monthly birthday in web two-dot-oh land redux

Yet another monthly birthday celebration in the office. It's supposed to be a business meeting type of thing but not quite...

We have a co-worker who's a guest of Sheriff Joe, on work release from tent city. (For those who don't live here in Phoenix our local county jail is partially made up of army tents - Arizona has a big collective hard-on for incarceration.) When it was officially asked whether anyone had any special announcements he shared with us "I only have three more weeks!"

Then he proceeded to tell us a story about the guy who o.d.'d on black tar heroin at 3:30 in the morning and shared that, "He was dumb to do that because your own race will beat you up."

Just like it was normal.

My life is not exciting enough.

fuck them, I could write a show...

Sarah Silverman stars as a wacky airheaded JAP (her words!!) in a comedy show that gets a lot of play on Showtime-HD.

Her comedy is fuckin' great if you have a twisted sense of humor.

"All I need is the theater space and a bag of weed and a star..."

televised Iraqi atrocities

It turns out there is an Iraqi version of "American Idol."

I was half-listening to the show and the announcer started to say "It has been over a week since the contestant was last seen..."

Strangely the sentence finished with "last week."

The finals are in Beirut so there's still a great possibility of that alternate ending (to the sentence).

The contestants sing that wonderful Arab music that a cat could sing along with perfectly.

Twelve thousand quid for a piece of ass?

I can't say I was surprised that this happened, but I am surprised at the amount of the settlement.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/16/liposuction_mishap/

Seems a German woman had one half of her ass sucked out by a plastic surgeon. Amazing that a piece of ass is only worth around $25,000 in Germany - that settlement would have likely been at or below the level of the first offer in a US suit.

America's tax dollars at work

The US props up Israel to the tune of billions of dollars per year.

Great to see how some of it gets spent...

The Israeli ambassador to the sun-kissed Central American paradise of El Salvador is for the high jump after being found "in a street, drunk, wearing only bondage gear", the BBC reports.

Tzuriel Refael - on his first ambassadorial assignment following elevation from "a foreign ministry position" - was apparently discovered by police on the streets of the capital San Salvador two weeks ago in a rather more uncomfortable position, viz: inebriated, with his hands tied and gagged with a rubber ball in his mouth.
Click here to find out more!

An Israeli foreign ministry official told AFP: "Our ambassador has been recalled immediately. During the 60 years of the State of Israel, some of our diplomats have caused us embarrassment, as happens in every country. But an ambassador behaving indecently on a public thoroughfare, that has never happened before."

Whatever his fate, Refael can consider himself lucky. In El Salvador's darker days, people who turned up on the country's streets with their hands tied were normally minus their heads - the work of death squads attached to fun-loving former prez Roberto D'Aubuisson. Good to see things have moved on in that troubled land. ®

on exes and perceived "cruelty"

My ex posted an open letter to me on his online profile.

Other than giving the police a copy of it, I'm nonplussed.

He's whining about how cruel I am to him. Makes an analogy about Nixon and China. Suits me fine, he must be Nixon since if his lips are moving he's probably not speaking truth.

The fact of the matter is he did something unspeakable. That's just going back to January 6th. I'm capable of going back in his life much further than that with a big old searchlight and I wouldn't feel the least little bit cruel about it. He has sown the wind and he may reap the whirlwind.

You know which ex you are. Shut your mouth, take your meds (hopefully ALL of them at once) stop whining and take the licks you got coming. Any escalation is going to provoke an instant, unpleasant and perfectly legal response.

dogs

I have a dog now.

inside North Korea on National Geographic

It was very interesting to see the inside of what the North Koreans consider to be an "average family's" apartment. I'm not sure which were the dead giveaways that they were high up in the party - the Karaoke machine, multiple electric fans, the 21-inch TV (with what was likely a VCR below it!!!!) and the electric rice cooker were all high on the list.

A VCR would be notable because South Korean soap operas on VHS are very popular in NK but no one would ever admit that on camera.

The child used the Karaoke machine to sing a song that was probably originally composed by cats. I've heard it before through my window.

Nervous laughter translates in any language. The government tour guide / minder who was translating the conversation wiped his brow and laughed nervously before he translated to the group of loyal party members. The reporter had asked about nuclear weapons, oops.

the taliban's beard ban

I saw one comment that we should air-drop bic shavers.

It's flawed logic. You can't take a razor on a plane.

Scooter Libby goes down in a Plame (er, plume) of smoke

Convicted. Good.

learned a new slang word in español rioplatense

"Pornoco." In a sentence it's used interchangeably with the word "grano" (pimple) but it has a quite different meaning. If you say, "Tengo pornocos," it means that you have not had sex in awhile. It's an abbreviation of "por no cojer." Cojer = to f*ck.

