Thoughts, Raves & Outright Beatings

You’ve all seen it elsewhere.  I’m posting in here to do my bit for world peace:

You can say whatever you want about what some people do with their free time.  If they seek to inspire others, then it’s all right by me…

Via some site that “trends” Twtiter conversations, I found out that this area near where I lived a few years ago is now on fire.

Good God, is all I have to say…

San Bruno Mtn Fire #2, originally uploaded by Sutanto.

I’m in the market for some new gear to put in my purse.  The PDA’s doing ok by me, but it’s made by Dell, and it’s a brand that they neither make nor support anymore.  So if and when it breaks, I’m screwed. It’s already got a nasty little scratch on the data entry screen that’s a few more strokes of the stylus away from rendering the thing unusable.

I’m thinking of, after I make a few more payments on my car, biting the bullet and just look into getting a laptop.   I’m not into toting heavy accessories, but the sub-compacts coming out now (or soon) appear to be doing a lot with a little.

To help me in this search, I’ve employed the use of the lovely Shiny Shiny blog.  It’s tech reviews by women, for women.   And I don’t feel as if I’ve stepped in the middle of some late night coder convention when reading/viewing videos of their product reviews. 

Anyway, upon reading up on their laptop recommendations, I’ve got my heart set on one of these:

It’s an Asus Eee PC.  It initially came out back in October of last year.   It’s primarily for folks who just want to surf and type on the go.  It’s super light, kinda tiny, not heavy on the CPU and Ram setup, and carries just 2GB and 4GB of Solid State Hard Drive space on it (but there are USB slots for extra storage), and runs Linux Xandros on it (though you can also run an extremely optimized version of Windows XP on it - but why?).    Also, the initial colors for the 2 GB version also included Pink.  So you know girls were part of the target market.  And they initially retailed for somewhere between $299 to $429.  Cheap.

The only thing that would stop me from getting this is that I would also want to do music and recording on the go, as well as surf and type.    Those are pretty intensive applications in Windows - God/dess knows how a small Linux box would handle them.

I guess I won’t have to wonder anymore, because apparently, these models are being discontinued to make way for these.

It’s a Eee PC 901.  New 1.x GB Atom-Processor, over 1 MB of Ram, WIFI, Bluetooth, 12GB or 20GB hard drive etc.  Depending on where you read about it, you will either need to pay $549 for one with a Linux install or $650 for a Windows one.  It was “unveiled” on June 3rd, but you can’t buy it yet.  Grrrrrrrr….

No, it’s not cheap anymore, but it’s certainly fits my needs.  And it looks to be still small enough to put in my purse. 

However, does it come in pink?

Update:  Oh, how in the hell could I have passed this one up.  The Shiny Shiny blog also had me drooling over one of these:

It’s the Ego Handbag, er laptop.  And one with all the bells and whistles on it will set you back $200,000.  Oh well, it was a nice fantasy while it lasted…

For a while, my blog was rather, er, infamous due to one particular post I wrote where I called bullshit on that song “I Wish I Was PunkRocker..blah blah blah”.  I took it off after a couple of years, because, even though I still call bullshit on that song’s historical revisionism and psuedo feel good message, the kind of traffic it was bringing is not what I wanted, nor was it what I wanted to be known for.

Anyway, I run the risk of it happening again, and I have to preface this by saying that I’m NOT hating on the artist.  I’m just calling bullshit on the message (which may or may not be her own…whatever).

Anyway…suffice it to say that I really, really, really don’t like this song:

It’s not necessarily Katy Perry’s fault.  And I’m as big a fan of faux-80’s revivalism as the next guy (check my Calvin Harris obsession from last year).  I’m sure it was someone in her management or record company who decided that singing the equivalent of a rite of passage into a Girls Gone Wild scenario was a good idea.

