you're the one i want you're a chance to take you're a heartbreak you swore you'd never leave again you're the only one that i ever trusted who ever cared at all is this how it's gonna be? is this how you wanted me? broken down again it's almost over now is this why you wanted me? to watch as you walk away kept on killing me you don't even want to touch me i was wrong i've wasted on can't figure out what happened to us i won't count on you anymore i'll be alright don't worry about me are you happy now? got what you want i wanted you but i'm over that now i'm over it so sick of you what we went through your lies to me won't win again so don't kid yourself it's better this way it's all back to me

I've spent quite a lot of time adding bells and whistles to the site to make it visually more appealing, and even more time pondering what other doodads would be cool to code and/or use. But lately i'm realizing that the slickest interface in the cyberworld is all for naught if you don't have anything to present. Whether my rants are worth reading is debatable, but the long and short of it is i'd like to have more content on the site. In that vein i've taken to writing more album reviews, as you'll note by the four i've generated in the last three days. I'm also resolved to generate more frequent posts in the journal (although that's been said before).

I did indeed watch the Chelsea/DC United match yesterday, and to be honest was thoroughly unimpressed. José Mourinho put it bluntly after the match when he said"in the first half we were very bad, in the second half we were better but we were still bad". He blamed it on a lack of motivation when playing an MLS team versus playing AC Milan or Benfica, i'd blame it on that as well as still rusty players and unfamiliar squads and formations. A ton of errant passes and miscommunications. Jiri Jarosik in particular looked totally out of sorts, and Didier Drogba did his usual bit of pandering to the ref for more calls. When DC United went ahead through a headed goal from a corner, it seemed to light a fire under Chelsea, who responded four minutes later with an absolute stunner from Damien Duff. Newcomer Shaun Wright-Phillips lofted a cross in from the left that Duff volleyed, sending a left-footed screamer past the DC United keeper from a tight angle. Mourinho made no less than 10 changes at half-time, bringing off everyone except Tiago (god knows why). The second half squad, featuring Frank Lampard, Arjen Robben, and Hernan Crespo, thoroughly controlled the rest of the match. When a poor DC United pass was intercepted at midfield and quickly sent forward to Robben, there was no doubt in my mind what was going to happen. He surged past the helpless DC defense and cued the ball for Hernan Crespo to slot an easy goal past the keeper. Final report cards ... Robben looked his fantastic self, Crespo was active and could yet assert himself in England, the young Carlton Cole was surprisingly effective with the ball at his feet, and Shaun Wright-Phillips demonstrated the kind of skills that are worth £21 million.

Again the commentators gave the U.S. side all sorts of credit, and to be honest they did play well in the first half. My favorite bit however was when sideline commentator and former U.S. womens star Brandi Chastain asked DC United coach Peter Nowak at half-time what he thought of his team's performance in the first 45 minutes. He responded that they were playing tentatively and needed to improve. Chastain actually corrected Nowak, saying that he had to admit that his team had played a great game in the first half. It was almost like someone had told the announcers to always praise the MLS team regardless of the scoreline or their inadequacies. I'm amazed Nowak didn't tell her to shut the hell up and let him manage his own team.

I finished Sector 2 of Coded Arms last week. I still love the game, although it is getting a bit repetitive. I'm now on "Infinity", which isn't looking like it's going to break up the monotony. There are a s@$tload of weapons in the game, which unfortunately means that my tried and true, levelled-up shotgun and assault rifle are slowly running out of ammo since all the stores i find are for things like the virus pistol and bolt launcher. I'm anxiously awaiting the PSP version of Grand Theft Auto, due out in October. Hopefully the recent outburst over pornographic content in GTA: San Andreas won't cause the new release to get watered down. Of course kids should be protected from this kind of content ... it's not intended for them. But that's not an excuse for Congress to ban it outright. I'm an adult, and i'll have sex with video hookers and then beat them with a baseball bat to get my money back if i feel like it.

