Fire Todd Sauerbrun
Just fucking fire him already. 21 points off of punt/kickoff team fuckups? Exhibit A:
What's surprising is that Mike Shanahan, tactician Shanahan, let Sauerbrun kick not once, but twice to Devin Hester. Both kicks straight up the middle resulted in Hester running them back for TDs. The blocked punt in the third quarter which also resulted in a Chicago TD was the icing on the shit cake.
I realize Sauerbrun caused Ellis Hobb's fumble in the 2006 playoff victory against the Patriots, and Denver was in a big bidding war with the Patriots over him earlier this year, but his direct responsibility for 21 points to a chump team like the Bears is a fire-able offense. His punt average of 48.5 yards is really respectable and all, but he showed today that he's not capable of strategic thinking. The Broncos should have dumped him after his problems with ephedra came to light earlier this year.
The Broncos defense shares some of the blame too, giving up 14 points in a little less than 5 minutes to a shitty Chicago offense is pretty weak, and the Ponies' failure to capitalize on third-down conversions (I think they were 1-for-8 today) also hurt (and continues my extreme antipathy towards Jay Cutler), but really Sauerbrun and special teams should shoulder the blame for today's loss. Of course, as shitty as the AFC West is, the Broncos can lose today and still make it to the playoffs.
What are readers of Conservapedia interested in most?
So there's this "conservative" version of Wikipedia called Conservapedia, which describes itself thusly:
Tired of the LIBERAL BIAS every time you search on Google and a Wikipedia page appears? Conservapedia began in November 2006, as the class project for a World History class, meeting in New Jersey, of 58 advanced homeschooled and college-bound students.
So, it's a Wikipedia for conservatives, right?
Take a look at the top 10 "most-viewed pages": http://www.conservapedia.com/Special:Statistics
<Nelson>HA-ha</Nelson>
Wee bit obsessed are we?
(H/T to Atrios)
P.S. Just in case they decide to modify this page so it's a wee less, umm, insightful vis a vis the conservative mindset, here's a screen capture, preserved for posterity.
The Invisibles
Just started reading The Invisibles, this amazing comic book that started publishing in the mid-90s on Vertigo.
Wow.
I know that I'm like, 12 years behind the curve on this one, but 12 years ago I was freaking on jungle and drum & bass white labels and learning how to do OO Perl. Hell, 12 years ago I was still hacking on the SGI Indy for Investigative Reporters and Editors. I didn't have time for no comics, but I do now, and man, what a mind-blowing series. It takes place in a universe where chaos magic and all that are realized to their full and reality-altering potential. I'm only up to issue #7 (with 52 more to go) but it's already quite apparent that this is one of the most literate yet still entertaining comic series I've ever read.
Thanks, Josh
Quote of the day
"Art's the way to know what you don't."
- Azaroth, from Postsingular, by Rudy Rucker
Quote of the day
From Digby, of course:
"You know, freedom, which in the cramped and self-centered right wing view is defined as your inviolate freedom to use guns, discriminate, pollute, and exploit. Any other kind of freedom, not so much."
Exactly.
DSL Speed Update
Had Qwest send a DSL tech out here today. While the modem itself is reporting an outgoing speed of 1536 kbps and an incoming speed of 800 kbps, in "the real world" I'm actually getting:
Apparently there was a "load" or "amplifier" on the line that needed to be removed in order to see the faster speeds. Didn't cost me a dime. If the service remains reliable, I don't really see how my cable internet provider can compete.
The bad news is, it appears that getting any faster a speed anytime soon is not going to happen. DSL is only supposed to extend 18,000 feet from the point of presence, and we're right at 19,000 feet. The Qwest tech said to be eligible for the 7Mbps connection, you've got to be within 7,000 feet of the POP, and unless Qwest builds a new facility, that probably ain't gonna happen.
Oh well, I guess any improvement is a worthwhile one.
So, I finally get DSL at my place in the mountains…
and it absolutely sucks. I mean, it's freaking slow, with amazingly high latencies. I was typing in a shell, and Missy was pulling up a web page on her laptop, and all of a sudden, I could no longer get a response from the shell. It was like being back on 28.8k dial-up.
