Most people probably know that there was an earthquake in Southern California yesterday by now. It was moderate by most standards but you would never know that by talking to people and looking at the news. Ironically, I was attending a meeting where we are preparing for a mock major earthquake when the shaking started happening. The keynote speaker was talking about disaster preparedness and so forth when the conference room started shaking. I was confused as all hell because I thought there'd be no way in hell that irony would even be able to exist in that form. Immediately, half of the people in the conference hall went table diving. Most of the other half waited for the strong jolt in the middle of the quake's duration to get under the table. I'm not big for getting under tables unless the shaking gets really bad or things start falling so I (and a couple of other people) sat there and watched the asses of people sway to the quake beat and listened to people panic. Finally a person yelled for everone to duck and cover. I snapped out of my assgazing and slowly complied. By the time I met up with the other people under our table, the shaking had all but stopped.

So because we were in an earthquake preparedness meeting, there was someone from the USGS there who had immediate access to the details. She said that it was a 5.8 and centered in Chino Hills (30 miles east of Los Angeles). I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get through on the phones to call different people just to make sure everything was ok. After that was over, we started receiving more updates about the quake... and it was downgraded to a 5.4. A 5.4??? I got under the table and stuck my ass out for that? I gotta say, I was a bit disappointed in myself. I've been through much stronger and much longer than that.

Ok... so a 5.4. That's is about the mid point of the middle of moderate so far as Earthquakes go. Anything above a 6.0 starts to get into the whole lotta shakin' going on territory and anything below a 4.5 or so is an earthquake jr. There were no deaths, no significant injuries and damage was minimal. It should have been business as usual, right? Not really... 3/4 of the people in the conference left after the earthquake (of course, half of them stayed around and ate lunch after the shaking but left before the conference resumed). I understand that there was some sort of panic and confusion at my job afterward. And the worst part, I understand that every local station cut into their programming to report on the quake. I saw on the news where they were talking about "damage" as a result of the quake and they had a reporter in a supermarket aisle treading lightly over a few wine bottles that had spilled and broken. Really? If that is all that it did, is it really worth showing? I mean, I know that regularly, the tv would be showing a generous helping of courtroom shows with a side of soap operas and a topping of sleeze bag lawyer commercials but still! I'm sure that there was more news than the spilled merlot at the local Trader Joe's...

Ah Friday morning. I work a formidably brutal 10 hour day 4 days a week with a smile just so that I can begin my weekend a day early every Friday. In the ideal situation, I'd stay up late the night before and wake up about the same time as the workforce is thinking about taking its lunch. But ideal situations aren't normally within reach so here I am at 7 in the morning sitting in front of a computer like I was at work. Our dog knows no weekends, holidays or sick days. Every morning around 6 she's thrilled about getting up and going outside so every morning one of us ends up taking her to that same outside to fufill those thrills. Today, it was me. And while she has been outside, eaten and is now curled up on the couch and asleep, I'm wide awake... blah

I signed onto yahoo this morning to find out the following information:
1 out of every 5 people end their relationship with someone else via email or text message.
Who Hollywood's most influential babies are.
A man gets an 85k cell phone bill.

Useful information eh?

Alright... I'm off to try and go back to sleep.

Today was approximately the fourth time in the past two years that my ass has had the pleasure of kissing a cold county issued seats for sexual harassment prevention training. You would think that I was some brand of caveman with the tendency to spout off words like "toots" and "broad", phrases like "nice figure" and crude sentences like "Hey toots, that broad over there has a nice figure". But I'm no brand of caveman and I don't bring my crass colored suit made out of crude jokes and insults to work. That is weekend wear only. As dumb as I am most of the time, I keep it professional at work. Basically, I had no written proof that I had been to the training within the past two years so I had to attend the full session again.

So I pretty much know how the class goes. We talk about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the original protected classes. We will then expand to talk about the history of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination. We then move onto giving examples of sexual harassment in the workplace and so on. Yeah yeah yeah... I know all of that like I know I'll be in this class again in a few months when there's mix up. What I'm waiting for are the visual examples. The poorly produced talkies that show extremely caricatured examples of guys that say things like "Hey toots,that broad over there has a nice figure". The poorly put together videos that will show Bob from accounting acting out sexual quid pro quo while trying to keep a straight face. This stuff amuses me because it is always so over the top. Just the kind of over the top material that I need to get me over the hump.

