some of what i missed throughout the week

c monks was at the dem convention and blogged a ton, and noticed a lot of the same things that i would have. although we disagree with miss new mexico’s national anthem rendition.

that c-net scrooge tried to say that the bloggers didn’t add to the dialogue of the convention, but did c-net tell us that there was an unsuccessful wave attempt at the fleet center? not that i recall. and you know what, thats the sort of details that i like in my blogreading.

Google continues to remind the youngsters what the dot com boom felt like. it felt exciting, fresh, and new. As they continue to drag out the most anticipated IPO since Netscape they launched ipo.google.com this week so that people could literally take a number to have the chance to buy the first shares of the stock which is projected to sell for $108-$135.

holy crap, the time to re-open the shuttered monocle and top hat store in sunnyvale has come.

kitty bukkake nominated me to run with barack obama in 2028. apparenlty i am vice president on the ticket because she predicts the future alphabetically.

sk smith’s uterus fell for that story the kerry daughter gave about licorice the hamster. after watching the sunday roundtables, most of the other women got soft and fuzzy with the heroics of sen. kerry giving cpr to the half-drowned pet.

on the mclaughlin group, tony blankley wasn’t buying it. “how do you even do that?” he scoffed.

speaking of the mclaughlin group, what’s going on with pat buchanan? in the last three weeks on my favorite pbs show, buchanan has done nothing but defend kerry, bash bush, and crow over the dnc convention which he graded an A to and predicted that it would give kerry a 7 point bounce (yesterday Newsweek polled a bounce of half that).

is the instapundit more conservative than the former advisor to nixon and ford, and director of communications to reagan? this month he certainly is, and it has only helped him get more hits.

interesting.

the increase of political posts this summer hasnt hurt my stats either, even without any help from professor reynolds, who usually doesnt link opposing views.

the post-convention zogby poll is what you’d pretty much expect from a well-received week of hype.

mark circa 1977 points out that the new van halen double cd greatest hits when bought through the apple itunes store is just fifty cents a song. and i would agree with him that there are very few tracks that will remain unchecked. just the sammy hagar ones.

bunny mcintosh (pictured) saw the cure. raymi saw the killers. chelle saw kiss and met gene simmons and took pictures of the moment.

anti ran out of weed.

doc searls turned 57.

buzznet got a nice write up in the wall street journal.

in lessor news in the wsj, apparently sandy berger really was just happy to see us. the journal reported that the national archives is clearing sandy berger of all charges. the much missed ken layne asks where is the liberal media’s coverage of this reversal?

unfazed, reynolds goes back to hammering on joe wilson and calling michael moore unamerican.

steph will be in LA in a week, and of course now she has fallen in love. that means bad news for the bachelors planning to meet her at the playboy mansion this coming saturday.

seacrest out.

amy‘s brother don has a new band called Squatcho, and it actually does sound like AC/DC meets T-Rex as pure volume describes them. listen to two tracks for free here.

Tsar provides the music behind the new Xterra commerical. i heard it last night on VH1, tivoed it, recorded it with my camera and will post it soon.

the designer of lick, raspil iverson has a new layout and a nice photo shoot up. expect a new issue of lick before the end of the summer.

someone other than the homoerotic four horsemen won head of household on my favorite summer reality series, big brother, when jase literally freaked out while trying to keep his finger pushed on a doorbell-type button for 9.5 hours.

today nay turns 18.

Corey Patterson CF

Nomar Garciaparra SS

Mois�s Alou LF

Sammy Sosa RF

Derek Lee 1B

Aramis Ramirez 3B

Mark Grudzielanek 2B

Paul Bako C

Greg Maddux P

Dusty Baker, Manager

am i crazy to get excited about this team?

am i crazy to think that harry is looking down from above and raising his eternally frosty mug of Old Style down at us all?

best sign i saw in the wrigley crowd

We

Got

Nomar

what a difference three years makes.

cubs lineup 8/01/01

Eric Young 2B

Michael Tucker CF

Sammy Sosa RF

Fred McGriff 1B

Matt Stairs LF

Ron Coomer 3B

Todd Hundly C

Ricky Guiterrez SS

Kevin Tapani P

Don Baylor, Manager

once again, thank you God.

thank you.

cardinals, here we come

off wing opinion + jason sutter + obey pedro + boston dirt dogs

Nomar traded to Cubs

my phone rang almost immediately. long time dodger fan jeff whalen from tsar was on the other end.

