What Scares You?

Let's get this clear quickly: this is NOT a political post, even though the title sets it up for that. No, the genesis of this post was the night I discovered that if I ever have a heart attack, it won't be induced by fear. More on that later.

A hilarious thread on the intertubes recently explored things that frightened the contributors as a child - specifically something that was either intended for children, were seemingly innocuous, or was readily available to a youthful audience. The Brave Little Toaster popped up a lot, Jaws, and various incarnations of the Wizard of Oz that were not the one we all know and love.  (In particular, the Disney sequel Return to Oz destroyed a lot of childhood psyches, and I recall at the time when working as a theater usher wondering what in the hell they were thinking when they made this little walk through nightmare planet.  Check it out when the kids aren't around.)

The things that really tweaked my bolts as a kid were the wolf man (1941 original), the mummy (1932 original) which probably wouldn't have even shown up on my radar if our school's weekly reader had not featured a story about x-raying a mummy (which is how the mummy is brought to life in that flick) and freakin' bigfoot.

However, hearkening back to the point of the thread, the thing that scared the ever-loving fuck out of me, and forever turned me into a nightlight junkie, was something that was meant as creepy, but it was an Outer Limits episode, which was just right there on the tube one night at 9 O'clock.  Outer Limits was supposed to be OK because it was supposed to be about freaky sci-fi  stuff, which never really bugged me.  But some bastard found a way to incorporate a ghost story into my sci-fi (and I'm sure there was "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" commercial on during that episode).

It was called "Wolf 359" (da fak with that name?), where this scientist creates a mini-earth to learn something crucial about evolution or sociology or something, but then THIS FUCKER SHOWS UP:

And it walks on down the hall (figuratively):

And it finds him while he's sleeping:

His girlfriend shows up and saves him, but JUDAS CRISPIES!

I recall having a rather sleepless week.  At one point, I heard a single note in the house (a typical house noise) and the wind whipped up.  My parents room was on the diagonal across the hall from mine, and our stories are all the same: my foot hit the floor at the end of 10-foot span from my bed only to pivot and leap on their bed 12 feet away.  Who says white boys can't jump?

It was nightlights and wide eyes behind the pulled-up blankets for the weeks it took to wear off.

So, that was the childhood thang.

But, a few weeks ago, insomnia had crept down the hall and ... I just put that together ... anyway, there I was, on the 'puter, cruising.  Someone posted a link with some false info, like "check out the shock absorbers on this Chevy!" (but not the actual lure, of course), and I clicked on the link.

I had forgotten that I'd had the new wonderful monster speakers with the thunder-licious sub-woofer that I had cranked to 11 for the girls earlier in the night so they could dance right next to me on the floor. I also had the browser expanded to cover the whole screen (which I never do) so I could see all of some awesome "Astronomy Pic of the Day" thang. 

And this thing popped up. [UPDATE: alas, it's gone.]

BEFORE you click that link, a few provisos, a few quid pro quos....

This is what's known on the intertubes as a "screamer," which means the sound is worse than the image.  Also, please, no children in the immediate area.  Finally, have your sound down, and no headphones.  You can totally decide to not click this link, and maybe you shouldn't.  If you do, you've been warned.

When I clicked it, it came on at top volume at t 3 A.M. in the dark, jumping at me from the screen.  I didn't scream like a little girl, no.  I screamed like an adult male with his nuts caught in the worse part of a Soloflex as it works itself out when its victim has let go out of fatigue.  I lunged for the speaker's volume knob, but in the midst of completely spazzing out, I knocked the whole stack of speakers over.  I was reduced to finding the plug and yanking it out of the wall.  As I emerged from that, the screen was still flashing the BAD THING at me, so I had to locate the mouse, which I had thrown involuntarily, and close the browser.  As I was doing that, my wife - who can literally sleep through thunderstorms that sound like a full-on bombing raid - appeared at the landing and screamed "ARE YOU OK?'  Having shut it all down, I walked over and said, probably quite shakily, "I'm fine. Sorry for waking you."  She said, "*&%#$ the *&%$#@ are you doing?"  I gave a brief, less-damming, description, apologize profusely, and suggested she go back to bed, I'd be right up.  

Thankfully, she did.

I had to walk around for about 10 minutes before my pulse lowered and the goosebumps stopped snaking around my person.  I went and laid down, but stared at the ceiling for a while, happy the nightlight we keep "for the kids" was still on.

I spent the next two weeks hunting for the thing, wanting to see if it was as bad as I thought it was.  When I found it again, it was in broad daylight, but I still jumped and snorted. 

So, what scares you?

Happy Halloween!

Click to Enlarge

Happy Birthday, Barbara

90 Days, 90 Reasons to Re-elect President Obama

I wasn't going to post anything political outside of a single link (the one above) this election season, because any and all subtlety or humor I try to bring to my posts here abandons me like passengers of the Hindenburg when I wax political.  Truly, a good half of the essays on that site are wonderful.

But Samuel Jackson keeps being awesome, and this - probably the best political ad ever - changed my mind:

So, in the spirit of waking the fuck up, I'd like to start with two things I've noticed (or had pointed out to me) about the Republican campaign:
1) The Karl Rove Academy of Projection (KRAP) is an often-used tactic of the Republicans where a Republican accuses a Democratic person, policy, platform, etc. of the very problem or weakness the Republican has.
2) Romney and company speak to all of us as if we were Fox pretend News devotees who will uncritically accept whatever is said, no matter how demonstrably false or batshit it is.

Whereas number 1 works for them a lot of the time, sadly - because it instantly confuses the easily confused - number 2 has proven disastrous for their campaign (yay!) because those of us who weigh the credibility of everything any politician says, or anything the media says about them, will fact check it. That's why Paul Ryan's mostly fraudulent speech at their convention was such a flop outside of Republican circles.

The main theme of their campaign is that the wealthy are the "makers" and everyone else, particularly the poor, are the "takers," which is theme that the right has been developing for a while now, but has finally surfaced in this election in its naked form.

Of all the ways that can be controverted, perhaps the best is to point out the sham of their favorite (and completely debunked) economic theory.  Let me use Robert X. Cringely's words here:

The fundamental error of trickle-down (Supply Side) economics is that it is dependent on rich people spending money which they structurally can’t do fast enough to matter, and philosophically won’t do because their role in the food chain is about growth through accumulation, not through new production.
- Source: Ticked off- How stock market decimalization killed IPOs and ruined our economy ~ I, Cringely

Then we have Romney's infamous accusation that 47% of the nation are lazy bums (those damn "takers").  I won't belabor the incredible, gob-smacking stupidity and brazen callousness of this, as many on the left and right(!) have done that so well. (I could rant over several posts about Romney's crack about people thinking they're entitled to food, but I'm going to spare us both that.)














What I didn't see addressed enough was the composition of that 47%, which you can see in the chart below, and the primary reasons why the low income portion is so large: Bush's tax cuts and people being cast into lower tax brackets (read: poverty for many of them) due to the recession.  There's much more good detail on this here and here.


