Page Two with Shane and Wil

Military Reunions Caught On Tape

2010-08-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

It is Dangerous!

2010-06-12T20:56:00.000-07:00

It is Dangerous!: "Did Rob really out-do himself this time? Check out the trailer for the third season of Fantasy Factory."

seekrit

2010-03-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

One of the things I love about this blog is that it's the one place on the entire internet that Wil can post an entry and have zero comments. If that doesn't prove that this thing exists in a vortex, you don't understand the concept of proving vortices. You are vortex dumb.

myku

2010-02-09T06:07:00.000-08:00

Rainy oranges/
brighten the tree with color/
no one will eat them.

Well, hello there. How do you do?

2010-02-08T23:15:00.001-08:00

I'm just feeling jealous that Shane has made some recent posts, and I haven't, so I thought I'd share two things:

1.) I've been working out so much my whole body is sore from running and stuff. This is awesome, though, because it means I'm that much closer to being in good enough shape to play ice hockey again.

2.) Guitar Hero: Van Halen is so much fun, it's almost worth paying that much to really only pretend to play the same 9 songs over and over again. When Anne was all impressed that I nailed the solo at the beginning of Hot For Teacher tonight, I honestly felt cool for the first time in years.

Okay. As you were. Dragon Age calls.

excrete

2010-01-23T14:33:00.000-08:00

"This bag can be used for vomiting, spitting, throwing the wrappers of chocolates etc., and throwing the baby's excrete in the flight period. Thanks!"

I'm partial to the choreography of the women leaving with suitcases.

2010-01-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

2010

2010-01-02T16:03:00.000-08:00

Here's to a grand new year. Make this the year you do it.

I'm a Zombie

2009-09-15T23:11:00.000-07:00

Photo Courtesy of LA TIMES

2009-08-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

matchbox

2009-06-30T23:07:00.000-07:00

The most beat up Matchbox car I own. Click on it for more detail.

CLEAR!

2009-06-20T10:17:00.001-07:00

You will not die, underbelly blog. NOT ON MY WATCH. Stay with me kid. Keep those eyes open. Do you hear me? LISTEN. Look at me! There you go. Stay focused. We're gonna make it. Here's a picture of a fishface to inject a little life into your near dead hull:

Day One

2009-06-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

Today is a big day. Ten week marathon of production, followed by a 12 week marathon of post. Excited, nervous, anxious, happy.

wgafr?

2009-06-13T18:23:00.000-07:00

This is seriously the greatest place to post "under the radar" entries. Wil's corpse is shriveled in the corner of this old blog, but that's not going to stop me from braindumping here. I'm doing that improv show I mentioned a couple of posts ago (scroll down). I'm scared shitless to get back onstage after so long away. And yet, who gives a fuck, really? That's the philosophy to really take with you through life. Worried about what someone might think? Who gives a fuck, really? Afraid you said something awkward? Who gives a fuck, really? Scared of failing? Who gives a ratfuck, really? Do it. Fail. It's okay. Risk it. Ignore the voice. Live loudly.

fact

2009-06-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

I prefer coffee that isn't scalding hot.

Brand X

2009-06-11T23:52:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a show for old time's sake. It's an improv show I created several years ago, with some then unknown talent. Some of these folks have gone on to be...well...I guess, known. To me, they are still my old friends from the grimy improv days, when we used to do a 40 minute show called BRAND "X." Jessica Makinson wanted to do a three week reunion run, so I said, "Why not?" The photo is my son. I did the amazingly basic photoshop work with the text tool. I R SMRT. Since 4 people read this blog, including me and my dog, I have no qualms about self-promoting. Also, why should we ever be ashamed to self-promote? Shouldn't we assume that people who subscribe to a feed or check in on a blog or follow someone, want to know more about what they're doing and might be excited to hear about things they are involved in? I sure hope so. That's how I am with the people I read/follow/stalk. Wait. Not stalk. Stop talking, Shane. Stop effing talking. Here's the flyer....

2009-06-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

One time, I won a contest to be the Great Guinness Toastmaster onstage with Barenaked Ladies. I am lucky.

this is burned in my memory

2009-06-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

me dumb

2009-06-06T11:31:00.001-07:00

I just deleted posts by accident. Luckily, they were just youtube videos. ME DUMB.

I look like the crazy one...

2009-06-05T00:12:00.000-07:00

As part of my continuing effort to breathe meager life back into an archaic blog with random quick posts, here is a picture of me and Tommy Wiseau from the cult classic film, The Room.

The film is terrible and wonderful, just like this picture:

2009-06-04T08:50:00.001-07:00

It's fun that this place is forgotten. I can post anything! It's like the old west, if the old west were a forgotten blogger blog! As a celebration of this awesome lost relic blog, I give you this picture of me holding a bowling ball. I've clearly gone ROGUE! Try and stop me, no one.

hollow

2009-06-03T22:54:00.001-07:00

In the corner, there is a crumpled sweatshirt. Forgotten in a room that was never quite fully furnished, it has been left behind for good. The years have blanched the pictures within the open magazines lying about, and the petrified remains of the last sip of coffee rests in shattered shards at the bottom of a plain white mug that reads "l33t." It makes sense to someone. Someone that has not been here in quite a while.

Archaic links taunt me with their thumbnails. I pick up the dusty sweatshirt that I forgot I even had and hang it on the back of a folding chair that hasn't been used in quite some time. It's rusty and cold, and I realize the sweatshirt probably isn't mine after all. There are unpacked boxes of ideas and plans that have decayed and crumbled into corrupted files. A slight buzz fills the lifeless room. It is a room without purpose. I shut off the light as I walk back out just as quickly as I walked in. This place is abandoned.

Omegathon finals.

2007-08-26T17:14:00.001-07:00

Omegathon finals.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Minibosses play theme from Halo 3! So awesome.

Minibosses!

2007-08-26T00:48:00.001-07:00

Minibosses!
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

PAX sign.

2007-08-26T00:01:00.001-07:00

PAX sign.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

This was on a screen in the main theatre between acts during the concerts.

MC Frontalot at PAX.

2007-08-25T23:39:00.001-07:00

MC Frontalot at PAX.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

I got next!

2007-08-25T17:41:00.001-07:00

I got next!
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Now that is a crowd.

2007-08-25T16:02:00.001-07:00

Now that is a crowd.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

They're not all waiting for me, but still...

Win your weight in Ramen.

2007-08-25T12:55:00.001-07:00

Win your weight in Ramen.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Probably the best idea, ever.

Scary!

2007-08-25T12:51:00.001-07:00

Scary!
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Some kind of scary bunny monster from White Wolf.

Rock band demo.

2007-08-25T12:36:00.001-07:00

Rock band demo.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Freezepop!

2007-08-24T23:55:00.001-07:00

Freezepop!
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Wheaton trifecta!

2007-08-24T19:07:00.001-07:00

Wheaton trifecta!
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Sorry!

