I'm giving serious consideration to selling my 2004 Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom - one of probably a dozen or so in the US - so's I can pick up a vintage fretless.
I love this guitar. The Jaguar is the greatest sounding guitar with more tonal range than anything Fender has ever made, plus this is the model with single coils instead of those crappy mexican humbuckers. It's the best looking shape Fender ever figured out. It looks fantastic with it's tobacco sunburst stain job and the tortoise pickguard and the chrome, and the and the. It has a 28 ½ inch neck from an old 70's Fender Bass IV, which means it's tuned to Low E - a full octave lower than a standard Jaguar. Moreover it is in Perfect condition. There's not a scratch or chip on it.
On the rare occasion I see one for sale, It'll go for anywhere from ~$1300 to >$1750. I suppose if I were to sell it, I'd put that kinda price on it.

How about this. It really is in perfect condition, but it doesn't have a hard case. Hard cases cost about $130, so lets say $1620.

There.
If anybody wants a super-rare early 2004 Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom in perfect shape, I think I'm ready. I wish I could play guitar better so I could enjoy it more, myself, but I'm a bass player.

If you're interested, contact me at seth (at) unventure (dot) com.

Also, Here's pics from some other schmuck with one on ebay.

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Update: SOLD!

Now I just need to find the right replacement.
Anyone got a line on a fretless Gibson Grabber or Ripper Bass?

I've been having a field day with The Black Angels lately. Somewhere between Radiohead's etherial melodies, Subrig Destroyer endless drone, and The Magnetic Fields' lo-fi distortion, is this gem that Loyola Marymount's student-run radio station, KXLU, introduced me to last month. The more I listen the more I want to listen, which hasn't happened since I discovered VAST four years ago. I'm sure the phase will pass when i start listening to the lyrics or something..... but good god is this stuff fun.
Alex Maas has got one of those hypno-voices. I don't really care what he's saying - I'm just gonna listen intently, goddammit.
Go buy some things by them and crank up the bass.

Don't like this one? Listen to others on youtube... There's lots.

Making this short, just before work.
I discovered Graveyard about 6 months ago. They're a swedish Homage-Rock band that makes music that is harkens to lesser-known Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer (from their cleaner albums), and the glory days of 70's Psych/D&D Rock and Roll.
Overall, their album of the same name is a little stiff and formulaic for my tastes, but this song makes me smile from ear to foot.
May the listening commence:

Thoughts from the weekend. Joshua tree is really nice right now. Not too hot, clear skies at night. Too many people.

The more time I spend in te desert, the more I see and appreciate the plenitude and diversity of life. Things are just a more spread out.

Birds, lizards, tadpoles in the muck of oasis, that rattlesnake I came within 2 inches of stepping squarely on. Chipmunks, rats, rabbits.

Trees that grow only in washes because they must have their branches scraped by heavy debris in order to release their seeds.

Joshua trees can only be fertilized by a moth which lays it's eggs in the seedpods of the plant. The moth larvae then eat some if the seeds

I am astounded at the delicate interdependence that everything in that desert exhibits.

Pictures:

Barrel cactus flower
http://tweetphoto.com/24789774

One of numerous lizards.
http://tweetphoto.com/24790030

Mathematically interesting flower on a rocky hillside.
http://tweetphoto.com/24790252

Ocotillo and horizon.
http://tweetphoto.com/24790926

Tadpoes
http://tweetphoto.com/24790725

Twitter feed: kamandi

it's gonna take me a week to delete all these damn spam-comments... anybody want a temporary admin account to help me delete them?

I finally got a new job as a Genius with Apple Retail. I'm happy to finally be regularly employed. Apparently I'm pretty lucky to have gotten a Genius position as an outside hire, especially in this economy. Quite proud, yes quite proud...

I'm in training for the next two weeks, then off to Cupertino. Wheeee!

