I'm watching a show from the Science Channel on the sabre-toothed cats, and there's a commercial that just aired for a Mormon video on Jesus. It focused mainly on his erstwhile miracles - healing with a touch, raising Lazarus from the dead, etc... There's just something strange about something so decisively non-scientific being advertised next to something it rejects, a TV show about evolution and science.

So they just played this dopey opening video at the RNC, a lame-ass knockoff of the SNL opening. It was a camera going through New York, from the airport to MSG, with a bit on the subway and the like...and absolutely no black people that I could see. I'm soooo shocked. When I think "New York", I think "only white people" alright.

That is all.

So I went to Amazon to change the credit card number attached to some pending orders I have there, after the whole identity fiasco of earlier this week. After I change one of the orders, I get this in response -

No, I'm not making that up. And no, I didn't try applying the obviously-not-real gift card balance. But there's something pretty funny about Amazon, however briefly, deciding that it owed me $201 million dollars worth of stuff.

EDIT - while it didn't show up when I went to the gift certificate balance from the My Account page, I did get a similar situation when I tried changing the credit card for another order, except this time the balance was down to around $149 million. No, I'm not going to find out what would happen if I *did* apply it to my order.

If there ever was any doubt that I don't have an ounce of coolness in my body, well, that doubt has been erased by my latest music purchase: Depeche Mode's singles collection. Seriously. Personal Jesus is a top-10 ever song for me, and I've never actually owned any Depeche Mode, so when I saw the two-disc set for real cheap...I just couldn't resist. I immediately opened the CD case, of course, and blasted Personal Jesus, Enjoy the Silence, and I Feel You on my drive home. Dorky? Sure. Hell of a lot fun? Most definitely.

I've got two tickets to the Red Sox game in Oakland in two weeks (the 8th of September) and I need someone to fill the second seat. If you're in the area and interested, let me know - the ticket's free!

EDIT - looks like I have a taker...

I know - some of you are going to think "This is news?". But I've done something really stupid. This morning, I wasn't very awake when I checked my email. I saw what seemed very much like an email from eBay, with the subject line "TKO Notice: ***Urgent Safeharbor Department Notice***", regarding suspension of my account. I filled out the online form it linked to - though in my defense, the link was masked behind an eBay URL - fun with HTML - for reactivation...and then I realized it was a scam. Arrrrgh. I've had to spend today running around, closing my new bank account and opening a new one, changing all my auto-payment stuff to use a credit card I don't normally use, since my debit card is dead until I get a new one from the bank...wow, I'm stupid. In my defense, it was very believable - I just was very, very, very stupid. Luckily, I caught it before anything could go wrong, closed the account, notified one of the credit reporting agencies of potential fraud (so they'll be notifying me if/when anyone tries to open an account anywhere under my name), etc...but still. Damn. I'm stupid.

However, I think there is someone more stupid than me - these guys, a Korean tech company of some sort. Why are they more stupid than me? Because they're the suckers whose server has been hijacked to host this scam on - at http://www.neomain.com/event_1201/popup.files/.eBay/eBayISAPI.php. Now, my first thought is that they must not know about it, so I email them (and their provider, Hanaro, a Korean ISP) and let them know what's going on. So, I think, I've done some good, shut down some bastards...

Nope. If you do a Google search for the IP in the email (211.202.3.208, in case you're curious), you'll find other reports of this scam at this IP address, dating back to at least mid-July. I've contacted eBay about this, but I'm seriously considering calling the ISP and seeing if they have an English-speaking tech, or maybe finding contact info for the Korean equivalent of the FTC and submitting a complaint. There's gotta be SOMETHING I can do to wipe these assholes out. Oh, and I've got the IP address the original email was sent from - 202.110.54.235, which seems to be from China (shocking, I know). Doing a whois on the IP shows that it's owned by the Liaohe Oil Prospect Bureau, International Department, of Panjin City, Liaoning Province. I've emailed the abuse contact - probably won't get anywhere there either, but hey. Maybe I can get somewhere.

It's a replica, of course, but I'm happy. I've wanted one of these suckers since high school - it's not due to any nostalgia for Walter Ulbricht or anything like that, I've just always thought that the East German flag looked cool. Reading people yearning for the good old days when the East Germans kicked our asses in Olympic medal counts made me remember it, and then I realized that I have a lot of empty wall space in this apartment that's just yearning for *something* to cover it. And so - a 3'-by-5' East German flag, bought for real cheap off eBay. I'll take a picture later.

