posted 2007/04/30 at 15:57
These next couple of weeks are going to be kind of big for me, as Tori Amos releases a new album tomorrow, then Björk releases a new album the following Tuesday. I plan on picking both up on their release days, as usual, and I'm sure I'll enjoy both of them. I guess that over the years it's become almost a tradition for me to become hyperbolic in my assessments of the albums on here, encouraging all of you to buy five or ten or even twenty copies.
I have a confession to make, though. I think I've only ever listened to Tori Amos' most recent release, The Beekeeper, two or three times, and I'm positive I only ever listened to Björk's most recent album, Medulla, once before I shelved both of them. To be clear about this, it wasn't that I didn't like both albums or think they weren't very good. On the contrary, I thought they were both great. There was just something that prevented me from connecting to either of them like I'd connected to their previous works, though, and I just didn't really feel compelled to listen to them more than I did.
Part of me thinks that this is just a reaction to the way both Björk and Tori's styles have changed over the years. Björk pretty much reinvents herself with every new album she puts out, and Tori seems to go further and further away from her "girl and a piano" image with each passing year. In Björk's case, I think her mid-nineties work was her strongest -- I still believe Homogenic is the greatest album ever -- and I don't think Tori's yet been able to match the incredible intimacy of her first three albums, particularly Under the Pink. Although I could make cases for those albums being their strongest musically, part of me wonders if I just remember those albums better because of what stage of my life I was in when those albums first came out. I bought Under the Pink when I was 18 and I was going to Antioch and finally starting to feel comfortable about myself, and then Homogenic came out when I was 21 and starting to find some success with all the Website work I'd been doing for the past couple of years. (Homogenic also came out about the same time that Final Fantasy VII came out in the US, which may also be colouring my judgment of it.)
Another part of me wonders how much I have changed since then, though. When I started back at college my music choices changed a lot, now that I think about it. Back when I was mostly working on Websites all day I could get away with "noisier" music in the background, but once I was doing homework and writing papers and stuff, I found myself drawn back to the new age music I'd fallen in love with in my pre-teen years. (Yes, I'm odd, thanks for asking.) Even now that I've been out of school for a while, though, I still find myself much more drawn to playing Matsui Keiko and Catherine Marie Charlton than Björk or Tori, and I honestly don't know why that is. Perhaps these next two CDs I buy will change my listening habits here.
posted 2007/04/28 at 17:14
My father's always been a classic car nut. Back when he was going to Michigan State, he actually put himself through school by buying old cars that were having problems, fixing them, and then reselling them. Of course, this was long ago, back when you could actually take a car apart with common tools and fix things, something which my father constantly complains about any time one of our minivans breaks down. Still, to this day whenever we pass a classic car out on the road, my father is able to identify the make, model, and year with such accuracy that it's kind of astonishing. Not that I don't have my own hobbies and obsessions and stuff where I can identify similar things that most people wouldn't even think to notice, but somehow my father's ability to identify classic cars never fails to amaze me.
Being that we've never been a tremendously rich family, we've never really owned that many classic cars, and those that we've had we've usually sold later for other purposes. The only one we really held onto for any length of time was a 1947 V-8 Ford, which we'd had for as long as I can remember, probably before I was even born. It was coloured this weird ruddy peach -- nearly flesh-tone, actually -- and it had more than its fair share of problems (mainly no way to defog the inside without rolling the windows down, a huge pain in the winter), but back when I was a kid my father took me out on drives in it all the time, and even though I've never particularly been that interested in cars, it was still nice to go out driving in it.
After my father started his own business, though, the Ford just sat in the garage collecting dust. It wasn't that my father didn't have time to go out driving in it, but he just seemed to lose interest. I also think he was kind of disappointed that neither of his kids wound up taking an interest in classic cars. After the house fire we actually had to keep the Ford in a garage ten minutes away, and even though no one said anything about it, we all kept wondering what father was going to do with the Ford. Well, this past week my father finally sold the Ford, and in what I hope is not an ominous foreshadowing, he sold it to the owner of the big local funeral home here in Toledo.
Even though I probably haven't even been inside the Ford in over fifteen years now, and I never even laid eyes on it after the fire, I still feel a strange sense of loss now that the Ford's gone. I guess that if nothing else, it's forcing me to think about me and my packrat mentality, and all of the strange things I hold on to. Some of them I can justify as investments -- particularly my old video games -- but I can't help but wonder what's going to happen to all of this stuff when I die. Even if I take a partner some day, I really don't want kids, so I have to wonder what would happen to all of my stuff. Maybe it's time for me to get serious about writing up a will here.
posted 2007/04/26 at 16:49
In the past I've mentioned doing a lot of my shopping at Meijer stores, but I don't think I've ever discussed Meijer in any great lengths here, which I probably should do since Meijer is a fairly regional company. If you want to know what a Meijer store is like, imagine a Wal-Mart Supercentre (big box, full department store and full grocery store, open 24 hours), only the employees are unionized and paid well. Sure, maybe stuff costs a little more at Meijer than it would at Wal-Mart, but the peace of mind that not shopping at Wal-Mart buys is always worth it to me. Meijer first came to Toledo in the early 1990s, and we Shannons have been frequent shoppers there ever since. Even though Meijer remains a regional company, in terms of size they're one of the ten biggest privately-held companies in the United States, or at least they were the last time I checked.
