Yeah, I finally got around to posting one of these notices.

I do have rules for adding me:

1. We MUST have something in common. Compare the interests on your profile to mine and I will make a judgment.

2. I prefer friends to be 16+ due to post content, though I have made exceptions before.

3. I rant A LOT. If you don't like reading rants, this journal is NOT for you.

If you meet all of the requirements, Go ahead and add me. But PLEASE post here saying you have done so. Thanks!

This is something I've done for the past few years. I wish I didn't have to, but I must.

This will be the first of two posts; the second, covering the second half of 2009, will come sometime in January.

Also, note that I can't possibly list every single person. But if I missed anyone particularly important, please tell me.

January
3 - Sam McQuagg, 73, 1965 NASCAR Rookie of the Year (cancer)
22 - Billy Werber, 100, Last living teammate of Babe Ruth (natural causes)
24 - Kay Yow, 66, North Carolina State women's basketball coach (breast cancer)

February
10 - Jeremy Lusk, 24, motocross rider (traumatic brain injury sustained in crash during event)
20 - Christopher Nolan, 43, Whitbread Prize-winning Irish author and cerebral palsy activist; also the inspiration for U2's "Miracle Drug" (pulmonary aspiration)
Larry Miller, 64, owner of Utah Jazz, a movie theatre and a chain of car dealerships (complications from diabetes)
26 - Norm Van Lier, 61, former Chicago Bulls player
Johnny Kerr, 76, former NBA coach, player and Chicago Bulls color commentator (prostate cancer)
28 - Paul Harvey, 90, radio broadcaster

March
8 - Hank Locklin, 91, country music singer and Grand Ole Opry member
10 - Jack Grimes, 82, voice actor
11 - Charles Lewis, Jr., 45, founder of MMA apparel company TapouT (injuries sustained in car crash)
13 - Andrew "Test" Martin, 33, professional wrestler (accidental drug overdose)
16 - Nicholas Hughes, 47, marine biologist; son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (suicide by hanging)
18 - Natasha Richardson, 45, actress (epidural hematoma caused by fall during skiing lesson)
22 - Abismo Negro, 37, Mexican lucha libre wrestler (drowning)
Steve Doll, 48, American professional wrestler better known as Steven Dunn (blood clot)
23 - Lloyd Ruby, 81, race car driver
24 - George Kell, 86, Detroit Tigers star and member of Baseball Hall of Fame
25 - Dan Seals, 61, country-pop singer; one half of England Dan & John Ford Coley (mantle cell lymphoma)
26 - John Mayhew, 61, Genesis drummer (heart failure)
27 - Alysheba, 25, 1987 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner (euthanized)

April
9 - Nick Adenhart, 22, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim pitcher (injuries sustained in car crash)
13 - Bruce Snyder, 69, former college football player (Oregon) and coach of 3 teams (melanoma)
25 - Beatrice Arthur, 86, actress (cancer)
28 - "Playboy" Buddy Rose, 56, professional wrestler
30 - McCoy McLemore, 67, baskeball color analyst and former NBA player (cancer)

May
2 - Jack Kemp, 73, politician and former player of American football (cancer)
4 - Dom DeLuise, 75, actor, comedian, writer and chef (renal failure)
6 - Kevin Grubb, 31, NASCAR racer (suicide by gunshot)
Ean Evans, 48, Lynyrd Skynyrd bassist (cancer)
8 - Dom DiMaggio, 92, former Boston Red Sox player; brother of Joe DiMaggio (pneumonia)
9 - Chuck Daly, 78, former basketball coach (pancreatic cancer)
15 - Wayman Tisdale, 44, smooth jazz bassist and former NBA player (complications from chemotherapy) :(
18 - Wayne Allwine, 62, voice actor of Mickey Mouse (complications from diabetes)

June
2 - Tony Maggs, 72, South African Formula 1 driver (cancer)
3 - David Carradine, 72, actor and director (hanged - suicide ruled out)
10 - Barry Beckett, 66, record producer and musician (natural causes)
13 - Mitsuharu Misawa, 46, Japanese professional wrestler (heart attack; officially, spinal cord injury sustained after botched move during match)
14 - Carlos Pardo, 33, Mexican NASCAR driver (injuries sustained in accident during race)
23 - Ed McMahon, 86, TV host and announcer
25 - Farrah Fawcett, 62, actress (anal cancer)
Michael Jackson, 50, singer (acute Diprovan overdose)
28 - Billy Mays, 50, TV pitchman (hypertensive heart disease)
29 - Jan Rubes, 89, Czech-born Canadian actor and opera singer (stroke)

It's been 4 years since Eddie Guerrero died.

