2009 that is. The end of the Bush era. And while most of us want the asshole impeached, if not dragged before the Hague for his war crimes, just getting him out of Washington will be a wonder to behold. Like Los Angeles, with the smog gone after a rain storm.

At any rate, just getting drunk is not enough to celebrate the end of such a blight upon our nation. The celebration needs to be epic in scale. Fortunately, we already have a guide!

Just make sure to start your planning now. You don’t want to end up stuck in the jungle, with a bunch of Ewoks for company now do you?!

Wow, it’s been almost a year since I posted here. Where did the time go?!

Quick update for what I’ve been up to over the past year, for the hopelessly Dagoril-obsessed hehe…

Ditched the hated AT&T as an internet provider. Have new and improved provider now. Note to AT&T…fuck off and die. Seriously. Your unconstitutional spying on Americans is revolting. Your pandering to Republicans is disgusting. Your continued calls OVER THE PAST YEAR to get me to come back will never bear any fruit. STOP CALLING ME! It’s not you, it’s me…no, in fact, it really was you. Hopefully the next Dem president will bust up your monopoly, and send your leadership to Guantanamo, for some quality time.

It’s been about a year since the end of my crappy temporary job, mentioned in the previous post briefly. The song Better, by Regina Spektor, was stuck in my head back then, and was probably something of a torchsong at the time hehe. It was probably inevitable that I would get into her music, what with her classical piano background, and Russian influences. I’ve got loads of her stuff on my Ipod.

Yes I broke down and got the Ipod. I’ve resisted its siren song for several years, but the untimely demise of my Muvo led me to consider alternatives. And I really like it, in spite of the somewhat retarded method of getting songs into it via iTunes. I certainly don’t miss the bulk purchasing of batteries. And I’ve discovered just how many podcasts there are available on there for free download to the Ipod. You could also listen to these at your computer if you wanted, without having the Ipod. It’s like rightwing talk radio, but with a pause button, and without the obnoxious rightwing!

Crazed linguist that I am, I spent much of last year studying languages. Hopefully it will come in handy when I get that dreamjob offer that will whisk me off to Europe! Either that or I would need to be a mail order bride, seeing how complicated EU immigration appears to be.

I’ve been working as a tax accountant for not quite a year now, and since it is now tax season in the US, we are crazed again. Not preparing tax returns for individuals, but interacting with the various states to get the employer withholding accurately reported for 4th quarter 2007 and for the entire year. Yes, it really is as glamorous and exciting as it sounds!

I also caught the Lost addiction. As noted previously in other posts, I rarely watch network tv, so I had missed the first two seasons of Lost entirely. I only started watching with season 3. And it is incredibly good, I went back and got all of it on dvd. Seriously, if you haven’t watched the show, go to ABC’s website and watch the 8 1/2 minute clip of what’s been going on in the show. You will have to select in manually in the video player widget there.

Click me for Lost!

The new season of Lost begins January 31 in the US. I don’t think I’ve ever anticipated anything on tv so much. There’s also an online game component that fans can play through to help ease the hunger for the show. It starts at the Oceanic Air webpage.

Other than that, the only interesting thing I was doing last year was experimenting in the kitchen. And I must say that I had some success! We do a lot of potlucks at work, and I’ve been doing cooking for them to mostly rave reviews. The pineapple poi was a dud though lol. It did make a great addition to a cake though. I’ll try to post some recipes, but will have to remember to snap some pictures before I eat everything hehe.

I hope everyone is doing well, and hope to actually make another blog post before 2009!

Well, where to begin? I haven’t posted for a while! My apologies to anyone who was semi-following the blog. Are any of you still around? Or is it only the spambots that Akismet keeps blocking? God bless you, Akismet!

Not much of interest has been going on with me during my absence. I weathered the holidays, and even managed to not gain any weight. Got a nasty bout of the flu. And I had an especially crappy temp job, which is fortunately over now. I was on my feet all day there, and it was waaaay more physically demanding than I have been in shape for, for say, oh I dunno, 20 years?? The good news, is I’m in better shape than I’ve been since college hehe. But I was too tired to blog or do much of anything else, for that matter. Sure slept well though!

Other than that, the only thing of interest I’ve been doing has been refreshing my language skills, primarily German, as the title of this post hints at, though a few others too. I took German, French and Spanish in high school, as mentioned in other posts, and studied Russian in college, and have been working rehabilitating my language skills in those too. It’s all coming back to me fairly rapidly. And in my typical Leonine fashion, I’m of course not satisfied with that, and have started trying to learn half a dozen other new languages as well. Now I’m going to have to buckle down and come visit Europe, to put some of these languages to some use! I had a weird dream about Bavaria the other night, perhaps I should start there and work my way west

An Amusing Bavaria picture I found on my hard drive.

Finally there’s the Top Chef finale coming on in a few hours, and while I’ll watch it, I must confess the season has been utterly disappointing. All drama, and not enough food. The show has inspired me to do more cooking lately myself though, instead of eating non-stop frozen microwave dinners I’ll see if I can get some pictures up of some of my frightening bachelor haute cuisine hehe. Season premiere of the new series tonight also, Top Design. We’ll see if it’s any good, the previews of the girl not wanting to design a whole room around a cat certainly gave me a chuckle.

Much of the West Coast of North America has been hit with ugly weather this week…in Los Angeles where I am it’s finally getting up into the 70s (Fahrenheit) again during the days, but the nights are still quite chilly, in the 40s. I should probably count myself lucky, because at least we aren’t poor Canada, which got snowstorms hehe. At any rate, most of us would probably rather be on some sunny Caribbean island right about now, so here you go! (If video doesn’t load in a timely manner, try viewing the individual article on it’s own page by clicking on the title, or try hitting F5…YouTube has been ridiculously slow lately).

You like? I like!

Still cold and shivery? OK! Here’s another one

We love L.A.! We just love it more when it’s warm!

If that didn’t warm you up, you’re gonna have to settle for the flannel blanket and a cup of hot cocoa!

I hope you all didn’t eat too much over the holiday! I know I did. Hence this music post, to help us all burn some calories hehe! Stand up and shake your groove thang while you watch the videos, your former waistline will thank you.

I like a wide variety of music, and it often happens that I’m playing something, at work or on my mp3 player, that a friend hasn’t heard before. Explaining what kind of music it is is usually a pretty straightforward thing, unless it’s industrial or techno. For people who aren’t into electronic music, it all sounds the same apparently, whereas the 2 genres sound dramatically different to me. Some people can’t even tell the difference between heavy metal and industrial…well there’s no hope for you if you’re in that group, just go shoot yourself now (hint…heavy METAL is METAL because of the METAL guitar strings…electronic music, like industrial, is all done on computers…hence no METAL!!).

But in a nutshell…industrial is noisy, gritty, often political, often angry-sounding. While techno is more lyrical, often more danceable, less serious, more fun maybe. If you can get past the noise and the screaming with the industrial music, the lyrics are often thought-provoking, though can get a little pretentious. With techno, the lyrics are usually easy to hear, but forgettable. But enough banter…here are some examples for illustration.

This is Industrial:

Leaether Strip

This is Techno:

Scooter

Industrial:

KMFDM

Techno:

Pet Shop Boys

I hope that cleared everything up! But if not, check out Ishkur’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek survey of electronic dance music. (you’re going to want a broadband connection for that site I think)