Anyway, although I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at Kroger (better prices and tastier generics), and most of my clothes shopping at Target (better selection), I still go to Meijer an awful lot. There are two Meijer locations in Toledo I frequent; there's one store five minutes from my house that used to be right on the way to and from my father's business back before he moved his business into the house, but these days I usually go to another store that's further away but more convenient for the frequent trips I make to the southern part of town. The layouts of the two stores are a mirror image of one another -- the groceries are on the left side of the closer store, but on the right side of the store that's further away -- but for the most part the layouts are exactly the same.
Unfortunately, right now shopping at either of these Meijer stores is proving difficult because they're both undergoing major redesigns, the first significant changes to the stores since Meijer came here. Now, you need to change things up every once in a while just to keep customers interested, and certainly retail changes enough over fifteen years to necessitate some changes. (For example, Meijer used to keep the televisions in fairly narrow aisles, and given the mainstreaming of big-screen televisions in the past few years you kind of need more space for customers to step back and really appreciate the quality of the new high-definition sets.) However, even from the few times I've stepped into Wal-Mart stores in my life, I can remember enough about the layouts of those stores to know that Meijer is basically ripping off Wal-Mart's layout. Meijer's even getting rid of their trademark red aisle signs, replacing them with new white-and-green signs that look suspiciously like the signs used at Wal-Mart stores.
Although I understand the pressure to copy the tactics used by the most successful stores, and I can understand the convenience of stores being laid out in similar patterns to help people new to a store/city find certain items, there's something about everyone copying Wal-Mart that kind of disgusts me. I don't even think the issue here is so much with a company I despise so much being the template as it is just the fact that there is a template at all. I like convenience, yes, but at the same time I also like the places I shop at to have distinctiveness and personality, and different layouts are one of the best ways to create those traits in a store. I realize that chain stores like Kroger and Meijer probably aren't going to have that many variations from store to store because of economies of scale and all of that, but when every chain starts to make their stores look and function the same, it really turns shopping into a blasé experience. Even before the Meijer remodeling jobs are complete here, I already find myself missing the old Meijer stores I knew and loved.
posted 2007/04/25 at 14:39
Use of Wiccan Symbol on Veterans' Headstones is Approved (New York Times)
All I have to say about this is that it shouldn't have taken this long to get the pentacle added to the official list of religious symbols on headstones. It would at least have been understandable if Wicca had not been included in other aspects of the military's treatment of religions, but as the article mentions, Wicca was already included in military chaplains' paperwork and engraved on dog tags. To make allowances for Wicca on these grounds, but then to deny a Wiccan symbol on the headstone of fallen soldiers, reeked of a kind of final insult to the soldiers. I honestly don't know why the military didn't come to this decision sooner, as I doubt that any right-wing backlash over this decision is going to be as costly as the court case that led to it.
I have to admit that I still personally kind of sting over Dubya's proclamation in 1999 that he didn't consider Wicca to be a religion, and it does continue to colour my feelings about the man. I've never read of anyone asking him to clarify his statement since then, and I'd like to think that this would be a matter of at least some interest to some journalist out there, particularly given all of the "uniter not a divider" rhetoric we've heard over the past seven years (and all of the actions to the contrary). Then again, it's been hard not to notice over the past few years, across the political and ideological spectrum, of people attempting to "disprove" the history of Wicca that some (not all) Wiccans claim the religion has. Maybe it's some kind of post-Buffy backlash, I don't know, but it's certainly not a welcome development as far as I'm concerned.
posted 2007/04/24 at 21:26
Kucinich announces impeachment charges against Vice President Cheney (The Raw Story)
There is a part of me that wants to be blind to the possibility ... okay, likelihood that this action by Kucinich is partly ... sigh, okay, mostly being done for the publicity value, but this is why I love Dennis so much: even if conventional wisdom says that there's no way he stands a shot at securing the Democratic nomination in 2008, he can still use his position as a candidate to push issues like this, and force other Democrats into taking positions on the kinds of things that actual liberals care about. For all the talk about the possible impeachment of members of this administration in the left, no one's had the audacity, the courage, the balls to force centrist Democrats to articulate exactly why they don't support impeachment. Sure, some Democrats have talked to the press about why they don't believe impeachment is a good thing, but Kucinich is now going to force them onto the official record with their stances, and that is going to change the face of the 2008 election.
