Okay...I'm kinda creeped out

It's really unnerving watching it scramble for balance. I half-expected it to attack the guy that pushed it.

And because I am a geek...how long before we get to this point?

Nigger? Please.

Time to update schools' reading lists
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/394832_nword06.html

By JOHN FOLEY

GUEST COLUMNIST

John Foley of Vancouver is an English teacher at Ridgefield High School in southern Washington.

The time has arrived to update the literature we use in high school classrooms. Barack Obama is president of the United States, and novels that use the "N-word" repeatedly need to go.

Oh dear god. Is there nothing more important to worry about? Try addressing the fact that your students don't know how to use their native language correctly, and possess zero comprehension skills. Are novels that use ‘myopic, self-important, censorious jackass’ still okay?

To a certain extent, this saddens me, because I love "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Of Mice and Men" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." All are American classics, and my students read them as part of approved sophomore and junior units, as do millions of students across the nation.

His students were born about 1992. Remember that.

They all must go.

I hope they go to private and public libraries and remain in high school classrooms. I would keep copies in my own classroom and encourage students to read them. But they don't belong on the curriculum. Not anymore. Those books are old, and we're ready for new.

What year would be a good cutoff date, perfesser? To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. Maybe you could teach your classes from Oprah’s reading lists. They’re current.

Even if Huck Finn didn't contain the N-word and demeaning stereotypes, it would remain a tough sell to students accustomed to fast-paced everything. The novel meanders along slower than the Mississippi River and uses a Southern dialect every bit as challenging as Shakespeare's Old English.

Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English (sometimes called Elizabethan English), which has about 300 years of language evolution on Old English. What class do you teach again?

Explaining that Twain wasn't a racist -- or at least didn't hate African-Americans (he had a well-documented prejudice against Native Americans) -- is a daunting challenge. I explain that Jim, a black man, is the hero of the book. I tell them Huck eventually sees the error of his ways, apologizes to Jim and commits himself to helping him escape slavery. Yes, I tell them, he does all this while continuing to refer to Jim by the demeaning word, but Twain was merely being realistic.

Many students just hear the N-word. This is particularly true, of course, of African-American students. I have not taught Huck Finn in a predominantly black classroom, and I think it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do so effectively. With few exceptions, all the black students in my classes over the years have appeared very uncomfortable when I've discussed these matters at the beginning of the unit. And I never want to rationalize Huck Finn to an angry African-American mom again as long as I breathe.

So sorry that it falls to you to explain how these books are actually anti-racist. Teaching can be tough. Suck it up or retire.

John Steinbeck's "Mice" and Harper Lee's "Mockingbird" don't belong on the curriculum, either. Atticus Finch, the heroic attorney in Lee's novel, tells his daughter not to use the N-word because it's "common." That might've been an enlightened attitude for a Southerner during the Great Depression, but is hopelessly dated now.

I cannot believe a teacher who is supposed to build on the foundations of literature going back thousands of years just used the expression “hopelessly dated.” And which part is hopelessly dated? The use of “common” to mean “lowborn or base”, or holding the attitude that we shouldn’t use the word?

What books should replace these classics? The easiest call is for "Mockingbird." David Guterson's fine "Snow Falling on Cedars" has similar themes and many parallels, and since the novel is set in the San Juan Islands, it would hold more interest for Washington students than the Alabama setting of Lee's novel.

Setting aside the stupidity of determining curriculum by geographic location, don’t you think the phrase “that fucking goddamn lap bitch” [page 251] might be at least as objectionable as “nigger” to some? Does Obama approve of lap dancing?

I think a good substitute for "Mice" would be Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel "Going After Cacciato."

“Nigger,” Oscar said. The boy lit up. “Nigger!” the boy said. [page 113]

Like George and Lennie in Steinbeck's novel, Cacciato dreams of peace and a better world. And the Vietnam War is a more recent -- and arguably more painful -- era in American history than the Depression, and one of more interest to teens.

What is it with Liberals and the fucking Vietnam War?

Technically, America got involved in the Vietnam conflict in 1950, ten years before To Kill a Mockingbird was published. Don’t you think that’s a little…old…perfessor? Your students weren’t even born until 17 years after the war ended. It has exactly as much relevance to them as the Great Depression.

"Huck Finn" is the toughest book to replace; it's so utterly original. The best choice, in my view, would be Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." Like Huck, "Dove" involves an epic journey of discovery and loss and addresses an important social issue -- the terrible treatment of women in the Old West. That issue does not rank as high as slavery on our national list of shame, but it definitely makes the list.

“Niggers eat turtles”’ “have a nigger bring you buttermilk”, “I’ve went with a nigger”, “The news about the nigger”, “a bad nigger they ride with”, “I think I hit the nigger”, “Don’t you tie me, nigger boy”, Nigger boy, don’t you get near me”, “and this nigger boy, too”, “you’ve got a nigger for a scout”, “Leave me that nigger”, “They’re just red niggers, anyway”, “Soupy Jones and Bert Borum, who didn’t feel it appropriate for white men to talk much to niggers, exchanged the view that nevertheless this one had been uncommonly decent.” [Lonesome Dove]

Some might call this apostasy; I call it common sense. Obama's victory signals that Americans are ready for change. Let's follow his lead and make a change that removes the N-word from the high school curriculum.

Yeah, John. You’re off to a great start with your suggestions.

When it rains, it pours.

Mayor Bloomberg Declares War On ... Salt

Hizzoner Calls On U.S. Manufacturers To Reduce Salt Content Until It Results In A 50 Percent Cut In 10 Years

Singer Jimmy Buffett will never find his "lost shaker of salt" in New York City or any other place in the country if Mayor Michael Bloomberg has his way. The mayor is waging a war on salt and he wants food manufacturers and restaurants to join his army … or else…

Thomas Frieden, the city's health commissioner, said he wants manufacturers and restaurants to join the war on salt voluntarily. If they don't, the city could pass legislation making it the law.

http://wcbstv.com/politics/bloomberg.war.on.2.920343.html


Yo, man, where y’all goin’? Y’all goin’ in that restaurant over there? Huh? Y’all got a reservation…or one a them uh…‘Call Ahead’ numbers or somethin’?

Hey…lissen…y’all got any spice?

Now y’all ain’t a cop or anything, huh? Naw…y’all ain’t no cop. No cop ever wore $500 shoes like them there. Pretty lady on the arm, too. How y’all doin’, Miss? Alright. Yeah, that’s good.

Now look here, y’all…a fancy couple deserve the finer things in life, dig? ‘specially when y’all be eatin’ in one a them upper class places here on the Ave. What y’all need is somethin’ that ain’t on the menu, right? A little party flavor? So look here…I can let y’all have some reg’lar NaCl for an even ten, right? Just wait ‘til the gar-sawn turn his back, and sprinkle it on y’all’s salad. We’re talkin’ big-time taste, yeah? An’ look here…a little more’ll getcha the fancy stuff, if y’all think y’all can handle it. Check it…I got Cypress Flake if y’all havin’ seafood, Himalayan – course and fine, I even got Alaea Hawaiian if y’all gettin’ somethin’ off the grill.

What’s that? You want Fleur De Sel de Camargue? Well well well. It sure is nice to meet a man what knows his salt. Y’all know that shit’s expensive, yeah? On account a it bein’ imported? Yeah… y’all know. Well y’all just got lucky, cuz I’m the only shaker this side the park what carries that shit. Y’all got the cash, I got the crystals. Y’all know what I’m sayin’? Let’s step over here out the way and see what kind a business we can work.

