being a person who doesn't really believe in party politics, i haven't taken much time to identify which political party or philosophy i would most adhere to or identify with. i've basically figured out that i'm a social-democrat — the government should provide for the basic needs of all people with food, clothing, shelter, medical care; and the people should decide who and what makes up our government. (this is purely a matt term, i don't care whether i'm really applying it correctly in the sense of traditionally accepted political nomenclature…)

but, it was interesting to find out that both the world's smallest political quiz, and the party compatibility quiz indicate that i'm libertarian. not surprisingly, my second most compatible political party was the Green Party, who i would have voted for in the most recent political election, had i been allowed to vote (long story…). < quiz links courtesy of miss athena darling >

its late. g'night.

well, this has been a rather pleasant weekend (plus Monday). sometime friday my federal tax return finally posted to my account (thank god for e-file and direct deposit!) probably making this occasion the one time in my life where i've actually been pleased with our "government." of course, i still think income taxes should be done away with in favor of a federal sales tax, but that's another topic for some other forum.

my plans all along (since figuring out that i would be coming out of the tax season much better off than paul, who unfortunately had to pay taxes this year) have been to utilize this bounty to considerably improve my financial state by paying off all the various and sundry little petty debts i'd gotten myself into over the course of the past two years. little things like unpaid doctor bills, vet bills, cd club subscriptions, etc. all told, it amounted to a little less than $700 of debt, so i've not been doing as badly as some, but i'd never been able to catch up long enough to actually take care of these things. well, now that i've had this groovy tech job for almost a year, and have gotten rid of one deadbeat roommate and replaced him with two lesser deadbeat roommates (sorry, brian, couldn't resist… brian's actually the only one of the two new ones to be fully paid up), i've actually been able to place myself on a little firmer financial footing. all our bills are being paid on time, and once the newest roommate pays up, i'll be doing much better. SO, i'm out of debt. which, as brian would say, is what we'd call a "good thing."

i'm on a bit of a high right now, having just phoned the last collections agency that i was concerned about and finding out that… somehow, outside the bounds of my memory, my account with them had been paid in full back in 1997. i don't recollect it, but i sure don't mind finding it out four years later!

top that off with the fact that i'm planning to head out to a local computer retailer today to pick up a secondhand Dell branded sony trinitron monitor for the low low price of $168.00, and coupled with the fact that i've just purchased a 256MB stick of RAM for this fabled machine i'm planning to build in the next couple months, and you can understand my elation. i may, finally, have a system i can actually use to do the types of stuff i like to do. a machine that won't complain when i run more than three programs at the same time. a machine with which i might just be able to take over the world. oh, wait, i'm still going to be running windows, aren't i?

anyway, enough gloating. suffice to say, right now, this matt is a happy camper.

i've just spent the past 15 minutes or so laughing my ass off at the witticisms of our president-"elect."

probably the funniest one i read, until i had to quit before my head exploded:

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."?LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

read more bushisms, just put the glass down first.

well, back from the ol' homestead and haven't had enough of a moment since my return to do an update. almost as soon as i returned on Saturday night, i went out with Paul & Brax, and had a bit of an adventure.

on the home front though, to complete the story of my recent visit, Friday was political discussion day. dinner rolled around and mom provoked the whole thing. dad had been amazingly quiet about the emails we'd exchanged ( read them here: first email & second email ) and only my mom & my little brother had talked to me about them. well, after mom brought it up, then it started. i think dad & I were talking for about an hour and a half, not really making any progress at all, just talking around each other's arguments. we pretty much covered everything. he's a pretty stubborn man, and i conceded a few points to him in the hopes that he'd realize i wasn't arguing just to argue and ignoring my logic on that basis.
      i was disappointed by my father's selfishness and narrowmindedness. he's a very intelligent, thoughful man–generally–and i hold him in high esteem. but the struggles that he has had to face in his life, from the time he was a little boy growing up in the "hollers" of virginia, while building his character and intellect to such an enviable level, have also contributed to and molded this mindset that prevents him from automatically thinking of others (far removed from himself) before himself. his arguments were pretty much all concerned with the immediate impact of some of the ideas that–of necessity–must be considered for their long-term advantages or the advantages they will provide to others who may not currently have them.

thankfully our talk(s, eventually) never grew to the argument stage, but i think we both got flustered at some points when we thought the other was just not listening or understanding. it's frustrating to attempt to explain these abstract concepts you've got buzzing around your head, to not be able to sufficiently explain them with the language we're given. hell, i run into that all the time here on this weblog.