For example, Nancy Pelosi mentions in this article that she thinks articles of impeachment would distract people from the Democrats' agenda, and that impeaching anyone in this administration wouldn't be "worth it." Okay, first of all, not that I don't think political parties aren't important, but I think there comes a point where you need to stop worrying about pimping your party's so-called "agenda" and start worrying about the health of the nation, and the world, as a whole. Secondly, I actually think it's kind of insulting to say that impeaching the members of this administration wouldn't be "worth it" when it is clear that the administration is going to cut off any attempts by the Democrats to stop the war. What about the thousands of American troops who have already died, Madame Speaker? What about all the Iraqi civilians that have been killed in the wake of the sectarian violence fueled by our continued occupation of Iraq? Are they worth it? How many more people have to die before you start putting the good of the nation and the world above the good of the Democratic Party?
Less than ten years ago this country faced only the second series of Presidential impeachment hearings ever, over something as utterly trivial and meaningless as whether or not oral sex actually counts as sex. Even though the Republicans lost seats in the 1998 election in part because the public got sick and tired of the impeachment affair, once the hearings were over they actually won seats in the House and gained the Presidency in spite of the biggest peacetime economic growth in this country's history. I don't think asking the question of whether or not the conduct of members of the current administration rises to the level of impeachable offence is too much to ask.
posted 2007/04/22 at 22:44
I've been sitting here in front of my computer for the past ten minutes trying to think of something, anything to write about, and nothing's coming to mind. The worst part is that I have a list of possible topics to write about that I keep on the whiteboard next to my computer, and there are a good half-dozen topics on there right now, but I just can't make myself write anything about them.
In all fairness, I am sick right now, and unlike the past year or so where I seemed to get a touch of something and be done with it within 48 hours or so, I've been fighting this big off for the past four days and it shows no sign of abating. The worst part is that I never got an "ear-shooter" -- that tickling sensation I normally get in one of my inner ears that lets me know that I'm about to get really sick -- and I normally don't get this sick until I get an ear-shooter, so I'm worried that I'll wind up getting an ear-shooter sometime soon and get knocked on my can once again.
Anyway, what's up with the rest of you? I really haven't been on my computer much these past few days as I've been largely bed-ridden, so I haven't been able to bounce around online as much as I normally like.
posted 2007/04/20 at 17:18
Well, a few weeks ago I predicted that the Thrashers would beat the Flames in the Stanley Cup finals, and as an added bonus the team that eliminated the Red Wings would sign away Pavel Datsyuk. Before the season even ended the Red Wings locked Datsyuk into a long-term contract, and the Thrashers got swept out in the first round by the Rangers. Hey, I've still got the Flames to hang on to here, and unless the Red Wings actually start playing like the Red Wings again (which they somehow managed to do in the first two games of the series), they'll at least make it to the next round. Gah.
I have to say that this is one of my favourite times of the year, if only because it's the only time of year there's serious coverage of the NHL in the news. I understand that due to historical and geographical considerations hockey isn't appreciated much beyond the Hockey Belt that Toledo is on the edge of, but I still get sick and tired of people joking about how they didn't even know the NHL season got canceled a couple of years back. Pardon me for a bit of hyperbole here, but it bothers me when sports reporters only barely cover NHL games and scarcely anything about the behind-the-scenes action, and then turn around and 2,000 words a day when a third-string tailback in the NFL gets a hangnail. (Okay, maybe that was more than just a "bit" of hyperbole.)
There are a couple of things about this year's coverage of the playoffs that I'd like to mention here as well. First of all, it kind of surprised me to find out that Versus was actually doing the whole "put a microphone on a player" thing in some of their playoff games. It's not that I don't understand the appeal of those kinds of gimmicks, but at the same time I really think gimmicks like those should be used in the playoffs, particularly as I think a microphone pack becoming detached from a player caused a delay in one of the playoff games I watched earlier. Then again, given that Versus is being brought to us by the same people who killed my beloved TechTV in favour of garbage like repeats of The Man Show, I have to admit that I do kind of look out for excuses to complain about them whenever possible.
Also, at the start of the playoffs the CBC changed their on-screen graphics. CBC had stuck with the old "score in the corner" graphic there long after all the US networks switched to that top/bottom-of-screen bar, and they used a nice, soft colour scheme that was distinctive yet informative. Now they're using a top-of-screen graphic, and not only did they start using a much deeper, harsher blue than before, but they also have all these sharp angles in the graphics. As much as I hate to say it, it looks like a rip-off of the graphics NBC introduced for Sunday Night Football. I understand the whole "follow the pack" mentality when it comes to these sorts of things, but at the same time I think there's something to be said for distinctiveness and originality, and I'm used to seeing more of the latter out of CBC. (Worse yet, they're also using the same new graphics for their curling coverage, where it really seems out of place.
posted 2007/04/19 at 17:25
Bloggers rail against imposing civility online (AFP through Yahoo! News)
I'm glad to see some people out there dealing with this problem, given how much I've written about it both here and elsewhere. I don't think that this solution is one that should be arbitrarily enforced, which I think some of its critics are charging it will be, but this is something I'd definitely be interested in implementing here on the .org at least. (Not that I don't already, but I think it would be nice to have a volunary programme like this.)
