My friend Sean sends a daily e-mail to a long list of friends called his Moment of Zen. It's a link that's usually quite bizarre, and you can't help but looking at it and questioning your existence on this planet.

Today, he sent out this link and dedicated it to Alex, who I consider to be, outside of my family, my only Republican friend.

Alex rebutted with this link.

Both are oversimplifications of important issues. After all, what each sent out was propaganda distributed by their respected parties.

Therefore, I sent them the following e-mail. And I couldn't resist sharing it with those of you who read my blog, all zero of you:

Alex:

In Sean's defense, he has a point that the fiscal choices of Republicans tend to benefit the rich, a tactic thinly veiled with the excuse "It will trickle down." It never trickles down. For example, I defy you to show me one specific example where a tax cut has benefitted the poor or even the middle class. Putting social security into the stock market only benefits big industry in the short term and screws up Americans in the long run.

And to rebutt your link, the power that the Bush administration wants for Homeland security is unconstitutional. All budgetary debate is crazy mad insane with the huge increases in military spending. And the debate over our current military skirmishes, which affects all other issues, is a valid debate and should not the squelched.

But I think you made a valid point, which I have shared with Sean below.

XOXOXO,
Arlo ;->

-----

Sean:

In Alex's defense, he has a point that Tom Daschle, and most Democrats in the senate, are being pussies when it comes to legislation because they are more interested in being elected than actually defying the president. The social programs they want to institute don't go through not because they are outnumbered or that their ideas are bad but because they don't push them through. It's rare that a politician like the late Paul
Wellstone will vote from their heart and not from their electorate.

And to rebutt your link, increasing taxes and spending isn't going to help social security, either. NOTHING is going to help social security except sytematically killing off baby boomers, and I doubt you are going to advocate that.

But I think you made a valid point, which I have shared with Alex above.

XOXOXO,
-Arlo ;->

Jam Master Jay is dead.

Moment of silence.

Never mind their sagging, shrinking bollocks. The Sex Pistols' only album turned 25 yesterday.

Also yesterday, the Nirvana greatest hits album was released. I have all of these songs already except for "You Know You're Right," so I'll probably just wait for the box set that comes out next year. But "You Know You're Right" is just as good a song as anything Kurt Cobain ever wrote.

It's also an incredibly creepy song. With lyrics like "She only wants to love herself," it's easy to see why that cunt who kicked his cold body out of the way to start her own career didn't want it released.

I was asleep on my futon my sophomore year at Virginia Tech when I woke up to the phone ringing and my friend Wendy leaving a message on the answering machine that Kurt was dead. In fact, there were a total four messages from four different people. I wept. And wore a black armband to my friend's birthday party that night. (Becca still won't let me live that down.)

And when I struggled with my own battle with psychological demons two years later, Kurt Cobain's spector hung over me.

I'm now 28 years old, older than Kurt Cobain was when he died. If there is an afterlife, I hope Kurt is in a place where his stomach doesn't hurt anymore.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- the first friends you should make at any job is with the folks in the IT department. I'm having a terrible time getting my Web cam set up (damn corporate firewalls), but hopefully some friends downstairs will give me a hand. Otherwise, I'll just have to figure out which port to use by brute force.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to wonder if I did something wrong to my Sea Monkeys. I don't see a damn thing moving anymore. I followed the instructions to the letter -- at least I think I did -- but I don't see anything. I'm starting to worry. Poor little Sea Monkeys -- did I do something wrong?

Anyway, life's busy right now and I haven't had much time to ruminate on political dogma and what-not. It's all part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to keep me occupied, I'm sure.

But I do want to nip this conspiracy theory about Sen. Paul Wellstone's death in the bud right now. When a candidate dies, especially an incumbent, voters have historically been won over by sympathy and vote for the dead guy or whoever happens to replace the dead guy. Look at the Carnahan vote. Republican facists may be evil, but they're not stupid.

I'm starting to wonder how well a Sea Monkey cam would do. These things are currently no bigger than what would be a pixel. I can hardly see them, but I can no doubt detect moving dots.

But now I've got a Web cam. And in the spirit of this page's title, I think I may just point it at myself. Yeah, Web cams are so 1998 at this point, but I don't care. Y'know, why the Hell not?

I'm a fan of Robert X. Cringely's column about what's going on in the computer world. It's not your typical "here's an amusing anecdote about my foibles with a digital camera" type of computer column. Mr. Cringely delves into the cultural and social implications of technology and the tech sector. Anyone who is interested in technology and how our civilization is changing because (or in spite) of it should read this column weekly.

