lol. Memorial day weekend. Vanhood. Vanbergs. Vanlandw. Flo. MickeyVB. Cuda. JumpStart. Aztek. Oops. Steak. Brats. Beer. Dutch. Dutch Masters. Garcia Vega. Pool. Sun. SPF 30. Metro. Fire. Raft. Pop. lol. Football. Diving board. Flip. Vanberge. James Gandolfini. Family redefined. Wikipedia. WordPress. Update. P4P. lol JJA. Gallery. Basketball. Scruff. No showering.

24. finale. china? hmm.. Rescue Me. Promotion. Busy. Blackberry. Engaged. House. Central Air. Ultimate fighter. GTA III.

More.  Maybe.  Later.

I’ve forever been against purchasing ‘The Sopranos’ on DVD – just on the fact that it has always been at least 80 dollars everywhere i’ve seen. This is a series that i’ve never watched, ever in my life. A part of me has wanted to, but not for 80 bux.

For some reason lately, i’ve been on quite the ‘organized crime’ funk. I watched Donnie Brasco, Goodfellas, Heat, Payback… I’m re-re-re playing grand theft auto 3.   for some reason – something about the whole idea really appeals to me.  I think it started when i was watching ‘Thief’….

Anyway… This week the Sopranos at best buy was 50 dollars. I decided it was time to buy it. So, i picked up the first season. I watched it all in 4 days. I’m hooked. It is a fantastic show. It makes me wish i was 100% italian…

I’m debating starting a “Van” mafia where you have to be part hollander…

p.s. i love giving best buy my old phone number when they ask at the checkout line. each time is a small moral victory for me…

Almost anyone that knows me would tell you that I am extremely picky when it comes to music. I hate 99.99% of the music that is created on this planet. HOWEVER – In my opinion, music is (well, should be – in most cases) an extremely powerful extension of unbridled humanity and personality. It doesnt matter the genre, it doesnt matter the style, it doesnt matter if it is fast or slow – Music is absolutely the most profound of any creative art or self expression. (again, when i say “music” – i am not referring to such things as “O-town” or “Justin ‘dance with me’ Timberlake”).

I consider myself a fairly unique person – so it makes sense that only a small percentage of music fuses with me on a higher level. Tool is a band that accomplishes this feat without question or concern.

Tool is on the verge of releasing a new album – Which makes it their third album in literally the last 10 years. Although their new album “10,000 Days” has not yet been released, I have had the pleasure of giving it a “pre-listen”. It is quite different from typical Tool music, but that is almost impossible to say because ALL of Tool’s music is completely unique. Rythmic concentration on percussion – Ambient, powerful, and soothing guitar – And absolutely epic lyrics/vocals from Maynard James Keenan.

Maynard grew up in Scottville Michigan, which is literaly 15 minutes from where I grew up. And really, aside from Mickeyvb – Maynard might be the greatest man in the world.

Although many of Maynard’s lyrics are completely subjective and up for interpretation of the listener – there are some lyrics that could not possibly be taken any other way. Aenima, for example; is undeniably saying “We are beyond saving – no retribution possible – the ONLY way to fix it is to absolutely destroy it”. Truly epic.

I have had the pleasure of seeing this band in concert twice. And one of these concerts was without a shadow of a doubt one of the most amazing and bitterly unique scenarios to ever be able to happen. I don’t know if people who attended this really truly realize the importance of this, but seriously it is absolutely cataclysmic. The concert I refer to: Tool, on September 11th, 2001.

Obviously, September 11th 2001 is a date that is etched on a dark side of everyone’s mind forever. The concert was rescheduled, and took place on Thursday, September 13th instead. The course of actions on Sept. 11th Completely changed Tool’s performance. It was a completely unique and literally a life changing event. You could almost call it religion. They took out a couple songs, for fairly obvious reasons, but the performance was profound. Thinking about it when i write this – i get goose bumps.

That’s what good music does…. It gives you goose bumps.

Aenima
“”Some say the end is near.
Some say we’ll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this

Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. Any fucking day.
Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay.

Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and
Fret for your car.

It’s a
Bullshit three ring circus sideshow of
Freaks

Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. Any fucking day.
Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay.

Some say a comet will fall from the sky.
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves.
Followed by faultlines that cannot sit still.
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.

Some say the end is near.
Some say we’ll see armageddon soon.
I certainly hope we will cuz
I sure could use a vacation from this

Silly shit, stupid shit…

One great big festering neon distraction,
I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied.

Learn to swim.

Mom’s gonna fix it all soon.
Mom’s comin’ round to put it back the way it ought to be.

Learn to swim.

Fuck L Ron Hubbard and
Fuck all his clones.
Fuck all those gun-toting
Hip gangster wannabes.

Learn to swim.

Fuck retro anything.
Fuck your tattoos.
Fuck all you junkies and
Fuck your short memory.

Learn to swim.

Fuck smiley glad-hands
With hidden agendas.
Fuck these dysfunctional,
Insecure actresses.

Learn to swim.

