every word you read is true and maybe that is a lie

This kid is awesome.

keeps coming from the inside

Start clearing out your calendars folks, because the first batch of dates for the Nine Inch Nails 2008 tour have been announced! There are only two so far that are anywhere close to the tristate area:

August 22 Cleveland OH Quicken Loans Arena
August 31 Lexington KY Rupp Arena

Let me know who wants to go, because I plan to be at both shows. No announcement on when tickets go on sale yet.

just a victim of your fear

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson

I finally saw the first couple episodes of HBO's John Adams miniseries. It's pretty great so far; this may be Paul Giamatti's finest role yet. The supporting cast is fantastic as well, especially Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, David Morse as George Washington, and Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin. The show is a good reminder that our founding fathers did not start out seeking a war for independence, but to legally and peacefully secure their rights. Only when all avenues for a peaceful revolution were closed did they resort to violent insurrection. It is also a great reminder than American success was not a foregone conclusion; in fact the odds were strongly against it. I haven't read historian David McCullough's biography on John Adams that the miniseries is based on, but his book 1776 is a great study on the first year of the war.

While watching this show, I cannot help but wonder what our founding fathers would think of our country now. Unlike modern day leaders, these men were truly risking their lives by going to war; failure would have meant certain death for treason. It was a risk they were willing to take for the sake of liberty. The possibility of losing their property, their families, and their lives was less important to them than living without their naturally, unalienable rights. Meanwhile, today we are content to sit idly by as our government gradually strips away our rights and civil liberties under the guise of protecting us from terrorism. I cannot help but believe that the men who founding our nation are rolling in their graves as the government they created passes legislation that allows it to spy on its own innocent citizens. What is worse is that we are so seized by fear that we have decided that safety is more important to us than freedom. It's sad that we have strayed so far from the beliefs of our forefathers.

(Justin Hall had a good post about his thoughts on John Adams which you can read here)

all the iron turned to rust

blind with my eyes wide open

I've been long overdue for an update, but things have been busy lately. I've been working a decent amount have been trying to get something worthwhile accomplished on my days off. The birthday went well, but I'm currently fighting off my second cold in the past two weeks.

Doug and I saw The Gutter Twins at the Southgate House in Newport last week. Great show. I finally got to see Mark Lanegan perform live, and the man did not disappoint. His vocals have always had an intimidating feel to them, an image that carries over to his live performances, as he stood on stage brooding all night with a death grip on the microphone stage. The man only said two sentences in between songs all night; one to introduce his counterpart Greg Dulli, and the other a threatening response to a heckler in the audience. Dulli, on the other hand, was the outgoing one of the pair. It was a hometown reunion for him--he is originally from Hamilton--and he seemed to enjoy being back in the tri-state. Dulli was hamming it up with the audience all night and continually talking to his mother and sister in the audience. The band played most of their debut album Saturnalia, along with some of Lanegan's solo tracks and a few from Dulli's Twilight Singers band. I thought they put on a great show, and this was hopefully the first of many good 2008 concerts (still hoping for more from Radiohead, NIN, and Tom Waits).

I'll leave you with a shot from the other day:

come on up to the house

A Tom Waits tour in 2008? Count me in. Tom Waits is probably in my top three bands/performers that I'd like to see live, and the fact that he rarely tours makes me even more determined to see him on this summer's tour. No dates have been announced yet, but I'd like to see him to badly that I will seriously pay for someone else's ticket in order to have company to a Tom Waits show. No dates have been announced yet; you can bet I'll be bringing this up again when they are.

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Here's another edited photo from the ones I took yesterday:

Photos.

just a shout away

Since Rob enjoyed my other self-portrait shots so much, I decided to post some I took at the park today.

ghosts

After a couple weeks of cryptic messages via the Nine Inch Nails website, the announcement was made last night that the newest NIN record--a thirty-six track instrumental double album entitled Ghosts I-IV--was available now online, by way of a high-quality digital download, along with a number of different purchasing options for a physical product (ranging from $5 to $300). The music is copyrighted under a non-commercial Creative Commons license, meaning individuals are free to use the music for anything they want as long as there is no profit involved. So far the record sounds amazing; a combination of previous NIN efforts like The Fragile, Still, and Year Zero. Yet again Trent Reznor has proven himself to be the most innovative figure in the music industry.

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I've been trying to keep my expectations low for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but the new trailer actually looks promising. Normally that would be good news, but it's probably just getting my hopes up so they can be let down when Shia LaBeouf ruins the movie. Either way, I know The Dark Knight and WALL-E will make up for it.

you be my passerby