This blog is now being hosted at:

http://fiercepanda.us and http://radiomatthew.com

LIVEJOURNAL USERS:  You will need to subscribe to a new RSS feed in order to continue receiving updates from FiercePanda.us and the new RadioMatthew.com.  Details soon.

Hey guys, Happy Easter!

This blog is moving to a brand-new server, courtesy of Dreamhost and generously provided by William Mruzek and Zac Cardwell.  From time to time, the site will be online and offline, and once the move is done, it’ll take a little time before the pages, theme and blog entries are back online.

You can access the WordPress.com version of this website at http://radiomatthew.wordpress.com

For my readers on LiveJournal:  The syndicated feed will expire once the move is completed.  I’ll set up a new RSS syndication feed by the end of next week so you can continue reading these entries on your friends page.

Thanks for everyone’s patience with this move!  Moving to Dreamhost will allow everyone, both writer and reader, a better experience here at FiercePanda.us!

Discovery Kingdom was amazing! To be up-close and personal with many perosnalities of the Alice Morning Crew (including Andrew) was a thrill for me, and to have some idle chit-chat with the gang a few times during the broadcast was equally enjoyable. Ninja Jim and I hadn’t slept well the night before, so we left the park after eating lunch—no rides for us!

Best of the Week #2: Anchoring Good Day
Written by Alan “The Slightly-Paid Intern” Sanchez
Alan’s been dreaming about reporting for Good Day Sacramento in a dream that slightly mirrors my own. Now, after being a GDS intern and doing anything and everything to get ahead in the business (such as shaving his head and sitting in every seat at a stadium), Alan’s getting the opportunity at hard news, serious reporting and adding his own personality to the show—by anchoring the show for two hours in two weeks. Congrats to Alan!

Best of the Week #1: Starbucks vs McDonald’s
Written by Eight-Foot Wookie
I had heard about this Consumer Reports-like study a few weeks ago: In national blind taste tests, McDonald’s-brewed coffee beat out Starbucks-brewed coffee for body, heat and taste. And it’s so much cheaper! I haven’t tried McDonald’s coffee at all, so I wouldn’t know, but I have tried Starbucks coffee. Has anyone tried them both, and can they offer their opinions on the two?

Only two “Best of” entries this week! More videos and stuff from Discovery Kingdom coming soon. Eventually, I’ll get around to making a page with the Discovery Kingdom stuff on it.

To avoid more confusion in the future, I’ll go ahead and point this out here: The “add comment” link is now below the title of the entries; the comment link is no longer at the end of the entry. So for this blog entry, look below the title “Early Mornings” for the words “No comments” or “x Comments”, click that, and leave your comment. Little confusing, I know, especially since my comments have always been linked at the end of the entry, but it comes with the blog design change…and unfortunately, it’s here to stay.

Jim and I woke up at 3:30AM this morning to be at Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo by 5:30 for free admission, courtesy of the Alice Morning Crew. Sadly, though, I’m too exhausted to write—it was an exciting day that’ll have to wait to be written about until tomorrow.

But for those of you who just can’t wait, check out Sarah Clarke, one-half of the morning show duo Sarah & No Name, with Discovery Kingdom’s resident elephant in the video above. More fun, plus my on-air chit-chat with the Alice Morning Crew and comic Dat Phan, in tomorrow’s blog entry.

According to Good Day Sacramento, who got their story from another source I can’t remember, Keith Richards admitted to a British tabloid that while snorting cocaine, he ground up his father’s ashes even smaller and snorted daddy too! His publicist denies this, but it didn’t stop the traffic team at GDS from expiermenting, which was followed by a breakdown on set. Check out this video I uploaded from yesterday’s GDS…

Yesterday was my day to reset my internal clock. I was tired of insomnia, so I toughed out yesterday as long as I could. Around 5PM, I finally crashed. Woke up around 2AM, thinking it was 4AM, and disappointed when I found out otherwise. Oh well, I’ll have to wake up early tomorrow anyway for the Discovery Kingdom broadcast with the Alice Morning Crew. It’s going to be a pain in the butt getting Ninja Jim up early tomorrow morning.

Today though, my temporary crown comes out to make way for a permanent, porcelain one. I’m going to be in SO MUCH PAIN after this morning. Ouch.  Makes me cringe thinking about it…

My days are night are flipped at the moment, so I’m awake during the night and asleep during the day. Living in the extreme San Francisco Bay Area, I’ve learned something these past few nights—nothing is open past 2AM.

Ninja Jim and I will be at Discovery Kingdom this Friday, hanging out with the Alice Morning Crew. If you’re in the Bay Area, come check out the new Six Flags Discovery Kingdom with the Alice Morning Crew! Admission is free for the first 1,000 people, then it’s only $9.73 per person until 9AM. Animals will be interacting with the audience, and Sarah & No Name of the Alice Morning Show will be joined by band Brickhead and comedian Dat Phan. Doors usually open at 6AM, I’m told. It’ll be really funny to see me out and about one day after major dental work, but I’ve been planning this for along time with Jim, so we’re going anyway!

Also, I’ve been invited by a neighbor of mine to take a tour of KTVU Television Studios in Oakland sometime in the next few weeks. I don’t know which day I’ll be going, but it’ll be fun nonetheless. I’ll be checking out the control rooms of KTVU, the area’s Fox affiliate, and I’ll be sitting in on a newscast as well. KTVU Fox 2 is host to the Bay Area’s highest-rated primetime news program, and is the same station that fictional character Daniel Hillard (portrayed by Robin Williams) worked for after divorcing his wife in the 1990s movie Mrs Doubtfire. KTVU is also a partner station of KFOX 14, a channel I used to watch when I lived in El Paso, Texas. Here’s an example of a KTVU newscast that I’ll be sitting in on—in this clip, they report that pop-up ads can harm your computer:

Right now, it’s close to five in the morning, and I’m waiting for Starbucks to open so I can go get some Passion Iced Tea.  That stuff’s good, even if it does taste a little bland.

Starting off this post is FREE MUSIC! That’s right, 100% free music. I’ve been jamming out to this new contemporary artist, Paolo Nutini (you may have heard his song “New Shoes” play on your local hit FM radio station). He’s this awesome artist from the UK whose music is selling fast on both iTunes and at Hear Music stands at Starbucks. While most people have heard his upbeat song about his new shoes and new life attitude, I’ve been digging what could very well be his new single (ironically, I heard it on the Hear Music channel on XM Radio), called Last Request.

If you want to download Last Request as part of my artist-album promotion here on the blog, head on over to the Download Center. It’ll be there for the next week or two, so snag it while you can and tell me what you think of it! If you don’t feel like downloading it, the song plays in-rotation on Stream 24 as well.

Best of the Week #3: The Solar Anglometer
Written by Ninja Jim
Yes, Ninja Jim blogs! It’s something I haven’t really bothered to pitch, but it’s true. Jim’s been talking about this little invention of his for the past few weeks—most of you will only get to see the Photoshop graphic he made for the “solar anglometer”, but I’ve seen the actual blueprints (or greyprints, since there’s nothing blue about them) of this thingy. I don’t understand what it’s for, how it works or anything like that—to me, it looks like a sundial—but he’s pretty excited about it. And I love seeing ingenuity at its best.

Best of the Week #2: Getting Wasted With Chicks
Written by Hooman
After a month’s dry spell, Hooman’s back and blogging again! Hooman is a radio personality in San Francisco, best known for his sidekick-like appearance on the Alice Morning Show at KLLC-FM. Hooman also blogs for 7×7 (pronounced “seven-by-seven”) magazine in San Francisco—unrelated to his radio appearance, I know. But with a blog that self-proclaims an exhibition of all things “extraordinary or just plain off the wall,” it’s a good contrast at 7×7 to the fashion that’s found wall-to-wall. And who doesn’t love Hooman?

Best of the Week #1:  Werekitties
Written by Emo Debra
Last night, Ninja Jim and I went to our youth group meeting in downtown Sacramento, and one of our friends Amberly brought along her new kitty.  The kitty was a tiny thing!  It was so cute seeing the kitty she’s named “Damnit!” sleeping in her sweatshirt pouch.  I had a dream about that cat last night, and woke up this morning to see a post by Debra about kitties that are like werewolves, but in a feline way.  Everywhere I’ve turned in the past twenty-four hours, I’ve seen cats!  Damn it!

Nobody has been reading my blog lately (and if they are, I can’t tell because nobody ever leaves comments), so I figure this is the perfect opportunity to be completely random. So here, in no apparent order, are some random things.

1.  I can’t stand that Blondie song The Tide Is High. The melody and lyrics feel like it should be sung alongside Hokey Pokey and other children’s music songs.

2.  I finally got around to upgrading my Macintosh to Mac OS 10.4.9. I don’t understand what’s so different about this upgrade, but the computer’s been pushing it for the past week or so.

3.  My station, Stream 24, is now ranked 20th among 100 other stations in its genre, and 3,020th out of over 10,000 stations overall.

4.  I found out one of my friends is a communist. Well, anyone who censors free-speech and bitches about what others has to say might as well be a communist…

Today is an uneventful day of burning data to DVDs in an effort to free up hard drive space. I’m hoping that this, in turn, will make the computer run faster (fat chance, I know). According to Spotlight, I have over 25GB of music files on a hard drive with a capacity of 75GB. Which means 50GB is being allocated to something else (movies and GarageBand files, no doubt, or the fact that I have four different web browsers installed on this machine).

Ninja Jim and I are heading to Downtown Sacramento tonight.

Well, my mini-vacation with Ninja Jim ended Sunday afternoon. It was nice to get away and forget your problems for two days, though the problems are right back on your doorstep when you come back.

About a week ago, I had agonizing dental work in which they drilled down one of my molars and replaced it with a temporary crown (the permanent crown is coming in about two weeks).  I have no doubt that this dental work brought on my fever two days later.  In addition to that, the crown brings me around-the-clock pain and has slightly chipped in two places.  It got so bad that while Jim and I were in Dublin, we had to venture to a drugstore and buy some Orajel (that stuff hurt like hell and didn’t really do well—if it hadn’t been for my exhaustion, I probably wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep in the hotel room).

Right now, I really want a job.  I wish I had signed up for more classes.  I really want to be productive, and I just feel incredibly bored.  I’m sure there’s things to do and people to see, I just don’t know what there is to do or where to look.  I’ll call Tyler in the morning and follow up on the Wine Menu project.   Jim wants me to visit him at the studio, so I might do that too.

Some friends of John have been e-mailing me since the intial post, and it’s now my understanding that the police don’t believe John’s death was a hate crime, nor do they believe he was murdered.  The intial post that broke the news of John’s death suggested that John was tied up and that homicide was likely, but it now looks like that might not be the case.

Two of John’s friends, both of which I’m communicating with right now, were interviewed by the police and it looks like John’s death may have come from other circumstances.

Nevertheless, I don’t want to undermine the sadness and grief that a lot of us are feeling.  Regardless of how he died, we’ve lost an intellectual who could have very one day changed the world, and with the thought of him in mind, a handful of us continue carrying the torch of change that he once carried.

Yesterday, I found out some news that’s left me emotionally numb. John Patrick Day, a pioneer and activist against hate crimes, was murdered a few days ago in what appears to be a hate crime of its own.

John actively pursued an end to anti-gay hate crimes through a website he and a handful of others created called Stop Hate 2000, a resource website that stemmed from the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which John was also actively involved in. John was a frequent personality in the Matthew Shepard Yahoo Group, called the Matthew’s Place forums, which is where I first met him.

When my video, Project Soundwave, was first released last year to YouTube, John and colleague Gary Simpson were quick to snatch it up and give it exposure on Stop Hate 2000, providing the first international exposure to a small video I’d created. John and Gary saw potential in this small video as a push toward their agenda of ending hate in the hearts of every person who walks this earth. Now, a year later, the video has been picked up by GLSEN and distributed on an even higher level to anyone who seeks information for this year’s Day of Silence march. The video’s statistics have shot through the roof, ticking in over one thousand views per week since GLSEN introduce Project Soundwave on their website—but the honor for the first exposure to the video lies with the two people who believed in it first, John and Gary.

It wasn’t just Project Soundwave that John took an interest in. Over the past two years, I’ve been able to trust everyone, including John, at the Matthew’s Place Forums to lend an ear and offer advice anytime I’d have a trivial event or unexplainable circumstance arise in my life. John took an interest in whatever I had to say, no matter what it was, and took time out of his day to e-mail me anytime he thought he could offer me some advice, words of wisdom, or comforting thoughts. He occasionally left a comment or two here on this blog—the last of which was a comment in regards to an anti-gay hate post of my own. And just as I was typing this paragraph, I received an e-mail from someone at the Matthew’s Place Forum—a personal note to tell me that John had e-mailed them several times out of concern for me when I was going through rough times in my life. If all of those things can’t expose to you the good heart and soul this human being had, I don’t know what will.

I still don’t know what I’m supposed to say right now. It’s shocking to hear of John Patrick’s death, and it’s even more shocking to hear that he died at the very hands of what he was battling against. I will never begin to understand why hundreds of years ago, people were persecuted because of what they believed. I will never understand why a few decades ago, people were judged because of the color of their skin or the gender they were born with. And today, I sit here, not being able to understand why people are tortured and killed because of who they love. But circumstances like John Patrick’s death are more than a reminder to us all as to why we must fight against hate and intolerance—this is a call to action.

To say that we will miss you, John, is not enough.

Jim and I are at the Courtyard Marriott in San Ramon while visiting his mom and brother in adjacent Dublin.  I’m using their business Internet to blog, transfer photos and stream music from iTunes—not very business-like, I know.

Most hotels offer a free continental breakfast of sorts.  I asked the front desk clerk how much breakfast costs here, and it’s $11 per adult, so I get the feeling Jim and I will be eating breakfast elsewhere (for $11, we’ll eat somewhere else).

