Since last we spoke I’ve done Thanksgiving in San Francisco with the family — where I saw one of the world famous Suicide Girls (link not safe for work) on the Haight-Ashbury crosstown bus, Christmas dinner with a crew of Real Live English-persons — British accents and all, and traveled to Argentina — and back.

For those of you who hate Snapfish and are still waiting to see the Argentina pictures, don’t worry… I’m building a photogallery here on the site and should have those pics up Real Soon Now.

I’ve also been locked in a life-and-death struggle with my ISP and Network Solutions, trying to regain full control over this domain name. This particular struggle basically involves me faxing polite missives on official-looking letterhead to my ISP, complete with photocopies of my driver’s license. It also involves rather less polite conversations with several of the least competent customer service drones at my ISP; I’ve spent alot of time lately trying to explain DNS and the difference between Admin contacts and Technical contacts to those fuckers. It’s like they draw straws for brains over there.

There is a moral here for those of you who own your own domains; keep your WHOIS record up-to-date. It’s a real bitch to change it otherwise; I’ve entered new realms of pain.

The last week has been a real blast. Holly and I took in a Hey Mercedes show at the old Black Cat on Thursday; on Friday, Kym and I took a stroll over to the petroglyph at Great Falls, followed that up with a seminar on Basic Guaranteed Income with ex-Governor of Alaska Jay Hammond, and closed out the weekend with a rock show on Sunday night with Mike and Ontwo.

Mike invited Kym and me to see the Mates of State on Sunday. They were awesome, a band I wish I had discovered months ago. The opening band was a guy-girl combo called The Hawney Troof, specializing in spaced-out trash-rock. . . just a guy, a girl, and a Casio. Dressed in matching blue t-shirts and leopard print women’s underwear, these two led the audience through a series of calls and responses - not songs or chants even — inqurying at length about our sexual preferences, including choice of partner, style, preferred actions and duration of events. Apparently, these two like to fuck. They were swinging from the rafters and yelling at the top of their lung, just begging for a little bit of energy back. Of course, DC being DC, the crowd stood there — mute — with their arms folded across their chests.

Me. . . I screamed and yelled for all I was worth. These are my factory settings, please don’t try to alter them.