The Christmas Music, It is unusual.

So this holiday season has resulted in some unusual releases, including the 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force Christmas Album' and a couple of fun ones this last week.

First among these is experimental hardcore group, Fucked Up's version of (usually terrible to listen to song) 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' featuring Andrew W.K., Tegan and Sara, David Cross, Bob Mould, The GZA, Yo La Tengo, and more. You can pick it up here and best of all, your 99 cents goes to a good cause.


Second, we've got a song that is less about Christmas, and more about what a particular rapper wants for Christmas. That rapper is Sage Francis and the song is called 'Gimme Dat', produced by Buck 65, and available for free here for a limited time.


So there you go. Two Christmas Jams from people who probably aren't huge Christmas fans, but will at least put something a little different in your ears this holiday season.

Review: The City and The City

There are weird places in the world. The Antarctic, unbroken vistas of ice and snow. Madagascar, an island of creatures found nowhere else. And somewhere in Europe, or Asia, or far more likely, in between, exist the twin countries and cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma.

Occupying the same space at the same time, Beszel and Ul Qoma have a strange symbiotic relationship. The citizenry of each are trained to un-see the other, not acknowledging it even when they might almost be run down by a car that to them, isn't there. Doing otherwise is to risk breaching, and a run in with the secret police of the same name. However, there is a rumor of a third city, hidden between the two. And when a brutal murder is committed, Beszel Police Inspector Tyador Borlu begins to suspect that agents of this other place may be behind it.

That is the basic premise behind China Mieville's latest novel. Released this past May, I had for whatever reason not touched my advance copy until this last week, despite having loved his previous work. Maybe it was the distancing from straight-up steampunk/fantasy to a more crime-procedural format, but The City and The City stayed off my radar for far too long. And having read it, it seems that turning his typical style on its ear was just what he needed to stay fresh and continue to be one of the most unique voices out there.

The novel is brilliantly structured, a slow build into the idea of these two cities that occupy the same geographical and temporal space, the first five chapters getting us used to the idea. At the same time, he manages to make what could be a cheap gimmick into something functional. Unseeing a person that is right next to you is accomplished not through some strange technological gadget but by the cooperative denial of citizenry of both places. And coordinating a murder investigation across both cities lends itself a whole new group of issues.

The characterization is well done. Much like in Mieville's modern classic, Perdido Street Station, the main character is an ordinary person who, being pushed to extraordinary lengths, becomes someone we're interested in. His characterizations are almost uniformly beautiful, though a few of the secondaries suffer. A third act resurrection of a minor personage had me flipping back to earlier pages to refresh myself. Overall though, the citizenry of Beszel and Ul Qoma are living breathing people.

A hallmark of Mieville's novels are the settings. He has a knack for creating a fascinating location and stories to populate them. Once more, perhaps the most major character in this story is/are the city/ies. Through the everyday occurrences of traffic accidents and children playing in the park, we're able to understand more about this world than anything Inspector Borlu tells us. Something as minor as a person bending over to pick up some litter becomes insight into the way this world functions. Mieville is a visual artist working with words.

The book is a triumph. As mentioned before, it could slip into cliche or gimmickry but never does. He manages to build a believable world, a fantasy that exists. The novel itself is a parallel of its story, its events taking place in the world we currently operate within, a world of worry for terrorism and liberal/conservative head-butting. We see these things paralleling our every action, and un-see them as alien or frightening. Mieville doesn't. He stares them down and puts them on the page for all of us. Because of this, he remains one of the most unique and intelligent young writers operating today.

The Coney Island Effect

I stink.

My sister works for Victoria's Secret out in Denver. Apparently there is some kind of employee sale going on at the moment, so she called me.

"Lincoln, go try on the colognes and let me know which one you like the best."

Nevermind that there are 600 different colognes/perfumes and the 3 male ones aren't set aside in their own spot. Nevermind that apparently our mall's VS is understaffed. Nevermind that this store is relatively undiscovered country for me, a single male.

So after a lovely young lady took pity on me and helped me find the men's colognes and I spritzed my wrists with the two that smelled the least like my current stock of colognes (a wide stable of 2 scents) I went back to work. I am making my female co-workers smell me. Or my wrists rather, the other statement sounding decidedly inapropriate.

