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:

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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.

***

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.

***

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.

***

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!

***

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?

***

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.

Where does one apply for this job?

Could you put a handle on them?

It can be tough for FBI man who nicknames bank robbers

Along with 2008's near-record number of local bank robberies—276 at current count, and delayed reports could still bring the total close to 2006's tally of 284—arose an unusual problem: coming up with all those nicknames.With so many robberies to sort through, christening each serial robber—those wanted for at least 3 heists—with a unique and memorable name was more of a challenge than usual, said Chicago FBI spokesman Ross Rice, who assigns the names."It's actually one of the more trying parts of the job," Rice said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-talk-robbersjan05,0,6136633.story

I want this job. I’d give every criminal an insulting nickname to piss them off and/or make their prison terms hell. Forget “The Cadillac Bandit;” that gives them an upper-class air. In fact, don’t use ‘bandit’ at all so as to avoid even casual equating with Smokey & the.

And if I ever drew a blank, I’d get inspiration from MST3K:

Hack the Planet

You a fan of ’95 Angelina Jolie movies? Oh well.

An 18-year-old college student in Canada – majoring in Chemistry, mind – built a small lab in his garage. Of course, the police decided he was making meth and arrested him. Then, after admitting several days later that the lab was not, in fact, used for making drugs, kept the student in jail because he had some materials which could be used in the making of explosives.

Apparently, the Canadian Keystones were tipped off to the presence of the lab by a woman from whom the student had purchased fertilizer. It was her concern that it was being used to make meth. Conveniently, the article neglected to note how much fertilizer had been purchased, but I imagine there’s a significant difference in the quantities needed to fill a beaker, and those necessary to churn out a drum of crystal.

Now, I’ve looked up the ingredients for making meth (for which search I am probably on a watch list now), because I know that the majority of meth producers in my county are under-educated trailer trash, and I assumed it couldn’t be that hard to produce. I think with that list, and maybe a couple of reference books or a local chemist, I could probably walk into a lab and determine within a couple of hours if they had been making meth there. It certainly wouldn’t take days. And the bullshit explosives charge (HA! A pun.) is just the cops trying to justify their heavy-handed inanity. Everyone has explosive-making material in their home. Ammonia, bleach, fertilizer, foil, drain cleaner, gasoline, Styrofoam – all can be used to create explosives. Hell…Mythbusters gives you enough information to make them. We’ve come a long way from the 80s, when the FBI forced the writers for MacGyver to either substitute incorrect materials or skip crucial steps for Mac’s off-the-cuff brand of troubleshooting. To protect the kids, don’cha know.

See, government is not nimble – especially the bloated bureaucracy ol’ George has saddled us with – so it passes laws that allow it to detain people on a pretext (Patriot Act, anyone?) until it can figure things out. The problem is that individuals are faster at learning how to circumvent laws and technology. Most DRM protections are broken within hours of their release (using such high-tech devices as a Sharpie), you can buy DVDs of movies that are still in theaters, and people Twitter locations of traffic stops.

And these are mainly benign examples. What if you want to cause mischief? According to this story (http://www.thesentinel.com/302730670790449.php), local teens are making copies of license plates and speeding past county speed cameras. The owner of the real plate gets the ticket, and the official justification behind the cams (it’s not about the money…honest) goes out the window.

I recently checked out a stack of books at the library. When I handed them to the woman behind the counter, she set the whole stack on an electronic pad about the size of a medium-sized scanner. A couple of button taps later, and she handed the stack back to me. “All done,” she chirped. “Are you using RFID tags?” I asked. She reluctantly confirmed that yes, they are. If you’re unfamiliar with the “arphids,” they’re Radio-Frequency IDentification tags. They’re similar to the metallic tags retailers use to protect electronic items from being stolen. The pad at the library read all of the tags at once, and noted that I was the patron checking them out. Theoretically, the library could tie their RFID system into some sort of cell network and use that to locate their books and, presumably, me.

Now, think of the money that went into this system. All of the hardware that was purchased. The software and training. Programming the tags themselves. The man-hours required to tag every book, magazine, and DVD.

30 seconds in a microwave will burn out the tag.

Governments and corporations spend millions of dollars in implementing “solutions” that can be foiled by determined individuals using low-tech or low-cost methods.

Those RFID tags? They can be cloned using a ten-dollar machine from Radio Shack. Doesn’t sound like a problem for anyone but the library? A lot of credit cards and hotel keys use RFIDs.

