FRQNC


Thursday, January 31, 2008 While not quite as good as the "Dramatic Chipmunk" vid, this one did make me geegle a little this morning. j.s.



Tuesday, January 29, 2008 Clarification: It seems I bought into the hype in my earlier "Qtrax" post. I've since found out that the claims the "Big Four" had signed on the dotted line was a clinic in reality management. In its current build, Qtrax is nothing more than Winamp with ads, and there's no indication that their much-touted "free downloading" aspect of the program will ever be anything more than vaporware. My apologies if I led anyone to download the program. But if it's any consolation, I'm as disappointed as you are. j.s.



Rudy, Rudy, Rudy... Have you learned nothing about who not to piss off? So lemme get this straight Mr. 9iul1an1, it's your contention that people need a passport to get on the Internet? Have you lost your fucking mind? Ahem...and best of luck with your website today. I sure hope nothing...happens...to it. grins j.s.



Monday, January 28, 2008 No sooner did DRM die a howling, squirming death than EMI, Uni and Warner announced Qtrax, a legal and free (or so it's been touted), website to download music. The beta is scheduled to be released tonight at midnight EST. And while the songs won't work with iPods (currently anyway...a fix is in the works for this), it's still a huge step forward in reshaping how people browse and buy music. And that, pending all goes as advertised, is awesome. j.s. [[ed. Can you tell I'm still a skeptic?]]



Thursday, January 24, 2008 You know, I was just talking about Scientology on Tuesday, and how the entire dogma of this ~~cult~~ religion seems about as ridiculous as a fez on a burro. Apparently, 75 million years ago, The Master of the Universe, a.k.a Xenu, a.k.a. Prince Adam, jaunted around the galaxy on a DC-8 (you'd think a Cosmic Overlord could afford an AirBus 380 or something), and dropped hydrogen bombs inside Earth's volcanoes to purge the galaxy of undesirables. Oh, and then he trapped their souls like a Galactic Peter Venkman. Mmhmm... Well these misguided Thetan-hoppers at the Scientology Institute are taking issue with the video of Tom Cruise that was released on YouTube a little while ago... Poor Tom. He's obviously lost what little mind he had. That and apparently he really needs a travel agent to book him a vacation...so he can "romp." The Scientolawyers have demanded that this video be removed from the Intarwebs since it violates a held copyright. BUZZER Incorrect answer. As Gaby Darbyshire over at Gawker so brilliantly points out, the video is being used in the context of "news reporting and critical commentary, which are uses that may not be authorized by your client, but which serve the public interest." This litigous strong-arm was just the beginning though. Because any attempts to censor the net pisses off all the right people. Yesterday, an online "group" entered the fray, (one whom I'll leave Anonymous for now), and began "Operation Chanology." An operation that apparently consists of barraging the Church of Scientology website with DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, prank phone calls, looped faxes, and presumably hundreds of fake orders for pizza. My questions is, why stop there? L.D.S. people think that Earth was hurled from its orbit around Planet Kolob (where God lives) after Adam & Eve committed original sin, and that "Cain was cursed with a dark skin; he became the father of the Negroes, and those sprits who are not worthy to receive the priesthood are born though his lineage." Nice work guys. The Islamic church was founded by a pedophile (Mohammed married his first wife when she was six, although he apparently waited 3 years to have sex with her...you know...out of decency), and advocates domestic abuse as the cure for disobedient wives. They also have that whole "70 virgins" thing going. You know, I haven't asked my female friends how they feel about ~~having to~~ getting to deflower 70 boys, but my guess is that they wouldn't be all that thrilled. Fortunately it would all probably be over in about the same time it takes to watch "Malcom X." Christianity, of course, is presided over by an omniscient "Creator" that has given us all free will...yet concurrently has a "plan" for each of us. (/boggle) A God who claims to be "love," but reminds us regularly of how pathetic and awful we are by comparison to him and his beautiful family. (Nepotism on the Nazarene!) And this leaves out the juicy bits about sacrificing two turtles after every menstrual period, and the Lord's hatred of poly/cotton blends. Now, before you browse away to watch videos involving kitties and puppies set to death metal, I'm certainly not going to list the entirety of the world's religions and poke little snarky holes in them. But I will venture the question, "what does that leave us with?" And I'll even venture an answer... Absolutely nothing but yourself. So it would be my suggestion (I am an ordained minister after all, and thus every bit as qualified to suggest what is right and wrong as these random yahoos are), that you consider why it is that you believe that the Bible, the Koran, Dianetics, etc. hold the required instructions for living your life "correctly." Because I'd like to propose a new addition to the Lexicon of Faith... The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss Part II: I feel a healin' comin' on... j.s.



