X-Tra Rant

Happy halloween

Originally uploaded by xtrarant.

This was my costume for Liz’s party last night. I was a Fox News anchor, complete with a news ticker. The ticker said:

Liberals: Why Do They Hate America    Bush: G|

Up Next 10:00pm Ann Coulter - An American Hero|

I might be doing a couple instances of Freeway Blogging with a political aquaintance in the next few days, focused on the Indiana governor’s race. I’ll post more info (and hopefully pictures) if it ends up happening.

I’ll say this, my design looks BAD ASS.

I think I’m going to start (eventually) moving all my photos from my server to a new Flickr account. I think I’ll even pay the cash-money for a full account so I can upload more than a measly 10MB per month, because it’ll take far more than that to get all my photos on there.

That way it’ll save me bandwidth, I’ll be able to do photo RSS feeds and all that fancy stuff, I’ll be able to photo blog from my phone directly to this blog instead of having to go to the current Phlog page to see my camera phone pictures, I’ll be able to group my pictures into albums, all that stuff.

For now you can check out my Flickr account as it stands now. Not much there yet. I just hope they make it so you can sort by the date the picture was taken instead of the date uploaded. Of course there’s an RSS feed too.

[Update: moving this back up to the top. it was a long post and got buried by some not-as-important posts. Went on a posting spree last night/this afternoon]

These are old surveys, but they go out to those special family members that think I’m a deluded commie pinko
(a tip o’ the Rant Cap to Watermark and The Carpetbagger Report)

Why do a majority of Bush supporters not even understand where he stands on the issues? Why the cognitive dissonance?

From a survey….

(more below the fold…..)
(more…)

Taking a cue from John Hoke I’ve switched my feeds to FeedBurner. It will basically allow me to support all feed types without having to worry about my MT feed templates, and will add some extra features for those that read feeds in feed readers. It might take away from my server views, but hey, it’s not like I’m making any money on this site anyway right?

Anyway, if you’re still pointing to an old feed it’s okay, I have redirects in place so you can just keep doing what you’re doing. If you want the new feed location it’s http://feeds.feedburner.com/xtrarant. Right now the formatting is kinda funny.. I think FB is having a system hiccup (all the HTML formatting shouldn’t be showing up, I don’t think).

You can also add my feed to your My Yahoo account. Just click the “+ My Yahoo” link below the RSS link to the top left.

it’s good to know that sometimes the SECOND most highly paid team in baseball can win it all instead of their arch rival MOST highly paid team in baseball. So heartwarming to see those “underdogs” win.

/bitter Cardinals fan.

(yes, I know, the Cardinals have a really high payroll too. I’m still bitter. So nya.)

(P.S. Click animated Gif for video. Video is real, not photoshopped or edited. Courtesy of Video Vote Virgil via Kos. Animated gif by Bob Harris.)

(P.P.S. If you aren’t reading Bob Harris you should be.)

69 albums ripped (1030+ songs)
224 albums to go.
~300+ albums to go including Kelly’s CDs.

This is gonna take awhile (and alot of HD space).

Work has been super crazy mega busy and I haven’t had a workable computer at home for about two months, which kinda sucked. But now I do (bought a cheap-ass “get me online” machine) so I should be blogging more. Work is still super busy, so no blogging from work for awhile (except this one).

What’s been up….?
Still hosting Drinking Liberally: Indianapolis at the Union Jack in Broadripple on Thursday nights. 7pm-10pm. Stop by I’d love to see you!

Kelly and I went and early voted Saturday. It felt soooooo damned good to fill in those little ovals next to John Kerry & John Edwards, Julia Carson, Joe Kernan and Kathy Davis. Felt okay to fill in Evan Bayh even though I think he’s a sellout and a DINO (Democrat in Name Only). County Clerk’s office was moderately busy, and the workers said it had been steadily busy all day, more so than in previous years.

No Democrat was running against my Republican state senator, so I voted for the Libertarian as a protest vote. I vowed this year to vote for NO Republicans, no matter what, after their party’s behavior the last four+ years.

