It was a good weekend, that’s for damn sure. I’m not used to having
Saturday & Sunday off, but I got them off for the second week in a
row. The time was used wisely as far as I’m concerned.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. I worked all day (Holiday pay…woohoo!)
then had dinner & partied a little with friends. I got to bed around
2 (I think…) and woke up and went to work all day. It was a little
brutal but I managed to survive. I had a weekend to look forward to
after all.

Friday night was Captured by Robots (http://www.capturedbyrobots.com)
at Room 710. I saw this band 6 or 7 years ago in Iowa City and it’s
only gotten more amazing in that time. There are two robots that play
drums, one that plays guitar and bass (at the same time, no less), a
horn section that uses compressed air to make the horns blow, a
talking stuffed gorilla, and one guitar playing/singing human. Cover
songs included “Born in the USA” & “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. It was a
helluva set. The opener, Seizures, was also pretty good. They
reminded me a lot of Lightning Bolt & godheadsilo. They were only a
bass & drum combo and had a strobe light flashing constantly
throughout the set.

Saturday night was Ghostface Killah at the Parish Room. Also on the
bill were a DJ & the Rhythm and Roots All-Stars, who also ended up
being a part of Ghostace’s set. He opened with “the Champ”, went
through other songs on Fishscale, Mo’ Fish, and even pulled out songs
from “36 Chambers”. “Greedy Bitches” was also in there. I got drunk.
The show was free. I don’t know how Scion ended up owning
Ghostface’s soul, but they’ve sponsored a couple shows here with him
since SXSW and one there as well.

Sunday was spent sleeping off a monstrous hangover. Oh yeah.

Every time I listen to Daniel Johnston’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on
Your Grievances” I feel like smiling a whole lot. Especially when the
bridge comes in with the “you’re gonna find (you’re gonna find)”
echoes. I just walked from the Oltorf & Wickersham bus stop to work
and had to replay it a few times. I’m pretty sure I was singing out
loud. Oh well, no one to hear me but the cows in the field.

“Sometimes you might want to give up. But keep that chin up. ‘Cause
you’re gonna find (You’re gonna find).”

He never really explains what you’re gonna find, but his voice sounds
great when he’s singing it. I dig that.

You know how people sometimes ask if it’s a full moon out or something
when things seem especially weird? It almost never is. Today is no
different, though I have to admit I did check my phases of the moon
calendar on my google calendar page.

I hopped on the bus for my regular route #5/26 ride from 21st and
Guadalupe to Wickersham and Oltorf this morning with a new book to
read (”Sex and Death in Television Town”; Carlton Mellick III). It
was not a morning unlike any other morning at first. I hopped on the
bus, said “hi” to my driver, nodded at another person I knew, and
plopped down in the back of the bus for the thirty minute ride to the
next stop.

Somewhere around the Capitol building stop, I noticed that the guy
seated immediately behind me was humming. It wasn’t clear exactly
what he was humming but he was definitely humming. Then he started
adding in his own beats for awhile and interspersed it with more
humming. I was still reading the book, which is about a gang of
hermaphrodite cowfolk, and the beat boxing and louder humming didn’t
strike me as odd immediately.

That was when a man at the front of the bus decided it was time to
start proselytizing to the bus driver about some lady in some public
office that had done him wrong. I can’t remember the particulars
because I was trying very hard not to laugh out loud but his rant took
a turn where he referred to the woman as “a no good, stupid, mean
spirited, condescending, stupid STUPID *STUPID* AHHHHHHH” and then
rolled his fists into balls and looked like he was going to start
beating his chest. The guy who was sitting across from that rides
everyday and works at AMD nearly lost it. The combination of
unadulterated rage, rant, and monkey gestures was just way too funny.
Luckily, the enraged chest beater got off the bus at the next stop.

But we weren’t through with ranters yet. At the stop a different guy
hopped on. While the enraged man passed the new guy on the bus, the
human beat box behind me was now singing something in an off key voice
that sounded like “…baby, baby, baby, baby, baby…” but it’s hard
to say.

