Coffee House Poetry

I Got Nuthin’

JavaElemental — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:50:05 +0000

I seem to have written myself into a corner. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’m trying to figure out how to write myself back out without being hopelessly stupid and/or contradicting something I already wrote, and/or not having to go back and rewrite large chunks of previous chapters. It ain’t easy. While I brainstorm feverishly, enjoy these links:

How To Build A (Almost) Free Solar Heater
Disgruntled American Seeks Canadian For Political Asylum, Maybe More
Obama does not associate with terrorists. (Jesus, you people will believe anything.)
Want to know what all those pesky Constitutional Amendments mean? Read this.
Looking for a place to publish some work and/or a writing contest to win? Go here.
Deeply cool: Basement decorated with a Sharpie marker.

Excuses, Excuses

JavaElemental — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:30:38 +0000

Unfortunately, I’ve had a rather busy week, so I’m running late on my chapter. I’m hoping to have it — a revision of Chapter Four — done for tomorrow. This week has included an expensive trip to the emergency vet for a very sick Jazz (she seems to be doing better), some long hours at work, and road trip with my mother to see some relatives we hadn’t seen in forever (some I was meeting for the first time). In between, I caught the debate, Dexter, True Blood, and Supernatural.
Quick reviews: Dexter rocked, as usual. I won’t spoil it, but it sure looks like it’s going to be an interesting season. True Blood is sticking with cheap, tawdry, and badly-acted. I think, after this last crappy episode, I’m just going to have to give up on it. A shame, too. I love the Southern Vampire Mysteries. Like with the Dresden Files on Sci-Fi, though, they managed to take excellent books and render them down into shitty TV shows. Supernatural delivered a good episode this week, a two-parter that covered some more of the Winchester boys’ family history. After two mediocre episodes, it’s good to see them hitting their stride.
On that note, I’m out. Time to get ready for work, and all that. Chapter Four (v2.0) coming late tonight or early tomorrow, come hell or high water.

VP Debate

JavaElemental — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:08:27 +0000

I found the VP debate streaming live at CNN.com last night, and so was able to watch it. It was actually a rather amusing experience, because while I was watching it, I was also MST3King via text message with a friend of mine. Crooks&Liars live-blogged the debate, and here’s the transcript.
     I’m not going to do some in depth review of the debate. Plenty of folks are doing that, and better than I can. I would like to point out that Sarah Palin consistently failed to actually answer the questions she was asked, instead turning to folksy-sounding, soccer-mom style burbling canned answers. You know. The kind of things beauty queens are trained to say in quick sound bites to win in front of the judges.
     I mean, come on. “Doggone it?” Really? Is anyone buying this?
     Meanwhile, Joe Biden stayed on point, answered his questions, and managed to do so without getting too dry, dragged down in the details, or sticking his foot in his mouth. He also pinned this “McCain maverick” bullshit straight to the wall. I am not ashamed to admit that I cheered when he called her on that.
     Maverick my ass. I mean, really. “Washington outsiders”. McCain’s been in the senate how long? And he’s an “outsider”? Reallly? And Palin’s not an “outsider”. She’s an “I-don’t-what-I’m-doing-er”.
     I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I don’t care how “folksy”, friendly, or likable a given candidate might be. I don’t care if they’re pretty or handsome. I don’t care if I think I could sit down and have a beer with them, or if they can dance on Ellen, or if Oprah likes them. What I do care about is whether they represent my opinions, and/or are willing to compromise with me where our opinions differ. I care if they’re qualified and able. And, at no point, should I ever get the feeling that I might be better informed on a relevant subject, or more capable, than the people I’m electing to do the job.
     Bush has given us eight years of bullshit, lies, and misery. Nowhere in this debate did Palin manage to convince me that McCain differs any little bit from Bush. Hell, McCain hasn’t been able to convince me he’s going to be any different than Bush.
     On a side note, reading some of the media’s reviews of the debate last night, I notice that most people seem pretty pleased with Palin, because she didn’t make a fool of herself. As in, “hey, good job, you didn’t come across like the fool you were with Couric!” Is that where the bar rests for the standards for VP these days? Really? She did a good job because she didn’t manage to make the same ass of herself she’s done in the press the last couple of weeks? That’s not “doing a good job”, that’s just barely managing to squeak by. Come on, people.

