Fear and Loathing in Fort Lauderdale

"We were somewhere over Miramar, when the Citalopram withdrawal began to take hold..."

Backstory:

My jeep starting being hard to start and began choking out at low rpms about a month ago. The problem got progressively worse until 2 weeks ago when it took me over 1/2 an hour just to get it started. I asked my dad, brother, and uncle what they thought the problem was, and since they all agreed that the symptoms were pretty general, I decided to take it into the dealership to get a sure diagnosis. They told me it was the timing chain, and quoted me $900 to replace it. I called my mechanic, who is an awesome guy who I've used several times before and he quoted me $300 for the timing chain. The dealership charged me $100 for the diagnosis and I took it back to my house. My mechanic bought the parts and came over. I was standing behind him when he took the cover off of the timing chain and even I could tell immediately that there was nothing wrong with it. Fuckingcocksuckingdicklickingshiteatingcuntass dealership motherfuckers lied to me and stole $100.

Over the next few weeks, my mechanic came over every day and worked in 100+ degree heat trying to figure out what the problem was. In the meantime, I'm without wheels, relying on the gf for rides to and from work and pretty much f'ed if I wanted to go anywhere else.

The jeep has 150k miles on it, so I knew the time was coming to get a new car anyway. I'd been looking on craigslist, cars.com, and the like. Last week, I saw a Hyundai Azera on cars.com. I'd never even heard of that model before, but it looked cool, so I started doing research. The more I learned, the better the deal looked. I called on it, then test drove it 2 thursdays ago. I liked it. I knew it was a good deal. I told the dealer I'd think about it over the weekend (just to not buy on impules and make sure it was "meant to be"). I decided on Saturday morning that I was for sure going to buy it. I called him first thing monday morning. Of course, he had sold it about 8pm sunday night. Fuckingcocksuckingdicklickingshiteating powers that be fucked me and stole my new car.

So here I am, no leads on any good deals, no clue as to what's wrong with my jeep and how long it will take to fix and how much it will cost.

I don't know why, but for some reason I snapped. There was a lot of other stressful shit in my life to go along with this situation, so maybe that had something to do with it. Regardless, I proceeded to go on ebay and bid on 37 cars. At one point I was the leader in $76,000 worth of auctions. I wasn't even really looking at what I was bidding on. It was ridiculous. This was on Wednesday during the day at work.

That night I got home and monitored the auctions while watching UT get spanked by LSU in the college world series. In the end, I ended up getting outbid on all but one automobile: a 2006 Hyundai Elantra GT in Miramar, FL with 50,000 miles on it. I had won it for $5000.

To Be Continued...

Stock Picks

1. Ivanhoe Energy (IVAN) - I'm heavily invested in this beaten down oil small cap. Their schtick is that they have technology which makes refining heavy (dirty) oil cheap. They have deals in place in Ecuador, Canada, China, and Iraq. Most of the oil in the world cannot be used right now because it is too heavy. If this company has the answer to that problem, hello retirement for Jakey. Warning: don't gamble with $ you can't afford to lose.

2. Qwest Communications (Q) - They've been beaton down over the last 10 years because of their 2001 corporate fraud scandal, but they are paying a ridiculous 8% dividend and are one of the only companies keeping AT&T from an antitrust suit.

3. General Electric (GE) - The financial crisis beat them down, but the stock price took a much worse dive than it deserved. They are one of the most stable companies in the world. They're not going anywhere.

4. Duke Energy (DUK) - Doing a lot to be out front on the alternative energy tip while simultaneously profiting from carbon energy. Pays a steady, spectacular 6% dividend.

5. AT&T (T) - Their financials are very healthy and they pay a high dividend (6.8%).

Grain of salt. Don't ask me why after a 2 month blogging hiatus I decided to post this. No news on the music tip.

All I want to do is drink beer and smoke cigarettes...

As most of you know, I worked in Iraq for 19 months, from October 2005 through May 2007. I saved $150,000 while I was there. I thought that by making the short term sacrifice of spending a year and a half working 84 hour workweeks in a war zone thousands of miles away from home I'd grant myself freedom from the rat race forever. I was wrong. Or was I?

"I got a cousin, he's broke, don't do shit." -Lawrence from Office Space

I filled up with gas today at a station near Rundberg and I35. This intersection is pretty much the heart of the Austin ghetto now that downtown east Austin has been cleaned up. Anyway, while I was filling up, a crackhead approached me and asked me for money. I've had a particularly rough week at work, and today was the worst day yet, so I was in no mood for his schtick. I exploded on him. I won't give details on what I told him but I will say that I was yelling, and ended up chasing him after he ran away.

