How's About them Broncos?
Now Playing: Jesse Cook-Vertigo
A wonderful blast from the past this last Monday night. Monday Night Football on the television, the Bronco's out there against the hated enemy-those evil soulless Raiders, and a satisfying wire to wire massacre of the Silver and Black. Ah yes, it doesn't get much better than that. Dazed looking Raiders yelling at each other as they were pummeled into submission under the derisive catcalls from the Bronco faithful. Jake the Snake looked like Elway there, running and throwing on the run, completing passes for long gains and touchdowns, running for long gains and touchdowns. A beautiful thing all in all.

In the vast scheme of things of course, one little game played by a bunch of men in a stadium at night in Denver isn't going to chance the world, it's not going to contribute to world peace or end world hunger but it made me happy for a couple of days. A meaningless battle that is given meaning by fans and those who care. A battle where nobody is really hurt, and a battle where lives and property aren't exchanged. Just a game.

A clogged email box
Now Playing: Monday Night Football
Anyone who has tried to get in contact with me via email in the last few days will notice that either I have not responded or that you have received one of those horrible 'email undeliverable' notices in your email box. Yes, I think that my email has been clogged most completely with spams in general. I don't know if it's anything more specific and more personal since of course, there are no emails to be had in my box at the moment. My other email accounts are fine and dandy but that's because I don't publish them. You could also leave a message in the bravenet forum that I have connected through my www.gadlaw.com website or even message me via icq at #14469628. I always acknowledge real emails sent to me with a reply of some sort so if you have emailed and I haven't answered it is because I haven't received the email at all.
my site is here
that would be the usual site and me checking the url connection feature in this blog.

Anyways, I received an interesting email. It's very much like one I've received before and it's one of those which in a flip sort of way seeks my assistance in amassing information about the death penalty and death penalty inmates. I'm fairly sure I've had this before so I am thinking that it is one of those usual scams not unlike the Nigerian minister of finance scams that often time find their way to the email. Some fellow has some 'nebulous' idea about doing some sort of a film concerning the death penalty. "People will finally really know what the problems are" is his scam. He'd of course tell me about his revolutionary ideas but a friend of a friend has advised him to not disclose this bit of brilliant movie outlining. I'm not sure what the point of it all is but then I never take the hook so I don't get to the part where I am supposed to send money to a offshore bank account in order to help finance this. I will stay tuned to see if this scam effort continues a bit or if I was supposed to immediately offer to help the movie making. Film not at eleven.

Good news is that the Broncos are two wins and no losses so far. Their next game is next Monday night and so I will actually get to see it. This is cool although bad things often happen when I get to see a game these last few seasons. I'm crossing my fingers that the Broncos will be able to beat the evil hated Raiders.

Big storm heading toward the East Coast. The Governor of Virginia had already declared a state of emergency. Boats are being taken out the water and everyone now watches where it will hit. Actual real reality TV to be seen on the weather channel now. Weathermen and junior reporters are getting their slickers ready for those live remotes from some shore side community as they get whipped around in the wind and the rain. I think those are so stupid. Yes Jim, it's indeed raining here. I would say it's raining hard Jim. Normally rain falls down (as the reporter makes a slashing sign with his open hand), as you can see the rain (slashes his hand sideways) is falling sideways. This is indicitive of rain with wind as you might expect with a storm of this magnitude. I know everyone has seen rain and wind with rain but we thought we'd endanger a reporter and his or her camera crew so we can show you rain. Bah. :-)

Old Sparky Bird
Now Playing: Vanessa Mae-Four Seasons
I went into a Bird shop today. Lovely birds, lovely big birds. I've owned a blue front parrot, a grey cheek parrakeet or parrolet and a blue crown conure. Of the three, the Blue Crown Conure was my favorite. Back in the dim past I worked in a pet store and it was back when the wild birds were brought in from the shipper directly. It was a shipment of such bird, of Blue Crowns that had my Sparky bird in it. A bunch in the cage, I had opened it to feed or water or some such thing and Sparky walked up my hand and onto my shoulder. Well that was it for me. I had to buy him and so I did. Quite a character of a bird who seemed to like nobody else but me. I distinctly remember his little eyes, dilating orange eyes and how he would bob his head up and down. Well, I saw a couple of Sparky birds in the pet shop. OF course, being the way things are, they looked just like Sparky. Those eyes and that sleek head and pointy beak. It brings back happy memories.

