Been awhile...

Well its been awhile since I've posted to the blog. What have I been doing? Well as many of you know I am a clinical psychologist and I am completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. I've been busy lately interviewing for faculty jobs in the north east. So far I've interviewed at 3 places and have a few more interviews lined up. Unfortunately the traveling takes away the little free time I have to do things like post here. It'll be worth it though when I have a new job.
So what else is new, well my Jocelyn and I bought a webcam and are now in the process of convincing our extended family (and friends) to get one as well so we can video chat. Other than that nothing new is going on.
Later.

Short political rant

OK. Every American should be pissed off about this regardless of which candidate they support.  In America, a country that supposedly is the greatest democracy in the world, we the people no longer get to choose who the candidates are.  The coporations get to choose for us.  What makes me say this, it is the restricted debates that are held by the major media outlets.  The most blatant example happened this past week. NBC a media coporation owned by GE set up rules for being eligible to participate in the democratic primary debate, invited the 4 top candidates, then they rescinded their invitation to the 4th candidate (Dennis Kucinich) only allowing the top 3 candidates participate.  Kucinich took them to court, won the first case, NBC took it to the Nevada supreme court and this court rescinded the first ruling, stating that it was the TV network's 1st ammendment right to exclude Kucinich.  What about fact that they coporation is suppose to use the public airways to promote the public interest? What about Kucinich's right to free speech? Why is this a problem, its a problem because it means the coporations are choosing for us who is the top candidates.  They are the ones who control access to the masses, they are the ones who run the polls.  How is a candidate suppose to get high ratings in the poles if the public can't here his or her message, and how can this candidate get his or her message if they can't participate in the televised debates.  In this particular example, Kucinich is the one candidate out of the 4 that were originally invited that was truly different.  Obama, Clinton and Edwards all have very similar stances on the issues.  They each refrain from giving straight answers to any tough questions and since they're all the same they don't want to push each other to be more specific.  These 3 have all taken money from coporations and special interests and so they get the attention from the media and in turn are afraid to go on record (and likely will instill any real change if elected president) because they owe these special interests.  Kucinich is not afraid to be specific about his stances on the tough issues because he doesn't have to answer to any coporation or special interest, only to the American people.  Now republicans should be just as upset by this as democrats, because the one republican candidate that isn't afraid to stand up to coporations and special interests, Ron Paul, gets shafted in the same way.  So is this a country For the people, By the people, or is it For the coporations By the coporations.  
Here are a couple of links discussing this matter:
Click HERE
and HERE


Here's a link to here Kucinich respond to some of the questions from the debate that he was excluded from: Click HERE
 

And here's an interesting website were you can rank where you stand on the issues and see which presidential candidate best lines up with your views: Click HERE.
 

OK. Enough of the rant.

ALT show this Saturday

My band, Astronaut Love Triangle, has a real gig this Saturday.  We open for a blues rock band at Martin's in Jackson, MS.  For anyone who reads this and are local come see us (10pm).  I'm going to try and get video's posted of it afterward.

Band Pictures

This past weekend I took some pictures of the band.  I've posted two versions of one of the pictures on my flickr account.  You can see them here. I was finally able to get some use out of my flash equipment I had purchased over the summer.  Yeah!  We're going to work on some more band pictures in the near future and I'll post those when they're done.

On a related note, over the x-mas vacation I hope to update my photography website and when its done I'll let everyone know.

Pity the Kingly Fool

Ok. Here's the last song from my band's set at Martin's open mic Dec. 3rd. This song is called Pity the kingly fool (aka The beginning is a good place to start). At the moment this is probably my favorite song we have worked up so far.

Mr Mountain

Here's a video from the first song of my band's set at the open mic we played at Martin's on Dec. 3rd. The video quality is not great, but it gives you an idea of our music. This was our second public appearance; the first with our new singer Adam. I'm working on getting some more video up of the other songs. Plus the band's working on a myspace page which I'll forward the link to everyone once its finished. This song is called 'Mr. Mountain.' (formally known as song1)
-JSB

Anybody out there? (use the news feed)

I've sent out the link for this blog to some people I know but I have no clue if anyone is actually looking at it.  Please shout back (meaning leave a comment) to let me know you're reading it.  I want to use this blog as an efficient way to keep in touch with friends and family I don't see often enough so I'm going to try and keep it updated. Of course if no one actually reads this then there's probably no reason for me to put in the effort. The reason I'm doing this is that being so busy with work and life in general its hard to keep in touch with everyone individually.

I realize that manually checking this website for updates is probably not on the top of the list for anyone so I urge you to use the news feed option found at the bottom of this main page.  What this will do is it will have your web browser automatically check for you when you go online and inform you when there's an update.  You can then go to the blog at your own leisure but only when you know there's an update (so you don't have to check it on a variable interval schedule).

So scroll down and click the link that says 'Subscribe to: Posts (atom)' and follow the instructions.
-joe