Homocon

Now this is my idea of a year's end list -- 50 video jewels from 2005.

The video installations are the pieces I head for whenever I hit a modern art museum, and generally the only pieces I'll pay that much attention to. What people are doing now with video only highlights why it is that the paintings that generate any attention anymore are the ones that are covered in shit . . . even with the sound turned down, Beck beats Rembrandt to bits.

Long live the moving image!

Posted by at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The latest Pure Idiom podcast is up and running and ready for audience participation and (potentially) appreciation. The running time is just over 32 minutes, which is about 10-15 minutes longer than the usual episode running time, so it'll take a little longer to download. Think of it as a holiday bonus -- more Laurence Simon!

Click here to listen to "Pure Idiom Takes a Holiday"

In this episode, Nathan, Scott and Tinkerbell are summoned to Vegas by the VRWC to stop blogger Laurence Simon from carrying out his plan to assassinate the top ten Pajamas Media bloggers and win big at the 2005 Vegas Celebrity Dead Pool competition. But not everything is what it seems, as Tinkerbell is used as bait to set an adorably fluffy trap and our Secret Agents are caught in the crossfire.

Pure Idiom Podcasts contain explicit language. All impersonations of people and depictions of places and events (real or otherwise) are entirely fictional and meant for entertainment purposes only. Special thanks to Tom Paine of the Shire Network News podcast and the Silent Running blog for appearing as the voice of Laurence Simon.

Have a great New Year's Eve!

Posted by at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Uhm . . . okay. Now we know where they get those crappy mall Santas.

OFF TOPIC:
Did anyone else find the casual disregard for spousal affection in Mr. and Mrs. Smith to be as disturbing as I did? I switched the button in my psyche to "off" when the scene with Brad Pitt literally kicking the shit out of his fictional wife flickered across the screen . . . and that was after both characters had spent a great deal of screen time (and many many millions in special effects) attempting to outright murder one another.

Right before they had mad, animalistic sex, of course. Can't forget to include a mad, animalistic sex scene right after the husband kicks the shit out of his wife and/or the wife blows holes in the walls trying to fill her dear hubby with lead. I guess domestic violence is the new sexy.

"Achieving catharsis via punching your husband or wife in the face may begin as a tongue-in-cheek metaphor. However, as this one-note film segues into a standard-issue summer blow-'em-up, such activities eventually seem less like therapy and more like good ol’ fashioned domestic – and audience – abuse."

I mean, what's with the tango in the restaurant where Pitt as the emotionally confused husband bashes his character wife's head into the wall, nearly knocking her unconscious? Is this supposed to pass as edgy commentary on the state of the modern relationship? If so, I didn't get it, and, actually, found it very depressing to watch.

Posted by at 10:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Where in the hell is my Charlie Brown Christmas video for download on iTunes?

Hmm? Where, I ask you!

*ha-rumph*

I swear -- media distribution companies are so behind the curve. They're still stuck on the DVD even as the model moves further away from tangible property -- it's as if they watched the whole music CD vs. Napster debacle and didn't learn a thing. And it's not as if Apple developed the iPod Video for nothing.

Apple would be my frickin' hereo if they'd offer all those claymation Christmas specials for immediate download.

That way I could sing along to "I'm Mr. Heat Miser" all year long . . .

ADDENDUM:
I downloaded Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" last night and have been listening to it all day. For some reason, I'm particularly mushy about the holiday this year. Still no tree, however -- too much trouble, and the needles shed all over everything. But lots of Baileys and hot chocolate and Vince Guaraldi, yes, my preciouses, yesssss.

Posted by at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

No matter how you slice it, Intelligent Design is just creationism regifted for the 21st century.

"In one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a federal judge barred a Pennsylvania public school district Tuesday from teaching "intelligent design" in biology class, saying the concept is creationism in disguise. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones delivered a stinging attack on the Dover Area School Board, saying its first-in-the-nation decision in October 2004 to insert intelligent design into the science curriculum violated the constitutional separation of church and state"

I mean, I hold no personal animosity toward Christianity (I much prefer its tolerance of contemporary freedoms and personal ambitions over that of, say, Islam) -- but hey, I.D. proponents, you're not fooling anyone. You do know that, right?