Supposedly, my connection is rated at "Up to 1.5 Mbit!" I think Qwest is leaning a bit too heavily on the phrase "Up to!", because my connection speeds since the thing has been installed are barely a tenth of what's supposed to be it's maximum. In fact, here's what I normally get:
I'm trying to do their online chat thing to see if there's anything they can do about it, but I've been in the chat room for 30 minutes now, with the following message repeated ad nauseum:
"We are experiencing higher than usual service times. Please wait and an analyst will be with you shortly."
I guess their definition of "shortly" is right up there with "up to 1.5 Mbit/sec!"
Fortunately, I still have my CanyonCable account, which is way faster:
Unfortunately, it seems to be a bit on the unreliable side, although it goes for very long bouts of no problems whatsoever, followed by a week or two of it-doesn't-fucking-work-at-all-oh-god-why-doesn't-this-thing-fucking-work.
OK, so I started writing this while I was in an online chat with Qwest, and after some fiddling, I've now got the following performance from my DSL line:
It's still a far cry from 1.5Mbit/sec, but at least it's no longer in the same league as my old ISDN line. Still though, as someone who lusted after an ISDN line in 1994 as being the penultimate home internet connection, it pains me that, 13 years later, I'm still not surfing at insane speeds. Just another cost of living in the mountains. I'm pretty sure the peace and quiet and views and air quality are still worth it.
Re: the personal stuff written on this blog
I was recently contacted by a good friend who did not like something I had written on this blog, and they were quite upset about it.
I thought it might be a good time to state why I even write this blog. It started out as an easier way to maintain the "home page" I've had more or less since 1994. I thought it would be a clearinghouse for cool ideas I ran across (hence the name "mememiner") but once I realized I didn't really care to participate as an author of blog content on the level of say, a bigger blog, it became more of a place for my personal thoughts.
From time to time I am quite intimate and open about my hopes and fears on this blog, and the reason I do not restrict postings to "friends" on my LJ site is because I am not afraid to share my innermost feelings, warts and all, from time to time to the small readership that frequents this site.
If anyone thinks that I write blog posts with the intent of achieving ulterior motives, nothing could be further from the truth. I am simply keeping a journal of private thoughts, publicly. While you may be privy to them, that does not give you the right to unfairly judge me or assume that they are a jumping-off point for criticism. Well, judge all you want, just don't expect to internalize any judgments you make as a result of reading something here.
Let me be clear: if you do not like what you read here, do not read here. It's pretty simple. Please don't expect me to change my behavior just because you developed a problem with something I wrote. I'm not writing for you, I'm writing for me.
And to the person who emailed me about the blog post, you are my friend and I admire and respect you, and I hope that you can move on, but I offer no apologies (except when I do, and not in this case).
The Repercussions of Honesty
When I was a kid, I used to tell a lot of really fantastically untrue stories. I won't go into them, but one of them involved my dad having fallen into a vat of peanut butter. What can I say, I was 8 when I was telling that story. The obvious reason I did this was because I was very insecure and desperately wanted people to like me, and figured they'd have more reasons to like me if I told crazy, funny stories. I also became quite good at deception, mostly as a survival tactic. I also became quite good at keeping my mouth shut when I saw Bad Things happening, especially when they happened to me. As a result, I spent the majority of the first twenty years being a deceptive, lying doormat. It was a pretty awful combination, all things said. You couldn't trust me, although you could walk all over me if you wanted. Both perceptions were usually picked up on pretty quickly.I'll just have to man up and live with it.
Then, right around the time I turned 20, I had a life-changing event. The details of the life-changing event aren't worth going into now, but when it happened, I decided I would always be as honest as I could possibly be, and I also decided that I would never be a doormat again. Again, after I made this decision, both of these character attributes were usually picked up on pretty quickly by friends, co-workers and acquaintances.
It's easy to see now how that reaction was essentially a self-defense mechanism. I had to do something to protect my fragile psyche, and to be honest, it worked really well for me for a number of years. However, as of late it has become quite apparent that this approach to things is no longer giving me the results I want.
I was recently told that the reason people tend to stop wanting to be friends with me is because I have a big chip on my shoulder, and that at the smallest slight, I will fly off the handle and decide that whomever committed the slight is my enemy. While I don't think I've ever declared someone my enemy, I can definitely see where this perception comes from. Once slighted, I will often declare, loudly and vociferously, to whomever will listen, everything I honestly dislike or find lacking about that person. From my vantage point, the only possible reason someone could have for slighting me would be because they want to hurt me, they want to run me down into the ground, and as I explained, since I turned 20 I'm nobody's doormat.
