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It’s certainly no secret that my favorite game of all time is Rock Band. A huge fan of Harmonix games since I first played Guitar Hero, not a single Tuesday goes by that I don’t buy all of the available Downloadable Content for RB and have a session with my best friends.

This morning was a huge surprise when I awoke to breaking news that Rock Band 2 has been announced, and it’s coming out in just two months! Just two months!

I don’t even have any particular novel information about the release. The vast majority of the information currently known about Rock Band 2 is the super-set of information from the previously linked press released and this interview on IGN.

But novelty aside, I’ve just gotten so excited about the news I couldn’t help but try to shout it out on the inter-tubes! I wish I could buy a 360 and RB2 for everyone I know so that they can experience this game that has me so livid with joy. But, of course, I can’t… so I’ll just have to settle for this blog post as an expression of my exuberance.

It’s been a long time since Matt Hoosier and I were “on the air” doing political talk radio, and I’ve slowly grown much more apathetic since that time. Particularly, it amazes me just how obviously bad things can be while the majority of people don’t care.

This article by Wired is disheartening, but with a bit of a silver lining. The article highlights a press release by the awesome MAPLight.org group where a stunningly clear connection is shown:

Maplight.org analyzed the contributions to both sets of the Democrats and found that those who switched their votes received, on average, 40 percent more money in campaign contributions over the last three years from Sprint, Verizon and AT&T’s political action committees.

It begs the question, “How transparently corrupt does our government have to get before anyone really cares?” Perhaps people like to joke about corruption and greed in politics, but somehow are in denial that it’s true? It’s hard to guess what the rationale is for maintaining the status quo when the status quo is so broken.

Of course, it’s unlikely–understatement–that it’s only the telco PACs that are padding the votes in this manner. It seems likely that there’s a huge correlation between “donations” and voting records. What seems to be the silver lining on the dark cloud is this MAPLight organization; who subtitle themselves “Money and Politics: Illuminating the Connection”.

It would probably be best if you just visited MAPLight.org yourself, but I think that this referral mentioned on their site is the thesis for my appreciation:

“What used to take hours to dig up and analyze is now laid bare for you to see in seconds or minutes.”

— California Progress Report

Maybe people really do manage to keep their head in the sand when it comes to corruption and politics, but in this “new information age”–with projects like MAPLight–I like to think that ignorance will no longer be an option.

I used to think that napping was impossible. I just couldn’t do it. If I took a nap, I didn’t nap, I slept. Of course, this wasn’t a big deal until I came to K-State and joined some twenty-five thousand other “traditional” undergraduate students. (For those that aren’t intimately familiar with the college liffe, the majority of traditional students have a sleep schedule that includes being up late, getting up early, and taking an afternoon nap before dinner.)

Eventually I was able to take naps now an then, more of a necessity than a voluntary choice, and even now I have some successful naps and some more unsuccessful naps. However, now it turns out that napping is “in” and comes with instructions!

Divine carnitas
Enshrined in burrito bowl
Thank you, Chipotle

As a quick blog update, I decided to give the blog css a little love. It’s nothing significant, but should make things a little nicer to read around here. I’ve added whitespace around the posts and images (which now float right) and tidied up that big gray block of rarely-does-anyone-give-a-crap-links at the bottom.

Gotta keep up Lindsay after all…