Looking at the ads for Stealth, Jamie Foxx's seemingly ill-conceived followup to Ray, i can't help but think that the whole thing is a slightly more ominous telling of Short Circuit. A cutting-edge robot gets struck by lightning and doesn't want to obey its programming any more. Wouldn't it be great if the AI pilot in Stealth tries to hook up with Ally Sheedy? Is there a comical foreign character like Fisher Stevens? It's interesting that in the ~20 years since Short Circuit, lightning is apparently now considered a bad thing for electronics, as opposed to the intelligence-bringing force it was in 1986.

I've got an idea ... let's make an Alien Vs. Predator-style flick where all the self-aware robots from the annals of cinema, including Number Five, the AI pilot from Stealth, SkyNet from the Terminator movies, HAL 9000 from 2001, that impossibly annoying monstrosity from AI, Robocop, and any others i've forgotten duke it out for the fate of humanity. My money's on SkyNet. I don't think Number Five's pop-gun laser and lousy puns are going to make much of a difference. At least we'd get to see someone disassemble Haley Joel Osment though.

I'm all for the growth of U.S. soccer. I'm not sure that our national and club teams will really be able to compete until we raise the level of competition in the MLS and begin attracting foreign stars in their prime (as opposed to those just looking for a paycheck in their golden years). However, i've been impressed with the exploits of the national team, putting in gritty performances that have shown powerhouses like Germany that no one should be looking past us. Some MLS teams have shown similar resolve, although on the whole my impression of the domestic league is that the skill level needed to compete with the European leagues is just not there.

I also think that the friendlies with top international club sides of the last few summers are just what the doctor ordered for U.S. soccer. The first hand exposure of fans and players to overseas talent is the initial step in raising interest in soccer in the states, and beginning to bridge the talent gap. Having our national team play endless games against scrub squads like Panama and having MLS players insulated from top-tier talent, patting them on the back when they trounce local low-quality sides, is doing nothing to improve our situation. We need to be competing against the best in the world. Of course we're going to get blitzed initially, but it's the only way to continue improving our players.

I don't think this is a radical viewpoint by any stretch of the imagination, it's common sense. We don't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Argentina, Brazil, Italy, or Holland yet, regardless of what the FIFA rankings say (honestly, the only possible explanation i can come up with why the U.S. national team is now ranked 6th in the world is marketing). Similarly, the LA Galaxy and DC United are not in the same league as teams like Real Madrid and AC Milan. But for some reason, the media is putting out the party line that we have earned and are continuing to earn our right to be considered among the world footballing powers. I watched the friendly between Real Madrid and the LA Galaxy a few weeks ago, and was amused at how Madrid tore LA's defense to shreds in the first half, before they tired towards the end of the match. When Zidane and Beckham turned it on, LA's back four were getting annhilated. Despite this, the commentators were adamant that LA had given Madrid "all they could handle" and had "earned their respect". I turned on yesterday's match between the Chicago Fire and AC Milan early in the second half, and was instantly greeted with the screaming Scottish color man ranting about how Chicago was running Milan ragged. The score was 1-1, but according to the announcers Chicago was dominating. Nevertheless, Milan's Serginho and new signing Gilardino combined for a simple tap in goal 15 minutes later, and Serginho added a solo third in injury time to make the final score 3-1. A travesty, according to the commentators. Hrm? Let's be truthful ... the MLS has earned nothing so far. They don't just need to field eleven conscious players to deserve respect, they need to show that they can impose their will on the pitch. And as i said before, no one expects them to do this immediately. Let's allow the league to grow into our expectations, instead of playing silly semantic games to try to convince everyone the MLS is the equal of the great soccer leagues of the world.

I've got my Tivo set to tape this evening's friendly between my beloved Chelsea and DC United on ESPN2 ... we'll see how the MLS fares against the newly-crowned Premiership champions. This will also be my first chance to see Arjen Robben back in action (already impressing in the preseason), and Shaun Wright-Phillips in a Chelsea kit.

