It's pretty long. Text ( behind the cut )

And here's the obligatory bald pic for this year (click to embiggen):

Carlito's Way

Although, you know, if there's one movie I don't need, it's one whose moral seems to be, "you know that loser you used to be? You're fucking stuck with him. Suck on it, jackass."

In lighter news, I've never been happier to see Sean Penn die.

"A favor'll kill you quicker than a bullet."

"Dumb move, but the it's the old instincts coming back."

Tags: movies

I've got The Prisoner playing in the background today, and just hit one of my favorite exchanges from the whole series, which seems especially pertinent just now:

#2: What a piece of luck! We start our election campaign today. A showery outlook is very depressing, don't you think?

#6: Elections? In this place?

#2: Of course. We make our choice every twelve months. Every citizen has a choice. Are you going to run?

#6: Like blazes, the first chance I get.

#2: I meant, "run for office."

#6: Whose?

#2: Mine, for instance.

#6: You have a delicate sense of humor.

#2: Naturally. Humor is the very essence of a democratic society.

So, no arm-twisting, but if any of you Mac fiends were considering the MacHeist bundle anyway, I'd appreciate if you'd use my referral link (https://www.macheist.com/buy/invite/32979) to get there. I'm sort of interested in trying out Circus Ponies Notebook, which takes two referral purchases.

There are three days or so left, and a few cool things in the bundle, depending on your particular needs.

It's going around, so here:

80% Chris Dodd
78% Mike Gravel
77% Hillary Clinton
76% John Edwards
76% Barack Obama
73% Joe Biden
70% Dennis Kucinich
70% Bill Richardson
49% Rudy Giuliani
40% John McCain
37% Tom Tancredo
34% Ron Paul
33% Mike Huckabee
31% Mitt Romney
22% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Funny how everybody I've seen is topping out with candidates that have been completely marginalized for months now. And by funny I mean utterly tragic.

For the past couple of years I have been unable to do automated kiosk check-ins at the airport. I've only been flying American (by coincidence), and I figured maybe it was just an issue with them.

Not so. This morning I found out that I particularly cannot check in online for a Southwest flight. I was on the phone with smallerdemon who did the same thing at the same time for the same flight with no hitches whatsoever. I got a message that I could not check in online due to some vaguely worded thing about Southwest policies, rules and procedures, and that I had to go to a counter agent.

When I'm checking in with an agent, I typically ask them if there's an issue or if there's something I could do differently to avoid this. I've never gotten an answer. The only clue I've ever gotten is that once when I handed my "you cannot check in at the kiosk" slip to the counter agent, he muttered something about "every common name in the world." Now I have a very common sort of name, but surely, surely there's got to be more to it than that. I've asked my father, who has the same very common name, and he doesn't have this issue. On the other hand, I've never done a goddamned thing to anyone, ever. Besides which, if I'm some huge security risk, how is it that seeing me in the flesh resolves it and gets me a boarding pass? Zero added security is conferred by this process. The boarding pass I receive has never tagged me for extra screening. It's just a huge pain in the ass for me to get to that point.

The pointedly unresponsive attitude I get when I ask about this has the cumulative effect of telling me that they are not allowed to tell me why this happens. It goes without saying that because the issue, whatever it is, is not made explicit, there is absolutely no chance for an appeals process. To whom would I appeal, and on what basis? Nobody's made any specific claim I could respond to. I appear to be singled out for a reason that cannot even conceivably be legitimate, but I am not even permitted the information that would allow me to evaluate its legitimacy. People toss around that "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" bullshit, but this makes me feel like I have something to hide that even I don't know about. I'm forced to examine my life and try to figure out what the hell could have possibly triggered this. Is it because I object to the retarded man-monkey ostensibly running the show? Should I avoid publicly writing things like "retarded man-monkey"? This is exactly what's meant by "chilling effect" only I have no solid idea what it's supposed to chill; just a generalized uncertainty. I'm not exactly the up-sticking nail that needs to be hammered down. I'm pretty damned flush already.

This shit needs to end, period. Nobody is safer as a result of this, and frankly I'd like to live in America again, please.

I'm going to BNAT 9!

Current Mood: excited

Well, as the entry deadline has passed, here is my complete application for Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9. I have been trying for a few years. This year I am grouping my entry with smallerdemon and p1aceboeffect in the hopes of basking in their reflected coolness.

( Application behind the cut... )

Tags: bnat
Current Mood: anxious

Via John K's blog, here's a collection of old Cocoa Puffs commercials. It surprised me to learn that Sonny once had a grandfather. More surprising was that Gramps seems to have been a sadistic old man cruelly manipulating a young cuckoo's tragic dissociative psychosis for his own purposes.



Very short step from those ads to...

Gramps
I JUST CAN'T RESIST THE BLACKJACK,
AND FRANKIE THE THUMB WANTS
HIS MONEY!

Sonny
HERE COMES FRANKIE NOW! RUN,
GRAMPS!

Gramps
NO PLACE TO RUN. I'LL BE DEAD IN
MINUTES! BUT SONNY CAN'T RESIST
COCOA PUFFS, MADE WITH REAL
COCOA. I'LL TURN HIM INTO A
COCOA-POWERED MOBSTER
MURDER MACHINE! HERE, BOY. IT
MAKES BREAKFAST TASTE LIKE
CHOCOLATE!

People^* commonly argue whether one should use "email" or "e-mail" when referring to electronic mail. I am fairly sure it doesn't matter, not least because both are wrong. Why not...

Contraction: e'mail
This may have a problem owing to the regional differences in pronouncing "electronic," which can start with a long e, short e or schwa. I don't know how I might respond to a request for my ə-mail address.

Abbreviation: e. mail
This just sounds like a kind of bacterium: Bags of pre-cut salad were recalled from grocery stores this week due to e. mail contamination.

Regardless, English already had standards for shortening terms, and we seem not to have even considered them. I am not a total prescriptivist, but on the other hand a language where all usage is idiosyncratic does nobody any good. Did "e-mail" arise because the hyphen looked more futuristic? Did "email" arise because early adopters simply didn't know or care about spelling or usage concerns? Should we correct it? Should we form a retroactive rule describing it? Should we just give up trying to have a language that yields to any objective analysis at all?

Disclaimer: I care about this much less than it sounds like here.

--------------------
^* By "people" here I am referring to people who write software and the accompanying documentation. Everyone else happily ignores it.