If you're expecting to hear from me right here, right now--I hate to disappoint you...

I think I'm slowly giving up on LJ. Perhaps it's due to my current love of Twitter. Did you know porn stars use Twitter? SPOILER: They lead boring lives outside of all the on-camera sex. Not worth reading unless you have a fetish for regular ol' people with slightly elevated sex drives and a willingness to do it on film for copious amounts of money.

However, if you enjoy David Gregory (Meet the Press' new host), his Twitter is fuckin' sweet. Between it and the NY Times, I have plenty of reading to do when writer's block hits.

But the main reason I'm diggin' Twitter is because it's one non-sequiter after another. It reads like I speak.

So if you have a desire to hear from me more often, then hit up: https://twitter.com/elecvp

I've done so well to try to minimize my world wide web presence, purging and deleting so many accounts and then Twitter comes along...

Good, but Best Picture worthy? To be fair, I'll have to see the rest of the Best Pic nominees but I'm going to say that, while a solid film with great casting and a beautiful landscape, the only reason I see that it's in its current position is because it's a feel-good movie in a world littered with feel-bad films.

Next weekend the plan is to see Frost/Nixon but who knows.

Due to the massive amounts of snow in Seattle, Jacelyn and I had a very low key Christmas. We each had only gotten around to getting each other a couple of gifts, so our X-mas has been delayed until further notice.

Why? Because we spent too much money in Vegas during our wedding weekend. In other words, we finally tied the knot.

Friday night was drinking. Saturday was recovering from drinking and enjoying a small but fabulous dinner at Hyakumi in Caesar's Palace, and Sunday was wedding and reception activities followed by a few of us going out for a drink.

It was a great time but Jacelyn and I were ready to get home by Monday afternoon. Our flight back yesterday was smooth and quick and it's nice to back to a defrosted Seattle.

Now we're dealing with inept companies. Whenever we have the USPS hold our mail, they never seem to deliver it on the date specified to deliver it. When I called today to have the problem fixed, the person on the other line was a jackass and told me someone would call the next business day, which is Friday which means we won't get our held mail until Saturday at the earliest.

The shuttle service that brought us back home from Sea-Tac overcharged us and now no one wants to field my calls or e-mails of complaint.

And now my wife (had to throw that in there) is on the phone struggling with Dell because of the 4 power cords that have failed for our two laptops in the span of 4 months. This is not the first time we've had this problem (clearly, we have had 4 power cords which mean the first two failed and we had replaced).

So, welcome to the marriage!

Playing along:

Hum - You'd Prefer An Astronaut
Alan Sparhawk - Solo Guitar
Radar Bros. - The Fallen Leaf Pages
Neil Young - Comes a Time
Jim O'Rourke - Insignificance
Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger
Wilco - Summerteeth
Miles Davis - A Tribute to Jack Johnson
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food</i>
Screaming Trees - Dust

This probably wouldn't be a permanent Top 10 but these are 10 albums I did and do listen to more than anything else.

And it isn't about Obama.

I'm angry at voters in California, Arizona, and Arkansas voting against homosexuals. In the case of the western states, Cali banned gay marriage and 'Zona voting for defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman. In the case of Arkansas, citizens voted for the ban of same sex couple being able to adopt.

First Arkansas--you just denied millions of foster and orphaned children the joys of a loving family.

Now to Cali and Zona--yeah, you're swell denying CIVIL RIGHTS to a group of people just because they creep you out. They merely want the boring lives of married couples.

I suppose I get a laugh (and a headache) out of religious folk talking about how horrible homosexuals getting married would be; how it would ruin the sanctity of marriage. The same religious folk who marry and divorce willy nilly; who have mistresses; who marry more than one woman;who have secret homosexual trysts at rest areas and in airport bathrooms.

It's odd that I feel this way when I've only known a handful of gay people (there's a joke to be made there) in passing but I find it strange that no one is outraged that civil rights are being violated. The same people using the bible to ward off homosexual equality are bread from the same people who used the bible to promote segregation and slavery.

When millions were chanting with cult-like enthusiasm for change, I guess that means 'Anyone but Bush' but it doesn't mean 'We're sorry for oppressing a group of citizens because we are scared of their sexuality'.

That's the last I'm saying about it. It's not worth arguing about because if you don't agree with me, then we clearly see this from two different perspectives and no amount of discussion is going to persuade you or me.

Last night CNN--short of actually saying it--was already projecting Barack Obama the winner of the 2008 election. All they needed was the serious journalistic music and Wolf Blitzer interrupting their Obama love to give us said projection.

The lady and I headed out to catch Burn After Reading Saturday afternoon.

She was a little put off by it as it the film unfolds like a Coen-ed out episode of Seinfeld, with the antics of George, Elaine, Cosmo, and Jerry replaced with the overacting of John Malkovich, the rubber band face of Brad Pitt, the lechery of George Clooney, and coldness of Tilda Swinson, and the tomfoolery of Francis McDormand.