Hi-Def but low-brow

I'm watching Jackass 2 on DirecTV pay-per-view as I write this. The picture is very clear on the HD set.

Honestly it's TOO clear if you've had the guilty pleasure of watching this "unrated" work of lowbrow, er, art. Johnny Knoxville and MTV really outdid the first one. It would get an X, no question. Offhand I cannot name a cultural taboo that they didn't touch upon and they possibly invented some new ones.

The worst segment is Terror Taxi for a whole laundry list of reasons. I think I choked to death laughing during the first part but on the whole it was pretty extreme. It will not go over very well in the Arab world due to the subject matter - to say NOTHING of how realistic the beard looks on the actor.

Now in HD

As I alluded to in the previous post where I was expressing my opinion on something I'd seen on TV...

I bought a new one on Saturday. Usually I avoid open-box specials like the plague but I stared at it real darn hard to make sure there were no dead pixels or scratches on the LCD screen.

It's 19-inch Polaroid FLM-1911, which is the right size for my room. The price was too good to pass up and it does full 1080i. Yes of course I'd like a slightly larger picture but the condition of the set was very good and it was under $300. It only has an analog tuner.

I've had an ATSC (the standard the US, Canada, Mexico and South Korea* have adopted for broadcast HDTV) tuner since October 2005. That too was an extremely good deal. I found out about it online - Radio Shack had put the receivers on clearance. It's not a fantastic tuner - newer ones are probably better - but the price too was incredible. Originally Radio Shack was trying to sell them for about $270 but the product was a little before its time. Sets were super-expensive then and digital signals were not on the air in most DMA's (designated marketing areas). Some markets that had the digital signals on the air were not operating them at full power. I got the receiver for $60 because not only was it clearance but the store I went to had only the floor model :)

The transmission power issue at the time was (and still is) caused by the UHF signal assignments (sometimes VHF, rarely**) interfering with analog assignments in other nearby markets. In some cases interference happens with distant cities because UHF can propagate a long way with the right weather conditions.

*South Korea did a slightly different version of ATSC - they do everything slightly different from everyone else, it seems. It appears to have been done to boost various aspects of their economy. The receivers will use the same chipsets as in the USA but the datastream is slightly different and broadcast on a different frequency. They've put it on 2.6 GHz which is highly directional thus ensuring their broadcasters will have to buy lots and lots of very small antennas to get their signal to cover urban areas. Its a strange choice because ATSC is not great with multipath reception (signals bounce off buildings - it appears as ghosts on analog).

**In Chicago CBS-HD is on a VHF channel and has to broadcast at a reduced power because the channel is used for analog service in markets as close as 150 miles away (?!)

It works great in south Scottsdale with just an indoor antenna because of proximity as well as line of sight to the transmitters. If I had an outdoor antenna I might get the Tucson stations (for what, same thing?) because there is a hint of the signal present on their channel assignments. The antenna requires re-aiming to get the independent and the all-jesus-all-the-time stations but I can pretty much lock in CBS, ABC, NBC and PBS with one antenna position so it makes surfing possible amongst the signals that I would actually watch.

An analog TV might show a snowy picture with distorted sound at that distance but digital is all or nothing.

The quality is incredible. I've used the receiver with my standard set (it down-converts) at times and its crystal clear - but connected to the new HD monitor all I can say is WOW.

DirecTV and Sky look OK on the set, not a hi-def signal but good quality.

The New Yorker putting online in its place - online

Nick Lemann of the New Yorker caught my eye on Frontline saying something that I interpreted as bloggers are generally unoriginal and reprocess things. I couldn't backtrack to catch his exact soundbite because I was watching it my new HD setup which I can't (yet) rewind like standard-def. But it prompted me to fire up my mac.

"We" (not the royal we, I'm speaking for myself) are admittedly low on humility and have the hubris to think people actually read this stuff.

Nobody would confuse my little place on the net with a church newsletter. Don't confuse this with an attack on Mr. Lemann. Frontline's viewpoint (a/k/a spin) lit the fuse on this one as much as insomnia.

I think bloggers cut through (and/or expose) as much crap as they produce. I also don't deny the signal to noise ratio is worse than that of the New York Times.

Traditional media DOES shy away from things depending on what its brand managers say about its target market. Traditional media DOES shy away from things depending on what its lawyers say about the target of its reporting.