I really miss watching him on TV and it's a shame, seeing as he went through hell and back to turn his life around.

I also think that if Eddie were still alive, Chris Benoit wouldn't have did what he did.

Saw how this picture my dad took of my cat came out, and just had to do this.

Some unintentional humor provided by former WCW president Eric Bischoff, via Twitter:

"Listening to the blithering idiots on MSNBC trying to convince their audience that THEY are a legit news org and Fox News is not...stupid."

Also...

"Oh...and I just noticed that MSNBC knows that Americans are sick of liberal b.s., so they are now referred to as "progressives"."

I used to get angry seeing stupid things like this. Now I can't help but laugh.

Keep it up, Eric. You may end up being the cure for my depression.

Here's a copy/paste of my review of their concert, 10/20/09...

Music concerts are great things. I love getting to go to them, especially as money as tight as it is right now. However, no future concert I attend will even remotely come to close to U2's greatness on October 20, 2009.

This is something I wanted to do back in 2005 on the band's Vertigo Tour, but things came up and I couldn't attend either of the two shows here. This all changed, here in 2009, and it was money well spent.

The band was running late, so naturally the Black Eyed Peas, who opened, started their opening set late to accommodate for this. I wasn't particularly looking forward to BEP - I did think a few of their songs were nice and catchy, but every piece of live stuff I saw on them wasn't good. They proved me - and everyone else in the audience - wrong last night. They did a 9-song, 45-minute set, and from the opening notes of "Let's Get It Started", all the way to the extended ending of their latest hit "I Gotta Feeling", they were able to engage the crowd all the way through. I have to say, I may actually want to catch a full set of theirs in the future. Fergie got her turn in the spotlight, doing not only BEP's new single "Meet Me Halfway", but also her solo hit "Big Girls Don't Cry", in which she held out the last note of the song for about 10 whole seconds.

Now onto U2...

U2 were supposed to start around 8:30, but didn't take the stage until around 9, due to the reason already mentioned. However, I didn't care, I was just happy to be there.

When Bowie's "Space Oddity" was playing over the PA, I knew it was almost time for U2. Then, a new, unreleased U2 track named "Kingdom" played. That segued into an extended drum intro by Larry Mullen Jr. to the song "Breathe". Most reviews of previous shows I've read said that "Breathe" didn't work well as an opening song; I disagree. I like the extended drum intro. Then when the first notes of The Edge's guitar are played, it just works somehow. I can't describe the feeling. Second song was "Get On Your Boots", the first single from the band's latest album, No Line On the Horizon. On the album the song is embarrassingly bad, but it ROCKS live, especially when it's just Bono singing the line 'let me in the sound'; that just asks for audience participation.

Single 2 from No Line, "Magnificent", was next. Bono engaged the crowd to clap in time with the beat, and we gladly obliged. This was also a highlight of the show for me. I knew it would be great live, but it was even better than I expected. Up 4th was "Mysterious Ways", off of the 1991 album Achtung Baby. It was truncated from previous live incarnations - it just didn't seem right without its beginning solo that was included on previous tours.

"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" had some of the best audience participation of the night. We were so loud that Bono just let us sing the first half of the song! Bono sang the first verse of the song "Dirty Old Town" at the end, dedicated to The Pogues' Shane MacGowan. New song "Unknown Caller" I wasn't looking forward to, but live it was much better than I thought. The Edge's guitar solo at the end ROCKS.

