Yearly Archives: 2005

Bullshit, Bullshit and More Bullshit

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Between Rove and Roberts, this is getting little play in the mainstream media, but the House voted to extend the PATRIOT Act yesterday. Billmon reminds us why this is a very, very, very bad idea. PATRIOT is a hodgepode of expanded search & seizure powers protected by a veil of secrecy in the name of “national security,” and will end up being abused even if it hasn’t been already. Governments are loathe to give up power once they get it, and every government in the history of the world has abused the trust and power granted it by its citizens. Let your congresscritter know how you feel.

In the “useless security theater” department, NY will now do random bag searches on the subway. Like that’s gonna deter anybody from anything.

Finally, it looks like somehow we got the Irish drunk enough to give the CIA authority to secretly interrogate Irish citizens in Ireland even if they’re not suspected of any (Irish) crime. WTF? We proclaim we’re defenders of liberty, but we consistently behave as agents of government power trumping said liberty.

Damn.

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The Oxford American shames us by pointing out that Larry Brown died when we weren’t paying attention. He had a heart attack last November 24. He was 53.

Coverage still up at NPR and the MIssissippi Writers Page. If you haven’t read what he’s written — Pat Conroy famously said he wrote “like a force of nature” — do yourself a favor and pick up something from your local independent bookshop.

We love that guy.

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So, Scottie has been getting a pretty rough time from the White House press corps over the Rove thing and, well, the lies he told about the Rove thing months ago. They’re being pretty tenacious, and refusing to let the issue drop, which is pretty amazing. Jon Stewart describes this phenomenon best:

We have secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters.

Watch This Movie

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Primer is the best $7,000 movie you’re likely to see this year; they certainly loved it at Sundance. Bullet pitch: garage-based tech startup guys attempting to manipulate gravity end up manipulating time. It’s quick (77 minutes), which is good, as you’ll probably want to watch it more than once.

Here’s something fun.

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And by “fun” we mean “that sucks.”

We’re trying to send a set of addresses to our friends who are throwing us a party. As it happens, Apple’s address book has no “arbitrary export” feature, which SUCKS. It’ll do VCards (which are great for moving between address management tools, but lousy for arbitrary data manipulation), but that’s all. However, it does have an address-label printing feature, which OUGHT to be at least good enough to get us past this roadblock (leaving aside the issue of data-lock-in for a minute, anyway).

However, in previewing the labels, we noticed that sometimes it was using the partner/spouse information in the addressee line (as in “Chris B___ and Cathy P____”) and sometimes not (as in “Edgar A____”, with his lovely wife nowhere to be found). Both records had the spouses listed in the “spouse” field. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth resulted before we were able to figure out for the Applecare dude exactly why this was. (We’re pretty sure this isn’t the way information is supposed to flow on those calls.)

As it turns out, when printing labels, the Address Book checks to see if there’s a record for the spouse. Unaccountably, if there is, it decides NOT to append the spouse name to the adressee line. Sure enough, Mrs Edgar has a record of her own, but Cathy does not (sorry, Cathy). The theory held up well; the minute we created a record for Cathy, she disappeared from the addressee line with Chris.

But it gets even suckier: For some reason, Tony’s spouse wasn’t showing up, either, and Emily doesn’t even have a record; she’s listed — with both first and last names — only as his spouse. However, we do know two other people named Emily, but with different last names. This partial match is enough to make Address Book omit her from the addressee line.

The AppleCare response? Don’t use the Spouse field, which means returning to the morass of somehow fitting differently-surnamed couples into a single set of firstname, lastname fields. Uh, no thanks, jackasses.

So: Way to go, Apple! Looks like I’m about to fucking TYPE the addresses into Excel manually. What. The. Fuck?

In which we celebrate resurrections

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The red beast (file foto) is being repaired even as we speak, ending a 9 month fallow period wherein it quietly and forlornly leaked expensive synthetic oil onto Heathen Central’s garage floor.

How much? To preserve topicality, we will state only that current estimates are, roughly, 3.5 wedding cakes, but that includes an annual service, oil change, new spark plugs, miscellaneous maintenance and a new battery in addition to fixing the aforementioned oil leaks (yes, plural). It may remain a bad idea executed very well, but at least it’s OUR exemplar thereof. Vroom Vroom.

Live 8

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So, twenty years ago, we wanted to watch the original Live Aid on TV, but for whatever reason our mother insisted on going camping instead as a “family activity.” We were not, she said, staying home for some concert on TV. This met with precisely the sort of reaction from 15-year-old Heathen that you’d expect.

The new Live 8 is nice to see, twenty years later, but cannot be the cultural event the original was. We hope it’s more successful, though, since Geldof presumably has a bit more savvy and pull behind him now than he did then.

The most irritating thing about it, though, is the hopeless nature of the broadcast. Fundamentally, they’re not doing concert coverage; they’re doing some sort of awful meta-coverage. The direction is awful; for example, they managed to never have a camera on Pete Townshend when he pulled his signature windmill, for example. The on-air talent is pulled from that most vapid of all possible pools, MTV’s “veejays.” They keep referring to one-hit, current-hot bands as “amazing” and “incredible” as if they’d just seen Jesus on lead guitar. A more systemic problem lurks, though: the coverage is clearly tailored for an 8-year-old with ADD. Virtually no entire songs are shown, and we’re pretty sure the first time we’ve seen two songs in a row from the same act is now, with the much-ballyhooed Pink Floyd reunion (“Breathe” followed by “Money”) — and even then they interrupted “Comfortably Numb” to let some stupid twat babble over it.

