Another Portrait of the Bush Administration Asleep at the Wheel

Foreign Workers Abused at Embassy, Panel Told - Washington Post

The Bush Administration appears to be doing a pretty spot-on, unintentional Spinal Tap parody. Only here the question isn't how much more black can an album cover be, but how much more tone-deaf can his administration be about the damage his policies and actions (and as here, inaction) are causing to America's image and interests abroad recently?

I know that's saying a lot, but I don't know how else to characterize being seen as kidnapping foreign nationals, and not to bring them home to the US do our menial labor. We've already got people illegally coming here for free to do that, plus many of them are actually skilled to boot! Instead we shanghai these hapless souls and drop them into a deeply unpopular war zone instead of a Persian Gulf paradise awash in glitz and golf (you've seen all of the Dubai ads on CNN and what-not, right?).

Don't think that because it was a Kuwaiti subcontractor at the pay end of the abuse allegations, the Kuwaitis will be the ones more reviled. The Kuwaitis are seen here as clearly doing America's bidding in supplying work on the American Embassy in American-occupied Baghdad, after we did Kuwait's bidding kicking Saddam Hussein out of their country in the early '90s. Those kinds of contracts don't go to non-friendly, or even a-political organizations and everybody knows it.

Even worse, the Kuwaitis were clearly violating the principal law of capitalism, that of supply and demand, part of the very bedrock of all that it means to be Republican. If you can't get people willing to work for what you're willing to pay them to do that work and you have no alternatives, you are clearly offering too little and need to offer more money. What's left unsaid is that in modern Capitalism you generally don't have the ability to compel your work force to show up as much as you used to, say in at the end of the 19th century (Lattimer Massacre).

At least that's how it works here. In the wealthy US, where the vast majority of citizens at even the low end of the economic pole are no longer having to deal with 3rd World poverty (exceptions granted, as John Edwards recent "Poverty Tour" amply demonstrated Edwards on Poverty - washingtonpost.com), we have private citizens who are volunteering to work hellish stints in Iraq (Civilian Contractors Face Perils in Iraq -CBS News). Only they aren't making "as little as $240 a month", more like $8,000 a month for generally non-combat support job, like running recreational facilities (see CBS again).

I'll grant that running recreational facilities is quite a few notches in importance above day-laborer, but that is still on the low end of the American contractor food chain I'd imagine, behind those operating on the front-lines, running force-protection and other missions, so maybe not that far off of an analogy, though I guess that might depend on whether or not we import or use local clerical support.

I'm not sure if we do or don't import purely administrative staff to Bahdad, like some modern-day version of a "Three Coins in a Fountain" world (IMDB link) where big American companies actually moved secretaries to exotic locales to work in the typing pool^*. The only difference is there's a long way between "exotic" and "hellish" and I can't see many American women today that willing to make that sort of leap, so I'm guessing these two positions are likely far closer in terms of where their recipients are in the pecking order.

How could this most Republican of Republican administrations have allowed this ridiculous situation to occur? At some point there have to be some Republicans in Congress and party activists starting to question on balance whether President Bush's limited ability to promote any of their agenda any longer, coupled with revelations like this, mean that he and Vice President Cheney may actively be causing long-term harm damage to their party far greater than in the 2008 Presidential election.

How soon do you think the American people will be able to forget Iraq, Katrina, and the fact that Bin Laden and Zawahiri are still alive? Especially if a Democratic President in 2009 actually re-commits significant troops and diplomacy efforts away from Iraq and towards Afghanistan and Pakistan, managing to capture or kill either of the masterminds of 9/11?

Combine that with an economy teetering on the brink of a collapse due to the lengthy and ongoing weakness in the housing market, negative real-term salary growth that means most people don't personally feel better off today than 8 years ago, despite the supposed strength of that economy overall. Most people see record corporate profits, yet little if any more money in their pockets, and do the math that if the economy is good and I ain't getting my share, that means somebody else is, and guess which party that "somebody else", the rich, are closely associated with promoting the economic interests of?

^*
Remember typing pools? My mom used to work in one, I think, if my family memory serves me correctly. She even met my father when she was working in one back in 1969, and now I don't know what the modern equivalent could possibly be. Maybe the people who respond to those "make money working at home on your computer" ads?

Name of the Year 2007 Final Four (the Grinning Edition)

In case you missed the earlier episodes:
intro
ballot page
Bulltron Regional
Dragonwagon Regional
Sithole Regional
Chrotchtangle Regional

Which brings us back to here, at the Grinning Media Edition of the 2007 Name of the Year Final Four:

4 Kyle Sackrider vs. 6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz: I've got to go with my heart over my lower regions and give the first spot in the finals to D. Zeke Ezekowitz.

8 Destinee Hooker vs. 1 Vanilla Dong: let's see, Sackrider, Hooker, Dong and Ezekowitz, notice a pattern? At least this time I have to resolve a conflict that presents a challenge, though in the end since I'm a boy I have to give it to the Hooker, right?

NOTY 2007: 6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz vs. 8 Destinee Hooker: Destinee Hooker. What can I say, when it's practically carved in stone at birth?