This hotel room is amazing, and the view is pretty nice as well.  The one thing that bothers me is the window—it tricks you into thinking you can open the window, until you realise that there’s actually two window panel:  the first being glass, and the second being plastic.  I guess they built the plastic panel over the glass one to keep people from jumping out the windows, or so Jim tells me.

Now it’s off to breakfast at some place called the Copper Skillet.

Time for another Best of the Week. Unfortunately, I’m a little sick so I haven’t been able to blog in a few days. On top of that, I’ll be out of town with almost no Internet connection, so I figured I’d take this opportunity to make the post before I head out.

Best of the Week #3: Five Things
Written by Just A Toy
Blogs are filled with random Internet memes—some tell us what kind of kisser we’ll be, or some are a little more deep and personal. My personal favorite are the kind of memes that you learn from in terms of being more educated on the blogger.

Best of the Week #2: They’re Wasting Our Time And Money
Written by Sam Shane
One of two lead news anchors for CBS 13 in Sacramento, Sam Shane goes beyond the job of a news reader to deliver his own intellect and opinion on his blog, hosted by the station. That’s what I like about CBS 13—they allow the personalities of their reporters and staff to shine through in every aspect of their jobs. It’s what sets them apart from other area stations.

Best of the Week #1:  The Presidential Scholar
Written by Laura Karoly
Over the past two years, I’ve heard quite a few stories on the news about colleges sending the wrong letters to the wrong students—like the story a few months ago of a California college who accidentally sent out acceptance letters to students who had actually been rejected entrance into college (I won’t say which college, though).  Here’s another mix-up case from a friend of mine on LiveJournal.

And that’s it!  I’m off to Dublin this weekend with Ninja Jim, who is working hard on his blog (he’s excited because he bought a tripod today, which means better pictures will be coming out of his digital camera).  And that means, photos of our trip will be coming soon.

A conversation Ninja Jim and I had this morning while waking up:

Jim: “I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about what we want our future careers to be. He said he wanted to become a communist dictator. I said I wanted to become an artist whose artwork made people go insane.”

Me: “Well, the important thing is, you both have goals.”

After I left Jim’s apartment today, I got home and collapsed on my bed. I could feel myself overheating, and I took a little nap. When I woke up, it was 10PM and I felt like I had a fever. I asked my grandma to feel my forehead, and she said I was burning up. A little Robitussin with codeine and aspirin took care of that. Now it’s 1AM and the worst thing I have is a stuffy nose and a headache. My fever seems to have broken.

My webcam was made available yesterday to Good Day Sacramento for about four hours yesterday during their morning news program.

The cat made a cameo appearance toward the end.

Two posts ago, I was bitching and moaning about how I wasn’t going to get more than three hours of sleep. Well, it was worse—I didn’t get any sleep. Some weirdo rang the downstairs doorbell at five in the morning, and that kept me going until six. I left to pick Ninja Jim up and we went to Starbucks for a morning boost at six-thirty. By seven-thirty, with half-a-dozen donuts in hand, Jim and I picked up our friend Amberly and headed to the Red Lion Inn in Sacramento. What was supposed to be a five-hour event was finished in two hours, which was good news to me—I was exhausted and really wanted to go home.

Our friend Steven found us just after the event ended, and the four of us trekked to nearby Arden Fair Mall. Two of my favorite attractions are at Arden Fair Mall: One being the KCRA-3 Experience (a huge in-mall studio where the news is broadcast daily at noon—a first for any television station in the country), and the other being Sacramento’s Apple Store. With it being the weekend, the KCRA-3 Experience wasn’t going to do much for me, so I wandered off to the Apple Store with Jim while Amberly and Steven took a rest on some benches nearby.

I found a device I’d wanted since it came out about a year ago: An FM tuner remote for my iPod video. These things are like fifty bucks through Apple retail—they’re so much cheaper at Wal-Mart. But I bought one anyway, which took forever since the guy standing in front of me was buying a brand-new iMac computer and it took forever to ring him up.

I could also tell it took forever because after what seemed like fifteen minutes of waiting, Amberly and Steven wandered in to the Apple Store and found an iMac loaded with a program called Photo Booth. They messed around with the different effects and made some pretty funny (and sometimes, unrefined) pictures—I thought at times we might get kicked out. After playing with the program for a bit, I showed them the trailer to a film Jim and I watched the other day from iTunes called Sorry, Haters. By the time all of that was done, it was one in the afternoon, and I decided it was time for me and Jim to head home.

After dropping off Jim at his apartment, I struggled with the traffic to get home. I collapsed on my bed around two, and fell asleep until midnight.

Obviously, the Plug-It Thursday thing didn’t work out. But I have a new idea, and I think this one will take off more than the Plug-It Thursday thing did. Every single day, I go through my blogroll and read certain blogs that I find are interesting. I do the same with MySpace subscriptions, LiveJournal entries and blogs I find on Digg and Technorati. Sometimes, a blogger writes something that I wish I could reciprocate or redirect here on my blog. Alas, we now have “Best of the Week”, a new thing I’ll be doing every Saturday in which I take three (and eventually move on to five) blog entries that stood out in the past seven days and link them in a weekly entry. And please don’t be offended or hurt if you don’t make it into this week’s entry or the week after, or the week after, because eventually I will get to you. Especially if you’re someone like Debra, Heather, Just A Toy or any of my LiveJournal friends—you know, the people I read on a daily basis.

Because of the entry length, I’ll probably be using that feature that adds a “more” link, so don’t start freaking out if you only see one entry instead of three—they are there, but they’re hiding under the “more” link. Let’s get started.

Best of the Week #3: Bright Blue
Written by Emo Debra
I really don’t remember how I came about giving Debra the name “Emo Debra” when referring to her on my blogroll. I think one of her headers had something to do with cats and embracing her inner-emo self. Anyway, this entry (even if you’re me and have absolutely no idea what’s going on) is one that people can get a small inside chuckle from. Read the phone conversation she has, and picture this happening in your mind. Doesn’t it feel like a scene from a 1990s sitcom?

Best of the Week #2: No-Subject E-mails
Written by Dave Barry, Miami Herald blogger
I have to admit, I’m guilty of deleting (or making a rule to delete) e-mails that come into my inbox that have no subject line. I figure, it’s not that hard for someone who sends me an e-mail to at least include “Hello” or “Hey” as a subject so I can tell it didn’t come from some Cash America Loan junkie. But you know what really grinds my gears? When people decide to ONLY type in the subject line. Have you ever gotten one of those e-mails with a subject line that says something like, “Hey, just thought I’d ask you, what’s for dinner?” and then there’s NOTHING in the body of the message? It’s like, that’s it! God, that irritates me…I don’t respond to people who do that (now watch how much e-mail I get like that…).

Best of the Week #1: Pepper Jack
Written by Heather from Alice
It has been HOT here in Northern California, and there’s a new phrase coined among us Californians: “Imagine what it’ll be like in the summer…” Every time I bring the heat up, this phrase is dropped—either by me, or by someone else. One paragraph of this post stands out the most—the paragraph (which is really about two or three sentences) about wearing sunglasses, a hat and sunscreen, since I can totally see Heather doing that. And if anything, the picture of Fosse (her cat) at the end of the entry makes even clicking on the link above all the more worthwhile.

In about three hours, I have to be awake so I can get ready for a trip to Sacramento. Ninja Jim and I will be participating in a community service event with the American Cancer Society.

The ACS does this annual community event called Daffodil Days. The idea is to give everyone suffering from cancer in the Sacramento area a daffodil as a sign of rebirth and renewal (it’s been said that daffodils are one of the first flowers to bloom in spring). One of our facilitators at the community center Ninja Jim and I go to works for the ACS, and since I have nothing better to do with my Saturday, I might as well go.

But…I’ll be getting three hours of sleep, and I won’t be coming home until two-ish in the afternoon. So I’m hoping and praying that time flies.

P.S.:  With all the excitement over the new online radio station FiercePanda.us launched almost two weeks ago (and we’re movin’ up in the ranking still!), I forgot to mention that within the next two weeks, a new Podcast will be released.  But first, I’m going to schedule it to play on Stream 24 during the weekend.  If people tune in, it’ll probably become a regular thing, but that remains to be seen.

I’ve had this one particular watch for almost five years now, which is longer than I think I’ve owned any watch before.  This thing practically got me through high school, and they don’t even sell it at department or electronic stores anymore.  By late 2005, the resin (some fancy word for “plastic”) wristband started to tear at the hole I used most often for my wrist, and shortly after that the battery finally went out.  Instead of just shelling out $20 to buy a new Casio watch with features I’ll probably never use, I decided to buy a battery and new resin wristband—all of which cost me about $10 (I found a website selling the watch for under $30, which just goes to show how long it’s been since this watch has been sold in retail—it cost me $55).  I just wouldn’t have felt comfortable with another watch—this one was practical when I needed it to be and every feature on it I actually used daily.  So here begins the second life of the best watch I’ve ever worn.

My grandma wants to have Comcast cable throughout the house again.  The main reason why I suggested we have it turned off two years ago was because we were only watching three channels after having the service for two months—and all three were local channels we could receive fairly well with a regular antenna.  But now we’ve got two brand-new HDTV-ready television sets, and she’s just itching to make those things work.  Personally, if we’re going to have the cable turned back on, I’d rather we wait until Comcast comes out with the new receivers that have TiVo in them—I’ve been wanting a TiVo for the longest time (ever since I saw my great-grandma in Sacramento use it with her DirecTV dish), but I don’t want to pay the monthly fee associated with it unless I’m getting another service—like cable—as well.

So much to talk about and I have absolutely no idea where to begin.  I think that’s why there’s a numbered list option offered on WordPress, for situations just like this.

1. In half an hour, I have a dental appointment to go to that I’m not exactly looking forward to.  But my whole mouth aches and my throat feels like it’s on fire, so maybe this’ll be good for me.
2. I’m tired of people calling me a liar on very trivial things or events.  At this point in life, I have pretty much nothing to lie about.  If you don’t think I’m sick, come visit me.  If you want your hard drive back, come get it or visit me when I’m there.  And for the love of God, stop believing everything you read on the Internet.
3. I’ve determined that if I ever gained artistic abilities, I’m going to create a comic strip called “Christianity & Food”.  The comic will revolve around a pig farmer.  Take that, society.

My friend Heather qualified for a trip to see John Mayer in Australia from one of our favorite radio stations, Alice in San Francisco.  Everyone cross your fingers for her!  There’s a rumor if she wins, she’ll take me to the other show she’ll win tickets to also—the concert this summer in Fresno.  Can you imagine being front row and having John Mayer spit on you while he’s belting out the notes to “Your Body Is A Wonderland”?  Oh, to feel John’s DNA on my sleeve…

So much to talk about and I have absolutely no idea where to begin.  I think that’s why there’s a numbered list option offered on WordPress, for situations just like this.

1. In half an hour, I have a dental appointment to go to that I’m not exactly looking forward to.  But my whole mouth aches and my throat feels like it’s on fire, so maybe this’ll be good for me.
2. I’m tired of people calling me a liar on very trivial things or events.  At this point in life, I have pretty much nothing to lie about.  If you don’t think I’m sick, come visit me.  If you want your hard drive back, come get it or visit me when I’m there.  And for the love of God, stop believing everything you read on the Internet.
3. I’ve determined that if I ever gained artistic abilities, I’m going to create a comic strip called “Christianity & Food”.  The comic will revolve around a pig farmer.  Take that, society.

My friend Heather qualified for a trip to see John Mayer in Australia from one of our favorite radio stations, Alice in San Francisco.  Everyone cross your fingers for her!  There’s a rumor if she wins, she’ll take me to the other show she’ll win tickets to also—the concert this summer in Fresno.  Can you imagine being front row and having John Mayer spit on you while he’s belting out the notes to “Your Body Is A Wonderland”?  Oh, to feel John’s DNA on my sleeve…

The blog’s theme is a little awkward at the moment for anyone viewing through Firefox 2.  Something went wrong at WordPress.com, which is where FiercePanda.us is hosted, and the great guys at WordPress.com are attempting to fix the problem.  The issue arises with most themes, including mine, not loading correrctly even when the page is refreshed, and as I’m typing this out, it’s also affecting people who compose entries through WordPress.com.  So sit tight and hopefully it’ll be fixed soon.

In unrelated news, the water was turned off at my house today.  Why is it that the housing association picks the absolute worst days to turn the water off?  In a few hours, I have to be in Sacramento with Jim and, of course, I feel grimey because I haven’t been able to take a shower!

It’s been two days since Stream 24 launched and the station is already making a name for itself.  Just this morning, I received an e-mail from Shawn Fahy, a representative for Jonathan Cain (the lead singer of the band Journey).  Apparently, the guy has released a new CD and the first single from that CD is number 7 on the modern adult contemporary charts.  Shawn wanted to know if I would play Jonathan’s single on Stream 24.  It’s such an awesome feeling to have musicians and their representatives approach me and the station!  What an amazing beginning.

I can hear my grandmother listening to a PBS telethon in another room.  When I retire someday, I’d love to be one of those guys you see on PBS, taking pledges from a telephone, just to see what kind of people actually call in and pledge.

Just thought I’d blog real quick to make a major announcement: FiercePanda.us is getting its very own online radio station. This will be the first twenty-four hour stream I will have put out (I’ve been DJing off and on for a mediocre four hour stream for two years now). The genre of music played will be Modern Adult Contemporary and I will be recording promotional bumps for my blog and the blogs of my friends to gain both myself and them more exposure.

It’s something I’m very excited about, and it’ll all be happening within the next few days.  The station, when launched, will be called Stream 24. More soon.

EDIT: The streaming station launched much sooner than I thought it would. The stream is now available here.  Or, look where the links are above and click “Stream 24″ for a separate page.

Hi mom!  Send money.

Hi mom!  Send money.

