New documentary about a failed coup in Venezuela in 2002.
Now, I’m not exactly a new junkie, but 90% of the time I’m in the car I’m listening to NPR, I read as many articles as I can on cnn.com, and I watch CNN and other news channels now and then. I can’t believe I have no recollection of this attempted coup that most likely was secretly supported by the American CIA.
That might explain why I don’t recall much. Aside from the fact that the US media probably didn’t care too much being Latin America and all, but also because of the War on Terrorism and War on Saddam (which I still support, BTW, although my opinion of the Administration’s reasons have shifted*,) and the US War on Anti-Patriotism. All of which stole all the media attention.
But also probably because the government probably did a pretty good job trying to keep it out of media attention.
Failed CIA supported coups don’t make for good government support, especially when it has to do with oil ownership and we’re going to war in a Middle Eastern country that happens to be one of the largest oil producers.
Hmmm.

Anyway, politics aside, I’m intrigued by this new documentary also because of the heretofore unequal access the documentary makers had to the events. They were inside the palace before, during, and after the coup, they had unbiased footage of shootings, of prisoner questionings, all very fascinating and historic!

Doubt it’ll ever show in the Midwest. =( Don’t have HBO, so I better hope bumbfrick Missouri video rental places get copies of it.

* I originally believed, naively, that the Administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq were: 80% freeing the Iraqi people, 15% Bush’s father’s unfinished business, 5% oil access.
I now believe it was 20% freeing Iraq, 20% unfinished business, 60% oil access. Did they think it wouldn’t be obvious that something would look fishy when the Vice President’s (double check that) own former oil company was put in charge of Iraq’s oil production, and the process for implementing a local Iraqi government gets stretched far longer than necessary, despite endless offers and plans from other countries to help speed things up and take some of the responsibility from the US (and the US military who has had more “post war” casualties than during??)

Teenaged girl expelled because of a piece of prose in here diary.

I can’t help but think about since 9/11, the “Patriot Act.” The labeling of “anti-American” and “non-patriot” to anyone who expresses disagreement with the Administrations handling of terrorism/Iraq. Prisoners of a “War on Terror” who the Administration is getting away with calling NOT prisoners of war and holding them indefinitely and without any rights in Guadalcanal. I think about an Attorney General who has classical style statues covered up because of their nudity. A general in charge of liaison affairs with Middle East representatives making statements that his God is the only real God and the God of Islam* is a false God.
And I think of how each day we seem to be coming closer to a fascist Religious Reich controlled country where “no tolerance” will soon include “thought crimes.”

And we’re not only turning a blind eye to it, we’re encouraging it!

* The God of Islam, don’t forget, is the same God of Abraham and Moses…who also happens to be the Judeo-Christian Yahweh/Jehovah. Go fig.

Still obsessing over the movie “Battle Royale.”
Here’s probably one of the best reviews of the movie, and commentaries on why it’s a poignant film with sociological meaning and not just an action flick:
http://www.destroy-all-monsters.com/battleroyale.shtml
Pay close attention to the last three paragraphs if nothing else.

Another excellent site on the movie, with a pretty active Web board is:
http://www.battleroyalefilm.com/
Right now there’s a pretty heated thread of discussion involving a plotline that went unnoticed by me the 1st five viewings of the movie…but having been alerted to it, it’s so obvious. A downright brilliant in its subtlety and believability.

http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/23/technology/grandtheft.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
It seems some more ghouls who a) Want to make money off of tragedy, b) Are displacing sincere grief they need to deal with in a more healthy way, by casting blame where it doesn’t belong, have found a scapegoat.
A death and an injury caused by a couple of teens sniping drivers on a highway is being avenged through a lawsuit against the designers and distributors of the game “Grand Theft Auto III”, which the two teens say gave them the idea.

