I don't know why I do it but lately I've been browsing through youtube looking at videos of 12 year old musicians who have only been playing guitars for two months who can kick my arse up one side and down the other. Now some of the kids aren't telling the truth about how long they've been playing, for sure, and to some degree it speaks to the amount of free time a dopey kid has for practice and whatnot, but still, some of those mopes make me want to put all my gear up on eBay and take up something easy like quilting, or the bass or drums. Feh.

I'm probably the only bloke who didn't know about this site but it's the schiznit, quick and easy. So now I can easily save all those dopey 14 year old mopes to my hard drive and lose the will to live on demand!

The 86 Escort is still shifting smooth and easy - so hopefully even if it is leaking fluid it's a small enough leak so as not to bother until I sell the old carriage. See - this is a lesson as to why you never want to buy an older used car - there's likely tonnes of little things wrong with it that are just a-waitin to blow up on you. If you only learn one lesson from today's secret diary let it be that.

It's actually sunny out today. That's a rarity here in Ohia during this part of the year. We're one of the most gray states on the planet during the Winter, according to some of the studies I've heard. That is to say we have more overcast days than you do. On the credit side it really makes the sunny days a special treat - on the debit side it's the same sort of treat that a wife gets on those days when her husband doesn't beat her.

Speaking of wife-beating - they say the first casualty of war is date-rape-drugs and it turns out it's true. (She is kind of cute - if I was going to slip someone some roofies she would certainly, uh, well, never mind) This really should come as no surprise to anyone - most of those blokes who are expats are expats for a reason. My stepdad was actually an expat (not for Haliburton mind you) who worked in Indonesia and Egypt for a number of years and when I would visit them (my mom went with him although she hated living overseas) I was always rather put off by the all the expats I met.

Most of them struck me as thugs. Overpaid uncultured thugs. They make a serious fuckload of money but they all seemed to be the type of person who was in some serious trouble in the states and took the expat gig as a way to a: get the hell out of dodge, and b: make a tonne of money (much of it tax free) to be used as a means of digging out of whatever trouble they were running from. Blah - so there ya go. God bless Americia!! Spreading Democracy and the Americian way!!