US mentions the war at last [BBC World]
Interesting article - less for the content than the whole way the writing feels. It gives me a better sense of how the rest of the world must think of our little dog-wagging plan to go after Saddam...I mean, if the BBC is almost being obvious with their skepticism, imagine how the continental Europeans feel about it...
They're right, of course.
Who needs fundamentals? Lisa Leslie performs first dunk in the WNBA history. [FARK]
heh. I know I shouldn't get so much entertainment out of this, but hey - it's funny. I'm just shocked she didn't tear her ACL in the process...
No, not seriously. It's just a joke that failed. Leave me alone. =)
By the way, that quote from last night - it's from Brian Faulkner, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, 1971 or so. Sounds a little Bushie to me...
Got another quote for y'all.
"You have to respect the monkey, that's for sure. Every time he peeks his little head out, something happens for them. You got to respect him or kidnap him, one or the other." - Desi Relaford, Seattle Mariners infielder
Now, before you get too confused (except Chris Green, who's going to get this instantly. And how's your little Pedro now, huh? RED SOX, BABY! ...sorry 'bout that. heh.), this quote is regarding the unofficial mascot of the Anaheim Angels: the Rally Monkey. It's something they started a couple years back, where they put a tape of a monkey jumping up and down (or something like that - I've never been to the Big A, so I'm going by memory of a two year old Jayson Stark column) whenever the team needs a rally. Needless to say, this caught on. It made it to SportsCenter, the aforementioned Stark column, and I believe they now have Rally Monkey memorabilia. What's more, they suddenly have a good team...me, I think it's the getting rid of Mo Vaughn that did it. But hey - what do I know? =)
Further disection of that inning log from last night's Arizona/Montreal top of the 8th, in an attempt to figure out how many players were used in total from the beginning to the end...
Ok - the Expos used three pitchers - Javier Vazquez, who was relieved as the inning began, J. Eischen (don't know his first name), who walked Durazo, struck out Matt Williams, and got Mark Grace to groundout, and Matt Herges, who relieved Eischen, walked Chad Moeller, and got Tony Womack to fly out. Alright.
The D-backs...this is where it gets complicated. Eurbiel Durazo was up first. That's 1. He walked, and was pinch-run for by Steve Finley. That's 2. Matt Williams struck out. That's 3. Jay Bell was sent in to pinch-hit for Dave Delluci. That's 4. Finley stole second. Herges relieved Eischen - a quick check reveals that Eischen's a lefty and Herges is a righty, which explains the next move. Mark Grace is sent in to replace Jay Bell at bat (lefty/righty kind of thing). That's 5. Mark Grace grounds out, Finley to third. R. Barajas comes to bat, and is safe at second on an error. That's 6. Finley scores. Now things get confusing... C. Donnels hits for Miguel Batista - ok, pinch hit for the pitcher. Ok. That's 7. Brian Anderson pinch runs for Barajas - again, makes sense (a bit). Barajas is the catcher and not too fast. That's 8. And now, since they've lifted the catcher, they need to get another one in there, so they send in Chad Moeller to pinch hit for Donnels. That's 9. Moeller walks. Tony Womack then flies out to end the inning. That's 9 players used by the D-Backs in one inning. 6 guys actually finished at bats - I think Jay Bell may have started his at bat before the reliever came in and Grace replaced him - for a total of 1 run, 1 error, two walks, and 3 outs. Wow. That's just weird.
This is the inning log for the Arizona half of the 8th in tonight's Arizona/Montreal game, from ESPN:
Arizona
-J Eischen relieved J Vazquez.
-Top of the 8th inning
-E Durazo walked.
-S Finley ran for E Durazo.
-M Williams struck out looking.
-J Bell hit for D Dellucci.
-S Finley stole second.
-M Herges relieved J Eischen.
-M Grace hit for J Bell.
-M Grace grounded out to first, S Finley to third.
-R Barajas safe at second on throwing error by shortstop O Cabrera, S Finley scored.
-C Donnels hit for M Batista.
-B Anderson ran for R Barajas.
-C Moeller hit for C Donnels.
-C Moeller walked.
-T Womack flied out to center.