Thus far I'm a bit undecided. I like them both, but the combination of the two is swirling and creating in my nostrils the scent of, for lack of a better term, douchebag. So we'll see. I'm leaning to my right wrist, which I think was called Vertical.

I've decided something about the whole Susan Boyle phenomenon. If you don't know who that is then...I can't even say you're old or live in a cave or anything because the young generation knows how to use youtube, while the oldsters are who her music is aimed at. In any case, she is a good example, with her 701,000 albums sold the first week, of something that I am going to call the Coney Island effect.

I'm not belittling her or her story. Far from it. I think that it's extremely inspiring that we live in an age where someone can come forth fairly humbly and become a sensation. No, what bothers me is people reacting to her.

A conversation at the register the other day:
"What cd is that? Oh, is that the ugly woman?"

I feel like this is a lot of the buzz around her. Sure she has a nice voice, and yes, her story is inspirational, but would a beautiful, younger woman who had come out of nowhere have generated the same buzz?

Taylor Swift says no. Or at least her initial cd sales do.

So what does this say about human society as a whole? I'm not sure. I'm not an anthropologist, a psychologist, or a host of other words that end with -ologist who might be able to shed light on this. But I don't feel good about it. How much of this is genuine admiration and how much is hearkening back to Coney Island freak shows, sitting in awe of the dumpy single woman with the pretty voice?

Gabba Gabba.

Katamari theme, over and over, says Lincoln's brain

So the start of another month, the last month of the year, in fact, and we still have no snow. A lot of my co-workers are excited about this fact, praising the ease with which they get to work. I'm a skier, so thats my first problem with our lack of snow, but a more troubling one is the whole global-warming issue. But wait! We know that doesn't exist now right? I mean, what with climategate and all.

All I have to say on the subject can be summarized here: Just what is in a “political agreement”? (Hat tip to Charles at LGF.) When even the climate change advisor at SHELL says you're a bunch of moronic criminals, then you probably are.

"I think that the science now tells us more than enough to warrant action. Certainly there remain uncertainties, but not on the issue as a whole.
With regards the private e-mails posted on the internet, I think the story is a simple one and it could apply to any one of us. Think of all the e-mails you have written over the past 10 years. Now imagine that someone criminally breaks into your e-mail account and downloads all of them, handpicks a few and posts them on the internet to cast you in a particular light. We could all be shown to be saints or sinners or anything in between.
Now look at what has happened with these scientists going about their work in much the same way anyone of us might attend to our job. Enough said."

I think he sums it up pretty succinctly. I mean, the whole thing was illegal, and if you go through anyone's e-mails you're going to find some stuff that can be misinterpreted.

Today was a pretty laid-back mess. Quiet enough that while sitting at the back register, I caught myself humming video game themes to myself. Katamari Damacy dominated the bizarre mixtape in my head.

And now a brief amount of fiction word-salad. Might not make sense, but fun to write anyway.


'Bulbs'

Stranger days have happened. I woke up to a goose standing on my back step once, hissing as I tried to edge past him. Work was a man down that day. There was the morning of the wind that blew in from all directions, my door shattering closed with each gust, locust leaves across the fake hardwood.

This morning though I woke up to every light turned off.

It wasn't just my apartment. Or my block. Or my city. I could tell. We'd all gone dark.

Even the sun.

In the night of 9 am, before my phone died and my watch was no longer wound correctly, I could see no lights in any direction. My neighbor across the street was on his front lawn and asked if I knew what had happened. When I shrugged, laughed, pointed at the church, he smiled and went back inside, the loud click of a bolt thrown after him.

The lights didn't come back on though. We're not really sure when they will. I flip the switch, and lean close to the bulb, and I can hear it humming, but no light is given off. I contacted a professor at the University, and he said they're still detecting the correct wavelengths from the darkened bulbs, they just aren't lighting. Or they are, just not so we could see them.

I look at the church more and more. I was never a religious man. But it's a church.

And I'm out of candles.


Goodnight.

Dear LHC

Will you please adopt me? I will be your high energy, particle-colliding child. I would love to set world records with you.

