essentially, the same type of situation is also true in Washington DC at current, but that's a different matter. The equivalence is of course living in a state with no direct representation in the national legislature today.

Anyway, I'm afraid I don't see the equivalency between this historic act and the protests of today. Everyone who resides in a state within the US is given representation under the federal government via their own senators and district representatives. If you want to go out and march with signs and yell a lot about how you own a lot of purestrain gold and hate socialism, go do it. If you need to find a historical context to make yourself feel more righteous or patriotic about it, maybe you should rethink your motives in the first place.

Perhaps the best part is the fact that people think that by just not paying their taxes they're going to make a difference. You can break the law, but you get to deal with the consequences, too.

As a side note, I really, really want an ACORN hoodie or t-shirt. I'd love to walk around in one after the insanity surrounding them in some people's heads, as if they're some kind of secret service militant group or something.

probably the best troll would just be a big sign with "Do You Even Know Why You're Here?" written on it

Blogvalanche

So, I have some confessions to make. I've been seriously skimping on my blogging commitment. There are several reasons for this, but I'm going to do my best to nip them all in the bud by posting more. Gasp.

Anyway, it was an eventful weekend. I'll break it up into more posts because I can, so I'll start with the Friday night. Most of my testing for the week was axed, I found out on Thursday, so I ended up saying 'screw it' and taking the rest of the weekend off. I took ten hours of PTO, including a holiday float day and two hours of comp time I had just sitting around.

I worked fairly late into Friday morning and ended up leaving around four, heading to bed, and waking up at about two in the afternoon. I woke up and drove into Philadelphia, parked, and headed to a random coffee joint to meet Claire. Soon enough, and after learning an important lesson about purses not needing chairs of their own, we were off to get something to eat.

Claire had a coupon for a restaurant, but before we could get there we spotted a place called Tapas y Vinos which we decided to try out. After walking in the wrong door (and plodding over some rocks), we sat down and started looking at the menu. I was overwhelmed, but pleasantly so, and let Claire make the calls as to what we got. The shrimp and shirred egg topping was delicious, and after splitting up the check we high-tailed it to the concert.

Eventually we found a place to park on the street, and I had the sneaking suspicion that the spot wasn't all that perfect - there was a hydrant a couple yards behind me, but I figured it'd be okay. We got there just in time to see the (mediocre) opening band, Crooked Fingers. They were pretty run-of-the-mill as far as opening acts go, something akin to the TOMAHAWK band that opened for Tool, but not that bad.

Then the main event! Neko Case and her band came onstage. The performance wasn't as epic as some of the other events I've been at, but it made up for that and more by being far more intimate a venue. The tickets weren't outstanding, but the small size of the theater (the Keswick in Glenside, PA by the way) made it easy to see the stage from wherever. I was surprised at the set list she sang, since it contained a lot of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood stuff that I have listened to (and liked) a lot more than her newer stuff. Among my favorite renditions were "Maybe Sparrow" and "Teenage Feeling," the latter being a song I wasn't all that fond of until I saw it performed live.

Accompanying Neko and her band was a movie screen behind them playing videos for each of the songs they played. Of particular note was a few very bucolic video scenes, including one that had me transfixed featuring a plane skirting some clouds over the pure blue sky. Also of note was the little quips that the titular singer and her backup exchanged over the course of the concert, including a mention of a "suit made of sleeping back parts" and some kind of potato-chip-delivery-system somehow involving a vacuum. Of course, the encore is always obligatory, and they ended up playing a half a dozen additional songs. Once the concert closed, Claire was half asleep and ready to head home, so I dropped her off and walked into my apartment at a little before midnight.

I talked a bit to some folks after getting home and made the spur-of-the-moment decision that I'd be going on an adventure the next day. More on that later!

15 Step

You used to be alright
What happened?

