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Had a fun party at my place the other night and as alcohol would have it, we decided that at 1:30, when we should be calling it a night, we wanted to head out to somewhere. Sure, fine, no problem, except for the one problem that everything in San Francisco is pretty much closing or closed at 1:30.       Not to be daunted by that fact, we still went out. I found out about an underground dance party that was happening south of Market, which seemed to be the only thing going on, so we headed there.       One of the girls in the group, Gwen decided that it was a fine night to party and was pretty loaded on some bizarre Martini-esque things she had been making in the kitchen. As we neared the spot of the party, she hopped out of the car with beer in hand as we cruised in.       Unfortunately, in our way to this illegal party was a goofy, bearded, hippy, drugged-out, loser freak that was trying to do crowd control outside the warehouse the party was at, but was seeming only try to control our little group of six people.       It also was unfortunately revealed to us that this party was a mighty $20 to get into it and we just weren't quite ready to spend that much money for what would have been two hours of entertainment.       Gwen decided to explain this and also question the doofus guy about his crowd control techniques. She had an interesting way of doing this, which involved getting up in the guy's face and not backing down with a kind of aura to her that said, "I will knock you down skinny boy."       The guy seemed to have some wits about him as he tried to get himself out from the pickle jar he had slipped into. Ultimately this resulted in him getting down on one knee and proposing to her. All in all it was a strange displayed and we ultimately got her away from him before he did a strip tease for her or something, but there is a lesson to be learned in that you should never get between a girl who's been drinking and her having fun.

It used to be, just less than a year ago, that there would be now way in hell I'd ever go watch a play, musical, or other live performance, in favor of watching films. There was something that was always off-putting about live performance and I guess I had been tainted by seeing some bad performances early on as well as not liking the very voyeuristic and almost too real of live performance versus the fake realness of film.       This change rather abruptly after visiting London for the first time last March and seeing some rather tremendous stage productions that changed my mind on the whole issue. Upon returning back to the States, I got into watching more such entertainment, while still watching a lot of film.       Lately though, I'm drifting more towards liking live performance more. This has nothing to do with a diminished taste for film, which is still something I will always treasure as a fantastic medium, but it has more to do with the audiences that watch each type of performance.       Plays, while being about common, everyday things, still have something of an erudite edge to them and seem like something that belongs to the upper class. While this isn't true, this myth is enforced by the fact that occassionally some idiot who should be getting drunk at a Raiders game get dragged to a stage production by his woman and proceeds to either talk, blather, or otherwise interrupt the production. They're easy to spot, since for the most part, people watching plays are an extremely respectful group and you will never hear a cellphone go off during a performance or someone talk through the whole thing.       Movies on the other hand have become fodder for the masses. And it also seems that with the invention of home viewing through VHS and DVD rental, the line between watching at home and watching in a place with other people has faded.       Movie crowds have gotten steadily worse as I enter my sixth year in the Bay Area. People talk through the movie, they'll bring children that are far too young to violent movies, and then there's the worse one of all with fools who will talk on their cellphones through the film.       Luckily at more upscale establishments, the fellow patrons will yell at someone to turn their phone off if it rings, since afterall not one single person is that important that they need to be reached during a two hour film and if they are, then they shouldn't go. I've also heard that some theaters are putting up devices that block the cellphone frequencies within the theaters, thus blocking calls.       I think the later is definitely the best, albeit most passive-agressive way to go about stopping cellphone abuse in theaters and I would recommend to anyone who has to listen to a cellphone conversation during a movie to demand their money back after the show, since the theater has failed to provide the service you paid for. This might prompt more to opt for blocking signals in the future.

I'm getting over a whopper of a cold. Of course, the fact that I didn't want to sit still while I had it didn't help me in getting over it.       What I think is most frustrating about having a cold in the 21st century is the fact that there must be a cure to these damned things out there. In fact, I seem to remember a product that was on the market for maybe two weeks, which was an inhaler that killed the cold virus off in the lungs and permanently knocked it out of you.       Not surprisingly, you can't find any trace of this thing now and most likely that's due to the lengthy isle of cold symptom reliefs that exist. There is no money in a cure. There is definitely money in a prolonged illness that you must take a repeated dose of something for.       While I can get over a cold, there are many things that people can't get over and this current, market driven drug development system we have in the US is quite literally killing people off. Case in point was my father. He had a rare type of cancer, which there was a drug for that you had to take th rest of your life once diagnosed with the condition, but it would save you. The only catch is that it cost $5,000 a month. He was able to get on the drug about a year ago, but that wasn't enough to save him and he passed away several months due to complications with his illness.       This drug issue has also come into importance because many Americans are getting their drugs from Canada these days, since you can get them at up to 50% off what you can get from the US. Same damn drug, just a different cost, since the Canadian goverment limits what manufacturers can charge for prescription drugs. This has caused a lot of controversy of course, since Canadians aren't too keen on Americans taking all of their drugs from them, since we, afterall we apparently use 53% of all the drugs in the world. That's a crazy figure, since a very large percentage of the people in country are uninsured.       Well, this is all a far cry from there not being a cure for the common cold, but I think this all shows a huge problem in health care in this country, since afterall, there should never be any profit in the illness and suffering of others.

