News. Oh, Rudy, how could you?

Man, the MP3 player is psychic today.

Rudolph Giuliani, who is oftened mentioned as Presidential material "someday," has completely blown any chance of getting my vote when he said, of the troops that went to al-Qaqaa, "The actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"

In fact, the troops weren't ordered to search al-Qaqaa. The first two battalions to hit the area were passing through it after determining that there were no hostiles there. They were not ordered to search. The commanding officer of the second group said that after encountering some noxious chemicals, presumed to be insectides, he told his men to stay away from the warehouses, as they were not equipped for hazmat conditions. The third U.S. team to visit the base, the one that discovered the explosives missing, was tasked with cataloging al-Qaqaa and did have the proper equipment. Each team followed their orders as given by their superiors. If the site needed to be secured, it was the duty of the higher echelons to know that and follow through.

And Bush accuses Kerry of undermining the troops' efforts? Giuliani just called the troops on the ground incompetent at best and mutinous at worst, and he knew they didn't deserve that approbation. In defense of "his president," Guiliani has committed an unpardonable political sin.

Shrillblog has a good summary.

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A letter claiming to be from an elections board and mailed to Democrats only informs them that if they registered through the Kerry for President Campaign or NAACP, that such registrations are "illegal" and they're not really registered to vote. Isn't that lovely?

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There's evidence that Syria is testing chemical weapons by giving them to Sudanese "rebels" in Darfour. Hey, isn't the user of chemical weapons against citizens under your protection one of the excuses we used for going after Saddam?

If it's not one thing, it's another...

After burning only about 70 DVDs or so, my burner apparently died in the night. My hard drive has been filling up and I haven't had the disk space necessary to render more than one DVD at a time-- a useful thing to be able to do, to set up multiple render sessions before going to bed, since I know I won't be able to actually get to master and burn phase 20 hours later, and two render sessions can be done in that time.

So I've been making archive disks, 4GB apiece. I had just made one and went to put in another, and the machine just started to rattle horribly, couldn't recognize the disk, and then ultimately wouldn't give the blank back to me.

I've only had it for five months or so. And it's actually become quite important to me: it's allowed me to finally do something I've wanted to do for a long time, which is get into anime and practice my Japanese seriously. Ah, well. I managed to find some disk space to offload my excess (the windows drive was barely 10% used) until I can either see if this one is under warranty or get a new one. New ones are running about ninety bucks, which isn't fatal, just annoying. I hope I can find the box.

[Review] The Secret Machines (CD)

A few weeks ago Slashdot asked, "When does new music start to sound scary?" I answered, somewhat facetiously, "38," because that's how old I am. At first, I thought my opinion was confirmed when I listened to a John Peele tribute on the radio only to discover that The Undertones, which he adored, were in my opinion just another talented but unremarkable English punk band. But The Secret Machines have forced me to reconsider my answer.

It's hard to get past the first track of The Secret Machines' new album, Now Here is Nowhere, just because it's so damned compelling. "First Wave Intact" is a driving, rhythmic tour de force of drums, rough bass guitars, and vocals that goes on for nine minutes without once becoming boring. The second track, "Sad and Lonely," maintains the rough distorted feedbacking analog sound and beating drum that's so perfect for the song it must have been practiced and cleaned up a thousand times, yet never sounds forced. It sounds grungy without ever once sounding distorted or incoherent. And the lyrics are damned good: "Did you get your headrush and your heartache confused/ Have you been sleeping late 'cause you've been abused... "

Unfortunately, the album comes to a screeching halt with the third track, "Leaves," which is like early 70's Pink Floyd-- intersting and technically well-done, but such a slow contrast to the power of the album's opening that it feels forced and discomforting.

Other tracks on the album aren't as remarkable as the first two. They're all interesting, but nothing quite carries the power of "First Wave Intact," which demands that it be put in the car's CD player and then cranked to 11, but still leaves you breathless with the thought that went into it. There are moments worth attending, like the opening to "The Road Leads Where It's Led," which I've heard before-- it's a riff on a Riyuchi Sakamoto piece; unfortunately, the refrain, "Blowing all the other kids away (with all of your charm)" becomes a tiresome attention-getter, and makes the piece weaker than it should be. The album picks up near the end with the rocking and paranoid "The Light's On."

The Secret Machines aren't making anything "new"; they're well staked out somewhere in a Venn diagram of 70s space music influences, modern power rock sensibilities, messy punk and grunge instrumental stylings and studio technical virtuosity. But they're doing it well, and they deserve a listen.

And the weekend spirals in...

I had an absolutely lovely Wednesday, visiting with shemayazi. We went out for Mexican food, watched the eclipse and did the appropriately pagan thing. I didn't get home until very late because we stayed up and chatted for all hours.

But now Friday has rolled around and I have no idea what I'm going to do for the party on Saturday or T-or-T'ing with the kids on Sunday. I do know that the party on Saturday will be ending early, since I'll be tending the kids all by myself; Omaha is going out on a "girls only" party with some of her friends.

And if it doesn't rain, it pours: work today announced that "we're in the final weeks until release, so you're all on sixty-hour weeks. Come in weekends or stay twelve hours, we don't care, but you're going to put in the extra time." Whatever. Fortunately, I can do some of it from home, but this makes me about as happy as a cat in zero gravity (If that link doesn't work anymore, go to BoingBoing and go through the recent archives).

On the other hand, I have managed to write about 700 words this week. I've been very stressed, under-rested and over-worked, and the election hasn't helped at all. The 700 words are crap and will probably get tossed in revision, but at least I wrote something. Something about cyber-telepathically linked squirrel furries who drifted apart because the orgasms were better that way...