Who ordered the scrambled brains?

The Simpsons are on so I’m stuck in front of the TV, but I only have 5% battery left on my iBook so I’ll make this quick.

Everyone loves bashing on Geraldo, be they conservative or liberal, greedy or humane (sorry that was redundant). Anyway, I think the left needs to take a more measured approach to its Geraldo-bashing. Yes, Geraldo is what the left needs. Why? About half the people in this country are conservative, for religious reasons or because they never received an education. These people are herded like sheep by the airheads of conservative punditry: Elisabeth from the View, Ann Coulter, News Corp (Fox News et al), etc. Ironic that so many can be mind-controlled by such absent-minded folks. How do they do it? The same argumentative techniques that get Geraldo so much flack. In other words, Geraldo is the secret weapon of the left, and the right fears him because he operates on the same empty-headed logic that their base does. He will win over middle America for the left with his new national network news show because Jon Stewart and Michael Moore are simply too high brow.

Crap only 1%. That will have to be my entire argument!

Early morning not happy time for brain. Slow turning gears, very smecbrald it is. But brain like good taste of iced latte, soy and Splenda. If possible inject into cranium. MMM MMM MMM. But cranium too hard. Not possible so I injected into mouth with straw—oral consumption must suffice. So far haven’t had enough for gears to reach threshold rotational rate for acceptable thinking process (required for grammar processing and stop me from writing stupid things on blog).

Belle and Sebastian tore up the Hollywood Bowl earlier this month. Natalie and I were lucky enough to witness the exuberance; people rushing to the stage, people rushing ONto the stage, entire stadium dancing on it’s feet. It definitely rivaled the Röyksopp/Basement Jaxx concert last summer, where again the entire stadium was dancing wildly. The difference is those acts are dance music, and b&s are folk-pop; getting the crowd on its feet requires exceptional talent, and an enterprising audience. And the Bowl provides the perfect atmosphere, is the perfect catalyst for explosive reactions between talent and fan. And that’s what I love about the Bowl. It has this high-culture stigma to it, yet it has the capacity to really get down with it and jibe perfectly with diverse, energetic, upbeat Los Angelean culture. In that sense it equalizes the masses, stratifying “upper” to “lower” social classes. If I were to ever move from L.A., the Bowl would be one of the places I miss most.

It was interesting though ’cause I felt like I was in a section that was kind of tame, or the people didn’t know b&s that well, which makes me wonder if I should have got cheaper tix where I’d be surrounded by bigger fans. Anyway, thought I’d share a nice review of the show, and hopefully entice some of you to check out these indie-pop masters.

The 17383 members of the sold-out audience were ready to eat their own shoes if skinny singer Stuart Murdoch had recommended it. The magnitude of this success is comparable to our country’s greatest military victories (remember, back in the revolution?). How else, other than using will-altering techniques, does one convince the enormous Mozart-devouring, gold watch-wearing audience of the Bowl to get up and dance, really shake their asses, to run through the aisles and jump around like children, singing along and hanging off your every word? —Filter Magazine concert review.

It warmed my heart this week to see that innovation is trumping market dominance in three important areas in technology. First, we have news that the Firefox user base has doubled since April 2005 to nearly 13% globally, 15% nationally. That’s tremendous considering it has to overcome the convenience of pre-installed browsers on both Windows and Mac OS X. Firefox is simply more powerful and secure than Internet Explorer, while also maintaining or improving usability. These traits are usually inversely proportional. As a developer, I also like Firefox because it promotes standards-compliant web development by respecting open standards, which frees the people from vendor lock-in.

Second, we have an upsurge in the user base of Apple laptops, doubling to 12% of the market from January. I can personally attest to the merits of Apple laptops: extremely intuitive without sacrificing versatility or performance. They are also the only laptops to run Mac OS X, which shares the same traits as the hardware (and also has a predictable update cycle, unlike the 4 years late and counting upgrade to Windows XP). Of course, these numbers are most certainly also aided by the new Intel-based Apple laptops, which can also run Windows XP. That is the holy grail of consumer computing if ever such a thing existed, and like Firefox, frees people from Apple’s hardware lock-in. (And I cannot wait to get one… Visual Studio on Apple hardware—it’s enough to bring a tear to your eye.)