As much as I think it's disturbing that so many adults feel this weird compulsion to act like fifth-grade bullies online and treat everyone outside of their little clique of bullies like garbage, I also think that the Internet is a big enough place that if these people want to have their own little place online where they can act out in such infantile ways, they should be able to have it. I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that so much of the time I will be trying to have an intelligent conversation online with someone, and then all of a sudden one or more other people will interrupt by saying stuff like "U R DUMB" or spouting off a bunch of insults and slurs. Unless the board/forum is moderated by a fairly good team, it then becomes impossible to have any kind of intelligent discussion at all, and whereas in my younger days I wouldn't have a problem joining in on the flamethrowing, these days it's just not worth it for me.
This has kind of been a problem for me lately because on the main messageboard I visit these days, a throwaway comment I made about how I considered Final Fantasy VII to be the greatest video game of all time led someone there to take issue with my statement. However, while I tried to reinforce my statement based on the merits of the game, his debate tactics have by and large consisted of personal attacks on me. Unfortunately, not only has this person now spread out these kinds of attacks beyond the Final Fantasy discussion to other things (namely discussion of this week's Virginia Tech shootings), but now other people are jumping on the bandwagon with the personal attacks against me. Not that I don't expect this kind of behaviour on the Internet these days (especially given the average age of people on this board I'm discussing), but it's still pretty damn disappointing to me when it happens.
posted 2007/04/17 at 16:45
Just so my request doesn't get lost in the rest of my words below, I'll start with it and then do my storytelling in the paragraphs that follow: Björk is going to be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live this weekend, and I'd like to videotape her performance. The thing is, I honestly can't remember the last time I bought blank videotapes, so if anyone can recommend any good brands of videotapes for long-term archival purposes, I would be most appreciative.
Asking this question kind of takes me back about ten years ago, when I first got DirecTV. I remember getting it specifically because one of the networks our local cable company didn't carry then was going to carry this tremendous Bj&0246;rk special that had aired in the UK a few months prior and I'd heard all these great things about. In the years that followed I'd use rockontv.com to figure out when my favourite artists would be on TV and I'd tape pretty much every show they were on. Given that this was in the heyday of Lilith Fair and even MTV was watchable there for a while, this meant I went through a lot of videotapes. Heck, I still have over sixty tapes of stuff I recorded back then that I still haven't watched and labeled and shelved in my collection. Between these shows and the fact that I used to tape Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and Amp religiously, probably a good 90% of my VHS collection is stuff I taped off of cable or (when I had it) DirecTV.
That being said, Jeff mentioned to us recently how his friends kind of gasp when he mentions that he still has a VCR, and while I certainly understand the drive to keep using the newest and best technology, I don't understand why some people would consider VCRs so obsolete as to be unnecessary in a home entertainment setup. Even though I try to get stuff on DVD whenever I can these days, a lot of these old performances by my favourite musicians just won't be coming out on DVD anytime soon, unless shows like Live with Regis and the late-night talkies decide to suddenly make all of their past shows available to purchase, and I don't see the economics of that feasibly working out. I've seen some of the performances up on YouTube, but particularly with the loss of sound quality, it's just not the same.
I know that now I could get a hard disk recorder and just burn my own DVDs of stuff I record, but, well, I don't have the money for that right now. When I do, though, I'm probably going to want to take all of my old videotapes and burn them to DVDs just so I don't have to worry about the recording quality on the tapes degrading any more than they already have. Given how many tapes I have, though, that would probably take me years to accomplish, even if I set aside time to work on such a project every day. At times like these it's kind of a pain in the butt to be the packrat that I am.
posted 2007/04/15 at 20:52
Democrats, Fox News Channel lock horns (AP via Yahoo! News)
I've always wondered why the Democrats haven't been as vocal about the obvious bias and other problems with Fox News, and why they didn't start to do things like refuse debate invitations/interview requests from Fox News sooner. It particularly struck me as odd that John Edwards, of all people, would be the first high-profile Democrat to turn down Fox News in such a public manner. This article raises an interesting point, though, namely that Bill Clinton's fighting back against Chris Wallace's ambush interview questions back last September may have been the moment where Democrats really started to fight back against Fox News. I hadn't considered it before, but now it makes perfect sense to me.
