Friday, February 12, 2010

The trouble with Google


The problem with smart people is they can be so dumb.

Take the techie wunderkinds at Google. They thought it would be a fine idea to combine Gmail with elements of Twitter and Facebook, thus giving themselves the chance to be the Masters of All Social Media.

BUT NONE of these scary-smart people thought combining the exhibitionism of Twitter and Facebook with the inherently "private" nature of electronic mail (even if it is web based like Gmail) might be a problem. And could, for some people, be a full-blown privacy nightmare from which they'd be hard-pressed to wake up.

(Note that the last link is not kid- or workplace-friendly . . . the title is "F U Google," only spelled out in all its Anglo-Saxon glory. And the post gets more bitter from there.)

Reuters explains it all here:
Google touted its 176 million Gmail users as a key advantage in its latest attempt to break into the red-hot social networking market, dominated by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. But email may turn out to be Google’s Achilles heel.

Less than four days after introducing Google Buzz, a social networking service that is built-in to Gmail, the company is already moving to address a growing privacy backlash.
At issue is the network of contacts that Buzz automatically creates for new users based on their existing email contacts, saving people the laborious chore of manually building a social graph from scratch.

The problem is that Google’s ready-made social network is composed of people’s frequent email contacts – which are not necessarily the folks you want to receive regular status updates and random musings from (e.g. your landlord).

But the bigger problem – as many blogs and online publications have pointed out in recent days – is that people’s email contacts are in inherently private and the mere fact of making them publicly accessible can be dangerous.
FAIL.

Who needs the National Security Agency to comb the Internet for every detail about us when Corporate America so helpfully encourages us to out ourselves? And then we're shocked, shocked when an abusive ex-husband shows up on the stoop with a shotgun. Or when an employer takes a dim view of that picture of you . . . well, prudence dictates that I not elaborate upon that one.

Thing is, it's not just Buzz in Google's quiver of poison-tipped arrows aimed right at the stuff formerly known as "None of Your Beeswax."

See the above screenshot.


If you have Google Chrome as a web browser, you might want to be extremely careful about who you let use your computer. Or about using any remote-desktop software.

You might even want to set up various user accounts on your PC, and then banish Chrome from all but your own. Then again, you just might want to uninstall the whole thing and resign yourself to surfing the web more slowly.

That's because all it takes for someone to steal every saved password you have is to open Chrome, click on the "wrench" icon on the toolbar, go to "options" and . . . voila!


AND IT WILL show them all to you, too. Or anyone else. Oops.

The trouble is you're likely to look at that and think, at first, "That's handy. I can't keep up with all the damned things. Can't remember half of them." Only later -- if ever -- do you get around to thinking that if you can look up all your passwords. . . .

Pity. I like Chrome. It really is sleek and fast.

But I like lots of things that, sooner or later, could land me in a world of hurt. The question is whether you can afford to indulge in them.

And that question, the way things are going, could be the death of Google.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

They don't call it 'self-love' for nothing


If you want to see the poster child for the death of us, look no further than John Mayer.

Look no further than this blabbermouthed archetype of the self-absorbed schmuck, devoted to "self-soothing" above all else and incapable of finding a woman half as neato-keen as himself.

John Mayer is how the world will end -- living in its own demented head, drinking single-malt scotch and ending up late for the apocalypse because it was otherwise occupied whacking off to The Playboy Channel.

Really. I'm not kidding here.

IF YOU don't believe me, the sad evidence is in Mayer's Playboy interview. Weep for yourselves, not the supercilious superstar, because this 32-year-old adolescent is far from one of a kind in the America of 2010.

It's a good thing there's words in there, I guess, because I'm sure the nekkid pictures in Hugh Hefner's soft-core mag aren't nearly "hot" enough for the self-lovin' singing sensation:

MAYER: I’m a self-soother. The Internet, DVR, Netflix, Twitter—all these things are moments in time throughout your day when you’re able to soothe yourself. We have an autonomy of comfort and pleasure. By the way, pornography? It’s a new synaptic pathway. You wake up in the morning, open a thumbnail page, and it leads to a Pandora’s box of visuals. There have probably been days when I saw 300 vaginas before I got out of bed.

PLAYBOY:
What’s your point about porn and relationships?

MAYER:
Internet pornography has absolutely changed my generation’s expectations. How could you be constantly synthesizing an orgasm based on dozens of shots? You’re looking for the one photo out of 100 you swear is going to be the one you finish to, and you still don’t finish. Twenty seconds ago you thought that photo was the hottest thing you ever saw, but you throw it back and continue your shot hunt and continue to make yourself late for work. How does that not affect the psychology of having a relationship with somebody? It’s got to.

PLAYBOY:
You seem very fond of pornography.

MAYER:
When I watch porn, if it’s not hot enough, I’ll make up backstories in my mind. My biggest dream is to write pornography.

PLAYBOY: How did you become a self-soother?

MAYER:
I grew up in my own head. As soon as I lose that control, once I have to deal with someone else’s desires, I cut and run. I’m pretty culpable about being hard to live with. I have had a good run of imagining things into reality. I’ve got a huge streak of successes based on my own inventions. If you tell me I’m wrong or that I’m overthinking something, well, overthinking has given me everything in my career. I have a hard time not looking at anxiety disorder as being like an ATM. I can invent things really well. I mean, I have unbelievable orgasms alone. They’re always the best. They always end the way I want them to end. And I have such an ability to make believe, I can almost project something onto my wall, watch it and get off to it: sexually, musically, it doesn’t matter. When I meet somebody, I’m in a situation in which I can’t run it because another person is involved. That means letting someone else talk, not waiting for them to remind you of something interesting you had in mind.

