Here’s a list of the bands I’ve seen and enjoyed over the past several months. Check them out!

Editors at the Roseland Theater

The Prids at the Doug Fir Lounge

Charmparticles at the Doug Fir Lounge

Feist at the Schnitz

Joy Wilson Band at Macadam’s Bar & Grill

Talkdemonic at the Doug Fir Lounge

The High Violets at the Doug Fir Lounge

Dat’r at the Doug Fir Lounge

Datarock at the Doug Fir Lounge

She Wants Revenge at the Roseland Theater

Benefit show for Ethos at the Someday Lounge

I should have posted this ages ago but, clearly I haven’t been posting anything lately. I repent! I finally fixed Firefox by deleting and recreating my profile. You didn’t know you had a Firefox profile? Neither did I. Apparently, they can get corrupted from time to time. Once I created the new profile and copied my bookmarks in from the old profile’s folder, I was totally up and running again. It took me about ten minutes. Go figure.

Go here for the official instructions… http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_new_Firefox_profile_on_Windows

The new update appears to have improved my Firefox situation. I mentioned in a previous post that I was having a horrible time with Firefox lagging. After yesterday’s update, which ostensibly fixed a Quicktime security issue, I’m having fewer lags. They’re still happening from time to time but they’re not so frequent that I can’t use it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

This link will take you to a video of a student being dragged away, held down, and tasered for not shutting up when he was told to by Univeristy of Florida campus police. Only one person openly questioned the police’s actions and tried to help the student. The kid was a little bit obnoxious, but he wasn’t violent and he wasn’t dangerous. He had the same right to free speech that we all do. Or do we? What will you do when you find yourself watching a fellow citizen being tortured for speaking out?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE76LQwT6qA

Thank you to Ask-Steve for bringing this to my attention.

Robert Jordan, the author of The Wheel of Time series of fantasy novels died of a rare blood disease yesterday. Fans around the world are cursing in rage and grief. Rage because he didn’t finish the series, leaving us forever hanging off a cliff, grief because we’ve lost a writer of incredible imagination and talent.

I’ll try to explain why it’s such a big deal that he didn’t finish the series. He started it in 1990 and by 2005 had completed 11 books in the series. The story is huge and encompasses the lives of upwards of a hundred characters. I haven’t done an actual count but there are a crazy number of people to keep track of in these books. By around book 7 fans were starting to get nervous, some angry, at how sprawling the story had become. Every book introduced new characters, leaving less time for the old ones. By book 10 the story’s progression had slowed to a molasses crawl. Everyone was frustrated because it was clear there were way too many loose ends to wrap up in even 1 more 800 page book. I think he was thinking he’d have it all wrapped up by book 14. When you’ve been following a story for 17 years, it’s a big deal. All of his characters died with him. Ugh.

I remember actually thinking during book 10 that Jordan had better not die before he finished this damn thing. I didn’t know he was actually ill. The problem was that even amidst the frustration of too many characters and slow plot progression, his characters were engaging and the story was fascinating. I can’t believe he didn’t finish it. He was working on book 12 so perhaps they’ll edit it into something publishable. It worked for Tolkien and I’m sure Tor Publishing would love to do it.

Robert Jordan is a pen name, by the way. I didn’t know anything about the man behind that name but I’ll mourn the writer.

Update: I rolled Firefox back to a previous version. Same issues. I fired it up in safe mode. Same issues. I’m typing this from IE. I can’t take it anymore! I’ll keep trying to find a solution when I have the time and if I do, I’ll post it here.

About 2 weeks ago, Firefox starting randomly hanging. It’s not related to a specific Web site although I suspect it has something to do with running Java scripts. The symptoms are as follows.

I click in a box to type something and nothing happens for up to 15 seconds. I click on a button on Web page and nothing happens for up to 15 seconds. Everything moves along fine for a couple of minutes and then I try to scroll a page. Nothing happens. Sometimes the Firefox program icon goes to the non-responding icon. My CPU usage spikes to 100% during these lags. It’s maddening.

Googling this problem has not returned anything useful yet. I don’t have any extensions installed. I reinstalled the latest Java update (which I think is what caused this mess in the first place). I ran a spyware check. I checked my processes for anything that looked suspicious. I cleared my cache. I changed Firefox so it only uses one processor. No improvement so far. Arrrgh!

The Firefox error console shows lots of the following errors: “Warning: Error in parsing value for property ‘cursor’. Declaration dropped.” The Firefox forum claims this wouldn’t cause a crash. It’s just a CSS error.

I haven’t done a full reinstall of Firefox yet. I think it may be my last hope. Help me Obi Wan!

That title ought to attract some lovely hits. But hey, if you’re into what I like to refer to as vampire porn, then you probably already know about Laurell K. Hamilton. In a previous post I promised a review of her latest Anita Blake novel. If you read her last novel and felt disappointed, you’ll be less disappointed this time around. Edward comes to town and that’s always a recipe for a good time.

When I think of her earlier novels in the series (we’re on book 15 in the series) they seem so innocent. Anita was certainly more innocent in those earlier novels and a lot of readers had trouble making the transition to her not-so-innocent story lines. I believe around book 6 or 7 is when my friend and I started referring to them as “vampire porn.” That’s a lot of foreplay when you think about it. Books 13 and 14 however were too much porn even for me. I’m all for Anita banging lots of vampires but jeez louise, there’s got to be some sort of plot beyond her Catholic guilt and relationship angst. It’s supposed to be a hard broiled supernatural detective/crime series for goodness sake! Throw some unlikely, yet hot, sex in for good measure and it’s all good. Make the entire book about sex and the fact that these vampire and werewolves all have huge cocks and you get…yawn.

Here’s a random thought: let’s have Anita bang something that has a normal sized dick and knows how to use it. That would be interesting. Sorry, I digress.

Her latest novel, The Harlequin, is much more fun than either Micah or Danse Macabre. There are vampire politics and problems coming to terms with The Ardeur, not to mention some freaking resolution with Richard the werewolf, as well as a nice appearance by Edward and the Sick Fuck from a few books back. You know if Edward shows up, Anita is in some serious trouble and there’s likely to be a plot. But, in the end…it’s still vampire porn.

Goddamn, I just saw We’re From Japan and they totally fucking rocked it. Fuck prosac, if you’re feeling down in the dumps go check out some live music! I’m pretty new to the progressive post-rock scene a la Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Isis, but I don’t care: I loved it!

There were no vocals in the entire set. It was all instrumental. Boring you say? Ohhhh no. There was no boring music, unless you think the sound of the ocean is boring. It was symphonic wave after wave that ebbed and flowed and swelled and boomed and caressed.

I’ve been curious to see them for quite some time and, clearly, I wasn’t disappointed. Two guitars, bass, and drums they all seemed to be doing their own thing, each lost in their own little piece of the music , yet somehow they melded together into this awesome wall of sound.

Check them out online or catch their next show. If you don’t dig them, well…there’s really nothing I can do for you.

So last night I went to Berbati’s Pan and saw The National. Tonight I saw The Prids at The Doug Fir. Dang, both bands were totally fun, if entirely different, and The Prids had the added bonus of The Sun The Sea opening for them. My ears are seriously complaining about the abuse but both shows were really freaking fun. Check out these bands if you haven’t already.

The National has a symphonic rock sound with deep smooth vocals and a sweet violin. The Prids are a darker, bass heavy and fast drums band, while The Sun The Sea are charismatic garage indie rock at its most fun. It’s weeks like this that I feel really happy to be alive and well in Portland within a 10 minute drive of great music.

I’m heading to Hawaii for a week in the sun, then I move into my new place. Life is good…