“i woke up at 2pm like any normal person,” he said. “and i find out that the world has been turned upside down.”

he went on to tell me that the Dodgers had traded catcher/first basemen Paul LoDuca, reliever Guillermo Mota and outfielder Juan Encarnacion to florida for pitcher Brad Penny, first baseman Hee Seop Choi and minor league left-hander Bill Murphy in one of the most mindboggling trades in recent history.

while jeff and i continued to wonder aloud why the dodgers hate good catchers (piazza, johnson, and now loduca (who is currently batting .301)) all i could do was contain my disbelief that the cubs had actually pulled off the trade of the day.

the cubs, the chicago cubs, a team that hasnt won a world series since 1908, actually got off their asses and traded for something that they actually needed: one more big bat in streaky, uneven, but potent lineup brimming with potential.

the four way deal went as follows:

boston sent Nomar Garciaparra, powerhitting prospect Matt Murton, and cash to chicago

chicago sent shortstop Alex Gonzalez and reliever Francis Beltran to montreal

chicago sent pitching prospect Justin Jones to minnesota

minnesota sent first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz to boston

montreal sent shortstop Orlando Cabrera to boston

i still dont believe the cubs great fortune, the sox’s great loss, and the dodgers’s great stupidity.

desipio + bambino’s curse + a view from the bleachers

our cheif engineer, the brains behind chopper one and several other of the magical machines and devices at the xbi.

michelle is the heart of the company. a devout partier and deadhead, she is the polar opposite of what you’d expect from a mechanical engineer.

her desk is a mess, her bob marley tapestry hangs proudly above her cubicle, and her groovy jams blaring from her speakers.

michelle loves ice cold coke. medium cold coke will not do. therefore dozens of half drunk plastic one liters litter her desk. as do dollar bills, trick staplers that electocute you upon touch, pennies, and a slinky.

shes not leaving the xbi entirely, just our department.

she is moving to the equipment room where she will fiddle with future machines and inventions.

so to celebrate we had a pot luck.

danielle was late to her flower stand this morn, which is bad news for a friday. but she too loves michelle, as we all do, so she picked me up out back in her newly fixed mercedes and we sped to the kfc, as a bucket of chicken was to be my contribution.

every excursion with danielle becomes a photo shoot, and we did get a few good pics in.

when we returned, john woo broke out the turkey mac, someone brought pizzas, someone else brought sandwhiches. there was potato salad, fruit cups, corn dogs, corn, ice cream sandwhiches, home made deserts, pop for the kids, and of course plenty of booze.

crime had a free for all this afternoon as we toasted our favorite dreadlocked engineer and she toasted back wearing a pink boa.

life sometimes is very good.

you forget that during the parts when its very bad, which seems to be all the time at the xbi, but days like today put things into perspective.

a beautiful drunken loving perspective of too much food and so much joy.

bunny has been a blogging fool + 2cents + i aint scared to say it + no, i am not the rudepundit

tonight 7/30

mere mortals, spaceland

mini-kiss (pictured), avalon

alanis morissette, greek

suicide girls, knitting factory

dita, dragonfly

kd lang, hollywood bowl

tomorrow 7/31

black sabbath + judas priest + slayer + slipknot, hyundai pavilion

jessica simpson, pacific amphitheatre

kristin hersh, largo

al green, the greek

rick royale, lava lounge

mutual admiration society, roxy

sunday 8/1

heart + lisa loeb, greek

zz top, pacific amphitheare

amoebapalooza (20 bands playing 10 minutes each), king king

monday 8/2

eric clapton, hollywood bowl

the hives, henry fonda

elefant, el rey

abandoned pools, viper room

tuesday 8/3

i love you but i’ve chosen darkness, viper room

the hives, henry fonda

wednesday 8/4

the crickets, house of blues

papa roach, roxy

thursday 8/5

john frusciante, knitting factory

richie havens, santa monica pier (free)

doc searls + flagrant + muscle68

it didn’t go into many details, it wasn’t passionate, it didn’t sink its teeth into the real reason that people will vote for him, and it didn’t make me want to head off to arizona and register voters in that swing state.