2007-08-20T21:41:00.001-07:00

Sorry!
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Lifeguard tower with flags and fog.

2007-08-19T18:33:00.001-07:00

Lifeguard tower with flags and fog.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

A few minutes after this was taken, the fog lifte and it became a perfect day.

Arthur... King of the Britons...

2007-08-17T18:01:00.001-07:00

Arthur... King of the Britons...
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

stop groveling!

Mountains.

2007-08-16T14:20:00.001-07:00

Mountains.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Star Trek shot glasses.

2007-08-14T18:27:00.001-07:00

Star Trek shot glasses.
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

Another drink? Make it so!

enterprise

2007-08-12T20:55:00.001-07:00

enterprise
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton

The absolute best sign from today's anti-war protest in NYC

2007-03-18T20:05:00.001-07:00

I can't believe I am, either!
Originally uploaded by nickcalyx.

I can't believe it, either.

[via reddit]

oh no...

2007-02-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

Does it mean that I've jumped some sort of Firefly fandom shark if I (may or may not have added) Nathan Fillion and Jewel Staite to my MySpace friends list? I swear it's just so that I can read their blogs. I SWEAR. It's just that they're both really fun reads.

Gah.

Fine, I'm a stupid fanboy. Okay? FINE.

it's official. george lucas is batshit insane

2007-02-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

According to this story at Netscape, George Lucas believes that Empire Strikes Back was the worst of all the Star Wars movies.

Someone better check his midichlorian count; I think its dangerously close to crazy.

the collective

2007-01-18T09:15:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it is only our own arrogance that somehow convinces us that there is a massive panel of judgers and watchers out there, examining each move we make, charting it and comparing it to where (we think) they think we should be, and ultimately shaking their heads in disapproval. It is foolhardy to waste energy second-guessing our decisions as if the rest of the world has time to worry about us instead of themselves; as if there is a collective measure of our own achievements that matters or exists; as if any of the scrutiny we imagine to be focused upon us isn't projected onto our unsuspecting friends by ourselves.

A man after my own heart.

2007-01-12T06:08:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced that I'm a Skeptic. In this article from Wired, they dicuss the long-standing million dollar challenge to prove that psychic ability exists.

Here's an excerpt:

"Ten years after stage magician and avowed skeptic James Randi first offered a seven-figure payday to anyone capable of demonstrating paranormal phenomenon under scientific scrutiny, the 79-year-old clear-eyed curmudgeon is revising the rules of his nonprofit foundation's Million Dollar Challenge to better target high-profile charlatans, and spend less time on unknown psychics, who too often turn out to be delusional instead of deceptive."

I need to join the Skeptics, I think. I've always believed so-called "paranormal activity" to be bunk. These TV psychics are hucksters and swindlers preying on people's fragile emotions.

Proof that the Universe is finally starting to revolve around me...

2007-01-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

I discovered this site when a commenter on another blog posted a short comment linking to it. Naturally, I took the bait and checked out the site. It's called "Project Shane," and in the words of creator Shane Sevo: "Project Shane is the attempt of one Shane to understand the current collective climate of Shane energy." Awesome.

I can help you understand, Shane. The collective Shane energy is hott with two T's. It borders on radioactive. And most of us rule at geekery. And beer drinking. Oh, and sarcasm. We especially rule at that.

Geek In Review: Guitar Hero II

2006-12-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

"Guitar Hero rocked the world of just about everyone who picked up a controller, struck the legs-apart rock pose, and transformed their living room into the stage at the Fillmore. Could Red Octane and Harmonix do it again? Would the setlist be as diverse and satisfying as Guitar Hero's? How could they improve upon a nearly-perfect game?"

read more | digg story

Wikipedia Trolls try to get entries on bloggers deleted

2006-12-04T11:51:00.000-08:00

A well-known group of childish trolls is at it again, this time launching a coordinated effort to delete pages for several popular and well-known bloggers on Wikipedia. Their first (and current) target is Tony Pierce, and they say they're going after the Freeway Blogger and Violet Blue next.

read more | digg story

democrats: don't you fucking DARE play nice

2006-11-12T17:07:00.000-08:00

It's only a few days in, and they haven't even taken their oaths, but I sure hope all this "we're going to play nice and be bi-partisan love buddies with the white house" talk from the Democrats is just a bunch of talk, especially on Iraq and the staggering amount of cronyism and corruption inherent to this administration.

Witness AMERICAblog:

The last thing Democrats need is to hand George Bush some bipartisan approbation of his failed Iraq policy so that, in the future, he can say we all own Iraq, warts and all. We all don't own Iraq, it's his disaster, his failed state. And nothing we try is going to work because it's already too late - Iraq is lost. Bush had his chance, and he failed.

(Emphasis mine.) This is exactly right. Bush has made it very clear that those of us who didn't support his failed Iraq war or subscribe to his binary world view (worship him or love terrorists) that we don't deserve to participate in our national conversation. Well, the voters in America just gave Bush and his Republican enablers a big fuck you, and the Democrats better be aware of that and act accordingly. Especially on Iraq. One of the countless reasons Kerry was such a terrible choice to challenge Bush in 2004, and one of the most significant, was his incomprehensible need to "me too" everything Bush said on Iraq.

Democrats have a massive mandate to change our country's course, including Iraq, corruption, and the abandonment of congressional oversight by the Republican Rubberstamp Congress of the last few years.

They'd better not fuck this up with a lot of bullshit Liebermanesque bi-partisanship. Americans expect some fucking investigations and some fucking accountability. George W. Bush broke Iraq, so he bought it. The Democrats had better not make it easy for him to make them (and the rest of us) pay to clean up his fucking mess.

the very antithesis of individual liberty and a limited federal government

2006-10-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

I had a joke for ACME this week (before I got sick) about how Bush responded to the North Korean nuclear test by moving to immediately ban gay marriage. I have a cold and a sore throat, so I can't do the joke, but it's an easy one that can be used again for just about anything Bush and the Republicans do, because they talk a big tough line about protecting Americans, but when you get right down to it, all they really do is expand their power and pander to their ultra-right, authoritarian, moralistic religious base.

Greenwald says it perfectly:

The same people who relentlessly insist that this war against The Terrorists which we are fighting is so grave and of such overriding danger that we have to dismantle the Constitution and vest unprecedented domestic powers in the President to fight it, are simultaneously causing the FBI to devote its resources to finding and arresting adults who choose to spend their time and money on gambling and adult pornography, all because James Dobson and Bill First think those activities are immoral and irreligious and, therefore, the Federal Government can and should use its vast law enforcement powers to dictate how adult citizens conduct themselves in their private lives.

It has been obvious for quite some time, and certainly since the Schiavo travesty, that the Bush-led Republican Party is the very antithesis of individual liberty and a limited federal government. The administration and its Congressional loyalists not only seek unlimited state power in name of combating terrorism but also in the name of enforcing private morality.

