Preference Personnelle
it's a quiet, sad, thoughtful day, so here's a blogdex/daypop-fueled linkorama:
latest guerrilla marketing fooforah: sony, says the
wsj, hires actors to pretend to be interested in some new
cellphone. i hardly see how this is any different from, say, teens being paid to go into chatrooms and plug some lamewad buzz bin band (as noted in
'the marketing of cool'), or that woman at
stu's disco who works for
bacardi. also, the
florida high-speed rail authority (a government agency) hired off-duty state troopers to flag drivers down to take a
marketing survey. some of the people objected to seeing warning signs with pictures of ditch-diggers instead of palm-pilot-toting schmucks.
the sf chronicle
asks, is bush channeling orwell? when people say it's like
1984, sometimes they
don't mean the
super bowl ad.
salon compares the
war on file-sharing to the war on drugs. there's a link to a
mikejack article, and
moby talking about what he calls the
'pearl jam effect' (it has nothing to do with saturating your market by releasing hundreds of bootlegs), too. senor moby's thesis is that groups with more tech-savvy fans are less likely to sell lots of cds, because people will download/burn/etc instead. pink sells more records than weezer, but moby would like to think that weezer is more popular. he'd also perhaps like to find an excuse for the disappointing sales of his new release (my suggestion: license more tracks to commercials). as is always the case with these arguments, i'm waiting for empirical evidence.
copyright restricts creativity,
suggests (note the academic language)
siva vaidhyanathan in the chronicle of higher education.
mit's media lab works on
musictoys. there's even a
download.
tv guide lists
top 50 cartoon characters. as usual with these lists, it's very of-the-moment (spongebob squarepants ranks higher than daffy duck), and, as usual, i have mad beef (e.g., gumby's not a cartoon, he's claymation. pikachu's not a cartoon but a video game character). on the bright side, they include the wonderful
gerald mcboing-
boing.
"I thought it was a dance club," she said Monday.
"Well, I declare."
An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a Windows installation that had gone terribly wrong.
Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from work to install them on my home computer."
Training stresses that we are "not the Software Police," so I let the little act of piracy slide.
Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"
Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns out they weren't initialized."
Tech Support: "Do you remember the message exactly, ma'am?"
Customer: (proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This is not a Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialize it?'"
Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"
Customer: "After they were initialized all the disks appeared to be blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I can't read them in the A: drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our only set of Windows disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?"
hahahaha
drew: and you'll be singing in the style of a jewish wedding.
wayne: oh, good, because i've been to a lot of them.
drew: what, you and sammy never hung out?
wow, this chips episode not only features chippendales, it also offers a trained-animal criminal gang. who'd've thought that two german shepherds and three chimps could rob a bank?
those ostensibly-customized coupons that the grocery stores give out--what bullshit. today, i bought some dr. pepper (mr. pibb seems to have gone the way of the passenger pigeon while i was in massachusetts), a loaf of french bread and a clif bar. i got coupons for scott paper towels and caress soap. i'm confident i've never bought name-brand paper towels or non-organic soap in my entire goddamn acme-shopping life. i'm using their discount card, so where's my personalized shopping experience?
"oh, crap! i shouldn't've said he was a customer. oh, crap! i shouldn't've said it was a secret. oh, crap! i certainly shouldn't've said it was illegal. ahh... it's too hot today."
ray romano? jack black? megan mullaly and sean hayes? chris tucker? tina fey and jimmy fallon? ellen degeneres? will ferrell? i know him. he's not funny.
these e! rankings of
funniest people? there's a heavy concentration of people who do... well, there's martin short, eddie murphy and jack black, all of whom have appeared in projects with fat suits in 'em. at least eight (i'm no expert) are snl alums. and a scant three of 'em--lisa kudrow, steve martin and conan o'brien--have some simpsons connection.
grrr. i hate the way born-again types perpetrate the laughable fiction that, like, any historical figure that ever expressed a belief in the christian god had a 'close personal relationship with jesus christ.' that touchy-feely crap is a pretty modern invention.
ooh, i just won this
auction for some o.j. trading cards. i'm thrilled.