As to why I can appreciate Christianity over Islam? Here's a great example -- after writing my post, About Face, which noted the evangelical Christian movement's efforts towards addressing HIV and AIDS in both Africa and the United States, I received this email from megachurch pastor and Saddleback Conference organizer Rick Warren, whose wife, Kay Warren, was instrumental in setting the Saddleback HIV/AIDS Conference in motion:

Hey Nathan

RE: About Face -- you’re right. We as evangelicals blew it on AIDS. We’re late in mobilizing. I ask your forgiveness for that, and for any hurt that has ever been done to you by “so-called Christians” who do not represent the compassion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus tells me to “love your neighbor as yourself” so I intend to wake up the church on caring.

rick warren
______________________

I'm just a semi-anonymous gay guy scrawling his opinions across the Internet, and while I don't have to agree with the way Rick Warren phrases every single one of his statements, or with what he believes in general, I can stand back and appreciate the train of thought that brought him to send me an email, and the evolutionary shift within the evangelical community that this email might just represent.

On the other hand, I'm still waiting for Islam's Wittenburg moment . . . and I'm not holding my breath.

Posted by at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

It's Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on line six -- he wants to know why you haven't paid your cell phone bill.

"The scam only came to light after law professor Susan Drummond challenged a mobile phone of $12,000 (Canadian) she received after her return from a month-long trip to Israel. The monster mobile bill listed more than 300 calls made in August to foreign countries including Libya, Pakistan, Russia and Syria. Drummond was told she'd have to foot the bill despite her protests than she'd never previously made overseas calls using the account. Her normal bill was around $75."

What's the matter, Susan -- don't you believe in the cause? The BBC sure seems to.

Posted by at 5:21 PM | Permalink

I have a business associate of mine who's working with a filmmaker on getting a decently budgeted action-adventure project off the ground (yeah -- another one of those), and the script calls for a Latin-American woman who will play a mid-thirties in age wife/mother character who's an integral part of the action/adventure plot rather than a stand-and-scream mom.

He asked me if I had any ideas as to an actress I thought might be a good choice for such a role, and Patricia Velasquez immediately came to mind -- a stunningly beautiful supermodel/actress who's the right age range and has already proved herself capable of handling the action genre in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

But I thought I'd ask readers visiting this site if they had ideas to offer of their own. I mean, the bigger the suggestion pool, the better. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Posted by at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Albert Maysles, the so-called Godfather of the Documentary, gave an interview to Aaron Dobbs at Gothamist.com. Below is an excerpt from the interview, where Dobbs asks Maysles about Maysles' controversial appearance in the documentary, Michael Moore Hates America:

Dobbs: You appeared in the documentary "Michael Moore Hates America", but there's been some controversy both about what you said and your very presence in the film.

Maysles: What you don't know about that is that when they finished filming me I heard one of them say, "Michael Moore hates America," and I said, "Wait a minute. What's that all about?" I told them, "No, I'm not signing a release," and I didn't. But I consulted my lawyer, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. In a sense they had stolen some of that footage. They had misrepresented themselves, and I never would have participated in that kind of a film.

See here for a video clip from the interview that Mike Wilson had with Albert Maysles while filming for "Michael Moore Hates America". You must have Quicktime to watch the video.

Now you tell me, after watching that clip, if you think that #1. Albert Maysles overheard them talking about the name of the documentary only after they'd finished filming him; #2. Albert Maysles said, "Wait a minute. What's that all about . . . No, I'm not signing a release"; and #3 that Wilson misrepresented himself, that the footage was "stolen" or that Maysles displayed any aversion whatsoever to the title or the subject matter of the documentary after he was explicitly told the title and subject matter.

My favorite quote from the clip is when, after Maysles learns that the documentary's title is "Michael Moore Hates America" (while the cameras are obviously rolling), he says: "Ahhh - I think he does . . . and if he does, then that's the title."

Hmph. Misrepresentation, my ass.