Tripod down down and also unavailable
Now Playing: Hearts of Space #594
Spent a number of days with some of my site ready to be updated only to find out that I couldn't access it. Tripod, which hosts my site has been down as down can be. Very annoying. But suddenly today, this afternoon in fact, I tried again and lo and behold! Access was granted and so I quickly updated the pages and such that I had ready to go. Thank goodness. So now some of the horror images are up and looking as good as always. Now I will send this in, press a couple of buttons and hope that it gets on it's way. :-)

A Two Towers Kinda Day
Now Playing: Jesse Cook-Freefall (flaminco spanish guitar-excellent)
A nutri-grain bar, raspberry flavored. A glass of lemon iced tea, brand Nestea. The just released Two Towers, Lord of the Rings DVD video in hand as well as a complimentary free maroon Two Towers tee shirt from a kind sales clerk. The elements of a passable day indeed. I watched the movie again. I particularly love the Ents going to battle. Slow to anger and when it's unleashed it's particularly awesome. The Elves coming to Helm's Deep 'to honor a alliance of old' to die with the humans in a hopeless battle- romantic and honorable and the kind of thing I like to see in a movie. A great movie all in all and I am looking forward to seeing the next one as well as getting the extended version of the Two Towers when that comes out. Small pleasures.

Also I might add that I'm listening to a new music artist I happened upon, Jesse Cook, a heck of a good guitarist under the Narada label. Amazingly good. As I listen to his music I can almost feel my fingers bleeding from the strength and vibrancy of the notes he can bring out from that guitar. You should take a listen, obviously it's a bit like the Flamenco dance of that lovely dark haired woman from Riverdance. The music of Jesse Cook makes your toes tap and makes you involuntarily drum the beat along with him.

It's interesting watching the site begin to recover from the complete overhaul. All new pages and all newly redone content has left the old links that were linked to my site no longer there as well as having befuddled Google and yahoo et al for a bit. Their recovery is quick though and the numbers of visitors has picked back up. Of course I haven't completed all of the content. It's a bit hard, my hands are not working with the ability I would like them to have. It's hard to do much, I certainly can't sketch, draw or do any fine work with them any longer. I can type a bit after an overload of Motrin but I pay for it later on. No matter. I've got a lot of the future content layed out and now I wait for the strength to do it a bit at a time. I feel a bit like a one legged broken winged Bower Bird trying to put a few flowers in my Bower. A useless endeavor but one I will make anyway.

One thing I've noted about the site now, I'm getting more hits relating to Buddhism and so my Buddhist information is being well received. That's wonderful in my mind. Well the Motrin isn't helping any more right this minute so I'll call it a day and wish you well this day. :-)

"I'm shocked, simply shocked"
Now Playing: Jesse Cook-Tempest -
Ah, the words of Claude Raines in the movie Casablanca when confronted in public about there being gambling in Rick's Place. "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here" And then he is handed his gambling winnings. This is how I feel about all of the public teeth gnashing going on in the wake of the murder of the pedophile priest John Geoghan by another inmate in the Massachusetts prison where Geoghan happened to be in protective custody. Yeah right. Somebody in protective custody in a prison not being protected? Wow, I'm shocked, shocked to find that prison is not a place where people can be safe. An open secret, that prison is a barely controlled jungle run by the inmates and not the understaffed prison officials and guards. Men are killed frequently in prison, killed, raped, beaten up, intimidated, bullied, terrorized and of course, deprived of their rights in ways too countless to list.

Well, the constituency who would advocate prison reform are not generally those who have any influence in the halls of government. Most states disallow those who serve their time to ever vote again. Those in prison of course do not get to vote. They have been cut off from society and are thus, not a voice that is often heard in our society where influence and a fair hearing are determined by how much money you have. As a result, there are record numbers of people in prisons and those prisons are highly, dangerously overcrowded. Those overcrowded prisons are jungles full of sociopaths, predators and conmen. Those who are not of this ilk are simply prey. It doesn't matter what the sentence was that they are in jail for, the sentence is terror and torture, the sentence might be death, it's certainly pain physical and mental which is the definition of torture. The fact that this priest is killed in prison while in a protective custody environment let's you know how safe it is in general population. The insincere concern over the safety of prisons is a laugh. Nobody in any level of power cares and nothing will be done about it. I guarantee that.

