Has everyone voted? Has everyone been as bummed by the choices they have been given on the ballot? Am I just unusually pessimistic and cynical or are elections really that bad these days?

<p>The two main parties are accusing each other of some really nasty tricks. It looks like there are going to be lawsuits deciding some of the closer elections.</p>

<p>Then, I have the bad feeling that no matter what party has control of federal or state government, the bureacracy is so messed up that it will make little difference for the citizens.</p>

<p>Can anyone turn my frown upside down and help me see a light at the end of the tunnel?</p> 

keith caputo left <a href=”http://www.lifeofagony.com/“>life of agony</a> a few years ago. they’re apparently getting back together with the original line-up for two shows in january. the first one that they started selling tickets for sold out in 20 minutes. they’re selling tickets to the second show starting on sunday at 1pm. must remember to get mine before they sell out.

Does anyone know why mail to heather@curiouser.org gets bounced back into my mailbox?

jp

AC/DC - back in black

when i was in junior high, AC/DC was the beginning and the end of music as far as i was concerned. at one point, i had every single one of their albums. my friend russ was similarly obsessed and we would hang out and listen to AC/DC together.

Black Sabbath - We sold our soul for rock n roll

when i was finally starting to branch out from AC/DC, Sabbath was just a natural progression.

Motörhead - 1916

Lemmy is god. this isn't motörhead's best album but it was the first that i'd heard.

Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction

my older sister and her friends were incredibly influential during my junior high and early high school years. for quite a while, i would use my little dual cassette deck to copy every tape that her friends lent her. i think someone lent her a video tape of an episode of Headbangers Ball with the video for Skin of my Teeth.

Faith No More - the Real Thing

when my sister got her drivers license, we used to ride around blasting this album.

Pantera - Vulgar display of power

i met my friend cj in art class. during one of our first conversations, he asked if i liked pantera. "pantera? who's that?" Vulgar remains one of the all-time heaviest albums ever. pure, distilled aggression.

Sepultura - Chaos AD

i think cj showed me this album and i was mostly attracted by the spikey, 'S' logo. the music turned out to be good too.

Morbid Angel - Covenant

cj kept going on and on about how great morbid angel was. when i first heard it, i didn't know what to think. they were the first band i'd ever heard who used totally distorted, growling vocals. while any metal band worth listening to has some kind of satanic overtones (or at least is accused of it by the right wing), morbid angel went all the way. they had songs about feeding christians to lions and sacrificing virgins and pentagrams all over their albums. how could i resist? Ministry - a mind is a terrible thing to taste

someone left this tape in my sister's car. i found it on the floor or in the glove box or something and started listening to it.

NIN - broken

i was discussing ministry with one of my sisters' friends and they said something to the effect of "i don't know... they sound too much like NIN for me..." by that time i was obsessively listening to ministry so i immediately went out and picked up a copy of broken.

Tool - Opiate

i'd bought Tool's album Intolerance after seeing the video for Sober. but it was Opiate that really grabbed me. i actually wore my way through the tape.

Godflesh - selfless

by this time i'd started playing guitar and was reading various guitar magazines all the time. one of them had a small article on godflesh basically saying that they were the musical equivalent of the apocalypse. so when i saw Selfless in a used bin, i decided to give it a try.

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses

during high school, i used to drink a lot of mountain dew. this would keep me awake late at night. i spent most of that time just lying in bed listening to the radio. i first heard the song 'Christian Woman' at about 3 am and didn't catch the name of the band. i spent the next week staying up all night hoping for them to play the song again so i could find out who it was by.

Carcass - Heartwork

the greatest blend of aggression and melody i've ever heard.

Fugazi - Repeater

Fugazi was the first concert i ever went to.

White Zombie - La Sexorcisto

for some reason it took me a while to get into this album.

Pink Floyd - The Wall

dark. creepy. complex. i have a theory that the first time anyone seriously listens to this album it changes them forever.

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

i have vivid memories of listening to demanufacture in cj's car riding around maine in january at night with no heater. the combination of ice cold temperatures, headlights piercing the darkness, and fear factory somehow seemed just right.

Life of Agony - River Runs Red

venice gave me this CD. at the time she'd decided that she didn't like keith's voice. years later i reintroduced her to LOA and she repented.

