lisa says to you, "dude, i need the link to your actual, active blog"
lisa says, "my bookmark file died, and your old LJ blog doesn't show it anymore"

Funny thing about bookmark files. You accumulate a lot of cruft there that you never look at again, yet you never realise how much you’ve stored there until you lose it.

“Browser Bookmark Blues”
(apologies to Don McLean and “American Pie”)

A long, long time ago
I can still remember
How the pages used to make me smile
And I knew if I took the hint
That I should make those pages print
And maybe they’d be safe, then, for a while
But browser crashes made me shiver
with every webpage it’d deliver
Bad news on the page load
It wouldn’t take one more goad
No, I can’t remember being brash
When I saw the blue screen crash
But something made my bookmarks trash
The day the browser died.
So…

Chorus:
Bye-bye “Miss America” site,
“Driving Chevys”, “Jacques Levy”, “Feel Like Chicken Tonight”
“Da Geto Boys”, Inky Blinky and Clyde,
Browser, this would be the day that you died

Did you see the “Hamsterdance”
And did you have it linked, perchance
If the shortcut showed you how?
Now do you believe you saved the site?
Can you retrieve this page just right
And would you send the URL to me now?
Well, I knew that you’re in love with “Jack””
’cause I had it bookmarked, “Hotmail hack”
But now my links are gone,
Man, I miss that anime pr0n…
I was a lonely surfer browsin’ news
Reading soundbytes from the Reuters news
But I’m screwed now, yeah, I have the blues
The day the browser died
I’ve started singing….

(chorus)

Now, for five days I’ve been on my own
Can’t find that site for the Rolling Stones
But that’s not how it used to be
When it used to link emulations sites
Yes, it kept track of the hockey fights.
And it showed me where to catch my flights.
Oh, and now that things are looking down,
I can not wipe away this frown
The bookmark list adjourned.
All my “eBay cheats” are burned.
Oh my message board links, they are gone
Along with helpful tips for a greener lawn
And the flash version of 3D Pong
The day the browser died
And I am singing…

(chorus)

“Helter Skelter” in my ‘OLGA’ folder
As the ashes of my bookmarks smoulder
All my ways to procrastinate…
And a “Starbucks” latte coffee pass
Yes it’s hoax that failed, alas, alas.
I’ve been looking in vain but now it’s getting late.
Now the Half-Life link is M.I.A.
The “Pulp Fiction soundboard” went away.
I never got to play
The role of Shoutcast indie DJ.
‘Cause my browser went and bit the dust
Seemed my cookies caused the thing to bust
Is there anything left that I can trust
Now that my browser died?
I still am singing…

(chorus)

Oh, and they were all there sitting in one place
…the fanboy page for “Lost in Space“…
I’ve got to go and start my list again
So come on people, send me links
To the “Space Quest” page of hints and tricks.
While my bookmark file is on the mend…
I watched the meltdown take effect.
Goodbye to “Star Trek”, “BattleMech”
No action could help quell,
Could break this cold death knell.
And as the numbers climbed high, out of sight
I lost that sweet MP3 site
My friends were laughing with delight
The day the browser died.
And still I’m singing…

(chorus)

I met a girl on ICQ
And I asked her for some things to do
But she just logged off, and refused my text
I went down to the Yahoo! store
Where I’d seen the discounts days before
But without my bookmarks I was truly vexed,
And in misery, I lost my mind
The cursing flew, I went half-blind
But no scrap was recovered
The bookmarks were all smothered.
And the three sites I admire most:
Google, Slashdot, and Space Ghost
They’re all that’s left, my browser’s toast
Today, my browser’s fried,
I can’t stop singing…

(chorus)

Another SCO Group parody, to complement Lady Caldera. This is, if it’s not obvious, a parody of “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2″

I actually wrote this a while back (9-Dec), but I wanted to keep a copy of it before it was too hard to find on Slashdot.

(With apologies to Pink Floyd)

We don’t need no litigation
We don’t need no spin control
No Darl McBride praise in the chatroom
Pumpers, leave this stock alone!
Hey! Pumpers! Leave this stock alone!
All in all it’s just another turd in the stall
All in all you’re just another turd in the stall

We don’t need no litigation
We don’t need no spin control
No Darl McBride praise in the chatroom
Pumpers, leave this stock alone!
Hey! Pumpers! Leave this stock alone!
All in all it’s just another turd in the stall
All in all you’re just another turd in the stall

“Wrong! Dump it again!”
“If you can’t beat the street, how can you have any earnings…
How can you have any earnings, if you can’t beat the street?”
“You! Yes, you behind the bodyguards, stand still laddy!”

