I’ve never been a soccer fan. Not of watching it, anyway. Playing in gym class was fun, especially if you were a defender and got to spend half the game standing around watching what was going on on the other end. “D” was where I played, because even when I was young and could run, I wasn’t exactly what you’d call fast. Watching, well, for me that leaves a lot to be desired.

They kick the ball all the way down the field and then the other team kicks it the other way, and back and forth it goes and then once or twice a game (or match, I guess I should say) somebody scores and there is much rejoicing. Not my thing. IMHO, if you have a sport where you don’t actually control the item of play in your hands or in a stick or something, you need to play it in a smaller venue than a 12 acre field – this is why, for instance, the MISL is much more entertaining than FIBA. Soccer in a hockey rink – the only thing that would make it more entertaining would be if they kept the ice. But I don’t resent other people who like it.

Which is more than I can say about Ann Coulter, who apparently hates not only soccer but also anybody that enjoys soccer. It’s some kind of socialist plot, ostensibly because it’s team sport with no individual glory (or shame) unlike American sports. Plus there’s not enough scoring (I’ll give her that one).

Though I didn’t get past freshman football in school, I can honestly tell you, Ann, that there’s not a lot of glory for an offensive tackle. Shame, maybe, if you happen to be holding on a touchdown or something, but that’s about it.

Of course, Ann looks like somebody who got made fun of so badly in gym class that she decided to go for gender reassignment surgery in hopes of not being picked last at field hockey or something.

I’m sure that what brother Ann really doesn’t like about soccer is all the goddamn foreigners that seem to love it. A lot of them aren’t even white, fer chrissakes!

But it’s a low-cost sport that anybody in any shithole place like Pakistan, Somalia, or West Texas can play. I mean all you need is a flat spot and a ball (or maybe a decapitated head if you’re in Afghanistan) and you’re good to go. It’s not like they can afford a lot of equipment to play football (or even worse, hockey – if your kid decides to play hockey, you’re screwed ‘cuz between the skates and pads and helmets, you better be prepared to take out a second mortgage).

Though I’m sure Ann hates hockey, too, ‘cuz it’s the sport of those socialists to the north (look on the bright side though, Ann – the Canadians call it “soccer,” too).

But, anyway, despite Ann’s disapproval, the World Cup ratings are sky high(ish) and ‘merica has caught Futball Fever, which I expect to last until the USA loses in the next round, and people realize that you can’t lose and keep advancing forever.

Then we can all go back to watching American sports, like the one where if you get a hit 1 time out of 3, you’re a Hall-of-Famer. Assuming you weren’t having somebody give you a shot of HGH in the ass or something – ‘cuz this is American, man. Cheating is fine, but getting caught is shameful.

My long horrible week is finally (almost) at an end. Five days – two of them late ones – and on-call to boot. Fortunately I’m working from home today, which is a good way to get it over. Even better, I am making up for this week by taking Monday off, then working from home on Tuesday. So I won’t have to go to the office until Stupid Meeting Day. Then I took Thursday off, Friday, of course, is The Fourth (USA! USA! USA!) and then I have the following Monday off as well. This is gonna cost me a fortune in beer, but it’s worth it.

I’m also supposed to get an iPhone 5s for work next week, so I’ll be able to compare it with my HTC. I have to admit, I’m not terrible excited by it and frankly wish I’d just stuck with the 4s loaner. IOS just seems so…. Generic, I guess I’d have to say. Like you could pick up anybody’s phone and it would be pretty much exactly the same as anybody else’s. Which I suppose is the appeal.

Me, I don’t like to accept the default settings in life.

Oh well, every time I start to write something here, I get interrupted by work stuff – what the hell is wrong with these people? – so I guess I’d better get to it and kill the rest of this day.

Much like me, my iPhone was eternally searching yesterday. Unlike me, it was searching for the ATT cellular network (I, sadly, have no idea what I’m searching for, though I’ve been searching for it for most of my life).

When I got to work yesterday, I stopped down to see the person who does the phone stuff, but, alas, she was out sick (a lot of that going on around here). As this was not only my work phone, but also a substitute for the non-existent land line at my house this presented a bit of a dilemma.

