I'm taking off for Ireland with Zoua this evening at 8PM. It's exciting but I always get that feeling like I've missed packing something dreadfully important. Too late now, at any rate! I'll be sure to post tons of pictures when I return. Maybe I'll even manage to update halfway through the trip or something, but it may be nice to be away from the internet for a while. Clear my brain of all that digital nonsense.
In the meantime and if you're not "in the know," go check out the Geeks section for the lowdown on how to get crackin' with RSS.
I've occasionally expounded on the benefits of RSS feeds in my news section, but for those of you who are still in the dark about what RSS really is, here's a little "tutorial" on how to get started in the wonderful wide world of syndication.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication, not Really Sexy Sluts as Dan suggested) is a way for you to aggregate a whole bunch of information into one point rather than having to go search all over the internet for it. Any webpage that is syndicated (has an RSS feed) will send updates to whatever program you choose as your "News Aggregator." The Aggregator will be your new point where all of the news that you have linked to (via the RSS feeds in pages) will gather. Get it? So for instance, in my aggregator, I have BBC World News, Boston.com news, New York Times, Ryan's Blog, Boing Boing Blog, Slashdot, and a whole veritable assload of other feeds. Instead of having to navigate all over the www and find all the headlines I want, I have everything I want in my aggregator. The best part is that I don't have to wait for pages to load or read articles I don't want to read. I simple text headlines that load in no time flat as soon as they are put into the feed, and I read whatever I choose.
That was probably confusing. Let's learn by example, shall we?
Say you think my page is downright kickass and you want to know whenever I update (which, admittedly, in the past was rather ... uh ... infrequent but is now more frequent than anyone thought possible).
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1) Go download and install a news aggregator client like SharpReader or NewsMonster or any one of the other million aggregators out there. Unfortunately, SharpReader (like many Windows aggregators for some reason) requires the .NET framework from Microsoft, which is a 20MB download in itself. NewsMonster on the other hand, requires Mozilla, whose Firefox project I've been pimping on my website for a while anyway. As I said there are plenty of other aggregators out there. I use SharpReader, personally.
2)
There are other ways people choose to display RSS feeds. Ryan displays his feeds like this:
Most commonly, RSS feeds will show up as an orange XML icon, something like this:
For any one of these display methods, what you need to do is get the URL of that feed. So you can right-click on the link/icon and choose "copy link location" or however it is worded in your browser. You may also click on the link and then copy the URL from the addressbar in your browser.
Paste into this field the link that you copied above. If you hit enter, you will see the current headlines for that site. Somewhere in your aggregator there will be a "subscribe" button. If you hit that, you will be subscribed to the feed, and you won't need to do this process again. Every time you look in your aggregator, you'll have new headlines (if any have been made)!
Now go out and start feeding, Soldier!
P.S. the feed on my site is http://www.shock-e.com/index.xml
Copy and paste into your aggregator, and you're set.
Boston firefighters group not allowed to serenade president
Thank God.
The last thing this president needs is more "honor." The only thing he's done for the country is make us look like an international dunce of a country.
My favorite line is this: "The president's visit canceled classes for 1,425 children at the Boston Renaissance Charter School, a K-8 institution on Stuart Street, a block away from the Plaza, because of possible transportation problems."
So essentially what I read into this is that George W. Bush is such a complete asshole and makes obvious his complete disregard for "leave no child behind" by causing school closings! Huzzah!
I suppose this might happen with any president, but I especially loathe the monkey (big ears, limited vocabulary, and all) who manages to disgrace this fine country every day.
Way to waste our tax dollars, dubya!
Update: (3:45PM) Snipers on the roof of the building ... Don't make any sudden or suspicious moves downtown today ... I imagine falling under the category of "suspicious" isn't hard, including not being white, wearing a turban, carrying long objects (brooms, pool cues, hockey sticks), or saying "Iraq was a bad idea."
Oh boy oh boy, King George the W is coming to town! And his entourage is sitting its fat oil-bloated ass down right outside my building. Just grand! So now if I want to go to lunch I'll probably have to go through about eight security checkpoints!