Click for large version

The irony concerning the fact that this article was published in The American Conservative is so deliciously sweet, I can’t stand it.

When Bush travels around the United States, the Secret Service visits the location ahead of time and orders local police to set up “free speech zones” or “protest zones” where people opposed to Bush policies (and sometimes sign-carrying supporters) are quarantined. These zones routinely succeed in keeping protesters out of presidential sight and outside the view of media covering the event.

The irony concerning the fact that this happens under a President who claims to be fighting a war for our freedoms, however, is quite bitter indeed.

I’ve written lots of letters in my day, but this one takes the cake so far. Coming out to five pages printed, including attachments, it’s a bit long, but considering the missive sent by SCO to Capitol Hill numbers about nine, I don’t think this is too awful bad. I really couldn’t condense it much more.

---

(address)
22 January 2004

The Honorable Senator George Allen
204 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Senator John Warner
225 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

The Honorable Representative Frank Wolf
241 Cannon Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Sirs,

In recent weeks you may have received, or may soon receive, a letter from a Mr. Darl McBride, President and CEO of “The SCO Group”, a software company based out of Lindon, Utah. This letter, dated 8 January 2004 and sent to many at Capitol Hill, attempts to draw attention to the so-called dangers of “open-source software” and, more specifically, the licensing entity known as the General Public License (henceforth, the “GPL”).

Should you not have received a copy of this letter, it can be found on the website of the Open Source and Industry Alliance (“OSAIA”), via the following URL:

http://www.osaia.org/letters/sco_hill.pdfBefore going any further, however, I ask that you first consider this quote from Frederic Bastiat’s 1845 piece, “A Petition”, which was a biting jab at the then-notoriously protectionist French State:

“We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us so mercilessly we suspect he is being stirred up against us by perfidious Albion…”

I feel you will soon find the above quote relevant to the issue at hand.
(more…)

I first heard Jonathan Alter use the term yesterday, on a short bit with WTOP, but his use of the term “mosh pit” to describe the current Democratic primary situation is, apparently, a rather alarming trend as opposed to a one-time mot du jour.

Frankly, the idea of any of these guys stage diving scares the living bejeezus out of me.

No, I’m not gonna post the mp3 or the video of Dean’s shrill war yip. That’s been done to death.

I do have them, however, if you’re interested ;).

From National Review:

“It sounds as if you had a little bit of an anxiety attack when you got the word that you were now governor,” Heyman said.

“I did,” Dean answered. ” I hyperventilated and I started hyperventilating and I thought, ‘You better stop that or you won’t be much good to anybody.’”

“Has that happened since, or before?”

“No.”

“Why was that such a — ”

“To suddenly get told that you have responsibility for 600,000 people — it provokes a little anxiety.”

“But now you’re asking for responsibility for 250 million and then, the global reach of the U.S. presidency. That doesn’t provoke a little anxiety?”

I sometimes feel I need to tone down the Dean rhetoric… but I honestly just don’t think this guy could handle the job. Nothing on Dean’s record particularly impresses me, and the lack of poise doesnt’ seem befitting of a President.

All of this, of course, is based on the idea that he could even win the election. As it stands, I highly doubt he’d ever beat Bush one-on-one.

Interesting article, albeit this is probably pretty obvious to some…

The nature of these contests has changed over the years, of course, but the comparison of early national poll results with the eventual nomination outcome provides us with a track record of sorts in our attempt to answer the “prediction” question. And the answer is clear: there is no clear relationship between the candidate leading in Gallup’s national trial heat surveys among Democrats at the beginning of an election year and the eventual winner of the party’s nomination.

The most interesting thing about Iowa, I think, was the erosion of Gephardt’s support there. I was too young to remember all this, but Gephardt won Iowa in 1988. From what I’ve heard, the demographic has changed there so much, that the labor groups that supported him then — and this time around, to some degree — don’t exert the same pressure that they used to.

As tight as this year’s race is, it ought to be interesting. I’m wondering if Gephardt will throw his support to anyone. We’ll see.

Regardless of talent, Gibbs is strongly opposed to signing players who have unseemly track records. Last year, the Redskins signed a few players with controversial backgrounds, including defensive tackle Darrell Russell, who had been suspended by the NFL for 1 1/2 seasons.

