I've also been spending money like I have a lot of it. Today I bought a cookware set. The other day I bought a vacuum cleaner. One quality that I've picked up living with Beta Girl for nearly ten years is a low tolerance for low-quality stuff. If I need to buy something, I buy something good, or I go without. My new vacuum cleaner (an Oreck) and my new cookware are very, very good (read: spendy). Or at least they better be, for what I paid.

I've been gripped by this mania to buy everything I can imagine I'd need for a "nice pad" right this minute - lucky for me, and for my credit card statements, I've mostly been able to shrug off this compulsion. I'm trying, right now, to only buy things that I need pretty much on a day-to-day basis. I really would like some decent oven mitts, but I don't need them tomorrow.

From the It's-About-Time-Department: today King's X finally released an album worth getting excited about if you're an old-time fan like me. No, it's not another Gretchen. It's closest in spirit to the now out-of-print Ear Candy, which was in my opinion the last truly great record the band made before this one. Please support this criminally under-appreciated band. Lead singer/bassist Doug (dUg) Pinnick is fifty-five years old now - makes me feel silly about feeling like I'm too old to do the music thing.

Well, today I bought a sofa.

Family members have asked me to "register" somewhere, so they can send me stuff I need for the new place. I wasn't aware one could do that if one wasn't getting married, but apparently it's no problem. Yay capitalism!

I move on the 1st. Looking forward to it, but I'm also nervous. I'll feel better once all my crap is stacked high in the middle of my new "living room", especially the TV Of Doom that I'm inheriting. It's a 36-inch tube TV that looks and sounds great, but weighs more than the Titanic and cannot be moved by one person alone, unless that person is Hercules.

You and I know that I am NOT Hercules.

I've decided that I will NOT be getting cable TV at my new pad. The only show that I regularly watch that doesn't show up later on DVD is Bill Maher's HBO show - and while I will miss seeing it, Bill's show alone is just not worth the expense. Oh, OK, it will be a bummer not being able to watch a week's worth of Jon Stewart on the TiVo, either. But I think I will survive. I have a decent-sized DVD library and an XBox, so I think that me and the TV will have plenty to talk about without cable. I get all my news online and from the radio these days, anyway. If I want to see the Superbowl, I'll go over to a friend's place. Boom.

Interest seems to be picking up in Beta Girl's House. Maybe they will be able to get out of here before Thanksgiving.

My bro-in-law was in town last weekend for the Seattle Sketch Fest. He and his group are right now up in Vancouver, BC doing what is apparently a very high-profile festival in comedy circles. I haven't heard any reports of shows yet, but I do hope they are bringing the various houses down. They are doing at least four, possibly more shows this week.

Oh, and the Retrograde CD's did show up and look great, and have been mailed to you already if you pre-ordered one. Don't forget, you can have one for free if you come to a live show.

When's the next live show, you ask?

Well... there isn't one scheduled yet. But we did come up with a setlist for the next as-yet-unscheduled-gig at rehearsal on Monday night. That's right, we're gearing up to play live again. Dusting off songs we haven't played in a very, very long time. And a whole bunch of new ones, too. It'll be fun!

Thank you, pre-orderers, for your patience.

If there is one silver lining to moving, it's the chance you have to really purge a lot of your accumulated crap. There's something about having to put everything you own into boxes that makes you really look at whatever-it-is, and ask, "Do I really need this in my life? Have I touched it even once in the last four years? Can't I just get rid of this?" It's amazing how much clutter you can generate when you live in one space for a long time.

Assuming all goes well, and knocking on all available wood surfaces, I don't expect that I'll stay in this new place as long as I was in, say, Snoqualmie (nearly four years). For one thing, my rent is not going to be cheap living downtown - in fact it will be darned close to what it would cost me if I just up and bought a condo, fer crying out loud. I've always been unwilling to commit to a mortgage payment, because my plans tend to be in such flux - and, OK, some part of me still clings to "rock star dreams" like, "Well, next year might be the one when my band goes on tour, and I don't want to have to worry about a mortgage when I'm on the road!" Even though I have a lovely band, and we're going to release a nice new album sometime next year, one must acknowledge reality even when one is an idealist. The likelihood that my band is going to go on the road soon is not high. I'd actually consider buying a condo downtown today, but I don't think I have quite enough guidas saved up for a down payment, and I'm not going to be suckered into one of these bad "interest only" or "no down payment" mortgages. I've spent my early 30's atoning for all the horrible financial mistakes of my 20's, and I am unwilling to botch all the work I've done to fix that stuff. So - maybe another year of renting, and by then I should know if I want to stay in the area - and we'll see what I might be able to afford to buy. It will almost certainly be something condo-shaped, because I hate yard work, and because houses cost so much right now a condo is really the only thing I want to afford. Of course, in another year, even condos could be out of my financial reach. Or maybe Western Civilization in the United States will have broken down and I'll just be out looking for a nice tree to take shelter in. You never know, I guess.

Back here at the old country homestead, we're in a rush to get stuff packed and the house "staged" so that Beta Girl can get it listed. Monday somebody is going to come by to take "glamour shots" of the property. This house is going to sell fast, methinks. It's pretty much in pristine condition. A family with little MS Kids 1.0 would love it - and they've just finished and opened the new elementary school within walking distance.