It'll take all I have not to go outside and scream obscenities at that piece of shit. Maybe I should play a little BoomBoom Volleyball to calm my nerves ...
Those of you who may have seen me in the past few weeks might recognize that I've been having some "interesting" hair days. I can't say "bad" hair days because inevitably due to severe laziness I have those days almost every day. But I finally realized what it is I am shooting for with this haircut-hiatus.
Yes, you may find it awkward and mildly embarrassing that I seek to emulate a cartoon character. I, too, find it mildly otaku. But what, seriously, isn't there to like about this guy? He's badass. He's lazy. And he bears a striking resemblance to me, aside from the fact that he's a cartoon character, better looking, smokes, and lacks anatomical correctness. Nevertheless, we could be twins!!!!!!!
Taken from a promotional Cowboy Bebop Poster
A recent photo (any resemblance to past photos is strictly coincidental)
Simply astounding, no?
Ryan sent me this comedic goldmine. Imagine what the little kiddies at your local club/rave/place-where-lame-glowstick-people-hang-out would say when you show up with these pearly whites/oranges/blues in your chompers! Oh the beauty of the internet I tell you!
Ever since discovering it, for the past two days straight I have been playing Boom Boom Volleyball in every spare moment I can muster.
Warning: This game is highly addictive. As I said, I have been playing nonstop instead of doing much more productive things like writing, cleaning my room, packing for Ireland, or doing my job. I have also managed to get Ryan addicted as well. Three cheers for simple internet games! If you manage to start playing this game and figure it out quickly enough, be forewarned: you will be sucked in. This is like oldschool Nintendo games that were quite simple but immensely fun. To this day, MegaMan 2 is the most fun video game I have ever played.
I think the goal of the game is to eventually beat Level 5 so you get to "play topless" or something, but I can't really see the appeal to that other than just the fact that you beat it. I don't really see that tiny digitized boobs would be all that exciting. Then again, the wacky world of hentai (Japanese animated porn) does appear to be quite popular.
All I want for Christmas is one of these.
I've been yammering for one of these for a long time, saying iPod is overpriced and overrated. Until I could play my favorite movies/music/whatever on the subway or in the plane, there was no way I'd be updating from my old NetMD. And here it is!
This is serious drool-worthy geekware. And for once it's not from Apple! We'll have to see if it stacks up though.
Well well well, what do we have here? Ah yes! Whenever they get threatened, Republicans start to play dirty! Oh wait, they always play dirty! This article really makes me laugh, as the GOP is supported by nothing but special interests. Suddenly when Democrats have special monied interests on their side, they start whining and crying as if they have no money to spend. Meanwhile, Bush has $170+ million in his so-called "war chest" for the election.
Happily, though, his monied investments from oil companies may not help! It's true, he's fucked up so much that even previous Bush advisors are calling him out on his blatant lies to the American public. And it's about frickin' time.
I was out in Western MA all weekend soaking up plenty of country livin' and family loudness when I made the foray down to Connecticut. I took some pictures to demonstrate the second day of spring as interpreted by the Pagan Gods of Weather in Western MA, but of course I made the mistake of not forwarding them to myself at work. And no, they're not accessible to me on my FTP. Way to go foresight!
Regardless, here's a funny-bone tickling piece in the Bosteon Phoenix. Link provided by the ever-relevant BoingBoing Blog. Check it out! With tongue planted firmly in cheek, it pokes fun at using The Bible as reference for determining law. Funny stuff.
There has been a remarkable amount of news today in the realm I like to call the "tee hee OH FUCK" news category. I call it that because some of the things that are going on today are so incredibly unbelievable they become rather amusing.
Today's TSA announcement I find particularly interesting because my friend Prima was recently racially profiled up the ass (forgive the expression, she didn't experience any sort of anal exploration) on her most recent return flight from France. This is the kind of stuff that we have been seeing more and more of, but this article is especially chilling because of its blatantly vague wording and the fact that this stuff will inevitably become reality.
A brief snip: "The Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, would rank all air passengers according to the likelihood of their being terrorists."