Chaucer, it ain't.

Dallas City Council approves $165,674 expenditure to hire new smoking law enforcers

On the heels of passing a sweeping municipal smoking ordinance expansion last month, the Dallas City Council this morning voted to spend $165,674 in contingency reserve funds to hire new smoking law enforcers.

The expenditure is necessary, City Manager Mary Suhm said, in order to adequately address complaints about smoking occurring within buildings such as bars, billiard halls and most other indoor workplaces. Smoking in such venues becomes illegal come April 10. The expenditure funds three new "sanitarian" positions in the Environmental and Health Services Department.

http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/dallas-city-council-approves-1.html


It was all Tony’s fault.

We were at Michael’s house, like most every Friday night. His parents worked nights at the Bureau of Health, checking the menus of the area restaurants against shipping manifests to make sure they were in compliance with the various Meat-Consumption Reduction laws, so we had the place to ourselves.

We were in the basement. Michael and I were in the “lab” we’d built in one corner. Tony was keeping one eye on the security monitors and the other on the antique pinball machine he was playing. Eric was at the desk, patiently manipulating higher-order algorithms to manufacture realistic-looking “results” from our “experiment.”

Looking back, I can’t believe we got away with it for so long. A handful of bored high-school students against the all-seeing eye of the government? Yeah, you laugh now, but at the time, we thought we were oh-so clever.

Back then, every citizen enrolled in the Governmental schools had to complete a series of courses in Earth Stewardship and Cultural Sensitivity, among others. If you didn’t complete these courses, you wouldn’t be likely to get a job. When three out of every five people worked for a Governmental Agency, it was an incentive to pass the courses. Of course, if you didn’t want to work, that was your right, too, and there was a multitude of Governmental Assistance programs – each with it’s own office, staff, mission statement, and bloated budget – available to help you.

As long as you passed the courses.

It was Eric that first suggested the plan to me, and once he convinced me, I talked it up to the others. We went to our Earth Stewardship professor and told him we wanted to prove the connection between carbon dioxide and Global Warming. It didn’t matter that huge Governmental Agencies with a thousand times the manpower and infinite access to money and equipment hadn’t yet managed to do it, he admired our pluck and Yes We Can! attitudes, so helped us with the environmental permits we needed in order to purchase old-fashioned filament light bulbs, real wood, and a small gas generator. He even allowed us to clone his gas ration card so we’d have the juice to run everything, and made suggestions on which hockey-stick graphs were easiest to produce. He even got us an Educational Exception permit for ordering the seeds from the Governmental germplasm warehouse.

We’d specified balsam fir seeds when we presented the plan to our professor, but Eric ran the permit chips through his home-built (and highly illegal) off-the-network computer and converted them.

When the package came, we couldn’t believe we had gotten away with it. Inside the recycled cardboard box was a plain brown envelope. Within that, the seeds of our own destruction.

Tobacco.

We were all heavy smokers, sometimes having as many as three in a week. We had our network of suppliers, people who maintained a plant or two hidden in abandoned talk radio stations or burnt-out libraries. Not only was it a very expensive habit, it was getting more and more difficult to find a place we could smoke in peace. Especially after the city developed the Sanitarian Corp.

The Sanitarians’ mission is to patrol the city and write up Health Code infractions. Like their counterparts in other Governmental Law Enforcement Agencies, the majority of their operating budget comes from the fines they impose. Whenever they need more money, the State creates more laws. Even if the old prison system hadn’t been converted into a Governmental Counseling Group, there was no way they’d be able to hold all of the criminals these new laws create, so the punishments are always fines.

Then, smoking in public was a $10,000 first-offense, with attendant Addiction Counseling. Even smoking in your own home required a permit, the agreement of your neighbors, and annual Interior Environmental checks. The number of places you could smoke in the city had dwindled to about a dozen small lots scattered around the perimeter. The public transport didn’t even get out that far; you had to walk the last mile or so – not something smokers were likely to do if they could help it.

So our brilliant idea was not only to grow our own tobacco, but set up a place in Michael’s basement where we could smoke in peace, using the “experiment” to cloak our criminal behavior.

On that particular Friday night, I had just lit up one of my eco-specials, a cigarette made out of one small leaf rolled into a loose tube. It had no paper, which meant no trees were harmed, and had no filter, which meant no wads of cotton would blight the landscape. I didn’t expect to get one of the monthly Green Citizen Awards, however.

I was just settling back against the cushion under the exhaust vent when Tony burst in.

“Sanitarians, Davey!”

I jumped up, frantically burying the cig in the can of baking powder we kept to mask the smell of old tobacco, while Tony misted a little ammonia into the air. The Sanitarians sometimes use dogs. I joined Eric and Michael at the monitors, watching as the doors on the black vans slid open, disgorging body-armored agents.

Michael looked pale, even in the glow of the full-color HD monitors. His parents were going to kill him, once they found a new place to live, that is. Depending on the size of your garden, the Sanitarians have license to seize your home; a practice entrenched by the decades-long War on Drugs. Even though we never sold any of our yield, they could have still charged Michael with distribution since the rest of us didn’t live there.

“How did they find out? How did they find out?” Michael chanted over and over. A mantra to try and block out the reality of what was happening.

“Maybe one of your neighbors smelled it,” Eric said. “Doesn’t matter. They’re here, now.”

“Think they’ll believe it’s just a GW experiment?” I mused.

“Not if they ask for the original permit chips,” Eric said. “They’ll find where I wiped them.”

“Then we may as well go all the way,” Tony said from the corner. We looked over to see that he was now holding two pistols.

We were in shock. Up to this point, we were in deep shit, yes, but nothing we wouldn’t eventually recover from. Some counseling, some fines, some Community Service. A lawyer that was devious enough could probably even stop the seizure of the house.

The guns changed all that.

Once an illegal weapon is brought in, all bets are off. The Sanitarians, just like the other Enforcers, are authorized to use extreme prejudice under the Retroactive Abortion Act. It’s reasoned that any citizen that circumvents the multitude of laws against buying guns, owning guns, and carrying guns (not to mention all of the similar laws regulating ammunition), as well as resisting all of the psych profiles and conditioning built in to the system, is an incredibly dangerous individual who is beyond redemption, and shouldn’t have been allowed to be born to begin with.

“T-Tony?” Michael stammered. “What the fuck are you doing with those?”

I’ll always remember how tired Tony looked at that moment.

“I can’t take it anymore, guys,” he said matter-of-factly. “You can’t go anywhere without cameras following you. Every purchase is entered into a database. Every call is listened to. Every net search is snooped. All of our homework is analyzed, and all of our activities have to be approved. It drives me crazy, sometimes.”

“Tony,” I pleaded, “just put the guns down. Seriously, man, we’ll get through this as long as they don’t see those.”

He smiled. “Sorry, Davey. I’d rather not spend the rest of my life under the microscope. I want to be absolutely free for once.”

And with that, Tony ran up the basement steps and disappeared into the dark house. We jumped for the monitors, watching with growing alarm as it became evident that Tony had been spotted in a second-floor window. We didn’t have sound on the CCTV system, but we heard the faint reports of Tony’s guns. One of the Sanitarians suddenly clutched his arm and spun down to the ground. He was dragged away by those nearest him while others brought out a heavy tube. We didn’t know what was in it at first, but when it fired, the delicate circuits in our cameras died under the intensity of the glare.

Magnesium.