OK, can we get real for a second? We have two teens who have the emotional and psychological makeup/upbringing to think shooting people is a good idea, and we should believe that a game is the sole cause for them to think of doing this?
You know, I’ve played “GTA-III”, I’ve played Quake, Doom, UnrealTournament, Battlefield:1942/Desert Combat, America’s Army, hundreds of violent video games and even Dungeons & Dragons for a couple of decades now, and I have yet to have had the urge to go kill a human being. I live a normal middle-class life and grew up pretty well adjusted. And guess what, everyone else I know who have had the same or even more exposure to violent video games are equally just fine, responsible non-murderers. In fact, 99% of players of video games are normal people who don’t think murder is a hot idea.
The logical conclusion would be that it’s not the game that makes the killer, right? Or does that make too much sense?

Strangely, we’ve had people killing each other for all history, LONG before video games.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that a person capable of murder and wanton violence in real-life has some deep psychological issues that pre-date their involvement in video games.

What we really have here are two fscked up teens who likely were born with a genetic disposition to violence and an upbringing of little to no discipline and little to no education of morality, who are projecting the blame and responsibility onto a popular scapegoat, parents who don’t want to take responsibility for raising kids with no discipline or morality encouraging the displacement of blame, victims who need to deal with grief and pain thinking they can get it resolved with money, and dirty freaking slimy evil sick disgusting soulless lawyers who see a great opportunity to get big settlement paychecks and publicity.

Or, maybe that’s just me.

Well, I’m obsessed with a new movie now. Not quite as bad as when I was to “Heavenly Creatures,” but I’m spending my lunches and after work doing browsing and searching and reading everything I can find on “Battle Royale.”
It’s a Japanese movie made in 2000 about an “underachieving” jr. high class being selected to “participate” in an annual battle to the death on a deserted island. One winner in 3 days, or else everyone left alive will be killed by the low-jacks they all wear around their necks.

Yeah, sounds like a cheeseball thriller flick, and I thought so too when I first heard of it. I saw some discussion about it on a forum when I was looking around the ‘Net for info on “Kill Bill” actress Chiaki Kuriyama, who was also in “Battle Royale.”
The rationale in the movie, which is certainly more fleshed out in the book and then the manga that came 1st, is it’s the near future, and the overpopulated society’s fear of its ever increasingly violent teenagers has forced it rid itself of them in this manner. In the book, 50 of these events are held a year, only 1 in the movie.

Yes, it’s bloody and very violent, but more like a “Saving Pvt. Ryan” violent than slasher-movie violent. (By the way, I detest slasher movies. Hate em hate em. There’s nothing more banal and disgusting and moronic as a slasher movie. With the exception of the 1st “Scream,” the 1st “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Each because they were either cleverly written comments on the slasher genre, or was a low-budget non-ultragore film that successfully captured and created mortal fear and not revulsion.) So I hope you trust me when despite the way it sounds, “Battle Royale” while bloody and violent, is not a moronic blood-fest designed to simply slate the thirst of slasher fans. The movie is not designed to scare or gross out, but it does horrify and shock.

The 40 characters, and indeed the actors themselves, are 14-16 year olds who you see placed in a horrific situation of life and death, where they kill each other or try desperately to avoid death, and that concept alone is horrifying. Instead of the movie focusing on the “action” factor that might create, or make it tongue-in-cheek, it recognizes the horror (I’m using that word a lot, but it fits,) of it and subtly comments on it. What kind of society shocked and fearful of juvenile delinquents forces then to kill or be killed, making them become far worse and doing far worse than they ever would have done in society? And this sensationalistic method of doing so, (the movie acknowledges early on the media excitement over this “game”,) trying to get rid of “bad seeds” ends up catching countless innocents in its net. For example, this class of 40 (plus two suspicious transfer students) may have 2 or 3 future criminals, while the rest are normal kids with normal fears and desires and hopes and troubles.

And the movie does an INCREDIBLE job in showing all the possible reactions to a situation like this. When a school class is forced to kill or be killed in 3 days, all the cliques, the rivalries, the desires, assumed infractions become ultra magnified and amplified, and as often happens in normal situations except on a slower less mortal course, end up being shown as ridiculous and harmful for no good reason.

