It’s been almost 5 months since I got the conchs done. It’s been an interesting experience and not entirely pleasant. I’ve spent most of the 5 months fighting pressure blisters. Until about two weeks ago they were on the back side of my ear. Then they just went away and things were pretty cool. I was sleeping on it some and it looked like they were going to heal. Then a few days ago I noticed that it was kind of red around the lower piercing in front. Now it’s blistered up some. Fuck.

I still have the barbells in and I’m going to keep it that way until I’m sure they’ve healed pretty well. I still think they’ll look bitchin’ when I get the CBRs in but I really don’t recommend a cartilege piercing for the faint of heart or those who aren’t up to constant maintenance for six months or so. I’m really glad I got both done at once because I honestly don’t think I’d have gotten the second one after the PITA of taking care of one.

I saw a bumper sticker the other day. That’s what it said “Don’t Postpone Joy”. It had fundamentalist Christian written all over it. There wasn’t anything to indicate that really. Just a deep feeling that I was about to be called a heathen or something because that’s the way they always start out… one positive statement followed by two hours of telling you how evil and worthless you are.

But, whatever. After I thought about it for a few minutes, the basic premise is sound. To make it less FC sounding, I’m changing it to Don’t Postpone Happiness. Happiness makes them uncomfortable because it’s almost always something they consider evil that makes us happy. But whatever.

I think if you’re putting off being happy for the sake of something else IMO you’re making a huge mistake.

****UPDATE: Maybe I was wrong about the fundy thing. Feeling a good deal less lazy than usual, I googled “don’t postpone joy” and the first things that came up were two books, one by a psychologist & one by a guy who was in the olympics but is hiv positive, and a bumpersticker that may or may not be the same one I saw by a company that sell “products for progressives since 1979″. Just thought you should know.

According to a new Harvard study, health insurers own $4.5 billion in tobacco company stock. Does that seem odd? David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study, calls it “the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back.” The Consumerist has a good write up on it.

One line I find particularly funny is at the end of the article: “It’s just another thing to keep in mind this summer as Congress debates whether we can continue trusting our private health insurers to look out for our best interests.” Debate? Seriously? Private health insurers have never looked out for our best interests anymore than GM or Microsoft or Kellogg’s has. They aren’t supposed to. They’re businesses and if you expect them to look out for anybody’s interests but their own you’re going to be really disappointed. What I find interesting is that they are so arrogant that they’re willing to hold them in their own name in the open.

If people (and by people I mean politicians) would stop endlessly ruminating over whether or not we should have socialized medicine and come to the realization that we already do, they could start doing something to fix the situation. Realistically, we have it already in the form of corporate syndicalist socialism (is he going to use the national socialist word, hmmmm?). Insurance companies have been making your medical decisions for at least a decade and probably more.  And that, my friends, is the essence of socialized medicine. It makes no difference at all whether the bureaucrat making the decision for your doctor gets a check that says US Treasury on the top of it or Prudential–it’s all the same thing. And healthcare in this country won’t get better until it’s fixed.

Last night Friday night Dillinger Escape Plan, The Number Twelve Looks Like You,  Knife the Glitter and two other bands played at The Brewery.  In my continuing quest for journalistic excellence, I started drinking the moment I got there so some of this will be spotty.

First up let me say again PIMP YOUR SHIT. I have no idea who the first two bands were but all five were what I would call mathcore/experimental/hardcore. I’m about 100% sure one of them was Christian (which is fine) but since one of the components of mathcore is unintelligible vocals we’ll never know for sure. The first band was good and their drummer was amazing. I talked to the bass player for a little while at the merch table and he told me their name but now I’ve forgotten it.  So now I’m beginning to think pimp your shit should include business (music?) cards to give away at shows since some of us destroyed our short term memories in the 70’s and 80’s.

Knife the Glitter played without any vocals. I think they said something about why but I was getting a beer and didn’t hear. They sounded good regardless.

