Brent's List of Albums from 2010/2009 that he is trying to digest.

1) Charlotte Gainsberg - Every so often I hear one of her songs and they stop me dead in my tracks.  But when I listen to the whole album, not only do I get bored, but I am also unable to identify the songs that stop me dead in my tracks.  Frustrating

2) Cymbals Eat Guitars - Sounds like Broken Social Scene.  I like Broken Social Scene, but it takes a long time to identify with music like that. 

3) Dan Deacon - The only thing I need to share about it is that I am constantly calling it Deacon Dan.  Then Chelsey laughs as me.  Then I get mad.

4) Local Natives - This sounds exactly like Fleet Foxes to me.  I never liked Fleet Foxes, yet I somehow like Local Natives.  I really like "Airplanes", but my guess is that everyone who listens to their album does too.

5) Los Campesinos - No idea.  My ipod never plays them on random.  And I keep forgetting to listen tot he album.  Maybe when I start mowing the lawn.

6) She and Him - I love it.  This should come as no surprise to anyone.  I love them.  Their music is a perfect.

7) Florence and the Machine - Nice refrains.  So so songs.

8) Frightened Rabbit - I think I will grow to like this like I liked their last one, but it hasn't grabbed me by the head yet.

9) Fanfarlo - Kent keeps raving about this band.  They sound like a cross between Arcade Fire and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, except not as good as either.

10) Surfer Blood - I like this album!  It makes me feel good.  Yay.

New Years Resolutions Revisited

So it's about the end of March, and high time for me to look at my new years resolutions. I also recently found my 2008 resolutions, so I can share those results as well.

1) I'm going to start running again. And run further than the 2 miles I was logging at the end of 2010. - I am hitting this one out of the park. I ran like 14 miles last week, I'm running 16 this week. Goal one, I have kicked you ass. Grade: A+

2) I'm going to keep up with this motherfucking blog. - I think I am doing okay at this. I have pretty low expectations for quality, so just doing it somewhat regularly is good enough for me. Grade: B

3) I'm going on a roadtrip - either South or West. - This doesn't look all that hot. If I had to guess, the only roadtrip I might take would be around the Pacific Northwest, if Chelsey and I vacation up there. Not as good. Grade: C-

4) I'm going to join one of the following a) a class b) a society c) a club d) an organization. I guess technically I joined the Goodwill Running Club this year, but if I could, I would accompany this fact with that air jack off move that people use when they aren't impressed by something. Still lots of work to do to improve mt status as a joiner. Grade: D

5) I'm going to leave the house more. Not only am I not leaving the house more, I have no desire to leave the house more. All I want to do is lay around and watch HBO On-demand. Grade: F.

6) I'm not going to buy anything major unless something breaks. I think I am going to give myself a decent grade here, because last weekend I let Chelsey talk me out of buying a new blanket for our couch downstairs. But not a great grade, because I bought a bed frame. Grade: B-

7) I'm going to eat more pancakes and chicken fried steak.8) I'm going to try to not be so stupid when I get frazzled. A++++. I'm eating so much fucking chicken fried steak, it's incredible. And I'm catching up in the pancake department. I still haven't found a go-to place for both items yet, but surprisingly Garden Cafe may be the spot. If I can get over the lamo clientele. Grade: A++++

All in all, I'd say I'm doing pretty well. My hope is that warmer weather will lead to me wanting to leave the house more. And as a died-in-the-wool non-joiner, I'm not sure if that resolution is ever going to happen. But Chelsey did send me some info on a beginners Yoga class. And I have been doing Yoga on-demand. . .

I was looking for a piece of paper to spit my gum into yesterday and I found 2008 New Years resolutions for Me, Chelsey, Chuck, Hayden, and Beth. Mine were almost all creative in nature. Write a short story a month, that sort of thing. I Believe I failed them all. Yes. I just looked again. I did fail them all. It looks like the only one who actaully came through on one was Chelsey, who listed "start school" as a goal. So I guess what I'm saying is that we have some real groundbreaking stuff, if I am able to come through on any of these things by the end of the year.

St. Patricks Day

I dont' care about St. Patricks day. It's just a day where jerks dress up in green and act like jerks while drinking in overcrowded bars. That said, my friend Carly spends her day with her husband and friends in some ratty bar in South O. That sounds okay. I am going to attempt to do the same by going down to O'leavers, which sounds like it would be busy for an Irish holiday, but most likely won't be. Because it is also very ratty. It is also within walking distance from our house, so that will be nice.

Otherwise, I will spend the day trying to get people to sign up for my basketball pool, and running.

Chuck Wrote a Story for His Job!

It's Awesome! (You have to click "It's awesome!")

Laundy Room

I am so sick of looking at my laundry room. I have spent the last 4 months in my basement. It's all tv's and laundry rooms and dogs barking at everything. I cannot wait to go outside. And it's finally warming up. So once the 2 feet of snow melts, and once the ground becomes reasonably dry, I will finally be able to move upstairs. Here is a list of things I cannot wait to do:

1) Grill out
2) Sit outside the chimnea with friends
3) Walk the dog
4) Play catch
5) Bike
6) Watch Chelsey on her scooter
7) Fix shit
8) Sit outside and smoke cigarettes and drink beers.
9) Plant things
10) Not put in a swimming pool.

House of Jealous Lovers

This is awesome. I got my gmail and facebook hacked this morning. On its own that makes for quite a day, but I really think the hackers, some friends and I all conspired to make this a unique experience.