For one thing, I feel oddly insecure when I leave the house without a working phone (odd because I managed to survive the first two-thirds of my life without one – or even knowing that I desperately needed one). I also need to “authenticate” myself via a phone when I work from home (and I sure as hell don’t wanna have to come to work needlessly) and when I’m on-call for the week I need to be able to get my voice mail, since my work voice mail calls my cellphone every 15 minutes until I pick up the message.

And then of course you never know when the house might burn down, or you might suffer some horrible chainsaw-related accident, or a serial killer breaks in and you want your final terrified death screams recorded for posterity on a 911 call and broadcast on the lo-cal news.

So, being the eternal optimist that I am, I saw this not as a tragic dilemma, but as an opportunity. In other words, I used this as an excuse to do what I’ve wanted to do for a very long time – get an Android phone. So that’s what I did. I set it all up online and then went over to the phone store by where I work, and I was in business.

No need for the phone geek to set anything (much) up – I just logged into Google, and, whoosh – all my contacts, appointments, and settings and everything else were all magically there, and now I’m trying to remember all the apps that I actually use (far fewer than the number of apps I have installed) so I can download them to the phone.

So that’s cool. Plus “OK Google” is way, way smarter than Siri (Siri’s kind of a moron, truth be told).

Then I came into work today and the phone person was there, so she hooked me up with a loaner phone while a new iPhone 5s is on order. I don’t really want it (fairly content to stick with the 4s – especially now that I won’t actually ever have to use the iPhone outside of work crap), but, hey, it’s not like I’m getting a raise anytime soon (in actuality, on July 1st we get a 2% bump – first increase in something like six years. Fortunately, the cost of living hasn’t gone up at all in that time).

So now I’m back to two phones when I barely needed even one, but I’m paying what, in retrospect, seems like an awful lot of money a month for unlimited calls (I think I make an average of zero non-work-related call a month, and get maybe half a dozen incoming non-work and non-spam calls a year) and unlimited texts (even less useful to me than “voice” – my fingertip covers an area roughly the size of eight “keys.” How the hell these kids text so fast is beyond me, though I think not caring how atrociously terrible your spelling is, is the first step).

Anyhow, I do have a tidbit to pass along to you Apple folks out there (those that didn’t already know about it, at least – perhaps it’s common knowledge).

While at the phone store, I noticed they had an otoscope behind the desk (in case you don’t know, that’s the thingie with the light and the pointy end that’s a lot smaller than your elbow – but it’s OK ‘cuz they’re medical professionals – that they stick in your ear when you go to the doctor and they want to pretend whatever it is they’re looking at is worth the $250 they’re charging you).

So I asked, “hey, is this in case somebody gets an ear bud stuck in their ear, so you can find it and get it out?”

Turns out, no. It’s because Apple puts their “moisture” detectors in the bottom of the headphone jack, and they use the otoscope to check ’em out.

“Water – you lose, sucker!”

Did I mention I also went with the extra accidental damage (including water) coverage?

So I’m thinking you should cut the tip off some crappy old ear buds (say, the ones that Apple ships with their products) and keep your hole plugged (so to speak) when you’re not in need of sound.

Then maybe when your phone falls into the skimmer basket, there won’t be any evidence.

After some rather decidedly un-summerlike weather lately (which I suppose makes sense, since it’s technically not summer yet), we had our first crappy-hot day in what seems like a long time. Hot and nauseatingly humid – reminiscent of pretty much every day of the summer I was forced to spend in DC.

I was working from home yesterday, and I don’t turn the a/c on because I’m cheap and it seems silly to run it for basically one room. But it was pretty miserable, and I spent some time trying to figure out how to get an air conditioner in my office. The windows aren’t conducive to window a/c installation (not without major modification) and putting something through the wall as I did in our bedroom would really screw up my wall art.

It’s too humid around here to use a portable swamp cooler, and a portable a/c would still have to be vented someplace (even if I wanted to spend money on one). I could put a split system in, but that requires putting yet another condensing unit outside someplace (we already have two that haven’t run since the first summer we moved out here when I was testing them) and running electric to it. Though I suppose I could tie into the electric of one of the ones we don’t use.

But, anyway, all that would cost money and I’m cheap and summers are so short here that it doesn’t seem worthwhile. Not when I’m throwing all kinds of money into the big pit we call a “pool.” For the most part, I can just go jump in that every now and again.