(emphasis mine) Why don't the so-called Libertarian conservatives get this? Why do people like my father continue to buy into the ridiculous canard that Democrats want to take your money way, when the Republicans are working very diligently to tell you exactly how and where and on what you can spend it?

I, for one, am fed up with this. I am fed up with 30% of the country and a bunch of fanatical religious zealots deciding what the rest of us adults can do in the privacy of our homes.

the terrorists are winning

2006-10-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

The biggest problem I have with the "torture first and maybe ask questions sometime later, if at all" crowd is that imprisoning people without trial never gives them a chance to prove if they are innocent or not.

This is important: just because the government, or a prosecutor, or even the King Himself George Bush says it is so, does not mean that someone is guilty. A trial may prove that someone is guilty, but all people who can be seized by this mighty country should be afforded, at the very least, the opportunity to speak in their own defense, and have their case heard by a judge or jury. Until someone is charged with a crime, and given a chance to respond to those charges, nobody, not even the president, can say if they are guilty or not.

So, with that in mind, read Tristero:

After racking my brain, I can come up with only one reason why Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years without charges and tortured. It was not because Padilla had 3 1/2 years of information that needed to be elicited it from him. It was not because what he may have known was a state secret. Padilla was imprisoned and suffered simply because Bush wanted to prove he had the power to do so. To anyone, even Americans.

Why? Why would Bush want to do that? What does he - more importantly, what does the country - gain from this kind of totalitarian behavior? Well, once again, Bush is making a point, that the president has the power to do whatever the president wants, without having to provide reasons to anyone. Especially during "wartime."

And Bush thinks, and the Bush administration thinks, and Republicans think, that it is a Good Thing. They must destroy America in order to save it. Shrink the American government down to nothing, so it drowns, as Norquist once said. What no one ever asked Norquist was what Republicans would replace the American government with.

It occurred to me last night, while listening to the president ramble on about something or another, that this man is simply unqualified to be the leader of my country. All this man and those around him want is entirely unchecked and unchallenged power. After five years of listening to them and their supporters tell me that I am not patriotic, or I am weak, or I wish to aid those who would seek to hurt me, my family, and the country we love, I have finally had enough. It is Mr. Bush, who is weak. It is Mr. Bush who has given the animals who attacked us on September 11, 2001 everything they hoped for, and more. Those people who have given in to terror, those people who are so afraid of their own shadows that they are willing to light our Constitution on fire to drive those shadows away; they are cowards. They are weak. They have allowed themselves to be terrorized, and in their cowardly, shameful rush to unquestioningly line up behind Mr. Bush and give him whatever power he wants, enencumbered by the courts or Congressional oversight, those very people are taking my country away from me.

America is a nation of laws, that has endured a civil war, the great depression, two world wars, and the Cold War. It is shameful that, under Mr. Bush's "leadership," 19 terrorists were able to do what Stalin, Kruschev, and Hitler could not.

I sincerely hope that we are a strong enough people to survive this simplistic, binary, "us vs. them" worldview favored by Mr. Bush, and that all the damage he has done to our standing in the world, and the very things that have always made America such a wonderful country can be repaired.

If not, a lot of people have shed a lot of blood for absolutely nothing, and the terrorists have certainly won, all because George Bush is an unqualified, simplistic, power-hungry man, surrounded by his equals.

New ST:TNG episode review on TV Squad: "The Last Outpost"

2006-10-10T11:33:00.000-07:00

It's the most spectacular failure to introduce an enemy in the history of television! The Ferengi ended up making those aliens at the end of Explorers look like Reavers. This review is way long, but I think it's pretty funny, too.

read more | digg story

Dark Side of the Bowl

2006-10-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

I never really got into Pink Floyd the way that some of the "heads" did in my high school. I was nowhere near daring and/or cool enough to hang with the stoner/party crowd when I was in high school, and I sure as hell wasn't able to identify good music at that age. Back then, I was probably trying to score tickets to the Great White/Whitesnake/White Lion concert on the River in Manchester, NH.

Luckily, in college I started hanging with a crowd that appreciated decent music. One of my friends introduced me to Roger Waters, via his solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchiking. If I remember correctly, we got super stoned on some local New Hampshire redbud and turned out the lights and listened to a concept album featuring "that guy from Pink Floyd" and Eric Clapton (ahh...college). Needless to say, I was hooked.

From Pros and Cons I moved on to Waters' other solo albums, including my personal favorite, Amused to Death. Like the rest of Roger Waters' masterpieces, Amused to Death is a concept album. The theme throughout the album is that with the help of TV, our society has reduced war and killing to a videogame. Because of that, we are on track to literally amuse ourselves to death. Although almost twenty years old, it is remarkably relevant today. If you've never heard it, it's the one album I try like hell to convince people to listen to, without much success.

Continuing the backdoor route to Pink Floyd, I eventually bought Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon. Finally, after years of seeing Pink Floyd on the faded shirts of hippies and stoners (many of whom were my best friends in college), I understood the hype. There is genius in the music of both Pink Floyd and Roger Waters, and although you will find those that consider David Gilmore the force behind Floyd, I am of the Waters school. I think he is a musical genius, with an unbelievably strong and interesting point of view that is evident in all of his music.

He performed all weekend at the Hollywood Bowl, and in addition to that, he played the ENTIRE Dark Side of the Moon album, beginning to end. Under a full moon. In the open air, in the shadow of the Hollywood Sign.

Holy Fucking Crap.

I bought tickets for the Friday night show three months ago, but since the friends I was supposed to go with bought tickets for the Sunday night show instead, I found myself with an extra ticket. I spotted this post by Wil, which included this key line:

"I'm listening to The Wall and The Final Cut today." It seems appropriate.

An e-mail later, Wil agreed to take the extra ticket and meet me at the Bowl.

I thought I was a fan. Wil is a REAL fan. Although the concert was billed as "Roger Waters playing the Dark Side of the Moon" album, he also played a bunch of classic Floyd. Wil knew every song within the first note. My favorite quote of the night was when Wil turned to me as one song began and said:

"OH MY GOD. HE'S PLAYING SHEEP! I AM SO FUCKING HAPPY RIGHT NOW."

We also played the scavenger hunt point game with arbitrary rules like, first one to spot:

Hand Made Tibetan Knit Cap = negative 500 points
Gray Ponytail to the Ass = negative 4000 points
Vintage Pink Floyd Shirt= +500 points
Bedazzled Pink Floyd Shirt= negative a million
Dude Dancing a Wavy, mushroom inspired freestyle dance= negative a kajillion
Seeing Corey Feldman on the way out, carefully poised under the only well-lit area so that everyone could see him= priceless

It was a really fun night, and an absolutely terrific show. My little write-up here doesn't really do it justice. Wil, maybe you can tackle it better than I just did. Mine meanders and seems out of order. Page two though, you know? Fuck perfect.

