Save poor Sammy Snake!

Because Sarah is Sarah, she went to and greatly enjoyed the Death Cab concert at the Greek in Berkeley last night. She posted the videos on youtube, and she took a lot of videos! But here's the best part - you can hear her singing along to every song! Can you believe she's giving away her singing for free!? She's the Radiohead of elementary school teachers.


Speaking of Death Cab, I must offer a retraction of my earlier statements about their newest album, Narrow Stairs. It's actually quite good, now that I've given it more time to settle. I'm still not in love with Ben's lyrics, but some of the instrumentation it really great, especially on songs like "Pity and Fear" and "I Will Possess Your Heart". Some of the songs, like "Long Division" are good old Death Cab fun. Like I said, if you can get past some of the lyrics, it's a very worthy album. I actually enjoy it quite a bit more than Plans.



So, sorry Mr. Gibbard. I know he reads my blog.

I'd like to write something more in depth about this at a later date, but GTAIV is really starting to hook me. I'm not a big fan of the missions. They're kind of repetitive. But, I am a big fan of the "kill-innocent-people-and-yourself" minigame that is always there to play. Add a few cheat codes and you're off. You're dropping boats out of the sky onto people's heads and splattering them. Since I've started playing GTAIV, Liberty City has seen a sharp increase on the number of people who's offical cause of death was "crushed by random boat that fell from sky." I think this desire to crush people with boats is somehow related to being "the boatbuilder's son." Somebody psychoanalyze that, please. I need to know what it means.



Everything in this game is very...um...philosophically challenging. I mean, it's clear I enjoy beating bums to death in dank alleyways with a bat...in this game...but why? Also, when I used the cheat to spawn the helicopter, why was my first impulse to fly to the airport and crash into a plane that was taking off (This is one of the few things you can't do in GTAIV, and I wonder if there's some sort of social commentary there. I mean, you can hire a hooker, have sex with her, then kill her, but you can't crash into an airplane? You can blow up entire blocks with rocket launcher, or kill cops for hours, but you can't crash into the airplanes?) Then there's the multiplayer. Especially fun when played with Matt Lydon, Cy McNally, and a very drunk Cody Herzog. I got an achievement last night that said "Killed a Rockstar." I have no idea what this means.



It looks like we could close on our house as soon as Friday. I guess I never thought about owning a home much before, but now that we're doing it, it makes sense. My Dad was about thirty when he and my mom bought their first house together (though he had bought and sold several others before they met), and I am thirty so I guess it makes sense. I tend to be philosophically inert when it comes to traditional milestones.


I'm ready to start reading books like this.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I want to wish Sarah a happy first anniversary. I intend to up-end social custom and decorum by saying it here first, on the internet, on my blog that no one reads. That's very romantic, I think.