Third, there was a post on the blog of influential tech publisher Tim O’Reilly last week musing about the migration from Mac OS X to Ubuntu GNU/Linux by technophilic dweeb-nerds (i.e. FOSS maniacs). Since few of you fit that description, you probably don’t know that Ubuntu is the latest and greatest operating system in the Linux and open source community. What is so great about it is its unrelenting focus on usability. It certainly rivals Mac OS X in usability, and offers a much more powerful development environment for hardcore programming dorks like myself. (Though Apple’s offerings have been getting sweeter year after year.)

What this shows me is that people are starting to be both more discerning over the usability of their computing tools and also more sensitive to restrictive product lock-in, finally! Whether that means they are actively pursuing other products or they are merely putting more trust in the advice of their tech-savvy friends, it’s clear that standards of usability and freedom are rising. The freedom factor may be prescient of a backlash against digital media DRM, especially as people become more educated about technology and injustice in media publishing. This may be a part of a larger trend that includes movement away from lock-in by traditional media purveyors, with the rise of user-generated content.) Clunky-junky browsers, utilitarian hardware, and operating systems are being trashed for products that focus on the golden coin of simplicity: usability on one side, aesthetics on the other. If you’ve ever talked shop with me, you know that improving usability is my raison d’etre. So I like this trend, and I see it reflected elsewhere, most notably in automobile (e.g. Audi/VW, Volvo) and furniture (e.g. IKEA) design.

Side note: “Visual Studio on Apple hardware”? Yes, I admit it, I am enamored by Microsoft’s software development tools. While they crapped up many of their other products and their public image in the last five years, they have certainly not slacked in their development technology. And I feel there is a groundswell of usability and interoperability taking place in Microsoft, which may yet make them an innovative (for once) force to be reckoned with. What pleases me even more is their apparent growing respect for open standards and interoperability. This represents an about-face for them, or probably just a quarter-turn at the moment, but if they continue to deliver on this strategy, I could easily see myself giving much more respect to Microsoft. Interoperability, after all, is the moral currency of software vendors.

When did the craze over reality TV (and by reality I mean scripted) turn into a craze over all-out TV talent shows? Sure, like the TV talent shows, Survivor et al were always ostensibly about the talent of individuals to outperform others in some ridiculously degrading circumstances—who could best charm the bachelor/CEO/viewing public. It was a sordid, tawdry affair in which participants whored themselves out on national television, while viewers whored out their brains, their consumer discretion and intellectual standards.

Wait, what’s that I smell? …Ah…yes. Of course. That’s the unmistakably acrid aroma of American capitalism, drug-store perfume that it is. Transparent. Repugnant. Superficial. Good enough for most Americans to mask the underlying detritus.

I always saw reality TV as a marriage between game shows and the Real World. The Real World exploded in popularity by perfectly satiating the narcissistic needs of the Gen-X subculture, an insular microcosm spawned in response to the super-culture’s focus on the identity crisis of post-Cold War baby-boomers. (Dissertation idea, anyone?) To be honest, I would be much more comfortable if nomenclature other than “Reality TV” was used to refer to the genre. Something like “Running Man TV” would be more than suitable. (But that’s cheating really—anything that harks back to that vintage classic puts a smile on this old man’s face.)

Anyway, here we are, years after the American Idol storm rolled by, tredding through a media landscape flooded by talent shows. Fer chrissake, what is this, the 70s?! Not even, at least they had the Ramones—The Ramones!

Yes, the Ramones. Non-conformists, not just against the trends, but against the deeper norms. Well, I’d say we have quite a few cultural norms that are in need of non-conformance. It appears that, like on all those talent shows, the proverbial stage is set. I’m dying with anticipation.