PLAYBOY:
Masturbation for you is as good as sex?

MAYER:
Absolutely, because during sex, I’m just going to run a filmstrip. I’m still masturbating. That’s what you do when you’re 30, 31, 32. This is my problem now: Rather than meet somebody new, I would rather go home and replay the amazing experiences I’ve already had.

PLAYBOY:
You’d rather jerk off to an ex-girlfriend than meet someone new?

MAYER: Yeah. What that explains is that I’m more comfortable in my imagination than I am in actual human discovery. The best days of my life are when I’ve dreamed about a sexual encounter with someone I’ve already been with. When that happens, I cannot lay off myself.

IT SUCKS to be you, ladies. There's no way you're going to compete with Photoshop, an airbrush . . . and John Mayer's right hand. I wonder if he's given it a name -- Jennifer? Jessica?

And speaking of Jennifer. . . .

PLAYBOY: What does the word womanizer mean to you?

MAYER:
Well, wouldn’t a womanizer have dated more than two girls in two years?

PLAYBOY:
You and Aniston got back together and broke up again in 2009. How many women did you sleep with in the eight months after the breakup?

MAYER:
I’m going to say four or five. No more.

PLAYBOY:
That’s a reasonable number.

MAYER:
But even if I said 12, that’s a reasonable number. So is 15. Here’s the thing: I get less ass now than I did when I was in a local band. Because now I don’t like jumping through hoops. It’s been so long since I’ve taken a random girl home. I don’t want to have to submit myself for approval. I don’t want to audition. I’d rather come home and edge my s*** out for 90 minutes. At this point, before I can have sex I need to know somebody. Unless she’s a 14 out of 10.

PLAYBOY:
You have been very up front about your fondness for masturbation.

MAYER:
It’s like a vacation — my brain gets to go free. It’s a walk in the park for my brain. Pull the shades and let your mind go without having to answer for it.

PLAYBOY:
The way you talk about being 32 sounds as though you were too immature for Aniston.

MAYER: No, the actual day-to-day was fantastic. I have to explain this so people don’t say, “Sure, you’re 32, and you want to f*** other chicks.” If you say I’m not adult and stable, it sounds as though I’m someone who’s watching football and playing Xbox. I have this bond with infinite possibility — when I go out to dinner, I bring another shirt, a flashlight, a knife, a hard drive, a camera. It’s not like I wanted to be with somebody else. I want to be with myself, still, and lie in bed only with the infinite unknown. That’s 32, man.
I SUPPOSE you can go to the Playboy site and read the whole thing but, frankly, you should feel like you've been slimed reading just this much of it. And these are the excerpts I figured I could lift and still come away feeling only moderately guilty.

Let's just say there are depths to Mr. Mayer's depravity. And to our own depraved alienation as we bask in the auto-beatific vision of our "infinite unknown."

Alone. Utterly, despairingly alone.

I have witnessed The End. It sounds like a John Mayer song.

No, you're still a douche


Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


John Mayer is sorry he tried to be "clever" with the media.

He likewise says he's going to "take a break" from projectile-vomiting what passes for his thoughts into reporters' recorders.

That is what we call "totally missing the point." What the oversexed, under-IQed singer really needs is his very own chapter of Narcissists Anonymous,
judging by MSNBC's reporting here.

WELL, THAT and to "take a break" from being a thoroughly contemptible human being:

Despite being dubbed a womanizer in the media for relationships with Hollywood stars such as Simpson, Aniston and Jennifer Love Hewitt, Mayer told Playboy that he was not open to having sex with black women.

When asked if “black women throw themselves at you,” he replied with, “I don’t think I open myself to it. My d--- is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a f-----’ David Duke c---. I’m going to start dating separately from my d---.”

But he also said that black people love him, and tried to sum up what it means to be black: "It's making the most of your life, not taking a single moment for granted. Taking something that's seen as a struggle and making it work for you, or you'll die inside. Not to say that my struggle is like the collective struggle of black America. But maybe my struggle is similar to one black dude's."

He also used the N-word in the revealing interview.

"wow if this stuff is true...John Mayer just lost a whole heap of cool points...and i really likes him too..." commented jnyfer on Twitter.

In the interview for Playboy's March edition, some of which reportedly took place as Mayer downed malt whisky, the singer sought to refute the media image of him as a womanizer and "douchebag."

"I've been trying to prove to people I'm not a douchebag by not dating, by keeping my name out of 'Us Weekly'," he said. The singer also noted that his "biggest dream is to write pornography."

WOW. That Jennifer Aniston and Jessica Simpson saw anything whatsoever in this guy certainly doesn't speak glowing volumes about them.

And that whole "prove to people I'm not a douchebag" thing is sooooooo not working out for young Mr. Mayer, he of neo-Nazi penis fame.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Creating a negative buzz

Who in the world, upon hearing the premise of Google Buzz, ever could have thought privacy issues might come into play for all those early adopters getting their "buzz" on?

Really, what in the world could be the problem when you, in effect, combine Twitter and Facebook with your clunky old G-Mail account?

WELL, this, according to Business Insider:
There is a huge privacy flaw in Google's new Twitter/Facebook competitor, Google Buzz.