This still reminds me of how sick I am of how tied to the Clintons the Democrats are, though. Just like the Democratic Party as a whole never really pushed the anti-war thing to an appreciable extent until Hillary did her big turnaround after the election, this seems like another example of a very large section of the Democratic Party being led around by the nose by the Clintons. It's not that I understand the allure of the Clintons -- Bill is probably the most brilliant political mind of his generation, and Hillary is right up there as well -- but the Clinton strategy of running to the centre didn't work for Gore, and it didn't work for Kerry. The strategy only seems to work for the Clintons themselves, which is why I think, for all that the true liberals in the Democratic Party are casting Barack Obama as the big hope for everyone, Hillary will likely make mincemeat of him in the primary.
posted 2007/04/14 at 17:15
These past few days I've had a lot on my mind, about various things going on in my life. I don't want to be too specific, but let's just say that a mix of personal and work stuff has had my mind going in circles now for quite some time. I've tried to alleviate this problem by focusing much more energy than usual into my writing projects, and of course writing is always an excellent channel for releasing that nervous energy that builds up when you've got a lot on your mind. Unfortunately, writing can also be incredibly addicting, and between staying up late because I can't pull myself away from my writing when I'm on a roll, and then having a hard time falling asleep once I finally go to bed because I've still got all this stuff on my mind, I've managed to give myself a severe case of sleep deprivation here.
I've written before about what sleep deprivation does to me, and how I've tried to avoid sleep deprivation because of that. Having abstained from alcohol and illega drugs all my life I can't say whether or not it's true that this feeling is similar to getting high and/or drunk, but I certainly feel like my inhibitions are a lot lower than they normally are. For those of you who remember me from the pre-.org days and can recall all of the absolutely stupid things I did back then (and there's a lot to recall, I know), I'd say at least half of those stupid things came from times when I was feeling like I am right now. This is why normally, when I feel like this, I kind of make a point to speak and write as little as possible, and just try to ride out this feeling until I can get a good night's sleep and hopefully regain my sanity.
For some reason, though, today I've been fixated on this idea I've had in my mind for maybe five or six years now and haven't really developed. I don't know why, but now all of a sudden this idea is starting to flesh itself out almost faster than my brain can keep up with it, and right now, to me, this seems like one of the most brilliant things ever. At the same time, though, I know that I'm not thinking straight right now, and for all I know this idea of mine could be entirely without merit. In the past I just would have gone with this idea at 200 miles an hour (if for no other reason than because I amuse myself easily when I'm feeling like this), but now I'm just writing down all of the details I can, and maybe once I've gotten my head back I can take a look at my notes and see if this is something worthy of my time. It's still a temptation to go ahead with it all now, though.
posted 2007/04/13 at 15:38
Originally I hadn't planned on saying anything about the whole Don Imus uproar on here. For one thing, I don't think I'd ever heard more than ten minutes or so of Imus' broadcasting in my entire life; I've never been much of a morning person or a radio person for that matter, and the only reason I know what I know about Howard Stern's broadcasting is because I used to watch the tapes of his show on E! back when there was basically nothing else to watch on Toledo basic cable. I know that Imus caused an uproar when he said some real stupid stuff when he was the main attraction at one of the White House Correspondents Dinners back in the Clinton administration -- that was the biggest uproar I can remember coming from one of those dinners until Stephen Colbert put everyone in DC in their place last year -- and if you'd come to me a couple of weeks ago and said that Imus referred to a group of African-American women as "nappy-headed hos," I probably would have assumed it was just a normal part of his act on the radio.
I think Keith Olbermann did a good job on Countdown last night in pointing out all the other right-wing flame-throwers who have said things equally as bad, or worse, about African-Americans on the radio. This article (Reuters via Yahoo! News) recounts all of the examples Olbermann brought up, and it also examines how this incident might potentially change the face of talk radio. Here's what gets me, though. A couple of weeks ago Olbermann awarded his "Worst Person in the World" gold to Glenn Beck, and rightfully so, for dismissing Rosie O'Donnell's recent political opining by calling her a "fatso." However, anyone who watches Countdown on a regular basis probably recalled that several weeks before that, Olbermann had called Fox News chief Roger Ailes a "fatass" in an uncharacteristically juvenile blurt in the middle of a story. To be fair, Olbermann owned up to his blatant hypocrisy the following night, apologized to Ailes, and even gave himself a "Worst Person" award, but where was the outrage when Olbermann (or Beck, for that matter) used these slurs against people of size?
I don't want to sound like I'm trying to diminish how appalling Imus' slur was, because it was a hideous remark and there's no doubt in my mind that Imus deserves all the flack he's taken for it. I'm just wondering why this remark, in particular, generated all of this press and outrage, and not, say, Neal Boortz calling an African-American congresswoman a "ghetto slut." Why would prominent African-American leaders like the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton raise such a furor over one remark and not the other? Did they, in fact, raise an equal furor over Boortz's slur, and the only reason the Imus coverage has been front-page material for so long is because the big media/news conglomerates decided that this story was more headline-worthy for whatever reason?
