jmoiron.net

I feel pretty confident now, 11 days before the 2008 US Presidential Election, that Barack Obama will win and I won't have to flee the country in search of sanity and mental health. This is presuming that the recent polls are within their stated margin of error and that massive voter fraud the likes of which likely happened in 2004 and 2000 does not make up for McCain's current deficit.

I remarked to Amit the other day that my titles rarely make sense. In this case, it's probably illegible to you, although I've shown a tendency to title posts in IPA in the past. This time, the title of the post is very much relevant to the concept contained within. Unfortunately, you (the reader) has a homework assignment: you must read this nymag article first.

I always feel like I should write something on this day. I started this blog about 6 months after 9/11/01, and I've been outspoken in my political beliefs since then. The shenanigans going on in the current election mimic the outright shambles our entire society has become in the years following the attacks on WTC and the pentagon. Instead of a day for quiet contemplation and commemoration of innocent lives that were lost that day, September 11th is merely a reminder of how horribly we, the people of the United States, handle disaster.

It's not often that I read something that is so dead on I feel compelled to write almost exclusively about it, but this Op-Ed by Frank Rich in the NY Times today is one of those times. It's about the rise of Obama in world politics and how his trip was perfectly timed to reap the maximum benefit. Two particularly salient points from the article:

I might just take all of my title names from classnamer from now on. It really saves me from the hardest part of writing these damned things.

Glenn Greenwald, whose writing is better than mine is and will likely ever be, put into words quite succinctly the major problem with media in the united states in a column today. As is all too often, Chomsky's propaganda model is at least peripherally relevant to the discussion, and in fact (as elegant as a logically flawless mathematical theorem) is but a superset of the specific observed behavior.

John McCain's 2000 campaign for president was nicknamed the "Straight Talk Express." The theory was that he was going to give people what everyone assumes they might want: a politician that speaks frankly and truthfully about the government. He failed to do so in 2000 and lost his parties nomination. He's running again in 2008, and again he's failing spectacularly to live up to his campaigns moniker. It was kind of to be expected, since he was a politician, but still it's still a sorry reflection on our political climate. Even a terrible ordeal in a Viet Cong prisoner of war camp couldn't persuade someone to be honest to their constituents.

I saw Chris Hedges on the Colbert Report a few weeks ago, and frantically scoured the internet for material he had written. He seems to have a pretty good handle on the Robertson/Falwell Fascist movement, and it's something that I wanted to learn more about. He's also a plain spoken, intelligent graduate of harvard divinity school, which is something I did not know even existed.

I am virtually surrounded by this chuck klosterman article. People who know me well know that I am never really interested in one thing for very long, and that my interests almost always run deep. Such is the case with virtually all of the things I write about, and it just so happens that video games.

Politics isn't dead, public service is dead. Selfless acts are dead. When John F. Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, he wanted to pay tribute to unsung (political) heroes who risked (and quite often sacrificed) their careers by taking a position they deemed necessary regardless of becoming political pariahs. In some of his chosen cases, the public servant was cornered into his decision. Others actually risked (and lost) everything for what they did.

A few days ago, as we rode home from Japanese Class on the 126 bus, I was speaking to ceache about the current situation in the middle east, and what it has to do with the history of the region and the history elsewhere. I drew heavily upon material learned from various sources, but particularly unsettling was the conclusion of the conversation.

Things have been pretty hectic at work recently, which kinda makes me cherish free time a little more. Work always seems to heat up right as I get enamored with a personal project of some sort. I know hiragana damn solid now, been reading comics to facilitate in trimming recognition time. This is just some stuff I was thinking about, falling under my favorite subjects: music & politics. And I guess, movies too.

For most of today I was trying my hand at developing an object oriented framwork that would result in generated code that would look as if it was handwritten. My preliminary results are pretty encouraging. The main idea comes from the the design of PHPhtmlLib, but I wasn't happy with the generated code from that library and wanted something a little more XHTML friendly.