ADDENDUM:
Apparently, Maysles has his "I was a victim to a couple of lying kids" fabrication down pat. In an interview with Film Freak Central, he repeats his new mantra: "As they were filming me, I didn't know who they were, but at the end of the filming, I overheard one of them mention the title to the other--Michael Moore Hates America--and I said, "What's that all about?" . . . "

See here for another clip where Wilson clearly tells Maysles, at the very beginning of their interview, who they are and what the documentary he's interviewing Maysles for is all about. Maysles even tells Wilson that a documentary examining the manipulative editing of Michael Moore is an idea he's had himself, and it's "a good idea" . . . but somehow, in the interval between the interview and Maysles' desire to re-establish his liberal cred for his upcoming MOMA retrospective, the story has turned into Wilson "misrepresenting" himself, and how Maysles "never would have participated in that kind of film."

So much for the power of truth.

Pauline Kael, a well-known film critic for the New Yorker, suggested back in 1970 that Maysles had staged scenes and fabricated the spontaneity of his Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter, the movie which made Maysles a household name among documentarians. Maysles has gone on record as claiming that what Kael said about his work was "hurtful" and factually incorrect, but given Maysles' shaky relationship to the facts regarding his own appearance in Michael Moore Hates America, perhaps Kael had Maysles' number all along.

Posted by at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Why, when it takes three months to lose five pounds, does it take only one week of parking my ass on a chaise lounge in Kapalua to fit them all snugly back into place? Damn bathroom scale -- liar! LIAR!

Posted by at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It seems fitting that as my scheduled time in Maui dwindles down and the gin is running out, that I should be left to the last five contestants in the Best Photo Blog category of the 2005 Wizbang Weblog Awards.

What with the LGBT category dissolving into "I'm an angry lesbian and they're all Republican Fucktards!" and "Vote for me because I'm cuuuuuuuute!", I thought it best to simply look away and focus on the Photo Blog category, as I think it gets far less attention than it should, and way less than it warrants. Here are my thoughts on the last five nominations of the bunch, including my own personal favorite that I would love to see win the category, but which, sadly, is not even close.

I think Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities can relate . . .

11. Sopheave de Lumiere: Not one of my favorites of the bunch, but not bad, either. While Margaret Andrews has no formal training in the art of photography, what she manages to convey in her photoblog is the narcissistic charm of the artist who focuses upon her own life as a body of work (and I mean that as a compliment). Much like Chuck Close contributed mightily to the modern art movement through his compelling, and constantly evolving, self-portraits, Andrews invites the viewer into her own ambient space and creative psyche, introducing us to her surroundings, friends and personal journeys as she aims and shoots. The results are uneven at this point in time, but when she hits, she's right up there with the pros.

12. Polaroid Diary: Sadly defunct, Matt Balara's Polaroid Diary was a pean to the magic of the 70's era camera. While most photographic artistes boast of their lenses, digital gymnastics and/or rare 35-mm models, Polaroid Diary made more than fair use of the lowly form of rip and watch it emerge. I can only hope that he one day plays his own Frankenstein game and brings the monster back to life.

13. Rion: Just what I've always thought a good photo blog should be, Rion Nakaya wields her camera the way a writer wields a sword, er, computer keyboard, er, pen -- yeah, that's it. I view her photo entries the way I would read text on a blog page.

14. Mute: The best photo blog in, like, the history of all photo blogs, Mute makes my heart beat faster, my brain turn all aflutter and my knees go weak. If I were the king of the world, Miles would be my personal shutter-bug, and I'd appoint him his own wine and food taster because it's a harsh world out there, and there's no greater threat to the royal photographer than a scorned Chromasia. I love you, Miles. May you take pictures forever.

15. Shutterblog: How the hell did this piece of crap get on the finalist list? Oh, that's right -- Kevin added it at the last minute. Figures. Visit the site at your own peril. Death from boredom awaits.

Posted by at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Because Pam's House Blend reads like Andrew Sullivan's alter-ego in the aftermath of a crystal-meth binge, Gay Patriot is not so subtly trying to purchase votes by pledging to donate $1 for every vote received to a military charity and Brat Boi School reminds me of the kind of cute but emotionally dramatic guys I used to file restraining orders against when I was in my mid-twenties (I kid, I kid!), I want you all to look away from the trainwreck of the Best LGBT Award and focus on the Best Photo Blog Award, instead.