Have you been tempted to offload Firefox recently because 3.0 is lame and slow and worse than Internet Explorer 7? Me too. I hate the new Firefox. I hate it so much that I have foregone the joys of Firebug, Adblock, and Gspace in favor of the software that came on my computer. I know, what am I thinking? Using pre-installed software - Hah! But the new FF is the bloatiest piece of crap ever. I probably shouldn't be so harsh, but it really is a problem creator, and that's not something I value in my software.

Well, it's a little better now with the 3.0.5 update, and thanks to the tips here: How To: Double Your Firefox Browsing Speed with a Few Easy Tweaks

Believe it or not, these tweaks actually help, a little.... well, they make FF a tolerable work space again. My CPU fan is still a little more on-all-the-time than I'd like, but now I can block ads again. Thank bajebus.

Even though I have an old tiny CRT TV and not some fancy HDTV, I've found only marginal difficulty reading dialogue text in what is otherwise the most addictive game I've played since Katamari Damacy: Fallout 3. Maybe it's the bleak grey-brown alterna-future, the 1950's art design, the payoff for exploration... I have a very hard time putting down the controller at 2:00 a.m. and coming to bed.

It is very much like WoW in it's constant-quest-giving nature. There's always just one more thing to do before you take a break. Unlike WoW, the quests feel substantiative. Although I know I'm wasting my life, I don't feel like it so much. Perhaps it's the lack of online play, though, that makes it better. It's post apocalyptic; You don't expect to see a ton of other people out trolling the wastelands. Well, maybe one or two, but that's what makes them fun to run into... There's only the one.

The one thing I am certain of, Fallout rewards exploration with oodles of eye candy. There is huge incentive to straying from the path you were on to check out that neat, oddly solid looking building beside that pile of nondescript rubble. You may be rewarded with creepy tunnels filled with glowing purple soda and giant crab monsters that don't really care if you shoot at them... it just pisses them off. Quick, go get the missile launcher! Dark Cloud 2 I liked a lot for many of the same reasons that I like this game. However, we can thank developers new propensity for catering to "hard-core gamers" (i.e., adults) for delivering a game which is worlds more mature.

Fallout 3 wins in it's character flexibility. It's a true role-playing game. It gives you tools and flexibility to play as any disturbed, unbalanced personality you can come up with. So you want to play an alcoholic pacifist? Great! Go for it! It's in there.

Bethesda has made a fantastic game, in a setting I actually want to play in, with characters I like, and enough content to screw with your head for months. Don't tell my girlfriend. She thinks she's getting me back eventually.

December 9th, 2008

A series of explosions rocked the residences of Canoga Park, within a block of the intersection of Jordan Avenue and Saticoy Street last night. There were three explosions heard at 7:30, 9:30, and 11:30p.m.

The Los Angeles Fire Department was on the scene twice canvasing streets, looking for fires and smoke. The firemen on scene reported no fire, and no damage. When we went to look later ourselves, we found a blast mark and a bits of burned paper beside a car parked in front of 7550 Jordan Avenue.

Some residents argued that it sounded like an electrical transformer explosion, some thought it sounded like a grenade. It is likely that someone thought it would be fun to over-pack firecrackers at home and set them off in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, neither the police, nor the fire department reported finding anyone carrying fireworks over the night.

December 8th, 2008 - 9:30p.m.

A family of four were irate and shaken tonight after one of them had his car stolen after being shot at tonight at a Washington Mutual bank branch, on the corner of Sherman Way and Vassar Avenue. Kami, a Canoga Park resident, said that he was approached at the bank's street-front ATM by a man holding a gun demanding money. When Kami explained that he was only checking his account to confirm that he was out of money, the man shot twice, and ran to Kami's car. The thief then broke the window and drove off. Kami was not injured.

Since the car was an older Mercedes Turbo-Diesel, Kami had taken the keys out, but left the car running with the doors locked. Kami's adult son who arrived on the scene minutes later explained that the thief appeared to be drunk and confused not to find keys in the car, even though the car was running. Both of them were thankful that Kami wasn't hit by either bullet as he ducked out of the way.

The officer on scene reported that the car had been recovered only a few blocks away on Burbank Boulevard. The police also recovered two shell casings which will be checked for prints, and they will check the ATM video tomorrow.