My First Show

Music, Personal / /

The first show I ever saw was the Beach Boys at MacArthur Court, the basketball arena at the University of Oregon. I remember my desk in my old room, and the way it looked with the concert tickets tucked safely under the edge of the blotter. My sister and I were equally excited about the concert. I’m not sure why…I don’t remember either of us really caring much about the Beach Boys. At the time she was a Shawn Cassidy fan, and I was pretty heavy into either Joan Jett, Blondie, or KISS…depending on the time of day.

I remember a few flashes about the show. I remember that we were behind a post and had to lean to the left or right to get a good view of…who? No idea. I mean, these days I know…it was all about Brian Wilson. At the time I had no fucking idea who Brian Wilson was. I knew Gene, I knew Paul, I knew Peter and I knew Ace…but Brian?!? Not fucking likely. I really have no idea whatsoever why the ‘sis and I were so damn excited about that show. I couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11, so I guess that explains it.

There weren’t a whole lot of shows at MacArthur Court. The only other band I ever saw there was The Clash. It was 1984; my junior year of high school. It was one of the last times I went out with one group of friends, before abandoning them for another group. I remember that Jimmy took something nasty and had to leave. I don’t remember if I went with him. I do remember that The Clash was something. Really something. It was all I had room for. Sorry Jimmy.

I’ve lost track of a lot of things in the last 20 years. I get lost really easily while driving. I am easily lost in conversations with any background noise at all, because my hearing is so bad. I have ADD, and am prone to feel depressed for no reason at all. I am constantly surprised when people I work with find my work noteworthy.

But there are two things I still have a tight grip on:

1. My sister was there for my first rock show
2. I got to see Joe Strummer live, on stage, singing words with feeling

Which of those is the more important is meaningless to me. They are both mine, and I’m keeping them.

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Dobson is a Dick

Kids, Personal, Politics, Queer / /

What a complete and utter pud. Total dork-wad all tied up in knots. Check out the post on Sadly, No. James Dobson is trying to help you stop the evils of queerness in your dear child.

Is My Child Becoming a Homo…er…sexual?

Should I worry that – at the tender young age of 4 – Demon #2 is only happy when he’s dressed as some sort of superhero-Babushka and thinks he looks smashing in barrettes? Nah, I’ll worry when he stops calling the shrub “President Butthole,” and starts eating meat. No, not that kind of meat. I could care less if he eats that kind of meat. I just fear that he’ll eat animals someday and start voting Republican. Eating hot studly beefcake, though? Not so much a worry here at the homestead.

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Flyouts Are Fun! And So Are Democrats.

HTML/CSS, Politics, Work, XHTML / /

I just finished a 12 hour day getting this site re-fresh ready for launch. It was my first real stab at a CSS-only flyout menu and I’m really pretty nervous. I know that older browser support will be spotty (or non-existent), but it should function in all current browsers and platforms. I’m pretty happy with it, but could probably use an expert review. I mean, in some ways I am an expert, but that just scares me sometimes. I mean, if I’m expert in any aspect of this wild and wolly internet then how the fuck is it still even running?

http://www.dlc.org

My main responsibility was the flyout menus under “ideas” and a bunch of image chopping and HTML cleanup. Please, by all that is holy, do not run an HTML validation on this page. We had nothing to do with the core HTML and I would dearly love to spend 10 hours just combing through the code getting it all up to XHTML snuff. Just seeing the thousands of occurances of

was enough to give me nightmares! Honestly, if you are as big a standards geek as I am, that single tag will make your stomach turn. Why do you think I’m typing this (while desperately gulping Hefeweizen) instead of going to bed, like any sane person would after already being in front of their computer since 8am? I’ll be dreaming of inline styles, duplicate IDs and classes with names like “blueNavCopy” all night. Honestly, it’s just not worth going to sleep at all.

Maybe I’ll just FTP to the server on my own time while nobody is looking and just…

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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Did Rove Leak Plame’s Identity to Press?

Politics / /

Two sources confirm (Editor and Publisher) that documents Time turned over to a Federal Judge name Karl Rove as one of the sources for Matt Cooper’s piece outing Valerie Plame. How key he was, and what information he provided, remain to be seen.

The White House said, back in 2003, that whomever leaked the info (if they were White House employees) should be fired and prosecuted (AmericaBlog). I expect that the coming weeks will see some creative definitions for “fired” and “prosecuted.”

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From Blown Speakers

Music / /

When the contact high
from the real life adventures wear off,
you find, in the tiny moments that bomb, your old files rain down from the sky.

And would they fall down,
like cymbal crashes, would the alarm bell sound?
Would your eyelashes keep all this in time?
If not, I won’t mind…

it can be impractical.
it can be impractical

So can you tell me
why in every version of the events shown here,
theres another season that crawls by like years,
from blown speakers clear?

It came out magical.
it came out magical.

Just a contact high,
one in every mood I’ve ever declined to fight,
one in every single exchange you might find.
From blown speakers,
time came out magical

It came out magical, out from blown speakers
it came out magical, out from blown speakers

-The New Pornographers

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