Had one of those surreal NYC moments tonight where I was chatting with a youngish lady who lives upstate but is originally from the South.  Her boyfriend came out and she was trying to get him into the conversation.  He not only wouldn't acknowledge my presence, but was insanely offensive to me.

"He lived in Memphis."

"Where's that? AND?!?"

I wish I could remember them all because it was so over the top that I had to laugh.  After four or five of these kinds of insults, I finally said, "It's okay, I love abuse."

This was the only time he looked at me at all.

I assume he was jealous (which is so frigging ridiculous) and has some issues.  Serious issues.

The worst thing is if you wrote this into a fictional story no one would believe it possible.  NO ONE is THAT rude.  Right.

My ex-father-in-law passed last night.  He'd been in Nashville for some time now awaiting a heart transplant.  Apparently it was a genetic disease that also claimed his father.

I was never particularly a big basketball fan, but I was a fan of Mike.  He, even when things were horribly, horribly awry in my marriage and my relationship with his wife, my then mother-in-law, he was always calm, assured and kind.  I learned a lot about life from him, and how to deal with its extremes.

This is his wikipedia entry.  I was surprised that someone had updated it within hours of his death.  I recall that he also knew Pat Riley (and thought Riley was one of his fellow players) but wikipedia doesn't mention that.

My thoughts go out to my son and all of Mike's family.  He was a big man with a big heart and he will be missed.


EDIT: Thanks to Valmiras for the link:

WKYT Sports Report

And sounding rather familiar except for his somewhat outdated manner of writing.



From BoingBoing

Like montecook wrote on his blog, I've never thought tricking people into thinking something that was untrue was particularly funny.  It was a busy day (the 1st) so I'm only now getting around to posting this.  I might make an exception or two for the crass, cruel or otherwise annoying.  Puck and other myths often test people and when they were proven to be greedy, got their just desserts.

A few years ago (2003? 2004?), I helped a co-worker and a friend of his trick a friend of theirs.  They gave me his cell number and told me the situation: this guy (I've forgotten his name, we'll call him Kevin Mulko... don't know why, has a ring to it maybe) took a picture of his girlfriend of several years while she was sleeping in the nude. She didn't know about it, and he not only talked about it but showed it to his friends.  I'm already losing sympathy for the vic at this point.

Anyway, they want me to pretend to be a phone company employee or something telling him he's in trouble for having a nude picture on his phone.  I think about it for a while and make a few changes.  Here's roughly how it went down.

KM: "Hello?"

Me: "Yes.  Kevin... Mulko?"

KM" "Yes, can I help you?"

Me: "Mr. Mulko, this is Agent Robertson with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During a wireless backup of your cellular phone, your phone provider noticed a pornographic picture.  Now, Mr. Mulko, this qualifies as transmission of pornographic material across state lines and is a violation of the Safe Kids Act of 2002."

KM: "Oh, God..."

Me: "Mulko... is that an Arabic name?"

KM: "No, no, sir.  Not at all."

Me: "Well, Mr. Mulko, we'll be contacting you soon about setting your court date.  I suggest you seek legal counsel.  Good day, sir."

Something like that.  Before they could even call him back to say "April Fools" he deleted the picture.  He was---as is usually the case with that fear show on SciFi/SyFy or Punked or whatever---trying to pretend to be relieved while actually being angry.  Not a total loss to teach a cad a lesson, I guess, but I didn't really feel like laughing.

Either today or tomorrow there's a fraud suit being opening in Georgia (I think) charging Obama with fraud for accepting the office of president and not being eligible to be president.  It's the birth certificate thing again (which, BTW Hawaii says is legitimate) and probably the citizenship issue.  So, now we face the new Monica Lewinsky, an attempt by the GOP to remove a duly elected sitting president.  I expect, though Limbaugh and FOX will have a field day, this is just going to ensure that the GOP faces a worse defeat in 2010 congressional races, assuming the case goes forward and gains any traction.

The idea that this party wants to see homelessness, hunger, and joblessness is just mind-boggling.  I am nearly 100% sure that Reagan, were he alive and president, would say, "Well, I guess tricke-down isn't working in today's environment."  Say what you want about the man's policies, but he was honest about that: he lowered taxes for the rich and didn't use Joe-the-Plumber's-Helper tactics to do so; he was up front about it.

