sleepover

it's party time. it's webkinz time. it's club penguin time. it's making beaded necklaces time. it's popcorn time. it's polly pocket time. it's melatoin time.

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Way?

"Look for the good... the glass isn't always half empty.. sometimes it's half full."

Way?!?

You see, this is where i get into trouble, 'cuz, no. no i'm fraid it's not. for sheltered white westerners sipping wine and sopping up blog juice maybe. but the planet does not begin and end with a full glass of wine.

go figure.

while you're figuring, read some investigative blogging wherein Madame Levy takes Stormhoek to school on the shady business practices of Tesco, where the wine is being promoted.

Something slightly more informative -- or at least wittier -- than 'sometimes the glass is half full' is deserved in response. I doubt if we'll hear it. After all, things are well with good bloggers everywhere whose glasses are half full--well, probably a good bit more than half if it's half past noon.

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some little bird

so a 'little bird' (what people tell me when i ask them wtf) told of my laptop mac-switching plight and my upcoming birthday (my dad didn't wanna name me Nina June for nothin) and SUDDENLY my paypal account is FLUSH with FUNDS that are going toward a MAC book as soon as I can patch in the rest of the dough, and I cannot COMMUNICATE in mere pixels how overwhelmed I am at the support from more than a dozen of you--each of whom I would like to name, but I know some of you are funny about that, so it puts me in a predicament, how dare you--OMG!

I am not sure how to say thank you to the nth degree, but thank you to the nth degree.

NONE of you had to do this, some of you can't afford to have done this, and many of you did anyway. I don't know what to say.

I really have had trouble lately about what I'm doing here. Not a new story. Many of us are struggling with why. I had lost a lot of faith in the net over the whole KS afffflair, and a lot of faith in what I'm doing here, how much I should be here, where HERE is anymore, and what any of us are doing here.

No big secret that.

It's not the Generous Contributions that have restored something in me. It is the show of support from all of you--some of whom I didn't think even knew I was still around, or whom I assumed had writ me up as being some kind of Really Mean Kid unworthy of further time, love, or readership. Or maybe that was me doing that. Either way.

I'm turning 45 Saturday and this thing--this being here--there is still something to it.

Thank you more than I can say for showing me that even with all the noise, our hearts can still cut through.

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Gabriel Brings a Sledgehammer Down on DRM Issue

Smart smart smart smart. We7 is a soon-to-be-launched music download solution that makes sense for all constituents. It got Peter Gabriel's investor $ and is getting a close -- albiet paranoid -- look from the folks currently sucking distribution and marketing dollars out of artists' pockets.

The new company, based in Oxford, appears to be targeting the UK first with its advert-funding model. Using technology that the company calls "MediaGraft," We7 will dynamically insert 10 second advertisements at the beginning of songs when they are first downloaded. The advertisements will be tailored to the particular user requesting the track, and a version without ads can be downloaded one month later.

Gabriel has been involved in several innovative music startups recently, including The Filter, an automatic playlist generation program that is also free to download. He was also a backer of OD2, a "digital service provider" that has formed the foundation of many European online music stores.

Put a social network behind it and BAM you've got an end-around on MySpace. A 'lil sneak attack. Hey, you never know. I've been right before. I think once or something.

Meanwhile, blogging sucks.

Film at 11.

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