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Saturday, March 22, 2003
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New server/comment system
Please find new posts here (democratswithspine.com).
Well, I'm on my own server now, with a custom comment system, which seems to be working. I recommend it highly as it gives you control over your comments. You do need room on a php server, plus you have to do some custom stuff to get it to work with radio.
Sorry to anybody who posted comments before today - unfortunately I wasn't able to import them.
12:10:40 PM 
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President Bush ushers in the Fourth Reich with the familiar salute. |
Illusion Awards
Iraqi Freedom Edition
- Most likely to fire first shot in Iraqi civil war: Turkey
- Most likely to ask for their own state the minute hostilities end: The Kurds
- Most likely to take bloody revenge on their brethren: The Shiites
- Most likely to foment terrorism in the Gulf Region: The Bush Foreign Policy Team
- Most likely to gas his own people: the next dictator of Iraq (sorry Saddam, I think we're in for an upset)
- Most likely to be a conservative Muslim: next leader of Iraq
- Most likely to sell arms to the liberated Iraq: U.S.A.
- Most likely to win the biggest oil contract: Halliburton
- Most likely person to be in a good mood right now: Osama bin Laden
11:01:41 AM
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Friday, March 21, 2003
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Can't wait for episode three...
9:45:54 PM
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Shock & Awe
 I don't know if it'll work on the Iraqis, but it's sure worked on me. I feel like we've made the leap into the great unknown, and I just know something bad is going to happen. It's just a matter of when.
Maybe by betting on bad things happening I can make myself feel better when they come true, because at least I'll have made money... Isn't that the American way?
Speaking of money, if the Bush tax cut passes, who's paying for this war and the reconstruction of Iraq? Has Bush won some billion dollar bets at tradesports.com that we don't know about?
Welcome to the Brave New World of pax Bushisma. The best is yet to come I'm sure.
7:51:11 PM
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Wednesday, March 19, 2003
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I can't fight this feeling...
As much as I'd like to pen an insightful and biting analysis of the
politics surrounding the coming war, the formula of dental surgery +
antibiotics +
getting sick + more (horsepill) antibiotics, has been a pretty effective
silencer.
So as I slither off to another round of lying motionless and staring off
into space, I throw off a last ditch conspiracy theory: mysterious
pneumonia another ploy by the Bush administration to avoid dissent? You
tell me...
5:15:16 PM
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Monday, March 17, 2003
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Well, we're going to war. No surprise there.
This is the first time ever a speech by George Bush has made me
feel just plain sad.
Maybe I should have just kept watching Law & Order.
8:36:16 PM
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Thursday, March 13, 2003
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It's official: technogy world full of twits,
just like the regular world
I spent most of today looking for a decent mailing list host. I don't think I've seen this many bad web sites since... well, since the last time I looked through a bunch of software company web sites. My favorites are the ones where you read through the whole site, and still have no clue what the fuck the product does, because it's all marketing gibberish written by someone who has even less idea of what the product does. And why does the price have to be a freaking secret? If my company can't afford something, reapeated calls from an annoying sales person will not make me change my mind.
I might have to end up buying a listserv and installing it on our own server, but it needs to be up and running by the end of the month. I'd need the cooperation of the IT department to get it done, which means it'll be ready in time for the next ice age.
unsubscribe rant
7:44:43 PM
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Wednesday, March 12, 2003
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Freedom Fries: the official food of idiot Congressmen
I'm sure you've heard already: the House of Representatives has officially renamed French Fries to Freedom Fries. That'll show those Frenchmen (Freedommen?). As if the hostility we have provoked around the world through our heavy-handed diplomacy weren't enough, now we are opening ourselves up to well-deserved ridicule.
Quote from the article linked above:
The French Embassy did not seem amused. Its press officer declined comment, except to say that french fries originated in Belgium.
2:41:56 PM
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Tuesday, March 11, 2003
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An eager mind
sinks in the bog of mediocrity.
Bureaucracy consumes all.
Yes, Towlie, I do, but I ain't got any :(
6:13:57 PM
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Saturday, March 08, 2003
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Can I sue the Bush administration for emotional suffering?
This job market is making me clinically depressed.
I've spent most of today searching job sites to see if there is anything remotely appealing out there. I guess I should feel lucky I still have a job, but it's the kind of luck that requires a lot of coffee in the morning just to keep going. I also looked on a couple of IT freelancer web sites to see if I can make a dent in my debt, but the low-balling is so rampant that it's not even worth the trouble.