I don’t remember much about the rest of that night. There was only one way out of the basement, and none of us wanted to go out while the Sanitarians had their tempers up. By the time we smelled the smoke from the burning house, set alight by the magnesium flare, it was too late. It collapsed on us shortly thereafter.

Ironically, I survived because I’d cowered in the very lab that caused the whole thing. The irrigation system we’d rigged dropped enough water around me to partially put out the fire, though I still lost my legs when a joist fell across them. My three closest friends are dead, and I live with the guilt of knowing I had a part in convincing them to try and thwart the law.

I know you kids are thinking that I just give these speeches to you as part of my Community Service requirement, and that is how it started. But I fulfilled those hours long ago, and now I continue visiting groups like your Healthful Behavior Awareness class here to serve as a warning. Not just because the Sanitarians pay me a stipend, but because I’ve genuinely learned my lesson, and hope that you’ll avoid the same mistakes I made.

Thank you for listening.

Sharp Knees

Mrs. Cat and I were discussing some of the things I noted in yesterday’s post (see…I do have adult supervision), and she brought up a really interesting point. I raised the issue of women’s self-image problems, and we were discussing the role of the media in shaping what was considered “beautiful.” Her point was that whenever someone raised a stink about the unrealistic ideals as presented by the fashion industry, the media, or adult entertainment venues, everyone looks at it as being harmful to young girls’ self-image, and no one ever brings up the fact that young men are also being influenced.

What prompted her observation was the commentary on the HCwD website I linked to yesterday. As with most other sites, allowing anonymous comments tends to bring out the reptilian nature of people, and the males that were posting were either super-critical or totally misogynistic.

“Guys want big boobs,” she ranted, “but if a woman has them everyone rushes to dismiss them as fake. And if they are real, guys bitch about sagging when she gets older.”

I’ve long-held the view that men who leave their wives and families just because the woman’s gotten older are the worst kind of shallow, vapid, narcissistic assholes on the planet. These are the fuckers with the bald spot, the paunch, the sports car and the trophy wife. If you weren’t aware that your wife was going to change as she got older, what the hell are you doing claiming to be a responsible adult? My take is that the guy that dumps his wife to seek out one of these miracles of modern plastic has his own image problems. He hopes that people will focus on his woman, and overlook any glaring faults he may have in light of the fact that the gold-digger chooses to be with him.

I’m juggling stereotypes here, obviously. I’ve also seen posts that rag on comments from people that boorishly document why a certain gal or guy is not up to their standards. FARK.com is pretty good for that kind of snark, and someone usually posts a variation on ‘real women have curves’.

But where do guys get the idea that women will never change? From the same outlets that bombard the women. Ever notice there are very few actresses or models in their 40s and 50s? Most of the roles and campaigns focus on the ages of 16-36. After that, it skips to “kindly grandmother” type. There aren’t really that many older women that are held up as a standard of beauty – unless they look 10-15 years younger than they really are. These women spend hours in a makeup chair before being photographed in perfect lighting, and are digitally enhanced afterwards. The only exception that comes to mind is Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign.




Think about it, Hollywood oohed and aahed over Nicole Kidman in The Hours and Charlize Theron in Monster. Why? They didn’t wear makeup and deliberately made themselves ugly. That was considered to be brave of them. Val Kilmer and Robert DeNiro have both gotten press for changing their weight for roles, but nowhere near the amount of ink that the two glamorous women got. The unspoken question was “Weren’t you afraid you wouldn’t be able to go back?”

I would hope that guys would look at their own graying hair, spreading gut, and wrinkling skin, and realize that the female of the species will also go through similar changes. Yes, physical attractiveness is a necessary part of keeping the species going – Tom Robbins opined that “young girls are the biological equivalent of a ‘new car’ smell” – but it is not the alpha and omega. Once you get to the point where you’re echoing Wooderson from Dazed and Confused (“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”), you can probably assume you’re no longer offering a positive contribution to society on balance.

And I especially hope that in this age of Photoshop, guys would understand they can’t trust any picture to necessarily be an honest representation of a woman’s appearance.

No Tools Required

Mrs. Cat and I were surfing through Deep Cable last night, idly scanning to see if anything interesting was on (I’ll save you the suspense…no), and stumbled across two more examples of why our country is completely fucked.

First, we landed on Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, where a gentleman who majored in Speech and worked for Army Intelligence could not identify the preposition in a sentence, and did not know which organ produced insulin. Now, I would have assumed a Speech major would have been given at least a cursory breakdown of the parts of speech along with their Rhetoric courses, but apparently knowing the difference between a proper noun and a preposition was not given a high priority when he was matriculating. And while one could argue that only diabetics and the doctors that treat them need to know that the pancreas produces insulin, I would hope that if an order ever came down for the Army to storm the Isles of Langerhans, someone would say “Yeah…about that…”.

The second incident occurred on Tool Academy. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the show gathers together a number of men who apparently learned all they know about how to treat women by watching porn, and tries to reform them. Sort of a Guido/Playa version of My Fair Lady (for the visual learners) or Pygmalion (for the lit crowd). I would argue the mere existence of this show is another indicator of the coming collapse, but more specifically, the segment we subjected ourselves to had a female coach explaining to the guys about attitudes that women found desirable in a mate, and how this particular batch of testosterone junkies were lacking in these attributes. The exchange:

Coach: “You need to learn humility. Do you know what ‘humility’ means?”
Neanderthal: “Uh…humor?”

At this point, my brain ejected a goodly portion of my remaining IQ points in an effort to save enough memory to restore baseline bodily functions once the program had ended.

Hate to break it to you, Studly, but women do not want a guy that makes them laugh above all else, despite what Jessica Rabbit says. Oh, and humility does not mean humor, you ignorant troglodyte! Read a fucking book every once in a while! Your erstwhile mate might want the reassurance that you won’t be a bouncer for the rest of your life.


He makes me laugh. And he has a large…vocabulary.

I’ll admit to tapping into some residual high school nerd-rage, where the beautiful people hooked up irrespective of GPA, but I’m also decidedly Southern when it comes to how I treat women. Libbers hate it, but a sense of chivalry still exists in the South, and my mother would make a concerted effort to return from the Other Side and haunt me if I treated women the way some of these boys do.

And apparently I’m not the only one that feels this way, given the popularity of this site .

Yes, I know there are many self-esteem issues certain types of women work through (or don’t) by dating these slabs of flesh unsullied by anything resembling original thought. Mrs. Cat has a choice list of terms for those kinds of women, which I won’t repeat because of the aforementioned threat of maternal poltergeist activity.

Because I’m smarter than a fifth grader, don’cha know.

Commercially driven

The University of Chicago Press publishes the “Journal of Consumer Research,” and one of their latest articles claims that commercial interruptions actually enhance a viewer’s enjoyment of a show. It didn’t seem to matter about the length or nature of the interruption, but the interruption itself was crucial.

The central argument is that viewers adapt to the level of comedy, suspense, etc. in the program, and their enjoyment diminishes as a result. The commercials allow the viewer's adaptation to recede, so they can enjoy the program more thoroughly when it comes back on.

The précis of the study did allow that some people don’t “adapt” to the shows, and that some programs do not lead to adaptation, but that information was presented as the exception that proves the rule.

This blog will continue after a word from the Arachnid Gymnastics Team.



I’m too cheap/poor/apathetic to pay to unlock the entire article, but I would be interested in seeing some of the specifics of this study (like who paid for it, for one). The only show that was mentioned specifically was Taxi, where one group was shown an episode with commercials, and another group shown the same episode without them. I don’t know how they measured “enjoyment,” but the group that had commercial breaks showed more enjoyment by a wide margin. I’m sure the researchers controlled for the idea that these people hated Taxi, so anything that interrupted it was welcome.