...a question that won't get many answers from the peanut gallery, since, well, no blogging means no audience.

Beats me, anyway - I spend nearly as much time sitting in front of the computer (the 1 1/4 hour each way commute does cut down on the computer time, as does the increased reading) and I have even less people to talk to...so why don't I write anything to speak of? I think I may have gotten too addicted to other people's blogs - I hit Pandagon, Kos, Talking Points, Matt Yglesias, Atrios, etc - and never bother to write anything myself. I'm outclassed. Or something. I dunno. I'll try to write more.

It's 10:45pm and they've only shown half of the men's individual all-around gymnastics finals. I mean, I know how they turn out, but I want to SEE them. But it's just about past my bedtime, so no luck. Arrrgggghhh.

EDIT - ok, I stayed up. And it was worth it. Paul Hamm was pretty damned impressive, but really, what made it all worthwhile was when one of his coaches ran up to him after his high bar routine, with Hamm coming back from a terrible fall on the vault, and told him his result - he won the gold. Hamm seemed to think he'd won the silver - he was obviously elated about that, since he was 12th coming out of the valut. He didn't seem to believe it for at least a few seconds. Damn, that was nifty.

Last fall, I attended BloggerCon at Harvard. I had a good time, but the highlight was really that I spent the time there porting this blog into Movable Type. Anyway - I've since moved to Palo Alto. So today I get an email, announcing the date and location for BloggerCon III - and no, I don't really know what happened to BloggerCon II. I wasn't paying attention. Back to the point - the new BloggerCon is...at Stanford Law School...that is, a mile or so from my apartment. And it's free. Well, hey - looks like I've got plans for November 6th!

No - seriously - what's with them? The most poignant, heart-rending, and heroic fantasy novels I've ever read are Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay, and Steven Erikson's Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice. I just finished the last of those for the first time, all 1200 or so pages of it, following the roughly 1,000 pages of Deadhouse Gates, which I finished a week ago or so. Tigana? I've read that a good ten or twelve times - chances are, Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, of which the two books I've mentioned are volumes two and three, will get that kind of re-reading, or something approximating it.

Anyway - if you read fantasy, you HAVE to read Erikson - I'm assuming you've already read Kay, because if you haven't, you're not much of a fantasy reader. Erikson's a Canadian writer, but his books have been published in the UK, with only the first volume of his cycle, The Gardens of the Moon, so far available in the US - though Deadhouse Gates comes out in a couple months. I bought the next three books ('bout to start book 4, House of Chains) off eBay, and I'll be buying the fifth book soon. This is unbelievably brilliant stuff. I'm not good enough to do this work justice - read a great review here at Salon. He hits the most amazing highs - his characters are human, yet more than human. They sacrifice, they fight, they die, some even become gods. There's none of that "fated boy gonna pick up a sword and become a king and so on" crap. It's deep, it's complex, it's insanely elaborate, in fact. Gah - soooooo good. I'll try to be more coherent later.

I took the train to work today for the first time - took me just about exactly 1 hour and 15 minutes from door-to-cube. Not too bad, though I nearly missed my train from Palo Alto to Mountain View - I'll have to either go out the door earlier or catch a later train in the future. Anyway, it was pretty pleasant - got a lot of reading done and I didn't even sweat much. I prepared for the sweat, too - brought a handtowel in my bag. Trust me, if you've ever seen me after walking a mile in any weather, you'd understand why it's needed. =)

...why The Wire is the best show on television. This is taken from the press release announcing the upcoming third season:

Season three of THE WIRE will examine the concept and nature of reform and the role of the political leadership in addressing a city's problems. Earlier themes included the death of the American working class, depicted in season two, and the inherent conflict between individuals and the modern institutions to which they are beholden, as seen in the protracted drug investigation that began in season one and continues into the coming season.

...

THE WIRE wrapped its second season last September. The first season depicted the national drug war through the microcosm of a West Baltimore housing project. Last season chronicled the de-industrialization of America, focusing on the travails of a longshoremen's union to survive in a changing economic landscape. In its third season, the drama will continue to expand its sociopolitical desciption of a fictional Baltimore by examining the city's political component and its relevance to the problems confronting a post-industrial city.