I'll start at the beginning, and since it's my accounts that got hacked, I reserve the right to decide the facts of the matter for now. Here's how I remember it.

At 9:30 I came upstairs from watching The Soup and VH1 videos, and Chelsey was still in bed. She had just awoken, and discovered text messages from my friends saying that my gmail had been hacked. She then checked her email and saw an email from me, telling her I was in London and asking for some money. The message said that I was robbed at gunpoint, and needed money for some bills I had racked up. Really dumb shit. But it gets better.

She tells me this news, and tells me that my phone has been ringing all morning. I check my phone and see missed phone calls from a coworker, my boss, and my sister and brother. What really gets my attention is that one of the Vice Presidents of Goodwill has been trying to call me. This strikes me as odd for two reasons. First, I was not aware that he had my personal phone number. Number two, I'm a little horrified that he has been mixed up in this.

So Chelsey posts something on facebook saying that I am not under gunpoint, and I call the Vice President back. He's not there, but in the process, I am looking at emails he sent my work email account, and from the looks of things, it appears he has taken this email more seriously then anyone else has. So I leave him a message, telling him I'm not in London, and that haven't been robbed.

After that I attempt to restore both facebook and gmail for a while. Gmail is impossible. There is a form that you have to fill out which asks for all this information that would be reallly easy to provide, if I had access to my fucking gmail account. So I make some guesses and submit everything. I then ask Chelsey if we can go to breakfast, because I feel like this bullshit has entitled me to chicken fried steak (one of my new years resolution is to eat more CFS).

As we are driving to Leos for breakfast, I get a call back from the Vice President. Turns out that he was online right when they hacked my account, and they started IMing with him. They actually act like they are me and tell the VP that Chelsey and I were just mugged and so on, and the VP is actually kind of buying it. he aks how much I (they) need, and they tell him 900 pounds (or $1400). Surprisingly, he is up for it! This is a guy I work with every day, but we are not friends. We don't hang out outside of work, but he's totally willing to wire me $1400. WTF?
Fortunately, before he sent the money, he asked them a question to verify that they were me. (What is the most important thing in the world to me? Answer: My corvette). They are unable to answer this question, and he says he's going to have to speak to me before things go any further. He also calls my boss and confirms that she saw me at work at 4pm yesterday. So getting to London and racking up $1400.00 seems unlikely. So the VP did NOT send any money (thank god), and we both laugh about it, and I go to Leos.

I eat the CFS. It's great. Especially since I am also hungover. Hacked and hungover. After breakfast, Chelsey and I go to Goodwill at 41st and Pacific - where my office is. While she shops, I submit another request to gmail to restore my account. Which is a good thing, because when I get to my work computer, I see that I have not provided enough information to for them to restore my gmail . There is a rejection email waiting on me. With the help of my work email, I can provide more of the information they are looking for (main contacts, the name of the this blog's url, etc).

We go home, and I realize that the hangover is now taking over, so I lay down and watch some tv. Chelsey comes down, and we watch Mad Men on DVD. During the third show, Gmail tells me I can have me account back, and I take a laptop to City Limits, so I can re-setup my account.

This turns out to be more of a challenge than I hoped it would be. All my contacts are gone, and I don't have any emails from the time I was hacked. I start sending emails to tell people I have me email active again, and I begin to notice that no one is responding to my emails. So I start IMing with my friend John (IM worked fine), and I have him send me an email, and nothing comes. So I figure that maybe usability is just limited.

Work ends, and Chuck and I decide to watch Hurt Locker on demand. While the movie is playing, I decide to poke around on my gmail settings and see if maybe I'm missing something that would keep people from emailing me.

It turns out I did. Because the hackers have set up my gmail so that anytime anyone emails me, the messages are forwarded to an email that they created called brent.koster@yahoo.com" and are then deleted from gmail. Meaning that all the emails that were sent to me today were forwarded to their fake email address and then deleted. So I stop this nonsense, and look in the Deleted folder, and discover all these emails that people sent. I also notice that they have entered an Nigerian phone number and associated it with my account. That's worth noting, since by doing so, they would receive text messages every time I reset the password. Great! Fuckers!

So I get that fixed, and gmail is mostly back to normal. I also make another plea for facebook to activate my account again. I also google "facebook has disabled my account" and read about all these people who have been waiting for months to be activated after being disabled. This makes me mad, so I contact yahoo, and tell them, about the brent.koster@yahoo.com account, and tell them they should disable it.

Now it's 1am. My gmail works. Facebook hates me. And I have to run 5 miles tomorrow for my half-marathon training. I can't fucking run that far.

Big John Shaft

I've had this song in my head all morning. It's a Belle and Sebastian song from the movie Storytelling. I was setting up the microphone system for our Goodwill "Town Hall" (a big meeting of all Goodwill Employees), and I had the urge to start signing it. And I think I would have as a mike check, but as soon as I switched the microphone on, this huge blaring feedback sound came out. So severe was the sound that it broke me out of my little "I'm going to sing to all these people" trance. I ended up just saying "check" a couple of times." This is weird for a couple of reasons.

1) How did Big John Shaft get in my head? If anything should have been in my head, it should have been Dragon's Lair by Sunset Rubdown, which I watched the video that morning, but stopped before it was over - usually a sure-fire way to get a song stuck in my head.

2) That speaker and microphone have never done that before when I switched them on - and I do so every month. Is there a chance that there was some devine intervention at hand?

3) Do I have a good singing voice? I think I was recently videotaped signing "Love Boat" I should really look at that...