Along those lines, I took a break yesterday to pull the solar cover off and turn the pump on (it’s on a timer, but I have it set for 2-8 AM and 2-8 PM, and I wanted to get it going so I could turn the robot on and let the skimmer do its thing so I could go jump in when it got unbearable in the house.

So I checked the skimmer basket, and there were the usual bugs and leaves (no frogs, toads, or rodents, thankfully) in there so I leaned over to pull it out to clean it. Of course, I had my phone in my shirt pocket and, well, “plunk” – into the skimmer it went.

I pulled it out as quickly as possible, dried it off, and – much to my surprise – it still seemed to work. Except, on further inspection, there was no sound – which is a bummer ‘cuz I like to keep the ringer and the dinger on when I work from home so I can hear if I get a work-related call or e-mail. And then I went to take a movie of the dog (because who can get enough of those, right?) and the camera looked really hazy – because, of course, there was moisture in there.

This, too, was a bummer, because I got a check in the mail and I really didn’t want to have to go the back to deposit it. But the pictures it was taking looked like some kind of artsy-fartsy vaseline filter or something and you couldn’t really make anything out.

After putting the sucker out it the sun for a while as I contemplated plausible excuses to give the folks at work for why my phone was no longer working, the sound came back and water evaporated from the camera and everything seems OK (though it currently seems to be “searching” for the ATT network. WiFi works, so hopefully it’s ATT and not the phone).

Well, crap. Maybe reboot will fix it. It’s time to start getting ready for work anyway, I guess.

Kind of a crappy weekend here. I had thoughts of maybe pressure washing the deck (if not actually getting around to staining it), but the wife got sick and basically went to bed on Friday night and stayed there until Sunday. Though if she was gonna miss a day of a weekend, Saturday was the day to do it – it was cloudy, windy, damp (I don’t think it really rained much, be just stepping outside make you feel clammy), and cold. I don’t think it even got up to 60°.

It was even too cold to go sit on the tractor and cut the grass (I mean, I suppose I could have, seeing as I sit on the damn thing when there’s a -40 windchill to plow the driveway, but plowing is necessary to get out to the road and lawn mowing is most definitely optional).

So I mostly spent the day playing Wolfenstein: The New Order (always good to do some Nazi-killin’, though I’m old and kind of suck at the whole “gaming” thing, so the Nazis probably killed me – or, I should say, killed B.J. Blazkowicz – more than he killed them) and laughing at the foibles of the folks on “Renovation Realities.”

Mostly I laugh at their confident “pre-project” predictions of how great things are gonna go as they “start” the total kitchen renovation they expect to do in five vacation days at 9:38 AM by having breakfast and then clearing all the shit out of the drawers and cabinets – though it’s also fun to watch them cut live wires, drill through water lines, or check for gas leaks with a match.

I often wonder about the camera guys on this show. I mean, I know they’re just supposed to be impartially recording events as they transpire, but when you see somebody fixin’ to blow the house up, it seems like maybe you’d at least say, “hey, tell ya what. I’m gonna just leave the video rolling while I head out to the next block or two over. Gimme 5 minutes, and then carry on.”

I also finished watching Season One of “Orphan Black.” A good show, IMHO, so you may want to give it a shot if you find yourself with time to kill. Season Two is on now and I’ve been recording it, patiently waiting until I get through the season one.

Much to my horror, I found that I didn’t get the first episode, which, given how the first season ended, I really need to see. It’s not for free yet on Amazon, so I’ll have to pay either $2 or $3, which I guess I can spare but that’s pretty much what I typically spend on a book, which lasts me considerably longer than 43 minutes. So I postponed the decision until the next time I’m in-between renovatin’ and Nazi-killin’.

Though I will put this question out to you all: is it worth the extra money to buy/rent the HD version from Amazon? I always get HD, but when I watch “regular” DVDs, they look pretty OK to me (not pristine but generally good enough, especially for a teevee show). I’m tempted to try it out one time, just to see.

Sunday was a better day, at least. It started out kind of cold and cloudy but it did brighten up in the afternoon and the wife managed to move about a bit and get some sun and fresh air. And I got the grass cut (not much else – unless you count extricating a rather enormous Bufo americanus – aka, American Toad – from the pool solar cover).

Sadly, it never really got all that warm – 72-ish, which I hate to complain about, but when you’re hoping for pool weather, that just doesn’t cut it. It felt nice in the sun, but when clouds wandered by it got kind of cold and breezy.

