So long as it isn't a blow job and a cigar, America still cares about the pump more than the big picture. Hope-driven dreams of white picket fences and SUVs dot starless, light polluted skies in a false celestial umbrella of imagined success in the only way truly American - intangible and unreal.

Is it little wonder that snake-oil salesmen peddling hope by the pound can find their stock rise higher than pies in skies in these hopeless times? The efficiency of capitalism is matching supply with demand, and there are few supplies greater than religion for those most demanding, the religious. Swiping debit cards like the hope-stricken ancestors before them crossed themselves each Sunday, these metroreligious will meet the same disappointment after pounding the five-pack portable communion wafers as they did before. A disappointment found solely in the sudden sixty-five mile-per-hour smack in the face that this world isn't waiting for the Passion of any Christ. That this planet is not interested in hanging around for any Second Comings. That your heart knocking nine-to-five isn't putting food on the table like Christian nobility.

This disappointment comes in the realization that responsibility is the Alpha and Omega and it all begins and ends with you, little man. No rosary bead or Biblical novel or advance movie ticket is going to buy you a front row seat to the Heaven of the here and now. The closest thing to Paradise you and I will ever see will be found in the glorious appearance of the smallest of things that collectively amount to the angelic grace of humanity. The separation between us and monkey isn't divine decision and providential prominence, but speaking plainly at dinner tables, talking softly across fire places, and making love instead of making sex. With hubris as integral to humanity as using tools, fools will chase white rabbits through any attractive holes in the ground instead of taking pause to ponder the heavenly hereafter that was already sitting in their opposable hands.

A simple pause of admiration for the adoration of ourselves is all that stands between you and divinity.
Why pay the piper for a tune you already know how to sing for free?

So, we're all getting broadband in 3 years. I have to say, even getting to Mars seems more feasible. Of course everyone is asking where the money is going to come from and, of course, Dubya isn't telling. Apparently it is coming from the same infinite and invisible revenue stream that is going to take us to Mars.

I caught The Fog of War again last week, this time with the added bonus of a panel discussion with a couple Brown professors that work with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara frequently. So frequently in fact, for a senior seminar that is periodically taught at the university, their students get the benefit of an in-class guest lecture by the man himself. Naturally, a good amount of envy accompanies such news; envy that can only be quelched by checking out the graduate program for poli sci.

My first real fateful trip into the inner bowels of Boston was last night. A journey of plenty action and little memory, I am able to recall fuly accomplishing two things. 1) Seeing Jersey Girl and 2) finding the best pub in the United States. The latter a discovery of uncomparable signficance and the former a mistake of unrepeatable misjudgement, I find in the game of life four pints *can* beat a royal flush. The perfect counter balance to cliche plot and weak characterization, Tiernan's was quite, smoke-free, and loaded with every important beer imaginable on tap. Add inexpensive pricing, quality disc-jockeying, and a shrine to The Way, The Truth, and The Light himself and the only thing missing is a Now Leasing sign in the apartment space above the pub. Much like Homer suddenly finding a place that serves Fudd, my lot is the disenchantment that comes with finding out that Heaven is a place on Earth, but still pretty fucking far away.

I have my new vehicle a grand total of an hour and a half, when suddenly my boss comes up to me while I'm talking to the boys with a concerned look on his face. I join him outside with another partner, and sure enough, a brisk wind carried the door of his Volvo on an intercept course with vehiclar fate, leaving my new ride with a very distinct ding.

Obviously, he apologized all over himself and promised to make it right, but it was kind of hard to get upset. If the luck that befell every other automobile I have owned is any indication, this Focus better be ready for a bumpy ride.

The Rockstar, my flame-painted beauty, is sadly on the way out, hence the replacement. A solemn ceremony shall be conducted next Saturday to give the vehicle its proper respects. Still loosely defined, this ceremony is going to involve two 12-packs of Guinness, motorcycle helmets, health insurance waivers, and the large acreage behind Jesse's parents' house.

Pictures, obviously, will be provided.