Since there's nothing like art to soothe the addled beast (and some bloggers are getting pretty damn addled over a contest in which the ones who come out on top win, well . . . nothing), I offer a brief overview of Photo Bloggers 6 through 10 (may they live forever, and may you always grace them with your Internet traffic):

6. Photojunkie Squared: Rannie Turingan's photo blog is an unassuming, intimate perspective on the larger world in which he seems to bemusedly find himself. Combining a would-be professional's eye with a snap-shooter's heart, Turingan utilizes what he calls "old, crappy" film cameras over digital models because he prefers what he considers the magic of film as opposed to the precise, often clinical nature of the strictly digital era. I find his photographs warmly personal, and sometimes touching.

7. Satan's Laundromat: A photo blog of New York "with an emphasis on urban decay, strange signage, and general weirdness," Mike at SL captures the everyday character of urban clutter and elevates it into art. A Macy's parade balloon, a street sign, graffiti on a wall, a smoothie stand during a trip to Tokyo -- SL catalogues and transforms its subjects into a sum that's larger than their individual natures might suggest, while ever reminding the viewer that beauty, if not always obvious, really is everywhere.

8. Sugarfused: A deft combination of writer's blog with photo blog, Sugarfused focuses more on nature pics than is my personal preference, but that said, her photos of flowers are sometimes amazingly sensual a la Georgia O'Keeffe, if you're into that sort of thing. Her writing style is also casual and friendly, and she has a loyal following of devoted fans.

9. Daily Dose of Imagery: One of the heavyweights of the photo blogging world, Sam Javanrou's blog is a marvel of light, mood, color, form and texture. He jumps nimbly from landscapes to portraits to architecture and urban fragments without losing even a bit of balance, and every photo is worth the double-take you're sure to perform.

10 Zombie Time: A welcome addition to the mix, Zombie Time chronicles the nuts and fruits of the anti-globalist, anti-capitalist left in snapshot form. This is not an art site, but, rather, a political journal in photographic form, and, as such, will undoubtedly be referenced decades into the future for its exhaustive visual examples of a political movement that mainstream society abandoned along the way towards greater social interconnectivity.

Posted by at 11:07 PM | Permalink

My favorite category in the Wizbang Weblog Awards is the Photo Blog category. With so many yakkity yakkity blogs competing for attention in nearly every single other category, the photo blogs stand out for being works of art in a blogosphere that's most often awash in a good deal less than its Sunday best.

If you haven't already, make sure you spend some time investigating the Photo Blogs, and honor their work with a vote -- not because you think that one of them has to be better than the other, but because each one of them deserves just that slight bit of recognition (and because their presence in the Weblog Awards adds a sense of dignity to what would otherwise be just another loud, clamoring popularity contest).

Here are my own impressions of the first five Photo Blog finalists (in order of appearance):

1. A Walk Through Durham Township: Kathleen Connally's subject matter isn't always up my alley, and there are times when I think she borders on being overly sentimental, but she nonetheless has a sharp eye for color and texture, and the sense of captured motion in her photographs is at times extraordinary.

2. Brown Glasses: Rachel James is an American designer/photographer working out of the Netherlands. Her composition and subject matter are entirely Dutch, and each photograph is a painstaking detail of James' life in the Netherlands. It's like watching a documentary unfurl, frame by frame. Dutch Realism in its contemporary form.

3. Chromasia: A true find. David Nightingale's photographs are uncanny, for lack of a better word. He's all angles and colors and juxtapositions. Chromasia was listed as one of TIME magazine's 50 Coolest Websites in 2005, and there are over a thousand damn good reason why.

4. Gut Feeling: Precision crafted photos of signage, lettering, graffiti and random images on walls. The human-free compositions set this photo blog apart from its peers. It's as if the photographer is closely shadowing society, yet is only interested in documenting the evidence of its aftermath.

5. Japan Window: Andy Gray lays claim to one of my favorites of the finalists -- the photographs are casual, clean and personal. There's a sense of emotional involvement with the subject matter that I don't often experience when looking through photo blogs, and there's always a companion text to go along with each daily photo, offering clarity for the viewer while surmounting the overt detachment that often plagues professional photography.

