20031126 
See here in Maine the weather changes. When the leaves fall off the trees and we can see our breath in the air and intricate patterns of frozen water crystals paint themselves on our car windshields at night then we know it's about thanksgiving time. Time to be thankful for the turkey we have and the cranberry sauce and the mashed 'taters and all those goddamn dishes we're going to have to do. It's time to enjoy football - which around here means cold and muddy fields with the fans wrapped in scarves and mittens.
Nothing in the thanksgiving book says anything about palm trees.
Tomorrow I fly out to California. Right into the heart of the beast - LA - and then up to Isla Vista to enjoy some quality sit-down time with my man Alex and his rubics cubes, kite-surfing crap, frisbees, and odd theories on human nature. Yah see, he is an evolutionary psychology PhD.. and I think that basically means he makes up ideas about why humans think and act the way they do.. and then he tries to contort those theories for his own uses: mainly to pick up women. Or undergraduate girls, as the case may be. If you asked him he would tell you it's working out for him. If you asked me he's just getting older and a little more mellow so the chicks can stand him a little easier now.
But I'm going to California. Nothing, nothing at all, about California says Thanksgiving. Nothing at all about California says Christmas either. Maybe, maybe, way up in the Sierra Nevadas there is a nugget of Christmas cheer... but even then I'm skeptical.
Nothing about Alabama says Xmas, either. Or Mississippi or Arizona or Florida.. Especially not Florida. Nothing about Waikiki or Santa Fe or Savannah or Texarkana says the slightest thing about Christmas and I'll be honest - I don't like talking about it because it makes me depressed.
It just goes to show you where this country came from. It's New England puritanical roots, based in cold and suffering and religious persecution. And that's why we have a white Christmas.
Go down to Mexico and I bet you they don't give each other holiday cards with pictures of snow on them.
Here, though, in the States.. even in Arkansas.. we sing "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" and we set up Christmas trees - evergreens, mind you, a cold weather tree - and we even frost our windows with fake ice.
So it's no wonder that we live in a country that is having some serious growing pains. It's no wonder that things like sex and smut, becoming ever more pervasive in our society, really gets our goat sometimes. It's no wonder that 60-Minutes tries to make the adult industry sound so scary.. because we're rooted in the puritanical soil of our forefathers.
And though there may be people who stand out, stand up, and yell loudly: "I like porn"... there are the silent many who are still living, in their minds, at plymouth rock.. still thankful for their turkeys and their mashed potatoes but still willing to cut the throats of the very indians who saved them because afterall, the indians are different..
plus.. those indians didn't wear much in the way clothes.. kinda skanky if you ask me..
20031125
I am a shell of my former self. I am flighty and distracted and my nails, once long and healthy or now bitten to the bone. I drink coffee by the gallon. My attention span, once the wonder of many, has been reduced to half that of a wrigley's spearmint commerical. I am a shell of a man.
I stopped biting my finger nails a few months ago for no real particular reason. Call it random self-improvement. I didn't read it in any book by Deepak Chopra and my shrink did not suggest it. I don't even have a shrink, in fact. I know, I know, hard to believe in these heady days of our decadent culture, so self-absorbed are we that we can not open our eyes unless they face inwards. But I stopped biting my nails and with little good reason. I was not socially ostracized for nail-biting ( I did not do it excessively in public or in a slurping, snarling way that would disrupt my neighbours, so why should anyone care? ). I did not suffer economically for my sins - indeed, may have profitted for I have replaced far fewer lost nail clippers than most. I did not contract any disease or otherwise downgrade my health by biting my nails ( okay, perhaps my teeth have somehow taken a toll but then it is slight and insignificant at best ). My rights, as a human and a citizen of my country were not degraded based solely on my biting. The days, growing longer through the seasons and then shorter again, did not stop their cycle on account of my *snap* *snap* *snap* at my finger tips. Great authors and leaders did not stop their greatness nor did lowely whores and drug dealers deviate from their normal course because of me, here, nibbling at my nubbins.
So why is it that I stopped, what is it that cast doubt and shadow upon my sunny day? Why did I fear the bite of the canines and the chomp of the incisors? What, after years upon years of nibbling away, caused this mouse to raise head from cheese - warily oh verily sniffing about the air in fear and paranoia?
Some things must come to an end. Nothing is forever. It is better to burn out than to fade away. And a diamond is certainly not forever. The honeymoon with my fingers was long past and it was time to experience the freedom of a new life far from the nervous biting of an anxious boy. It was time to make a decision and with that decision change the course of my life for ever and ever amen.
I won't lie to you. There were some very specific reasons I quit. I shant repeat them here but let us say there were certain gambling promises made - contracts signed in hushed voices 'neath the dark street light of my soul. My ego, my id, locked in a duel of ultimate proportions, came out both gripping what they thought was the upper hand only to find that they were holding onto themselves. But the deal was made and I'm not one to go back on a promise and so for two months I went without.
My teeth mossed over. The brushing helped but didn't grind down to the root of the problem like some good nails can do. My demeanor mellowed to a lathargic rate and my daily drive, my soul, my hope was leveled out like a bedspread smoothed and laid out after a harried night of tossing and turning. For better? For worse.. I do not know. The promise - always double-ended - was not evenly balanced in the end. The refrain from nails did not bring about the intended outcome.. I realize, of course, that I can not expect a trivial thing such as not biting my nails to bring about huge change but as we humans are want to do I attempted to make a deal with the devil.. I promised one thing and he promised something completely unrelated and in the real world anyone in their right mind would not think the one could effect the other but inside, in the mind, we think differently. Like a boy praying at night - "I promise not to bug my sister anymore if you could just bring me a toy truck for christmas" - I expected a miracle for a molehill. I expected all the world to stop and lay before my feet for the price of a simple refrain and I did it - I refrained.
I'm biting my nails again. They are short and can barely grab the edge of a stack of paper, can barely seperate a sticker from the refridge or even properly scratch my back. I am a junky, always looking for more nails where there is always none. When I was letting them grow I was amazed at how fast they shot out of my fingers and now I am shocked at how slowly they come. I fidgit idly while work sits nearby and I stare out into the distance of nowhere - always expecting to be jolted by my seat. My heart races - not like a race car revving up and down at the start but more like a rampant river overflooding at it's banks; always more and consistently fast and dangerous.
At night I turn the fan on. It is winter now in Maine and still I turn the fan on. If I don't, I can hear the creaking of my nails slowly growing in their own beds, creeping out from under the cuticles like so many hobgoblins come to steal away my first-born thought. So, like a child who throws the blanket over his head, I close my ears with the whir of the fan and I pretend, every night, that it's not there. I block out the fear and the doubt, the questions of virility and potential, the expectations of great things. I try so very hard to think simple simple thoughts - the kind of thoughts a cucumber has while it sits quietly on an early august night, slowly growing and minding it's own business, worried only about the sun the stars the wind and the rain. I try to think happy thoughts.. thoughts a mother might whisper to her new born son, not to sooth him when he cries, but just because she feels like it, because the warmth she feels for that human being is unsurmountable compared to the troubles of this world. I try to imagine waking up tomorrow with all the questions answered and all the troubles dispelled. I try to imagine the place where I want to be and I try to imagine the people I want to be with me.
and sometimes.. I chew my nails.