Things I Remember

• I remember a shock site failing to scare some friends of mine due to the sluggishness of a school computer.
• I remember a stupid conversation with Andrew about being a jerk at the mall before he fell asleep and I used his computer to meet somebody new named Delilah.
• I remember peaking at 130 wpm on the Keyboarding II typing test in high school.
• I remember our trebuchet, and transporting it with a rickety trailer from Andy's house. On the ramp off of Circle Drive onto the highway, it nearly fell over and we had to stop to tie it back down.
• I remember being deliriously tired at Eric Dean's house and playing Axis and Allies in his living room after the sun rose. It was the one I didn't like as much, the Japan-included "classic" edition.
• I remember seeing a random car crash right outside our dorm in freshman year. A little pop and that was it. Less bravado than I'd always expected.
• I remember Mario pajama pants that were a Christmas gift that I received in the following summer. I thought I'd never use them, but I use them all the time in the winter. Thanks, Amanda.
• I remember driving home from work at Best Buy one night after a downpour and turning into the right turn lane only to have my car begin to float. It was flooded, but continued to work... for another two weeks or so. It finally went kaput when I was driving home on the morning after a small party with work people. It threw a rod through the engine block.
• I remember picking all the M&Ms out of the cookies at school and eating them first. This was because I always liked the rest of the cookie the most.
• I remember the ritual of getting Chipotle and arriving at Andrew's apartment to watch American Gladiators and Heroes.
• I remember racing to Valentino's every day for lunch, and Tom's propensity to eat double the amount everyone else ate.
• I remember wishing I could have gone out in John's canoe when the park flooded rather than being stuck at work. Scott was almost stranded on a stray island, I'm told.
• I remember walking to Andy, Tony, and Matt's apartment during freshman year when Andrew wasn't around and I was bored. On my way one time I saw a girl who I had a crush on from Physics class in Coffman Union, but decided better of it.
• I remember seeing the setup in the aforementioned Tony/Matt/Andy apartment and wondering exactly what the three of them did aside from sitting at the computers. There wasn't much room for much else.
• I remember being amazed with myself for testing into UMTYMP in the sixth grade, an accelerated math program, but quit after the first year ate up all the free time I would have used having fun.
• I remember being very confused by the Science Classroom Building; there are two different entrances for different sets of rooms.
• I remember crossing the Washington Avenue bridge and listening for "ghosts" with Andrew and Leigh, the latter not able to take our impromptu spiritual investigation seriously.
• I remember my job in the dorm - sitting in a computer lab ten hours a week. At least $90/wk was enough for me to have spending money. More valuably for myself and my friends was my ability to print for free at all hours.
• I remember playing Monopoly and Yahtzee with Chelsea and the way she pronounced "mortgage" and "kitty" in her British accent.
• I remember my father being laid off when I was young, and how forlorn he was some days when he was searching for a new job.
• I remember staying up late some semesters because I had no class until late into the afternoon. The only things that were on were Survivorman and How It's Made marathons on the Science Channel.
• Speaking of Les Stroud, I remember seeing his "urban disaster survival" special on the Science Channel. Of specific note was how he threw an object into the glass of a vending machine to obtain food. Believe me, it looked incredibly awkward.
• I remember my first night of living alone.

Decoration

It's about time something interesting went in the dining room.



More to come once I clean up around here. More boxes for the box graveyard!

EDIT: Here's some more pictures after cleaning up the living room a little. Still need to vacuum, but it's looking quite spiffy so far.

A special friend on the television. Still kind of cluttered with wires, but looks okay now.

New end table to the left of the couch. The lamp is still naked because I bought the wrong kind of harp for the shade. Oh no!

I bought some 3M sticky hook deals so that I'd have a place to hang my coat. Previously I'd toss it wherever I felt like.

UPDATE: April 7

A little more shopping that I intended to do yielded some more cool stuff. Figured I'd append it to the post rather than keep posting about the same subject.

Lateralus Art Disk

Bowie album I made into a clock. ARTSY.

The wall. I'm not sure if I want to rearrange stuff - would they look better right up next to one another, perhaps?

Content?

It's 5:30AM and I'm suddenly enamored at the possibility of purchasing new furniture tomorrow.

Yes, that's right. A week or so ago I procured an of Montreal LP and desired something to play it on. Now, this led to needing something to actually put a turntable on, so I looked at end tables. What I planned to do was to buy some sticky dealies to mount the record sleeve to the wall all artsy-like.

One thing leads to another, and I come up with a fantastic vision for my currently-empty dining room. Music theme! It can have the CD/LP player in the corner, a few LP sleeves hung on the wall in a vertical line, maybe even a framed piece of art or two that's music themed. It might cost a bit, but it's worth it to finally get something in that room. Later in the month I plan to purchase a nice solid dining room table that hopefully I can also get some use out of.

So I'll compile a few things I'll need to buy:

1. Stick wall-mount thingies to secure the LP sleeve I already have to the wall and for future endeavors to that effect.
2. The LP/CD player itself, which is a pretty good chunk of change, but it'd be nice to have a way to play my music in the dining/living room area, including LPs I buy.
3. An end table or two, one for the actual purpose of providing a table for my couch, the other for a stand for said player.
4. A lamp for the end table next to the couch.

I also need to clean. I should probably do that first, but maybe I'll go out and shop so I'll be able to listen to music while I do so. I don't think I should be this excited about cleaning and purchasing furniture!

In the meantime, though, Thursday I went down to Voorhees to pay rent and re-up my lease for another year, so I guess I'm here until at least June of 2010! That's not a bad thing, though, since my apartment is more than acceptable and generally a good place to live.