Springtime is here, and the trees are sprouting flowers on the campus of American River College. Unfortunately, the campus still has two major drawbacks: horrible parking and birds. You can hear me rant and rave in a two-minute LiveJournal voicepost here.

Supposedly, there was an earthquake tonight in the Bay Area. I had dinner over at Ninja Jim’s apartment this evening, so I wasn’t anywhere near where it would’ve been felt. Jim treated me to a dinner of spinach raviolis in an alfredo sauce, along with a bread-and-vinegar side-dish. Jim’s roomie made a big deal about me trying the bread with the vinegar dip, so I dived in and tried some. Unfortunately, I couldn’t taste much of anything since my cold was screwing with my tongue, so I’ll have to try it again another time. The raviolis were good, though.

Speaking of Jim, we’ve decided to set up and contribute to a blog that exposes his artwork. You may remember a few days ago, I posted a video showing Jim creating a stoneware sculpture. Now, Jim and I are writing about his artistic creation, exploration and styles right here on WordPress. You can find it at tangledhelix.wordpress.com.

A video of Ninja Jim creating a stoneware vase yesterday at UC Davis.  I shot some more video today of Jim putting the final touches on the vase, and eventually I’ll get around to putting them on the Internet.

One of the cool features of Facebook is the ability to see what your friends are up to through a feature called “news feeds”. Recently, I noticed a friend of mine joined a group called Against Homosexual Adoption which both surprised and startled me. So I decided to venture into this group and see what it was all about.

There’s a little over 100 people joining this group (including those who joined the group to retort against the main message), ranging from students attending prestigious universities in the United States, to high schoolers. Those who have an opinion against homosexual adoption have chosen to quote Biblical references, while those who choose to take the opposite end of the argument quote outside sources such as scientific findings and scholarly reports. This got me thinking: When the argument of homosexuality is presented for debate, it seems like anyone against it usually quotes the Bible while others quote outside references.

I presented this idea to the group on Facebook, and…well, it wasn’t well-received. Kelsey Robertson of Notre Dame and Mary Coran of Fort Carson High School in Colorado, the top repliers to my idea, had some pretty interesting arguments against my point—though none were supported outside the realm of Biblical references, and occasionally they were mixed with latent insults.

Mary Coran is the front insulter of the group, claiming that September 11th was funded by terrorists running the “Iraquian” government (even though our own President said months ago that Iraq had nothing to do with the terror attacks of September 11th), and further stating that homosexuals are indirectly to blame for the terror attacks six years ago due to a lack of divine protection. Mary intermingles her opinions, which have yet to be backed by concrete facts that venture outside the realm of religion, with insults against liberals and personal attacks toward anyone whose views do not align parallel with her own.

Kelsey Robertson attempts to take a more intellectual approach to the issue of homosexuality, arguing that homosexuality is against the moral fiber of the principles the United States was founded upon. However, Kelsey also brings up the issue of homosexuality and the AIDS pandemic, to which she believes that AIDS is a lifestyle disease—the result of immoral choices of Americans, in comparison to emphysema and alcoholism. When asked how she felt after finding out that nearly 600,000 children died from AIDS in 2005, Kelsey responded by saying that those statistics were “not based on the situation in America”. But like Mary, it didn’t take long before Kelsey became frustrated with the opposition to her opinions and began the insults of her own.

The debate in this forum no longer tackles the specific issue of homosexual adoption. Instead, focus has shifted to the larger topic of how homosexuality is viewed in religion, and how the laws of the United States should be backed based not upon concrete establishments, scientific findings, tolerance or equality, but upon mere faith.

But the debate in this forum also exposes an very ugly element that many hoped to eradicate with the civil rights movements of the 20th Century—the element of hate. Here, we have the voices of two women who today exercise every freedom under the United States Constitution as a result of equality reform in areas, such as voting (women’s suffrage). Two hundred years ago, men would argue that God would view women’s rights as an abomination and sin; today, these two women have chosen to exercise these rights and privileges they were once denied as citizens of the United States to oppress fellow human beings based on religious views.

In addition, Mary and Kelsey are bringing to light the issue of how our educational system here in the United States is handling the issue of equality and acceptance across many platforms of human beings. Mary is demonstrating that our high schools are not doing enough to promote peace, tolerance and acceptance of all human beings, regardless of religious or political views, at a crucial point in a person’s development that could shape the way that person interacts as an individual and within society. Kelsey represents a person who was not thoroughly educated on the matters of equality and respect during development and has created personal belief structures that are dangerous to the well-being of human society.

We have here two voices that are extremely dangerous—voices that subconsciously lend support to the radical ideas behind organizations like the Westboro Baptist Church and the Ku Klux Klan. They are voices that promote hate and intolerance toward anyone who can be viewed as different, yet they stem from individuals who forget that just two hundred years ago, they would not have the right to a voice. They are voices that come from individuals, yielding the platform to remind all of us why it is imperative that we teach our children that it is not okay to hate anyone based on their belief, identity, biology or choice. These teachings begin with two groups of people: Those found at home, and those found in our schools.

However, we live in a society these days when even parents can breed to their children hate, as evident with Fred Phelps, members of the KKK and even certain political groups. That is why now more than ever, it is important that we reach out to our educational system and demand changes in curriculum to provide the future of tomorrow the necessary conditioning, not in hate, but of acceptance and understanding. When these ideals become institutionalized in our educational systems, they will breed children of tomorrow who will not persecute their peers based on sexual orientation, or gun them down in the streets based on the color of their skin, but who will instead become politicians who can make social changes for equality and lawyers who will fight to protect those changes.

When we can make these developments in our educational system that produce the results of an entirely new agenda, only then can we continue the steps forward to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of children who are not judged on the color of their skin, the orientation of their biology or the choices of their lives, but rather on the content of their character. And hopefully, we can walk past that dream to a world where people are not judged at all.

It’s time to play America’s fastest-growing quiz sensation, “Davis or Baghdad?”. The following picture was taken from the roof of a building on Valentine’s Day.

Cast your votes now.

My computer had to go into the hospital (again) on Tuesday.  Again.  I thought after what happened in December, it’d be the last time I’d have to contact AppleCare.  But, alas, the Superdrive decided it wasn’t going to cooperate, so off to Apple’s Tennessee repair center my notebook went.

This left me four days without my computer.  Four.  From Tuesday, to today.  And it’s going to leave me another four days without my computer, because guess what?  The Superdrive still isn’t fixed!  In fact, it’s worse than when I sent the computer in.  And because the computer isn’t under warranty, it looks like I’ll have to keep sending the computer in to get it repaired, since Apple won’t swap it out for a new computer despite its defective nature (nor do I expect them to—I just want a functioning notebook computer).

On top of that, my throat hurts–so bad that I wasn’t able to talk this morning at all and could barely talk with the Apple people on the phone.  On top of that, Jim and I are going to Sacramento tonight for our weekly hangout with friends.  I feel absolutely miserable, but then again, I also feel stinky and gross since I haven’t showered at all today.  So hopefully I’ll get in the shower and feel a little bit better.

I could go for some 7-Up at the moment.

Very few things are so simplistic, but speak volumes.

Wow, they pretty much have a website for everything these days, don’t they?

Picking locks used to be something a magician would amaze a crowd with. In the 21st Century, thanks to the Internet, just about anyone can pick a lock for a few dollars with the right search keywords—and that should make you think twice about what kind of lock you have on your door.

I just finished watching a segment on bump keys from CBS 5 in San Francisco. Bump keys are often used by locksmiths to unlock deadbolts and industrial-strength MasterLocks—by simply inserting a special key and then striking the head with a hammer, anyone can easily unlock a deadbolt. They’re also used by burglars to break into homes and storage garages clean and effortlessly. In the State of California, bump keys are illegal to own without a locksmith license, but with the easy availability of the Internet, bump keys are falling into the wrong hands every day.

For instance, a simple Google web search shows thousands of sites dedicated to the art of picking locks with bump keys—one site even features a video on how simple using a bump key to unlock a door is.

Bump keys are sold on many popular online stores, including secondhand bump keys at eBay. They can go for as cheap as two dollars—one website I found sold a set of bump keys, “guaranteed to open the majority of locks in North America” for about $33.00 (this website, for some reason, offered a Valentine’s Day special on the keys—what better way to say “I love you” than with burglary tools?).

Bump keys have been around for upwards of fifty years, but only recently has the threat of bump keys falling into the wrong hands (thank you, Internet) become more widespread. Over the past few years, lock manufacturers have taken note to the mass availability of bump keys and have since designed locks that will not work with bump keys. For instance, if you have $200 to shell out for a new deadbolt, Black & Decker has a lock that will read your fingerprint in place of a key, or for those who lack the patience to deal with a fingerprint scanner, Lockey has designed a pinpad deadbolt that requires the owner to enter in a code. So while alternatives are available on the market that bypass this bump key threat, it should be noted that it’s important for a person not to forget their codes (or fingerprints), or else a locksmith would be useless.

An adrenaline bug caught me at around 11PM tonight, so I called Jim and joined him in the art building of UC Davis. I remember being in the art section of my high school (I never took a drawing or painting class in the actual art studios, but I walked by it in the hall all the time). There’s something about a building that has the aroma of paint and oils that makes you feel at ease. Maybe I’m sucking in some sort of unknown fume.

And then, a sign down the hall puts everything into perspective: Whether you’re drawing, painting, pressing, sculpting or snapping, you’re pretty much an equal in the art world among artists.

If someone constructed a unisex bathroom in the Gaza Strip, there’d be no more violence.

Who was the person that decided February would have the shortest days out of any in the year? Yeah, okay, it gets a boost once every four years with a gratuitous extra day, but even then, it’s the shortest!

February also has some pretty lame holidays. It’s the one time of the year when meteorologists put aside their million-dollar radar equipment and turn to a rodent for weather forecasts. Linguists embrace their native language in the month of the amethyst. It’s also the month in which lovers seek to rekindle fading relationships (or, when one partner discovers that the other partner is bad with remembering dates—this evident by the last-minute Kwik-E-Mart box of chocolates).

And somewhere in the month of February, two major events will take place. The first being the deaths of many out of boredom when the Westminister Dog Show is broadcast on NBC (followed by near-daily rebroadcasts on Animal Planet—yes, the same channel that brings you Puppy Dog Superbowl, also in the month of February). And the second of which being the day I officially mark two decades on this planet.

Let’s see…what am I forgetting here? What else is celebrated in February?

On the road again…

Jim and I went last weekend to meet his mom and brother in the quiet city of Dublin, California. Steady growing population of just under 30,000 people—a collection of citizens who must travel to a nearby town for Sunday shopping (since everything in Dublin, save the McDonald’s, is pretty much closed).

My phone was off the entire time. It was nice to be disconnected from everyone that’s usually connected to me, and just take a moment to breathe. Miles away from home. Wireless isn’t always a good thing.

Economics class—it’s a place where you learn the fundamentals of business. The driving force behind society in terms of “work for money”. Making and breaking of ingenuity through structure. Graphs and charts that measure human error or triumph (what’s life on earth but a man’s seventy-year experimentation and journey?)

I was sitting in class the other day, writing on a piece of paper with a pen that had a business name and number stamped on it. It says a lot about a business to be able to afford advertising space on pens—that one, in particular, had said Trammel Roofing and offers a phone number. It makes me wonder where the point is that an organization stops to wonder what business would be like if their name was stamped across a pen.

I wonder if Enron had pens, and how much they’d go for on eBay.

Last week, I was supposed to release a Podcast about a radio station’s involvement in the death of a local woman who fatally overdosed on water. The Podcast is available finally, and will be placed in the download center for a week. No more will be said of it.

Also last week, I completed one of my first assignments for my public speaking course…which is always fun—people almost being required to listen to me speak for a few minutes. What could be greater but a few moments in the limelight? And though I didn’t let it show, I was nervous as hell. A new college, with new faces, new chances at constructing a reputation—so it’s not like I could afford to screw this up. This was a big opportunity, and I could do one of two things with it: Run it into the ground by saying all of the wrong things and emphasizing all of the wrong ideas, or say all of the right things at the right time, in the right order, with the right tone. There was no denying it’d be an academic success; the question was whether or not it’d have social success. I think it did, even if I added toward the end: “I like to talk.”

It dawned on me this morning why I like to talk so much. The more I talk, the more I learn. I learn a little more about myself, and I gather an understanding of people based on things like reactions. For example, if I say something and a person reacts negatively, it means one of three things: I said it the wrong way, or they didn’t understand what was being said and are having an attack of intelligence, or they didn’t agree with what was being said. If a person reacts positively, it’s usually the opposite of the three (though the middle is sometimes an exception—sometimes, people will react positively, but give you that dumb face look which indicates that everything went right over their heads and they’re just smiling to satisfy you).

Understanding perceptions, beliefs, facts and ideas—it’s a pretty great thing. Now, back to the iPod earphones where Guster is performing a personal concert just for me.

Friday night was eventful—Jim won a Starbucks card in a contest at our youth meeting. I stayed the night at his apartment, expecting to wake up the next morning and head home. A massive five car pile-up (three of which caught fire) closed all of the westbound portion of the freeway, so I was stuck in Davis. My grandmother, who had to work the next day, faced a massive gridlock throughout the city, since traffic was being diverted off the highway and through surface streets due to the accident. I didn’t come home until late Sunday evening.

Corin Hardy has an amazing short now available for download through the iTunes Music Store called Butterfly. The stop-animation presented in the short was used in the music video to Bedshaped by Keane. Corin is also responsible for the directing of the original Somewhere Only We Know music video. Never have I been more fascinated by a combination of animation and music— Jim and I are fascinated by this short little animation, and it’s definitely something worth checking out.