This most recent column is one of his best. He examines management and how faceless MBA-holders are sucking the blood out of what was once great about capitalism. He does see some hope in companies that are still run by their founders -- Sun, Adobe, even Microsoft -- but on the most part, big business is cannibalizing itself for some quick scratch. One sentence from the second paragraph sums up the whole article: "Michael Eisner never emptied a wastebasket at work, but I'll bet Walt Disney did."

Are people starting to wise up to the greed of CEOs who don't care about people or product but only profit? With Enron and WorldCom and Tyco, maybe Americans are. Like I said a few days ago, Ralph Nader's next campaign slogan should be, "I told you so!"

But what can we do about it? I write this weblog entry on a Compaq computer running Microsoft Windows 2000, drinking a Starbucks coffee, wearing a Gap sweater and jeans, listening to music with Sony headphones. Later, I'm going to drink a Coca-Cola. With the exception of the music, I know that much of that money spent helped fuel layoffs and third-world exploitation. At least I'm listening to independently published music.

But on the other hand.... I watched AntiTrust on cable the other night. (Not a great movie, though I will commend it for making the programmers look like they were actually programming -- they were using some real UNIX commands!) During the closing credits, as Showtime is want to do, they were running snippets of press junket interviews, and Tim Robbins said something to the effect of I'm not against people making lots of money, but I'm against the abuses carried out when getting that money.

Not that I look to film actors for my political ideology, but I certainly agree with the card-carrying Green Party member on that point. Lots of money is fine, I guess. But earn it fairly and use it wisely. And give back. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Is it?

Even in our terrible economy, people are still spending their money on completely stupid shit. Maybe they will send the discs to these folks.

How the internet works, and how it can fail. Two of the 13 servers that basically run the Internet are operated by WorldCom. Sleep tight.

But everyone keeps telling me, "Arlo, Sea-Monkeys® are nothing more than brine shrimp. Not so. Quoth the Sea-Monkey® manual, page 3:

"Although Sea-Monkeys® are a species of brine shrimp, they are unique. We not only unlocked the most elusive secrets of their life-cycle, we created new formulas to keep them alive under conditions found in the average home -- an accomplishment never before achieved! Finally, after years of crossbreeding, we developed a hybrid SUPER Sea-Monkey®! These animals are raised on our own aquaculture farm, and their unique eggs are now STANDARD in every Sea-Monkey® kit. Truly, the world's only FULLY MAN-MADE PETS, these amazing new hybrids grow larger and live incredibly longer than any 'natural' variety of brine shrimp."

Dammit, y'all, Sea-Monkeys® are patented, and they are living, breathing creatures, and they can even play games. So you and your Aibo can kiss my ass.

A search on Google reveals no live Sea-Monkey® webcams. I'm going to fix that. Tune in next week....

Have you tried Google News yet? It's fantastic and innovative in the way it automatically collects articles. Yet again, the eggheads at Google have developed something clean, fast-loading, and infinitely usable. No wonder they are one of the only Internet companies that is actually making a profit.

Gubernatorial races are getting interesting right now. Jeb Bush will probably win in Florida again, but not by much. Gray Davis will win California. But the big news is right here in illinois, where we are most likely going to have our first Democratic governor in 30 years. But I'm not really excited by either candidate.

Rod Blagojevich is my congressman. When he has actually shown up to vote, he mostly votes how I would, though I'm surprised he voted against foreign aid for family planning. He comes from Chicago, though, a city boy, and in a state that is so broad in its citizenry (urban, blue collar, farmers), is someone attached at the ass to Mayor Daley the best choice for a governor?

Jim Ryan, on the other hand, thinks our capital punishment system is just fine. He thinks the government can dictate family values. He opposes abortion rights. He's a very conservative, the kind of conservatism that is in the White House. He didn't investigate the licenses-for-bribes scandal and he put knowingly put innocent people in jail as Attorney General.

So I'm voting for Rod. He may not be the best guy for the state, but he at least respects freedom for those who aren't Christians.

Where is my ideal candidate? Third parties will never be viable in this country (I hope I'm wrong). Americans are pretty much idiots. Libertarians are gun-toting freaks, Greens are too stoned all the time to know what's really going on, and I can't believe I still see LaRouche folks on the street. Granted, with all of the corporate scandals, Ralph Nader could run in 2004 with the slogan, "I told you so!" However, it doesn't mean he has an antelope's chance in a lions' den. It just means fewer Democrats voting strategically to get Bush out of office.