I thought i had RSS for the site working two days ago, after i sorted out issues with my redirect script and determined that i was using an outdated RSS syntax. Then i posted a review of the Iron & Wine album and lo and behold, my feed is once again bringing RSS readers to a grinding halt. Turns out XML isn't two keen on ampersands, unless they're preceding a character code. A line or two of perl in my RSS generation script and we're back in business. Subscribe to the feed here, if that's up your alley.

Simply put, the weekend was hot. Very hot. Our house is exhibiting its excellent insulating ability, which was wonderful in winter but in summer tends to keep all the heat inside, even after the sun has gone down and temperatures outside have begun to decline. Despite the conditions, V and i did some more gardening on Friday evening. In fact, we got very ambitious and ended up using a handsaw to cut down some very large branches from a few trees in our front yard. V did some more pruning the next morning, and then decided to rearrange our bedroom, nudging the bed over and shifting the computer desk from its right side to its left. Unfortunately that meant disassembling the mess of cables behind it (hey, this kind of technological performance doesn't just happen by magic). It took me the better part of two hours to completely disentangle the cables, move the desk, and reconnect everything in its new location. And as this entailed lots of time on my hands and knees under a desk in a newly-dusted room, by the end i was sneezing left and right. My sinuses were one big stagnant ball by the end of the night, precluding a trip to Sacramento to hang with N and G as well as a jaunt to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I'd partially recovered by Sunday, so my twice-delayed viewing of Tim Burton's latest effort was conducted that afternoon in Santa Clara. As a faithful devotee of the 1971 film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, i can't really claim to give an unbiased opinion of the current version. But here are my thoughts anyway:

• If anything, the titles of the two film versions of the book are reversed. Tim Burton's flick is almost exclusively about Wonka. Charlie is essentially a background character through much of the trip through the factory.
• No surprise here ... Johnny Depp is nowhere near the Willie Wonka that Gene Wilder was. Depp depicts the chocolatier as a scatterbrained child, and gives him a particularly creepy smirk when he watches the bad children meet their end. Wilder's sardonic wit is nowhere to be found, as is his humanity. Depp just seems to be torturing five kids until one is left (whoever it may be), and then woohoo, he wins!
• The children are not nearly as memorable as those in the 1971 version. I think part of the reason for this is that Burton has made them embodiments of their own particularly vice (gluttony, greed, violence), and by that reasoning they don't need any "character development" persay. One of my favorite elements of the original movie is that you catch glimpses of innocent children beneath the nasty facades of Veruca, Augustus, Violet, and Mike, for example when they finally enter the utopian main room of the factory. And this makes their character flaws all the more vivid.
• The one thing i really missed in the new film is the sentiment of the original. I bawl during the introductory scenes of the 1971 film ("Cheer up, Charlie ..."), because i really believe that Charlie wants a golden ticket more than anything and is heartbroken to see other spoiled children finding them. Freddie Highmore is not a bad Charlie Bucket, but it seems to me that he could care less whether he gets into the factory. Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Bucket was the only one who made me feel a tinge of sadness.
• Okay, the Oompa Loompa songs were never my favorite part of the 1971 movie, but here they are downright annoying. All credit to Deep Roy's performance as a host of individual Loompas, but did we really need the Oompa Loompa heavy metal video?
• I need to go back and read the book again, but as i recall Wonka never gave an ultimatum to Charlie at the end, and that whole development really ruined any sense i had of Willie Wonka as a benevolent man. It takes me right back to my second point, Depp plays Wonka as a nincompoop who happens to make good candy. Yet, again, Tim Burton wants to place all the spotlight on the outcast oddball and have everyone fall in love with his unique charms. To me, that's not what Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is all about.