Film Version of Good Omens Will Cost One Groat

2006-10-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens is closer to being made into a film by ubergeek director Terry Gilliam . . . if the director can track down a coin that hasn't been minted since the 1780s called a groat. (@ SGNews, via boingboing)

read more | digg story

Right Wing Terrorist Targets Keith Olbermann

2006-09-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Oliver Willis:

The crazies are at it again, first it was the NY Times - now it's Olbermann :
The acerbic host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" was terrified when he opened a suspicious-looking letter with a California postmark and a batch of white powder poured out. A note inside warned Olbermann, who's a frequent critic of President Bush's policies, that it was payback for some of his on-air shtick.
The powder turned out to be a dud, but that doesn't change much. The right-wing in America has once again chosen to try and silence that which they disagree with.

What Oliver doesn't mention is how reprehensible the linked story from the NY Post is, in its portrayal of Keith Olbermann. I won't reprint it, but follow the link if you don't mind throwing up in your mouth a little bit.

If George Bush gets his way, and his law to suspend habeus corpus, legalize torture, and make it the American Way passes, the Right Wing Lunatic who sent this letter to Keith Olbermann could theoretically be tossed into jail without trial, and then tortured as long as some unaccountable person felt it was necessary, without ever having an opportunity to defend himself. Ironic, isn't it?

In both cases -- the torturing and the threatening of journalists with subsequent mockery -- this is not my America. This is not the America I believe in, and am willing to die to defend. This is George Bush's America, and I sure hope we start taking it back from him and his Republican rubber stamp congress in November.

I went deep and cashed in the WCOOP!

2006-09-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, I played in the Pot-limit Omaha high-low split event in the WCOOP at PokerStars.

1303 people entered, many of them the very best PLO/8 players in the world.

Somehow, I managed to play smart, get lucky a couple of times, not get unlucky a couple of times, and finished 70th.

Holy shit. I finished 70th out of 1303 players, many of them the best in the world.

If I hadn't suffered a really bad beat by a hand I had completely dominated pre-flop, I probably could have finished in the 30s.

CardPlayer.com even included my finish in its coverage of the event:

Actor Wil Wheaton also made it past the bubble in the tournament, landing himself a 70th place payday of $742.71.

Even though I've made it very, very deep in events before (top 20%, including 40th at a Legends of Poker preliminary event this year) it's been in events where 10% makes the money, so this was my first tournament cash. More than the money it put into my pocket (which is going directly into the fix up the house fund, with a little skimmed off the top to buy some new CDs) it took a Prove To Everyone That I Deserve To Be On Team PokerStars monkey off my back that was starting to dig its claws into my brains pretty deep.

So I'm skipping around just a little bit today.

Okay, a whole lot.

Okay, the most.

Seriously.

ROCK!!1

a post just for my brother

2006-09-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

EWWW! RAT!

geneva

2006-09-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

This is pretty simple: Bush has fucked up every single thing he's touched.

Geneva has worked for over 60 years.

Do the math.

college republicans are sick fuckers

2006-09-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

From the people who brought you:

"The people opposed to the war aren't putting their asses on the line," Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn't he putting his ass on the line? "I'm not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country," he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, "and I wasn't going to pass that up."

We get this little beauty:

Events allegedly planned to recruit students to the Republican Party at the University of Michigan have both Republicans and Democrats across the nation stunned. Morgan Wilkins, an independent contractor hired by the College Republican National Committee to recruit students to the party, was described as planning events such as "Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day" and "Fun with Guns Day," in an article written Tuesday by The Michigan Daily.
"Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day" would involve volunteers posing as illegal immigrants and hiding on campus while students try to find them for prizes. For the "Fun with Guns" activity, students would shoot cardboard cutouts of Democratic leaders with BB or paintball guns.

No wonder the number of people who self-identify as Republicans is significantly down. Who wants to be associated with these psychos?

Losing the War on Terror

2006-09-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

Washington Post, Via The Agonist:

In North and South Waziristan, the tribal regions along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, an alliance of extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda, Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, Central Asians, and Chechens has won a significant victory against the army of Pakistan. The army, which has lost some 800 soldiers in the past three years, has retreated, dismantled its checkpoints, released al-Qaeda prisoners and is now paying large "compensation" sums to the extremists.
This region, considered "terrorism central" by U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, is now a fully operational al-Qaeda base area offering a wide range of services, facilities, and military and explosives training for extremists around the world planning attacks.

Man, it is so super awesome that Bush pulled soldiers out of Afghanistan and stopped the hunt to eradicate al-Qaeda so he could have that war in Iraq that's going so well! Heckuva job, George!

new GOP talking points as election draws closer

2006-08-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

Fox News is profoundly successful at the "some people say . . . " tactic, which is a great way for an anchor to express an opinion or spout a talking point while appearing to just report the news. For example, "Some people say that if Ned Lamont wins in the general election, the terrorists will walk right into your house and steal all your beer." or "Some people say that George Bush is the greatest most super duper awesome fantastic president ever in the history of the world and everyone who doesn't support him is a terrorist lover who had a party on 9/11 because they hate America so much." etc.

It's been very successful, because the Fox audience, who so desperately want to believe that Dear Leader and his Merry Band of Colossal Fuckups are doing a great job, can hear "some people" and immediately substitute "those evil liberals" or "the Democrat party[1]."

Now the "some people" language is moving up a notch in the GOP food chain, from Fox News right up to the White House.
A couple of days ago, we heard Dick Cheney say:

"Some in our own country claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone," Cheney told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nevada. "A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be ... a ruinous blow to the future security of the United States."

The big problem with this claim is that nobody is saying that. An even bigger problem is that the media are dutifully and credulously spreading the specious claim. Now Rumsfeld is using the same "some people" language, and making the same completely false claims, which 36% or so of sadly deluded Americans are gleefully listening to and believing.

Expect this language, and this framing, to be repeated more and more as we get closer to the election, and especially when the Decider tries to make everyone believe that Iraq=9/11 and Saddam=Al Qaeda.

Guess what? "Some people" are finally waking up and realizing that George Bush's GOP is a complete and utter failure.

(via Americablog)

[1] As an aside, whenever you hear someone call Democrats or the Democratic party "the Democrat Party" you can be assured you're listening to a wingnut. The right wing noise machine has been trying to replace "Democratic" with "Democrat" for a little over a year, now.

dangerous expansion of unconstitutional powers, thanks to dear leader

2006-08-27T17:56:00.000-07:00

Greenwald:

This article from the San Francisco Chronicle details the truly amazing story of two U.S. citizens -- a 45-year old resident of the San Francisco area and his 18-year old son -- who, after travelling to Pakistan, have been barred by the Bush administration from re-entering the country. They have not been charged with any crime, and no court has ordered or even authorized this denial of entry. The administration is just unilaterally prohibiting these two Americans from re-entering their country.