Even though the Republicans claim they intend to help the middle class in the future (because they can't claim they have in the past), when you explore how they intend to do that, it falls apart. it's not through tax breaks (those will be only for the rich), it's through "growing the economy" through supply-side economics, which doesn't work (see above). So they're lying.  And they hope that, like a good Fox pretend News sucker, you'll buy the lie again.

The bottom line: they honestly believe the poor and even the middle class don't really matter.  And in their world, they don't.

So, I hope that come election day, this will be the look on the Republican ticket's faces:

Finally, I want to make sure you saw this wonderful moment where the token Republitard on "The View" tries to blame the economy on Obama to his face.

Please vote for Obama.  Thank you.

Stay Frosty

"[I'll post] Sooner than a month, at least" I wrote 5 months ago. So much for that goal, eh?

As usual, I've been grinding on a post about this summer's movies, and often didn't get past a list or a half-hearted comment on each.  The short version is my favorite movies this year were 21 Jump Street and The Cabin in the Woods.  The new kid flick (just barely), ParaNorman, had a couple good laughs, but I'd wait for the DVD.  The final witch ghost scene will likely scare the holy hell out of the more sensitive kids (I got goosebumps), so you may want to preview it and judge first. The one I was looking forward to the most, Prometheus (the Alien prequel), was a huge disappointment.  Like most, when two scientists encounter a penis cobra (not my coinage) and the first thing they think of is taking off their spacesuit glove and touching it with their bare hand, I wondered how long the rest of the movie was going to be. Of course, I'll see the sequel they set up at the end and grouse about it here.

The thing I really enjoyed the most though was a cancelled series by Joss Whedon called Dollhouse (and, btw, pronounce his first name ending with "s" as in snake, and not "sh" as in shit, because that's what you'll get if you mispronounce it to a fanboy).  The premise is that a technology exists that  removes your personality (including muscle memory and other goodies), stores it on a hard drive, and then installs another personality into you.  People whose lives have gotten sticky can sell five years to become a "doll" that rich people rent out for whatever, after which you get yourself back and you're a millionaire with no memory of any of the nasty things they made you do.  See if your local library has it; it's a trip.  The pilot starts slow, so soldier on to the end and likely you'll be hooked.

One of my favorite moments IRL in the last couple weeks was during a voyage to Target with my daughters. The eldest has bloomed into quite a teenage beauty, and it’s fun to watch the boys try to be subtle (and failing every time). The 7-year-old wanted to buy a toy with her allowance money, and so brought along her new little blue purse (she used to use a box with a handle meant for recipe cards, Lord knows why). When it came time to pay, I had to do the digging for the correct change because even though she understands currency somewhat, she still wants me to make sure the change is right. Among the contents was a single blue crayon. I held it up with a questioning look and she said that you never know when you’re going to need to color something.  I still smile at the memory.

Musically I've fallen hard for Ska recently.  I've always kinda dug it, but preferred it mixed in with other songs.  Now I can groove to 2 hours of the stuff.  I've always loved myself a good horn section, which is mandatory in Ska.  My most surprising discovery is the now-defunct band called The Dance Hall Crashers.  I've had their great song "Enough" on many mixCDs, but guessed incorrectly that I wouldn't like the rest of their songs (and back then there was no way to listen to other songs without financial commitment).  Well, after a trip to Grooveshark (more on that in a bit), I realized I like nearly everything they've done.  Other current favorites are Mayer Hawthorne's How Do You Do, Joan Osborne's (remember "what if God was one of us"?) Bring It On Home, and the single from the last Van Halen, "Stay Frosty" - another David Lee Roth classic.  Oh, and almost forgot Joe Walsh's Analog Man, produced by Jeff Lynne (of ELO) with members of The Beatles, The Eagles, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash in guest spots. (I don't know why the links take you away from my page. I've set it so it's supposed to spawn a new window, but apparently Amazon grabs the link and forces the page change.  Bad on them.)

I had a Macintosh as my main computer at home for about half a year now (the time I did little writing I now realize), but it's an old hand-me-down, and the video port suddenly forgot what the color red was, so I procured an old hand-me-down laptop with a huge display (but a battery as dead as Rush Limbaugh's conscience), and put Xubuntu on it.  Gad I love that freakin' OS.

However, with having a Mac for a while, and now a Linux box, I had to hunt for software so I could work and play regardless of the computer I happened to be sitting at.

Here's a rundown of the best free software and web sites I've run across in this voyage, with a strong bias towards software that has a package for the 3 main OS's (Vinders, Mork, Linus).

Music and Sound
Grooveshark is a website that allows you to find and que up about any song there is.  If you create a free login, you can save your songlists to replay later.  It also has a radio station feature like Pandora if you want someone else to throw songs atcha.

If you find yourself a good Stream Ripper for your OS (the one I use on Xubuntu is Audio Recorder), you can record the stream and chop out the individual songs if you'd like.  (Of course most of the artists would hate you for that, and typically I do it to test-drive a song, and if I like it, go nab a good copy from Amazon for a buck.)

Another place to grab free (and legally free) music, is the Gorilla vs. Bear site.  This link is a shortcut to their monthly mixes, so make sure you check out the website proper as well.  If you like anything in the mixes, the track listing shows the time the track starts so you can snip it out as a single.

To chop up or edit sound files, Audacity is awesome. Be sure to also grab the "lame" encoder if you're on Windows or Mac.

This, of course, implies that you'll listen to it on some portable device.  The iHome rechargeable mini speaker is the size of a single-serving tin can of veggies and sounds pretty amazing.  I got one for sitting outside and watching the little one play, but my teenager uses it when I'm not. (She just grooved through the room with it dialed to 11 as I was writing this.) It lasts about a week on one charge.  $20 at most Targets, office supplies, etc.

Finally, check out Amazon's MP3 best sellers list.  The one on the right is the freebies, and they have many sampler anthologies that almost always have a good song or two.

Word Processors
By accident, I found this wonderful word processor that's tailored for distraction-free writing: FocusWriter.  When you launch it, it takes up the whole screen and does not allow other apps or OS messages to popup at you and harsh your mellow.  So, if you're gonna have Grooveshark swimming in the background, get it going first.  You can set the screen colors, or even have a groovy picture as the background, and set the font color and size for optimum visibility.  It saves in RTF and ODT format, so all other word processors can open the files for final buffing for presentation, but you'll likely not even need that unless you have to include tables or pictures. I LOVE THIS THING!

AbiWord has finally fulfilled the promise of a nice, stand-alone, fully-featured word processor, and I recommend it if all you want is a solid word processor. It's peppy and does most of what you want.  If you need a page layout app, then there are many good free ones.

By now most folks know of the full-featured word processor in the LibreOffice free office suite, but it's a bit of a hog and takes a while to load, and you have to install just it if you don't want the rest of the office suite sucking up hard drive space better suited for music and pics. (In my experience, not a lot of folks use anything other than the word processor from an office suite at home.  Some use a spreadsheet, but typically at work if they do. If you do use one though, LibreOffice's is very good and I've never seen it have a problem with even complicated Excel spreadsheets.)