Does that freak you out as much as it does me? I'm white and male, the least likely group in the world to get profiled, but I still find myself shaken by this statement. What the hell kind of criteria are going to be used to establish "likelihood" of terrorist activity? I'll tell you. Brown skin. The article further down explains how the system would work. It mirrors the idiot-proof guidelines of our so-called "terror alert" color-coded warning system (that no one gives two shits about anymore, coincidentally). Unfortunately these color-coded guidelines aren't at all idiot-proof, since obvious idiots created them in the first place! But anyhow, the colorbook fun is as follows: "Suspected terrorists and violent criminals would be designated as red and forbidden to fly. Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening. The vast majority would be designated green and allowed through routine screening." We're also assured that privacy will be upheld, and data collected about you will be "stored securely" and destroyed once your travel completes. One word: Bullshit.
Now I don't wear a tinfoil hat but you could probably call me paranoid. Can you blame me? It doesn't really sit well with me that you could be completely barred from a flight because somehow you raise a flag. Prima's experience of being one of the all non-white group called up to the flight counter and "entered into the database" makes me wonder if she already has been classified as "yellow" (asian jokes aside) and gets watched every time she flies. With a name like Prasertrat, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. And would it even stop there? Naw. How many protests do I have to go to before I get flagged as a "threat?" Heh, for that matter, how many times do I have to say George Bush is an idiot to be flagged? Oh yeah, probably already there.
Still further today, we have Colin Powell's "surprise" visit to Iraq. Is it just me, or has poor Powell become the brunt of some huge Bush administration joke? He's the guy who gets to go around looking like a huge asshole in front of other countries (witness the "Anthrax Vial" incident in front of the UN) while Bush (invariably the much bigger asshole) somehow escapes ridicule by anyone but John Kerry. Call Clinton's presidency the Teflon Administration, this makes Bush's rule the Eternally Lucky-as-Hell KY Presidency. Nothing sticks to this man. But Powell, who loses my respect daily by being the idiot patsy for the administration, gets to be the flypaper. I do not envy the man.
Powell today had the dubious honor of echoing George W's idiotic pro-war rhetoric when he visited Baghdad. He said, no doubt with his straight "don't take no gump" face:
"The people of Halabja never have to worry again, neighbors never have to worry again because you have removed -- you and your buddies have removed -- a horrible dictatorial regime."
...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Wait let me take a look at that article again ...
"He told hundreds of U.S. soldiers and civilians, now frequent targets for attack, that Iraq and its neighbors need no longer fear Saddam Hussein's chemical arsenal -- even though U.S. experts have found no such weapons in a year-long hunt."
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
gasp
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAA
JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST you could've fooled me! Let's go over this again, maybe I'm not as smart as these guys to quite get this right. Okay so Saddam Hussein and his regime have been removed. That we know. "The people of Halabja never have to worry again..." stretches it a little bit, don't you think? I find it just a tad awkward to say something like that a day after two dozen people get blown to bits by a terrorist carbomb and two Iraqi journalists get killed by American soldiers. Saying something like "you no longer have to fear chemical attack" when a year after the war is over they still can't find any WMDs kind of flies in the face of truth, doesn't it? The term "foot in mouth" comes to mind. But this is worse than foot in mouth. This borders on dick in mouth.
It doesn't surprise me that the Iraqi people are starting to wonder if things were better when Saddam was around. He certainly was a creepy despot and was no lover of human rights. But I'm sure there are a whole lot of Iraqis thinking "at least you could go to the store without fear of body parts going flying." Ask the iraqi woman interviewed on TV (absolutely brilliant clip, by the way, saw it on the Daily Show) how "safe" she felt when that hotel bomb went off just as she was being interviewed. I've never seen someone duck off camera faster. And you know what the sad part is? I could've missed it, but she really didn't have any expression on her face. It was almost like "ho hum, another bomb, another 30 people dead. Time to cover my head." You know something is seriously wrong when people have become accustomed to terrorism as common.
It raises a tough question. Do we leave terrible dictators like Saddam in power to ensure regional stability? Or do we remove said dictators from power and risk regional instability? Certainly we're seeing the results of the latter even as I type. The Middle East is a complete disaster now, and George Bush I'm sorry to burst your bubble but you fucked up bigtime. I'm sure the parents of soldiers are really feeling confident and justified when every day they see on the news another story about a group of soldiers bombed or ambushed.
