Another Point of Singularity

I have to admit, I was skeptical about this XM Radio stuff, but Drey had a serious jones for it so I dropped a big dime and got her set up for a Xmas pressie.

Turns out, it's a blast. About 120 some odd music stations, radio drama (something I particularly like), sports, some talk (not a lot) and some news (also not a lot) and NO commercials.

My particular favorite channels (they all have names for ease of memory recall) are FRED, ETHEL and LUCY, which play retro punk and new wave from the 80s. The best part is you can listen at work through ear phones as they broadcast live over the web... so even tho I can't play it in my truck, I can still listen during the workaday world.

I did manage to snicker a bit while watching the serious gents in their cubicles this morning, whilst my favorite BLACK FLAG song of all time was playing at maxvolume in my ears...

t.v. party tonight.



t.v. party tonight.



t.v. party tonight.



t.v. party tonight.



we're gonna have a t.v. party tonight... alright!



we're gonna have a t.v. party... alright!... tonight.



we've got nothing better to do, than watch t.v. and have a couple of brews.



everybody's gonna hang out here tonight... alright!



we'll pass out on the couch alright... tonight.



we've got nothing better to do, than watch t.v. and have a couple of brews.

don't talk about anything else... we don't want to know!!!



we're dedicated to our favorite shows. we sit glued to the t.v. all night... and every night!



why go into the outside world at all... it's such a fright!



we've got nothing better to do than watch t.v. and have a couple of brews.



t.v. news shows what it's like out there... it's a scare!



you can go out... if you want... we wouldn't dare!



we've got nothing better to do than watch t.v. and have a couple of brews.



don't talk about anything else... we don't want to know!



we're dedicated to our favorite shows. i wouldn't be without my t.v. for a day... or even a minute!



i don't bother to use my brain anymore... there's nothing left in it.



wait a minute, my t.v. set doesn't work. it's broken! what are we gonna do tonight? this isn't fair! we're hurtin'!



we've got nothing left to do. left with no t.v., just a couple of brews. what are we gonna talk about... i don't know. we're gonna miss our favorite shows. no t.v. party tonight....

Thanks to Steve "PudgyM" DeRose, I now have two destinations in my bookmark file that will doubtless cause me hours of lost work. Check these out:

EFANZINES.COM: an archive of electronic Fanzines (some scanned from paper, some not), in PDF format, going back quite a ways, from a large number of sources. Also SF convention photographs, program book covers, fanzine cover art, and various visual efluvia going all the way back to the early fifties. This is a fantastic archive.

VISCO: the Visual Index of Science Fiction Cover Art. An attempt at a visual archive of the covers for just about every pulp SF rag that ever breathed life. An amazing collection, still building as we speak and recently added a gigantic ASTOUNDING/ANALOG collection that would make an excellent reference source for the idly curious.



Enjoy! I know I did.

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I did LT McCaffrey a favor recently, and he asked me what I wanted by way of repayment-- I naturally said nothing, and eventually agreed to "hey, buy me a soda sometime"... he dropped THIS off at my desk this morning...

JOLT ULTRA Specifications: Volume: 23.5 FL.OZ Caffeine: 141mg Calories: 0 Total Fat: 0g Cholesterol: 0mg Sodium: 87mg Total Carb: 78.3g Sugars: 0g Protein: 0g Ingredients: carbonated water, citric acid, sodium benzoate, sodium citrate, concentrated orange juice, sucralose (splenda a non-nutritive sweetener), caffeine, gum arabic, natural flavor, yellow 5, glycerol ester of wood rosin, brominated vegetable oil, taurine, guarana and vitamin b complex.

Mmmmmm Good. 2x the caffeine as regular Jolt, no sugar, no carbs. I like the looks of this thing. Regular JOLT tastes crappy but has the effect I buy it for. The problem I have with regular JOLT is that it's full of sugar. Looks as if the Jolt people have worked pretty hard on the taste...

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Because I maintain (badly) a page on Bravehost.com, I occassionally get a popup from their "exchange program", which i volunteered to do (hey, free isn't free, we all know that, and if that's the price the man wants for me to host a page, I'm down with that). Today, a page pops up with the standard net-gloop about getting rich quick:

Congratulations! You have been selected for a FREE membership which can secure your financial future!

We Are Looking For A Handful Of "Beta-Testers" That Want To Make An Insane Income... Interested?