Tuesday, January 22, 2008 So long Heath. I kinda liked you mate... =[ j.s.



These were taken while I was away in New England. [["You! Knave! Fetch me the SnackKeeper immediately! So that I may pout at him with a ferocity unparalleled in the history of pouting. And tell him to bring sausages."]] [[This dog has absolutely no idea how big he is; as evidenced by his attempt at curling up on an errant towel.]] [["I can has SnackKeeper now?"] And just so you don't think he was completely mistreated in my absence... He did have a crew to hang with. Although that doesn't make those other shots sting any less... =[ j.s.



Friday, January 18, 2008 I can't remember if I've ever linked this here (I probably have), but I love this song...and making a WoW video for it was genius. =] Fickle, thy name is "Night Elf." Have a great weekend. =] j.s.



Wednesday, January 16, 2008 And since hope seems to be my theme this week, I'd like to share a video I stumbled across a while ago. It's pretty standard fare at the beginning, war protests, anti-corporate slogans, criticism of media fearmongering, Muse, [ed. thank you Dixie] etc. But the end more than justifies the mediocrity. I have to admit that my heart swelled a bit at the end of the lion/gator scene. "All I know is that first...you've got to get mad." j.s.



Tuesday, January 15, 2008 You know, I realize I've been pretty negative about the whole Net Neutrality/DRM thing, and that's mostly because there hasn't been much in the way of good news. But a few rays of light have shone through the ebon gloom of corporate milkhoggery, so I thought I'd share some good news today. First, let's talk about DRM. It's dead. Over. Kaput. Nailed to the perch. The last holdout (Sony/BMG), threw in the towel and allowed their catalogue to be included in Amazon.com's new music download service. (You'll be hearing a lot more about that during the SuperBowl this year.) So what does that mean? Well for starters it means that if you download a song legally from Amazon, you'll be allowed to play it on any system you like. That sounds simple, I know, but it's really a huge positive step...and a concession the major labels have fought like a fat kid being dragged away from the cookie jar. My question now is, what about all the iTunes music that I've already downloaded legally? Will the DRM be removed from those so I might move them from my office computer to my home system without having to scrub them first? And speaking of labels doing awesome things, EMI has recently threatened to pull their funding for the RIAA. "The functions and structure [of the RIAA] need to make sense. Right now, funding them doesn't make sense." You might remember EMI as the first major label to remove DRM from their iTunes catalog. (Or you might not...but now you know.) In my estimation, this event will trigger one of two responses: 1. The RIAA will step up its litigious pursuit of "pirates," and the number of lawsuits will skyrocket in the coming months in an attempt to show the labels they're actually performing some kind of service for the millions they're paid every year. 2. The RIAA will drop their bullying tactics and try to work with the labels and consumers to find a new business model for the dissemination of music, rather than attempting to sue the 15 million people who "illegally" downloaded music last year. Here's hoping for the latter, but I think I'll go ahead and exhale. And finally, on the Net Neutrality front: Well hi there Mr. Comcast! How you doin' today? Aww, I'm so sorry to hear that...what's wrong? Really? You're getting complaints about using the "Narcolepsy NOW!" help groups as a hiring pool? (HERE and HERE.) And now you've been busted for illegally monitoring your network for BitTorrent traffic, and throttling the downloads on that P2P network? Wow. Well what happened? NO!!! The vulturing FCC has threatened to fine you almost $200,000 per affected customer? That's 1.77 *trillion* dollars! [[HERE]] Well it couldn't have happened to a nicer group. Good luck with that. laughs uncontrollably So there you have it. A little good news sprinkled in with my bitter EFFueled angst. Enjoy your new day. j.s. [[Info gleaned from Ars Technica and Mashable.]]



