Long time no write

Yikes, it's been 18 months since anything has been posted here.
Going to to be selling notecards version of my photos for the holidays -- see www.onesockon.com for more deets. Also, need to pick out a fall and winter images for my latest display of some photos that will be at Blue Heron Wellness.

Teething Fiend

All I can say is: Ow.

Two of my favorite things...TOGETHER! ZOMG!

Obamania in D.C.

Things are getting crazier, little by little, down here. The traffic is already gonzo, but now there are lots of impromptu street closures as the soon-to-be commander in chief explores D.C. as the big cheese. I'm off on Inauguration Day and plan on watching from the cozy confines of the Joe and Jenny living room as history is made. It would be nice to attend, but it's just not feasible with the kids.

R.I.P. Ron Ashton - An original Stooge

Just found out that Ron Ashton, guitarist for Iggy and the Stooges, was found dead yesterday. For me, Ron's shining moment was not on guitar, but on bass. On the Raw Power album, his churning bottom riffs—scraped directly from the sludgy floors of a thousand rock club bathrooms—pounded out the foundation for one of the most vivacious, out-of-control rock albums of all time.

Rest in peace, Ron!

Attention TSA scholars: Saltpetre + Sulphur + Charcoal = BANG!

This woman is crazy risking a trip to Guantanamo to prove a point, but for what it's worth, the people working at TSA are proved unbelievably stupid yet again:

"Last Thursday, December 5, I brought five ounces (140 grams) of old-fashioned black gunpowder to San Francisco airport...I had thought, though, that I might elicit a short conversation about the gunpowder. Mind you, I had packed the stuff safely. It was in three separate jars: one of charcoal, one of sulphur, and one of saltpetre (potassium nitrate). Each jar was labeled: Charcoal, Sulphur, Saltpetre."

She goes on to relate the whole story of packing the offending powders with the labels clearly showing through the TSA-approved Ziplock safety container and getting past the checkpoint with a bogus, home-made boarding pass.

I know you don't have to have a degree in chemistry to get a job at the TSA, but c'mon. Gunpowder is an ancient recipe. Eighth graders in beginning science learn how it's made. And anyway, shouldn't a TSA screener's curiosity have been piqued a little over why someone wanted to bring charcoal, sulphur, and saltpetre (not carry-ons you see everyday, surely) into the passenger cabin for any purpose? This isn't 1863 and United doesn't fly stagecoaches.

Your security theatre at work. Read the whole story here.

Current GPA: 4 point oh! Dig!

Got my final grades for the semester and I'm currently rocking teh four pointer. Life is good. Now the hard part: not screwing this up.

Happy New Year! Don't forget to eat your grapes!

Happy Holidays everyone!!!

Happy Holidays 2008 from joey fabulous on Vimeo.

Gary Shandling

I hereby declare Live Totem Pole EP by fIREHOSE to be the most ass-rocking cover album ever produced ever. EVER!

Rock god.

Interviewer: So you're some kind of "spaceman," then?
Ace: No, actually, I'm a plumber.

Group project hell

What do you do when you are assigned a group project worth 25% of your final grade and two of the four members in your group are (a) a plagiarist or (b) an illiterate?

Team member "A" cut and pasted entire sections of her contribution directly from sources assigned by the professor and used Wikipedia as a source. Team member "B" included sentences such as "...women, as appose to men..." And "the stradegies include...."

I ended up just sucking it up and writing my section and theirs. Life is too short to educate people in grad school on 8th-grade level term-paper skills.

Turkey Day weekend!

Well, Thanksgiving turned out very nice. We hosted our neighbors K, B, and B from down the street and pigged out on turkey with all the trimmings.

The only kitchen disaster occurred the night before the event, when I stupidly poured a pot full of hot cranberry sauce into a room-temperature, non-pyrex bowl. CRAAAAAAAACK. SPLASH. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" What a freaking mess, let me tell you.