Just when I thought I could get away from the hard winter's night, Rhodey drops another 6-8 of freshies in my lap with little more than a fork to eat my way out. Though it bites, I hear if I had taken a more conservative turn of life choices post-graduation, it could well be worse. I hear the Midwest is still digging itself out a week later.

My second experience with a cell phone began yesterday. Though a thorough geek in virtually all manner of nerd periphenalia, I have always been stringently opposed to carrying the chic du jour piece of consumer electronics with which even 10 year olds seem to come standard equipped these days. Many thought I was just being a ridiculous Luddite, but as I wear my Nintendo shirt to my white collar IT job every day I think I can stomp that particular argument like an Italian plumber on a Koopa Troopa.

The real issue with me and cell phones has been a matter of need. I don't think for a collective five minutes in my life I've ever been so important that I needed immediate availability with the outside world. Three of those minutes constitute the few moments following the first and last occassion I zipped myself up in my pants and the other two constitute small 15 second bursts of minor emergencies over the course of a lifetime growing up geek. In terms of importance, I've always comfortably occupied tiers slightly above inorganic objects but safely below Taco Bell managers.

With the new gig at work, however, the Powers That Be suffered a synchronized set of short fits of insanity that prompted the distribution of a company phone. Generally speaking, if its not automotive or adult-oriented, I can understand the intricate workings of any electronic device in pretty short order. However, after fiften frustrating minutes of trying to determine how to turn the damn thing on, I had to call in the cavalry on my cell phone. Evidently, the mysterious artifact contains a digital "camera" of some sort with which you can take "pictures" and place them on the "Internet."

After a day of use, the only thing I know is how to set the phone on vibrate. And even then, all I know is that I need to buy tighter jeans and have people call me more often.

To our guests visiting from other strange domain names, welcome. If you were looking for porn, I hope you are not overly disappointed. There are a few photos in the gallery where I look particularly fetching while suggestively holding a bag of Riffles potato chips and my best "come hither" is in a number of different pictures from my vaudeville shows at The Blue Moon Cafe.

For those who came for the usual shafting, I've got a funny story.

So I'm cruising through my logs and I find a whole mess of external links that I can't explain, and popping them up in the browser it became clear that they *all* were pointing to the Shaft website. While having guests intending to learn about Rogers Industrial services were likely only a bit miffed, I imagine those looking for the latest pics from One Sick Chick were pissed right off. As has been proven on many an occasion, the Shaft simply can't compare to barenaked ladies.

There should be some sort of strigent federal regulation on the limits of the hot water knob on bidets. Seriously. It is far too easy to become a victim to these things.

After a hectic week of both wheelin' *and* dealin', I'm settling in to my new apartment in Providence's gorgeous East Side. Shacking up with my boy A-train, the mighty house of vectorLab is now in one convenient location. Quite an upgrade from my former ghetto domicle, I get such formerly unknown luxuries as functional heat, a fully formed roof, and unleaded water. Additionally, it is a stone's throw away from my frequent haunts on Thayer street, and in a neighborhood I can bring my mother to see with little shame.

My room is a pretty serious downgrade in size, but with a kitchen and living room I can actually access without tripping over my slum lord's things, I have very little to complain about. On the second floor, I have two well positioned windows. The first giving me a reasonable view of the house next door and the block's tiny, but interesting Victorian backyards. The second overlooks our tiny rear parking lot and the tree that hangs protectively over it. The limbs are positioned such that when one looks directly out the window, all one sees is a tangled three-dimensional web of bark; an organic work of art I eagerly anticipate seeing in bloom.

Unlike Paper Street, this apartment does not have the lush furnishings of my previous home, forcing me to actually go out and purchase a bed. For the better part of my life, I've always lucked into circumstances that didn't require furniture purchase, but for better or worse it seems I've had to settle down and buy a bed. Down the street from my previous apartment was a "furniture store" that apparently sold items like the one I looked for, but had disheveled presentation that remind me distinctly of an auction house selling some dead grandma's collection of Hummel salt and pepper shakers. Lacking any experience in the fine art of furniture negotiation, I feel I came out with an alright deal, easily adorning my geek love den with a plush queen size matress with pillow top.