1 run, 0 hits, 1 error
Can anyone make sense of that? Oy.
Interesting quote here - "[T]he security forces and the government feel that interment is working out remarkably well. It has exposed the [terrorists]. I have taken this serious step solely for the protection of life and security of property. We are, quite simply, at war with the terrorists and in a state of war many sacrifices have to be made, and made in a co-operative spirit."
Guess who said it - answer coming later.
I get this weird feeling every once in a while. It's a desperate craving to buy stuff. Nothing in particular, typically, just *stuff*. Something cool, nifty, new. This craving has, in the past, led to me owning a Dreamcast, Playstation 2, 20" Sony Wega flat tube TV, Sony 5-disc DVD player/home theater system, more books+dvds+cds+video games than I count... it's not quite the same as compulsive shopping. I had problems in the past with just rampant spending. This isn't that - I'm quite capable of NOT buying stuff. And I generally restrict myself to a reasonable budget (the home theater system is the exception to that rule, but hey, it's f'n awesome. I love surround sound, as detailed below). I just want stuff.
I can afford said stuff. I'm not saving a lot of money these days, but I'm paying my bills and living comfortably. I've handled the stuff purchasing financially quite well. It wouldn't be a real problem except for the fact that I've run out of stuff to buy. No, seriously.
Alright - let's look at it this way. I have every nifty electronic gadget that I can reasonably want - a nice laptop from work, a great TV, a great home theater, a few video game consoles. I've got more video games than I know what to do with - I'm playing through old Playstation games these days, with about 10 games on the pile for me to play. I joined Netflix, and no longer buy near as many DVDs (only the rare new one I'm waiting for and a couple used ones that jump out at me every couple weeks). I've run out of music that I know I want and don't already own, and am quite happy with my music collection right now anyway. And books - while there's ALWAYS more books I could buy, there's only so much time I can spend reading every day. I've cut myself down to approximately 5~10 new books a month, which still leaves me with an eternally growing pile of books to read. So what else is there?
I'm vaguelly saving towards a new computer. Since my current computer of choice is owned by my employer and not myself, I need to have a nice, modern computer at home that I own for when I get a new job. I'm putting aside money towards a planned late fall purchase of a new system for something like $1200 to maybe $1500. So that's settled. There's nothing else I can really see spending money on that I don't already have. This is FRUSTRATING. I know how dumb this is - whining about not having anything to buy. I know I'm just too fascinated by novelty, and that this is why my room is a total mess of books, clothes, and cds in piles. But I can't help it - I love new things.
So if you happen to think of something I'd enjoy and not feel like I wasted money on in the ~$150 price range, let me know. I'm going through nasty withdrawal right now. =)
Nothing. 11 Investors Participate in $715,000 Round, Negotiating New Line of Credit [Salon Headlines]
woohoo! Salon's not going out of business! WOO!
Sorry. I love Salon oodles. I can't honestly remember how I survived without Salon. And no, I'm not paid by them - I just get my movie reviews from them. And Nothing Personal. I love celebrity stupidity. 'cos they're weirder than us.
OSCON, last week, has done its job and stirred the embers of the Great Open Source Debate of the 1990s. I found myself writing in an email yesterday: "Very little really usable software has come from people who are willing to work for $0. (I chose my words carefully, infrastructure is another matter entirely.) Further, it's weird to say, as Richard Stallman does, that by coercing programmers to work for $0 that that's freedom. To me it seems obvious that that's slavery." 
[Scripting News]
<geek>
Ok - I agree that coercing programmers to work for nothing is not freedom, but I really don't think even Stallman said that. I'll need to dredge up my downloaded copy of his biography, but I'm pretty sure there's a quote from him stating that programmers deserve to be compensated for their labor. The issue is not programmers working for nothing, but corporations and patent holders restricting technological advances and productivity through charging for software. These are radically different things.