A relative of the two men (the older man's nephew) was convicted in April by a California federal jury on charges of supporting terrorism as a result of his attending a Pakistani training camp (and just incidentally, the conviction was obtained under some controversial circumstances). And the Federal Government is now demanding that his two relatives submit to FBI interrogation in Pakistan as a condition for being allowed to return home to the U.S.

Gosh, why in the world would anyone be reluctant to submit to interrogation in Pakistan, even if it is allegedly done by the FBI, without access to counsel and without the protections American citizens are supposed to have, regardless of where they are geographically, when they are in American custody? (Hint: the answer rhymes with "water boarding.")

Over the past five years, this administration and its supporters have advocated empowering the Government to detain U.S. citizens indefinitely in military prisons without a trial, eavesdrop on their telephone conversations without any warrants, track and chronicle all of their telephone calls, and now bar their entry into the U.S. -- all without any criminal charges being filed and without any opportunity to contest the accusations, all of which are formed in secret.

Blood boiling, yet? Try this one one for size, from Digby:

For several years,
Javed Iqbal has operated a small company from a Brooklyn storefront and out of the garage at his Staten Island home that provides satellite programming for households, including sermons from Christian evangelists seeking worldwide exposure.

Mr. Iqbal’s home, a modest two-story stone and brick house on Van Name Avenue in Mariners Harbor, stands out because among the children’s toys in the backyard
were eight satellite dishes.

But this week, the budding entrepreneur’s house and storefront were raided by federal agents, and Mr. Iqbal was charged with providing customers services that included satellite broadcasts of a television station controlled by Hezbollah —
a violation of federal law.

Yesterday, Mr. Iqbal was arraigned in Federal District Court in Manhattan and was ordered held in $250,000 bail. The Hezbollah station, Al Manar — or “the beacon” in Arabic — was designated a global terrorist entity by the United States Treasury
Department in March of this year.

The Bush administration has decided to equate Mr. Iqbal's rebroadcast of what is little more than propaganda (pretty awful stuff, no doubt, but ultimately just propaganda) as material support for terrorists. That's ridiculous. Call it horrible, say that it's disgusting propaganda, but don't classify it as material support for terrorists, because that's just stupid. So open up your big book of rules to the page that says things like "buying or supplying weapons or providing financial support" for terrorists (start at the Saudi Arabia page, if you get lost) and add "rebroadcasting television programming." You should also grab a marker, and just wipe out the first amendment portion of your Constitution.

Bush and Cheney are fascists, and their Republican-controlled Congress are little more than enablers. We need to blow the Republicans out of Congress in November because our American way of life (freedom of speech, press, religion, right to be secure in our houses and not subject to unreasonable searches, etc.) can not stand two more years of a Bush White House and a Republican Congress.

GjOePmentum

2006-08-17T17:19:00.000-07:00

Everything you need to know about Joe Lieberman is summed up in this screengrab from Google News:

Yeah, the Democrats counter "Lieberman and GOP" on Iraq, and who is cheerleading for Joementum? Why, FOX News, of course.

Doughty's Creative Process

2006-08-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

Super Special Questions Blog: Methods.

I've been trying to write more songs for a session in September; time is limited, obviously, and I don't have the sheaf of culled phrases from months of journals that I usually use as a lyrical source. So I've been reading books with a pen in hand, underlining interesting and/or rhythmic words, and then writing them down the next day--over several columns on several sheets of paper, to put them in an order other than that in which they appeared in the books--and then when I go to the guitar and the drum machine I use those words to plug into the lyrics.

scenes from a media room

2006-08-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

INT. Media Room -- Late Night.

April: Oh man, I feel like an eighty year-old woman.

Wil: You don't know what an eighty year-old woman feels like.

Pauly: Hey, don't knock it 'till you've tried it.

Pause.

Wil and Pauly explode into laughter.

April: What? Oh! Gross!

Fade to Black.

how you know you've been in Vegas too long

2006-08-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

You wonder where all these goddamn people came from, and then realize: oh yeah, it's the weekend.

tomorrow may come, tomorrow may never come

2006-07-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

I got eliminated from the main event because I got stupid. That's really what it comes down to. I got stupid, made two total rookie mistakes that I know not to make, and didn't even make it to the third level. I was the sucker. I was the dead money. I was the idiot who shouldn't even be on Celebrity Poker Showdown, because he fell in love with top pair twice early on in a deep stack tournament. And called off all his chips. Twice. Fucking. Idiot.

The worst part of the whole thing is that I completely beat myself. I wasn't trapped, or tricked, or masterfully outplayed; I just got stupid and made two completely fucking idiotic donkey moves. I played like a stupid fucking celebrity poker player.

I'm disgusted with myself. I let myself down, and I feel like I let PokerStars down (even though my friends who I work for and with will tell me that I shouldn't beat myself up about it, we all know I screwed up.)

I fucked up every time it mattered in this year's World Series, in every event I played. I completely choked in the 2K and in the Main Event, and I didn't have the balls to make a move when I needed to in the 1K.

Well, I have at least a year to think about it, but I only have about twenty minutes before I go back to the Rio and write about people who actually know what they're doing.

countdown

2006-07-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

it's five days until my birthday, when i'll finally be older than jesus.

if i can just avoid the romans for the next 120 hours, i should be safe.

prescient

2006-07-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

When the government fears the people there is liberty;
when the people fear the government there is tyranny.

-Thomas Jefferson

afro wisdom

2006-07-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

"If you don't like a song, don't listen to it."

darkness, imprisoning me

2006-07-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

There are just total fucking scumbags all over the place in Vegas: con artists, criminals, liars, scam artists, and people who are best described by Ben Kenobi, thusly: "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."

Two of my friends were completely taken by different con men in the week I've been here, and I saw it happen once. Even though my spidey sense was going off like crazy, I convinced myself that I was just being paranoid, and it cost my friends a few hundred dollars. Though it didn't cost me any money, it certainly cost me a sense of security and threatens my entire sense of believing that people are basically good. I feel really dirty and violated, and I can't get this one guy's face out of my head, probably because I'd like to see him end up face down in the desert, after digging a hole with his bare hands and begging for mercy.

Yeah, it's shocking to me that I can even think that way, especially over a few hundred dollars, but it's true. I'd really like to watch this pile of shit suffer. I didn't know I had that in me, and maybe it's heightened because I'm very open to emotions (mind and other people's) because I'm completely The Writer while I'm here, but knowing that I would smash another human's face in with a brick until it's unrecognizable if given the chance isn't the most comforting feeling in the world, you know?

So yesterday, as we walked down a hallway at the Rio, I told my friend Pauly, "You know what? I'm done giving people the benefit of the doubt, and I have my shields set to maximum right now. If I don't personally know you, or you're not personally vouched for by one of the ten people I know here who I implicitly trust, you can just go fuck yourself."

A pretty girl passed us going the other way, and she smiled at me and said "Hello."

I smiled back, and said, "Hi." You know, just being polite. Then I thought, "Wait a minute. What does that fucking bitch want from me?"