My rambling is probably something you've all read or thought about before, so I guess it's nothing really new. Just thought I'd share those fresh little gems of steaming bullshit served up courtesy of your favorite national government: ours!
The first thing today I have to offer is my new (poorly drawn) "Favicon." It's the icon you see up in the addressbar and also when you bookmark my site. If you don't see it, then you may have to delete your browser cache (known in Internet Explorer as the "temporary internet files"), refresh the page, or sacrifice a virgin to the gods of the internet. It really all depends on how fiesty your computer is feeling today.
Also a rant today which I aptly title "Joke of the Year." It covers the sad state of affairs we are privileged enough to live through.
This really isn't an endorsement per se, think of it more along the lines of a Mini-Review. The show was pretty good, I'll give you a snippet of the email I sent to the inimitable BillR describing the show.
Quoth I: "The show was ... hmm. Mixed reviews.
The first two acts, Sixtoo and Blockhead, were boring as hell. Sometimes I'm amazed at who gets DJ gigs.
Bonobo had a very lively/catchy set. Didn't do anything special though. Kid Koala completely stole the show in my opinion. They had a cam trained on the turntables projected on a huge screen behind him, and he did some absolutely
amazing shit like moving the needle on the fly to get precise notes, some crazy scratching...an amazing live DJ. I do find his recorded stuff a little dull, however it's much more interesting to actually see what he's doing in conjunction with the sounds he's making. He even tagteamed with "P. Love" from the earlier Sixtoo act.
Tobin himself had a good set, but Koala is a hard act to follow since Tobin was just spinning. He spun great tracks, really bassy and energetic, but ho hum, just mixing, nothing fancy.
My suggestion: If the "Zentertainment" tour is stopping nearby to you, check it out. It's worth the $20. However, unless you're planning on really chilling and talking with your friends and not really getting into the show, skip the first hour and a half and hop in when Bonobo goes on."
So last night I went with Zoua to the Amon Tobin show. We spent way too much money on watery drinks and bad food, but I think the show was worth it. So go check out the Stuffs section for the mini-review.
Also check out the Rants section for the latest and greatest news about Courtney Love's crashing and burning life!
How deep can one celebrity sink without ever suffering consequences for her depravity?
Part of the answer is right here. I definitely breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that Courtney Love's god-awful band "Hole" was defunct. Finally the world would be rid of that crass outspoken hag. Needless to say, as celebrity often does, Courtney simply would not go away. I read almost daily these days about how far the woman has fallen; she gets arrested for breaking windows at 5am in a cracked-out rage, she fails to show up to a court hearing about her alleged illegal painkiller possession, and then she "repeatedly exposes her breasts on Letterman." In attempting to portray herself as as Rock n' Roll Maverick, she has succeeded only in:
a) completely humiliating herself
b) being completely and utterly unaware of humiliating herself
c) turning on a whole new generation of teenagers to ugly fashion and bad music
d) not being a maverick at all but rather reinforcing a decades-old rock stereotype.
Bravo Courtney, bravo. Un-PC as this may be to say, but no wonder Kurt Cobain committed suicide. With an insane bitch like that at your side, wouldn't you? I'm kind of assuming by now that she has completely lost custody of her child, yes? I sincerely hope so. No child should grow up with a pathetic loser like Courtney Love as a mother. I hear her new album has been well-received. It's really too bad that she can succeed so well as a musician (which I commend) but fail so utterly as a fully-functioning human being!
So anyway, I don't like to (at least publicly) denigrate someone for their physical appearance, but take a look at that article and tell me she's not fucked up on something. Not very photogenic, that one. Or maybe it's just the constant stream of heroin or whatever she takes in her bloodstream.
I hear Trent Reznor of "Nine Inch Nails" (and Allegheny College, HAHA) fame dated her at some point. No wonder he writes music to inspire sinking into a deep dark hole.
Poor David Letterman. Did he really want to see those? Yeeks. Talk about late to the bandwagon, Courtney Love ... didn't Drew Barrymore do that to him about 2 or 3 years ago? I'm telling you, that guy sees more breasts than a mammogram technician!