The rarefied world owned by ill-mannered wealthy dinosaurs like Mel Karmazin is undoubtedly being squeezed in its tender bits. The little guy has more of an opportunity to compete with the Prada-clothed devils with the ad dollar connections than ever. It's a free market. One can only coast along so much based on brand identity. I don't have the momentum that comes with an army of fact checkers, researchers, attorneys and marketing boffins who lunch with their ad-agency counterparts.

I googled and the New Yorker reference that I think the Frontline journalists decided to include as a sound bite came up in a couple of seconds - just like in theory anyone could google and land on my writings.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060807fa_fact1

Big media takes itself too seriously. The above link is opinion labeled as fact. The internet gives the average citizen nearly the same capabilities to publish and disseminate "media." The average joe has more ability than ever to communicate just like magazines that live and die by their individual scans at the point of sale, corporations that operate in "the public interest" as licensees of very expensive radio spectrum and newspapers that are 75% regurgitated content from the wires put in a local wrapper. The average joe doesn't have the overhead of Betacams/DVcams, uplinks, printing presses and patent royalty payments to the algorithm owners of content management systems.

It's not an accident that Cisco owns Scientific-Atlanta.

This writer is not snowed by the Manhattan-based media conglomerates. Lots still are - which is also a part of media momentum - but that number is slowly eroding. Y'all have your place and a much-greater ability to verify what you publish - but with the budget comes a spin. It's obvious when you have access to multiple media sources in your home. I can switch from 60 Minutes to 48 Hours to NBC Nightly news - and then break out of the box and watch BBC World, TV España, TV Globo and the nightly news shows from across Latin America. I know I'm missing out on Euronews because my apartment balcony's view of the southern sky is blocked by a tree. It's not worth it to have a dish on the roof for it because the amount of content in languages I understand emanating from 95 degrees west is limited anyway.

Those sources are very different from the syndicated stuff I see in the mainstream US media.

In the US the power of big media and its spin is fading away as the options grow. Options are good even though they squeeze at the number of times your magazine gets scanned at the point of sale. I read between the lines during your 90-odd seconds on Frontline. Point blank Condé Nast's (the New Yorker's owner) ad dollars are being squeezed - which is one of the key facts behind that opinion which is labeled as fact. But if internet authors are to be poo-poohed, why does your page load include DART - a laser-targeted internet source of ad revenue? It's sorta having it both ways :) DART is the essence of Internet 2.0.

What's DART? It's a breed of little-known technology that impacts the bottom line of your web browser as well as the bottom line of traditional media brands. Readers, watch that bottom line of your browser for the word "doubleclick." That URL that flits by is one that you won't visit directly. The well-known search engines won't feed it back to you. It's not the only one - just a big player in Internet 2.0. It's a survivor from Internet 1.0. Look at the date on this article: http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=198511

There could be ads in my page load too. My revenue would be measured in pennies, not dollars - for now. Naturally my value per impression is a lot lower. It just depends how much time and effort I put into it as well as a lot of luck. My eyes are wide open

There's room for a lot of players, opinions and facts in the US marketplace. It'll be interesting to see how this new aspect of free-market competition for impressions play out.

Hopefully my regurgitation of the meme I picked up from Frontline measures up. ;)

On being strong...

In a conversation this evening someone said something that's very true. Being strong for someone else is just the ability to bullshit everyone that you're not really dying inside.

Don't work too hard...

Madness in a coffee ad... Coffee with cake? or death?

Ok so I'm watching Eddie Izzard on BBC America (whose content is pretty far removed from what gets shown on the actual BBC channels, but hey, we don't have to shell out 150 quid a year for an absurdity called a TV licence)...

Cut to a coffee commercial. Totally aimed at my damn demographic. Maxwell house has an ad that is a send up of the Madness' "Our House" video. It's sent me rushing for Napster (sadly, reincarnated in Internet 2.0 paid service with a smaller albeit more stable selection and a heapin' helping of DRM) to see if I can hear the real thing because its such an ABOMINATION. I actually rewound the commercial on my PVR to take it in again because it was so damn bad.

Let's see... we open with people who we're supposed to assume are latin american coffee growers, except they're dressed like they just walked out of Banana Republic at the mall. They're singing in a latino-british accent. WTF? Love to have been a fly on the wall when the creatives knocked back their Starbucks (they ain't drinkin' Maxwell House at the agency it'd be a little déclassé) and probably decided to hire a consultant to get it just right to make sure.

Actually I'd left the room when it was clear there was about to be a commercial but got drawn back into the room by the bastardization of the tune, that and I mis-heard "each bean is custom roasted" as "each penis" which of course got my undivided attention.