***Tomorrow -- A Thousand Words: Part Two***

Posted by at 1:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm a big fan of Laurence Simon's blog, This Blog is Full of Crap. In all the time that I've been reading TBIFOC, Simon has displayed an intuitive grasp of what most everyone else who blogs (including myself) only dimly fumbles toward on the best of days -- the effortless mix of the personal and the political, the rant with the rave, the sledgehammer soothed by the velvet caress. In other words, Laurence has achieved, with little fanfare and next to no overt pretensions, the perfect blog (with cats!).

It's not sparkly or flashy, it doesn't change its skin to suit the shifting seasons, it never bites its tongue, flatters its peers or lectures its readers, and best of all, TBIFOC never pulls its punches. Which is what makes Laurence, even on his off days, a must read -- because you know that, whenever you hit the TBIFOC channel on the remote, you'll always get a pure, unadulterated dose of . . . huh? What? You say that Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities has risen from his Internet grave and is back to blogging?

Well, then, fuck Laurence Simon -- go (no, RUN!) to Beautiful Atrocities for the best blog experience in, like, ever!

Jeff is back.

Sorry, Laurence. Ask the Prophet is now second on my list of daily reads. Can you ever forgive me?

Posted by at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My favorite quote from the December issue of WIRED magazine:

"There's nothing wrong with blogging or podcasting, but they feel to me a bit like CB radio. What I think will happen is that the best bloggers and podcasters will eventually be subsumed into the professional media. After all, every blogger I know is trying to find a way to generate revenue. Blogging and podcasting will eventually morph into something that looks a whole lot more like The New York Times, and the Times will come down a step or two and learn to give up a bit of its patrician nature." -- Robert Cringely

Don Surber makes the point that 00.07% of Internet traffic is directed toward blogs (which is what made the delusions of "gravitas" behind amateur hour at the OSM even funnier).

Behold the transitional phase. Love live its replacements.

Posted by at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So here I am in Maui -- the weather is in the low 80's with a constant breeze, the surf is crashing onto the beach out beyond the front of the house and weather-browned boys are riding the waves. There was a small marriage ceremony on the beach just off to the right of the house -- a Hawaiian minister in a black silk robe billowing in the wind, a bride and groom, and what looked like only immediate family, all crowned in flowers. The air is warm, the sun is only just starting to set behind us and my gin and tonic needs refreshing.

Seattle who?

The house where we're staying is amazing, and a little funny. The BF calls it "The House of Pillows" -- every chair is overstuffed, and every sofa is overflowing with so many throw pillows that it's difficult to find a place to sit. But all the rooms are enormous, there are floor to ceiling windows that slide fully open, and the entire face of the house overlooks the ocean. We were, like, "We're coming back here next year!" -- until we were told that this is the last year the owners will be offering the property for rent, as they're moving to Hawaii permanently from their home in Chicago.

I can fully understand.

I have a rough draft for the next Pure Idiom script that I have to carve my way through and bounce back to both Scott and Laurence so that we can have it finished by the time I arrive back in Seattle, and we have friends showing up tomorrow that we haven't seen in too long a time. Much vodka and gin will be consumed.

I'm already sinking into the chill-out island mentality, and I've only been here for two days. It's going to be tough to leave once the week is over -- I just hope no one gets shot on the plane trip home.

And is it just me, or is Bipolar Disorder the new ADHD?

ADDENDUM:
Sat and watched a terrible mini-series on the SciFi channel -- The Triangle. Everything old is new again, what with cheesy 70's era conspiracies making their comebacks on cable television.

The funniest part was the Greenpeace guy who drove around in an SUV and owned a 750HP gas-guzzling cigarette boat. Oh, and the fact that, in order to save the world, the main characters had to convince the government to do nothing. Yes, that's right. "The Big Plan" involved letting nature just take its course, because, you know, all the brains and technology at the military's disposal was just going to ruin everything and destroy the entire space-time continuum.

"You just have to believe me," shouted Eric Stolz at the climactic showdown, with tears in his eyes and not a shred of proof on offer for a reason as to why a mission that cost hundreds of billions of dollars and spanned decades should simply be aborted.

*sigh*

What liberal media?

