I guess it's official. I've migrated all my old posts and set up All Day Permanent Red at a new location. Please update your blogrolls!

Hope to see you at the new site. So, once again, that address is

http://www.permanentred.com/

I'll miss you, Radio.

Ok, I'm blown away. Wordpress is amazing. I'll probably move. I'm going to see what I can do about setting up redirects (I've migrated all my old content). My domain name hasn't propagated out yet, so please don't change your bookmarks.

But for now you can find me here.

Update: Had a domain up and running, but decided to use permanentred.com (which I had already). But, once again, it will take a while to take effect. For now the IP link above should work. So come visit me there. I've got the style swithing working, so you can pick which template you want to use to render the site.  

Obviously I thinking of migrating, or (less likely) keeping two blogs. I haven't been able to get remote access for Radio working. I can log in remotely, but I can't post (and yes, I have remote posting enabled.) I tried out TypePad before but if I'm going to move, I'd like something I can really control and tweak/hack. I had fun setting up Wordpress and look forward to learning its API.

I think Wordpress can import the RSS files fairly easily, so I could recreate my blog, but, you know, after taking a year off, I'm worried about losing what readership I have. But, hey, if I'm going to switch, I should probably do it now.

Wish I had signed up with with TextDrive for hosting, but they only accept PayPal, and PayPal refused (without reason) to accept any of the payment methods I tried to use.

Right now the new blog is here (ip adress until the new domain name propagates out), but there is not much up yet.

I'm playing around with Wordpress and Textpattern. Why? Not sure yet.

Hmmm, just did a manual install of Wordpress and it turns out the hosting company has one-click install. Ah well, at least I learned how to do it.

omg, I was just looking at the traces of myself on the net, and ran across this post from... my early grad school days. Let's just say sometime in the 90s. Like talking to a younger me.

This was an email I wrote to a listserv. Email never dies.

Georges Bataille 

email me for PGP key
*******************************************************************

In the "wish I had thought of this joke first" category, Tena posts on Eschaton:

 
Hawking is a flip flopper!

Sheesh. I have thrown all kinds of damning evidence, and voiced terrible confessions into a black hole I happened upon-- all based on Hawking's reassurance I would be safe. But now it seems I'm screwed.

Has anyone tried out TextPattern? (CSM/Blogging software.) It looks pretty cool.

Update: I've installed it and tried it out (then nuked it for the time being). Nice interface, but it's a bit scary to use software from a one-person development team.

Fantastic cartoon:

Mark Fiore: Minister of Fear

Tom Ridge wants you to remain calm but scared

Whoh. The German autotranslation is getting surrealer and surrealer now that the blog has actual German text in it. Apparently it retranslates the German phrase it originally created into ... well, stranger German. 

Heißes Wonkette auf John auf Johntätigkeit!

becomes

Auf-Johnauf Johntätigkeit Heisses Wonkette!

Took a look at the German (auto)translation of my blog -- always a fun thing to do -- and came across this phrase:

Heißes Wonkette auf John auf Johntätigkeit!

Meaning "Hot Wonkette on John on John action." But I love how "John action" becomes a single word: Johntätigkeit.

Let's declare a Johntätigkeit day: John action day!

Kevin Drum wonders

Is it possible that Bush played the gay marriage amendment issue perfectly? Maybe. By making a few phone calls and a radio speech he was able to look like a hero to his social neanderthal base, but by otherwise paying little attention to it (and getting it off the agenda quickly) he doesn't look too scary to moderate Republicans. Overall, he probably played this pretty well.

That would be a real Reagan-like trick to pull. But I think -- or hope -- that Kevin's not right about this one. If things were going Bush's way, a ploy like this might actually work. But now, as Bush appears increasingly incompetent, I think his legislative failures look more like failures.

Yeah, sure, he showed that he had the hate in his heart, but he was too much of a boob to turn the hate into anything useful.

Ran across this observation on Pandagon. He's commenting on an article contesting the use of homosexual as a noun -- because it implies that homosexuality defines a class of people, rather than a class of behavior.

Those [statistics] are just a sample of the worst. The theory of the entire piece is that since there's no way to confirm that someone is actually homosexual (the same thing could be said for heterosexuality, mind you), and since homosexual is a fairly new word, at least according to the author, they don't actually exist, and therefore, can be discriminated against at will.

Yes -- but you won't believe how common it is for homophobes to combine this argument to legitimize discrimination against homosexuals with another, contradictory one: that homosexuals are known to make (x) amount more money than straight people, and therefore don't need laws protecting their right not be fired for being gay, or thrown out of their homes.