Gait-recognition cameras can be defeated by a handful of gravel in one shoe.

You can get ATM default passwords from the technical manuals. A lot of the retailers that have third-party ATMs in their stores don’t change them.

As Cory Doctorow states in his book Little Brother, “The important thing about security systems isn’t how they work, it’s how they fail.”

I suppose that student in Saskatchewan, who is forbidden from using any lab outside of the school, and had to notify the school of the pending charges against him (his trial continues later this month), knows pretty well how they fail.

So Keep the Kiddies at Home

I knew it already, but it's nice to get confirmation.

These results are based entirely on the words I use, of course. I said at the very beginning that I cuss a lot. Obviously, this is just a silly little thing meant to pass the time, but it illustrates up a point: Words really have no power in and of themselves – it’s always the intent behind them that determines their impact.

Context is important, too. FOX announced recently that it was developing a new dramedy called Bitches. It’s going to be similar to Sex and the City, but the female leads will be werewolves. I know the producers think they’re doing some sort of clever contextual end-run around the FCC (See…‘bitch’ is a term for a female wolf, so it’s not cussing, it’s zoology!), but you call female wolves she-wolves, not bitches, so they’re just cussing.

I don’t care what they call it, though; I’m watching it. I love werewolves, and will watch anything lycanthropic – no matter how awful it is. I’ve seen Full Eclipse three times, for Pete’s sake.

My top werewolf films are (in no particular order):

An American Werewolf in London
The Ginger Snaps trilogy
Dog Soldiers
The Company of Wolves
The Howling

I’m happy with the writer, Michael Dougherty, who wrote X2 and Trick-r-Treat, and the Executive Producers also produced Pushing Daisies, so it seems like a good crew to helm the thing. I am curious about the casting, though. The only TV actresses I can name off the top of my head are Olivia Wilde (Thirteen on House), Amanda Tapping (Magnus on Sanctuary), and Mariska Hargitay (Detective Benson on Law & Order: SVU). I could accept any of them as Manhattan socialites, but I think only Wilde would make a good werewolf. Hey, as long as they don’t cast Sarah Jessica Parker, I’m good. Lycanthropes are carnivores, SJ.


Why the long face?

If they could persuade some screen actresses to sign up, that’d be cool. Gina Gershon would make a good were, as would Carla Gugino. Christina Ricci deserves another shot since Cursed…was.

With vampires having gotten a lot of media time this past year, I’m looking forward to some equal exposure for the shapeshifters. The remake of The Wolf Man will be fun (I can’t understand Benicio del Toro anyway, so he may as well just growl), and maybe we’ll finally get to see the Lycans kick so much vampire arse in Underworld 3. They’re so obviously the superior species (the train assault in part one), it annoys me that the vamps are presented as the “ruling class” in that series. Especially since most of them are whiny, pseudo-Goth Eurotrash vamps.

So remember, kids: if you want to be on an NC-17 blog, use ‘fuck’ correctly. If you want to be on Fox, use ‘bitches’ incorrectly. And if you want to be on Sarah Jessica Parker, either be Matthew Broderick or bring a sugar lump.

10/25/1415 – Never Forget

A story in today’s Telegraph reads:

“A science fiction fan sparked a bomb alert, which led to 100 homes being evacuated, after reports of a man seen with a longbow.”

At first read, the headline indicates the reporter gets confused by the “Fantasy/Science Fiction” signs on the shelves at Borders, but as the story explains, police were called when the man was spotted with a longbow, and in investigating the flat, discovered items they “initially suspected could be homemade explosive devices, [but] turned out to be harmless ‘science fiction-style’ equipment.”

“Armed officers and negotiators arrived and a 36-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon.”

What did the police think he was going to do with a longbow? It’s not like they’re good for slaughtering French heavy cavalry or anything.

I just hope the officers were too distracted by the homemade phasers and lightsabers to check out the kitchen. As the BBC reported recently:

Doctors are calling for a ban on long pointed kitchen knives to reduce deaths from stabbing.

“A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase - and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.”

I vote we ban hospitals, as more than half of all preventable deaths in patients occur from nosocomial infection.

“They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.”

Along with hammers, pencils, wrenches, heavy brass candlesticks, and large geode bookends – and that’s just the stuff on my computer desk.

“The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all. They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.”

Most of the gadgets in my kitchen have little practical value. I’m looking at you, Ron Popeil. I’m thinking the 10 top chefs are full of shit. Turn on Food Network at random and chances are, someone’s using a big honkin’ knife.