I would recommend the flick, but Coen fans should realize they're seeing an updated version of Fargo or The Big Lebowski. I'm sure fans are ecstatic to read that but I'm sure a lot of folks went into the film expecting a softer touch along the lines of Intolerable Cruelty or O' Brother Where Art Thou. Burn After Reading is dark, seedy, and uncomfortably funny. I was laughing at the most inopportune times (but there's nothing new about that).

It's an odd cast but it works well. The CIA office scenes in the middle and end of the film are the funniest, so my hats off to JK Simmons and David Rasche. My only complaint is we get scant backstory on Richard Jenkins' character. They tease us with it but its scope and impact on the storyline is nigh but Burn After Reading was clearly the Coen Brothers just getting back to making uncomfortable, yet cacophonous comedy after the accolades and praise of No Country for Old Men.

As for Choke, I see it next Monday afternoon at a press screening! I'm stoked.

I'm also stoked for Milk, which we saw the preview for before Burn After Reading. It's directed by Gus Van Zant and stars Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. If you're unfamiliar with Harvey Milk, do some research.

>> My new laptop has arrived. Sadly for the [soon-to-be] Mrs., hers hasn't shipped yet. We're sure it has something to do with her having a bluetooth card included. Her and her desire to turn a laptop, a Wii-mote, and a white board into a smart board.

>> I'm gearing up for another year of Bumbershoot. For those not educated, Bumbershoot is the yearly festival that takes over Seattle Center during the three-day Labor Day weekend. I've reviewed it the past two years, so this will be my third year. Sadly, they've cut back on handing press extra tickets, so the year that friends can actually come and keep me company, they only give me one ticket per day. It's probably for the best considering I'll be doing press-only things that exclude non-press.

Bands I'm looking forward to seeing: Asylum Street Spankers (may I recommend the track "Beer" for those who want to hear the Spankers--they're similar to BR5-49), The Walkmen (to hear the new tracks live), Man Man, The Black Keys, Ravens & Chimes, The Whigs (to hear if they're decent live--their debut album is a guilty indie rock pleasure of mine), Neko Case, Lucinda Williams, Lee Perry, Stone Temple Pilots (I saw 'em in 1996--it's hard to believe it's been 12 years and while that seems so long ago, I was a just a Junior in HS), Nada Surf, Blitzen Trapper, M. Ward, Monotonix, and Dan Deacon.

No, I won't be seeing Beck or Death Cab for Cutie. I've lost my loving feeling for Beck's music--he just isn't that good these days. I don't like DCFC--not my kind of music. I like my sad bastard/sappy bastard music to sound, y'know, bastardy? I'm sure I won't end up seeing every band I want and I'm sure I'll end up discovering a few artists/bands just by happenstance. I suppose that's what multi-staged festivals are all about.

>> College football season!!! I really don't have a team to route for beyond Ball St. and Cincy (where I went to college). One's good and the other hasn't been decent in a decade. A cute story: my freshman year of college I attended U of Cincy. The football team lost their first 7 games (in the midst of a near 20 game losing streak) under my watch (the football field was underneath my dorm, so I could watch the games from my dorm room window when the game was sold out and/or I didn't feel like paying). They finished the season 2-9 but it was a horrible season.

The next year I was a transfer at Ball St. and needless to say, Ball St. was in the midst of a 20+ game losing streak. They didn't win any games that year--it wasn't until the following year that they won a game. I endured so many CFB loses that I think it soured me a bit on CFB. I still love football, but I can't invest too much into my college teams for fear of long, long losing streaks.

>> I'm stoked to see Burn After Reading. Should be solid. The same goes for Choke. Other than Fight Club and Survivor, it's the only other Chuck Palahniuk book I enjoyed when I read it. I think the film version of Choke should be stellar in no small part due to Sam Rockwell. He's an underrated actor. Watch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and tell me you don't dig the man. I'm still hoping for the day when I can shit out the perfect screen play for Rockwell and my other acting man crush, Ron Livingston. People would watch a great indie film starring them, wouldn't they?

>> I hope you enjoyed these ramblings. It'll probably be the last I do for awhile. It's just my nature.

This is a eulogy to my desktop PC, which died earlier today.

It's terrible timing with us about to pay for our reception site, pay the last half of our wedding package, and the fact that we are buying a couch (all we have is a love seat and two chairs--it's about time we bought a couch for additional seating). It's good timing in the fact that we are on the verge of buying Jacelyn a new laptop (which is where I'm writing this) because her current laptop is sloooooooooooowwwwwww. It's been slow for a long time--it's about as old as my desktop (I bought my desktop in late '02 and she bought her laptop in late '03, so both are old and outdated though we did update my PC a few years ago with more RAM and a better video card).

So we bit the bullet today and ordered two new laptops which should arrive next week. It's weird to think that two people need two computers, but we do. She wants to be able to take hers to her classroom to better educate her classes and I need one for all my journalistic endeavors.