Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’m a big fan of Lifehacker‘s featured extensions for Firefox. I have been using Better Gmail and Better Reader for some time, and now they have a new one, Better YouTube! If you are an extensions geek like me you will love this. Or, better yet, if you are not, and don’t feel like experimenting with a bunch of precarious Greasemonkey scripts, then this is even more for you. Lifehacker has collected a bunch of YouTube-themed Greasemonkey scripts into one package: install it, restart Firefox and you are good to go. Mess with your settings in the Tools column. Do things such as hiding comments, disabling auto-play, and enabling download. Good stuff.

Go on! Fracture! Split! Die!! The party of mindless unity has become the party of spoiled empty idealogues. Really the only crucial difference between McCain and the “party line” is that he doesn’t want to crucify immigrants, endorse torture, and whore out our government. But apparently to everyones favorite pundits of evil, this is venom! It is wonderful to see the Republicans, drunk with power, eating themselves alive.

Now, if only today goes as I hope it will!

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGPLZPLZPLZPLZOMGOMGOMG

This is really just such a frightening video in so many ways:

Yeah, in case you were wondering, I’m sitting here in my apartment alone, watching the Super Bowl and drinking girly drinks, which is why I’ve been storm-blogging. That probably makes me kind of lame, but you know what makes been even lamer? I’m about to start bitching about the Super Bowl, blog-style.

Well, the game is actually pretty good. But we are currently at half-time, where we have yet another aging rocker performing hits from 20+ years ago. Weak. I mean, I like Tom Petty ok, and I guess it’s still an upgrade from the Up With People Super Bowl Halftimes, but I mean, can we have something current please?

Well, this Super Bowl’s solution was to get a whole mess of youngsters, from God knows where, to rush the stage – as if the normal, unhot audience weren’t barricaded from the field – and dance funkily as if they had any idea who Tom Petty were, aside from the guy who sings Freefalling while they chug rancid Labatts from a beer bong in their frat houses. Ok, I’m getting dark, but it was pretty annoying when they showed a close up of MTVers who were apparently supposed to be singing along, but they obviously didn’t know the words.

Well, the game is back on. I’ll resume casually watching the Super Bowl, lazily practicing horn, attempting to fix my BlackBerry, drinking Vodka and cranberry juice, and possibly pausing to write more sassy blogs.

Two controversial issues tackled by the British government that pretty much run the gamut regarding personal freedom/responsibility:

The first, which I think is pretty ridiculous, is about the “obesity crisis”. Apparently, obesity is no longer an individuals’ fault, officially.

The second, which I agree with, is about polygamy. While I can easily see how many people might consider polygamy to be pretty messed up, I don’t think it is the government’s business. I like that they are taking a step in a more sensible direction, but I fear it is more a product of reactionary cultural relativism than respect for freedom and alternative lifestyles.

In case you were wondering about the, ya know, breadth of political and social insight of the people behind the Yes We Can video, here are will.i.am and Jesse Dylan (Bob Dylan’s son! wtf?) discussing the song:

Now will.i.am seems like a nice guy (I actually dug Behind the Front) and Jesse Dylan seems harmless enough, be these guys hardly have substantial knowledge about the political realm.

Here is my favorite quote:

Alisha Davis: So, what are some of the changes you wanna see right now?

will.i.am: (pause) Education. (pause) America’s finance, you know, getting our dollar back up to where it should be.

Jesse Dylan: Stopping the war. (smiles and looks around slyly)

will.i.am: Stopping the war. Um… Health. Um… International policies. Ya know, good things?

Alisha Davis: Good things, we can support that.

So, yeah, not the brightest bunch. But you know what? It’s ok. They’re artists. The video is moving and inspiring on a purely emotional level. People respond to that. Sometimes it takes emotional impact for people to get off of their asses for a cause.
The I Have A Dream speech is really a poem; there is not much in terms of policy that King was speaking of, but it is a work of art, and I think that it helped to inspire the civil rights movement.

But of course, the cynic in me still thinks the video is bullshit. It still seems like it is more of a way to help launch Scarlett Johannson’s debut album, or revive Tatyana Ali‘s career. And why do I find Kate Walsh so immensely unlikable??

Ok, this post is now both digressing and becoming bitchy. My point is that it is hard to look at a bunch of sexy millionaires, who have varying degrees of talent in areas other than government, and see it as anything but something directed towards children. To me it’s no different than putting Michael Jordan on the Wheaties box.

What does Michael Jordan have to do with Wheaties?

Nothing, eat the fucking cereal.

Ok. I live in New York City. This means that I am accustomed to noise, a good amount of it. It is routine for me to hear:

MTA Buses

Police and Ambulance Sirens

Banda and Reggaeton with deep bass

The loudspeaker Azan a block away

Big cargo trucks which for some reason are allowed to drive down my Avenue

A Italian tenor with a vibrato so wide you could drive one of those cargo trucks through

The people upstairs who mysteriously begin moving furniture every evening at midnight

An air raid siren that inexplicably will go off in the distance, leaving me casually wondering if I am about to be vaporized by a hydrogen bomb

The car alarms of seemingly abandoned gypsy cabs.

Unabandoned gypsy cabs that will honk their horns to pick up a rider no matter the time of day (or night)

A crazy lady outside my window who literally shrieks at the top of her lungs to her children in Arabic

But the newest, and most inexplicable, is the new Cowbell Virtuoso.

This is a human, I think, who will bang on a cowbell at more or less a steady tempo for hours at a time. I’ve thought that maybe it was a child or baby, but the tempo is too steady. It sounds somewhat disciplined (not that it is in any way impressive), and completely in earnest. It is always absent any apparent accompaniment or instrument and never seams to be reactive. It also sounds as if it is being played by a proper drum stick, which only supports my theory that the player is taking it very seriously.

I can’t really get angry. I mean, I play the french-fucking-horn and am often screaming at the top of my lungs, in falsetto, one sentence that repeats throughout a melody. So I am trying to live with my new friend, the Cowbell Virtuoso.

Perhaps at a gig in the near future I’ll hear a familiar “plonk” behind me and turn to see the dutiful artist feasting on the sonic fruits emanating from his/her/its hollow metal Stradivari. Then I’ll walk over, extend my hand and say:

“Give me that! No more for you! Bad Cowbell Virtuoso Bad! Keeping me awake with your ‘plonks’ all the damn day. Bad Cowbell Virtuoso!!”

What do you think?

Inspiring message of hope uniquely expressed by some of the leading musical artists of our time?

or

Self-aggrandizing ego queens so in love with themselves being on camera that they’ll perform a politician’s propaganda as a song accompanied by oddly transcendent facial expressions in the hope that you’ll briefly ascend to their exalted level of social consciousness and pick their preferred candidate for the Democratic nomination?

I think I’m somewhere in the middle.

Or perhaps I’m both.

Ok, so on the day of the massive suicide bombing in Baghdad, what, pray tell, is the leading headline on CNN.com?

Source: Arrest sought again in Holloway case

Hey, remember that one girl who died that one time, like almost 3 years ago? Yeah, that’s more important than the nearly 100 that died today, by a pair of women with down syndrome.