V and i made plans for our year-late European honeymoon last night, hitting London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Cologne in late August/early September. At work i've been toiling away on a new grant, this one on for submission to the American Cancer Society to develop PET agents to image hypoxia-regulated proteins You'll notice a few more design modifications on fac13, i've been tinkering. RSS still hasn't been fixed, but i'll have a go at it soon.

it's hard for you to understand the things it takes to make us feel alright and it's hard for me to comprehend when every little favor is too much we could win this, she said go, go go go we could lose it, i said no, no no no we could have whatever we need we could call it ours so you take the blame and save it up, inside your mind so easily you take a stand, the opposite of everything i say you claim you always understand the books and sense and do what i expect we could win this, she said go, go go go we could lose it, i said no, no no no we could have whatever we need we could call it ours so you take the blame and save it up, inside your mind

A little more fac13 gushing ... i quite like the new digs, although i haven't yet made up my mind whether light text on a dark background is harder or easier on the eyes than the inverse. I'm quite proud of the static transitions on the menu icons. Also, should anyone other than myself actually be in the habit of visiting the music page, be sure to try clicking on the album art in each of the different sections. And on the bug front, you can try subscribing to the fac13 RSS feed here, but be forewarned that it's not working as robustly as its previous incarnation.

After dropping the dogs off at the kennel in Fremont last Friday (and feeling pretty guilty as i'm sure the two of them thought they were being shuttled off to yet another new home after their 3 years in shelters), V and i met up with N and G for the drive down to LA. We stopped in Gilroy for dinner and a quick jaunt to Lane Bryant and Barnes & Noble, taking in the pre-Harry Potter hysteria. Geoff then drove us almost to the grapevine, where we grabbed some coffee at Starbuck's and V took over driving duties. That gave Geoff and i a chance to test our latest PSP acquisition Coded Arms head-to-head. N and G bought me a copy of the newly-released first-person shooter for my birthday, but i hadn't gotten a chance to give it a test drive. It's gotten mediocre reviews, but G and i are taken with it. The theme, raiding secure networks as a virtual-reality soldier in search of hidden cyber-goodies, is executed perfectly and the controls work fine once you spend a little time adjusting. I played the single played mode for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and am really getting into it.

N and G dropped us off around 1am at Matthew and Dionne's, and we quickly headed to bed. Saturday was allotted for preparing for Dionne's 30th birthday party, so Matt and i went off to Costco and Ralph's for party food and drink (and a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for V). Matthew spent his afternoon baking a very tasty red velvet birthday cake, while V dragged me to the mall to check out another Lane Bryant. The party got underway at 8pm, with everyone heading off in the rented "party Escalade" at 10pm. By that time most of the attendees were good and sauced, making the ride in the limo an event in itself. We managed to hit four bars before 2am, with my favorite being the 50's/60's themed Star Shoes. Unfortunately i was in the minority on its merits, with everyone else preferring to head to more dance-friendly climes. The question of the evening was exactly how many drinks Matthew managed to consume. By 11pm he was totally plastered, and at 2am on the ride home was molesting Dionne's friend Mark. He spent the next day looking like death warmed over, precluding any Winning Eleven 8 duels.

N and G picked us up at 6:30pm on Sunday afternoon, after V and i watched Thirteen with Dionne. Good flick, very disconcerting about today's ever-more-mature adolescents. I was interested to learn afterward that Nikki Reed, who played the corrupting influence in the movie, actually wrote the screenplay based on her own experiences (she apparently was the "good girl" in real life). The ride home was handled all by Geoff, with the rest of us drifting in and out of sleep. We again arrived around 1am, heading to bed in our lonely, dogless house. I rectified that the next morning, picking up two overjoyed doggies in Fremont. I decided to spend the day at home with them, working on a grant for submission to the American Cancer Society in October.

Chelsea finally made their first high-profile acquisition of the summer, luring Shaun Wright-Phillips away from Manchester City in a £21 million deal. It's a deal that will provide some extra depth for our dual-winged attack (which suffered greatly last year when Arjen Robben and Damien Duff picked up injuries). It's also a deal that has already incurred the wrath of long-suffering City fan Gary. "You can't buy heart and dignity", he writes, and he's got a point. But you definitely can buy a shitload of white-hot players. With or without the signing of long-term target Michael Essien from Lyon, i'm really liking our squad. And i'm willing to give loan-returnee Hernan Crespo and unsettled forward Didier Drogba their chances to spearhead our attack at the striker positions. God knows they'll have brilliant service from the midfield.

