I’d known about The Libertines for a good long while but didn’t actually sit down and listen to them until a friend gave me their second CD a month ago. Prior to that, my knowledge of the band was pretty well limited to seeing the occasional news item about singer Pete Doherty and his near-weekly drug busts (heroin and crack: two great tastes that taste great together!). Note to Mr. Doherty: when your habit becomes notorious enough to have its own Wikipedia entry, you may have a problem.

Anyways, tabloid headlines aside, the band could play. My favorite track is “What Became of the Likely Lads,” a sort of epitaph for the band (it was the last single they released before splitting up). Video is here on YouTube. The video itself isn’t anything special, but the song’s catchy and has some neat guitar work. Maybe if it gets stuck in your head I’ll be able to shake it loose from mine.

Couldn’t find any good Weekend Hotness today. I’ll try to get something posted tomorrow.

In the comments to my previous post, Rustmeister saw fit to compare me to the great John Bolton, UN ass-kicker extraordinaire. To thank him for this outstanding (and richly deserved) compliment, and to congratulate him on his acute powers of observation and judgement, I’m adding him to the blogroll.

Actually, I should’ve added him a long time ago but, well, I’m not good at keeping that thing up to date. I keep meaning to axe pdb…

Grant Cunningham has a post with some helpful links for navigating your family tree without falling out and breaking a leg.

Personally, I’m absolutely horrible at this. I can’t tell the difference between a second cousin and a first cousin once removed. And really, it doesn’t bother me too much. I don’t have one of those huge, close-knit families where everyone stays in constant contact. Hell, I haven’t seen anyone from Dad’s side of the family in a decade; they’re all in Mexico and speak Mexican whereas I’m in America and speak American.

This causes some occasional friction with my sister, who DOES stay in touch with that side of the family. She’ll come to Detroit for a visit and feel compelled to bring me up to date on every minute detail concerning everyone from that side of the family. The conversations usually go something like this:

Sis: “Hey, you know our cousin Margarita? Well, she’s … [insert half-hour of intensely boring blather about someone I’ve met TWICE in my entire life]”

Me: “Margarita? Is she the one with the huge knockers? The one who brought shame and dishonor on the family by getting knocked up twice before she turned 20?”

Sis: [icy glare] Nevermind.

I should be a diplomat or something. I have people skills.

… self-inflicted this time. It’s been a helluva day.

Ran upstairs to dig a USB cable out of my Pile O’ Computer Stuff and heard a tap-tap-tapping coming from my closet. Looked in closet to see water dripping all over my halfway-refurbed SKS, which is already beginning to rust. Looked up from rusty gun to see water dripping off of the light fixture. Went up into attic and found steady trickle of water pouring in from roof (it’s been raining all day). Put bucket under leak and dug out insulation (damn, that shit itches!) to find a nice little trail of soaked drywall.

Goddamnit. That roof is only 2 years old.

Both quality and quantity of recent blogging have been, well, shitty. Everyone hits a slump now and then, and right now it’s my turn. I’m tryin’ to shake it off, though.

Meanwhile, Cowboy Blob makes me laugh every day. Thanks, Blob!

CDNN Investments has removed all handguns from their PDF catalog, supposedly to protect dealer pricing. Of course, under that reasoning they’d remove rifles and shotguns too, so who knows what the real reason is. Discussion here.

Excuse the lack of updates; I’ve been doing some electronic housekeeping the past two days (synchronizing backups, moving files around, nuking old backup discs) and spent the afternoon setting up the latest release of Ubuntu Linux on my Thinkpad. I’ll have some videoblogging goodness shortly.

My friend Amanda, who gets to be the Hotness even though she went to Florida and didn’t take me with her.