Cuz I’m praying for rain
And I’m praying for tidal waves
I wanna see the ground give way.
I wanna watch it all go down.
Mom please flush it all away.
I wanna watch it go right in and down.
I wanna watch it go right in.
Watch you flush it all away.

Time to bring it down again.
Don’t just call me pessimist.
Try and read between the lines.

I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t
Welcome any change, my friend.

I wanna see it all come down.
suck it down.
flush it down.“”

Maynard – I definitely know how to swim my friend.

Today, I was turned onto this article because it had been posted on Slashdot

Apparently, according to a recent study/poll by “money.cnn.com” – I have the 7th best occupation in this country.
Here is a link that basically gives “the top 50 jobs in the country”: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/top50/index.html

#1 is “Software Engineer” – which almost immediately made me believe that the study had been horribly skewed and misconstrued. As it is my belief that “Software Engineer” would be one of the worst possible jobs on this earth. I pretty much despise everything related to writing/architecting/documenting/testing any sort of software. Java, C++, C, VB, COBOL – I hate everything about every computer language, and nobody will ever be able to convince me otherwise. I guess some scripting languages (bash, html, teh php) are tolerable.

Back to the point –
#7: Computer/IT Analyst – Career description:
“Analysts – Analyze science, engineering, business, and all other data processing problems for application to electronic data processing systems. Analyze user requirements, procedures, and problems to automate or improve existing systems and review computer system capabilities, workflow, and scheduling limitations. May analyze or recommend commercially available software. May supervise computer programmers. Managers – Plan, direct, or coordinate activities in such fields as electronic data processing, information systems, systems analysis, and computer programming. Administrators – Coordinate changes to computer databases, test and implement the database applying knowledge of database management systems. May plan, coordinate, and implement security measures to safeguard computer databases. Install, configure, and support an organization’s local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), and Internet system or a segment of a network system. Maintain network hardware and software. Monitor network to ensure network availability to all system users and perform necessary maintenance to support network availability. May supervise other network support and client server specialists and plan, coordinate, and implement network security measures.”

Although that is not my exact title, i am responsible for many of the things that are described in that “career description”. So basically, reading this list made me good about my position. 🙂

Although, i’d like to know how they got those average salaries. 🙁

Since the ‘honeymoon’ stage of buying a house has transitioned into a less exciting more everyday feeling, i’ve finally had a chance to get my priorities back in order. An unordered bulleted list ensues:

• I have watched alot of movies recently. (More on this later)
• I beat guitar hero on hard. Vanbergs can attest to the sheer difficulty of this
• For some reason, i love basketball of the sudden. I watch NCAA. I watch the Pistons. I even bought NBA Live 2006 by EA sports which i despise for their monopolization of the NFL game market. Ef that. Ef vanberge.
• House Party = successful.
• Rusty loves red wine. {shake. moan. blargh}.
• I am definitely losing the motivation to maintain and update my webpage. Is it honestly worth it?

pointless sequel: noun. American origin. Also see Saw II.

A history of Violence.
I really liked this Movie… Aragorn is really quite a bad ass. I wasn’t sure about the ending, but i can’t concieve any better ending in my own mind – so i have made peace with that. I will probably buy this movie.

Im sick of this update… brb

P4P is back online. w00t.

Moving has been extremely exhausting. It seems like every move gets much much more difficult. I guess it just equates to having more stuff to move, but hopefully this move is fairly permanent for some time. I hate painting. I really hate painting. I hate “Home improvement made easy”. But, i already love living in this house.

Its already been a great deal of work, but after the initial move – i’ve kind of enjoyed doing this kind of stuff. I recaulked the bathtub and kitchen sink counter. I put on new screen door closers because the old ones had bent rods. I installed a garage door opening button. I put in a new dead bolt on the garage. I fixed a leaky kitchen sink. Mickey helped (well, mostly did himself) out by fixing a leaky shower faucet handle. I bought a new oven. Basically Home Depot’s stock went up because of me over this past 10 days.

It’s wierd how my priorities have instantly changed by moving into a home. Typically the first thing i would do is hook up my computer and video games, and then get everything else done “when I got around to it”. Now, I spent pretty much two entire days doing fix up type stuff to the house without so much as a thought of computer, video games, or even television. It was just an extremely odd feeling for me because that is not ususally how things go. I’ve almost been in this house an entire week and still not hooked up any video game consoles or my extremely expensive still not paid for all the way stereo. What a wierd feeling. I feel like I “grew up” or matured kind of instantly. I’ll have to make a conscious effort to work against that.

Shorts:

• I really need to update gamgeecount, that is coming.
• Congrats to Vanbergs, Vanlandw, and Flo for obtaining a new residence as well.
• I am definitely convinced that there is nothing in this entire universe that mickeyvb is not capable of doing.
• The chuck norris facts are really pretty goddamn funny.
• The DLO Transpod might be the best 80 dollars i have ever spent.
• It really does rule to have a basketball hoop.
• FUCK vanbergs.
• 24 and the Shield have been pretty phenominal – even though Forrest “I cant open my left eye all the way” Whittaker’s whole plot line is getting kind of stale.
• GG rusty for keeping the bulleted lists in style.