This time however, there weres no videos. I was so disappointed. I wanted to get up and act something out myself. And even though the training rep. was good, she didn't tell me much that I didn't know already. Actually I did learn one major thing. I learned that the act of pinching someone on the behind is called goosing. Because of my maturity age, it made me giggle for a good two minutes. Hmmmm... maybe there is a reason that I have had this class so many times...

I failed this year in my eternal and internal bout not to bestow gifts upon myself around Christmas or Jesus is the reason for the season time period as it is called by some. Seeing as how I now have seasons one through three of The Wire... and seeing as season 4 of The Wire just came out last Tuesday... and finally, seeing as how I can seemingly never get enough of that same The Wire, I kept fighting my urges to go out and get it. Susan told me that I should hold off because I might disappoint Santa. As much as I hate the combination of gray facial hair, cheap red suits, rosy cheeks and a person who rewards ignorant kids by burging their parents house, eating their cookies and leaving gifts to further their sense of entitlement, I definitely know the ills of disappointing an imposing force with ankle-biting elves and workhorse reindeer at his large beck and call. So I didn't rush out and buy it. But that left me feeling empty. You know the feeling of needing to buy something. It is like a formidably deep itch in that part of your back that cant be reached. It bugs the shit out of you until you find a random stick, kitchen utensil or a willing and significant other to handle it for you.
So to cure my itch, I decided to go out and buy a crybaby pedal for my guitar. The wah wah pedal is a beautiful thing. Pure genius that you can have a contraption that controls the tone of your guitar with your feet. Ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine out of 10,000 Porno movie aficionados, rhythmic funksters and Hendrix-heads agree that stepping on Jim Dunlop's pedal is quite possibly akin to not just a slice of heaven, but at least half of the pizza. So I plugged in my pedal and grabbed my own formidable piece of that same celestial body. I can't believe that I had been without one for all of these years (I used my last one so much that the tone switcher wheel wore down and the sound was all crackly).
Flash forward 24 hours and I was still in the process of grabbing a slice of the effervescent pie. I decide to turn on the satellite radio to play along with the blues channel as I often do. After about ten minutes a cover version of Hendrix's Little Wing came over the air. No words... just 9 minutes of guitar soloing. About 3 minutes into the song, I had abandoned my guitar and pedal to listen. It was by far the best cover version of the song that I had ever heard. The information section at the bottom of the screen said that it was by the Eric Steckel Band. I had heard of him before but never paid too much attention. After the song was over, and after I picked my under-bitten chin and jaw up off of the ground, I did what any person with a computer and a recently detached jaw would do. I started searching online for this band. It didn't take very long for me to find the guy and his band... it took me a while though to stop staring at his picture because he looked very young. I don't mean the young like, he's obviously old enough to be drinking this but I'm carding him out of courtesy. I mean the young like he should be one of the kids singing a Hendrix song on "Kidzbop 25: Acid, Hashish, Hippies and the Swinging Sixties Sang by Pre-pimpled Anonymous Kids so it's all Groovy Daddy". The picture was of him at 11 holding a guitar that was as long as he was tall. But whatever, there could have very easily been a picture of a pre-voice changed me playing my dad's guitar with my teeth... it doesn't mean that I knew how to play. In reading his bio though, he had in fact released an album by then and was already touring with famous players. So he knew how to play... and pretty damn well by the time he reached double digits. The Hendrix cover was off of an album released last year... when he was the down right long-in-the-baby-teeth at all of 16.
So after hearing that along with a lot of his other spectacular material, my guitar playing doesn't sound the same. Even with the crybaby pedal in all of its omnipotent glory, my sounds are far from heaven... purgatory at best... but more likely a section of hell that's not too deep to feel an occasional breeze. I could take a full time job playing guitar for the next 45 years, retire, collect social security, use that to pay for more guitar lessons, take up a part time job playing guitar to supplement what will be an inadequate social security check and still not even be in the same league as this kid who can't vote or grow facial hair. I've decided that I'm going to retire from the world of playing guitar. No cry baby pedal, Gibson Pro Shop Guitar or Marshall stack can save me.... I knew I should have just bought The Wire. A disappointed Santa be damned!

