I took the plunge. I signed my life away. I own a house now; it’s exciting. I closed on Wednesday, but part of the deal was giving the seller 30 days occupancy. They anticipate being out by next Friday, since they’re paying me for every extra night in the house. The wait is killing me.

I’ve got some work to do on it, but nothing major. Some painting, replace some pink carpet, and general cleanup. Stay tuned for more pictures and some details about a “Welcome to the Neighborhood (with apologies to the neighbors)” party.

No, I’m not talking about deodorant (although, I do hope you use that every day).

English.

It’s the language we speak, write, etc. I’m not proclaiming to be a great writer, but I’d like to think I’ve got the basics down: spelling, contractions, and the general grammar rules. I can remember when instant messaging was first becoming main-stream; I remember thinking: “How cool is this? I can write and skip words, letters, and puncutation! And look at all these cool little acronyms! This is GR8, thanks AOL! LOL!”

No. No thanks to you, AOL. I’d hate to be a grade school teacher trying to decipher little Johnny’s paper about his dad’s new car.

my dad bought a blu corvette today lol! its so fast!! my friend jeff came over 2day and said that it goes so fast that u will never B L8 to nething nemore. all my friends R jealous and want they’re dads to buy 1 to.

(I’m relieved that little 2-3 sentence blurb took a while to figure out how to write improperly.)

So anyway, I felt the need to rant about this. It’s generally the first thing I notice when reading anything these days. (papers, websites, instant messages, away messages, blogs, etc.) I’m a pain in the butt, so I usually will sarcastically question what you mean by making fun of you — it’s not that I don’t like you, I just wish you’d take the time to think about a few simple facts. I’m not asking for 100% perfect grammar, spelling, punctuation, and sentence form (because I take a few shortcuts here and there) but I do appreciate it when the following words are used correctly.

• its = possessive adjective (possesive form of the pronoun it): The crab had an unusual growth on its shell.
• it’s = contraction for it is or it has (in a verb phrase): It’s still raining; it’s been raining for three days. (Pronouns have apostrophes only when two words are being shortened into one.)

• Their = possessive pronoun: They got their books.
• There = that place: My house is over there. (This is a place word, and so it contains the word here.)
• They’re = contraction for they are: They’re making dinner. (Pronouns have apostrophes only when two words are being shortened into one.)

• To = preposition, or first part of the infinitive form of a verb: They went to the lake to swim.
• Too = very, also: I was too tired to continue. I was hungry, too.
• Two = the number 2: Two students scored below passing on the exam.

• Your = possessive pronoun: Your shoes are untied.
• You’re = contraction for you are: You’re walking around with your shoes untied. (Pronouns have apostrophes only when two words are being shortened into one.)

(source: Purdue University writing lab)

I guess that’s it. Bring on the “your a big jerk” and “you have an extra comma” comments …

This one’s for Jtosh.

From the Fat Wreck newsletter:

Louisiana Purchase? Maybe not such a bargain after all. Even at a measly 15 million dollars, it seems the French knew something that the US didn’t. Building a city 10 feet under sea level in a hurricane zone isn’t the greatest plan. OK, all kidding aside (and yeah I know that the Louisiana Purchase was a lot more land than just Louisiana), it’s nice that some people are giving out the big dough to help out the Big Easy. George Clooney, George Steinbrenner, Jay-Z, P-Diddy, Oprah, Nick Cage, and Spielberg each gave a million bucks and John Grisham gave a whopping 5 million. Lots of citizens are digging deep to help out, so when I read how much money some of the biggest US companies are giving, it surprised me. Actually it didn’t surprise me.

Chevron is giving 5 million. That’s nice cuz I’m pretty sure John Grisham and Chevron have about the same annual income. The only real difference I can see is that Grisham didn’t double the price of his books when this disaster happened. Then there’s Walmart. Walmart originally pledged 8 million. Now it’s up to 17 million. Walmart is the biggest company in the world. If it had it’s own economy, it would rank 33rd in the world (right behind Portugal). Last year alone, it grossed 285 billion dollars. The family that owns Walmart is worth over 100 billion dollars. If my numbers are right, it’s kind of like a family that has 10,000 dollars giving 170 cents to the relief effort. Thanks Walmart. Citizens: yay. Corporations: boo.

Fat Mike

(Fat Mike is the singer/bassist from NOFX, and the bassist in Me First and the Gimmie Gimme’s)

Lots of new music links; I like it.

• Thrice (myspace sampler)
  The demo on MySpace sounds awesome .. I want more than 10 seconds of each song, though.
• Coheed & Cambria (myspace)
  I was able to score a copy of this early (thanks Mike) and I can safely say it is fantastic.
• Cartel (full album stream)
  Poppy punk/emo/core/whatever/word-of-the-day, but I still like it.
• 30 Seconds to Mars (purevolume full album stream)
  I like this as much as I like their old one. I was listening to this non-stop until I got the new Coheed.