For example, a group of girls, some are a clique, a couple outsiders, get together to plan a way to get off the island and not participate in the “game.” The situation has forced them to put aside differences for the moment which is fantastic. But when a horrible mistake happens, in seconds all civility is torn aside and the situation deteriorates quickly and violently based on amplified rivalries. One moment you’re glad to see how this small group has risen above their situation and you have hope for their survival and cooperation, and the next second everything goes horribly wrong and innocent 15 year olds have slaughtered each other in both fear and hatred, and brutal, emotional instinct. It’s a scene that is not easily forgotten.

On a forum someone commented they don’t believe how some of the relationships, the love shown by some characters, can be realistic for 15 year olds. (No, there’s no sex or nudity, thank goodness. That would not be realistic, and this movie is nothing if not realistic.) And I say, absolutely it’s realistic. Two couples kill themselves, not wanting to either be killed, or having to kill their girl/boyfriend, a couple kill in order to defend someone they love, a couple die professing their love for someone…and I’m thinking, when in your life except when you’re in love for the 1st time do you feel that kind of once-in-a-lifetime love that’s that passionate? (Granted, one could argue if it’s REAL love, but philosophical debate aside, whatever it is, it’s been known to be fatal to young lovers in real-life as well as fiction.) Don’t get me wrong, I’m happily married to the love of my life and I’d die for her, but middle or almost middle-aged love doesn’t resonate the kind of passion young, unworldly-wise love does. Romeo & Juliet were only 14, and I doubt their story would have ended like it did if they were 30.

When you see a scene where one 15 year old girl is pointing a gun on another and screaming at her about how she stole her boyfriend, written here it sounds almost silly, but seeing it and seeing what looks like honest anger and anguish and fear in these 15 year old actors, (OK, so that’s why it’s called “acting,” but I would hazard that a lot of the emotion seen from these young actors had more than a kernel of honesty in it,) it’s very stressful and believable. You believe their fear and anger and motivations, and thus feel that much more affected by their fates.

The book evidently does a great deal, as books always do, in examining these motivations and actions. Why someone who might be a shy and meek outsider normally would be the first one to try to kill as many as he could as quickly as possible. (I haven’t read the book…I hope to! But here’s a sample of it translated: http://www.bobmink.com/translation/leftmenu.htm )
And unfortunately the version of the film I saw was the theatrical release (there’s an expanded special edition) with poor subtitle translation (there’s a Korean release on DVD with supposedly better English subtitle translation.) Some of the lines were rather ridiculous, and I just knew that couldn’t be what they meant. I could pick out places where a character would say “hai” meaning “yes” in a formal situation, and another where the subtitle says “yes” but the words she spoke was something more casual and befitting the situation.
I found a site, I thought it was this one: http://www.battleroyalefilm.net/movie/index.html but I can’t find the page, that showed how there are different translated subtitles and how the meanings are very different in places from one to the other. I’d really like to get my hands on a copy of the film with the better translation.
Fortunately, if you recognize the translation’s bad and just use it as a guide to what’s being said and focus on the tone of voice you really get a good idea of WHAT is really being said and why.

Anyway, it’s a very disturbing movie that really stays with you. Some have compared it to “A Clockwork Orange” or “Lord of the Flies,” and I think comparisons are certainly fair, but it’s not near as good as either the “Orange” movie (or book especially) or the “Flies” book. Now, the “Battle Royale” novel might, but the movie is just very affecting, lingering, thought provoking and emotion stirring cinema. I understand the book goes into greater detail, obviously, regarding character backgrounds, but the movie I think did a good job at hinting as well as it could at these without spending an extra hour on flashback scenes. For example, there’s one girl who very obviously has had a hard life where she’s had to fight to just be normal. Now she’s fighting to survive, and she seems as homicidal as the sociopath among them, but she’s given enough dialogue and actions to display her need to not be a “loser,” which isn’t that a core motivating force in most teens?