I do like somebody these days and I think she knows it but she doesn't know that it's real. She doesn't really get the severity of it - only the severity in the implications. She understands the weight of crushing likeness, she knows what crushes can do because she is a beautiful girl and beautiful girls are often crushed. It's the way the world works. I don't know if that makes the world cruel, for throwing them out there unprotected and wide open like that, or if it makes the world beautiful too but I do know that she is - inside and out - and that's that.
I could - will - wax a bit more about the human spirit. About the human drive to do great things. We are creatures of habit of wealth of motivated spirit but for what, for whom do we toll the bell and ring the phone? Why do we come here? Why do we do these things? We are a species blessed, cursed some might cynically say, with the ability to realize our fears. Most species learn only to recognize their fears and react.. always react. Flight, fight, what have you. We, for better or worse, we realize and process and think about these fears and by doing we learn to deviate from those fears. We learn our fears are unfounded and we learn to reduce and react in more sophisticated ways.
A philosopher would tell you we're advanced. I think I'd say we're just another form of stupid.
I do like a girl an awful lot. Her spirit is moving and sweet and the intentions honest and forthright. She speaks with the intent of truth and the integrity of someone who believes what they say and her smile is bright like the dawn of the day.
And not only is she sweet but she does not intend the pain she inflicts. She does not realize the suffering that is caused by her doubt and fear and does not, at all, mean to hurt, yet she does. The world is a cold place built on principals and theorems and meant for mathematicians, not lovers. The physicists of this earth will understand these things better than I, but I can not blame her nonetheless. She is a creature made for this earth, created on this earth, to die on this earth.. A mere mortal in this world of cold and eternal rock.
There is a truth here, that I am getting at. She will either love me or not. That is the truth. The power of logic. She will fear or she will sidestep that fear. She will doubt, or choose life instead. She will love me for who I am and what I am - a completely lovable and entirely average human, all things considered and weighed and measured - or she will choose not to love me, choosing instead the fear and doubt predicted so concisely in the mathematician's formulas.
These are the things we humans are. Variables so snuggly fit within universal formulas - formulas within formulas, really. Like a polynomial we are capable of effecting greater change than just ourselves if we try, if we use the exponential power given us, or we can be simple constants in system of life.
Every equation has a trivial solution. X can always equal Y or Z can equal zero and the system is balanced like a rock on a table. There are, also, very complex solutions - situations involving imaginary numbers and complex systems of rings and fields..
Life, my friends, was not meant to be solved by setting Z to zero. Life was not meant to be controlled by the fear and the doubt that we conjure so easily inside ourselves for what - for what? - I ask you.. for nothing, for nothing.
But sometimes you pick zero. Sometimes the clock is ticking and you have no more time. Sometimes life is there, at your desk, tapping it's finger telling you your time is up and there is barely time enough to scribble a legible answer and then there you are, fearful and with doubt, hoping desperately hopefully, the eternal hope, that maybe you scored and A.. maybe you got an A-.
Listen folks. Pick the zero. Solve it grammar school style. Life is not affraid to give you a C. Life passes almost everyone. Take the easy way out. Why try harder.. Am I bitter? No. Not yet. But I fear the mathematician's formula too.
I do very much like a girl. She is small and slight but large inside with all the heart of a classroom of first graders. She is as yellow as a field of grain and white as a lake of snow, green as a forest's canopy and blue as the sparkling sky. She fears and doubts and runs about and is human, human, human. That's what I love about her she is human. Flawed and imperfect. Blemished and disenchanted. Hopeful but hesitant, honest but smart. Flawed, always, flawed as only a true human spirit can be.
I, too, am flawed. I am flawed with hope and remorse and cynical realism. I am flawed with guilt and regret and crippled by fear and doubt. I am, if you've guessed it by now, human. I am human, human, human.
I hope she realizes that.
20031124
.. that this really creeped me out.
It sort of goes along with last night's 60 Minutes where they did a bit on porn - they kept calling it the adult entertainment industry so their bread-n-butter 60-yr old viewers wouldn't change the channel, but it was about porn. Their whole report was about how explosive (no pun intended) the industry has been in the last 25~30 years. They were interviewing some guy who started an industry newsletter and he claimed, probably rightfully so, that the whole she-bang (again, no pun intended) could be attributed to the advent of the VCR, and now, to the internet. He talked about how sex was a very private thing for most Americans and how technology in the last 25 years has allowed us to persue it in the comfort (and privacy) of our own home. The interviewee was probably spot on but I think the rest of the report was pretty shabby. They were trying to poo-poo on big corporations like Time Warner, Cablevision, and DirectTV for entering into the foray and for.. *gasp*.. making money off sex. Their pre-show commercials promised how I'd be aghast when I found out how much porn America watches. It was pretty sad, really. I've grown to expect better from 60-Minutes but I guess everyone has their moments one way or another.
Anyhow, I guess my point was that I was pretty unphased by the whole thing. Why is it we're surprised by sex? Why is it that we're surprised sex sells? If you've been paying attention at all you know that we're here on this earth for only a few carnal reasons: to eat and have sex.. and the eating is really just to stay alive and have more sex. I know, sickening really, when you think of that bloody burger you just ate and the partner you're about to.. oh nevermind.
Are we cruising for a bruising, as my father would say? Is our society in a downward spiral of filth and smut? Are we heading for the end?
It's been said that the best art a culture produces comes at the height of that cultures decadence.. I don't know that I disagree, but it seems a pedestrian conclusion. The less people have to actually get up and work everyday then the more people are left to their own devices.. and the more people will produce odd things for no good reason - which is essentially what art is, whether you appreciate it or not (which I do).
It's also been said that a culture's height of decadence is followed shortly by it's ultimate downfall.. The Romans, as we all know, were quite the sex fiends.. or at least the ruling class was - those who were most left to their own devices. They did, despite their lack of VCRs, end up in a pile of rubble so maybe we could learn something from them..
guess I should go rent caligula again.
(did you notice how I sort of called pornography "art"? hehe)
The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days according to some dude from the internet archive. He says that is no way to run a culture.. and he may have a point, as far as I am concerned. The article referenced is directed more at citations and research than anything else but I think it's also important to look at the social impact of such change. Due to the emergence of Radio, TV, and now the Internet, the entertainment of the people is a system of constant change.. a lot different than it was long ago when the same plays or operas were performed over and over again. Sure, playwrites worked hard to churn out new material but not at the level we see in our culture today.. We now live in such a fast-paced society that "entertainment" has been reduced to 5 second clips of adolescent boys embarrassingly waving a "lightsabre" around.. Even full length TV shows are split up into bite-sized portions. Commercials split the shows up item 5 minute blocks, sub-plots split those blocks up into 1 minute pieces, and in the case of some of the nations most watched shows such as Cops and America's Funniest Home Videos, the media-bites are as short as a few seconds. What is the ultimate social impact here?
We all know about AD(H)D.. but is there more to worry about? Will the internet ultimately kill the book and the newspaper? No, probably not. The short story has not killed the novel and the newsletter has not killed the magazine so we don't have to worry yet.. but there will no doubt be social impacts in ways we can't even imagine. Something to think about anyway..
Oh, and as mentioned here some while ago, Opus is back! Read his interview here.. it's really quite a chuckle, if you are at all familiar with his ..umm.. opus. HA. I made a funny.