Over the weekend, I think I upset a friend who thinks I’m neglecting him. It’s not going to be easy commuting to Sacramento every week for school, and it’s going to require some financial budgeting—the end result being a slight decrease in socialization. It makes me a bit sad to know that I can’t spend more time with my friends, but school is something I have to prioritize. Ultimately, this new lesson in prioritizing will definitely pay off in the long run, and it won’t be long until the summer is here and I have a little more free time on my hands.

Probably one of the best stories I’ve seen on a local morning news program: A teacher lost six pet snakes and quite a bit of football memorabilia when his classroom went up in flames in Loomis, California. One of his elementary school students wrote in to Sacramento’s leading morning news program, Good Day Sacramento, and in response, KMAX-TV sent entertainment reporter Mark S. Allen on a mission to bring some good will to the class. Technical issues halfway into the segment and a moment of comedy toward the end makes this snippet of live television worth watching (and the good deed as well).

Friday (which is technically today, but I haven’t slept yet, so for all intensive purposes, I’ll just say “tomorrow”), Ninja Jim and I will be getting lost in Sacramento to hang out with some friends.

I’m starting to wonder if my readers crave more meaningful thoughts. It looks like school is sucking up most of the creative juices, so sit tight and I’ll get an epiphany worth sharing soon.

Apple has gotten a blogger into hot water for leaking an iPhone-like look for Palm devices. This comes just a few days after Cisco threatened to sue Apple over the trademarked name iPhone. Despite all of this, it seems like everywhere I look (be it on LiveJournal, Xanga, MySpace or regular blogs), everyone wants this phone.

This past weekend, I learned how glaze was made from various chemicals. I can now say, I have a deeper appreciation for porcelain dinnerware. This week, school starts up again, and despite the freezing temperatures, I’m excited about attending my first classes at American River.

This is the second video blog I’ve ever attempted (the first being hosted on YouTube, created toward the end of last July). Unfortunately, my camera was giving me issues, but it didn’t take away from the overall quality and message.

I’ve been asked relentlessly since last year when I was going to do another one of these things. I hope this delivers. For links mentioned in this video blog, click here.

There had been an ongoing dispute between me and a friend of mine as to whether or not Apple would unveil an iPhone at MacWorld yesterday. Jake had said there’d be an iPhone by morning; I disagreed, saying Apple would never venture into a market where they developed products that mainly required a subscription. Apple did well with the iPod and Macintosh computers, allowing both products to utilize services like the iTunes Music Store and Mac.com synchronization, but neither are really required for full product useage.

Apple is having its cake and eating it too with the inevitable iPhone. As Apple is notorious for doing, they’ve created a product that is superior to anything available on the market—a glorified personal digital assistant (yes, the name “iPhone” is quite deceptive in that sense) that lacks a stylus and is completely scrollable through touch-screen technology. The “eating cake” part lies in the idea that the iPhone could be used without a Cingular subscription, since the iPhone can play music and videos on a 3.5-inch screen.

To me, the iPhone seems like the Apple Newton for the 21st Century. At a hefty price of a little over $700 for one of these puppies in six months, it probably won’t catch on with people who just want simple iPod features (you could buy two iPod videos, with a total of 160GB between the two, for an iPhone with 8GB). On the other hand, everyone I’ve spoken with about this little device…skeptics and hopefuls alike…want to get their hands on one. So, time will tell as to whether this thing is successful.

I haven’t forgotten about all you little readers out there. A new Podcast is on the way, as well as my takes on Apple’s newest invention.

All I kept hearing on the news this morning was how foggy the roads were outside. At times, the fog was so bad that the California Highway Patrol slowed traffic on the Interstate in the same fashion a pace car slows Nascar traffic.

Given this dangerous and treacherous morning (yeah, right), I thought it’d be fun to start my 2007 photography with snapshots, not from a high-tech camera, but from a cell phone. Why, you might ask? Well, given recent events, it seems that our 21-st Century tricorder are making quite the buzz in the media world. I can’t imagine why…hmm…

Emo Debra has educated me on the matter of certain themed weekdays within the blogging community. Sadly, though, you’ll never seem me posing half-naked for “Half Naked Thursday”. Sorry, readers of the blogosphere—Plug-It Thursday is here to stay.

Everyone knows I can’t stand people who say one thing and do another.  For instance, if you’ve been rejected because of how you look, don’t reject someone because of how they look.  Consider how you felt when you were told you didn’t fit a certain look.  Consider your feelings when you found out that what was keeping you from holding hands with a person was based on if you just had a different color of eyes, or a different hairstyle, or dropped a few pounds.

It also bothers me when a person says they’re fighting for gay marriage.  Nobody is going to achieve gay marriage by marching down the street in assless chaps with leather whips.  Your bondage gear will not make the Christians go, “Hmm…those guys deserve the priviledge of marriage.”  Keep that stuff in the same place you say you don’t want our government:  In the bedroom.  Not the streets of San Francisco.

Another thing I’m bothered by:  The “radical” or “fundamentalist” Christians.  Seriously, shut the fuck up.  If you believe in Jesus and God, great for you.  I live in America, on Planet Earth, with tons of athiests, agnostics and Satanists.  God has yet to kill off these people, which means it obviously doesn’t bother Him that there’s a few lost souls in this world.  And don’t even bother quoting the Bible to me.  That “manual of life” is over thousands of years old.  Tell me, if your car broke down, would you grab a manual for a 1933 automobile?  My point exactly.  Now, let the gays get married.  God won’t kill us all off if they do.  And if he does, will you go to Hell for it?  Nope, didn’t think so.

People, telephones are supposed to RING, not play computerized booty-bumping ringtones.  It’s not pleasant to stand in line at my bank, lost in deep thought while I’m behind four people ahead of me for a bank window, only to hear “Hips Don’t Lie”, your special ringtone for your wife (girlfriend) (mistress) (five dollar whore) (five dollar girlfriend) (Fido).  My phone rings.  My friend’s ringtone, albeit annoying, somewhat rings (it more or less chirps).  My house phone rings.  Phones RING.  Another thing that’s annoying is that crappy service that replaces a telephone ring in the receiver with some weird MP3 music.  Cut that crap out.

I swear, if one more person asks me to comment on their pictures or profile on MySpace, I’m going to go postal.  Stop being attention whores and go back to your Nintendo Wii, MTV and high school one-act plays.  You’re not going to get a cash prize for “most comments on MySpace in a day” or “more friends than Tom!”.  Nope, won’t happen.

Porn isn’t that great.  Seriously.  No, really, it’s not.  Why everyone makes a big deal about it, I dunno.  While not everyone can capitalize on it, we all have the ability to view naked people.  And we don’t even need a computer, a DVD player or even a TV.  All we need is the courage to remove our own clothes and a bedroom mirror. Yep, people, that’s it—I just gave you the recipe for home-made porn.  And get this:  Once you grasp that ability, you’ll always feel foolish looking at MPEG videos of two guys, two girls or two opposites getting it on.  Porn isn’t degrading. It’s not disgusting.  It’s an exposure into a natural human act.  If you pay $39.99 for an online service or $69.99 for a DVD of it, though, you’re fucking stupid, and you deserve to go broke.

Smokers know they’re killing themselves with all this poisonous crap.  They do it because they have self-esteem issues.  “Truth” and anti-drug campaigns furthur their resolve.  The answer?  Stop pressuring smokers to stop smoking.  What’ll come of it?  People will stop smoking.  It’s also a LOT more cost effective than multi-million dollar advertisements on the dangers of smoking.

Stop leaving your pets in your cars.  You wouldn’t like it if your dog ran into the grocery store for “just a second” and left the window cracked barely an inch.  So don’t do it to your dog.  Leave them at home with the central air conditioning and their favorite chew toy, because trust me, they don’t enjoy the back of your Toyota Highlander with their paws melting to the leather seats and their bones baking at 140 degrees.

Fathers, be good to your daughters.  Daughters will love like you do.  Which means, if you beat the crap out of them, they’re likely to shoot you in your sleep.  So do one of two things:  Love them, or buy a gun lock.  This goes out all the moms and their sons too.  Consider this a public service announcement from Radio Matthew.

Stop using the phrases “shortie” and “baby’s momma”—if you can’t say “girlfriend” and “ex-girlfriend”, you should repeat the fourth grade.  We all took twelve years of English so we could speak it properly. With that being said, the word is “whore”, not “ho”; “four”, not “fo”; and “floor”, not “flo”.  The letter “O” is not a substitute for a period—there are other letters, you are supposed to keep going.

Alright, that’s all I’ve got when it comes to going into 2007.  Happy New Year’s to everyone.

Every morning (or afternoon), I wake up with a song in my head. I can’t explain why this happens, and I’m not sure it happens to anyone else. But it happens to me every single morning.

Yesterday, I woke up with a South Park song stuck in my head. Which is weird, since I don’t own the South Park movie, I haven’t seen it in at least two years and I don’t have cable. Still, it was amusing to find I couldn’t empty my head of the words “boner biting bastard”. This morning, it was “Rock Steady” by Bonnie Raitt. Talk about the other side of the spectrum…

Her plane landed an hour early. As mentioned before, I’d been tracking her progress through USA Today’s flight tracking page. When I saw that the Delta plane was overhead Nevada, I thought it’d be best if I took off for the airport.

Heading to Sacramento International Airport was no walk in the park, thanks in part to the wind. Going eastbound on the Interstate meant the wind was tackling my car from the left. I don’t ever want to drive to Sacramento again by driving in the slow lane. I arrived five minutes before the plane landed, we grabbed the baggage from the claim area, and took off for a quick snack at a Woodland McDonald’s.

I told her that I’d registered for classes at American River last weekend. When I got home, I pulled up the local news online only to find out that college tuition for four-year community college is dropping. Um…yay? I’m only paying $20 per unit at American River as it is, with $30 additional going to parking (which I’ve been told is worse than horrendous). I don’t think tuition is the problem. I think the cost of books is where the problem lies. If I had my way, books and educational materials would be included in the price of tuition.

But that’s a utopia even Wal-Greens can’t bring. I like how the Wal-Greens website has an entire section (with a highlighted tab, no less) dedicated to sexual wellness. Wal-Greens should change their slogan to “We Know How It Is…Kinky.”

Tonight, I’ll be completing my grandmother’s vacation by picking her up at Sacramento International Airport. I’ve been tracking her plane through USA Today, and at this very moment, it’s in the air over what I think is Nebraska (it’s the state above Oklahoma, right?). My geography is a little bit off, and maps of the United States aren’t helping.

Anyway, her plane was early coming into Atlanta, which means it’ll be early coming into Sacramento. Which means, less sleep for a certain little boy who got three hours of sleep over the mid-morning. Since I was sent home early today from work due to the windy weather, I should’ve used that time to catch up on sleep. What did I do instead? Cleaned house and called Federal Express. I’ll be making a trip to the Starbucks counter near the United Airlines baggage terminal for sure tonight.

Evan is quickly becoming a close online friend. He’s visiting family for the holidays, so he wasn’t able to come online for a few days. Evan’s one of the few people I know with whom I can carry on a conversation for hours. Needless to say, I missed that over the past few days, and we had a lot to talk about last night when he did come online. I’m supposed to call him this evening when I’m on my way to the airport.

Speaking of which, she’s overhead Kansas, not Nebraska. And while we’re on the topic, when she touches down tonight, it’ll officially mean that every member of my family except one has flown on an airplane since the September 11th terror attacks. The  person who hasn’t flown on an airplane since September 11th is me.

Here’s an example of Christmas irony: I live in a city that lies forty-five minutes south of a metropolitan area that had the lowest holiday traffic fatalities as compared to recent years, and an hour north of a metropolitan area with rising holiday traffic fatalities. And in related geographical news, I live in a place where our own Governor doesn’t even celebrate the holidays at. Who said California was great?

A few weeks ago, blogger Emo Debra tagged me in a post she made in which I have to list five things about me. Or something like that. It’s not that I’ve ignored the tag. It’s really two things: The first is, I don’t take well to doing blog chains. But, this one looks pretty enjoyable, so the second thing is, I have been putting it off. And I’m still going to put it off. But at least I’m acknowledging that I’ve seen it and that I’ll get around to it one day.

Now that Christmas is over, the next big holiday is the New Year, which means I’ll have to figure out some resolutions. Simple resolutions. Ones that can afford to be broken. I don’t ever want to make important resolutions that I’m psyched about, but can’t follow through…that’d make me feel like some kind of failure. I’d rather make resolutions that I can sort of go through with, give up on, and then attempt at again. On the other hand, the whole idea of making resolutions simply because a calendar changes seems silly. Resolutions should be made for the betterment of ourselves and our community, not because the year changes a digit. Maybe I’ll just resolve to change little by little throughout the year, and make educated choices as they come to me. There, I figured out my resolution for 2007, and the year hasn’t even started yet.

Is anyone else bothered by the sight of “A Community Service From (Your Local TV Station)” displayed at the bottom of a public service announcement as made available through the Foundation for a Better Life? The next time you see an ad from the FBL, note the letters “LDS” above the logo. “LDS” stands for “Latter Day Saints”, as in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. In an age of democracy where we attempt to break free of morality through religion and rather focus on morality through independent thought, is it really in the best interest for local television stations to be running LDS advertisements as public service announcements “for a better community”? The way I see it, any advertisement that is not from the American Red Cross, United Way, Ad Council or a true non-religious non-profit organization, should be treated as a regular advertisement from a business.

Anyone who really knows me can tell you that I value musicians in our world.  I’m at a terrible loss for words at the moment.

We’ve lost another one.

As with Jimi Hendrix and Ray Charles, never again will soundwaves bounce of a theatre wall with verve and style.  It’s unique to each person.  It will never be heard again, but it will be felt forever.

Thank you for your gift, Mr. Brown.  It’s time for your rest.

The year is slowly winding down, and I thought it’d be interesting to create a list of songs that I thought made it into pop culture in 2006, as well as a list of albums I’ll remember once the year is over.