Bananas: We accept you, one of us

So if you're not familiar with the children's show 'Yo Gabba Gabba!', it can be summed up thusly: Sesame Street meets Japanese Cosplay for the hipster-parent generation. Started by the MC Bat Commander of Aquabats fame, the show fuses edutainmental bits with an indie rock aesthetic that can be enjoyed by both children and their parents. But the high point is the music. Guests have included The Roots, The Ting Tings, Jimmy Eat World, The Aquabats (of course) and the Aggrolites, of all people, who originally performed the song that Dinosaur Jr. rocks in this video of the live 'Yo Gabba Gabba' show.



So yep. Must be bizarre to play for a roomful of kids when you're used to playing for a bunch of drunken college-mops, but they look like they're having a blast, after getting through that tentative, deer-in-the-headlights "Hi Kids."

Black Friday is disgusting. We didn't have any doorbusters or the nonsense that major chains had, but we do now have the only coffee shop in the mall, so our store was pretty ridiculous. I just don't understand the greed that we as Americans seem to have hard-wired. I'd like to say that I'm not part of it, but to be honest, I'm pretty messed up with it. I have constant envy of things that I don't own, when I haven't finished all of the ones that I do. Stupid, but I shouldn't look down on myself. Black Friday, with children complaining that they want every toy in the store, people attempting to negotiate for better deals and my sister getting yelled at because they ran out of the tote her store advertised, is a pretty horrible symptom. I need to fix it in myself before I can avoid it outside of my body.

Shoot the moon.

Place

This is a placeholder, but let me just say that I'm disgusted by the greed shown on black friday.
Night.

Roombas and Guitar Strings

So why is it that people such as myself can never be satisfied? Everyone my age wants to be famous. We want to have everyone know our name. They need to know our music, our writing, our art. But really, we're just feeling lazy and entitled.

Since this is my blog, we'll use me as the fr'instance. I have high hopes for my writing. Anyone who is reading this right now can probably puzzle that one together. But my identity is made up of a bunch of different things. In elementary school, I was the kid who broke at least one backpack a year. I would fill them, to the point where the zipper seams tore, with books.

There was no way that I could read all of these books in school. We had classes, recess, never mind that elementary school was a more social time. But I simply liked the feeling of having these books around me, even if they were never opened. They ran the gamut of science texts to fantasy novels, and really just provided a safety net.

Whatever it might be, that safety net disappears as we grow older. In junior high and high school, the number of 'fun' texts I could carry dwindled, and in college, my non-school reading dropped to near zero. I really had nothing holding me up anymore.

It's scary, not being able to rely on something you've always had before. There are ways around it obviously; drugs, alcohol. You fill the gap with something powerful and life changing. Many of us can't find a way to do that, and almost delude ourselves into seeking new identities. We become sure that we'll be famous.

The punchline here is that that is unlikely.

I sit down some days and strum my guitar casually. I'm not very good yet, and in my head there's a voice telling me that I should be. I've had this guitar four years, I should be a performing singer-songwriter with his own backing band. My poems should be recited in high school classrooms as exemplary works. I should be making my way through the money with a shovel for my fiction.

Life doesn't work that way. It gets in your way, changes the game. You can catch yourself saying that this is bad.

Or you can strum the guitar. Hammer out one more chord before you go to bed. Learn something new.

Thursday Afternoon Short Story

"I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore. There's just a monotone to your voice.. and it's there all the time. Even when we talk about shit like this. I'm sorry. I can't...I'm sorry."

She hung up.

Into the silence, he said "At the sound of your rejection, the time will be 3:30 pm EST."

Mother of Mindfuck!

So Pitchfork posted this yesterday, and I felt that it's general strangeness was worth commenting on here. Beck and actress/singer Charlotte Gainsbourg are putting out an album together. The first single 'Heaven can Wait' is available at the iTunes store, and I dig it, but the music video is the weirdest combination of imagery I've seen in a while. Check it.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck - Heaven Can Wait

Amphibians

A poem I'm working on right now. It still needs work.

In nature camp, we’d turn
over logs, roll them back into
the patches of poison ivy that
seemed to thrive around them.
We were looking for worms, insects,
anything that thrived in the dark
and wet,
the real joy coming with a log tipped
and that glossy back, spots
of yellow or red, and the slow flashing tail
of the salamander.

We’d pick him up, careful not to
break, fragile limbs with sticky hands.
Tigers, spotted, toxicity needed to stop
exactly this groping, drying hands, as we roll
them over and see the pale, non-hiding
underside.