I pay for software that I consider worth spending money on - good games (such as the outstanding Europa Universalis II from Paradox Entertainment), useful applications (such as Radio Userland for this very blog), etc...I also use the single greatest development editor in all of computing, Emacs. Which was, of course, developed by people willing to work for $0. And it's not infrastructure. Salon's web server runs Apache on Linux, according to Netcraft. Yes, that IS infrastructure, but it's still really good software, most of it written for free. Just because Stallman's got the tendency to say crazy things once in a while is no reason to denigrate the idea of open source. And just because some good software is open source is no reason to not buy quality commercial software. There IS an in-between here, people. =)
</geek>
Australia unearths fossilised giants [BBC Science & Nature]
On the same note as the previous post, but this time it's giant marsupials. The best bit is about a wombat the size of a small car - seriously. I want one as a pet.
Kansas might suck now but 85 million years ago it had oceans. [FARK]
No, seriously! This is really cool. Then again, I'm really just a wannabe paleontologist at heart. I can't help but geek out at extinct species. I had the time of my life watching the Discovery Channel's dino and extinct mammal shows, and went to DC primarily to see fossils at the Natural History museum. (which was, of course, mobbed with small children. argh.) How can you not love a picture like this?
I love this stuff. =)
Ack - I woke up at 6am. Actually, more like 5:50, but who's counting - it's already hit something in the '80s here. Way too hot for this time of day...it's gonna be miserable all day long. Ah well - I've got good air conditioning at work. =)
Reading a book on the Troubles in N. Ireland now. Here's a little ditty the Protestant police sang while suppressing a non-violent civil rights march (a la the civil rights movement in the south in the US during the '60s) in 1969 -
'Hey, hey we're the Monkees,
and we're going to monkey around
Till we see your blood flowing
All along the ground'
Makes you feel all warm and cuddly, doesn't it?
"nl2" U2, Achtung Baby )
This album is so damned good - I forget just how good it is until I listen to it. There's hints of sounds hiding in the background hidden throughout. Just fucking brilliant stuff. And it makes me feel good. Can't go wrong.
The Top-100 weblogs report for Salon is starting to get interesting. [Scripting News]
What, the fact that porn is the #2 blog? =)
Parliament to open curry shop on premises [FARK]
Further proof that the UK is my kind of country. Our government leaders need to eat more curry. It'd make them better people - with much more clear nasal passages to boot.
"nl" ( Oasis, Familiar To Millions disc 2 )
I've never quite understood why some people have such a problem with Oasis. I mean, yeah, they've had a problem with that whole Beatles-wannabe pretensions, but they're still the best bar band ever. Or so I think.
Someone just sent me an email through this site with absolutely no content. There was a name, but no from address, no subject, no content. Makes me sad - it might have been something interesting. =)
So Rachel, one of my best friends, went driving from Rochester, NY, to somewhere in New Mexico with her mom, who was moving there. The last I heard from her was a phone call somewhere south of Denver, for about two minutes. That was something like a week ago. I've called her cellphone a few times since then - gotta assume she's not getting service. Hmm...maybe I should check Sprint's coverage map. Not that I know exactly where in NM she would be, but hey, it's something. Mind you, I'm not all that worried about not hearing from her...moreso it's that we generally don't go more than a few days without talking. Throws me off my rhythm...
In fact, that might be why I'm posting here so damn much - I started this up a few days after she vanished into the southwestern ether. Coincidence? Beats me. =)
"nl" ( Social Distortion, Live at the Roxy )
Great album - punkabilly perfection. The version of 'Story of My Life' that opens the album is fucking amazing.
Does anyone know of a TV show or movie that did a parody/schtick with the song Mandy? I think the original's by Barry Manilow, but don't quote me on that. For some reason, that song is stuck in my head, but I know it's not the original. I feel like it might have been Homer Simpson, but I'm not sure.
While reading this article at Salon about the wacko Christian right, the Left Behind books, and Israel - nothing particularly groundbreaking in the article, but still a good read - I came across a truly great quote:
'Imagine if, say, James Carville wrote a novel in which a band of heroic gay socialists defeated a voracious army of slack-jawed Bible-quoting Republicans to turn the world into a gigantic French-speaking free-love commune.'
Oh my GOD. I want this book to be written. I want to pimp this book to everyone I know. I want to hand it out free to people on the street. I want to walk up to people's doors, ring the bell, ask them if they've heard the good news, and then give them this book. James Carville, you MUST WRITE THIS BOOK. If not you, then someone else. Oh, it would RULE.
