predicate.

It is, for lack of a better way to phrase it, a continuation/conclusion of Use Your Illusion. This doesn't make it bad, but the self-indulgent twaddle you mentioned...this is still Axl.

It does sound different, obviously. Axl is the only one left of the original band. It's less bluesy sounding, bit more aggressive style of music. Which is not a surprise when his guitarists for these tracks included Buckethead, Tommy Stinson and Robin Finck. Plus, he's been tweaking every song for 17 years!

In conclusion, me likey.

I haven't paid for my own music (unless you count last.fm registration fees) in close to ten years, and I see no reason to start with Chinese Democracy.

If Irish buys and recommends it, I may go that route. Otherwise, meh. Even Use Your Illusion was heavily adulterated with self-indulgent twaddle, and I have little doubt that fifteen years of noodling by W. Axl Rose has produced more of the same.

Go back to Russia.

I'll admit, I wish that Illinois had the old school machines with levers and curtains like NY had the one time I voted there, in college. But, I'll be placing my optical scan ballot in the machine on Nov. 4th. There's just something about the civic participation-ness of it.

Also, like rawdog, I haven't done all my research on the local candidates, judges, and "public questions" yet.

I sent my mail-in in weeks ago. Hope no new information comes out.

I like pushing buttons, making check marks or punching chads. Take that, Chad.

Also, I haven't read up on the Props, yet.

I've got my mail-in all filled out, but haven't dropped it off yet, because I'm waiting for the husband and the eldest to fill out theirs. We were all encouraged by the Obama campaign and the big Dems in the state (the Gov and that liberal hippie Congressman who's running for Senate) to vote mail-in because of the very long ballot and the expected huge turnout is likely to mean a mess at the polls on Election Day.

I'll be trooping out on Election Day with a fierce glare and a heart of stone.

It's the Chicago way!

Took care of this yesterday, as a matter of fact.

Done and done.

1. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

3. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

When do we start?

I saw this at the second-run theater one rainy night in 1988. I know it was a rainy night because the most memorable thing about that evening was my friend fishtailing his '71 Pinto into a 270 degree U-turn when we realized we'd driven past the theater [we missed the part that explains how Bruce Willis came to be running around a building shooting at the Scorpions].

You're a maverick!

Note the omission of Los Tastik's Victory over the Arborists. I knew the mainstream media couldn't handle my Tex-Alaskan brand of justice!

"Oh, C'mon, Slavery isn't THAT Bad" Day.

Great Books of the Western World
List of Penguin Classics
The Children's Literature Canon
Modern Library's Best Novels of the 20th Century

I called it.

Whoever axed "Raiders of the Lost Ark," there's a special place in Hell for you.

During a break at the G-8 summit, Sarkozy and Merkel demonstrated their mad pop-and-lock skills for the assembled press corps.

"We were THIS close to just group-jumping Belgium and using their GDP to bail out our banks. Oh well."

He put his hands on me and I jumped THIS far out of my chair.

"Sorry about the genocide" day.

It's Indigenous Peoples Day. Which, predictably, we don't get off.

You should have seen the one that got away!