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Barack Obama isn't perfect, but he's the best candidate we've had for president in a long time. These are the 5 main reasons why I support Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the Democratic Party.

1) Ending the War in Iraq.

2) Affordable Health Insurance for Everybody.

3) Tax Cuts for Working People.

4) Fair Trade and Creating Decent Jobs for America.

5) Clean, Safe Environment.


Why Barack Obama isn't perfect. Here's a couple reasons and things we need to push him on when he's president.

1) National Health Insurance. America has by far the most expensive health insurance in the world with over 48 million people with no coverage. Obama has NOT expressed outright support for true national health insurance, which almost every other industrialized country in the world has. His plan would still keep private, for-profit health insurance companies in existence.

2) Bloated Military Budget. Half of our federal taxes go to the military and towards a foreign policy that meddles with other countries when it benefits corporate profits. Horrible atrocities have been committed and many democratically elected governments have been toppled with our tax dollars. Obama has NOT significantly challenged this system.

3) Corporate Influence In His Campaign. Take a look at Obama's economic advisors. They include a lot of bigwigs from Wall Street, such as Robert Rubin (Citigroup), as well as Clinton era free traders who cost us millions of manufacturing jobs, such as Lawrence Summers and Robert Reich. We're still not sure how much Obama's economic policies will benefit regular working people.

song a week

1 new song every week for the next year. every friday is the deadline.

build your own tube amp

i bought a really expensive mesa boogie roadster head and 2x12 cab a few months ago, but it's so loud and bulky and a little complicated that i hardly ever use it. it'll be good if i ever start a rock band again, but for now it's just collecting dust. so yesterday i bought a used fender blues junior combo amp off of craigslist. i paid 300 and it sounds nice though i should probably get the tubes changed cuz the guy bought it in 2002 and hasn't ever changed them.

if i had more time i'd try building my own tube amp. this website has a few simple designs and instructions. a youtube search of those designs shows that other people have done this and their amps sound decent.

what i mean

so i've been describing my ideal band sound as "half indie rock, half punk rock with a splash of reggae and a sprinkle of metalcore." what do even mean by that? this is rough recipe of what i mean:

quarter ted leo
quarter bright eyes, pedro the lion, elliott smith
quarter lawrence arms, broadways
quarter nofx, green day, anti-flag, bad religion, saves the day, thrice
splash of bob marley, pilfers, rx bandits, buju banton
sprinkle of as i lay dying, atreyu, avenged sevenfold
mix together while listening to figher destroyer, the beatles, and nirvana

hope that helps. i'm in no hurry to rush together a band. want to do it right. so now i'll work carefully on writing good songs. i've starting meeting some musicians and checking out some of the open mics in sac. it's a good vibrant scene. old ironsides. true love coffeehouse. some other places.

SMT5800

after much deliberation i decided on a new phone. i'm going to get the SMT5800 (Verizon Wireless's version of the HTC Vox). it's a Windows Mobile Standard smart phone with a full slide-out qwerty keyboard as well as the standard numerical keyboard on the front.

i was also considering the more powerful and more expensive Samsung SCH-i760 (cnet review), which has a touchscreen. but it's too big and bulky for a cell phone. this dude just switched from the SCH-i760 to the SMT5800. his pictures show the size comparison.

i was also considering the LG Voyager, but i figure the SMT5800 is more like a computer and can do more stuff.

also there's the Blackberry Pearl but that doesn't have a full qwerty keyboard. the version that does (the Blackberry Curve) isn't offered by Verizon Wireless. plus, the blackberry keys are so small compared to a slide-out qwerty keyboard.

so anyway, the SMT5800 seems fairly compact, has a large enough screen, has a full qwerty slide-out keyboard, can open microsoft office files, and isn't going to break the bank.

UPDATE: here's a youtube video review of the phone.

Clarinets Rule

Buffet makes these clarinets now that are 95% grenadilla dust (the dark African wood) and 5% carbon fiber and epoxy resin. They're called "Green Line." Neat, eh? Whatever happened to my old clarinet? Chris, are you playing that now in marching band?

I'm listening to Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major on the Mozart wikipedia site. Man, the internet's amazing. Wikipedia and Youtube are so useful. Even Google which we take for granted now. Kids in rural nowhere or wherever have access to everything we do. The world is flat like that idiot billionaire crap columnist Tom Friedman says.

weird world of used book stores

just sold a audiobook on cd for 3 dollars to the local used bookstore. the owner lady is new to this; the store's been open about 5 months and she said she's been doing well. the store is decorated more nicely than most used book stores. she said other used book store owners in the area come in and count her books to scope out the competition. i usually just buy my books online.

hey sacramento i wanna start a band

25yo Guitarist Seeking Drummer, Bassist for Punk/Indie Rock Band

RIP Oink

for now i'm trying STMusic. i wonder if the waffle thing is any good.

Trent Reznor: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero. They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.
-New York Magazine

it's time i got back

to the good life.

so i ordered the guitar from guitar workshop and that should arrive in 6-9 weeks. next i'll need a nice amp head and cab to go with that. gonna check out some mesa boogies from northridge. probably won't buy anything until i get the guitar to try 'em out.

but before that arrives i'll get some basic recording gear: an 8-track firewire recording interface (presonus firepod), mic cables, mic stands, an SM57 to record the amp, and a cheap condenser mic or two to record vocals and acoustic guitar.

if i get that within a week or so, that'll give me at least a good month to work on songs with the acoustic before i'm all set with the electric. then i can get a band together (half indie rock, half punk rock, with a splash of reggae and a sprinkle of metalcore). also still need some furniture for the apartment.

get your sleep

The new frontier of what to expect, and what to do about it, involves studies of the relationship of sleep to pain. It’s no surprise that pain can disrupt sleep. But what is new is that a lack of sleep can apparently increase the sensation of pain.

Michael T. Smith, the research and training director of the behavioral sleep medicine program at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, reached that conclusion with a study of healthy young people. One group slept normally for eight hours in the hospital. Another was awakened every hour by a nurse and kept up for 20 minutes. Their sleep pattern was meant to mimic the fragmented sleep of elderly people. A third group was allowed four hours of solid sleep.

Comparing the second and third groups allowed Dr. Smith to tease apart the causes of the problems that arise from fragmented sleep: were they because of the short total sleep time, or because of the disrupted nature of the sleep?

Fragmented sleep, he found, led to severe impairments the next day in pain pathways. The subjects felt pain more easily, were less able to inhibit pain, and even developed spontaneous pain, like mild backaches and headaches.

Timothy Roehrs, director of the sleep disorders research center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, also found that healthy young people became exquisitely sensitive to pain after a night of fragmented sleep.

And getting more sleep, Dr. Roehrs found, had the opposite effect. His subjects were young healthy people who said they were chronically sleepy, just not getting enough time to sleep at night. Dr. Roehrs had them stay in bed 10 hours a night. The extra sleep, he said, reduced their sensitivity to pain to the same degree as a tablet of codeine.

-NY Times (also see this piece on learning and memory)

G&L Comanche

so i think this is the guitar i'm going to buy. pretty sweet, eh?