When you first go into Google Buzz, it automatically sets you up with followers and people to follow.

A Google spokesperson tells us these people are chosen based on whom the users emails and chats with most using Gmail.

That's fine.

The problem is that -- by default -- the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile.

In other words, before you change any settings in Google Buzz, someone could go into your profile and see who are the people you email and chat with most.

(Freaking out already? Here's how to IMMEDIATELY stop following someone >)
YOU ARE NOW FRIENDS with that cheap barfly from the Cougar Lounge in the Bide-a-Wee Motel. Boy, you E-mail her a lot. Thirty-seven people like this.

Your wife does not.

Personally, I try to avoid "friending" loose women from local drinking establishments. That's one reason I've been married almost 27 years now.

See, there are things that I electronically share only with a specific person or persons. That is called E-mail -- it's not perfectly private, but it's about as private as you get in cyberspace.

Then there are things I care to share with friends, acquaintances, friends of friends and friends of acquaintances. That is called Facebook -- it's a great tool for finding folks, catching up and keeping up.

Finally, there's this thing I use to spew out pithy little tidbits to whomever wants to read them. I also use it to, in a matter of speaking, keep my electronic ear to the ground. That is called Twitter.

I GUESS if I were someone who just couldn't manage to keep three applications straight in my head -- and on my computer -- I'd be interested in Google Buzz. But I bet if that were the case, I'd be someone you'd figure you couldn't trust with a secret.

Oh, the weather inside is frightful. . . .


And in a bid to prove Charlie Brooker's point, the local Fox-o-maniacs in New York City decided this morning to sling some snow . . . in addition to what they are more accustomed to slinging in their viewers' direction.

Charlie Brooker explains it all


Is it still media criticism if you're rolling on the floor, gasping for breath with tears in your eyes, all because you haven't laughed this hard in ages?

Whatever it is, it's pretty much the God's honest truth as Charlie Brooker unloads via his Newswipe program programme on the BBC.

HE DOESN'T MIND his language -- and God knows Bill O'Reilly didn't in the clip below on differences between Brit and Yank TV news -- so you probably don't want to watch this if you're working in a church office right now. But it's safe to say Brooker has television's number, particularly regarding what happens when you mix the telly and a good snowstorm (above).


DO WATCH this segment, which features the best take on Glenn Beck ever, until the very end. Cheers!

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Glory bound


In the beginning (OK . . . 1983), there was the "Who Dat" song.

Now, the creators of dat have brought you dis Saints anthem -- "Glory Bound," featuring a couple of true New Orleans musical treasures, Theresa Andersson and Aaron Neville.

AREN'T YOU happy the Saints won the Super Bowl? After all, what could Indianapolis come up with for the Colts?

Anyone? Anyone?

I guess Indianapolis could have brought in Johnny Cougar John Cougar Mellencamp John Mellencamp to do "I Fight the Saints and the Saints Always Win," but what the hell fun would that have been? No, you're really glad the Saints won, and that you have New Orleans folk providing the Super Bowl soundtrack.

And if you buy the single, part of the proceeds go to the New Orleans Musicians' Clinic. Dat's cool, bra!

Go to the Lombardi Gras


You thought Mardi Gras day was big in New Orleans.

The Saints' victory parade on Dat Tuesday dwarfed anything the Crescent City ever has seen. Hell, this is something longtime fans thought -- on our darker days -- that we might never see.


Pardon us if we're freaking out . . . but damn! I mean, that's Saints Coach Sean Payton holding the Lombardi Trophy over his head.

"World champions" and "Saints" are words we're not used to putting together.


Yet.

Who dat!?!

Happy Dat Tuesday



In other words, "never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in."

Monday, February 08, 2010

How ta save dem noospapah, dawlin'


Cher, we awl know tings fo' dem noospapah industry is bad bad.

Dey ain't sellin' no noospapah no mo', and da advuhtisah is advahtisin' on da Intanets, but not da noospapahs' Intanets. It hard hard, cher.

But dey hope, Cap!

I TINK I foun' a way ta save da noospapah industry, baby. Yeah, you right!

Now, all you got ta do ta save dem noospapah in your town is to win da Supah Bowl every damn day uh da year. You get da team in your town ta do dat on a regulah basis, baby, and money goin' ta be growin' on dem trees.


Why am I tawkin' lak dis? I don' know, Cap. But dat ain't impotant now.

Look at dis from Editah & Publishah -- which was dead but now it not, because some trade papah company done bought it an' fiyah haff dah staff, but dat ain't impotant now, eidah:
By noon Monday, The Times-Picayune had printed at least 200,000 copies over its ordinary number of single-copy papers -- and the printing presses were still running to keep up with the extraordinary demand for newspapers proclaiming the New Orleans Saints Super Bowl victory.

"It's a totally moving target," Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss said of the ever-growing press run. "The presses are still going and we are trying to satisfy a demand which doesn't seem to slack." A normal press run for single-copy sales would be about 25,000.

When Amoss arrived for work at the paper Monday morning, he said, the line of people waiting to buy copies stretched all the way around its imposing building. "When I drove up this morning," he said, "I literally gasped. I've never seen anything like this."

Waiting in line was a cross-section of New Orleans of all occupations and races. Walking away were buyers with bundles of 20 or 30 papers, Amoss added.

The coveted front page pictures a triumphant Saints quarterback Drew Brees under a five-inch single word headline: "AMEN!"
IT AS "BIG EASY" as dat, bra. Get you a team, win you a Supah Bowl aftah fawty-three year.

