My sister had her kid last night after a very long day of labor! Ashton was born @ 7lb 11oz around 8pm yesterday. I am going to head out Austin later today to go meet the new nephew.

7 Words (NSFW Lang - like you did not know)

Carlin was the best.

Obama’s opting out of public financing, giving McCain grounds to attack and fairly I might add. I think Sam Donaldson nicely summarized.
And now it looks like the Dems are going to grant telecom immunity. It’s day like this where you seriously lose hope and realize the game will never be anything more than the lesser of two evils.

Lasagna Cat = Garfield + VH1 + Kierkegaard. Pretty funny stuff. via

I’ve subscribed to Aquarium Drunkard for a while. Nice to see a posting about a local band, American Princes, where they give the highlights of Little Rock. Better tour than I could ever give. Click on the music links for a listen too.

Love graduation time as commencements seem to populate the internet. JK Rowling at Harvard had some insightful words about failure:

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

You can watch and read the entire speech here

I recommend checking out other Julia Nunes posts. Good stuff. And the Weezer triumvirate is now in play.

Seems like the most honest review I have seen so far.

Before and after.