I'm a podcast guest star!

One of my favorite podcasts can be found here. It is about logic, and the way it is used/misused/abused in popular culture.

One of my favorite blogs can be found here. It is about the philosophy of science, and other things too.

This week's podcast featured an email I sent to them, containing a link to the blog. So they read my email! Hooray! And then they dissected my assertions with the sharp scalpel of critical thought! Ummm... hooray? Anyway, I have now had my 15 seconds. Because I wrote in to someone else's show. I feel like I did when they printed my letter to the Groo comic book when I was twelve. Except now, I get to blog about the experience! Hooray again!

Automatic society

I just canceled my Netflix account. They asked me why, but then only offered a list of reasons. I chose "other", since "I'm moving in with friends who already have Netflix and your marketshare is so huge it's actually started to hurt you now, take it suckas" wasn't an option. I wonder why.

I think society is getting too damn used to being automated. I mean, Netflix gave me a list of prefab answers to why I might be getting rid of my account; it's just as easy to make a text box and let people give their own creative answers. The problem is, then someone has to actually read all those responses, and make numbers out of them so that the higher-ups can understand what's going on with their business. Their solution is to cut out the middle man and have the people generate the numbers themselves. My solution is to cut out the middle man and have the higher-ups read the responses themselves.

Does anyone want to study a fake society? Here's your chance!

How to read.

I just read a report on CNN.com about what people are searching for. The last paragraph was particularly worrisome, not only because of the subject matter, but also because this guy knew what people were searching for. I mean, how hard is it to obtain not only the nature of people's searches, but also the IP address from which those searches originated? The government already taps our phones illegally; why not crack down on people who search for information They don't want us to have?

If I could organize people, I'd set up "search days", where tens of thousands of people search for particular disturbing things a few times on that day. Example: "How to start a revolution" Day. Also, more abstract and post-modern searches: "The ballistic damage of the common stream trout" Day. Thoughts?

Posting more and more...

Now that I have some kind of internet in my apartment again, I can't help but keep you up to date. EVERY FIFTEEN SECONDS, if possible.

Anyway, here is how I want to remember the wedding next month. It doesn't have to go like that, but I want to remember it that way anyway, so if it seems like my stories about the event don't match other peoples' stories, video records, or the laws of physics, just ignore me. Like always.

Here is a DVD that everyone should watch. Remember Tiny Toons? Yeah. Tiny Toons is on there.

I feel like Michael Moore, but for Michael Moore.

So, I rented a couple of DVDs tonight. They were old TV series from the late 90s. You might have heard of "Dilbert: The Series" (or at least the comic strip). It was a little funnier than I remember, and I don't think Fox aired all the episodes, because I remember a lot less continuity than was demonstrated in the episodes I watched tonight. The other show was Michael Moore's "The Awful Truth". It's about what you'd expect, but it only takes 30 minutes to watch an episode (I'd thought it was an hour-long show).

So here's my problem: the Dilbert DVD had no subtitles, but the closed caption worked just fine. I like to read what I'm hearing, damnit. Awful Truth? Nothing. No titles, no CC, nothing. This came as a little shock to me, but might have come as more of a shock to the people who live around me, and who may have wanted to sleep during the night. I admit, I could have waited to watch the shows, but this is when I'm awake, and it's nice to be able to turn the volume way down.

Anyway, I decided that this was an unfair situation, so I wrote an e-mail. To Michael Moore. As follows:

Dear Mr. Moore,

While I have long respected your work as a documentarian, I have a question about the DVD version of your old TV program (which I only recently discovered) "The Awful Truth". There do not appear to be either subtitles or closed captions on my copy of the Season One discs; why not? I understand if there were technical issues, or if the then-new technology of DVDs was not understood enough to implement one of these features, or if you simply did not have control over the decision, but still, I'd like to know.

I wonder how he'll respond.

I miss TV.

I just don't have enough to do, I guess. Or more correctly, enough that I want to do, since I have to do laundry, and the dishes, and clean, and get ready to move, and cook food.

