Sinister Dexter's New Year's Eve @ The Lost & Found Saloon

In San Francisco? Searching for a fantastic, nay, a SUPER-FANTASTIC New Year's Eve? Well, cease your searching and join Sinister Dexter @ the Lost and Found Saloon in North Beach.

A big band with 17 musicians onstage. Live Music from 9:30 till 1:30. $30 cover. Antimatter will be served. Funk. Blues. Swing. Latin. See you there.

Best of Craigslist

So (like me) you're at work during The Quiet Week, the monastic period between Christmas and New Year's Day during which time business is more-or-less stuck in a holding pattern.

Give yourself a break and peruse a webpage that has just been getting funnier and funnier since it started more than 4 years ago. Appreciate the best of craigslist, an assemblage of the funniest posts ever listed on this more-and-more useful and more-and-more popular site.

I Thought The Sky Would Make A Louder Noise When It Fell

Well, either Russian ICBMs are already in the air, or CNN's current take on the S&P 500 is a little bit off.

Sinister Dexter on iTunes

Sinister Dexter is now available on iTunes. Now it's easy to enjoy Dexter a la carte or on thy iPod.

In case you're curious, our placement on iTunes was facilitated by CDBaby, an online distribution service for independent musicians. We signed up with CDBaby back in August. It took them about 130 days to get our stuff placed on iTunes.

A Tale of Two Bridges

During the same week that the French open a breathtaking and marvelous new bridge, the Governator announces that the new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge will not be the distinctive design currently in progress, but shall be a far less expensive option utterly without artistic merit.

With California on the verge of bankrupcy, cost savings are on Ahhhnold's mind -- but supporters of a grander span think that he should consider the psychological impact of a more beautiful bridge.

On NPR, San Francisco architect John Kriken notes that, "cities are reflections of their aspirations at any given time. One generation gives us these great bridges... our generation is giving us something equivalent to an expressway." Kriken also notes that the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge's equally impressive western span were built during the Great Depression, yet their builders still managed to include aesthetic qualities that we Bay Area denizen find grand today.

Scare Tactics Newspaper Predicts Scary Times Ahead

It's almost never useful to read the Washington Times, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon owned newspaper that mostly serves as a printed amalgamation of the Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh; however, you might be interested in reading this prognostication by Arnaud de Borchgrave.

...that is, you might be interested in reading it if you're not easily depressed.

...and if you smile a bit when the National Enquirer predicts apocalypse year after year.

Like a Dick Cheney speech, Borchgrave's predictions could be summed up in one word, "Boo!"

Not Fooling Anybody

Not Fooling Anybody is a photoblog with a single purpose: To highlight small businesses growing up inside the carcasses of ex-Taco Bells, ex-Pizza Huts, ex-IHOPs, and other immediately recognizable chain businesses whose distinct architecture dots the American landscape.

Note Gilstrap Chiropratic, living within the shell of an old KFC.

Gaze upon Oasis Pool & Spa, making its way from within an old Pizza Hut.

You can't get a burrito at this ex-Taco Bell, but you can get a loan against your car.

Don't Stop, Don't Look, Don't Listen

I know I've blogged about this before, but the extent of the robots.txt file at http://www.whitehouse.gov is truly breathtaking.

For the uninitiated, this particular file is created by some webmasters to inform search engines like Google or services like the Internet Archive as to which pages and directories are effectively off-limits -- online information contained therein is not supposed to be searched or cached.

A quick look at the Internet Archive shows how the Clinton Administration didn't even have any restrictions like this in place. Under Bush's watch, this off-limits list has grown and grown, making it increasingly difficult to keep track of how his administration revises history under our very noses.

Here's the bit on Talking Points Memo today that brought this issue back to mind.

Subpoena Novak Now!

I'm in favor of journalists protecting their sources; however, before Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine and The New York Times' Judith Miller move one inch closer to a jail cell, the Justice Department must subpoena or indict Robert Novak, the unofficial Bush mouthpiece who initiated the entire Valerie Plame episode through his questionable judgment.

The longer that Novak escapes the scrunity applied to his far-less-culpable colleagues, the more our Justice Department seems to have failed to equally apply our nation's laws.

Do You Think He Made It Himself?

If you sew a bunch of patches on a Member's Only jacket, does that make it a uniform?

Volcano

I'm normally not one to blog about online music, but this song's got me in its grip.

Damien Rice has a great video of a live performance of his song Volcano (Real Media link) on his website.