I'm still puzzling that aspect of the Imus story in my mind. Another thing that worries me is the discussion at the end of that Reuters article about how people like Rush Limbaugh won't have to worry about changing in the face of this uproar because people like them are expected to throw out callous, insensitive insults and slurs like that. Excuse me, but exactly why should it be okay for people like Limbaugh -- on the left or the right -- to make a living off that kind of crap? Why should acting, for lack of a better phrase, like an asshole, make it all right to perpetuate this kind of misanthropic garbage? Shouldn't the fact that people like Limbaugh rely on that sort of stuff make them bigger targets for people's scorn? This makes it sound like our culture is sanctioning a class of people whose purpose in our society is to slur minority groups, and if we are doing that, is it any wonder that our society continues to be as bleak and antagonistic as it is?
posted 2007/04/11 at 15:03
The CD player in the sweet Aiwa stereo I bought some seven years ago is crapping out on me. Given that the tape decks on the system busted years ago (I still have my old cassette tapes from the 80s/early 90s in storage, plus when I bought my first Japanese textbook it came with cassette tapes of practice stuff), and I've never gotten good radio reception from it, right now the system's basically only good for amplifying incoming audio feeds from my cable feed and my video game systems. It does a good enough job of that -- even without a subwoofer, the system's got all the bass I could ever wish for -- but now when I want to listen to CDs I have to run them through my PS2, and while this doesn't involve much of a signal loss, it is still kind of a pain.
It's going to be a while before I have the money to get a new system here (especially since I don't really need a replacement at this point), but I already know that I'm not going to like that shopping process. A couple of years after I got my system, I bought my father a surround sound system of his own for his birthday, because the rest of the family are much bigger film buffs than I am and they like to watch the movies where surround sound and big bass make a big difference in the experience. In just those short couple of years between buying those two systems, though, the market for those systems had changed dramatically, as now I couldn't find any system with a dedicated CD player at Best Buy, but they all had DVD players. The only other option I had was to buy separate receivers and CD players, and my folks don't like going the component route any more than I do.
On the one hand, I can understand why the market would go to DVD players in these systems just because of how inexpensive the components for DVD players are. Heck, I could drive down to Kroger right now and get a new DVD player for $25 if I needed to. However, when my folks got their new system hooked up, I noticed something that I later noticed with similar systems some of my UT friends had when I visited their apartments: It's nearly impossible to run the DVD player as a CD player without having the television on. For some reason the manufacturers of these systems seem to think it would be better to contain all the controls and track information and such on the television screen instead of on the LCD display of the player. This strikes me as being horribly inefficient, especially given how old CRT TVs are such energy hogs, and how much more distracting having the television screen on is when you really want to focus on the music.
I will grant you that this was a while ago, so maybe the market has changed since then and I can find a suitable system to replace my old Aiwa with when the time comes, but this is one of those cases where I just don't understand why a manufacturer would choose to make a product in this way. Even if the environmentalist in me weren't worried about energy consumption and all of that, I think I'd still be kind of bothered by this.
posted 2007/04/09 at 16:07
Death Threats Dog Female Blogger (Salon.com) (link stolen from Ariel)
This article really touches on something that's been a particular concern of mine ever since I logged onto my first computer BBS back in the early nineties, which is how some people believe it to be acceptable to treat people with less respect online than they would in real life. I can't say that I received the kind of graphic threats that Kathy Sierra did, but I've certainly received more than my fair share of harassment online, particularly in the pre-.org days, and to this day I still encounter people online who seem to derive some sort of sick pleasure from insulting me and making idle threats towards me.
I can't begin to talk about how much I hate how these people have developed all these smart-ass rejoinders whenever anyone calls them out on their bad behaviour, like "lol Internet" or "the Internet is Serious Business." I don't understand where these people get the impression that the fact that they're on the Internet somehow excuses their actions. It's as if these phrases are a shorthand for saying "I'm pissed off because I can't treat people like crap like I did when I was 12 years old without getting fired or jailed or punched in the face, so instead of developing healthier ways to channel my emotions I'm just going to dump on people on the Internet I don't like."
The worst part about this phenomenon is that having observed it for over ten years now, I've noticed that for many of the people who choose to engage in it, it isn't just some phase they go through where they first delight in being able to dump on people without any real repercussions and then get bored with it after a few months or years. I'm now seeing people well into their thirties who are still acting this juvenile, and after this long you begin to wonder if they're just going to act like this all their lives. I know the big joke about the Internet is that anyone can come on here and be a hot seventeen-year-old girl, but I think the more pressing problem is how many adults -- who damn well know better -- are coming on here and being petulant fifth-grade bullies.