Unfortunately, it seems bent on eating me alive because whenever I get in it even a desperate need to urinate doesn't seem like sufficient reason to escape its soft damasque clutches.

So, the new coffee machine.

An arcane, black object lurks within the bowels of the kitchen at my employer's new facility. It sits simply with an unassuming mysticism that disarms the infrequent visitor searching for the last oatmeal cream pie. Much like a monolith, we apes paw at it curious at its nature. Suddenly, our evolution leaped to the next step and my god, it was full of coffee.

The device is simply an automatic one cup coffee machine, devouring wee K-cups and spitting out perfectly balanced cups o' joe. Simply insert and brew, the overall time to retrieve your cup has been so reduced, no one can even sit around the coffee pot and talk anymore. A thinly veiled attempt by management to reduce fraternization amongst the men, I am convinced the salesmen of these monoliths are unique seductresses of the corporate funny bone, tantalizing PHBs with promises of caffiene and silent cubicles. In short, insertion to consumption is under a minute flat, perhaps a minute and a half if you take your time with the cream.

The mystery is where the hell the K-cup goes. Like a red potion, you get your 8am hearts filled up... but where the glass goes? Nobody knows.

Some mysterious dimensional portal likely exists behind the unassuming facade, a gaping maw that will swallow the souls of the first nine geeks that dare push aside its simple entry.

Ah, it is wonderful to have such adoring fans.

It's hard for me not to get excited about a comic book movie, but judging from the trailer Hellboy seems to be suffering of the recent streak of suck in comic book films. Oh Movie Gods, please cast upon your undeserving masses thine saviors of Raimi and Singer to deliver us from Crapville.

Hellboy being one of the ultimate combinations of large guns and geek elitist mentality, the trailer proved rather concretely to me there is, ultimately, a limit to how believable 21st century CGI can make a character. It is refreshing to know post-Return of the King that there are still bounds of believability waiting for us.

In celebration of a soon-to-be roommate's birthday, A-train's crew determined that bowling was the only activity fit for the passing of another year. Expecting piss beer, bad shoes, and big balls, I discovered that two out of three can still be pretty bad.

A strange deviation from the generally accepted norm of bowling, it seems that New England bowling (properly nomenclated as Duckpin Bowling) effectively demasculates the sport even further from its already wimpy standing by reducing the size of both the balls and pins nearly in half. About the size of bocce balls, this guys vs. gals showdown had primarily two objectives fro Team Men: 1) Throw the ball as fast as possible and 2) Try not to get beat by the girls. Successful on both counts, virtually every other facet of bowling was precisely the same, namely the demographic that frequents such establishments. Seated firmly between the very old and the very young, we may have been the only ounce of cool in the place besides the Daytona machine, which admittedly still isn't much.

I was studly enough to catch The Fog of War a full hour and a half before it won an Academy Award. Before I saw the film, I always regarded Robert McNamara as simultaneously the best and worst Secretary of Defense the White House has ever seen. On one hand, he stared down the Cuban Missile Crisis and came "this close" to watching the human race self-destruct. On the other, he was the chief architect and propaganda man for the Vietnam War. What I didn't know before I saw the film and the real question I think I had was whether or not he thought the former outweighed the latter.

Afterwards, it's still not clear. But the pangs of regret follow clearly after every frantic word. Honest, objective, and carefully minded... He may my favorite politician I've ever hated.

Jacking someone's WAP and munching on a slice down at Antonio's, I wonder why I've lived anywhere else. The best pizza in the world combined with the unparalleled connectivity of metropolis, Heaven really is a place on Earth. Italian and internet access. Rock.

I've been listening to a few associates complain about the impending pressures of graduation and was suddenly struck by the fact that I'm almost a year out of school.

Maybe I should unpack.