Archive for February, 2008

From deep in the lair of the crab of ineffable wisdom, home of those Rather Good / 7 Seconds of Love folk, comes this rousing ode to brave Prince Harry.

I’ve never cared for my family name: Gladstein. When my grandfather came through Ellis Island, they didn’t change his surname — just the pronunciation. It was originally pronounced “GLOT-shtine” but they changed it to “GLAD-steen”. Oddly enough, I find that the original pronunciation just rolls off the tongue, but apparently, even after almost 45 years of practice, I don’t pronounce the current version of my name very clearly. If someone asks me my name and I tell them “Gladstein,” they almost invariably repeat back “Blansky?”

On top of that, when I briefly attempted to learn German, the professor in my class told me what my name means. I won’t mention it here, but it is not brave leader, or god’s gift, or even decent enough fellow.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about names and naming of late. There are people who make their living naming things: companies, products, etc. But naming people is another matter. My mother was given the name Edith Claire at birth, supposedly in honor of some dead relative named Edith. However, nobody liked the name Edith (and I don’t think they liked Edith herself, either), so before the ink on the birth certificate was dry, people started calling my mother Claire Edith. So there, Edith, whoever you were.

I’ve been putting together a little project in my copious free time, listing names that could be real, and have a certain something else that sets them apart. I’m sure you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. If you have any to add to the list, let me know.

• Anne Teeter
• Bela Kose
• Claire Voyant
• Ella Meneaux
• Ellie Tate
• Farrah Field
• Helen Bach
• Luke Askew
• Paris Ochs
• Paula Titian
• Perry Farrell
• Phyllis Stein
• Herman Ütichs

Just look at that weasel. Would you trust a word that slithered out of his mouth? Could there possibly be a smarmier smile in the world? That’s the same smile he displays on Fox when he’s saying utterly amoral, uncaring things about people whose lives mean nothing to him unless they serve to offer power or profit. This is the founder of the Project for a New American Century, for fuck’s sake — the people who a decade ago planned and promoted preemptively taking out Saddam Hussein as part of a plan to recreate the Middle East and further establish the US as the preeminent power in the world. That sure worked out well.

I don’t know why the New York Fucking Times hired Kristol to write a column. I guess David Brooks wasn’t enough of a right wing water carrying weasel to make them feel like their Op Ed section was sufficiently balanced. But I’m hoping that they’ll eventually come to the conclusion that any paper that carries Kristol’s propagandistic claptrap is a right wing paper. There’s no such thing as balance when it comes to this weasel.

Did you see the crap he spewed into today’s paper?

Last October, a reporter asked Barack Obama why he had stopped wearing the American flag lapel pin that he, like many other public officials, had been sporting since soon after Sept. 11. Obama could have responded that his new-found fashion minimalism was no big deal. What matters, obviously, is what you believe and do, not what you wear.

But Obama chose to present his flag-pin removal as a principled gesture. “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”

Leave aside the claim that “speaking out on issues” constitutes true patriotism. What’s striking is that Obama couldn’t resist a grandiose explanation. Obama’s unnecessary and imprudent statement impugns the sincerity or intelligence of those vulgar sorts who still choose to wear a flag pin. But moral vanity prevailed. He wanted to explain that he was too good — too patriotic! — to wear a flag pin on his chest.

Fuck you. Let’s go through his many salient points.

• Obama was asked why he wasn’t wearing the pin. It’s not as if he announced it himself.
• Yes, he could have said that it was no big deal — that it was just a fashion choice. But apparently, that would have been a lie. Besides, I have to wonder how the right wing propagandists would have responded to him treating Old Glory like it was nothing but a fashion statement.
• Why should we leave aside the idea that speaking out on issues is a sign or a form of patriotism? That was Obama’s whole point. He was asked why he didn’t wear the pin, and he said that, in his opinion (note that he said “I think”), wearing the pin had lost the meaning it was intended to carry, and that he saw patriotism as something you speak and act on rather than wear a symbol of. If you want to leave that aside, then there’s nothing worth discussing.
• Ah, but the weasel finds something else worthy of discussion: that Obama’s answer to the question was “grandiose”. What was that quote again?
  

  You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.

  That’s grandiose? Were there trumpets playing behind him? Did the people who heard him bow down in obeisance of his glorious pronouncement? Maybe somebody put an ermine cape over his shoulders and scattered rose petals at his feet. I don’t know. The words alone certainly don’t seem grandiose to me.

• Was he saying something about the people who choose to wear the pin? Not really. It seems to me he was saying that, if one wishes to demonstrate one’s patriotism, wearing a flag pin no longer accomplishes that because its meaning has been so diluted. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to wear the pin; it just doesn’t, in his opinion, say as much as actual words and deeds. Personally, I think the vast majority of the people who wear the pin do so out of a shallow desire to be seen as patriotic, whether they are or not, because they don’t want to have to actually prove their love of country. But that’s my opinion, not Obama’s.

The weasel goes on to quote Michelle Obama:

“Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”

But they can be repaired. Indeed, she had said a couple of weeks before, in Los Angeles: “Barack Obama … is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.

Fuck you, weasel. That has got to be the most ineffective effort at twisting someone’s words I’ve ever seen. She’s telling people that for the change Obama talks about to happen, we all have to work. We have to shed our cynicism, put down our divisions, come out of our isolation, move out of our comfort zones, push ourselves to be better and engage. The point was that we need to be involved, informed, and active. Weasel somehow wants us to take that to mean that she’s claiming we can all lay back and do nothing, and Saint Barack will take care of everything. Does he think the readers of the Times are at a second-grade level in reading comprehension? Does he think that starting to read one sentence requires us to clear the previous ones from our minds?