Two weeks from today is election day. Please vote, and please vote wisely.

Yesterday, I saw bobrauschenbergamerica. I had lost faith in theatre. I couldn't watch a show without constantly thinking about what was wrong with it, why the artform was dying, and how I'd much rather be at a movie. This show single-handedly revivified my love affair with theatre. I had forgotten how the immediacy of a play can carry an audience member through an entire spectrum of emotion, a journey where you are not at the wheel but there's no set destination anyway, so what the hell? I didn't once "think" while watching the show. I merely "felt" and "experienced," a pleasure I have not felt in quite some time. Unfortunately, yesterday was it's last performance here in Chicago, but if it comes to a town near you, rush to go see it.

More than you ever wanted to know about fog machines

I made some adjustments so this looks good in Macintosh browsers now. For some reason, IE for Mac thinks an iframe of 200 pixels wide should be 204. Crazy. Well, it's fixed now. Dig it.

Ends up the Dan Savage article is in his new book, so go get it.

The US Military has some bad graphic designers. But you should see the plane. These'll be dropping bombs on somebody soon.

Send those AOL CDs to these guys. It's worth a stamp or two, isn't it?

The bombing in Indonesia is a huge terrorist attack, possibly Australia's September 11. I can't find the link -- I'll post it if I do find it -- but I read an article about how the death of Australian football players has caused a devastating culture shock to Australians. The bombing in Bali is a huge tragedy, but I guess because it didn't happen to us, it doesn't matter, right?

Besides, we're too busy trying to catch a sniper. And now the US is interviewing the prisoners at Camp X-Ray. I bet that sniper is just a kooky American. If it is a terrorist, great -- we caught another one. But it probably isn't. Or maybe it's a CIA agent instructed to draw attention away from the Iraq situation...

...not to mention the North Korea situation. They've admitted to all of the things that the US suspects of Iraq. What are you going to do now, Mr. President? Bomb them, too?

Well, there are two distinct differences. A. North Korea didn't try to kill Dubya's daddy. B. They don't have nearly as much oil as Iraq.

But it does confuse issues and puncture holes in the US argument. I think someone else on the UN Security Council put North Korea up to it to put a wrench in the works. And which member has the most to gain by avoiding a war with Iraq? Russia. It's only a theory.

If you happen upon my blog and you aren't in the Chicago area, it's a damn shame. Dan Savage of Savage Love fame has a great article in this week's Chicago Reader about swingers. Not the overrated movie -- the open marriage lifestyle of acknowledging lust for other people other than your spouse and acting on that lust as a team.

I'm not, however, writing about this to advocate swinging -- my girlfriend might read this. But I do want to point out that the article makes a very interesting argument about gay marriage.

There are as many swinging couples in the United States as there are potential gay couples. And lesbian couples are more faithful to each other than most married couples. So why is gay marriage is seen as a threat to the sanctity of heterosexual marriage when the biggest "threat" is itself inherently heterosexual?

So Wired has this article about DNA scanning, how geneticists can scan your genes for disease-causing neucleotide-pairs. The article does a very good job of bringing up the potential ethical issues that could arise should such technology reach the mainstream (think Gattaca).

But here's something really fascinating. According to Brian Sykes, the guy who traced European genes back to seven women, "There is no ethnic purity." For all of the misgivings that I give to modern techology, I will give one thing over to science -- they keep proving Facists wrong time and time again.

Yuck.

Yesterday was my birthday. Did you remember? It's okay if you didn't -- I never remember your birthday.

If you've been reading my blog (and you probably haven't), you've no doubt figured out that I'm not a big fan of our Furher, uh, I mean President George W. Bush.

As I spent last night intoxicated in celebration of my birthday, I got to thinking about how evil Dubya really is.

He wasn't really elected president. A faction (in this case, the Republican party) worked from the inside to put him into power. One could very easily consider that a coup.

He wants estate taxes repealed. He wants to drill for oil in protected environments, which would benefit him financially. He's probably seen Ken Lay naked. So he's an aristocrat.

He doesn't want anyone to speak out against him. He's a tyrant.

He wants to conquer the world. He's a dictator.

George W. Bush will go down in history as one of the worst leaders ever. I'm serious. A dumb-ass steals the highest office in the country, arguably the world, and uses it as a way to help him get richer and control as many other countries as possible. He's a war-mongering oligarch.

We're living in interesting times. I may have some good stories for my grandkids.

