Someone tagged me with a Thinking Blogger award. You do realize that most of my material is shamelessly cribbed from people who are smarter, funnier, and better-looking than me, don’t you? Just so we’re clear.
Apr 032007
Apr 022007
EMI and iTunes are going to begin offering DRM-free, higher-bitrate songs for a slightly higher price (which means I may have to bump up my monthly music budget). It shouldn’t be long before the other major record labels see the wisdom of this move and remove DRM from their own catalogs. The labels’ insistence on DRM protection for digital downloads has never made much sense considering that the majority of commercial music is sold in a format that contains zero protection (namely, CDs). I put up with DRM simply because I like the accessibility of the iTunes Music Store (no more having to depend on someone to shuffle CDs for me), but I don’t appreciate being regarded as a potential criminal by the very companies whose content I’m purchasing.
And a friendly reminder: don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Especially on this blog. Especially on April 1st.
Apr 012007
After careful and ample consideration, I’ve decided to decamp from Minneapolis and return to my childhood home of Green Bay. If I stay in this city much longer, my transformation into an effete, snotty urbanite who can’t stop raving about that Hungarian period piece he saw at the Lagoon will be complete. I need to rediscover my roots; I need to be in a town where the living is simple and the air bears the faint tang of the paper mill. A town where the biggest musical event of the year is the Poison reunion concert at the county arena.
Of course, this means I’ll have to change the name of this blog. It wouldn’t be fitting for a town where the tallest building is eight or nine stories. I’ll notify everyone of the new moniker once it’s finalized. Right now, iheartthepackers.com is the leading contender.
Mar 312007
Explain this Twitter thing to me. My impression is that it’s a site where people share whatever it is they’re doing at the moment. I’m afraid my list would be somewhat redundant:
- Sitting at computer
- Sitting at computer, procrastinating work on book
- Sitting at computer, trying to ignore itchy nose
- Sitting at computer, struggling to think of blog posting that isn’t about cybernetic implants or fishnet stockings
- Sitting at computer, feeling slightly disgusted at all the time I spend in front of said computer
Do people really want to know this stuff?
Mar 302007
Urgh. Here I am enjoying a nice, quiet Friday evening when PZ tells me about the geysers of blood shooting out of Minneapolis sewers. I’m both disgusted and a little confused. Doesn’t this sort of thing usually happen in St. Paul?
Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.
Mar 292007
Harold Meyerson had a perceptive op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post about how the Bush administration still hasn’t gotten the memo about last fall’s election results. The two big scandals currently sucking all the air out of Washington–the U.S. attorney purge and the GSA “team building exercise”–both developed well after the election. Republicans in Congress seem entirely incapable of dragging the president and his inner circle into the living room for an intervention. They realize that Bush is no longer their messiah, but hero worship is a difficult habit to break.
By the way, you really should watch the testimony of GSA chief Lurita Doan. The poor woman appears to have some sort of affliction that has seriously compromised her memory.
Mar 282007
The self-help industry provides incontrovertible evidence that the world is full of an alarming number of people who will believe anything you tell them. How else to explain the success of something like The Secret? The Secret (although it appears not to be much of a secret anymore) is the weird bastard offspring of an unholy union between trippy New Age philosophy and infomercial marketing. Its pitch is essentially this: wishes do come true. Whatever it is want in life–money, success, that hottie in the cubicle across from yours–will be given to you by the universe if you want it badly enough. Those who don’t get their heart’s desires are simply not fervent enough in their wishing. But the fact that I do not yet have a supremely competent nurse named Kandi who has the measurements of a porn starlet, a talent for giving great back rubs, and a deep inability to respect boundaries is reason enough to suspect this theory’s validity.
And then there’s the Thank God I…[insert your personal tragedy or crisis here] series of books. These books are meant to be inspirational and with titles like Thank God I Was Physically Abused and Thank God I Was Raped, it’s hard not to feel that Someone Up There loves you. Future titles include Thank God I Had That Female Circumcision and Thank God I Discovered Heroin.
I understand the seduction of anything that promises to make sense of a chaotic and indifferent world, but it’s a little troubling that so many people are compelled to ascribe reasons to life’s tragedies and disappointments. And they’re willing to hand over their hard-earned money to purveyors of cheap bromides and empty promises.
Mar 272007
It looks like The Onion is trying to get in on some of the Daily Show’s action. My first impression: nice try, but it needs some work. The piece on immigration was clever, but other bits fell flat (can’t the writers come up with something a little less lame than Civil War reenactors going to Iraq?). The Daily Show works because so much of its humor is grounded in the absurdities of politics and real people. The Onion News Network feels like it’s broadcast from some weird parallel universe real people don’t exist, only caricatures.
Mar 262007
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…Crippletron:
Because sometimes the only thing the able-bodied world understands is brute force. The next time the Supreme Court issues an opinion that spouts some Federalist Society crap about the Eleventh Amendment trumping the ADA, I’m forming my own Crippletron with some of my fellow gimps-in-arms. We’re gonna traipse over to Washington, DC, rip the roof of the Supreme Court building, pluck Scalia out by his ankles, and use him as a human hackeysack until he sees reason.
I suppose this posting will go into my FBI file. Hope you got a good chuckle from this, Agent Gordon.
Mar 252007
I’ve spent part of today experimenting with Pandora, a streaming music service. The interface is simple enough; you enter a favorite artist or song and Pandora creates a “radio station” that plays other artists that share similar musical characteristics. There’s a subscription-based version that plays the music without any interruptions, but the free version is more than tolerable. I have a feeling I’ll be making quite a few iTunes purchases because of this.
And after you check out Pandora and like it as much as I do, sign this petition to show your support for webcasting. A recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board could dramatically increase the royalties that both small and large webcasters have to pay to labels, which could force many services like Pandora out of business. Commercial over-the-air radio is a wasteland of generic playlists and endless advertising; internet radio offers almost infinite choice and many of the webcasters are truly passionate about music. They deserve our support.