Stuff mentioned, referenced, alluded to above:




Here's the other version of March Madness many of us will be watching for the next couple weeks.NCAA sitefree live stream

Chrotchtangle Regional

In case you missed the earlier episodes:
intro
ballot page
Bulltron Regional
Dragonwagon Regional
Sithole Regional


Chrotchtangle Regional, First Round:

1 Vanilla Dong vs. 16 Chanel Gemini: the Donger! The Gemini is just trying way, way too hard, yet ironically winds up totally outclassed.

8 Doris Morris vs. 9 Unique Grant: I guess it's kind of Unique, but not really that much when you look around at the competition. Somehow Doris Morris is unique here, so I'll take "Alliteration" for $600 please Alex.

5 Margharita Pigeon vs. 12 Bung Mac: I feel like maybe the 12-seed is some secret English or Aussie phrase I may understand if I travelled more than I do, so I'm sticking to form with the Margharita Pigeon prevailing on account of confusion.

4 De’Cody Fagg vs. 13 Chief Kickingstallionsims: another apo'strophool, and I'm wondering if this is the last year we'll see such a clichéed and potentially offensive representation of the Native Americansims tribe.

3 Gelo Orange vs. 14 Zhaneta Bozo: I like clowns, so it's another 14-3 upset!

6 Simpson Rushing vs. 11 Sasha Junk: I like history also, though admittedly I have some mixed feelings advancing Simpson to the next round, but in the end there's just not enough Junk.

7 Solomon HorseChief vs. 10 Demetria Crumbly: I'm not sure how to parse Solomon (the "Lawgiver") with HorseChief (maybe someone mixed their biblical action figures with their old Cowboy and Indian ones and was merely describing a tableau?), but however it works it moves on.

2 Thankful Vanderstar vs. 15 Ramarcus Dickerson: The fact that Ramarcus isn't that Ramarcable dooms Dickerson in the end. "Just be Thankful for What You've Got".




Second Round:

1 Vanilla Dong vs. 8 Doris Morris: as if it's not perfectly obvious already, I'm a boy and in situations like this, dick jokes win. No gong for the Dong as Doris has to call it a day.

5 Margharita Pigeon vs. 13 Chief Kickingstallionsims: I knew a Pigeon once, but I ain't ever heard of no Kickingstallionsims' in my neighborhood. Being a well-educated man, I reject the familiar and advance the unknown and presumably misunderstood Chief.

14 Zhaneta Bozo vs. 6 Simpson Rushing: Karma helps the Bozo beat the Simpson Rushing.

7 Solomon HorseChief vs. 2 Thankful Vanderstar: I like to think of myself as having occasional bouts of wisdom, but I'll admit I may regret advancing Thankful instead, but that's what I'm going to do.


Sweet Sixteen:

1 Vanilla Dong vs. 13 Chief Kickingstallionsims: it's starting to look inevitable as we get another tablespoon of Vanilla in the Elite Eight.

14 Zhaneta Bozo vs. 2 Thankful Vanderstar: it's not a big win for the Bozo, but a win nevertheless.

Elite Eight:

1 Vanilla Dong vs. 14 Zhaneta Bozo: Dong becomes my first Number 1 seed in the Final Four.

Next: The Final Four

Sithole Regional

In case you missed the earlier episodes:
intro
ballot page
Bulltron Regional
Dragonwagon Regional

Sithole Regional, First Round:

1 Mario Hilario vs. 16 Eugene Heavy Runner: if I didn't already know a soccer player named Hilario, maybe we wouldn't have our second 1-16 upset of the tournament, but I do, and we do. Mario goes home and the Heavy Runner bounds into the Second Round.

8 Lovie Lilly vs. 9 Cetera DeGraffenreid: DeGraffenreid is another name that I feel like I would maybe get an inside joke on if I only understood some Germanic language (which I don't), but I don't really care for Lovie Lilly either. The weirdness advances over the blandness, and Lilly Lilly Lilly goes home.

5 Wisdom Bleboo vs. 12 Babu Chalamala: Babu!

4 Kyle Sackrider vs. 13 Oxide Pang: I almost spit up when I saw Kyle step onto the court. No contest.

3 Conceptualization Gibbs vs. 14 Anita Fiel: a vote Bart Simpson would be proud of. Anita Fiel, Round 2 is on the phone.

6 LeQuantum McDonald vs. 11 Jamarion Cavness: pretty evenly matched, but I'll give a little extra "e" for effort to LeQuantum for pseudo-scientific-ness.

7 Sa’Coby Carter vs. 10 Quantavius Sturdivant: not a big fan of the apo'strophied names, while I AM a fan of classical (and classical sounding) languages, so Quantavius Maximus gets a pass on to the next round.

2 Maserati Jemison vs. 15 Brett Bucktooth: I've said it before, I'll say it again: sometimes people shouldn't try so hard, it's unseemly. Maserati goes home and the Bucktooth Bandit pulls off an upset!


Second Round:
16 Eugene Heavy Runner vs. 9 Cetera DeGraffenreid: Heavy Runner keeps on to the Sweet 16.

12 Babu Chalamala vs. 4 Kyle Sackrider: I like thinking about Seinfeld randomly, but the Sackrider it is. Was there really ever any doubt between a Sackrider and thoughts of a long, shamefully waving finger?

14 Anita Fiel vs. 6 LeQuantum McDonald: I remember seeing early Simpsons shorts in an 80s animation festival before their series debut. Loved it then, sometimes still like it, and am definitely looking forward to the movie. That counts for a lot in contests like this.