Tonight I watched The Take, a film made by Naomi Klein who I very much respect for her insights and reporting in Iraq. It follows the struggles of occupied worker-run factories in Argentina and somewhat excitingly affirms that many of my beliefs about the virtues of worker control and cooperative economics. Its not available in the US yet, but if you can find it anywhere (it is up on the dissident torrent site Chomsky torrents) I highly recommend watching it.

Newsweek has been in the news a lot lately for an article they published by Michael Isikoff about Qu'ran and religious abuse at Gitmo and Bagram. This was published on the 9th, and on the 12th there were riots in Afghanistan. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan assailed the article, saying:

This past Thursday; the 28th of April 2005; I went to see a show at the Knitting Factory. The effects of listening to music can sometimes take a while to sink in, and sometimes it takes something else to make you realize why what you've just listened to was incredible. Any band with a keyboard and a disco beat can make you dance; it takes a special band to make you smile. Thank's Palomar.

Completely different:

I began what was quite an interesting day waking up at 8:47 and wondering just exactly what time it was. 8:47 was apparently not enough of a reference point, and was certain alien when compared to the likes of the "7:30" that I had set my alarm for. I stumbled out of bed anyway, donned some ostensibly business-like garb and set out for the bus, which thankfully arrived on Ferry St. shortly after I did. I sat next to an odd fellow this morning; Long hair, beard, and an "Independent" backpack with a button that I liked very much. It read: "The problem isn't Bush" in small letters circling the top, and in large letters on a white banner "It's Capitalism!".

When I first saw Michael Moore's 2nd film, Bowling for Columbine, I was amazed that there were people in a position to make films and get them distributed that actually looked at some of the problems I saw. Of course, his 3rd comes after an Oscar, a Palm d' Our, and much controversy; so I viewed it with different people under different circumstances.

Inevitability rears its inevitably rearing head recently, in the form of exhaustion from overwork, the death of a terminally ill 93 year old ex-president, or in the form of an MPAA takedown notice.

I read the whole archive of Elf Only Inn the other day, mostly at the impersonal behest of Tycho, who's on comic has left me somewhat empty these days. This archive reading of course reminded me that I haven't read the Thin H Line/Sexy Losers in a while, so maybe I'll eventually get to doing that.

After carefully reading my own writing, namely RPGd which takes up so much vertical space as to make me somewhat embarrassed, I realized it was rife with errors. It's not the grammatical or spelling errors, since those don't phase me; its the stylistic errors that bother me. Repetition. Repetition. Ugh.

Today's title is brought to you by an old favorite, RPGd, and is brought to you as such because of the events at the end of Fall Semester '03 at Stevens Institute of Technology as well as Christmas '03 back at the Moiron household. In many ways, the last 3 or 4 weeks of my life have been heavily centered around video games and the pursuite thereof. So, I bring to you my thoughts on these matters.

The need for a subtitle, a la "or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb", which oddly enough came up in political conversation, family banter, and the thanksgiving festivities last night, suddenly presents itself. The need that is, in case you forgot within mhy first of what will probably be many rambling run-on sentences. After all, although most will understand, I'm sure I can probably name at least one person who won't get the title.

I had the pleasure of joining a co-worker of mine for a BBQ this saturday; it was quite the event. The route, for those of you who might be in the area, was to take the path to Journal Square, then a bus up to North Bergen. That was the plan at least. I missed the bus that was in the terminal upon my arrival in Journal Square due to the draconian exact change bus laws. No bother, I can wait 30 minutes. I have games on my phone.

So it becomes apparent that chaotic is in reference to some manner of followed update schedule, and that nondeus simply means that I'm not god... something that you'd think people would get by now, a year and a half later after I made such a brash statement.

This is a message to ticketmaster, who screwed me out of white stripes tickets this past thursday. Fuck you

Last night in my rant, I made reference to how democracy now correspondent Amy Goodman got arrested during Code Pink's march on Washington on Friday the 7th.

Its odd the different perspectives you can get from different news sources. This slashdot article [slashdot.org] refers to a story at the guardian [guardian.co.uk], and paraphrases the article in its title saying that Echelon, a technology to track cellular phone usage and pinpoint the locations of calls and receptions of calls, was used to trap and capture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They don't seem to say much about the 18 million pounds ellegedly given to an Al Qaeda foot soldier in exchange for the information on Mohammed's whereabouts.

