I'll rate it like this

UYI

Right Next Door to Hell--great
Dust N Bones-ok (Love the Live Era version)
Live and Let Die--ok
Don't Cry--ok (hasn't aged well)
Perfect Crime--great
Bad Obsession--ok
Double Talkin Jive--great
Back off Bitch--mediocre
November Rain--great
The Garden--great
Garden of Eden--good
Don't Damn Me--great
Bad Apples--ugh worst song of the album
Dead Horse--great
Coma--great

UYI II

Civil War--great
14 years--ok
Yesterdays--good
KOHD--I hate this version
Get in the Ring--music is great lyrics not so much, borderline good
Shotgun Blues--ok
Breakdown--great
Locomotive--great
Estranged--great
So Fine--great
You Could be Mine--great
Don't Cry (alt)--ok
My World--ugh awful

Bottom Line:  I think both albums suffered from having too much filler.  I personally prefer some of the songs on UYI 1 but I think there is less stuff to wade through in UYI 2.  I would have just dumped the cover songs and the alt version of Don't Cry.

I'm around the same age as you are and feel generally the same way.  The maddening thing about this he screws up on basic easy shit that every musician should be able to do.  Showing up on time to his own concerts, boarding a flight on time (I think that was the excuse for the 2002 Vancouver riot), hiring someone to design a competent website, those are all things someone with his money should be able to do.  The problem with him holding the name is that no one will challenge him and he does (or doesn't for the most part) things whenever he feels like it.  Now that CD has been released, most of us can see that Axl for whatever reason just didn't want to release the album.  There were no big obstacles delaying the album--not the label or finances or anything else.

Just look at the output the former Gunners have put out since they left.  Izzy releases an album every two years.  Duff has released several albums with Loaded and VR.  Slash has done 4 albums and will release a solo album, which he recorded in less than a year.  Shit NIN (with Finck) released an album only months after Robin rejoined.

The simple fact is that Axl is lazy.  I know I'll get bashed for this but that's the truth.  He has released one album of original material in 18 years.  I'm not asking for albums every year but an album every four or five years is a reasonable expectation.  AC/DC with band members in their fifties and sixties have released 3 albums since 1995.  I think I finally understand what Slash was talking about when he was talking about Axl's questionable work ethic.

Yes, I know Axl probably has mental health issues but he is in the income bracket where he can afford the medical care where these thing shouldn't interfere with his musical output.

The problem here for the Republicans is that they're lacking an articulate and engaging guy/person to deliver the message.  The Presidential Election is in essence a popularity contest and I'm not sure that there is a current candidate who can match Obama.

Another problem they have is that they have essentially been relegated to the party of the South.  The Democrats pretty much took the youth vote and Latino vote by significant margins.  I think that they have to determine what their message is--outside of Anti-Obama--and present it to the nation.  The Latino issue is complex since there are some key Republicans who favor a hard line stand against illegal immigration and that hurts their attempts to woo the Latino community.

They need to refocus their election strategy because even when they were winning it was basically a bunch of southern states and a few battleground states.  They need to copy the Democrats and go towards a 50 state strategy instead of targeting a few key states.  The western US is solidly democratic and the Republicans need to make some inroads here if they want to be competitive.

I agree with most of this since I too find Gingrich too be an engaging speaker regardless of whether or not I agree with him.  His problem is he has a whole bunch of stuff in his closet that would be ripe for Democratic attack ads.  His problem is that he's basically an a sleazeball when it comes to women.  He tried to make his first wife sign divorce papers when she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery.  I'm pretty sure he was cheating on his second wife with a younger congressional aide.

Fight Club

It's hard to go wrong with any Fincher/Pitt collaboration.

That's the crux of his problem right there.  He (Axl) shoots himself in the foot whenever an opportunity presents itself, usually by inaction.  The curiosity factor could have been exploited in 2001/2002 but I have no idea why that didn't work out.  The best explanation was the record company wanted a hit single and Axl went back into the studio and tried to write one or tweak the existing songs to make it sound like a hit.  2001 was the year of the bad excuses for me if I recall correctly as they cancelled a European Tour because Axl just found out about it on the internet.

The problem with Chinese Democracy in all its phases is that at the end of the day I'm not sure how much he has grown the fanbase.  Most of the original GNR fanbase eventually moved on to more active bands or they just dig out AFD, Lies, UYI, and TSI albums.  The fans gained during 2001, 2002, and 2006 tours, grew tired of waiting for the damn thing to come out and some just moved on.  If they stuck around, their initial enthusiasm for the album became restrained  see davegnr2k as an example.