Where oh where is that intellectually stimulating job that involves international travel, tuition reimbursement, and no cubicles? Nowhere in sight, that's where.
I think it's time to do some nation-building of my own to distract myself from economic realities. Civ III, here I come.
4:58:08 PM
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Good news at last:
Bill Clinton & Bob Dole do Point-Counterpoint on 60 minutes
Oh, Bill, how I've missed you. I'll be waitnig to take in your eloquent words this Sunday at 7 EST. And yes, I am completely serious when I say this.
I just had to quote these lines from the CNN article though:
Clinton received an advance in excess of $10 million from Knopf Publishing to write his memoirs, and Dole has appeared in television commercials endorsing products such as Pepsi, Visa, and Viagra.
Therein lies the difference between Democrats & Republicans. :)
11:07:21 AM
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Friday, March 07, 2003
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Speaking of T-shirts
Of all the ready.gov parodies, I think this one sums things up the best. You can also get it on a T-shirt here, though be forewarned, if "give peace a chance" gets you arrested, this should get you a couple of years of detention, and by the time they're done with you you'll look like this:
1:27:07 PM
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Squirm Rummy Squirm
Last Tuesday (March 4th) Brit Journalist David Dimbleby interviewed Donald Rumsfeld, and made American journalists look like the pussies they are. Watch Rumsfeld hide behind the President, try to disown his own rhetoric on "old Europe" and "so-called occupied territories," claim ignorance of American policies, and explain why he had no problem shaking Saddam's hand. You won't see/hear this kind of thing in this country...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2819931.stm
11:58:21 AM
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Monday, March 03, 2003
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Evil incarnate |
The axis of evil is in my living room.
It's been crapping on my floor, and last night I came home to find puke all over my office chair. A sweet, purring creature one minute, an evil monster the next. Such is the nature of evil...
9:31:18 PM
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Colin Powell - the only person in the Bush administration with half a brain, and he's going down, fast.
It sure sounds like Powell will end up taking the blame for Dubya's dubious foreign policy. It's a real pity, because I sort of liked the man (and for me to say I like a Republican is really saying something).
The other day, Secretary of State Colin Powell was reminded that his boss is in bed by ten and sleeps like a baby. Powell reportedly replied, "I sleep like a baby, too-every two hours I wake up screaming."
It's too bad he decided to turn coats on the war at the last minute. Now the rest of us are waking up screaming, and there is no end in sight to this nightmare.
While we're on the subject of jokes, it's sort of funny that we were so sure Turkey would let us station our troops there that we had started unloading stuff in southern Turkey. Is the Bush administration really that wide-eyed? Wake up guys, maybe you should be really sure before you act on promises from a country whose (mostly Muslim) population doesn't support our war. Maybe it's better that way. I know I can't wait for the violence between Kurds & Turkey to erupt. At least U.S. troops won't be in the middle of it. Yet another place in the Middle East enveloped in conflict thanks to us, the harbingers of democracy.
10:12:47 AM
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Friday, February 28, 2003
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Like a plot from Kafka's The
Trial
Friendly skies indeed
WASHINGTON - Delta Air Lines will begin testing a new government plan for
air security next month that will check background information and assign a
threat level to everyone who buys a ticket for a commercial flight. [More]
It's color coded, too, just like the terror alert! If you are branded red,
you will not be allowed to fly, and I'm sure you'll be treated real nice by
airport security. OK, let's just think about this. If the government has
enough information to figure out that someone is enough of a threat not to
be allowed to fly, shouldn't that person have been arrested already, and
prosecuted for their involvement in terrorist activities? What we are
seeing here, friends, is conviction without a trial. Somebody up there
decides that you are a threat, and before you know it, you are wearing the
equivalent of a Star of
David on your sleeve. It's true, this one is invisible, until you try
to take a vacation.
I guess this is a week for political activism. I'm going to email Delta's customer
service to inform them that I won't be booking any flights on their
airline any time soon.
10:59:38 AM
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Thursday, February 27, 2003
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Photo of Japanese "google eye" figurine, attesting to google's ancient (possibly alien) origins. | All hail google!
I have been visited by google, and life will never be the same. The joy of seeing tracks left by google in your referrer logs can only be compared to the joy of a mother beholding her babe for the first time. Then you realize that the search terms by which your site was found were "ominous vader-music" and "madam heather csi."
Whatever your personal take, if you're on the web, you live and die by google. And I ask you, with such a cute name, how could it be bad?
Google delivers...