It was also the Father’s Day Fly-In Pancake Breakfast at the little local airport, so the skies were filled with small planes buzzing overhead. They were enjoyable to watch, but there also must have been helicopter rides or something going on, because about every 7 minutes a chopper flew directly over the house at an altitude of about 37 feet (or so it seemed). A few times are cool – after that, it gets a little annoying.

And now here we are – Monday again. I’m off, and it’s looking like a bright sunny day so far (not very warm yet and they say maybe some t-storms later – probably to correspond with whatever time I get off my ass and venture outside). The wife is home as well – recovering, but still in somewhat of a persistent vegetative state. She looks pretty wiped out, so hopefully one more day of rest will set her right.

I just hope she doesn’t pass whatever the hell it was on to me, ‘cuz while I could use a good excuse to spend 36 hour in bed, I really don’t like being sick.

No doubt everybody’s all excited to do some waving of the good old stars and stripes today, because it’s Fannie Flagg Day. OK, well, it’s not actually about Fannie (whose real name is Patricia Neal, which she obviously couldn’t use for professional purposes ‘cuz we already had one of them). I find this ironic, because Patricia Neal, as you no doubt recall, was responsible for the rise of the greatest American patriot prior to Glenn Beck, Lonesome Rhodes, in “A Face in the Crowd.” Plus, Fannie Flagg, Patricia Neal, and Andy Griffith all have Bacon Numbers of two. Coincidence? I think not.

So, anyhow, I just kind of assumed that Flag Day was an American thing, just because it seems so…. Stupid. A day to honor a piece of cloth, which we also honor in song before pretty much every sporting event, and which I, personally, was forced to pledge “allegiance” to every school day until, I think, 6th grade (not real sure when it stopped – I don’t think I had to do it in high school).

So since all that singin’ and praisin’ and pledgin’ clearly aint enough, it seems entirely logical that we’d come up with some bullshit holiday for it (which, I am truly appalled to say, we don’t get a goddamn day off from work for, which I find absolutely outrageous).

And, sure enough, this day is indeed a uniquely American thing (like working three jobs to pay the rent or “supporting the troops” while calling Bowe Bergdahl a traitor who should have been left a Taliban prisoner in Afghanistan). According to the National Constitution Center’s “Brief History of Flag Day”, today’s holiday commemorates

…the day the first flag resolution was passed.

On June 14, 1777…the Second Continental Congress passed a flag resolution stating:

Resolved, That the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.

So, hu-rah and all that. That “brief history” page has comments from true patriots, like:

I’M A PROUD AMERICAN. MY HUSBAND SERVED OUR COUNTRY AND MY STEP SON…IS SERVING RIGHT NOW. WE FLY OUR FLAG WITH PRIDE.

and

I love our flag and am proud of it’s history !!!!

Yes, I AM PROUD OF IT IS HISTORY, TOO !!!!

I personally don’t own a flag, mostly because if I bought one, I’d then have to go and find a poll to run it up to see if somebody would salute it. Also because I don’t believe my love of country and/or patriotism has much of anything to do with a piece of cloth (though, as flags go, I’ve always been quite fond of the aesthetics of ours – though the Union Jack is pretty cool, too). Clearly, if I was supposed to take this day seriously, they’d have made it a Monday holiday and there’d be picnics and parades and fireworks and all kinds of good old fashioned American-values type of celebratin’ going on.

I do have one small flag-related story that I will share, however.

Back when I was just a tender youth at the age of 17 or so, I worked at Sears. I worked Toys and Lawn and Garden, which were located next to Hardware, which I used to cover when the sales people took a break (they worked commission, and it really used to piss them off if I sold anything). Anyhow, so I’m working there one day, and a guy comes up to the register in Hardware to buy an American Flag (I have no idea whether or not we sold flags in the Hardware Department or not, but whatever).

So I ring it up and it was like $10.70 or something (ten bucks for the flag plus sales tax), and he says to me, “you can’t charge sales tax on the flag.”

And I’m, like, “huh?”

And he’s, like, “there’s no sales tax on the flag. I’m a fireman – I know these things.”

Clearly, there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it, ‘cuz I’m just a friggin’ high school kid working part time in Toys and Lawn and Garden covering the Hardware Department and it’s like Sunday afternoon so there aren’t any important people around who can override the sales tax thing, so I’m like, “…um…uh…well, uh….”

