Thus spake Sean Hale.

This from the man who quibbled with my metaphor of "a muddy river running below you", as well as his friend's metaphor of "a patch of quicksand lurking around you".

And he's the one who wants to be an English teacher. Weep for the childen. Weep for us all.

Oh my word (literally):

It's a visual Thesaurus

You plug in a name, and a Flash-driven applet shows you how the words are related in a three-dimensional, rotatable map. And it breaks down whether the word is a noun, verb, adverb, or adjective, and by literally connecting the dots, you can read definitions and examples of the words in use. Clicking on one word, or link, opens new connections.

How fucking cool is that?

Holy shit.

Holy, holy shit.

NOT WORK SAFE, unless you want to get fired for racism.

So things are looking promising for Bright-Matrix. Since Saturday, we've gotten four bites for possible web-work. Granted, no one's actually hired us just yet, but (especially this early in the game) at least we've got possibilities. I think Mike and I need to work on the Hard Sell--or whatever you want to call it when we try and convince someone to use a product.

So between viewing some websites that can definitely benefit from a re-design, not to mention revamping my ubiquitous Vendetta Shrine, I wound up revisting the place where it all began for me: The Shadow Gallery. This, longtime friends will remember, was the name of the Geocities site that was my first official website, lo those many years ago. (Late 1996, if I remember correctly.)

God, what a piece of shit it was. I officially shut it down about in 2001, though it was dormant . . . almost since inception. If you go to the main page you'll see the "closing" notice where I admit the site was nothing more than a collection of links to sites I liked. The only two sections that I did anything with were, not surprisingly, the Comicbook section and the aforementioned Vendetta Shrine. And, look at my webdesign circa 1998, it's obvious why these sites went nowhere fast.

So, for a laugh, check out:

The Shadow Gallery of Comicbooks


The Gallery of Friends


The Gallery of Shows

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Seriously. I leave work for one day--one day--and all fucking hell breaks loose. My day back and I get baglogged with order sheets, invoice problems, and for over a week now I've been trying to order a power adapter for our sales rep and I still haven't done it, and not for any lack of trying on my part!! (OK, well, maybe the first few days, but, that was last week!)

On top of it all, we had more big wigs from Fiberconn come up to check things out, what with the merger. One of our customer service reps, Jennifer, transfered from Fiberconn, so she's friendly with them all. At one point I walked over to her desk for some reason, just in time to here her bitch that it takes too long for me to sign off on the orders. The worst part is, it's a bit of a fair cop--I have been taking longer with orders lately, but only because I've been swamped with so much other shit that I don't have time for it! Still, not nice to hear her bitch to the higher-ups about it, and especially when I've been one of the view people in the office that's nice to her (she managed to piss off Brenda and Laura fairly quickly; not sure where anyone else stands with her.) I meant to bring this up with her, but (here's a surprise) I had no fucking time to do it!!

So it was another late day in the office. I finally got out around 5:45, slightly earlier than when I stayed late on Thursday. More problems with Morocco orders. turns out they have sent more cables than I thought they did, but backtracking through the mess (my screw-ups, Recieveings screw-ups, Quanity Control's screw-ups; we all dropped in spots) I managed to figure most of it out. But tomorrow ends Ramadan so they won't veen be there.

I think I'm going to have to start spending one or two nights a week working late because the only way I can stay on track--nevermind ahead--means I'm gonna have to put in the extra hour or two. Bugger all.

On the bright side, with tomorrow the day before a holiday, the sales orders should be all but non-existent by noon so I'll be able to focus on some of the items still in piles on my desk.

At least I enjoyed my day off (as evidenced by four blogs in one day; it was like My Unemployed Life all over again! :). It's just a bitch that I have to pay for it.

Whilst searching the net for articles on racism in old Warner Brother and Disney cartoons (of which I found precious few; my Google-fu is shamefully weak) I did come across the website of Genevieve Petty. Genevieve is a Grad student who written several papers on her various interests, including Japanese and American comicbooks. One article of hers is called Sexuality in American and Japanese Comic Books, and it takes a look at, well, sex in the two country's comicbooks.

Now, I'll be the first to admit: women in just about every superhero comic published by American's get the Playboy-treatment. They're idealized, two-dimensional parody's of real women, and very much inline with your average 15-year-old male's sexual fantasy of what a woman should look and behave like. So her examples are certainly indefensible proof of the seixst attitudes you find in many comics.