As much as I wish that Sierra never had to go through what she went through, I hope that this incident opens up a wider discussion on this phenomenon of people mistreating and abusing other people online. I've been saying for a while, though, that I don't think there's going to be a real serious discussion on this topic until one of these misanthropes just pisses off the wrong person, and the victim travels some 3,000 miles to take care of the problem with a gun or something like that. I really don't want that to happen, but as long as we don't discuss all this "lol Internet" crap and passively accept this kind of bad behaviour, the chance of such a tragedy happening will continue to exist.
posted 2007/04/07 at 19:09
It's actually kind of surreal for me to think that right now might be the last time I ever catch a regular season Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. The Red Wings' playoff spot is already locked up, but for Don's sake I'm rooting for the Leafs against the Habs right now so that the Isles still have a chance to make the playoffs tomorrow.
Something's bothering me, though, but not hockey-related. I mentioned a couple of months ago that I picked up Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol for PS2 primarily because it had Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on it. As I said before, we Shannons are all huge Jim Steinman fans, and I was hoping that the inclusion of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in the latest Karaoke Revolution meant that there was a chance that more Steinman songs would be in future releases of the game. (If they put a clipped version of "Bat Out of Hell" instead of the full-length version in a game, though, I will be seriously ticked.)
Anyway, if you've watched much television this year (at least in the US) then you've probably seen a commercial for a car rental company that features a guy making romantic advances towards the GPS in his rental while "Total Eclipse of the Heart" plays in the background. Well, up in Canada yet another commercial airing right now features "Total Eclipse of the Heart," this one for Diet Pepsi. Steinman hasn't exactly been that eager to license his music for these purposes in the past, and I can't help but worry that he may be going through some financial troubles right now.
posted 2007/04/06 at 21:28
Although we Shannons live in suburbia (or at least as close as you can get to suburbia with a big honkin' highway in your backyard), we try to keep as much nature around us as possible, so we keep fully-stocked birdfeeders in both our front and back yards, and we keep various scraps of food on our front porch for raccoons and squirrels and the like.
Unfortunately, early this morning we found one of our usual squirrel visitors on our porch bloodied, and with several puncture marks on its body. We didn't see what happened, but there's been a few dogs roaming the neighbourhood lately, and while they act friendly to humans, we're bigger than they are. The squirrel wasn't dead -- it limped away when my father tried to the cage it to take it to the vet -- but it was not a pretty sight, and unfortunately the best efforts of my father and my sister to keep my mother from seeing the squirrel (she was upstairs working in the office at the time of discovery) were in vain, and she was kind of shaken up for most of the early part of the day.
This incident took me back to my undergraduate days, as during my first year at UT I had this incident where I parked my car in a garage, and then when I was walking in the garage to get to the exit I passed a squirrel that had been run over. Now, living in this part of the country you're going to see roadkill all the time, but this was the first time I had ever been that close to it. Roadkill is gross enough when it's a somewhat-recognizable lump that you speed past fairly quickly, but when you're just walking, and you're close enough to see the animal's viscera strewn out in front of it from where the pressure of the car wheel basically squeezed it all out of the animal's body ... it's not that I don't have a healthy respect for the cycle of nature and all of that, but there are still some sides to nature that I'd rather not get that close to, thank you very much.
Anyway, we haven't seen this one squirrel since this morning, and while you want to hope for the best in these kind of circumstances, given the cold weather and all I'm guessing that the squirrel, if it hasn't died already, will probably die very soon. For our part, the next time we see those dogs roaming around, we're going to call animal control. Moments like these are why, if I ever get any pets after I get my own place, they're going to be indoor pets.
posted 2007/04/05 at 16:21
Although I've been by and large happy with Yggdrasil Mark I (my self-built computer), ever since I've had it I've had problems with some Websites loading properly. It seems like whenever a Website wants to load a transitory page between when I submit a form and the final page, my browser refuses to load the transitory page, and I get a connection reset error. This is happening in both Internet Explorer and Firefox, so the best I can figure is that there's something going on with my Internet security software that's preventing the pages in question from loading properly. Even when I turn that software off, though -- a risk I really don't like taking -- the pages still won't load properly.
This has been a problem for me for some time here, but I didn't pay too much attention to it for two reasons: one, the Websites this was happening on were of fairly low importance to me; and two, I could always go to campus and use one of the computers there if I felt like I really needed to use the Website in question. Unfortunately this problem has come up again, and instead of being on a Website of relatively low importance, it's happening on a Website I need to use in order to apply for a job I found. Now that this is happening on an important Website, of course, I can't just drive over to campus and use a computer there to work my way around this problem.
Being the old techie that I am, of course, I've been trying to diagnose the problem myself, working through every possible avenue I can think of in order to get the job application Website to work properly. Flummoxed with the lack of success so far, I decided to go ahead and click on the "Diagnose Internet connection problems" link on the error page Internet Explorer gives you when a connection has been reset. Nothing happens when I click on that link, though, except that I get a nice like alert in the lower-left corner of my browser letting me know that a scripting error has been detected.
Let me repeat that in boldface and capital letters just to help drive the point home: THERE IS A SCRIPTING ERROR IN A MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER ERROR PAGE.