It took a week or two of frantic coding, including inventing a new aesthetic, improving the coding of the site to take better advantage of CSS, and adding an assortment of new bells and whistles, but my web presence is finally ready to take the leap from OCF-based Stormy Clouds to Dreamhost-based fac13. Drop me a note to let me know what you think!

It's Dionne's birthday party this weekend, so V and i head off down south today. We're carpooling with N and G, who are venturing south to see N's mom. As such, we had to figure out what to do with our two little demons while we're away. My parents are off in Italy for two weeks, and Hilary isn't too keen on dogsitting, so that leaves kennel. The last time we tried this Bob arrived unannounced on Thursday night and agreed to look after them for the weekend. This time, Tara apparently couldn't call in any more favors, so this morning i took them over to Fremont and the Mission San Jose veterinary clinic. I brought Pepe's two cough medicines, and scheduled an appointment for Tara so a vet could have a look at a new wart in her ear. The vet surmised that Tara has seasonal allergies, as evident from her skin irritation near her tail and her ear infections. She gave me some tips for cleaning the buildup out of her ears and keeping her scratching in check. Meanwhile, the vet also suggested how to go about treating Pepe's collapsing trachea. Millions of homeless dogs to adopt and we get the two medical marvels. Oh well. They're worth it. Even if they do get me up twice a night.

Matthew and Dionne have rented a party bus to drive 30 people around to a host of bars and clubs, so that should be amusing. As V put it, i should wear my shiny shirt. I'm also hoping to take in a showing of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, although i have my reservations about whether Johnny Depp's depiction of Willie Wonka will supplant Gene Wilder's dry-as-Sahara wit ("Help. Police. Murder."). The two reviews i've read today, while both generally positive, have gone out of their way to avoid comparing the current film with the 1971 classic. I read an article in Entertainment Weekly a week or two ago where Burton sounded like he was fed up with people telling him he's ruining the memory of the first film. Even Wilder himself has gone so far as to say that money is the sole motive for the remake. Burton is quick to note that he didn't care for the original movie, and is making a film version that is faithful to the original Roald Dahl novel (the original movie did make more than a few modifications to the story). That's all fine and dandy, but there is a definite magic about the original (i'm getting teary-eyed thinking of "Cheer Up, Charlie") and i'm not so sure Burton's umpteenth depiction of the "lonely, bizarre, but beautiful outcast" will bear the same chemistry.

It's been almost 13 years since i first got my OCF account, way back in 1992 when i first arrived at Cal as a clueless freshman. The first version of this site was created sometime around 1994, featuring my assorted music reviews and my bio. It then mutated into a sort of Daria theme under the title "Ted's World", before falling by the wayside around 1996. For a long time it was reduced to simply housing my CV. It wasn't until a boring Saturday in Allston in 2001 that i began playing with DHTML, ultimately generating the foundation for the site as it stands today.

And while it's been a lot of good times, the time has come to move on to my own domain. And after much brainstorming, fac13.net has been registered as the new face of what was Stormy Clouds. My pondering on the word "transmission" ultimately paid off, and without resorting to any blunt quotes like "touching from a distance" or "no language just sound". I'm in the process of migrating the site over there, adapting to a new Perl environment, and tweaking the design to accomodate the new title. See you on the other side.