See, here’s the thing: television programs are written specifically to be interrupted every so often. There are many books on writing for television, and most of them advise the writer on how to structure their episode to make sure the audience comes back after the commercials. This usually involves a mini cliffhanger in dramas, or a setup for a wacky misunderstanding in comedies. Watching these programs without the interruptions throws off the rhythm of the show. I know, because I watch most television shows online or on DVD, and that rapid fade out/fade in is jarring.

We’ll be right back.



I remember when Fringe first aired, it was presented commercial-free, and the writers structured their stories to unfold more organically, rather than in discrete chunks. I’ve stopped watching it, so I don’t know if this is still the case, but the writing for films is structured the same way, and audiences manage to stay entertained throughout the entire two hours (depending on the quality of the film, of course). I’m sure that when watching a movie on a cable channel, you’ve been irritated when a commercial cut in at a seemingly random point – in the middle of an action scene, for example, or a conversation between the two leads. That’s because the movie wasn’t written for these breaks, and they have to get shoehorned in for the sponsors. I especially hate it when they break right before the film ends, so there’s three to four minutes of commercials, then about forty-five seconds of the movie when you get back.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, right after this message from Benny Lava.



So though I’m sure they got some interesting, verifiable results, I think the structure of the script has more to do with it than anything else.

I’d like to thank the Academy

Now I have a free evening – February 22nd.

See, I won’t be tuning in to see the Oscars this year because 1) the speeches always go on way too long, 2) there are only about ten awards that the viewing public gives a rat’s ass about, so the rest of the show is annoying filler, and 3) the Academy members are all pretentious douchebags.

What’s the point of making a movie? To entertain? Nay, my innocent friend. Oh that may be the stated goal – to put a smile on the faces of all the children – but you can bet your buttered popcorn those studios are in it for the money, and only the money. They leave the happiness hokum to the PR flacks and the Marketing shills.

So Hollywood turns out huge, action-loaded special effects bonanzas in the summer to get the money they need to finance the rom-coms, period pieces, and dramas they foist on us the rest of the year, then completely ignore those popular films during Awards time.

It’s total bullshit.

Look at this year’s nominees for Best Picture:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog Millionaire.

How many of you have seen The Reader? How many of you have even heard of The Reader?

Taken all together, these five movies cost $247 million to make, and as of today, have only earned a combined total of $184,598,493 – a loss of $62,401,507.

By contrast, The Dark Knight cost $185 million to make, and is the second highest-grossing film of all time, earning $531,037,655 – almost a 300% return. But of course, it wasn’t an “important” film, so no Best Picture nomination was forthcoming. Oh they might give Heath Ledger Best Supporting Actor because he died, but had he lived, you know he wouldn’t have been nominated.

I checked the earnings of the Best Picture winners for the last fifteen years, and none of them lost money. If the Academy wants to continue that trend, then it’s really between Milk and Slumdog Millionaire, since they’re the only two nominees that have made a profit. It will come down to whether the Academy members feel they should pander to the gay community or the “poor Indians” this year. Since they slobbered all over Brokeback Mountain a couple of years ago, I’m betting they’ll give the statue to Slumdog. Interestingly, if you read the reviews of Slumdog at IMDB, you’ll find that Western audiences overwhelmingly love it – it “touched” them – while audiences in India and other Asian nations generally don’t like it, complaining about the stereotypes as presented by its Western director.

But people’s reactions don’t mean anything to the studios (otherwise, why would they greenlight a Karate Kid remake?) They want you to give them your money, eat your Mike & Ikes, and shut the hell up. It doesn’t matter how much you liked Death Race, they’ll tell you which movies were really important on Oscar night. I’ll save myself the time and ignore it completely. If I wanted to watch a four-hour self-congratulatory smarmy circle jerk, I’d turn on C-Span.

What right do you have?

Like the majority of parents, we have a number of DVDs that the kids thoroughly love, but threaten to send us into spasms of twitching and drooling, followed by diabetic comas. My particular kryptonite is the Kidsongs series. The setup is that a plucky, pan-ethnic group of “adorable” kids descend on a television studio, asking to be allowed to put on their own show. Sort of a modern version of “We’ll put the play on right here in the barn!” Not happy with the amount of sap per serving, the producers added in two magical furry critters that interact with the kids and provide marketing tie-in opportunities.

I keep one of these discs with me at all times in case I accidentally ingest something poisonous.

As with every other video production, each dreadful DVD in this series is preceded by an overly-stern Copyright Protection notice. It admonishes that the disc is licensed for home use only, then advises us that the definition of home excludes clubs, churches, schools, oil rigs and prisons.

I understand why you’d maybe want to keep these discs out of prisons, but I kind of doubt the crew of Baltic rig No. 72B is shattered that they can’t watch badly-choreographed music videos of popular songs as performed by pre-teens.

At what point does the right of the consumer to control the products they’ve purchased outweigh the right of the producers to receive fair market value? That’s the question underlying the fight against the RIAA’s efforts to squeeze every last blood-soaked penny out of the people that would occasionally like to buy a piece of music that can be played on every medium they own without compatibility issues or anti-piracy safeguards locking them out.

If I want to buy a song, the RIAA would prefer that I pay for each version separately – a cda version for disc, an mp3 version for my portable, and a version that would play on my computer. Each of these versions would be engineered so I couldn’t copy them, and each would have its own license tied in to my players so they couldn’t run on someone else’s systems.

However, I don’t want to pay for each song three times. Once I’ve purchased it, I want to be able to put that song wherever I may want to listen to it. Technically, according to the RIAA, playing a disc I’ve purchased in the car when I have passengers breaches their copyright unless my passengers have also purchased their own copies of the disc. At that point, technically, the RIAA can kiss my ass.

As much as I geek on Hardware/Human interfaces, I fear that the first neural shunt will allow the RIAA to inventory the songs I carry in my head and charge me accordingly.

At a different spot on the rights spectrum is the Disclaimer. Unfortunately, our society has gotten so litigious, manufacturers and distributors have been reduced to putting obvious-to the-point-of-absurdity disclaimers on their products. That’s why we end up with warnings like “Not for internal use” on curling irons, and “Caution: Product is flammable” on matchboxes.

Then there are the folks that go so overboard, you can’t help but admire their total unwillingness to accept any responsibility whatsoever, as with the folks at Nelson Rocks Preserve (who I am sure have had to deal with many tourists complaining about these very things):

WARNING

Nature is unpredictable and unsafe. Mountains are dangerous. Many books have been written about these dangers, and there's no way we can list them all here. Read the books…

[lots of other funny stuff here]

By entering the Preserve, you are agreeing that we owe you no duty of care or any other duty. We promise you nothing. We do not and will not even try to keep the premises safe for any purpose. The premises are not safe for any purpose. This is no joke. We won't even try to warn you about any dangerous or hazardous condition, whether we know about it or not. If we do decide to warn you about something, that doesn't mean we will try to warn you about anything else. If we do make an effort to fix an unsafe condition, we may not try to correct any others, and we may make matters worse! We and our employees or agents may do things that are unwise and dangerous. Sorry, we're not responsible. We may give you bad advice. Don't listen to us. In short, ENTER AND USE THE PRESERVE AT YOUR OWN RISK. And have fun!

It is well worth going to http://www.nelsonrocks.org/disclaimer.html and reading the whole thing.

