So it's Hump Day. Maybe this post-Thanksgiving week won't be the death of me after all.
Man, I'm not sure what I did last night. I know I spent a kind of ridiculous amount of time wandering around in Target (I ended up buying some picture frames for photos I had taken). I watched part of a Nine Inch Nails concert on that new Palladia channel, but the sound was sort of poor (it seems like the mix was all messed up or something- there were sometimes guitarists going crazy on stage, and you couldn't even hear any guitars in the mix). Anyway, I had forgotten how melodramatic Nine Inch Nails can be in concert. Trent Reznor just loves to show depressing and disturbing footage during his concerts, but given how long Nine Inch Nails have been doing this- the whole black hair, black clothes, angsty demeanor thing- they sort of seem like charicatures of themselves at this point. I still think that Reznor comes up with some interesting stuff- he comes up with some really interesting rhythms in his songs and uses interesting sounds to carry his melodies and harmonies- but from a lyric standpoint, I wouldn't really say subtlety or nuance are among his strong points. Still, any man whose songs Johnny Cash saw fit to cover must be doing something right.



What else? I've been pretty happy with Obama's cabinet picks, by the way. I think Hillary Clinton will make an excellent Secretary of State and I think Obama made a strong choice in asking Robert Gates to stay on as Secretary of Defense (who seems to have done a relatively commendable job in helping to repair some of the damage done under Rumsfeld's watch). I know that there's still a lot of mistrust among conservatives, but I really do think that Obama, so far, is looking like he's going to be a very centrist president with moderate views. We'll see how things go, but Obama seems like he's going to be the kind of president who's more interested in finding solutions than in worrying about whether those solutions originate on the right or the left. At any rate, he certainly seems to be attracting a lot of talent in terms of recruiting his staff. I know that I sometimes get pegged as a crazy liberal, but I'm really glad that Obama appears to be willing to listen to advice from talented, intelligent people on both sides of the aisle rather than allowing himself to become beholden to more extremist views on the far left (for instance, I support an orderly, structured exit from Iraq, but I don't share the view of some on the left who think that we need to withdraw from the country as rapidly as possible, regardless of costs. I think we need to leave in a manner which minimizes the negative consequences that our departure might have upon the people of that country).
Anyhoo, so far, so good.

That's it. Hope you're having a good one.