Anyway, I mention again: the 2001 National Intelligence Estimate said the number one threat to America's national security was not radical Islam but the ever growing gap between the rich and poor.  It IS the Great Depression all over again, where the Industrial Revolution came to a halt because Americans could no longer afford what they were making.  This is why Cheap Labor Conservatism is ultimately a failure.  I'm all for balance; if something becomes too expensive to make sense, there's a problem, but it takes two to buy and sell and not being able to afford things is just as big a problem.

I can't be certain of the year, but I can remember being puzzled as a toddler as to why my mother started crying one morning while listening to the radio. She explained as best she could that American soldiers were being sent some place and my Uncle Harry was in the Marine Corps.


He spent his thirteen months there and never wanted to talk about it. The only things I know: he hates Kool Aid (they drank I a lot) and some of his friends didn't make it back.


With that, I head out for the third viewing of Watchmen.

Please stop making Alan Moore look sane. V for Vendetta is supposed to be fiction.

The Independent: Police Identify 200 Children as Potential Terrorists

France is not immune either, but Britain takes the cake (and lets people eat it?):

The Open Rights Group: EU Telecom Package

This is purely power and the government in bed with spammers, selling your private info to big business. What's corporate control of the government again? Oh, right, fascism.

Now, the Germans (and Austrians, and Americans, and...):

News.Com.Au - Police raid Wikileaks.de domain owner Theodor Reppe's home over 'censorship lists'

POLICE have raided a Wikileaks associate's homes in Dresden and Jena after the website published a list of banned websites.

Theodor Reppe owns the German domain registration for "wikileaks.de", one of the many URLs used by the whistleblowing website.

This morning, Wikileaks published a Twitter update:

"Police raid home of Wikileaks.de domain owner over censorship lists - stay tuned."

Wikileaks, which offers an anonymous service, has previously published alleged web censorship lists from Thailand, Denmark, and Australia.

A statement on Wikileaks's website claims police were investigating the "distribution of pornographic material" and "discovery of evidence".

Wikileaks claims Mr Reppe is not involved in the website other than "sponsoring the German domain name and mirroring a collection of Wikileaks US Congressional Research Service reports".

...

 

Ah, yes, an old favorite of a-hole investigators to imply it's kiddie porn (see the reference to it in the original X-Files movie) and not politics that launched the investigation.  An anonymous tip no doubt, the phone call undoubtedly coming from one of the officers involved.

Now back to Jolly Old England.

BoingBoing.net - London cops reach new heights of anti-terror poster stupidity





Yes, please report the contents of your neighbors garbage and be careful when you see someone looking up.  As we know, this means they are terrorists.

I wanted to go to England for a vacation.  I will not do so until this insanity stops.  You don't deserve my money, you paranoid, pessimistic, human-hating, civil-liberty-destroying jackanapeses.  From the same article:

What an embarrassment from the country whose level-headed response to the Blitz was "Keep Calm and Carry On" -- how has that sensible motto been replaced with "When in trouble or in doubt/Run in circles scream and shout"?

I don't mean, "They can't be serious." I mean, "They are NOT serious."  As in, they have learned NOTHING (like Wall Street) and are in denial.

I took an online poll in the hopes of helping the opposition party to find its way back (sorry, I do not believe in a one-party system, that crap is for banana republics, China and Eastern Europe).

The first portion of the survey was fine.  It asked questions, asked for advice, what they should concentrate on to get their footing.

But then the questions turned into---I've forgotten the term for it--- but essentially the questions are asked in a way to get people angry as opposed to actually finding out what they think.

Examples:


What does that even mean?  Pass more socialism?  Who wrote this, some kid skipping school on the subway?


Uh, yeah.  The answer is obviously corporations WHEN WE HAVE A DECENT ECONOMY.  What are you, on lithium?  We're in a recession, dipshits.

No, I think we should CRUSH FUTURE ECONOMIC GROWTH.  Yeah, I'd like to see it crushed.  Better yet, blended up with elephant (or Rush Limbaugh's) feces for a smoothie for the RNC to drink.


Bwahahahahahaha!!!