Scored four goals on Sunday. I seriously rock. :-)

Heart = melted

Yesterday Sylvia and I were sitting on the couch, all snuggled up after she had just awoken from her nap. We were taking the opportunity of alone time (Joseph and mommy were in the other room) to "have a quiet talk," as Boo likes to put it.

I was explaining that later in the week we would be having Thanksgiving dinner with our neighbors, and told her about all the things our family should be thankful of, like our nice house, our family's good health, and our general lack of want—things that other children and families don't necessarily have.

I asked her what she was thankful for, and she turned her beautiful little face to me and simply said, "you."

I never felt so good in all my life.

Gahhh!!!!

Joshua Hoffine's work will keep you up at night. The creepiest thing about these shots is that none were Photoshop composites. He uses friends and family as models, and sets the scenes as if they were movie sets. The theme is childhood fears, and I think it's safe to say that he vividly hits the mark. Very cool, and very, very scary:

Election Day

Well, it's finally here. I voted this morning, and had to wait 24 minutes to do so. Not bad, considering that this should by accounts be a record turnout.

I can't believe that some black areas in Virginia Beach and Florida have waits up to SIX FREAKING HOURS to vote. It's a disgrace.

I'm still skeptical that the Republicans will steal the election again (like in 2000 and 2004), but I hope I'm wrong. I also didn't think Barack had a snowball's chance in hell due to his skin color, but it looks like I was wrong. Thank goodness for that!

Go Dems!

GRRRRRRRRR.

(Photo: Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Seriously. Cut this shit out.

I want my name back!

Joe Six-Pack.

Joe the Plumber.

Dear Republidicks: please pick some kind of Republican name to use as your "everyman" name. Biff, Lawson, Chad, or Clayton all sound good. Just leave mine out of your bullshit. Thank you.

My oldest friends

Jenny, Joe, and Iris at OHHS 20th reunion
One of the very cool things about growing up in a small town (pop. ±8,000) is having the same classmates from elementary school through graduation. When I went back for my 20th high school reunion (gah!) a month back, I got to catch up with two of my oldest friends, Iris and Jenny.

Iris and Jenny were always partners in crime, and they graciously let me tag along from day one. And I mean day one of kindergarten. We met by luck of the last name draw (W., V., and T.) when we were grouped together in home room.

As an only child, having fast friends gave me a sense of security and warmth that saw me though the difficult days of scraped knees, ABCs, and playground scuffles. We stayed friends all the way through 12th grade cowbell class by virtue of being all of one mind on pretty much everything. Their parting words of wisdom before graduation: "Don't marry anyone named Beth." (Yes, there's a history of Beths and no, it's not a good one. :0)

Now that we're all grown up, I was surprised at how those first-grade feelings of comfort still came rushing back as soon as I saw them again. I love you girls!

In other news

Life is still pretty darn good:

Off the mark

What the hell are they doing up there on the Hill?

According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, only 48% of the public support this preposterous giveaway to the rich bankers on Wall Street that will saddle our children (and likely our grandchildren, too) with mountains of debt. Given that level of split, one might be tempted to think that the Senate would not want to rush headlong into a proposal that would enrage more than half of the voters in this nation. "No problem, screw the people, we're doing it anyway," say the Senators.

And to add insult to injury, the bill is laden with all kinds of bullshit like, believe it or not, cutting taxes on kid's arrows. I swear to god I could not make this stuff up:

"SEC. 503–Excise Tax Exemption for Wooden Practice Arrows Used by Children.

Current law imposes an excise tax of 39 cents, adjusted for inflation, on the first sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any shaft of a type used to produce certain types of arrows. This proposal would exempt from the excise tax any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means to enhance the spine of the shaft used in the manufacture of an arrow that measures 5/16 of an inch or less and is unsuited for use with a bow with a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more. The proposal is effective for shafts first sold after the date of enactment. The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years."

Kill me now.