20031121
1. Citizen Kane
2. Casablanca
3. Easy Rider
4. Seven Samurai
5. Lawrence of Arabia
Top Five Movies I didn't see soon enough and will watch again as punishment (but that's like getting sent to your room where your nintendo, telephone, and boombox is)
1. Taxi Driver
2. Blade Runner
3. The French Connection
4. Dazed and Confused (sidebar: some girl in my high school class who was trying way too hard to be cool kept saying it was her favourite movie so I avoided it all the way into my second or third year of college)
5. The Graduate
(6. Office Space)
Top Five Movies that seemed overhyped (not that they were bad)
1. Braveheart
2. Titanic (I actually didn't think it was a horrible movie.. )
3. A Bridge Too Far (Star cast Star Shmast)
4. Some Like It Hot
5. Patton
Top Five Sleepers and Surprisers (movies I went to the theatre knowing little to nothing about or thought they would be bad and came out quite happy and surprised to have seen them)
1. The Matrix
2. Gosford Park
3. The Pirates of the Carribbean
4. The Usual Suspects
5. Arlington Road
Top Five Silly Cheese Ass Teen Movies that were actually not half bad, as long as you just rented
1. Bring It On
2. Can't Hardly Wait
3. American Pie
4. The New Guy
5. Oh who am I kidding.. they're just cheesy teen movies.
... and finally,
Top Worst Movies I've actually paid to watch in a Cinema
1. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (seriously.. do *not* check this one out if you have the chance)
2. Saving Silverman
3. Lawnmower Man
4. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (and believe you me, it pains me to have to say it)
5. Three Men and a Baby
3rd leg says:
I think parents of today thinks it’s everyone else’s fault but their own when their kids get in trouble or do something stupid. And I think the decline of strong parenting and raising tough, independent kids can be directly linked to the rise in popularity of children’s bicycle helmets.
I've been saying for quite some time - years, really - that Billy Idol really knew what was going on.. at least for a brief moment in history. When he screamed about white weddings and pumped his fist like a true rocker, snarling at the camera.. man. Yeah, that's about it. And finally, someone else gets it. Anti waxes on today about how billy idol knows wassap.. but then he goes on to say sweat motherfuckers. sweat. Is he talking about the physical exersion required to rock out? Or did he mean to say sweet? I dunno. What a difference an A can make..
I was just about to say "get it? an A.. ha!" cause I always feel the need to point out my horrible puns and bad jokes. I figure no one gets them cause they are so bad it hurts.
Anyhow, anti gives us a little of the keep-on-keepin-on advice too.. A little chin-up-bucko,it'll-work-out which is less than expected from him seeing as how he's been sorta having a rough time of it lately. But he says it anyway and I think it means that much more because he is having a tough stint:
the thing that keeps me from running though... is the undying false hope i have that everything works out in the end. i don't know if that makes sense to anyone but me... but. fuck it
He calls it false hope.. but is it? I don't know.. Even more so, I don't know if it matters if it's false hope. Hope, by it's very nature, is unsure and optimistic. And that's all we need is hope.. if we listen to the Matrix's message. (note: I haven't seen the third one.. I may be outta line here). Anyhow, If the false hope works to effect the same way that true hope works then who cares? It's like a big circuit that, when you really figure it out, always resolves to 1 no matter what your inputs. Or just a simple one. [Hope] (inclusive)OR [False Hope] = [Hope].
Whatever.
20031120
Some people like to say that money is the most powerful thing around - the root of all evil, the cure of all ails. The what, why, how to every question asked from here to Wall Street.
I beg to differ. I think it's time. Time is the most slippery of creatures, that odd duck with the slippery oil - some sort of melding of the natural and the human mind - a creation made from the colaboration of mother nature and technology. Because time, afterall, is a human invention. There is no time in the true sense of the word, there is only states and the figurative movement of things from one state to the other - much like riding over the bridge into New Hampshire from Eliot, Maine.. It's more a matter of physical change than it is any sort of passing of a length of "time". Time, really, is a figment of our oh-so-impressionable minds.. yet so ingrained at this point that there is little point in even discussing an alternate reality. We are, in this case, truly prisoners of our own devices.
Time is the end all be all of everything. They should not have asked, willy-nilly, "What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?" but simply "What time is it?" because it would have done them about as good. Time controls us, shackles us, and commands the sort of attention that only a powerful master can. We are all, even those without watches - even far off tribes still unawares of the 24 hour day - slaves to the passing of time. But the real kicker of it all is that it's a double-headed snake this Time - dangerous at both ends. It's a curse and a cure.
"I don't have enough time"
"I can't wait that long"
On the one hand time is always nipping at our heels. "What time is it?" "When do we have to be there?" "How long do I have?" "When do you want this finished?".. today, time is pressure. Time, or the lack there of, manifests itself as deadlines and late fees and subscription limits. And in this incarnation, there is never enough of it. In the short term, time is our enemy. We work against it as if racing against it in some sort of sick twisted marathon.. but we're not happy to run our fastest, to charge ahead and try our hardest - oh no - we constantly check it's progress. Is it catching up to me? How far behind is it? Is it keeping pace? Quick, what time is it? Your average westerner can't go five minutes these days without glancing down at their wristwatch or cell phone and groan. Like the commercial where they tell you the average person spends XX.X years on the toilet during their lifetime, you'd have to imagine the average person spends a good amount of Time.. well.. checking the time. Think about that for a second. Oh wait, there I go.. bringing time into it again.
On the other hand time can be like molasses. Time can drag by so slowly you'd think the earth had stopped revolving 'bout the sun and the moon 'round the earth. Time, when you are waiting, is like holding your breath - like drowning while the surface and air and wind are within your sight, your grasp even. "Are we there yet?" "Can we go already?" "I can't wait till I'm 21". Yeah, ain't that the way it is. Time, my friends, is a tempting mistress - sometimes so sensual and attractive as to make you drool. And evil, because we've outlined above the exact opposite problem we have with time - yet somehow time has us both in love and in disgust and all at the same time. Bi-Polarity never looked so normal.
Time, also, is a bit edgy and not always clear as to it's meaning and intentions. Time can be a chunk of life (10 hours and 16 minutes), time can be an exact record of a given state of the universe (10:32.324567 PM), GMT), and time can even be hypothetical or rhetorical ("it's time to get a watch"). Time can spin you around and spit you out and you won't know whether to scorn it or desire it.
The older we get the faster time flies. This, I think, is easily explainable. At age 10 a single year of our life accounts for 10% of our existence as we know it. 10% of all our experiences, all the situations and predicaments and moments of euphoria, can fit into the space of a single year. As we grow and live to the ripe old age of 25, we have experienced so much more - we have had a lot more practice, essentially - and this makes the time that much more trivial. With anything, spending time with the idea of Time gives us a sort of familiarity with it and with that comes a comfort - and no one pays any attention to that which they already understand (or else girls wouldn't ever get any dates). So by 100, a year is barely 1% of our conciousness. 1% of our experience. No wonder we feel it so much smaller and insignificant than the 10 year old. A 10 year old has 10% of the space in which to fit his memories than a 100 year old. Which is not so curious in itself, but what is curious is the idea of a length of time being an amount of space - space in which to fit experiences - like a footlocker in the attic of memories. Time, as a space, is a collection of moments.