Relaunch of the main site
Now Playing: Deuter-Rainforest
How's about them apples eh? Finally, after much struggle and much scratching of the head I have succeeded in putting up a redesigned website at www.gadlaw.com. Of course, it's up but not completely populated with the goodies I will put up. The struggle was the menu and I have since been able to get that working. Amazing. I plan to get the serious information up first, most of the death penalty info is up and running already. The sex offender law and registry sites is to be up shortly. Much work but it looks good now to me. Much cleaner looking.

Ah this bunch of nasty worms invading the email box is highly annoying. I have seen the same ones everyone else has seen and I have been clearing my mailbox constantly. But my anti virus and my firewall are smack up to date, I've downloaded and installed the newest microcrap patch and run complete checks on my system. And just as soon as everyone else does this I won't have so many emails bombard me and mine. Now of course I am wise to the ways of the virus and of the trojan and all of that nonsense. Even so, I did get completely hosed a few months back even with my vast and varied knowledge. I hadn't been that badly hosed with invasion of the computer snatchers since five or so years ago. They need to catch these guys doing this and put then in the big house. Spammers, virus writers, script kiddies, what a mess.

Working the site redesign
Now Playing: Natasha St Pier-On Peut Tout Essayer
Another day where the moments are spent working on the redesign. A bit of CSS stylesheets, a bit more javascript, tables, background images, tweaking the pictures and on top of all of that there is the little matter of the content to be rewritten and made presentable. Whew, what a task. My site has been up since 1998 and it's gone a bit far afield and the result for me is that doing a redesign is a lot of work. Like cleaning out a garage there's the cleanup before even thinking about the remodel. It's a bit like that at the moment. At any rate I am hoping to get this thing restarted before too long. It's my own work so I can take my time.

glassy eyed dhtml boy
Now Playing: xtc - dear god
ohhh, my eyes are blurry with the effort of looking at very tiny things that make little sense. time for a break from code and table frustrations. other than that I am encouraged in my site renovation efforts. I'm putting down the foundation, making things easier in the long run to make it something that I can keep updated easily and keep looking sharp. Fortunately I am not under any deadline. It's a good thing too since the ability to make any deadline in this effort would be quite difficult. I can't see, I've got a cold that is moving down into my chest again, my arms are so carpel tunnelly that I can't open a previously opened jar of pepperoncini let alone hold it. Other than all of that I'm feeling perfectly fine. peachy keen.

one of my favorite movies of all time, "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is on TCM right now. and a few days ago another of my all time favorite films, "Holiday Inn" was on the same channel. Amazing. I look for these films for years and all of a sudden they start making multiple showings. so much for my theory that I wasn't seeing them on tv any longer because of the minstrel numbers in both shows. fred astaire, bing crosby, gary cooper, henry fonda, tyrone powers, ah now those were movie stars.

the terminator running for governor of cali. i'm not even amazed by things any longer. i'm glad it's happening because i love politics and the more the pot gets stirred the more interesting it is. interesting that the fellow with the recall plan, congressman issa, tearfully decided to not run for governor. he spent more than a million of his own dollars to get the recall against governor davis. see, issa had a plan, he would bankroll the recall of davis and a grateful cali would hoist him on their shoulders and declare him the next governor. a good plan indeed. of course, he didn't count on my old friend, 'unintended consequences' to show up. unintended consequences, humm. i bet issa didn't expect the running man to be the man running for governor thereby crashing the careful plans of a would be leader of the richest state in the union. still and all, the crying at the news conference was uncalled for. someone who cold bloodedly goes after another human being like he went after the governor davis should stand up like a man when he gets slammed down and his ambitions momentarily thwarted. unseemly and embarrassing.