Regarding the Left Behind books - are they even good pulp? I'm a self-confessed Tom Clancy addict, so I know good pulp when I see it. If the Left Behind books are good pulp, I'll pick up the first one at a used bookstore...no sense putting more money into the hands of the people behind 'em, and it'll take another copy out of circulation. And hey, if it entertains me, we're set. If you HAVE read any of them, please let me know. I've got nothing but contempt for their 'religious' content, but good pulp is hard to find...
Red carpet for Musharraf in Dhaka [BBC World]
Lobster mystery solved [BBC World]
I see these two news stories, right on top of each other. What do I think I see? 'Red Lobster for Musharraf in Dhaka' I was disappointed when I realized it was two stories. I like the idea of the Pakistani military dictator eating chain-seafood in Bangladesh a lot. Then again, I like pretty much anything absurd. I'm easy that way.
It's both fun and intimidating to google search old friends. It's often pretty easy to find them - or at least the ones with unique names and a tendency to do online things. But in at least some cases, their web presence is even 'cooler' than they themselves were when I knew them, oh so many years ago. This leads to awkwardness - should I not email an old friend, someone who I was very, very close to in early high school years? She seems like she's taken that which made her interesting and cool in the first place and magnified it. I'm eerily terrified of emailing her and being ignored. Why should that bother me? Ok, I guess that's pretty obvious - while not being in contact with an old friend has no inherent negative bearing on me, sending an old friend an email and not getting a response would imply that I'm not interesting/cool enough to talk to. Ah, email - it makes it so much easier to ignore people. =) I'll send that email - if I get no response, fuck it, right? I've always got this blog, right? Right? =)
"nl" ( Tricky, Pre-Millenium Tension )
Argh - sudden wave of anxiety. I feel like there's something I'm supposed to have done that I didn't do. This happens to me too damn often. It's an old habit, mainly, dating back to my problems doing homework as a kid. I'd not do my homework, then cry myself to sleep because I hadn't done my homework. For some reason, the logical answer of 'Do the homework instead of crying' never quite got through my head. And then I had problems with debts - I always owe someone some money. I'm getting a hold on this, though. It'll be under control soon. I swear.
On a brighter note - it's fun to google search your own name. The most common occurences of 'Andrew Bayer' are some Welsh politician and a Minnesota Civil War soldier. Once in a while I'll find myself, though - maybe 1 out of every 10 or 12 links are to something that actually involves me. I actually found a reference to me at someone else's website once. Kinda cool. Mind you, I have no idea who that person is, but hey - they seem to know me. =)
Catholic Archbishop asserts abortion is a greater crime than sexually abusing children [FARK]
Well, this should go over well.
Fundie Jingoism. America as 'the second client nation of god'. Complete with charts and the wierdest map of the US you'll ever see. [FARK]
Can anyone explain what the hell this guy is talking about? I don't get it. At all.
North Sea seals at risk [BBC Science & Nature]
A seal plague is ripping through the North Sea. There aren't many things more anti-cute than a whole bunch of seals floating bottoms-up in a harbor, are there?
I admit - I'm cuted out by seals. And otters. And panda bears. And monkeys. Really, I like furry things that seem vaguelly human. Can't stand dogs, though. Fearsome little bastards. Dogs, no. Seals?
Yes.
About a month and a half ago, I bought a couple silk-woven shirts. For me, this was a near-revolutionary gesture - I've had a distinct tendency towards slobbiness in the past. I generally wear t-shirts and either shorts or jeans, depending on the season. Actually buying nice clothes is a landmark for me. Figuring out how to properly take care of them is a bitch, too. Do people just assume that we're born with the knowledge of how to wash certain fabrics? I did my own laundry in high school, but we're just talking about t-shirts, jeans, shorts, and flannels. Complicated fabrics are a new thing to me.