And at 100 we go back to desiring time - needing more of it. We fear death, that worst of states, and we even start to lose the time we already have. Memories fade. Entire groups of people are forgotten. The mind begins to get foggy and sometimes it is only now, this very moment, that we have for sure. And it's moments - not memories - that we have so the best we can do - the best we can hope for, is to make due with those oh-so-few that we do have. It's no wonder we love to dream so much and do so more and more as the years wane on and the real memories become more dim. Dreaming is one of the few ways out of time, out of the order and sense we have of the world around us - so, again, it's like the curse that is the cure. We dream to feel the passing of time - to experience movement, happens, the passage of events before our closed eyes.. but we also dream like it's a drug - our only escape from father time. Only in dreams can we disobey our sagely father and fly from one place to another, transport ourselves, outlive bullet wounds, and even sleep with some folks we probably won't get around to sleeping with in real life - because most logistical problems always come down to time. Time is the limiting factor so it's no surprise we, in our most child-like state of REM, run run run away from our father time.
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection, says Anais Nin, which may explain the excessive habit we humans have for record keeping - the writing down of all that happens because when it is gone, when the memories dissappear and only moments are left there is no sequence, no order to those moments, and with no order all time is lost and our very existence comes into question.. something we certainly don't like to consider - so we record record record. Write every little occurance down to satisfy our own flickering light of a life - give it meaning - and I would guess, more importantly - give proof of it's existence. The moment that is forgotten is the moment that perhaps didn't even happen. The moment a moment is no longer recallable is the moment that first moment is no longer a moment and therefore no longer fits into Time.
And moments bring us back to square one - Time is a human invention. Time is a way for humans to explain the transitions from one state to another - from one moment to the next. Time is not a real pliable thing. Time is not a rock or a bird or even air. Time is a figment - an explaination - an invention of the human mind, but an invention we will always embrace; are forced to embrace - even when it makes us late for work.
The bats are in the belfry
the dew is on the moor
where are the arms that held me
and pledged her love before
and pledged her love before
It's such a sad old feeling
the fields are soft and green
it's memories that I'm stelaing
but you're innocent when you dream
when you dream
you're innocent when you dream
running through the graveyard
we laughed my friends and I
we swore we'd be together
until the day we died
until the day we died
I made a golden promise
that we would never part
I gave my love a locket
and then I broke her heart
and then I broke her heart
.. which adorns the back cover of this week's U.S. News and World Report, claims 16hrs battry life, and has a LCD screen read-out that looks an awful lot like another little mp3 player we know ( the iPod). Even the controls are similar. Take a small package with LCD screen, implement some odd input device (in this case a scrolly wheel, in the iPod case it was the circular trackpad) along with your normal forward >> and back << buttons, your play/pause.. and kazaam - profit?
Microsoft, never too quick on the draw, is just going to let others make the portables for them
From the Business Standard:
By the time Microsoft's download store debuts, the digital landscape will be awash in competition, however. Apple's Windows-based store, which sold 1.5 million songs in the first week of November, opened in mid-October. The new Napster--a combination store and subscription service--launched at the end of October.
RealNetworks' Rhapsody subscription service is adding a song store that will be open to the public by the end of the year. Musicmatch, MusicNow and BuyMusic all have opened their digital doors already.
Major retailers including Wal-Mart Stores and Amazon.com are expected to launch their own efforts, while PC makers including Dell are offering co-branded versions of other company's stores.
Whose next? Ford?
But it's on the busblog - a strange guest post. Relatable things of note:
I have an art career I would envy if it weren't my own, but I still can't get out of bed until twenty minutes before I have to be at my job.
and
"You can't make a dog behave like a chicken no matter how much corn you feed it." Right? We are what we are and that's all. But I like dogs and chickens.
and a good idea to boot
Here's a reality show: Suicide Island. Seven contestants, each on an island, alone.
Last one to kill himself dies.
And as long as I'm going on about good posts from some of our female bloggers, how about these tax suggests made by Moxie:
Why not impose a tax on all non-essential cosmetic surgery. Like boob jobs. If you got the 5 grand to drop for the big fake double D's from your married boyfriend how about chipping in on a tax that will keep our roads nice and pot-hole free. Your new chest will thank you for it as you cruise down the freeway in your big stupid SUV.
That leads us to the next idea -- I like the "big stupid SUV tax." It's the next level in the luxury tax. If your vehicle is large enough to take up two parking spaces and sucks the air out of baby's lungs -- you should pay a triple tax to the fireman who will likely scrape the bodies of those you've run over from our pot-hole free roads (see the big fake boob tax above).
and then, god bless her, she goes on to say:
what about the Michael Moore donut and ding-dong tax? If you buy one of his so-called "books" there is a 100 dollar stupidity tax. Per book.
which sounds an awful lot like my spittle-flinging rant about a dumb tax. Call it stupid, call it dumb - it's all the same thing.. putting a price on the privelage we Americans have of being dumb and lazy. I think it's a great idea.
20031119
And check out that shirt. Did I mention this already?? That half-melon/half-fro there grinnin' back at you is none other than TP. If you've been under a rock for the past year or so.. or if you just don't use the internet much and maybe don't read my blog ( Loser!) then maybe you aren't aware of who TP is. TP, short for toilet paper to some, is short for Tony Pierce to others - a seemingly bummed out lazy ass drunk blogger who has a few friends but mainly makes up stories about getting ass from pre-adult celebrity sex symbols. Still not interested? Well fuck. That's not the point. Point is, if you go to that link you'll see TP, in all his glory, IN MY SHIRT. Okay okay, admittedly it is possibly and quite probably just *like* my shirt but is in fact not my shirt... but anything is possible and since I got my shirt from a girl for a trade of my shirt at the time (a small grey-stretchy one with feet marks on it - I think it was for some 5k road race) ((and yes, we removed the shirts and traded right there.. oh yah.. boobies)) .. well then it is possible that at some point it was in the hands of TP unbeknownst to me. ANYhow, I do not think that likely as tony is clearly a fat fucking slob and if my shirt were his shirt it would probably be all stretched out right now - which it isn't. See him there, in that shirt? Look how it stretches out around his stomach, stretching it to the very limits of it's fabric-toughness.
Or not. He is actually pretty skinny. But still, no captions on his pictures which means I either have to keep up with Xtina's hair colour so I can recognize her or I am left to whistle in the dark.
Whistling in the dark.
Whistling in the dark.
There is only one thing that I know how to do well and I've often been told that you only can do what you know how to do well..
and that's be you
be what you're like
be like yourself
So I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the dark.
So once again someone has stolen my idea. tony says: if only i could forward my answering messages to [audblog] i would be totally stoked, cuz i get some funny ones... Yah? Well I've been saying that for awhile now. I've been saying to myself "Self," cause that's what I call myself: self, "Self, if you were not lazy and had time on your hands and wanted to effect then you should start a service that would allow easy transferring of voice mail messages to one's blog.. or maybe just start funnyvoicemails.com or something... cause god knows there a lot of people out there that get a lot of funny voicemails. Not that you get any - heck, you don't even have a cell phone - but still.. there must be a lot of funny voicemails out there... just waiting to be enjoyed by the feckless masses while pretending to work.
Are you listening Audblog??
On a similar note, Tony rocks out with one of the better first audblog posts I've heard.. good energy, not all "yeah this is dumb", and a little tiny bit of self-deprecation to boot. Lookin forward to more.
It's just too bad that the way audblog works is just mp3 downloads cause it'd be nice if it was somehow embedded. Yah, I know.. that coming from me who likes to do everything myself and to keep things manual and thinks automation is the work of the devil.. but just think.. audblogs like streaming radio.. in order.. or backwards order. Listen to someone's audblog post by post chronologically. Listen to certain audblog threads, with multiple posters, all about the same topic and in chronological order. Connect rants and rebuttals to newspaper articles, press releases, or even products and services.