it was as flacid as i expected.

but it didn’t suck.

this has never been a partisan blog. no one owns me. no one.

you can look at george bush and see a retard and not be a liberal.

you can listen to john kerry and doze off and not be a conservative.

the republicans immediately started blogging about how the speech was flat and i wonder, what did they expect?

john kerry has been a senator for twenty years and i doubt he’s ever delivered a great speech. why would the right have thought that tonight would be any different?

people will try to judge kerry on tonight’s speech like speeches mean something.

if speeches meant something then how the hell did bush get even ten votes last time?

yes tonight’s performance was weak, but if gwb could drag a “band of brothers” up there and talk about saving someone’s life during the vietnam freaking war, then his speech could be lame too.

yes tonight’s monologue was awkward and choppy, but if bush hadn’t sent us into a $200 billion war, driving us deeper into a freefall of debt that he started with his ridiculous tax bribes i mean cuts, then his speech could be awkward and choppy too.

yes john kerry sweated up there, and he should, there’s a lot at stake, cuz some idiots actually decide who they will vote for based on canned convention chants like “help is on the way.”

i want a president on the way.

but better, i want someone to get out of the way.

so john kerry’s a well-intentioned dullard and gw bush is a creepy retard. america, this is what you get when you throw out candidates because they paid a maid under the table, or got caught cheating on their wife, or because they’re black and they’re proud, or because they happened to be born female.

milquetoast is the requirement and kerry at the mic and edwards with that fake hair and smile fulfill our crazy standards. unless youre republican, in which case anything goes (cokehead? fine. deserter? mmm-kay. foulmouthed haliburton ceo? kewl!)

to be fair, john kerry did take a few risks and he did score some much-needed points.

he made stem cell research a debate about science and not religion, where it belongs.

Two young bicycle mechanics from Dayton asked what if this airplane could take off at Kitty Hawk? It did that and changed the world forever.

A young president asked what if we could go to the moon in ten years? And now we?re exploring the solar system and the stars themselves.

A young generation of entrepreneurs asked, what if we could take all the information in a library and put it on a little chip the size of a fingernail? We did and that too changed the world forever.

And now it’s our time to ask: What if?

What if we find a breakthrough to cure Parkinson’s, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and AIDs?

What if we have a president who believes in science, so we can unleash the wonders of discovery like stem cell research to treat illness and save millions of lives?

he took a nice shot at the saudi crown: “I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation – not the Saudi royal family.”

and he took a very smooth shot at the current cabinet:

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.

I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws.

I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders.

And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

maybe it wasn’t that bad a speech.

maybe it helped that i watched it three times.

maybe even a dull speech by a dull democrat is all that is required to remove a republican who didn’t win the popular vote and probably didn’t even win florida.

but speeches and elections are not what im interested in as much as i care about actions.

when and if kerry wins, i will not expect him to entertain me, or wow me with words, all i care about is the bottom line.

and i doubt that im alone.

and i did like springsteen at the beginning of the speech and u2 at the end.

and yes, im ignoring the van haggar that kicked in right before my tivo stopped recording.

blogumentary + ken layne + jim gilliam + welch n blair

that i got clipper girl’s cousin, i dont buy a lot of sex toys.

does that make me a prude?

probably.

people say how creative my mind is, how inventive my ideas are, and yet when it comes to matters of the most intimate of moments, i pretty much do things the old fashioned way: dull.

in out in out up down up down fiddle with this over here fudtz with that over there.

perhaps it was my midwest upbringing.

and so, when i read today that the Alabama law prohibiting the purchase of sex toys was upheld by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, it sorta made me want to take a little trip over to the Pleasure Chest in hollywood to stock up before the tide of conservatism hits the west coast.

are sex toys really that dangerous to the moral fibre of this fine land?