Either this is a sign that there is something seriously wrong with my computer (and the gremlin in question is only manifesting itself under the oddest of circumstances), or, more likely, Microsoft royally screwed things up here. Times like these make me long for the days when I had time to learn more about computers, because then I might have a better idea of what I'm doing. As it is, now I'm going to have to hope I can find a computer I can use to make that job application. (Before anyone asks, all the computers at the public libraries around here are invariably taken by ten-year-olds playing online billiards.)
posted 2007/04/04 at 16:02
Alex Blagg: "American Idol, Sanjaya Malakar, and the Postmodern Condition" (Huffington Post)
When I was teaching first-year composition at the University of Toledo, I kind of made a point of becoming more aware of the music, television, and other media trends that people in that 18-20 age group are likely to be aware of, even though for the most part I really don't care for that kind of music or television. Given the huge juggernaut American Idol is, I thought that I should make a real concerted effort to follow the show, but so help me I just can't make myself watch it. I've already made my opinions about Simon Cowell well-known, and even if the show weren't pumping out such homogenized music, I haven't heard any singer come out of that show whom I could describe as anything better than mediocre.
Were it not for the mentions this whole thing has been getting on Countdown, I'd have no idea about this whole Sanjaya thing going on. On its surface, I can see the attraction of deliberately trying to mess up the voting on the show to make the seemingly least talented contestant the winner. That being said, as much as I sympathize with people who don't like American Idol, messing up their voting just seems kind of petty to me. I mean, if you really want to do damage to American Idol, wouldn't it just be easier, and better, to change the channel and just ignore the whole American Idol cultural juggernaut? I know it can seem hard to avoid something that's become such a dominant part of American popular culture, but it can be done.
More to the point, if you despise a force that you believe is manufacturing substandard product -- in the case of American Idol, both singers and songs of questionable quality -- why not instead put your energy into pushing quality singers and songs? I realize it can be hard to find the singers out there who are putting out quality music these days, but they are out there, and if you get your friends and co-workers used to a higher quality product, they should automatically reject the lower-quality product. That just seems like a better, more constructive, use of your time and energy than something like this whole "Vote for Sanjaya" business.
posted 2007/04/02 at 14:03
Good news: They moved the Tigers' opening day game to Fox Sports Net Detroit, so I've got it on right now.
Bad news: Tigers are getting their butts kicked.
As much as the Tigers have me recharged after last year's performance, though, it's hard to think about any other sports with the Red Wings just a week out of the playoffs here. Mind you, I fully expect the Red Wings to make another early exit -- not only do they still lack physical toughness and strong special teams play, but in the second half of the season they've been playing down to their opponents' level -- but given that this may be the last chance I get to watch CBC's hockey coverage, I'm probably going to follow the playoffs much more closely than usual.
As far as a Stanley Cup prediction ... well, the pattern these past couple of years has been a low-seeded Canadian team to come out of the West, only to lose in the finals to one of the teams in the Southeast where hockey really isn't that big but Gary Bettman insists the NHL has a future. Let's say Thrashers over the Flames in seven games, and in addition, whichever team knocks the Red Wings out of the playoffs will also sign Pavel Datsyuk in the off-season just to make the loss hurt even more. (See: Anaheim signing Sergei Federov, Calgary signing Darren McCarty.)
posted 2007/04/01 at 23:51
April 1st has come and passed, and thanks to the fact that I pretty much barricaded myself in my room all day, I managed to survive. I can't say that I don't appreciate a good April Fool's joke, it's just that I tend to appreciate them a whole lot more when they aren't done to me. What can I say, I'm not that jovial a person. (That being said, I actually had a couple of ideas for April Fool's jokes I could have done here on the .org, but I didn't want to run the risk that maybe a potential employer would come by here and see it and not realize it was a joke, so once again I played everything safe as can be.)
A thread on one of the messageboards I visit reminded me of the April Fool's jokes that the editors of Electronic Gaming Monthly used to pull back in the day, though. EGM always was my favourite gaming magazine back when I was younger -- I still have all my old copies, although I haven't exactly kept them in collectible condition -- and back in the day they would always sneak something into one of their April issues to confound everyone. There would always be some tell that it was an April Fool's joke, but it was always fun a couple of months later to read the letters they got from readers who fell for their tricks.
One year, though, they decided to hold a contest where readers were supposed to send in a letter saying what that year's April Fool's joke was, and, well, no one got it. The answer was that they misspelled the title of a game on the cover of the magazine (they tripled a consonant that was just supposed to be doubled), and that seemed kind of lame to me. I don't mean to offend anyone at EGM, but misspellings happen, even in professional publications like theirs. I mention this because I thought of doing something similar here, where I'd go back and misspell a word from a post I made six years ago and see if any of you could catch it, but like I said, that just doesn't seem cool to me. Besides, from having gone back and reformatted all my old .journal entries lately, I know that I misspelled enough words back then as it was.
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