climate change

read this article by George Will that appeared in the February 12th issue of Newsweek.

he has a point: people complain that the US walked away from Kyoto, but let's face it: it's not in the interest of hundreds of millions of Americans to lock ourselves into this thing without really knowing the impact economically AND without holding China and India, specifically, accountable to make the same commitments! they're spewing an awful lot of stuff into the air, too.

check out what this other guy has to say here:



"The Kyoto agreement does not apply to China as a developing country! By placing more and costly regulatory burdens on Japanese and European industry-- whose governments unwisely signed the Protocol, it will drive more manufacturing out of those countries and into Kyoto-free China. "

interesting. we're having a tough enough time competing with China without giving them another leg up.

Stock Market

several months ago, i listened to a financial guru on NPR talking about what you and i, the little people, can do to achieve success in the market. he was rattling of ways to diversify: 15% here, 30% there...i about went off the road trying to write it all down. luckily they posted it online and i 'll paste it at the bottom for your review.

yesterday i decided to log onto my 401k page and move stuff around, as per this guys suggestions. i moved money out of my company's stock and into an International Equity Fund, as well as some Bonds. this morning i logged back on to verify the change had gone into affect and noticed i had lost several hundred dollars. what the??

turns out i chose to mess with my stocks on the biggest losing day since 9/11/01. what timing! it may work to my advantage, if things rebound quickly. that's a big IF.

diversify!!!

***********************************************************************************
* Domestic Equity (30 percent): Refers to stocks in U.S.-based companies listed on U.S. exchanges.

* Emerging Market Equity (5 percent): Refers to stocks from emerging markets around the world, such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

* Foreign Developed Equity (15 percent): Refers to stocks listed on major foreign markets in developed countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan.

* Real Estate Investment Trusts (20 percent): Refers to stocks of companies that invest directly in real estate through ownership of property.

* U.S. Treasury Notes and Bonds (15 percent): These are fixed-interest U.S. government debt securities that mature in more than one year. Notes and bonds pay interest semi-annually. The income is only taxed at the federal level.

* U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protection Securities, or TIPS (15 percent): These are special types of Treasury notes that offer protection from inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. They pay interest every six months and the principal when the security matures.
***********************************************************************************

post Oscar wind down

i'm still mad about Melissa Etheridge winning the Oscar for best song. without rehashing the incident, it appears the Academy is now awarding top honors to people for splattering dung on a piece of paper and calling it a song. in this case, the dung in question was apparently organic, in keeping with the whole "Green" theme.

i predicted below there would be backlash. i am hard pressed to find any. that's too bad. but if i'm honest about it, it's not that surprising. talk about un-PC: verbally bashing a gay woman who won an award for a song she wrote about environmental responsibility?? might as well kick some puppies while i'm at it. but seriously...who could make that up??

Oscar fever!

yeah, so my buddy Oscar at work has been out sick with a temperature of 102! just kidding. i need to make this post quick and go to bed b/c unlike some people, i don't have a 4 day weekend.

i don't know what's more annoying: the old days when people used the opportunity of an acceptance speech to pump out political crap (Michael Moore, et al) or now with the whole "Green Movement". don't get me wrong, i'm all for the "Green Movement", and i ain't talking about what happens after you eat too much spinach. collectively, thousands of individuals can make a change. but the pessimist in me says we're all doomed. people can't even commit to going to the gym or to quit smoking, what makes anyone think we can radically shift the whole nature of the world economy and the daily life of billions who, incidentally, have more important things to worry about (like where their next meal is going to come from) than about the environment? i'm not saying it's not necessary: just not possible.

everybody loves Al Gore now. i still see him as a stereotypical politician (rich, white, boring, Brylcreem). he's found his niche and he's working it. i'm just pissed b/c Melissa Etheridge won an Oscar for that piece of crap song that goes along with his movie. it was bullshit. Andrea and i were both stunned. we had already made fun of Etheridge and her band during their performance of the song. we were later wowed by a pretty awesome Dream Girls medley. the two were not comparable.

but we all know the one holding the Oscar isn't always the one who deserves it. i think there will be (or at least should be) outrage on real blogs and infotainment sites about what a rip off this was.

Now I am throwing off the carelessness of youth
To listen to an inconvenient truth

that drivel will get you a gold statue, people!! looks like my songwriting career may have some hope after all:

if you care about global warming and glaciers forming,
hurricanes storming and locusts swarming,
Al is still boring and Melissa's performing:
the crowd is roaring but i'm pissed b/c Dream Girls should've won.

2 minutes on RhymeZone. how long did she spend writing hers???

music

i've been playing bass for a little while. been through periods of "high" activity and periods of no activity. i use "quotes" around "high" b/c it's a very relative term. i wasn't on retainer for a studio or anything. it has to do more with my interest in playing. the interest has gone up a couple notches recently, which can be attributed to 4 things.