But THIS in the middle of an Eddie Izzard comedy show? It's just not compatible. It's so corny and lowbrow it doesn't fit in. The average American needs subtitles to understand Eddie Izzard even during the parts of his routines that are in English - he's funny in French too. He has that certain je ne sais quois... or in his own words "Je ne mets jamais mes spectacles par écrit parce que je suis paresseux et un peu dyslexique. Et puis ce n'est pas adapté au genre d'humour que je produis : j'ai une petite idée et j'improvise autour de ce thème une fois sur scène."

As for his whole cake or death conundrum - today I'll pick cake. Tomorrow's another day.

Oh and Napster actually HAD the track. They often don't have the more esoteric 80's stuff like when I get thinking about Chicago house music and such, or even Men Without Hats which is de rigeur in an internet 2.0 office... You'd think with all the damn marketing at my ancient demographic the service would have it - but their target market is 15 years younger than me I think.

The erosion of rights based on fear, or, please stop my car

Ever notice these stickers in the back window of cars as you're driving around? They're for our security. Here's how the police explain it.

"The Watch Your Car decal program is a voluntary program whereby vehicle owners enroll their vehicles with the AATA. The vehicle is then entered into a special database, developed and maintained by the AATA, which is directly linked to the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD).

Participants then display the Watch Your Car decals in the front and rear windows of their vehicle. By displaying the decals, vehicle owners convey to law enforcement officials that their vehicle is not usually in use between the hours of 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, when the majority of thefts occur.

If a police officer witnesses the vehicle in operation between these hours, they have the authority to pull it over and question the driver. With access to the MVD database, the officer will be able to determine if the vehicle has been stolen, or not. The program also allows law enforcement officials to notify the vehicle's owner immediately upon determination that it is being illegally operated."

Ok, those of you in the self-righteous "I have nothing to hide" crowd, pipe down. Why on earth would you voluntarily subject yourself to stop and search? Americans have pretty much already lost any scrap of personal privacy and other rights continue to be eroded with "voluntary" well-meaning-sounding crap like this.

Babies...

I feel really old. A friend from college just had her first kid and is dealing with things like changing diapers, being up all night, etc. It's interesting to hear her tell me about it - mostly from the point of view of, "Better you than me, girl..."

She mentioned that her husband got peed and crapped on a couple times already during diaper changing. I told her to tell him, "Hey, in big cities strange people pay good money for that, consider it free." She was in pain from laughing (c-section...)

Anna Nicole's funeral - Over the top in death as she was in life

A picture is worth a thousand words. She lived her life like a poker game with special rules - her one pair beat all. She might be looked down upon in death as she was in life but you cannot fault her for having lived her life to the fullest. As a firm believer in grabbing life by the balls, I salute her even if she came off as a blatant gold-digger.

The picture is censored. Her bulgarian airbags are especially "over the top" in the original picture.

She went tits-up before her time, just like her idol Marilyn Monroe.

Israelis vote for Eurovision nuclear apocalypse but wait a minute, Israel isn't IN Europe

From The Register http://www.theregister.com/
Israelis have "voted overwhelmingly" to send a song having a poke at Iran's nuclear ambitions to this year's Eurovision Song Contest, the BBC reports.

In a move likely to have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad choking on his Rice Krispies this morning, Teapacks' Push the Button will wow the Helsinki crowds in May with lines such as: "The world is full of terror, if someone makes an error, he's gonna blow us up to kingdom come."

This raises an interesting if pointless question - what would one rename Snap, Crackle and Pop in Farsi?

The song continues, in traditional Eurovision style: "And I don't wanna die, I wanna see the flowers bloom, don't wanna go kaput-kaboom."

The fun-filled ditty was selected by Israeli music-lovers from among four Teapacks offerings, including the "facetiously titled" Salam Salami, "so-named after the group discovered that its original lyrics, with words taken from the Bible, broke Eurovision Song Contest rules on suitable content".

Defending their contribution to peace in the Middle East, Teapacks say "it is their role to stir up controversy". Singer Kobi Oz explained: "The idea is to do something that crosses the accepted norms."

And just to prove how far Eurovision has come since the days of Cliff Richard and Abba, former Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins will on 17 March battle former East 17 star Brian Harvey and ex-Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon for the honour to represent the UK in Finland. Reports that Marilyn Manson and Iggy Pop will this year give forth for Cyprus with a rendition of the old favourite Gonna Greece your partition, Gonna stuff your Turkey are unconfirmed. ®

You can see the video (as of this writing) on YouTube at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpWYFoSrmRA

Lyrics are in English, French, Hebrew and Italian.