I involuntarily put my hand on my pocket to protect my wallet, even though she hadn't come within fifteen feet of us. We walked about five more steps, and I said to Pauly, "Hi? Wait. I take that back. I don't know you, so go fuck yourself."

I've been exposed to the darkness in others while I've been here, and as a result I have had a glimpse at the darkness that I didn't know existed in myself, and didn't exactly want to find. Who knew that it would only cost a few hundred dollars of someone else's money to find it?

it controls your actions, but it also obeys your commands

2006-07-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

I drove a friend of mine home last night, and we talked a lot about writing on the way. I commented that when I'm really writing well, I feel like I'm in some kind of pseudo-out of body experience, and I almost feel like I'm floating along in a river that I can kind of control, but enjoy just drifting down.

The key is to stay out of my own way, so I can feel the flow, and holy crap can I feel the flow right now.

ghosts

2006-07-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

Last night, I went out to Greg Raymer's house for a barbecue with a bunch of my friends from PokerStars. It was a little surreal -- Greg is playing in the $50,000 HORSE event today, where the buy-in is more than two years of mortgage payments for me, and he invited all of us out to his place for dinner the night before.

Greg's place is way off the strip, and it's the farthest I've ever driven away from Las Vegas Boulevard in all the times I've come here. Once I got about ten blocks away from the cluster of hotels and casinos, the harsh reality of Las Vegas' location was apparent all around me: for miles at a time, I'd be surrounded by empty lots and open desert, and the few lots that had any sign of civilization in them were pawn shops, porn shops, or abandoned bars. That's what Vegas is really all about, when you get away from the shining neon and watered-down drinks.

I stopped at a light way out on some highway, and saw the history of Vegas in two glances. To my left, there was a housing tract that looked like it had been built in the 1970s. The houses were small and were once brightly-colored stucco. Today, they are falling apart, and most had patches of dirt where a front lawn once was. About a third of them appeared empty. Just behind them, a new housing development was under construction. The houses were mostly frames, but many of them had piles of roofing tiles wrapped in plastic on their tops. They were built right on top of each other, were two stories tall, and looked to average about 8000 square feet each. I thought to myself, "Who in the world is going to live in one of those houses? Do any potential buyers look at the existing tract and think of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?"

I looked to my right, and saw a middle-aged man with a dirty face and an equally dirty once-white T-shirt, standing on the side of the road. He held a black canvas bag at one side, and drank deeply from a bottle of clear alcohol.

The light changed, and I pulled away from another Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.

to put on a black shirt

2006-07-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
-Sinclair Lewis

I'm a huge champion of private property rights, and I believe, like George Washington, that we can all exist in America with tons of different religions everywhere . . . but when I read stories like this and this, I get afraid. I get really, really afraid.

kenny boy dies

2006-07-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

On days like today, I really wish I believed in Hell.

the real victims are the conservatives

2006-07-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

Kristoff:

When I was covering the war in Iraq, we reporters would sometimes tune to Fox News and watch, mystified, as it purported to describe how Iraqis loved Americans. Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning. In retrospect, the real victims of Fox News weren't the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it.

(Emphasis mine.) I hadn't thought of it this way, but it makes sense to me, now. A few years ago there was a study which revealed that people who used Fox as their primary news source were the most misinformed people in America. That's really sad and frustrating, but what's really scary is that those same people were the most strident in their belief that they were correct, and everyone else was wrong. Even when these people were presented with copious evidence to the contrary, they maintained and fiercely defended their erroneous beliefs.

Of course, virtually all of those people voted Republican.

dear parents of children on airplanes

2006-06-21T21:15:00.000-07:00

Please, for the love of sweet fucking
jesus on a pogo stick: don't let your kids run up and down the aisle of
an airplane for the entire fucking flight. Especially when the vast
majority of the passengers have asked you to get them under control,
and have even asked them directly to settle down just a little bit.

See, while you may be totally cool with your kid treating the world
like it's their playground, some of us would like to grab a nap, or do
some writing, or play some Hot Shots Golf on our PSP while we fly. Yes,
I know it's a crazy concept to accept, but not everyone thinks it's
just so adorable that your little hellion is having such a great time.

Oh, and once you get them to sit down? Yeah, it would just be awesome
if you could convince them that slamming the tray up and down, kicking
the seat in front of them (let's just say, for the sake of making this
personal, that I'm sitting in it and trying really hard to be patient)
and shouting about Dora the fuckin' explorer at the top of their lungs
is pretty much the opposite of acceptable behavior on an airplane. Or,
now that I think of it, any-fucking-where that's not your house or a
Chuck E. Cheese's.

Have a nice flight,

Wil

reprehensible, but not ignorable

2006-06-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

Greenwald on Malkin, Coulter, Limbaugh, et al:

It would be nice and all if we had a political culture where extremists and those who traffic in character smears in lieu of substantive political arguments could simply be ignored, so that they would disappear. But the reality is the opposite. Our political dialogue, especially over the last five years, has been shaped primarily by those who specialize in demonizing political opponents as fringe lunatics, depicting disagreement as treason, and deliberately papering over complexities in order to spew misleading political slogans designed to propagandize rather than persuade. The lesson of the Swift Boat debacle, more than anything else, was that to ignore those individuals and those tactics is the best thing one can do . . . for them. It is surprising how many people seem not to have learned that lesson.

just a number

2006-06-16T10:44:00.000-07:00

2500 American soldiers have been killed in George W. Bush's war of lies. How does White House spokesman Tony Snow mark this tragic milestone?

He says, "It's a number." He must have realized how callous and disrespectful that was, because he quickly followed up with some rambling comments about how Bush feels the pain the families of fallen solders feel (Yeah. I'm sure he does), but his first comment is very telling. When they aren't being used a backdrops or props for political gain, these men and women are just numbers to this administration.

Disgusting.

AOL-Netscape Launches Massive "Digg-Killer"

2006-06-14T22:25:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, AOL's Netscape property will no longer be just another portal - it's being converted into a Digg-killer.

I wouldn't call this a Digg killer, at all. This isn't a zero-sum situation where Digg must fail for Netscape News to succeed, or vice versa. If you're in ad sales, of it you have some personal vendetta against one company or the other, I guess you could view it that way, but from a user standpoint, what's the big deal?

Complaining about the interface is a little silly, too. Clearly, Digg is doing something right, if another site wants to use a similar design, because that makes it _easier_for_the_users_. How is that a bad thing?

Ultimately, the users will go where they're happiest, and where they feel their time is best invested. For some, that will be Digg; for others, it will be Netscape News. I suspect that, for most, it will be a combination of them both.

Disclosure: I write for CardSquad.com, which is a WIN blog.

read more | digg story

some people are never happy

2006-06-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to attend YearlyKos, but alas, my schedule didn't permit. I guess Mark Warner, a possible Democratic contender for president, was very high-profile at the event, and some people (usually people who have sworn a blood oath to another candidate) are really complaining about it.

