FRQNC


Thursday, February 28, 2008 For those who've never seen the "Chocolate Rain" video, behold yet another Net meme... And for even more Tay Zonday fun, here's the Chad Vader version... And the MegaMan version... (Ignore the stupid "Rickroll" comments at the beginning.) I <3 teh int4rw3bs... j.s.



Wednesday, February 27, 2008 I knew you were slime Comcast, but I had no idea just how low you were... What I want to know, though, is whose twisted idea it was to keep people from entering the FCC hearing in Boston yesterday by paying random jackasses to fill up seats and thus keep the real protesters from entering... I want to know because, for the good of this great nation and humanity as a whole, we must trepan this person with an American flagpole immediatly, before they start raping kittens or setting fire to orphanages. You drove people in on buses who knew nothing about the FCC case, placed a yellow highlighter on them all for easy identification, and then gave 'em $40, a hooker, and a bottle of cheap whiskey on the way out for stopping any of the real interested parties from entering. My mind's most hellish nightmares look like Blue's Clues compared to the twisted and devious world you live in. And I will never, EVER, become a paying customer of Comcast, you filthy fucking corporate milkhogs. XOXO, j.s.



Monday, February 25, 2008 Tracklist: 1. Silence 2. Hunter 3. Nylon Smile 4. The Rip 5. Plastic 6. We Carry On 7. Deep Water 8. Machine Gun 9. Small 10. Magic Doors 11. Threads Oh dear God in Heaven... April 29th can't get here fast enough. j.s.



Yeah, so it's been about a week. Sorry. There simply hasn't been a whole lot going on. It's beginning to look like I will indeed attend SXSW again this year, so you should expect to hear about that ad nauseum in the coming days. There's something I've been mulling over since I went to the HSPVA Art Show this Saturday though, and I'm hoping writing it out up here will help in the decoding process. Basically, watching people mill about and bid on art work, all within eyeshot of the artists themselves (who busily feign indifference), seemed strange and...I don't know...way too commercial? I realize that selling your work is a part of being an artist. But my God man, there's got to be a better way... I'd also like it known at the forefront that stick kitties are pretty much the apogee of my artistic ability, so I know next to nothing about how much of the artist him/herself is hanging on the wall, and how much of it is just a commercial product. But I do know that if I were trying out for a writing gig, and had to hang my stuff on the wall for random editors to walk by and judge? I would be extraordinarily uncomfortable. Maybe that's just me. And maybe I'm comparing apples to styrofoam... j.s.



Monday, February 18, 2008 I started THIS ARTICLE assuming that Ms. Jacoby and I would agree on most points. After all, the "Dumbing of America" is something I've ranted about on several occasions. And while we did agree on a few points (particularly her discussion of FDR's "Fireside Chats"), she degenerated into a loopy Luddite about halfway through the article, and it became more about how supra-awesome she is for reading in a treehouse during her idyllic childhood, and how anything that shuttles its way through a cathode ray tube (or LCD/Plasma), is horribly bad for children and is causing them to become simpletons. Blanket statements like that make me want to crawl under mine. But Susan, Dahling, Bubullah...we need to talk. Because you've just gone and pissed me off. I learned to read at 2 years old. This phenomenon was attributable not to time spent pondering what in the hell those 26 squiggly lines on the wall of my nursery could possibly mean, but to one thing and one thing alone. And that thing, is Sesame Street. The repetition of simple words, and the animations that denoted their meanings, resonated in my little noggin...and then, one day, I understood them. (Read that last line like Nicodemus from "The Secret of NIMH.") As I got older, we got an Atari. Not only did this develop an impressive hand/eye coordination that I retain to this day, but I also spent hours and hours thinking about the games, developing talent with them, discussing them with friends, and yes, reading about them wherever I could. I understand that your self-proclaimed "snobbery" would've preferred me to be reading Hardy Boys paperbacks tucked away in a cobbled together pile of 2x4s and rusty nails, but I assert that my particular choice of intellectual material was of no less importance than such "novel" pursuits. Not only did reading about games expand my vocabulary and create a concrete and easily measurable practical use (in my high scores of course), it also bestowed the life long treasure that we've both been gifted with, and that we both hope is passed along to children everywhere... A love of reading. Soon I was reading everything I could get my hands on. My parents ordered books by the hundreds. Sweet Pickles, then Value Tales, then those Time/Life animal card sets that came monthly and were bundled with a filing container to hold them all. Then came "Spider-Man," "Daredevil," and "X-Factor," comics. Then "The Three Investigators," and "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure"s. I read the manuals from rented video games, and scoured "Nintendo Power" and "Electronic Gaming Monthly" magazines from cover to cover. I pored endlessly over the "Player's Handbook," "Dungeon Master's Guide" and "Monstrous Manuals." And although I did many of these simply to become better at what you feel to be a common and prole past time (i.e. gaming), I never stopped reading. But I believe that it this same appreciation for various genres of the written word (one that you seem to have missed out on during your childhood), that allowed me to become a paid and published writer today, much like you are. But a huge difference between us is, I don't have to resort to the laughable, entry-level undergraduate structuring that you employ when writing articles. E.g. Step 1: Quote someone awesome. Step 2: Twist quote to fit your particular topic so it sounds like someone much smarter than you are agrees with your point. Step 3: Carry your topic to whatever pre-determined conclusion you held by using 3 distinct points, set in increasing order of strength. Step 4: Close by reiterating your opening quote in a new and clever way. Pathetic. Even for the Wa-Po. Now I'll be the first to say that I'm not Pulitzer-worthy (yet), nor do I claim to know everything there is to know about writing. But I do know bad prose when I read it sweetheart, and it pains me that people actually pay you to write things like: "Technophiles pooh-pooh jeremiads about the end of print culture as the navel-gazing of (what else?) elitists." Taking an awesome word like "jeremiad," and cramming it into such a hideously malformed sentence should be a crime punishable by losing a pinky finger. And while it would indeed impress a Persuasive Writing 201 professor, here in the real world we have things called "readability" and "sentence flow," neither of which you seem to know a fucking thing about. Coincidentally, these also happen to be elements of writing that come from talent alone, and that you can't learn from a book. Treehouse or no. So see me after class young lady. I'm making a long overdue second appointment for you to spin the Wheel of Employment with the resident vocational counselor. And in the meantime, please stop typing things. XOXO, j.s.