I’m working on the big project i’ve been wanting to do for years - rip all of my CDs to MP3. I’ll probably have to buy a big fat hard drive for it (my 40GB might not hold them all plus Kelly’s) but eventualyl it’ll be a good project to have done. That way if I ever get an iPod or a home stereo MP3 player I’ll be set.

Look to near the top of the left column. I have a “What’s Playing” section again hooked up to my WinAmp. It’s not as feature rich as the last one I had, but WinAmp3 is dead and the plugin I used was WinAmp3 only, so I had to settle for CurrentlyHearing 2 for Winamp 2/5.

Probably going to a Halloween party with Kelly that Liz is throwing Saturday. I’ve never been a huge fan of Halloween ( a long story I might explain in full someday. Maybe on Halloween this year), and I’ve never been a big fan of drawing attention to myself, so I’m fighting my anti-social demons to get up the guts to get dressed up rediculously and worry all night that people are thinking I look like a moron Kelly is going as Velma from Scooby Doo I want to go as Shaggy from Scooby Doo as well (I sure can get scruffy enough for it) but for some reason Kelly has it in her mind to dress me up all goth/Robert Smith Of The Cure-ish. Apparently the idea of that is quite funny We’ll see….

I now have a recliner at home. Rock. A man needs a comfortable recliner. Thanks to mom and dad for letting me have the old one from home.
There was a group of people at our local Most Favoritist Mexican Restaurant Ever that were almost a charicature of your blindly Fox News following, blindly Republican voting WASP family. I had never heard any real person say, in person, that they really like Ann Coulter. I think my soul died a little at that moment. Too bad I wasn’t wearing my Jesus Loves Dick t-shirt. (Sadly discontinued, had a drawign of a grimmacing DIck Cheney with a halo and the slogan “Jesus Loves Dick” below it. Yes, I am going to a hell I don’t beleive in).

Question: What do you do when your Bill O’Reilly/Fox News loving grandmother sends you an email full of distortions, misrepresentations, character assasination and outright lies directed at your politician of choice? Do you respond to set the record straight or do you just let it go even though every bone in your body hates letting something like that go unanswered?

Drinking Liberally went well last Thursday (if a bit small) and we’re gunning for more this Thursday! So here’s everything you need to know. First up, the when and where. Same as last week:

Every Thursday, 7:00-10:00pm
Union Jack Pub (Broadripple)
924 Broad Ripple Avenue (between Guilford and Winthrop)

We’ll either be at the bar itself or in the seating area to your right as you enter the bar. if you can’t find us ask the bartender. For anyone who couldn’t make the Kerry meetup a couple weeks back, I’ll bring info from that on opportunities to help out not only with Kerry but with some other campaigns as well.

Next up, the Drinking Liberally website is expanding, so make sure you visit. Especially check out the Drinking Liberally:Indianapolis forum!! I’ll be posting updates, info on a few non-DL related activities, and hopefully our fellow Indy Liberal Drinkers can chat away there as well.

There is an official DL:Indy mailing list in the works. Right now I’m running one on my own, but the tech gurus at the DL website are doing something more official that’s in testing. I’ll put out a link to subscribe if you want once it’s up and running. If you want to be on my list (which I’ll convert to the new one once it is running) email me at jborneman {at] gmail (dot> com

Now onto the more pressing news. Tomorrow there is a Cheney/Edwards Debate Party! It’s not a Drinking Liberally thing, but it’s at a bar so that’s close enough. It’s being organized (or at least was mentioned on the KerryVols list by) the Indiana DNC director.

By the way, if you all aren’t a part of the KerryVols
yahoo group, it’s local and its moderated by the
Indiana director of the DNC. It has a calendar of
volunteer opportunities and only Erin, the moderator,
can send out emails, so you won’t get flooded with
them by a bunch of random people.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KerryVols/

I hope to see the Indy liberals that stop by this site either tomorrow night at Loughmiller’s (look for the tall dorky redhead and introduce yourself) or Thursday at the Union Jack!