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The Institute of Medicine in Washington and Health Canada have determined that you do not necessarily need eight glasses of water a day. Furthermore, Beer and Coffee do not have a diuretic affect on the human body, but rather add net water to your system.

The independent institute sets nutrition recommendations. The nutrition, pediatrics and geriatrics experts concluded the average North American woman requires about 2.7 litres of fluid a day and men need 3.7 litres.

The fluid doesn't all have to come in form of water. Milk, juice and soup all add up, and even a cold beer or caffeinated coffee count.

The belief that beer or coffee draw fluid from the body is mostly a myth, according to University of Alberta physiology Prof. Susan Jacobs-Kaufman.

"It has very, very little if any diuretic effect," said Jacobs-Kaufman. "Overall, you're still gaining fluid for it to go back out of the kidney ultimately."

I am a big water drinker, but I am also a big coffee drinker and a big booze drinker. Lucky for me, they are all healthy!

Dude, I would totally drive this.

Finally some press! Jim Harris writes about the Musician's Showcase this week in the Arkansas Times. Here is the money paragraph:

Poeboy Society barely escaped a strong performance by first-timers Cosmic Debris. Obviously, Cosmic Debris members have played somewhere, a lot, and for such a new band were amazingly tight with their jazz-influenced rock. Poeboy's edge came in the overall stage presence and crowd response, as the musicianship edge clearly was in Cosmic's show.

Upcoming Fox TV shows:

1. The Littlest Groom. 12 female dwarfs compete for the love of a hunk; well make that a chunk of burning 4 foot 5 inch love. Just when you have accepted this premise, a group of normal sized babes are brought in to compete against the little ladies.
2. When Animals Attract. A National Geographic show about mating rituals among animals. It should include plenty of doggystyle.
3. Celebrity Spelling Bee. Nothing else needs to be said about this one.

Honestly, you can not parody this. Fox’s New Development team is a load of freaking geniuses.

For anyone who cares, and I know that John Barber does, here is the board tape from last Thursday’s show at Juanita’s. First a few notes, or reasons why this sounds so crappy:

This was our first gig in front of a live audience. We were playing in the Arkansas Times’ Musicians Showcase, and were the third act of four that performed that night. We arrived while the first band was playing and stood outside on the sidewalk while until they finished and loaded out. When they were out of the way, we moved all of our gear into a closet next to the stage while the second act was setting up. When the second act was done, we waited patiently for them to break down, and then had fifteen minutes to set up and start playing. We got no sound check, or even time to tune our guitars. The first time I tried my mic was the first time I sang a note on Chevy Nova. I had nothing in my monitor at all. Because of this, my background vocals occasionally sound like I am doing a Linda McCartney impression.

Now for a word about the curious genera of Rock and Roll board tapes. When you play in a small club like Juanita’s, you are in a small room, maybe 1000 square feet. You have a loud ass drum set, moderately loud guitar amps, Dan’s holy thunder bass amp, a fairly quiet sax, and very quiet voices. All of these things go into a 12,000 watt PA to be mixed to equal levels in the room. Obviously, the things that are the loudest on stage are going to be at the lowest levels in the mix – the things that are quietest on stage become the loudest in the mix. If you have a good sound man, and Juanita’s has the best, then all of this sounds perfectly balanced in the room.

When you get a board tape, you get the levels as set on the board. The stage volume is not a factor, since you are not in the room and can not hear the actual guitar amps and drums. Therefore you get very little drums, a little more guitar (Luke’s guitar is louder than mine on the tape because I had mine turned up louder on stage), a lot of sax, and an uncomfortable amount of vocals. There is no singer in the world whose voice will stand up to the scrutiny of a board tape without some gaffes. (An exception to this is Mark Currey, who always sounds pitch perfect and soulful on even the most horrible mixes.) Luke weathers this very well, but you should listen to it while cutting him some slack.

With all of this in mind, go and enjoy. Tell me what you think.

Matt Labash is in New Hampshire this week.