While I might not be "stupid", if I'm honest I will say that I am sometimes a very slow learner, especially when it comes to social stuff. I think what I've kind of recently figured out is that a lot of the time, when we feel slighted, a lot of times it isn't personal. It's just the result of someone being selfish, or clueless, or callous, and that it's usually not about us at all.
My wife used to tell me she found my frankness "refreshing". I think it's been a long time since I heard that from her. The novelty of finding someone courageous enough to speak their mind, honestly and without restraint, wore off as the repercussions of such an approach made themselves more apparent. It's really unfortunate that my delegation as a pariah has rubbed off on her, too. The costs of marriage, I suppose.
I ran off someone very dear to me in the last few years because I had a big problem with a lifestyle choice they made (no, they didn't come out of the closet; they decided they were in love with someone I have zero respect for). I made myself somewhat of a pariah in my social scene by taking offense at some actions, which, while probably not directly aimed at me, were nonetheless offensive, not in the prude sense of the word, but more in the taking a general offense to. Those people are welcome to do anything they want of course, it's (still?) a free country, and it's probably a bigger testament to my insecurity than anything else that there was offense taken at all.
So, the result of all this is that I've managed to alienate a huge swath of folks in my social scene, and destroyed a really good friendship. I'm not quite so sure that the cost of all that has been worth it, to be "honest". At the time, I thought I was staying true to myself, and not being a doormat, but like many other things in my life, I swung too far in the opposite direction and played myself for the fool.
I don't know really how to rectify these things, but it seems that pointing that high-powered microscope at my own behavior is probably a good place to start. It's really depressing that I've managed to lose so much, and drive away so many friends, as a result of my own stubborn obtuseness. I wish there was a way to reverse course, to go back and keep my mouth shut but the damage has been done and
Like Jeru said, "You're only a player cause you played yourself".
Updated 10/8/07 12:22:30 to remove whining
Dear Christian Right, et al.
Just for the record, I fully support your possible decision to support a third-party candidate should Rudy Giuliani get the nomination. In fact, I will fully support your decision to abandon the Republican Party en masse and form your own, explicitly fundamentalist Christian, explicitly right-wing third party, should you decided to go that far.
I think it's way past time for this bold action, and I encourage you to make double-time on it.
Inspired bit of casting
I'd just like to say that casting Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach in the upcoming movie version of the Watchmen is one of the most inspired casting decisions I've seen in years. I think he was born to play this part, and can I just say that it's really cool to see him having a late career resurgence? Seriously, after Kelly Leak and Moocher, it was bit parts, followed by a complete withdrawal from 1993 - 2006, and now he's cast as Rorschach? I didn't see Little Children, but I hear he's really good in it.
Also, they better not fuck up this movie. Heads will roll. That shit better be like, 3 hours long and as far away from the FF movie attitude as possible. Watchmen is precious to me.
Finally making headway on some music
Well, I finally, actually finished a track. After years of sketches, experiments, half-efforts and abandoned ideas, I finally saw a track through from start to finish, and, -gasp- I didn't hate it. I've sent it to a couple friends, and lo and behold, they think it's "tight", "mixed well", "coherent", possessing "flow" and a "head-nodder".
I'm not gonna link to this track. Linking to it would mean that I felt like it was finished, that it didn't need any more work, that I was ready to release it to the world. I'm not, but I almost am. If you want to hear it, send me an email and I'll consider sending you a link.
The funny thing is, I didn't have to give up being picky about my music or anything. I was picky, and it's still almost done. It's not the most amazing track ever made, but I feel it's all those things my friends said. On a big system, the bass would slay. It would definitely wreck heads.
So, that has led to some increased confidence about where I'm going with this music shit. I think finishing this track was the result of two things: one, getting to the arrangement a lot sooner in the compositional process and two, it's the payoff of an extended period of committed study to the instruments I play, and synthesis/sampling techniques in general.
Feels good.
Putting two and two together
So, I saw this news article today: Breast implants linked with suicide in study, which goes on to state:
Women who get cosmetic breast implants are nearly three times as likely to commit suicide as other women, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
The study, published in the Annals of Plastic Surgery, reinforces several others that have shown women who have breast enlargements have higher suicide risks.