Posted by at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Tis the season for Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) in Seattle, and the BF and I are taking matters into our own hands with a timely trip to Hawaii. We leave tomorrow morning, so I'll be spending most of today cleaning up the house, putting all our clutter away and packing a suitcase.

I'm taking my laptop with me so that I can sit out on the deck, overlooking the ocean, and tap tap tap away at the keyboard, but my postings may be a bit sporadic for the next week -- but I'll be thinking of you all, nonetheless, as I sip my gin and tonics in the sun, lulled to a peaceful, mind-numbing calm by the crashing of ocean waves.

And as if it isn't depressing enough that I'm talking about my vacation while you're still sitting at home, take a look at this: "A 16-year-old California boy won a premier high school science competition Monday for his innovative approach to an old math problem that could help in the design of airplane wings."

Hmmph. When I was sixteen, I was struggling to get a "B" in advanced algebra.

The other winners of the contest: "Anne Lee, 17, a senior at Phoenix Country Day School in Paradise Valley, Ariz. and Albert Shieh, 16, a junior at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Ariz., shared the $100,000 top prize in the team category. They improved computer technology that could help locate the genetic roots of some inherited diseases like Alzheimer's, autism and bipolar disorder."

And I complain when my computer crashes over something really stupid that I've done.

*sigh*

Oh, and the funniest part about the 16 year old top-prize winner -- he was home-schooled! Maybe my parents made a mistake by sending me to public school.

"He is a super-duper mathematics student," said lead judge Constance Atwell, a consultant and former research director at the National Institutes of Health. "It was almost impossible for our judges to figure out the limits of his understanding during our questioning. And he's only 16 years old," she said.

Well thank god somebody out there is this smart, otherwise we'd never get anywhere as a species, I'd be unlikely to get that Eternal Youth elixir that I swear somebody once promised me, and I so dearly want to take a roundtrip to Mars before I keel right over.

While I'm off to the land of sun and beaches, make sure you catch up on all the Pure Idiom podcasts. There's nothing like a little political humor to keep the dreary winter blues away. And also cast your votes in Wizbang's Weblog Awards -- there are categories for Best Blog, Best Blog Design, Best Military Blog, Best Photo Blog, Best Conservative Blog and more. Yours truly is featured in the LGBT Blog category (much to my surprise), but there's a category for everyone, and you'll be introduced to a number of great blogs that you might not otherwise have stumbled across.

Go vote!

P.S. -- Make sure you check out this year's entries for Best Photo Blog. Some of the finalists are amazing. Today I'm scrolling through the photographs at Mute. Stunningly beautiful work.

OFF TOPIC:
As if you weren't already aware, Wikipedia has a problem, and if they desire to be taken seriously as a source of information, they're going to have to figure out a way to separate the nut-jobs and vandals from the valid information contributors.

As Fred Wilson at AVC states: "I know a number of people who have gone to wikipedia and were stunned to see that there was an entry about them and then horrified to find out that it was all false. Character assassinations in Wikipedia are not new . . . But the reality is that Wikipedia suffers from the same curse that all user generated content services face, and that is when something is truly open, people will abuse it. The Internet itself is the proof that that."

Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion claims that Wikipedia will be the next Google -- well, not if it continues to be plagued with falsehoods and conspiracy theories.

It's been said that over 50% of all Wikipedia entries in English are posted by only 0.7% of Wikipedia members. Which means that, while it may be Open Source, Wikipedia suffers from 1. an almost complete disinterest from the general public, and 2. excessive input from a fractional minority of obsessive kooks and/or members with an ideological axe to grind. Hence the falsehoods and errors.

Using Wikipedia as a source of information at present would be akin to scrolling through the comment sections at the Democratic Underground or Little Green Footballs in order to glean a comprehensive history of both the Conservative and Liberal political movements. In other words, it's not a good idea.

Posted by at 12:50 PM | Permalink

The latest Pure Idiom Podcast is up and running, and you can visit the Pure Idiom website, or click here to directly access "Misery Loves Company: Part 2".

