Archive for the 'Technology' Category

Like A Motherfucker!

Published on October 24, 2007 in ..The Dude, Literature, Technology and The Future. 1 Comment

I want to talk about a word. A compound word I guess a truly literate savant might call it. It’s become a much used piece of slang and profanity. Slanganity. It marks an evolution of the classic “fuck,” which was flexible and universal in it’s applicability and appeal. It too functions as verb, noun, or adverb and can be used in positive or negative modes to convey so many ranges of emotion.

And yet it doesn’t make sense.

The word is motherfucker.

Despite not making sense I still use it constantly now as if it does. Because it feels right. It’s irrationality only seems to make it more appropriate. And truthful. Like love.

Like a motherfucker.

That’s how it’s usually used. As a simile. “He hit that ball like a motherfucker.” “I’m gonna hit that ass like a motherfucker.” We gonna do this diner like a motherfucker.”

You see how crazy it is.

It’s more than a word though. It’s an idea. It’s the new fuck as far as I’m concerned. A catchall expression for our times. But what is it that makes me love and use this expression so much? I mean I use it everywhere and all the time. It has become the universal analogy. Like a motherfucker. “That song rocks like a motherfucker.”

It can be bad too.

That’s some motherfucking bullshit right there.

The Mets choked like some big old motherfuckers.

But how many of us really know any motherfuckers?

Or what one is really like?

One who fucks their mother would seem to not be something so worthy of comparison. Someone that so many cool things can be paralleled to. And yet motherfucker has become the analogy of coolness to many. Not just myself. What does this say? What does it mean?

It’s stupid like a motherfucker.

You see sometimes it does make sense!

Fucking your mother would be stupid. So being stupid like one is right on target. It hits the spot.

Hits it like a motherfucker.

See?

Now it doesn’t make sense again.

I use this term in some form or other quite regularly now. At work, at home, in my car. Especially at work. I do those time sheets like a motherfucker. I watch as the cats attack that bird like motherfuckers. I return e mails to motherfuckers though I still use their legal names. I make a meat sauce fettucine like a motherfucker. We get in and out of Home Depot like a motherfucker.

And yet I have no idea if a man who fucks his mother makes a good meat sauce for his fettucine.

Or a woman for that matter, though I’m not quite sure it can be faithfully dubbed motherfucking when a mother and daughter try and do it.

Do male or female fuckers of their mothers do paperwork like I do it?

Do they rock like the Jerry Cantrelle solo album I discovered this past Summer rocks? Because it rocks like a motherfucker as I’ve noted on quite few occasions.

It’s all some motherfucking crazy ass bullshit.

But I got to go. The Red sox are finished beating the Rockies limp asses like a motherfucker and I want to watch Pushing Daisies. THat show kicks TV ass like a motherfucker it does.

Like a motherfucker.

That’s all I’m going to say about this for now.

Time Magazine Acknowledges My Contributions: Finally!

Published on December 18, 2006 in ..The Dude, Literature, Technology and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

[image:203:l] That’s right Time has announced their man of the year and it’s me. Well technically it’s You But when read from my 1st person perspective it’s me again. And it’s about time.

Time has acknowledged that I am at the forefront of the media revolution and properly credited me for “seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.”

Granted they attribute some stuff to me that I have no memory of doing. Stuff like making YouTube movies, developing Linux, and doing podcasts. But I certainly did alot of the blogging, commenting, My Spacing, and reviewing they gave me credit for so it’s quite possible that in all that “digital democratizing,” I was apparently up to I forgot some of the other cool stuff I did. Hell this very website that exists in my name goes on changing with me having no memory of any of the technical innovating or codewriting I must apparently do. It’s just that easy for me I guess. But the site works, is interactive, and ever changing so i must be doing something right.

Like my namesake pictured above now I too am immortalized as an icon of my time. But where’s my picture? Where are my quotes? How about a check for changing the world?