The problem I have with this is that Genevieve's paper gives the impression that all male comicbooks are like this, when in fact all she talks about are super-heo comics. She completely avoids or ignores A) the small-press/independent titles out there that are either far fairer in their treamtent of women ( Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, for example, and Jason Lute's Berlin is another, not to mention almost all of Andi Watson's work.) or B) the growing number of women creators such as Carla Speed McNeil, Lea Hernandez, or Jessica Abel, just to name a few.

In academia, comics generally get a fairer shake than they do with your average joe. It's a shame to see that even in academia there are people who are too short-sighted.

I wanted to put The Memory Hole on my list of sites worth visitng, as I think it's a wonderful resource. But when I checked it out today, it made me think twice about it. If you visit the site and look on the right to it's "other stories" section, you'll see one of the news items listed is "Happy Birthday Mickey the Racist", and the link took you to an auction page for a rare 1932 Mickey Mouse Annual that features highly racist depictions of black people, not to mention the word "nigger" is used prominently.

Now, here's the thing: as most of you know, I am not a Disney fan. I find their brand of entertainment sophmoric, and their values outdated. Add in the fact that their a multi-billion dollar conglomerate and I think you get a fair understanding of why I would be perfectly happy if Disney went bankrupt tomorrow and no one ever saw Mickey Mouse again.

That said, I think The Memory Hole is being a tad unfair in its presentation of this particular item. Is it racist? Obviously. Was Walt Disney racist? Most certainly. But to say "Mickey the Racist"? We're talking about a fictional mouse here. It's one thing to take Disney to task for allowing such a racist book to be published. But to put the blame on Mickey Mouse? Even if the title on the Memory Hole was done in jest, it's distorting the picture just a tad, don't you think?

Racist cartoons are serious issue. Stuff like Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips or Black Coal and de Sebben Dwarfs, the old Heckyl and Jeckyl cartoons, and even this Mickey Mouse annual, show that animated cartoons are not immune to racist attitudes. Song of the South is racist; those characters, whose existence comes solely from that movie, are racist. But when you address something like Mickey Mouse, you're dealing with an icon, one whose meaning has developed over decades from repeated sources, not just one single example. And I have yet to see the evidence that shows where Mickey Mouse is nothing but a proigator of racist attitudes. (A tool of an evil, narrow-minded, global-dominating, mind-numbing corporation, yes; but that's a whole different argument.)

I think The Memory Hole is a fine resources, but it obviously has its own agenda and I think it's a site that can be valuable, but has to be taken with a grain of salt.

You will notice that I've added a few links on the side here. As many of the odds and ends I post here are a result of links posted on either The V or Skate Jesus, I figured it was high-time I just link those placed directly. Unless you're a member of Delphi Forums, the company that hosts these places, if you click on my links, you'll be redirected to a sign-in page. It's worth becoming a member because it's free and it'll make returning to the forums easier, but if you're not interewsted, there is an option to check out the forums as a guest.

I discovered the two forums in the aftermath of The Warren Ellis Forum closing down. During it's run, the WEF spawned several forums, and helped promote several others. I think there's a solid two dozen or so that owe its existence to the WEF. At any rate, after the WEF closed, the WEFugies (as they were self-named) scattered went to the other forums. Cross-visitg exists, but its father limited as each forum has its own identity and purpose.

The Velvet Forum started out as The Insult Loki Forum. One of the WEF's regulars was a chap named Nick Locking, who at first went under the nickname Loki. I got on board the WEF after he had aquired his reputation of being the resident whipping boy (mostly earned for his unashamed love of all things Robot) and as a joke, some of his friends created a forum specifically to think of new and creative ways to insult the guy.

The forum wound up becoming a place to spend time beyond insulting Nick (who is one of the board moderators), and is now primarly a place where a large group of (mostly British) friends meet up to talk pop culture, technology, and some politics, and take pot shots at them all. A witty, if acerbic, place to visit, and highly amusing.

The Skate Jesus Forum actually started independantly of the WEF, if memory serves, but its owner was a prominent WEF member and it gained much of its current audience and members through it. Another place to talk pop and non-pop culture, but also a great place to discuss current events as well as debate various political and social issues. Smart people post there.

So there you are. Visit and be enlightened.

Which, by the way, is a very good Pink Floyd tune.

But in this case, I am referring to the title of an episode the webcomic, Delta Thrives. I found this gem . . . quite a few months ago via Warren Ellis's column at Artbomb. It blew my mind back then but I lost the URL. I wound up over at Artbomb this morning, catching up on things and one of Warren's columns references it again, so now I'm posting the link here.