"during a rest day in the 1964 tour [de france], jacques anquetil stopped by a lamb roast organized by the local radio station in andorra. photos show him enjoying the lamb, which had been flavored with sangria. immediately after the start of the next stage, anquetil immediately became less festive. dropped on the first climb, the envalira pass, anquetil quickly lost time to other favorites. at the summit, he was more than 4 minutes behind his longtime rival raymond poulidor and spanish climber federico bahamontes, who passed on the lamb.... when [anquetil's] team car pulled up, team director raphael gaminiani grabbed a bottle of champagne--likely one reserved for a victory party--poured it into a water bottle and handed it to the fatigued rider, saying 'ca passe ou ca casse' ('this works or this kills' is bicycling's translation. i would've gone for 'it'll make you or break you,' myself). it worked. anquetil started riding better and eventually caught the front group."--from bicycling magazine's tour de france coverage.
anquetil didn't just catch the front group, he went on to win. i yearn for the days when the best cyclists in the world trained on roast lamb and champagne.
lance won this year's
tour, by the way. but, like most americans, i could give a shit.
goddamn, it's hot. and, like, festering. is that the word i want? at any rate, i'm going to ksu early, just to be somewhere more climate-controlled.
i was mentioning this to rachel. here's a
link to this 'stop teen pop' site.
"sure, it crashes now and then, but you just push that... button... thingy... you know the one." apple switch
parody. there are many others.
now i'm sitting around with a bunch of aretha's pals, drinking a cape codder and talking about some kid who hustled cigarettes in, like, the second grade. he didn't smoke himself, but had, like, cartons. nobody knows from where.
'white noise' quote that i really adore: "i have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain, but it's enough to make me proud to be an american."
suggested modern etiquette: never ask anyone if you can use their cellular phone.
the woman seated next to me on the bus, who was later heard telling all her friends about hanging out with some guy who she thought was gay, until he kissed her, and plans to hang with her 'gay head girls' tonight, is reading a women's magazine one of whose headlines is 'why your sexual fantasies are healthy.'
in my little notebook: driving past a lot full of wrecked cars, i wonder how much spanish i could pick up by looking--making a point of looking--at bilingual signs. the mongolian bbq is still open. in fact, their parking lot is close to full, closer than the denny's and bob evans across the highway. 'we open july 4,' says the sign, which, if grammatical, is not true, and, if true, is not grammatical. and, like, it's july 20 now.
ooh, soon i'll get on a cab and then get on a bus and then get on several more buses and then get on a boat and then i'll be visiting aretha. i'm excited.
i just saw a mcdonald's commercial with inxs' 'new sensation' as the background music. yeah, nothing makes me want a big mac like the thought of autoerotic asphyxiation. well, unless it's the news that con-agra is recalling 18 million pounds (that's, uh, 9,000 tons--does that sound like a bigger quantity?) of potentially-tainted beef.
there's this fairly stupid 'whose line' promo on abc family, where they just show drew laughing hysterically, and the tagline is, like, 'don't ask, just watch.' i just saw the episode that's taken from. what strikes drew as so funny is that, during the game where people from the audience provide sound effects, these two bozos, like, hardly made a sound. then, when ryan and colin tried to make the people produce an elephant noise, one instead quacked like a duck. yeah, i didn't think it was that funny either.
is it just me, or is blogger really going to hell lately? 'the end of free' indeed.
"Whatever you thought about how things were going to turn out in the '60s, nothing could have prepared us for Stallone. I really hated it when Stallone was a big star. I thought those movies were evil. I thought the Rocky movies were racist. I don't think he has any talent. A stupid man, making one stupid violent movie after another.
I feel that movies don't have to reflect reality, but they have to connect to reality in some way. So, if you make five movies about some short white guy from Philly who beats up a lot of black guys, what does that tell you about reality? I haven't seen any white guys winning any heavyweight championships in a long, long time.