“Home Office spokesperson said there were already extensive restrictions in place to control the sale and possession of knives.”

That is a distinctly Orwellian title.

"‘The law already prohibits the possession of offensive weapons in a public place, and the possession of knives in public without good reason or lawful authority’”

But where is “good reason” defined? I carry a Swiss Army knife everywhere because I might need to open a box, tighten a screw, cut a thread or open a bottle of wine. It also has a large blade and an awl that could do some damage if I made the effort. Does the potential for violence outweigh the many practical applications? And isn’t that a judgment call on my personality rather than the tools I own?

"‘Offensive weapons are defined as any weapon designed or adapted to cause injury, or intended by the person possessing them to do so.’”

If it’s a weapon, of course it’s designed to cause injury. That’s their purpose! I also like the “intentions” clause. Many self-defense instructors advise that you use your keys to try and blind an attacker. Should we outlaw keys next, just in case?

I’m declaring the British Empire officially dead. Hey, France, if you want to go for the tie with Agincourt 2.0, now’s your chance.

In Which Time Warner Threatens To Hold Its Breath, And, While Making Ironic Press Releases, Is Shown To Be Insulted By Basic Math

So MTV Networks and Time Warner Cable got into a pissing match over pricing yesterday, and it seemed likely we would lose Noggin, which is the only one of the 19 MTV Network channels we care about, as it keeps Cub entertained. Fortunately, it seems they were able to reach a last-minute agreement.

I looked at the statements from both companies yesterday. Viacom said:

“The renewal we are seeking is reasonable and modest relative to the profits TWC enjoys from our networks. We have asked for an increase of less than 25 cents per month, per subscriber, which adds up to less than a penny per day for all 19 of MTV Networks' channels.”

Straightforward and upfront. They told us exactly what each individual customer would be asked to pay, and noted how many channels they get for that money. Time Warner countered with:

“Viacom claims their demands equate to “pennies,” but that is misleading and insulting to our customers, from whom Viacom is trying to extort another $39 million annually – on top of the hundreds of millions of dollars our customers already pay to Viacom each year. That doesn’t sound like pennies to us.”

How is that misleading? They state outright they want a little less than one quarter per subscriber per month. Honesty is not insulting, it’s refreshing. And if you want to talk about extortion, who has the monopoly here? If I don’t like what MTV is showing, I can go to another channel. If I don’t like my cable service, I don’t have any other choices. And we don’t pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Viacom, by the way; we pay it to you.

TW continues: “Demanding that our customers pay so much more for these few networks would be unreasonable in any economy, but it is particularly outrageous given the current economic conditions.”

When did 19 become a “few”? Notice that Time Warner didn’t offer up the number of subscribers they have. FYI, it’s a bit more than 13 million. If you multiply the $0.25 increase by 12 months by 13,000,000 subscribers, you do get $39 million, so the statement from Viacom was absolutely true. Time Warner is the one that’s blowing smoke. I can picture the CEO as he dictated the press release: red-faced, arms flailing about, vein throbbing in his forehead, blowing spittle all over the poor copywriter. And the fact that they tried to scaremonger by equating our cable bill to the economic chaos makes them an even bigger bunch of assholes.

An extra quarter per month. That’s $3 extra a year for each subscriber. For 19 channels. The average cost for Time Warner Cable – considering all packages, deals, rebates, etc. – runs around $113 per month (skimming through Google, anyway). $113 per month x 12 months x 13 million customers = $17.6 billion per year. How much do you want to bet that your bill will go up by more than $3 this year? If past behavior is any indication, Time Warner will raise the price by 3%, a small but crucial difference in designator. That will be an additional $530 million Time Warner will reap. I figure it’ll break down like this: $39 million to pay Viacom, maybe $91 million for all the other deals they made, and the remaining $400 million as reparations for being called out and losing face.

Yesterday, Viacom was running scrawls on all of the affected channels urging viewers to call Time Warner to demand these networks. I called in, but to ask a question instead:

Me: I know that if you accept Viacom’s terms, you’ll pass the extra cost on to us. But what if we lose those channels? Will there be a corresponding reduction of our bill?

TW: “I’m not authorized to discuss the negotiations.”

Me: “I’m not asking about the negotiations. I’m asking if my bill will go down 25% if I lose a quarter of my available channels.”

TW: “I’m not authorized to discuss the negotiations.”

Me: “No, listen…”

Needless to say, I never got the answer, but I suspect it rhymes with “yuck foo.”