Friday, January 11, 2008 I know how the intarwebs loves their lists, so I've had Sherman working the Wayback Machine all morning to bring you this, slightly perverse, list. I have no idea why I'm attempting this, other than I think it might be kinda interesting. So here we go... 10 Unpleasant Things That Women Have Said to Jeremiah: (Names have been withheld to protect the guilty.) 10. *"You'll never settle down. You're a wild child."* We'll overlook the hackneyed, prosaic use of the phrase "wild child" for now. The context of the discussion was my penchant for spontaneously leaving wherever I am to seek fortune and adventure in a new locale, and how I'd started to think that maybe that wasn't such a great plan for my future. Apparently this was quite funny to her, and she responded with the above. 9. "I remember how cool I felt when I got to go over to your apartment. You were so beautiful..." That doesn't seem twisted at all does it? In fact, it reads like a compliment. It'd been about 5 years since I'd last seen this girl and we were reminiscing about our collegiate days. However note the past tense of the verb "to be." You were so beautiful. Hmmph. My response to this was a haughty scowl and a "what do you mean 'were?'" She stammered for a moment, then blurted out "uh, well, I'm married," and looked away, signaling the end of the conversation. 8. "You're not a safe bet." Not surprisingly, I've heard this several times from different girls. And I can't actually argue with this one. Although it's taught me that, while many people claim to envy lives that are lived hard and without a safety net, they don't actually want one. 7. "...and a beer budget." This was the follow-up to my admission that I was guilty of "champagne taste" in women. The kicker here is that it was a family member who said it to me. 6. "Can't you stop being weird for just a minute so a girl might like you?" Same family member as earlier, different venue. Apparently I'd used the phrase "persona non grata" in a sentence when talking to one of her friends. Turns out she had no idea what it meant, and complained to my family member about how I was making fun of her for being dumb. 5. "You owe me for this. And I'm gonna collect later tonight." Our cook, a Swedish woman 20 years my senior, said this after convincing a bouncer to let me into a private party at "The Black Cat" bar in Baltimore. ("You have to let him in. I want to fuck him tonight." was her method.) As it turns out I was the only member of the crew whom she hadn't slept with and she wanted to remedy that fact. And no Snoopy, I never did sleep with her. 4. "How could you have created something so beautiful?" I'm afraid there isn't a way to avoid giving this one away, since the quote was in response to an engagement ring. Although to properly "hear" this one you have to understand the context. She was repeating the topic of an earlier discussion she'd had with a friend about the ring, and apparently both were in disbelief that I was capable of making something so lovely. 3. "Don't look me in the eyes." and "Your eyes freak me out." Now I don't really see (ZANG!) anything wrong with my eyes, but apparently many women do. Specifically when I'm looking directly at them. Actually this little quip has been repeated so often that I very rarely look people in the eye when I'm speaking to them anymore. 2. "Look, I don't want to talk about fairness! All I want to hear from you is that I'm right!" Fortunately, this little gem wasn't directed at me. The girl in question was actually angry with a minor acquaintance of mine. The twisted part was that I was trying to reason out why this guy might've done the things he'd done (in this case, he played too much EverQuest), in an attempt to glean a deeper understanding of the situation for all parties involved. Silly me. 1. "Men like you should never be happy." Yes, I actually had a girlfriend tell me this once. The strange part is, we weren't even fighting at the time. It was just a matter-of-fact response to an otherwise banal statement about life in general. (i.e. "I really just want to be happy.") Like a "What? Didn't you know you're supposed to be miserable?" kind of statement. On my end, however, it spawned several horrible, brooding poems with lines like "loss has always been my armor from honesty," and "tears collecting in my faults." Ugh. And it makes me cringe to admit to writing those... Well, that was fun. See you next time when I'll catalogue my favorite childhood traumas, all in a fun and easy-to-read outline. =] j.s.



Wednesday, January 09, 2008 You know, it's hard enough for me to leave the house in the morning when Jib is standing at the gate, hanging his head and looking at me through big, brown eyes that plead "Please...please...please don't go." But this morning he took guilt to new heights when, as I was waiting for the Jeep to warm up, he ran from his normal spot at the gate. "Wow," I thought, "he's getting used to me leaving at about this time every day..." No, not so much. He runs back to the gate, but this time with a stuffed monkey in his mouth. The same monkey that causes me to stop whatever it is I'm doing and play fetch with him. He sets it down at the gate, and looks up at me expectantly. It can't be good for you to suffer that kind of heartbreak this early in the morning... j.s.



Friday, January 04, 2008 Huckabee? Really? I mean sure, he's the most "Bush-esque" guy in your little caucus coven...but c'mon. A creationist, Southern Baptist minister who once quipped that we needed to, "take this nation back for Christ" and "the Ten Commandments form the basis of most of our laws...does anybody find anything there that would be all that objectionable?" Oh, I don't know Mikey... Maybe the part where it says "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods," or the bit that forbids "Making Graven Images." And 2 years for "Taking the Lord's Name in Vain" might be a rough sell to Congress. (Or maybe not...) Seriously, you guys can't find a better GOPstopper than this? I can say this for Mike though. He's made me an official cheerleader for the Rapture...if it means all of these "Christian" fundamentalists will be magically whisked away. j.s.