I’ve always been intrigued by these kinds of stories. Back in grade school I read a book about these 4 kids who wake up in some surreal house of stairs–no cieling, no floor or walls…just stairs and landings. And a food dispensor. It was a government experiement on conditioning and social deterioration, and I’ve never forgotten it. I’m likely never going to forget this movie either.

http://www.battleroyalefilm.com/

Having a discussion with someone regarding whether “morality” (whatever that can be defined as) was provided by God or if it’s a human biological trait. “Objective morality,” specifically, is what the conversation is about–and I don’t believe in it. There is no such thing as objective morality. The closest you might be able to come is “murder,” but that’s subjective depending on your environment and beliefs.
Cults and especially religious zealots love to get kids young, because they can indoctrinate them with their subjective reality very easily. The younger the person, the more “morality” is mutable. Murder can be made OK, if it’s for “the cause.”

Anyway, here’s my side of the conversation; thought I’d share:

I preface my reply saying that even Stephen Hawkings and Carl Sagan have both stated the NON-existence of God cannot be proven, and there�s nothing in the universe that exists that is mutually exclusive from an existence of a creator God.

If the most intelligent and creative living astrophysicist and the most intelligent (recently) living cosmologist and proponent of critical and skeptical thinking can say that, then it�s foolish to be staunchly atheist. In my opinion. Agnostic, sure. But in my opinion to say that there cannot be a God as a matter of �fact� is as foolish as saying the universe was created in 6 days and dinosaurs either never really existed or they existed only 6000 years ago.

Now, that being said, and again stating that I believe in a creator God (although in a free-thinking, deist way similar to our nation�s founding father�s like Thomas Paine and Jefferson,) I can still see a legitimacy to a biologically organized �morality.�

1st, morality is subjective, we have to agree. There are certain components of morality which can be argued as �universal,�: e.g.: murder and theft. But the more you get into specifics beyond that, the more examples there are of differing cultural views. For example, the early Jews and middle period Christians felt it was immoral to �murder� although going to war and slaughtering every man, woman, child, and animal in a town because God told them to, is OK, be it against the people standing in your way of �The Promised Land� or against �infidels� who are occupying �The Holy Land.� Likewise stoning a woman for the suspicion of adultery is OK. Both of these concepts were perfectly morally OK until a few hundred years ago. And now, you�d be hard pressed to find a Jew or a Christian who would advocate ANY kind of killing�except possibly in a war that was OK�ed by your government. Morality is very fluid and subjective to time, place, and conditions.

Now, let�s take humans out of the picture. In the animal kingdom, there is no murder. There is inter-species killing for the purpose of survival, but you don�t see one bird killing another out or some philosophical difference. Animals only steal from each other when they need something to survive. One could say animals are more �moral� than humans. At least they don�t sanction wholesale slaughter (Crusades, Inquisition, travel to the Promised Land, Final Solutions, racial cleansing,) by justifying it with either religious arrogance or social intolerance and hatred.

The same concept which says we have a divinely assigned morality, religion, is the same concept that has justified most of the mass death and injustices throughout history. One could say that if God IS the giver of morality, He�s also the giver of subjective rationalization of murder and rape and pillage and forced conversion and theft of homelands, etc ad nauseum.

Humans are undoubtedly a very unique creature. We�re the only ones able to create art, music, architecture, politics, and justification for injustices. We are owners of a sentient self-consciousness that can arguably be called a �soul.� IF we evolved to this consciousness, it had taken tens of thousands of years. Not something that just went POOF! One could argue it happened around the time the Neanderthal developed and started becoming social creatures which helped each other for reasons seemingly beyond just self-preservation. Did we evolve to that because humanity found on a genetic level that as a species we�d be able to survive en mass by developing a sense of helping others with no conscious anticipation of self gain? Or did the creator God who undeniably set the universe in motion with set laws of physics and biology, say about that time �OK humans, I am now endowing you with a soul, and thus a morality that includes behavior that includes self-sacrifice�? We have to remember that the fundamental law of nature is the survival of the SPECIES, not the individual. In the animal kingdom where abilities and skills are a million times more limited compared to humans, survival of the species is often limited to survival of the individual or family unit and that works fine.

But humans are capable of killing entire tribes, ne�, the entire race�it behooves us to have a genetic programming to direct our behavior as a species to way that benefit the species, not just the individual.