Delta Thrives is a bit esoteric and not quite work safe, but it's a wonder to behold. Not just for the shere drawing skill (all computer generated; Maya, Poser, maybe Bryce, and God knows what else) but for the skill in which it's composed online. If you have a 56K, it takes a good ten minutes to download it all (and it may take one or two tries with the amount of graphics), but it's worth doing because as it downloads you can see how all the graphics are layered. It's a wonderful representation of how you can use the abilities of the Inernet to create comics that can't be done of paper.

Go check it out. And if you like it and want more, hit the main site at http://www.e-sheep.com/

Yes, I know it's early. Not my fault. Mitch posted some Christmas musing on his blog and it got me Googling up the Origins of Christmas, and the ensuing knowledge is too good not share.

First up is The Origins of Christmas and Easter which is a highly scholarly-looking page in which the author explains how the Roman vestival of The Saturnalia. Mind you, I went straight for the information and completely missed the rather large CHRISTIAN CHURCHES OF GOD logo at the top, and the preamble which states "The facts are that neither [Christmas and Easter] are at all Christian . . . They are directly contradictory to the laws of God and His system." That aside, the research is pretty impressive, and nicely footnoted. Like I said, I skipped the preamble at first so it wasn't until about 2/3 down the page when I read "There is nothing Christian about so-called Christmas and, indeed, it is so steeped in false religious superstition that it is a direct breach of biblical law. No Christian can observe it and remain a Christian." that I realized the intent of this page.

Still, lots of good info there, and the section on Sinterklaas is something I bet Mirjam and Hannah would get a kick out of. If they read this blog.

Next up: The Origins of Christmas. Be warned: this garish-looking site has a green background, bolded black text with occasional red text, so it's a bit of an eyesore to read. On the plus side, this site has none of the "Christmas isn't Christain!!" agenda the previous site had. The page also mentions The Saturnalia, but then discusses how many Germanic traditions helped shape the holiday. As this webpage is part of linguatics.com much focus here is on wordplay, with an interesting disection of the word Chrismas itself. Heavy focus on Saint Nicholas and his origins, as well as the origins of the Christmas tree.

Oddly enough, while reading this page, it gives the impression that Christmas didn't really catch on in the United States until the end of the 19th century. This seems to contradict a lot of information I've seen before, and I'm wondering if it's simply a case of, ironically (for a linguistics site) poor phrasing. Christmas was obviously around, so even throughout the 19th century must have beena recognized celebration, but didn't have anything resembling its current scope and importance until the end of the 19th century.

Next up is The Celtic Origins of Christmas. This is the one I knew most about prior to this research--the whole Solstice/Sung god connection. (But, surprise! The Celts weren't the only ones who had such a holiday.) This site talksa bout the origins of the word "Yule", but so do the other two sites I've listed.

Lastly, just for shits and giggles, I give you Historical Origins of Christmas Traditions. This one's a must read just for the entertainment factor. Thrill to the GIF animation at the top of the page that turns the worn "Santa" into "Satan"! Marvel at the paradoxical sentiment of Love and Peace as he spits out venomand bile at the holiday! Hell-- you can make a drinking game out of it: evertime it quotes the Bible, drink; everytime it calls something "phallic", drink; everytime it mentions "the whore church", drink twice. It's an absolute riot--although, from the looks of it, it does give an interesting analaysis of the meaning behind the carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas". See, even from the mouth of zealots comes the occasional grain of wisdom.

But, OK, there you go. A wordy Blog entry about Christmas and it isn't even Dec 12 yet. Gonna be a loooooong Holiday Season, my peoples. :)

Check out Suess's political cartoons from the early 1940's.

Tori Amos is doing a singing at Tower Records tomorrow. I found out about this about two weeks ago or so. I called them up today to get the info about it, whether it was a first-come-first-serve sort of signing or if there was something more organized involved. There is--you need to buy her "Best Of" CD and you get a wristband.

They're all out of wristbands.

I should've known there'd be a catch like this. I had meant to call the store late last week, but I let it slide. The irony is, if this post is accurate, they still had some as of Saturday night. I was in the city on Friday, I could've gotten one easily.

I took the day off from work tomorrow to go to the signing. I had everything planned out--which, alas, must remain under Setec Astronomy in case I get the chance does come up down the road--but, Jesus Christ, I'm 28 years old and Tori's taking a slight hiatus while her daughter starts school next fall; the prospect of being 30 and waiting on line to get someone's autograph seems a little on the sad side. But who am I kidding, I'll be there with bells on.

This is twice now. Tori did a signing at a Virgin Megastore back in 2001; I went to the store too late to get the wristbands. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I knew about the wristbands for that signing--I think I must have otherwise I would've have gone down a few days early to get one. But that was two years ago so my memory is hazy.