No, I'm not interested.. but the sidebar with all the testimonials caught my eye, particularly this one:

"I am amazed how well this system works! I have spent less than an hour a day and in just 2 months I have built a passive monthly income of $4,300.00 per month. I'm convinced, anyone can do the same, it's just so easy." - Nauder Khazan - CA

maybe that name struck some resonant chord of memory because it looks so made up. Nauder Khazan.. where have I seen that before?

A quick google search later

Well, dog my cats, look at that. Two pages of hits, from about 25 different "sure thing money making schemes", and even a picture of the man with his lovely wife, Melissa.

"Thanks to Concorde Vision, my wife and I are able to stay home with our two daughters and I now earn more money than I earned working 70 hour weeks as a successful mortgage broker. This system has been the answer to our prayers." - Nauder and Melissa Khazan

(attribution: Concrde Light website)

Nauder's been very busy lately. And apparently he exists in the flesh, making a decent living pimping various internet get rich quick plans.

Kids, what's our lesson to be learned today? Change your name frequently. Having your moniker endorsing 25 different schemes tends to dilute the effectiveness of any individual scheme. Secondly, using something boring like "Joe Smith" or "Skeeter Hawkins", not something instantly recognizable like Nauder Khazam.

Thirdly, how do I get a piece of this, Nauder?

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Hey, I've found a nice, configurable and FREE alternative to AVANTGO. It's called PLUCKER, and it's a gnu type software for doing thread-clipping and offline web-browsing on your PDA. The software is very well supported, with installs for Linux, Mac, OS/2 and Windoze. YOU NEED TO DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL PYTHON to activate the "Distiller" portion, but everything else you need (including docs and extras) is provided on the plucker site.

This is an oldie but a goodie.. I've seen a version of this code from the old VAX days. Pakin's Complaint Generator This is my test using HOTSPUR as an individual that the computer has a grudge against:

My Complaint against Mr. Hotspur Nizz

Everybody lock your doors, get a gun, protect yourself! Mr. Hotspur Nizz is planning to treat traditional values as if they were ghastly crimes! Here's my side of the story: He has figuratively enclosed himself in a secure elitist ghetto. That's self-evident, and even Hotspur would probably agree with me on that. Even so, he dreams of a time when he'll be free to distort and trivialize the debate surrounding snobbism. That's the way he's planned it, and that's the way it'll happen -- not may happen, but will happen -- if we don't interfere, if we don't appeal for comity between us and him. When I was a child, my clergyman told me, "Hotspur has a vested interest in making me go crazy." If you think about it, you'll see his point. When people say that bigotry and hate are alive and well, they're right. And Hotspur is to blame. What he apparently fails to realize is that the law is not just a moral stance. It is the consensus of society on our minimum standards of behavior.

Viewing all this from a higher vantage point, we can see that Hotspur has stated that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, and ambiguity are marks of depth and brilliance. That's just pure Comstockism. Well, in Hotspur's case, it might be pure ignorance, seeing that if a cogent, logical argument entered Hotspur's brain, no doubt a concussion would result. He maintains a "Big Brother" dossier of incriminating personal information about everyone he distrusts, to use as a potential weapon. Is your name listed in that dossier? Well, I'm sure Hotspur would rather break down the industrial-technological system than answer that particular question. In many ways, no matter what else we do, our first move must be to educate everyone about how he is our worst nightmare. That's the first step: education. Education alone is not enough, of course. We must also strike at the heart of his efforts to redefine humanity as alienated machines/beasts and then convince everyone that they were never human to begin with.

Look at what's happened since Hotspur first ordered his surrogates to overthrow western civilization through the destruction of its four pillars -- family, nation, religion, and democracy: Views once considered unrealistic are now considered ordinary. Views once considered prissy are now considered perfectly normal. And the most unrestrained of Hotspur's views are now seen as gospel by legions of hate-filled blackguards. Is it just me, or do other people also think that this theme has been struck before? I ask, because this is not Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, where the state would be eager to fan the flames of separatism into a planet-spanning inferno. Not yet, at least. But I will let Hotspur's record speak for itself. At the risk of sounding a tad redundant, let me add that anti-intellectualism is dangerous. Hotspur's temperamental version of it is doubly so.