It's no surprise to me that Southwest is the only airline that is turning a profit. I flew American on Friday on a business trip, and the plane leaving Columbus, OH, was an hour-and-a-half late. But did they do anything to expedite our trip? NO. Southwest would have rushed us on, taken our drink orders during takeoff, and flown at supersonic speeds to make up for lost time. But American just took it business as usual. They're just lucky I didn't miss the Sleater-Kinney concert that night.

Coming soon: The Sea Monkey Cam!

I've never been very good with my finances. We can debate all of the psychological reasons why, but it's moot. I'm getting back on track now. I have a job that I'm working hard at and don't anticipate losing (but do we ever?), I have a savings account now, I paid off my old credit card debt, and I pack a lunch most days. I don't have a 401k, but having one would just flush money down the toilet anyway.

But is it for naught? According to this Fortune magazine article, I'm fucked. In order to retire comfortably, I should have $50,000 in savings by the time I'm 32. I turn 28 next week, and I have $48,000 to go. That's not including the student loans I'm racking up now. The dot-com boom was a bust and didn't do much for the economy anyway. The middle class is bifurcating and disappearing. Social security will be depleted before I'm 50. And our current president wants to spend what little money we have to avenge his daddy and steal some oil.

I'm having a difficult time wrapping my brain around all of this. Yes, captialism is failing and I'm screwed, but I still want a DVD player and a nice house and a car. I was raised with the American dream, and now I know that, for my generation at least, it was just a dream.

I'm trying now, but perhaps I'm too late. Should I stop worrying about the home theater and worry more about being able to eat when I'm 70? Would it make a difference?

All I can say is thank God my office has free coffee. I'm going to get another cup, in lieu of some booze to drink this depression away.

I gave up on writing a point-by-point response to Bush's speech on Monday night. Let's face it, he didn't say anything new. Just the same jingoistic diarrhea that has poured from his assface since day one.

"Less is more." "The medium is the message." "Two wrongs don't make a right." Cliches are such because they are true, even when they apply to art. Cliches speak to human nature, the way the collective subconscience reacts to stimuli. Any opinion, viewpoint, or concept can be expressed to a large population if it is delivered in a way that is accessible. Even the most abstract concept can be conveyed compellingly if it provides such a foothold for the audience or reader or what-have-you.

Unless you don't care about being popular or accepted. Which is fine. Just take a shower and brush your teeth every once and a while. That's all I ask.

For God's sake! It's nearly 2003 and the Internet has been relatively mainstream for almost a decade. And yet people are still forwarding around bogus virus warnings and CC'ing e-mails to hundreds of people.

I don't always follow proper e-mail ettiquette, but I try. And I'd like to add a few of my own to this list.

Don't forward chain letters or virus warnings. All virus warnings are hoaxes. Chain letters and virus warnings and your itchy "Reply All" finger are one of the reasons why you and I receive spam. All of those e-mail addresses appear in the header, and once that header gets in the wrong hands (and it happens easier than you might think), all of our e-mail addresses are added to a list that starts receiving adds for "Hot Young Teenage Sluts". And as much as I loved hot young teenage sluts in high school, I'm not as interested in them now.

Don't fill up the CC: line with every e-mail address you have. If the only way you can afford to promote your shitty band, your shitty play, or your shitty garage sale is to mass e-mail everyone in your address book, please use the BCC: line instead. I've started receiving such e-mails from people I don't even know, and they probably got it from the last time you mass e-mailed. You wouldn't want me to publish your phone number to hundreds of people; why would you let me do the same with your e-mail address?

Honor opt-out requests. If you send me a promotional e-mail, and I tell you that I'm not interested in receiving such e-mails, I had better not receive another one, lest you get a response from me IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. You can lose your e-mail address this way, and I have ratted people out to their ISPs before.

Use descriptive subject lines. It's one thing if you are forwarding a cool link, but if you are sending an e-mail that is important and needs to be followed up on, don't neglect to include a subject or just enter "Hi!" or "What's up?" Most people get tons of e-mail every day now, and if it's something your recipient will need to come back to, he or she needs to find it readily.

If I never receive another virus hoax, I'll be happy. The rest is gravy.

I'm working on a point-by-point response to Bush's speech last night. I may not have it done until tomorrow.

Astonomers discovered a tenth planet beyond Pluto. And this time, it's for real -- not like that second moon thing that ended up being a piece of space junk.

I start classes today for my third quarter towards my second bachelor's degree, and my first useful one. Wish me luck.

Dammit, I've republished today's posts several times today. I revised this morning's post three times, and then I kept leaving out quotation marks in the HTML code in the second post. I'm in a perfectionist mood today. I gotta lay off the genseng.

