Where is my left foot?

The [recording] industry’s lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are “unauthorized copies” of copyrighted recordings.

One wonders if Señor Schwartz, while filing this brief, had that same shit-eating grin that Alberto Gonzalez had during his congressional “testimony”. It says, simply, “Fuck…You…Period. We’ll do whatever we want.”

This is insanity.

These taken on our way to the Budowsky family house for their Christmas Eve (another mixed marriage, this time to goy is the wife, not the husband, so she gets to pick the religion). Besides the Budowsky clan, Kramer, Valerie and Tess were in attendance, and we watched some of “Bukowsky: Born Into This” while the kids were running around in a sugar coma.

“Born Into This”

During sitting this morning, when I experienced the sensation of being alive within myself, I also had a revelation about this: it is peering into an abyss. Perhaps that is why we avoid it so. There is nothing to hold onto, and nowhere to go, just the abyss in front of the awareness.

Mom and Granny are going up to Leesburg to spend Christmas with my sister and nieces, so an early celebration was planned, Last night we went over to mom’s place, where Adele had spent the afternoon cooking with her, and had a delicious feast and a relaxing evening. My gift to Granny was two Pachira trees I had grown, potted in nice terra cotta, for her back porch.

It is so f*cking rare for me to be shocked by a new band, that when it happens it’s cause for celebration. Susan and I were watching Spanish language music videos on Sunday night, when this appeared, initiating goosebumps. We immediately bought the album off of iTunes, and it is fantastic. Three girls from San Antonio. The Smiths influence is there, and indeed they opened for Moz on his last tour. There are other things hidden in there as well, some of which are familiar but I can’t get to, and some of which I can; Siouxsie, Pixies.

Saturday was a trip to sister-in-law-Janet’s for the Hanukkah feast and gift opening:

Henry with his charming and funny cousin Sabrina.

On the ride home we stopped at a “Christmas House”. Nothing says Christmas to me more than strange, disturbing, dingy Dickensian robots, and “over 700,000 electric lights”:

“Apologies mam, I was so hungry I ate me own thumb!”

Henry confirmed the inherent creepiness to me unbidden, but thankfully he seems to have a high level of tolerance to it, in other word no screaming nightmares later. I have always felt this way about these things, but am better to articulate it as an adult. One vision of hell is a soul confined to live in a creepy robotic mannequin, to be deposited in a dark closet for 11 months of the year. Another vision sees a celebration of man’s mechanical nature on display. Say your prayers.

I’m in the home stretch of the design and production of a 320 pg. magazine for the professional sports industry, my first go-around with them. As is typical at the tail end of such endeavors, things are piling up (but not, thankfully, because of anything I’ve done or not done). The publishers keep saying things like “I’ve bet you’ve never done anything like this before”, but, of course, I have, so I’m more prepared for the crunch. I iz also paid for de crunch…

Now, over to “I Can Has Cheezburger”