Now, I know you gonna lose you azz fo' 42 year, but you gonna clean up aftah dat, podnah. I promiss you dat.

Another Super Bowl the Colts couldn't lose




Oops.

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Never give in


Pigs flew. Hell froze over. The world came to an end. Baptists drank their own beer.

God Almighty, the New Orleans Saints just won the Super Bowl!

Tears were shed.

For 43 years, people like me -- people from the Gret Stet of Loosiana -- have been settling for picking a temporary favorite team in the Super Bowl because the Super Bowl was no place for our team, the oft-woeful Saints. For the likes of us, the NFL experience often was best taken in through the eye holes of a paper bag.

The one with "Ain'ts" written on the outside.

FOR 43 YEARS, more often than not, when you told somebody who wasn't from your neck of the woods that you were a Saints fan, the response was laughter. Or condolences. One was as bad as the other.

We done wid all dat now. Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints? Not a damn body, dat who!

Louisiana is a poor state, one where the schools weren't good enough, and the government wasn't honest enough, and the jobs didn't pay enough, and our expectations weren't high enough. Sometimes, we figured we were just born to lose.

Born to lose on the pro gridiron, and born to lose in the greater scheme of America. No. 1? That's where Louisiana finished in all the bad national rankings -- illiteracy . . . poverty . . . corruption . . . whatever.

YEARS AGO, a favorite New Orleans sportscaster said he'd parade down Bourbon Street in a fancy dress if the Saints ever made it to the Super Bowl. Last week, thousands -- tens of thousands -- of cross-dressing New Orleans men paraded down Bourbon in honor of Buddy Diliberto, who never lived to make good on his promise.

This week . . .

Pigs flew. Hell froze over. The world came to an end. And Baptists drank their own damn beer.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! There is hope. The impossible is possible.

Who knows? In another 43 years, Louisiana may be on top of all the good lists and the bottom of all the bad.

Who knows? Louisiana might be a rich state, one where the schools are the best anywhere, and the government surpasses Scandinavian levels of orderliness and efficiency, and the jobs pay well indeed, and our expectation is one of excellence.

IN THE WAKE of this most improbable of nights, my mind keeps drifting to what Winston Churchill told his battered, bloodied, frightened nation in 1941 after Nazi Germany had failed -- just -- to bomb it into oblivion:

You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.
BACK TO the unlikely present, it seems to me we can take the same lesson from this football band of free agents, late-round draft picks, castoffs and reclamation projects: "[N]ever give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

It might look hopeless. It might take 43 damn years. But never give in . . . "never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in."

Amen.

Trig Palin: Political football


Sarah Palin not only isn't fit to be president, I'm starting to have second thoughts about whether she's fit to be Trig's mom.

The mother of a Down Syndrome child thinks Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, isn't fit to hold the job because -- in a fit of pique -- he called Obama's critics on the left "f***ing retarded."

IN FACT, Palin was in high dudgeon over the whole thing:

PALIN: Special-needs parents reached out to me and obviously they know me well enough to know that I am sincere in my efforts to make this world a more welcoming place for those with special needs. I made that commitment during the GOP convention speech. They knew that they could come to me and ask and I was happy to do it, I'd do it again in a heartbeat and I'm not politically correct, I am not a word police person but there are some things, especially coming from the most powerful office in the world, in the free world, the chief of staff in that office being so demeaning and degrading to those with special needs. And remember too it's not as benign as the White House wants to spin this into. He didn't just use the r-word applying it to a plan, he called opponents of a plan f'ing retards. That's demeaning, degrading, it's beneath the dignity of the White House. That alone should I think make the president ask for that do-over with his chief of staff.

Q: Obama made a Special Olympics crack about a year ago.

PALIN: Yeah he did, and so that pattern there --

Q: Did you say anything then?

PALIN: I sure did, I did. I was the governor then and I made a statement saying you know, insensitive, come on, coming from the most powerful man in the free world, you should do better than that, Mr. President. Yeah I made a statement about that and was criticized for that too, but I don't care -- I ‘m not gonna sit down and shut up. I'm gonna tell people that this pattern of not just the insensitivity, but the flippant way of perhaps looking at those who are less fortunate and are not part of that elite crowd there in Washington I'm sick of it and I'm gonna stand up and I'm gonna say something about it because I think I'm speaking on behalf of others who are concerned about it.

ON THE OTHER HAND, she also thinks conservative talk-show emperor Rush Limbaugh was doin' just fine when, after full reflection and deliberation, he said this:

I think the big news is the crackup going on. Our politically correct society is acting like some giant insult has taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards.

I mean, these liberal activists are kooks. They are loony tunes. And I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel. It's in the news. I think the news is that he's out there calling Obama's number one supporters effing retards. So now there's going to be a meeting. There's going to be a retard summit at the White House, much like the beer summit between Obama and Gates and that cop in Cambridge.

IT'S NICE TO KNOW up front when a politician is so craven that she'll sell out her own child's honor to avoid offending someone she thinks it's important she not offend.

Trig is her child; he suffers from a condition marked by mental retardation -- now more commonly referred to as "developmental disability." But in the warped moral universe of Sarah Palin, using "retarded" as an insult is a bad thing only for Democrats.

Prominent Republicans -- well, at least the ones she thinks are of use to her -- can use the term, as well as the even nastier "retard," and it magically becomes brilliant satire.

