Plaidophile

Check it out, yo.

• For some reason they made a feature-length movie of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. For some reason my family dragged me to see it. For some reason I actually enjoyed it. (Scary!) The plot centered around there being some ancient evil unkillable spirit that was held in very deep cryostorage and which one of the responsible ponies had to check on it once a month; then one of the stupid ponies (who didn't know about it) accidentally unleashed it on the world.
• For some reason I had parked my car on the NMSU campus, but forgot where I'd parked it. The "keep locking the doors and hear the horn honk" trick wasn't working, but then I noticed my key had a headphone jack and a "map" button. Pressing this button would cause a synthesized voice to tell me how far away I was from the car — but in units of how much longer I had to walk at my current rate assuming I was walking straight for it. So the value kept on fluctuating between "ten minutes" and "two weeks," making it useless. As I woke up I wondered how hard it would be to add this feature to a car for real (using active transponders or whatever) until I realized that I already have this.

1. This week on Malcolm in the MIddle of Adulthood: Malcolm develops a crippling case of irritable bowel syndrome and refuses to leave his (very smelly) camper van
2. Scott Pilgrim was originally a poorly-drawn philosophical furry webcomic set in a featureless wasteland and which had nothing to do with video games
3. New Life in the Analog Age: Remember when we all had to flee the scramble jets as they turned us all into instant refugees? That was pretty great.

A few years ago I did the music, sound effects, and some of the voice acting on a little animation called "Pirate Scum" by my friend Patrick. For those in or near San Francisco, it's going to be showing at the Peaches Christ Film Festival on April 15, 2011, and Patrick, Mo (main voice talent, best known as the voice of Erin Esurance) and I will (probably) all be there too.

Japan:

San Francisco:

South Van Ness is pretty much falling apart. There isn't a single area between Division and Cesar Chavez that isn't pocked with giant potholes and temporary metal plates, and when it rains or gets dark out it becomes nearly impossible to see the lane markers. There are even some sections where the road surface has buckled so severely that there are giant bumps right in the middle of the lane, leading to even more of a hazard when people suddenly swerve to avoid them. This street is very dangerous to drive or bicycle on, and yet is very heavily-trafficked as it's the most convenient thoroughfare from the Mission to SoMA.

It absolutely needs to be resurfaced, and it would be nice if it also had designated bike lanes added, as opposed to the current de-facto "bicycle gap" left from where people park in the curb lane.

It would also probably improve street safety and traffic flow if the lanes were reconfigured to be more like Valencia street, with a single traffic lane in each direction, a central shared turn lane, and dedicated parking and bicycle lanes.

But at the very least it MUST be repaved and restriped.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you for contacting DPW with your concerns regarding the roadway condition of South Van Ness. You are correct that it is in need of repaving and is a major thoroughfare for SOMA. To repave a major artery such as South Van Ness, all utility companies and construction operations must be coordinated. Once the roadway is paved, it cannot be opened unless there is an emergency. According to the 5-Year Paving Plan, efforts to coordinate construction/repair operations have commenced on January 3, 2011 with PG&E, SF Water, etc. and appear to continue from Market to Cesar Chavez through 2015. For more detailed information and adjacent roadways affected, please visit DPW's website at http://www.sfdpw.org/index.aspx?page=370 and click on Five Year Plan.

I thought I'd had all the bills settled from my endoscopy last year. So of course today I just got another bill from St. Luke's for $713.72 with no reason given aside from "balance due," saying that there is no more insurance payment forthcoming on this account. The only contact option given was either calling their toll-free number or "access your account online." Knowing that the online access is useless I called the number. I was greeted with an endless cavalcade of data entry, which ended with "our office is now closed; please call back during regular business hours." They could have said that BEFORE I spent 5 minutes entering every bit of information they wanted. Ugh.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what this amount could be for. I am pretty sure that I have paid every bill that came to me. All this shows is: Service date June 24 2010 (the endoscopy), total charges $6430.07, $4044.56 in payments, a $-1671.79 "adjustment," and a balance due of $713.72. I am pretty sick of this whole stupid situation.

And of course my employers moved me over to a new insurance provider this year so who knows what the hell the status is of my previous insurance vis-a-vis handling this issue. Obviously my new insurance company wouldn't be held accountable for this.

St. Luke's billing department is the embodiment of failure and a shining example of what is wrong with the American healthcare industry.

Or, in short, St. Luke's hospital FUCKING SUCKS.

So, my musical mission has for quite some time been to make music in as many genres as I can, with as little repetition as possible. Today I realized that this isn't anything new, and in fact it's probably been well-established by my biggest musical inspiration ever — The Beatles. As I have been listening to their self-titled album (the so-called "white album") for the first time in years I can't help but realize that they actually have a much wider stylistic and acoustic dynamic range than anything I'm struggling with on Love and Monsters. Back in the days before the loudness wars they just went ahead and let every song be equalized completely differently. So maybe I'll only focus on fixing the last few vocal pitch problems before considering it "done" (at least done enough for submission to Createspace and BandCamp, anyway).

I'm working on another album, and I'm getting close enough that it's time to start looking at CD manufacturing options.

My primary sales channel will (hopefully) just be my BandCamp page, but some weirdos still want to buy physical CDs. As with last time, the only real options are Discmakers, OasisCD, and CreateSpace.