A little kindness
Now Playing: Simple Plan-I'm Addicted to You
Was in a parking lot the other day, running errands here and there and was walking to my car. An old man, thin and scabby, short gray hair, pedaled through the parked cars on an ancient bicycle. A small white bag tied to the handle bars with nothing much in it swung weakly as he weaved his bike and then seemed to suddenly see me as I opened my car door. He aimed his bike a few spaces from my car and then hesitantly turned the front wheel toward me. In a quiet voice I heard him say "excuse me, but could you possibly spare a few dollars." He motioned to his stomach and said he was hungry. I was half way into my car when these words interrupted my reverie. I had already seen him and as we all do, I took his measure in an instant. Thin, poor, not looking like he was suffering from the ravages of excessive drink. I'm an expert in what that looks like, both parents having been lifelong alcoholics before their addiction to alcohol took both of them a number of years back. He looked like my dad in a way. I wasn't frightened or on guard. Despite his look I didn't feel any dislike toward him. He had asked me if I could spare a few dollars. I thought to myself that as a matter of fact I could spare a few dollars and I reached into my pocket. I reached over, handing him a number of bills. He looked at the money in his hand and seemed to be shocked. "That's very generous," he said in a soft grateful voice, the money disappearing in his pocket quickly. I looked at him and said, "You're welcomed, please take care."

I drove away thinking about the encounter. Analyzing myself, wondering if that was compassion on my part. I don't think I acted out of pity, or out of fear or out of any sense of reward-good karma for myself. To my mind, any self congratulatory feeling about doing some good deed lessens the deed. You do good, you show compassion as you breath, naturally and without thought. You are not rewarded for breathing, nor is it any special act. Funny how things work out. I was not done running my errands and drove directly to a Wal-Mart. I parked and was walking toward the entrance when I saw another old man. This one in a motorized wheelchair with a basket on the front of it. He had two big boxes there and was trailed by a frail looking Wal-Mart employee. The man saw me and as I was passing him I heard him ask me if I could help him. I stopped and smiled. "Certainly I can help sir," I said. "What is it that you need?"
I looked over at the boxes and had some idea that he wanted me to load his boxes in his car. A nice big new car. He worked the little electronic door opener and I heard the click of the doors being unlocked. He smiled as I opened up the back door and examined if the two boxes would fit inside. I looked at the boxes and they had pictures of a cot. Two heavy green cots. I picked one up and began placing it his back seat. The man told me that his grandchildren were coming down to visit him. He hadn't seen them in five years and sounded happy and proud. "They all need to have some place to sleep." He said. I smiled and said that was wonderful and that he must be very excited to see his family after so long. I loaded the second boxed cot in the back of the car and closed the door. "There you go sir. Good luck to you and drive carefully on the way home." He smiled and patted my arm and thanked me. The Wal Mart cashier patted me on the other shoulder and she thanked me as well saying that she didn't know how she was going to lift those boxes without my help. I smiled again and said I was glad to help and it was no problem at all.

Going into the store I thought about how funny things are sometimes. I tugged on my yin yang earring as I always do and continued my quest for a slightly bigger pot for my growing draco plant. The reason for my wanderings on that day.

DHTML and the shards of sanity
Now Playing: Um- Some trance stuff
Hello again. I've been busy with various programming languages of late. It's a slow process for me, I've got very few active braincells which are able to comprehend complex ideas especially ones connected with symbolic logic terms and codes that mean exactly what they say they mean unless of course you are wishing them to work in netscape and explorer. Oh the pain. But such is life for the turtle like Bower Bird that I am.
I watched the Tour de France all the way to the end and I am glad to see Lance Armstrong win his fifth title. Many of the people I admire are those you can identify as people you'd like to emulate by reason of their courage and ability to overcome adversity. It's easier sometimes to identify sports figures who fit that image. Lance Armstrong is one of those fellows. He overcame many things in his life including cancer which has spread to his testicles and brain. He fought back from that painful brink, a blow that could have and would have destroyed many people. He came back and endured more pain to train and more pain both mental and physical to compete and even win five Tour de France's. That put's the stamp of a warrior to be admired on him as far as I am concerned. Tyler Hamilton as well, he fell in one of the first days of the three week race and broke his collarbone. Despite the pain of that he got back up and finished for that day and for every other day of the race. The pain he was in must have been intense and yet he got up and competed and was the fourth best bike race of the whole tour. A skinny, short little buck toothed bike racer with the heart of a champion. And even the big german Hans Ullrich, a strong fellow who powered his way to second place had overcome events in his life that had him out of the race last year and contemplating retirement. He one the Tour in 1997 and finished second every other time he has raced. He finished second again this year but not from lack of trying and not from lack of effort. In fact on the last day in the rain he went out and with second place securely in hand proceeded to try to win over Armstrong. As a result he wiped out on a turn which ended his effort to overcome the lead of the yellow jersey. He had waited for Armstrong on two occasions during the days of the race when he had once fell and once swerved off the road to avoid a crash and as a result had to off road bike a bit to rejoin the group. Such chivalry, such honor among competitors seems almost unheard of these days. I appreciated and respected the honor of the racers. A wonderful event all around.
And this weekend the first preseason football game starts! Woo hoo. Football season reminds me of other folks who overcame and won in the end. John Elway, a man of immense football talent overcame a team that was rarely the best and through never giving up and always competing, was able to win the day and two Super Bowls along the way. All the while while still being a good guy who never whined about not winning every year. But that is another story for another day.