Graphic Editing
Only people who make a living at graphic design or photography need to pop for the blindingly expensive Photoshop.  Both Photofiltre and Paint.net provide all of the things you need for typical home or web site editing.  I prefer Photofiltre because it's so simple and intuitive, but Paint.net provides layers, which sometimes is a must.  (Here are two downloads for Photofiltre: the primary download site, the portable apps slice that's a slightly higher version.)  Sadly, both of these are Windows only.

If you need all the power of Photoshop, of course there's the free conteder, the GIMP, but it's really geeky and takes a while to learn how to use the complex features.  But if you want to do Dooce's wonderful "Glow Effect," you'll need the GIMP.  There are several web tutorials on how to use it, as well.  It also has a version for every OS.

Video Viewing
Don't bother with the bloated and bitchy video viewers that come with Windows and Mac.  They're hogs, they don't have half the video format docoders, and they try so hard to help you just watch a freakin video you have to click through much shite just to do that.  And they crash like teenage drivers.  Neither can open the formats used by most smart phones.

Get yourself VLC/VideoLan.  There is not yet a video format I've found it can't open.  It's solid.  It lets you navigate in the timeline easy, and you can tweak the video and audio to perfection.  It's the must-have video viewer.  I have no idea why their icon is a traffic cone, though.

As you can see, I've added some of the recommended sites and software to the menu on the right for easy reference.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention online applications like Google Office, online photo editors and the like.  "The cloud" has many fine offerings, and I use them once in a great while.  The problem is, if something's in the cloud, you have to think of it as postcard - anyone can see it if they try hard enough, and the hosting company certainly will, as will your internet provider because it goes through their network and servers on the way to its storage particle in the cloud. I used Google Office to write the posts for this blog until Google essentially replaced the editor on Blogger with the Google Office editor (which I use now).  Since all posts were destined to be posted online anyway, there was no problem with writing them there in the first place, and it allowed me to do so where-ever I had access to a computer.  Pretty cool.

But, that great novel you're working on, spicy pictures of your spouse - or even innocuous, sweet family photos, wills, financials, and anything that's essentially private should stay on your local computer, and be backed up regularly (once a month at least).  Post only photos you intend to on the web.  Storing all of your photos on a cloud service, like flickr, still makes them available to others. (Think of the creepy bastard neckbeard IT guy at work, because another version of him is managing the site your pictures are on.)  In addition, they've written algorithms to recognize certain content, like nudes.  If you have a pic of your kids in the tub out there, you may get a visit from a cop.  Also, most sites have buried in their terms of use that they essentially own the copy you've placed on their servers so that you can't sue them if they lose it.  Yeah, you still retain "rights" to it, but they have some too.

So, view the cloud as that friend you can't lend anything to that's valuable.  You only lend it to them if you're ok with them losing it, even in a public place, which they've managed by leaving it on the shelf on a store somewhere because they got a call while holding it, set it down then forgot.  Only lend the cloud things you can bear to lose or don't care if your boss sees it.

Cheers.

Ok, Fine

(Found on http://robotindisguise.tumblr.com/)

So, a good friend who reads this blog said to me about a month ago, emphatically, that I needed to post. I was touched, and it obviously prompted me to write something. (Been working on this post for over a month now.)

I don't know if it's what you'd call writer's block, apathy, or what, but I just haven't been motivated to slide thoughts together.  Maybe it's the bad influence of 4Chan.org, which has become my Twitter, since Twitter itself does not intrigue me.  (Standard warning, if you go there, while you'll see some pretty funny stuff, you'll also see - regularly - the worst of what the dark side of the web has to offer.  Talkin' nightmare fuel, here. But it can be funny as hell, too.)  

Anyway, here goes.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a movie I can recommend unreservedly as a grand ole time, as long as you're OK with R-rated gore and language.  This is a twist on all those "a group of kids go into the woods and suddenly start disappearing," but here the typical villains are the good guys.  Even better, they're not cliche cardboard standup Hollywood yokels, they're real characters.  I know these guys.  Hell, I am one of these guys at times. I spammed my entire contacts list to demand they watch the movie.  You, too, dammit.  Just watch.  This sucker should've been on of last year's hits.

Saw Drive and it reminded me a lot of Tarantino's True Romance: something a teenage boy with no actual experience with women (and who struggles with amorality) would view as wonderfully heroic and romantic.  Everyone else with a little experience under their belts, literally and figuratively, would see it for the sad anti-fantasy it is.  No one really acts this way, not even criminals.

Now, you may posit that both of these movies are floated as adolescent fantasies and are just that: nothing that's meant to be taken seriously.  I dunno.  The tone of these movies doesn't contain the "just kidding" bluster of The Fast and the Furious and do have realistic elements like children pining for their daddies, which - at least to me - make me think I'm supposed to take them as straight-up dramas, just the same way that sepia-toned sequences are supposed to invoke "this is the past as remembered fondly by our hero."

I thought it was kinda dull, too.  Actually driving a car is more engaging than the flick itself.  I'd say skip it.

This clever visual summary of Drive really hits the mark.
 
Finally saw Thor, too.  I had to give it two tries.  Didn't even get to Thor waking up on earth the first time.  Picked it up a couple weeks later writing off the first time to a bad mood or something (Harry of http://www.aintitcool.com/ always includes his day's activities and mood because he's convinced that an objective review is not possible.)  This time I enjoyed it for what it was: a popcorn movie and setup for the franchise The Avengers, and much better than the sad adventure in cliche that was Captain America.

Saw 21 Jump Street and The Hunger Games in the theatre, a nice treat.  

I laughed hard at 21 Jump Street.  Like the fantastic Hot Fuzz, it's a send-up of the genre while being a legit entry at the same time. It's fun to see an artist hit his stride, and Oscar-nominated Jonah Hill conceptualized, wrote, produced, and starred here, proving he can do it all.  This is one of those that will work as well on DVD as the big screen, so see it at your convenience, but see it.

The Hunger Games was exactly what I thought it would be.  The ladies of the house all tore through the books, so I got enough of the setup to guess at the plot.  Being a sci-fi fan of several decades now, this plot has been done to death, so while I was engaged during the movie, I can't say I enjoyed it.  I had deja-vu, reliving the vague revulsion I felt watching the original Rollerball, which explored the same concept of a deathmatch staged by the powers that be. So, I can see why it's powerful for the young'uns.  

Another movie that was also exactly what I thought it would be was flick Real Steel.  Yup, Rocky meets the rock'em sock'em robot game.  I was assured by many that would not be the case.  Alas.  

A movie I'd love to see that will likely never be released is Star Wars: Episode III.5: The Editor Strikes Back.  (Via Kottke.org) Topher Grace, the actor from "That 70's Show" and the recent movie Preditors, apparently came up with his own edit (for practice) of the Star Wars episodes 1 - 3, that clocks in at 85 minutes.  All attendees say it was great.