Well at least I won't be anywhere near Courtney's home turf, seeing as I got rejected last night from Univ. Washington. My #1 school! Oh well. Bitter? Yeah. I guess that's why this rant isn't very funny. Sorry!
Maybe I'll go expose my hairy chest to David Letterman. Hell, it seems to do wonders for everyone else's careers! ;)
Some days I regret following links that I find interesting. A few days ago I found, via Slashdot, a BBC News article outlining just how disgusting office spaces truly are. If you didn't have enough reason already, I think this one should truly inspire fear and loathing in your heart when you get up to go to that ol' job of yours every morning. A snippet to pique your interest:
"The key offenders are telephones, which harbour up to 25,127 microbes per square inch, keyboards 3,295 and computer mice 1,676.
By contrast, the average toilet seat contains 49 microbes per square inch, the survey showed."
Woah.
I guess I should start eating my lunch off the surface of the office lavatory rather than my desktop.
I get to go check out Amon Tobin on this fine snowy-ass day in Boston. Tobin is one of the finest musicians I have ever heard, and I'm really psyched to check out his live show, along with Bonobo, Kid Koala, and others. w00t! If you're in Boston and want to hear some excellent and original music, check it out.
Kerrie has a new page up, hosted at shock-e.com! Pretty cool, huh? She doesn't have much up there yet, but go one over and see her design and check back once in a while, and pester her to update!
PS Aerie means something about a bird roost or something like that ... ? Not quite sure, you may want to ask her about it.
Not like I'll be a huge referrer to her site or anything ... haw haw.
Did I ever tell you I get carried away about music sometimes? Well head on over to the endorsements section (aka Stuffs) and read on. And don't blame me if your musical taste sucks and you don't like it!
This weekend, I spent an awful lot of time lying on my bed, staring at my crazy-ass colorful OpenGL screensaver, and listening to Orbital albums for the first time in over a year. Ever since being introduced to them by Shawn Wall, Rich Doty, and Bill Rodgers, Orbital has struck me as the project that defines what "electronica" should be. Perhaps it was the uh ... state of mind ... I was in at the time, but the same tingly awed sensation I felt years ago in college I felt again listening to the packaged genius that is In Sides. I don't know how many of you have tried sitting around on a Friday (oh and Saturday) night doing nothing but relax and listen to music, but I highly recommend it. Don't expect, however, to be perky the rest of the weekend. Perhaps it's time to lay off this "relaxation" nonsense for a little while ...
I'm sure you're thinking "okay hippie, what should electronica be then?" And I say "Duuuude it's all about the mindset man! Can't you feel it flow?" Well hopefully I won't say something that innately ridiculous, but if I ever do, you are free to hunt me down and smack me. No really. In my minute, worthless-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things opinion, electronica should be modern day's reply to classical music. You know, violins, tympani, flutes, etc. etc. Or is that an Orchestra? I know one of them is only string instruments. Shit if only I could remember what Sarah taught me long ago. Regardless, electronica should serve as a reflection pool for a musical form that hasn't really changed all that much since God knows when. Yes, classical has changed. But the basic format is still the same. Same instruments, same conventions.
If you don't agree, give an objective listen to Orbital's In Sides and at the very least, even if you don't like it, you'll see what I'm talking about. Epic songs that have several movements, and so much layering you often can't tell the difference between one instrument and another. If you really listen and isolate, you can hear that single instrument and appreciate how it blends perfectly with the other pieces of the song to create an impressive whole. The way the composers (the Orbital duo goes beyond simple sequencing) manipulate sound envelopes, stereo imaging, and sequences is pretty inspiring. Lay there for ten minutes and listen to "Girl With the Sun in Her Head" and I tell you, it's nearly an emotional experience. Listen to both parts of "The Box" and hopefully you'll see why I rave about this.