God gave us free-will. The ability to chose our actions and to justify them how we will. We can choose to kill out of religious justification, we can choose to stop wars out of a religious pacifism. We can chose to kill all the 13th century Muslims for being heathens and say it�s morally alright because they�re heathens, we can kill entire tribes of American Indians and say it�s morally justifiable because God gave us the right of Manifest Destiny, or we can spend our lives protesting war and injustice, or live our lives in 3rd world nations helping the poor and starving and disease ridden.

All of our morality is based on the survival of SOMETHING. Be it ourselves, our family, our own town or village, our own society with its own way of thinking, our own human species.

God is not required to give us a mutable and conditional sense of morality, history has shown us time and again WE need GOD in order to justify our actions!

Besides, dualistic ideas of �right and wrong� is really a Western concept. Buddhists, Taoists, Hindi and Shinto�s to an extent, don�t believe is a right vs. wrong morality concept. Since I�ve been doing a lot of study on Buddhism, I�ll focus mainly on them as much I can express my limited understanding�but Buddhists believe actions are based on want and need. And actions that cause others grief and pain are not �bad� but just are. Our own grief and pain is to be accepted, then overcome. We allow ourselves to experience negative emotions because something WE want or need has been affected by another�s actions. What is desired is to get beyond want and then actions which affect what we want, viz-a-vis, can�t. It�s a matter of what is and what isn�t, not what�s right or wrong. Murder is not wrong in any moral sense, it�s a side effect of someone being controlled by their want and that�s unenlightened. And the grief and pain caused by that event is a side effect of the want people who were affected have. And we overcome that pain by overcoming want.

It�s hard to explain, because so much of our mindset is focused on a duality or morality, which the traditional East simply does not have. For centuries it was very difficult for them to understand Westerners and our �twisted� sense of right vs. wrong. Until we did our darndest to convert as many Buddhists, Shintoists, Confucinists, and Hindis into good Christians. =) Pounded right vs. wrong into them but good!

A letter I sent in to Apple’s iTunes site. Just thought I’d share it with you. =)
(iTunes is now available for Windows!!)

I’d been hoping for an inexpensive method of buying individual songs back when Napster wasn’t even a blip on the media’s radar. And was real excited to hear about iTunes…and real disappointed when I found out it was for Macs only.
Then real excited again when the Windows version came out!
So I’ve spent an afternoon browsing around, and I have to say I’m pretty disappointed with the selection. Certainly I understand that you probably have to deal with unfriendly music publishers to get a lot of material, but when I can find no songs for “Radiohead,” “Rammstein,” “Evanescence,” “Chemical Brothers,” just to name a few popular artists in their own genre, it’s difficult to justify iTunes as a viable alternative…just yet.
(Although I do admit I was rather surprised to find more tracks than I would have expected from Canadian band “The Tea Party”. Kudos for that.)
I assume the issue is with the publishers as I did a search in buymusic.com and found the same problem with the same artists.
I guess my comment is more of a request and a hope that you’ll be able to successfully convince music publishers that iTunes is a good idea.

My second comment is regarding price. $1 for a current popular song, or a classic oldie, is justifyable. But I have yet to see anything for less than .99, which is very discouraging. If you could possibly offer a good amount of tracks for .49 and perhaps even .24, I and thousands of others, will very likely flock to iTunes and download in droves. I would gladly pay a quarter or half dollar per song legitimately rather than rish the Gnutilla network for my music.

Also, the cost of purchasing a digital copy of a CD seems rather high.
Again I understand you’re at the mercy of the publisher, but a digital CD should be significantly less than what you’d spend in a retail store due to lack of a physical product that had to be pressed, assembles, manufactured, and shipped. I can buy the same CD sold on iTunes for only $2 more and have a physical item with booklet to show for it.