Someone here is retarded, and it's not liberal Democrats, cynical radio talkers or even baby Trig. The only "retard" in all this -- a profound moral "retard" -- would be the woman who just might want to be president.

God help us.

Friday, February 05, 2010

3 Chords & the Truth: Black & gold, baby!


They're throwing a Super Bowl in Miami, and my long-suffering Saints are in it.

I've only been waiting for this since . . . oh . . . 1967. That was the year the NFL came to New Orleans. I was 6.

So what have I been doing today? Lying on South Beach?

MORE LIKE splitting my time in snowy Omaha between shoveling wet, leaden frozen precipitation and putting together this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. Well, that's OK -- so long as I have some good music and a hot cup of tea, I can cope.

And I'll bet you can, too.

In honor of the Saints being in the Big Game, the Big Show features some Louisiana artists this week (though, truth be told, that's not exactly an unusual thing around here). Good is good, and there's a lot of good music around my home state.

Anyway, I'll just leave you with this simple thought: WHO DAT?

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Find Uncle Lionel's bass drum!

An entry from the Offbeat magazine Facebook page, in an odd kind of way, demonstrates why there always must be a New Orleans.
Uncle Lionel [Batiste's] Black Bass Drum was stolen after Krewe de Vieux Saturday Night. Just talked to Uncle Lionel, we are looking for his BLACK Bass drum, not the yellow, it was stolen after Krewe Du Vieux outside the port o johns after parade by Elysian Fields and Decatur, some dude said he would watch while Uncle Lionel was in the port....came out they were both gone... He just told "I would rather lose all my women than this bass drum"....and he really appreciates all the concern. This should be enough info to know what hood the drums in, I know there are peeps out there who deal with "The Element" or know someone who does...REACH OUT NOW!!!! Any info call Jeff at 504-943-0743 or Jerry at 504-201-2202
GOD BLESS a city where an old black bass drum -- not the yellow -- is that important. That kind of soul just don't grow on no trees, Cap.

And whoever run off with Uncle Lionel's drum, I hope dey get dey azz kick good.

Oh . . . and look at the poster for this year's Jazz and Heritage Festival. It honors Louis Prima, and you want to know who painted such a gorgeous thing?

Tony Bennett.

That is so cool.

Bad beer, funny ad


If it's cheap beer you must drink -- and who isn't in that boat nowadays, right? -- I'm a PBR and Schlitz guy.

Long ago and far away, the old man drank Dixie and Schlitz, and I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree (or whatever cliché you happen to prefer). Then again, if you're falling off the Bud Light tree, I don't know how much solace you can take even from a commercial as funny as this one.

I MEAN, if somebody gave me a case of Bud Light, I reckon I'd drink it, but I'd be bending an elbow and thinking of England. OK, Abita . . . but you get the idea.

So, Budweiser, just so you know, you know? I'll give some virtual airtime to your funny ad for bad beer, but Tokyo Rose used to spin the hottest Western hits in service of Tojo's war machine, too.

And that guy that looks kind of like me? I'll give him a Guinness to put his damn clothes back on.

I'm just sayin'.

The world's second-oldest profession

The next time you hear a Republican say his party is looking out for ordinary folk just like you, remind yourself that he's a damned liar.

Also remind yourself that you don't matter, that the whole political system is set up to screw you and screw you good, and that there will be no meaningful reform of, well . . . anything if there's big money on the side of the status quo.

HONEST TO GOD, Republicans are so shameless they don't even go off the record when they talk to The Wall Street Journal about workin' hard to stay the bankers' bitch:
In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.

GOP strategists hope to benefit from the reaction to the White House's populist rhetoric and proposals, which range from sharp critiques of bonuses to a tax on big Wall Street banks, caps on executive pay and curbs on business practices deemed too risky.

Democrats have dominated Wall Street's fund-raising circles in recent elections. Mr. Obama himself raised millions of dollars from employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other Wall Street firms.

Now, at least some Wall Street executives have reduced their political contributions to the Democratic Party and its candidates, according to fund-raising reports and interviews with executives at financial-services firms.

Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to Democratic contributor James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan, over drinks at a Capitol Hill restaurant, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Boehner told Mr. Dimon congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama's efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations. The Republican leader also said he was disappointed many on Wall Street continue to donate their money to Democrats, according to the people familiar with the matter.

A spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan declined to comment.

"I sense a lot of dissatisfaction and a lot of buyer's remorse on Wall Street," said Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), the second-ranking House Republican and a top Wall Street fund-raiser for his party.
THE DEMOCRATS, of course, wasted no time in going all Huey P. Long on the GOP -- that is, if the Kingfish had used words like "symbiotic":
The White House referred calls seeking comment on Wall Street donors to the Democratic National Committee. A DNC spokesman said: "It's not surprising that Republicans are seeking money from the same banking industry they are the champions of. The relationship between Wall Street and Republicans is symbiotic."
THIS WOULD be funny if it weren't so Orwellian. Think 1984, Ministry of Truth.

The Democrats, you see, took home most of the Wall Street money during the 2008 campaign. And if the DNC spokesman's name happened to be Winston Smith, I'm reaching for the Early Times right now.

Whither Salem?


Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

One day, you're a kid sitting in front of a 1962 Magnavox watching Julie and Susan go at it, while Tom and Alice Horton try to hold Salem together single-handedly. The Magnavox is the only TV in the house, and Days of Our Lives is one of Mama's "stories."