10 Quantavius Sturdivant vs. 15 Brett Bucktooth: it would feel a little elitist to advance Brett, like assuming he could use a helping hand because he probably never even heard of modern dentistry back in Bucktooth Holler, so I'm giving a leg up to Quantavius instead.


Sweet Sixteen:

16 Eugene Heavy Runner vs. 4 Kyle Sackrider: the Runner is out of gas and goes back home.

14 Anita Fiel vs. 10 Quantavius Sturdivant: memories of (mostly) long-ago greatness will only get you so far, while pretensions can apparently float one on into the Elite 8.

Elite Eight:

4 Kyle Sackrider vs. 10 Quantavius Sturdivant: The upper seed wins out, my manliness is assured, and we have another member of the Final Four.

Next:
Chrotchtangle Regional
The Final Four

Dragonwagon Regional

In case you missed the earlier episodes:
intro
ballot page
Bulltron Regional

Dragonwagon Regional, First Round:

1 Yourhighness Morgan vs. 16 Cynammon Burns: Yourhighness, and not for illegal affiliations, but more the obvious that's what we all at some time or other call the little ones (see 7 Princess Perdue below). I like cinnamon, but not really Cynnamon.

8 Destinee Hooker vs. 9 U Nu: you've got to be kidding me! This is basically a slam dunk in the end for me, but I will still admit that U Nu would have won just about every other face off. A damn shame to see this have to happen in the 8-9 matchup rather than further down the road.

5 Alibaba Odd vs. 12 Jazzmen Guy: neither one really excites me, so Jazzmen Guy becomes the next victim of the winner below.

4 Phyre Quickly Burns vs. 13 Ottilia Eycleshimer: this was another toughie, as I like the practicality of a parental admonition for a name, but they lose points for the misspelling. Ottilia Eycleshimer? I'm still not sure how that's spelled, so Ms. (?) Eyclewhatever moves on.

3 Adrienne Cumbus vs. 14 Nature Johnson: no one fools with Nature, not even for a semi-funny/sick double entendre.

6 Pinckney Pinchback vs. 11 Joe Favorito: Favorito, sounds like a used car dealer already.

7 Princess Perdue vs. 10 Co-Eric Riley: already got one member of royalty, so Co-Eric, you're the next contestant on....

2 Outerbridge Horsey vs. 15 Leftonred Atanycorner: this is an example of the selection committee doing a poor job of seeding. Unless Outerbridge had to fight his/her way through a power conference, it's basically a pedestrian, albeit kind of odd, double-take name, but Leftonred Atanycorner is the easy upset winner here. I'll admit I've had a partiality to signs as names ever since my High School Mythology teacher, Mr. Ron Adams, told my class of an acquaintance (possibly apocryhpal) named Nosmo King.


Second Round:

1 Yourhighness Morgan vs. 8 Destinee Hooker: it must be Destinee.

12 Jazzmen Guy vs. 13 Ottilia Eycleshimer: hello again, Ottilia.

14 Nature Johnson vs. 11 Joe Favorito: Joe seems alright, though generally I prefer to see upsets.

10 Co-Eric Riley vs. 15 Leftonred Atanycorner: the 15 seed may be the Cinderella of the tourney so far as he/she/it dances on.


Sweet Sixteen:

8 Destinee Hooker vs. 13 Ottilia Eycleshimer: another easy win for the Hooker.

11 Joe Favorito vs. 15 Leftonred Atanycorner: ya gotta be better than alright to make it to the elite 8, and I'm giving it to Leftonred.

Elite Eight:

8 Destinee Hooker vs. 15 Leftonred Atanycorner: in the end Leftonred is a bit of a gimmick, not that they all aren't to some degree or other, but Destinee is clearly the thoroughbred of the region and moves on to the Final Four.

Next:
Sithole Regional
Chrotchtangle Regional
The Final Four

Bulltron Regional

In case you missed the earlier episodes:
intro
ballot page

Bulltron Regional, First Round:

1 Intelligent Infinite Botts vs. 16 Taz Knockum: if it was "Infinite Intelligent" instead of vice versa, we might not have our first 1-16 upset, but it ain't and we do. Goodbye Botts, and hello Rock'em, Sock'em Knockum to the Second Round.

8 Tyson Mao vs. 9 John Bulcock: the apolitical potty humor of the Bulcock.

5 Michelangelo X Ball Van Zee vs. 12 Tekerrion Cuba: they both confuse me, but Michelangelo in a way that makes me pick him (5 part name!), while Tekerrion just makes me wonder what his mother was thinking.

4 Zaire Kitchen vs. 13 Mister Taylor: clever putting someone named after an African country and someone who sounds like he could rule one together. In these situations I go for the strongman: Mister Taylor subjugates Zaire.

3 Gertrude Nipple vs. 14 Windham Rotunda: not all body part names are good, but maternal ones with a lascivious aftertaste generally work for most dirty-minded people. Here it just has to beat the meeting room in downtown Metropolis's nicest convention center. Not much chance of another upset here as Gertrude holds serve.

6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz vs. 11 Remus Stefan: Zeke! You just have to kind of shout that name, with that sort of up-lilt you imagine prospectors in the Old West had when they shouted "Eureka!" Then Ezekowitz reinforces the lyricism. A pretty easy win for ol' D. Zeke.