No kidding: these arguments are made at the same time. Gays don't deserve protection against discrimination in the workplace because we don't really know who is gay -- it's a behavior, not an identity -- and, gays don't need protection because they make more money.

Yes, we have precise demographic information about a demographic group that we claim can't be identified as a demographic group, so will you stop talking about them, please?

Among other comic horrors, the FMA has subjected us to the indignities of headlines such as "Will the gay marriage debate reignite the culture wars?"

As if, politically, we had anything but "culture" wars. It is no accident that political acrimony has grown as the actual political distance between the political parties has diminished.

But that sounds too much like a Naderish point. The next election, as Hersh said in his talk at the ACLU, is no doubt the most important since 1860. And as Burningbird has argued, if Kerry did nothing but take long naps during his presidency, he would be better than Bush.

Political analysts have been baffled by Bush's inability to put the most basic thought into words. He was never eloquent, but, back in Texas, he could at least hold his own. (He sounded so much more presidential as a Governor than he ever has as a president.) The reason seems clear enough: the governorship of Texas is almost a ceremonial office. He didn't really need to do anything.

As president, Bush's awkwardness has always seemed like an acknowledgement that he's far out of his depth. It's only through something like a collective mass hysteria that people have convinced themselves that he seems "commanding." A collective fiction that we have embraced out of fear, one that has baffled the rest of the world.

They said that far more horrific stories were going to come out of Abu Ghraib. Here it is

At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say:

"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

See the post about this on edcone.com here.

Sadly, No offers a smaller, downloadable version of Hersh's talk.   

If you haven't seen the memos from Fox News that Wonkette reprinted, read them now. They are astounding in their candor about Fox's right-wing political bias. (I'm really looking forward to seeing Outfoxed this weekend at one of the house parties organized by MoveOn.org. It has backyard vision with an LCD projector! BBQ! Booze!)

Join Eschaton in sending a message to Slim Fast. (They canned Whoopi Goldberg for her comments about Shrub.) Contact Slim Fast electronically here.

Via Logos, information about updates at Feedster. I agree that it's become a great search engine (mainly for blogs, of course.)

Feedster update

Feedster is my favorite feed searchengine. After a first year of continuous improvements Feedster has now done a major update. It has many features. I can understand why Scott Johnson is...

Hot Wonkette on John on John Action!

John on John Action: Looking at the Overnights Edition

You don't even have to try to make it sound dirty:

Bastille Day is over already.

And we missed all the Republican anti-parties.

Matthew reminds us of some of the forgotten bloody verses of La Marseillaise.

As an undergrad I spent a year in Paris (yeah, yeah, didn't everyone). I'll never forget the night I was sitting outside my apartment -- in the middle of Paris -- when some drunken American sorority girls stumbled by and said, "Frenchy frenchy frenchy French frog, eating frenchy frenchy french fries?" (Well, ok, I was in fact eating French fries.)

They are probably Congressional members now.

Well, there is always this.

Came across this on George W. Bush, Will You Please Go Now?!

"Isn't that the ultimate homeland security? To defend the sanctity of marriage?" ? Rick Santorum

Oh... my... god. Santorum is equating gay marriage with a terrorist attack.

What an offense to the all the real victims of terror.

He's disgracing the memory of those killed on 9/11. He's demeaning anyone who puts his or her life on the line for homeland security -- hey, he's saying that he's doing the "ultimate" in homeland security by supporting the amendment; he's doing more than a soldier who fights and dies.

Top 5 hits for "hot John on John action" on.. 1. All Day Permanent Red » Hot John on John Action , Yet Again 2. All Day Permanent Red 3. All Day Permanent Red 4. All Day Permanent Red 5. Harrison Brace's Radio Sandbox  8/4/2004; 12:01:49 AM.

Update: er, well, sort of.

A number of people have already written on the "social" network that blogs have with each other. In the good old Marxist tradition, it's the blogs themselves that, increasingly, have the social relation (though that I do not think that this is a condemnation of blogs.)

To the degree that the claim is true about the "sociability" of blogs, design (to state the obvious) takes on a role akin to personal appearance. Not to overstate the case, but I think that accounts for the weirdness people feel when redesigning blogs, or when visited a blog they know that has been redesigned.

I was so busy playing around with design that I didn't see this. But, in the name of all things holy, what bastards:

A church's plan for an old-fashioned book-burning has been thwarted by city and county fire codes.

Another reason to love firefighters. And what weirdness to have a reverse Fahrenheit 451 while Fahrenheit 9/11 is in theaters.