On Wednesday last, V arose early to take Arlene, Ana, and her grandmother to the airport for their return flight to Iowa. It was fun having them around for a few weeks, even if i'm still trying to find those three 6's that i know are somewhere on Ana. Before their departure, Arlene and Veronica managed to finish the living room and prime the dining room. The plan there is to paint it a bright red, and add vertical 8 inch wide stripes of alternating high gloss and satin finish. So on Wednesday night V and i loaded up a couple of rollers and got to work. Now, in my limited experience with painting i've come to the conclusion that either a) my technique or b) red paint is seriously screwy. The paint just does not spread like it should, leaving areas of thin coverage as well as clumps in other spots. We put on a second coat a day later, this time using brushes instead of rollers as we suspected the rollers might be at fault, but the results remain less than perfect. An even coat is key for this room, as the gloss stripes will look lame if the color underneath is splotchy. I fear the answer may be the same as that for the deep red in our music room: paint, paint, and paint again.

My sister mentioned to me recently that her and her boyfriend had been playing arcade games on a PC emulator. That spurred my brain into remembering that i have a host of emulators installed on my "super Xbox". Lo and behold, i've got a staggering 2500 arcade games at my fingertips, as well as many many more NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64 games. I spent quite a while on Saturday revisiting Rolling Thunder, the classic side-scrolling shooter featuring a red turtlenecked hero gunning down hordes of enemies in multicolor Ku Klux Klan-style hoods. Veronica meanwhile has rediscovered Pepper II, an Amidar-type game where your hero encircles a set of rectangular areas in a maze while avoiding assorted baddies also roaming the course.

Despite that diversion, i was bored to tears on Saturday. I spent a while watching a series of shows on the History Channel entitled Breaking Vegas, chronicling a variety of gamblers and cheaters who have tried to make their fortune in Sin City. The first episode was the best, discussing the world's best "past poster" (a person who alters their bet after the result is in) and his team. I kept waiting for his downfall, only to learn at the end that he retired uncaught and now lives in the French Riviera. If only i had those kind of cajones. The second cheater was more my speed, an electronics whiz who gaffed a number of slot machines and then set his sights on winning a Keno jackpot by cracking its random number generator. And, as would probably happen to me should i ever try a life of crime, he was caught minutes after his triumph.

On Sunday V and i decided to get out of the house. We met up with Hilary and Jeff at the AMC in Santa Clara and headed in to see Batman Begins. What a great movie. Despite my previously discussed distaste for Christian Bale, he made a fine Bruce Wayne/Batman, representing the emotional tormet admirably. It was fantastic to see a complete depiction of the Batman legend, from Bruce Wayne's orphaning to his commitment to save a crime- and corruption-ridden Gotham City. Assorted thoughts from the film:

• I'm not so sure of Tim Burton's status as an elite director anymore. I was totally juiced for his version of Batman in 1989, and was mildly disappointed in the film. The visuals were great, but the tone of the Batman mythology just wasn't there. The followup, Batman Returns, was unadulterated crap. All style, no substance. Burton is known for his visual style from films like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, but i'm not sold on his ability to tell a convincing story. Planet of the Apes, need i say any more? My prediction for his upcoming film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is that Burton will deliver his usual series of visually stunning images but won't generate the kind of emotional resonance that made the 1971 version (although Burton is quick to point out his film is a more faithful telling of the original Roald Dahl novel) Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory one of my favorite movies of all time.
• Christopher Nolan on the other hand delivers an engaging depiction of Bruce Wayne, from a young, privileged heir to a disenchanted orphan to a young man exploring the criminal mind to an exquisitely trained adult bent on pulling Gotham from its social and political mire. The Batman story is one that has undergone significant revision since its introduction by Bob Kane in 1939. I'm no comics expert, but i did have a penchant for Batman in high school and discovered that the story of how Bruce Wayne's parents met their end has been revamped at least three times. Not modified, but retold with new layers, motives, and characters added. In that respect i think the DC Comics superheroes have evolved more than their Marvel counterparts. This isn't to say that the Marvel superheroes aren't developed, what i mean is that the DC icons (or at least Batman) have been continually tweaked so their backgrounds suit the current flavor of the comic. Batman has gone from a mysterious hero to a corny, cartoony superdetective to a dark, shadowy, imposing enemy of the criminals to a declining and tormented figure (à la Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns). Spider Man on the other hand has a story that was told more or less chronologically, with minimal revision. I'll put it to my more comic-savvy counterparts, is this DC/Marvel comparison valid?
• The villains of the film, Jonathan Crane aka Scarecrow and Ra's al Ghul are every bit the twisted psychological case studies of the comic as it left the corny 1950's/60's phase and entered a darker realm. I'd love to see Nolan make a sequel featuring a perverted and evil Joker to rid me of my memories of Jack Nicholson as a wisecracking, bumbling boob of a clown prince of crime.