Fred Astaire on TCM-off day for the Tour de France
Now Playing: Night and Day- Carol Welsman
Some days end with a perfect balance. I don't watch much TV but I will watch Fred Astaire movies and I have been following the Tour de France on OLN. Today happened to be a day where the bike racers were resting and as luck would have it, there were a couple of Fred Astaire movies on Turner Classic Movie Channel. Things don't get much better than that in my book.

The Tour de France has Lance Armstrong and he has won the three week race the last four years in a row. This man besides being the best bike racer on the planet is also a cancer survivor. He is everything I admire in a person, someone who has overcome dreadful adversity in his life and has still gone forth and done his best to be a good human being and a champion in his chosen goals in life. It's an amazing thing to watch men pedal up mountains for hours at a time and then seeing who has the energy and the drive to push themselves again and again when you know their bodies are screaming in pain at them, when there is no more energy and no more drive left in their bodies to push up one more hill. You see men literally break in front of your eyes, you can see it when it happens. You can see the man who has gone out ahead of the field and spent hours in the lead, pedaling as hard as he can. You can see the others behind him slowly catching up to him and then you can see him slump and slow down as he is caught. You know that the effort is long and painful and you know for some of these riders the chance to win for one day is their entire goal and all of their effort goes to the one race. The next day the same person is a half hour behind the leaders. It's a three week race after all and the energy they use today can only come back so far for the next day's race. So you see Lance Armstrong letting some riders go ahead of him and not letting others out of his sight. It's more than a display of effort and pain and the drive to survive and succeed. It's also a chess match with multiple players each with their own goals and agendas. Very fascinating and very riveting, at least for me.

Now a Fred Astaire movie is always fun. The dancing, the romances, the clever banter between the characters. Nothing is so serious or painful that Fred Astaire can't dance through it and come out smiling. He tries to win the hand of his lovely costar, he is rebuffed, he winces, he dances, he gets back up and wins the dancing costar and in the end they dance the big number together through the big finish. The end, happily ever after. Well not even that. It's not even that big of a deal, happily for the moment because Fred Astaire lives in the moment. You'll Never Get Rich and You Were Never Lovelier were on tonight. Great stuff.

