September, 2005

When did the kids at the shows all get so young? I could count the people that I knew were older than me on one hand. One was the coolest city council member ever, Mr. Matthew Goodman. He smiled and nodded. Hell yes, I voted for you.

Then the kids walked by with beer. That threw me. I could have sworn…

I do not ever want to be described as “jaded.” “Bitter” works.

There was this crazy dancing girl in front of me that I’ve seen before, and every time I see her, she reminds me of Amy Campbell in a crazy way. It makes me a little sad because I probably had eight thousand opportunities to make out with Amy, and I blew every one.

Take some advice from an old man. Make out with some hot girls before they move back to Chicago. You’ll thank me later.

It seems like a lot of people I know live in Chicago, and I haven’t seen them in freakin’… I haven’t ever seen Harper. I even missed him when he visited Des Moines.

The thing is, I’m starting to like Des Moines. People just keep trying to make is as cool as other cities, and they should totally give up. There is no East Village, and there is no economic incentive to build skyscrapers when they can’t fill the ones we have. But I’m having some fun, I like the people. Maybe it’s just another sign of age. Maybe I need to visit Chicago before I start building rocking chairs for a hobby. And sitting in them.

Mates of State was a cool show. You should have been there. Stop acting like you are too old, get a freaking babysitter and have some fun already! The show was over by 10:30, you could have been home for Leno.

At least I don’t have a kid, you old fart. Go back to bed, I’ll stop making noise if you stop complaining.

For a while, some oversight in the Pioneer network allowed Firefox users to totally get around the Web filter. It was awesome. I was on Myspace and Bash.org and grouphug.us… but it’s over. They figured it out, and now I can’t get to anything entertaining whatsoever. So here is a blog entry to stave off boredom.

The fact that I can’t browse the Web from work has finally motivated me to get the Internet hooked up at home, but Qwest is having some weird issues. I tried signing up from work using their website, but some glitch in the system was preventing the site from recognizing my address. I called customer service last night and got pretty close to having some awesome broadband when suddenly the sales rep ran into the same computer glitch. Apparently, it is a major system problem, not just a bug on the website. They said they would call me back, but they have until tomorrow evening before I bite the bullet and call Mediacom. I really want that 1.5 Mb download, though. BitTorrent is going to be my life.

Bored, yet…?

Walk the Line is starting to be promoted in theaters for a November release, which is making my obsession with Johnny Cash worse. If I start wearing even more black and introducing myself by saying, “Hello, I’m Cedric Collins” in the deepest voice I can manage, don’t worry about it. I’m only a little insane.

I know most people who read this blog generally skim the rant articles (boring!!!) and probably haven’t been paying attention to the proceedings on the John Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court, but just in case you really thought none of this matters – it does.

I’ve been going to ZZZ every once in a while for the past few years, and I have to say, I thought what they did with the building was fine. It’s not like the building is some huge eyesore (check out the owner of Blazing Saddles gettin’ nervous in this article.) I mean, there isn’t a lot of money in the record business here in Des Moines, and they haven’t been able to carry a huge inventory, so I haven’t been able to buy as many records from them as I probably should if I really supported local business. But wtf, how can a city in America just take someones business away from them?

I would like to apologize for my blog always being broken. It pisses me off, too. However, I am paying $3/month for my hosting service. You get what you pay for.

This weekend was long, even for a three-day weekend. I am so tired. Friday night was Derek and Kari’s bar-stocking party in a huge house with a theater in the basement. From there, I headed over to the Lift to meet my sister’s friend, Sarah. She was driving through on her way up to Minneapolis, so we hung out until 3:30 in the morning. Sometime in there, Shaun called, and I also decided to head up to the Twin Cities. I went up on Saturday, bought sixty bucks worth of records, ate some Thai food, etc., and Shaun came up with the brilliant idea of heading up to the North Shore on Sunday. I mean, brilliant, no sarcasm, I should have thought of it myself. I never go farther north than Minneapolis, but why?

Lake Superior was a great experience. We drove up on Sunday, walked around the lake front in Duluth for a while, and then drove on a little farther to Two Harbors and checked out the iron docks. The sheer scale of everything was hard to comprehend. I couldn’t even get a picture of the whole dock with my Lomo, and the lens on that is a pretty wide angle. The lake water is surprisingly clear, and I could see all the way to the rocks on the bottom.

Yeah, then we got back to St. Paul, went out and met Sarah, and stayed up until 3:30 again. I mean, why not, right? We had only been driving for five hours of the day. I made it back to Des Moines yesterday without falling asleep in the car, but I crashed almost as soon as I got back into my apartment. And then I went to the Vinyl Sunday installment of iPod Monday and stayed up until after 1 because I am such a genius. A tired, wiped-out genius.