Site Announcements

JavaElemental — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:14:16 +0000

This is just a quick post to point dramatically at two new things. The first thing is, of course, the Halloween site design. Ah, Halloween — Autumn, crispy, crackly leaves, gray, rainy days, cool weather, fewer bugs, Honeycrisp apples, candy, ghosts, witches, horror movies, costumes, and all those other joyful Halloween/Fall things. And a site recolor feature orange and black and haunted houses. Yay.
The second — and somewhat more important — thing I’d like to point out, is my new website, devoted to my serial novel: Black Alice. For now, it will continue to update on Fridays. Time permitting, I’d like to start updating twice a week, but I can’t promise that yet.
That is all. Carry on enjoying October.

Internet Piracy

JavaElemental — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:49:43 +0000

Avast, me hearties! Let’s talk about internet piracy. Back in the day, about a thousand years ago when I was but a young lass who listened to most of her music on the radio and watched most of her movies on a VCR at friends’ houses, we used to do most of our “pirating” by making actual physical copies of movies and music, and passing them around to our friends. Another favored method was to tape the movie, TV show, or music off the radio or TV, and share that around. A really good copy was one where someone had taken the time to edit the commercials out.
     There’s always been piracy. People have always bootlegged concerts and movies. I used to own a couple of Alice Cooper bootlegs, but I was eventually able to lay hands on the (far superior quality) official tapes, and disposed of the crappy bootlegs.
     I must have owned a veritable mountain of VCR tapes and cassette tapes chock full of music swiped off the radio, and movies copied from friends or off the TV. We passed these things around like the common cold. I never got sued for any of this, nor did the Feds ever come and bust down my doors, demanding my collection shitty album dubs.
     These days, when you want to pirate something, you go get yourself a high speed internet connection, and a program like BitTorrent, and you go to town. I don’t use BitTorrent, nor do I ever, ever do anything illegal like download movies, music, or TV shows, but if I did, it would be for one of a few reasons. I would hardly ever go after movies. I like to watch movies curled up on my couch, with a blanket and popcorn and a remote near to hand, all that, and since there’s no way for me to burn something off my computer to watch on a DVD player, I wouldn’t go after movies much. Also, if it’s any sort of a good movie, I want to see it in the theater.
     I might go after a lot of music. I frequently hear a song on the radio and want to listen to it at home. Usually I use something like Pandora radio or IMEEM, but other than that, I don’t buy a lot of music. What I might be really interested in would be TV shows, since I don’t have cable.
     One of the main reasons I don’t have cable is because I refuse to pay a goddamn monthly fortune for hours and hours of shitty TV, just so I can watch the two or three programs I enjoy. Give me a reasonably-priced a la carte cable service, and I wouldn’t even be interested in downloading TV shows.
     Lots of people turn to illegal piracy to lay hands on their favorite media. If I were so inclined to break the law, I might download things like Dexter or True Blood, or possibly a few favorite songs, possibly the occasional movie. I might be interested in Iron Man — missed it in the theaters, and I really want to see it.
     Of course, if there were a neat, reasonably-priced, legal way to download these things, I’d be very interested in that. And, by neat, I mean keep your shitty iTunes copyright protections off my legally-bought media, and your crappy DRM garbage off my software and movies, and we’ll talk. By reasonably-priced — eh. A buck a song? A buck a TV show? A few bucks for a movie? Or, how about a decent subscription service, where I can just download what I want for a monthly fee. Offer packages based on amount of information downloaded per month. Say, twenty bucks for a basic package of a few gig a month.
     Offer me that, and — if I had it, heh — I’d ditch BitTorrent in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t have to worry about being sued or getting in trouble. I strongly suspect that I’m not in the minority, feeling this way.
     The big problem here is the refusal of media purveyors to change with the times, and their hidebound insistence on raping us for every single dime they can fuck us out of. I’m just not going to pay twenty bucks for a CD, particularly if I only like one song. If I buy a video game, I’ll install it as many goddamn times as I want, on whatever computer I want, and I’m damned if some company will tell me otherwise. As long as big media insists on screwing us with their archaic Nazi-like copyright protections designed to force us to fork out more cash, or prevent us from making legal back-up copies and the like, and as long as they keep demanding small fortunes for products that are mostly crap, internet piracy will thrive. As long as there are millions of intelligent, sneaky, conniving, dedicated pirates out there, they aren’t going to be able to stop people from downloading things. They have a company, with a budget. Pirates crack codes for free, in their spare time, and there are umpteen thousands working on any given project. Pirates are not constrained by time, money, or manpower. They can’t be stopped.
     It’s like the “War on Drugs” or “Terra” — traditional methodology will not stop these crimes. Change your tactics. Find out what the pirates want, and provide it at reasonable fees and with reasonable freedoms, and you’ll be back to making money. Come down like a bunch of government heavies, and you’ll incite pirates to further effort just out of sheer contrariness.

(Photo credit: BloodySushi.com.)