I was able to think far enough ahead that when I bought the shirts, I made sure to go for a silk blend that was machine-washable. Washing on gentle, cold, check. I can do that. Wait a minute - line dry? Warm iron if needed? Eh? I don't have a clothesline - I live in an apartment without much free space in the first place. And while we do have an iron, I can't figure out the settings - it's my roommate's parents' old ass iron, and every single knob or dial has been wiped clear of any labels that might have explained things. So on the first try, with the first of the shirts, well, I burned away some of the color. That surprised me - how the hell can you burn away color from a shirt? I'm still not sure how that happened, but hey, it did. Luckily, it's not just an iron-shaped section of paler green. It almost looks deliberate. When I got to the second shirt, I started doing experiments first. I twiddled with each of the settings on the iron until I found one that seemed a little less hot than the others, and tried again. Voila! No burning.
I only bring this up because I'm wearing that second shirt right now. It's quite comfortable. I just wish I knew why clothes were so damn complicated.
From the 'way to make me feel like I've accomplished nothing' department...
My mom calls me to tell me about two stories she read in today's Boston Globe. The first is about a folk singer playing Newport Folk Festival this coming Saturday, Josh Ritter. Mom's wondering if I know him - he went to Oberlin, he graduated in 2000 (when I was supposed to graduate)...and yeah, I know him. Ate in the co-op I lived in freshman year, we crossed paths periodically over the next couple years. He's a cool guy. And then mom REALLY messes with my ego - she tells me that there's an article about the guy playing the lead in that new movie Tadpole. He went to my high school, it turns out. Graduated the year before me...I know I recognize the name (Aaron Stanford), and looking at pictures from imdb.com, I think I*might* recognize him. And just to make it more fun - he's got a significant part in the next X-Men movie. And what have I done with my life? Well, I started cleaning my room yesterday, and I had a nice lunch. Argh.
heh. I get way too much entertainment out of looking at the top page-read blogs here at Salon. #1 makes sense - Scott Rosenberg's IS the one with a link on the main page, after all. The #2 overall is 'people are stupid', where the blogger spends half the time whining about blogs and the other half whoring for hits. And #3 overall (and #2 today)...'Pornographer's Picks'...let's just say I'm not surprised. =)
Not to bash Pornographer's Picks at all - we all need our pr0n, after all.
Ok, while watching/listening to an action sequence in Das Boot, it made me think about sound in movies. I never really appreciated it until I got a home theater system (and yes, it's in my room. long story.). Since that point, though, I'm a geek for it. I actually critique the Oscars for Sound and Sound Editting. Well, ok, not really sound editting. I'm not entirely clear what that award is for, exactly. But sound? Oh yeah.
Black Hawk Down won it last year. And deservedly so...it also won film editting. It's not the best movie I've seen, by a long shot. It's pretty flimsy on character and dialogue, and it's not so much telling a story as restating events. But DAMN does it do it interestingly. It pulls you in and swallows you into Mogadishu. The sonud is simply incredible. There's always a gunshot somewhere in the distance, from somewhere behind you, somewhere to your right, off in the distance - they move, and make you feel just as jittery and nervous as the soldiers. Great, great work there.
Das Boot is pretty impressive as well - the scenes that particularly stand out as brief, subtle moments of sound elegance are one where a torpedo is being cranked past the camera and you hear it, moving from your back right to the front right, with a slight echo effect on the left side - since the camera's in a skinny corridor on a submarine, you'd expect something like that. And whenever the shot is on the top of the submarine (I forget the exact name for the thing - you know what I mean, though) the ocean cracks around you, and goes in perfect sync with the waves. There's also a nice section where they're trying to hear the target ships through the water - they're pre-sonar, so that's the only way they can detect things besides surfacing and periscope. The scene is dead silent, except for the captain walking, and eventually a small hint of sound. Well done stuff.
I like movies too much for my own good, really.
Military under fire over Ukraine crash [BBC World]
What, just because one of their pilot dropped into a crowd of friggin' people? Yeah, that'd be an issue, wouldn't it?
BTW - Das Boot is a quality piece of film. I'm about halfway through the director's cut right now. Peterson, the director, is lined up to do the upcoming Batman v. Superman movie...should be interesting.
