Housecleaning the brain….

• Consumers getting tax credits for the purchase of hybrid cars is a good idea, of course, but this morning’s New York Times lays out some of the complications around the tax credits, including the fairly amusing part about the consumer essentially having to guess when to buy the car in order to get the full tax credit. Yes, you read that correctly. The full amount of the tax credit ($3,200) will only be available to buyers “during the quarter in which an automaker reaches 60,000 hybrids in cumulative sales.” Up to you to figure out when that is. Good luck. I’ve toyed with the idea of trading in my car for a hybrid, but I’ve decided I’m in no rush, as I’m close to paying off my car and it’s probably advantageous for me to wait a few years when more models are available, the technology is better and the prices come down a little.

• I fall into the Olympics trap every time. Whenever the Olympics approach, I always look forward to watching them – then I never do. If I tune in, I end up like a drooling vegetable, staring off into space, bored out of my mind. I’ll probably tune into the medal round for hockey, I suppose.

• I’m on a nasty Six Feet Under bender right now. Steph and I watched Season One about a year ago and she wasn’t crazy about it, but I loved it and recently Netflixxed Season Two and watched all the episodes in like 10 minutes. That’s a new phenomenon, by the way: renting TV series from Netflix and getting so addicted that you just watch as many as possible in the shortest timeframe possible. We need a name for that affliction. Anyway, I’m about to start Season 3, so don’t tell me anything. Seriously. Don’t.

• Those of you who are music fans of all years should really check out Vault Radio, a recently launched streaming radio program featuring many, many live performances from San Francisco’s Fillmore. It’s basically forty years of recorded shows which were recently found in the basement of the Bill Graham Presents offices, ranging from Elvis Costello in 1978 to Led Zeppelin in 1969 to Springsteen in 1973, The Band, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and many, many others. Really neat stuff.

• I don’t recommend sending the Dick Cheney hunting party out for this. Oh, that was really too easy. I need to work harder on jokes.

• I am taking my first official guitar lesson tonight. So far I’ve been noodling by myself and it seems you can only get so far that way (especially when you have a full-time job). One of my Christmas gifts from Steph was an hour lesson, so tonight I become a student again. On my own, I’ve managed to get Elliot Smith’s “Ballad of Big Nothing” and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” somewhat down. I’d like to get to the point where I can rattle off a nice Nick Drake song.

• You know what’s totally sweet? When you don’t realize you have Monday off until like 5 days before it happens. Excellent surprise.