And finally, can you tell me (I really don’t expect a reply, but I appreciate if this at least gets read,) if the artists get more of a share from sales at iTunes than from buying CD’s retail? I doubt it, as I assume you’re required to pay a certain percentage to the publishers which go by the same rules of money distrobution as they do with retail sales.
I just hope iTunes becomes a very successful, powerful tool in music sales, and that you might be able to use your influence to help artists to see more money from their work than they do now.
Especially since, as previously mentioned, e-purchasing bypasses the cost of CD pressing, CD booklet publishing, product assembly and distrobution. Artists should rightfully get more when the purchase is simply a collection of 1’s and 0’s directly translated from their music.

Thank you for listening!

Two items today on people taking a stand and doing something in protest.

The 1st, the LA Film Critics Association is cancelling their awards ceremony in protest of the MPAA’s decision to stop sending out screener DVD’s. A move which everyone EXCEPT the MPAA (and the big studios of course) says will hurt the chances of smaller and indipendant films from getting a chance at Academy Awards.
If Chicago has a critic’s award ceremony, you can bet Roger Ebert will protest. He’s pretty vocal about how assinine the MPAA decision’s lame attempt at preventing movie piracy is.
Actors and Writer’s Guild has also protested.

Also, even though there’s a telemarketer “Do Not Call List,” it’s highly flawed and full of holes. This morning’s NPR’s “Morning Edition” had a story (scroll nearly all the way down to “Pranksters Take Revenge on Telemarketers”,) about two guys who are making trouble for telemarketers (sure, and some money for themselves along the way.)
By pranking and just screwing around with telemarketers who call them (and recording it to sell on CD’s) they bring down the production quota of the handful of telemarketers who call them. A drop in the bucket, but if LOTS of people do this instead of just hanging up, it could make a dent in the profitability of telemarketing!
Having been both a telemarketer (for like a month, until I couldn’t take anymore and either had to quit or gouge my eyes out with paperclips,) and a network administrator for one of MCI’s telemarketing center, I know how almighty important the production quota for telemarketers is. If a lot of their time is wasted without making a sale, that’s lost money for the telemarketer.
So, I suggest you go ahead and take telemarketer calls, and spend as much time as you can screwing around with them (keeping it legal, of course,) and having your own fun.
If enough people do it, we might make a dent in how many firms use this marketing strategy.

The Feds made a mistake in a hacking persecution? No way! Not possible. =)
Granted the guy should not have used his FORMER employer’s resources to garner a mailing list of all their customers and send e-mail out to all of them, whether it was to warn them about a security flaw or not. That’s not cool.
I can’t honestly think of a better way to get the word out, true. I worked for a piddling ISP once whose customer base was 99% within a 100 mile radius so articles to newspapers in the area would have worked.
His intent was good, trying to protect the company’s customers, but I have a feeling revenge was also a goal, and that’s not cool either. Supposedly he tried, while still an employee, to get the security flaw examined and he wasn’t taken seriously, so I’d like to think he had the best interest of the people in mind.

As for writing…yeah! Good news…which I can’t say much about. =/ Mainly out of fear of jinxing it, and partly a fear of coming even an iota near violating a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Let’s just say I’ve been accepted to work on a provisional basis on some writing for a major gaming (pencil-and-paper and CCG gaming) company. Small and not even 100% assured (not until I see my name in print *grin*,) but I have confidence! It’s a step closer to what I would love to be doing! Writing in general, and for a game company specifically.
Oh granted the money stinks (actually, it’s pretty darn good for what I’ve been asked to do so far–I really expected no pay at all,) but in general it’s not something one can live on, so I have no hopes of ever quitting my day-job. =)
But it’s a step closer to my dream “second” job! Besides, I don’t do it for the money. I love to write, and I love the products the company in question puts out (I’m sure it’d be fine to say it, but again, a) Jinxing it and b) Even coming near NDA violation, nuh-uh.)

Ever since I was 8 or 9 I daydreamed of working for TSR (you know, the original owners of “Dungeons & Dragons”.) I had no real idea of how the company worked, but I sure did have grand imaginings of it!
I never thought I’d have a chance at really being a part of “the industry” (and again I stress, I’m still not really a “part” of it now…I’m just real excited about what little taste of it I’ve been granted.) But this gives me hope that if I focus and work hard, one day I might see my name in the front of a role-playing game source book, preferably in a font size reserved for those above “play testers” *grin*.

