Jaco Pastorius, Mike Stern, and George in happier times, sort of. This ends my test of Picasso 2 and Hello. I approve. I wish you could re-size images directly in Picasso though.  

you may have missed gary turner's National Enquirer Spoof a couple of years back. Damn, it was funny. 

a shot of george at using picasso 2 and hello to upload. 

Behind the Iron Firewall

Go get your favorite About.com advice tidbits now, before the NY Times sweeps them behind the firewall.

The New York Times Co. has agreed to acquire online consumer-information provider About Inc. for $410 million in cash, an indication that the media company is looking to the Internet as a channel for future growth.

OH MY GOSH--you mean that Internet thing might take off after all?

The media company plans to operate About.com as its own distinct business division and market Times products through the website.

We'll see.

If they only knew that they could have bought 410,000,000 bloggers for the same money. ;-)

STWC-side Theatre

How did I miss it? Give a Listen to Stavros read his great post about the raven, which his good friend the mighty Bearman has mixed piano behind.

It's really, really nice.

Kinda what I thought a WonderChicken might sound like.

And while you're there, don't forget to re-visit Weblog: The Movie.

Stav, you remain ball-filled. You're my hero, man.

Liberal: The New Nigger

I don't know why I torture myself with drive-time A.M. talk radio, but I do. Every day. To and From. I tell myself it's homework. That I'm evesdropping on the enemy's secret communiques. I've tapped into their proprietary connection; I'm decoding their messages. I'll take them down yet!

But it never works that way.

I wind up spitting coffee all over my air vents.

In attempting to decode the secret language of the Red-State-Right (Political Twister, anyone?) I've noticed that the died-in-the-wool redneck now uses the words "liberal" and "nigger" interchangeably. They are at opposite ends of the snuff-chewing political correctness meter.

On talk radio call-in shows, Shane, Bobby, and Sonny Ray claim that "those liberals" are the cause of America's ills -- welfare, crime, what have you. Doesn't matter. If it's bad, the liberals are at the root of the problem. Then, at the corner bar or filling station, among friends, when the sensitivity meter is off for the night, these same societal ills are the work of none other than "those niggers."

The Poli-Racial linguistical twists and turns that have leeched into the mainstream of our newly-'terrorized' nation are downright frightening.

I don't think I need to tell you why.

But maybe I do need to switch to F.M.

Welcome Home

You probably think that when I'm not blogging, I'm writing super-copy for mega-corpoations, sporting fancy sunglasses and an expensive laptop to Starbucks to work with the other trendy involuntarily separated outcasts of the 00s.

Har-De-Har!

What I'm really doing is hanging my DSL wire over the footboard of my bed, hoping it doesn't slip out again since it long ago lost the little prongy-thing that keeps it neatly stuck inside the ethernet port, emailing long-lost bloggers encouraging them to come back.

Take for instance Tom Shugart. An officer and a gentleman who has entered his seventh decade, Tom is one blogger whom this blog mama (you see I helped spawn Tom some years back) is not about to let sit silently.

Tom's a solid old-school blogger.

Tom's not a shock jock. Tom's not a pundit. Tom doesn't chase conferences. Tom doesn't lose sleep wondering whether blogging is journalism or vice versa. Tom's not looking for a book deal (though if you want to give him one, he has a lot to say). He's Tom. And you should keep up with him.

Now that I've twisted his arm, shall we say, to get back to where he once belonged... I confess that Tom only mentions PART of my email to him in his post. I thought you might like to read the whole thing. Feel free to use it as a template to coax your own lost bloggers back online:

HEY BABY--IT'S YOUR BLOG MAMA TALKIN'! DON'T GIMME NO LIP, NOW, JUS GET YOURSELF BACK ONLINE TO THAT BLOG AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ONE LITTLE WORD ABOUT IT.

DON'T TELL MAMA YOU BUSY, DON'T TELL MAMA YOU GOT BETTER THANGS TO DO. LORD KNOWS THAT'S THE TRUTH. WOOHOOO. THAT IS THE EVER LOVIN TRUTH.

