That does it, I’m getting a Mac.

According the the Christian Science Monitor, Painting is back. “The taste of the art world is changing,” Ms. Kotik says. “Suddenly painting is allowed to exist again.” That seems like a good thing.

Y’all keep a list of things to do, right? Groceries, fix that screen door, have the oil changed, and on and on. I have one too and it has some important stuff on it: some personal, some professional, some in between. I’m finding that I need a second list. All the things on my current list fall under the same category: If they don’t get done I will not die unfulfilled.

Alice Cooper is blasting other rock stars who are planning to perform “benefits” in order to oust GW. Folks like Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp and R.E.M are committing “…treason against Rock and Roll because Rock and Roll is the antithesis of politics.” I love this quote… “If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are.

I’ve been watching an odd assortment of documentary or near-documentary films lately. For those interested, here’s a summary. Touching the Void ***** Story of two mountain climbers' nightmare while climbing the Siula Grande mountain in the Peruvian Andes. One of them breaks his leg and from then on it’s pinned-to-your-seat dramatization coupled with interviews with the climbers. Step into Liquid Breathtaking photography of surfers and surfing around the world.

It’s been almost 4 months since my Dish went wonky. At first I panicked, worried that some new reality show would pass me by unwatched. Oh wait, I hate reality shows. No big deal then. It turns out that there’s nothing on or about television that I miss. World Events: CNN, NYT and about 400 weblogs do a pretty good job Local News: Nothing happens here and what does happen is reported by people I seriously dislike listening to.

Schwinn re-introduces the Sting-Ray. We all had one; most wish we still did.

The folks at Flickr have released a Flash app called Organizr. It’s basically a nice interface for creating photo “sets”, searching, browsing and whatnot. Interesting that they worked pretty hard to make the Flash app look like an HTML app. The notable thing here is that Organizr is built easily on top of the existing Flickr API, which is documented here for everyone to use.

Thomas Pynchon for newbies says… “So, at first it appears that the book is chock full of sudden and arbitrary jumps in chronology and location interlarded with strange song and dance numbers or bouts of weird sex or whatever.”

A year or two ago, many bloggers would list the books they were reading somewhere on their blogs, usually near a blogroll or other typical weblog whathaveyou. This practice seems to have fallen out of favor. It’s a shame, because that was a great way of discovering new things to read. In an effort to revive the practice, I’ve decided to list recently, currently or about to be read books. You’ll find the list over there on the left somewhere.

Apparently, you can be barred from the Olympic games for drinking the wrong brand of bottled water. It’s true, but it’s bullshit. “Strict regulations published by Athens 2004 last week dictate that spectators may be refused admission to events if they are carrying food or drinks made by companies that did not see fit to sponsor the games.”

Soul Caliber fans should love this: Voldo gets his thang on to Nelly’s Hot in Herre. Supposedly everything is from actual game play. Stay with it, it gets pretty funny toward the end.