'New species' of giant squid found [BBC Science & Nature]
Giant squid are inherently cool...just 'cos they're weird as hell. After looking at this sucker, I'm hungry. =)
On that wonderfully pathetic note, I'm going to go to sleep. If you read that last entry and feel sorry for me, don't. I'm really not unhappy, when you get down to it. I've got a good job, I've got all the books I can dream of. I don't see enough of other people, but hey, I work too much and read too much. It happens. I've just got a nasty insecurity thing re: my mad desire to be a writer. The problem is that I'm too much of a snob - I don't just want to be a writer, I want to be a GOOD writer, and I know, deep down, that I'll never be that. And that I'll never be with her.
Damn, I was trying to avoid that. Now I'm getting all narcissitic bloggy, all the cliches of blogging. Fuck it - this isn't being written for the purposes of showing myself off to others, this is being written because I need to fucking write things down and this feels more possible to me than a 'diary' or some crap like that. I'm going to write about Josephine.
So it's St. Patrick's Day, 2000. It's my quasi-first anniversery with Polly, whom I finally ended it with the day before Valentines this year. We're sitting in the Sco at Oberlin, drinking a couple beers and listening to Irish music. People are dancing - I'm not, because I don't actually like to dance and therefore suck at it. Polly's not because I'm not - she's a dancer by major, so she'd really rather be dancing. A couple girls sit down at our table - they're significantly younger than us, freshmen in fact.(this is my senior year at this point, Polly's as well though she was kicked out for a year and should have been gone the year before). And one of them blows me away immediately. She's unique looking - very skinny, almost unnaturally skinny, with a decidedly uneven face - there's something so that one side of her face doesn't look like the other, but I can't pin it down. She's fucking nuts - it's obvious. She's also a dancer, and an artist, and a reader, and with ADHD - like me. She reads everything - EVERYTHING. She likes so many things I like, but also dislikes some things I love - she's always good for a great argument on art.
And she's perfect.
It took me a while to see this. It first dawned on me during Commencement Week that May. I didn't graduate - still haven't, in fact. I owe them money. But I was in town to watch my friends. Polly went home for a few days - I forget the reason. A friend stayed with me at me and Polly's place...Josephine was staying with her grandparents, who happened to live in Oberlin. Late one night, the three of us are up talking when my friend goes to bed. Josephine and I talk for another hour or so more when I realize that I'm in love with her. It hasn't gone away.
I forgot about it for a while - all the shit I had to go through at home, getting an internship, getting a car, going to weddings (Polly's brother first and best friend later in the summer)... and then I got back to Oberlin and Arielle (the friend from earlier) reminds me of Josephine. I'm shocked, bowled over - I'd forgotten her? How the hell could I do that? I still remember that feeling - like seeing the sun come up and thinking "I wasn't sure it was going to come back? What kind of idiot am I?" I spent the rest of that semester (my last one at Oberlin) trying to end my already self-destructed relationship with Polly, wishing to god that I could just talk to Josephine about her for a while. I never had the chance - I broke up with Polly for 18 hours, but ended up back in our apartment, too terrified of dealing with moving out to stay gone. I went back to Oberlin repeatedly for the next year plus, always with Josephine as my first intention. Last spring, after breaking up with Polly for once and for all, I flew out on a Friday after buying my ticket on a Thursday and came *this* close to telling her how I feel, but I didn't. I couldn't. I'm never going to act on it - because I know I'm not good enough for her. And this is not just self-deprecating babble. It's the truth. I'm a lousy boyfriend. I get bored easily. I forget things. I never clean my room. I'd just make her miserable, and she'd most likely want nothing to do with me anyway. But I can't stop wanting to take the chance, wanting to just hold her for a minute. I'd give so much for tha.
I know I should get out, meet people. I know it's never going to happen. But I can't stop wanting it, and I can't stop hoping and dreaming. It breaks my heart, 4:30 am on a Sunday morning, dreaming of the girl I need, the one girl I've ever met who I truly feel I fit with. God, I love her.
Right - now that I've gotten myself all teared up - g'night.
Going back to that picture of a snakefish I posted earlier...
Is the guy holding the fish Kurt Loder? I swear it's him.