THE OTHER TRUTH IS THAT THESE HERE PUNDITS ARE COMIN INTO OUR NEIGHBORHOOD AND CAUSIN ALL KINDS OF TROUBLE. THEY THINK WE'RE THE RIFRAF BECAUSE, WELL, I DON'T KNOW, I GUESS IT'S WHO WE HANG OUT WITH IN THIS BLOGPLACE, OR MAYBE BECAUSE WE DON'T GO TO THEIR CONFERENCES AND AREN'T HIGH-EDUCATED OR WHATEVER, BUT THE PROLEM IS THAT THEY ARE THE REAL RIFRAF AND WHAT THEY'RE TRYING TO DO IS JUST MAKE THIS PLACE THE SAME OLD SAME OLD AS THAT PLACE, AND HELL WHY'D WE COME HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE IF IT WAS GOING TO BE ALL CONCRETE AND BRICKS AND WINDOW OFFICES AND WHO-PUBLISHED-WHAT-WHERE-THIS-WEEK?

SO WHAT I'M SAYING IS IN DOING OUR SMALL PARTS--ALL OF US LIL PIECES--WE CAN KEEP OUR LITTLE DAISIES GROWING ALL OF US, AND YOU WATCH OUT FOR MY DAISIES AND I'LL WATER YOUR DASIES AND WE'LL WATER FRANK'S DASIES, AND ALL OF THOSE BLOG PUNDITS THEY WON'T EVEN NOTICE BECAUSE THEY'LLJUST BLATHER ON AND ON AND ON. WHATEVER. DON'T WORRY BOUT THEM. I GOT VOODOO ON THEIR SORRY ASSES ALREADY.

BUT SEE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH DASIES OUT HERE, SO YOU BETTER COME BACK.

-YO MAMA.

Next, I'm after Michael O'Connor Clarke, about whom I've been thinking--a lot lately. Well, I should say we.

See I got my PEEPS Paynter helping me locate some of our old blogmates.


[[Above: PEEPS Paynter]]

So welcome home, Tom Shugart. And If anyone's seen MOCC, tell him his sister's lookin' for him.

MOCC--If you're out there, email us.

Fire Safety Already!

My poor kid has been indoctrinated into the fire safety honor society, I swear.

Let me just disclaim here--a popular activity among bloggers--that I believe highly in fire safety. Fire is no joking matter. Fire is hot. It burns. It kills. It is nothing to laugh about. I am glad my child has spent the last THREE MONTHS in school receiving weekly fire safety lessons from the local fire crew, because, again, fire (as in my house is on!) is bad.

But then, so are my kid's phobias.

You see, I knew the fire safety thing had been bothering her. Little hints gave it away. The yelps from her room, for instance: "MOM! What was that beep!? Was that the smoke alarm!?" Jenny Penny. The sky ain't falling. She eyes the smoke detector on her way out of the house, into the house, and sometimes in between. She doesn't trust it even though she's seen George change the batteries.

But now that the unit on fire safety is almost complete, and the entire first grade has been appropriately traumatized, Jenna gave me some lessons this evening on what to do in the event of a fire.

Not only do they teach "stop drop and roll" these days, but they add instructions for those of us who might roll into various items during our rolling: if you roll into an object, turn and roll some more.

Jenna demonstrated the technique tonight, rolling alternatively into the dresser, the bed, and the rocking chair. I thought I'd have to take her to the ER not for burns, but for a broken arm caused by a flawed rolling technique. Imagine explaining that one. Yah, fire safety.

I also learned that she's selected a meeting spot for our family in the event of a house fire.

The first spot she picked was the rose bush, which is approximately 14 inches from the house. I suggested something a little further from the source of flames and flying embers. She said she'd considered the mail box, but then thought better of it since it is on the road and we might get hit by a car.

I pondered the irony of that scenario.

We settled on the stump where our willow tree used to be. This is typical southern location language--we often mark geographic landmarks by what "used to be" there.

So, after agreeing to meet where the tree used to be, she gave me a demonstration on how we should leave the house, crawling, one after the other. Daddy first, then her, then me. I pictured our large bodies slithering our way down the stairs and thought about how long that could take--10 minutes? 12?

