Emo Sucks, Part 2348

A tune, if you could call it that, by Dashboard Confessional was just on the stream from our local alt rock station. Oh crap. My ears are leaking brain fluid, yet again. I didn't think it possible for a band to be more insipid than Creed or Coldplay. I was so very wrong.

Cannon

A different take on Pachelbel's Cannon in D

Here's Jerry C's official site: http://jerryc.tw/

Cell Phone Companies Don't Get It

Just came across a description of the features of the new Sony Ericsson P990 cell phone over on gizmodo.com:

Other features include a business card reader?what I wouldn?t give for that?and a music player that supports MP3, AAC and AAC+ formats. Then you?ve got a 2-megapixel phone with 2.5x digital zoom and flash, a 2.8-inch QVGA screen, and FM clock radio with stereo Bluetooth support. If previous incarnations have been any indication, the price on this thing will be stratospheric.

Please. Enough already. Want to know what will sell phones and keep customers? Here's a hint: phone service. Just give me a cell phone that works - doesn't drop calls, able to place and receive calls everywhere, has a good microphone so I don't have to shout, has good sound quality so I can understand what the other person is saying, has exemplary usability so I can store and retrieve numbers and names without having to read any manuals or quick start guides - keep the cameras, videocams, mp3 players, radios, game consoles, and PDA applications where they belong....anywhere but in my phone!

Million Dollar What?

We don't get to the movies much at all; perhaps four times a year, more or less. One of the reasons we have HBO...or maybe because we have HBO? In any case this past weekend, critically acclaimed, Academy Award winning film "Million Dollar Baby" - the boxing story with Clint Eastwood, Hillary Swank, and Morgan Freeman - was on, so why not?

Academy Award? What am I missing here? This film spent over two hours to say, essentially, nothing. The pace was glacial, and that's when it was moving along swiftly. I've seen grass grow faster. The acting was mostly phoned in save for a bit of emoting here and there by Clint. The characters were uninteresting and one-dimensional. The big moral "conflict" at the end was telegraphed at least 45 minutes prior, and it ended leaving the outcome of the Eastwood character totally unresolved. SU claims otherwise, that it was clear he bought the dinner and was there, but I sure didn't see it. Of course by then I'd pretty much lost all interest.

A Million Dollar Bore.

House Xmas Decorations for Lighting Designers

Look what you can do with midi controller, a hundred or so DMX channels, lots of addressable light strings, and a ton of time......http://www.houseblinger.com/bling-rock.php

Quote of the Day

Given the rhetoric spewing forth recently from Cheney, McCarthy-apologist and cheerleader Ann Coulter, hate-monger Hannity and others, who said the following?

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."

Bush? Rove? Mehlman? Frist? All logical choices, but no, it was Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials.

I Can't Ever Forgive Trump

Thanks to The Apprentice, of all things Trump unleashed upon an unsuspecting public, easily the most annoying is the phrase-meme: step up to the plate; stepping up; et al.
Please, if you find yourself using this phrase or variants, just stop now!

Yes, I Live in one of the dumbest states

Inexplicably, more than half of us still support our idiot president.

Thank You Pat Robertson

For background, just in case you haven't heard, American Taliban Mullah and right-wing religious bat-shit crazy Pat Robertson, advisor to lame-duck Bush, said this about Dover PA after voters tossed out all 8 of the flat earth morons on the school board who were adamant about force-feeding "intelligent design" in the school curricula:

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there."

Now, haven't all the ID proponents been repeating the talking point that ID is not creationism or have anything to do with god? Yet here we have a (supposedly) religious christian man saying that god's wrath will come down on a town that voted against the assclowns that push ID as a valid theory. Thank you Pat Robertson, for just admitting that ID is all about teaching our kids about the chirstian god and the myth of creation.

OK, I know this is difficult for FOX News watchers and anyone who still somehow supports Bush to follow, but try...Pattyboy just put a big nail in the ID coffin.

Neighbor Noise

I don't like hearing the neighbors. Fortunately our two neighbors are exceptionally quiet, so that's not an issue. OTOH, we live in pretty dense suburbia and are much closer to a bunch of people than we were in CT, so the ambient neighbor noise is quite a bit higher.

If I have to hear the neighbors, I really don't want it to be cupcake laden wholesomeness like "Kids! Time to go to church!" I'd much rather it be drunken fights - things like "YOU BITCH!!! I'm bleeding!!! I can't believe you hit me with that!"

It's far more entertaining.

Band Names From Spam

Lately I've been getting a lot of spam for penny stock pump-and-dump schemes. The algorithmicly generated subject line is of the form "Fwd: two words" or "Greeting of some type: two words" where the "two words" are seemingly random combinations from a dictionary. Some of them would make great band names:

heisenberg canvas

basketball sapiens

dunce chateau

salutary bullfrog

acrobat arson

dissident pancake

and my favorite

jurassic gunmen

Looky! A Deer In The Headlights!

Edit: there was a photo of our moronic idiot of a president here that was hosted on another site. It was removed from that site.