It seems that I am the only one who didn't resolve, "I'm going to drive like there's a swarm of giant angry wasps in my rear view mirror in 2008!" Every day this week there have been at least a couple McQueen-abees on the freeway, zipping back and forth across 4 lanes of traffic, passing in the slow lane, and pumping their brakes when they realize that simply changing lanes does not cause the cars in front of them to blink out of existence. You know, this city used to be pretty good about courtesy on the freeway. People zippered relatively well, stuck to the "left=fast/right=slow" scheme, and tailgating was a rarity. But of late it seems there's been a lot more ill will on the road. Less kindness. More people cutting each other off. And a lot more horns. Perhaps it's construction frustration. Or maybe people are suffering post-holiday stress. My guess? It's those rude yankee folk moving down here, and bringin' their northern aggression with 'em. Here to take advantage of our plentiful jobs, cheap rent and beautiful women. Goddamn carpetbaggers... j.s.



Wednesday, January 02, 2008 You've no doubt come here today to hear about the wild and decadent New Year's Eve of a handsome young man, and to live the high life vicariously through his tales of depravity. A gentleman as winsome as he is witty. As discerning as he is dashing. As comely as he is clever... Well Gregory Peck died in 2003, and as far as I know he never had a blog. So it's just you and me. And I hate to disappoint you further, but most of my acquaintances very quietly left town for a New Year's Eve party that I never received an invitation to. And because I am well-bred, and would never just show up at an event to which I wasn't invited (or because I am an egomanaical, pride-fueled bastard...whichever you prefer), I scoffed at the whole thing and didn't leave the house on New Year's Eve. Instead, I surrounded myself with small bits of computer processing equipment and set upon the task of building my very first computer from scratch. And at 3am, with bleeding knuckles and streaks of grey thermal grease on my face, I lifted the contraption off my living room floor and pressed the power button... whirrrr! At which point I threw both arms over my head in a "touchdown" semaphore, and proclaimed myself to be the smartest man alive. So here you go, my new system: [[I couldn't bear the thought of cleaning up the table clutter on New Year's Eve.]] [[External voltage/fan control panel.]] [[Yes, it has a clear Lucite side panel and blue-lit LED fans with an illuminated ultra-cooling system. I am all that is geek.]] There you have it. The product of my New Year's Eve. Strange since normally I'd have nothing to show for the night but a crippling hangover and voids where brain cells once were. And for those of you with a moderate amount of tech savvy, the specs of the system are: Asus P5KC Motherboard CoolerMaster 750-watt power source Pentium Core Duo 2.66ghz (Overclocked to 2.8 ghz) 4 gig of Corsair DDR-2 800mhz RAM 320 gig Western Digital SATA Hard Drive NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS (512MB) graphics card Sony CD/DVD RW drive Yeah, I'm aware that it's bottlenecking a little on the graphics card, but that's a purchase that's being pushed back until I at least have a proper desk at home. Ah, that desk bit is important isn't it? You see, this isn't just a computer for me to geek out and play Portal, or allow me to rock Spore at the highest settings when it's released sometime in April or May. (Although I must admit to having that very thought in mind when choosing a few of the parts.) No. I've put this computer together for one express purpose, a purpose that concurrently stands as my sole resolution for the next 366 days. And that is, to finish my novel on it by January 1, 2009. I'm not sure which of my ideas I'm going to pursue for this story, or if it will be an amalgamation of them all into one (hopefully) cohesive whole. And I don't know what I'm going to do with the thing once it's finished. Perhaps attempt to have it published, perhaps post it somewhere online, or perhaps just print it and leave it in a drawer to collect dust. But that's less important right now than the desire to simply see if I *can* do it. Also (and I haven't looked yet), but it's quite likely that I resolved to do this very same thing at the end of 2006. However, I've noticed a very different paradigm creeping into my life of late. Specifically, I'm home more than I've ever been before, leaving me with a lot of free time around the house. Time that would be easily spent tapping away at a keyboard rather than watching random terrible movies on HBO. Hence the new computer, and the need for a quiet place to sit down and use that computer. So, when you take all this into account, my New Year's folly was actually more of a springboard into accomplishing my goals for 2008 rather than the prototypical booze-addled blur of faces and names, capped by a slurred chorus of descending integers. So here's to a new year that sees all your desires become realities too. j.s.