I know this story is supposed to be heartwarming, about a kitty who wants to comfort the dying, but it just reinforces the “cats are creepy” image to me. I don’t want to spend my final hours with a semiferal beast who jonezes on my doom.
“Oooh, look, Oscar has come to comfort you!”
“Get it away! Begone, evil spirit, foul spectre, grim visage! I want to live! To live and learn and laugh and lov-”
“Time of death is 2:34PM.”
“Meow.” Stalks off in search of next victim.
I’m trying hard not to do anything rash, but I’m experiencing unexpectedly severe burnout at work. I thought a few days off after Independence Day would hold me over until this fall when I was planning to take some time for travel, but I was mistaken.
Hopefully I can arrange some time off soon and can endure through the next week or two, but it’s been an increasing struggle to stay at all motivated this summer.
If you know me and have read the last book, you’ll know why the first 58 pages were as sad as the rest of the book.
I got to see my friend Buffi tonight! She called me up this morning and said she was going to be in town with The Polyphonic Spree and was going to get me in to see the show.
Despite it having been a very full day of shopping and dealing with people, Amy proved to be the Best Girlfriend EVAR by going along, even though that’s pretty far from the kind of music she likes. It was also pretty far from my usual stuff, though technically symphonic rock is in the progressive genre, this sounded a little more like a concert of closers for some extremely happy broadway shows. Still, I think it’s been something like 12 years since I last actually saw Buffi in person, so it was wonderful to have the chance. She was very good with the crowd who kept coming up to express their appreciation to 1/24th of the band (no kidding).
My only disappointment was that they didn’t play the tune they played on Scrubs, which is the only one I knew.
But the 9:30 Club has Boddington’s! Who knew they would pick up such civilization when Ireland’s Four Courts has dropped it?
If you’re wondering where your favorite internet radio station went this morning, that’s because today is the “Day of Silence” for internet radio.
To administer rights for songs played on the radio (you didn’t think it was free, did you?), Congress created a group called SoundExchange to collect and distribute royalties. With online sales increasing while traditional CDs decline, the RIAA’s members decided they wanted more money to promote their music. So SoundExchange changed the way they count listeners and increased their fees.
The result? Internet radio is now several times more expensive per listener than regular over-the-air radio. This means that public radio stations who rely on a mix of donations and government funding to operate will see dramatic cost increases and have to shut down if you, the taxpayer or you, the donor doesn’t step up to the plate. It’s even worse for niche internet radio stations. Many of them operate at break-even or a slight loss as is and will simply have to go off the air.
The worst part of it is that they made the changes retroactive to 2006, meaning that even though the stations have been assuming their songs cost them a certain amount for the past year and a half, it will now cost them several times more and the bill will be due July 15.
More information at SaveNetRadio.org. Let’s see if the Democrats were serious about standing up for the little guy.
Here’s a couple for mah geeks:
So if Rudy Giuliani has been “studying Middle Eastern terrorism since the Seventies,” and is such an expert on it, how did he not predict 9/11 or take steps to harden New York City against the attack he must have known was coming?
After all, since it’s silly to consider Iraq as the justification terrorists use for attacking New York City, he must have known that the licentious freedom New York is famous for would bring them in…you know, since they did it to that same target once before…
Maybe this is why he took so many steps to curb the freedom of New Yorkers. You see, they hate us for our freedom, so the Not-a-Coward answer must be to become more like the terrorists and give into their demands so they’ll hate us less, right?
Rudy Giuliani: prevent terrorism by surrendering to sharia. That’s the Republican Party way of doing things! Real men surrender!
Word things so you’re not actually asking a question, but counting on me to just jump in as if I can always intuit what the hell it is you want to know.
For example, I say “I don’t know anything about that, so when you find out let me know.”
So you say, “Oh, we had assumed you knew something more about it.”
What you really mean to say is, “We had thought you knew something. Can you please give me X?”
I know you’re going to feel stupid, because I can then say, “I just said I didn’t know anything about X.” But really, if you’re going to ask a question, make it a question and not a period. If you think a question’s answer might be embarrassing, don’t ask me. But for fuck’s sake, don’t just let it hang out there.
That’s trying to appeal to my sense of decency and trying to manipulate me into doing something, or doing some work to find out something you don’t want to do, or whatever. If you have such a request, make it, don’t attempt to manipulate me.
I’m going to give you the secret to going from a techno-dud to a techno-stud, suddenly understanding computers and being able to be regarded as intelligent by the computer trogs at work. It’s a big secret we keep from the rest of you, but heedless of my own safety, I’m going to break ranks and share it with you.
Are you ready?
Can you handle The Big Secret??
Do you want to know!?!?!!?
Read English.
WTF? Yeah, I know. You think you can do this already, but here’s the secret: even though you can, you probably don’t. Many instructions and warnings and labels go by on the computer all the time, and if you don’t read them, it gets very mysterious. Some are extra mysterious–like the idiots who simply give an internal code number as if that’s supposed to tell you anything.
But I can’t count the number of times somebody has told me that they got “an error” and provided no explanation, like I had psychic powers to extract the truth directly from their brains. Hint: if there’s an error, it probably has text associated with it. And most of the time, it’s going to be in English. Even if you don’t know all the big words, you can probably figure a lot of it out if you actually just look at it, read it, and think about it.
At first, sure, you’re going to see lots of unfamiliar terms. But frequently inserting the error message into Google will get you a big discussion of it. And over time you’ll figure out “duh, I need to plug in my drive,” or “hey, this is just a notice, not an error,” or even, “Oh, it tells me if I don’t want Bad Thing X to happen, I shouldn’t do what I just did, and it’s giving me an option to not do it.”
That’s it–that’s the sole difference between me and you: I take the time to read what’s on my screen and figure it out. That’s really all there is to it.
Now, go forth and use your newfound power to fear the machines no more.
And wink at the trogs. They still haven’t figured out human faces yet.
Sandy Smith 