Indeed, I do tend to take things very seriously when I am "relaxing," (witness the Battle Royale incident in which I was still awed by the movie a week later), but every time I listen to In Sides and to a lesser degree the earlier tracks of The Middle of Nowhere I get chills. It's why I get all up in arms and frothing when people say "techno" is nothing but beats and some blips and bloops. Yes, awful danceclub tripe like "Sandstorm" (a truly repetitive and shitty dance anthem that has unfortunately become synonymous with "techno" and is what every layperson who knows nothing about "techno" thinks is the definition of anything remotely electronic) is indeed beat-heavy and should burn in techno hell for its lack of originality, but this is the real deal. No, I'm not talking about John Kerry, and yes, I'll probably get busted for using that slogan considering you can copyright just about anything these days.
Do you think I can copyright the word "asshat?" Shawn may have said it first, but whoever gets the copyright owns it!
Regardless, get yourself a copy of In Sides and give it a listen. Unless you like Britney Spears (mindless 90s/00s garbage), Bon Jovi (stuck in the 80s), or Dave Matthews (just plain garbage), you won't be disappointed.
Probably anyone coming to my site lately has noticed since I upgraded to the MovableType system that there are some text rendering problems associated with vertical scrolling. In short, if you scroll up and down, text lines will disappear or run into others. It's basically the fault of Internet Explorer, so this may be incentive (doubtful though) for you to check out Mozilla Firefox. Basically, Internet Explorer is a shitty web-browser that may be fast but doesn't comply to international web standards. I refuse to put into my code hacks that look something like this:
width: 760px;
\width: 780px;
w\idth: 760px;
All I should have to put in my CSS is width: 760px; but Internet Explorer requires the other two lines to display correctly.
The good news is that all you have to do to see the text correctly (should you refuse to download and use a vastly superior browser) is drag-select the text (as if you were going to copy/cut), and voila, the text will display properly. I'm sorry it behaves this way, and if I can figure out a way to make IE behave without adding ridiculous code like what you see above, then I'll do it. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will get their ass in gear and make a standards-compliant browser, but for some reason I doubt that. After all, why comply when you own 90% of the market anyway?
I find it mildly amusing that anyone with some sort of celebrity these days can claim to have talent beyond what they are famous for. Witness J.Lo's failing clothing line. Newsflash to Jennifer! No one likes your trampy getup! And another flash, no one really likes you! I remember when I was sixteen years old, I wrote my first novel. Admittedly it wasn't the greatest, but it had some originality and was on par with enough of the crap that gets published out there. Meanwhile, Rebecca Lobo, some hotshot UMASS basketball player, gets some publishing deal simply because she has gone to the WNBA (another failed commercial venture, I might add). I doubt she has much literary talent. Indeed, she and Dennis Rodman both got ghost writers. Boy was I bitter.
But this new line of cosmetics really takes the cake. Britney Spears Cosmetics? PUHLEEZE. Just because the girl can wave her ass around and make sexual grunting noises (passing that off as signing) doesn't make her qualified to design fragrances and cosmetics. I mean look at her, she looks like a whore! What's the fragrance going to be, "Eau De Tramp?" Sheeit.
Hold on there, geeklicious, I'll be getting around to putting something up in a little bit. Until then, just rock the dorxuality for yo bad self...
There was a saying I used to have, I think it was back around high school, maybe into my earlier years as college (man that makes me sound old doesn't it). "Use the Placebo Button."
Today's average urban pedestrian resorts quite frequently to the little button that so enthusiastically advertises "Push Button for Cross Signal" in order to get a "walk" signal and cross the street. Caught betwixt the foolishness and cynicism of my youth, I was absolutely sure that the button had absolutely no effect whatsoever on the frequency of walk signals. And thus I referred to it as the Placebo Button, a button that makes its user feel justified and assured that his actions have caused a change in the natural order of the universe.
After long years of personal experience, I began to feel that perhaps my earlier cynicism was unfounded. After all, I had resorted to pushing the Placebo Button quite frequently, and more often than not it seemed to actually cause a walk signal that might otherwise have been skipped in the cycle of traffic signals. I began to believe in The Button. Just as one believes hitting the "up" button for the elevator makes it somehow increase its speed, so too will hitting the Placebo Button cause a change in traffic patterns to accomodate the mighty weilder of The Button. But then, as the user, you might ask yourself if hitting The Button a second time will cancel out the first press, thereby rendering your hard work meaningless. I know I asked the question of myself.