Even as a kid, I noticed this about the Redskins. I’d see things on TV, and the Redskin players… I dunno, they just always seemed more clean-cut, both on and off the field. When they were interviewed by reporters, they were gracious and they didn’t mumble. They gave articulate insight, rather than just mutter a few marble-mouthed words and ramble off. Darrell Green was, of course, one of these guys… I seem to remember Art Monk in the same light. The one exception I could ever recall was the troubled Dexter Manley.

Ok, so maybe Riggins was a little bit of a rabblerouser, too.

Whatever the case, this is something that, for the past few years, I’ve felt was noticeably missing from the Redskins organisation. I guess, however, I’d always thought that, while the head coach might have been tangentially involved in these character decisions, that players of this caliber had always been a trademark of the Charlie Casserly & crew front office.

Good to see Gibbs is bringing that trademark of excellence back.

And yes… I honestly did have thoughts like those listed above, when I was around ten years old. Reading this article made all those thoughts come back.

When it comes to size, socially responsible funds aren’t the biggest player in the $8 trillion fund world. But they pack a bigger punch than their size suggests, thanks to the pressure they bring by exposing social responsibility performance as well as bottom line performance.

Interesting article. I’ve owned PAXWX (one of the funds mentioned) for a while now.

(bad pun, there)

So it seems Pavarotti is entering the pop music biz…

Yet for years he rebuffed attempts by his record label, Decca, to record a non-classical album, as many of his operatic peers have done. He was finally convinced after one of his three adult daughters prodded him to listen to material she thought would be perfect for his legendary tenor. The result is a collection of sweeping ballads that has been a top seller on the classical crossover charts since its release in late September.

Well, now he’s gone and done it. I guess it’s only a matter of time before he’s spied topless in People magazine and goes off having 55 hour marriages…

CNN: Traveler’s flute causes airport evacuation

“The passenger was allowed to board his flight after being questioned, but without his flute in the container made of plastic PVC pipe. Eight flights were affected and more than 300 passengers evacuated while bomb technicians investigated.”

PVC pipe? What, is this guy a member of Blue Man Group, or something?

So today, on CNN.com, the first thing I see emblazoned across the page is “Dean: ‘Tired of being the pin cushion’“.

I am so sick of you at this point, Dean. You already blew your stack a few days ago, and now this. If you can’t stand the heat, Howie, stay out of the kitchen. This happens in every primary series, you’re no different — as if you deserve to be up on some pedestal. You should feel lucky, considering the press has been propping you up for the past three months; You were neck-and-neck with Clark in polls a while back, but strangely enough, we never heard anything about him, we just heard about you and you and you.

You’re a phony, but what’s amazing is how blatant you are about it. Consider your gaffe in the Iowa Brown & Black debate.

HOLT: Next we’d like to give Governor Dean an opportunity to ask a question of one of your opponents.

DEAN: Well, I am going to break the mold a little bit, as Joe did, but we won’t have quite as long a speech. I’d like to ask my question to a community activist who’s in the audience whose name is Ako Abdul-Samad. He’s on the school board.

And the question is, I’ve spent two years listening to Iowans here in there caucuses and hearing their concerns and their needs. Can you tell us, Ako, what we ought to be doing to help your community?

HOLT: Well, hold on a second, Governor Dean. We’re not formatted to take questions from the candidate to a member of the audience. The questions are to be to members, other opponents.

DEAN: Well…

HOLT: That’s the format agreed by the candidates.

DEAN: I understand. I understand.

HOLT: Do you have a question to one of your opponents?

DEAN: Well, I…

SHARPTON: Governor, ask me. I’ll let Ako answer for me.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

DEAN: Well, you know, part of this campaign is about change, and it’s about letting ordinary people have something to say about something what goes on.

HOLT: Well, I don’t want to argue the point with you, but there was a format agreed to by the opponents. So do you have a question for another opponent, or should we move on?

DEAN: No, I think we’ll move on.

HOLT: OK.

DEAN: Thank you.

HOLT: Thank you very much.

What a panderer! A miserable attempt, really, and it just goes to show how foolish and overly self-confident you are.

Oh, wait. Maybe that was an example of you demonstrating yourself as “progressive”. Hah.

Anyway, I’m really kinda glad to see you do all this, as much as I think you’re entirely ridiculous. A few more outbursts like this, and maybe we’ll begin to see Clark get the attention he deserves.

…But since you seem to be clamoring for personal attacks, here’s one: Why do you always look like you’re constipated? What is up with your neck, man?

Three and a half stars??

Good god.