Hotspur maintains that all literature which opposes revisionism was forged by insensitive traitors. This is hardly the case. Rather, there is growing evidence that says, to the contrary, that his eccentricity is surpassed only by his vanity. And Hotspur's vanity is surpassed only by his empty theorizing. (Remember his theory that the moon is made of green cheese?) As I see it, he can't attack my ideas, so he attacks me. It could be worse, I suppose. Hotspur could intensify race hatred.

Simply put, he is thoroughly mistaken if he believes that he has a duty to conceal the facts and lie to the rest of us, under oath if necessary, perjuring himself to help disseminate the True Faith of particularism. We must understand that the evidence for this lies in the underlying assumptions behind Hotspur's notions. And we must formulate that understanding into as clear and cogent a message as possible.

To force us to do things or take stands against our will has never been something that I, hardheaded cynic that I am, wanted to do. Never. Let me carry my thoughts on this subject a bit further. If Hotspur bites me, I will bite back. Due to the power relationship between the dominator and the dominated, his Ponzi schemes are not normal. (Actually, his coadjutors always detect profound wisdom in what is most incomprehensible to them personally, but that's not important now.) Believe it or not, I really want to believe that Hotspur is a decent, honest person. Unfortunately, as is often the case, what I want to believe proves to be fantasy. The truth is that Hotspur can't possibly believe that his blessing is the equivalent of a papal imprimatur. He's stupid, but he's not that stupid.

While the question of who is right and who is wrong in this case is an interesting one, it is also something that I cannot and will not comment on, and not just because he has frequently been spotted making nicey-nice with doctrinaire toughies. Is this because he needs their help to exercise control through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation? Let me give you a hint: If he continues to prepare the ground for an ever-more vicious and brutal campaign of terror, I will be obliged to do something about him. And you know me: I never neglect my obligations. Documents written by Hotspur's minions typically include the line, "Hotspur has mystical powers of divination and prophecy", in large, 30-point type, as if the size of the font gives weight to the words. In reality, all that that fancy formatting really does is underscore the fact that Hotspur decries or dismisses capitalism, technology, industrialization, and systems of government borne of Enlightenment ideas about the dignity and freedom of human beings. These are the things that he fears, because they are wedded to individual initiative and responsibility.

It may be obvious but should nonetheless be acknowledged that I must part company with many of my peers when it comes to understanding why once you get past the initial crowd-pleasing conclusions, the remaining parts of his platitudes are merely the same illiberal, pompous vision that Hotspur has been espousing for years. My peers believe that I regret not writing this letter sooner. While this is really true, I insist we must add that of all of Hotspur's exaggerations and incorrect comparisons, one in particular stands out: "People don't mind having their communities turned into war zones." I, for one, don't know where he came up with this, but his statement is dead wrong. Don't let him delude you into thinking that his theories are all sweetness and light. He's just trying to allow federally funded research to mushroom into a malicious, grossly inefficient system, hampered by bloody-minded, brainless abusive-types and blathering opportunists. More prosaically, Hotspur's dupes are unified under a common goal. That goal is to regulate conformism.

I welcome Hotspur's comments. However, Hotspur needs to realize that he likes to compare his hariolations to those that shaped this nation. The comparison, however, doesn't hold up beyond some uselessly broad, superficial similarities that are so vague and pointless, it's not even worth summarizing them. I note in passing that time cannot change his behavior. Time merely enlarges the field in which Hotspur can, with ever-increasing intensity and thoroughness, apotheosize what I call disruptive-to-the-core charlatans. He wants to delude and often rob those rendered vulnerable and susceptible to his snares because of poverty, illness, or ignorance. Personally, I don't want that. Personally, I prefer freedom. If you also prefer freedom, then you should be working with me to put to rest the animosities that have kept various groups of people from enjoying anything other than superficial unity.