The new passenger was ranting something about some boy who was accused
of rape, got a jail sentence, and then the girl who accused him of
rape and got him tossed in the can, ended up confessing she had lied.
I don’t know if this is current news, an urban legend, or just a
machination of the guy’s though processes- but he felt incredibly
strong about it. “They sent an innocent man to prison!” he shouted.
“PEOPLE GO TO HELL FOR WHAT THEY ACCUSED HIM OF DOING AND HE DIDN’T DO
IT! BUT THEY SENT HIM TO PRISON!”

He continued to rant about police, the President, and the Veteran’s
Administration hospital for another few blocks and then finally got
off the bus.

My stop finally arrived, I hopped off, smoked a cigarette and waited
for the #331.

At my job, if a customer requests to speak with your supervisor, the
person who takes the phone call sends out a congratulatory e-mail to
everybody. I usually try to keep my customers from following through,
just because the e-mails are kind of annoying, but anyway, this lady
just had to talk with somebody. Enjoy the hilarity:

Subject: Bill Latham is giving our customers tooth aches
From: “K Ruiz”
Date: Wed, November 14, 2007 11:06 am
To: tech-list@***********.com

Frontier customer Buffyanne@********net.net wanted to thank Bill for
being sooooo sweet and nice and polite and sweet and helpful and you
guessed it sweet. I swear she must have said sweet like 50 times. I
think Bill gave her a tooth ache. Way to go.

After work yesterday, I stopped into the Dobie mall for dinner to go
from my favorite Indian stand. Before I got dinner, I took a moment
to drain the dragon in the restroom.

While I was draining said dragon, a homeless guy came out of one of
the stalls and started singing. Naturally, this made me seize up a
little bit and my stream did not return until he was singing over by
the public restroom sinks. While I continued to pee, he walked over
to the urinal next to me and said “hey man, could you spare me a
dollar.”

I freaked out- “WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE?! I’M PISSING!”

The dude walked away- to the sinks on the other side of the room and
waited for me to finish pissing. When I walked to the sinks to wash
my hands he then said “now can I ask you for a dollar?”

“NO!!!!” I said, incredibly irritated. It’s annoying enough getting
asked for every piece of change I have when I walk up and down the UT
drag, but getting asked for money while I’m taking a leak really,
really irks me.

“I’m a good person,” the dude said.

“That isn’t the issue,” I said as I finished drying my hands off. He
started saying something else, but by that point I was off to get
Indian food and wondering why the fuck anyone would bother asking
people for money while they were taking a leak.

Last night Keef, Dan, and I saw the Evens at an outdoor venue called
“the Compound”. I’ve been wanting to see them since their debut LP
(The Evens; Dischord Records) dropped in 2005, and last night was wish
fulfillment of the highest order. They played for an hour. It was
good times. Ian MacKaye’s stage manner was very entertaining, very
sincere, and quite funny.

Anyway, I agree with Dan that writing show reviews is hard and
sometimes they all come out sounding like Wesley Willis songs. So we
might as well follow suit:

The Evens played at the Compound.
About 200 people were at the rock show.
The jam session was awesome.
It whupped a marsupial’s ass.

The Evens!
The Evens!
The Evens!
The Evens!

“…I’m in the military, so I do a lot of work from home.”

During my last visit to Half Price Books, I picked up a copy of John
Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven” a book I’ve been wanting to
read for some time. It’s a story about murders committed by two
Fundamentalist Mormon (read: polygamists) Brothers along with a
history of Fundamentalist Mormon sects and the roots of polygamy in
Mormonism. I’m a couple hundred pages in now and I expect to be
finished soon enough. It’s a pretty interesting read. I can see why
it’s gotten a lot of flack from the LDS- it doesn’t pull any punches.
I’ll post a proper review when I finish reading it. I’m enjoying it
so far.

Last night, sitting down with a couple scotch & sevens I came across
this quote in the back and got a good laugh:

“My own view of religion is that of Lucretious. I regard it as a
disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human
race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to
civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it
caused Egyptian priests to chronicle elipses with such care that in
time they became able to predict them. These two services I am
prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.”

-Bertrand Russel, from “Why I Am Not A Christian”