The plot follows our two secret agents of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (and Tinkerbell the talking cat) as they flee a crazed Harriet Miers and head to the Vast Right Wing Headquarters for help. Tinkerbell is mistaken for the latest piece of VRWC spyware, Scott confesses that he has a VRWC implant, Nathan learns the truth about Karl Rove, and President Bush and Dick Cheney explain how difficult it can be to keep a vast conspiracy running like a well-oiled machine.

Pure Idiom Podcasts contain explicit language. All impersonations of people and depictions of places and events (real or otherwise) are entirely fictional and meant for entertainment purposes only . . . so go listen already!

Laurence Simon is the voice of Tinkerbell, I do the voice of Nathan (of course) and edit and produce the episodes, while Scott McCollum is the voice of, well, Scott, President Bush, Dick Cheney, Judge Scarlito and Harriet Miers, plus various marines and VRWC members.

I love Scott's impression of President Bush . . .

OFF TOPIC:
Attend Mass in Russia.

As I type this, it's 10:52 P.M. Pacific Coast time, and it's 7:52 A.M. in Russia . . . worshippers are filing in and out. It honestly never ceases to amaze me that we are so interconnected thanks to the advent of the web.

Here's more:

2. What looks like The University of Helsinki Library.

3. The cash register at some anonymous shop.

4. Washington Street webcam -- look at all the pretty Christmas lights!

5. A town square in Poland.

6. Puppy in the window.

7. Near and dear to my own heart -- someone's Koi pond!

8. A cafe in the Netherlands.

9. A lonely garden chair. At least, it was lonely when I tuned in . . .

10. Shopping!

Posted by at 8:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If it's considered "global" warming, wouldn't you expect it's warming effects to be, well, global?

Okay, ha ha, I know that linking to Limbaugh for anything beyond a partisan chuckle isn't the most sound idea, but I did like this particular quote: "Global warming is a political issue, and as such, it cannot die; it will not die." And he's right. It doesn't matter how much counter-evidence is presented to the theory of global warming, nor do global warming adherents care about scientists who come out with research that doesn't supports their man-made-warming hypothesis -- the theory of human-centered global warming, in its present incarnation, resembles more a religious belief that must be taken on faith more than anything else, and as such, just like religion, it looks unlikely to ever vacate the political sphere.

Take this 2002 article out of Oregon State University regarding global warming: "It's by no means certain that climatic changes of this magnitude and speed will come to pass, the scientists say, but even the reasonable possibility that they might are a cause for serious concern . . . 'To answer difficult questions such as this we depend a lot on our computer models, and in this area different models reach different conclusions,' said Peter Clark, an OSU professor of geosciences and one of the world's leading experts on glaciers and prehistoric climate changes."

In other words, no one really knows anything beyond "reasonable possibilities" about the causes and effects of long-term climate change, and there are as many different conclusions as there are different computer models, but sure, let's get hysterical about it anyway and force all the governments in the world to enact regulations that are aimed at slowing industrial growth even though we don't know that regulating the hell out of industrialization will have any significant long-term beneficial effect on the global climate because . . . because . . . well, we have to do something, and large industrialized nations are a broad target as they have deep pockets and so can be easily blackmailed with the threat of bad publicity, whether the bad PR is warranted or not.

I mean, from the fevered rhetoric emanating from the global warming corner, you'd think that everything must have been just dandy in our pre-industrialized Hobbit Lands until those awful polluters moved in and established the electrical grid, developed indoor plumbing, built roads, airlines and international shipping facilities, facilitated hi-tech medical research and practices, organized against our tendency towards inefficient sprawl, utilized the outer atmosphere, mechanized agricultural production, extended human life-spans and so ruined the neighborhood!

Right?

I swear, you can drop a house-load of paperwork on a lefty that supports the case for the democratization of the Middle East and yet they'll still spit in your eye about the current struggle in Iraq, but toss another rumination about catastrophic climate change in their direction and they react like a 14 year old boy at the climax of a wet dream. It's as if environmentalists comfort themselves by asserting human-centered causes for events which are wildly beyond their control -- Hurricane Katrina was a perfect example of this, as the natural disaster along the Gulf Coast states was quickly blamed on the United States' refusal to ratify the Kyoto Treaty. It's a mindset that harkens back to when tribal communities pitched virgins into volcanoes in order to appease the gods . . . "See? We can control the uncontrollable." And should the volcano go ahead and erupt anyway, they would find yet another human-centered reason -- "Agh! One virgin isn't enough -- find ten more!"