"The Unforgettable Fire" was a song I never thought they would play live again before this tour started, but I'm grateful they put it back in their set, because it is a beautiful tune and very poetic. During "City of Blinding Lights", Bono pulled a young girl (couldn't have been more than 8 or 9) on stage with him. They walked and ran around the circle-shaped catwalk a few times, and then Bono gave the girl his sunglasses. That was a cute moment, I must say :)

A surprising highlight of the show was a dance remix of No Line single 3, "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight", produced by British DJ Andy Holt, also known by his stage name Redanka. On live recordings, it doesn't sound like much, but it got an otherwise lethargic crowd back into it. That led right into "Sunday Bloody Sunday", which was played better than on most previous tours, and was dedicated to the innocent victims of the 2009 Iranian election protests.

The main set ended with "MLK" and "Walk On"; the first as a solemn prayer for Burmese democracy fighter Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent the better part of 20 years under house arrest. The second was originally written about her to begin with and was brought back to the set to protest the Burmese military junta's decision to not let her free. Bono threw in a line from "You'll Never Walk Alone", to show that she has the support of many people.

The classic songs "One" and "Where the Streets Have no Name" were featured in the first encore; the first led in by a prerecorded speech by Desmond Tutu. Then when "Streets" started, I immediately felt like Bono did when the band played in Sarajevo in 1997; my voice decided to go away, not because of an illness, but because I was immediately overcome with emotion. I was seriously and honestly on the verge of tears. There was no sadness or anything. It was complete joy.

The final encore consisted of Achtung Baby's "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)", along with "With or Without You", and No Line's "Moment of Surrender". This is perhaps the "emotional point" of the entire show. "Ultraviolet" is a song written from the point of a couple on the verge of breakup, and Bono portrayed a character to suit this. He did the same on WOWY; except that his character this time is alone, and WOWY sounds more honest and heartbreaking than ever before. Before MOS, Bono gave shout-outs to Muhammad Ali and John McCain, and thanked both for their help and generosity in getting debt and AIDS relief over to Africa. The song itself was truncated from its album counterpart, presumably because they were going past curfew. Disappointing, but understandable.

Overall, an unforgettable night, and one I would gladly do again, given the chance. But a word to U2 though - while I liked the set, most people didn't. You could take lessons from the BEP in constructing a great setlist.

Full Black Eyed Peas setlist:

Let's Get It Started
Rock That Body
Meet Me Halfway
Now Generation
Big Girls Don't Cry (Fergie solo)
Pump It
Where Is the Love?
Boom Boom Pow
I Gotta Feeling

Full U2 setlist:

Breathe
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day (with snippet of The Beatles' "Blackbird") - dedicated to Muhammad Ali, who was in attendence
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (with snippet of The Pogues' "Dirty Old Town")
Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of (Acoustic - Bono and The Edge only)
No Line On the Horizon
Elevation
In a Little While (Extended ending; Bono recognized 3 sisters that were at previous shows in years past and danced with ALL 3 OF THEM)
Unknown Caller (Bono allowed the sisters to sit by Larry Mullen's drum riser; during the guitar solo Bono layed across their laps, doing an infant pose)
Until the End of the World
The Unforgettable Fire
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (Remix; with snippets of Sly & The Family Stone's "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Two Tribes")
Sunday Bloody Sunday (with snippet of The Clash's "Rock the Casbah")
MLK
Walk On (dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi; with snippet of "You'll Never Walk Alone")
======
One
Amazing Grace
Where the Streets Have no Name (with snippet of The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love")
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
With or Without You
Moment of Surrender (dedicated to John McCain, who was in attendance)

Less than 3 weeks until U2.

This is like... the only thing on my mind right now. I'll be sure to post a review and any pics/videos I may take.

But wow. U2 live. I've got many of their concert films, but as cool as watching those are (Zoo TV in Sydney = LOVE), actually being there... damn. That takes it to a whole new level and can't wait any longer to experience it.