Yes, yes, I do.  After all it was them who missed 9/11, forced us into a stupid, pointless war, rolled back civil liberties, removed all oversight from the banking and trading industries and refused to help New Orleans in the wake of Katrina.  Oh, wait, no, that was the GOP.  Can we put borders around them?


Oh, no, NOT his "chosen tasks."  What are those?  Shooting puppies in the face?  Marrying gay muslims while feeding them French Fries?


Right, because it wasn't the Bush administration/Rove who created the most partisan judicial system of our lifetimes.


Really? I'M in charge of my healthcare now?  I thought it was INSURANCE COMPANIES!!!  Assholes...

The bullshit just goes on.  The one thing I agree on, the Dems should not be trying to cut off right-wing radio.  It's freedom of speech even if you don't agree with what they say.  The rest is just continuing to cover for their corporate overlords, ripping off the old, the poor and the weakminded, and straw man arguments.  GOP, you will remain in the wilderness until you remove your head from your ass.

From PledgeBank.com:


The idea is to get 1,000 people to post about women's contributions to technology today in order to sing these unsung heroes of the tech world.

Ada's wikipedia entry.  She lived from 1815 to 1852, and is considered the first programmer since she was manipulating symbols to control a machine (which, as noted above, before it was built---which it turned out it never was).

Thanks to varianor for posting about this.

An extra where Hollis Mason explains to a reporter Nite Owl I's origin.

Newsarama Video

Though I thought the song was largely used for comic relief, I have to say that coming home and putting on Leonard Cohen's hit song was actually quite effect---

Perhaps because I watched Watchmen for the second time yesterday or because the Washington Post panned this film, I've decided to post a hypothesis (perhaps not a theory) that I've heard regarding one of this famous pair. I was thinking of the Comedian's line about Woodward and Bernstein from the film and graphic novel. In that, the Comedian infers that he took the pair out on Nixon's orders.

Let's see who Bob Woodward might actually be, shall we?

Wikipedia says:


There's a bit of a gap there. Allow me to fill it in:

Spartacus.Co.Uk:


So, he was in Naval Intel and he served under Admiral Thomas Moorer. It's not here, but one of his jobs was to travel to and from the Pentagon to the White House.

But who was Moorer? For that we have to look at another incident during the Nixon years, not nearly so well known as Watergate, that of Yeoman Charles Radford, assigned as a stenographer in the Nixon White House by guess who?

History Commons:


So, the Navy is spying on Nixon and a former Navy Intel officer decides he wants to try reporting with the Washington Post and his first big assignment is taking on the President himself.  This was quite a big to-do when it happened.  The belief is that the Pentagon was afraid Nixon would sell the US out to the USSR and China.  Remember, he did sign SALT and was the first sitting president to visit communist China.  One can see why they'd be a bit paranoid.  But to throw a bit more cynicism on their motives, it may have had as much to do with the very profitable weapons industry.  (That is, after all, why we went to Nam in the first place, wasn't it?).

Now, let's look at Woodward's more recent work to see if we see a pattern:

Bush at War (a positive spin on the Afghan war in the wake of 9/11)

Plan of Attack (ditto for the Iraq war)

The War Within (oddly, a reversal of the previous book in meme)

So, is this a liberal?  A neo-con?  I posit neither.  This is a schill for the Pentagon, who, once the Iraq conflict was totally screwed abandoned the Neocons (particularly Rumsfeld) because it was no longer popular among Pentagon brass.

Now, who would the Comedian (were he real) really side with? ;)

Note: this is not my theory, but the theory of many Nixon apologists and those who have haunted the halls of Langley (such as Larry Johnson), and other journalists who smelled a rat.  Woodward has been asked about this and denied and deflected it.

Bernstein?  I think "East Coast Liberal" fits him just fine.  Nothing wrong with taking the chief to task for eavesdropping, now is there?

But back to the Post, I can see why dredging a lot of this up might make them uncomfortable.  My next assignment: to read and perhaps post on their reviews of the film.

Saw it again yesterday, this time not alone.  Though I found what I think are more flaws, I have to say they are dwarfed... DWARFED! by the magnificence of the film making.  Perhaps the ending is not as cynical as I thought at the first viewing.  Or perhaps Moore's genius lay in the fact that there are so many things going on at the end that you can see your own ending in it (and by extension the film).