Along with newspapers (Bringing you yesterday’s news today!), cable companies really need to update their business model. People have been asking for a la carte programming for years, and keep getting told it would be impossible. Then those same cable companies turn around and offer “On Demand” services. Wait a minute…you can open up one specific channel for movies I can start at any time, and charge me per instance of usage, but you can’t figure out how to swap out Lifetime in exchange for AMC in my extended tier? Talk about insulting your customers. Their intelligence, anyway.

Legacies

I was putting away the last of the Christmas decorations today, and while I was in the garage, some Y-chromosome function kicked in and compelled me to putter. It was already tidy, but my mind insisted it could be even more organized. So I moved shelves and toys, emptied some boxes and filled others, hung tools on the wall, and generally had a high old time. At one point, Mrs. Cat asked me why I was doing all this, and I honestly had no answer beyond grunting “Woman go house; cave mine!”

But it occurred to me as I was putting up the ochre hand prints and saber-toothed ibex drawings that if a man’s home is his castle, surely the garage is his armory.

Now, my grandfather died before I was born, so I never knew him, and can only piece together what sort of man he was by looking over the things he left behind. Judging by the stuff in the garage, he was either an amateur mechanic or a professional assassin. I mean, there’s a toolbox I could fit Cub into filled with all sorts of rasps, files, wrenches, screwdrivers, drill bits, and blades. In various corners and on random hooks are three different hacksaws, a large wood saw, a pick, a mattock, an axe, a couple of hatchets, a manual drill, bamboo stakes, a very large spool of medium-gauge wire, enough heavy chain to fetter the entire cast of Hostel, a sledgehammer, a couple of different shovels, a post-hole digger, two bags of lime, and – most telling for we Dexter fans – an unopened box of 39-gallon trash bags.

I imagine if I uncovered his diary up in the attic, a typical entry would be:

July 19: Changed oil in car; fixed porch rail; dismembered milkman; sanded dining room table; finished interrogating the Communist I caught at the Post Office (see July 5) and buried him in the backyard; my new rose hybrid bloomed today!; replaced bathroom faucet; set snare for that damn raccoon/sneaky neighbor kid. Note: need more trash bags.

Raising My Ire

The Bush Administration reduced the country’s net worth by six trillion dollars, pushed the DOW down 4,000 points, raised unemployment by 3%, increased the deficit by over $900 billion, forced banks to lend money to the insolvent, thereby collapsing the mortgage industry, pushed through a $700 billion bailout with no oversights or conditions, and demanded that auto executives accept a $1/year salary in order to get federal money.

(Of course, when I say ‘the Bush Administration,’ I mean ‘a Democratically-controlled Congress’, which the AP has conveniently forgotten is part of this administration.)

So after all of that hard work, and in light of the burgeoning economic crisis, it seems absolutely natural that they vote themselves a pay raise. Yep, each of our hard-working, fiscally responsible elected reps will receive an extra $4,700 – or a 2.8% increase. That’s an additional $2,500,000 from the taxpayers.

How about you, dear readers? Could you use an extra $4,700 a year? Call your reps and explain that to them.

All I can say is that it’s a damn good thing Congress isn’t seated in Brighton, MI, since their City Council just approved an ordinance allowing police to ticket and fine anyone who is annoying in public "by word of mouth, sign or motions." http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081219/METRO/812190459

What kills me is the admission from a city attorney that “there could be situations where the measure would violate freedom of speech.” Yeah…like every single one of them. I’m hoping that the citizens of Brighton show up at every public council meeting and demand that the councilors be ticketed as soon as they start talking.

Ten Glorious Minutes

Mama Cat came to visit over the holidays, and today – quite possibly because of a carbon monoxide leak – she and Mrs. Cat decided to take Kitten with them and hit the after-Christmas sales. So after making sure everyone had money, sensible shoes, store cards, cell phones, extra ammo, the portable Jaws of Life, and a Marine escort, they joined the madding crowd.

After settling Cub down in front of some flashy, cartoony thing, I attacked the house, rectifying the chaos that comes with the holidays: gift wrapping detritus, pieces of new toys that weren’t quite as sturdy as the commercials made them out to be, piles of dishes from extra-special, extra-large holiday meals, baskets of laundry because the weather keeps pendulum-ing from Winter to Spring, and the inevitable paper scraps, leaf pieces, dust bunnies and other unidentifiable oorts on the carpet that the visitors bring in.