More proof — as if we needed it — that people are dumb as posts

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The Discovery Channel’s list of the greatest Americans has some interesting problems. As one friend put it: “I’m inclined to distrust any list of ‘great Americans’ that puts Oprah Fucking Winfrey more than 50 spots ahead of Nicola Tesla.”

Here’s a list of people simply not on the list at all: Jim Henson, Dr. Seuss, D.W. Griffiths, Eugene O’Neill, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim.

To put that in perspective, the list does include Madonna, three Bushes (Barbara, George H. W. and George W.), Mel Gibson, Ellen DeGeneres, Tom Hanks, Pat Tillman, and Dr. Phil, for the love of God.

Follow-up
We have been alerted to this hilarious column wherein Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten has a bit of sport with PR flack Elizabeth Hillman at the Discovery Channel. A sample:

Have you seen the list of 100 people nominated to be the greatest American of all time, as chosen in an online poll? It’s a hoot. It’s going to be the basis of a month-long series on the Discovery Channel in June, featuring runoff elections where the public will finally choose a winner. I decided I owed it to history — the history of American humor — to phone a Discovery Channel spokesperson for comment. Me: So, are you happy with the 100 nominees? Elizabeth Hillman: Well, we were pleased at the number of people who voted. The results are not for us to judge. This is who America chose. This is the pulse of America. Me: America seems to have a dangerously erratic pulse. For example, there seems to be a bit of a bias toward recent times, since more than half of the nominees are currently alive or were alive in the last five years. Does that trouble you? Or are you just relieved that Lincoln made the cut? Elizabeth: Ha-ha. Well, I’m fascinated by the diversity of opinion! Me: Not only are both George Bushes on the list, but Laura Bush and Barbara Bush, too! Whereas, say, James Madison is not. So, basically, Laura Bush and Barbara Bush are deemed to be greater Americans than the person who wrote the United States Constitution. What philosophical statement do you think the American public might be expressing by this decision? Do you think the statement might be, “We are as shallow as a loogie on the sidewalk?” Or, “We are self-involved, self-congratulatory, parochial-minded nitwits with a ludicrous ignorance of our own national history?” Which one?

Because he manages to zing CNN and “Left Behind” at the same time

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Fred “Slacktivist” Clark has been reading and dissecting the Left Behind series on Fridays — he refers to it as “Pretrib Porno,” after the nutbird faction of Christianity these books represent.

Among the literary failings he’s uncovered is a staggering lack of imagination. The world of LB involves a sudden, literal rapture — meaning that every true-blue Christian and child below the age of accountability was suddenly and bodily whisked away to heaven. By Fred’s reckoning (which he freely admits may be off, as he doesn’t agree with what Jenkins and LeHaye clearly think of as “real” Christianity), literally billions (Fred figures 37% of us) of people have suddenly vanished, including everyone on earth who orders from the kid’s menu. The scale of such an event is hard to internalize or understand, sure, but when you’re reading a book about such an event, you sort of expect the author not to suffer this sort of failure of imagination — but J & L fail here miserably. He’s got a character in a hotel trying to relax with CNN on, but he makes no mention of what’s on CNN. Fred puts it this way:

Whatever the precise figure of the disappeared, however, we can safely assume that it included hundred of thousands, if not millions of young, attractive white women. Buck is watching CNN. Think of it: Millions of missing white women, all at the same time. What would CNN do? Would they cover them all? Or maybe just the blonde ones?

Amusing Things Noticed in Louisville, Kentucky, Pt. 1

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In no particular order:

  • The waiter was able to give directions to a sushi restaurant that included “and turn right on Muhammad Ali…”
  • The 13th floor of out hotel isn’t missing; in fact, it’s the “club floor,” featuring nicer furniture, better beds, robes, complimentary cocktails and breakfast, and a dedicated concierge. (We get to stay on said floor due to a familial connection between client company ownership and former hotel ownership, and at a rate that’s frankly absurdly good.)
  • There’s a sign in the airport that boasts of the city’s status as “America’s 16th Largest City.” This reminds us of “Red, White, and Blaine” for some reason.

Endorsement: NeverLost

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We freely admit that in the past we’ve disparaged gimmicky add-ons like Hertz’s NeverLost system as yet anther tool to transfer money from marks to cons. However, our recent business travel experiences have showed us the error of that assumption. The NeverLost system works astoundingly well, and even manages to recover pretty rapidly if you make a mistake and get “off route” on your way to some location. (When that happens, it figures out where you are and plots a new route based on your current location.) It also keeps track of locations you’ve asked for during your rental (not unlike your browser’s history), so going back to the client site (e.g.) is a true no-brainer even if it’s twenty twisty miles away.

We’re not sure we’d use such a thing at home much, but in a strange city, having trustworthy navigation aids on hand is remarkably freeing. NeverLost actually interfaces with Yellow Pages info, so you can search for damn near anything. Need a mall? No problem. How about an office supply shop? Done. True, Hertz costs a bit more than the other guys, and NeverLost is only available on midsize cars and up — and adds $9 a day to your bill — but flexibility and convenience are frequently hard to come by on business trips, and NeverLost manages to deliver both with aplomb.