Lately I’ve been talking online with a new friend of mine, Evan, from North Carolina State University. Evan and I share very similar tastes in music when it comes to artists, even if we tend to have different favorites. I sent Evan a copy of The Village Sessions and Evan generously bought me Keane’s extended play at AOL. One of the few exchanges over the past few days that could probably constitute as Christmas gifts.

It’s Christmas Eve tonight, and I’m sitting here wondering what the whole purpose behind Christmas gifts are. I mean, I understand the underlying meaning of gifts. But it’s like this: Every year, people ask me what I want for Christmas (usually this starts in October) and I always tell them that I don’t know. This year, I told people something different: I didn’t need anything for Christmas. I realised that I’ve pretty much got everything I want in life, both intangible and materialistically. And what I don’t need or want, I find a way to get.

For instance, I returned two products to Radio Shack and today purchased an iPod audio unit called iHome. Over the past few months, I’ve really wanted a radio that I could put on my bookshelf in the living room for when I’m downstairs on the notebook. About a week ago, I bought a radio that had an iPod dock, but the sound and ease of use was extremely mediocre. On top of that, it was missing parts needed to play back the iPod Video. But with the iHome, the sound is rich, it came with all the parts, a discount from Radio Shack, a $15 iTunes card and a warranty from Radio Shack (given since it was a display model).

With the iTunes card, I started downloading Lewis Black’s Comedy Central Presents appearance as well as Keane’s Live At ULU videos. I still have about $8 to spend and I have no idea what I’ll splurge it on. My hope is that I’ll be able to transfer the videos from the Dell to the Mac once the computer is repaired, but I guess time will tell on that one.

If I see one more picture of a cat near an Apple computer, I’m going to SCREAM!

In lieu of the recent issues I’ve experienced with my Apple PowerBook G4, I’ve drafted a list of things you probably shouldn’t do with your Apple computers. And here they are, in no order of importance:

1. Don’t leave your computer on a rock.
2. Don’t let your cat use the computer.
3. Neighborhood rodents do not benefit from Wi-Fi.
4. Don’t let your cat use the computer!
5. Mac rhymes with hat, but you shouldn’t wear it as one.
6. DON’T LET YOUR CAT USE THE COMPUTER!
7. Computers without screens are not cute.
8. Yoda has no use for an iPod shuffle.
9. Recycle your computer; don’t throw it away.
10. Don’t let your cat…eh, screw it.

My poor Apple computer is out of action for the next few weeks due to a few defective parts. Apple Computers is footing the bill, even though it’s past warranty. With that said, it’ll be a little while before a new Podcast is released (expect a new episode around the beginning of 2007).

The Music Plug: Britpop band Keane is often compared to their colleagues, Coldplay. However, most people don’t know that Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane was offered the name “Coldplay” and offered up the name to Chris Martin, current lead singer of that band, so to compare one to the other is somewhat ironic. In any case, Keane is making waves in the United States with their second studio album Under The Iron Sea. On Monday, I purchased a special-edition, limited press of their album. The special edition album encloses both a CD and a DVD in a songbook that is absolutely amazing. The artwork in the song book is mesmerizing and unlike anything I’ve ever seen and enjoyed. The DVD is filled with behind-the-scenes footage from the album’s creation, special demo versions and live performances, and an extended video shoot of Keane’s song Atlantic. List price is $21.98 for the special-edition press, or $9.99 if regularly purchased through iTunes.

The Gadget Plug: I’m a huge fan of the Apple brand, even if I have occasional hardware issues with one product in particular. However, overall, they are a reputable company. Apple has definitely made a name for itself in the computing world with the release of the Macintosh computer in 1984 (remember the commercial?). Twenty years later, everyone is finding a playing-card-sized music device in their possession known as iPod. The Apple iPod comes in a variety of sizes and with different features for different people. Choose the iPod Shuffle if you want a few songs for a leisurely walk or work-out, or take an entire music library as well as a few movies with the iPod Video. If fashion is your passion and you want a little bit of everything, try the iPod Nano, which comes in five “flavors” (similar to big sister, the iMac) to complement anyone’s accent. The iPod starts at $79 through Apple’s online store for the Shuffle, to $349 for the high-end iPod Video.

The Weather Plug: Snow is burying the metropolitan city of Denver, causing all sorts of delays at airports nationwide and dominating the primetime news. Meanwhile, we’re dealing with all sorts of wet weather in the San Francisco Bay Area with non-stop rain causing major issues on the road and in the sky. There’s never been a better time to utilize a tool online known as Vipir Radar, provided to the Sacramento area by KOVR-TV. Vipir Radar is the most cutting-edge weather technology, pinpointing storm formations in both real-time and third-dimension. Definitely a tool worth looking into, whether you’re a meteorologist or an average weather watcher.

I totally do not want to talk about the crap day I have had today. The pressure is definitely on, and it’s not something I want to blog about. This is not the proper outlet for it. Breaking dishes, throwing the cat, beating a mattress–those are all the proper avenues for this stress (maybe not the cat one…), but I don’t feel like venting about it here. I apologize profoundly to my audience of twelve that I can’t bring that level of entertainment. Not tonight.

I was speaking with my parents tonight, and one of them said something that resonates true in my head: Things could always be worse. Today, I was reminded of that while going back to my car in the airport parking lot. I saw a soldier with the US Army, hugging his mom as he exited one of the terminals at Sacramento International Airport, and I’ll admit, I almost started crying. I don’t know why there’s a soft spot in me for events like that. It makes me extremely greatful to take in scenes like that, in ways that I can’t even articulate, and I won’t even try. This guy’s homecoming was just one of a few at the airport today. I wouldn’t have been emotionally capable to take in more than one sight.

Moving away from that, I’ve been finding myself Facebooking and MySpacing a lot lately. There’s something about meeting new people from all walks of life and all places in this world that is just fascinating to me. I like that ability to talk with someone in semi-real time who is separated by an ocean and the occasional language barrier.

In an hour’s time, I’ll be on the road to Sacramento International Airport. My grandmother has decided it’d be a great time to go on vacation, so she’s taking off for a week. I was going to go with her, but I decided to stay behind this year and catch up on some work.

She informed me about five minutes ago that she is hiding her cash in her bra. Safe to say, for fear of financial instability, my grandmother will not be flashing anyone for “Girls Gone Wild” this year.

Just another reason why traveller’s cheques are the way to go.

Friday saw an appearance at Lambda Sacramento for part of the evening, and an outing to Denny’s in Carmichael with Darius and Adrian. Adrian was tired, while Darius was hyper following a local concert. The highlight of my evening was when my Washington Mutual debit card was declined after two attempts, which was unusual given that I had just gotten paid earlier that day and used my card twice without problem. Darius covered for me, so I owe him $11-something for my meal. Now, of course, my card works without issue.

Today is going to be interesting. I slept through all of Saturday, with the exception of a few hours in the transition from Friday to Saturday, so my state of mind is that Sunday is actually Saturday. And given that my grandmother is on vacation for three weeks, I don’t have her usual “Sunday Return To Work” to go off of since she will be here. Chances are, I’ll balance my checkbook today by writing in all of my entries a day behind.

I woke up this morning to see condensation on my bedroom window. About an hour later, on my usual trek for Snapple (some people have Starbucks), I discovered a blanket of frost on my windshield.

I also woke up to find out that I have been named Time Magazine’s Person Of The Year. I’ll take my oversized novelty-check, make my speech, and be on my merry way to WaMu (only to find that after deposit, my card won’t work). I am proud to share this award alongside my fellow bloggers, podcasters, computer hackers and virus designers.

Hollywood has this amazing ability to expose stereotypes and discrimination through cinematic works of art. In 2005, two films that exposed discrimination and stereotypes battled for the title of “Best Motion Picture”: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and the independent film Crash. Before that, the stereotype that “white men can’t jump” was not only exposed on film, it was exploited by the main character as a way of income.

In 2006, we do indeed know that those of Woody Harrelson’s skin color can play basketball, but discrimination through the sport lives on—high school senior Hannon Smith knows this all too well. Smith attends Bret Harte High School, nearly three hours east of San Francisco. The school has a policy that requires all male basketball players to keep their hair cut above the collar bone, but does not hold the same policy toward female athletes. Rebelling against the system, Smith decided the hair would stay—a decision that got him kicked off the court, and thrust into the local media spotlight.

Smith views the school’s decision to keep him off the court due to a physical trait as discrimination. Smith and fellow students formed a coalition on campus called the “Hair Peace Committee” which strives to change the rule in regards to male athletes and their hair. In an interview I conducted with Smith for the seventh episode of the Podcast, Smith said he understood that the change would not come in time for him to play basketball this season, but that the issue was still one worth pursuing for future basketball team members. Smith also understands the idea that pressing for the rights of a small group of people on a small topic creates a ripple in the pool of human equality through the masses. This is an interview and a Podcast you cannot miss.

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For a while now, I’ve been letting an idea ferment in my head in regards to a new idea for this blog. I wanted to launch a series of weekly posts in which I pitched music, movies, places, and other things that I found were interesting or worth noting. To most people, the idea of pitching things in blogs is half the reason for blogging in itself; what I wanted to do was take that pitching concept and create an entire day dedicated to just that element. Since I was born on a Thursday, I thought that’d be a fitting day to start the “plug-it” idea. So here goes, the first in a series of posts in which I plug random stuff that’ll either amuse you for five seconds or fulfill your life on a broader spectrum.

The Music Plug: It’d be wrong of me to start a fresh idea without somehow throwing John Mayer into this mix. John is experiencing wild success with the release of his third album, entitled Continuum, in which John attempts to break free from the pop-ish standard and move toward a blues platform. Just two months later, John is releasing an EP follow-up to Continuum entitled The Village Sessions, a six track disc filled with alternate and acoustic versions of Continuum tracks. The album isn’t being sold in many stores, nor can it be found on the iTunes Music Store, and it’s only available for a limited time. Price is $8 per copy, or $6.99 if you purchase through the link in this post.

The Beverage Plug: This morning on my almost daily quest for Snapple, I found a new “flavor” of my favorite drink. Snapple now has a line of red teas, which boast right on the label that the beverage “contributes to a healthy immune system” with the addition of rooibos, a rare anti-oxidant found in Southern Africa, and the inclusion of fruit juice and Vitamin C (no, not that Vitamin C…). I enjoyed the “Acai Mixed Berry” flavor, and it tastes very much so like something that would be sold at Starbucks. Price is $1.59 for a 17.5-ounce bottle at Arco AM-PM.

The Time-Waster Plug: A few months ago, I discovered this Flash game online called Falldown. The plot of the game is extremely simple: Gravity is pulling a ball toward the bottom of a box, and the player must keep the ball from ever touching the top of the box. This is done by maneuvering the ball through holes using the “left” and “right” keys on the player’s keyboard. The speed of the holes increases, making it more difficult to keep the ball from reaching the top. There are no “levels”, just an increase in speed. The successor to Falldown, sister-game Falldown 2, is probably a bit easier for beginners to play. The music is tacky, and I usually find myself streaming Bay Smooth Jazz while playing the game. It’s a great game that incorporates hand-eye coordination while challenging a person’s reflexes.

Has a business ever done something that just ruffles your feathers? In the (finally released) sixth episode of the Fierce Panda Podcast, I complain about two local business franchises (McDonald’s and Burger King) on locking their front entrances at least half an hour before the lobby is scheduled to close.

But that’s nothing compared to what George Vaccaro had to go through. George is a Verizon Wireless customer who was misquoted a rate for cellular data transfer by several Verizon Wireless customer service representatives before a trip to Canada. When he got back, he realised two things. One, Verizon Wireless had charged him one-hundred times more than the price they quoted him. Two, Verizon Wireless customer service representatives can’t understand fractions. Fierce Panda Podcast obtained the customer service call George placed to Verizon Wireless and played it in part during this episode. You can’t feel anything but sympathy for this guy, who ended up paying the bill as charged, but just yesterday was credited the overcharge to his account.

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There are just some things that should NOT have a Wikipedia entry. After seeing the commercial for the game on Family Guy tonight, I thought it’d be fitting to do some research on the Internet.

Just in case you weren’t sure as to the simplistic rules of the game, Wikipedia makes it expressly clear:

“The player tosses the ball upward by jerking the arm holding the toy. The game ends when the player loses interest. The player cleans up by either catching the ball in the cup, manually placing it in there, or wrapping the string around the handle, compactly storing the toy for another use.”

What fascinates me about said entry is the section of the article explaining how a person might cheat:

“One may cheat by grabbing the ball with their other hand and placing it in the cup. However, this makes the game lose its fun as winning by cheating in a one-player game is a rather hollow victory.”

Wikipedia: Informing you in ways Encyclopedia Brittanica won’t. For instance, an article I found yesterday directed my interest to two music videos on YouTube. The first being Girls on Film by Duran Duran, which was so raunchy for 1981 that it was the first music video ever to be banned from a budding music television network, aptly named MTV. This was probably due to the full-frontal nudity and female mud-wrestling. This just goes to show that while anyone can pick up a Playboy Magazine in 1981 without restriction, not everyone could view the human body on the misappropriately-named boob tube.

The second music video that caught my interest was the more-recent Call On Me by Eric Prydz. This video combines two elements needed to catch the interest of both heterosexual and homosexual males across the world: a beat-filled, lyrically-repetitve dance anthem (homosexual element) mixed in with scantily-clad supermodels dancing in an erotic fashion that was deemed to be “softly pornographic” by some family advocacy groups in the United States (heterosexual element). Bisexual males of the world, rejoice!

“You cannot wage a war without news,
without media, without propaganda.”
Samir Khader

About a year ago, I stumbled across a documentary on Comcast (back when I had cable) about the role of a controversial news network in the middle east reporting on Operation Iraqi Freedom. The documentary, entitled Control Room, follows the Al Jazeera television network in the early days of the war in Iraq.