Up at the campus's Dominic Hill, John Kerry prepares to march down to the debate with a firefighter's union and their bagpiping corps, who are playing something that sounds like Dean funeral music. For a moment, Kerry's bus, the "Real Deal Express," almost grinds its candidate into the pavement as it hurtles down the hill. A line of Deaniacs obstruct the way, causing Kerry and company to knock into the back of their bagpipers, who are getting their kilts flipped up and worse. The Deaniacs then burst through the line, and the Kerry supporters start pushing back. The whole thing plays like a battle scene from "Braveheart," or it would've if "Braveheart" had featured a man dressed like a giant penis getting hip-checked into a snow-bank.

The debate itself, as has now been well-documented, is boring beyond description. In the light of Dean's meltdown, all the frontrunners seem intent on being their campaign-brochure selves, only less so. After sustaining a sore throat and a week of nightmare press, Howard Dean appears to be sucking back his own words even as he says them, causing Joshua Green of the Atlantic Monthly, sitting next to me in the press room, to comment, "It sounds like a guy trying to hold in a bong hit."

With karate I'll kick your ass
Here to Tiennamen Square.

Tonight was our first time to play in front of people, and it went really well, almost perfect. We performed to the best of our abilities and received a huge crowd response. We did not win and will not be advancing to the finals of the Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase, but then again, we never really expected to. This was our first gig for Pete’s sake.

All in all, I am very proud of our performance. We accomplished everything that we set out for. We played the songs perfectly. We had a great time. We got to play at Juanita’s – on a stage where I have seen Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Warren Haynes, Melvin Seals, North Mississippi All-Stars, Merl Saunders, Oteil Burbridge, Duane Betts, Victor Wooten, J.D. Blair, Chris Duarte, Ian Moore, and many more of my heroes. We impressed a more experienced band to the point of them offering us opening slots. And I feel certain that the Juanita’s people will invite us back to play again.

So lookout for Cosmic Debris (suddenly and consistently pronounced Kos-mick Dee-Briss). We reign. Runner up.

And furthermore - Look for a tape of our performance on this blog in the next few days.

I realize that I am late on finding this article that Matt Labash published last Friday. Matt, an admitted reality TV junkie, rips into Nicole Richie from Fox's The Simple Life with his trademark sardonic wit. Here is a sample:

Critics, always in need of finding larger social implications, have misguidedly written thousands of words on how the ascendance of Paris Hilton means our culture is now so addicted to celebrity that we are willing to reward people with fame who've done nothing to earn it. Last summer, an Associated Press writer even diagnosed the condition with the coinage "PAC"--for "pre-achievement celebrity." But it's hardly a new grievance. Andy Warhol marked the same phenomenon in the '80s. And Homer took notice of it well before then, having written, in the "Iliad," "How vain, without the merit, is the name."

But if critics have correctly diagnosed the problem, they've undersold it's severity by pegging it to the wrong poster girl. The mystery isn't why Paris Hilton can become famous for having done nothing (she did, after all, allegedly make out with former Madonna girl-toy Ingrid Casaras in a bar). The true mystery is how someone like the charmless Nicole Richie can become famous for nothing more than being the friend of someone who's famous for nothing.

This is one of the acts we will be competing against. Things are not looking good for Cosmic Debris. We don't even have a web site! Be sure and check out the lyrics.

Up in dog town 72115
We’re coming up Yeah we’re bring it Live
Up in dog town 72115
We will get you off and leave you to die

Wait a second. 72115 - Dog Town - These guys are my neighbors.

My new band finally got our first gig. We will be playing at Juanita's tomorrow night in the Arkansas Times Musicians Showcase. Soon the world will be ours. Cosmic Debris - We Reign. Supreme.

Comments are back up. Feel free to tell me what you think about previous posts.

Dennis Miller's new CNBC show is starting soon. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reprinted a New York Times article about him and it.

"Did you see the Democratic debate the other night?" he asked. "To me, Dennis Kucinich's politics are more scrambled than Rod Steiger's dream journal. And Clark? He's a wizard in many ways, but when I hear him speak, it's almost like he's slumming. There's a mensch discrepancy there. At least John Edwards, who to me is a reasonably shallow guy, at least he can dog-paddle around in that park and not look out of place."

For Sale: 1/6 scale model of Christopher Walken's head.

