Thursday, June 29, 2006

Laptop Lambshmop!



Check out the new Eurotech Zypad. One step closer to that iSkin implant I've been waiting for....

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Office Space Wouldn't Take Me

We had office space. The movie about the life draining suck-jobs that my generation got stuck with: waiting tables and the big cube florescent light bath. I had a few of those jobs. 6 bosses. 2 of them were named Kenney and Denney. MS excel melted my face off all day long. One time, My Big boss, the boss of all my bosses came up to my office (at least I had a private office...) and said: (and this is gods honest truth)

BB: "Look at what Denney did with this spread sheet, this is good."
Me: "erm, actually, I uh... I did that."
BB: (not hearing me) "yeah, Denney, he does good work, try to do it like that from now on."
BB: "And Friday is "jean day," do you know what that means?"
Me: (stunned by the obviousness of the thing) "it means I can wear jeans?"
BB: (slow and inarticulate, again not hearing me) " It means you get to wear jeans... it you want to."

What frightens me is that we (talking 'bout my generation) may be the lucky ones. With all the ultra-crap life sucking cubical jobs going over seas, what work will future generations hate doing?

Whole generations of kids coming of age in fast food and Walmart?

Maybe this MSI video gives an idea... is it any surprise it's so angry? EDITED FOR A BETTER VERSION OF THE VIDEO

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Innocent When We Dream

Speaking of the conflict between our public and private selves....

I'm getting near done with the novel I've been writing for a couple of years now. Though I'm taking a brief break from writing, the novel is now fully conceptualized and mapped out and it's about 300 pages right now-- I still have a couple of important scenes to write, including the climax, but those are already fully imagined in my noggin. But basically, I expect to have a draft to burden willing friends and loved ones with by the end of the year (if I can get a break from singing work....) And, I'm really enjoying writing it- or rather, watching it write itself at this point. For a long time, I wasn't entirely happy with how the initial idea was playing out as it grew in complexity-- then quite suddenly, everything just fell into place, so that almost every word is a reflection of the 1 deep theme. I like my characters. They surprise me. But most of all, I feel like I wish someone else would write this story, because I'm really excited about reading it.

When I started this book, it was a sort of Zen Meta-technique to free my singing from the burden of self criticism. Like a straw man for the inner bully: "hey me, look over there-- that piece of garbage really sucks!"

But now, I think I might try to get it published.

Which brings back the conflict. Basically, I satirize just about everything in crass fashion. So I'm wondering about the consequences of having my name on it.

Is it different because it's fiction? There are a lot of people who put their names on controversial works of art....

And what about what I say on this blog? Where is the line of acceptability for public discourse? Our society's unquestionable "givens", Emotion, Sex, the inner machinations of human instinct? I once heard a famous singing coach explain the subtext of an art song to a class by explaining that "I think we all have rape fantasies, that's what a lot of music is, a metaphor for rape fantasy."

What about the "just plain weird?"

Now believe me, it was completely a-sexual, but last night I had this dream ( I blame this on the video for "Danger! High Voltage!".... All I can remember is this: I discovered I could tell the future with my penis, and I was really envious of Ted Danson, because his penis was a better, erm, divining rod than mine.

Just remember what Tom Waits says:

"We're innocent when we dream, when we dream we're innocent..."

Monday, June 26, 2006

Jack White is the man

The punk rock formula: Energy + simplicity= awesome.

Heard it last night and knew immediately it was a JW song-- but I thought it was a new Raconteurs song. Looked it up. really cool video to boot.

This song is sure to be a big hit.
Edited to add:
I;m a huge dork. Yeah, it's going to be a big hit, in 2004. In England. Apparently this song came out in 2003, and I just never heard it until last night. But I'm not alone, it wasn't added to youtube until this spring. And I guess Detroit rockers "electric six" deny the involvement of Jack White with their band, which is classic Jack White. From what I understand, Both parties, Jack and Electeic 6 deny even knowing who the others are "Jack White, who's he?"