Until the next cultural revolution takes place, feel free to respond to the new poll in the Vibe section of the right-side menu. It’s an homage to the perfect storm that is Wednesday night television, and asks what is the “worst Wednesday night TV talent show.” You can discuss the poll in the comments section of this post if you’d like.

Spambots have gotten better at spamming. They used to just infiltrate my comment sections. I stopped that thanks to the Akismet Bayesian comment filter plugin. Recently they started spamming up my Shout Outs box, making it totally useless. Freaks. Well, I came across the Bad Behavior HTTP request message filter. Hopefully that’ll make my ever-popular Shout Outs feature happy again.

In other news…. there has been no other news, hence not much posting lately. Nonetheless, I urge you to keep your brain tuned exclusively to this station.

Update (2006-07-19T19:31:42): OK, by the time I finished editing this post originally, I had received 8 spam. ARGH.

Update (2006-07-20T02:09:53): OK, the feature has been reinstated. Added a one-link limit to the code. Seems to be holding up for now. One more thing, I just realized I should have named this post Spam: good with rice, bad with brains. Man, what a wasted opportunity.

OK I never finished this feature.

Pocketbook status: -$140
High: $300
Low: -$140

There you go. Although it looks like a big chunk of change, I must say that spread out over 7 days it ain’t bad. Saturday was when most of the action went down, during a 6 hour drinking and gambling binge with Natalie and some random fools at the Hooters Casino (hey, it was next door to Tropicana) that paralyzed us both the next day. When you play for the fun of it like I do, you’ve accepted the loss before you even started playing you can enjoy the experience. Yeah, just playing for the fun of it… *sheds a single solitary tear*

But I did learn something in the case you are playing to win money: set a realistic threshold rate of wins and losses. For example, your loss rate threshold could be $40/day, or maybe $10/hour or something. After you meet that threshold, wait till your loss rate returns to zero. Likewise for winning, which is where the earning comes in. Say your win threshold is $250/day, or perhaps $100/hour, or whatever. Once you hit that threshold, cash out and stop gambling until your win rate returns to zero. This gives you a reasonable hedge against going overboard on your losses and a system to force you to cash out instead of losing it all. And never break those rules to make up a big loss.

Well I don’t think I can ever spend even a minute in Vegas by myself again. That was too much. Too much automated bathroom faucets, too much dim lighting, too much cigarrette smoke, too much kitzchy middle-American decor, too much sensationalized fabricated “sin,” too much expensive crap food, too much heat, too little urban flow, too little Internet, too little art, too little Madonna, etc…

Though I will say I was glad to stay in Circus Circus after all. I’d never been there, and that was the place my grandparents always stayed when they went to Vegas. During my time there, I kept imagining them playing, eating, talking…

Here’s an article about the pervasive public influence on the upcoming blockbuster B-movie Snakes on a Plane. Why “blockbuster”? Because this movie marks the dawning of a new age. If you haven’t heard about it, Snakes on a Plane stars Samuel Jackson and is intentionally ridiculous and intentionally B-grade production. Why would anyone make a movie like that? Because all Hollywood has churned out for years now is calculated, fluffy vapidity. Hollywood is stale. Beyond stale, it’s doggone gotten rotten. This movie slaps the anthromorphic face of every major Hollywood studio out there and heralds an era of realism and public connectivity, because it involves and reacts to the public directly (via Internet-based fan forums). This bypasses the exalted screenwriters, who have schizophrenically become either too plastic or too cerebral to make any meaningful connection with audiences. This movie unintentionally conveys public criticism of Hollywood. Hence I’d gladly pay to see this ridiculous, entertaining movie and I’m sure many others will as well. People don’t care about perfectly calculated, perfectly vapid Hollywood fluff (anymore, phew!). They want real, hard, crap.

Er, they want something they can meaningfully connect with (even if it’s crap).

Here goes my first post from the blogging tool in Flock. Flock is a Firefox-based web browser that includes integration of Web 2.0 type stuff, e.g. blogging, Flickr, RSS, etc… (Kind of like the equally cool Songbird, a Firefox based web browser taht integrates meda playing.) On with the post.

