The Spirit of Christmas

It's getting to be that time.

Hope everything's ok up in NYC, Nick. Walking several hundred New York City blocks sure would make me grouchy.

Come to think of it, so would staying up this late and having to work 9 hours in the morning. I love Audioscrobbler. G'night, world.

Death Be Not Proud

Wow. It's been a rough day for the human race.

I haven't seen a lot of press around this yet, so it seems like it's very fresh news, but it appears that Jimmy Wales, founder of the Wiki project (Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Wikibooks, etc...) has been murdered. Apparently, his shooting death was related to the false article posted about John Siegenthaler, Sr., a Kennedy-era reporter. The article has received a lot of publicity over the last week or two, and the author has apparently apologized for what he termed a "joke". Nonetheless, it seems someone who was a friend of Siegenthaler has shot and killed possibly the most prominent pioneer of the new age of the internet, often called Web 2.0. His life was ended senselessly, but its lasting impact on the human race has only begun to form. Evidently, someone was attempting to further prove the faults in Wikipedia. Sorry for the disinformation. It worked on me, and that's not easy to get by with. It definitely makes me look at Wikipedia with a healthier degree of skepticism.



John Spencer, the American actor I'm most fond of for his almost transcendent portrayal of White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry in NBC's The West Wing, has passed away at the lamentable age of 58. In an eerily parallel turn of events, Spencer died of a heart attack less than a year after his character, McGarry, was compelled by myocardial infarction to resign from his White House post. Many of you probably know the West Wing is my favorite television series of all time. John Spencer's death strikes a melancholy chord of tragedy deep within my soul. I hope both of these impeccably talented gentlemen are well-received into God's loving arms. If a man's gifts to humanity speak to the quality of his soul, I'm confident they both are.

I want to look at Senator Lieberman's proposed innovation bill, the National Innovation Act of 2005. I had planned on researching it tonight and serving something up for Elephino, which is sorely malnourished of late. Unfortunately, before my research could get underway, I tripped over the last two unfortunate events and spent the last hour reading about the two mens' lives in tribute. Joe Lieberman will wait until tomorrow. If he doesn't, he won't be receiving a tribute on my blog. Goodnight and God bless!

AudioScrobbler

The concept behind this service is sheer genius. I hope everybody I know gets one of these and adds me as a friend. Check out my AudioScrobbler.

Calvin and Hobbes for the Soul

Figure 8

Someone found the future as a statue in a fountain at attention looking
backward in a pool of water wishes with a blue songbird on his shoulder who
keeps singing over everything
Everything Means Nothing to Me
Everything Means Nothing to Me
Everything Means Nothing to Me
I picked up the song and found my picture in the paper the reflection in the
water showed an iron man still trying to salute people from a time when he was
everything he's supposed to be
Everything Means Nothing to Me
Everything Means Nothing to Me
Everything Means Nothing to Me
Everything Means Nothing to Me

I Am a Stranger in a Strange Land

I finished an excellent book today. I think I'll probably give it a day or two before I let you know what I think while I try to grok its fullness. When waiting is filled, I shall speak rightly.

I really need some time to grok a lot of things. Someone very dear to my heart may well have died today. Perhaps not in the corporate sense, which I could certainly envelope in love and understanding until it became a part of me. The sort of death I'm refering to is infinitely more terrifying in that it denies..... oh, hell. I couldn't even begin to explain this to you. Maybe if both of us spoke Martian. I don't know. I've never been able to speak Martian.

I've started writing songs. I have three incomplete songs, thus far. One is called "Joker's Wild". Another, "Benediction". The third, "Black and Mild". And those are just the ones I want to tell you about. I even have a melody in mind for at least one of them right now. I'm excited about that. Now I just need to get a keyboard to transpose said melodies.

Thou art God.

Tiggers Are Wonderful Things

Merry Christmas

I was feeling somewhat Christmasy today and decided to record a song for you guys. I don't think it's great, but it's a fun rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer a cappella. If you want to hear the music, Jack Johnson sings it originally. I just didn't feel like stripping out the instrumentals, and I can't play it on the guitar really, so you're stuck with just me and my voice.

Enjoy!

Edit: I added a guitar part. This is (literally) the first full song I've ever played on the guitar, and I learned it today because I wanted instrumentals behind my voice here. The result is some crappy guitar strumming and some crappy vocals (trying to match up with the guitar isn't easy... I can't record them at the same time with my crappy mic...) The theme here is crappy, but that's what Christmas is all about, right? I thoroughly enjoyed doing this, so I don't care what you guys say ;-)

God bless!

Tech News for your Brain

(Warning: This post is rated high on the nerd scale)

I don't expect anybody to surf over to TechNews ever, so I'll go ahead and show you some stuff I thought you might be interested in.

First, for the book lovers out there, Guardian posted SurveyMonkey's top 20 geek novels of all time. Check it out. I might have to add some (or all) of these to my reaidng list at some point.

Second, and even cooler, Microsoft (for those of you who don't know) is working on a new version of Windows, codenamed Vista. There are a lot of new features, but the one that I'm all hot and bothered over is the Restart Manager. Basically, it's trying to make all those "you must now restart your computer" messages stop interrupting your computing life. It's something that's been missing from Windows since, well, forever. Trust me, this may mean nothing to you now, but some day you won't be able to remember how you lived without it.

That is all.

The Media "is" Ignorant

Edit 2017-08-04 - I renamed this post to remove a word I now know to be offensive and ineffective at conveying the message I intended to convey.

President Bush was summoned for jury duty in Crawford last month. Obviously, the President won't be able to fulfill this summons while in office. Instead of assaulting my readers with a barrage of reasons for this, let's assume those are apparent and focus on how News.telegraph, an online news provider in the UK, reported the "event".

Alec Russell penned the article, all of which contained factual information as far as I can tell. My complaint isn't with factual reporting. It deals with the rhetoric used to deliver the news. Amid details on the lackluster story, (emphasis mine)

County officials posted a jury summons to President George W Bush at 43 Chapel Ranch Road, the address of his Texas ranch, last month.

But the White House said yesterday that Mr Bush was too busy with affairs of state to appear in court on Monday and would have to "reschedule".

We already decided that the idea of the President serving as a juror during his presidency is ludicrous. To apply accusatory rhetoric to the President's response (which, I'll point out, the article never actually quotes) is ignorant. Notice that the second sentence, which is intended to deliver the administration's message regarding the summons, has only one word in quotations. All I got from this was that at some point during Scott McLellan's press conference, he said the word "reschedule". To say that "Mr. Bush" is "too busy" makes him sound like he's trying to weasle his way out of a date with an ugly girl. I wonder what the rest of the sentence/paragraph actually said. I guarantee you the "too busy" thing is out of context. The man answered the most strenuous, verging-on-insane call to public service we could dream up in the United States and some half-wit crumpet-munching "news man" wants to call him out for dodging jury duty? You couldn't nail him to the cross on draft-dodging and you couldn't dig up any dirt on his military service. Now this? Give me a break. I want to start writing syndicated columns about liberals (and Brits). All I need to do is put one word they say in quotations and the rest is poetic license. Journalists actually get paid for this? The media "is" ignorant. Now give me fifty bucks.

P.S. - In case Alec Russell reads this, seventh graders know not to begin sentences in English papers with "and" or "but". Yes, I do it in my blog, but I don't get paid to write any of this, and as the saying goes, "I do what I want".