Markos made a great rebuttal to their complaints, that comes down to this: don't bitch when politicians ignore us (in the netroots) and then complain when they do pay attention to us.

This prompted John in DC to write a list at AMERICAblog, that concludes with the following points, which are very useful and should be remembered by anyone who has to deal with grumpy whinebags:

Fourth, some people are never happy.
Fifth, someone is always going to be unhappy, so sometimes you just have to say "whatever."
Sixth, just because someone complains doesn't make them right.
And seventh, just because someone complains loudly doesn't make them representative of anyone more than themselves.

3-0

2006-06-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

Where is the team I've been watching in World Cup qualifying for the last two years?

What an embarrassing, humiliating defeat.

NASA admits Deutsch muzzled science

2006-06-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

NASA has sent a letter to two Senators saying George Deutsch, a White House political appointee to NASA, did indeed try to suppress science in NASA. Deutsch is no longer at NASA -- he resigned shortly after this story first broke in January. This is good news-- but political suppression of science elsewhere continues.

read more | digg story

the finest things in the world were written on an empty stomach

2006-06-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

"I heard you had some talent."

"That was last year. This year, I'm trying to make a living."

-Sunset Boulevard.

network neutrality defeated by republican whores, with help from democratic whores. god i fucking hate congress.

2006-06-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

TPMCafe:

Net Neutrality shouldn't be a partisan issue. There should be Republicans who see the value in having a free and open Internet. But unfortunately, that's not happening. A grand total of 11 voted with Markey, who championed Net Neutrality along with Reps. Rick Boucher, Anna Eshoo, Jay Inslee and John Dingell.

More disturbing for TPM readers, however, should be that 58 Democrats sold out the Internet. You can see the vote results here. We know Democrats are not a monolithic party, but this was ridiculous. And not only did they flock to vote with the Bells, many of them signed on as cosponsors of the telecom bill (HR 5252).

With all of that support, the Bells, and the cable companies, got everything they asked for. Bells get streamlined entry into the cable business. Cable gets out of much of its obligations to renew local franchises. And neither has to worry about keeping the Internet open. This result can come about because there are no penalties for voting against the Bells. Neither the corporate backers of Net Neutrality, nor the enthusiastic but diffuse public who supports it are yet in any position to wield the political power to change a politician's mind. That will have to change.

Does it surprise anyone that most of the Democrats tried to keep equal access available to everyone, while all but 11 of the Republicans did everything they could to ensure that a few hand-picked corporations can ruin the Internets?

Next up is the Senate, where I understand we have a better chance of protecting network neutrality, but only if we seriously commit to putting pressure on our senators:

The Bells control the inside game. They spent millions on TV ads, newspaper ads and, most important of all, lobbyists. Bell lobbyists are on the Hill every day, in every office of every member of Congress and Senator. Contrasted with that up-close-and-personal presence, an email petition with 800,000 names has no significance whatsoever. It is an abstraction. Sad, but true.

We can blog forever, and it won't make a difference, except as a vehicle to informing those who want to read about these important issues. If you want to make your voice heard, you have to do it in person. Not everyone can come to Washington, but every politician has to go home. You should find out when your House member or Senator has a town meeting and attend. Or schedule a meeting with a group of friends. Put Net Neutrality on the agenda, whether the politicians want it there or not.

Wii's classic virtual console games to be priced less than US$10

2006-06-07T18:07:00.000-07:00

Dude.

Iwata revealed that games for Nintendo's "virtual console" that will allow Wii owners to play old titles on their consoles will be priced at Â¥500 and Â¥1,000, roughly US$4.50 to US$8.99. For reference, classic retro games for the Nintendo GameBoy sold for upwards of US$35 for some titles, US$19.99 for others.

read more | digg story

I also have some thoughts about this at the SG Geekwire.

You know you're playing too much Guitar Hero when . . .

2006-06-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

. . . you hear Killer Queen on Big Tracks, and instead of thinking, "Dude! Queen!" You think, "Man, this song kicks my ass on hard."

why a goat?

2006-06-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

"The fact that it admits that it's a joke proves that it's the only honest religion."

- Most Reverend Ivan Stang, regarding the Church of the SubGenius.

pull on your hair, pull on your pout

2006-06-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Cure is stalking me today. It started with Lullaby when I took the kids to school, then I ran into Jumping Someone Else's Train shortly after I got home, and now it's Fascination Street.

When I was about 19 or 20, a bunch of us got up the nerve to go to a strip club for the first time, and some girl whose stripper name was Cinnamon danced this incredibly sexy, slow dance in a long flowing white dress to Lullaby, and then later did a passionate, harder dance to Fascination Street. I've since retired from strip clubs, but that night was really cool, and whenever I hear The Cure it reminds me less of that dancer, and more of that turbulent time in my life just before I realized that I didn't like who I was becoming, and needed to do something about it.

I wonder if I'd still love The Cure as much as I do today, if things had turned out differently, and I hadn't fled to Kansas to work my shit out?

Star Trek 2.0

2006-05-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

Wow. What a pile of crap. I didn't think it was possible to make the original Star Trek painful to watch.

It turns out that I was wrong.

where did it go?

2006-05-31T12:26:00.000-07:00

Does anyone know what happened to 180news?

burbank on main

2006-05-30T14:14:00.000-07:00

I started my job today that's going to take me through most of 2006. I've had several false starts with this particular job and a couple of reprieves when it came to an actual start date, but today is EoH-Day: End of Hiatus Day 1.

I am relieved.

As fun as it can be to have zero work commitments for a few months, it also gets very boring. I know what you're thinking.

"I could make it work."

You're probably right. You'd love it at first. No reason to get up early; no meetings to dread; no stress about pending projects or office drama; no conflict.

You know what they say about "no conflict?" It's boring. It's peaceful and simple, but it's boring as hell.

"Why don't you just work on your own stuff?"

I'm lazy. I'm not proud of it, but I could outlaze Homer Simpson in a Homer Simpson versus the Teamsters laze-off. I get more done when my schedule is full than I do when my schedule is empty. Work begets work. I like to think of gearing back up at a new job as the equivalent of going back to the gym after a long time away: It sucks at first, but then it feels good. And then you get conditioned and you can do more, without excuses. With no time for excuses.

(and then eventually, it will suck again)

And so, I'm back with my feet cemented into a TV Producer's world. It is a world like most of corporate America's: Take-Out for lunch, meetings and office supplies, interoffice memos and intraoffice tension and camaraderie, deadlines and pressure, relief and frustration, a rollercoaster of energy that only matters to the people involved. It is not important work, but it is interesting work. It is a world eerily similar to the world I spent years dodging in the name of art and being an artist.

As it turns out, those things two are often closer than they are removed from each other. Or perhaps the two have merely merged in my mind.