Those who knew me back in the days when I was extremely political and kept almost hourly tabs on not only Operation Iraqi Freedom, but many things in current events, could tell you that I highly respected two news organizations for their ongoing objective news coverage. Al Jazeera is one of those news agencies. Al Jazeera provides an outlet for journalists and ordinary citizens to set the news agenda, in a day and age where people with money or people in power are likely to be the driving force behind the journalistic spin. I appreciate the presence of Al Jazeera in the cable and satellite world, and I was excited to learn that Al Jazeera broadened their international audience with the launch of their English channel in November (available in the United States through Globecast).

I can’t really write an adequate review on Control Room that would anywhere touch on doing this magnificent video justice. The best thing I can recommend to everyone out there is to either purchase a copy of the video, watch it in its entirety on Google Video, or download it for your iPod. Please, take the hour or so to watch this compelling and gripping documentary.

After spending a few restless hours at the computer, I thought it might be nice to meet up with Darius and Adrian tonight. What I’d forgotten was that Adrian was coming off of a cold. Nonetheless, the three of us met up in Carmichael around nine in the evening. After a little debate, we settled on Tokyo Fro’s, a sushi bar on the outskirts of Carmichael. I’d never had sushi before, and it took a little coaching on Adrian’s part to get me to order something other than rice and water (new foods aren’t always my forte). I settled on a dish called the Tokyo Tori.

The atmosphere and service at the restaurant was nice—nobody threw a fit when Adrian asked for a fork instead of using the customary chopsticks for the food (I was the one who really needed the fork, but was too afraid of offending the sushi-eating custom). I somehow found myself munching on a sushi roll for the first time ever—they aren’t bad once you get over the sting of the wasabi-soy sauce mixture.

From the sushi bar, we took off for a drive down Fair Oaks Boulevard. After another dream shattered courtesy of the California Lottery and a few failed attempts to rent a movie from a DVD kiosk, Darius and Adrian decided it was time to make a stop at a 7-11 store for Slurpees. It had been a while since I’d gotten a Slurpee, and I was quick to find that putting the drink into the cup without creating air pockets was a difficult task. Yes, it is true: I, Radio Matthew, cannot master the art of creating a fountain drink at a convenience store (I can, however, manage to drink from a straw, but that’s another story for another time).

I’ve noticed something in the way of interaction when I’m hanging around Darius and Adrian. We each seem to have our own one-on-one conversations with another person, but there’s rarely a time when all three of us are on the same page of any given conversation. Darius and Adrian will have a conversation, or Darius and I will have a conversation, or Adrian and I will have a conversation. Every now and then, the other party jumps in to do one of two things: As an audience and not a participant, enhance the conversation between both parties, or change topics altogether. I like that. It’s just how we are—different. It’s simply an observation on how we converse. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when the three of us all contribute to a common conversation, but it usually doesn’t happen that way. And yet, nobody feels isolated when that happens. It’s a pretty cool thing to pull off.

Over the past two or three days, I’ve met four new people that come from different walks of life. These four people don’t share a common bond of wealth, orientation, ethnicity or any other physical or emotional trait. They are a true mixture of the elements that can develop into a human spirit.

And I was intimidated to meet then, just as I was intimidated to meet the person who has taken this weird, rare transition in my life from “friend” to “friend-slash-boss”. The intimidation comes in the way I converse with people. Don’t ever expect to sit down with me and have your typical conversation—the ones where you ask about job, school, family. Instead, expect to have conversations about life, perceptions, choices, and frustrations. The job, the school, and the family are all ingredients for what I talk about, but they aren’t the sole purpose behind a discussion.

Reflections of me as a person aren’t shown by how many credits I’m taking or how many projects I’m tackling at any given moment. Those are just things that enhance my life. What makes up my life are the perceptions I have in the present and had in the past, and the choices I’ve made throughout my life. If you’re going to give me a reputation, base it on that. Base it on something more than a meeting in a mall food court, or a ten-minute conversation in a parking lot, or a five-hour phone conversation.

What I’m afraid of is that these people will view me as saying too much, too soon. Suddenly, the baton of intimidation is passed on from me to them. I don’t want that either. If you ever find yourself in that situation, where you see me as being a person that understands way more than he should, just remember…

…I might come off as someone with all the answers of the world, but in reality, I’m just your average guy who enjoys the occasional pudding cup.

The other night, I tossed and turned because I couldn’t find that quiet spot in my head that one must travel to in order to completely block out all environmental noise and drift into a solemn sleep. I couldn’t get to that point; something was grabbing my attention and it was something I couldn’t shake off.

Check this out.

Who is that person in your life you know you can go to when you are feeling any kind of emotion? No matter what feeling you’ve got bottled up inside your soul, they’ve always got a word, pattern, picture or idea that puts value into your intangible lifeline pulsations. And it’s just that: a lifeline. No matter what you’re feeling, they feel it ten times greater than you. No matter what you’re thinking, they’ve thought of it before. No matter what you’re learning, they’ve already put that education into action. Is this person readily accessible with a simple load of an optical disc into a drive? Are they as instantaneously personal as a speed-dial button push? Is this person so distant from you that while you share two independent hearts, you breathe in the same oxygen as it recirculates within a shelter of walls?

Touch-base with your thought process. You’re developing an image of a face or body of someone living, dead, or unknown to you at present who encompasses everything mentioned and more. This is your soul mate. This is your platonic friend. This is your Earthly companion. This image, in every realistic form, is your so-called “better half” if ever those two words could be used together correctly. That’s the person.

I’m not impressed by materialistic items or heavy thoughts that go nowhere. I’m not impressed by a man’s wealth by financial status. I’m not impressed by a piece of paper, or a tile of wood, with a name engraved symbolizing some achievement of the past. I’m impressed by the application of knowledge, material and environment that develops into a catalyst for personal and communitive gain and success. I enjoy seeing heavy thought put into poetic tone and spread throughout the masses, and all throughout the process, touching souls and inspiring capable bodies to seek out solace, comfort, individuality, and goal.

Yeah, I want to get lost with that crowd. The ten thousand people from all walks of life, who crowd into a stadium just to shout lines in unison to a feeble-bodied man with a plucking instrument.

Life is made up of success and failures. It’s made up of friends and enemies. It’s made of triumphs and tribulations. But all of those boil down to ultimately one thing: Life is made up of choices. The choices and decisions we make in life yield outcomes: expected, unexpected, negative and positive. But they are ultimately our choices, as individual as life itself.

Choice isn’t always an action. Sometimes, choice is an inaction. The decision to not do something is a choice we make, just as strong as a choice to carry something out. We choose who to acquaintance our bodies with, and we choose who we do not want to acquaintance ourselves with. We choose to hurdle obstacles in life, or we choose to let them knock us down. Once they knock us down, we choose to lay down, or we choose to rise above. We choose knowledge or ignorance. We choose to love or hate. But these are choices. The choices yield reactions. These reactions yield outcomes. And that, ultimately, is life.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with choice. The end to the beginning of a man’s life which is currently on a road to greatness. Made possible through the support of life’s many choices, and stored for eternity on Zip diskettes. Imagine how cool it would be to fish out an old box one day, and find the beginning to your life on brightly colored storage devices.

Flash-forward to December 2006, and you have my life. Soon to be recorded on brightly colored Sony videotapes. A life led by a choice that can only accelerate toward greatness, exploited by youthful entrepreneurs making choices in their own lives that accelerate toward that same goal of greatness. They haven’t achieved greatness yet, and they never will. I never will either. Nobody will, because where is the definitive line of “greatness” drawn? But like me, they push to get as close to it before their last second on earth. And that common thread formulates a relationship. A relationship developing between employer and employee, between collegue and colleague, between friend and friend, between two separate bodies of individuals with one common goal in mind.

One day in the future, I’ll find a box at the top of my closet. Where that closet will be, and what will be in that box, remains to be seen.

The Internet is a beautiful thing. It allows you to meet people from all over the world, talk with them like you’ve known them your whole life, and share your most intimate thoughts, desires, hopes and fears. You talk with them as if you’ve known them your whole lives, but they are just a screen name to you–a combination of zeroes and ones that somehow you manage to translate into your mind as another living, breathing human being on the other end of a network phone cord.

Never has it been easier to make friends, enemies and loves with the click of a button, a few mistyped characters, some acronyms and an enter key.

Introducing the all-new Radio Matthew blog at fiercepanda.us. A few days ago, the overall look-and-feel of the site was changed to a much cleaner blueish slate, and the reason for this change was due to the rollout of the new domain. Someone e-mailed me about the look change and figured it had something to do with a blog relaunch, and they were right. Thing is, all of this won’t matter, unless I feel the need to write. On a related note, I stumbled across a blog entry today that made sense: If you don’t have anything to say, don’t blog. I’ll project the same advice to people out there, and settle it in my own mind.

Special thanks to all of you living in Alaska for sharing some of your cold air with us with Northern California. A pre-Christmas gift, I see? Maybe it’ll get cold enough to snow this week, though I doubt it.

Today, I’ll be venturing to Sacramento. Well, hopefully. I’m waiting on the person I’ll be meeting in Sacramento to call me back with directions to wherever I’m going. All I know is, I’ll be going where I’m destined to go at or before one in the afternoon.

You never really appreciate the sense of security that a car window brings until you find you can’t roll it up.

I did this meme earlier today on LiveJournal (yes, I know it’s nine in the morning, but I didn’t get any sleep) in which I was supposed to mix up my iTunes library and post the opening lines of forty tracks. This would, in turn, cause other LiveJournal users to guess the names of the tracks as well as the artists behind them. Unfortunately, I have over 2,000 tracks in my iTunes library–not all of them have lyrics, and not all of them are even songs. Thinking it’d be best to skip the Rolling Stones Podcasts and Yanni orchestral dubs, I managed to throw forty tracks into a playlist and write them out on LiveJournal. The post has only been on there for a few hours, and a good number of songs have been guessed by people.

I invited Darius to take a peek at the new blog layout and subsequentially asked for some feedback. He basically said that there needed to be more content in the blog entries in order for an adequate judgement to be made. I wasn’t asking for comments on the entires, just the layout. And what exactly am I supposed to write about that’ll give these entries depth? Computer flea markets, perhaps?

Speaking of which, Adrian was upset that I linked his name to Retro Viral on LiveJournal while writing an entry similar to “Letters” and felt he was deserving of his own standing link. I went back and edited the entry, this time linking Adrian to a historical account of a hurricane sharing his name on Wikipedia.

I’ve reached a point in my blogging life where I’m unsure what I want to do next. I don’t know if I want this blog, which is really the focal point of my online life (as shown through the Podcasts and a decline in MySpace usage), to fill in the roll of a full-time network, or if I want to continue writing on LiveJournal. Almost three years ago, LiveJournal is where I started writing, and though I’ve left it a few times to “find myself” elsewhere (Xanga and MySpace), I’ve always been drawn back to it, as a drifter is drawn back to his home. There are a few things I’m considering when it comes to writing here.

The most important difference being that this blog was never intended to be a focal point for my online presence. In a matter of a few months, and through extreme flexibility, it just adapted into one. My intention for writing here was to keep in touch with family and friends through an easy medium of which I knew the ropes, while still maintaining a personal and mature reach over on LiveJournal through an already established audience of two years. I also appreciate the idea that LiveJournal allows me the control of providing content to a selected audience in the way of protected entries. But as times goes on, I’m seeing a dwindling need for that wall, and more of a need to grow through open freedom.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m faced with the difficult decision of trying to figure out if it’s time to move on from one thing to another, or if this will just be a phase like it has been before, where I find myself writing on LiveJournal again. It’s a thought that’s exposed to the world, but entirely mine, as all of these writings are and have ever been. My style, audience, and need might change, but the possession is very much still the same.

In San Diego, someone tried to sell a baby on Craigslist alongside offers for a free turkey dinner and an electric stove. ABC’s “All My Children” is introducing a transgender character, and I explore seniors doing the Macareña in the forseeable future (has to do with changing times and the Hokey Pokey…).

For enhanced sound quality, the Podcasts are now AAC format instead of MP3. This means you’ll need either iTunes or Quicktime to listen. Both are free and available for Mac and PC. Windows XP users may also choose to use WinAmp, a free audio jukebox.

Download the Podcast in stereo (broadband)
Download the Podcast in monaural (dial-up)

This morning, I launched the Radio Matthew blog under a new layout. I figured since the blog has become the makeshift portal for the Fierce Panda Podcasts, it was time to give the whole site a more professional approach while still maintaining the organized and clean aspect that I was driven to deliver.

Sad to say, I’ve neglected updating LiveJournal for the past few days. This has mostly been due to a few things: One, I spent at least four days in Sacramento this past week (Tuesday with Darius and Adrian, Wednesday for a job interview, Thursday for Thanksgiving and Friday for Lambda). Saturday was the one day I didn’t spend on Interstate 80. I do need to update LiveJournal soon, though, and I probably will when I wake up (it’s six in the morning and I still haven’t gotten to sleep). Yesterday, I learned the news that one of our family friends is having another baby–we’re all pulling for Brandy and Charles to have a little girl this time!

Over the past two days, I have downloaded several albums. The first would be the Missy Higgins album Sound of White. I saw Missy perform in July at Alice’s Summerthing concert, and her album is definitely worth looking into. Another album I downloaded was Blue October’s hit album Foiled. Coincidentally, I was invited to Alice’s Now & Zen 2006 concert (Blue October was one of five bands to participate), but donated the tickets to a fellow Alice fan who was actually able to attend. Among the many others I downloaded this week was UK sensation James Morrison, whose album Undiscovered remains just that here in the United States, but has managed to find its way on my iTunes library nonetheless where it’s been looped for the past day. As the UK’s Sun newspaper said: “There isn’t a bad track on this album.”