Luckiest
are dropped into a tank of peat, worms,
plastic plants and a classroom filled with
six year olds, end up dehydrated husks.
Tipped back under a log as burial.
Then
swollen with new moisture, they find
a grub who hasn’t seen them before
and swallow it whole.

Still waiting

Who wants to go get some grass stains?

More mythology for your buck

So odds are you've seen the trailer for Clash of the Titans the remake of the 70s original that made Ray Harryhausen a bit of a household name.

Well, now we've got that same movie for the Harry Potter set.

The third trailer for Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief went up and I've gotta say, it looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Christopher Columbus, the guy who directed the first two Harry Potter films is behind the camera, and I think we'll be getting a similar feeling out of this one.

Check it out.

Who poured mercury in my ear?

So my head feels like it's exploding, and this is going to be a short post because of that, but I still have a couple of things to say.

My friend Lauren pointed me to this video, and I think it's excellent. It really sums up what needs to happen in the world, and in the schools, to keep us going and possibly to push the economy back to where it belongs. We're stagnant.
Ken Robinson at TED

Also, I'd like to share a little humor with you folks out there. Some folks might be aware of Ray "Banana" Comfort and his revisionist 'Origin of the Species' that will be passed out November 22nd at college campuses. Well, the National Council for Science Education had a bit of a silly rebuttal on the subject.



Finally, if you're able, the annual Leonid meteor shower, as we pass through the tail of the Tempel-Tuttle comet, reaches its peak tonight, with 20 to 30 meteors estimated to be visible each hour, starting at midnight and most significant at 3 am on the 17th. However, if you're in, or closer to, Asia (I'm looking at you, Christopher, Katie and AV) then you'll be getting 200 to 300 an hour. So please, take photos and share with us.

I'm going to see if I can find Hephaestus and fix this headache.

Nighty Nighty: Day off Photo

Relaxing cliche tree photo I took for you to look at overnight.

Sweet dreams.

Soda Culture: Nerdcore, Cartoons, and Why Those Pants Don't Fit Anymore

Let me start the day off with this statement. I'm pretty sure I've figured out the country's obesity crisis. It's people shopping while hungry. Or maybe you fatsos should exercise more. Either way.


"A beard is no substitute for a jawline, no matter how you trim it."

Adult Swim is a pretty well known brand in the world of cartoons for the adult (surprising, I know) consumer. But while I've discussed this show before, I still find that there are a lot of people out there who aren't aware of the glory that is 'The Venture Brothers'.

Now in the early stages of the fourth season, 'The Venture Bros' was conceived and created by Jackson Publick, aka Christopher McCulloch, one of the main writers on 'The Tick' animated series. Originally to be a comic book, he decided to instead do it as an animated series after realizing he had a larger story to tell. The show was picked up in 2002 and began airing the first season in 2004.

Alright, now that we've got the boring stuff out of the way, why is this show so great? Simply put, it's a show for everyone who grew up in the 80's and 90's. Dr. Venture, a pill-popping scientist with two moronic sons and a hulking be-mulleted bodyguard directly recalls Dr. Quest from the old 'Jonny Quest' tv show (and the stupid relaunch). The Monarch, a butterfly-themed super-villain traveling in a flying cocoon is a Bond bad guy crossed with the Batman rogues' gallery. The show throws in the pop-culture left and right, including David Bowie in a significant role, the Scooby gang re-imagined as famous serial killers and victims, and a GI Joe-esque montage that gets really over the top, really quickly.

So if this show is as awesome as I say it is, why isn't it more popular? A couple of reasons, I think. The time slot, 12 am on a Sunday is pretty much shit for anyone outside the college set. Yes, I manage to stay up and watch it, but I crash immediately after, having to work the next day. I think the biggest factor is, oddly enough, the humor. People aren't smart. I hate to say that, but a large portion of the population can't wrap their head around anything more sophisticated than a 'Family Guy' joke, where you're given the set-up, and then the punchline is handed to you through imagery. A show like 'The Venture Brothers', where the referential material flies fast and furious without even a second to explain it is going to get lost on some people. When Edgar Allen Poe says that a sacred object is hidden under his floorboards, I snorted with laughter, seeing a quick "Telltale Heart" joke, while the person next to me just looked confused. A brilliant Exodus 21:24 joke in the last episode flew right over my head, a more Biblically educated friend pointing it out to me. So while the show is enjoyable for everyone, it's sort of the same situation 'Futurama' found itself in, except that instead of the science nerd, the hipster pop-culture (excuse me, Soda Culture) geek is going to find himself king of the couch with this show.