And one of my favorite e-mail disclaimers:

IMPORTANT: This email is intended for the use of the individual addressee(s) named above and may contain information that is confidential, privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is not authorised (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this email, although the yorkshire terrier next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you. Those of you with an over whelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from Microsoft: However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and eggwhites and place it in a warm oven for 40 minutes. Whisk briefly and let it stand for 2 hours before icing.

Something happened. Somewhere. Once.

For all you would-be Woodwards and wanna-be Bernsteins out there, here’s a quick lesson: J-schools emphasize the “5 Ws, 1 H” rule. That’s who, what, when, where, how, and why. Every story should include this information. The following story, though technically following the rule, is still a piece of crap.

Man confesses to sending strange text to UF students and staff

“Gainesville, Florida -- University of Florida officials said a man has confessed to sending a mysterious message through the school's emergency text message system.

UF spokesman Steve Orlando told The Gainesville Sun that the man, a former employee of the university's text messaging service, told investigators the message was sent by accident.

Thousands of current and former faculty, staff and students received a text message reading "The monkey got out of the cage" Tuesday night.

Orlando said it does not appear that university data was compromised.

Authorities are investigating the incident. The university said officials are working to determine which agency has jurisdiction [over] the case.”

http://www.tampabays10.com/news/watercooler/story.aspx?storyid=98673&catid=58



What a fluffy piece of non-committal journalism. Who is the man? Have authorities declined to release his name? If so, say it. Otherwise, you look lazy. Oh. He’s a former employee? Why former? Was he fired or did he quit? For what reason? Again, if no data is forthcoming from the spokespeople, at least let us know you made the damn effort.

An accidental message that apparently compromised no data. So why are authorities still investigating? Why even bother with jurisdiction if it’s as open and shut as you make it out to be? There’s a big difference between

“Whoops! Sorry, guys. I was replying to some personal messages before I left and accidentally sent that one out across the entire system.”

and

“Fire me, will you? I’ll show you. I’ll send this strange message out and make people panic, thereby costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasted man-hours while you try to figure out what it means. Ha!”

Ask. The. Questions.

I remember when Dan Rather and other “professional” journalists dismissed bloggers as “amateurs in their pajamas.” How ironic that these same news outlets, in their rush to compete with the blogosphere, are now pumping out stories that are little more than grapevine gossip.

I have a Bacon Rating of 2, and other short observations

My LinkedIn profile is separated from Kevin Bacon’s by only one shared contact. I am so much cooler than I thought.

Did you know there are entire catalogs for salt? Did you know that some salt is ridiculously expensive?

More people watched American Idol yesterday than watched the Inauguration. That explains a lot.

USA Today has an article today about washing your hands. This apparently qualifies as news to the hopefully-soon-to-be-bankrupt paper.

The movie Fireproof cost about $500,000 to make, and has earned more than $33 million. A 6600% return on investment isn’t too shabby. That’s better than Exxon.

Former French president Jacques Chirac was rushed to a hospital after being mauled by his own 'clinically depressed' pet poodle. The upcoming jokes probably won’t help the dog’s disposition. Or France’s.

Canada is concerned that compact fluorescent bulbs emit harmful UV radiation. Once again, differing alarmist ideologies clash. Who will win this round: the save-Nature-at-all-costs camp or the save-people-from-themselves team?

What is it with Obama and ignorant pastors?

After a brief reading from Rabbi David N. Saperstein and a solo singing performance by Yolanda Adams, Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell – Pres. George Bush’s spiritual advisor – introduced the keynote speaker: Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Jakes read from Daniel 3:19 and used the scripture to offer PEOTUS a series of four lessons for his administration…

After his four lessons, Jakes turned from the crowd and looked directly at Obama.

“The problems are mighty and the solutions are not simple,” Jakes said, “and everywhere you turn there will be a critic waiting to attack every decision that you make. But you are all fired up, Sir, and you are ready to go. And this nation goes with you. God goes with you.

“I say to you as my son who is here today, my 14-year-old son – he probably would not quote scripture. He probably would use Star Trek instead, and so I say,

‘May the force be with you.’”

::facepalm::

Momentous, Indeed

It’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and, appropriately enough, we are on the eve of a historic Inaugural celebration. There are so many topics these events bring to mind – the Civil Rights movement, the paths of Politics, the fact that Inaugural planners have only allocated 5,000 “Porta-Potties” for a crowd of 2-5 million, even the process by which certain days are declared to be holidays. Considering all of that, I chose today to write about badly-designed packaging.

If you eat food, you’ve probably been to a grocery store lately. You may have noticed the packages with the built-in zip-lock closures. Hot dogs, sliced cheeses, frozen foods, a lot of bulk foods that are expected to last beyond a couple of servings – they all seem to have the handy little feature on their brightly-colored plastic wrappings.

For the most part, these closures work just as they’re supposed to, keeping the food fresher than just clipping the ends of the package together, without the added expense of decanting the food into a separate bag.

However…

We make a run to the warehouse store every so often to stock up on staples. Great big jars of peanut butter, huge boxes of cereal, slabs of meat for the freezer…stuff like that. We went just before the holidays to get all of the baking ammunition Mrs. Cat was going to need and picked up, among other things, a big ol’ bag of brown sugar.

This bag of brown sugar has one of the handy-dandy zip-lock closures on it, and I’m pretty sure no one at the factory has ever used their own product. Because if they had, they would have realized that once the zippy thing has been opened, it can never be closed again. Here’s why: the closure, rather than being at the top of the bag like you’d expect, is one-third of the way down the front of the bag. What happens is that when you grab the bag at the top – as is natural when carrying larger bags – the weight of the sugar is enough to pull the zippy thing apart. Plus, whenever you try to scoop sugar out, the stiff plastic of the zippy thing keeps drawing the bag closed again, so it scrapes across your sugar transport mechanism (spoon, cup, etc.), and the concave part of the zippy thing fills with sugar crystals, which means it can’t grip the convex part securely anymore.

I don’t want to repackage all of the sugar because it would take many large zip-lock bags, which would annoy me, so I just bitch every time Mrs. Cat needs to bake something, because I know I’ll be battling the zippy thing again (it’s on an upper shelf she can’t reach).

It’s the absolutely stupidest bag design I’ve ever seen, and I’ve complained about it enough that Mrs. Cat actually threatened me with a meat thermometer if I didn’t stop. This is the last time I’ll say anything about it, Dear. You can put that back in the gadgets drawer.

Probe your customers; it brings them back

I mentioned recently that I had cancelled the home delivery of my paper. I spoke to two people at the paper when I called, and of course they asked why I was cancelling. I told them I didn’t think I was getting my money’s worth, and they accepted that answer.

But that’s where it stopped.

If I were running the paper, I’d make sure there were some follow-up questions. Had they gone a little deeper, they would have found out:

• I didn’t care about their national and world coverage, which I get online.
• Filling the “Area” section of the paper with stories about every single high school team in the county does not constitute area news (that’s why there’s a separate “Sports” section).
• The coupons they distributed were largely useless to my family’s demographics.
• If they were going to rely on the New York Times’ wire service to provide their articles, they should have borrowed their crossword, too.
• Their editing was atrocious.

Even if they didn’t do anything about it immediately, they’d have a lot more information at their disposal when it came time to reformat. Presumably, someone could then contact all of the people who had cancelled and let them know of the changes in hopes of getting them back.