So to make a long story short(er), he suggests that, since it aint about the 70¢, it’s the principle of the thing, I should take his name and contact info and when my boss comes around to have him check it out and they can send him a refund. And that sounds good to me.

So I get his name, and it’s Thomas Corcoran, and I think, “Corcoran? Fireman?”

And I go, “you’re fuckin’ Tommy Corcoran!?” OK, well, the “fuck” part I said to myself, but, yeah, he’s Tommy Corcoran, who I don’t recall ever meeting but he’s my mother’s cousin and I remember us driving by his firehouse a time or two and waving to him when he was hanging out outside.

So there you go. And as it turns out, he was absolutely correct that you can’t charge sales tax (at least in NY) on the flag and they absolutely refunded not only the tax but the whole purchase price, ‘cuz that’s just the way Sears used to roll back in those days.

So if you head out to Walmart today to buy an American flag (made in China, no doubt) as all true patriots should, make sure they don’t try to screw you on the sales tax.

This is ‘merica, goddamn it, and we love Old Glory.

As you probably know, not only is today Friday the 13th, but there’s also a full moon (well, technically speaking, there was a full moon last night at 12:11, but it should be pretty darn full again tonight). There won’t be another full moon on a Friday the 13th for 35 years (August 13, 2049 in fact), which most likely means this is the last one I’ll ever see (assuming it stops raining long enough to see anything). But if I’m still around, by golly, I’ll be sure and mention it. It’ll be eight days after my brother’s 102nd birthday, so we’ll probably just roll it all into one big party.

Texas Guv Rick Perry went to San Francisco of all places yesterday, and proclaimed that being gay is kinda like being an alcoholic (and therefore “fixable”).

I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way.”

So now I guess we know what’s on Rick’s mind after a few shots of bourbon. He oughtta hook up with Santorum for a good old Rick-roll in the hay.

Speaking of “the gays,” what’s up with all these insulting restaurant receipts? Is this real actual shit, or is it bullshit?

A transgender woman who says she received an offensive receipt after a night out at a hookah bar in Washington, D.C., has filed a complaint against the restaurant.

In August 2013, Amira Gray visited Bistro 18 with eight friends, including four women and two gay men, according to legal documents posted on Lambda Legal, an LBGT legal nonprofit organization. In the complaint, Gray says she and her friends were ignored by the waitstaff the entire night (except for when an employee brought over a hookah machine) and had to go to the bar to place their orders.

When they received their bill at the end of the night, the slur “Gay Bitches” was written on the receipt, the document notes.

I mean, isn’t it kind of stupid to put on the receipt you’re giving to the patrons? Especially since it says “Please Come Back!” at the bottom.

I mean, when people are visiting your establishment and paying $40 for a couple of hookahs, you shouldn’t be pissing them off (has the wait staff never heard of the Internets?). Not to mention they charge $12 for a bottle of Deer Park water – a buck more than a shot of Jameson, which I personally find offensive because there’s no way a bottle of crappy Maryland tap water is worth more than a shot of Irish Whiskey.

And paying $22 for a “Golden” Margarita is just plain nuts (though not as nuts as paying $20 to smoke flavored tobacco out of a water pipe – sorry, I just don’t get that particular fad).

Anyhow, no matter what your feelings (and, hey, maybe they were a really annoying group of people, who knows?), it’s pretty darn stupid to insult your customers on a printed receipt and then hand them said receipt.

One thing I learned in my years in the service industry is to make sure you wait until the customers are out of earshot before you insult them – and never, ever, put it in writing. Especially these days, when everybody carries a camera with a phone attached to it.

Speaking of which, I finally bought a new wallet last week. I’ve had the old one for more years than I can remember – so long, in fact, that it came with the plastic insert thingie (long since worn out, replaced, and worn out again) designed to hold photos of your kids or your dogs or whatever.

Anyhow, it occurs to me that wallets no longer come with these things (at least none of the ones I looked at did), and I realized it’s because we all keep our precious photos (movies, even) on our phones these days. I remember meeting up my sister and brother and their respective spouses and/or children a couple years back, and everybody was passing their phones around – flashing out pocket-sized teevee screens around the way we used to pass photographs back and forth.