I can't really complain. As a Tori fan, I'd say I've been pretty lucky. I've seen her fourteen times in concert (fourteen times!!); there's been some special shows, in that lot, including a "birthday" concert and a last-minute run to a Good Morning, America taping. I could've tried talking to her at the Meet-n-Greet from the Riverside Church show, but the idea of competing with a hundred-plus other Tori fans for her attention is just not my style. At least with a signing I'm guranteed the opportunity to talk to her and say thank you.

Still. This sucks.

I'm keeping the day off. I've got a lovely cold that's been a pain in my ass for the past week, so the opportunity to take a mental health day certainly is appealing. With thanksgiving Thursday that means I'll only have a two-day work week. Granted, withthe holiday it's not the most judicious use of time off, but I've got a lot of days so what the hell.

I'm half tempted to call the Tower Records store back later tonight and see if some wristbands have magically appeared. Hell, I may trek into the city tomorrow anyway just to be on the safe side. But even if I did, something tells me it ain't gonna happen.

I am pissed.

A conversation overheard at work today:

Sana, our production manager, was talking with Linda, our office manager, regarding one of the people on the production floor who was upset that she was denied time off to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Sana told Linda it was because this person hadn't been observing Ramadan in the first place--she was not fasting--and therefore, as she wasn't observing the holiday she saw no reason to grant her the day off on religious grounds. (This is traditionally our busiest time of the year, and personal time off is granted on an extremely limited basis.)

At first I was rather surprised to hear Sana's reasoning. Denying someone time-off to practice their faith is a rather dicey stance to make, all things considered. But her logic certainly held: if the person isn't actually practicing their faith, why use it as an excuse to be granted time off from work? It's exactly why I don't take off for the High Holy Days in September, and only take half-days for the first night of Passover: I don't practice the religion, so to take time off for them seems rather hypocritical.

The problem, however, is that it's all a matter of degrees, and faith is a matter of perspective. Ramadan ends, apparently, in a nice big feast to break the fast. The woman who requested time off is having a large family dinner. I think it's safe to presume that perhaps some of them have been fasting. Even if they haven't, you still have the social and cultural significance of the holiday to content with. To deny someone the chance to celebrate or pay respect to their faith, even if it doesn't coincide with your own view of it, seems far to presumptive an attitude to have.

Could this stand up in a court of law? Religious discrimination is illegal, last I checked. Sana is certainly being discriminatory based on religious grounds. The question becomes whether or not Sana is denying this person from practicing her faith--however she chooses to practice it--or if she's denying the person the chance to use a faith as an excuse for time off. I suppose, in a courtroom, you could legally challenge a person's degree of faith. Again, it's a matter of perspective, but at least the different perspectives get a chance to present their point of view for a jury to decide on. But, again, if the woman was to celebrate the braking of the fast with her family, could you even attempt to argue whether her whole family was properly practicing?

I keep thinking about last year's Seder at my parent's house, and what an embarrassing evening that was. You know there's something wrong when the atheist is the one getting upset that no one is even bothering to pretend to pay attention. I suppose it's because I get pissed enough when people chastise me for my refusal to consider myself Jewish; when people who claim to be Jews show less respect than the one who openly admits his lack of respect, I tend to get annoyed at the hypocrisy. I'm seriously wondering how to handle next year's Seder. It certainly wouldn't be the smart thing to tell my parents that if it's going to be as ridiculous as last year's Seder that I won't bother going, but for God's sake--it's one thing when one person doesn't care, but when the entire group doesn't care, why the hell are you bothering with the pretense in the first place? But then you bring in the whole "respect to your parents"angle and the whole argument gets twisted on top of itself.

I think Sana's got a bit of elitist streak to her. And, as I mentioned above, her decision to deny her employee the day off certainly smacks of it, even if her reason is valid. But does she have the right to pass judgment--and punishment--on someone because she doesn't agree with how that person practices their faith? And is my brutal "honesty" towards my parents and their practicing only just a variation on that theme?

Well, the good news is the rollovers work.

The bad news is, as it currently stands (and you will notice if you clicked on the link), I preload every image that is part of the rollover. Which means on a 56K you have to wait about 20 seconds for the page to load. This will not do. I'll either have to reduce the file-size further, which could ruin the image quality (depending) or abandon the preload, which would still result in a delay on slower connections for the rollover image to be called. My kingdom for universal broadband!!

The worse news is an unforeseen problem with the "Analysis" and "Media" section. See, the JavaScript relies on the default image being given a specific name. This tells the code "Oh, it's "X", that means I need to take this image out and replace it with that image." This works fine when there's a single image, but in the Analysis and Media sections, I sliced the image into smaller ones so I can use the picture box as a secondary navigation bar. For the rollover to work effectively A) the images need to be the same size and B) it can only swap one image for one image. So, in a nutshell, the multiple-rollover code will not work on those pages.