"Technologies. That's gangstas with computers, y'all."

I'm not embarrassed to admit that I dig rap. I have a few friends who hate the entire genre based on some preconceived notions about the way it presents itself. There are others I've met who think that every rapper who does some moronic thing is God himself, and there's of course no way he actually did the stupid shit there are six witnesses to.

I fall somewhere in the middle.

I hate to say it, but I'm a bit of a hipster, even in my rap choices. I listen to a lot of indie stuff: Aesop Rock, Sage Francis, Atmosphere, El-P, Doom, De La Soul...kind of the who's who of semi-underground, lyrically intelligent rap artists. Also in the play rotation are the precursors: Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys...the things you listened to as a kid that your parents and Tipper Gore didn't want you to. This probably makes me pretentious. Hopefully, this next bit will fix that.

Ever listen to Nerdcore?

The genre came out of the uterus back in 2000, birthed by balding father-figure MC Frontalot and his self-publish, DIY ethic. The songs tend to deal with nerdy (durr) topics, ranging from computer games to DNA, the nineties ska scene to unrequited love for goth girls. Since he first came up with the term, many other rappers have defined themselves as such.

My personal favorite is probably MC Lars. A graduate of Stanford's English program, his nerdy references walk happily hand in hand with classical literature. In fact, he's adapted several classics into ridiculously catchy rap tunes, including Moby Dick, The Raven, and Hamlet. Self-reference being a large part of nerdcore, Lars also writes about Guitar Hero derangement syndrome (the idea that being good at Guitar-Hero means you are somehow a musical genius), the cliched hipsters of Williamsburg, and the oft-ridiculous green movement. However, he also can write a damn good serious rap-tune, teaming up with nerd MCs YTCracker, K.Flay and the Former Fat Boys for a defense of the genre on one of the best tracks off his most recent album, 'We have Arrived'.

While some say Nerdcore is dead, I think the genre is not only going to hang on, but evolve. Artists like Jonathan Coulton, while not nerdcore, are making it cool to be a Nerd again in a way it hasn't been since Peter Parker had a clone. And I know there are a lot of us out there. Playing Munchkin with friends two weeks in a row is proof of that.

So sit up. Get out your synth. Sing a song about LISP and Visual Basic. And kick it.

Beards for Breakfast

Look at this, you lucky people. You get two posts in the same day. I know, I probably spoil you.

A couple of days ago, I discussed some comic books that are pretty awesome, and the movies coming out based on them. Well today, my dreams...aspirations...well, we finally got a look at Kick-Ass, the movie based on the Mark Millar comic of the same name. Thanks to Gordon over at Movie Make-out for the link.



Really, it looks pretty awesome. The opening shot is a really obvious set-up for a more obvious joke, but overall, we're looking at a movie that is a pretty interesting, unique, and probably hilarious take on the 'What would superheroes in the real world be like?' question that Watchmen and Batman have addressed most recently. Not Oscar-Fodder, the way upcoming genre films like The Road, Avatar, and The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus will be, but still, a good reason to head to the cinema.

The Flaming Lips video I posted earlier is strangely not the only pornographic music video to surface recently. A few weeks ago new wunderband, Girls, came out with a video for their song 'Lust for Life' from the album, 'Album' (hurr) that at moments approaches laugh out loud gay porn. Girls - Lust for Life (Extremely NSFW). Worth watching, and the song is tits, but those same tits and penis abound, so heads up.

On to much more serious matters.

Today was an important day, really, the world over. Here in the US, it's the day that we celebrate our veterans and the service they gave to their country. My father was in the Navy during the Korean war, working on a Minesweeper. He was lucky enough to not be rotated into the waters around Korea before the war ended, but there are many families of soldiers out there who can't say the same. We need to remember, not just today, but in some way every day how much these people give to us.