Cindy Sheehan enjoys creative ways of protesting war, but perhaps Donna Sheehan (no relation) has the right idea: A worldwide orgasm for peace. In the fourth installment of the Fierce Panda Podcast, I explore the story of the Global Orgasm for Peace movement, set to take place on the first day of winter (December 22).

Also covered: Foxnet has pulled the OJ Simpson special entitled “If I Did It”; Michael Richards, best known as “Kramer” on Jerry Seinfeld’s TV show, expresses himself as a racist; and Nazi gingerbread men. And I file a grievance against Charmin, the manufacturers of necessary household item toilet paper.

Repeat listeners of the Podcast will notice I was in a funk today. I was also talking in-between chews. Makes for attractive “radio” doesn’t it? At this point, I was just glad to have power to my computer again.

As you know by now, the third Podcast episode was supposed to be released on LiveJournal at the same time as its release on Facebook. However, computer difficulties in the way of a dead PowerBook kept me from releasing it on LiveJournal, so there’s a continuity issue. But that’s okay–you didn’t miss much.

Download in stereo (Broadband)
Download in monaural (Dial-up)

People come and go in life. The people who don’t mean the least to you will enter your life with agony, and leave you feeling relieved when they depart. I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the people who enter your life and bring you immense, intimate pleasure. These people bring you more pleasure than any sexual orgasm on earth will ever be able to achieve, and they do it with a smile. They do it with natural beauty. They do it by saying hello. They do it by just being.

And when they leave, and they will leave by force or design, the accompanying emotion brings you intense pain. The heartache, at times, feels like it’s unbearable. It’s cruel to the human spirit. But it happens, in a repetitive cycle. It’s a part of growing and a part of maturing–not just the acknowledgement of a loved one’s departure, but the recognition of time as the main element for said departure. The maturation comes from the recognition and acceptance of a departure; the growth comes from the cycle beginning again.

We are always growing, and always maturing. Even a fifty-year-old man is maturing still. He’s not immune to this cycle until his own death, and only then will it not matter to him any longer. But the cycle lives on in the hearts and souls of those that man touched emotionally. Voids in our hearts are never filled with the loss of a family member, a friend or a companion. However, our heart learns to grow gradually with the acceptance of new souls in our lives, strengthening and bettering the soul within ourselves until we eventually expire, and strenghten the souls around us.

I sometimes wonder why. Why does this happen in life? Is the meaning of life to enrich our own body, or is it to bring enrichment to others? I guess I’ll never have the answer to that, and I hope I never do, because not knowing that answer keeps me active. Not knowing the complete meaning of life gives me all the more reason to live it.

Yesterday, I finally made the switch from Sirius Satellite Radio to XM Satellite Radio. When I first purchased Sirius, I had been starkly against XM because I felt Sirius offered better programming. I was wrong. The lady at Wal-Mart even offered me an XM Radio at first at a lower price, and I stuck with Sirius, mainly because Sirius had OutQ, the 24-hour GLBT stream. Unfortunately, the only good show on OutQ is the Derek and Romaine show, and even that is going downhill.

After hearing XM’s Flight 26 on AOL Radio for a little over half a year, I finally announced the decision weeks ago on my LiveJournal to leave Sirius for XM. I am so much happier with the choice of programming on XM Radio. Yes, Flight 26 is on there, but there’s so much more! Never have I enjoyed talk radio more than I have with XM Radio–from Opie & Anthony on High Voltage to Dr. Laura Schlessinger on America Right (on a conservative station, for some reason), talk radio has never sounded better. I’m happy with my decision to switch satellite providors.

I’ve started Podcasting again, and unlike when I did it previously, I’m allowing anyone who wants to the ability to download them. Episodes premiers first on my LiveJournal, and then one day later on this blog, Facebook and MySpace.

Yesterday was one of the busiest days ever. From five in the morning to nine at night, one thing kept coming up after another. I collapsed in bed at ten in the evening and woke up this morning at nine. Today is my day free from everything.

This morning, I enrolled at American River College, leaving behind Solano College for good. I had been discussing a move to American River since March of this year, but hadn’t actually put those thoughts and words into action until this morning. I’m very happy with the transition. I spent a lot of this morning and afternoon finding people in the ARC network on Facebook and poking them. Now, about thirty or forty people have pokes waiting in their mailbox for when they next log in.

That’s me. Feel free to poke me, add me, or e-mail me if you want. On top of enrolling at ARC, I also found myself filling out paperwork with the Social Security Administration in an attempt to get a replacement Social Security card. My grandmother sent mine through the wash a while back, and I’ve been meaning to get a new one ever since.

By the time I had found out, it was already old news, but I felt it was worth sharing anyway. CBS News correspondent Ed Bradley passed away today at the age of 65. Bradley was diagnosed with Leukemia, which ultimately claimed his life following a nasty infection last month. I haven’t felt this saddened by the loss of a great reporter since 2003, when NBC’s David Bloom died while covering Operation Iraqi Freedom.

I downloaded Sheryl Crow’s album Wildflower last night. I have to say, the tracks are amazing to listen to. “Good Is Good” is one that I’ve skipped, though, when listening to the album thoroughly. It just doesn’t seem to “fit” with the rest of the album. My new favorite track is “Lifetimes” which is a brilliant example of how lyric and melody go together (like John Mayer’s “Vultures” or Keane’s “Crystal Ball“).

In addition to all that, I took new pictures for MySpace and Facebook after getting out of the shower. My hair was still drying, so it was in a wild state (it usually is anyway–I haven’t picked up a comb in God only knows how long). Out of the twenty or so photos I took, I only found maybe two or three I actually liked, and only one that I ultimately ended up using.

My grandmother definitely has an odd cat. I walked into the bathroom today and saw that Tiger might’ve been a bit hung over…

I wrote about this a little on my LiveJournal, but it looks like the Internet will soon be coming to a car near you. A company called KVH, which is responsible for putting DirecTV in most campers and SUVs, is marketing a new technology that would give anyone with $90 a month to kill the ability to access MSN’s WebTV service from a computer or notebook. The service, marketed as “TracNet” will cost a little under $2,000 for hardware and installation. TracNet relies upon existing cell towers serviced through Verizon Wireless to connect to the Internet. No idea if this is a niche market, or if this will catch on like satellite radio has.

The elections are over. It was a Democratic upset for people following the Governor’s race in California, with Angelides losing to Schwarzenegger, but it was a huge victory for the future of our country, with Democratic power in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Along with the Democratic victory came another boost for the Donkey Party–the first-ever woman Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, a California-native. With the news of the Democratic takeover, Donald Rumsfeld has resigned as Secretary of State, to be replaced with former Head of CIA Robert Gates.

Ever since starting therapy in early October, I’ve been watching a lot of Dr. Phil.  This has led to a major increase in my television intake per week (from three hours of FOX every Sunday to three hours of FOX, plus two hours of Dr. Phil per day on CBS 13 and CW 31). 

This week, I’m taping his show.  The show explores a mother’s accusations of molestation toward the father of her daughter.  It’s a very interesting, and somewhat disturbing, show.  I’m taping it because I can only handle watching this episode in small parts.

Tomorrow is an important election in California.  I already voted by absentee ballot, but I still encourage everyone else to take to the polls.

Hello to all of you who are reading this blog in lieu of LiveJournal’s servers being down. In an event that mirrored the Great LJ Blackout of 2005, LiveJournal’s servers suffered a massive power outage last night around 2AM. This means my main blog (the one that’s kept from public eye and viewable only to about a hundred or so people) is currently kaput while LiveJournal’s parent company, SixApart, works “around the clock” to fix the server issues.

When I started blogging on LiveJournal in 2004, a similar incident just a year later happened where LiveJournal’s servers went offline for two whole days. Back then, though, LiveJournal had a little over 5 million registered accounts–today, that number has more than doubled to a little over 11 million accounts (which means, more servers to host, and more servers to fail!).

As of right now, I’m able to do things on LiveJournal I wasn’t able to do earlier this morning. I’m somehow logged into the service, which means my server (I believe my account is still hosted on Cartman) is back up, but I can’t update my blog, view my blog entries, or do much of anything other than reading the LiveJournal status page (I can hear Ollie Williams shouting, “It’s still broked!”).

Today is Halloween.  I’m sitting downstairs in the living room (which could also be considered our dining room, I guess), wondering if anyone will ring the doorbell or knock for some candy.  We bought two big bags of candy (Smarties and M&Ms…I experimented with the M&Ms a little bit last night), even though I’ve decided I don’t want to be bothered tonight.  With that said, I won’t be answering the door.  This city has 90,000 people in it, so there’s bound to be other places little kids can get their candy from.

It probably doesn’t help that I keep eating the candy too.  I’m so tired of Smarties and M&Ms that if I never saw them again in my life, I probably wouldn’t miss them.

People who read this blog are probably getting tired of my entries becoming so few and far between.  The reason for this is because I blog so often at my restricted blog on LiveJournal that I sort of run out of things to say here.  Now that I’ve (finally) started my job at the Nut Tree, I’ll probably be updating this a little more often so my family can keep tabs on my daily stuff.

In other words:  Sorry for not updating this damn thing for the past month.

Not much has been going on lately.  I’ve got my orientation at the Nut Tree on Monday–that’ll be very exciting.  I got an e-mail from them two days ago informing me that the project to open the park is falling behind a little, but they’re still making mad progress.  They hired a new interim Operation Manager, who is the wife of the Nut Tree’s Master project developer.  I still haven’t received an employee manual or training or anything, but patience is a virtue–I know they’re working pretty hard.

There’s talks that my grandma and I will be going to Las Vegas and South Carolina for Christmas this year, though that is all dependent on my job situation.  I’ll keep everyone posted.

(From CNN International) Comments by academic Germaine Greer on the death of wildlife TV star Steve Irwin have triggered a storm of anger with the Australian author criticized for being “insensitive” and “elitist.” Greer, best known for her feminist book “The Female Eunuch”, said Wednesday Irwin was an “embarrassment” and a “self-deluded animal torturer.”

Irwin, who gained international fame for his “Crocodile Hunter” TV series, was killed Monday by a stingray barb while filming a wildlife documentary.

Speaking on Australian TV Channel Nine’s “A Current Affair” news program Wednesday, Greer described those who mourned Irwin’s passing as “idiots” and said possibly millions of Australians were embarrassed by him. Greer said Irwin had not treated animals with the respect theydeserved.

“He would tell you how dangerous they were and he would proceed to intrude on their space and humiliate (them) really — treat them with massive insensitivity,” she said. “It’s no surprise he came to grief.”

Click here for the Nine Australia interview with Germaine Greer

It’s unusual to post for a second time about television and my stay in Germany, but there will probably be no more appropriate time than now.

At around 9:30PM last night, I learned that Australian environmentalist and celebrity Steve Irwin, best known as the Crocodile Hunter whose television show has been said to air up to seven times per day in the United States, passed away in an unfortunate accident involving a stingray. Irwin was shooting a promotional ad for an upcoming Animal Planet documentary called “Ocean’s Deadliest” when he was struck by the barb of a stingray through the heart. Irwin’s seven-year-old daughter, Bindi Sue (named after his dog), was present on the shoot according to initial reports.

When I first learned of Irwin’s death, it was less than 30 minutes after the first source broke the story. I thought the source, an Australian newspaper, may have been a tabloid newspaper, but as more Australian agencies reported Irwin’s death, I was faced with the unsettling truth that one of my favorite television personalities had passed away.

While living in Germany, one of the four TV channels I had mentioned (AFN Spectrum) began airing repeats of Irwin’s Network Ten program. Irwin’s fearless handling of nature’s dangerous creatures and his original love for the environment caused “The Crocodile Hunter” to become a staple in our household. I can even recall bringing in a tape of Irwin’s show to my video tech class in 1999, where it became a favorite among my peers to watch. We didn’t have much in the way of TV programs to watch, but “The Crocodile Hunter” quickly became a favorite among my friends and many military families in Germany.

It’s with a saddened heart that our generation has lost a great icon of environmentalism and naturism. Crocs still rule!

According to the TV Guide, my shows won’t be on FOX tomorrow.  I only watch TV once a week, and I haven’t even been able to do that for the past two weeks (Teen Choice Awards, and then some decision to air Star Wars: Episode II).  Instead, it’ll be the finale of That 70’s Show, followed by several episodes of Family Guy.  The regular season on FOX resumes in mid-September.

In October 1997, my family packed up and left Northern California for the other side of the world. For me, this meant leaving behind the only life I knew for a strange, foreign land. We became a new military family living in a city called Kitzingen, Germany, and I began attending school thirty minutes away in nearby Würzburg. A classic American commodity, television, didn’t quite follow us to Germany. Sporting the slogan, “We Bring You Home”, the American Forces Network or “AFN” is the only over-the-air (called “terrestrial” in Europe) most Americans can receive without shelling out extra money for cable. In 1999, a deal was reached with a German cable providor to allow free access to three other AFN channels to anyone with a cable hookup and under no obligation to subscribe to cable services. These three additional channels, called AFN Spectrum (which was basically a film and family channel that repeated it’s programming three times a day or every eight hours), AFN NewSports (a channel showing news and sports) and AFN Pacific (same as AFN, but time shifted for people living in Japan and Oceania) gave us a total of four channels. Occasionally, my family would splurge a few extra dollars per month to gain access to British television channels that aired American shows like SKY One and the UK’s answer to Cartoon Network, but with under 15 English-speaking channels to choose from, television was definitely not something that was a commodity in Europe. Since 2004, though, AFN has expanded it’s channel guide–splitting apart NewSports into two separate channels (AFN News heavily relies on FOX News, but big surprise there) and launching AFN Freedom, a channel targeted to US troops in Iraq.