Long enough to burn like a match.

I suggested, alternatively, that we run like hell.

Jenna explained that if there was smoke, no running. It's slither only. She wasn't negotiating that point.

I thought once again about home schooling.

Then she told me how leaving the house would work.

1) Mommy, you go outside and go to Jack's to call 911.

2) Next I'll go out and wait where the tree used to be.

3) When daddy comes out, he'll say, 'Have you seen mama!?' and I'll say, 'Yes, she's gone to the neighbor's to call 911."

I corrected her:

I WILL GRAB YOU AND RUN LIKE HELL.

I demonstrate:

"FIRE! FIRE! WHERE'S MY BABY!?" I run into her bedroom from mine, grab her blanket which I pretend is her, and rush past the real jenna who's standing in the hallway giggling, toward the front door in a flash that lasts about 1.2 seconds.

She's still laughing.

She did learn other important lessons I hadn't thought of. For instance, parents, we need to show our young children how to open their bedroom windows so that they can scream for help in the event of a fire. And so that they can sneak out when they're 15.

Apparently, we also must remember NOT to put a tramploline under their bedroom windows. According to the fire chief, this almost never works out well.

So remember, class, stop, drop, roll, and as always, if you roll into something, turn and roll some more.

That's all for this evening's first-grade fire safety lesson.

A few posts, just because

Winding down the evening here, jenna's snoring away beside me, I'm bed-topping (blogging in bed on my laptop). Quick question--or dilemma. I have been using Trend Micro's PCcillin for anti-virus for a couple of years, and have been using webroot's spysweeper for spyware detection/removal.

Well, two times in the last six months I've ended up with a worm that is un-get-rid-able, and so I've ended up restoring; i.e., back to XP Pro on a desktop--having to reload all my applications, etc. AND my Outlook email file is always too big to copy to a CD, so I lose my email every time.

So I've downloaded Zone Alarm trial--the whole enchilada. I have the virus protection turned off because it wants me to uninstall PCcillin, which I won't do unless I buy Zone Alarm. But it does seem to be blocking intrusions. I don't seem to have any spyware problems, but I also didn't reinstall spysweeper last week when I restored because I'm sick of it not working hard enough to protect me.

SO, my question is, would you get Zone Alarm for everything?
Or do you prefer using separate virus/spyware/adware/firewall shit?
And if so, in what combination?

I'm really stumped. The more options out there, the more I seem to get slammed.

I am now finally up to date on all Windows updates. I avoided updates last time I restored, and that ended up hammering me.

Ah. fudge.

thanks for any info.

The Dog Ate My Homework... and...

So Sorry; I've come down with the Ebola.

I'm a double ass.

I didn't know Karsh had lost his job in January because of his blog. From Dooced to Karshed.

Skeletor spoke at length about her great disappointment in me while Wednesday Addams crossed her arms and nodded for effect. “And I don’t even know what this 'black gay blogger’ thing is. I mean what is that?” I stifled my laugh as best I could. columns of numbers and posts from my site were photocopied, stapled and collated as she emphasized “we have the proof”. I almost felt like I was Law and Order or something, getting busted for using the taxpayer’s hard-earned money on a new BMW X5 and a summer home in the Hamptons. As she spoke and the other manager nodded, I slouched down in my seat, giving Skeletor a look which said “I can see your point, but I still think you’re full of shit.

I was like, OH MAN, Karsh.

The Washington Post was like, whoa--bloggers have principles; the dude quit.

The blogger renamed his supervisor “Skeletor” and “Wednesday Addams” in an entry about the confrontation. When the was told he would be demoted and had to
dismantle his site, he quit, he said.

Norma Rae Karsh. YEEEAAAH!

And, what does "dismantle" a "website" mean anywah, like we're maintaining these active construction sites or something? We've got to tear down the scaffolding and drive the back hoes home down Peachtree Street? Don't forget the drill bits. Wear your hard hat. Time to dismantle your site.

The world gets stranger n stranger.

I am an ass.

I should have noticed before eight months elapsed, but where's Tom Shugart gotten to?

Anyone know?