It turns out that the cynicism of my youth was well-founded. Age had taught me nothing about traffic patterns but lies and unfinished promises. It was all a lie! It really was a Placebo Button. You can imagine the feeling of my world collapsing about me as I read the news. "...More than 2,500 of the 3,250 walk buttons that still exist function essentially as mechanical placebos, city figures show. Any benefit from them is only imagined..." (nytimes.com) I don't know which is more soul-crushing; the fact that my suspicions are true, or someone else used the phrase I had coined many years ago and is actually getting paid to write an article about it.
This is just another example of how I, Justin Nawrocki, am a true trendsetter. Just ask Kristin from work. People were harrassing me for having unironed clothes. I distinctly remember saying "just wait, wrinkled clothes will be the next Big Thing." Fast forward three months later, and "trendy" people on the cover of the Improper Bostonian were sporting wrinkled shirts. A few weeks later I found myself in the "trendy" section of one of those bigass department stores, and what did I see? Pre-wrinkled shirts. Imagine my ironic surprise! I imagine that my decision to "rock the white fro" (let my hair grow like an overenthusiastic hedge) will doubtless result in the newest hairstyle to become unkempt, without product, and foofy. Just you wait.
So just keep in mind people, watch what I'm doing, because you know it'll be big coming soon. For instance, I'm going to bed soon. I can only imagine what kind of trend "sleeping" is going to be after I try it. Sheesh.
Boston.com - Gay Marriage Ban Closer
Will Massachusetts always be doomed to be considered a "progressive" state, only to lag behind truly progressive states like California? I'm sorry, but the constitution is not at all the appropriate medium for bigotry. Ban it all you want, but do not defile the Constitution. Hear that, George Bush. Push all the agendas you want, but keep the Constitution out of it.
Think of it this way. Imagine if Democrats once again ruled the White House and Congress and decided that they were going to use the Constitution as a bulletin board for their agenda and didn't allow Republicans to marry (and therefore propogate, since it seems that Republicans don't favor pre-marital sex either) via the Constitution. You'd find that pretty galling, bigoted, and needless to say fucked up. But no, since you think that gays (and probably everyone other than white privileged fucks like yourself) are subhuman, that analogy doesn't apply now does it?
Talk about sanctity of something, think about the revered document you're trying to defile with your petty agendas. Talk about sanctity of marriage, how sanctimonious is a marriage performed by a priest who was molesting a young boy in the back room a day before the marriage? Please explain. It seems incredibly hypocritical for straight-and-narrow people to say that straight marriage is the only true marriage when divorce rates are over 50 percent and every week a new priest (who, by trade, abhors homosexuality as a sin) gets outed for molestation. Is that at all a problem to you people? Talk about fucked up!
I guess I'm just a bleeding-heart liberal but doesn't it bother anyone that others are being treated with less rights than the majority? Isn't that inherently wrong according to the laws set down by our forefathers? I recognize of course that said slave-owning forefathers were rather hypocritical, but times have changed and we pride ourselves in "freedom." Well, George Bush, all that "freedom" that people are supposedly dying for in Iraq is obviously a complete sham since certain people aren't allowed the basic rights that others are. This country is a freaking joke.
*sigh*
In other news, I've been messing around with the layout of the site so if you notice weird rendering or boxes or anything, don't be alarmed. Most likely they'll be gone in an hour or so once I've finished messing around with css layout goodness. If you want to hook up an RSS feed to my site, notice the "Syndicate this Site" link on the sidebar. RSS basically is a "news feed" that tells you when I've updated my site and also shows you what I've written. it's pretty cool, because as Ryan puts it, you can read 100 news pages a day without having to click to every single one of them! I'll come up with a recommendation for a good Aggregator soon enough.
You'll notice that things look a little different. I've (relatively) successfully made the move to the Movable Type blogging system. It's quite nice. Things will probably be a bit hectic around here but bear with me and they'll be straightened out in a day or so. Until then...hang out! Not like there's anything new yet to read anyway...!