I’ll pop little bits of the lyrics in here and I’ll tell you why I object to them:

“This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion
It’s not what, I’m used to
Just wanna try you on
I’m curious for you
Caught my attention”

Isn’t it how always starts peeps?  “I got drunk and my inner lesbo came out…what can I tell you?”   How old is the singer?  17? 18?  That’s right, encourage underage drinking.  Nice.  Also, from the looks of the video, she appears to have had the upbringing of someone who wouldn’t know what a gay woman was if she knocked aside with a purse.   Last I heard, you can’t just try on a sexual preference.  Where’s GLAAD on this?  Moving on…

“I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it”

Of course your boyfriend isn’t going to mind, dear.  He’s probably got Joe Francis on the line right now while he’s shooting a video of you two making out.   Sure it’s not love.  It’s dollar signs for hard dicks.  You sure you want to go there?  I’ll be looking this to come back and bite you when you compete for that beauty pageant crown, young lady.  Moving on…

“No, I don’t even know your name
It doesn’t matter
You’re my experimental game
Just human nature
It’s not what, good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets so confused
Hard to obey”

Gee…I’m so titillated right now. I thought we got over that whole ’70’s culture of anonymous sex?  After AIDS reared it’s ugly head?

What I don’t like is that, somehow, lesbianism here is being treated as if it’s some kind of dalliance.  An EVIL dalliance, if you will.   As if the only good girls are straight ones.  PULEEEEEEEEASE!!!!

And later in the song…

…Too good to deny it
Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent”

Yeah…sure.  And your life was changed from here on end.

This whole thing reminds me of the stink TATU raised in the early ’00’s with their whole girl-on-girl shtick.  Albeit with a much better song.

I remember being a BBS admin, and cleaning up occasional spam, and getting into it with another admin on the same BBS , a gay man from England, about whether or not the TATU street team hit-and-runs on the BBS constituted spam.

“They’re artists,” he argued. “And they’re providing themselves as positive, out GLBT models.  How can promoting this be spam?”

I, of course, argued back that the only positive role modeling they were doing were for lonely basement dwellers who typed with one hand.   Nothing that some record company hack hired to blanket BBSs with promo would do can change this.  Even the person who put the group together eventually copped to the accusations that he put the group together as a way to use underage, lesbian sex to sell records.  And besides, the girls themselves turned out NOT to be really gay, didn’t they?

I ended my argument with him on this note: Is your GLBT activism so bereft of role models, so lacking in representation, so desperately in need of any kind of emotional charity, that you, as a group, would stoop to having a couple of faux lesbians and their perverted manager be your face to the world?  Seriously?

In my mind, the only song that ever celebrated bi-curious experimentation in a positive, joyful manner, was, ironically enough, also called “I Kissed A Girl”.  It came out about 13 years ago.

It’s not only a lot more fun to listen to, it’s a lot more honest.   If you really were “curious”, would you really need to get drunk to find out if you “swung” that way or not?

Besides, the official video for the song had Fabio in it.  Yeah, he’s joke now, but back then…HAWTNESS!!!!

I’m not taking comments for this post, because I’m not into tolerating any hateration from some random tweenie who’s parents forgot to turn off the control guide on their PC.   If you’ve got something to say about it, put it here, or send me an email.  If you dare. :p

One of my pet peeves against my fellow countrymen that seems to have picked up steam as of late (especially among those following the right wing) is willful ignorance.   The unwillingness to even begin understanding, or research, other points of view lest they even remotely threaten to conflict with their own.  In fact, few things make my blood boil in heavy traffic more than being cut off by a car with a bumper sticker stating the following:

God said it, I believe it, that settles it!

Gee, thanks for nearly running me off the road with your (lack of) world view, asshole!

In my area, MSNBC and Fox News are right next to each other on the cable channel listings.   Which means during a commercial break on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I just press the “Down” arrow on my remote just once to point and laugh at, or shake my  head in dismay at, Bill O’Reilly.   This week, he was subbed by Laura Ingraham (who’s apparently being tried out by Fox News for her own show on that network).   It’s been a while since I’ve heard Ms. Ingraham’s radio show.   I initially didn’t think she was all that bad.   Of course, that was a few years ago, and she’s now seems to have caught the “Willful Ignorance” disease.  Yesterday, I managed to catch, in midstream, an interview she did with a reverend from somewhere in the Carolinas discussing faith-based license plates (?).

Here’s a link to the YouTube video on it; however there’s some spam put into the vid, so click with care.

What struck me, however was the Reverend mentioning working with the local “Humanists”.  

