You know what I find super cool about our Independence day?

Other nations celebrate their independence with the day they stormed a Bastille, or lopped off some head, or won some battle. But here in America, it is the day we signed a document a year after the fighting had begun.

Our independence is linked not to the comings and goings of power and the nation state, rather it is indelibly linked to a set of ideas. Ideas that even the founding generations found contentious and are even debated to this day. Women, for example, are not constitutionally made equal to men and an amendment to such has been debated in congress nearly every session since the 1920's. In a sense, this revolution is still going on. Not being made of armies and generals there is not point of 'mission accomplished'.

In terms of how we recognize our nationhood we are a nation of ideas; other nations are those of wars.

So why in the name of fuck's ugly grand daughter are drunken men throwing little colorful explosives in the air?

Or, more importantly, why are they doing it before it is dark out? You can hardly see them and are scaring the neighbors dog.

Have a few more beers, wait a few more hours, and when your alcohol thined blood is dripping on the floor of the local emergency room remember, those bullets fired and lives sacrificed do not make our nation. But the freedom to blow up your beer bottle in your hand does.

Good night, and Hern bless America.

A clip from the movie Groove Tube



goodnight

Apparently New York state health insurance sucks!

They covered my hospital trip minus $50 no problem. But the ambulance ride which cost more than the ER and resulted in a mis-diagnoses is not covered by it. Ya, apparently the unconscious diabetic with low blood sugar is having a bit of a drug overdose... When there are no drugs to be found.

What annoys me is that the insurance is for low income people, such as myself. I guess if taking the bus to work is good enough so is taking it to the hospital for a gun shot wound.

My medicine costs less than my monthly bill. The total I will spend this year on medicine, doctors visits, and my one hospitalization will all cost less than what I pay them, and I am an expensive guy to insure. So, well, I guess they would loose too much money paying for ambulance services. After all, if they are still making money off someone expensive like me imagine how much they are pulling in on perfectly healthy specimens.

I feel like I am paying a mob boss protection money. Only, he isn't threatening to break my legs. He is letting me know that on the off chance that I do break my leg, saw off a finger, get hit by a car, I am shit out of luck if I don't pay him.

Well, to put it as succinctly and poignantly as possible, fuck you.

I love dinner parties.

The crushing weight of social awkwardness which keeps me up at night pondering if it was rude to say hello to a neighbor two houses down while on his porch. Is there some sort of neighborly veil that separates the world of men and the world of porch dwellers? But at dinner parties. I can hold a glass and make a joke about Sri Lankin foreign policy in poetic form.

So, last night we had our landlords up for dinner. Not quite enough to make it a dinner party. Which reminds me, having my computer and only speakers in the office does no good for dinner music three rooms away. A good time was had by all.

I wanted to document a few things I was cooking. Most of the pictures I have taken lately are odd little abstractions, and I honestly needed the practice of... you know, making sure my subject was in focus. It is a lot easier to take an arty picture when no one has any idea what the heck it is you are photographing.

But, it must have been a sign from above that I am to continue snapping away the schmaltz I love so because our guests arived early. So I had to put the camera down and get all hard core kitchen wife on dinner.

The braised onions would have looked really cool. But they are all eaten now. The pork roast was a giant hunk of meat with rosemary and bit of garlic poking out of a crevice, so it wasn't that photogenic (it did look a bit like my uncle Pete though, no offense uncle, just after dropping it on the floor it had a mustache and a sexist joke).

So, here are a couple money shots of the asparagus before it was roasted.

goodnight.

Howdy,


I was planning on editing my Theremin post down to just facts, after all it was just a crudely constructed fiction around little snippets of vaguely related fact. And then I found this video.



Enjoy children