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by George Ziemann
December 1, 2006 -- Humor for Mac users -- How
Vista will take over your living room.
Neil Diamond is finally getting
over the depression
caused by Sony putting their misguided rootkit DRM on last
year's 12 Songs, which pretty much killed it, along with
50 other titles.
December 3 -- Apparently it's okay to copy movies
if you store
them in a vault. Similarly, there is no
lawsuit for pirating music if your last name is Bronfman.
December 4 -- Lots of music news today, but mysteriously,
none of it has to do with music. Let's see, Britney finally bought
some underwear, Lindsay is in AA, Pete
Dougherty dodges another jail sentence, another Simpson chokes
in front of a live audience ("...so nervous..."), and
Paris refuses to make fun of her tawdry friends.
And they wonder why no one
is buying any CDs.
Speaking of CDs... It seems
like a few months ago, we were being told how the labels were
concerned because they were going to put out so much new material
in the last couple months of the year that some titles might
get overlooked. I guess they're waiting until the last minute.
In other news... A
study of great tits reveals that not only are they more raucous
than their country cousins but will experiment with new sounds
and arrangements.
December 5 -- While you may never run away again,
you may still exercise "prompt
and highly motivated escape behavior."
December 6 ~~ If you live in Muncie and
happen to see Jack Osbourne hanging around this winter, DO
NOT invite him over for a bong hit.
~~ iTunes actually has a customer
service number.
~~ Taco Bell stopped using green onions today because
of ecoli, adding scallions to the already growing list of food
that is supposed to be good for you, provided it isn't toxic.
Spinach, lettuce and green onions. You know that tomatoes and
broccoli are going to get it sooner or later. Soon, responsible
parents who take their kids to restaurants will be saying, "How
many times do I have to tell you? Do NOT eat the vegetables!
Get that slice of tomato off of your cheeseburger. Yes, the pickles,
too."
Fox will declare a War on Produce
and either Bill O'Reilly or John Gibson will discuss it at length,
as it just so happens they have prepared a new book on the subject.
December 7 ~~ Alert reader Kiwi the Geek (possibly
not a real name) has pointed out that I used the word "hacker" and
implied there was a negative
connotation to the word. I said
that DVD Jon was not a hacker, but rather a software developer.
Kiwi has pointed out that a hacker IS a software developer, and
a very good one, at that.
In my defense, near the end
of the article
I was referring to is the following:
"In the late 1990s, 15-year
old Mr Johansen gained notoriety for breaking the copy protection
software used to encrypt DVDs, bringing down the ire of the technology
industry on him and earning him the monicker of "DVD Jon".
After a lengthy attempt by the film industry to prosecute him
for computer hacking, he was acquitted in 2003."
Had I thought about the misuse
of the word when I wrote the article, I probably could have done
a few extra paragraphs making fun of the film industry's attempt
to prosecute Jon for superior computer programming.
December 8 ~~ The Washington Post says "Google
Aims to Revitalize Advertising on Radio". Yep, if there's
one thing radio needs, it's more commercials.
December 10 ~~ Fox News turns its crack investigative
team loose to solve the perplexing mystery
of the Laffy Taffy joke. What they don't know is that the
joke itself -- "Which garden has the most vegetables?"
-- is far-left code for "Which network is brain-dead enough
to talk about a joke they don't get?"
December 12 ~~ There is a serial killer on the prowl
in England this week. We had a serial killer in Phoenix recently.
Two, actually. And there was one in Atlantic City a couple of
weeks ago. Ever notice how police are reluctant to say there's
a serial killer because "it might cause panic"? Even
in the Atlantic City case, where the bodies were all basically
in the same place and all killed the same way. Wouldn't it be
more frightening to think it was a coincidence and that multiple
killers were responsible?
December 14 ~~ Mariah Carey complains that people
might confuse her with porn star Mary Cary, suggests Mary Cary
change name. Mary Cary shows up at Fox and says, "Do I look
like Mariah Carey to you?" Mariah
finds shiny pole, says, "How about now?"
~~ "NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com)
-- The U.S. Mint has implemented a rule against melting down
pennies and nickels which, at current metal prices, could be
worth more as metal than as currency."
Seems like they'd pretty much
have to catch you in the act of melting it.
December 16 ~~ If Thomas Nast were still alive, he
might be surprised to learn that Santa
is a Disney character.
December 17 ~~ If you donated money to the tsunami
victims 2 years ago, you might be interested to know what purpose
it ultimately served.
The Office Party ~~ A
Canon Copiers survey last year of its technicians in the United
Kingdom found that 32 percent of service calls over the holidays
were "to repair copier glass that had been sat on'' or "to
fix paper jams that revealed evidence of embarrassing images.''
December 18 ~~ It's somehow comforting to know that
if you happen to be robbed
by Maoist insurgents in Nepal, they'll give you a receipt
for tax purposes.
December 21 ~~ Accidental
Wisdom -- Someone at
slashdot mentioned this, which
forced me to look it up. It's one of those oft-repeated quotes
that gets mangled in the public memory. This one belongs to T.S.
Eliot, and is usually served up in one of the two following versions:
- "Good poets borrow, great
poets steal."
- "Bad poets borrow, good
poets steal."
But that's not
what Eliot said at all.
"One of the surest of
tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate;
mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good
poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is
unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the
bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."
December 23 ~~ Trouble
at the North Pole.
December 28 ~~ Feeling way too content to be overly
creative, which is compounded by the naturally recurrent realization
that another year has passed and I have failed to change the
world -- again. Dammit! This is why we drink heavily on New Year's
Eve.
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