There is a progressive news talk show called Democracy now featuring the fairly well known (in the underground scene) Amy goodman. For a while now I've been catching the early morning show on my satellite dish, but anyone who wants can listen on 99.5 pacifica radio. Today's headlines included the proliferation of government materials that suggest the united states and UK government planted bugs on UN security council members in an attempt to garner support for their new resolution, the "code pink" march on Washington DC this past weekend (where Goodman was arrested for filming the protesters), and the issue of MSNBC firing Donahue in favor of more conservative talk show hosts in an attempt to seem like "less of a hotbed for the antiwar movement".

After a long downtime, and probably another few days of a transitional period, my backend is finaly back to an order that is working enough for me to update with it. Or at least, so things seem. I promised lots of things; pictures and at least a little blurb about the rally I went to, and a few other things, and these promises will be delivered eventually. For now, though, I have to pass on them.

I would have read arsjerm's rant in its completion if it wasn't laced with the mind control of the corperate media. As Phil has already pointed out, you cannot trust news from CNN, nor the other "media" controlled by massive conglomerates. Its not that I'm some conspiracy theorist, I'm just one of the many Americans who are able to see through a twisted, antihumanist slant and an almost ridiculous self righteous belief that we have the right to kill millions of people around the world.

For a long time now, I've lived with insecurity in a way which in some ways reflects my ideals for political and social structure (or anarchy). Its not that I don't want to be secure, or I can't be secure, its that for the most part, besides your occasional Mac user from japan looking for a Narsillion demo, only friends check my site. For this reason, the comment's system was launched with the warning and the notification that it does not in any way alter content of your posts. For this reason, the root password to my machine is fairly public knowledge.

That's right, there's not just a gallery, there's a whole museum of lost, helpless little boys. Even the the government is getting in on the act (again). Hey hey, what can I do? Apparently, the answer is no longer invoke my constitutional rights.

When I started to use Linux full time a few months ago, it was something else. It was special. Not many people were doing it, and those who were really had something. I decided to join in on the revolt against Microsoft. And indeed, others have joined me in this. In fact, just today..

Fresh off my install of KDE 3.1 RC5, I've been given a reason to use Linux and a reason to love KDE again. Its not how great keramik combined with everaldo's crystal theme look, or how polished the gray facade of my WM makes the OS as a whole feel; its how open source software makes way for innovations that closed source software simply doesn't allow.

Unlike others, or even others still, I will decline the opprotunity to do a year in review? Why? Well, first of all, I'm a little "reviewed" out from the semester in review. Second, if you want to see what went on, if you really want to know what happened, you can read the damned archives. And lastly, I am lazy. I mean, its taken me 12 days just to write this. If you want a good year in review, unlike the first two mentioned, you can go here.

Sometimes, you see the old you in a new place; in particular, I see my old writing style, and specifically the things that I write about, turning up in the second pea down the pod. In light of the recent discovery that my updates have become rather impersonal and, barring the off chance that you actually want to learn, useless, I've decided to stretch the boundaries of my style by writing 3 different updates in three different styles. If there were more examples, perhaps I'd add a fourth and fifth as well.

Who knew the government was so much fun?

If boring is what you seek, then seek no more. Now that the traditional insult is out of the way, heres another installment of the whenever the hell I feel like news.

Nothing is more painful than pain, and in the past few days I've had my fair share. Right now I create this with my spine suffering some cruel twist, an evil contort that must be made to function in a chair. My stomach muscles have been forced to become 5 times stronger than before, and my right leg is needed to move my left. Of course, left's all over the place are being weakened; for example, in our own government.

Today has, to a large degree, been a mixed bag of things that piss me off and things that inspire an undescribeable ammount of awe. Lets take it from the begining, shall we?

I wish the gainax people would know their role and get out the kitchen, but alas we will all have to live with the horrified slanderous title of "fooly cooly". Luckily for me, I may get to live with it sooner rather than later.