7 Basil Hero vs. 10 Taiwan Easterling: no real reason here, just capriciously chosen Easterling to advance.

2 Ayo Yayo vs. 15 Lady Comfort: I'm going for the (presumably) little girl named like a race horse. It's Lady Comfort by a couple lengths!


Second Round:

16 Taz Knockum vs. 9 John Bulcock: the plastic robot loses to the wang.

5 Michelangelo X Ball Van Zee vs. 13 Mister Taylor: the real Michelangelo survived the whims of both Medici and Popes (sometimes both at the same time wikipedia), but X Ball Van Zee is sent abroad to "rest" while Taylor takes care of business on the court.

3 Gertrude Nipple vs. 6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz: Zeke!

10 Taiwan Easterling vs. 15 Lady Comfort: no real contest here, so no need for another horse metaphor as the 15 seed advances to the Sweet Sixteen.


Sweet Sixteen:

9 John Bulcock vs. 13 Mister Taylor: Taylor has to buy off the opposition this time, but a porn name like that probably didn't cost too much.

6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz vs. 15 Lady Comfort: I'm a geek, so bad luck to the lady.

Elite Eight:

13 Mister Taylor vs. 6 D. Zeke Ezekowitz: I'm still a geek, and I don't like despots and dictators, so I refer Taylor's case to the UN and put Ezekowitz into the Final Four!

Next:
Dragonwagon Regional
Sithole Regional
Chrotchtangle Regional
The Final Four

The Real March Madness

Name of the Year 2007 (you need to get or at least look at the brackets here before this will make any sort of sense)

The brilliance of the Name of the Year concept is that it is like reverse Mad Libs, friend of long, boring car ride/trip sufferers everywhere, except here you start off with all of the funny parts, then have to work a reasonable narrative around them. In other words: very entertaining and silly.

I used to have the entire tournament here, but for brevity's sake, I've broken it up into the following sub-posts:

Next:
Bulltron Regional
Dragonwagon Regional
Sithole Regional
Chrotchtangle Regional
The Final Four

Robot Love

Seth Green is the man! I never thought I'd say it, but I can think of nothing more appropriate to describe the comic actor who got Adult Swim to bring us "Robot Chicken," a show that brings the toys of childhood to a semi-permanantly infantiized culture.

I love it, really I do, and what's not to love? Tonight's early episode, "Gold Dust Gasoline," had a Cannonball Run between Knight Rider's KITT, Speed Racer, Ponch and Jon of CHiPs, the Mario Brothers, Bo & Luke Duke et al, and a parody of "That 70's Show" as "That 00's Show" featuring the actual cast doing the voice acting, while other themes generally touched by typical child-hood play absurdism, the kind forced on you simply by not having all of any toy universe.


direct YouTube video link

The world of my childhood was one where my brother and I had one of the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee replica Matchbox cars, but that's about all of note you could buy from that show that would allow you to otherwise pretend/play the TV show. So we certainly could have added in a 1960s era Batmobile we had no idea the origins of, plus the cyclically cool/uncool Mach 5, and then whatever else happens to be current like an A-Team van and we'd have races, or demolition derbys, make bad sound effects with our mouths, drove cars off cliffs, killed off entire casts if we felt like it, and generally just did whatever entertained us.

The world of childhood imagination implicit in the conceit of Robot Chicken makes for an incredibly flexible canvas to play off, as its twisted sorts of logic enable the overlapping of not just genres between film and tv, but eras as well. We used to have Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars doubling as the legions of Tie Fighters and X-Wings in a Star Wars battle, since our parents didn't have the budget to adequately reproduce the filmed version, or even a boy-sized small scale version. Not that really anybody much South of George Lucas's financial world would likely want to have thousands of toys like that, given that I believe they ranged in price from about ten to the hundreds or thousands of dollars for high-end replicas rumored to be available, but still we had to have more than one of each to have a real battle, so we improvised, and anybody who had ever done that would recognize what we were doing if they saw a filmed version of what was in our heads. That's the genius of Robot Chicken.

Of course that's obvious, since this was in fact most people's childhoods to some extent or other. But if it's so obvious, why hasn't it been done before? I mean, it's just stop-motion animation mostly, one of the cheapest, and easiest to get a basic level of proficiency at, using facsimiles of common childhood toys, brilliantly voiced by Seth Green and an amazing array of the best and brightest of contemporary American comic actors. Cheap computer animation helps further lower the production costs, but still this is the first time I feel like I can see my childhood on TV. Kind of cool, and creepy at times, and sometimes flat, but most commonly clever and plenty hilarious.

Proposal for Fair Use Extension for Online Usage

Was thinking about what I could do with my online posting that would really demonstrate my understanding of what the medium is capable of and where it should be going, and it became obvious that it was in figuring out some way to think differently about how multi-media content is included in the general narrative, i.e., how it doesn't just become dots on a screen instead of ink on paper, when those dots can do so much more. I obviously don't have budget/time to create all kinds of original content, just as most don't, which is why so many bloggers quote everybody and their brother at length, like junior high kids padding out their essays. Sure occasionally there are the blowhards like me who can ramble on and on about just about anything, even when they don't know anything about it, but the blogosphere is still dominated by liberal quoters. But you can't quote movies and songs like that. I would love to be able to throw a couple of bars from the Replacements "Bastards of Young"

in an article rather than just their corresponding lyrics:

"God, what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled
It beats pickin' cotton and waitin' to be forgotten"Full lyrics
but I can't.