Current Music: The Gossip - Standing In The Way Of Control

The last year of my 20's is here. And for all of my complaining about not being in my mid 20's anymore, it hasn't been bad so far. I guess I buy into all of the hype this society puts on being young. Not to say that I'm not young right now... but I'm no longer a baby.

This has been more like a birth week than just the standard day. It started last Saturday with a party at a local brewery. My wife rounded up friends and family to watch me drink 28 away. By the end of the night I was offering to pick up the tab for everyone.

I woke up Sunday without any hint of a hangover and spent the whole day watching season 2 of The Wire (Which Susan gave me as a gift).

I didn't do anything special on Monday or Tuesday.

Wednesday, Susan and I went out and had a nice dinner.

Thursday, my mother-in-law took me to dinner.

Friday night/Saturday morning, my good friends made me dinner and shoved more drinks down my throat. Ok... they didn't push, shove, tilt, squeeze, nudge, inch or pour anything down my throat. I pushed, shoved, tilted, squeezed, nudged, inched, poured, forced and shot drinks down my throat. The night ended with me shooting Glenlivet multiple times. Good times. Of course good times brought the subsequent hangover from the 7th circle of the unwashed armpit of hell.

Later on this afternoon another friend is taking me to lunch and next week my mom is supposed to be taking me to dinner. I don't think I've ever had this much done for me. It has been spectacular!

I don't know if it is a function of my increasing detachment from radio, the rings rapidly making their way around my tree or something else but every hour that passes seems to grant further distance between me and the world of popular music. It is almost like I have heard everything that I wanted to hear. I mean, don't get me wrong I still buy new albums or download new music... legally LEGALLY if the RIAA has nothing better to do than to read my random posts. But most of the music that I buy from a LEGIT store or download LEGALLY on the new-fangled internet stores are new albums by the same artists that I've been listening to for a while. I feel completely out of the loop with regard to music which is somewhat a strange feeling for me...

Though the loop is elsewhere these days, I don't think that it is far enough away that I don't still know SOMETHING about music. I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher earlier this evening when I heard something that I always hear about rap/hip hop music... that it is basically little more than a foul-mouthed, mean spirited, homophobic, violent and mysogynistic faux genre of music that pollutes the airwaves and corrupts our children... well, your children actually because this mutha fuckin' killa of a player-pimp ain't got any. Formidable hint of Eau de Arrogance and smuggery aside, I like Bill Maher... but sometimes he says things that make me not so happy. I always hate to hear that people really have that shortsighted view about this form of music. The problem is that I don't really know who to point my formdibably long fingers at...

To be sure there is a smelly, heaping pile of rap music that is busting at the seams with women starring as bitches, uber-violent scenarios and all of the other things that people like to complain about. And to be sure, that is a large part of what is played on the radio and talked about in the mainstream media. But I'm not even sure if that is such a valid argument anymore. It seems like people are still using the same arguments that they used in the height of Gangsta Rap. Gangsta Rap is no more a trend than Paul Frank is really your friend. From what I can see in that far off loop, todays radio rap is primarily about the joys of hyper-consumerism. Look what I got, look how I roll, etc. A formidable segment has always been about that but that seems to be what is really popular now.

But there is a lot more rap out there than what the average person is exposed to. Specifically there is a lot of rap music that doesn't deal exclusively in the characteristics mentioned above. The problem is that you have to dig a bit to find it. Cynical anti record industry me wants to blame it completely on them. They are the street corner pushers of the vapid bling rap that likes the radio today. But I'm not sure if they are entirely to blame. There just doesn't seem to be the market for the "conscious" and "undergroud" rap that stays... well... underground. So if there isn't a market, then the radio, record companies and others who have their hand in trying to make a profit aren't going to "push" that product. What would be in it for them? I can't really blame it on the consumer because most of us don't really know that there is much better stuff out there than what is on the radio. So I guess my formidably long finger will have to not be put to good use.... yet.

I received a random email from someone designated the "wellness coordinator" at work today inviting me to join the wellness program and be a "team captain". The email said that I was chosen because I have demonstrated the attitude and leadership skills necessary to be an "excellent team captain". I clicked on the link which took me to FightCancer.org. There I was poked and probed with questions about my exercise and activity habits. I'm curious as to who at work saw me as a motivator of men (and women of course). It is all very secretive. I run a few times a week, I make it a point to walk fast and further than I should to and from work, I do push ups and other things sporadically throughout the week... but I wouldn't call myself an exercise buff per se. More importantly, I never told anyone at work I do any of these things. I really don't tell anyone at work too much of anything. I only talk with any sort of detail to the staff person that I supervise and my manager. As far as everyone else knows, I'm a skinny sociopath who has a tendency towards being cold in more ways than one. So now I ask YOU, who sees me as the mover of unfit mountains and the motivator of lazy county employees with a dash of attitude?

