...And a Happy, um, Birthday, Mom!

And belated happy birthdays to Becca Goettsche and Liz Griegg, wherever the hell they are.

Merry Christmas

My tree! It's even better in person.

It Will Be My Bad

Sorry folks, but it's about to get a whole lot sparser here. Pre-finals plus Ceciliannukah plus finals plus christmas equals not a lot of posts. Happy December.

This is Why I Don't Listen to KISS 108 (Also, They Don't Play Nearly Enough Young Jeezy)

On November 18th, Representative Jean Schmidt (R-OH) called fellow Representative John Murtha (D-PA) a coward, in so many words, because he came forward and said we should leave Iraq (you may have heard about it). Because Congresswoman Schmidt is a demented loon, she either didn't realize or didn't care that Representative Murtha is a heavily-decorated Vietnam veteran who is held in immensely high esteem by pretty much everyone. Anyway, she withdrew her comments amid a hail of shaming articles and op-eds, and despite Presidential support--which wasn't really a shock to anyone, since character assassination is the administration's #1 tactic and they're pretty sure to endorse it wherever they find it.

The Democrats got their act together and decided to actually try and grab some political capital out of the whole episode, and paid to run some billboards in Rep. Schmidt's home district (Cincinnatti). All was going well, the DNC raised the money for them, and then yesterday, Lamar Advertising (which is the largest owner of billboards in the country) refused to run the ads. It turns out this isn't the only time Lamar has turned down contracted advertisements. My old hometown paper The Times Leader has an article about Lamar refusing to run billboards against Pennsylvania state politicians that they had donated money to. That's not just censorship, or defaulting on contracts, it's downright questionable. Who wants to make a bet that Lamar's Reilly brothers (CEO Kevin and COO Sean) gave money to Schmidt? Onward to the FEC's PoliticalMoneyLine!

It's Never Too Early...

I think it's safe to say that everybody who went to the New England Beer Fest a few weeks back had a fantastic time. (The waffles alone...)* Well, buckle on your beer helmets, because the next fest is just around the corner.

Speaking of, if you haven't become a beer advocate yet, what's stopping you?




*Although my personal high point was definitely the hangover-banishing pizza on sunday afternoon. Hot damn!

Shameless Promotion

So, I decide to start blogging again, and immediately fail to keep to any sort of schedule of posts. I figure being a reliable blogger should come second to being an interesting blogger. Now, upholding that end of the deal is no easy thing, either. But I'm trying my best here, so chill out.

And in the spirit of biting off more than I can chew, I just got "hired" as a blogger over at
Metroblogging Boston. Congratulations are in order, I believe.

Since they discourage crossposting over there, and since all things boston are kind of their purview, I think I'll try to give most beantown-specific posts to them. Which means my little space of the interwebs here gets more of my internal ramblings, and I'll just link over there whenever I put up something good. Or at all.

P.S. "hired" is in quotes because I'm not being paid. And the application process wasn't exactly "rigorous."