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Category: Commentary

Hey Joe! What you doin' with my garbage?

Published by NiteMayr on July 8, 2008

I forgot what day it was last night, and put my garbage out on the curb.  My big, 2 weeks old garbage bag.  Full of chicken.

Get the picture?

Be glad I didn’t take one, it was a disaster.

What is it about garbage that attracts the animals?  Is it the rotting meat?  Ewww!

Jen ended up having to re-bag a bunch of garbage, fighting clouds of flies and beating a raccoon to death no doubt, since I was at work already.

I’m firmly in the “I wish we had bag tags so that I could put out extra garbage” camp.  I still don’t have recycling containers and so have tons of garbage that needs to be dealt with and last week I ended up having to store garbage in the garage as we had too many bags out.  If I could have paid to put out more bags, I would have.

Anyone in the London area know where I can buy recycling containers?

NiteMayr’s helpful advice on raccoon fighting:

Raccoon combat is never pretty, it always seems to involve low blows and insults about one’s mother. I will usually just toss some cat food off to the side and insult their love of “pussy food”.  Yes, it’s a low blow, but it puts them off-balance for the final “yo mama’s so furry that she has an entire page on Encyclopedia Dramatica” which sends them into a shame spiral.  It’s troubling that even racoons are familiar with ED, but that’s the viral nature of the ‘net for you!

–Nitemayr “Raccoon Combat”

Writer's Block? Let me have that

Published by NiteMayr on July 8, 2008

Writer’s Block? Let me have that, originally uploaded by NiteMayr.

Spencer tries to help out when I’m stuck for ideas, he’s just a kitten so you can’t really blame him for constantly suggesting that I write about that stuff in the sunbeams and the interesting way the birds move. Not that those aren’t important subjects, it’s just that I don’t find to much human appeal in writing about being scratched on the ears and eating kibble. I may be wrong, but I’ll keep to large hominid style writing for now Spencer.

A web Poll made me curse

Published by NiteMayr on July 4, 2008

The Money Quote about the Poll results:

No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. Within hours, votes in his favor began to pour in. His supporters—typically educated, upwardly mobile Muslims—were eager to cast ballots not only for their champion but for other Muslims in the Top 100. Thanks to this groundswell, the top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim. The ideas for which they are known, particularly concerning Islam, differ significantly. It’s clear that, in this case, identity politics carried the day.

When I read the poll results (without first reading the above paragraph) I was nearly apoplectic that someone described as a muslim Televangelist was rated higher than Richard Dawkins, and that Al Gore was on it at all… phew.  I was up in arms over it, at least emotionally.

This is one of those times when one has to examine their personal prejudices and determine if your reaction is to the “Islam” or to the “Religious” part of it.  Did I react badly because the top ten are foreign and unknown to me or because they are overwhelmingly Muslim?  This is a troubling line of questioning, isn’t it?  I guess if you are conservative and wrong, the answers are easy here, but when you are a thinking liberal who has to examine the whole list and determine what you think of it, the answers aren’t as easy.

It seems that the top ten list is made up of religious personalities, akin to the list being full of American Televangelists and the Pope.  This kind of framing, in my mind, puts to rest any queasiness I have about the list and of course the fact that it was made via open public gaming of the poll makes it even less troubling. Imagine if Free Republic and Stormfront had come out in force to vote on the list?  I imagine that personal politics would color it there too.

So, in the end.  Am I being racist in my reaction to this list.  Most likely, there is certainly a strong xenophobic bent in my initial reaction that can’t be passed of as me immediately noting the religious trappings of the top ten, but I went on and read the list and tried to gain a better understanding of how it came about and used reason over emotion to judge it.  I think that is the best we can hope for, that reason is our fallback plan when we think our emotions are overwhelming us.

Also, Stephen Colbert is the “write in” winner.  I think we can put this list to bed as “typical web poll garbage” and sleep easier for it, or at least congratulate the voting public for having their voice heard.

When under Siege, Tell Jokes about their Moms

Published by NiteMayr on July 2, 2008
There has been a bit of tit-for-tat over Boing-Boing and Violet Blue, that I’m not really commenting on now, I’m actually interested in the bahvior of a couple of mods on the site and their interaction with visitors over this whole thing:
#904 posted by Antinous , July 2, 2008 10:41 AM

Well, someone there has certainly deleted at least one of mine. Do you have my history at your fingertips?

Yes. You had one comment about Violet Blue that was unpublished because it was in a different thread. We don’t delete comments.