Ms. Ingraham then blurted out, “Humanists?  What are those?”

Oh no she didn’t!?!? Did she?

It’s come to this when debating certain members of society; you KNOW someone has the capability to do all this research, to do all this preparation, but somehow refuses to do it for fear of possibly undermining their own point of view.   Of course, we’re talking Faux news here, where all anchors are varying shades short of ignoramuses, lest they piss off Rupert Murdoch once they get wise about something.   But still, there are more intelligent ways of arguing your point than making your self out to be an ignoranomous, as Ms. Ingraham did.  Surely, if you are going to discuss religion, you need to get all of your bases covered before talking to a reverend? 

Or maybe that was the point.  Yet another case of “All I know is”.  Just like Cindy McCain a couple of days ago: “All I know is that I’ve ALWAYS been proud of my country…”

Really now…if that’s ALL you know…you surely must not know much.  Or experienced a lot…

Discuss…

I’m signed up with two encompassing aggregators that allow me to collect my internet activity into one rss feed (I think the trend word for this is lifestreaming - so touchy feely, y’know. Ugh…anyway…). FriendFeed and MyBlogLog. I wrote about these sometime ago. Anyway, Friendfeed has updated their Atom code so that it shows details in their aggregate entries in whatever gadget or RSS Feed widget you use. It looks a lot nicer on my blog, and it’s allowed me to remove a few more RSS widgets from the side. For a fresh clean feeling.

See, nothing much. But cool, all the same.

Yes, I know that I’m as vain and vapid as any other self-absorbed dweeb with a blog on the internet.  I’ll probably pay for revealing that much information about my spare time doings on my side bar.  But, for right now, again, cool

I’m feeling better today.

I’m not into too much public catharsis these days, so I’m glad Ed, in the comments, set me straight on a few things. In his own, poetic way.

Fact of the matter is, someone committed a crime against me, and I let them get away with it, because I didn’t want any drama. Either directed towards me or enacted by me. It’s all part of me trying to keep my life at an even keel, but sometimes, I need to step out of my box and kick, if not physical, then some legal ass. I’m still of the mind that if I hadn’t controlled myself that morning, I probably would have bashed a couple of heads in someone’s car hood (Lord knows, I still have blood-pressure raising fantasies of doing so, thinking back to that moment). Of course, the more sensible thing to do would have been to get the person’s license plate number and dial 911. Then there was what I actually did, was just sit in the car, slowly unleash the emotional fumes as I tell myself to calm down, and then drive away.

The chasms between the could’ves, should’ves and actually dids are miles long.

I now realize I was in the wrong. I should have reported this. So, the perps are now free to believe that they can harass and bully other drivers as well, when the drivers react against being tailgated. My bad. I can’t get them now. I’m pretty sure karma will (perhaps in the form of some dude from the desert with a pickup truck, a shot gun, and a trigger-thin temper? Nah, can’t go there…)

Anyway, I know you are all sick of me talking about this. Did I tell you that I actually purchased two, yes two Coldplay CDs last night?

I didn’t? Well, I just did!

Well, they weren’t physically CDs, but you know. Amazon’s MP3 store had Parachutes for $1.99, along with their latest, which was $8.99.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Coldplay. I can’t even front in even having adopted this guy’s attitude about them during any time in their career. Yes, they ripped off Radiohead (I think I have a blog entry where I confessed to liking the “sons of Radiohead” more than Radiohead themselves for a while…but I can’t be bothered to dig it up now). Sure, Chris Martin’s lyrical stylings have the social and emotional content of week-old oatmeal.

But everytime “The Scientist” video comes on VH1, everytime I hear the swooning harmonies on “Clocks”, everytime the blistering guitar chunks chime in on “Yellow”, my heart turns to mush.

“Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me…” I’m on the floor, people. Literally.

I just never bothered to buy their CDs, because their songs, videos, etc. are EVERYWHERE. They are inescapable. And they’ve been even MORE inescapable since that ITunes commercial came out. Since I’ve been less impervious to marketing lately (I even went in for the Radiohead promo, myself), I fell hook, line and sinker.

So far, I haven’t heard the tunes yet. I’m afraid to, actually. I may not get up for a week after doing so.

OTOH, I could use a vacation…