It won't be long now...

So there it was as I was getting ready to leave work last night. My grey cardigan that has been on a coat hanger the past four months. As I got ready to cycle home in my t-shirt on another warm late summer evening, I wondered if I will ever wear that cozy grey cardigan again. Apart from a wet spell in August, summer has been warm and dry. Bike rides to and from work have been in t-shirts and shorts, you couldn't ask for a more perfect place to spend summer. Not too hot, not too dry, warm days, cool evenings. It's very easy to forget winter's just around the corner. I almost miss wrapping up in my hunting jacket, Doc Martens and winter hat, braving the cold and wet that never seems go away. Let's see what I have to say a couple months from now.

These are historic times and I am so glad I can log events as they happen here on this blog. Yesterday John McCain said he was putting his campaign on hold to fly back to Washington in order to assist in fixing financial crisis on Wall Street. McCain claimed that he asked Obama to do the same thing and to postpone the debate due to be held tomorrow night on CNN. McCain claimed he suggested they put a bi-partisan statement out together on the economy.

What actually happened was Obama called McCain first at 8:30 in the morning yesterday to talk about a joint statement. He never heard back and McCain went on the air saying it was his idea to put out a joint statement. Once again stealing the democrats ideas. Obama gave his opinion that any president should be capable of handling two things at once and therefor the debates should go ahead.

As of late Thursday McCain's stunt has become something of a joke as both Dems and Republicans feel his efforts are completely pointless. Something akin to a 2 year old helping daddy lift that heavy couch out of the living room. It is nothing more than a publicity stunt. McCain parachuting in to save the day, 'Country First'!

McCain still won't commit to the debate tomorrow night and as of now there is a very real possibility that Obama will be there, along with the audience, the host and an empty seat where John McCain should be.

In the meantime McCain has asked that the Vice Presidential debate be postponed as well. Not even during the American Civil War, 150 years ago, did they postpone a debate. This is another ploy by the desperate Republican nutters to regroup and deflect attention away from their faltering poll numbers and embarrassing campaign.

Palin continues to avoid every media question asked of her, apart from those, correographed by her campaign in special interviews with leading news anchors. What is it they are so afraid of?

The wheels are falling off for McCain and it is great.

Fox News Do it again. Biden to quit, Hillary to take his place?

More lies from the lying liers.

I found this article on their front page. Trouble make shit stirers. I couldn't find any other website proclaiming this nonsense. All the while Fox News claims the rumor is "thriving".

The Leinster Gormley Critchley's

Photo by Shelly Cooke

Orcas Island August 2008

Footy

I've been playing on this team the past year now. Although I spent 6 months recovering from my broken knee - which I managed to rather embarrassingly break in practice. Yesterday's game, all be it another loss, was as fun as it gets for me. I played left-back and had my position covered from half way through the first half. So much so that the other team stopped attacking my side. This is in striking comparison to the last game I played when I was double teamed by two attacking players throughout the entire game (two players that should have been playing a couple of leagues up). Yesterday, in 80 plus degree weather and with a hangover, I had one of those games that reminded me why I bother running myself ragged, getting out of breath, risking injury and so on for an hour and a half. When you can come away feeling good after a close loss then it's worth every moment.

Aislinn and Muirenn play on Saturdays. I'm coaching Aislinn's team of eight seven year old girls. I was asked to help out and after winning our second game of the season, I'm really enjoying it although a little paranoid that I may have over stepped my mark in terms of coaching! I hope not and don't think so. Coaching Muirenn's team last year left me feeling a little lost when the team disbanded during the summer. I felt I had done well as a coach and was looking forward to this year. Muirenn has gone on to join one of the best teams in Ballard. She is playing a year up, in the highest division with girls a year older than her. And she fits right in. She played a storm on Saturday, after a slow start. Running up and down the left wing as an attacker, she can out run anybody and deliver clinical crosses into the box. She's playing 35 minute halves on full size pitches. Pretty impressive if you consider the size of a soccer field.

I love this time of year and kids soccer. These ages in particular are such a pleasure as it's recreational and yet still competitive. Just a year or two from now soccer will become very serious for Muirenn as it's not so easy to get on the school teams and school teams here are taken very seriously. Then you have the groups associated with the team, the sports kids, the jocks the image. It's so easy to fall into cookie cutter moulds at that age. But it is something I don't believe Muirenn or Aislinn will fall into. They are so strong willed.

In Aislinn's game on Saturday, we had 2 minutes left and were down 3 - 2. Aislinn came on and scored 2 goals back to back. For one of them, she chased a ball from the halfway line stopped it on the line, turned and shot between the keepers legs. A very proud moment for Lisa and I.