Taken From: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/01/that-violet-blue-thi.html#comments

This is about the Boing-Boing “We don’t delete, we unpublish” deal that is going on, and Antinous has hit the nail on the head, the Boingers (and their Internet White Knights) seem to miss.  When something is removed from public access on the web, it has been deleted.  Just because the delete button wasn’t used, doesn’t make the person accusing you of deleting it wrong, just semantically different.

Then he comes back with zingers like:

#909 posted by Antinous , July 2, 2008 10:47 AM

Perhaps you should read the Moderation Policy.

Which just feeds the damn fire.

Antinous and TNH are both acting like they are personally under attack (right from the beginning, before they started calling people out I mean) and have failed to separate themselves from Boing Boing as an entity.  It’s easy for an individual to take an assault on their employer or community as a personal insult, it’s another thing to start calling your customers (and that’s what readers of boing boing are) idiots and malcontents in a public forum.  In the end Boing Boing is a money-making enterprise and having it’s employees activily insult customers is egregiously silly.

Now here is a Comment to Watch:

OK, seriously, I’m done with this site

In light of recent activites on your website ‘BoingBoing.net’, I no longer wish to be associated with the site in any way.
I hereby request that you cease and desist using my comments or screenname on the site. Please ‘unpublish’ ALL of my comments and delete my ‘happy mutants’ profile, screenname: ‘sexyrobot’

thank you.

according to your policy page: “When readers contribute content to our sites, you retain ownership of the copyright, and you also grant permission to us to display and distribute it.”

so yeah, i’m invoking the first part of that, but not the second. why? because your policy page has been invalidated by this clause:
Changes in This Privacy Statement
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, THE HOMEPAGE (my caps, your words), and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.

specifically as it pertains to this recent addition NOT posted to THE HOMEPAGE:
We reserve the right to unpublish or refuse to unpublish anything for any or no reason
which, in light of recent events, I find morally reprehensible and displaying a lack of journalistic ethics so atrocious I no longer wish to have any association, however marginal, with your site ‘boingboing.net’ Please remove my profile, please remove my comments…all of them. I fully realize this may totally bork the continuity of your comments threads, but maybe you should of thought of that before shovelling posts down the memory hole.

thank you
‘sexyrobot’

#965 posted by sexyrobot , July 2, 2008 12:15 PM

If it is still there later, more blog drama to ensue.

Neighbourhood Killer may Go Free

Published by NiteMayr on June 30, 2008

A Harris County grand jury decided today that Joe Horn should not be charged with a crime for shooting two suspected burglars he confronted outside his neighbor’s home in Pasadena last fall.

Joe Horn Cleared by Grand Jury in Pasadena Shootings

I covered this story here: This sounds like murder to me

No doubt this will be a nice dog whistle to the kind of people who keep guns by their front door, just in case.  Too bad for the neighbours, would you feel safe with a neighbour who shoots people in the back in self-defence?  What if you have some friends over that get out of hand, what if he shoots them in self-defence?  You’d have some dead friends and Joe would have another notch on his gun.  Good ol’ Joe.

Bob Dylan is no source for legal argument

Published by NiteMayr on June 30, 2008

“The correct rule on the necessity of expert testimony has been summarized by Bob Dylan: ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,’ â€ a California appeals court wrote in 1981, citing “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Eighteen other decisions have cited that lyric.

The Chief Justice, Dylan and the Disappearing Double Negative

While one may not need a weatherman (who may or may not be a meteorologist) one should in fact consult an expert in legal matters, just in case the apparent truth of the breeze may simply be the eye of a much larger storm.

This is all about this quote:

“The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “ â€˜When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’ Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).”

I suspect when a Chief Justice bowdlerizes a quote from an old hippy I should think back to the fact that Ann Coulter is apparently a Deadhead and take heart that there was always a good reason to dislike the old hippies.  The most prominent fact being that the children of hippies tended to end up as Conservative Douchebags (albeit successful and wealthy douchebags).

It Sucks, why I won't use the Roger's DVR.

Published by NiteMayr on June 30, 2008

I lived in the States from March 2002 until August 2007.  I was a comcast customer for 100% of that time, having free basic cable as part of my rental package at the townhouse.  I can’t say I hated Comcast, and in fact I really liked their dual-tuner DVR solution.  I tried out the TIVO as a replacement and found it too cumbersome a soultion (after having the Comcast solution for over a year at the time).  When I returned to Canada, I lived with my parents out in boonies (Kincardine) where the local Cable company had the same basic hardware and sofware as Comcast, which was great.  The software was easy to use, allowed me to set up reminders and search for shows by name.  Great, huh?  I could set up season passes for shows and be reminded on screen that they were on, pressing the swap button let me swpa between tuners with impunity and both had a good hour long stream in reserve.  TV viewing heaven.