Caught a segment on Fresh Air today, an interview with Henkrik Hertzberg, who writes for The New Yorker and was a  speechwriter for Jimmy Carter's. He was commenting about the proposal to develop plans to postpone the election and remarked that we are becoming more like... Peru was it?

The "standard model" of the lit crit take on Latin American magical realism is that it's a very realist response to absurd political circumstances (such as the denial of the massacre of workers at the banana company in One Hundred Years of Solitude -- which was based on a real event.)

Seems we are becoming a country that can genuinely produce magical realist novels.

In case you're wondering, here are the changes since the design, er, "premiered" (keep in mind I'm not claiming credit. I stole ideas for it from a couple of places.)

• Changed the background color to a deeper red.
• Changed the links so that they are all red (previously the visited links were gray.)
• Changed the body of blog from an absolute width in pixels to a percentage of the browser window.
• Added a few pixels to the width of the "masthead" (side panel)
• Rearranged various parts of the masthead.

I still need to work on the dates and maybe the way the posts themselves are displayed.

All of these charges, I have no doubt, will contribute to getting Shrub out of the White House.

So now that Cindy and Michelle are both converted to FireFox, it's... time to start a club?

Tell me -- honestly -- what's the most browser tabs you've had open at the same time? I just closed the browser and it informed me that I had 29 tabs open. That's just embarrassing.

I love the web developer extension. Makes it that much easier to steal -- I mean -- see how other people have implemented things.

So, what do you think? Like this design better or the dark one?

I'm a bit inclined to back to the dark design.

Political Wire: Kerry Leads In Battleground States

Mind Body Spirit: Hangover Helpers: New pills promise to rid you of morning-after misery

Now I understand what made this possible:

Bush Daughters Embark on Campaign Trail (AP)

AP - After years of zealously guarding his twin daughters' privacy, President Bush has turned a public spotlight on them by making both active players in his re-election.

From Wonkette: FMA "Celebrity" Press Conference Update: Gaygaygaygaygay

Wonkette's fashion correspondent writes to let us know what happened at the press conference announcing the support of "famous people" (Pat Boone! Darrell Green! Marvin Winans! Dean Jones, star of "Herbie the Love Bug"!!!) for the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Are they putting up such pathetic defenders of "heterosexual norms" to make heterosexuality really look endangered?

"Look at what celebrities the gays have left us with! Who the hell are we going to fanticize about while having sex?"

Though we have a good idea what Santorum thinks about. (Wonder if he knows about the box-turtles.)

Well, have done a bit of redification of the blog; not sure if it's an improvement. Was thinking of grabbing some public-domain css designs and plugging in all the radio Marcos, but liquors drunkened me. Plus, I haven't found anything that seemed appropriate yet (though the CSS Zen Garden has some cool stuff).

Any suggestions?

Not sure I would have guessed this:

You are the the Hierophant card. The Hierophant,
called The Pope in some decks, is the preserver
of cultural traditions. After entering The
Emperor's society, The Hierophant teaches us
its wisdom. The Hierophant learns and teaches
our cultural traditions. The discoveries our
ancestors have made influence the present.
Without forces such as The Hierophant who are
able to interpret and communicate traditional
lore, each generation would have to begin to
learn anew. As a force that is concentrated on
our past and our culture, The Hierophant can
sometimes be stubborn and set in his ways. This
is a negative trait he shares with his zodiac
sign, Taurus. But like Taurus he is productive.
His traditional lore can provide a source of
inspiration for the creatively inclined, and
his knowledge provides an excellent foundation
for those who come into their own in the
business world. Image from: Morgan E.
Cauthers-Knox.

Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

But guess who is the moon...

Well, it's just a dodge on the procedural vote, but all the same:

Kerry, Edwards May Not Vote on Marriage (AP)

AP - Democrat John Kerry and his running mate John Edwards may not end up voting on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, a polarizing issue in the presidential campaign.

Yahoo! News - AP Poll: Bush Seen Decisive, Kerry Smart

Have to love that headline.

So anyone planning a house party to show OUTFOXED? After reading the piece in Salon I'm dying to see it.

A gang of Peter Lorres: great description of Cheney and Bush from Cahiers de Corey.

You know, if we could manage a presidential election in the midst of a freakin' Civil War, I think we can manage an election in the wake of a terrorist attack. Nicole is right—it's all to make John Wayne look more impressive. Of course, John Wayne WAS impressive because of his cool and grace. Cheney et al are more reminiscent of a gang of Peter Lorres.

Reminder to self: Card is an ass-clown, over and over. Forgive yourself for liking that stupid book of his when you were a kid.

Asshole Watch

Orson Scott Card: is he still an ass-clown? Our sources say yes. If I were a political blogger, I might...