Comments to Mr. Rail E. Operations at Metro:

There has been a problem with one of the tracks on the light rail line that I use to get to and from work. As a consequence, there is a stretch of track where only one train can pass at a time. As a consequence again, the train schedule has been thrown off to where one train can only pass in any one direction about once every 20 minutes. This is fine for "going Metro" to recreational activities in the middle of the day. But for dragging my half awake and half dead carcass to work and for taking the backward trip home 10 hours later, it isn't so good. The train has been more stuffed than a traditionally prepared Thanksgiving Turkey. I realize that you give up the conventional idea of your space and complimentary force field when you decide to engage in communal and very public transport but it has just been crazy for the past couple of days. I don't really mind being close to strangers but when you are fitted like a jigsaw puzzle, it is a bit of a problem. I'm sure that the problem with the tracks is major and that your best guys are working hard on the job but... I just want to complain I suppose.

Current Music: Red and Gold - Mf Doom

I look at myself in the mirror and see somewhat of an aging government employee version of a yuppie at times... a guppie if you will. I'm in my late 20's on a one way downhill road to my last rest stop before my 30's. I think this weekend showed me that despite my last name and early 20's face, I'm not the same person I was 5 or 6 years ago.

I bailed on a festival that I was so excited about going to. I had bought tickets to the Rock the Bells tour so that I could see Rage Against the Machine and all of the other Underground Hip Hop acts that were performing. When the tickets first went on sale, I was considering going to the show here and in San Francisco or San Diego. I was so excited to be going to see some decent live music. Then, as the day grew closer something happened... I started thinking about how long I'd be there (It was a 12 hour event), how hot it would be (the last time I was at that venue in the summer it was about 110 degrees), how long it would take me to get home (last time it took over an hour to get out of the parking lot) and how long I would be able to take a lot of the Rage and Cypress Hill fans (not traditionally the most mature or fun loving group of people you want to stand ass holes to elbows to for 720 minutes). So in the end, my buddy and I ended up selling our tickets to some younger and more hip chaps who were probably as excited as I was 7 years ago to venture solo to see Rage at the Democratic National Convention. If it were 7 or 6 or 5 or probably even 2 1/2 years ago, I would have been fighting to keep my secured spot to ensure a contact high and hearing loss... Who gave a crap that the only thing higher than the temperature were the lot of the fans. Who cared that the parking sucked.

Now, I opt to hang out with a friend and BBQ... which turned out to be a good time but the cool factor is a bit lower than spending an epoch and a small fortune at an outdoor festival.

I have purchased all of these wonderful albums within the past few months in an attempt to build my paultry collection back up to something that would make a moderate collector crack a half smile on one side of their face. Well, yesterday I decided to try and update my mp3 player with some of this new found music. Well, Windows Media Player didn't recognize that anything was plugged in. I kept getting the "connect a device" prompt. I updated the player but to no avail. I tried using my real player but all of the sudden that decided that it wanted to freeze up as well. I uninstalled and reinstalled the real player but the same thing. I even tried using the Creative software but to no avail. I'm starting to think that there is something wrong with the player itself now. I seriously hate computers and electronics sometimes. Things work perfectly for a given amount of time and then all of the sudden, for no apparent reason programs decide that they aren't in the business of working anymore. As a sort-of sidenote, what the hell is an error report? Why in the devil's hell would that prompt show up asking me if I wanted to send it? Who is it going to? Is there someone with 25 arms sitting at an uber computer in the geographic middle of the United states reading and processing these reports? I doubt it. It is infinitely more likely that this report goes to some unused email address or database that some computer guy with a last name as a first name like "Davis" or "Collins" gets around to after he gets finished obtaining the next level on City of Heroes. But I'm determined to figure this out one way or the other! Even if I have to start playing City of Heroes and become buddy buddy with "Davis"... I'll do it damnit! There isn't 10mb of free space on my player for nothing...