AFN was, and still is, pretty well known for showing televison programs on a heavy delay. Anyone with access to an Internet connection knew well months in advance that Richard won the first Survivor series on CBS before AFN ever got around to airing it. There were, however, two times watching AFN was a pleasant experience. The first of which was when AFN Pacific would air Saturday Night Live, which was always a week ahead of AFN’s airing despite only being about 8 hours ahead of Europe. The second of which was late night television, which would consist of “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” at 10:30PM and “The Late Show with David Letterman” at 11:30PM. It seems so mediocre that it’d be a privilege to stay up late enough to see Letterman, given how I can now see both shows in the same timeslot on two different networks now that I’m back in the United States, but when I was in junior high school, it was a big deal.

One of the things I can remember enjoying about the Late Show with David Letterman was the continuity of Dave’s feud with talk show host Oprah Winfrey. This morning, doing my usual browse of YouTube videos, I stumbled across an interview legendary and Emmy-award winning Detroit television anchor Bill Bonds conducted with Oprah when she was just starting out. This led me to search for other clips Oprah has appeared on, and I stumbled across one that threw me into a flashback to when I’d watch the Late Show in Germany (I don’t watch late-night talk shows anymore). After sixteen years of “feuding”, in late 2005, Oprah finally appeared on the Late Show upon opening night of her Broadway show “The Color Purple.” It’s such an unexplainable feeling of nostalgia to be able to see something like that, even if I am a year off, given the sheer joy I had for four years watching Dave Letterman while stationed overseas.

Kayce, Joel and I went to Taco Bell today to grab some food.  Taco Bell is nice because, like Wendy’s, it offers food at a reasonably cheap price, which fits perfectly with college students who are sick of Top Ramen and Spaghettios.  Burger King’s double cheeseburgers, while delicious, are well over $2.  Even though McDonald’s has its double cheeseburgers on it’s “Dollar Menu” (which, in reality, is only a dollar before tax is added on), the burgers are often sloppy and messy.  Taco Bell, on the other hand, has tacos and burritos for under 90 cents and often just getting two burritos is enough to fill up even the hungriest college student.

Following our brief trip to Taco Bell, our trio decided to venture out to Leisure Town Road in the countryland to find Kayce’s “Happy Place”.  On the way there, “Heaven” by DJ Sammy started playing over the iPod.  I made a remark to the couple that I had heard the track play on SKY.FM on Sunday and that it reminded me of them.  Tonight, I surfed YouTube for my favorite video featuring Heaven and thought I’d post it here for people to check out.

Music is a beautiful blessing to have in life.  It’s like a modern day Latin–a universal language, but unlike Latin, it’s one everyone can understand.   I’m fortunate enough to have an acceptance in my soul for all types of music, from R&B to Jazz, Rock and Classical.  I have a dream (or should I say, “Dreamsicle“) that one day I’ll be fortunate enough to find a career where I can exercise my love and passion for music.

I was going to do something in broadcast journalism, but after seeing some of the crazy things that go on in journalism, I think I’ll stick to music and the radio.  At least in music, craziness is considered an artform rather than a scandal.

I’m still sore from Friday’s adventure to Guinda. If you’ve never heard of Guinda, it’s a small town with a population less than 600, quietly nestled six miles north of Cache Creek casino. It’s the kind of town that would have a YouTube mention of Guinda on the front page of its newspaper. There’s a corner store and Joel’s house, and that’s pretty much the excitement for Guinda. Nestled north of Guinda is a town called Rumsey, where Joel, Kayce, their friend Travis and I found ourselves rushing down Cache Creek (the water) in inflatable tubes. After a near-death experience and inches away from drowning, I was exhausted and found myself back in Vacaville short of 9:30PM.

While I did take photos in Guinda, it was probably a good thing I didn’t take my camera on the water. Aside from being dumped into the water several times (once so severe, I was held under water for about ten seconds without air while my back was slammed into a rock), I had my car keys in what I thought was a securely tightened Ziploc bag in my pocket. My keyless entry allows me to unlock my doors, but refuses to lock them. Good thing I have power door locks. Anyway, I can’t wait to get back in the tubes and go down Cache Creek again. Maybe not anytime soon–my shoulders, knees and back all hurt from either excessive rowing or being pushed into rocks by rutheless waters–but in the near future. While in Guinda, I received a message on my phone saying I’d been hired by the Nut Tree Family Park.

Saturday afternoon, I caved and got a Last.FM account. I feel the need to share my love for Keane and John Mayer with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like I thought it would, but it’s still a neat little tool nonetheless. As time goes by, I’ll figure more and more of it out. Last.FM is audio’s answer to online social networking, making it the MySpace of music.

Doing my usual wrap of YouTube, I stumbled across this video of Keane’s UK commercial for their album Under The Iron Sea. I also happened to make my way to Keane’s live performance of “A Bad Dream” from BBC Radio 1’s “Big Weekend” this past summer. I can recall hearing ads for this on BBC Radio 1, but it seemed to have more of an emphasis on Snow Patrol rather than Keane. The more I listen to Keane and Britpop in general (I just learned today that’s the proper title for the genre), the more I figure I’d have loved The Beatles if I was a child of the 1960s. Hopefully, I’ll have the opportunity to see Keane in concert come October when they play at UC Berkeley.

Shira’s a friend of mine from the Lambda Community Center in Sacramento who recently went on a trip to Ireland. She asked me tonight if I’d be at Lambda on Friday, and I told her no.

I’m going on a trip to Guinda with two friends of mine, Joel and Kayce. Here’s a photo of them. They’re nuts. All three of us are nuts. But we’re all perfect for each other.

There’s no higher feeling of ecstasy than the closeness of friends, be it two or twenty, whom you can share anything with, including the blessing of life.

More bowling and laser tag fun with Kayce and Joel, along with Kayce’s friend Katherine and sister Kelleigh. Took more pictures, took some video, posted the photos on Flickr, will post the videos on YouTube tomorrow. Kayce and Joel have invited me to do something involving water on Friday in some city past Woodland. When I’m more awake and conscious enough to remember the city, I’ll post about it (more than likely tomorrow with the YouTube videos). It’ll mark our first activity with Joel and Kayce as a new couple (happened about an hour ago).

My aunt in South Carolina viewed my blog today for the first time. I guess the question arose between my aunt and my grandmother as to what “emo” meant. At first, I didn’t understand the question, nor did I know where it was coming from. Then, it dawned on me they were probably viewing Alex’s photos in which his nickname is “emo boy”. I’m not entirely sure what “emo” means anyway. I know it has something to do with being cast away from society or something. I don’t know. This is the part where I shut up and stop talking about things I don’t know anything about.

Someone saw my profile picture the other day (the one where I’m holding the camera toward a mirror in an attempt to capture my inverted reflection) and decided to e-mail me a compliment.

“Hi there, I saw your blog on WordPress, and I have to say I find you really cute.  And your face looks SO amazingly clear!  What do you use on your skin?”

I told them, “Photoshop”.

Yesterday saw an awesome time with Kayce and some of her friends at a bowling alley in Vacaville.  Laser tag, air hockey and craziness ensued.  Took tons of pictures but only uploaded one of myself.  They’re on Flickr.  Also took some video and posted them on YouTube.

Tonight, FOX is showing the Teen Choice Awards.   That means, my Sunday shows of American Dad, Simpsons and War At Home won’t be seen until next week.  On top of that, this is the first week in a while without Hell’s Kitchen since the season ended last Monday.  See, this is why I don’t watch TV too much.  I get attached to a few shows, and they can’t even be on this week.  TV blows.

Our second interview for Nut Tree Family Park ambassador was held at the Madison Inn behind the Black Oak Restaurant.  The entire interview went fine, especially since I was under-dressed (though I’m told it was Casual Friday anyway) and a little unprepared (thank God for four years of impromptu forensic speaking!).  What bothered me, though, is I backed up my deliverance of preparedness with a 10 minute frantic search for my car keys at the end of the interview.  Turns out, they were in my computer bag the entire time.

So now, I definitely have a reason to be a little nervous about this job opening.  They know I lost my keys, and I was honest about being unprepared (to an extent–I still pulled, clear out of thin air, a fabulous speech on how you have to face obstacles that just get thrown at you at the last moment), so hopefully they don’t see me as being absent-minded at all.

I’m just going to pop some aspirin (I have a headache now) and push it to the back of my mind until Monday or Tuesday.  No need getting stressed over it.

Just got back from my interview with the Nut Tree Family Park and now I’m making Hamburger Helpwer (mmm…Cheddar Cheese Melt). The Nut Tree Family Park (“Nut Tree”) is pretty much a landmark in Vacaville, California. Wedged half-way between San Francisco and Sacramento, it offers a great family environment where memories can be made. In addition to that, let’s hope it can offer me a paycheck.

The interview went well this morning. I’ll be doing a second interview at the Residency Inn tomorrow at 10:30. One of the things we have to do in the next interview (I’m guessing it’s a group interview) is “act out” what we’d do on our job. Tell a joke, tell a story, things like that. They put on the second interview flyer the jokes must be appropriate and clean, which means now I have to do an Internet search for clean, age-appropriate jokes. I have a dark, sarcastic, somewhat deep humor that few people get. It’s more conversational; not necessarily one-liners. An example of a joke I have to tell is the one where the muffins are in the toaster oven and one shouts “OMG, a talking muffin!”…yeah, long story.

Hamburger Helper is done!  Time for me to take off. 

]]> http://radiomatthew.wordpress.com/2006/08/17/bocce-grove/feed/ 0 radiomatthew http://radiomatthew.wordpress.com/2006/08/16/headliners-and-legends/ http://radiomatthew.wordpress.com/2006/08/16/headliners-and-legends/#comments Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:03:32 +0000 Radio Matthew http://radiomatthew.wordpress.com/2006/08/16/headliners-and-legends/ ]]>

Finally, a break this morning from all the pizza! Had some nice Macaroni and Cheese for breakfast this morning, which was at 5AM. I managed, somehow, to get my sleep schedule back on track by sleeping longer, rather than staying awake until I crash.

Speaking of sleep, according to the forums at Explosm, nightmares are caused when pressure is exerted on the chest during sleep. That makes me wonder if side-sleepers have a 50/50 chance of having a good dream or a bad dream in any given night, and if back-sleepers always have good dreams? I’m a side sleeper with a preference to sleeping on my left side (left shoulder against the mattress).

Yesterday was my job interview at the Volkswagen car dealership. The person doing the interview told me with the computer skills I had, he couldn’t see me doing a detailing job and he’d look into other jobs around the dealership instead. Plus, he was looking for someone to work full-time rather than part time (don’t they read the applications when they come in?). He’s supposed to give me a call later today.

Finally, while doing my usual scoop of YouTube, I found a video that sets the record “straight” so-to-say: Gay marriage should be legalized, even if this means marriage between a human and an animal is next. But what should be forbidden is marriage between a gay animal and a human.

I’m going on my third straight day of having a Totino’s Party Pizza
for breakfast. Nothing else sounds edible at four in the morning–not
even the Hamburger Helper I requested earlier this week. I think it’s
because Hamburger Helper takes about a half-hour to make, while the
pizza takes half that time. Both give desired results.

Yesterday afternoon, I read a fascinating article on Jill Carroll, the Christian-Science Monitor columnist who was kidnapped in Iraq. What surprised me the most about
the article was Carroll stated her kidnappers invited her to watch
television with a family. How do you channel surf with the mujahideen?
she thought. Anything concerning politics or news was out. What did she
finally settle on? “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on Dubai Channel 1. They
have Oprah in Dubai?!

This morning, I was doing my usual cruise on YouTube of Ann Coulter
videos and stumbled upon a video that has finally answered a question
I’ve thought long and hard about: Does orange juice make a person gay? Thank you, Steven Colbert, for giving me the ability to sleep easier tonight knowing that mystery has been solved.

Just to continue the previous post (entitled “Broken Toy”), there’s a few things I forgot to mention:

One, Keane is awesome. Enough said. If you haven’t heard their new album “Under The Iron Sea”, you’re missing out.

Two, yes, this website is RSS compatible. I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care to, but for those of you complaining that the Tagworld wasn’t, this one is.

Three, I’d like to thank Julien Biewer-Elstob of Davis, California for the snapshot of the header picture (which, unless I change it, is the clouds of Wales). I’d also like to thank him for not suing me the millions of other times I’ve used the photo.

Four, Keane is awesome, in case it wasn’t enough the first time I said it.

technorati tags:keane, music, julien, photo, tagworld

This is the third attempt I’ve made at creating a blog somewhere. If you’re my family or friends viewing yet another place, I’m sorry I’ve pulled you in three different directions over the past two years. I swear (or at least promise) that I’ll attempt to make this more permanent.

You’ve probably noticed a few things different about this place than the other one. First off, there’s more photos, and they’re hosted elsewhere. I’ve been using Flickr (link) to host my photos for a while now, and it’s nice to find a place online that will automatically update my photos.

The second major difference is the lack of music. This is because those small handfuls of people who wrote to me mostly complained about the music either being too loud or automatically starting. A third complaint was by people who haven’t figured out that it’s no longer 1997 and are connecting using dial-up. Put away your Pokémon cards and Cabbage Patch kids, and join us in 2006 where KT Tunstall rocks the airwaves and cable TV once again needs a set-top box. If you really miss the music, go to Wal-Mart and buy a $5 clock radio. Turn it on when you read my blog. It’s, essentially, the same thing.

The third major difference is the lack of my name being in the URL. Instead, it says Radio Matthew. This is because I pulled my head out of my butt, and the extra space allowed for the growth of a creative bone. If you can live with that mental image, you’ll fit in perfectly with the writings in this blog. The last difference (I’ll throw it in this paragraph, why not?) is that links are now enclosed in brackets. Too many people did understand that a word highlighted in a different color with a line under it was a link, so I’ve given the stupid people of the world (or just those on AOL, take your pick) some help.

Welcome to the new place. Place all housewarming plants in a corner, pull up an armchair (actually, we’re still using crates until I can go to IKEA, so sit on one of those), turn on your clock radio and enjoy.

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