Woes, though some things are still top drawer

So one of the reasons blogs make me uncomfortable are the growing pains involved. Back in 97, when I was first using basic HTML for my hanson fanfic site, I became master of the Geocities/Angelfire basics. If you remember the sort of banded creativity involved in early websites, you can imagine my dismay, a former maestro of the hit counters and scrolling marquee of yore. It's another ball game now! I don't spend the same long amounts of time alone on the old desktop, trolling FAQs for information on resizing. These last couple of months, I decided I was to take a stand, learn how to resize my header and fix the horrible cropping effect written into my template, and reclaim HTML for my own, see if the website HTMLgoodies still exists, and have a day of it.

But to my chagrin, just like with the study of any new language to someone suddenly (albeit just slightly) further on in years, it just didn't come. In a broader computer scope, I'm bored to tears with installing things, and I thought getting my MacBook would be the end to the nightmare of dreaded drivers and .DLLs at least, but this dark lady comes in different forms now. Quoting the laughably pessimistic family motto of the Baylor family in the film Elizabethtown, "If it weren't this, it would be something else." Although I appreciate some of the simplicity of Mac OS, the bare bones programs I have drive me mad- for starters, I don't have a decent photo editing program. When I first decided to dive into digital, my decision had been backed by a glorious well-resourced year in an Adobe wonderland, tasting the fruits of digital imaging and editing at its best. However now I feel like a fool whenever I use the ridiculous tools of PictureProject (Nikon's horribly designed importing, cataloging software included with its products). I can't synthesize the effects of masking an image, and, as I said before, something as simple as resizing or framing an image has proven a first class nightmare.

Nevermind, I'm just feeling the sting at the moment.

I've been reading a lot about Hillary v Obama in the news. Unfortunately, I've found myself in the camp of the mindless Obama supporter. There's nothing anyone can tell me to shake my irrational convictions on the subject of our rightful future president. Fortunately, since he's making the best Mr. Smith impression I've ever seen in blood-and-flesh politics, I feel more comfortable, supporting in the way I do. I'm sure, reader, you may have seen this crazy incident in poor campaigning in the last couple of days. After feeling intense appeasement with Hillary's bad move, what throttled me a bit was the witch hunt of a message board following the opinion piece. This itself is not startling at all, because anyone who posts in the comments section of a web paper has one, if not many, axes to grind. What disturbed me was my readiness to join the fray and back Obama like a gutless wraith. I should get back to reading more policy. Maybe it's simply that, outside of the country, Obama feels heartbreakingly close to home, and supporting him, like blowing kisses to Chicago.

Yes, despite the glories of my days, there are a few things in the UK that meet with my distrust. The chip shop onion bhaji is the foulest thing I have ever come across on a plate. My affinity for Indian food has at times put me at odds with the madhouse joke of some British Indian food. The bhaji is the best example, since it can be found at chip shops. One day when in Risca, I picked up a battered sausage and chips with curry sauce. Totally standard, albeit shockingly unhealthy. I thought I'd continue the faux Indian trend with the addition of the ominous onion bhaji, the only edible not on wax display behind the glass counter. What arrived between my chips and sausage was not unlike the Creature who lived behind the mayonnaise, next to the ketchup and to the left of the coleslaw in the inimitable and timeless 1992 Garfield episode. To what foul heights did they go to derive this recipe? It was not golden and crispy on its exterior like a good and decent bhaji, but rather a soggy murky purple, a sort of sodden mixture of perished onion in congealed batter. Not recommended.

I just bought Bruce Springsteen tickets yesterday at a sorrowful 130 bucks a pop. I know he's the Boss, but where's my pay day? I know- that joke was tacky. I don't see gigs often so I figured I should just spring for the real deal. Although, I saw Ryan Adams play Cardiff Bay on November 11th, and he was achingly good. Dear John is a killer, especially the rendition based on the Follow the Lights LP that just came out, with Neal Casal replacing the wretched Norah Jones on backing vocals. Just as he was making me feel at home, I think he was starting to feel like a stranger. He had just come from New York and was publicly lamenting - in his classic style - the separation pains he was already experiencing.

But I was grateful to have him there. The thing that's so terrifying about Ryan Adams is that you feel so dizzyingly intimate with him when you see him. His show is like a bashful conversation, to the point that he dolefully asks pardon when informing the audience that everyone will be going on an intermission, so, as he said, "You can have a drink, we can have a drink, go to the bathroom, and then come back, and keep playing as long as we're allowed" - with the implicit message: "if that's okay by you." So his shows are never perfect, the faults often bare, but then at moments he is so good that his inconsistency garners some brand of little brother sympathy, even when he lashes out at you (the loving audience), like his gig at U Chicago a few years back. People rail on his inconsistency all the time, his sheepish relationship with his drinking problem, that he is prolific to a fault-- he puts out so much material and a whole lot of it is garbage. But I'll take his rough edges any day.

Well this has been a whole smatter of things, but it had been a while. I miss everyone, and thanks for your birthday wishes.