Fucking lying weasel.

By the way, CNN had a piece yesterday that included Obama’s response to some of the lies that people (and the weasel) are trying to spread about him.

Asked how he would fight the image of being unpatriotic, Obama said, “There’s always some nonsense going on in general elections. Right? If it wasn’t this, it would be something else. If you recall, first it was my name. Right? That was a problem. And then there was the Muslim e-mail thing and that hasn’t worked out so well, and now it’s the patriotism thing.

“The way I will respond to it is with the truth: that I owe everything I am to this country,” he said.

…

About not wearing an American flag lapel pin, Obama said Republicans have no lock on patriotism.

“A party that presided over a war in which our troops did not get the body armor they needed, or were sending troops over who were untrained because of poor planning, or are not fulfilling the veterans’ benefits that these troops need when they come home, or are undermining our Constitution with warrantless wiretaps that are unnecessary?

“That is a debate I am very happy to have. We’ll see what the American people think is the true definition of patriotism.”

OK, weasel? Now shut the fuck up.

Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig created the video below to explain why he supports Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton. Even if you’re not familiar with Lessig’s work on Creative Commons, the Free Software Foundation, or the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I still recommend you listen to what he has to say here. It’s about 22 minutes long, but it’s well worth it.

With apologies to François Truffaut.

I’d like to point out a couple of things I’ve noticed recently about the Sci Fi Channel, that great bastion of geekery on the eye of hell.

Ghost Hunters

I can’t say I’ve seen this program, or its spin-off, Ghost Hunters International, but I’ve certainly seen my share of promos for both shows. The shows document the adventures and investigations of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS. Here’s how the TAPS people describe themselves and their mission:

Taps promises to bring professionalism, personality, and confidentiality to each case we investigate. We understand that it is tough to call someone like us, and we respect your right to privacy.

We bring recording devices to your home to capture evidence of paranormal activity, but they are only used with the homeowner’s permission. We will not share or publish any of the media or any details of the case outside of the close-knit TAPS group. More sensitive cases will be dealt with by the founders and be held under the most strict confidence.

We are not amateurs. We have had extensive experience. Part of what we have learned is the psychology of making someone feel comfortable during these times of fear and uncertainty. We will bring a levelheaded and comfortable atmosphere into your home, in essence, taking care of the most important thing, your discomfort. We will then help you to understand some of the nature of the problem supplying you with the information to understand why this is happening and how little danger is actually involved. We will listen to your experiences and concerns. Then we will set up equipment and begin trying to recreate and debunk personal experiences in an attempt to find good evidence either for or against paranormal activity. We will then share our findings with you and come to a conclusion.

Pretty serious stuff, it would seem. But if that’s the case, why is it that every clip I’ve seen in promos for the show consist of people completely freaking out every time the floor creaks or a door closes? If they’re serious about this, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me that they would wet their pants at the slightest hint of finding what they’re supposedly looking for. How many CPAs do you know who cry for mommy every time they see a W-2?

The Friday Prime Time Schedule

This is the channel’s current schedule for Friday evenings from 7:00 to 11:00 eastern time:

And what do they call this four-hour block of programming? “The All New Sci Fi Friday,” of all things. If you’re a regular reader here, you probably know that I take issue with the marketing term “all new”. I’ve pointed it out quite a few times. Quite a few. Come on, Sci Fi. How can it be all new if 75% of it simply isn’t? Honestly, what the fuck?

No, I don’t have a report; I’m hoping to get one.

In case you’re not up on this, it was recently suggested that supporters of Barack Obama make contributions in multiples of $5.01 on February 12. It was to be a money bomb, a la Ron Paul (only this time for someone who actually has a shot at winning). Why $5.01, and why February 12? The five dollar bill and the penny both feature images of a certain president who, like Obama, started his career as a legislator in Illinois, and February 12 happens to be his birthday. Get it?

The idea got picked up and spread throughout the social networks, with more than 2600 diggs. It was discussed at length (and with great petulance, as usual) at reddit, a reddit/Obama group was created, and it was added as an event on facebook (and another, and yet another).

All of these sources pointed people to Obama’s donation page, and I assume it convinced quite a few people to contribute. Hell, even I contributed, and I’m notoriously cheap and cynical — a combination that tends not to lead to financial support for political campaigns.

So how much was raised? I don’t know. I’ve been searching blogs and news sites for the past 15 hours or so, and I can’t find a thing. When they ran money bombs for Ron Paul, it was always easy to find the results. I know the Obama campaign has made numerous announcements of how much they’ve raised in a given quarter, week, weekend, etc. and I’d really love to know how this went.

Has anyone out there located any information I haven’t been able to find in spite of my extraordinary internet fu?

What is shabby is the code I removed from the badge:

<small>Meet <a href=”http://www.justsayhi.com/states/155/north-carolina”>North Carolina Singles</a></small>

What is that taste in my mouth…?

Gotta keep the kitchen nice and tidy…

I was a finalist for a SEMMY. See? Down there.

→  ←

You could say I was a “SEMMY finalist,” but that would be pretty confusing, and not particularly amusing.

It wasn’t for a post here at qwerty’s qoncepts. It was for a little something I wrote for isos, called “This Just In.”

Did I win? Did you look at the title of this post? No, I didn’t win. In fact, if you look at the results for my category, you’ll see that I tied for last place among the finalists.

I’m over it, though. It was an honor just to be nominated…dammit.

Besides, with the WGA strike going on, the awards weren’t televised, so it’s not as if I had to rent a tux to find out I’d lost.