Yes, Billy Bragg did preach a bit. But he wasn't quite the flaming Marxist he's rumored to be. He was a lot more pragmatic than I was expecting.

Oh, and the music was great too.

At one point he played a rather pointed new song dealing with the Iraq situation called "The Price of Oil". At the end he handed out a dozen or so CDs of it that he asked people to upload to the web. That's not something you see at a lot of concerts.

I've revamped my list of concerts I've been to, and added this one. I'm still missing a bunch, I'm sure. The ones marked with an asterisk are ones I saw with Marjorie.

NPWA
We went and saw Billy Bragg last night. It was a wonderful show, and of course, Billy was very riled up and ready to share his latest political agenda...Which leads to the explanation for NPWA, Billy's latest slogan which stands for No Power Without Accountability. A simple enough concept, and one this country was supposedly set up to maintain through a system of checks and balances...alas, lately we seem to be falling short. However, Billy's slogan was not meant directly for the U.S.A. , but more for the gross imbalance of power to the big businesses of the world (World Banks, Industrial monopolies and so forth) as compares with the average person, and in particular the IMF and the shear lack of accountablility this agency seems to possess considering the amount of power they wield. Like I said, it was a great show, and very thought provoking. The most surprising thing about the show to me were all the voices of dissension in the audience from seemingly right-wing minded individuals, I mean honestly, did they not expect the author of "Waiting for the great leap forward" to not talk about politics? Or were they shocked by his very leftist/Marxist idealogy? Had they ever listened to a Billy Bragg album before buying a ticket to his concert? One can only wonder. Beyond the politics though, I gotta say he sounded great. The show consisted mostly of Billy, alone with his guitar, though occasionally he was joined on-stage by Sir Ian McLagan, and the sonic quality of the show was full and beautiful. One of the better shows I've seen, overall. Billy's off to Florida now, to convince the people at his shows to not re-elect Jeb Bush...Although I can't imagine many Billy Bragg fans in Florida would have voted for Jeb anyway.
I suppose maybe Mark and I should make our own personal pleas to family and friends in Florida to please, please, please get out and vote this year and get that man out of office!

FRIDAY FIVE
1. What is your favorite scary movie? Jaws, I love that movie.

2. What is your favorite Halloween treat? Hm.. so many yummy goodies to choose from, I like anything with chocolate, but that's an around the year kinda thing, so I'm going to pick candy corn, because I only eat candy corn around Halloween.

3. Do you dress up for Halloween? If so, describe your best Halloween costume. I usually dress up, though my costumes are usually less than spectacular. My best costume is probably the bear costume I wore last year, but we rented from a costume shop last year, so it's not like I put it together myself, which is a little like cheating.

4. Do you enjoy going to haunted houses or other spooky events? Yea, somewhat. I though the last haunted house I went to was at a fraternity house and it seemed to be an excuse for the guys to wear costumes (be anonymous) and molest co-eds. So it wasnt' really the best experience I've had.

5. Will you dress up for Halloween this year? yeah, probably. I'm actually supposed to go to a friend's house this evening to look at some old costumes of her's that maybe I could borrow.

Tragic news out of Minnesota: Senator Wellstone has died in a plane crash. He was a courageous man who stood up for his principles in the face of overwhelming pressure on many occasions.

I am bummed out.

Rarely do I pass along links that are just pure entertainment, but when it's an animated version of Tom Lehrer's amazing song about the elements, how can I resist? Back when I was doing the ACM programming competitions, it was a point of geek pride among some of my team members to have this song memorized.

New feature test

Testing another new feature of my upgrade -- the ability to post via
email. If you see this, it worked. If you don't, please let me know. ;-)

Tonight is for Billy Bragg. I'm very excited. Billy is one of several
artists that Marjorie introduced me to who I may now like even more than she
does. Opening act -- Ian McLagan. Anyone heard of him?

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To follow up on Marjorie's post, I too am starting to freak out a little. The culture shock will be a little rough to deal with. And I'm worried about the toilets, too. Especially since my love for the cuisine of the region is -- how shall I say -- unrequited.

We're going to make mistakes, sometimes, and be taken advantage of, occasionally, and be uncomfortable, frequently. But we're hardly the first person to visit there, and I think we do better than most tourists, because we're generally respectful and we don't expect people to cater to us or speak our language just because we're Americans or anything.

A photo from our wedding in Key West, courtesy my sister-in-law. Thanks, Kim! Here Mark demonstrates his drinking problem with a bottle of Schnitzius wine.