Reading this, I immediately thought of Angela Devi. Here's a picture of her:
(img taken from her Wikipedia entry, not from my "personal stash", you perv)
This adult model took her own life in 2006:
Angela S. Dhingra (aka "Angela Devi"), 30 years of age, hanged
herself at the 7498 E. Christmas Cholla Dr. property that she had
occupied since January of this year. Her body was discovered by the
Scottsdale Police at approximately 10:15 A.M. The last known time
anyone spoke with her was the night before.
(From: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=717242)
Let's see, implants, adult modeling, suicide? Not quite the glamorous life some would have us to believe.
I finally paid for LiveJournal
So, I was trying to go back and delete the prodigious amounts of comment spam left on the LJ portion of my blog (I use LJ for comments, and although I'm fairly sure that most people who read my blog do so through LJ, I actually post these thoughts to mememiner.com, and through the magic of a cross-posting plugin, publish them to LJ at the same time), and I found that I could only go back so far in the comments in the easy list view to delete them. Since I didn't really want any adultfriendfinder or hydrocodone ads in my comments, I figured it was worth ponying up $20 for a year's worth of the pimped-out LJ experience.
I'm not sure why I indulge, I don't really post that often to my blog, but maybe this will change at some point. Kinda like how I have this kick-ass studio, yet don't release any music. I've got a MySpace page, but I don't put any work into it. I'm sure it will all change at some point, or at least, I'm gonna keep telling myself that.
I think the reasoning for all of this is roughly the same: I feel like a damn narcissist every time I post to the blog, and like I recently posted on the idm list (the same post that got me in so much hot water with the aforementioned soon-to-be-disclosed-nutjob), I'm not such a damn egomaniac that I think anyone wants to hear my unfinished tracks.
A Fascinating Story I Plan On Telling Sometime Soon
So, the month of July, 2007 was a very interesting one for me. Did you know that posting snarky, vaguely indirect criticisms of generalized problems with today's electronic music on a mailing list can lead to an unhinged nutjob threatening you and your family? Did you know that making snarky, indirect comments on mailing lists and your blog about how local techno promoters show a lack of diversity in their musical offerings can get you branded as a pariah, a "hater" and worse? Did you know that some local electronic music promoters consider snarky mailing list posts to be more threatening and distasteful than someone making threats of violence against someone and their family? It's true!
A good friend (?) of mine *almost* had me convinced that *I* was the problem, and I spent a fair amount of time beating myself up over it. Fortunately, I came to my senses about all this nonsense and have started to develop some fairly lucid thoughts about the whole sordid affair, which I plan on detailing on this blog soon. One thing's for sure, there's a whole lot more to life than worrying about your position in the local, temporary pecking order of big fish in little ponds.
(If you're reading this, and thinking that it's a lot of shop-talk and inside baseball stuff, you're right.)
The new Fantastic Four movie
Jalen and I went and saw "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" today. A couple thoughts...
For one, it wasn't as awful as I had been made out to believe. The Silver Surfer, as portrayed through his spoken dialogue, came off as fairly accurate to the spirit of the original comic book character. This was a pleasant surprise.
Secondly, people should not expect the FF movies to take themselves too seriously. Obviously this franchise is going to be a little tongue-in-cheek, and given that our expectations were set along this trajectory in the first movie, complaining about the goofy moments in movie reviews is neither illuminating or relevant.
Thirdly, I'm sorry, I don't get the hype about Jessica Alba. She looks terrible as a blonde, and she's on the generic side of exotic brunette IRL. Big deal.
Finally, I'm really disappointed that they failed to show Galactus. He's one of the coolest-looking characters in the Marvel Universe, and yet in this movie, he's portrayed, more or less, as a menacing cloud/tornado thing. Weak. I realize the screenwriters would have felt the need to develop the characterization a bit more if they actually showed him in his giant humanoid form, but I have to say, a real bummer.
Jalen thought it was TOTALLY AWESOME. Then again, he LOVED the Ghost Rider movie too. Talk about a screenplay that makes absolutely no sense.
RIP Steve Gilliard
Steve Gilliard passed away this morning. He was all of 41.