The only option would be for me to make an image map. For you non web-savvy peoples, that means taking a single image and plotting points on the image that would become "hot", and enable linking. This way I can have one image and swap that out when the rollover code goes into effect. My only concern is if the conflicting code sets (one for the image map, one for the rollover) won't fuck the other up.

And I was so close.

On the bright side, I am listening to Tori Amos's "Best of", Tales of a Librarian. In my spare time I can go into this in more detail, but suffice to say, every song has been remixed, and two B-sides completely re-recorded, along with two new songs and a bonus DVD, making this compilation well worth the money. AND "WAY DOWN" NOW INCLUDES THE BACKING CHOIR WITHOUT ACCOMPANIMENT!!! They essentially take the chorus track and tacked it on to the end of the song without mixing in any of the other tracks so all you get is the choir singing--that alone is well worth the price of the CD.

. . .

If you loved Tori, you'd understand.

I have more to write. I was going to get to "Mother's and Sons Pt 2" and I think there was another entry I wanted to make that I'm blanking on completely . . . but I'm blanking. It's also ten to midnight and I'm tired and I'm coming down with a cold. (Wait! I think I wanted to blog about coming down with the cold and my financial battle plan and probably ruminate on my Love of Most Things Amos, and playing Diablo II last night and-- oh fuck it; it'll have to wait.)

Sleep and dream time. But, see, I am updating my blog, dammit. So quit yer whinning!! this shit ain't easy, dammit!!

We're a nepotistic bunch here at Optical Connectivity Solutions (nee LoDan). Bobby was hired because Sandy worked here, and Rich, our Shipping Manager, is the son of Linda, our Office Manager.

As a result, Lind and Rich often have various "family" conversations. Since my cubicle wall is shared by Linda, I'm often privy to the conversations. They're usually fairly mundane stuff, but the one this morning is just begging to be shared. Mind you, as Rich can be somewhat soft-spoken (as in volume, not personality) I couldn't here what he said. This probably raised the comedic factor a bit. And it's Linda's last question that makes this one worth while. Here's her side of the conversation, verbatum:

Linda (to her son): "Did you get it up? . . . It was a job and a half, wasn't it? . . . How many holes?"

Quoth Principal Rudy: "So that's how it is in their family."

Yes, I know I've been lax updating. I don't know how other blogs do it--make the mudane even mildly interesting. And I've been too busy at work to hit the forums and find any eccelectica to post, so things have been slow, blog-wise.

But there is another reason. After . .. oh, about three years I've finally begun to revamp my V for Vendetta Shrine. I tried it back in the Spring and the design went nowhere. About a week ago I fed-up with the piece-of-shit design the site currently has (to think that was once the height of my design skills--shudder) and with a little playing around I've come up with a design that I like. I've been playing around with it over the last few evenings, and I've spent the majority of the day slicing-and-dicing the pictures to assemble in HTML.

I'm not generally fond of showing off works-in-process. Which is probably a lie, as I've showed this design to Mike and Sean already, but I digress; the point is, if you want to know what's been keeping me busy lately, here's your answer:

The Revamped V for Vendetta Shrine

As you can see, it's still got a ways to go. The biggest challenge (not including the horror-show that was my table-layout until Zav came to my rescue--and I'm doing this for a living!!) will be the multiple-rollover trick I've got lined up. For a change of pace, the navigation bar will remain static, but the image in the right-hand corner will change, as well as the lines connecting the picture to the appropriate section on the navbar. It'll take a lot of work to get right, but once that's done, it'll look quite sweet.

Of course, there's still the logo to design. I was originally planning on making the content all centered, but I rather like the right-justification I have now, so I make keep that. And with that format it actually makes the logo I have in mind work more effectively, but will see.

Still, once the design is complete, then the really hard part starts. I'll have to write several new sections--a new analysis essay, the whole movie section, formatting a rambling, multi-e-mail correspondence into a coherent narrative; and don't even get me started on what I plan to do for the timeline-- there won't be a single page on that site that won't be changed in some way; I'm all but starting from scratch. It's taken me three years to get this redesign going, it'll probably take me another three years to get the content up.

But at least it's a start.

It's 9:00 and I haven't had dinner yet. Fucking hell.

At my job, a daily backlog is generated for the office to use. It contains a list of all the jobs we have on order, and includes quantities and ship dates. Customer Service uses it to keep track of who ordered what when and when it ships; Production uses it to determine and regulate its building schedule; Purchasing uses it to determine how much stock is allocated. It's vital information to the business.