So, I thought that those movies got into a real racist fantasy. And every time you say that, people go, "Oh, you're reading too much into it." No, I'm not."--Joe Queenan
At the third annual Tibetan Freedom Concert in RFK Stadium, during a set by Herbie Hancock, lightning struck the crowd, throwing a spectator 20 feet in the air and injuring a total of 11 concertgoers -- four critically.
According to a recent story about Sharon's bare knuckles, for the recent reissues of Ozzy's first stellar solo efforts, 1980's "Blizzard of Ozz" and 1981's "Diary of a Madman," Sharon ordered that the parts of bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake be replaced by Robert Trujillo (ex-Suicidal Tendencies) and Mike Bordin (ex-Faith No More) from Ozzy's current touring band. Daisley and Kerslake have a $20 million lawsuit pending for back monies they claim Ozzy owes them, and Sharon didn't want to have to pay them performance royalties for the reissues.--from
salon
i want to make a version of
quarto with little people. four distinguishing factors--hmm.
i just saw a 'discovery kids' (digital-cable discovery channel spinoff) promo that had james brown samples in it. incidentally, why is it such a convention in kiddee teevee that, like, person x is really knowledgeable, and explaining things to the grateful person y, who's kind of a moron?
so, as i sometimes do, i just told somebody that the little cul-de-sac at the end of my street is private property. for the first time, however, that person was patronizing a prostitute. she was nonplussed.
citizen spies. now that's just great. it's like
bad fiction.
the
bike i want like whoa is set to end in ten minutes, and still just the one bidder. sigh. timing.
i'm watching 'how i'm livin,' which is a second-rate cribs on bet. and, like, wow do i like e-40. i want to hang out with him. things he has stressed: don't buy an $85,000 car before you buy a house. take off your shoes before you go into his house. "y'all watch the food channel? that boy emeril, he be cheffin'!" he's married to his high-school sweetheart. he, where someone else might say 'nawmean?' or 'knowutuhmsayin?', he says 'you smell me?' the one thing i like about the pimp stereotype, by the way, is the, like, gift of gab. ooh, and e-40's video just had a lingering shot of a medaglia d'oro coffee can.
a little tidbit for all my yahoo-mail-using buddies--they're replacing
words now.
Okay, I have a new respect for Cher. Check out what she said during a Boston performance of her farewell tour, as quoted in the Boston Herald:
"I feel like I have a responsibility to give these young girls something to aspire to. Britney, J. Lo, follow this show if you can, you bitches."
--from
moviejuice.com
i am obsessed with
this bike. i desperately wish i had some money.
on my way home from the bank, i saw some gentleman sitting in a chaise lounge in his front yard, wearing boxer shorts, smoking a cigar and holding a garden hose in his other hand. and with the hose, he was sort of halfheartedly watering the lawn, but mostly spraying his dog with water. the dog was having a hell of a time.
i need a guide to, like, configuring linux (xinerama, really) with multiple monitors. ideally, one whose target readership are basically complete idiots.
salon claims 'the sims' is 'easily... the most popular game of all time.' bullshit. putting aside for a moment non-electronic games like catch and tag, consider these two titles: tetris. solitaire.
seeming neologism: **AA - (n) the Motion Picture and Recording Industry Associations of America. "Those **AA bozos just don't get it."