And I’ve started to get serious on my other writing. I’m currently editing a couple of my short stories to send for publication submission, and I’m getting back to work on one of the three novels I’ve been working on for oh…THREE YEARS! =P It’s conceivable that by my birthday next year I could have a 1st draft completed. And if I follow Stephen King’s excellent advice given in “On Writing,” I might have it ready for submission by the end of next Summer.

He states that after you finish a 1st draft, put it away and forget about it for weeks, if not months. Don’t come back to it until it looks strange and foreign to you. You’ll be able to more objectively edit it that way, and I completely agree!
I wrote a 10,000 word short story a couple of years ago that I thought was excellent work…but put it away for fear or rejection. (Sick, I know.) I came back to it last week, and man! Does it need a LOT of work! Adverbs and redundancies galore! I am SO glad I didn’t try sending it out then, because, well, the story is still good but the writing itself nearly stinks. (In my opinion.)
So I’ve been working on a 2nd draft on it, and I keep wishing I had done 2nd drafts of papers back in college. Granted I generally got A’s and B’s on most of my papers that I only did one draft of, usually the night before they were due. But if I had actually taken the time to do 2nd or more drafts, I KNOW I could have gotten a 3.8 or even a 4.0 in college instead of a 3.2. But, I was putting all my time and energy in my Theatre BA (3.9 GPA in that major) instead of my English BA (I don’t recall, but it was below a 3.4. Mainly because I pretty much sluffed off a couple of classes like “Old English,” which I deeply regret because I loved that class. But Theatre was indeed a very harsh mistress.)

But I digress, badly. So, between getting that news, and finding the urban assault tac’ boots I very deeply wanted cheaper at BassPro than online, I’m a pretty happy camper!!
So, now to chug a SoBe Adrenaline and get back to work on my day job (which is kicking my rear! I LOVE Flash/Actionscript but this current project is a PAIN! I SO wish I could start over on it from scratch. A 2nd draft, one could say *grin*)

An ode to leaf raking and the nostalgia of leaf burning.
Pay close attention to the last paragraph. =)

Autumn is my favorite time of year, especially late autumn. The early part when the leaves start changing colors is pretty nice, but I prefer the bleak bare trees and smug still green conifirs, the slate gray sky, the chill in the air, and the constant mist.
Winter WOULD be my favorite season, but only in Colorado. In Missouri Winter sucks. Ironically because it’s a lot like Autumn the entire time with the exception of occassional ice storms. I hate ice nearly as much as I hate spammers.
Give me snow to my neck any day. But ice covered streets in a region where people freak out when it simply rains, and I get contact panic due to the idiocy of the people around me.
But then, Autumn has the aforementioned (see article above) smell of burning leaves (at least most towns in the Ozarks still allow burning to some degree.) I do love that smell.

So I get some e-mail alerts that tell me someone has left a comment. Yeah!
I look, and it’s a form comment advertisement for Viagra. And there’s 5 of them before I can block the sender.

I don’t care if all a person says is “U sux!” because it’s still a human written comment, someone’s opinion that is related to me or my blog, and that’s fine. Up it’d stay.
But someone who spams comment forms and blogs and guestbooks deserve to be hung by the neck by their own intestine still attached to their abdominal wall while pliers tear off their flesh before they finally die, just as any spammer should suffer the same fate.

In fact, here’s the spammer’s info:
IP Address: 65.77.116.28
Email Address: amir11@hotbox.com
URL: http://www.someviagra.info/

In case anyone is curious how to reach the frickhead and let them know what they think of spammers. (It took a lot of self control to not say what I wanted to say and keep it PG).

From a CNN article today on that CD-copy bypassing article earlier:

“In America today, scientists shouldn’t have to fear legal action for publishing the truth. Based on the apparent weakness of its technology, perhaps SunnComm should be hiring more Princeton computer scientists, instead of threatening to sue them.”