888-888-8888

Kobe Bryant- The Art of Uniformed Opinions
Now Playing: Bing Crosby - Cheek to Cheek
One of my favorite hobbies having to do with watching the news is to follow the reaction that the news herd has to some sensational news story. By sensational I don't mean a 'good' story. After all, there is no news of interest in a good or a happy story. You never read about the people living their lives happily and quietly, only about 50 wedding anniversaries on the page in the back of the Sunday paper where those people have to pay for the announcement. But I digress. The news of interest of the day, the news that will fill our screens for the coming months has to do with the one count of felony sexual assault filed against Mr. Kobe Bryant.
Now, Mr. Bryant is a sports superstar, a public figure who has up til now had a clean image. Unlike another basketball star or two like Allen Iverson who has had the image of a street thug, Kobe Bryant has had the clean cut image that is so very necessary to sell all manner of product. Yes indeed, Kobe Bryant has been a product goldmine and it's to the detriment of the companies that have used him to sell sneakers, sports drinks and clothing that this whole mess has blown up. There is already speculation that whether or not Kobe Bryant has actually committed the crime that he is accused of, that his image will have been damaged beyond repair. There is much gnashing of teeth over that very important item and you can certainly find all manner of opinions bemoaning this fact.
The alleged victim? Ah, did you want that to be of any interest. Humm, well let's see how much dirt they can possibly come up with on a 19 year old girl. You know as sure as the sun rises that there is an army of Kobe lawyers, an army of tabloid 'journalists' and an army of willing Judas friends of this girl to fill the newspapers up with real and made up information which will make this young girl out to be a mentally unstable, gold digging, ambitious, drug using, sexually promiscuous, slut, whore, fan obsessed person who consensually had sex with Kobe Bryant and who later decided that she for one of the reasons to be inferred from one of her many faults (as listed above) that she would now cry 'rape.' If you don't believe me then feel free to print this out, tape it to the frig and check off every alleged character flaw that I have listed here as you hear them reported on or speculated on. In fact, make your own list of character flaws, indiscretions, mistakes, problems that any young girl can have and list them. You'll find all of them attached to this girl in the coming months and perhaps for the rest of her life.
See, it doesn't even matter if the allegations are true or not. What matters is how many newspapers can be sold, how many eyeballs can be attached to this news channel or that one. Never mind that you're destroying a young woman or not. As Eric Snow on Fox will say, 'truth is what we report,' and other self serving drivel designed to excuse the pack of hyena like behavior you'll see. If you hear that the young woman went to audition for Star Search or one of those other talent shows you'll see commentators nod knowingly, as if that is a significant indication of her character. Everyone knows that people who want to be entertainers or stars will lie and cheat their way up. Perhaps the young woman had an 'emotional breakdown' in the past. Of course an emotional breakdown, for purposes of the media will be evidenced if one of her Judas friends mentions one time that they've seen the girl cry or one time she was distraught over a boyfriend or a sick puppy. Yup, there you go, evidence of her unstable nature, obviously she's a liar. See, whether this young woman was raped by Kobe Bryant or not doesn't matter. What does matter is whatever evidence, innuendo or whisper the news can find that proves conclusively that this young woman isn't a saint.
Now if the young girl doesn't appear to be moving toward a book deal, a quiet payoff from Kobe Bryant, a playboy nude pictorial, a movie of the week or somehow using this notoriety to launch herself as an entertainer well then the focus might actually go to Kobe Bryant. Of course, if this girl tries to do anything with her life other than entering a nunnery it will held up as proof that she lied and was only using the 'encounter' to further herself. Actually, the focus will go to Kobe Bryant eventually. But gingerly and with all due care and caution. After all, you will hear some commentators, even Jesse Jackson if he gets paid, say that this is 'Just another high tech lynching of a uppity black man,' or words to that effect. You will hear the 'white man don't like seeing no brother get ahead' defense. Ugly racism, yes indeed it must be true since Kobe Bryant has never been in any kind of trouble and the woman is 'obviously' a gold digger. You'll hear the rants about injustice and false witness being brought against Kobe Bryant at the same time you'll hear them slander and bear false witness against the girl. Watch and see. It's quite fascinating and obvious.
In fact you will see a parade of uniformed opinions by people who know none of the facts. Nevertheless they will be passionate, indignant, spittle flying spewed opinions as the know nothings climb their perches and screech their ignorance forth. People will be destroyed, lives will be ruined but of course that's entertainment isn't it?