Are you listening Noah Glass?? I mean, bitching about traffic is fun, but how about a *bunch* of people, all bitching about the same traffic.. all in the same jam, audblogging back and forth about the fall of western civilization into a chaotic soup of smog, cells, SUVs, and celebrity sex tapes?
Oh Paris.. we all make mistakes.
There is nothing new about the idea of taxing e-mails, or levying some sort of fee for the use of the system, in order to curb the rampant spread of spam but it is being bandied about once again, this time by Minn. Senator Mark Dayton. The concept is clear, the predicted outcome is not. Depending on who you ask it is "a good idea", "an unfortunate but necessary consideration", "really not going to work", and "the dumbest idea I've ever heard".
Even if a realistic system for the payment of these taxes could be developed, it doesn't strike me as particularly debilatating. Let's set the tax at 1 cent. Any more than that and you are asking a bit much for an essentially free service. Now you're talking $1 for 100 emails. $10 for 1000. $100 for 10,000. $1000 for 100,000. These numbers are not as large and scary as they should be if in fact you're trying to stop Spam. Thing with Spam is that it actually works. Something like 10% of the time, even. Companies who are willing to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for email lists will certainly be willing to pay a few pennies to email those people on the list. $1000 is a drop in the bucket.. if companies are willing to spend money on junk snail mail - certainly costing them far more than 1 or 2 cents per letter - than they are certainly willing to spend it on email.
And.. as a spokesman for the Internet-based Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail correctly points out, "it doesn't explicitly tell people not to spam." Definitely a valid point. Are we trying to outlaw spam? Make it illegal? Somehow I doubt that will happen so maybe this is as good as we're going to get. The spokesman goes on to do a disservice, though, by speaking fearfully: "At [the current] rate of growth, e-mail is going to be unusable in five years. E-mail is getting mildly unusable now." Okay okay, sure, I get maybe 50 or 100 spam emails a day but I automatically filter them, 3 or 4 slip through, and I deal. I get far more valid email in my inbox than I do spam. "Mildly unusable"? I don't think so.. only if you are doing absolutely nothing to avoid it.
Another good point made was that we should follow the money.. start penalizing the companies who are trying to push products and services through spam, not the spammers themselves. You may never be able to trace an email back to the spammer that sent it but you certainly can find the company that is trying to sell you shit. Make the spam work for you. It is, afterall, essentially like leaving a big flashing business card on your doorstep.
I say go both ways. Don't just penalize the company selling through spam, penalize the consumer who is dumb enough to buy through spam. Call it a internet consumption tax or an online service contract fee tax levy. Whatever. I'd call it what it is: A dumb tax. A tax for being dumb. An idea we should have implemented a long long time ago.
We could apply it everywhere, too - not just on the internet:
- Buy a new car at retail price without bickering? Well, you're willing to pay obviously, might as well pay a dumb tax too, right?
- Sign a two-year contract for an overpriced cell phone plan you'll never even use to half it's potential? Heck, why not pay a dumb tax as well?
- Like paying exorbatant prices at the movie theatre, then paying excessive prices for the VHS, and then the DVD when you get a DVD player (which you bought on a whim without price shopping), and then the Special Edition double DVD disc when that comes out, too? Well fuck.. we'll nail your dumb ass five times with that
- Find it necessary to take 5 pills an hour, go to the doctor twice a week for "chest pains" or "flu symptoms" and think you've come down with Ebola at least twice a year? MMhmm.. yah.. dumb tax.
- Actually think that car kit on your '98 Dodge Neon is going to make you cool? Ohhhh yah buddy, you're paying the dumb tax also.
Aww.. poor Xtina
20031118
As with anything, there has got to be some consequences to the excessive internet access and use we are experiencing now that we don't even know about. There will most likely be effects we haven't even begun to think about which will manifest themselves in odd and offbeat social behaviour or psychotic seizures. Yes yes. We should probably develop some irrationally burgeous fear surrounding all advancements in our society. Oh, and all that stuff that has made us human from day one, too.. like eating and sex. Yes yes. We should fear eating. And sex. And the internet.
It's the only way.
Oh, and while I'm here.. Microsoft is about ready to enter the foray into online music stores.. like wal-mart they want to come in at a lower price point than itune's 99 cents a song. This all from slashdot, of course.
And in other news, Apple came out with a new iMac with 20" screen and a new PowerMac with a dual 1.8gig offering. Course the price points are $2,199 and $2,499, respectively. I'm not quite sure how they can offer quality laptops - some of the best on the market - with decent performance and decent prices yet they can't get their mainstay offering (the iMac) under $1300, even in it's most modest of forms (15" 1GHzG4 w/ 256MB). What some people forget is that a run-of-the-mill dell P4 at 2.6gig with the same specs (15" w/ 256MB) will run you $1,000. So okay, Apple zealotism aside, what's it all worth? Is a pretty flower-shaped computer worth another $300? Is iTunes worth another $300? Oh - wait - iTunes is now free on windows, too. It even works with Apple's Music Store. So what's Apple trying to do here? Shoot itself in the foot? No - it's priming itself for a major push into the mainstream. Intel fans can say all they want but there has never been a time in the history of Apple when they had more mindshare then they have right now. Sure, most of it is due to a higher technology awareness from your average person on the street but a lot of it has been gained from marketing and branding and the exploitation of new technologies (i.e. mp3s - iPods). Apple has set a standard with the iPod and that makes it the Ford of personal audio. Sure, it's not that simple but Apple is the new Gap. And if you think they have plans to stay where they are in terms of computer market share, you're wrong.
Mac OS X is the first clue. A new operating system - a seemingly modern operating system argueably as pretty as XP - based on Unix.. which for the uneducated masses is synonmous with Linux which is synonmous with free speach, liberation, and the end of racism everywhere. Okay.. so maybe I am exagerating but that's just it - so is Apple. They are playing off of the public's perception and they're going places.
Safari is another perfect example - their first stand alone browser. Built specifically for Mac OS X it frees Apple from one of it's many Microsoft shackles. We should not be surprised if we see a robust office package fully compatible with Microsoft formats coming soon... and we shouldn't be surprised when Microsoft takes them to court.
And yet a third example is the muscling of the meek, the inevitable clue that someone wants to be a player - like Apple's recent bullying of one of it's employee's for a little bit of code. For shame, Apple, for shame.
The honeymoon is over and the lines are being drawn. Microsoft has dumped Apple, jealous of it's better looks. Microsoft is no longer as dependant on QuickTime as it used to be and Apple has put the period on the end of the sentence by freeing itself from Internet Explorer. The big players are coming to the field and everyone's suited up to play.. I'm just not sure who is going to win.
appalachia alumni association points to a rough quiz that will outline how many earths would be needed if everyone on this planet consumed at the level that you consume. I came in right around what europeans come in at: 300-400 earths, which is relatively low for developed countries (or so they seem to suggest). Still not a very good number but at least I don't drive an SUV, yah?
is that there really isn't a heck of a lot to do for the first few hours of work.. or at least there really isn't a heck of a lot I *want* to do for the first few hours - how's that?
8am EST on a Tuesday means all those West Coast folks are just starting to groan their way through the early morning sunshine lasering through their blinds and any level-headed person on the East Coast is still in bed. That means there isn't a blog in sight with any worthwhile updates from yesterday - unless I was all heads-down-focused-on-my-work and didn't surf after mid-morning at all and we all know that didn't happen.