Around September, it became my responsibility to generate the backlog and e-mail it to everyone; roughly two-thirds of the office. It was rather monotonous, and as is usually the case when I'm stuck doing something monotonous, I look for ways to keep myself amused. I found my amusement when, one day, rather than put the generic "latest backlog" or "Backlog for 10/14/03" in the subject header, I wrote "I'm a Backlog, you're a Backlog", and in the e-mail wrote "Wouldn't you like to be a backlog, too?"

Needless to say, this act cemented my reputation in the office for being a straight-shooting, no-nonsense sorta guy.

And for the past month, I've kept at it. Each day, I'd write some goofball subject heading, taking some well known phrase or song-lyric and subsituting one of the words for "backlog". It wasn't always easy, especially given the fact that I tried to always make it something everyone would get--not easy when you've got a cross-generational office with people less knowledgeable about pop culture than others. But by and large, people liked it. Even the General Manager, the head of our company, had no problem with it.

Until today. Because at the end of the day, Matt, the General Manager, cc'd me on an e-mail discussion he was having with one of the Emerson mucka-mucks who oversee our company. It seems he'd like to start recieveing the backlog every day for his own purposes. Which of course means the uttery-unprofessional taglines I've been writing have to go.

I'm pissed, as it certainly made work a bit more enjoyable for me, but I really can't complain. Matt had been extremely gracious to let me keep doing it when I really shouldn't have. And, let's face it, how many days can you keep at something like this before the ideas start to run out?

Still, a shame it has to end. Christmas is right around the corner and I had a TON of ideas ready for that.

This is interesting. When I jumped onto Yahoo News earlier this afternoon, the headline said something along the lines of countires re-thinking the amount of troops they'd send to Iraq to support the U.S. Now, however, the current headline focuses solely on Japan's decision, and the article gives less focus to other countries. How wonderfully Orwellian.

This got me thinking about Iraq and the near-unavoidable comparisons to Vietnam, and in a stroke of syncronicity, Reuters released the story that the Official U.S. death-toll in Iraq now exceeds the death-toll in Vietnam over the same time period.

You know, there's a rant in here, but I just don't have the heart for it. It's a cluster-fuck. And while I'm loathe to claim Iraq is "another Vietnam", only a fool would miss the similarities. But the truth is, even at eight months it too damn soon to see how this will end. Vietnam--as a moment of history--encapsulated far more than Iraq has done. When protests songs become Top 40 hits, national guardsmen shoot student protestors, and this country nearly becomes torn apart along generational lines, then I'll say Iraq has become another Vietnam. right now it's just another cluster-fuck in a long history of cluster-fucks. (How many people called Vietnam "Another's Battle of Little Bighorn?")

I think the problem has a lot to do with the fact that our society has become so short on attention that it refuses to believe a war can last more than a few months. Think about it: imagine if you were living during World War Two. Do you remember what a horrible mess things were at the start of that war? America was getting its ass handed to it in the Pacific, and it took almost two years just to get a foothold in Europe. Can you imagine todays media reacting to that sort of tedious, prolonged fighting?

Bush declared an end to hostilities forty-two days after starting the attack. Is there any wonder what-so-ever that there's still resistance? Does anyone seriously think this resistance will be cleared up anytime soon? I have no faith in the Bush Adminstration what-so-ever, but even I understand that it's going to take a year or two before you can look at Iraq and decide whether any progress has really been made. These things take time. Even Bush and his adminstration know that. It takes time, and casualties, because people die in a war. So more people have died in Iraq since March than died in Vietnam; to get pedantic, that the death-rates don't match up should actually show people that this isn't another Vietnam; the situations, while similar, are fundamentally different.

I swear, Politics and War are two of the ugliest inventions the world has ever seen.

I was dialing around the boob tube Tuesday night and came across a fascinating show on PBS. It was an episode of Nova that focused on the Wright Brother's and the building of their airplane. It was a fascinating story. I knew the whole "bicycle-makers-make-airplane-at-Kitty-Hawk" story, but it was fascinating to learn how the Wright Brother's were the first to figure out the basic principles of aviation and succeed where countless others failed.

The Wright Brother's took flight on December 17, 1903. The centennial is just around the corner. It's a nice milestone to be alive to, isn't it? Think about it: in a real sense, their flight ushered in the 20th century (as much as Eienstein at any rate). By getting us off the ground, the Wright brother's changed everything--the way we travel, the way we fight, the way we do business, the way we view the world.