Much of the rest of the world also celebrates and remembers today. Armistice Day. November 11th is the day when a treaty was signed between the Allies of World War 1 and Germany. While things did get bad in that area of the world again relatively quickly, globally speaking, we should remember that Peace is possible. I mean, the amount of hatred and anger in the US is staggering to me. The news is full of rape, mass murder and war on a daily basis. It's depressing and if there is a God, I think he'd be pretty disappointed with how people use him to justify all of this. The Westboro Baptist church. Anti-Abortion bombers. The 9/11 attacks. Really, what the fuck is wrong with humanity?

I'll get off my soapbox and end by posting a somewhat humorous holiday that is also celebrated today. If you're like me, you love corduroy. You love the way it feels. You love the noises it makes. You generally think that corduroy is rad. Well, there is a group of people out there who feel the same as you. The Corduroy Club uses November 11th as their celebration of all things corduroy, including speakers and a gathering. This year's speaker (who will already have spoken as of this writing) was writer Sloane Crosley. A humorist, I'm sure her speech was a lot of fun.

I always have trouble wrapping these entries up. No idea what to say. So I'll end with what was my word of the day, at least until general anxiety set in.

Beard.

Thank you and goodnight.

NSFW: The Flaming Lips - Watching the Planets Video

For those of you with less internet-savvy than the average 13-year old, NSFW=Not Safe for Work. So don't yell at me.

The Flaming Lips are bizarre. Wayne Coyne is possibly the weirdest, most awesome front-dude since GG Allin. But I think personally, that giant, furry, pig-snorting vagina eggs spewing out naked people is a lot more awesome than throwing your own feces at your audience. But hey, that's just me.

But yep, a few months ago Coyne advertised for people in the Portland, OR area who were willing to be naked to come out and be part of the shoot for the Lips' song "Watching the Planets". They apparently turned out in droves, and lead to both some really cool imagery, a lot of it reflective of their newest disc's title, Embryonic, and a nice celebration of humanity, as we're treated to the entire spectrum of body shapes and sizes. Pretty neat. Check it out.

The Flaming Lips - Watching the Planets (Warning: Extremely NSFW)

Oh, and Coyne gets nude too.

Neurose #6362: Holy crap, what if a lion breaks in right now and eats me?

I'm a worrier. It's something that I'm really quite good at. At times, I think that I should be a world leader, as I think we're tending towards a humanity that is, above all else, really worried about everything.

Look at what's happening in the news here in the US. The right is worried that we've somehow elected some foreign-national communist to the highest office in the land and that he's going to force us all to marry gay babies while directly siphoning our blood from our veins into the nearest homeless person. The left, on the other hand, finds concerns in whether a rubber faced whinging pundit is going to incite their Jesus-eyed neighbors into a war at home with religion and intolerance planted in the eye of the storm. In fact, it seems like both sides are so busy worrying about the other that they're neglecting more important things.

And that's what worry comes down to. You become consumed by it. I know there are days, particularly days off from work, when I'll become lethargic from it. I'll wake up and something will plant that little seed of can't or won't into my brain and I'll plop myself down on the couch and watch cartoons until the streetlights come on. I could still be reasonably expected to do other things, but that part of my head is steadily gnawing away and tells me that I'll just fail anyway.

That part of our brains is a little bit of a dick.

So what do we do about it? Looking around, at the books in the self-help section in particular, a popular way to try to fix it is with things. This is a shortcut to failure. French Women or Dr. Phil or even that Oprah lady don't know you. You do.

I'm at risk of sounding like a self-help seminar here, which isn't at all what I intend to do with this blog, so I'll wrap it up. When I become worried, I try to sit down and have a little chat with that part of my brain. We'll call him Wart. You've gotta say, look Wart, you're being a dick. Cut it out.

Because odds are, there isn't an atomic bomb or plane crash or tiger shark out there with your name on it.

Fun Fact before I close out this blog for the night: Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter is really awesome and will put you in a good mood. This is a proven fact by order of the 10,000,000,000 or so happy neurons in my brain currently.

Goodnight.

An addition to yesterdays post...

A friend of mine pointed out that advertising I'm drinking while writing is not the best decision, but I felt it was pretty clear that I was being facetious. For those of you without a sarcasm detector (pretty hard to detect, internet style), I was joking. I was not in fact being an alcoholic. Thank you.

This retraction/apology has been brought to you by the United States congress, the group in charge of making inapropriate statements and then apologizing for them.

Edit: Also, I apparently can't use the correct form of addition.