overall, i had a wonderful weekend with my folks and little brother (who ain't so little anymore–he's 13 and his shoes are only a half size smaller than mine… ). much more pleasant than i'd thought it might be. sometimes, though, i think my dad just puts up with my shit because he knows it would break my mom's heart if we were to truly have some kind of split. don't think i've written about my relationship with my dad here, perhaps that'll be a subject for a different time.

      in other news

www.mchawking.com has updated finally and have a new song by that hip-hop master–MC Stephen Hawking. The new song e=mc hawking isn't quite as good as the previous tunes, but still worth a listen. If you've not visited the site before, my two favorite songs would have to be entropy, and fuck the creationists. where else are you going to get a healthy dose of humor, hip-hop, and theoretical physics in one go? nowhere, baby, let me tell you.

well, thanksgiving went off without a hitch. my parents did their normal thing of having several families over for breakfast in the morning, so i got to see all those people that i only see once a year. and no sooner had i gotten out of the shower and dressed, than i realized that i was almost completely uncomfortable around most of them. these are the people that i grew up around, and i'm so different from the person i was back then. i mainly just filled my plate with all that good food, sat down in the livingroom away from all the people, and just quietly stuffed my face. i don't even really feel bad about it, 'cause i didn't come home to see them. i came home to be with my family, all this extra thanksgiving bullshit is just an excuse and a couple extra days off work to make it possible.

it has been amazingly calm around here today though. i was worried that my dad & I would get into a big argument over politics, but he hasn't even really said anything to me about it. in fact, i've had more discussions with my mom and little brother about it than with my dad. maybe he's just biding his time.

i am planning to post–for your reading pleasure–the emails i sent my dad about my political feelings. hopefully i'll be able to get those formatted and uploaded tomorrow (er… today…)

i was also very happy to talk to my sister, who called from france. she's planning on coming home for christmas, so i'll get to see her then.

well, i've been up since 8:00, my brain & body are about to shut down from the food overload.

good to hear the puffin had a decent day as well.

well, i'm at home now. thankfully i had enough foresight to find out the 800 number for my ISP before leaving the 'ville, so i can post for all you lovely people to read.

enjoyed the ride down immensely, what with the new MP3 CD player I got and all. it's a little quirky, but it does well enough i suppose. earlier today i scoured through my mp3s on my computer at work and pulled out just enough to fill a cd, which i think came out to about 165 songs. slammed them all into the root directory of the disk, deleted the track numbers from their filenames, and pretty much wrote them to the cd in alphabetical order. the funny part was that, with the player set on random, the first hour was pretty much Billy Idol, Liz Phair, Chris Isaac, Beastie Boys, NIN, & Bloodloss, then when i see the first signs for Princeton, it suddenly becomes Kid A time. three songs from Kid A–almost consecutively–played me in on the last leg from the parkway to my parent's house. i was excited and amused by how appropriately the mood was set. another funny observation i made was that, despite the number of Mudhoney tracks on the disc, i don't recall any getting played. apparently hour four would have been Mudhoney hour if the trip had lasted that long.

walked into the house, gave my mom and my little bro a hug, then pretty much just submitted myself to my brother's always animated discussions. i see a lot of myself in him, and then there are other things that he's not managed to avoid like i did when i was his age. i walk back into his bedroom (which used to be mine, ages ago.) and hear Hank Williams, Jr. playing on his stereo. i informed him that i was going to take him to Wal-Mart (the only thing that passes for a record store in these parts–that i'm aware of) and buy him a cd or two. i've decided that Kid A is at the top of my list. (paul will love to hear this.)

after somewhat settling in, we set up the laptop, logged on, chatted with brian (& paul, very briefly) for a bit, started doing some remote setup of the new x:13 server (soon, soon), and had what was basically a warm-up round of political discussions with my little bro… a mini version of the large discussion/argument i'm likely to have with my father tomorrow night after all the guests leave. thankfully, my brother's only 13, and still has quite a few years to figure things out.

happy smallpox and genocide day to all you turkey (& mock turkey) eaters out there.

g'night.

it's as bad as i'd feared. my father's influence still reigns supreme in my family's house. i just received an email from my (13 year old) brother today… he sent me a George W. Bush e-card. uggghhhh…

i know he'll grow up and learn things on his own the way i did, but it still frightens me that my own family is just as blind as they've always been.