I got off track.

When I first got back in the US in June of 2007, I got a job at Hula Hut working 3 shifts per week. For the six months that followed, I was happy for the only extended period of time in my adult life. I didn't work weekends. I never had to get up early. I had plenty of money to buy beer.

I don't have expensive tastes. I drive a Jeep Wrangler with over 150,000 miles. I take pride in buying my clothes from WalMart and Target. I'm cool with drinking Keystone Light and Bud Ice. I live in a modest home. So why can't I live my current lifestyle while only working 3 days per week at a restaurant? Is this too much to ask?

In my office, I have a spreadsheet with a formula that refreshes every time you press enter. It calculates the amount of time, to the second, until my (average) life span runs out. So, I literally sit in my cube and watch myself die.

I don't know what the point of this post is, other than to vent on the depression tip. But the question remains: would I be happier as a vagrant?

Ask and Ye Shall Be Brutalized

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Not much (at all) has been happening with the band, and I was pretty determined not to let this blog turn into drivel about my personal life.

So anyway, I see a wave of creativity forming in the near future, so hopefully there'll be some action round here soon.

As soon as I get my tax refund (should be in the next couple of weeks), I'm going to pull the trigger on the rest of the recording gear I want. My goal after that is to record one song per week, be it a polished song with Keith or a 'scratchpad' type deal by myself.

But I need help. Does anyone know how I could take an Mp3 file and load it somewhere, paste the html and have it up on this site? I can't seem to find out how to make that happen. What I'd like to be able to do is record a song at home, convert the file to Mp3, then load it on this blog for y'all to critique. Anybody have any insight into how to do this (easily and for free)?


Keith and I haven't practiced in a couple of weeks. We've both just been really busy. May not happen this week either as I'm going to see Rhett Miller at Shady Grove tonight (our usual practice night), and I have a pretty busy weekend. Hopefully we can get together sometime this weekend and jam. I'm becoming more open to the idea of adding people to the band, if for no other reason than for motivation to practice and/or gig more frequently.

Anyway, thanks for reading, check back soon for new audio (hopefully)!

The Big Mo

No motivation to blog.

Will update when something happens. Could be soon, could be never.

Thanks for reading.

That's My Dog(us Balbay)

The Band: We had our usual practice on Thursday. We spent a good amount of time jamming without drums (Keith on bass, me on guitar). It was really nice.

The Studio: Can I have $3000?

Miscellany: Went to the Texas-OU basketball game on Saturday. It was awesome. Our team is very very inconsistent, but bloody fun to watch. I've been hatin on Balbay and Abrams all year, but they were the $ in that game. Balbay's range ends well before the free throw line, but he must have a 40" vert and is an excellent passer and defender. Abrams shoots way too much and should in no way be our main offensive weapon, but he has the quickest release I've ever seen and when he gets hot, look out. That said, UT will lose in the 2nd round of the tourney this year.

The coolest thing about the game was that my seat was directly behind the main ESPN cameras (half-court, 1st row of upper deck). It was neat seeing all the things that go into the broadcast. There were 3 cameras, and each operator had a headset where they were getting directions from the production team and a cheat sheet with all the players pics and notes. Some of the notes were like "people to show during downtime: Colt McCoy, Blake Griffin's parents, Mack Brown and Duane Akina". How did they know Colt and Mack were going to be there? I had a moment of awesome during the game; once, when the camera directly in front of me was live (there was a light telling you when each camera was the one on TV, plus you'd see the cameraman perk up and get all careful)...anyway, once, when the camera directly in front of me was live, he was panning the band. I leaned forward (pretty much right in his ear), and go "More chicky, less bandy." He then panned over to the pom girls. I felt badass.

3 Piece Brutality?

Band: Keith invited a bassist to join the band. Supposedly he's a cool guy. His last band was Christian Rock. I'm anxious about this for many reasons, the biggest being that I'm not exactly stoked about dividing my creative input by another factor, I'm not excited about another personality in the mix, and I ain't thrilled about having my technical deficiencies exposed even further. *Sigh*. Oh well, we'll roll on and see what happens. No word from Hanover's about a future gig.

Studio: I found a sweet glass top desk at Big Lot's for a hunerd bucks. There is VERY little left to do in the studio. Anticipate being ready to self-record in the next 30 days.

Miscellany: Not much going down on the rant tip. Work sucks.