The new pad is pet-friendly, so Pete and Bojangles will be able to come over and stay with me on occasion. Beta Girl recently gifted Pete with a little something that all the cool dachshunds are wearing these days - is this guy a lady killer, or what?

Here's an eloquent article from George Will, of all people, that hits very close to some themes I've been thinking about as a result of the Katrina vs. New Orleans story. To me, it all boils down to this: our idea of "Western Civilization" is tenuous. We think that Things Will Always Be As They Are, and base our future plans on that flawed principle. The fact is: Things Could Change Tomorrow, And Could Be Very Different From How They Have Been. Even in America. And Mr. Will is dead-on about one thing - it all depends on security and law and order. Without that, we're screwed.

I guess I should also address the fact that my beloved Seattle Storm were bounced out of the WNBA playoffs Saturday night. I didn't really feel like writing about it, because the loss hurt. First-round series in the W are best 2 of 3 games. The Storm won Game 1 away, and had two chances at home to end the series and move on. They led Game 2 until the final two minutes, when Houston came on strong and snatched away a 3 point victory. That was really when the series was lost, even with one more deciding game to come. The Storm, honestly, gave the series away. It was hard to watch it happen.

And then in Game 3 they were absolutely pasted. Give it up to the veteran Houston team, who won the first four WNBA championships ever, and who still have one of the best women basketball players in history, Sheryl Swoopes. They were the smarter team, and they wanted that last game more than the Storm did, who I think just assumed that since they were at home, they'd win. But in the end, I believe that the Storm lost this series, more than Houston won it.

Ah, well. There's always next year.

And of course, I've been following the latest news events. I'm trying to shy away from writing about things political and/or social too much in these parts now - mostly because in real life I'm trying to disengage somewhat from the realities in the world. Does that sound weird? I guess it's just that things seem so bleak right now, that if I sit around worrying about it like I used to, my psyche just starts to buckle under the strain after a while. Is that a head-in-the-sand response? If so, I apologize - but I just can't manage better right now. The people in charge in America currently are at best incompetent, and at worst willfully, frighteningly hateful. And the so-called "good guys" have no alternatives for those of us caught in the middle. They are busy swimming in a sea of political correctness, crying about how wronged they are, but seemingly completely unable to articulate just how and when they think they could change things for the better. So for those of us not hung up on any of the obvious idealogical rungs on today's politcal ladder, there isn't any hope for improvement. All we can do is try to keep our heads down, and try to keep our ducks in a row for the worst - because things can get worse, as we've seen this week in New Orleans.

And I don't really have anything to add about New Orleans, though I do want to respond to one question I've heard more than once, either from friends or in the various Media. The question seems to be something along the lines of, "Why are those people just hanging around waiting for help, instead of hiking up the nearest highway to help themselves? OK, I get it, they're poor, they don't have cars, they don't have money for food, let alone hotels, but they don't have feet? If it were ME in this situation, I'd grab a boat and paddle to safety rather than sit around on the roof moaning about the government! Those people are just LAZY! They don't WANT to help themselves!" etc., etc.

It's when I hear rational people asking questions like this that I start thinking that I don't have anything in common with my countrymen anymore.

So alright. Let's put aside poverty and all that stuff for a second. Here's what I want to know: Someone is sitting on their roof, only a few feet above flood waters that are up to twenty feet deep. Is it right to conclude, after seeing a two-second clip of this person on Fox News, that this person did not try to get out of the situation? How do you know, as a person sitting in your unflooded living room, what that person has been up to for the preceding few days? I will grant that one of the possibilities that one could consider could be that Person X would rather wait for government tax dollars to send him a rescue helicopter, rather than take any action available to him to get out of the situation. But is this the only possibility? I don't think so.

Then there's the question of geography. Here's a quote from geologist Jeffrey Mount about how New Orleans' topogrophy has influenced what happened there:

"When the French showed up and tried to make a city there, they built levees that would surround the city, so they wouldn't be flooded all the time. These levees are wonderfully and carefully engineered.

However, there isn't an engineer who isn't totally aware of the risk involved in New Orleans. That's because when the water comes in, there is nowhere for people to go. You can't run to high ground. Most cities that are prone to flooding, whether it's Sacramento or St. Louis on the Mississippi, you can move to high ground during floods. You can't in New Orleans. There is no high ground." (emphasis added by me)

I don't think it's unfair to say to the people out there who really think that the people they are seeing on TV stuck in New Orleans couldn't have just hitchhiked out of town ("If it was ME, I woulda... " BLAH BLAH BLAH), that they don't know what they are talking about. Especially if they've never even been to New Orleans, and don't know the lay of the land. I mean, come on. Like these armchair second-guessers, I can say that yes, if I was stuck in a flood, I would try everything I could think of to get the hell out of the very bad situation. I would probably try very hard for days, doing everything and anything I could think of.

But does just the fact that I tried really, really, really hard guarantee that I would have been successful? Could I not, in the end, have ended up stuck on top my roof, hoping for a helicopter? Isn't that a possibility?

Let's be realistic. No one chooses a fate for themselves that resembles what has happened to those people in New Orleans. I hope that the people out there who are barking about how they could have done better (without the help of government tax dollars) are never forced to put their money where their mouth is. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.