more dangerous than guns? which are legal in Alabama?

and why is it that the Appeals court didnt overrule this silly law on the basis of the right of privacy?

and why are people so concerned about what goes on in my bedroom is beyond me. if i used 100 “toys” last night with a variety of young women, i dont see how it is any concern to anyone, let alone the nation.

as long as everything is consensual and everyone is satisfied i dont see how the purchase and use of sex toys is any way damaging to the union.

meanwhile i assume that whipped cream and cucumbers are still legal to purchase in ‘bama, but by law those should be banned as well.

therefore i suppose the only way that we could help get guns off the streets in alabama would be to start a fetish where people started using them in a sexual way.

hopefully if such a protest occured, people would have the good sense to unload the side arm or rifle before they committed the act.

unless they wanted to demonize the bullets as well.

canada, your way of life is looking smarter and smarter with each passing day.

add the busblog to your MyYahoo page and each post will be updated to your page automatically.

maybe it was the running suits he wore back in the day, or the twana brawley fiasco, or the way he straightens his hair.

but tonight he did all the things that i was hoping obama would do last night. and he did it better than anyone had done over the last three days, other than former president clinton.

rev. al did the six minutes at the mic that he agreed that he would do, and it began like this:

Tonight I want to address my remarks in two parts.

One, I’m honored to address the delegates here.

Last Friday, I had the experience in Detroit of hearing President George Bush make a speech. And in the speech, he asked certain questions. I hope he’s watching tonight. I would like to answer your questions, Mr. President.

To the chairman, our delegates, and all that are assembled, we’re honored and glad to be here tonight.

I’m glad to be joined by supporters and friends from around the country. I’m glad to be joined by my family, Kathy, Dominique, who will be 18, and Ashley.

We are here 228 years after right here in Boston we fought to establish the freedoms of America. The first person to die in the Revolutionary War is buried not far from here, a Black man from Barbados, named Crispus Attucks.

Forty years ago, in 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party stood at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City fighting to preserve voting rights for all America and all Democrats, regardless of race or gender.

Hamer’s stand inspired Dr. King’s march in Selma, which brought about the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Twenty years ago, Reverend Jesse Jackson stood at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, again, appealing to the preserve those freedoms.

Tonight, we stand with those freedoms at risk and our security as citizens in question.

I have come here tonight to say, that the only choice we have to preserve our freedoms at this point in history is to elect John Kerry the president of the United States.

I stood with both John Kerry and John Edwards on over 30 occasions during the primary season. I not only debated them, I watched them, I observed their deeds, I looked into their eyes. I am convinced that they are men who say what they mean and mean what they say.

I’m also convinced that at a time when a vicious spirit in the body politic of this country that attempts to undermine America’s freedoms — our civil rights, and civil liberties — we must leave this city and go forth and organize this nation for victory for our party and John Kerry and John Edwards in November.

And let me quickly say, this is not just about winning an election. It’s about preserving the principles on which this very nation was founded.

Look at the current view of our nation worldwide as a results of our unilateral foreign policy. We went from unprecedented international support and solidarity on September 12, 2001, to hostility and hatred as we stand here tonight. We can’t survive in the world by ourselves.

How did we squander this opportunity to unite the world for democracy and to commit to a global fight against hunger and disease?

This court has voted five to four on critical issues of women’s rights and civil rights. It is frightening to think that the gains of civil and women rights and those movements in the last century could be reversed if this administration is in the White House in these next four years.

I suggest to you tonight that if George Bush had selected the court in ’54, Clarence Thomas would have never got to law school.

and then he went off-script.

he freestyled, he came from the heart, he bit into president bush with passion, and he answered the foolish questions that the president asked last week to african-american voters in his pitiful attempt to get the black vote.

here’s how al responded:

Mr. President, as I close, Mr. President, I heard you say Friday that you had questions for voters, particularly African- American voters. And you asked the question: Did the Democratic Party take us for granted? Well, I have raised questions. But let me answer your question.

You said the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is true that Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, after which there was a commitment to give 40 acres and a mule.