At any rate, I improve my recommendation from tentative go to a definitely go.

(Following the trend from montecook  here).

The sheer amount of waste was unbelievable. It had been a short trip hopping from one planet to one in the next inhabited system.  Yet Jayne stood ankle deep in the hold, shovel in hand removing so much waste for so few head of cattle he wondered if something, somewhere hadn't done this to him on purpose.

"Hwoon dahn Captain, that's who! Still mad about something or other!  'Jayne do this!  Jayne do that!'  Why am I always the one cleanin' up gos se messes 'round here?  It ain't fair! It ain't right!"

Jayne slipped a bit and nearly fell face down into the pile he made on the cart to move the manure off ship.  He caught his balance at the last second on a piece of junk that was sitting in the bay for far too long.

"One o' these days, I'm gonna show him!  I'll be captain!  I'm gonna be the boss!  Jayne, the---"

The cough was a quiet one, but Jayne heard it despite his own loud rantings.  He didn't even bother turning around.  He just slowly took off his gloves, grabbed two great big handfuls of the waste, and slapped it on his shirt and neck, careful to get some on his skin.  Then he carefully shook the excess off his hands.

The Captain just smiled and turned back out of the bay, laughing quietly to himself.  Jayne really needs to learn to think to himself, was what Mal thought as he closed the door to cargo hold and made his way to the mess hall to grab something to eat.

I didn't really want to watch this show.  I really didn't want to see anything related to our former president for a long time.  It's not just that I had issues with him (I certainly did) but somehow eight years of anyone can get on your nerves.

But I was pleasantly surprised.  Ferrell not only hit some of the more obscure stories (trained monkey from Morocco for use in Iraq, which he carries to its fictional but hilarious absurd conclusion), but makes W seem at times noble, petty, sympathetic, lost, clever, and dumb as a rock.  In other words, sublimely and wholly American.

Ferrell not only played the former president, but he wrote the script as well.  On top of that, he did some of the funniest improv imaginable, taking names and professions from people in the audience and giving them pet nicknames (like the real W, c.f. Brownie, the Vulcans, and Turd Blossom).

Should this air again (it was live last Friday night on HBO), be sure to check it out and stick around for the credits.  They show more of the improv that was cut from the earlier portion of the show.  And see if you can pick out Edward Norton and Jeff Greenfield of CNN and CBS in the crowd.

This is playing at the Cort Theatre, where it broke the record for one week sales.

Finally, semi-off topic, let me say this.  I have a newish pet peeve regarding humor.  HUMOR IS COLLOQUIAL.  HUMOR IS LOCAL.  HUMOR IS CULTURE-SPECIFIC.  If someone doesn't like pizza, does that mean "pizza is bad"?  You may not find it funny.  Plenty people do.  Plenty people don't.  Ergo, if you don't, it doesn't mean "it's not funny," it means it's not your kind of humor. (Which is of course fine).

No, this isn't about Cheney.

It's another installment of the ongoing series: Who Cares? The Life and Times of a Couch Potato Actor/IT Guy/All Around Geek.

'Twas about 1993 or 1994.  A friend of mine from college called me infrequently (and by infrequently I mean three times a day for four days because he was depressed or bored and then a gap of five weeks, one call, then three weeks and the process started over again).

In one of these calls he told me that his great uncle lived in Manhattan and that his grandmother wanted me to go see where he lived, take pictures, and see if he would accept a letter from her.  I said, "I guess...." and we soon moved on to other topics and the subject was forgotten.

Then, after a hiatus from calling, he called me again about this specifically.  She was pushing him now to do this.

"Why? What's the story?"

In 1940 (!!!), my friend's grandmother's husband got into an argument with my friend's great uncle.  (I'm going to switch to she and her husband and her brother now. It is after all 1940 and my friend doesn't even exist yet).  There were fists and the husband pulled a knife on the brother.  He left.

And they had not spoken since.  Over 50 years of no contact.  I didn't know how she found out where he lived, but I decided it probably would be a good idea to do what she asked.  My friend sent me some money for a disposable camera and one Sunday, I took a trip way up town to where he lived.