Here's a link to current Fair Use guidelines for podcasters:
Podcasting Legal Guide: Fair Use Under Copyright Law and Its Application to Podcasts

This is why youtube and its brethren is really under threat, and why the negotiations between them and the major studios are so crucial to the youtubes of the worlds', and indirectly our, futures.

Here's my thoughts:

Proposal for Fair Use Extension for Online Usage

A publisher agrees to only use x% of material in its relevant medium down to a minimal level (varies per medium), and that material may only appear on some % of however you define the potential online universe, and should have some link to a range of commercial outlets for that product with its copyright owner, or contact information if out-of-print/unavailable commercially.

Details:

Recorded performances would have to have a minimum length to be eligible, as there would be no point in having a 5 second minimum for most sound-effects, making their inclusion commercially unviable. So a recorded performance would have to be a minimum of 30 seconds in length, contain at most 1/4 of the shortest commercially available version of that content, and be linked to the online commercial outlet of your choice for that content, either directly on the posting, or via an indexed page for that posting detailing the usage of copyrighted materials in the posting. The same sort of formula could be developed for each medium, eg. a still frame would be the smallest freely publishable snippet from a video recording, but only a fraction of an original still photograph, both with the same commercial linkage requirements.

The publisher's portion of the bargain is enforced by voluntary submission to some standard basic traffic analysis software system, like Google Analytics to verify that the system is not being abused by a commercial publisher. This strikes the balance between anonymity of recipient of a publisher's traffic while giving the aggregate numbers needed by the content owner to ensure that commercial opportunities are not being subverted by the agreement.

Does that make sense? Thoughts?

buy The Replacements "Bastards of Young" on

F-L-A his name is Ned!

E-R-S he is so white bread.
"Everybody Hates Ned Flanders" lyrics

Dude, Where's My Ranch? episode guide

(covers Seasons 13 and 14)

Yet Another D.O.A. Plan for Iraq

Bush Threatens to Veto Democrats' Iraq Plan Washington Post

Did anyone seriously think that there was going to be any response from the White House to the newest proposals from Congress regarding the Iraq war? At this stage of the game it is not really all that newsworthy that White House counselor Dan Bartlett said, ""It's safe to say it's a nonstarter for the president."

Mr. Bartlett, it's safe to say that ANY proposal from ANYBODY other than President Bush and (maybe lately) Vice President Cheney will be considered as a "nonstarter." Yet this is what passes for political debate under this administration: challenge the opposition to come up with a plan, knowing that whatever they are going to come up with is going to be a nonstarter, simply because the plan is developed at the wrong end of the Mall by people operating from the other side of the aisle, and not by "the Decider himself".

Can you imagine any other outcome? Mr. Bush maybe says, "Ms. Pelosi has some very thoughtful and interesting ideas regarding Iraq. I don't agree with all of them, and in the end it is my decision, but I respect the effort that went into it and will take it under consideration."

No, that will never happen. So we play the same meaningless game, yet again. As an illustration, try this: Google News Archive search for "Bush"+"nonstarter"+"Iraq"+"Democrat*"+"Plan"

Free-Fall for the Fall Guy

"Three reporters heard [Libby's wife, Harriet Grant,] say what sounded like, "We're gonna [expletive] 'em.""

They're gonna [expletive] whom? Cheney, Rove and Bush for making him the fall guy? Fitzgerald for prosecuting only Mr. Libby for what the Libbys believe is ultimately only a technicality in the end? The jury for having the temerity to convict someone so un-concerned about what the general public might think (and not in the honorable rebellious way of say "Wild One" era Brando), despite being in his mid-50s and this no longer being the 1950s, he publicly is referred to as "Scooter"? The dirty jackals of the Press for not lying to protect his lying?

read more | digg story

The Great Louse Detective

Wiggum: If I can tranq out just one freak on stilts, I know I've done my job.
Lou: You're living the dream, chief.

Simpsons Season 14: The Great Louse Detective

Still Reliable, Sources Now Also More Convenient

While listening to CNN's podcast of this past Sunday's "Reliable Sources" program for 37 minutes and 50 seconds of my drive home today, I began to wonder whether I still needed to keep my Season Pass scheduled for the same program on my Tivo at home. It's the exact same show content-wise, minus the commercials, thus it is much shorter than the 60 minutes of broadcast time that the Tivo chews up for it. Of course Tivo makes it pretty darn easy to skip through the 22 minutes and 10 seconds of ad pitches, none-too-revelatory "updates" from talking head du-jour, plus the lead-ins/hand-offs to/from preceding/following shows, but you can't get any easier than not having to do anything at all.

So what's in Tivo's favor? First, it's always plugged into generally one of the largest pieces of screen real estate in the house (our tvs still dwarf the size of even the most gargantuan computer monitors, though theoretically they share much of the same hardware). Second, if you have more than one Tivo and a home network, you could theoretically share programs between them.