So I get to work, do my usual rounds.. you know, yahoo mail, slashdot, tony, jaime ( I don't want to be so blinded by the things I think I want that I miss the surprises).. maybe theward, popie, montrealblog. If I'm super bored I'll hit up girls are pretty for a few days worth of laughs (you really gotta wonder how they keep it flowin' over there day in and day out: That's why she bought, sold, bought back, and is now looking for a new buyer for that baby Heather) and maybe if I've given her sufficient time since the last visit I'll pop into bunnie's place and have a looksee at the european vacation ( He moved in close to me and kissed me full on the lips, but I extracted myself from it, feeling a little uncomfortable with it. Thinking to myself that it would be just too strange for me to be the lover of two brothers, but then again stranger things have happened).
When I've exhausted my possibilities and even visited a few random links and I still haven't gotten through my first cup of coffee cause it's that early in the morning and no one has posted crap and I'm bored out of my gourd than I hit up my site meter for some friendly (and depressing) statistics - like more people have come to my site looking for information about the new sony vaio than anything else in the last few days.. and more depressing is even those people are going to get what they want.
But you know.. screw it. Saturday I put in a new stove. okay, not new - really old. 15 years old, at least. Probably 20. Maybe as old as I am, for all I know. But it was a serious improvement on the tiny piece of crap we had before. It was free. It fit perfectly - more perfect in many ways than the smaller crappier one we had before. It even took the power cord from the smaller crappier one and I got it transported to me for free and and and... the landlord will pay me for it. Free stove. Free apartment improvement. Get paid for it. My kind of deal.
Sometimes things do work out.. for the best.
What does that mean, "for the best"? Who is anyone kidding? There is no best. Best is always relative and never absolute. To make the best of ill fortune or a bad bargain is the best you'll ever do. Ha. get it?
Like this morning. In at 8am and what've I gained? Nothing. What've I lost? Nothing. Like Monty Python's song.. Came from nothing gone to nothing, always look on the bright side of life..
What's with Pink and her androgeny look, anyway?
20031117
3rd leg has graciously linked me on his site..
oh .. wait. No, it's just that I happened to be the first to guess Raymi in his "Name That Blogger" game.. I can't even say I deserve it because I just happened to cruise over to his site from tony's and.. you know, right time right place - boom.. I win round three.. or whatever round it was. I will never again get a single one cause I'm just not so happenin in the blogger scene no more and that makes me a losssser, and a sore one at that.
Soo that being said I'd like to turn your attention to...
"The Negative Effects Of Alcohol".. which I might have mentioned awhile ago but I mention again cause it's one of the few good things that have come out of the internet.. well, not *it* itself.. but things like it. .swf files and .wma files.. .mov files.. Humorous little ditties and songs and one liners and mastercard "priceless" rip offs. All this.. we are no longer relagated to shitty SNL commercials and parodies.. We are free from the likes of In Living Color and Kids in the Hall. We are now, finally, free to experience the humor of just about anyone out there.. and that's a great thing. One step closer to global peace, I say.
What I'd really like to see is a little more of the skits. Whip out your digital video and iMovie.. write some bad skits.. put on a wig and a dress.. and kazaam - funnyness ensues. But take a page from Kids in the Hall (something SNL falls short of).. Always, *always*, have men play the parts of women and if possible, have women play the parts of men. That way, if the audience can't laugh at the skit, they can at least laugh at you..
So go make some skits and start posting them on the internet. divx format, please, and it doesn't have to be DVD quality.. just something simple with good clear dialogue and guys in dresses. Here, I'll even give you a few ideas:
Do a sketch about how socks seperate in the night and one of the two turns into a coat hanger - and that's how coat hangers multiple and socks disappear.
Okay okay.. that was dumb. Nevermind.
Do a sketch where a guy dressed up as a dog goes into a pet store and proceeds to get help from the clerk on what kind of chew toy to get his/her significant other.. but in a "I'm buying a stereo for my husband" sort of way... but have the clerk be a really tall famous basketball player.
Yah.
What someone really should do if they want to get a laugh out of people is to bring attention to girls and bowel movements. I've said for years that one of the funniest things on this planet - universally humorous - is girls dumping.. and finally... FINALLY.. someone agrees.
From The Ward:
like girls train themselves to hold back on bowel movement to maintain a pristine image. Maybe farting in public areas, but when girls need to take a dump, they search for the nearest concealed area to squat and squeeze. I'm not playin it up - female dumps are hilarious. Male dumps though, best be clearin the room. If you have pets, make sure they stay away from the door. If you have neighbors, call them and warn them before Hiroshima 2 commences.
Oh, and here is another damn sexy celebrity picture for your ass, since it's what you want anyway
Catherine Zeta-Jones.
See? What's so hard about that Tony? An easy little caption and now the dumbasses like me know who it is without having to ask.
20031116
So I keep saying how much more my adoring public would adore if I only adorned my site with more adorable pictures.. and I really think it's true to some extent.
I could be putting up pictures of all sorts of things. My pets ( oh wait, I have none). My girlfriend ( oh wait, don't have one). My crazy rager parties ( oh wait, none of those either).
I could be posting images of celebrities and sunsets from Hawaii and fast cars.. but that would just be icing on an empty cake, right? You guys don't want to see images of celebrities.. nah.. not at all, do you? You don't want to eat an empty cake. What's the point in that? What's chocolate without the calories? What's fondue without the fat?
Okay okay. Clearly you want to see the celebrities. You want to see Paris Hilton real bad. You want to see her all hot and bothered and you want to see her in a compromising position. You want to see her, well, being human.
What sort of sick sadistic person are you that you want to see someone famous - a demogogue, a statue an icon - all down and dirty and in the gutter? What, in your twisted mind, is so great about humanizing the sacred image of celebricy?
I'm trying to be terribly "sarcastic" and "ironic" here, if you weren't sure. "sarcastic" in that the reasons are incredibly obvious and "ironic" in that everyone likes to say things are ironic without truly understanding the word so why not me, too?
I have a theory about socks... I think people need to change their mindset about them.. they aren't a clothing item.. they're like latex gloves.. they should be disposable. Socks should be worn once.. twice.. maybe three times and then disposed of... I think a lot of things should be more disposable. Semi-disposable. I mean, look at the electronics manufacturers... they seem to think all the shit they make is disposable now.. considering how crappy their shit is. Stereos don't hold a candle in the wind to the stuff they put out 25~35 years ago. So socks.. why not? One wash.. two.. then chuck 'em.
And my other sock theory.. you've probably heard this one: Khaki-dyed tube socks. 12-packs for $10. For the rushed business man on a conference trip. For the cheap business-casual man. For a slightly classier look with your jeans and penny loafers. I mean, come on.. they dye them white anyway.. why not have a few batches died light brown?
There, you happy?
20031114
The newest in Sony's Vaio lineup is just nuts. From the Register article:
The Vaio PXG-X505 is less than half an inch thick - 0.4in... It weighs 1.8lb.
[it] packs in a 1GHz Pentium M... 512MB of DDR SDRAM... and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi card.
The screen is a 1024 x 768 10.4in TFT.
Just nuts I tell you. So when is my jacket/computer coming? When will my shirt finally be made from pliable paper-computers?
When can I get stock quotes from my jockey shorts?
Dot Com, redux?
Are we seeing the beginning of the next big rise in technology companies and if so, are they doomed to repeat history?