• 19:00 Idea: Since U2 is playing in Foxboro (30 miles from civilization), they should play a show in Ann Arbor. #
• 19:00 Just think - Ann Arbor is 45 miles from Detroit, but unlike Foxboro, it's NOT in the middle of nowhere. #
• 20:46 @MATTHARDYBRAND Most boring? Not you, and not @HurricaneHelms... #
• 10:58 @jpmontoya Here is a late happy birthday wish. Your birthday = 16 days after mine #

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• 18:20 This has me thinking - what's the point of digital subchannels if you can't get them on digital cable? #
• 18:35 @nemalki Ah. Thanks. #
• 18:37 @nemalki Odd, though, that I can see subchannels offered by PBS and NBC. #
• 18:52 @nemalki Figures. #
• 22:39 Fact: If you disband because your singer dies, and regroup years later with a new singer, you're not the same band any longer. #

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• 20:54 Dear Sheryl Crow: What were you thinking allowing Miley Cyrus to butcher your song? #

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• 20:11 Geez, the U2 setlists are unusually static this tour :/ Even Popmart and Zoo TV had more nightly changes... #
• 21:08 @HurricaneHelms LOL! Love reading your tweets... you're a funny guy :) #

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• 15:19 For those who like to know what songs bands play live, I will be live-tweeting the U2 concert when it happens. #
• 01:19 @setlistfm I like the new way of doing venues... and the venue merging feature will come in handy for me :) #

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People that know me personally regard me as a very careful person, though even I know I'm not infallible.

Good example: Two mornings ago.

I've been taking St. John's wort to help with depression, as I don't trust prescription SSRI's after having bad experiences with them. Anyway, I am careful to study any possible adverse reactions any supplement I take and possible adverse reactions that may occur with regular medicine.

I see nothing online regarding St. John's wort having any adverse reactions with Benadryl outside of a possible stronger sedative effect than what Benadryl normally induces...


WRONG.

Took the normal dosage the label on the bottle says, and about an hour later, I start shaking uncontrollably, my heart starts going way too fast, I can barely stand up without falling forward, and at one point things got very scary. I tried to stand so I could lay in bed, but not only could I not move, but I started to feel like my heart wanted to explode.


NOT a good feeling at all, especially when you're home alone.


I'm ok now, but never again will I combine those two... I don't feel like risking a heart attack just so I can relieve allergies. I also post this as a word of warning to others.

• 22:44 My U2 ticket is now paid for :) #

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• 02:00 Now playing: Nine Inch Nails - Closer bit.ly/18dnNJ #

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• 16:06 @rubarrichello Great win in Monza! #
• 21:09 @monijj Heh, I loved Coraline. #
• 21:45 @Mark_WillsMusic Agreed, and I like Kanye's music and don't like Taylor Swift. But still, she don't deserve that... #
• 21:53 @Mark_WillsMusic Oh, absolutely; no disagreement there. #
• 22:27 Dear Kanye: Your "apology" sucks. #

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• 22:28 Fact: If it weren't for Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero would have died sooner than he did. #

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• 14:22 #FF @TVShowsFan @nickandmore @nemalki @chdr #
• 16:49 Once I can free up some HD space (or get a new computer - hopefully soon), Gary Numan's entire discography will be on it. #
• 19:23 RT: @u2gigs: Your Blue Room! // Oh wow, they actually played it?!?!?! #
• 19:54 Now playing: Live - Sweet Release bit.ly/FsKYx #
• 20:08 Now playing: Lenny Kravitz - Believe bit.ly/nKDsY #
• 04:25 Dear Lady Gaga: I liked you better when your name was "Freddie Mercury". #

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• 00:01 Wait... NIN playing Gary Numan covers... with Gary on stage with them? Damn, why couldn't I have gone?? #

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• 22:50 RT @marmel marmel.com » Screw you and your apology. bit.ly/25AB6 #
• 22:59 Honest question: Why do I have to be surrounded by so many idiots? #
• 23:35 Fact: Some DMB fans are total morons. #
• 23:37 Seriously: If you go to the 3-night stand at the Gorge and NOT expect repeats during an ALBUM TOUR, you're an idiot. #
• 01:16 Now playing: Kanye West - Through The Wire bit.ly/sXXOc #
• 02:04 Now playing: Johnny Cash - Sunday Morning Coming Down bit.ly/WBkv2 #

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