I say "theoretically" because it has been our experience that we have to have a dedicated hard-wired cable into the tivo boxes from the two wireless access points we have in our fairly small house. One access point could service the whole house, but not with any sort of media sharing going on, and we already wirelessly stream our music to our stereo. We sometiimes get interference from our microwave on that, but it doesn't generally degrade the other basic online stuff we do, like web browsing. Whereas if we have the tivos networked solely wirelessly over the exact same infrastructure, it not only brings all other online activity to a crawl, but it also doesn't go fast enough to watch generally in anything close to real-time, while it's downloading. So you both can't watch what you're downloading, nor get to any other content while you're downloading, at least not until almost 10-15 minutes has been downloaded, then you have a reasonable chance of staying ahead of the download cache.

At least hard-wiring the Tivos to the access points minimizes their impact on our web browsing, so we can watch youtube, but that still isn't necessarily fast enough over the slower version of WiFi that many houses still have for real-time viewing while downloading (we have one old client that only operates on 802.11b, so we have to use the slower one until we retire/upgrade it). However even in the worst case of the above scenarios, our iTunes will still work since it's presenting already downloaded shows and video podcasts, like Reliable Sources.

So that's 3 strikes against Tivo: 1) for the 22 minutes of hard drive space, 2) for making me do what I can otherwise avoid at no loss to me of anything of value, and 3) slowing down my incessant news trolling. Season Pass priority Number 7 gets canceled. CNN Reliable Sources podcast

Selections from the rest of my current Season Pass list:
#1) Austin City Limits: WMPT because the other PBS station available on our Comcast subscription for some reason has listings a week off from who is actually appearing, so I'd fire it up on a Sunday night excited to catch Lyle Lovett and instead get Robert Randolph & the Family Band, which maybe is fine, but nevertheless not what I was looking for at that time. When your available media consumption time is as hotly contested as ours is, I may not get an hour for picking and singing in the 2 weeks or so that any given episode is saved on my box, so it helps if I at least know what I'm getting ready to watch. It gets the high priority also primarily because it has zero competition in its normal broadcast timeslot in the rest of my regular viewing schedule, so the only time I'd want to cancel it myself is if I were watching something else, usually soccer, in which case I'd manually cancel the recording.

#2) Desperate Housewives: I personally don't watch it much, but I know somebody close to me who probably would be more than a little upset to come home expecting to see the episode not be recorded that she missed because she was busy putting our son to sleep, or cleaning up after my piglike self because I still need work on getting my cleanliness acceptance factor closer to that of a civilized being. I program the Tivo, so my show got first slot, but number 2 ain't too shabby (though I wouldn't complain if she took the effort to figure out how to swap them, as I'd applaud the technology learning initiative it would demonstarte).

#3) The Office: our current favorite.

#4) The Simpsons: classic that has seen better days, but I'm still not ready to drop out of the top 5 yet. Plus I'm really looking forward to the movie (please be another Beavis and Butthead and not another

#5) My Name is Earl: a close second behind The Office.

Once these are available as free downloads, Tivo loses them too. I wonder if Tivo or anybody else has tracked the impact of the releases of programs into other formats on PVR/DVR usage.

Just a Collection of Tubes in the Sky

To parapharse the eminent Senator Ted Stevens (Google Query: Tubes Internet Senator), the satellite radio network is just a bunch of tubes in the sky, but unlike the "tubes" of the terrestrial networks, the satellite kind of XM and Sirius are much, much more expensive, and in general unlikely to any time in the next 10+ years be considered anything resembling a competitive market.

BusinessWeek: New Conditions May Ease XM-Sirius Merger
I say this as subscriber to both services, and appreciator of various aspects of each, that I wish the two would just merge their technology and let me subscribe to a package of the best of each that I could share between each of our two stereos, rather than accept the compromises forced on me by the current situation:

If my wife's car needs work, or I yearn for the joy of our '99 Maxima again, I get to hear Bob Edwards, Bob Dylan and (sometimes) my hometown St. Louis Cardinals. If I'm driving my primary car, and I've figured out how to reset the security code on our stereo after it got locked when we had to have the car jump-started this past winter, I get Howard, Champions League Soccer and NPR. I'd like to combine those worlds, and having a merger that would allow me to somehow use my existing hundreds of dollars invested in our current receivers and antennae (a dream, I know) or at least not have to shift my listening habits to one set of options or the other would probably be a good thing.

To buttress one of their arguments for the merger, my iPod plays the same music from car to car to car, and that kind of consistency I like.

Space

Gillian Anderson and first season X-Files, mirroring an old Looney Tunes classic (in my head it does anyway).



Try to find this episode to buy online. You do a Google Search for "Fallin' Hare", the title of the episode, and you get a link to an ebay 16 mm film ($50 at last check), Amazon gets you this collection only available currently through third parties:
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Hmmm, who's the winner here?

The Good, The Bad and The Big Audio

Saturday night's 1 a.m. broadcast on Encore Western of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" IMDB quotes, a quote from Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan-Maria Ramirez, "Who the hell is that? One bastard goes in, another bastard comes out!" reminds me of hearing it in a different context, as a sample in a song by Big Audio Dynamite called Medicine Show from their debut album This Is Big Audio Dynamite.

This album was an important part of my early musical education, recommended for me early in my college days by my best friend, deceased just for a year as of 2 weeks ago, so I'm understandably nostalgic about things like it.