7:49:13 PM
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Top this, Energizer Bunny
Every once in a while you read something that makes you realize that our little nationalistic spats aren't that important in the grand scheme of things, and we aren't as superior to our ancestors as we like to believe...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2804257.stm
6:54:39 PM
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Wednesday, February 26, 2003
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Tuesday, February 25, 2003
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 My biorythm, courtesy of Facade.com confirms that my intellectual functioning is at a low ebb right now, as does the very fact that I am spending my time looking up my biorythm.
The I-Ching says: The fifth line, divided, reminds us of the marrying of the younger sister of king Ti-yi, when the sleeves of her the princess were not equal to those of the still younger sister who accompanied her in an inferior capacity. The case suggests the thought of the moon almost full. There will be good fortune.
Oh, that explains everything...
9:38:20 PM
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Art and headaches
This was supposed to be an essay on the nature of art prompted by last weekend's museum visit. Unfortunately I happen to have a big headache which has turned my brain into mush. Instead, I leave you with a photo of a Japanese woodblock print called "Catching A Demon" by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), which kicks more ass than any writing I could conjure up right now. To give credit where credit's due, I stole this photo from an ebay auction which you can find here.
9:21:22 PM
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Thursday, February 20, 2003
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I am probably the only person on earth whose childhood ambition was to become a book critic. Today I would describe myself as just a critic. After all, why should I limit myself when opportunities in the field are nearly limitless? Below is my first forray into TV criticism...
CSI Las Vegas: a show written and acted by cyborgs
Before I start (and before I receive the cease-and-desist letter), I must describe myself as a fan of the show. I guess I started watching for the same reason people watch reality shows: to have a good laugh at the expense of others. There is nothing better than watching a show really try, and fail miserably at every step. Now I'm hooked, and there is no escape. I even started watching CSI Miami!
So why is CSI so bad? After much deliberation, I have come to the inevitable conclusion that the futuristic vision laid out in Terminator has actually come true in the form of a TV show that is written, directed, and produced without the assistance of real humans.
As a die-hard fan of the show, I have compiled some tips for the actors and writers of CSI, which, if followed faithfully, should make them appear even more human-like.
Pointers for cyborg actors
- Gil "pompous ass" Grissom": I can't decide which is worse: the jokes or the delivery. Stop stringing me along: going deaf is a great excuse to leave the show.
- Rick "handsome ex-gambler" Brown: squinting while you say your lines does not make your acting better. Neither does it add credibility to your delivery.
- Sara "I have no life outside CSI" Sidle: delivering your lines in a droning monotone will not help win friends and influence people.
- Catherine "I might be the only human on this show!" Willows: Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault that the writers' attempts at exploring your private life fall as flat as a fat woman off a tall building.
- Nick "a crazy guy actually wanted to steal my life!" Stokes: it's hard to play a scientist when you look like a linebacker...
- Jim "an actual cop!" Brass. Next time they ask you to drive home one of Grissom's "jokes", just say no.
- Al "The Coroner" Robbins: You could well be the other human on the show, but the fact that you approach putrefying corpses without a mask belies your fake identity.
- Greg "the geek" Sanders: The good news is that you're the coolest guy on this show. The bad news is, that's not saying much.
- Lady "The S&M Madam" Heather: Grissom? What in the world were you thinking?
Pointers for cyborg writers:
- It's OK ignore the fact that real people have private lives outside of work (see the X-Files). It's not OK to blame your bad writing in this department on your characters (those CSIs sure are loners). For more help on this, watch ER do an excellent job of what you fail at again and again.
- People's bodily fluids are not there for the taking. Note to research team: investigate mysterious "warrant" concept.
- People who work in the same field don't launch into monologues explaining scientific principles behind their work to their co-workers. Here's an idea: work it into the story.
- A plot by any other name...
Here's some recent setups from the show (to be fair, some of these plots might actually be from CSI: Miami, but who can tell the difference?)
- a club where people pour honey on one another
- a club where people paint themselves with day-glo paint
- a club where people cover themselves with foam
- an S&M brothel where people wear latex (two appearances so far)
Can you see the pattern?
- Full color, 3D graphics do not appear on computer screens in response to furious typing. Word to research team: mouse.
And last and not least: For God's sake, use a smaller sledgehammer to drive your points home! Yes, it is true that cyborg intelligence is far superior to us lowly humans, but some of us do have IQ's above 40. We get it already!
- Your biggest fan
1:48:16 PM
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© Copyright
2003
evans.
Last update:
3/22/2003; 2:33:33 PM.
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