We all know Bush grabs for power like a pedaphiliac in a preschool. That’s just our Bush, what can you do? Well, finally it looks like our venerable self-balancing government has checked his perverted abuse of influence.

In a blow to President Bush’s strategy for dealing with foreigners taken from the battlefields of the war on terror, the Supreme Court ruled today that the administration lacked the power to hold military war crimes trials for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The court’s basic opinion prevailed on a vote of 5 to 3, with the court’s more liberal justices in the majority. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who often sides with the conservatives, provided the majority with its decisive vote.

High Court Rules Out Tribunals for Gitmo Detainees - Los Angeles Times

Props to Justice Kenny-to-the-D. His vote, combined with the hesitation demonstrated by some conservative Senators in yesterday’s rejection of the flag burning ban, is a welcome sign that some in the conservative clone army are willing to question their teenage-schoolgirl psychosexual obsession with their executive American Idol. I do not deny the philosophical merit of classical liberalism—my objection to it is that it relies on a view of society that is pro-wealthy in its optimism. But it seems that most conservatives these days have long forgotten the anti-government precept underlying conservatism. They’ve been relentless in handing over to Bush, the all-powerful all-knowing deity of their neo-conservative fundamentalism, all the power he can fit into his toy box. “Oh boy! Toys!!!”

The recent examples of breaking conservative ranks might presage a return to legitimate, reasonable, and collegiately-debateable conservative ideology that at least possesses a mildly tenable conception of morality. So I give those guys props. Turning against the Bush administration was a tough move that must have hurt; I should know, I felt the exact same way when I let go of my crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar. Trust me, you didn’t want to be around me for a week. You could have put a trash can lid on my head and called me Oscar, I was that much of a grouch!

The rise of neo-conservative gun-happy machismo no doubt lent itself to this judicial and legislative cowardice. Point a gun at a dog and like clockwork its tail whips between its quivering legs in fearful anticipation. “What a big gun you have, Master! How can I please you?! I will do anything…”

Did I say “gun-happy machismo”? Reminds me of rural America. Which reminds me of the generational cycle of intolerance facilitated by childhood indoctrination by xenophobic parents and communities. Can we please institute a mandatory global studies/diversity/education abroad program in the schools that service the backwards/backwoods of this country? The subtext of that program would be ethics education, since the average Christian fundamentalistAmerican parent is no more tolerant than the average Muslim fundamentalistMiddle Eastern parent. Lesson 1 could be titled “Morality Ain’t Relative.” Now how many iterations are we from that reality?

And for that matter how many iterations are we from a globally-administered education system? …Stop laughing, I’m serious.

Blogged with Flock

Last night I got a little feverish and started betting $20 at a time on 3:1 payouts on roulette. Ended up losing the $40 winnings from the first day. Factoring in the $3 tip I gave on Tuesday….

Pocketbook Status: -$3
High: +$60
Low: -$3

Whether I win or lose, I ask myself if the mild amusement of the thrill of gambling itself is worth the loss of the wager, each time I place a bet. It was funny to note both the release of endorphins experienced after winning on Tuesday, and the mild distress after losing yesterday. Rather than caving in to the psychological addiction that is so seductive, I manipulated the experience into serving as a reminder (as does my overall impression of Las Vegas) how fleeting and meaningless money is and also how highly it is valued. One minute you could be up thousands of dollars, others you could be down just as much, and it is all dictated by a more or less random (hopefully) mechanism that is socially embued with that power. Amazingly absurd and irrational!

(The other things of Vegas that give me that impression are the absurd cost of basic ammenities such as $18/day to use the Trop’s workout facilities!!, the thin and superficial fun for which you are pressured to spend tons of money everywhere you look, the manipulative proliferation of cheap alcohol, the manipulative “pretty lights!!@!!11@!” and catchy tunes soothing you into a super-consumer, etc…)