It was about a year ago that I subscribed to Gilliard's blog. I was drawn to his writing the same way I was drawn to folks like Digby -- he was fiercely honest, amazingly brave and wasn't afraid to toss in a "motherfucker" into his writing where appropriate. He pegged this administration for the craven cowards that they are long before it was fashionable, and seemed to be a person of great integrity. At the very least, he was a writer who could distill things down into their base elements and present them for what they were without a bunch of extraneous bullshit.
I had been following Jen's posts for the last few months after Steve collapsed and was put into the hospital, and when Jen announced a couple weeks ago that Steve's family has asked her to not post any more updates, I felt a sinking feeling in my gut that his condition had taken a turn for the worst.
Steve was one of my favorite writers in the blogosphere, and I had been looking forward to his return. I am stunned and greatly saddened to read of his death. He will definitely be missed.
Something overlooked about having children…
I was thinking today ("I thought I could see smoke comin' from your ears!", as my dad used to say) about the living arrangements between parents and children, and it occurred to me that something frequently overlooked in this area is not just how the wee ones and their parents relate in the traditional parent-child relationship, but also how they relate as roommates.
Before Jalen came along, Melissa and I never lived together. The five-plus years we dated beforehand we certainly spent a lot of time together, but it wasn't until Jalen came along that we both actually had the bulk of our worldly possessions under one roof. It took us quite a bit of time to figure out how to not just be life partners, husband and wife, etc. - but also how to live together. We're still learning.
I think my parent's generation might think it was funny to think of one's relationship with their child in this way, but in the 21st century with all it's new-fangled ways of thinking, it's largely unavoidable. I think it's really come into focus for me too, now that we've got a baby and a 7-year-old, who have hugely different needs in their living arrangements.
Luka barely wants to be put down and wails if left alone (while he's awake) for more than a minute. Jalen, on the other hand, craves personal space and treasures his alone time. I can relate. Alone time, for anyone beyond a certain age, is very valuable. "Alone time" and "personal space" are largely about boundaries, and with Jalen, I'm glad that it's easy for us to establish and respect personal boundaries (at least as far as "living arrangements" go). I grew up in the sort of household (like many children) where my room and my space was something that was granted to me, could be searched and invaded at any given point, and could be taken away for punitive reasons at the drop of a hat. I think it was growing up in that sort of environment that made me a very poor roommate for many years after I had moved out of my parent's house. I had no real sense of effective boundaries for myself, and as a result, it was hard to respect others' or expect them to respect mine.
In our household though, Jalen's room is his own. Yeah, when he's throwing a fit and trying to avoid us when we need to talk to him, I have no qualms about following him into his room after he's slammed the door to shut me out - but this isn't an absolute power for Melissa and I. We try to make sure Jalen knows that his room is his room, and if he doesn't feel like being around us, it's (most of the time) OK for him to retreat to his space without fear of us entering at will. Because of that, we don't seem to have any issues whatsoever with Jalen disrespecting the boundaries we set in regards to ourselves. I have a lot of cool, fun stuff in my studio, not the least of which are some still-in-their-blister-packs Micronauts and Simpsons action figures displayed on the wall. I know for a fact Jalen would like nothing more than to take them off the wall, open them, and play with them. It's quite maddening for him really, to see toys still in their packaging just collecting dust - yet I know he'll respect the boundaries I've set for him in regards to my things.
I can only conclude that the reason for this is because we share a mutual, healthy respect for each other's boundaries. It's not perfect by any means, but it's there and it largely works, which is more than I (or most kids of previous generations) can say for my living arrangement growing up. I'm not bitter or anything, but let's just say it was a real drag having to hide my Dungeon Master's Guide under the carpet or worry about having my "Satanic" punk rock tapes seized and pitched into the trash when I was younger. I'm glad I won't have to worry about that with Jalen. If he wants Satanic punk rock, he can just grab it off the server ;-)
Mission Accomplished: The Fourth Anniversary of Dumb
Dumb as in (as Atrios would say): "TEH STUPID! IT BURNS!"
Media Matters has a nice roundup of the amazingly dumb things major media figures were saying and writing about that day. I'm sure you'll find favorite moments in pundit stupidity on your own, but my favorites were definitely Chris Matthews & G. Gordon Liddy going on and on about Bush's manhood and crotch bulge. Of course, it was a noteworthy enough event that day that I even blogged about it here.
At the time, I said it was "textbook, Chinese-style propaganda". I think that assessment holds up pretty well.
(H/T to Atrios for the link)