Now I realize that if I turn that Time article to you and you read it, or I use my revolutionizing internet media skills to e mail you the article or link, it’s like you’re looking in the other Jeff Lebowski’s mirror. Or am I the other Lebowski? The Duderino (I’m not into the whole brevity thing), doesn’t own the mirror. He’s just passing through. And sometimes I feel that way about this whole internet thing that I’ve seized the reigns of. I mean I’ve actually considered severing my ties with the net for awhile due to ISP issues I’m having with the people at peoplepc who won’t send me my software for security upgrades I was supposed to get a month ago, even though they’ve started charging me the higher monthly rate. And whn I e mail them they want me to call their service hotline which is 2 bucks a minute. my guess is the call will take more than a minute. Despite my grasp of this bold new global media thing I’m guessing it would take alot longer than that just to navigate their menu.

And I don’t want to spend alot on broadband. I have bills to pay and have been hemmorhaging money lately.

But I’m not making that phone call.

So this could potentially strike a bit of a blow to this “massive social experiment” thing I’ve been recognized for being such a huge part of by the good folks of Corporate Enemy Mag…I uh, mean Time Magazine.

But I want to thank Time for putting me in the same class as Bono who was last years Man of the year along with the Gates’s. I bet Bono got laid though. So far I’ve yet to be approached. Perhaps I can use my newfound, I mean newly recognized, web status to hook up with a nice professional girl.

Oh and feed starving kids too.

That’s cool when Bono does that.

I’m digressing from my point about how others fit into this whole revolution. Frankly I’m a bit worried you’ll let this go to your heads. Our culture is already pretty myopic and self centered.
Do you really need magazines telling you you’re more powerful than the mainstream media? Or than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Or Dick Cheney? Are you all going to start shooting me in the face or starting your own nuclear weapon program? Most of you are tough to deal with as it is. I don’t need you running around drinking and waving guns at me or scheming for weapons grade plutonium.

I guess what I’m saying is I’m worried about the further egoifying of the American. I made that word up. Egoifying I mean. American was made up by someone else. I think it was Rush Limbaugh. But with all the reality shows aggrandizing your stupidity and venality, with therapy books telling you all how great you are, with parental upbringings that lavished every poop you took and every B- with the ceremony reserved in different times for guys who walked on the moon, ended Fascism, or won the 69 Series, and with so many of you getting lost in your Ipods and blogs, it worries me that you’re all becoming just a bit too hard to live with.

The first one of you to get linked to Jack Abramoff, cry on American Idol, become a Scientologist, or mess with your page, nay the first one of you to get a page, goes on my list. And you know what list I’m talking about.

You’re all a troublesome lot as it is. You don’t spend nearly enough time worrying about the things that really matter like me, death, starvation, me, global warming, eroding democracy, me, genocide, overpopulation, and me, Al Franken. Seriously you never listen to reason. So sure are you that you all know it all. And whose always right? Who said there were no WMD’s years ago? Who said there was no connection to Al-Queda and Iraq before we invaded them? Who predicted civil war and quagmire? Who said Republicans used religion and were social Darwinists who wallow in immorality and lies? Well alot of sources on all the above actually. I just know facts and lies when I hear them, and can tell credible information from bullshit. I’m not sure about the rest of you. You trouble me. You had no idea the Mets would come up short and not even get to the Series or that Pedro was shot? I did. You tried to get me to believe Chris Doughtry would win on Idol. I knew he wouldn’t. You thought Lost would progress storyline. You thought that guy killed Jean Bonnet Ramsey when it was obvious from the get go he was just a weird ass pedophile looking for attention. Hell some of you even thought O.J. was innocent way back when. And I know you were going to watch that Fox “If I Did It” show. Weren’t you?

Weren’t you?

What am I to make of you all? Can I trust you now that you all think you’re being glorified on the cover of Time? Can I trust you to not be un-Dude? I think we’d all be better off just making like the article is about me. I can handle it. I know things the rest of you don’t. And I need the attention more. Come on people! I don’t ask you for much. I’m renouncing the creature comforts except for my TV and it’s accesories. I might be getting rid of the very internet I helped create after Al Gore got it off the ground when he uploaded it from his lock-box using his patented fiber optic technology (I love you Al). I have let go of desires for companionship, kids, success, or ideal health and fitness. But I can handle the burden of being your man of the year. Alone I can carry us into the year ahead with purity of heart, conviction in truth, and openness in mind. I’ll protect you all from Intelligent Design, the wrath of Tom Delay who now runs loose amongst us, global warming, Evil Jesus, Rocky Balboa, Bill O’Reilly, steroids, Hillary’s folly, the Others, Michael Jackson’s next album, and Tom Cruise.