Chelsea have yet to make any more additions to their squad, although rumors continue to swirl that we'll be acquiring Lyon's Michael Essien, Manchester City's Shaun Wright-Phillips, or even Brazilian sensation Ronaldinho or all-world striker Andriy Shevchenko soon. José Mourinho had a nice response this morning however: "Our rivals are the ones who'd better improve or we'll trounce them again just as we did last season". Watching highlights of mid-season Chelsea, revisiting the old Lampard-Duff-Robben magic, i'm tempted to agree. At any rate, it's almost time to settle things on the pitch and leave all this transfer market intrigue behind for a few months.

As suggested in my last post, i will indeed be leaving the OCF for my own domain in the near future. The name of said domain hasn't been decided as yet. Stormy Clouds may live on, or i may opt for a new moniker (and accept the redesign challenge that will entail). I was toying with domains featuring the word "transmission" last week, and was really keen on test-transmission.net (in homage to UK indie darlings Kasabian), until i learned that that URL was already home to Kasabian's official website. Doh. Lost-transmission.net? Broken-transmission.net? We'll see.

One day after pissing off the Red army by saying he wanted to leave Liverpool, Steven Gerrard has reversed himself and is set to sign on for another four years. So no 'ard partnership at Stamford Bridge. Our frustration in the transfer market continues. On the upside (for me), Liverpool supporters will now get to spend another season wondering whether Stevie is there for love or money. And when they fall thirty points shy of the Premiership lead again, wondering whether Gerrard will be eyeing the exit door for the third season in a row.

Who to fill the Gerrard spot in my previously stated lineup? Is Joe Cole ready for a starting role? Or should we play a more conventional 4-4-2 with Drogba and Hernan Crespo (recalled from his loan to AC Milan and back in London, although with questionable motivation)? Any late summer transfers in the works? Only time will tell.

My fourth of July weekend began Friday afternoon when i headed out of work early to take Ana and Arlene out to lunch at the Palo Alto Creamery in the Stanford Shopping Center. After Ana poopooed her hot chocolate and then orange juice (it was fresh squeezed, and Ana dismissed it by saying "it tastes like oranges!"), she settled on pancakes. We then headed to Macy's and the Kenneth Cole store, where Arlene bought me a sweet digital pseudo-analog watch as a belated birthday present. That evening we squeezed another two guests into our diminutive abode, as Bob arrived with Veronica's grandmother. Bob was more than happy to sleep out in our satellite TV- and wireless internet-equipped music room, and we let V's grandmother take our bed while we slept on a mattress in the living room. That evening Ana told Veronica and i an intricate tale about how bad children at her school are put in something called "the cage". Intrigued (and a little worried), i mentioned this to Arlene, who was shocked. She asked Ana who put her in the cage, and Ana sheepishly named one of her teachers. Arlene then threatened to call the teacher, at which point Ana innocently inquired what if, just what if, not all of the cage story was true? Oh, that kid. Next time call it "the hole".