My knee-jerk reaction was George Lucas would be a fool to not allow this to be released.  It's free money, most of which he would get, of course.  If they released it as a digital projected movie only, distribution would be nothing.  

However, the mashup of a movie franchise of several full-length movies isn't really equivalent to a four-minute song mashup.  Where I can imagine Bowie or U2 smiling at a mashup of their tunes, I can't imagine George feeling wonderful about a re-edit that may "feel" superior to his films at first blush.

Oh well, maybe after Lucas rakes in another field of cash from the blu-ray releases, maybe he'll not be as concerned about undermining his profits with the release of a fanboy edit.  Yeah, it could happen.

A couple decades ago, someone at work gave me a teeny tiny .avi file of this, the inception of what became the "Tripping the Rift" TV series.  Since it's all on DVD now, I expected this to be included on the extras, as I've always wanted a clear copy, but it's not.  Come to find out it's now on youtube.  Still not in an archival quality version, but better than the old .avi I've kept for years.  By the way, this is NC-17 material.

Fun trivia, Stephen Root voiced the captain, who most of us know as Milton, he of the red stapler and big chunks of salt. 

Oh, and finally, Dooce found this.  


I plan to post again soon.  Sooner than a month, at least.

At the end of 2011

As we head into the final year of the Mayan calendar, I think we find the world somewhat adrift. Protests foam in many countries including the USA, dictators are being dispatched to the void with welcome regularity, the middle east looks like it might give representational government a try, media companies continue to implode because the market has shifted (again) to personal media-consumption devices with a 8 by 6 inch screen, and the killer app is a slingshot. (Oh, I got a Nook for Christmas. Love. It.)

We've faced probably the most evil group of elected officials in a century who actually want America's economy in the crapper because they think they can foster political gain from it. Let's go over that again: elected officials are actively working against the average American and making sure the government accomplishes nothing because they think it will help them on election day a year from now. On a tiny positive note, even the most thick-headed partisans seem to be grasping this, so the next election will be interesting.

On a side-note, politics-wise, I've been wondering why some pundits attack the first lady. The vitriol and nastiness directed at Michelle Obama, and Hillary Clinton back in the day, puzzles me. Heck, even when Nancy Regan got grief for updating the White House china I thought it was a bit much. What could possibly be the goal besides looking like an ass? I guess I'll leave it to wiser people.

Oh, and after years of joking that we'd see it someday (and always hoping it would remain a joke), I actually saw some poltroon with a "Jesus is a Republican" sticker on the back of his car. When I brought this up to a conservative I work with, he attempted to spin it as a joke the driver was in on, but all the other stickers were just as out there, so I think the guy means it. I got a look at him and his wife at the stoplight, and his whole demeanor was one of rage and bitterness. Methinks a lot of these assholes are gonna be surprised when they finally get to heaven (assuming) and Jesus straightens them out in the issue. (FWIW, as He did when on earth, He would likely eschew any political stance.)

Well, enough of that political shite.

I haven't seen all the 2011 movies I intend to, but of those I've seen, the ones I've dug (in no particular order) are:
- Paul
- Source Code
- Super 8 (my family's fave for the year)
- American: The Bill Hicks Story
- Bridesmaids
The Harry Potter saga ending, part II, we mean it this time, flick
- Crazy, Stupid, Love
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes
- Our Idiot Brother
- Contagion (scariest flick I've seen in a while)
- Red State
- The Thing (how could I not like a well-done prequel to my favorite movie?)
- A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas
- The Change-up

To my surprise, my wife loved Harold and Kumar as much as I did. You don't need to see the first two prior to seeing this one, but it does enhance some of the jokes.

I was thrilled that the folks behind The Thing prequel did such a fine job of making a nearly seamless prequel with nary a whiff of retcon, even preserving the look and feel of the movie even though they had to conform to the look of the special effects from 1982. And, my God, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a babe. The silver screen certainly has a lot of new eye candy these days, what with Ms. Winstead and the almost-too-pretty Emma Stone. I can see why Jim Carrey lost his shit and posted a video confession that will haunt him for the rest of his days.

The other big surprise for me was The Change-up, which I watched as part of my ongoing Ryan Reynolds festival to see if he's one of those guys who picks enough interesting scripts to always check him out. (The current short list includes Jeff Bridges, the late M. Emmet Walsh, Kurt Russell, Sandra Bullock, and Meryl Streep. Though Emma Stone may join, it's too early to tell.) So far the verdict is yes, The Green Lantern notwithstanding.

Anyway, except for the epic misfire of of a set-piece where toddlers are put in major harm's way, The Change-up is funny, which was part of the surprise because the reviews were scathing, but other surprise for me was the nudity, meaning the actresses (save for one) weren't ones I would expect to expose their pink parts. (Which came with the realization that I have some murky categorization in my head of those who will get nekkid and those who won't.) This lead me to pause the flick and imdb.com the actress to see what else she's been in (to test my "not the kind who gets nekkid" theory), which then lead me to the trivia that all of the nudity in the movie is CGI. Upon re-review of the scenes (a few times), I have to say the uncanny valley has been conquered, at least as far as breasts are concerned.

For a guy, can you imagine having the job of creating CGI nudity? Would it be the greatest job ever, or would you get to the point where you only surf the web for articles? I heard/read the actresses got to choose the appearance of their CGI parts. Imagine being the animator sitting there with some gorgeous actress, which would be intimidating (and fun) anyway, but then your task was to page through big screens full of animated boobs and discussing which ones she wanted as hers. At least my mind would boggle. (Conversely, for a woman, I can't imagine a more tedious assignment. I doubt CGI dicks will catch on, and if they did, the conversations would center around, "[Male star's name], I'm sorry, but if I make it that big, it will look fake.")

Two of my favorite albums - U2's Actung Baby and Nirvana's Nevermind - have finally gotten the deluxe remastered treatment, but alas the window of interest has closed for me. Both were released when CDs were well established, so they sounded good in the first place. All the reviews claim the upgrades in sound are minimal or a step backwards, to boot. And, like Stephen King has pointed out, you can only listen to a song so many times. I've spun both of those so many times that if they were vinyl I'd have the clicks and pops memorized, too.

Besides, a lot of rock dinosaurs put out decent albums this year. Really. There are at least three keepers on the latest from Blondie, Steve Miller (two albums worth!), Cheap Trick, Paul Simon, Stevie Nicks, and Lenny Kravitz. (One funny footnote to the year is Elvis Costello warned fans away from buying his latest box set because the label egregiously overpriced it.)

My favorite albums from new(er) bands are Foster the People - Torches (which is my eldest's favorite of the year), Givers - In Light, Foo Fighters - Wasting Light, and Maroon 5 - Hands All Over. My favorite singles are ColdPlay - "Hurts Like Heaven", Panic at the Disco - "The Ballad of Mona Lisa", and D. Gookin - "Stealing Sun Chips" which reminds me of The Go! Team but a bit more stoned and drunk (the song is FREE, btw).