The Number Twelve Looks Like You was on next. They’re  seriously mathcore. They were technically excellent. The problem is that I have to be in the mood for mathcore kind of like jazz fusion and I really wasn’t feeling it on Friday. Again, the band was technically excellent and the energy level was high.

Dillinger Escape Plan was the headliner and they lived up to expectations (see above disclaimer). They tore it up on Black Bubblegum.

It was one of the largest crowds I’ve seen at The Brewery lately which is pretty impressive considering it was a $16 show. Of course for me half of the fun of live music is people watching and this show was no different. My favorite two moments were the really hot girl in the very short denim shorts and fishnets that bumped into me then asked if I had touched her ass.  I said I had and that if she’d warn me next time I’d grab it instead  which she clearly wasn’t prepared for so she hung around and we talked for awhile. The other was the chick that was standing in front of me late in the show with her boyfriend. She was clearly there because he was and very clearly not enjoying herself. I should have shot some video since she was a case study in pissy body language. Every time somebody bumped her from behind she acted like they were trying to dry hump her.

At one point she looked at her bf and said “Is he saying ‘I want your soul’? it sounds like he’s saying ‘Iwant your soul’. (He was). The best part was when somebody up in the mosh pit threw a partially full bottle of water back our way. It didn’t come within more than about 10 feet of us but she freaked and looked at him and said, “I don’t like that. What was that?” He kind of ignored her the whole time and I was thinking to myself ‘Dude, you’re going to be paying for this for weeks.’

If you happen to be reading this my only advice to you is: Dump the stiff and find somebody who’s into the same things as you. Life is too short, dude.

Just to remind myself occasionally that the world isn’t totally full of overzealous cops, I like to take part in completely random exercises of time wasting. The good folks over at SnackBracket.com have taken care of that for us by setting up a NCAA style tournament to determine the Best Snack Cake of all time. Since this is the sort of discussion that fires people up probably more than anything but religion and politics, I urge you to hasten over and fill out your bracket. It has to be submitted by June 16.

Personally, I find Twinkies foul beyond belief and would probably resort to cannibalism if I crash landed on a desert island in a Twinkie transport. Ding Dong OTOH are the shit. Especially if you put them in the refrigerator for a while.

In this story at the N&O, Sarah Ovaska puts a slightly different spin on things. From her article it sounds like Hamlett Associates isn’t the bad guy. Apparently, some overzealous pig named K.L. Everett spotted the dangerous menace to society lurking on Hillsborough Street with his keen piggy eyes and had it dismantled and hauled away for investigation. OK, it probably didn’t happen that way since cops can’t do anything but write tickets on their own. He probably called his sargeant who called whatever fake military rank they use above that to indicate that this pig has a bigger dick than the other one. Then there was some kind of task force convened and so on until the swat team came down to take it apart.

Daniel Hall, the project manager for Hamlett Associates, claims he told Everett they weren’t interested in pressing charges and would like the monster back. So doesn’t that mean that RPD in the person of K.L. Everett really stole the barrels? Now, I’ll grant you that it’s possible that Hamlett Associates is spinning this story once word got out (Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing) but most of these projects are either Time and Materials or Cost Plus billing. Either way, it’s likely that Hamlett would have passed on the cost of the barrels to the State. I’m much more willing to believe that some joyless assholes overstepped their bounds in their quest for a world without sin or danger or variation from the norm.

This is what happens when you give people who grew up wanting to be bullies but didn’t have the balls guns and the authority of The State to back them up. One day we’ll be coming for you motherfuckers. And my smiling face will be one of the last things you see when we blindfold you in front of the ditch.

Through the diligent efforts of the fine boys in blue in Raleigh the creator of the Traffic Barrel Monster has been apprehended.  Joseph Carnevale, a junior at NC State was charged with misdemeanor damage to property and larceny. It seems thatthe authorities are claiming that there was $360 in damamge done to the 3 barrel that were cut up. Stop. Read that last sentence again (No, not the one that says ‘Stop’, the other last sentence). Three barrels were damaged and unless my calculator has gone batshit that workd out to $120 each. For little plastic barrels. Perhaps now we understand whyroad construction companies winning contracts in NC do such sub-standard work…. they’re spending all the contract money on orange barrels. Here’s a deal for the fuckwits at Hamlett Associates, I’ll personally supply you with all the orange barrels you care to purchase at $90 a piece.