I've always been a huge fan of This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow. A friend pointed out this strip from 1992. Prescient, ain't it?

I'm currently reading Microserfs by Douglas Coupland, about twentysomething Microsoft employees in the mid-90s wishing they had lives. It's basically every Douglas Coupland book (twentysomething [insert unique qualifier here] wishing they had lives), but I'm finding it truly fascinating. Yes, I'm a nerd, so it appeals to that side of my brain that recognizes "grok" as more than a potential caveman name.

What's especially intriguing about reading this book now is how a story that takes place only eight years ago (and written in 1995) can already seem so quaint and notalgic. The book is constantly referring to stock options and job security and technological gold-rushery, yet whining about the futility of it all; all the time, I'm thinking, "If only they knew." They'd whine a whole lot less, considering most of the characters in the book would now be unemployed.

But less than a decade later, the setting of this book seems so distant, like reading about the "Cars of the Future" as published in the 1950s. Is it due to the accelerated culture of the "mass-age" that Marshal McLuhan theorized? Is it the massively culture-changing events of the past few years (I'm including the dot.bomb and all the other corporate shennanigans)? Or is it because I'm fast approaching 30?

I'll post a full review -- and perhaps answer that question -- when I've finished the book ...like you really care...

Anyway, I bring this book up now because of my recent rant on vegetarians and vegans (we're the top of the food chain -- deal with it). The book very eloquently addresses a facet of vegetarianism that I overlooked -- fake meat. This is the character of Morris referring to the veggie burger he ate at a McDonald's in Amsterdam:

"I tried one and they're not very good, so don't romanticize them. They have a curry taste, and they're full of frozen *peas* (of all things). More importantly, by eating 'burgers,' aren't you just still buying into the 'meat concept.' Tofu got dogs are merely an isotope of meat.

"If you yourself are a vegetarian, but still dream of burgers, then all you really are is a cryptocarnivore.

True dat.

It's been seven years since O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder. Perhaps he'll find the real killers soon. In the meantime, he needs to learn to swing through and not just simply hack at the golf ball as if he were chopping firewood. Or stabbing his wife.

FOR THE RECORD: Commercial art is not fine art. I don't remember who said it -- I think it was Chip Kidd -- commercial art solves problems; fine art creates them. I just needed to get that off my chest before I punched somebody.

Finally, I committed an evening to making this page look like I actually tried. Let me know what you think.

<nerd>I'm also quite proud of the fact that the blog entries template only uses CSS and not one damn <table> tag in the bunch!</nerd>

C'mon, Mr. President. You're not fooling anybody. Just admit you want to make money off of Iraqi oil and get it over with. If the citizenry of America understand anything, it's the desire to kill darker skinned people in order to take their resources under the guise of progress and idealism. Hell, isn't how this country was founded?

Ascerbic satire aside, the rhetoric of all the president's men is working. The majority of Americans want Saddam Hussein out, gone, dead. But, thankfully, the majority of Americans (who are willing to answer surveys) don't think we should do it without the support of a UN resolution. Which we are not going to get.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- Saddam is an asshole. He can't be trusted with a country. Even China and Cuba treat their people better than Iraq does. Furthermore, Hans Blix is a pussy if he thinks "unfettered access" does not include Saddam's eight compounds. He's leaving that to the UN to decide, and since Russia makes a lot of dough trading with Iraq, you know they aren't voting for anything that doesn't favor Hussein.

That said, the motivations for this war have nothing to do with terrorism. Hell, there are even theories floating around that the war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with terrorism and more to do with oil, shock and dismay. I don't know if it's a viable theory, but it's out there, and it makes more sense than that whole Israel-is-responsible-for-9/11 notion.

Eventually, Bush's true motivations will be unveiled, that we need a new regime in Iraq so we can continue to drive our five-miles-per-gallon SUVs and that he and Dick Cheney can make an assload of money. Americans may buy the first part, but the second part? Hopefully Enron, Andersen, and Tyco have taught us to not trust that line of reasoning.

On a lighter note, my favorite big word is still sesquipedalian. And when I get all sesquipedalian on people, I get funny, even angry looks. Give me a break. I may be sesquipedalian, but I'm not so grandiloquent that I my conversations have to be palaverous. If you don't understand a word I say, just ask, for God's sake.

I'll buy this car. Even if it is French.

Another dramatic climate change story -- blocks of ice falling from the sky!

For the record: Shock/denial; bargaining; guilt; fear; anger; depression; acceptance/resolution. It takes longer than you think to get through all of those steps.