I discovered an interesting trick which works most of the time (90% roughly) if you want to preview an album before buying it. Yes, this is immoral and probably illegal if you don't eventually pay for it, but if you want to download an album for free, you need a newer browser that allows you to enter search terms in the URL wherein you enter the name of the band, a dash, the name of the album, followed by "site:mediafire.com". Like this:
foo fighters - wasting light site:mediafire.com
steve miller band - bingo! site:mediafire.com

The books I've enjoyed are Stephen King's latest about time travel, the Dave Grohl bio This is a Call (wow, even though Courtney Love probably didn't pull the trigger, she couldn't be more implicated in Cobain's death, imho), and a wonderful installment in the 33 ⅓ series: Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3) by Carl Wilson. It's definitely something readers of this blog should seek out. The premise is brilliant: Wilson admits he HATED HATED HATED Ms. Dion, especially at the time when you couldn't get away from that ubiquitous song that everyone eventually wished would hit an iceberg and sink out of sight, too; so he uses that to frame a discussion of musical taste. It is one of the most cogent breakdowns of what constitutes taste and how we can be more tolerant of other's horrible preferences. Especially since we appear to be headed for a time when the music market is more stratified than ever. (I mean, Judas Crispies, Doris Day even has a new album out.)

I've read a few articles recently that mourn for the day when most of the top 20 albums were bought by most music lovers, and we all had the same thing spinning on our turntables or in the tape decks of our cars. I think the last time I recall everyone embracing an album that we all had to have was Nirvana's Nevermind, with honorable mention to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill (which sold more copies than Nirvana did, actually). According to this Wiki article, the chanteuse triumvirate (Britney, Shania, and Celine) and the boy bands of the 90s are the only other pretenders to the throne of celestial sales numbers, but I believe they are actually examples of when the market splintered.

So, see you in the new year. I trust there will be a few fine entertainments in store.

ROFLMAO

So, I was looking for inspiration yesterday, something to break some thought blockage (like writer's block but slightly larger scale) and cycling through random images has almost always worked to jar things loose; then I come across this:


I was in my cube at work and had anyone seen me, they might have thought I was having convulsions. I couldn't contain some of my sniggers and tears were squirting horizontally out of my eyes. I realized it might look like I was crying. I had to dash to the copy room to try to recompose myself. For the rest of the day I had to avoid thinking about it or else I would laugh again, which I did in a couple subsequent meetings and had to come up with an excuse as to why. Haven't had anything come at me out of left field, particularly at work, in a while. But dammit a good laugh like that is wonderful.

I tend to stand up and call for the Lord when something really scares the hell out of me, but had I been scratching the boys, like this guy, I might also have nearly emasculated myself. I can just see the whole scenario. Gad, I'm snickering again just writing this.

If you're wondering, it's from the movie Insidious, which my daughter claims is muy scary. I don't really like scary movies anymore, so I may not see it. If I do, I'll let you know.



I also found this pile of extreme cuteness. Warning, if you're a cynic or a tea bagger, don't look:



Source

I've told some people that my main cat, Fuzz, is a hugger. If he's up high enough on something when you walk by, he'll rear up and hug you. Really hug you, meaning he puts his paws around your neck and squeezes. People have always looked at me as though I should consider counselling, but now I have freakin' proof that cats hug.

Veteran's Day

I want to send out a heartfelt thank you to all the men and women who have served our country, who are currently serving our country, and kept us safe.

I also want to offer condolences to those who have lost someone who gave the ultimate sacrifice and express my inexpressible gratitude that we have those brave and honorable souls who died in our place.

Thank you.

Bad Parenting at the Multiplex

I didn't realize that someone was revisiting the world of John Carpenter's The Thing until I saw the preview a few weeks ago. That was a good thing because like all fanboys who have a handful of sacred favorites, I don't like seeing my babies messed with.

But, they had the music, they had the look, and they had Mary Elizabeth Winstead, probably one of the most drop-dead gorgeous actresses of the day. (To recycle the Moms Mabley classic: She's so pretty it hurts my feelings.) I have to admit they topped the first movie twice: the first reveal when it pops out of a human, and when it all goes very badly near the end when they're trying to figure out who's human and who's not. Verdict: I liked it a lot and will purchase it when it comes out.

A couple weeks ago, we sat down with our daughter and her best friend and watched the original Thing (John Carpenter's, not the 50s version where the sheriff from Gunsmoke channels Frankenstein in the form of a giant carrot). They sorta dug it, but it had the taint of being an old movie, and one with a sad ambiguous ending as well.

Like all good Americans, my wife and I are letting our 15-year-old see the occasional R-rated film only as long as the R is due to language and hyper-violence. If it's sex, no mas. Though we are raising our daughters in a more European way regarding sex (in that it's not inherently bad and in fact is wonderful in the right context, but is something that belongs in the adult world), we think sexual imagery is too charged for younger viewers. However, kids experience violence from the age they are able to walk or crawl over to another kid. Granted, it's not blood-spraying horror violence (usually), but they tend to have an emotional handle on it, and viewing fictional stuff appears not to cause harm. In addition, most of us in the Midwest are either hunters or raised around them, so we've seen an animal processed, which is the definition of gory.

So even though I hadn't previewed it first (a usual step for us regarding R-rated flicks), my wife and I thought it'd be OK to take our daughter, who also liked it a lot.

But that night when she went to bed, I found her with her covers pulled to her chin. (Darn.) We talked about how the monster in the movie couldn't exist in our world; that it defied the general laws of basic physics and known biology, which seemed to help. It gave her nightmares anyway. So, FAIL on the thinking it would be OK thing. Alas.

My wife went and said it even scared her. That's a sum total of maybe three movies that have ever given her the willies. My daughter went again (the damage was done) with her mom, her best friend, and BF's mom. I guess her friend sat through most of the movie with her ears covered and her jaw hanging from shock. Her mom exclaimed out loud a few times, too.

So, if you've seen the other one, it's a great companion movie, and if you haven't, it might be one of the better horror flicks you've seen in a while. You might want to mind the R-rating though.

We also watched the wonderful Kristen Wiig's triumph: Bridesmaids. At least this time we were warned about what to hide from our daughter (the first 5 minutes). My wife and elder daughter loved it. I laughed a few times. I was thrilled to see Melissa McCarthy, who I thought was awesome in The Nines and hoped she could find her way to a long career; this is a pretty good start. Bridesmaids is worth a few minutes of your time, provided you like crude humor.

I caught Martin Scorsese's George Harrison: Living in the Material World on cable, when my family was out of the room. One of the ironies of my life is that I thought I would avoid driving my family nuts via the TV because I don't care for sports so don't watch them, but none of them have a tolerance for music documentaries, so my favorite thing to watch is the bane of their existence anyway.


I thought it was very average for the genre, but did learn some stuff about the quiet Beatle that I didn't know, and am now more impressed with his legacy regarding guitar craft and riffage. For fans only, I'm afraid.