The next day, it seems, you're middle-aged, sitting in front of your home computer
(Holy George Jetson, Batman!) noting the passing of Frances Reid -- a.k.a., Alice Horton -- hours ago at age 95. She had been on Days of Our Lives since the beginning in 1965 and made her last appearance in 2007.

Which spanned most of the days of my life.

THE NEWS broke early this morning on Twitter, when Days cast members began tweeting the sad news, along with their tributes to "Grandma Horton." In a sign of how much the world has changed during these days of our lives, the "mainstream media" has yet to catch up to social networks in the delivery of this latest news.

Next with the story was SoapCentral.com:
Born in Wichita Falls, Texas to banker Charles William Reid and Anna May Priest, Frances Reid grew up in Berkeley, California. Though an accomplished actor before stepping into the world of daytime, Reid's role on NBC's Days of our Lives is the role that would make her a household name. In her early years, Reid played a man in a thirty-minute play in grammar school. Reid attended and graduated from the Pasadena Community Playhouse, where she majored in acting. She began her professional acting career in her mid-20s with a bit part in the movie Man-Proof. The following year, Reid made her Broadway debut as Juliette Lecourtois in Where There's a Will.

(snip)


Reid's first soap role came in 1954 on the 15-minute Portia Faces. Reid quit after six months, saying that the workload was "exhausting." In 1959, Reid took another shot at daytime serials, joining the Procter & Gamble-produced As the World Turns. For the next three years, she'd appear as Grace Baker. A few years later, she appeared on The Edge of Night. Then, it was back to primetime, including a numerous appearances on Wagon Train.

When Ted Corday offered Reid the role of "Alice" on a new soap opera he had developed called Days of our Lives, Reid reportedly was hesitant at first to sign on. Reid eventually accepted the role because she enjoyed working and realized that roles for women over 40 were not plentiful. In November 2009, Reid marked her 44th year on Days of our Lives.
GRANDPA HORTON (Macdonald Carey) died in 1994, and now Grandma is gone, too. Lord help the woebegotten city of Salem -- who knows what will happen to the Hortons, and the Bradys, and the Williamses now?

We now return you to
Days of Our Lives.






Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Making a Deal with the devil


Bzz bzzz bzzzzz! Did you hear about the Catholic bishops' conference being in bed with the pro-aborts?

Bzz bzzz bzzzzz! It's the Catholic Campaign for Human Development! They gave money to the socialist baby-killer-backers!

Bzz bzzz bzzzzz! The head of the place was on the board of one of those commie-lib poverty-pimp outfits. And they're backing gay marriage and abortion rights!

Ohmigawd!

OF COURSE, the American Life League and the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry never bothered to contact anyone at the CCHD for comment -- that was left to Our Sunday Visitor, which was reporting on the online conflagration. Then again, it's not like these folks are real journalists -- the kind who seek facts and strive for balance -- they just play them on the Internet.

What we have here are activists in search of "gotcha," and that's fine. Just don't pretend it has anything to do with journalism . . . or Catholicism.

Now, mind you, I don't doubt that there's at least some smoke where the witch hunt says it has uncovered the towering inferno. Frankly, I find that the Catholic "peace-and-justice" crowd is at least as consumed by progressive politics as the Catholic "pro-life" crowd is by a slavish devotion to Republican talking points.

And it matters not whether you're prattling on about how "we are church" or happen to be more Catholic than the pope, it's still a sad fact that Jesus Christ and Catholic doctrine get pimped out to politicians and principalities.

In a church no less riven than anything else about the United States these days, that's to be expected. Alas.

BUT THE AWARD for excellence in unmitigated gall and sheer hypocrisy has to go to "conservative" Catholic "intellectual" Deal Hudson, who has busied himself touting what awful sinners the commie-libs at the CCHD be.

What abortion supporters the commie-libs at the CCHD be.

What Bad Catholics (TM) the commie-libs at the CCHD be.

From the Inside Catholic website:
This is the second round of incriminating evidence presented by ALL and BVM about the [Center for Community Change]. Three months ago, they issued a press release and supporting research regarding 31 CCHD grantees with a relationship to CCC -- all of which was ignored by the USCCB.

As ALL's Michael Hichborn points out, these reports have "revealed no less than fifty organizations (one fifth of all CCHD grantees from 2009) that are, in some capacity, engaged in pro-abortion or pro-homosexual causes (www.all.org/cchd). The sad thing, however, is that these recent revelations manifest a pattern of cooperation stretching back for decades."

These latest findings make it impossible for the USCCB not to sever its ties with the CCC. However, the situation is made more difficult by the news that John Carr -- who oversees the CCHD as the USCCB's Executive Director of the Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development -- served on the CCC board from 1999 to 2006 and on its executive committee from 1999 to 2001. Carr was hired by the USCCB in 1987, but his involvement with the CCC goes back to 1983.

ALL research shows that in 2000, while Carr served on its executive committee, CCC itself received a $150,000 grant from the USCCB. Carr's resume at the USCCB Web site does not mention his service at the CCC, while other published versions of his resume do.
I'D LISTEN to Deal if I were you. After all, it takes one to know one . . . on all counts.

Let's go back to the summer of 2001, shall we? That's when President George W. Bush was trying to figure out what to do about funding embryonic stem-cell research.

Historically, the Catholic Church has been -- forgive my phraseology -- death on research involving fetal and embryonic stem cells. That's because it all starts, somewhere, with dead fetuses and discarded, cannibalized human embryos.