As a former disk jockey and music director, I've got a pretty large music collection, all of which has been digitized for well over 5 years now, so if I own it, it's on my computer. Unfortunately for me, even in 20 plus thousand songs, the only copy of "Medicine Show" I had owned other than the original cassette Greg made for me was a bizarre-o 12-inch remix that just wasn't going to cut it.

Five years ago I would have fled to Napster or Kazaa/Limewire, etc. where I'm sure a decent copy of the song I remember could be found. They aren't really that obscure of a band, and it was on a major label, so somebody out there is bound to have posted it at one point or other. Five years older, and in the iTunes Music Store world of today, I decided to first look there before I fled to the wilds of free. Ten minutes and $7.92 later I've got it and near instant gratification in one ear and the soundtrack in the other.
see on iTMS.

Who loses? Comcast/Encore, as they had no way to leverage my interest in their content into cash in their pockets. Who wins? Apple/Big Audio Dynamite, as they made it possible for me to enhance my experience for a reasonable price on my schedule. And I spent that extra money even after already owning a copy of the DVD box shown below, and Ennio Morricone's most excellent soundtrack, containing The Ecstasy of Gold, the song I chose as my debut track on the nominally 80s radio show on WNRN-Charlottesville I helped create back in the mid 90s, Les Temps Perdue.

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The Modern Media Consumer

The Modern Media Consumer: A study in the annoyance, frustration, and overwhelming feelings of betrayal felt by this humble customer in my dealings with media publishers, the owners of the ultimate object of my desire, their product, and the consumption of it in some form or other.

The recipients of today's indignity: the one and only, Mr. Tony Bennett, and Bugs freaking Bunny.

In the networked world, people tell each other to "check out" things they think might be of interest, and someone did that to me regarding NBC's tribute to Tony Bennett, "Tony Bennett: An American Classic" aired sometime in the winter of 2006 (there's an "A Christmas Story" themed ad for Cingular and a Jesus movie, made the approximation easy). This is how highly I regarded the recommender's opinion: I allowed it to take an hour of precious hard drive space for full definition audio/video for over 2 months while I waited to archive it for potential eventual viewing.

That may not seem like much sacrifice in the new world of 80 hour PVR/DVRs ("Tivos" to most of us), but over the holidays it was, as is common in American households. This year was the year we flew back to my family's home in St. Louis, and it was the time for celebrating my father-in-law's 60th birthday, and it was when we finally were able to start re-building a relationship with my younger brother's family, this year barracked out in Arizona, one that had been on hold for years due to an excess of complications and budgetary/time issues going back really to before our wedding almost 6 years ago.

Who knows what serendipitous joy had to be discarded un-viewed during that entire period? And all to preserve this one hour of crooning, a musical style I am not generally known to appreciate that much (don't get me started on Ol' Blue Eyes). For comparison's sake, the only other show that had a a similar "highly protected" status to prevent me/Mr. Tivo from having a brain-fart and accidentally deleting was the US vs. Denmark friendly soccer match in January, which I had actually completely forgot about during all of my travels, only to happily find helpfully awaiting me after whatever leg of the journeys I was on when it was being played.

So, it was a bit of a something something that I saved this particular Tony Bennett show. And today I finally got around to taking it the next fateful step on its path to my eventual viewing: archiving to DVD. Archiving is not however a direct line to my eyeballs, but it's a necessary one for things that I think probably will like if I give them a chance, but who knows when the next time might come that my cranky ass actually feels like giving a chance to something I don't KNOW I'll like?^*

I generally try to at least watch the beginning and/or the end of a show when I'm dubbing it down if it's on a commercial channel, because who knows when their schedule has been slightly shifted by live programs, or if it's merely off a couple minutes due to the normal vagaries of broadcast schedules, but I can't watch the whole show to pause and stop the recording and make sure it all fits on the disk. This way I can usually just fast forward through the commercials during the first break, which generally offsets this margin enough that I haven't yet found one of these shows being prematurely cut off.

So here comes the first dramatically backlit shot of Mr. Bennett in a spotlight, solo on the stage, really nice, classy-looking imagery, then up pops this crappy little insert on the bottom of the screen for the local news broadcast: "Elderly couple murdered in Northern Virginia, News at 11". Classy indeed. And you see, that's the crap you have to put up with when you try to watch those "free" over-the-air broadcasts: you never know when a complete viewing train-wreck like this is likely to occur.

Say it's not a gruesome, tragic double-murder ruining what's otherwise a thoughtful and moving tribute to an American icon, what about when you do the nice social thing of go to a friend's house (or even better, the friend of a spouse's house) and watch the local team in a game you don't really have any interest in, while you're recording at home the game you really want to watch off the satellite (should you be so lucky as to not a have a freaking massive tree that you can't remove blocking your reception). For me say Missouri is playing Kansas when both are ranked again and slugging it out in the Big 12, while U.Va is pounding on a hapless Maryland. This is the essence of delayed gratification that we're all taught is one of the principal signs of achieving adulthood, right? Making the best of a crappy situation, at least saving your reactions to real- if delayed-time. And there, on the freaking ESPN2 ticker you see the final score.