Here’s another thing – NC has a budget shortfall of  something in excess of $1 billion. Wake County’s budget increased by 5.8% and included a 2.5 cent property tax increase part of which is to be used for increased law enforcement. I’d love to hammer on Raleigh too but they’ve taken the congressional tack and made their budget completely unreadable.  At any rate, I find it moderately offensive that this has wasted clearly non-infinite government dollars. Seriously, make him pay the $360 and move along. Or better yet have him replace the barrels by buying them from me for $270. As if the fucktards feeding at the public trough weren’t making enough money. What I want to know really is why none of these asswipes every get charged for anything when they milk government contracts?

The actual artist is uliveandyouburn (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) chronicles this and many other exploits at his blog NoPromiseOfSafety.com

In news that makes me feel better about politics than I have in a long time, The Swedish Pirate Party won two seats on the Eurporean Parliament. Most people assume this is a backlash against the grotesquery that surrounded the conviction of the guys from Pirate Bay. Personally, I don’t care  what caused it but it’s good to see people rise up against the bullshit and in-breeding that is modern government. Power To The People, man!

There’s a really good write-up at Torrent Freak that’s maybe not a vitriolic as I would come up with.

Mark wrote a pseudo-review over on Boing Boing of Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soul Craft.  I was a network guy for a significant part of my adult life and felt the same sort of disconnect that he talks about about was afraid to talk about it with anybody for fear of seeming ungrateful. I mean, I was being paid stupid amounts of money and when a large portion of the world’s population aren’t sure where their next meal is coming from it seems kind of pissy to whine about not feeling fulfilled at work. What he says is true though. I remember one time a co-worker and I were doing some consulting for a metal fabrication shop and the IT guy was taking us through showing us what they did. Both of us were taken by the production of real things since neither of us actually produced any tangible things of value in our regular work lives.

If you read the comments below the Boing Boing post you’ll see that I’m not the only one that feels that way. I’m taking steps to correct the absence of actual creation in my life. If it’s something that’s missing from yours I suggest you do too.

Stan Schroeder posted an article on Mashable titled If Free is the Enemy of Good, Then Color Me Bad a couple of days ago about Paul McGuiness and him being a bitch. That’s not what Stan said because he’s considerably more cultured than I am.  Paul McGuiness, for those of you out of the loop on such things, is the Manager for U2. I’m going to make the first of what will probably be many ugly comments now and ask —have you ever noticed that the bands or band apparatchik or clingers-on that are constantly bitching about the Internet or peer to peer file sharing or people stealing music are from bands that haven’t been relevant in 20 years? Bono is as swell a humanitarian as they come but how many people can name a song they’ve recorded from this century? Metallica–ditto.

The problem is that all of these people have stopped making music (if they ever were) and become part of the general whoredom that is the “recording industry”. They have been at it sooooo long that they believe they are entitled to drink Cristal poured over the breasts of $10,000 a night hookers. So they don’t want people to listen to their “music” unless they’ve been paid for it. When the actual music in the world is almost completely made by people who would gladly give it away just so people can hear it (BTW, Thanks, Trent. The Slip was the bomb). I’ll bet there are 50 bands in Raleigh that would pay to have people hear them play*.

At any rate, this is not the first time Paul has opened his hole and said something stupid. The funniest part is that he’s the fucking manager which means that he doesn’t have any talent and he’s basically sponging off U2’s success.

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*In fact, I knew a guy in a band a few years ago in Raleigh and that’s essentially what they did… after paying for the rentals on equipment and assorted expenses they were lucky if they split enough money at the end of the night to cover their bar tab.