It was a low income apartment complex.  Many buildings, all of them basically the same.  A "park" in the middle that was about 80% concrete and 20% grass and trees.  Kind of depressing.

I took pictures along the way.  Then took pictures of his building, front door, apartment door, etc.  Then I knocked.

Took him a while to say anything.  He was either hard of hearing or I was too quiet and I had to repeat myself several times.  He asked about the husband with the same disdain that he must have had over 50 years prior.  I didn't know at the time, but he had died several years before, which is probably in part what made the sister decide to contact her brother after all those decades.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I'm your great nephews' friend."

"My what?"

Imagine, time had stopped for him. He still imagined his sister and her husband (and their kids, if any at the time) the way they were so long before.  Before WWII was over.  Before Kennedy.  Before disco.

Anyway, he wouldn't open the door all the way, kept it cracked with the security chain engaged.  He said he would accept a letter from her and thanked me for coming.  I slipped his sister's address to him through the crack.  And I headed home.

Later, I got the film developed and mailed it to my friend.

I don't recall if they ever actually met face to face, but they did correspond amicably and around 1996 or 1997 my friend called to say that the uncle had died.  He said his grandmother was eternally grateful for me helping out.

At any rate, it was fun playing private detective for a day, as mundane in many ways as it was.  Life was more adventurous in the bohemian days in Hell's Kitchen, but also more full of strife.  I guess it's a trade.

I threw $0.13 into the fountain outside my office today, $0.01 for each of the original thirteen colonies.  On Friday the 13th!

We're going to be okay! :)

This has been driving me mad lately.  I've been hearing a lot of talk about Ayn Rand and most especially her novel Atlas Shrugged.  To put it in a nutshell, it's a novel about the US becoming socialist and how the enlightened wealthy (most of them) decide to leave the US and start their own country elsewhere because the rest of us don't deserve them.  I agree, but not in the way they're thinking.

The popularity of this book has risen since the financial crisis struck, I think to the point that more people may be reading it now than any other point since it was published.

I've never read it, but hey, it's the Internet and when has actual experience ever been required to pass judgment on something here?

I have, however, read The Fountainhead.  (By the way, if you've read Kevin Smith's recent three-part Batman story, Batman: Cacophony, you'll want to look closely at what the Joker is reading at Arkham in the beginning and at the end of the book.  I loved Smith's story though it was hard to take some of Batman's actions, so used am I to the darker versions we've seen lately.  If you read it, you'll know what I mean).

Anyway, The Fountainhead is about the trials and struggles of an architect, Howard Roarke.  Toward the beginning, he's kicked out of school.  He's not kicked out because he lacks talent, quite the contrary.  He's kicked out because his professors don't like him because he's more talented than they are.  He refuses to bow down to the great architects and architecture of old and wants to do his own thing.

At his exit interview from school, the professor who gave him the bad news is obviously hoping to see Roarke break.  He says (paraphrasing all of this), "So, what do you think you'll do now that you're leaving school?"

"Architecture."

"Huh? Who's going to let you be an architect?"

"Who's going to stop me?"

Roarke has many ups and downs, and his struggle can and should be compared to biblical characters.  I'm talking Old Testament here.  YEARS of struggle before he takes steps in the right direction.

During his struggle he makes his biggest enemy yet, Ellsworth Monkton Toohey.  Toohey has a column on architecture and actively seeks to destroy Roarke any way he can.  He is Rand's personification of evil.  He hates anyone who seeks to (in his view) rise above the mediocre or the old, wise, dead who must know better than modern man about everything.

Anyway, all of this is to get to the point.  Roarke wants to CREATE.  Roarke doesn't care about other people, it's true, but he respects them as he respects himself: he expects them to take care of themselves.

I think overall, this is fine philosophy to employ in many if not most situations.  Anyone who's in a creative field must certainly have heard (it's even a cliche in the movie Walk Hard) someone say, "You'll never make it," or "You suck" or fill in the blank negative criticism that really is not because they don't like what you're doing but because they don't want you to succeed.  Sometimes it's even someone close to you because they are afraid you're growing and they aren't; that you're outgrowing them.  One pysch book I read years ago actually defined evil as the desire to prevent others from growing for no reason other than selfishness.