A new company Huminity is putting a spin on social networking - or just getting a buzz off the phrase - but either way it looks like a new spin on an old trick:
The software they produce combines instant messaging, chat, and social networking
Whatever that means. I think what it means is they leveraged a few key pieces of jargon into a couple million in venture capital. Doesn't that smell an awful lot like.. oh.. I don't know.. 1998?
If you look back on the technology boom and what it brought us you won't see a whole lot that wasn't here before. It was like a flash flood that carried away the undergrowth but left little structural damage - and I'm speaking on technology terms here, not economical. But what it did do was provide an incubation period for new innovation. The economical situation was such that any old moron with a laptop and a suit could collect a couple million just by mentioning the phrase "emerging technology". Sure, most people would say this was a bad thing but what it did was create a secure and nursery-room like feel for hundreds of computer firms. For a few precious years the babes of the tech industry were left to develope and grow and flourish with nary a predator in sight.
Of course once they were all ripe and plump they were released upon the hounds and we all know what happened then.. but though the companies were laid to waste as the dotbomb spread a path of terror.. the technologies these companies created was left behind, unscathed and pristine and ready for action. Result? Large companies - IBM, HP, Microsoft, and Apple.. they snatched up these ideas and made them work. Implemented the unimplementable. Integrated the unintegratable.
Look at online music stores now - they took the ubiquitous file-sharing concept and applied a price tag. Is that so revolutionary? No, but the masses will think it is.
Look at the iPod. They took a technology (MP3) disparate from the mainstream money-making road and finally did it right - made a portable player that was slick and efficient with enough space... and they marketed.
Look at instant messaging, now making inroads to the business community.
So it's a natural cycle of birth growth death rebirth and we may now be seeing the next wave. With seemingly revenueless ventures such as friendster and now, huminity - 6-degree chat software (gee where have we heard *that* before?).
Seems all you gotta do is take two failed ideas (sixdegrees.com and icq) smack them together and *kazaam* - profit? Or at least the thought that there may be profit down the road.. which is exactly what we had in the first dot com era.
So is this era 2? If it is, did we learn anything from the first one? Are we going to make the same mistakes or different ones? Probably both I figure.
From a slashdot comment on Huminity:
The problem with 'recommend a friend' is that it's too close to 'recommend a fiend' for comfort. You really have no web of trust - it's all what X says about A says about C ... K.
And there is probably a point in that. When you have 10 "friends" in friendster but your "personal network" is 400,000 people, you know something is a little fishy. And that's the ultimate problem with social networking - it's society, and that means everyone is carrying their status stick and if you've got a bigger one they want it.. Everyone wants a bigger network because it's something to measure by. Human nature and all that.
I hate to be a curmudgeon but who needs 400,000 friends? Heck, who needs 1,000 friends? The only time that would come in handy is if you're trying to throw a rave or trying to get a petition signed and let's be honest - if there are two things mainstream americans don't like to participate in it's raves and politics.
If I have 10 friends, in a perfectly balanced world they would each get one tenth of "me". 100 friends.. one-one hundredth. Okay okay, things aren't that balanced but at some point it behooves no one to be "connected" to someone else in only the most passive and tiny way - like a tiny spider's silk bridging a gap of infinite space.
Certainly the farthest person in my "personal network" on friendster might as well be separated from me by an infinite gap. I'm not getting the least bit of social advantage being "connected" to him or her in any way.
.. but the message here is that I'm not getting hurt either, I guess. Somewhere down the road I may come to a bridge - a bridge I have never crossed before and may never cross again but may on that particular occasion have reason to cross it then. If I've burned it already then I'm screwed.. and if I've not even built it yet..
Will there be a day when I can travel to L.A. or Bangkok or Madrid or Buenos Aires and drop into a cafe, open my laptop (or my jacket or just my eye - as my computer will be me and I will be my computer) and quickly find all my "friends" in that city, call them up, and find a place to crash? Will I ever be able to gain a palpable advantage by having these "friends"? And in this day and age of always-on-always-connected, is there really six degrees of separation anymore?
What is the ultimate consequences of being thoroughly connected - not only to your email and your data but to people and companies?
What will we gain or lose by being one step away from our worst enemies?
How far away, truly, is the farthest person in this world?
If Bush was on friendster, how do you want to bet Osama Bin Laden would be in if not his first degree of friends at least his second?
20031113
is the severe lack of pictures and lack of popular and contemporary culture here and how it's probably the direct cause for my extreme lack of readership.
That or I just have nothing to say at all. Or I just write poorly.
Whatever the case may be, I still think I'd do better with some hot pics on here.. like the kind the busblog always seems to have. Dirty scary overexposed sexy luscious over-indulgent pictures of celebrities doing the things we all do behind closed doors but loving every minute of seeing famous people do it - maybe even more so than us really actually doing it ourselves because folks, the grass is always greener. Things are always prettier and a little more shiny on the other side of the street. The rims on the benz in the driveway next to yours bling a little more in the morning when you're trudging to your chevy. The grass, sometimes, is just literally greener.
Japan delayed shipping troops to Iraq today, along with some of our other "allies" due to
the recent surge in anticoalition violence
Which is to say they are mamsy-pamsies. Which is to say that they're all for helping out and pitching a helping hand provided that hand doesn't come back bloody and severed. Which is to say anything for a quick buck and another aid package from the U.S. of A.
I am not pro war. I am not pro bush. I am not, by and large, of a proletarian nature - despite my clear place in the working force of this nation. You see, I live in two places, two states, two universes that intersect only slightly and barely and only one one complex plane. There is no three or four or five dimensional space - volume as it were - that is shared by these to universes, only a line a boundary a fence. These two universes are 1 - the one we are sharing right now in which war and gravity and crappy mcdonald's wages are a sure and regular thing - and 2 - the universe inside my head comprised not of matter but of thought, not of flesh but of mind and war and gravity are only concepts, foreign in nature and mostly incomprehensible. My point is I live much more in this second universe - the universe of my mind - then I do in this physical universe we like to call home. So, despite my appearance as a fully-functioning cog in the wheel of democratic justice and capitilist dominance.. well... I just stopped by to help.. I wasn't planning on staying for long.
So don't blame me for my contradicting views. Don't blame me for hating Bush and hating Japan for it's cowardly ways in the same breath. Don't blame me for not making a whole lot of sense.
Is it me or is Madonna just getting old?
In other news, Time Magazine named the iTunes Music Store the The Invention Of The Year. Seems a bit premature, to me, it being only early November but fine.. I'll take it. And so will Wal-Mart, apparently, as it plans on opening an online music store of it's own right shortly. That will make it three?.. four? At least four major forays into the online music business in the last six months, including Apple (400,000 reported songs), BuyMusic.com (300,000 reported songs), Napster (aka Roxio) (500,000 reported songs), and the soon to be Wal-Mart venture to start with a reported 200,000 songs.
99 cents seems to be the going rate but Wal-Mart looks to be trying to come in under that.
Anyhow, any way you slice the pie, I still like mine free. It's going to be awhile before you see 99 cent credit card charges on my statement but I have a strange feeling that the people called bullshit on the RIAA and the people, well .. they haven't won yet but they may be on their way.
(or perhaps the RIAA has just found a way to get people to pay practically the same amount of money but without the cost of packaging or distribution.. now who is it that is winning again?)
That's all folks.
A good chuckle over at The Onion about someone's mom discovering their blog.