For a country so good at pretending can’t we make this happen? I promise I’ll be the best pretend man of your year ever. Let me be your Dude. I know the right rug can tie a room together and I know what you want from your global media vanguard. You want truth even if you can’t tell the difference anymore. You want to be reminded that the brain is the biggest sexual organ because you want to be mindfucked. And waht better mindfuck in the era of George Bush than truth. And that’s what this internet thing is ultimately about. Making information more accesible. Letting people weed out the lies and progress at the exponential pace technology allows for. So let’s have a Caucasian together and toast me and my accomplishments of the past year even as we look forward to the next year. Together we can also remember how the great Jeff Lebowski responded to being told the brain was the largest sex organ. Because deep down we’re all doing this media revolution for the smae reason mankind has done everything else. To show chicks our other large sex organ.

Time Magazine want me to show you mine.

I promise I’ll be gentle.

Left Behind The Right

Published on December 12, 2006 in ..The Dude, Religion, Technology and The Ill-Literates. 2 Comments

There’s a video game out there based on the Christian Left Behind series. You know the series so stupid it took 2 guys to write? The one that’s sold 60 million copies. This game is reportedly a pretty big seller too. And there’s some seriously twisted shit going on in it. Of course it’s been endorsed by many Christian groups like Focus On The Family. But these same groups who would probably lament the decline of civilization on view in games like Grand Theft Auto are pushing this Left Behind: Eternal Forces game, whose basic lessons to kids is convert infidels or kill them.

Like the books the game takes place after Evil Jesus returns under the guise of a Messiah and takes all the compliant drones with him to heaven leaving behind all others to work their shit out or get with the antichrist who Jesus apparently didn’t have the balls to take on head to head himself.

The game is a perfect example of how the right wing and fundamentalists have combined forces to brainwash kids into becoming tools for in a culture war that uses morality as it’s operating premise, or cassus belli, in the way they used WMD’s and false connections to 9-11 for another war. It’s also a nice summation of the Christian right mentality and how they feel about themselves and all the rest of us.

In the game players have to either convert or kill non-believers. Left Behind Games’ president, Jeffrey Frichner, says this is actually teaching pacifism “because players lose ‘spirit points,’ every time they gun down nonbelievers rather than convert them.”

Of course in true born again tradition those sinners who have murdered can earn spirit points back, or get right with god, by simply having their character take time in the game and pray.

Man if that doesn’t summarize alot of the allure and mentality of this whole Jesus fetish then Priests just don’t like little boys.

Of course there are other elements like the false sense of entitlement and superiority that otherwise disenfranshised and inferior people get from adopting the consecrated and sanctified veneer of the holy. But I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen this easy forgiveness thing played out. Committ a sin, do something wrong, act selfishly, whatever. It’s all ok if you accept Jesus as your personal savior and go through some of the easier motions of faith and devotion.

And just to illustrate the ties to the culutre war and politics the game is set in post apocalyptic NY City and the Antichrist is secretary-general of the United Nations and a People magazine “Sexiest Man Alive.”

The game is also as fixed as their elections. Players can choose to join either side. But of course only one side can win. And the kinds of people fighting on the antichrist’s side are rock stars and guys with Muslim names. “The righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics.”

When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But “Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ” — and thus can’t be on Christ’s side in the game.

“That is so obvious,” he said.

Do you mean childishly simplistic and propagandizing obvious Captain Prejudice?

You can actually lose spirit points in this game just by being too near rock musicians. Not too subtle there as far as what message they’re trying to convey to kids. Resist all things blue states like and breed or you will go to hell.

Plugged In, a publication of Focus on the Family, said this about the game: It’s “the kind of game that Mom and Dad can actually play with Junior — and use to raise some interesting questions along the way.”

More like get them to stop asking questions. And who but someone in the anachronistic religious communitty longing for the safe Leave It To Beaver facade America safely hid behind at one time, would refer to the family unit as mom, dad, and junior?