In other news, the cyborg revolution just got one step closer. They're coming. FOR YOUR LIMBS.

On a break.

Damn, but catching up on webcomics is hard work. To all those otaku out there who get deprived for a few months, here are some tips:
1. Stay hydrated! Laughing your ass off counts as exercise (well, probably for YOU, anyway), so be sure to keep your body's fluids balanced. (Ew.)
2. Try to remember where you left off. Archives don't always end in the most recent comic, and you could be rereading a couple of dozen (or a hundred or so) strips before you get into the stuff you haven't seen.
3. Make the time to make the time. Don't start on a day when you would conceivably have to show up to work or a date (I made a funny!) over the next couple of days, and do dishes and laundry beforehand.

When I quit smoking again, I'll probably take up knitting again. I have some projects that need finishing, and after that, I can supplement my income by selling handmade hats on eBay. I think I can charge a good deed premium for people who want to help out an ex-smoker who just wants to make an honest go of things and turn their life around. I do not have to mention in the ad that I am not a hot young punk girl, or that mainstream Christianity gives me little more than mocking-fodder. What do you think?

Guess where I am...

Here's a hint: it has one bedroom, one bathroom, and I pay rent here. And some of you occasionally crash on my cheap-ass couches.

That's right! I'm at home. A neighbor just recently set up a wireless network which they foolishly forgot to password protect. I have spent the past four hours catching up on a few of my favorite webcomics. Here is one for anyone with cats who are naughty.

I expect my character on WoW will make a recovery from his laziness (for which, I suppose, I have only my own laziness to blame). But first, there are piles and piles of webcomics to wade through. I have had sex, and I have had webcomics, and I honestly cannot, at the present moment, express a definitive preference between the two. But it is significant that webcomics bring little risk of rejection....

Revenge of the coffee blogging.

I think this will be my last Kalamazoo-based coffee blog; I'm moving soon, and I've got a good idea of the coffee shops in this town.

Ironically, this is not a true coffee blog; I am at Starbucks (a fitting coda to this movement), arguably the biggest purveyor of caffeine in the world (does anyone know how to stack them up against Coca-Cola?), and I cannot get on their wireless network. It is run by T-Mobile, the cell phone service provider, and you need to be a T-Mobile customer to use their network. Not a customer? No problem, they say! Just pay ten bucks for a day's use of any of their wireless networks. So customerhood is inevitable for users.

I'm drinking something called an "Orange Mocha", which purports to be "Tall". I know I'm not the first person to make fun of Starbucks' alternative size-name scheme, and I know that it makes a hell of a lot more sense than the fast-food move a few years back (in which they had "Medium", "Large", and "Extra-Large", but nowhere could you get a "Small" anything), but still. This coffee is not tall. I am tall. Redwoods are tall. The Empire State Building and the Sears Tower are very fucking tall. My coffee is short. This is even contextual; compared to other coffees offered here, this is a short coffee. I must admit, though, that it is very good. It's like a liquid Chocolate Orange (and if you don't know what that is like, I pity you. It is at least two forms of therapy wrapped in foil.) I guess liquid sort of defeats the structural purpose of the Orange, but it still tastes damn good.

Well, time to pack up and find a network that I can actually use, so I can present to you my intelligent and pithy comments.

More from the pit.

I'm on campus today. Work last night wasn't bad, so I thought I'd take advantage of their generous WiFi network to reload my WoW. It got broke, so I had to kill it from my computer, and now I am reinstalling. I got it all set up, but now I have to go home and go to bed. But it's not a total loss; I can play anytime now, (as long as I'm willing to hunt down a wireless network) and I got caught up on a few of my favorite webcomics that I'd been neglecting.

I'm moving in with Mike and Kim, in case you didn't know. It will be, by a wide margin, the smartest thing I've done since I dropped out of law school. Then, WoW and comics ALL THE TIME!!!! Yay!

I just couldn't help but laugh.

This guy does art for Jonathan Coulton. He has video on his site. You should watch.