So today I was giving my co-worker his daily deserved helping of crap and, for reasons that I absolutely cannot remember, told him he could twist in his sobriety. No, I don’t know what the hell I meant either though it’s safe to assume I wasn’t trying to be empathetic to whatever he was talking about.

Which brings us to this week’s video. Back to 1988, Germany’s Tanita Tikaram and Twist In My Sobriety, from the album Ancient Heart which, if I remember right, was pretty darned good.

Oh, I’m off to Sacramento tomorrow but don’t worry. As our Governor liked to say - I’ll be back!

As previously mentioned, last weekend was the annual Brawley Cattle Call weekend of which one part is a parade down Main Street. I took some video of it on the Flip and split it into two parts. First up is a montage of the school marching bands that took part:

Part two is a collection of some of the other participants:

See you here in 2009!

Guapacha.com was registered in March 1999 and I used it solely as an email host at that time. It wasn’t until later that I turned it into a web site as well, and them much later when it became the mega-force of web publishing that it is now lol

Whilst looking at some web traffic stats for this little ol’ site I came across the Internet Wayback Machine which states that it has 85 billion webpages archived all the way back from 1996… including this site from it’s beginning in 2001. Click on an image for full size.

		2001
		2002
		2004

Look how far we’ve come………. awww!

I heard somewhere there’s an election on today! Well, thanks to my recent citizenship, I received a mail-in ballot so I am pretty sure the rumours are correct. Odd that I haven’t seen anything on TV :-)

I filled my card in a couple of weeks ago but Teri will take it to the polling station with her today. Not that I think my vote will count for much - don’t need to count the votes to know that my Presidential candidate certainly didn’t win. I did vote yes on a couple of state Propositions, be interesting to see if they pass. Locally, a friend of the family is standing for a position against an incompetent incumbent who has run a pretty negative campaign; hopefully he will win.

Not sure what channel to watch the events unfold on. Usually Keith Olberman is my choice for these things but I can’t take his over-the-top pro-Obama stance so will look elsewhere, maybe CNN is the best of a bad bunch? BBC America is covering it but I don’t have that here in the apartment.

Or you can watch it all unfold in this widget, handily supplied by Google.

Every year, the fair city of Brawley has it’s annual Cattle Call week. Most people know it (if they know it at all) for the rodeo that takes place on the final weekend but the festivities start today with the Chili Cook Off which this year includes an entry from the local mortuary called “Dead Man’s Chili”.

Being out of town all week I pretty much miss the pre-rodeo events such as the beef cook-off and the cowboy poetry. Things like the Mariachi festival I am not so sad about.

Next Saturday morning it’s the Parade at which Teri announces and I try to assist. Maybe this year I’ll capture some highlights on the Flip, maybe not. A couple of times I’ve tried to get the SCMM MINI club to enter into the parade and have a line of MINIs (several other car clubs take part) but it clashes with an annual event so there has never been any interest. Plus I think many of the people there think it’s a bit too hicks ville out here for them.

Rodeo starts Saturday afternoon, repeat showing in the evening and, if we go at all, we go to the final performance on Sunday afternoon. For a city slicker like myself, these events really are something you can’t see anywhere else, true Americana, if you like. So if you find yourself in the neighbourhood, come over for a steak and watch some bull riding.