Some of the cooler, or at least saner, Christian groups such as The Campaign to Defend the Constitution and the Christian Alliance for Progress, are protesting the game and trying to get retailers, particularly Wal-Mart for some reason, to take the game off the shelves. I’m not so sure I can support this though I appreciate their motives. I have no love for the Grand Theft Auto type games either. But I’d feel like a hypocrite trying to get them banned. Any kind of censorship or forced limiting of distribution is hard to support even in a good cause. It’s just lamentable that we live in such a country where both kinds of games are popular and appealing to some kind of sickness in our culture and weakness in our minds.

I have changed my opinion over the years about the negative effects of movies and games on kids. I never thought they had much effect. I still don’t think they have a huge one. Stupid kids will drift to stupid games or movies. Suicidal kids will drift to dark music or movies. Unpopular kids will drift to Star Trek. It’s not James T Kirk making them unpopular. Ozzy didn’t make any kids kill themselves. He just provided a soundtrack to those who would have gone without one. And nobody should die without a musical score in this day and age. i think I’d like to go to that Wagner piece they used in Platoon. Or maybe Rocky for the irony.

But there is more and more evidence that this stuff does have some influence. I think it does perpetuate itself. You don’t have riots at Pixar movies but you do get tham at some hip-hop films. All the clean easy killing in the Tours Of Duty of the world can’t be helping the cause of humanitarianism. For most it probably has little effect good or bad. But for some it’s going to make them want more. Escalation could be inevitable for these people. If nothing else maybe they’ll join the Marines and die for nothing but some rich white guy who doesn’t want his name read out loud or funeral seen on TV.

I don’t think either kind of game is good for kids. But I can’t start up that slippery slope of choosing what’s right and wrong and should or should not be allowed to be seen, read, heard, or played. In the end it’s a parents job to raise their kids in a way that keeps them from forming an interest in that stuff or that make them healthy enough to not take a Grand Theft Auto seriously. Which is why the Left Behind thing is probably worse and far more dangerous. Parents are actually participating and encouraging their kids to not only play but to see the games viewpoint as a viable reality. One that is part of a wholesome biblical upbringing.

These kids are going to be alot more dangerous than the chop shop pimps being bred by GTA. Left Behind is a game full of hate and intolerance for all kinds of lifestyles and differences. It’s a game that want’s kids to be ignorant of facts and pledged to the narrow ideas and viewpoint that has been a stagnating force for thousands of years. It’s a game the people who got Bush elected like James Dobson suppport. Like it’s founding religion it’s a game that teaches vice and sin as long as you say a prayer to a made up Jew who died 2000 years ago.

And like I said it’s just annoying to see that mentality so clearly brandished and trumpeted in a game. It’s not enough they infect the rest of us with thier hypocrisy and wretched psuedo morals, but to advertise them so blatantly in a video game is both revealing and scary. like overweight trailer trash wearing form fitting pants, revealing and scary.

SF Chronicle

The Miracle Of DVR

Published on May 16, 2006 in ..The Dude, Technology, Television and The Ill-Literates. 11 Comments

[image:133:l] Last week I finally got my hi-Def/DVR receiver along with the new hi-Def package of channels.
Like a man newly in love I wish all of you who don’t have such a set up could know the same feeling of joy I now know.

? Most of you know the basics of what this stuff can do. Those who don’t have a dvr machine are by now familiar with the whole Tivo thing which has swept the nation (and by god its about time somebody swept this mess). But let me wax poetically about all the life altering advantages this little puppy has bestowed upon this humble? lovesick supplicant.? ?

First off, t.v. schedules are now meaningless to me. I watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it because I can record it all anytime in any combination. Just think about the implications of this! Sure I’ve had a vcr for many years, but it still imposed limitations that only now, with the knowledge of a better life absorbed over the past few days, do I realize? presented a flimsy kind of freedom indeed. Mine was the freedom of a minimum security incarceration. Free in comparison to the maximum security horrors of our pre vhs society, but imprisonment nevertheless. But now my friends I have tasted the sweet fruits of true freedom. I have walked through my cell doors and out of the prison. Yes those doors have swung wide and revealed the glory of a multi-tasking harddrive wired to my t.v. enabling simultaneous recordings and the power to control live programming!

Cue the choir of angels now please!