“‘So’ is the new favourite — at least among mainstream culture,” Tagliamonte told Reuters on Thursday, adding that no study has been done on why the word is so popular.

Co-author Roberts spent a year going through transcripts from each episode of the first eight seasons of “Friends”, taking note of every single adjective for the study.

I wonder how much they got paid to study this… I made the same connection back in college, like 5-7 years ago, albeit I didn’t make any commentary, due to fear of some sort of weird retribution — small colleges make you a little more cautious about things like that.

Regardless, I think the article/study may be a bit off… it’s not “so”, although its usage alone has picked up, but it’s derived from the increasing use of “so” with a negative modifier.

I remember noticing some people, people who I’d known since I started attending school, who because saying things akin to:

“She so does not get it.”
or
“That professor was so not cool about it”

At the same time, Friends was at the peak of its game, and I knew that several of these people were big fans of the show. While I’d never seen the show much at the time, and still don’t really watch it, I’d seen enough to make the connection.

The memorial service for Mr. Craver will be Sunday at 1:00 p.m. at George Mason University, in the Harris Theatre. It will be an open forum for friends to share stories. etc. Please pass that info around.

Washington Post notice | Online Guestbook

Gibb me some o’ dat: St. Joe is returning to the Washington Redskins.

I heard inklings of this last night, but the CBS link above has a little more meat to it.

I also have very little doubt that Mr. Crabbypants Daniel Snyder is offering Gibbs a more-than-reasonable compensation to make up for the fact that Gibbs will have to give up his minority share in the Falcons.

Some may look at this as a desparate move by a desparate owner (Snyder), but I think that while it’s fantastic news, it’s also a very shrewd strategic move. More than a couple Redskins defensive players had already announced earlier in the year that they would leave the team if the Skins got a new D coordinator.

Well, according to CBS, the Skins will get a new defensive coordinator, former Bills HC Gregg Williams… but like hell any of those guys will leave now, not when the opportunity to play under this legend is sitting there right in front of them!

GO SKINS!

(Click for larger version)

Heard from my sister, who heard from elsewhere in the Hayfield grapevine, that Mark Craver died very recently. He was a fantastic teacher, taught me to appreciate literature, and was an amazing poet himself. He also used to earnestly listen to me when no-one else would lend an ear.

I am trying to remember the last time I exchanged email with him. It wasn’t very recent, but it was certainly within the last two or three years or so, if I recall correctly.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I am crushed.

The following is a poem of his, that we published in Verbosity: it is not the most representative of his work, but it’s the best I could do for now.

The Reason Rivers are Evil

(Mark Craver)

Waves aren’t made of water. They glide
through it the way a glance cuts across

a room filled with voices
at cross-purposes. The room stays put

in a house and won’t stir when it needs
trim painted around doors and windows.

Doors that open into yards; windows overlooking
fields and tree-rows planted as windbreak

before vines and weeds took the fence
and groundhogs took the corner brush pile

as their hole. The view from here
is so lovely it hurts. It’s the pain

that bridges water pocked by drizzle
and flattens waves to endless ripples.

Rivers expand from still rooms in houses
rotating on the edge of a candy universe

spinning away from itself. The reason
rivers are evil? They never stop.

Pyongyang has called its offer “one more bold concession” aimed at resolving the standoff over its nuclear weapons programs.

I dunno, Kim Jong Il, this looks decidedly unbold to me.

Someone with more creativity or time than me should exercise his or her wit and write a good parody of that bit, substituting Kim Jong Il, Roh Moo-hyun, and the White House, et al. for the respective MST3K characters.

Delivered-To: corey@balance.wiw.org
From: "Juror N4"
To: corey@balance.wiw.org
Subject: Looking for Juror #3 Van Nuys Superior Court
Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 23:43:40 -0500 (EST)
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.126013 required=0.900000

To: Juror #3, Van Nuys Superior Court, Dept E, Los Angeles, CA, excused on November 13. This is Juror #4 and I would really like to say Hi and continue our conversation.

You can reply to this email or call 818-831-1492.

DO YOU KNOW JUROR #3?
She is WF, 30's, 5'5", slender build, short light brown hair. She served on jury duty November 12 & 13, Van Nuys Superior Court in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, CA.

Contact me or please pass this message along to her.

Thanks, and Happy Holidays!

As of this writeup, there are a few other references out there about this, but no one is quite sure what to make of it.

Interestingly enough, although my spam filter didn’t tag this as spam outright, it thought something was at least a little bit fishy…