That’s where the argument, to this day, of reparations starts. We never got the 40 acres. We went all the way to Herbert Hoover, and we never got the 40 acres.

We didn’t get the mule. So we decided we’d ride this donkey as far as it would take us.

Mr. President, you said would we have more leverage if both parties got our votes, but we didn’t come this far playing political games. It was those that earned our vote that got our vote. We got the Civil Rights Act under a Democrat. We got the Voting Rights Act under a Democrat. We got the right to organize under Democrats.

Mr. President, the reason we are fighting so hard, the reason we took Florida so seriously, is our right to vote wasn’t gained because of our age. Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of good men (inaudible) soaked in the blood of four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred to us.

This vote can’t be bargained away.

This vote can’t be given away.

Mr. President, in all due respect, Mr. President, read my lips: Our vote is not for sale.

And there’s a whole generation of young leaders that have come forward across this country that stand on integrity and stand on their traditions, those that have emerged with John Kerry and John Edwards as partners, like Greg Meeks, like Barack Obama, like our voter registration director, Marjorie Harris, like those that are in the trenches.

And we come with strong family values. Family values is not just those with two-car garages and a retirement plan. Retirement plans are good. But family values also are those who had to make nothing stretch into something happening, who had to make ends meet.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker, put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table.

But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start, but where you’re going. That’s family values.

And I wanted somebody in my community — I wanted to show that example. As I ran for president, I hoped that one child would come out of the ghetto like I did, could look at me walk across the stage with governors and senators and know they didn’t have to be a drug dealer, they didn’t have to be a hoodlum, they didn’t have to be a gangster, they could stand up from a broken home, on welfare, and they could run for president of the United States.

As you know, I live in New York. I was there September 11th when that despicable act of terrorism happened.

A few days after, I left home, my family had taken in a young man who lost his family. And as they gave comfort to him, I had to do a radio show that morning. When I got there, my friend James Entome (ph) said, Reverend, we’re going to stop at a certain hour and play a song, synchronized with 990 other stations.

I said, That’s fine.

He said, We’re dedicating it to the victims of 9/11.

I said, What song are you playing?

He said America the Beautiful. The particular station I was at, the played that rendition song by Ray Charles.

As you know, we lost Ray a few weeks ago, but I sat there that morning and listened to Ray sing through those speakers, Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains’ majesty across the fruited plain.

And it occurred to me as I heard Ray singing, that Ray wasn’t singing about what he knew, because Ray had been blind since he was a child. He hadn’t seen many purple mountains. He hadn’t seen many fruited plains. He was singing about what he believed to be.

Mr. President, we love America, not because all of us have seen the beauty all the time.

But we believed if we kept on working, if we kept on marching, if we kept on voting, if we kept on believing, we would make America beautiful for everybody.

Starting in November, let’s make America beautiful again.

the crowd was on its feet during this second half. as blown away as i was.

now we know why the Instapundit, the world’s most powerful and most popular political blogger took the night off to drink beer and told his readers to do the same, instead of watching a few hours of the convention.

because sometimes loose cannons like rev. sharpton have an uncanny knack of hitting their target square when the nation is watching.

sad thing is al isnt young, thin, mild-mannered, or without sin.

so his A+ power, elequence, and soul tonight will be ignored, over-looked and discarded, while obama’s B+ performance will continue to be lauded.

until he becomes a real threat.

and when that day comes dont be suprised if the instapundit starts into some serious drinking.

entire speech + sk smith + new blogger showcase + baldilocks

the apple ipod experiment is now over!

20. steve, $11.99

21. anonymous, $5

22. brian, $10

23. rene, $40

24. apple $63

yes, thats right Apple themself contacted me and told me that they would give me 15% off!

wtf is that all about!?!?!?!

i’ll tell you what its about, its about the unbelievable mystical powers of the blog.

which is real.

i keep telling you people that theres something magical about this crazy lil thing, and there is.

and i thank each and every one of you for being a part of it.

its wonderful, and in 2-3 days i will have my little music machine in my grasp and i will take a picture and show you what i got engraved on the back.

i think you will be pleased.

thanks again nice people, i feel blessed.