The world has certainly changed since I was a kid. I wonder what things will be like on the next Friday the 13th with a full moon? I hope I get to see it.

I know we’re all saddened by the demise of the soon-to-be dearly departed House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Sure, we’ll all miss his smug demeanor, his Prada shoes, his firmly cemented hair, and his eternal snarl. But the worst part of all this is that it propels him into Republican Party martyrdom – free of his congressional responsibilities (like perpetually voting to abolish Obamacare and whatever the hell else these parasites spend their time doing), brother Eric will now have plenty of time to make the rounds on Fux “News” shows (perhaps he’ll even get a show of his own), get paid a bundle for speaking engagements, and in general attempt to bolster his national political ambitions (not to mention his campaign war chest). I mean, it’s not like the Republicans have anybody else to run in 2016.

Or do they? I mean, Chris Christie, the other fat guy – Huckleberry or something is it? – Rand Paul, that Eddie Munster-looking dude, Ted “Joe McCarthy only dumber-looking” Cruz, Jeb the Once and Future Bush…? Am I missing anybody?

I guess there’s that group of Bozos who are even too crazy and stupid for Republicans – Scott Walker – Wisconsin Ranger, Rick “Dumber than Bush” Perry, the ever-frothy Rick Santorum, and token minorities Bobby Jindal and Marco Polo Rubio.

I dunno, none of these people are exactly inspirational. I don’t think they’re bringing Mittens back for another crack at it. What about Bob Dole – he’s not dead yet, is he? Clinton v. Dole – it has a nice ring to it.

How about a chick? That Nikki Haley Barbour from South Carolina ticks a lot of boxes – female, minority, teabagger, not bad looking, Southerner. Team her up with some Republican shithead from a big state – say, Darrel Issa from California – and I think they’d have a pretty formidable Hillary-bustin’ team.

But apart from that “dream team,” Eric Cantor is just as crappy a candidate as the rest of them. Sadly, I don’t think it matters who they run, ‘cuz no matter how shitty their candidate is, I have a feeling he or she is gonna wind up winning. Just ‘cuz.

The Republicans have been holding back a whole lot of Clinton venom for about 15 years now – and that shit only gets stronger as it ages. Add to that the whole Koch-fueled, unlimited money thing, and things are gonna get vicious.

It won’t be like the first Obama campaign when they weren’t real sure about how to attack a black guy. I mean, they wanted to call him a you-know-what, but it took them a while to figure out how to go about it (say, by photoshopping him as a jungle witch doctor or saying he was secret Kenyan Muslim Manchurian Candidate).

They’ll be all-in on Hillary from the git-go. Hell, they’re all in on her already, and she aint even officially running yet.

I just thank my lucky stars that I’m not in a battleground state (and that I have a DVR so I don’t have to watch commercials), because the ads are gonna be nasty and relentless – probably starting at the end of this year.

But I guess for now I’ll quit worrying about that, and worry about getting ready for work. My second late day of the week, and one I’m not looking forward to, especially since I didn’t get much sleep last night.

It appears that we are transitioning nicely from Black Fly Season to Allergy Season (on our way to Deer Fly Season, which normally peaks in July). I got to the point where I had to go sit inside last night because my nose was running, my eyes were itching, and my head was pounding. It did give me a chance to flip around the channels and settle on “History of the Eagles” on Showtime. I guess it took place in two parts, and I caught the end of Part I and then Part II. Great music, of course. Don Henley and Glen Frey came off as, how shall I put it nicely, rather impressed with themselves.

There’s one part when Frey said he told the Eagles’ manager that, regarding a reunion,

“I’m not going to do it unless Don and I make more money than the other guys.”

I thought, “how very Republican of you Glen.” I suppose he and Don were the big names (well, Joe Walsh, too, but he was kind of busy drinking himself to death and he just happy to have an excuse to get sober), and maybe Glen was hurting for money at the time or something and couldn’t spare a couple percentage points for his band mates. But to me it just seemed like typical Wall Street/Republican “score keeping.” And there seemed to be an awful lot of “our music is great, we’re great” talk.

Of course, they’re music is pretty darn good, but, hey, how about a little false humility, at least?

Well at least Henley has that whole Walden Woods thing going on.

Anyhow, I guess I’d better get back to work. Just another 6 hours to kill.