thought i'd actually use a song lyric for the title this time, even though that's brian's m.o. it fits, especially considering the fact that we're going to chicago to see the monkeywrench.

well, i haven't updated in a few days again. seems i've actually been finding things to do at work this past week. or, i guess, "having things forced upon me" would be a more appropriate statement. that, and i guess i tend to have less to talk about when i'm not allowing myself to be snubbed by women.

i know brian's already been touting puffin-a-go-go over on his side for a few days now (he's also been updating much more regularly and voluminously than i have, of late) but i'm gonna mention it anyway. it's nice to finally be able to link to Paul without having to resort to that out-dated crappy coffeemonk.com site. oh. wait. that's one of mine. it's crappy and out-of-date because i'm a lazy bastard. BUT puffin-a-go-go is neither crappy or out-dated, in fact, it's pretty damn snazzy, and you should check it out. knowing Paul as well as i do, i know it'll be a neat place to visit.

ok. i think that's four. that should just about catch me up to brian.

let me just state for the record that i am frightened as hell that g. dubya might be our next president. if that happens, brian, jack, and i may be on the earliest flight to australia following the announcement. hell, maybe we could even get walk-on parts as stormtroopers in the next Star Wars flick.

my day today has been interesting i suppose. woke up late, as usual, got to work much later than usual since i had to drive brian's non-car-repairing ass to work. checked my daily sites and then looked up the nearest locations of valvoline and big-o tires so i could get my car in tip-top shape for the arduous journey to chicago. on lunch, i went and got four new tires. unfortunately, i couldn't get them on credit, so i ended up spending more than i'd wanted to.

after work, went to get the fluids checked/changed/whatever expecting like $30 – $40 or something. nope. i let the guy do what needed to be done, and it ended up costing me over $70. again, more than i expected.

now, of course, my car's in good shape, but my wallet is looking a little ill. this will have to be a cheap chicago trip. i'm just hoping they sell mickeys up there. it's cheap, but it's oh so good.

though we'll be gone for the weekend, we'll be at least attempting to update bipolar while we're up there. i'm gonna pack up my trusty laptop so you all can revel in the avalanche of joy we are sure to experience. i'm really looking forward to hangin with nanette and co.

MARK ARM!

as promised, today's post will concern more of my thoughts from my recent trip to St. Louis.

driving through the farmland of Missouri and Illinois, I was struck by the beauty of the land and the green fields of new corn as they passed by at 70+ mph. since I rarely get the opportunity to be a passenger, I spent the majority of the trip back to Kentucky silently watching the scenery.

damn. my words are completely failing me at this point. I wanted to write about the fields and trees, and the beauty and profundity of it all, but it wasn't coming out right. sometimes, you just have to watch, listen, feel, and understand, but you can't say anything–you can't describe it. go out, drive, watch the land, and don't say a word.

ok. now, after my hours of communing with nature, developing the mother of all passenger's sunburns, and taking a short nap, Paul and I got off talking about all kinds of stuff. for hours we talked about cops, criminals, abuse of power, use of force, government corruption, capitalism, communism, socialism, marxism, and the political future of america. I think we started talking about unmarked police cars and ended up with america evolving into its necessary and inevitable socialist structure.
      then for some reason, we talked briefly about the weather, the probability that it's going to be a scorching summer with a possible drought, and I started feeling really xerophobic and basically fearing not only for my life but for the future of the entire human race.
      i saw this future where all the vegetation on the planet died off, the atmosphere filling with noxious fumes and the human race slowly dying out. Paul slowly talked me away from my fear by insisting that we humans are too crafty to allow our atmosphere to wither away. I only hope he's right.
      to top it all off, when we got home I phoned brian to tell him about the trip and to make sure x:13 was still in one piece, and one of the first things he tells me is that a large solar flare is heading for earth and will cause some "atmospheric disturbance." considering my terror from earlier in the day (which i still hadn't fully shaken despite Paul's reassurance), this was the last thing I wanted to hear. brian seemed a bit surprised when I made a comment about this solar flare burning off all our atmosphere and annihilating the human race.

fortunately (or not, depending on your point of view) we're still here, and still seem to have adequate oxygen for at least a few days of regular breathing. after that, we'll see.

in tomorrow's post, I'll briefly review the Fight Club DVD, and probably go off on something totally uninteresting