Sven’s Glass House

category: concert
name: roger clyne & the peacemakers
opening: ? (Columbia), ?, Browntown and Back Porch Mary (Kansas City)
price: $19 (Columbia), $16 (Kansas City)
rating: 9 of 10 (both)

video:

Preacher’s Daughter in Columbia, MO
Buffalo in Columbia, MO
Tell Yer Momma in Columbia, MO
Americano in Kansas City, KS
State of the Art in Kansas City, KS
Mekong in Kansas City, KS

Consecutive nights of Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers left me tired, achy and satisfied.

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Some very exciting, interesting, intriguing goings on today in politics.

context:  McCain hurt in polls by economic crisis, rates low in public perception of economic acumen, economy hurts him.

public move 1: McCain says he is suspending his campaigning to go to DC and fix the economy.  Invites Obama to do the same.  result: Fits nicely into McCain/Palin rhetoric that Obama is a talker, while they are ‘doers.’  McCain dodges a debate with Obama.  McCain paints Obama into a corner, if Obama accepts then McCain looks like a leader.  If Obama denies then it can be spun that ‘winning is more important than the country.’

public move 2: Obama says he called McCain first, that they agreed to make a joint statement.  Obama says he doesn’t need to suspend his campaign because the president needs to be able to multi-task.  Obama says he’s been in constant contact with DC.  Obama says that now it is more important than ever to figure out who is best to handle the presidency, so the debate is important, as the winner of the election will inherit the fallout.  result: Hard to say if this neutralizes McCain’s move, it did seem like a good way to play it, we’ll see how the public digests it.

Will McCain control the news cycles from DC as he works on the problem?

Will Obama control the news cycles from the campaign trail and new ads (which will have to play clean with no opposition pieces running)?

Will Americans perceive that McCain is a man of action?  Or a sly politician?

I’m left wondering if McCain is doing this because of polls and perception, or if he has only noble purposes.  Should be an interesting week.

category: cheese
name: musser artisan
price: $5.25
purchased at the Brookside Market
rating: 8 of 10

Again, I should have been more quick to review this. It really was quite good. It ranks second behind the other review posted today. This is a hard cheese but a very rich flavor. Not creamy, not smelly, really it’s own thing. Again, I’m going to have to get more experience, taste around to better articulate what’s going on. Beyond ‘tasty.’

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category: cheese
name: fontina val d’aosta
price: $8.55
purchased at the Brookside Market
rating: 9 of 10

This is a phenomenal cheese. I should have reviewed it immediately, a fair amount of time has passed but I feel quite sure that this is the best cheese I’ve reviewed. I should get it again later so I can better describe it, rather than just ranking it.

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Having access to ‘the real internet’ is spiffy, but some of the real internet doesn’t get along with the iPhone.  Sometimes pages are too long to be easily navigable by finger.

Navigation with the finger is usually pretty good, but sometimes when you’re frantically scrolling you might accidentally hit a button (like reload, which really is counter to the scrolling you were trying to do).  Sometimes the ‘foothold’ your finger finds on the screen for the scrolling happens to be a link and sometimes you’ll accidentally click it.

Safari crashes fairly often.
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I’m sick.  I haven’t been truly sick for a very long time.  I think when I was a 2L in law school I was pretty sick.  I might have missed one day of law school to being sick.  Today I went to work quite late and left after only putting in 1.6 hours.

I can’t say I’ve had a good time sitting around home, not getting paid for my time and not being able to properly enjoy my time.
My attention span and focus is too poor to play video games or even follow the plot of television shows, so really I’ve just been watching time go by.
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The Blackberry Bold had won the phone fight and I’d decided to patiently wait for it.

But…  the thing has been massively delayed.  It’s in limbo right now.

AT&T is guaranteed to have exclusive rights to the Bold for the first 90 days, then others can hop on.  There are proper reasons AT&T might be delaying the Bold and several nefarious reasons.

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category: horror/suspense movie
name: Mirrors
price: $10
seen at the AMC Independence Commons 20 in Independence, MO
rating: 6 of 10

A gory horror movie where mirrors are the vilain.  Half creepy idea, half reminscent of a jab at Stephen King from the Family Guy (where his publisher asked what his next book was about, King looked around and said ‘an evil lamp’ the publisher replied ‘you’re not even trying anymore.’)  But yeah, incongruent, non-representative images in mirrors is pretty cool looking.

spoilers below…

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name: UFC 88: Breakthrough
price: $5
seen at the Fox & Hound at 103rd & Metcalf.
rating: 8 of 10 or alternatively #8 best mma event of 2008 so far

Well established, well ranked veterans take on some upstarts.
The vets were largely favorites.
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There are a great many questions and issues swirling around regarding Sarah Palin.  I’ll here only address one.  This is one I’m picking because of a nexus of reasons.  I’ve spent more time in Alaska than most Americans (probably the 98+ percentile).  I know more about Alaska than most Americans (probably 95+ percentile).  This is a subject of interest to me.

Simple ingredients:

1. There is oil in ANWR
2. Alaskans get a cut of revenues from Alaskan oil
3. Palin had (for a time) been a part of a pro-secession group in Alaska (Alaskan Independence Party)

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