We've just got a little more than a month before we leave on our trip. My mood swings wildly each day between extremely excited and happy about our upcoming adventure, to terrified and hysterical that we've commited ourselves to a journey that will surely lead to one of our deaths. Anyway.....at the moment I'm very optimistic as I've spent the last hour looking up beach resorts in Vietnam and Thailand. It really will be an adventure in the truest sense, and hopefully we'll enjoy ourselves. The scariest part is giving up creature comforts like sit-down toilets and the relaxed ability to trust that ice cubes won't give you Cholera. Frighteningly, up to this point, Mark and I have never even managed to go camping together (in spite of several planned then cancelled attempts). So far, roughing it for us has meant staying in a hotel that doesn't have an iron or blowdryer in the room. I really think the most important thing that either of us can bring on this trip is a sense of humor.

Freaky coincidence last night. I was out with some friends, and happened to play a really obscure Stones song -- "Dear Doctor" -- on the jukebox. I actually picked it because I had no idea what it was. Well, when I got in my car to leave, what should come on the radio but that very same song. (It was played on WRAS's Tuesday night country show, "Cowtipper's Delight"). What are the odds? That's a really obscure song.

I'm not one to put much stock in coincidences, though. With all the billions of things that occur in life, they're bound to happen...

Messing with the image uploads now. The only picture I could find on my computer right now that was worth uploading was this. This is what happens when you drink too much around my friends. At least there was no make-up applied (that time).

Getting down to crunch time. Yesterday I picked up a copy of all my medical records. Today I got my eyes examined, and some new contact lenses. Also made an appointment for a checkup. And Marjorie made us an appointment to get more shots and malaria pills.

IraqJournal.org deserves a look. It is a news site that breaks ranks with the mainstream press on the Iraq war issue. The slant is decidedly anti-war -- as am I, but I am not endorsing all the views presented there. I just think they deserve credit, and a link, for presenting an opposing viewpoint.

Some words on the sniper situation in DC, in a roundabout way.

When the Gainesville serial killings were going on back in the 80's, I was living in Orlando, about an hour south. There was phenomenal pressure on the police to find the killer. They responded by finding a scapegoat, who as it turned out was completely innocent of the crimes (but admittedly had his own issues). I remember this so well because the scapegoat was the brother of a friend of mine. I won't post his name; you can look it up. The family was dragged through enough unwanted publicity as it was. My friend ended up having to drop out of school, and her brother had his rights basically trampled. They convicted him of some other crime that should never have gone to court, and gave him the maximum sentence for that, solely because he was a suspect in these horrific murders. There was no public apology when the killer turned out to be somebody else.

After I moved to Atlanta, history repeated itself in the form of the Olympic Park bombing. Again, there was enormous pressure on the police to come up with a suspect. And they singled someone out, and trampled his rights. Even worse, they used dirty tricks to try to get him to confess (actually, they probably did enough of that in the Gainesville case too). I won't post his name either. He too was completely innocent.

These incidents were particularly galling, not only because of what happened to the scapegoats, but also because they gave the public a completely false sense of security, while the real perpetrators walked around free.

There is as much pressure on the police in the DC sniper case as there was in the other cases I just mentioned. I have no doubt that they'd have a scapegoat already, EXCEPT that the ongoing nature of the crime is preventing this from happening. Anybody they take into custody will be pretty much exonerated by the fact that they're being held while the next day's incident occurs. So this must be particularly frustrating for the DC police (and all the other agencies involved). All I can suggest is that people lay off and stop pressuring them so much, unless you're the type who can somehow take solace in the police having a suspect who is quite possibly the wrong man in custody.

Let's just hope they get the real killer(s), and soon...

Woops, things might already be happening...

In an earlier blog I mentioned how perplexing I sometimes find my alarm clock in the morning. This morning was a classic example. When it went off, I awoke convinced that there was a numeric keypad on top of it where I'm supposed to key in the time that I want to get up. In actuality, all that's there is a snooze button and an off switch. I banged around on top of it for about fifteen seconds, totally nonplussed. This is the same alarm clock I've been using for (I think) over twenty years now.

Just for the evening Mark and I have apparently traded places. He's sweetly in bed, while I'm wide awake at 1am surfing the web. Today's Doonesbury is about web logs. I predict it's only a matter of time before everyone has their own. I wonder if we'll continue to keep one after we've finally decided where we want to live.

Some crazy people I knew in college used to do this. This was in 1987. Same yell and everything, assuming they didn't just make it all up. Looks like they were trendsetters...

I've just upgraded to Blog*Spot Plus, for the storage place so that we have a place to upload pictures during our trip. Beyond that, I have to say, the Plus doesn't add much. There's a stats page, telling us how many hits we're getting, which is mildly interesting. And you can password protect parts of your site, which I don't see ever using. Nothing beyond that. There are a few features promised "soon".

We're going to go eat Vietnamese food then go buy a new digital camera for the trip today. Maybe we'll stop in an internet cafe to see if we can upload some pictures from a strange computer later on.