And even if you're not the one doing the killing of a developing human being, conducting research with the cannibalized "parts" constitutes significant "cooperation with evil."

Look at it this way, "Well, they were dead anyway, and we didn't want them to go to waste" was the same justification the Nazis gave for making lampshades out of the skin of Holocaust victims, not to mention harvesting the gold fillings they'd no longer be needing.

You shouldn't be surprised that Catholics think Jesus Christ would frown on such.

Not that that stopped Hudson, among other "conservative" Catholic "intellectuals," from trying to gild the moral-theology lily as they "advised" Bush, which is what I think folks call influence-peddling nowadays. From a July 8, 2001, article in the Los Angeles Times:
Now, however, three conservative Catholics who advise the White House are saying a compromise may be possible. Depending on how the details shape up, these opinion leaders may publicly offer arguments for why some funding of embryo experiments is morally acceptable and help Bush win support for the policy among Catholic leaders and voters.

The advisors are focusing in particular on one option, now under discussion among White House aides, in which the government would pay only for research that uses existing stem cells scientists already have isolated from embryos. Any experiment that caused the destruction of additional embryos to obtain new cells would be ineligible for federal funds.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which represents the church in the United States, specifically have rejected this idea, saying it would make the government complicit in embryo destruction. But one of the nation's leading Catholic thinkers on abortion issues now is offering a different view. "I can imagine circumstances in which this would not only be politically acceptable but could be a morally justified policy," said Robert P. George, a moral philosopher at Princeton University who participates in a weekly telephone conference of Catholic intellectuals that often includes White House staff.

Another participant in the weekly calls, Rev. Robert A. Sirico, who leads a Michigan-based ethics think tank, said he has told the White House that the compromise might be regarded as acceptable and consistent with church teachings if it ensures that the government never pays for the destruction of another embryo.

"I am open to it," said Deal W. Hudson, editor and publisher of Crisis, a Catholic magazine. While the compromise would be "a victory for those who want to use embryonic stem cells, it can also be seen as a victory for the pro-life side," Hudson said, "because it ensures, for the time being, that there is no more government support for the destruction of embryos for their stem cells."

The stem cell issue came up during the conference call Thursday, Sirico said, but he would not give details. The Catholic advisors have seen no formal proposal and have not endorsed any.

Still, the comments from the three advisors suggest there is more diversity among conservative Catholic leaders regarding the stem cell issue than previously has appeared in public debate. If Bush moves in any way to support embryo cell research, it will be crucial that he win the support of at least some conservative Catholic leaders, George said. "Then they could say there's a range of opinion and that this issue is not like abortion or euthanasia," which are uniformly condemned by church leaders and ethicists.
AFTER BUSH announced his decision, which was unappreciated by the Catholic hierarchy, I heard from a friend tuned in to such matters that, according to "Catholic gossip circles in DC," Hudson had been "spotted around town looking like the cat who ate the canary today."

This friend said he'd heard that Hudson was "praising Bush's decision as 'Thomistic,' and taking credit for influencing the president's thinking -- which I'm sure he did."

Pot. Kettle. Black.

And we won't even go into why it was that Hudson abruptly quit as a "Catholic-outreach adviser" to Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. That was a doozy.

Understanding the important things


You want to know why The Best Years of Our Lives is my favorite movie ever?

It's because it gets so many things right. It's because there is truth in it -- lots of truth in it. I think that's because it's a story about struggling veterans of a horrible war -- men with newfound and profound impatience for all the pleasant lies and platitudes in which a society immerses itself.

In this respect, it's probably notable that the original story was written by a former war correspondent, and that director William Wyler had seen his share of aerial combat as a filmmaker in the Army Air Forces.


IN THIS FILM, which I watched yet again last night, there is no room for the self-absorbed or the self-righteous. I'll bet most people today would hate the hell out of it.

For example, the view of love and marriage you get from The Best Years of Our Lives isn't one for the squeamish. The clips above and below convict us and all the assumptions we've lived by in the decades since the film's release in November 1946.



IN THE FILM'S no-bull worldview, love is a verb. In the sentence "I love you," "love" is the action born of a decision made by "I." The object of the verb is "you."

And being that "love" is an active verb, it's implied that loving requires significant effort.

In today's world -- created by children who couldn't quite grasp what their postwar parents took for granted -- love has been recast solely as a noun. "Love" is this free-floating, self-actualized thing requiring nothing but to receive it.

Suddenly, the sentence "I love you" is like a sprinkler system without a backflow valve. Things flow the wrong way. We don't love so much as we're "in love" -- that is, until we're out of love again.

It's all about us. And that's not love -- or marriage -- at all. For the theologically inclined, the Catholic catechism puts it this way:
1604
God who created man out of love also calls him to love — the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'"

1605
Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is not good that the man should be alone." The woman, "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help. "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning": "So they are no longer two, but one flesh."
AND THERE'S this as well:
1615
This unequivocal insistence on the indissolubility of the marriage bond may have left some perplexed and could seem to be a demand impossible to realize. However, Jesus has not placed on spouses a burden impossible to bear, or too heavy—heavier than the Law of Moses. By coming to restore the original order of creation disturbed by sin, he himself gives the strength and grace to live marriage in the new dimension of the Reign of God. It is by following Christ, renouncing themselves, and taking up their crosses that spouses will be able to "receive" the original meaning of marriage and live it with the help of Christ. This grace of Christian marriage is a fruit of Christ's cross, the source of all Christian life.