And don’t even get me started on their clunky, user-unfriendly, hey-I-took-an-online-Dreamweaver-class web site. It’s just an electronic version of the regular paper, but even more poorly edited. If they were serious about keeping readers, they should offer us tailored newsfeeds. Give us a list of the features they offer and let us select the ones we want to see. Set it up like a Google homepage. I sign in to my account, and get the real area news (no sports), the “Opinion” section, maybe some Classifieds. Set up an RSS feed for weather changes, school closings, etc. They do offer a section for people to blog, post photos, etc., so on some level, they recognize the importance of involvement from their readers. They should take it a step further and host Town Hall-style e-meetings. Get a local councilman, City Planner or business owner on to field questions; tie into the local college and have some online lectures; get with the Arts council and have an electronic gallery opening.

I’m not holding my breath.

I think the real problem may be lethargy. When you’ve been the only option for so long, you tend to coast, which leads to entrenchment, which leads to apathy. I did tech support for five years, so I know of what I speak. Plus, customers are annoying, so who cares what they want?

The accountants, that’s who.

By way of contrast, when we had our house rewired, the electrical company called to remind us of appointments, confirmed arrival times, did several walkthroughs with us during the process, and called after the job was completed for a satisfaction survey. Would I recommend them? Hell, yes. My paper? Not so much.

Oh, speaking of entrenched thinking: I ordered fish and chips for lunch today, and the waitress asked if I wanted fries with it. Huh?

This post should be censored

“TORONTO — A Toronto parent says if students repeated some of the words from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” in the school halls, they’d be suspended, so he questions why it is OK in the classroom.”

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2009/01/15/8040186.html

Another day, another parent freaking out over a book. People like this make my head hurt. You can’t keep your little snowflakes bubble-wrapped, you know; they need to be exposed to contrary ideas to learn how to handle them. Your argument can be flipped to say: "If students fought each other with swords the way the characters do in Treasure Island, they'd be suspended. So why is it OK in the classroom?" It's ridiculous. If you're that worried about a book warping your child's worldview, you haven't adequately done your job as a parent.

“Age-appropriate” is a sliding scale, differing from child to child, but the book Edwards is concerned about was assigned to the Senior class. The kid is 17. You don’t think the kid hears (and probably says) worse in the halls already? Presenting the book for study is not the same as encouraging the behavior. There are already punishments in place for students caught cursing in the halls. Suspension is the deterrent, not yanking the books out of the students' hands.

“Edwards filed a formal compliant [sic] with the Toronto District School Board last month, arguing that while the futuristic theme of the book is acceptable, its focus on ‘sex, brutal situations, murder, prostitution’ is not.”

So glad the Science Fiction community has Edwards’ approval, unfortunately, the works of Shakespeare, the Greek tragedies (and some of the comedies, like “Lysistrata”), Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Bible, Catcher in the Rye, a lot of Twain, Les Miserables, Dickens’ stuff, Catch-22, Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Don Quixote, Lord of the Flies, Vanity Fair, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, The Art of War, The Lottery, The Most Dangerous Game, The Prince, and the poem Dulce Et Decorum Est will all have to be scrapped. [And that’s just from scanning the bookshelf closest to me.]

"After Edwards complained, his son was assigned another book, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and will step out of class during any discussions on “The Handmaid’s Tale".”

Yeah, because that won't be awkward for the kid. You know how a lot of kids rebel against their parents' values when they go away to college? I bet this boy is thinking: "Man...when I get to college...I'm gonna...gonna...discuss literature! That'll show 'em!"

I wonder if Mr. Edwards will complain when the school’s reading assignments consist of nothing but the Encyclopedia Brown series and “Choose Your Own Adventure” books.

Is this what they mean by change?

AP story, January 13, 2004:

President Bush’s second inauguration will cost tens of millions of dollars — $40 million alone in private donations for the balls, parade and other invitation-only parties. With that kind of money, what could you buy?

■ 200 armored Humvees with the best armor for troops in Iraq.

■ Vaccinations and preventive health care for 22 million children in regions devastated by the tsunami.

■ A down payment on the nation’s deficit, which hit a record-breaking $412 billion last year....

The questions have come from Bush supporters and opponents: Do we need to spend this money on what seems so extravagant?



AP story, January 14, 2009:
(concerning the upcoming $45 million+ inauguration)

So you're attending an inaugural ball saluting the historic election of Barack Obama in the worst economic climate in three generations. Can you get away with glitzing it up and still be appropriate, not to mention comfortable and financially viable?

To quote the man of the hour: Yes, you can. Veteran ballgoers say you should. And fashionistas insist that you must.

"This is a time to celebrate. This is a great moment. Do not dress down. Do not wear the Washington uniform," said Tim Gunn, a native Washingtonian and Chief Creative Officer at Liz Claiborne, Inc.

"Just because the economy is in a downturn, it doesn't mean that style is going to be in a downturn," agreed Ken Downing, fashion director for Neiman Marcus.
And if anyone does raise an eyebrow at those sequins, remind them that optimism is good for times like these. "Just say you're doing it to help the economy," chuckled good manners guru Letitia Baldridge.

Today’s really bad ideas from Hollywood

http://www.cinematical.com/2009/01/14/mcg-wants-will-smith-to-play-captain-nemo/

I don't know how I feel about this prequel. I'm a Nautilus geek, informed at first by Disney's conceptualization of the sub, then by a deeper appreciation of Verne's vision. I even liked the version of Nemo and his sub as presented in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And I kind of like McG's work (even if his moniker is stupid). The Angels films were fun summer fluff, Supernatural isn't bad, and I'm really enjoying Chuck. Plus, he's getting his sci-fi cred in helming Terminator 4.

I am worried about his desire to get Will Smith to play Nemo, though. Smith had his chance in the steampunk genre with Wild Wild West, and we know how that turned out. (On the other hand, Smith turned down the lead in The Matrix to do WWW, so maybe it's all for the good.) Even ignoring the fact that Nemo is Indian and not black, Smith only has two modes: wacky comedic action and Oscar-whoring. Neither would really be appropriate for the Nemo character.

Then there's this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,480029,00.html

Really? A remake of Footloose? Really? It kills me that with all of the original ideas flooding into Hollywood every day, studios would rather churn out the reheated leftovers of meals that weren't particularly good to begin with.

I know this movie isn't aimed at me - who saw the original in the theatre, thank-you-very-much - and that I have the option of ignoring it (which option I fully intend on exercising), but it annoys me that the money going into this project might be taking money from the next Dark City or Memento.

Maybe the studio system should just retire to the nearest Scientology retreat and let the indies have a crack at it for a while. Or, we could follow Ripley's lead:

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure."

Sometimes I feel...

I talked to a friend last night, and she said this post made her head hurt, and that she had to read each line twice. She told me I should write a post and just use one beat words so she could grasp it. It called to my mind the bet Seuss made with one of his friends, to wit: he (Seuss) could write a whole book – that made sense – and use no more than ten times five words. The book? Green Eggs and Ham, which has just one less than ten times five words.

As I try to write this, I see how hard it is to stick to small words, and the flow of each line is cramped. Small words are good for verse, but not so much for prose. It sounds bad, it’s hard to read, so this is as far as I will take it. Hope that will do, Red.


In other, multisyllabic, news, not even a week after I complain about boring newspaper writers, ABC news carried a story online today about a man that allegedly exposed himself to his (male) neighbor during an altercation. The writer included this gem: “Noting an ongoing issue between the two, the officer suggested the two might want to consider a threesome with a mediator.” Sadly, the site has updated the story to read: “Noting an ongoing issue between the two, the officer suggested the two might want to consider a mediator to resolve their differences.” Oh well; back to boring.