Case in point: my friend Jen lives in California, and she and I and our group of friends often lament the fact that none of us have the money to fly out and visit one another. But think about that for a moment. What bothers us isn't the problem of flying an entire continent apart to visit, but simply that we can't afford to do so. The fact that it's possible to travel 3,000 plus miles in an afternoon is completely taken for granted. It's become mundane--the delays we experience in using air travel cause more aggrivation and attention than the act of flying itself. In 100 years we've gone from an unbelieveable marvel to unemotional routine. Quite a legacy for two bike-makers from Dayton, Ohio.

Here's one more for you, a parting shot, if you will. If, like me, you enjoy connecting the dots of cause and effect, think how you could make the argument that by inventing the airplane, not only did the Wright Brothers start the 20th century, but also ushered the start of the 21st century as well. After all, it wasn't a horse and buggy that crashed into the World Trade Towers, was it?

I was dialing around the boob tube Tuesday night and came across this odd segment on CNN. It was called "How Quickly We Forget". The basic premise sounds intriguing enough: following up on stories that "captivated" the news for a while then dropped completely off the radar to see what has happened since. And if CNN had actually made it a piece of investigative journalism, it might have been interesting. Instead, it turns out to be a pandering waste of five minutes, a sort of glorified "where are they now?" piece with as much journalistic merit as, well, Fox News.

This should have been self-evident by the very title of the segment. "How Quickly We Forget" is full of smug, haughty insinuations, namely that we are somehow wrong for forgetting these stories and how smart CNN is for reminding us, and that there's some sort of moral involved that we should be ashamed for not knowing. This alone should have had me reaching for the remote, but then they actually tricked me with the subject-matter: Elian Gonzales.

In case you (quickly) forgot, Elian was the small boy who washed up in Florida back in late 1999. His mother had taken him and fled Cuba with a host of other refugees. The boat sank and Elian was the sole survivor. He was taken into custody by his mother's relatives living in Florida. That alone had the makings of a ratings-rich TV-movie, but the catch came when Elian's father, who remained in Cuba, began demanding that his son return home to him. The story dragged on for months, Elian became a celebrity, and all sorts of interest groups got into the act. In the end the INS raided the house where Elian stayed and took the kid back to his father.

The CNN segment began by promising to fill us in on the fallout. Which consisted of learning that Elian, now nine, seems to be living a decently normal life in Cuba. A bit of a celebrity, the same way Baby Jessica will always be a celebrity, simply because he was innocently thrust into circumstances that resonated with people, but otherwise the piece had nothing to say about his life.

At this point it becomes readily apparent why these stories are quickly forgotten: because there's nothing to them worth remembering.

The piece tried valiantly to make a story out of nothing. They couldn't interview Elian, and his father declined as well, so the best CNN could come up with was showing Elian and his father sitting fairly close-up at a rally for Castro. The piece shamelessly insinuated that this meant something sinister, that Castro was using Elian as propaganda, but had the CNN team actually bothered to do some journalism, they might have found an answer. Though they had no problem posing the idea that Castro was using Elian for his own nefarious designs, they didn't bother to examine any other reason for Elian being there. For example, the piece mentioned, somewhat understandably, that Elian's father has become supportive of Castro's government since Castro went to bat for him, but failed to mention how involved he was; perhaps Elian's father is now a well respected activist for Castro, and that's why he and his son were sitting so close. Perhaps it was sheer dumb luck Elian got such good seats (won 'em in a raffle, maybe? Got to the event early?). And, even if Elian was there purposely to be used as propaganda, so what? Plenty of activists here in America did the same thing to him when he lived in Florida, and you can bet had he remained there'd be activists still using his name for their purposes.

What's more, the story completely avoided the national angle of the story. Elian's deportation nearly tore a Florida community into ruin. What about that fallout? Had politicians been voted out of office because they allowed the INS raid to take place? Have any of the activist groups made any headway when it comes to refugee policies? What about Elian's relatives in Florida--were they at peace with Elian in Cuba, or still trying to bring him over?

And that's the irony. The segment itself has merit, but the "reporters" involved completely avoided the issues worth the investigation. Instead it went for cheap melodrama and insinuation. And this is what passes for journalism in the 21st century. Yeesh.

The Ten Commandments of Simon

Questionably work-safe; Big Brother won't kill you from the URL alone, but you might want to wait 'till your home for this. Trust me, it's worth it. Does take a bit to load on 56K.


(I could make a comment about it, but I think it speaks for itself; besides, you can come up with your own.)

Remember, Remember the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot.
I know of know reason
why the Gun Powder Treason
should ever be forgot.




Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone. Hope you all celebrated accordingly and tried to blow up the seat of Government of your choosing.