No matter what Hotspur thinks, if the people generally are relying on false information sown by incompetent pipsqueaks, then correcting that situation becomes a priority for the defense of our nation. If you want to hide something from him, you just have to put it in a book. I don't need to tell you that no one need be surprised if our culture's personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of Hotspur Nizz. That should be self-evident. What is less evident is that Hotspur wants to get me thrown in jail. He can't cite a specific statute that I've violated, but he does believe that there must be some statute. This tells me that Hotspur is right about one thing, namely that fear is what motivates us. Fear of what it means when sinful insecure-types judge people based solely on hearsay. Fear of what it says about our society when we teach our children that ruffianism and Stalinism are identical concepts. And fear of unprofessional lumpenproletariats like Hotspur who turn the trickle of neocolonialism into a tidal wave. Hotspur's opinions are the opiate of the power-hungry. But what, you may ask, does any of that have to do with the theme of this letter, viz., that he wallows in his basest behavior? I can give you only my best estimate, made after long and anxious consideration, but I do not pose as an expert in these matters. I can say only that a stockpile of Hotspur Nizz quotes favoring deconstructionism could fill a junkyard. But let's not lose sight of the larger, more important issue here: his pharisaical, superstitious rantings. Finally, any mistakes in this letter are strictly my fault. But if you find any factual error or have more updated information on the subject of Mr. Hotspur Nizz, Hotspur-inspired versions of paternalism, etc., please tell me, so I can write an even stronger letter next time.

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Well, I promised myself I'd spend a week curled up in a fetal position after COLD WARS; in cyberspace terms, I've accomplished exactly that. Sorry for the lack of a post or three in a couple weeks. It's been awfully busy getting the CONVENTION off the ground.

We had our share of bad to awful karma; promotions sucked wind for this thing and it's going to be hard for the HMGS BOD to put a shine on that turd. I'm not going to name names or point fingers, plenty of other people will do that for me. The Program Book (a big issue; read the Cosentino letter earlier in this BLOG for more edification) imploded on me at the last second. That sucked ass. It was only due to Mitch Osbourne's heroic last minute efforts to resurrect it from scratch that we had any book at all. Oh, and my beloved pickup went South on the drive up to Lancaster. I should know better than to wail "What more can go wrong, God?"

I went out of my way to try to reconcile some folks that were highly pissed off at East this CW; notably having some folks on staff who haven't worked in a long while; predictably, they worked their asses off and demonstrated their trustworthiness.

We're still figureing out the final numbers... looks as if we made a profit, but not near as much as predicted (mostly cuz of the free admission for GMs). Attendance was down about 14% by my reckoning. Oh well, maybe next time we'll get the word out better.

They (the BOD) are looking at making some changes in the convention managment positions. Stay tuned and watch this space.

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Hey, my dangerous pals! You can now play Settlers of Cataan and Carcassone online, FOR FREE!!

Have fun

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The Pope has been called home, as you probably already know. And you might recall I'm a Catholic, even a reasonably devout one.

I took the children to a memorial mass and said the Rosary with them for the Pope on Sunday (adding our voices to the din, as it were).

I'm grieving over the loss of the Holy Father, to be sure, but it's not as heart-wrenching as I thought it would be. Mostly, because I've been prepared for it for a very long time-- I didn't think he'd live as long as he had when his health started to seriously decline about three years ago. It's kind of like watching a loved one quietly pass away after a long illness.

I'll definitely miss him.. he was truly a great Pope, outshining the merely good ones that preceded him.


Farewell, and go to your home know you have lived a long and illustrious life.
Can anyone ask for more?

I have to wonder at where the Church will go after this. The WRONG move would be to nominate a hard-ass, three steps back candidate that gets mired in the dogma. One of JPII's great strengths was that he never lost sight of the role of the Church, especially for families.. he did not bend on core beliefs-- he was a great Pope, but NOT a liberal one. The Catholic Church is not a democratic insitiution, at the heart of it, and JPII was aware of the position he held and treated it with the gravity it deserved.

So the next guy.. I've heard of candidates from Italy, Africa, Germany, Honduras and even America. I rather doubt that the USA will supply a Pope (ever), because of political and balance of power issues that appointment will raise. Germany's a good choice but if the College of Cardinals has any guts at all they might consider the African or the Latin American pope. I personally favor a candidate from Latin America (if he has the background). Another European (unless it is an Eastern European) is a fairly conservative approach. Personally, I think choosing another Italian would be a big mistake.

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So, women, what are we thinking about?

This, pretty much:

You would have been 12 today.

Oh True-soul,
Oh Lion heart,
Your life cut short
by tragedy.

Would you have been an dreamy artist
like your younger sister?
Would you have been an wild anarchist
like your younger brother?

God knows.

I will know,
When we meet in that place where there is no darkness.

Happy Birthday, son
Pop-Pop will watch over you
until we meet again.