posted to slashdot, very possibly a fake:
****************************************************************
AT&T Network Fraud Advisory
July 11, 2002
****************************************************************
Possible Hacker Social Engineering Attempts
Friday July 12 ? Sunday July
14, 2002
===================================================
Caution:
------------
Be careful about giving information to anyone you don't know and those making unusual information requests by claiming to be an AT&T employee or customer. The H2K2 (Hackers on Planet Earth 2002) Hacker Conference will take place this weekend, Friday, July 12 to Sunday to July 14, 2001, [ed. note: 2001?] in New York City. This conference will be a gathering of over five thousand computer hackers, guest speakers, and computer enthusiasts. http://www.h2k2.net In 1994, 1997 and 2000 at the previous Hope (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conferences, live demonstrations of "social engineering" techniques were performed in front of thousands of hackers and other attendees. The hacker panel dialed live into AT&T offices and centers and demonstrated how to get proprietary information by pretending to be an AT&T employee and customer. These calls were recorded and videotaped by the hackers and are sold as instructional material at future hacker conferences. There is a very high likelihood that AT&T will be a target again this weekend. The social engineering contest is scheduled for Sunday July 14th, at 4 P.M. ET, (1 PM PT). During this period hackers may be dialing into AT&T to get information. AT&T Network Security would like to warn our employees to be on guard this entire weekend for any unknown person calling and claiming to be an AT&T employee to request proprietary information or claiming to be an AT&T customer with unusual requests. Remember, if anyone, who is unknown to you calls for proprietary information or make unusual requests, please follow your procedure by requesting additional information to ensure the person is who they say they are before giving out any information. � If the person is claiming to be an AT&T employee, please request name, callback and HRID #. Then verify through POST or the email global address list if the information is correct and even request to call the employee back at their contact number. � If the person is claiming to be an AT&T customer verify this by requesting additional info on their account like address and SS# and even request to call the person back at their contact number listed on the account. Please be on guard for any unusual requests. Verify the person is an AT&T employee or a legitimate customer and if they have a need to know the information they are asking. If you can't verify employment or number, don't give out the information. If you are still in doubt regarding the legitimacy of the caller, then speak to a supervisor regarding the situation before proceeding further and inform the caller you will call them back. If you still have questions you can call the Security Hotline 1-800-822-9009. Remember you do not want to be the lucky guest of honor on a telephone call from the hacker conference this weekend with thousands of hackers listening to you and attempting to scam AT&T out of proprietary information. Please be on guard.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Source: AT&T Network Security
*******************************************************************
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there are a bunch of upward bound kids on campus today, and one of 'em has this bop-it game, where, like, you hold the thing and it says 'bop it' and you have to bop it, and it says 'spin it' and you have to spin it, etc. and, like, i always thought this thing looked pretty stupid. but wow, is this kid enjoying the thing. bop-it ought to pay him, like those schmoes that walk around with gamecubes strapped to themselves.
"oh, you hate your job? why didn't you say so? there's a support group for that. it's called everybody. they meet at the bar."
wow, these l&o kids were listening to kool moe dee.
if i have time, this will all go on a webpage, but here's a collection of links about the Patriot Act and libraries.
9/13/2001 -- feds enlist isps in terrorist probe, says
cnn.com
9/18/2001 -- feds target
florida libraries.
10/25/2001 --
here's a (huge) pdf file of the act itself from senator leahy's site. if you're in my ethics class, you should be happy i didn't print you a copy. the electronic frontier foundation has the
text of the act too.
10/31/2001 --
summary and analysis published by the center for democracy and technology.
library juice
reprints an email and responses from ALA board members.
11/2001 -- center for constitutional rights
outlines constitutional problems.
12/12/2001 -- ashcroft defends bush. the world socialist website has the
story.
1/21/2002 -- civil liberties groups
challenge the act.
2/12/2002 -- criminal defense lawyers
question the constitutionality. committee of radical attorneys
agrees.
2/27/2002 -- cornell's mitrano is
interviewed by the chronicle of higher education on the topic.
3/1/2002 -- the chronicle of higher education
reports on results for academic libraries.
3/7/2002 -- lib/radical organ counterpunch
visits the topic.
4/1/2002 -- the lefties at
truthout take a look, too.
5/1/2002 -- senators begin to take a
second look at the act, reports hillnews.
6/26/2002 -- the libertarian cato institute weighs in on
liberties and terrorism.
7/1/2002 -- abc news reports that some us cities have
revolted against the act.