So, as some of you may or may not know, there was an Ebay auction making the rounds recently. Apparently a recent divorcee was selling his ex-wife's Beany Babies for money to buy beer and Home Depot items. He started the bid at $10.00 and, claiming he would not vouch for any of their authenticity, was just looking to get rid of the damn things. His posts on the matter were highly amusing in that "I'm just an average, no-bullshit, no-worries kinda guy" sort of way. His auction became so popular that he started a second auction for people to buy him a glass of beer.

But it gets better. Turns out the guy who started the bidding wasn't even divorced. The whole scenario he presented was a "story amusing for myself, more than anything else"

Except now the joke may be on him. Because some of the Beany Babies he sold were fakes. Now, not only do E-Bay's rules warn that a person is liable for any fraudulent items they sell, knowingly or otherwise, it turns out it's also a federal offence to do it! So when the winning bidder asked to have her money refunded and the guy refused, rudely, the bidder filed a complaint with the FBI for fraud.

It's things like this that restore my faith in human nature.

So I'm on Friendster.

Yeah, I know. But bare with me a sec, here.

I've got six people on my list. Through those people I'm connected to 59,293 people.

This is interesting for two reasons:

1) That through six people, the people they know, and those people, equates out to almost 60,000 people. We could fill a decent sized town with that size. And Friendster has the option where you can run through a list that shows you EVERY DAMN PERSON in your "network". They're all over the US, and even England. And it's interesting seeing how some people fill out one region more than others. There's a cluster in South Carolina for some reason I'm almost afraid to find out.

2) That the number is FINITE. I mean, theoretically, in keeping with the rules of "Six Degrees", everyone is related to someone by some connection. And yet through the six people I have on my list, at some point, all the connections turn on itself and no matter how you run through the chain, sooner or later all possibilities will be exhausted and you will end up back where you started. You can only go so far. 59,000 people never seemed so small.

So, yeah, this is my not-so-subtle ways of saying: "sign the fuck up". I'm not quite sure where this all goes. theoretically Friendster is supposed to get you to meet new people, but it seems to me that even with Friendster drawing you the connect-the-dot-diagram, you still run into the same-old problem: "why is this stranger talking to me? I don't even know them!" But who knows. At the very least, it's a conversation starter at parties: "Oh yeah, I saw you on so-and-so's list on Friendster!"

There's over six billion people in the world. They don't all have internet connections, but you gotta start somewhere.

So by show of hands, who knew about the elections tomorrow?

Hell, I didn't know until about a week ago when the Sample Ballot arrived in my mailbox. I thought next year was an election year! But it seems there is an election. It's state level--state senate and the general assembly. Does NJ not have a House of Representatives? I guess not. Did you know this? I think our education system failed us--I know the Federal Goverment has the Judicial, Executive, and Legislative Branches, and it's all about the cyhecks and balances. But when it comes to Jersey, all I know is Whitman was a waste. Fuck, who's our Governmer right now--do you know? I don't.

Mind you, this is a bit problematic, I think, what with trying to be a semi-responsible American. And I sure as Heck don't want the Terrorists to win or anything, so I'm going to do my duty and vote tomorrow. So here I am at 11:00 at night, combing through Google in search of information on the suckers running for office.

Having done this, I've now come to the conclusion that trying to decide on who to vote for the night before an election is kinda like writing a term paper the night before it's due. You could probably bullshit your way through it, and maybe you might come up with something that is actually valid and not compeltely-made up, but ultimately you've got a half-assed result that would've been far better had you actually spent the time to do it right.

So it seems none of the Republican's on the ballot have any information on line. The Democrats are all incumbant, and I've at least managed to find their voting record which seems nice enough. I can get you Donald Rice's and Craig Stanley's voting record from 1998, but not this past year. And the ANJRPC gives the incumbents failing marks for supporting gun control. Seeing how I'm rather for gun control, I view this as a positive.

But I can't find any information on Beresford Jones, running for state Senate for the Green Party. Which stinks because, you know, you gotta support your Third Party and everything. (I wish I lived in the 29th district, because then I could vote for Abigail D. Tilsner who's running for The Socialist Workers Party. Yay Socialists!) But Jones has nothing online that tells me a damn thing about him, beyond the Green Party's standard rhetoric. In fact, none of the candidates have any sort of web presence. The only reason I have info on the incumbents is because other people have information on them. But neither the Dems nor the Repub's list anything. Don't they realize that there will be people scrambling at the last minute to find out where they stand on the Really Important Issues??

sigh

I tell you, this voting stuff is really hard work. Stupid Forefathers--if they just bowed down to The Crown, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place!