To sum up, I think Roarke is heroic.  He is a hero in my opinion.

So, let's compare most of the people who think they're Howard Roarke to the Howard Roarke.  I'm talking about people who, when they say "freedom" only mean for themselves.  The ability to protect their companies from prosecution when they, for example, sell spoiled food that sickens or kills others.  They create financial tools that are so complicated others cannot figure out that it's simply a Ponzi scheme.  They make promises to help others when all they're really doing is stealing.  This is the heart and soul of (in my experience) 95% of objectivism as it is practiced and 85% of Libertarians I've met.  Usually, I get to know them just well enough to discover they are racist, sexist, classist jerks who simply want to hide behind something that's not associated with for example (their secret desire) fascism.  Free market to them just means don't stop us from being Robber Barons.

THAT'S NOT HOWARD ROARKE.  If anything, they have far more in common with Ellsworth Toohey.

Now back to the other book.  Leave the country, eh?  Start your own country?  Think we'll all go broke when you're gone?  That things will get worse here?

No they won't.  Here's why.  The roots of the Ku Klux Klan are thus: slaves were freed and some of them could do better work for less money (How about that for free market?).  Incensed, lazy, stupid people decided the only way to compete with efficiency and talent would be to intimidate, kill or drive the competition out of town.

Some of these old money folk are doing the same thing.  They use their money and influence to prevent competition.  Essentially presenting hurdles for the Howard Roarke's of the world to show off their talents.  In other words, Toohey's.

So, when the Rush Limbaugh's, the Anne Coulter's, the Kraut-Hammers, the whoevers, say they should leave the country, they should.  Can I recommend Dubai and Iceland?  Things are pretty cheap in both places (in large part due to your unethical business practices) and small enough that, should you try to again incite the United States to start a war just to bail out your failing companies or to make a buck, it'll be inexpensive to bomb.

Arriving over two hours before Watchmen on Tuesday night I stopped at Barnes & Noble next door to find something to read.  I picked up one of the books toward the front of the store, Dog On It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery by Spencer Quinn.

I'm a bit over halfway now.  It's a quick read (and if I have a fault with it, it's that: this is a lower reading level than I expected).  It's fun.  It's also scary if you're a dog lover.  I don't want to post spoilers, but prepare yourself for worry and tears of joy.

Now, just a bit about the background (still no spoilers: you can read this stuff on the cover).  Bernie is a private detective living in a Midwest desert state.  He has a dog, Chet, who failed out of police dog school (don't know why yet, that explanation undoubtedly comes later).  Chet (that's the dog) is the narrator.

Now, one tiny, fun, non-explosive spoiler.  Chet on horses:

Anyway, there's a sequel in the works, so I guess that's a spoiler all it's own.  Trust me, there's plenty to read and you may recognize some of your own pets in Chet. (Don't get him---or Cleo---started about the vacuum cleaner).

This is a demi-counterpoint to montecook 's post here.

It was GenCon 2005 (I think) in Indianapolis, Indiana.  We were having dinner (Tom Lommel, varianor , Ed Burrelle, Monte and Sue Cook, and I've probably forgotten someone important though people came and went and it was 4.5 years ago).  During dinner, the subject of the film The Gamers: Dorkness Rising came up.  Some people came by and mentioned to Monte and Sue that it was playing at the local movie theater for GenCon (the producers had a booth at the convention).  Monte and some other game designer folk (such as seankreynolds ) are in the film.

Well, we chatted some more and then someone else came by, said the movie was starting in 10 minutes, and that the house wasn't full.  There was a sudden group decision that we should run over there and see it.  Our speed was directly related to how close we were to the theater.

When we got to the ticket lobby, we found it empty except for one ticket taker in the booth.

"The Gamers?"

"Sorry, we've already seated them and the movie's started."

There was just the briefest moment of crestfallenness overcoming us when someone (was it me? I really can't remember) said, "This is MONTE COOK."

Without a word, the ticket-taker immediately showed us to the door and let us enter.  Thankfully, we were not far into the film.  A great time was had by all thanks to the power of a name.  Anyway, I'm betting this is NOT one of the two times Monte noted in his journal.  But I could be wrong.

:)