It seems endless, this starving suffocating silence that fills my belly. I can't stand it any more, I have waited for the pizza long enough. And this is what I do on a Sunday evening ... wait for pizza to be delivered and blog. To my 3-member audience (recently doubled). I've made an update to the media section in that I've changed the media to ogg vorbis format (for several reasons). It takes up much less disk space, and it sounds just as good as mp3! So check out the media and check out the ogg vorbis site. God where is that pizza!!!!
In the continuing spirit of good fun and public humiliation, I've made the decision to post on my website a story of epic proportions - a "sweeping chronicle of days gone by" raves ... that guy in the subway who always asks me for change. This will allow you, my faithful two (2) readers, the distinct pleasure of ridiculing me.
At my house, we have a candle on the stove. It's a pillar candle, it's red, and it smells. Pretty typical candle I'd say, were I forced to hazard a guess. It has safely observed our cooking attempts for weeks since it magically appeared there. Monday evening was no different when I set my water to boiling in preparation for frozen tortellini. You know, the frozen bagged kind. As I am wont to do, I set the water to boiling and left it alone. Typically it takes 20 minutes to boil water on our stove anyway, so I went away and forgot about it. Half an hour later I checked up on it, only to find a writhing mass of flame engulfing my poor pot of boiling water.
My first (and only) flash of intelligence was to turn off the gas on the stove. That said and done, I still had aforementioned writhing mass of flame to contend with. You see, the candle had melted into the depression in the stove where the burner lies, and now had formed a pool of molten, burning wax. Removing the (very) black pot didn't help. My call for help roused Liz and Lisse, who were ... predisposed in the other room, and we proceeded to have a brainstorm about exactly what should be done in a case like this. I distinctly remember Lisse saying "well, it's not a greasefire," but we were a bit hesitant to use water. So what was the next line of action? Being renters in Boston, of course we don't have a fire extinguisher. We couldn't remember if it was flour or baking powder you're supposed to use with kitchen fires. We have a lot more flour than baking powder, so flour was the next step.
All flour does, as I've learned, is burn, make things really disgusting-looking, and splatter the burning wax everywhere. So now we had several mini-fires burning on the stove, a little less flour, and still not much baking powder. Oh and we had a hole melted in the upper section of the stove. But what did we have a lot of? Water! It wasn't the brightest idea a group of twenty-somethings has ever had, but we were running out of options and the fire wasn't really going to be going anywhere anytime soon. Pour some water in carefully from the side, and voila! now we have a boiling mass of flameless, brown, flour-wax mix.
Word to the wise: Don't set your stove on fire. The cleanup just isn't worth it! On the bright side, at least we know we need to get a fire extinguisher.
Boston is an amusing place. I imagine places like Minnesota and North Dakota experience the same sort of phenomenon that we experience here. The first days when it's warmer than 30 degrees, people are busting loose like it's the fourth of July. Women shed about four layers and expose bare (gasp ... I haven't seen those in months!) legs, men rock the t-shirts. I, unfortunately, tend to be one of those people (no, I do not expose bare legs. Even if I did, they're so damn hairy you can't really call them "bare" per se). This week was unseasonably warm. Tuesday it was (supposedly) 70 degrees. Having seen the weather report that morning, I thought that wonderful 70 was actually 54. So the next day when I saw the weather report predicting 57 degrees, I thought to myself "Hot damn, it's a t-shirt day!"
Regrettably, it was not a t-shirt day.
Though it may have been 57 degrees after all, I have never felt colder as I walked t-shirted and jacketless with Kristin to the grocery store. Curse you John Hancock building and your wind-tunnel effect!
In other news, you can see the site has changed for the advent of "spring." I'll be removing the FizBox comments engine soon as no one really uses it and it is unreliable and stupid. I also want to work on an RSS feed so people don't have to visit my site manually and they can just use their aggregator. That'll probably be part of when I move over to Moveable Type (a blogging tool).
Got a few rants in the works, but nothing yet. Stay tuned!
I realize that it's definitely premature in this Massachusetts end-of-winter time, but I can't help and try to be optimistic. Note the springly colors. Ooooh. Aaah. It's this warm weather! I'll update more in a while, but I hope you enjoy the fresher look. Disclaimer: I'm still moving everything over from the old server, so you might notice a few things amiss or off. Please email me if you see anything!