Finally, I happed across this deleted scene from Will Smith's Hancock. If you didn't see it, the story explores the concept of a superhero who's become cynical and alcoholic because he realizes he can never do enough to fix the world.

In the deleted scene, we are finally able to witness the dramatization of the famous quandary that would face Superman should he ever try to have sex with Lois, as described by Larry Niven in his infamous essay, "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" (some wiki goodness here). Ironically, the original script for Hancock was titled "Tonight, He Comes.", and dealt with his sexual frustration along with his cynicism. So, of course, the one scene that reflects the origin of the story was cut.

Precognition

I had pretty significant asthma as a kid and have not suffered from it so much as an adult until recently. All the stuff the doctor threw at me has staved it off a bit, but I keep trying to find an off-the-shelf supplement to try to get complete relief because it's unpleasant and a bit scary to be on the edge of not being able to take a deep breath. Mucinex has proven to be a wonder drug for me, especially when I get some chest thing, and it has been a help now.

When I saw Bronkaid on the shelf, it seemed to promise exactly what I wanted: Mucinex plus a bronchial dilator.

There I was, the next sitting on the couch on a Saturday morning (after taking some), surfing the web until my family got up. I noticed that reading was a struggle, but when my wife sat down with her coffee and started shooting the breeze, I noticed I was really, well... fucked up.

I could barely track what she was saying, plus I kept getting distracted by the web page in front of me (which is rude when someone is talking directly to you, but kept finding myself attempting to read while my wife was in mid-sentence), and worst of all I seemed to be actively dreaming while sitting there which was inserting itself in the jumbled mix of my thoughts.

As we all know, dreams have their own logic that don't mesh well with actual reality, so being a bit confused as to what was occurring to me in the real world at the moment and what was seeping into my consciousness through a pin-prick between the wall of reality and dreams was outright alarming.

When I could sort out my thoughts enough to articulate a thought, I said to my wife, "I'm really messed up" (using polite language in deference to the kids in the room), and tried to explain what was going on. She responsibly asked if I needed to go to the emergency room, and I said probably not, but if I get out the body paints or start weeping at the mere sight of a rainbow, don't rule it out.

So for the next four hours as I waited for the stuff to wear off, I played mentally with the shiny ball of dream fragments floating through my active consciousness. It seemed the best way to manage the weirdness without freaking out.

As a young man, I took mushrooms once, smoked my share of doobage, and tried illegal speed once in my freshman year at college, which concluded with a woman flirting with me at a party while a tarantula undulated on her right breast. (I finally asked if there really was a tarantula where I was seeing one, and she said that it was the host's pet, thank God.)

My point is that I have at times experienced altered states of consciousness and none of them were as vivid and unpleasant as this experience was. As a rule, I don't like being altered - hence my one-time trial of a couple things and that's about it.

It has made me wonder about how and when our brains dream. Previously, I had assumed that what most scientists said was true: we dream when sleeping, probably to help the brain clear away and store the content of the previous day. My take-away from Saturday's trip was that we might be dreaming all the time, but don't have awareness of it unless we are in a different state, such as sleeping or whacked out on bronchial dilators.

I told you all that to tell you this, a couple nights later I had a really vivid dream about a baby that had a surreal birth defect in that it was born as only a head with mere nubbins of fingers under the sides of its chin. Such a sight would be horrific in real life, but in the land of dreams the baby was actually quite beautiful and it seemed as happy as most babies, and I loved it like parents love their babies, with a potency and yearning that often overwhelms. It was a sweet dream, actually.

Later that day at work, I stumble across this picture at work...


Holy cow on a sacred stick, I thought. That looks just like the baby in the dream, though of course the bundling wasn't there (or visible), but the proportion of the fingers that were showing was an exact match to the fingers of the dream baby.

So, I submit that I think I had a precognition of this picture prior to seeing it.

Does this imply an ability to see the future? Synchronicity? Something beyond the physical world (which constant readers will know I believe in)? That the military will run out and empty the shelves of Bronkaid? I leave it to you to decide.


As a footnote, or third level digression, I found this picture at the same time I found the dream baby pic, and thought to myself: who in the hell thinks a black and white picture of a rainbow is a good idea? It's kinda like asking a woman to pose nude for you then take a picture of just her big toe.


(Apologies that I don't provide credit or references to the origin of the pictures. I checked the exif data, and haven't found clues. If these are your pictures, or if you know whose they are, please let me know in the comments.)

Halloweenies

Alas, a student group in Ohio has launched a campaign that tries to make the argument that dressing up as a pimp/gangsta or terrorist or Mexican for Halloween is racist. Even anything that could possibly be construed as such, like this illegal alien costume, is suspect, they say.

Here's the CNN story that brought national attention to bear, the site itself, and the tumbler post of the president of the society on her reaction to the parodies that cropped up like mushrooms in a hot cowpie.

Y'know, if that kid dressed up as a pimp/gangsta (whichever it is) is in blackface, you could make an easy argument that it's racist to most reasonable people. (I can't tell from the small versions of the poster I've seen.) But if it is someone black all blinged out as a pimp or gansta, is it really racist? And why would a black college kid claim that was her "culture"? Wouldn't her academic aspirations automatically distance her from a dealer of drugs and whores? And does the Middle-Eastern kid really want to claim that terrorism is his culture? Really?

I wonder if they were aware of the similarly failed attempt by Wiccans to claim victimhood and unfair stereotypes of witches in the celebration of Halloween. Or of their failed attempt to claim that they originated the holiday, being pagan descendants of pagans and all that.

Anyway, if you can get past being offended (if it does offend you), the parodies are a hoot. Update: The Chive offers a bunch as well.

My favorite is this one:


I wonder if this means that laid-back, aged stoners with an affinity for bowling will come beating on my door, since I dressed as the Dude from The Big Lebowsky a couple years back.

FWIW, it was a tremendous failure because, of course, none of the kids had seen the movie and neither had most of their parents, so I just looked like some homeless guy shambling to the door to hand out candy. (I had a real beard and my own old bathrobe, not a fake ones like in this getup.) I got more looks of abject terror from that costume than any other I've donned.

The Latest Canary

So, among the top ten banned books this year is Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich, which reports the results of her experiments of trying to work for and live on minimum wage jobs. (Nother link.) Why would such a book be BANNED? (As pointed out elsewhere, the books aren't banned so much as someone challenged their appropriateness for a school bookshelf.)

Well, besides apparently containing some negative views on Christianity, it promotes '"economic fallacies" and "socialist ideas",' and a 'biased portrayal of capitalism.' Wade around in that for a while … banned because people don't like what it says about economic viewpoints and realities in America.

To me, this is the latest canary in a coal mine on how far out of whack our national "debate" about economic problems, "class warfare," and the right's propaganda about the poor are. (Note: no reason to qualify portions of the right as wingnuts and teabaggers, as it's the whole Republican base anymore, judging from the recent legislative sessions.)

To paint the basic facts and details about trying to live on minimum-wage as somehow controversial and political, something to be suppressed and hidden, is gobsmacking to me. It also strikes me as a rather dark if not evil purposeful ignorance. Disagreeing with what it might mean is another issue, but to try to suppress it?