7/9/2002 -- cato institute fellow robert levy
publishes on the topic.
the
aclu has a
legislative analysis of the act (not much library-related material).
here's
cornell's office of information technology's patriot act
page. very link-heavy. and a
tracy mitrano presentation on the topic. much legal detail.
ala's patriot act
page has all kinds of resources.
ditto the ala
office of intellectual freedom page,
patriot act in the library page and '
fbi in your library' page. the name says it all.
oif offers
guidelines for library staff.
the
american association of law libraries also has
guidelines.
so does the
law library exchange.
here are some
guidelines for the academic world, from
university business, and here are some
guidelines, though not intended for librarians, from the
department of justice.
ombwatch looks at the
impact for nonprofits (it would also apply to many special libraries).
wow.
what if it's all been a big fat lie? fat, obesity, diets. "In ''The Physiology of Taste,'' for instance, an 1825 discourse considered among the most famous books ever written about food, the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin says that he could easily identify the causes of obesity after 30 years of listening to one ''stout party'' after another proclaiming the joys of bread, rice and (from a ''particularly stout party'') potatoes. Brillat-Savarin described the roots of obesity as a natural predisposition conjuncted with the ''floury and feculent substances which man makes the prime ingredients of his daily nourishment.'' He added that the effects of this fecula -- i.e., ''potatoes, grain or any kind of flour'' -- were seen sooner when sugar was added to the diet." Brillat-Savarin was writing in French, which begs the question of why so many direct quotations were used, but his wisdom (he's quoted, something like 'show me a man eats, and i will show you what he is,' at the beginning of iron chef) remains unsullied.
one of my fellow slis students appears to be rocking a grey t-shirt, plaid skirt, olive socks and combat boots. oh, and a bun and glasses.
these pete and pete shorts are wonderful. 'the human heart pumps enough blood in one day to fill a swimming pool.'--pete
cd-alphabetizing-related dilemma: people with what sort of amounts to a courtesy title, followed by their real name. like
mc paul barman, or
dj mark farina. should i be putting him between, uh,
faithless and
karen finley? or between, er,
dj logic and
dj q-bert? or between
dj eddie def and
dj krush? my feeling is to go for the second option. then again, my first inclination would be to put buddy holly and the crickets under 'b.'
"Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."--Ronald Reagan
in footloose, there's that scene, right after bacon's big dance number, where he's talking to ol' girl, and then they go to the little shack. bacon/ren reads this crappy verse
(i'll sing to you of silver swans/
of kingdoms and carillons/
i'll sing of bodies intertwined/
under an innocent sky,)
which the girl completes. then he says 'you wrote that?' and ariel says 'it's not even one of my best.' bacon totally passes. he could've said 'it's one of your worst,' or 'i would've preferred it wasn't one of yours,' or just 'i hope not,' but he says 'it's all right.' granted, bacon's no olivier, but his reading is clear: he thinks the thing is junk. so why doesn't he zing her? he's willing to call her a slut, but not to dis the poem. no wonder he gets all the skirt.
line from my favorite footloose character: 'you're not stupid, are you?'
the grand prize on this techtv quiz thing is a copy of office xp? weird. okay, let's say there are ten techtv viewers (i doubt there are that many, but bear with me). of those ten viewers, i would suggest that five of 'em already have office xp, five of 'em could get a pirated copy at a moment's notice, five are linux zealots and four of them are, like, thirteen.
"he wants me to debate him on television. it worked for nixon."--steven hill/adam schiff
okay, i was definitely unprepared for the traffic and congestion and whatnot today. holy crow.
Sorry, you must either be using an old browser that doesn't support Java, or you have java support turned off. You must be running at least Netscape 3.0 or Internet Explorer 3.0. Newer versions of Netscape and IE will work also. If you are running new versions of Netscape or IE, and the applet still doesn't show up, making sure you have Java turned on.
ooh, this kid on law & order's listening to ice-t. now, he's a bad mammajamma, and i'm sure he's helping set the mood for this bernard goetz character, but why no love for the east coast? then again, using mr. cop killer (it's no 'godfather of soul,' but it's close) seems almost prophetic now.
wow. grr. time-warner had better, like, have a truck in my neighborhood fixing this as we speak.
dammit, i think posting links to aim through trillian screws 'em up en route. like, aim automatically makes any url a link, even if it's inside a goddamn tag to begin with.
why the hell did
blackalicious only put 'art of mind' on the japanese version of 'blazing arrow'? it's great.
call-in on techtv's cable in the classroom 'basic questions' show: 'why does microsoft office keep getting slower and slower when computers keep getting faster and faster?' haha. this other kid's asking about anti-piracy measures.