Only instead of virgins, environmentalists want to sacrifice industrial and technological progress. Sorry, I mean, quote-progress-unquote. But guess what happens when emotionally driven, hypothesis based treaties like Kyoto don't do what they're supposed to do? Mothers, hide your daughters and lock your doors (only, in this case, we'll probably be hiding our computers and locking our garages)!

Let's face facts here -- if environmentalists really cared so much about the planet, they'd be the loudest voices encouraging and supporting every conceivable effort to enable the human population to leave Earth and survive in space, independently of any geographically based ecosystem. I mean, what could possibly be better for the planet than that we all blast off and simply leave it to itself? Besides, it's not like our precious Gaia is going to live forever anyway, no matter how many SUV's the eco-fundamentalists vandalize . . .

Posted by at 9:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In what can only be an early indicator of strong retail sales for the 2005 holiday season, Apple's iPod Nano 2GB model is flying off the shelves, with even huge retailer Best Buy claiming that they're running out of stock and Apple Matters writing "go to Turkey Creek Super Target and look in the iPod storage case. Today’s inspection revealed that Target was, once again, sold out of iPods."

This bears little resemblance to the Tickle Me Elmo-type fads of past years, as the 2GB Nano clocks in at just shy of $200, which is not an inexpensive piece of Christmas cheer by most anyone's standards, yet demand is so high that both Amazon and Best Buy are selling completely out of the music players, while eBay Marketplace Research is reporting that sales of the even higher priced 4GB Nanos ($249 dollars) jumped 95 percent from November 25 and 26, compared to just a week earlier.

Great news for Apple, but that's not why this bit of news caught my attention. For months, we've been inundated with gloomy economic forecasts, yet if everything's going to hell in a hand-basket, why then are consumers snapping up luxury gadgetry at an unrelenting pace?

Brian Wesbury, chief economist for Claymore Advisors in Lisle, and one of the nation's top 10 economic forecasters, likens America's present economy with that of Industrial Revolutionary Europe. "There is a great deal of pain, but there is more opportunity than ever before," he said, referring to the economy's present transition from factory labor to services and technology. "Between 2001 and 2005, energy spending has gone up by $225 billion. But personal income has risen $1.5 trillion during that same time period."

Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, also points out that income per capita is continuing to increase, with a record 9 percent of individual taxpayers reporting earnings of more than $100,000 per year, and the spread of wealth shows no sign of slowing. With the advent of the technological age, the traditional barriers to personal success (land ownership, family ancestry, the cost of industrial machinery) are falling away. Brian Wesbury notes that this is why education and training are so important in today's world -- with the right training and a shaker of imagination, anyone can carve a niche for himself in the coming virtual world due to the continuously decreasing prices and widespread availability of the necessary technological tools.

Of course, in an increasingly democratic spread of opportunity, there's also the danger that someone will just outright copy your best ideas and so run off with your share of the brass ring . . . but hey, it's not like the brass ring is shrinking.

As technology replaces industry, new markets emerge and costs decrease. Even nations that are presently struggling to modernize will benefit from the rapidly accelerating pace of technological development, as machinery becomes less expensive, more reliable and more standardized. Hence, even more opportunities for their citizenry will emerge, and without the pesky baggage of outmoded but hugely bloated industries to replace.

But what does any of this have to do with me? Well, it's all about a hand-held vision of the future (baby!). I want me one of those hot little iPod Video numbers, as it's only a matter of time before full-scale visual content is packaged for rapid downloading. Instead of carrying around my own personal jukebox, I'm looking forward to carrying around a Mega-GB hard-drive stuffed with personal and commercial video content. I mean, what's next on the horizon? It can only be the iReality.

As Tom Peters predicts in his book, Re-Imagine!, the successful businesses of tomorrow are not companies that create products, but companies that create a lifestyle. And today's consumers are already showing themselves not only willing, but downright eager, to shell out some serious cash to purchase membership in the ground-floor of Apple's shiny new world because they see in it something of the future.

Talk about ka-ching!.

Posted by at 1:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)