Since I don't often subject myself to the Republican propaganda machine on purpose, if I'd heard the term "class warfare" before now, I really hadn't paid it much heed as the concept strikes me as eminently silly in America. But, it's getting such big play on the right that Jon Stewart dedicated a whole series of shows that hilariously subsumed the World of Warcraft logo: "World of Class Warfare." (If you follow only one link in this post, this is the one; the stuff you'll find is tres funny.)

The most absurd brainturd they tried to float was that if the poor have things like refrigerators and televisions, they're not poor! The blinkered depravity of someone who would have this viewpoint betrays such a vast lack of understanding of the larger world and humanity that it's nearly cartoonish in its banality. It's as if Thurston Howell from Gilligan's Island has become the primary pundit for these clowns.

As usual with the tighty righties, they employ the bullshit term "class warfare" to coin what they want to pretend is something they're victims of, but in fact is their effort to smear and marginalize those they disagree with (in the right's usual tactic of framing something as the opposite of what it is).

Their larger target is, of course, tearing down FDR's New Deal. FDR himself knew what bastards some of the people are: "Roosevelt again and again said the privileged classes are not your friends, they don't reflect your interests but we do." They're so rabid about the New Deal that they've produced their own cartoon version of history, where FDR didn't exist.

I've never understood this because the tangible results of the New Deal - a healthy middle class, a higher standing of living for everyone and the resultant general level of happiness and civility - appear so obviously valuable on their face that why would you want any else unless you were, well, fucking evil.

I've often wondered if the point to turn us into Mexico, because if it is, we're there!!!! (I've said for years, probably every party I've been to when I'm past 2 beers, that the real goal of the right was to turn us into Mexico in a cynical bid to halt illegal immigration from Mexico.)

Sometimes writing something out like this help me think it through, analogous to the weird effect when you articulate something out loud to someone else, it often crystallizes it for you. I now realize that what I've never heard from the right is their articulation of the world they DO want, other than lip service to freedom. So, I'm going to begin asking: "So, imagine we're living a world with no regulation on corporations and financial institutions, no labor unions, no minimum wage, no medicare, medicaid, no food stamps, no unemployment insurance, no government provided health care whatsoever, no food banks, no public safety net, nothing. What do you imagine that world would be like?"

While drafting this post, I ran some of these thoughts past my wife, and she pointed out the most obvious but wise thing I've heard: Congress doesn't eat its own dog food. It has no skin in the game. Every single person in the House or Senate is a millionaire, and they all have free healthcare and a pension they know will be there when they leave. Perhaps if they were in the same situation most Americans do, they'd listen.

Finally, I love this post by Lemony Snicket:

Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance

1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.

2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.

3. Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.

4. People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.

5. There may not be a reason to share your cake. It is, after all, yours. You probably baked it yourself, in an oven of your own construction with ingredients you harvested yourself. It may be possible to keep your entire cake while explaining to any nearby hungry people just how reasonable you are.

6. Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.

7. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.

8. Don’t ask yourself if something is fair. Ask someone else—a stranger in the street, for example.

9. People gathering in the streets feeling wronged tend to be loud, as it is difficult to make oneself heard on the other side of an impressive edifice.

10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.*

12. If you have a large crowd shouting outside your building, there might not be room for a safety net if you’re the one tumbling down when it collapses.

13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.

*Btw, it has come out that those people inside the impressive buildings are sitting in observation bunkers (paid for by taxes) with the police, which answers the question I've read a few times in the news: How come they're tear-gassing and shooting the OWS movement when they left the Tea Baggers alone?

Here are some links on other elements of this general problem that I couldn't squeeze into this already lengthy screed:
- The Tea Party is really just the pissed-off white south rising again.
- Republicans actively work to destroy Democratic presidents, and even Obama says right out loud that their primary goal is to defeat him, the people be damned.
- Republicans even think they can threaten the Fed.
- A great tell-all from a Republican operative who has left the cult.
- How banks cause hunger.

Sleeping with Techo-Lust

It's been a LONG time since I've been really intrigued by a new techie device.

The last was this pocket PC thing called a Jornada which came out in about 2000 - yes over a decade ago.

It had this nifty fold-out keyboard you could dock it to, and boy did you look like a geek using it - which I considered a good thing. Its fatal flaw was when its battery drained, it lost anything you'd saved on it, and after losing a couple valuable documents unexpectedly, I ended up putting it away. (I still have it. It still works and holds a charge. If there are any collectors who might want it, ping me at the email address provided on the page here.)

Oh, iPads are very slick and shiny, and fingering around the OS makes you feel like you've finally caught up with the promises of scifi. Watching people use their iPads, you can see the visceral pleasure on their face as they zoom and slide and peck away on the screen keyboard, a little smile smudged on their smackers the whole time. Don't let them catch you watching, though, because you will end up getting a breathless demo, akin to the interminable slide-shows back in the 70s, when people would invite you over to show you the slides of their visit to the great hole in the ground or the place where boiling water erupts from the ground or the place where some guy carved big faces of former presidents on high ground.

A starting price of half a grand is just a bit dear for me, especially since it is yet another glorified Etch-A-Sketch (yes it is), even if it's in glorious color. Input on the device is not easy, and it is, in the end, a content delivery device, that doesn't deliver one of the most popular forms of media on the web, the youtube video. (Maybe youtube fixed this by now, but still, it's silly to leave a major media technology off of a media-centric device; kinda like having a screen door on a submarine.)

Like anyone who was plied with a Blackberry at the workplace as an essential tool for optimal organization and constant communication, I've become tethered to its notifications of upcoming meetings, vital emails, and text messages from mylovely wife asking where I put the scissors. I forgot the thing at home recently and missed a very important meeting and chided myself on becoming so dependant on the damn thing, which was why I resisted it in the first place. But, it's just too damn useful, so whattaya do? I hear the Blackberry market is suffering due to smart phones, but I suspect the sheer utility and rock-solid reliability will keep them around for a while...

Partially because smart phones are a pain in the ass. They're fun when you're dorking around with the little apps and become deeply addicted to a mere physics exercise involving dissolving pig heads with slungshot birds, but if you absolutely need to make a call right now and in a straightforward manner - say you're not seeing the kids you need to pick up for carpool - the contacts list will likely end up dialing someone you talk to twice a year, so by the time you've hung up that call, gotten the right contact, dialed it, etc., you're a good panicky couple minutes down the timeline, and while you are talking to the person you wanted to call, the person you mistakenly called has called you back to ask why you called, so your conversation is peppered with gaps and bleeps, causing both of you to ask to repeat what was just said, which makes you not notice the kids are standing patiently outside the car in winter weather. Then, when everyone's snug and buckled, you hear a tiny voice screaming at you, and you discover that when you put the phone down it butt-dialed yet someone else, who's been listening the whole time and now trying to get your attention, so you have to rack your brain to see if you said anything snarky while the kids were piling in - which often happens because they're bursting with news of the day, and many of your rejoinders are "yeah, so-and-so's mom can be a handful." But, as you you lift the phone to your ear to explain, the battery dies because another "feature" of smart phones is that many many of those little applications start up for no reason, or perhaps you started them but there's no intuitive way to close them, so the 39 little apps have been communicating and updating and sucking the electrons off the battery like so many bees in a field of clover in spring. Joy. Rapture.