'Really, the blog is just a record of what I think about the world and how I spend my free time,' Widmar said. 'In other words, exactly the sort of information that no 30-year-old wants his mom to have access to.'
It's funny, sort of.. kind of .. um.. well, it actually sounds real - and that's the scary thing. Ain't nothin' funny 'bout my mom finding this site..
20031112
And I'll say it again
and again
and once more.
No one likes you when you're 23, ain't that the truth. Or when you're 24, or 25, or 26. Once you're older than, like, 6, there is always someone out there whose gonna be hating on your ass. If you're younger than 6 than all your contemporaries are too young to understand greed and jealousy enough to manifest it as directed hate.. and you don't really have much that people older than 6 want - except maybe a lot of free time and the right to shit your pants without much fanfare.
But once you hit that golden age of 7, once you're "lucky" as they like to say, things start to change. The boy across the street wants your bike and the neighbourhood girls fight about you even though they don't know why. Half of them are fighting cause they think you're an asshole and they can't understand why the other half love you to death. The other half are too confused trying to figure out why they like you that they are left pretty much defensless and always end up getting beaten up by the more savvy haters.
In this life, the first to hate is the first to rate. Hating is the prime perogative and being the first one who can command those feelings of jealousy and contempt is like getting pole position at the races - you're already half way to being the big winner - already way ahead of the rest of the group.
Anyway, no one likes me cause I'm 25, going on 26, and I still don't have much for pictures up on this sloppy thing. I haven't redesigned in ages and as anyone who has been watching the car manufacturers lately, you know you gotta redesign or be left in the dust. I don't have super duper javascript and the only techno-babble acronym I can use when describing the way this site is put together is HTML - and that is soooo 90's.
Boooring. I know.
So go ahead and keep on hating cause that's what keeps the world going 'round. Or at least the U.S. of fucking A. Goddamn right!
I watched Bowling for Columbine (again) last night and (again) I have to ask the same goddamn question that no one seems to get: If it ain't the guns, then what is it?. Michael Moore clearly showed that Europe, Asia, even Canada has far fewer gun deaths a year than the U.S. - by a factors of 10's and 100's - yet Canada still has a huge number of guns at their disposal. What's up with that, eh? And still, Michael Moore comes across as a anti-gun nazi and he is ostracized. Okay, sure.. he's a bit of a whack job with all his outspoken teary-eyed speeches.. He could be doing a better job by not alienating himself but still.. He outlined a very good point that no one seems to get: IT MOST LIKELY IS NOT THE GUNS!
It's been said before and I'll say it again. Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
I don't own a gun and I'm not a pro-gun fanatic. I'm not a member of the NRA and I've never been hunting. I do, however, believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. I do believe in certain unalienable rights - not for the sake of rights but for the sake of freedom.
I have, in my time, played a few rounds of paintball. I have aimed a projectile 'weapon' at a human being and knowingly pulled the trigger. I hit a few of those humans I was aiming at, too.. and you know what? It felt good. It was exhilarating. It was like hiding behind that pillar in DOOM, pulling out the rifle, aiming carefully, and firing a few dozen rounds into the Cacodemon or whatever horrendous monster happened to present itself at that moment. It was very much like a video game, "killing" people with paint. It was also exhilarating like beating my best friend at a video football game. Throwing that last 25 yard desperation pass into the endzone with 3 seconds left on the clock and down by 6. It was exhilarating like inching by my opponent in MotoGP, my finger mashed down on the acceleration button with all my concentration boring into the screen, only to win the race in the final stretch by .2 seconds. It was exhilarating like flipping a foosball rod with decisive authority and hearing the tin-metal bang of the ball hitting the back of the goal to win the final game (10-9) of a five-game series after work on a thursday night, while drinking a beer or two and enjoying the thought of a friday vacation day.
Humans are, by nature, a competitive species. Nature, itself, by nature, is a competitive system. Survival of the fittest and all that jazz. To ignore it or pretend it isn't there - it's ludacris. Such is the world we live in but does that mean we need to blame our woes on the guns in our hands? No. Does it mean that, in our advanced society, we must stamp out or be stamped out? No. Is it hard for people to deal with the instinctual urges of survival of the fittest while at the same time living in a society that purports equality is the answer while, at the same time, the natural system of capitalism becomes more and more entrenched while, at the same time, measures such as affirmative action and gender equality are enacted in order to fight - or at least give the appearance of fighting - agasint the capitalist-survival-of-the-fittest-only-the-strong-survive? Yeah, I think it might be a little hard. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Society kills people. Nature kills people.
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20031110
What is it about gringos thinking they can run off to Mexico and disappear after they kill people? Like Mexico is the perfect place for a white guy to hole up. You know, cause he wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb.
People get nervous around dead bodies and they end up making silly decisions like peeing on the body and running off to mexico. I mean really, who runs off to mexico?
There are a ton of white guys in Canada. There are a ton of pretty much every race in Canada, actually, and they have pretty decent strip bars, good beer, and cheap food. They are a heck of a lot more tolerant up there and so if you peed on a dead body, it's okay.. just head north.
Crossing the border into Canada is a cinch. Ask Jaime. They sort of look at you weird, ask you where you are going, and then let you go on your way. Sometimes they ask off questions like "Do you smoke?" or "When were you born?" just to see if you're nervous but heck, if you've peed on a dead body you must be stone cold so you shouldn't have any problems getting through. Just tell them you're heading north to check out some beer and tits and they'll happily step aside.
People will do pretty much anything for economics. Who would think that such a dry subject pretty much runs the lives of six billion people? six billion squirming writhing struggling people? Sure sure, love and sex and cartoons sometimes plays into things but all the serious shit going down in the world - it's all economics.
Like Oil. Did you see the last season of 24? Yeah, see.. it's all about the economy. It's about money and power and greed and more money. Green stuff. Is it so strange that green is the color of desire and greed? Is it so odd that the Statue of Liberty is green? Hmmm?
And to think we don't even have enough money to let people visit the Statue of Liberty. That symbol of freedom of hope of all the things that the U.S. used to actually stand for before Bush and Clinton made a clown's mess of things, before Reagan made pun of our economy and carter made a farce of our global strength and nixon shook his jowels at the nation and then croaked like a bullfrog.
Somewhere up there in Canada or down there in Mexico there is a gringo. A murderer and a theif. Someone who has peed on a dead body. They're up there or down there enjoying some cheap beer and maybe some smokes and they're laughing and while one might have a suntan the other might have frostbite, but that's okay cause they got out. They got away from the economics of things. The got away from 'the economy'.
Cause canada and mexico sure as hell don't got one.
20031103
I just sent a great idea to both weekly's here in portland and one of them was kind enough to reply and tell me they didn't have room and the other one didn't even do that.
punk ass bitches.
don't know a good thing when they see one. that's the problem with this world - punk ass bitches and their not knowing when to take a good thing and jump on it.
it's such a great idea that i can't write it down here for you but i'll tell you that it's great and that you're welcome to it if you want to give it a whirl in your town, try calling up your weekly rag and try to get them to publish your column that was mine is now yours cause i told you all about it and gave you free license cause it's a ripped off idea in the first place.
but now i'm all talkin future like-it's-the-past bullshit so i digress.
so lemme know if you want a good fucking idea for an edgy newspaper column, eh?
-m
anti is suggesting a swap meet for mcdonald's monopoly pieces. how great is that idea?
stick it to the man.
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the guys: philogynist jaime tony - the gals:raymi raspil
