Let them smoke $ 6.50 packs of cigarettes

I am so happy to be back in the US but besides all the tedious class-warfare rhetoric from Barney's Frank and the marginalization of dissenters (something I've anticipated) I have been disappointed in the gov's decision to raise the cigarette tax. A pack of cigarettes in CT cost around 5 and change when I left and now they're an average of 6 and change because the government needs to fuel its bail-out happy budget. Let me offer a hearty "fuck that" in response to the rapacious Obama administration's thirst for more of my money. Thank God for twofer deals. I got 2 packs of Parliament lights for 10 bucks today; a good deal even before I left for Italy.

Yay for the nanny state.

My favorite Bird-influenced indie band from Texas of 2008

Rook is the latest album from the curiously bird-themed, Austin Texas band, Shearwater (also the name of a stiff-winged seabird). I'm not familiar with any of their earlier stuff so I have nothing to compare it to but the first song I heard from Rook (also a bird) was the snow leopard in which Jonathan Meigburg's angelic falsetto made me think immediately of Thom Yorke. Even the music in the snow leopard reminds me of a Radiohead song (Pyramid Song; tell me if you disagree). I've heard people call Meiburg's vocals overly dramatic but seriously fuck them, they're just jealous.