Electronic book readers - the Kindle from Amazon and the Nook from Barnes and Noble - initially held zero appeal to me because I simply love the ease, utility, hardiness and physical presence of a printed book. Always will.

Plus, when anything is on a battery, there's this little meter running in the back of my head that says, "look at the battery level!" every minute or so, probably because of the trauma of the Jornada experience. I actually feel physical discomfort when I see my laptop or Blackberry power level down to a line, which augments the tension by displaying a lovely caution yellow color, because what if I need it but don't have an electric teat to draw sustenance from?!?! The horror! (Yes, I wax melodramatic, but it is a very real, if in reality less emotional thing I experience.)

And then there's DRM - Digital Rights Management, which prevents you from making a copy of a file and giving it to someone else. I have a very firm stance on DRM: Fuck to the hell to the damn no. Ever.

Yes, artists and the content companies who provide things should get paid, and they do when they're reasonable, like the MP3 store at Amazon.com. I am a regular customer. I leeeerve my high-fidelity MP3 albums, especially since they've stepped up and now include a digital booklet of liner notes. I miss visiting the record store/head shop downtown, but instant gratification combined with the bonus of not having to rip the CD myself is just too wonderful.

And most DRM systems cripple your machine. I often record sounds from the web (say from youtube vids) for throwing on a mix CD by using Audacity and capturing it through the computer's built-in sound system. A month ago I installed Audible.com's app on a PC so I could get the free version of Samuel Jackson reading the pretend children's book Go the F**k to Sleep, because how can one not have that in one's arsenal? Audible's app laced the PC with its DRM software, and disabled the ability to record any sounds whatsoever. On MY fuckin' machine. A cardinal sin of the highest order. How dare you disable part of my computer? Unless they back off of DRM, they've lost a customer forever. (I'll just mention Sony's disastrous rootkit fiasco with CDs in passing, which you can read about here.)

eBooks come loaded with DRM. Worse, each device has a proprietary format that only works with the company's eBooks, so you can't buy an Amazon.com eBook and read it on a Nook. Haven't these numbskulls paid any attention to Sony's attempts to corner a format market, or the music industry's idiocy and near demise because they just couldn't get their head around DRM-free music until the horse had left the barn, had ponies, and died?

Plus, publishers are making the exact same mistake made with CDs (even to this day - half of all CDs are still over $10), promising they would be much cheaper than the current market leader (vinyl back then). The majority of bad reviews on Amazon books come from customers losing their shit over the fact that the eBook, which takes a scintilla of the energy it takes to crap out a paper book, are typically a couple bucks more than the paper book. There is simply no logical or justifiable reason why an eBook isn't the same price or cheaper.

But then, signs of intelligent life in the universe started appearing. My library has eBooks you can borrow for free, just like a real book. They even have some I'd want to read.

The Nook has a real web browser that can actually play vids, an MP3 player, and it displays many formats besides their eBook format: Microsoft Office Docs, PDFs, and plain text. Wow. Way to go. I have a bunch of stuff from the Project Gutenberg, so if I felt like picking up a classic, I could. This makes the Color Nook (whose name makes me chuckle because it's vaguely naughty) essentially a low-rent iPad at $250. Plus, they now have "lend-able" versions of the books.

(And the hackers of the world have made converters so you can convert one company's format to your reading device, and strip of the DRM if you want. Yes, it's illegal for now. Hopefully the companies will get over themselves and actually serve their customers in an honest fashion. So, if you're one of those publisher folks, or Amazon / Barnes and Noble folk, here's a tip: you price the "paperback" eBook release at $4 - $2 for back catalogue - leave off the DRM, and money will fly into your accounts. I see the new releases are already typically under $10 - good for you!)

But, but ... you can get a whole freakin' laptop for $300! On which you can install a free application which makes it work like a Nook.

Still, Nooks (and Kindles) are a wonderful little size and optimized for reading. So, damn it, here I am in techo-lust, after all these years. I thought I'd hit the stage of life where I was past that, and could groove in my zen-like repose (not quite smug) holding my library book, plugged into my $20 DRM-free MP3 player, sucking on a Busch NA near beer (most of the taste, none of the drawbacks), and rock on with my bad self.

But I know I will find myself in a B&N, probably within the next few days, seeing if I can shake this feeling. I suspect I'll end up with a Nook, soon.

It doesn't stop there, though! God! Two objects of lust at once! It's just like high school all over again! Though, unlike the Lovin' Spoonful's wonderful song about having to make up your mind, my other object of lust would actually welcome a threesome.

I surfed across these headphones called Bedphones that are designed to be comfortable enough that you can fall asleep while wearing them. I liek to fall asleep to music about once a week, so these intrigue me. Plus, in a shocking display of market savvy, the company has priced them at $30 - a completely reasonable price for headphones. Plus, when we have family movie nights, my 6-year-old will often want to watch her own movie because she just can't seem to find a way to care about Katherine Heigl's hero's journey of collecting a closetfull of bridesmaid's dresses, so will plug into her portable DVD player (a grand bargain at $40), but we have yet to find a set of headphones that don't give her fits. Until now.

I'm having visions of reading in bed as I go to sleep without a booklight, and having the plaintive strains of Moby or Native American Flutes shimmering as the soundtrack on my new comfy headphones, as my wife dreams beside me, the dog sighing at the foot of the bed.

As there is often a cloud to be found within a silver lining, I read something about the Bedphones Android app that retroactively gave me the creeps. This app can tell when you've fallen asleep "determined by how much you move" and turn off your Android music player. At first blush, that seems really cool. MP3 players by default are designed to play way until you request they kindly stop.

But when you think it out, your smart phone will now have the ability to know when you're asleep.

People, your phone already knows too damn much about you, and now you want to let it know when you are unconscious and vulnerable? One of the "features" that smart phone makers and smart phone app developers keep on the down-low is that when you load an app, one of the steps is to grant it access to functions of the phone (like the built-in GPS thingy they all have, the mic, and other apps). This means that some of your apps are watching and listening to what you and other apps on the phone are doing, ostensibly so it can pipe up and offer something that you might find helpful or delightful - kind of a "would you like fries with that?" in digital form. Blackhat developers have also included sneaky little features to gather very private info (see?! ... see?!), like a note-taking app that requests access to your mic so that you can dictate into it, but behind the scenes it listens to the numbers you dial and sends them to China, right-wing media moguls, and Phil out in Schenectady.

So now your phone is going to know when you're asleep.

Perhaps you can render these apps useless by queueing up Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and since they're so smart, they'll appreciate the irony and decide to just leave you alone and go to sleep themselves.