The Quotable James Traficant. For the non-U.Sians not in the know, James Traficant is the embattled U.S. Congressman who was put on trial by Congress and then expelled July 24 for taking bribes and kickbacks. The following are quotes from his Congressional hearing. [kuro5hin.org]
It's a shame this man won't be representing Ohio any more. He represented everything I found annoying about that state.
My upstairs neighbors have a weird tendency to do carpentry at 8am on Saturdays. Just now, they were yelling and there were a couple VERY loud slams on my ceiling/their floor. Loud enough that I actually worried there might be some collapsing going on. Eek.
I hope the stability issues with blogs.salon.com will be ironed out...it's a little frustrating.
MPAA Requests Immunity to Commit Cyber-Crimes [Slashdot]
The scary thing is that the MPAA really DOES want to get away with hacking your computer.
I'm going to head home now. I've got Prince's 'I Would Die 4 U' stuck in my head and it's blocking out all attempts at doing work.
From MTV to the Taliban. Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith are writing songs about terrorists and the Taliban. So why is country maverick Steve Earle getting all the heat? [Salon Headlines]
Why? Because Steve Earle's song is the first out of the gate - and the most blatant and intelligent piece of cultural criticism of the American mainstream we've seen post Sept. 11.
So there's this truly gorgeous girl who works in my office. And I do mean gorgeous - especially her smile. Great, great smile. You don't see those often enough. I do my best to walk by her cubicle whenever I can - conveniently, it's on one of the two paths I can take to get from the bathroom to my cube. And I never say a word to her. That's just annoying - why can't I say SOMETHING? At some point? Maybe I should try to sit down at her table at lunch some day. Or maybe I'll wait until I'm assigned to work on her project. It's going to happen at some point in the next couple months. I dunno. This is still my single biggest weakness - meeting people. Damn. I need to get out more often.
On a brighter note that should help with the getting out more often, it looks like the ingrown toenail that's been bothering me off and on for the last 3 or 4 months is just about kaput. FINALLY.
Well, I'm bored with the French now. It was just silly. Except for the title - I actually rather like that.
US sides with Axis of Evil to thwart UN torture protocol. The UN's Economic and Social Council passed yesterday a new, important instrument: the draft Optional Protocol to the UN convention against torture. Voting against it (or actively opposing it) we've got the usual suspects (China, Egypt, Cuba, Saudi Arabia) and, guess what, the US. [kuro5hin.org]
When you're smoking, the cigarettes tell you many lies, including this one: "If you ever stop, you won't be able to do the things you love to do." Well, needless to say, I can write prose without smoking, I've proved that right here on Scripting News. I haven't tried to write code yet without it, but I'm sure I can do that too. [Scripting News]
Been there...I have yet to prove I can write papers without smoking, but hey, I'm out of college. I don't NEED to write papers any more. WOO!
Nicotine free for...what, nearly 7 months now? Yeah. Wow.
This rules.
Chicks With Sticks The movie. They've got a trailer. They've got the following tagline -
I am in love.
ACLU Files New DMCA Challenge [Slashdot]
News.Com: ACLU to put DMCA on Trial. "I don't want to go to jail," said Edelman, who graduated from Harvard in June, and who plans to study law there this fall. "I want to go to law school." [Scripting News]
Wanna know these things before they get blogged? Check http://www.politechbot.com Declan McCullagh's kickass mailing list/website...
The plaintiff here is a 22 year old programmer who has been studying filtering software and would like to crack the lists of 'naughty' websites most filtering packages use. Perfect - two Bad Things getting whacked by one lawsuit. I Heart ACLU.
For some reason, I was absolutely convinced that Tom Sizemore was in every major war movie of the last five years. I was wrong. He's in every melodramatic, big-budget war movie of the last five years. Though I did like Black Hawk Down.
http://us.imdb.com/Name?Sizemore,+Tom
Some great tidbits lifted from the Tom Sizemore trivia/bio page there...
'Trained for six weeks with high-powered weaponry for Heat.'
That explains a lot, really.
'May 2002 - Split from 'Hollywood Madam' Heidi Fleiss'
When I found out that he was engaged to Heidi Fleiss, I laughed a lot. For some reason, that entertained me a LOT. I don't know why, though.