1616
This is what the Apostle Paul makes clear when he says: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her," adding at once: "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the Church."
A CULTURE that could create a film like The Best Years of Our Lives still knew some things. Took for granted some concepts we find totally alien today.

I fear that we may understand the words recorded onto a soundtrack almost 64 years ago yet find that their meaning eludes us completely.

And if, somehow, our powers of comprehension continue to fail us so profoundly, the following scene will become a powerful metaphor for a whole new generation . . . and the country it has created in its own image.


Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Come around and retweet me sometime

Robert Nelson, alas, is not "crushing it."

Neither has he been living his best life now.

Nor has the newspaper columnist been "livin' the life" . . . or "rockin' the town." And his personal branding has left something to be desired.

Today, when the totality of one's existence is reduced to "branding" -- and unabashed self-promotion is as much a part of "getting ahead" as continuing to breathe in and out (and suppressing one's inner Rip Torn) -- you explain a monthslong sabbatical as "an opportunity for personal growth" . . . or as "working on an exciting new project."

BUT YOU DON'T begin your first column since returning to the Omaha World-Herald this way:

You may or may not have noticed that this column hasn’t appeared in The World-Herald for quite a while.

For the last three months, I have been on a sabbatical.

Part of me would love to leave it at that. But the journalist, the part of me that seeks full disclosure from everyone else, feels I had better come clean with the reason behind my absence, no matter how embarrassing.

And besides, there are some interesting rumors out there that may or may not be as interesting as the truth.

How to say it? I went off the deep end? A screw came loose? I was off my rocker?

Actually, in all seriousness, I’ve clearly been grinding through life for quite some time with what I now know are some significant mental-health issues.

It’s estimated that one in every four Americans struggles with some diagnosable form of mental-health problem. It’s somewhat comforting knowing there are so many of us out there — so many people who know what an uncomfortable journey it can be to feel right again.

Over the last year, I increasingly had found myself struggling with depression and, at times, anger and anxiety. Some of it was simple midlife-crisis stuff.

Some, as it turns out, was more serious.
NELSON GOES ON to describe a harrowing journey to the dark side of . . . himself. An editor talked him out of committing murder. The authorities were called. A shrink took charge.

Unless your name happens to be Andy Dick, there's not much "branding" gold to be mined here. And come to think of it, what's the last job Andy Dick has held down since News Radio? Making license plates?

Oh, Lord. What would
Gary Vaynerchuk do?

How do you "tweet" yourself into the national consciousness when your daily triumph is as simple -- and humble -- as "I didn't get sh*tfaced today." Or, "Taking my meds. So far, so good. No psychotic breaks! Yay!"

This is America, dammit! Half the country is broke, the other half is worried, and the third half is making out like a bandit and bragging about it all on Twitter, Facebook and Blogger.

A nation devoted to shameless self-promotion -- to style over substance, to personality cults for profit and success -- is a nation that increasingly doesn't add up.

This nation full of failure demands we construct sunny, self-serving narratives of our lives, then sell the world on our version of the Big Lie. This nation full of tragedies writ large and small doesn't want to hear about it.

BUT NO. Robert Nelson outed himself as a fallen, broken human being, one completely average in his brokenness. One utterly unremarkable in his misery.

You want to see the one unforgivable sin in America today? That's it -- honesty. How the hell do you "crush" that?

I'm sure some folk will applaud the columnist for opening a vein in the pages of the local rag. They'll say he's brave. They'll say he's showing other suffering souls that there's hope.

Maybe.

These people are called "activists." Their goal in life is to harsh your mellow, which might pull the plug on the power of your positive thinking and detract from your living "your best life today." I would tend to agree with these "activists."

Then again, I think Debbie Downer is a hottie. Mwah mwaaaaaaaaaah.

The rest of you, I am sure, are saying "I knew something was wrong with that Nelson boy." Like you're not f***ed up, too -- in your own special, morally superior way, of course.

Promote that brand via social media.

RT @Revolution_21 Robert Nelson's honesty about affliction making us think of our own. Not cool. No marketing in that.
MONDAY, the "career diva" of MSNBC.com, Eve Tahmincioglu (please don't ask me to pronounce Tahmincioglu), asked via Twitter (of course), "have we all become a bunch of self-promoting whores?"

You know, I think we have. Mostly of the "two-bit" variety.


And if you'll excuse me, I need to tweet up this post. Facebook it, too. If I'm really lucky, maybe a couple hundred people will be blessed by my deep thoughts on this matter of great importance.

Please retweet!

Because I am a whore for the postmodern ages. It's what I do. Now, how do I take that and "crush it"?

Monday, February 01, 2010

Ainnit true, Cap? Yeah, you right!


Bra, dat dere is da funniess T-shoit evah!

An' dat because it da damn troot, cher!

My mama an dem ain't from Noo Orluns, but dat how dey tawk. You do indeed wrench ya' dishes in da zink. Only Mama say it mo' lak "zank" when she announce she gonna go wrench da dishes.


ANYHOW, dat shoit can be got fum da same sto' dat dem NFL Yankee bastids tried ta "cease an' desiss" ta det, sayin' dey can't put "Who Dat" on a shoit.

But dey had ta back down, bra, cause when dey pick on da Fleurty Girl, dey pick on all da Who Dat Nashun, and we gon' kick dey azz. Dat's fuh true!