Thursday, February 14, 2008 I really hope they don't do a lot of the "I'm getting too old for this shit..." jokes. I gotta admit though, seeing the shadow of him in his fedora, the sound of the whipcrack, all set to that brilliant theme music... Yeah, that gave me a chill. But then again, it's widely known that I'm a Harrison Ford fanboy...so it's possible that I'm biased. j.s.



Wednesday, February 13, 2008 I am utterly crushed by the decision by Congress yesterday to grant immunity to the telecom companies who provided illegal eavesdropping on Americans. And while I applaud Barack Obama and his band of 30 similarly-minded senators who fought the bill, I can't believe that the Democratic party is, even now, so divided and so clueless as to the importance of this legislation that they'd side with the current administration. Apparently Obama didn't even actually vote against the bill in its final incarnation (for some unknown reason), instead he just spent the day vociferously opposing it. That's -100 DKP Barack... And you Clinton supporters shouldn't puff your chests out just yet. It seems she was too busy drumming up support for a shot at a new job to take her happy ass to the one we currently pay her for. McCain, of course, did as he was told and voted to absolve the telecoms of guilt while shielding his fellow Republicans from any further embarrassment. You know, it's not as if these people didn't know that it was illegal to wiretap/record phone conversations without a warrant. They just didn't care. This is the culmination of 8 years under an administration who wholeheartedly believes that since they create the laws, they do not have to adhere to them. So not only does this decision absolve AT&T and Verizon of all legal penalties for violating the law, it also green-lights all future recordings of your telephone conversations and email. Yet even now I can hear the familiar chorus of ~~morons~~ people saying "I'm not doing anything wrong, they aren't wiretapping me!" Perhaps that's true, perhaps it isn't. After all there's a 300 terabyte server humming along in the basement of the NSA, and I assure you it isn't there to house Keith B. Alexander's porn. (Or isn't just for that anyway.) And if they aren't directly monitoring you, have you considered who they are monitoring? "Terrorists dummy!" Well we can certainly hope so. But now that it's legal for them to listen in on anyone they feel like, who else? As just one of many examples, what about news reporters/journalists? No one in their right mind would become a whistleblower if they knew that every reporter in the U.S. carried a tapped phone... And if they did, can you imagine how fast the NSA would swoop in to deal with that little problem? See? Think about these things before you parrot "But I'm not doing anything wrong!" When dealing with the complexities of a nation of Responsible Democracy, it's about more than just you. So for any of you left who can be bothered to care about these things, drop Sheila Jackson Lee an email via THIS SITE, or just ring her office at (713) 655-0050 and let her know how you feel. j.s.



Tuesday, February 12, 2008 But, in infinitely more important news... IT'S NATIONAL PANCAKE DAY! Free pancakes at IHOP until 10pm! runs j.s.



Hello Sonja. Yes, I'm fully aware of my geekiness...but thank you once again for pointing it out. j.s.



Monday, February 11, 2008 So long Miss Charlotte... [to be continued...]



Thursday, February 07, 2008 I know. I've got end-of-monthiness and deadlines this week though. I'll write when I can. j.s.



Monday, February 04, 2008 I don't want to talk about it. j.s.