My first Saturday chore was to finish touching up the living room while Arlene and Veronica painted the trim. After that, i headed over to U-Haul to rent a truck so we could pick up some new furniture. My admin assistant Becky had offered a while back to give us an antique sideboard that she'd kept in her storage space for years and years, and V was keen to check out some armoires at an antique store in San Carlos. Bob and i picked up the sideboard in Foster City, and also made off with a brand new leather garment bag for Bob and some no-slip material for our bed (Becky and her husband Louie were emptying their storage space). We then met up with Arlene and Veronica at the antique store, where V had identified two candidate armoires. I made a quick trip home to measure the space earmarked for the new dresser, and the measurements picked the winner. Once again my negotiation skills were exposed as woefully underdeveloped (V claims i was making the salesman's arguments for him), but luckily Bob was on hand to play hardball. He got $75 knocked off the price and we headed home with two new pieces. Becky had expressed disdain at the poor condition of the sideboard (it had been in a storage space for over ten years, after all), but Arlene beautified it with a quick mineral oil polishing. It looks great in our new living room. And the armoire gives us some much needed storage space by the laundry room, particularly great for coats. I brought the evening to a close with a homemade dinner of chipotle-rubbed steaks with cilantro-lime butter, cheesy mashed potatoes, and sauteed peppers, mushrooms, and onions. Very yummy, even though when i came out of the house to turn the steaks over on the grill i found them aflame. Luckily, no damage done.

On Sunday we had planned to meet up with Veronica's uncle in the city, but that was aborted around noon so we headed to the tasty all-organic JZ Cool in Menlo Park for lunch. Ana again cast negative verdicts on multiple prospective meals, including macaroni and cheese ("it tastes like cheese") and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich ("it has peanuts in it"). Arriving home we set out to finish the living room. V and Arlene finished the doors, windows, and trim while i installed an AV switch for the Xbox and PS2 in our music room. I also relocated V's eMac out there as it had been bumped from its previous location by the new armoire. While Arlene and Veronica brought the living room to completion, i took Bob, Ana, and her grandmother to dinner at La Fiesta in Redwood City. Ana again demonstrated her storytelling ability, responding to Bob's questions about school by saying "i go to school at night".

I made a fresh batch of Rachael Ray's shrimp and pork balls on the morning of the fourth (as always, taking considerably longer than 30 minutes but good nonetheless), and we then headed en masse to Fremont for my parents' Independence Day barbecue. My aunts Cathy and Betty and uncle Ted had come, in addition to my sister Hilary and her boyfriend Jeff, and my other sister Emily and her husband Jared, out from Texas. My mom and dad had made several other Rachael Ray dishes, including delicious and quite spicy chipotle chicken burgers. After relaxing with the fam for a few hours, we headed home, making a brief detour to Lowe's first to get some paint for our next home improvement site: the dining room. V and Arlene are going to paint it a nice red and put up alternating gloss/flat stripes. Should be cool. They prepared by removing the table and priming the walls, while i installed a shelf above the washer and dryer on an annoyingly stud-less wall in the laundry room.

Cech
Ferreira	Terry	Carvalho	Del Horno
Makelele
Gerrard		Lampard
Duff	Drogba		Robben

Getting a little bothered by Chelsea's frustration in the transfer market this summer, i was pleased to read this morning that Steven Gerrard (the lifetime Liverpool supporter who six weeks ago was the toast of Mersey as he brought home the Champions League trophy) has broken off negotiations for a new contract, all but ending his time at the club. In the 12 hours since his declaration Chelsea, who almost signed the player last summer only for him to decide at the last minute to remain with the scousers, have already had a £32 million bid rejected and are undoubtedly lining up another. The head of the Liverpool supporters' association has blasted Gerrard for his lack of loyalty, and now is welcoming his sale to Chelsea, saying we should have to pay £40 million and give them William Gallas and Damien Duff. Umm ... sure. You've got a player who doesn't want to play for you anymore, and yet you think you're in a position to demand the moon from potential suitors? Guess again, genius. A dream Makelele-Gerrard-Lampard midfield is now looking possible, with Robben and Duff on the wings behind Drogba/Gudjohnsen/unnamed striker signing. Holy god, look at that squad ...

hey you, look through the window stained glass laughter peering through walking, with the sand on fire ten torches burning through reveal to us what we should do we are so alive we are so inspired when we were young, we were careful and prudish now we are creased, we're trivial and foolish now we are wise, we are waltzing on fire