I only had a single beer last night, and I don't remember doing any hallucinogens, but I swear this is true; last night, someone hanging out at Danielle's The Show pissed away a nice chunk of karma by making a crack about Terri Schiavo's feeding tube ending up on Ebay, which naturally inspired me to do a quick Ebay search for "Schiavo" then and there. In between the grafters trying to make a quick buck by pawning off "RememberTerri.com" and "TerriSchiavoIsDead.org" domain names (but not attracting bites above $5 - good for you, Ebay buying public!), some Buffalo-based genius had put up a Miraculous Terri Schiavo Grilled Cheese Sandwich, complete with photos of the blessed wheat bread-and-processed-cheese relic, its toasted-in pattern looking something like the poor woman/inanimate brain-damaged political football, something like the south face of Mount Washington. "THIS IS NOT A JOKE" he/she assured us. Of course not. Sadly I did not copy and paste the merch. description then - safe to say, it was hilarious.*

I hesitate to think how high the holy rollers would have bid it up, given the chance. Hundreds? Thousands? I'm serious. But not a sign of it onsite today - which shouldn't be all that surprising, I guess. More of a shock for me, per Google, is that no one else - no blogs, no news sites caught it. Am I starting to see things? Ah, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

*Yes, I said hilarious. Wrong, offensive, disrespectful of the pain being inflicted on the Schindlers and Michael Schiavo, not to mention Terri Schiavo (or what's left of her consciousness) as well? Yup, without a doubt. More offensive than cynically employing a helpless body in a bed as an wedge to further divide and polarize a polity that's currently about as unified as a brick made of mercury? Not a chance. Terri Schiavo jokes simply should not be funny, but the past two weeks have been little more than one very long Schiavo joke, told by Bush and Bush and DeLay and Frist and Terry and repeated by their utterly frightening fundamentalist minions.

Today I'm entranced by this Moscow Graffiti blog. I particularly like some of the ironic, sometimes bizarre stencil graffiti near the bottom - page down.

In recognition of the news from national medical authorities that German measles, a.k.a Rubella has been gewiped-outten, let's all sing along to the greatest punk-pop song about a contagious viral illness....ever!



I'm inflamed with desire and its spreading like wildfire
She doesn't know it but she'll soon be mine
Its just a question of time
Rubella

I'm insanely obsessed and I simply will not rest
She doesn't know it yet but she's the one
And I won't stop until I'm done
Rubella

And the heart that she has stolen has swollen twice its natural size
I've lost six pounds since I laid eyes on her
Rubella

I'm in love with a girl she's affected my whole world
She doesn't know it but she's inside me
And now I'm gone completely
Rubella

She explodes like a fist and she burns from the first kiss
I haven't told her but she's all mine now
I knew some how I'd catch her
Rubella, Rubella, Rubella (repeat until end of song)

If by any chance, there's a nice virulent strain of German measles, or any measles running around the country, we can only hope that political scumsuckers like Tom Delay and Bill Frist come down with a ass-kicking case of it.

My favorite new blog about American soccer, perceptive and intelligent even if I don't always agree with everything in it - Soccerpundit.

My favorite new blog needlessly, crudely and hilariously dissecting the wedding announcements of pretentious twits in the Sunday New York Times - Veiled Conceit.

The hiatus is finally over; the papers read, the books studied, the exams written. Another quarter is done. It's break time, and I'm spending a hot, sexy, wild spring break...in my apartment. And in a radio studio, its saving grace the fact that inside, I'm not likely to fixate on the chilly, dank, damp weather that's rolled into town just as everyone rolls out. So there's not a lot to distract me. Hopefully I can get back to writing this thing somewhat regularly in the next few days, never mind keep it up when classes restart.

Have you ever missed a lot of my life while I was gone!
No, not really. Studying, reading, writing, writing, reading and studying. A bit of this and a bit of that, but to recount it all now after the fact...I can't really be bothered. I'll lose too much sleep time writing it and you'll be bored in the bargain. I could rehash my assorted papers and whatnot, inflating my sense of self-importance (because a lot of it is cool, I think), but then you'll never, ever come back - or worse, write me off as a horrific nerd. Besides, does anyone really come here to ponder the minute details of my precarious existence?
No! You come here - if you come of your own volition in the first place - for my snarky, oblique shots at politicians and socceristi, along with the occasional goodies I bite from memepool. A discerning audience you are.
This blog has lost its focus. As if it had one to begin with.
However, interestingly enough I do have a personal life, a matching set of trials and tribulations, but I'm totally uncertain how much of it is worth splashing out here. Maybe sometime I'll figure out how to strike the delicate balance between being a sporadically-updated facsimile of some random Dem-blog, and a more pompous, less pretentious facsimile of the Livejournal of a random 15 year old girl.

On that cheerful note, last month was a bummer for the Family K.. Our Jurgen was put to sleep at the age of 14. I wasn't there, obviously. My brother and father were that morning, holding him as he went. Not really sure I could have been there, done that. A week later, we got two beautiful rescue labs from John Gagnon's Dog House. And with a little luck (and money), I'll have a rescue schnauzer from SFRA sometime in the next few weeks/months.

I've been asked by a few people recently if I've given up this blog racket already.
No, no, not in the least. I haven't given up TPC in favor of Podcasting, nor have I been thrown in the clink after they discovered I'm the guy who hacked Paris's Sidekick*. Amazingly, I never even succumbed to that debilitating flu that plowed everyone into the ground around here over the past few weeks.
I've just been busy as hell with coursework - specifically with end-of-quarter assignments. With 2 papers and 3 finals to bash out/study for in the next 6 days or so, I'm not quite there yet. But give me another few days and I'll be back, better than ever. Like that's saying much.

*n.b. for the humor-impaired: I am not really the guy who hacked Paris's Sidekick. Duh.