I saw on the Washington Post site where D.C. will be getting a slice of the bailout money. Why? To pay for the inauguration. The city is estimating a cost of $47 million, and was only given a third of that by Congress. Bush used a post-Katrina reform that allows the President to pre-designate areas that could become disasters.

I swear, the jokes just write themselves sometimes.


Speaking of disasters in the making, Reuters reports: “Chinese food and drug makers struggling in a declining economy could be tempted to cut corners and ignore quality standards, a senior Chinese official warned as the country awaits court verdicts in a tainted milk scandal.”

So much for my trips to Wal Mart. Of course, the first thing I thought of when reading “tainted milk” was this:

Get this widget Track details eSnips Social DNA

The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

Saw this article at the Wall Street Journal site:

Let's Spend on Broadband and the Power Grid
Not all stimulus is created equal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123180687062275609.html

I liked this bit within the story:

“Smarter infrastructure is by far our best path to creating new jobs and stimulating growth. We at IBM were asked to map this out by President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, and our research shows that a $30 billion stimulus investment in just three areas -- smart grids, health-care IT and broadband -- could yield almost one million new jobs within one year. That's possible because these kinds of infrastructure have significantly greater economic and societal multiplier effects than traditional infrastructure like bridges and highways.”

It’ll be interesting to see if the Obama administration follows up on these recommendations. I also wonder what other industries have been approached by the transition team. I will admit to having a fair amount of surprise over the fact that someone – a Democrat, even – is actually trying to figure out how best to spend all the money that’s going to be thrown at the economy over the next couple of years. All of the quotes from Pelosi and Reid haven’t exactly inspired confidence.

I forget who it was (apart from Ayn Rand fifty years ago) that pointed out at the beginning of the bailouts that if the government was serious about getting the cash back into the economy to stimulate spending, they shouldn’t give it to the banks and Wall Street assholes that lost it in the first place, but rather, suspend all taxes for two months. And isn’t that a sobering thought? We apparently pay $350 billion in taxes every month. Just to break that down, that means that every day, every single person in the country pays $40 in taxes to various levels of government. And then they have the nerve to ask for more on April 15.

I need to learn how to touch-type if there’s going to be an electronic infrastructure boom. At the very least I could blog faster.

Scrabble Champion – or – Let’s make it complicated – or – If you keep playing with the language, you’ll go blind.

I have an amateur interest in Linguistics (insert obligatory “cunning” joke here), and recently ran across a nifty new term: “Tmesis.” This is the act of dropping a word in the middle of another word, as in “abso-fuckin’-lutely.” Tmesis is a form of another fun word: “infixation,” and the example I used is defined specifically as an “expletive infixation.”

There are other examples. Hip Hop culture provides “hizzouse” and “shiznit,” while many people joke about being “edumacated.”

What’s interesting to me is the fact that linguists, who actually get paid for things like this, have argued over what determines where the insertion is placed. Many seem to subscribe to the theory that the insertion occurs before the primary stressed syllable, while others insist a morpheme boundary takes precedence. Yet another camp swears up and down that it’s all a matter of prosody, where “the metrical stress tree of the host is minimally restructured to accommodate the stress tree of the infix."

For what it’s worth, the third is the theory I subscribe to. As was pointed out, “unbelievable” and “irresponsible” have the same stress patterns, and the first syllable of each is a separate morpheme, but the infixation occurs in two different places, i.e. “un-fucking-believable” and “irre-fucking-sponsible.” The resulting rhythms just sound more natural, which is what prosody is all about.

Prosody is the rhythms, stresses, and intonations of spoken language. It can indicate if a sentence is a statement or question, the emotional state of the speaker, or – most important to me – sarcasm. Users of sign language have their own form of prosody, using length of gesture, tension of limbs, and of course, facial expressions to achieve the same effect. I think that’s cool. Emoticons are an orthographic convention (writin’) used to convey prosody, as are boring old punctuation marks such as commas, ellipses, and the wonderfully-named “scare quotes” – the quotation marks that are used specifically to cause doubt about the truthfulness of a specific word or phrase, as in: We’ve heard all we need to about your “solution.”

And since I can’t think of a clever way to end this post, I’ll just quote an expletive infixation from one of my all-time favorite movies, Boondock Saints: “I’d say that makes him a lia-fuckin’-bility.”

I found this story through Google, so you can blame me.

Research Reveals Environmental Impact of Google Searches

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479127,00.html




Who was it that claimed to have invented the internet? Al...somebody.

Look, even if you accept the proposition that global warming is anthropogenetic, there's nothing you can do about it, as nearly every single human activity has been "proven" to contribute to it in some form or fashion. You even exhale CO2, you know. If you're serious about reducing your carbon footprint, go have yourself mulched. We'll use you to plant more CO2 scrubbers in the form of corn (farming has been blamed for global warming), which we'll feed to cattle (cow farts have been blamed for global warming), which we'll barbecue (outdoor grilling has been blamed for global warming).

Personally, I hate cold weather, so I'm Googling for barbecue recipes.

Headline Hijinks

I’ve maintained that newspapers are outdated. I recently cancelled my home delivery because I get all of my news, movie/TV listings, and job postings online. Plus, their comics weren’t funny (honestly, who reads Family Circus?).

Part of the problem is that newspapers are so old-fashioned in their use of language. They’d certainly never get an NC-17 rating like some blogs I know. Simple words and sentences; dry stories in the inverted pyramid style; boring headlines.

For instance, an article today was headlined Local company lays off more workers. How boring. How uninspired. It tells you something without being informative at all. This happens to be a trucking company they’re referring to, so why not Long haul not so long for some or East bound and (shut) down? Insensitive? Maybe. But it’s a hell of a lot catchier.

Here are some alternate headlines for other layoff stories – some new, some older.

Planned Parenthood exercises freedom of choice, aborts 20% of staff
Women and children not hit hardest

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009901099982


Excellence in Motivation loses both in layoffs
If only they’d had a poster

http://www.daytondailynews.com/b/content/oh/story/business/2008/11/26/ddn112608layoffsweb.html


Many Google employees now 404
10,000 omitted from employment search results

http://www.webguild.org/2008/11/google-layoffs-10000-workers-affected.php


Microsoft to CTRL-X 17% of workforce
Now Vista will never be fixed

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11142&Itemid=38

Something smells…stupid.

PETA is in the news again today with their latest media whoring campaign – to rename fish to “sea kittens.” As they state on their site: "When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it's time for a serious image makeover."

I think someone might have their etymology just a tad backwards. I would imagine the name for the animal came before the name for the activity of catching them for consumption and/or sport.

Japan has the largest annual per capita consumption of seafood of any nation – 145.7 lbs – more than three times that of the US. China is second with 56 lbs. The World Health Organization reports that seafood is an important staple for most developing Asian nations. Of course, none of that matters.

I'll give PETA a small slice of credit, and assume they know there’s not a snowball’s chance of this ever happening. I mean, look at the impact it would have on the language:

Come with me, and I will make you sea kitteners of men.
He was sea kittening for his car keys in his coat pockets.
Searching for Bobby Sea Kittener.
He had a handshake like a dead sea kitten.
We had to sea kitten the mast after that last storm nearly wrecked the ship.
She’s just sea kittening for compliments.
He drank like a sea kitten.
You gonna sea kitten or cut bait?
He was a wallflower; a perpetual underdog. Always the sea kitten out of water.
I’ve got other sea kittens to fry.

That’s not even considering the critters that have the word fish in their name. Goldseakitten? Lungseakitten? Catseakitten?