The best I can say for the Rogers DVR is that I could pause TV.

I couldn’t search for shows by name, I had to scroll through an alphabetic list of every occurence of a given show, with shows thaty are syndicated in there, we had hundreds of identical listings to scroll through.  This took ages.

When I did find a show I wanted to record, I could set it to record a number of occurances, but no season pass and no “record only new shows” option was available, I also had to make sure I was recording it on the channel I wanted to.  With newer shows that were also syndicated, this was  giant pain in the ass.

Then there is the HD handling, can’t they figure out how to push all NON HD content at 480p or 480i so that we don’t have to have all the damn bars burning my CRT?

Big Red, you need to get in touch with comcast and get your cable hardware in order, this software has been around since before I left Canada in 2002.  It’s time to upgrade.

Since reviews are subjective: Manohla, F**K your reviews

Published by NiteMayr on June 27, 2008

I haven’t seen “Wanted” yet.  I want to.  I do.  I don’t subscribe to the theory that male on male violence is some sort of release for homosexual angst.  This reviewer seem to think any kind of male on male violence is a precursor to surprise butt secks and sword fights.

Case an point “Manohla Dargis” reviews “Wanted” with this turn of phrase:

And Mr. Bekmambetov, a Russian filmmaker who has earned a cult following with his razzly-dazzly thrillers “Day Watch” and “Night Watch,” certainly proves here that he knows how to use every blunt tool of the bullying trade: flashy effects, zippy cuts, simulated death, walls of sound, wheels of steel and, in between the bullets and blood, a hot mama to make the brother-to-brother, man-on-man action less worrisome. This is, after all, a movie almost entirely organized around the sights and sounds of men piercing one another’s bodies, which makes for a whole lot of twitching and spurting.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/movies/27want.html

Emphasis added by your faithful blogger

First of all, who begins a sentence with “And”?  The word ‘and’ shouldn’t be used that way; and is used to join concepts as an additive (you suck as a reviewer AND you are a hack) see?  That’s how one uses ‘and’!

The thrust of this little expulsion is to draw attention to the throbbing members of the review, all veiny and proud.  (See I can make penis jokes too!) However, I’m not a highly paid reviewer for the New York Times.  I assume highly paid, for all I know this person could be an intern.  However, their review history says otherwise.  That’s a good five year history there; good, nothing I write will hurt their feelings, they sat through and enjoyed Fido they clearly lost their sense of reason and ability to discern value in a film before they took up the reviewers pen.

I see nothing wrong with being funny in your reviews, I remember one review from Robert Ebert where the whole thing devolved into an anecdote about how a pair of young audience members could not get into a movie about pretty lesbians.  I can accept eccentricity in a review as well; but to pare a movie into a long gay joke?  Why?  It was the same with Jackass, Borat, Eastern Promise  and Fight Club, any kind of bare chested fighting gets into a movie and the main characters are suddenly picking out china patterns and looking for an apartment on Church Street in Toronto.

You know, I was bouncing around the idea of a Gay Cowboy movie years ago, not like Brokeback, but a real gay COWBOY movie, with action and gunplay and so on.  In a movie like that, you would expect gay jokes and so on, but with movies with clearly male-focused plot some reviewers can’t help themselves but to project a homosexual idea onto it.  Does that say more about the reviewer or the movie?

I asked my dad, who knows everything

Published by NiteMayr on June 27, 2008

On George Carlin:

Hes average, personally i like Chris Rock, Eddy Murphy and Russel Peters most. Never heard of him until he died and i even asked my dad, who knows most bigger comedians and he had never heard of him.

Feel free to link me to some of his good stuff, his 7 swearwords stuff was pretty…. average.

Nobbeh – who is level 44

I know my Dad, he knows football (the good kind), nuclear maintainence, 60s and 70s rock and pop, safety regulations, union politics and a bit about almost every other subject.  I wouldn’t go posting on the internet about how I asked my dad (who is not a bona fide authority on anything) about said subject.  I might say that I looked around some comedy blogs or science manuals or whatever, but not “I asked Dad, he says get stuffed“.

I am a Dad too.  I pretend to know everything sometimes too.  However, I like to think that I’ll admit when I’m stumped.  I don’t want my kids or neices and nephews to think they can use me as an authority on anything save what I’m an expert on, and even then I’d like to think they’d lie and use a euphamism like “I asked a professional asshole, and he says you’re part of the club” or “I know an expert in social dissasspointment, he says that if you sucked any more at being in relationships you’d be looking to on Henry the 8th memoirs for advice”

Or something like that.