More Republican double standards, lies and help from the media. Am I the only one who to notices this crap?

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain said they would pause their presidential campaigns today on the 7th anniversary of Sept 11th 2001.

But, while Barack Obama stood silently beside McCain during a ceremony at ground zero, McCain had already been to the site of flight 93, under lavish media attention and talked after about how he knows all about sacrifice and those that have given their lives for 'freedom'. In the meantime VP candidate Palin gives a speech on this day, today the day the campaign stopped, in her native Alaska to her sons platoon of soldiers who are heading off to fight, I mean police in Iraq, today. She said the surge has brought victory when General Patraus himself said yesterday victory will never happen in Iraq. And then Palin is on the national ABC news this very evening, today, giving her first interview to Charlie Gibson. An interview every media outlet is repeating over and over, today. The day both McCain and Obama said they would not campaing on. A day in which most americans will watch something as they remember Sept 11th.

Oops, I just puked in my mouth again.

THE ELKS - Sunset Tavern Gig
We played our 3rd show at the Sunset Tavern last night. A typical Tuesday with nothing much going on. I think we went on with 7 people watching us. All of whom were friends we begged to come! By our 2nd song the fringes of the club had filled out a bit and there must have been 20 - 30 people there. I was humbled by those friends who showed up knowing little what to expect. I was delighted with those friends who came to see us because they're really into our music now. It's a rare thing to hear favorable comments from people who really know about music and strengthens my belief in what I do. This is a good band and probably the most honest band I've ever been in. Older and wiser now I'm not swayed by the sounds of news bands and trends. I write what I write from my perspective and craft the sound of these songs with the guys in the band, Kevin, Scott and Todd. Funny enough it's not that far off from what I was doing in the early days of Peach and Carwash.

We played 7 songs and feel most of them are good enough to put on a record. I really got into it during the 2nd song when my friend Dave Quasha showed up. If I know for sure 1 person is really into what we do then I'll play my arse off in the same manner as if I'm playing in front of hundreds.

Two guys played an acoustic set after us and one of them turned out to be the guitarist from The Shins, which was pretty cool. Of course they weren't there to watch us so I paid very little attention to what they did. It wasn't anything to write home about anyway.

So a good night was had, even though it started off a little drab. We're putting some finishing touches on a demo and plan to get it on our great local radio station KEXP. Experience has shown that people come to watch you play if you're played on KEXP, after all this is a great music town. That's the plan and we'll see how it plays out - right here on 'Shano in Seattle'!

John Stewart and the hypocrisy of Karl Rove and his Republican agenda

This is classic...


John McCain made a great speech last night. But the man has been bought and I don't believe a word he says anymore. His name was destroyed by the team Bush and Rove hired in 2000 to discredit him. McCain, in all his desperation, has since hired that same team to discredit Obama. Yes, it makes me want to puke in my mouth also. Which is a shame because I had nice bagel for breakfast. As raving lunes go, McCain's not a bad sort. He's just lost the plot in his old age.

God Help Us

If there ever was a time to start praying to the lord, then this is it. I watched Palin's speech last night with fear and trepidation. What a condescending load of shallow, crowd stirring, empty shite. Not once did she mention any of the real issues that this election is about. She lied about Barack Obama and harped on about McCain's service to the country all the while carrying a smug grin empowered by her super secretary hair style, the only thing missing a pencil to hold her hair in place.

If McCain thinks he's going to sweep up Hillary supporters by appointing this raving lunatic as his VP, the old man is sorely mistaken. Palin is against a woman's right to choose - even if a child is raped, even if she is about to die giving birth. Palin is against contraception. Palin believes Creationism should be taught in school. For those Euro-centric readers who aren't quite sure what 'creationism' is, it is science taught from an angle that a man with a beard sitting on a cloud us the ultimate creator and all this science mumb-jumbo is just theory. Sure, she loves to shoot animals and believes we should all be armed to the teeth, even while a mad man went on a rampage not 25 miles from where we live killing 6 people 3 days ago. Sure she believes an Alaskan energy pipe line should be built because it is "god's will", you can almost empathize and forgive her for holding these beliefs because after-all she runs a town with a population of 9000 and they probably don't have all that much going for them. Especially the Librarian she trIed to fire because the librarian believed books, that Palin deems ungodly because of inappropriate language, shouldn't be banned. Here's a letter
from someone, from her town, that has known her along time, that doesn't agree with her views. A very interesting read.

Yes, it's times like these that I wonder why people confuse god and religion with ideology and conclude we are no different as a society than we were 2000 years ago. No wonder aliens won't contact us!