It took a while, but that was okay. I’m not really anal about the housework, but I am clumsy, and if I can avoid breaking an ankle on one of Cub’s Matchbox cars, all the better.

So I finished up everything, and just had time to get through the opening credits on one of my new DVDs before Josie and the rest of the Pussycats returned, their hunting trophies carefully wrapped in variously-logoed plastic bags and clutched with a vehemence usually only seen in the more rabid NRA members.

Five minutes later, there were discarded coats, shoes, and socks piled on chairs and the floor, I had tomato sauce on my shirt and the kitchen floor from Cub’s kibble, camo fatigues were piled on the washing machine, having been swapped for more sensible jeans and T-shirts, and the dishes and bowls had been snatched from the rack by Mrs. Cat so she could start fixing supper. Mrs. Cat is genetically incapable of fixing any meal – from stir-fry to cereal – without using every single measuring cup we own. On the plus side, everything Mrs. Cat fixes is really fucking good, so I generally don’t mind washing up, as long as I have a few minutes alone in the caloric coma before I have to start processing higher brain functions.

All of that was really just a build up to brag that my wife fixed two homemade sweet potato pies tonight, topped with homemade whipped cream, and I am having to type by randomly whacking the keyboard with a single finger because the rest of me is totally occupied in licking the plate clean and making yummy sounds.

Apparently I’m “It”

I’ve been neglecting dear Jales over at Barely Dressed. Seems she tagged me a couple of weeks ago and I missed it. Here are the rules:

RULE ONE, I have to grab one of the books closest to me, go to page 56, type the fifth line and the next two to five lines that follow.

RULE TWO, I have to pick five people who love books and who could receive the Bookworm award with honor.

And the result is:

“McNihil wondered if she had a name. He supposed he could give her one, something cute and temporary; it only had to last as long as whatever connection existed between them. Which was probably measurable in hours. If that, he thought glumly. She was the loveliest thing that had ever been inside the dark, cramped space of his working and living accommodations. Like some self-destructive flower that had bloomed there, begging to be crushed inside anyone’s fist.”

Noir - K.W. Jeter

Like Jales, I don’t have five other people I could tag, since most of my friends aren’t on Blogspot, but I’ll go ahead and shout out to Elle, Anise, and EX-PFC Wintergreen.

Some Anaesthesia Required

It’s that time of year again. Time for parents to steal away and put together the “Santa” gifts in secret so the tiny terrorists can keep the magic alive one more year. I’m convinced that toy manufacturers have a special set of instructions they include in the packages they expect to sell over Christmas. You know what I’m talking about. These are the instructions that take pains to include actual-sized illustrations of the ¾” screws, but whose diagrams for assembly require a 4,000 power microscope to read. Even then, those fun-loving engineers tend to include drawings more resembling optical illusions than any sort of true three-point perspective, as the lines showing you where to attach various accessories always look like they are zooming off into the Cartesian horizon instead of into some physical part of the toy.

And would it be too much to ask for someone to actually lay out these booklets in some sort of desktop publishing program before they’re printed? That way, you’d know beforehand if some crucial piece of information fell on the other side of the fold. I love turning the page over and seeing:

STEP 9b – Continued: Though the illustration seems to indicate otherwise, under no circumstances are the snapbaffles to be inserted onto the auxiliary flange before the flousting lever is rotated to parallel. The snapbaffles cannot be removed once they are assembled, and if you’re reading this after completing all of the other steps on the previous page, you’re just going to have to go buy a new one and start over – or explain to your child why there’s no gift from Santa for them. Ha ha HA HA HA!

They’re also misleading about the “Tools Required” section. It’s always just: Hammer. Phillips screwdriver. Yes, technically, you could assemble the entire toy with just those two items. As long as your screwdriver has a magnetic head, can adjust from 3” to 10” long, turn in right-angles, and has a built-in LED light source and jeweler’s loupe. There’s a reason Santa uses elves to do all of the toymaking – small hands. They can get into the 1 1/16” gap between the primary camshaft and the torqueguard to tighten down the friction pins. The same friction pins that the instructions reference in big bold red letters, letting you know that if they aren’t at the correct depth, the entire toy becomes one big deathtrap.

Adding to the fun is trying to do all of this in an unheated garage, where every scrape of the knuckles or pinched finger is exponentially more painful – and the fact that the garage shares a wall with the kids’ room means I can’t even cuss satisfactorily.

This is why my stocking is always full of bandages, rum and Valium.

Merry Christmas, y’all.