Observes David Simon, "More than characters or criminal procedure or even the drug culture, we are trying to write about the city itself, with Baltimore standing in for any number of American cities sharing the same hopes and fears and contradictions."

And that's NOT being excessively pretentious. It really is that deep, that complex, that thorough. Its writing team includes not just David Simon, but also an ex-Baltimore detective, a couple Baltimore journalists, a Balitmore filmmaker, and a few novelists - including Dennis "Mystic River" Lehane and Richard "Clockers" Price. This show is so damned good. Season one finally comes out on DVD this October - buy it.

Tonight's - sitting in my recliner, eating strange German orange-cream-filled cookies, reading an excessively thick fantasy novel, with the Pixies, live from a show in April, playing on the stereo...this is a moment that makes me happy to be alive, as dopey as it may sound.

No, seriously - word on the street is that the Pixies will be playing the Tsongas Arena in Lowell on Dec. 15th, followed by shows in Worcester on the 16th and 17th at the Palladium and then the 19th through the 22nd at the Roxy in Boston. I'll have to figure out when, exactly, I'm going back to Boston for Christmas - if I'm going to be there for any of the shows, well, I'll be going to the damned shows. =)

Anyone who knows me will be shocked by this, but I feel a strong urge to tinker with the apartment - that is, to go all handyman on it and fix things. I actually spent time at a hardware store today - no, seriously! Me! It's kind of creepy.

I'm sure this won't mean much to most of you, but hey - it means a lot to me. I'm moved in. And I've got Internet access and DirecTV and even have the TiVo working with the DirecTV. Sort of - gotta use the IR blasters rather than a serial input to change the channels, but hey, I'll live. So yeah, now I need some food.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I went to the same college as wingnut Michelle Malkin, whose new book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror, is getting a lot of press these days. She actually honest-to-god tries to make a case that the internment of the Japanese-American population of the western states (though not Hawaii, because, well, there weren't enough camps, I guess) was a morally right and necessary thing.

She's totally full of shit.

Oh, you want more than my word for it? Go read David Neiwert's smackdown of her evidence, her thesis, and her argument. I've got a few minor things to add to his case... FDR was an anti-Japanese racist, though I think some of his anti-Japanese position was influenced as well by his unwavering support for China (there's a reason China got a permanent seat on the Security Council, and it's not because Chiang Kaishek was a popular guy) and the rather nasty Japanese war with anything Chinese they could find in the '30s. Another thing - almost every piece of writing about the internments mentions how German-Americans and Italian-Americans weren't treated in the same way. What many people fail to realize is that there were, in fact, a decent number of Nazi agents among the German-American community - far more than there were Japanese agents among the Japanese-American community. I'll dig up some links on this later today...

It got in today - I'm still staying at the temporary apartment 'til Friday night, doing free laundry and using the Internet access. =) The cable modem and DirecTV people show up on Saturday morning, so at that point, I should be up and running. There are pictures up (finally!) here.

When I was walking out of the apartment, after the mover left, I noticed that there was water running down my garage door. I opened the door and looked in - more water, and the ceiling was discolored. I called my landlord and, while on the phone, I noticed that the next three garages after mine also had water streaming down their doors. The landlord came over and checked out the situation - it turns out that someone had gone into the vacant apartment above those four garages (they've been leaving the vacant apartments unlocked, so as to make it easier for potential renters to see them), blocked all the drains, and turned on all the faucets - there were a couple inches of water in the apartment and it was doing serious damage to the floor. Obviously, I guess, since it was leaking through in massive quantity. It doesn't look like my apartment has any damage, but it's still pretty absurd that someone actually deliberately did this.

Gotta love how Sydney Bristow jets around the globe on all these secret missions, dressed in all these astonishing, elaborate disguises, but doesn't bother to change on the flight home. In the second episode of Season Two, she's got a wig and leather thing on for a mission in Helsinki - when she shows up in the CIA facility in Los Angeles immediately afterward, she's still wearing the whole get-up. Um, why would anyone keep a freakin' wig on while flying halfway around the globe? Ah well - small thing, I know. =)

A gernade went off under a car at a casino across the street from the Museum of Communism. I mention that last point because Arwen and I went to the Museum of Communism - I remember where the casino in question is. Creepy.