So what, this is the price of watching free programming right? Well, I thought that's what advertising was. And even though I was tivo'ing and recording the DVD of the Tony Bennett show, partially fast forwarding through the ads, I can still tell you that the primary sponsor of the show was Target^**, and the first ads were for Cingular, Target and that Nativity movie. I mean, you know you'll have to one way or the other generally at least see any ads embedded in the breaks of the program, as well as the logos and other bric-a-brac overlaid on the video (hello Mr. Peacock), but why also during the actual broadcast of a non-live sporting event?

So if a broadcast network doesn't even take itself seriously enough to prevent it's own self-inflicted wound, why should I bother to believe that it really matters to them? Why would I expect them to do anything other than the most inept of jobs on any other presentation of what would otherwise be considered high-brow-ish programming?

And like so another broadcast network makes a good argument for it's own eventual demise to people who actually care about what they do, today easily found among the user-contributed and edited content on places like youtube.

I know that the person really cared about what they were doing when they went to the trouble of digitizing this old Bugs Bunny from 1946, youtube link (bizarrely this is currently the only place in my house I can watch what I remembered used to be the most ubiquitous content of my childhood). Yet why didn't Warner Brothers do this, making this kind of stuff available to people like me who grew up with it and have a very strong, latent interest in viewing. You can't tell me the cost is what would be preventing making making this quality of video available for .50 on iTunes.

I only found out that Bugs and Pals appear to not be receiving current broadcast on my friendly local Comcast network when I tried to schedule a Tivo season pass to have a little for a late night, pre-bedtime viewing treat some cold winter night. No luck finding any Bugs or Looney Tunes, but I think there might have been that kind of creepy tiny tunes baby version of the same characters somewhere. I know some of these old beauts are a bit embarrassing these days (to say the least: some superlatively shitty racial stereotypes here, viewer beware, but there are plenty that remain plenty entertaining, even if the Peter Lorre and Edgar G. Robinson references in the earlier non-racist Bugs cartoon need to have a director's commentary to explain to many of today's viewers.

So there you have it: this Modern Media Consumer today is annoyed at what I do see when I take the time to watch a high-profile Prime Time foofarah on NBC, and then doubly so for having to look to user-contributed content to find one of the most well-known icons of Western Pop culture. Losers: NBC and Comcast; Winner: Youtube and Verizon (the provider of the series of tubes coming into our home).

^*Thus these things go to DVD, then to a holding area on top of one of the tvs for a period of rest lasting between 1 and 3 months, following which I usually will pick them up, realise that they're still unlabelled, requiring me to wonder what the hell the last things might have been that I would have left there.

This can sometimes be an interesting journey through my recent viewing history, assuming I knew what it was that I was archiving, but as is most often the case I wind up confused, but if I have the time I'll go ahead and throw them back in the nearest player so I can finally label them and migrate them on to the next part of their journey, usually in a nearby secondary holding area.

Downstairs this may be on top of the bookcase, which is relatively valuable real estate as it's directly at eye level. But it's just above lots of open shelving, from which it and the latest episode of 2 hours of unwatched VW Gol may never see the light of day (I never know when I might want to track down one of the dozens of goals scored anywhere in the world the week of February 19, 2007, that I also would presumably have no other access to on youtube, or somewhere similar). I have more than a couple foreign language movies, I likely will never, ever see, despite my best intentions, in this category.

^**The Target branding actually was prominent enough that I noted it even while fast-forwarding through it, like the Cingular ad featuring my favorite Holiday movie, but I forgot them both when I was actually writing this and had to cheat for the above, so please forgive the temporary deception.

My Earliest Memory of Bullwinkle

It's not the most explicit of memories, for it occurs back in the fogs enveloping my third and fourth grade years, a Memphis, Tennessee interstitial in my St. Louis-based childhood, but it's the best I got.

Like many working class families, my parents had to leave for work before the school day started, and didn't return home until after it ended, meaning we had babysitters. The first that I can really remember was back in St. Charles, Missouri, when I would have been approximately 5-7 years old, first and second grades (Kindergarten started the year after I would have taken it), Becky David Elementary.

One of the inevitable factors of child care in the working class is that the child-to-caregiver ratio is never as good as most would like, in essence, you get what you can afford to pay for. It's not unsafe, as the fact that the vast majority of our children grow up to be relatively well-adjusted mal-contents like the rest of us can attest, but most of us would still probably choose a little more personal care to our offspring than we can generally afford.

This meant that we had about an hour or so in the morning with our babysitter, and a couple hours in the afternoon during the school year, and the one thing I remember regarding as a true morning treat was my completely irregular episodic encounters with Jay Ward's progeny, most memorably as Bullwinkle J. Moose and Rocket J. Squirrel, but also George of the Jungle, Tom Mix, and my favorite, Super Chicken, Fred and Super Sauce:

When you find youself in danger,
When you're threatened by a stranger,
When it looks like you will take a lickin', (puk, puk, puk)
There is someone waiting,
Who will hurry up and rescue you,
Just Call for Super Chicken! (puk, ack!)

lyrics

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My school year babysitter was different from my summer babysitter, I suppose because of schedule availability, so I don't remember it too much, other than some mornings in a cramped kitchen with a countertop tv hopefully playing some Bullwinkle. The rest of the time I was in the library. Or shoplifting. I was young. It was the 70's.

Monkey Business