I love my gadgets and the birth of the PDA has been one of the most fun things for me, since they keep adding more and features to these thigns as time goes on.       I refuse to get one of the Windows-based ones, since, even though I use Windows, I'm not a big fan using it on a small device, since it can get pretty bloated and I like these things to be fast and quick.       That being said, I've been a big fan of the Palm devices. My first one was a Palm IIxe, then I moved on to the Sony Clie NX70V. Now, I've gotten a Sony Clie UX50. This is a very slick device and probably one of the best Clies to have emerged.       The coolest thing about this Clie is the size and form factor. It's much smaller than any of the other ones and it open sideways instead of flipping up like a notepad. This has the advantage of not taking up too much space, as well as providing a very big keyboard to type on. Yes, the keyboard is actually, truly useful.       The next big thing is that this device has both Bluetooth and Wireless 802.11b built right into it. There's no need to add a card or anything, since you've got all the wireless abilities you need contained in the palm of your hand.       In addition to this, it has all the usual bits like a memory stick slot, headphone jack, and a standard USB connection for syncing. There are all the normal software on there that you would expect from a Palm as well as things like an MP3 player and photo software.       The camera is a cool things, but honestly, it'd be nice to have it be higher resolution, since the 1/3 megapixel images are all right, but not great.       The screen has the same resolution as the NX70V, but unfortunately is smaller in actual size, probably due to the wifi being built-in now. It's stilla very clear, nice screen though.       The only other bit I'd ding it on is the battery life, which isn't as good as my NX70V was. It's still all right, but it would be nice to get a bit more time from it, especially since WiFi and Bluetooth suck a lot of juice when they're on. They do make an addon battery pack, but that increases the size quite a bit.       Overall, it's very cool and a must have if you like gadgets and all that business.

I was visiting my family over the weekend and they have a new dog, which in and of itself isn't that big a deal, since a dog is a dog and as dogs go, it's a fine dog.       It's always funny to see how dogs and cats integrate though, since there are several cats up there, who were quite content with their existence up until the introduction of the dog.       At first, things weren't so great. The dog was always managing to chase the cats away from their food, no matter how high up we put the food. We weren't sure if the dog wasn't too into the cats or was really into them and they were simple misinterpretting her wishes. Cats do that I've heard.       Anyways, as the days went on, a "truce" of sorts was reached in that, the cats were finally able to get at their food. This happens to come in their sacrificing their land-based existence. We watched them hop from tree to tree to avoid the dog as they keep away from the ground. They jumped into where the food is on a high platform, ate and then retire back to the trees.       All in all, this is a pretty funny thing to watch as the cats out number the dog and don't seem to realize that if they put their collective feline intellect together they might be able to outsmart the dog. But, until that happens, it appears that we'll be breeding a new arboreal-based cat that lives its entire life in trees. So, they're somewhat like squirrels except a tad more annoying.

There's a disturbing trend that I've noticed in a lot of the youths today in that, they have never been without (whether that be food, clothes, etc.) and so they're growing up as a generation that has never experienced hardship. While some would say this is good, I say that it is very very bad.       A lack of want in the low middle class and up is something that ended to a large degree with my generation near the tail end of the Generation Xers. My family, while never anywhere near penniless was not rich and I grew up with the very strong virtue instilled in me that food and other things were not free and you had to eat or use everything you were given. I realize that many in my age bracket didn't experience this, but many did.       My parents' generation had an even stronger sense of this in them as they were raised by parents who had been both through war and through the Great Depression. Previous to all of these people, there was always want and need and you rarely got everything you wnated or needed no matter who you were.       I bring this up because so many children today are allowed to get away with a lot. Children are wasteful because their parents don't make them appreciate what they have and what they get. Some may say that this is a sign of good times and prosperity. That isn't completely true. While it is a fact that the US has a good standard of living, I believe that the lack of need is due to our warehouse mentality in such things as Costco and buying food in bulk. We may have more food now, but the quality of the food is not the best and most everything these days seems to be laced with unhealthy chemicals.       Ultimately, this derth of, for lack of a better word, spoiled children that are being raised are going to be what starts bringing the country down more so than what has already happened as their need for immediate gratification will parlay into them electing officials that only work on what's happening in the next five minutes as opposed to what will happen in five years. Additionally, such things as obesity, diabetes, and ADD will probably rise as well.       While I hope that I am wrong about this to a large extent, I've been seeing the nation moving more towards this lifestyle in the last 25 years as shown in the upswing of children that have ADD, which, while is probably a valid condition in some children, is misdiagnosed as ADD when it should be called bad or lacking parenting.