Now I can record 2 programs at once. I can watch one and record another. I can set up for programming ages in advance. Previously due to the limitations of satellite and some cable systems over the years, it had become impossible to record one thing while watching another. Due to the way it was set up it was also impossible to record more than one program in a day unless you were going to be there to change the channel. Now those shackles are thrown off. I can go anywhere for any duration and still be able to waste countless hours vegetating in front of my television.? I’m free, dear god free at last!

? Finally my life can revolve fully around t.v. the way it was always meant to. I tried for years to make that dream a reality but was sidetracked by work, social outings, errands, the biologically atavistic need for fresh air and exercise, and a lack of committment to my dream. But it is that last quality that now enables my full engagement with dvr and widescreen hi definition broadcasting that I now believe to be my destiny.

? I can set this puppy up to record every episode of 24 all season long. And when president with a small p made his immigration speech last night that set all network programming back 20 minutes, it knew. Somehow it knew! It made the adjustment despite the guide not including the change as of a few hours before. It’s already set itself up for next weeks 2 hour finale as well.

? As I write is sits, plotting it’s next move. I believe it is downloading programming about cloning in order to fully mobilize an army of me to properly serve it. I suspect it has motion sensors. Last night as I slept I think it sent me back in time.

? More importantly one of the hi def channels, I think it’s HDNET,? plays Wiseguy, one of my all time favorite shows weekday mornings. Haven’t seen it in better part of 20 years. It’s set to record them all. Forever. Same with Daily Show and Colbert Report. Now I watch them when I want and don’t have to foresake them to tape something else or think about making it for one of the Comedy Channel’s showings.? And I can wait as long as I want to watch it. Despite the machine’s powers the relationship is currently on my terms. I have hand. Stuff is always sitting there waiting to be watched. There’s never nothing on!

? And it’s not just recording all this stuff. Unlike vcr, the quality of playback on dvr is still digital. I can even record high def programming in hi def though the memory for it is 30 hours compared to 200 for non hi def. And of course I can fast forward at various speeds and skip ahead 30 seconds at a time to breeze past commercials. But live t.v. has new benefits as well. I can stop a broadcast and pick it up anytime later. watching a live Mets game and see a rare instance of the Mets making a good defensive play, I can go back and watch it as many times as I like at any number of speeds. Suddenly want to run to the store during a game? no problem. I come back and pick up where I left off until finished or I catch up with the live broadcast.

? It’s like I control time as well as a meaningful relationship!?

I believe this to be the culmination of my life’s work. This is everything sliced bread should have been but wasn’t. At last there is a measure of fulfillment to my life. The only thing missing on this thing is an oriffice.

? The owner of HDNET as well as various other things including the Dallas Mevericks is Mark Cuban who predicted hi-def will revolutionaize tv and usher in a golden age restoring networks to prominence as they offer the most high bandwidth programming. He said sitcoms and 30 second commercials would rule again due to dvr’s then inability to work with hi def. But that’s changing. Besides more bandwidth being available now and in the years ahead this puppy does it all on standard and high def.

? But I know where Cuban’s coming from. High def is great and it does make me want to watch things broadcast that way just for the picture. There’s a channel that was showing air images of great cities in hi-def and I felt like I could just fall right into it. And I don’t even own the highest resolution capable t.v. I have a 720 or 1080 interlaced widescreen RCA. 1080 progressive is the highest and what most will have eventually. Not many t.v.’s out there now with it though.

? I’ve got questions about how this will all work with hi-def DVD’s and or Blu-Ray players starting to make their way into the market. Not to mention current upscaling dvd players relying on HDMI to upconvert 420 p signals to 720 which my current dvd player doesn’t do. But if it can get me these type pics I’m there.

? But dvr stands alone in its lure independent of the broadwith. A recent Arbitrol poll asked people what piece of technology they own they actually love the most and 54% said their dvr box. That’s a higher precentage than that of those who voted for god’s choice for President. Clearly i’m not alone in my love. It is perhaps not only my destiny but America’s to succomb to the seductive lure of perpetual viewership. It’s beauty is that is gives us the illusion of now controlling our viewership rather than it controlling us. Who controls who will be a question for the philosophers and historians who will decide our posterity, as well as the? archeologists that dig us out of our bedrooms and living rooms? bent on examining wheather it was? dvr that saved us from war and annihilation, or wheather it simply allowed us to go out with more of a whimper than a bang.