1 - Church
i've been in North Carolina for 6 years now. upon arrival, playing was limited to upstairs jam sessions with my computer. more often than not, Iron Maiden. anyway, in 2002 i volunteered to play bass at the church i was attending. meanwhile, my buddy Daniel was the 1st and only bassist at Vintage21. my church had a good rotation of great musicians, but V21 was still very young and used a lot of the same people. to try and help keep Daniel from burning out, i offered to sub for him once in a while. that lead to a busy period of playing alternating Sundays at both churches. in 2004 i jumped ship and went to V21 full time. we now have a solid rotation of talented musicians and i play there once or twice a month. but most of my friends go to Vintage, which leads to reason #2...

2 - Side Projects
i go to church with a lot of very creative people. without mentioning names, Matt Wood is one of them. he writes and records a lot of music (an album every month, in fact) and recently decided to take the act on the road. the resulting side project is called Dujour Presents. "recently" means a year ago, by the way. the lineup consists of Matt, his wife Lisa, me and Andrea, Katrina and Kevin. we've done a few shows and it's fun.

another side project involving Matt Wood is The Whale Watchers. this is me trying to fill Daniel's shoes again, as he was the original bassist for these guys. they're just coming out of a long hiatus and are now a 6 piece (added keys and a full time rhythm guitarist). Matt is now free to dance around the stage and sing, ala Jim Morrison. he certainly has the chest hair for it.

other side projects involve playing bass tracks for people doing home recording stuff. it's not an everyday thing, but i'm doing 2 of them now. it's a lot of fun. i'm not the best at coming up with cool licks, but i'm alright at reproducing something inside someone's head. if they can hum it or whistle it, i can usually play it. and the pay is great, too! i've been fed terrific Chinese from P.F. Chang's and given a couple beers. it's more than i get for playing with The Watchers. i end up paying for beer with those guys! they say it's part of the initiation process. which explains why it's a 6 piece now instead of a 4 piece. next practice, i'm expecting there to be a 7th...ceremonial 12-pack in hand.

3 - Equipment
it's fun to get toys. i recently got a Line 6 Bass PODxt. it's a digital effects thingy that models all sorts of classic amp/cab combinations and has 1,000,000 stomp box models (distortion, flange, delay, etc). i don't know that it was entirely necessary, but it allows me to run direct into a PA and sound like i'm playing through an Aguilar® DB750 amp with a 4 x 12 Hiwatt® Bass Cab, for example. or some other amp and some other cab. or you can make your own signature tone, which i won't do b/c it would take too long, by combining all the different effects. or you can just download tones created by other users. i doubt i'll get into all that. oh, i can also use it to record on my computer. these attributes make it a nice addition, but messing around with all the annoying sounds it makes during practice and pissing everybody off makes it a must have.

i traded a guy my Rickenbacker for his Fender Jazz. we are both pleased with the transaction. so getting that bass has got me playing a lot more. i also put together another fretless "Frankenbass" comprised of various parts. it's alright and requires practice to get intonation down. otherwise, you're always sharp or flat, which is where i'm at now. oh, and i finally got a real practice bass amp. i've been using Peavey Audition's for years and they sound terrible. this baby packs 15 Watts of window rattling power that will make the neighbors say "do you hear something? no? ok.". the main thing is being able to get an idea of what i will actually sound like when plugging into a real rig. so far, so good.

4 - Desire to improve
this is the one i need to concentrate on. i want to be a better player, which could mean making less mistakes at church, being more creative when making new music, being more technically capable, or any combination of the 3. whether that means lessons, or just practicing smarter, i don't know yet.

that's about it from the music perspective. i'll talk about the ukulele and banjo next time!

relationships

very long story very short: me and Andrea officially began dating on December 20, 2005. she was all set to move to New York, but luckily for me, changed her mind at the last second. the very next week, we met at our church (Vintage21) where she sings and i play bass. it was August.

the whole summer passed and we kind of sent emails back and forth, but i was too much of a pansy to ask her out. i finally did and we are currently living happily ever after. this is what we looked like together on Valentine's Day 2006:



she's great. we love each other. but most importantly, she loves my dog, and he loves her...as evidenced by this photograph:




i hope you all get to meet her soon if you haven't already.

all good things must come to a beginning

i've kicked around the idea of a blog for a while but just never got started. i figure only a few folks will really check it out, or even want to, and that's cool. the irony: most of the people who read it are the ones who don't need to b/c they already know what's going on with me. which kind of defeats the purpose of doing it.

and with that stellar intro, we're out of the gates.

i'll spend some time adding the foundational stuff for the family and friends i don't get to see often enough. a word of warning: this will ultimately become a series of boring posts describing my day to day activities. if a day goes by without a post, it means i didn't do anything. can you smell the excitement?

let's do it!