A good friend lost
Now Playing: Caroline Neron - Dans Nos Yeux

As happens once in a while, a friend from a few years back contacts me to catch up, touch base, say hello. My website and my listing in the alumni page at the University of Dayton School of Law leave a trail there for anyone who might care to find me and speak with me. Careful planning makes it so, unfortunately and for a number of reasons I don't often try to find old friends and old classmates. A Nexus search, a run through Google or a look through the alumni directory would be sufficient for me to find anyone I would desire to find but I don't do it. There is always time. Time sometime later to make that small effort. So as a result I don't look up people. There is always time right? Yah. Well a friend of mine, Marc did take the time to look me up and it was good to hear from him. In our emails back and forth he mentions a fellow classmate, Andy Johnson or as was the running joke for us "Andy's Johnson."
Andy was a tall, gangly fellow with the disposition of a puppy. We'd constantly make our "Andy's Johnson," clever remarks and he'd smile and never took offense and we never meant any. He was a fellow who seemed not to have a hostile bone in his body and it seemed to me that it would never occur to him to say a bad word about anyone. When he would talk it seemed like he was always laughing even when he wasn't. A smile on his face and he'd always be genuinely glad to see you. When he would tell a joke it was like he was a little kid saying something he knew that grownups would disapprove of so his jokes or something funny were told only after he looked around to make sure that someone who might take offense would be out of earshot.
At the end of a long hard week in class he'd come down to the local watering hole that some of us had taken as our own. BW3's on Friday after class was where we would grab some hot wings, some happy hour beer and we'd pull some tables together, enough to accommodate however many of us would show up. Andy would laugh with us and we'd talk about what funny things happened in class. Sometimes he'd get a bit excited, a beer or two down the evening and when he wanted to say something and his words were tripping around on his tongue his eyes would sparkle and the smile on his face would broaden as if to acknowledge that he thought he was being a bit foolish or silly. But we would slap him on his back, laugh at his jokes and generally do the things that friends would do with each other as we recognize everyone who would want to be in the conversation and who would likewise have a patience and joy with us.
I can't begin to tell you how wonderful a person Andy was or how everyone instantly liked him. It's like you can instantly sense who is a good hearted person and who you would like to think of you as a good hearted and good person. I know I thought very well of him and he was the kind of person you hoped thought well of you. He was also the kind of person whose friendship you didn't have to buy. This speaks to a character flaw of mine, I took it for granted that he would be there with a smile and a happy hug for me whenever I did get around to seeing him or contacting him. I know he was the kind of man who would be there for me if I was the kind of person who asked anyone for help or support. A good man with a good soul and a huge heart. My friend Marc told me that he had finally gotten a nice job in Ohio and was on his way to work one morning when he got in a head on accident. Andy died that morning. Marc tells me that he thinks about Andy often. I haven't stopped thinking about Andy.

There is no question in my mind that life is not fair. Evil people live and prosper, good people who struggle and fight to get ahead in life die in head on car accidents. Life is short and brutish and it's a sack full of misery, pain, horror and suffering. A person like Andy makes you almost believe that isn't true, his warm smile and good heart carved a bit of hope and kindness into the world and he will be missed.

Macy Gray's Hideous New Album-
Now Playing: 06 ?C??O?Iu?C by S.H.E.


Once in a while I hear something that is so terribly hideous that I am stunned to the core of my very being. Such is my reaction the first, second and every single time that I have been unfortunate enough to hear even a moment of a Macy Gray song. The scratchy, chalk board like voice, the bizarre mannerisms, did I mention the sound of older wizened cats being slowly tortured of a voice she has?

Yah, normally I wouldn't even think a moment about any artist that bothers me this much but I do make exceptions when the forces of marketing make the attempt to force feed something revolting and otherwise off putting into my eyes and my ears. Such is the case of Macy Gray. I can put up with the lies spouted by folks you wouldn't normally believe in regards to whether or not some singer or band is "the greatest thing since the Beatles" after all, I can remember hearing that specific label being put on groups going back to The Knack and The Bay City Rollers. I didn't believe them then and I don't believe them now. So MTV can put whoever they want in the rotation of three songs they play during any given day, frankly they lost their right to tell me who they think is cool musically right about when the first Real World showed up. I'm not impressed, I'm not listening, I don't care.

However, it's the arrogance and belief that we are stupid and able to be manipulated easily that earns this artist and her handlers my eternal dislike. You know what I'm talking about too. Remember watching the Spiderman movie and suddenly she shows up singing some hideous song during the balloon parade? WTF? WTF? I'm sitting there trying to enjoy a movie and they put her right there, a product placement if ever I saw one. That's when my dislike became everlasting. It certainly didn't make me want to go and buy her scratchy voiced album. Ohh, it just yanks my chain every time I think about it. In any event, it happens to be news on the CNN website that she has her third album coming out. Thanks for the warning CNN.


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(woo hoo- no bad spelling)