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Blog identity crisis

I think that more people are going to be experiencing this....

A conflict between their public person and private and how that plays out on the internet. A friend recently felt the consequences of this conflict, and it's made me ask a lot of questions. I've always wanted my blog to be an extension of who I really am-- no border between the private and public, and even professionally I've always felt free to speak my mind. Lately, however, I've started writing several things, and then stopped because I'm not sure what some future prospective employer might think-- what if they aren't above judging me unfairly?

In the meantime, I've been publishing on a VERY anonymous public blog that to my knowledge, (thank you site meter) I'm the only one to ever have seen the page. I think because of some of the content, blogger has chosen not to list it.... so what's the point of that. And as for blogger not listing it, I just don't get it-- it really isn't much worse than the "monkey sex" thing on this blog-- the obscenity is purely philosophical, and yet it's not included in the blogger directory or the "next blog" list. Oddly, if I just wrote a pornographic sex blog it would have had 700 hits by now! Go figure.

what to do what to do.

Monday, June 05, 2006

won over

I admit it. I've been won over by the Student Prince. Who care's about the plot, and that the jokes aren't funny, the show is just plain cute, The music is fun fun fun. What else do you need in a little musical. The chorus is awesome. THis should turn out to be a great show!

And easy.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Quick note on politics

Ok, so I've always tried desperately to to avoid talking politics on this blog. I used to have a political blog, and it just stopped being interesting to me.

However, in the post below, I got on a slightly political tangent, and now I think I need to clarify my political position, so here it is:

I consider myself to be a sort of conservative, but I feel the modern "conservative movement" has been nothing less than a national disaster.

1. The "religious conservatives" in the movement are radicals. They wish to rewrite American history and American law to build a fundamentalist state. It seems quite the opposite of "conservative" to make such radical changes.... Furthermore, it is far from libertarian and anti-governmental to have such government involvement in religion.

2. The Republicans have created the most aggressive redistribution of wealth in human history-- in the upward direction. Far from capitalism, the economic platform of the Republican party is Corporate Mercantilism, (better known as fascism, though that word is now defined as "not the US.") Capitalism is the absence of government involvemnt, corporations and monopoly. The Republican party favors a strong concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the government construction of strong corporations and monopolies as an instrument of stability and security. This is not capitalism and it is not conservative.

My earnestly conservative opinion would favor returning to a more capitalist model, getting the government out of peoples lives, eliminate deficit spending and avoid non-humanitarian "nation building" which is almost always simple exploitation. Here is a Libertarian party idea (VERY CONSERVATIVE!) that I love: Replace welfare and all non-education social programs with a $10,000/ year check for life for every citizen. This includes ending corporate welfare, right down to tax payer subsidies of the business costs. Corporations make bigger demands on our infrastructure, pollute more, use more resources and create fewer jobs than small business. If they were forced to pay the true costs of their business, they wouldn't be able to compete with small localized economies. Returning to a more capitalist model would create more jobs, keep wealth local, reduce tax payer burden, keep prices lower and clean up the environment in one shot. On the personal side, it would encourage people to act more responsibly and save their government checks or at least spend them wisely.

So in some ways I'm quite conservative. At the same time, I'm not an unseeing ideologue: For example, I believe in increasing education spending, as it's an important investment in our nations future. And though the conservative in me likes a strong military as a deterrent, our current military spending is mostly a wealth redistribution scheme- giving tax payer money to corporations with little practical return. How much firepower do we need to deter other nations from an unprovoked attack? Enough to destroy the whole world 100 times? 1000? What the heck? I think once you reach the whole "destroy the world 100 times over" line, there isn't a country on the planet that would attack us without there being a reason worth dying for. From that point, the best defense is a foreign policy that doesn't give people a cause to die for-- and right now we're losing on that point!

So current movement conservatives make me into a radical... but who are the real radicals? And that's where I stand.

 
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