Wammo - Fat Headed Stranger

when my sister was a dj for the USM radio station, she rescued this disk from the throwaway bin on a hunch. "There is too much light in this bar" is sheer brilliance. i think i have yet to meet a single person who has even heard of wammo.

i'll have to stop there because i could go on for days.

gerard recently bought a bunch of catholic vestments on ebay, which he wore to work today as a halloween costume.

so i grabbed my devil mask (yes, i just happen to have a devil mask laying around in my apartment. doesn’t everyone?) and put on a tie (it just seems natural to me that the devil would wear a tie).

we got some good pictures of the two of us together (i’ll be sure to get them and post them later).

all in all, we’re both going straight to hell.

i must say that i’m impressed with <a href=”http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/“>phoenix</a>.

it’s a new lightweight browser built on top of the <a href=”http://www.mozilla.org/“>mozilla</a> platform but intended just as a simple web-browser. so no email client, javascript debugger, DOM inspector, or html editor.

the 0.4 release includes every mozilla feature that i’ve become reliant on like popup blocking, good cookie handling, tabbed browsing and type ahead find. and it’s so fast. on my machine it feels even faster than <a href=”http://galeon.sourceforge.net/“>galeon</a>, which is surprising since phoenix uses XUL for its interface rather than native GTK like galeon. XUL is basically just dhtml on steroids and was intended to be easy and flexible, but hasn’t previously been thought of as terribly efficient. that may all have to change.

phoenix development has reportedly slowed down after the 0.4 release. but that doesn’t seem like much of a problem when you consider that a very small team of netscape engineers went from <em>absolutely nothing</em> to IMO, the best web browser out there in just a couple weeks (the 0.1 release was september 23rd). that is unreal. there aren’t really any missing features. future development is apparently aimed at making it <em>even smaller and faster</em> and polishing the code up.

this really speaks volumes about the potential of mozilla and XUL as a cross-platform application development platform that’s just starting to be realized since mozilla stabilized after 1.0. i’ve been reading <a href=”http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mozilla/index.html”>Creating Applications with Mozilla</a> recently and i’m becoming more and more convinced that mozilla is nothing less than revolutionary. the skillset needed to develop reasonably sophisticated applications in mozilla isn’t much beyond what any skilled web designer who’s dabbled in javascript already has. mozilla isn’t competing with internet explorer anymore, it’s competing with Visual Basic as a rapid, easy development platform and it has the significant edge of being naturally cross-platform.

things are starting to get really interesting.

spent the weekend in virginia with lani, my sister, cj, and his roommates.

on friday night we drank. saturday i pretty much spent throwing up. after i’d spent enough time lying on the couch with my head under a blanket trying to stay perfectly still so my stomach would settle down, we watched Stephen King’s Rose Red, which was long but entertaining and then some episodes of the Young Ones.

sunday, lani and i managed to get corey to drive into DC and we showed her the &uuml;ber-vending machine. i’m sure that will be remembered as the highlight of her vacation. then we (me and corey) drove back up to new york.

I miss hanging out here. But I don’t know what got me off the rhythm. Perhaps I could change it. Hmmm… I think this place is one where I feel I have to a) be smart and b) be witty. LJ has neither requirements.

<p>Sigh.</p>

<p>Happy halloween.</p> 

jP

[before you go poking around in the archives at hotendotey, be prepared to be offended. it’s funny stuff but not for those with weak stomachs. don’t say i didn’t warn you.]

i’ve mentioned before that the name ‘thraxil’ came out of some old sci-fi book on my parents’ bookshelf that i haven’t been able to track down since.

today i had a breakthrough.

my dad mailed me a bunch of books of fantasy art (including HR Giger, Rick Griffin, Moebius, Mouse + Kelly, and others). in the stack of books was “The Garden of Unearthly Delights: The Paintings of Josh Kirby.” in it i recognized a painting as the <a href=”http://pc1.klmsz.sulinet.hu/gabo/daw/DAW7/DW128_X.JPG”>cover of the book</a> from whence ‘thraxil’ came.

the book is called “<a href=”http://www.flyingturkeys.com/gsg/gsgbarrettneal.html”>Stress Pattern</a>” by <a href=”http://www.nealbarrett.com/news.asp”>Neal Barrett, Jr.</a> it was written in 1974 and seems to be well out of print now. i’ve found a few spots online that have used copies so i’ll probably pick one up just to have around. if anyone else is interested in the origins of the name, i recommend you do the same. i remember it being a fairly good book.