walls are props

Don’t ever use Shieldhost. You’ll notice the prominently featured “99.9% uptime guarantee”, but anyone who has ever looked at this website knows I’m down A LOT, and I haven’t gotten any money from them. On Sunday, Derek texted me to tell me, guess what, my website was down. WordPress couldn’t connect to the database. I opened up the control panel, and the whole DB was just missing. I logged an issue on Monday morning, waited 8 hours, and got this email:

Hi,

Sorry for inconvenience caused to you.

The database was not moved due to interuptions during server migration. We have manually moved the databases to new server.

Best Regards

Josh Dotoli

That was nice of him, except he restored my blog with a backup from February. Every article and comment since February 17 was gone as well as some WordPress settings that I had changed in that time. So tonight I have been cutting and pasting from the Google and Yahoo caches to restore my articles. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do the same with the comments, so those are just gone. Which is a shame, because Elmo had some interesting things to say about parents getting rid of video games at the local movie theater. Oh, well.

Time to go do something more social, now. Like not blogging.

I was just checking to see how well my blog was doing on Google when I stumbled across this gem:

http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~collinsb/

Thank you for the permanent web space, ISU. It makes me laugh every time.

Nina Nastasia
Thursday, September 14, 9:00 PM
Vaudeville Mews

• Because I found The Blackened Air at a used record store, saw that it was produced by Steve Albini, and decided to take it home. I was surprised to find out that Albini had been involved in something beautiful, orchestral, and quiet.
• Also, the Vaudeville Mews needs support because the city is putting pressure on with some stupid rule about kicking minors out after 9 PM. Attention city officials: if minors are not inside a building after 9 PM, they are out on your streets with cans of Krylon. Think about it.

The Mountain Goats
Friday, September 15, 9:00 PM
The Maintenance Shop

• Because nothing is quite as surreal as watching a guy with an acoustic guitar and a nice sweater lead one hundred hipsters in a “Hail Satan” singalong. Actually, that’s kind of creepy, now that I think about it. But don’t judge if you haven’t heard the song.
• Also, because Nina Nastasia already put me in the mood for cool shows. Seriously.

Murder by Death and The Appleseed Cast w/ Unwed Sailor
Wednesday, September 20th, 8:00 PM
The Maintenance Shop

• Because that’s three headlining bands.
• But mostly because of Murder By Death.

The Melvins and Big Business
Saturday, September 23rd, 6:00 PM
The House of Bricks

• Do I seriously need to tell you what’s cool about the Melvins?
• You’re an idiot.

September is going to be a good month for Central Iowa, so maybe instead of moping around and planning your move to Portland, you should go to one of these shows with me. See you there.

http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5362163

Seriously, I can’t find them. They are the ones I was wearing on Friday night: my favorite pair of Thread-Dyed Black Levi’s 527s. I woke up this morning and they were gone. I’ve looked under the bed, in the laundry bag, in the closet, under the bed again, and in the chest of drawers. They are gone. Capoof!

I really don’t think I had the kind of good time where your pants disappear. I wasn’t drunk, stoned, tripping, or tweaking. I was just really tired. So tired, in fact, that I think I slept in my clothes. In that case, though, they should be on the bed somewhere. Maybe under the quilt?

Nope, not there, either. Crap, my belt is in those pants. I would just put on another pair of jeans, but man, I need that belt. What is going on here? Maybe I’ll check in the living room. I might have undressed at the door. I mean, I was pretty tired, I really can’t remember.

Dangit. Where could they be? I didn’t wear them at all yesterday, because I was wearing swimming trunks on the canoe trip. Could they be in the car? No, that wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever. I didn’t undress on my way back from Council Bluffs.

Holy crap, they are right there, in the backseat of my car. I sort of remember, now. I woke up pretty early for the canoe trip, so I was still tired. While I was brushing my teeth, I heard an explosion outside, and the power went out. Sure enough, a squirrel gave up it’s life, jumped into a transformer, and took my power out with it. Not only were my lights out, but the automatic garage door wouldn’t open. Stall number five had been left open by its occupant, so I could get to my car, but I couldn’t back it out. That’s not important. What’s important is that my swimming trunks were in the car, so I put my jeans on, walked to the car, and changed into shorts behind the shut garage door.

So that’s where my pants are. I’ll be damned.