Two things in the media have really been bothering me lately and they're Bush's desire to spread Democracy throughout the world and the RIAA's claims that file-sharing has dropped their album sales.       Let's start off with Mr. Bush, since his "speeches" and propaganda as of late have really been irking me. Mainly it revolves around the fact that it seems to be his dream to spread the oh so great democratic system that we have in the US to the countries of the Middle East which are ruled by dictators.       Let's for a moment, forget that he is a war criminal that committed an unprovoked attack against a sovereign nation. Let's for a moment forget that the reconstruction of Iraq is going poorly and that under Bush's command, he has lost more troops in bringing about the democratic epiphany in Iraq than he lost during the war, which was little more than an assault on a group of bedouins who had had their entire country mapped out for strategic targets before the invasion. Let's for a monent focus on the democracy that Senor Bush wants to spread. The democracy in question is, I believe the same democracy that got him into office, correct? This would be the same democracy that, by a majority of 200,000 votes actually did not elect him president right? And it is of course the same democracy that, where it came down to a key vote count, it was in a state that was controlled by his brother?       What we have here is definitely a sad state of democracy. Spreading this to the rest of the world is the true attrocity in all of this. A system, such as our's in another country, is still a bad system and it is not the system that is the end all be to answer the problems in Iraq.       Of course, there is the additional fact that all of this is a thinly-veiled resurgence of the Crusades as very much evidenced by Bush's constant reference to God and how God protects us and God this and God that. Then there's the oil issue, which is evidenced by the fact that before anything else got running in the country (water treatment, electricity, "democracy") they made sure to get the refineries and pipelines up and running.       The RIAA (the association for the recording industry) has also been irritating me lately since they are blaming a 15% (some sources say 30%) lag in album sales on file-sharing and the media keeps buying it and relaying this ridiculous fudgery of the facts. Let's face it, there are two reasons record sales are down. The first is that there are no standout artists which are propelling the industry currently. All of these mergers and such that have been melding the industry into a bland spectrum of music have finally come to a head and is not providing people with good music. There are no Nirvanas, no Guns and Roses, no Led Zeppelins, no Beatles today. Hell, there aren't even any Eagles, Beegees, Enya, or Yanni now and it' having a serious affect on how people are buying music, because there is a lack of trickle down purchases in that people who would have gone into a store to buy a Nirvana CD back in 1991 would have also bought another CD since they were there.       The other primary reason for lacking album sales is that the economy is in a slump for Christ's sake!!!! When people have to make a judgement between buying food and buying the latest Britney Spears album, guess which one they're going to choose. There has been a slump across the board in all consumable purchases and music has just been one of them.       Sure, file-sharing is playing a part in all of this and I'll admit it, I download music via Kazaa Lite (http://www.kazaalite.tk) but I usually only download songs of albums I have owned in the past or albums that I want to try out. Case in point, I heard about the new Gotan Project CD, downloaded it, liked it and then went out and bought it.              Anyways, that's the end of my latest media-based rant. These were jsut a few things that I felt needed to be said and out on the web.

Friend of mine works for a law firm in their accounting department. Yesterday he was going through some outstanding balances they owed contractors that had worked for them. I looked at some of the figures which ranged from a "mere" $5,000 up to $75,000!       Now, this wasn't money that they were late in paying, this was money that these people had failed to collect yet, which makes me wonder how the hell someone hasn't gotten around to collecting $75,000! A friend of mine owed me $20 for about a month and I didn't let him hear the end of it until he paid me back. Of course, I'm probably in different economic straights than someone doing contract work for a law firm. Crazy, just crazy.

Today as I was checking out the half-price tickets in Union Square (of which there were only four shows, what's up with that?!!) some guy was talking to another and they were blabbing about how cold it was and how hard it is to deal with it.       You call this cold? Please... In my hometown it would get to 25F on a regular basis. Now that is pretty cold. I've also had girlfriends from Norway and Russia. Talk to them about what cold actually it. When you spit and it freezes before it hits the ground, that's cold.       When it's 50F with a chance of rain, that's just not cold. In fact, to me it seems downright comfortable. I really like the colder weather. It makes me walk faster and think more clearly. When it's hot, I turn into lumpy soup and am totally worthless.       I think I'm going to sponsor a new Proposition for the next election, which automatically deports anyone who complains about the "cold" in San Francisco to a temporary assignment, covering seal migrations off the coast of Siberia.

So, the election turned out how I figured with the exception of the fact that Green Party member, Matt Gonzales is going to be in the runoff with Newsome. He might stand a chance as there is a lot of anti-Newsome sentiment in SF. What's funny though (or perhaps more ironic than anything else) is that the platforms Newsome runs on were also presented in the form of Propositions which got passed.       San Franciscans are a funny lot in that they don't really want to pay for the homeless, don't want to see them, and don't really want to deal with them as seen from the passage of several anti-begging and vagrancy laws, but at the same time, they don't want a mayor who advocates these things. This is probably one of the reasons there is such an entangled government in this town.       On another note, it was sadly amsuing to see Angela Alioto lose another race. She has become something of the Susan Lucci of San Francisco Mayoral races. Maybe she'll stop after this go round, maybe not.       We'll see how everything goes, but ultiamtely, even if a Facist Republican Neo-Nazi was somehow elected to office, I doubt he'd be able to do much as this town is very liberal and fights just about anything that tries to happen here.