I burn the candle at both ends as I try to do it all at once.

i need no sympathy

2006-05-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

It's so gorgeous outside, the last thing in the world I want to do is sit inside and come up with interesting things to write about.

That's a great problem to have, isn't it?

another page two

2006-05-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

Peter Daou joins the Page Two world with The Grit.

I think this Page Two movement is going to catch on, and I can start nastygramming people who try to use the phrase themselves, just like a big boys do.

You heard it here first, folks . . . all thirteen of you (which is just the way I like it.)

let's call it web two point oh gamma service pack eight build eleven forty-two

2006-05-26T12:48:00.000-07:00

O'Reilly sent a nastygram to a small Irish non-profit, to stop them from having a "Web 2.0" conference.

Sharing, collaboration, and the wisdom of crowds are big parts of the Web 2.0 ethos—but they don't extend to using "Web 2.0" in a conference title. That's because O'Reilly and CMP jointly put on the Web 2.0 conference, and CMP has filed for a trademark on the phrase. They felt that IT@Cork's conference threatened that trademark (which has been sought both in the US and the EU), and so sent them a strongly-worded letter demanding that they cease "making any further use of our mark."
Tim O'Reilly and the company he founded are generally considered to be Good Guys™, and the move was disillusioning to the faithful. First Google, now O'Reilly? It didn't take long for O'Reilly and CMP to reconsider their position, though; a letter arrived the next day which granted IT@Cork a reprieve. Because the conference is only weeks away, CMP agreed to allow the use of "Web 2.0" this year; next year, though, would be a different story.

In the Ars forum, a poster pointed out that there are two ways to deal with this: the "carpetbomb them with lawyers" technique, and the "grant permission on a case-by-case basis" technique. The blogosphere is furious about it, and it was smart of O'Reilly to eventually reverse course . . . but after the way they dealt with me and handled Just A Geek (some of the same people are involved in this latest bit of idiocy) I'm not surprised at all that they did this.

There should be some serious blowback from geeks all over the world. O'Reilly is more than a publisher: they are a leader in all sorts of communities from Open Source, to [whatever] Hacks, to all kinds of Conferences. This is a company that exploits its image, and takes advantage of its customers, because -- let's be honest here -- they are the 800 pound gorilla in this world, and until today, nobody has stood up to them. I mean, even BoingBoing, where I see countless posts every day about this sort of bullshit, still doesn't have anything up about it (as of noon on Friday). If they think sending lawyers after their customers is a smart thing to do, they should give the RIAA and MPAA a call and have a nice chat. It seems like they may have more in common with them than you'd think.

Technorati Tags: 2.0, web2.0, itcork, oreilly, cmp,

big tracks

2006-05-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

For the last few months, XM has worked very hard to suck as much as regular radio, turning Lucy into a JackFM-eqsue pile of crap with a play list of about 30 songs, and overplaying the fucking Red Hot Chili Peppers on Fred and Ethel.

Where can a child of the 80s turn for spiffy music from our youths, and not want to stab our ears with a pencil every third song? Big Tracks, on XM 49 has been really fantastic. It's like Top Tracks, but with a focus on about 1979-1985. They'll play The Motels, Styx, Van Halen, REO Speedwagon, Journey, The Cars . . . sometimes they get really shitty, with extended periods of Tom Petty and Bon Jovi, but most of the time it's very satisfying and nostalgic.

Updated: Dude, they're playing Sweet's Love is Like Oxygen right now. I rest my case.

Updated Again: Now they're playing Stone in Love, From Escape. Fucking Brilliant. Maybe I'll live blog an hour of Big Tracks tomorrow. Yeah, that's what I'm-a gonna-a do-a.

Opera mini 2: an internet browser for your phone is OUT

2006-05-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

When surfing with Opera Mini, Web pages are optimized and compressed before being sent to your phone. This means that even though your mobile provider may charge you for the data which is transferred to your phone, the amount of data transferred is significantly less than it would normally be, making mobile surfing cheaper.I don\'t use a browser on my phone (it\'s an outdated LG thingy that I pretty much use for talking and buzznet-ing) but if I did, I\'d want to use a browser that didn\'t significantly impact my bill. And this is a great move by Opera; if they can establish themselves as the mobile browser (very difficult, to be sure, but stay with me for a second) they could get more people to give their full browser a try.

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Password Salting

2006-05-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

Here\'s a simple technique for using a unique password on every site that\'s still possible to remember. Cuz not all of us can remember an 8 digit unique password for a few thousand websites...

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Wil Wheaton Gets His Geek On At E3

2006-05-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

Wil Wheaton visits E3 2006 in search of the next wave of games, gadgets, and virtual rock stardom. Gonzo Journalism, geek-style, from The AV Club.

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longview

2006-05-23T12:21:00.000-07:00

Man, I am so unmotivated, it's crazy.

I don't feel down, I don't feel overwhelmed, I don't feel unhappy or anything like that (all reasons I've felt unmotivated in the past) . . . I just feel unmotivated. I look outside, and it's so beautiful, all I want to do is put on my iPod and take long walks so my mind can drift and grab a few creative and interesting ideas and run with them.

I must be experiencing some sort of pre-midlife crisis, because I've recently felt like there isn't enough time to do the things I want and need to do, and now all I want to do is get out of the house, get away from computers and TV and technology (except for my iPod, of course) and climb up the metaphorical mountain.

I think I'm going to try an experiment this week: I'll get up and do all my writing work for SGNews and CardSquad (which has eaten my last two fucking posts and really pissed me off) before 10. Then I'll write for my blog a little bit, but only if I have a good narrative non-fiction story to tell. I'll aim to be finished up by noon, and I'll spend the rest of the afternoon out of the house (or at least away from the Internets) observing the world and collecting inspiration and living my goddamn life for a change.

At the least, I should get some interesting things to write about; at the most, I should be able to unclog my brains and figure out if I'm really on the verge of some kind of massive crisis.

wake up, it's 1984

2006-05-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

A school district in Illinois is requiring their students to sign a pledge that they won't participate in "illegal or inappropriate" behavior at any time, even when they're off campus.

The board of Community High School District 128 voted unanimously on Monday to require that all students participating in extracurricular activities sign a pledge agreeing that evidence of "illegal or inappropriate" behavior posted on the Internet could be grounds for disciplinary action.

Eighty percent of the students in the district participate in extracurricular activities, so it's a this will impact a significant number of students. And who decides what's inappropriate? The school board, of course, who will be monitoring the students' blogs.

District officials won't regularly search students' sites, but will monitor them if they get a worrisome tip from another student, a parent or a community member.

What a student does away from school is none of the school board's business. The people who should be reading these students' blogs (and acting on anything they find worrisome in there) are their parents. If a student is stupid enough to blog about illegal activity, then it would be appropriate for law enforcement to get involved. But a school board acting as a morality police, determining what's appropriate for teenagers and what isn't crosses a line that shouldn't be crossed.