Fark has a link to the Top Ten Drug War stories of 2003. This is number ten:

On May 16, New York City police tossed a stun grenade into the home of 57-year-old Alberta Spruill, city worker and church volunteer, who died from a heart attack during the mistaken drug raid. On May 23, NYC police accidentally raid the home of teacher Joe Celcis. Police smashed open the door, handcuffed several people, pointed a gun in the face of a 12-year old girl and ransacked the house for 90 minutes before realizing they had the wrong address. On Nov. 5, cops in a Charleston, SC, suburb burst into the mostly white Stratford High School at 6:45 a.m. with guns drawn and ordered mostly black students to get down on the floor while cops searched lockers and book bags for marijuana; students who didn't move fast enough were handcuffed. No drugs were found in the 45-minute raid. Seventeen of the students are suing the school district.

The article also notes that a Swiss Addiction Research Institute has released a study that claims tobacco is responsible for 71 percent of all drug related deaths in the world. All of this goes nicely with the news last week that an ad agency overcharged the government millions of dollars for producing anti-drug PSA's. To me, the most shocking part of that story was not that we were overcharged, but that the budget for the ads was $684 million. Who out there still believes that our Drug War is a wise use of resources? Who in Washington will stand up and lead a movement to put an end to this? Surely it will have the support of all but the most ignorant of constituents.

Blogcritics has collected a masterlist of end-of-the-year lists here. My favorite one is "The 30 Most Shameful Events of 2003" by Stephen Silver.

On December 14th, the day that news broke that Saddam was caught, Miss J, Wylie, and I went to the small town Missionary Baptist Church that my Pop pastors. This is what the sign out front looked like that day. This is why I love small town churches, and this is why I love my Pop.

On a lighter note: Here are three songs from my latest rock and roll act. Give them a listen and tell me what you think. (Unless you don't like them. In that case, keep your opinions to yourself. Who do you think you are, William Miller?)

An open letter to all of those we invited to our annual Christmas Eve Party

Dear Friends and Family,



A depressing and familiar tragedy has struck our humble house. For any of you whom we have not told, Jerusalem is pregnant. This is exciting news and we could not be happier about bringing another child into our blissful little family.



For those of you who were not around when she was pregnant with Wylie, Miss J had a rough go of it. For about ten weeks she was incapable of anything but vomiting and sleeping. She was not able to hold down any food or liquids. Nothing seemed to provide any relief. During this period (mid first trimester until early second) she lost a lot of weight and was generally, horribly miserable.



At this point you are probably asking yourself, “why would anyone who had gone through such torment voluntarily sign up for a second tour of duty?� Well the answer (besides the obvious “she didn’t volunteer�) is that we found a medicine early in her second trimester that seemed to keep her from getting ill for the remainder of the pregnancy. We assumed that if this medicine fixed everything so well in the first pregnancy, next time we would just start dosing from the beginning and avoid the whole pukey thing all together.



While we did just that, it has not seemed to work. After about three weeks of her generally feeling quite revolted, the barfing started at daylight yesterday morning. The last two days have been eerily familiar. When she is not actually involved in the act, she is lying very still with her eyes closed trying not to reach that point. Wylie is currently being cared for by Jimmy Neutron and Sponge Bob Square Pants.



Needless to say, Sweet Miss J does not feel much like entertaining right now. While we have no idea how long the sickness will last on this go-around, there is little hope that it will be over with before Wednesday night. It is with deepest regret that we hereby withdrawal all invitations and cancel our Christmas Eve Party for 2003.



Please pray for Jerusalem. She is a sweet lady that does not handle sick very well anyway and did not mean to get herself into this mess. Pray that God will deliver her from this as soon as possible and she can return to her normal life.



Also, pray for Wylie. He is missing his momma very much and does not understand exactly what is going on. There is nothing more heartbreaking that hearing him say, “Momma I am so sorry that the baby is making you sick.�



We love you all, and will miss you very much this Christmas.



God Bless,

Nathan



p.s. I am not sure when the next home team was scheduled, but that will have to also go on hold pending the health of our matriarch. Thank you for understanding.



p.p.s. I sure hope that this email was not a disgusting overshare of details.