And what about freshwater fish? You can’t logically call them sea kittens. Of course, when has PETA ever been concerned with logic?

On the other hand, no one would be able to post that fallacious 'Ghoti' is pronounced 'fish' crap ever again.

This whole thing is an extension of their campaign to convince sportsmen (who don’t care), scientists (who know better), and seafood eaters (who don’t care) that fish feel pain. Never mind that their nervous systems are not developed enough, or that their brains are not large enough – PETA knows best. (You can read that sentence however you wish; it works both ways.)

Now for the lightning round:

Question 1: Which culture eats the most seafood, Eastern or Western?

Question 2: What culture is least likely to be put off by changing the name to evoke images of cat meat, Eastern or Western?

Question 3: Which culture does PETA target in their protests, Eastern or Western?

Question 4: What word best describes PETA, irrelevant or immaterial?

It’s as easy as shooting sea kittens in a barrel.

Wandering Around in My Head

As I may have mentioned before, I visit several news aggregate sites every day: FreeRepublic and DemocraticUnderground for politics, FARK for general stuff, and other boards for various specific interests. What kills me is the people on these boards who show up in the comments threads to note that the story is either a duplicate of one already posted at the site, or has been posted elsewhere online.

What’s the fucking point of posting that? Are you trying to impress us with the fact that you have the time to note every single submission to the site? You need to get out more. And really? It’s been posted elsewhere online? Perhaps you don’t understand how an AGGREGATOR site works. I don’t want to visit every vaguely-related .com every day, so I rely on people with whom I share certain opinions or viewpoints to find topical stuff and post it here. Of course it’s been posted elsewhere, you moron!

Each site seems to acquire its own little group whose only contributions are these kinds of posts. I always picture them as spinsters, with pursed lips and a raised eyebrow, going “Hmmmm?” Tapping their liver-spotted fingers on the offending headline to make sure you see it. It’s the internet, bitch. It ain’t gonna get full because someone double-posted a story about a cat that can tell when someone’s going to die.

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I’m pretty sure I witnessed a multiple homicide on Dora the Explorer the other night. I was wandering through the kids’ room, and noted that Dora & Co. had a group of bad guys tied to a ship’s mast. Our heroes proceed to reclaim whatever it was the bad guys had taken from them, and jumped over to Diego’s Rescue Center ship. As they did the “We did it!” dance, the other ship sank in the background. Even by Rocky & Bullwinkle standards, that’s pretty dark.

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My local paper apparently has a +48 Resistance to Irony when it comes to our economy. On Page 1A, they’ll headline “County Employment at Record Low!” On page 5A, they’ll note that the county government just spent $40,000 for a new tourism campaign, a campaign developed by a company in Arkansas. On page 2B, there’s a story about the contractor from the other side of the state that’s coming in to renovate some city-owned buildings, and page 13B has the story about the number of small local construction companies that have gone out of business.

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We took Kitten and Cub to the local pizza buffet tonight, in hopes that the carb overload might shut them down early. It’s one of those places that has a television on every wall and an arcade in the back. We had three screens in our room – two news stations and Cartoon Network (you know…for kids!). The local news was repeating CNN’s non-news story about how Obama might age while in office, while on another wall, the actual CNN was showing clips from an Obama press conference. I was really surprised that the Cartoon Network wasn’t featuring Obama, too, since he lifted his entire campaign from Bob the Builder. Can we infringe copyright? Yes we can!

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I realize that the English language is constantly evolving, but the current use of “ginormous” irritates me. It’s a completely useless and unnecessary word, because all it does it combine two synonyms without expanding the definition of either. Similarly, the UK term “drink-driving” offends my sense of grammar. Are you steering a cocktail down the motorway? When was the last time you were drink?

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When Frank Caliendo’s career fizzles out (4…3…2…), he should offer to do his voices for the TomTom network. It would be cheaper than getting the actual celebrities (though the John Cleese package is a lot of fun.) I’ve been disappointed in TomTom’s selection of voices, though. They don’t have an Aussie, Kiwi, or believable Irish. They need Amy Walker.

50 Ways to Love your Lever…age

I’ve been watching USA’s new drama, Leverage, and am really enjoying it.

Very brief synopsis:

A crew of crooks runs con jobs on criminals and corrupt businessmen in order to help those who have been ripped off by them.

It’s a fun show. The cons aren’t as complicated as the ones in the Ocean’s movies (as it is inevitably compared with), which keeps the story light and moving quickly. The crew is small, with distinct specialties that allow them to handle most situations – i.e. a thief, a hacker, a mercenary, a grifter, and the mastermind that keeps them on track.

There’s a good blend of personalities, and the dialogue easily moves between serious and comic, with the team members taking little potshots at each other on occasion.

The producers get a lot of mileage out of the sets, providing enough detail to set the tone without relying on extensive greenscreens (a la Sanctuary) or expensive location shoots. According to John Rogers, one of the writers, “It’s nowhere near as expensive as it looks.” Hopefully this will convince the powers that be to renew it on a cost basis if nothing else.

One of my favorite parts of the show is the use of flashbacks. These were very effective in the first episode, when they fleshed out each character without pages and pages of dialogue. They’re also sometimes used for comedic effect by providing ironic answers to questions raised by the characters or plot.

{Small Spoiler Ahead}

It’ll be interesting to see how the characters develop over the story arc. They’re basically two-dimensional archetypes right now, which totally works, but I imagine the writers and/or actors will want a little more over time. I can see where the writers are already playing with fleshing out the characters some, and it seems a bit uneven right now. For instance, last night’s episode involved orphans, and the viewing audience was asked to empathize with the thief, Parker, since she was an orphan herself. This would have been fine if we hadn’t seen the flashback where a pre-teen Parker blew up her house, presumably with her parents still inside.

Hiccups aside, I think as long as the writers keep it light, the show will have a good long run. They’ve set up some sexual tension, a couple of “mysterious pasts,” a possibly reoccurring opponent, and some humorous character flaws, all of which could be mined for a while.

In any case, the timing of this show’s release is good, since Eureka, Dexter, House, True Blood, My Name is Earl, and Sanctuary are all on hiatus, and the flawed-but-still-enjoyable My Own Worst Enemy has been cancelled.

Full disclosure: I wouldn’t take my opinions on what constitutes a good television show too seriously; I thought Acapulco H.E.A.T. was awesome.

Viva la Resolution!

According to the Department of Statistics We Pulled Out of Our Ass, most New Year’s resolutions are broken within the first week. Since I hate admitting that I lack the willpower to follow through on even the most benign of resolutions, I tried to put together a list that would require more effort to break than to keep.

So, with that in mind, I present my resolutions for ought-9.

1. I will not put roadkill on my next-door neighbor’s wheelchair ramp to jumpstart a PETA protest.

2. I will not reprogram the church carillon to play Helter Skelter.

3. I will not put Thorazine into my kids’ pudding snacks whenever they get mildly annoying.

4. I will not dig holes in the graveyard and call 911 about zombies.

5. I will not quote the Revelations of St. John whenever a discussion turns to in-laws.

6. I will not play recordings of screams in the attic whenever the city bus drives by.

7. I will not re-label copies of Hostel as The Wiggles Visit Europe and leave them at the library.

8. I will not sit in a tower in the front yard and call out “Release the hounds!” whenever a pedestrian wanders by.

9. I will not Twitter during a colonoscopy.

10. I will not build an Alamo snow fort and challenge my Mexican neighbors to a rematch.

This is gonna be a snap.