Monday, November 20, 2006

"Celebrity" Is A Form Of Insanity

Looks like "Seinfeld"'s Michael Richards just graduated from the Mel Gibson School Of Religious And Racial Tolerance:

"Seinfeld" star Richards under fire for racial outburst



Somebody there videotaped the outburst, which was aired on a local news program this morning. Offensive and sad.

Humanity Regains An Element Of Sanity

News Corp. cancels O.J. Simpson book

What a huge travesty that would have been had the book and TV special continued. It's one thing for Fox to air specials of animals attacking people and disgruntled employees urinating in customer's cups of coffee, but to air this? I still scoff at the title: "If I Did It". Whaddaya mean "If"?

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, bucko.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

GOOD Music

Went on a spending frenzy at Amoeba Music a few nights ago.

Picked up "What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves".



A four CD box of rare funk and obscure soul.

This box is AWESOME. If you like that funk sound from 1967 through 1977 from the likes of Curtis Mayfield, Allan Toussaint, Little Richard, Earth Wind n' Fire, as well as more obscure talent like Baby Huey & The Baby Sitters and Black Haze Express, this box'll blow you away.

Right on, baby.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Pronunciation Counts

A few weeks ago I downloaded a GPS program into my cell phone. It's awesome. As long as the satellites way up in the sky can find me I'll never get lost, even in cities I only visit once in awhile or have never visited before.

This program gives you real time driving directions. The satellites (you know... the ones way up in the sky) keep track of you while you drive and a synthetic female voice tells you when to turn and how far to drive.

Again: awesome.

Sometimes, however, the voice has problems with pronunciation. Especially with Spanish words.

For example:

Last weekend we went to San Diego and needed to drop my brother-in-law off at La Jolla Village Road in La Jolla.

We humans pronounce it "(LAH HOY-yah) Village Road."

The voice, on the other hand, pronounced it "Louisiana (JOL-lah) Village Road."

It took us several seconds to realize what the voice was saying. I could understand her saying (JOL-lah) -- most voice synthesizers speak phonetically. But "Louisiana"?

It finally dawned on me. "La" is the abbreviation for Louisiana. The voice only said this when we were on the freeway. Once off the freeway, she pronounced it "la". Apparently when you're on the freeway, any word that matches a state abbreviation must mean the state and not a Spanish pronoun.

I'm going to Hawaii in a few weeks. We're going to have fun having the voice pronounce various Hawaiian city and street names like "Likelike" (LEE-kay LEE-kay), "Hoopio" (ho-oh-PEE-oh) and "Kaaawa" (kah-ah-AH-va)...

Friday, November 10, 2006

Wow... Democracy REALLY Works!

Forgot to mention that the Democrats won the Senate, too.

And in two years we can top off this tasty brew with the Presidency, too!

Blogger Beta

I've converted to the NEW Blogger (Beta).

I feel all new and shiny.

Can you smell that new car smell?

(Doesn't the term "Beta" mean something's gonna break?)

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Whaddaya Know... Democracy Still Works

The Democrats have control of the House of Representatives and are within striking distance of the Senate.

And now Rumsfeld has resigned.

While a Democratic Congress vs. a Republican White House will most likely mean a total governmental stalemate for the next two years, that's much, much, much better than the ass-whuppin' we've been getting from our own government since 2000.

There's actually some hope!

Friday, November 03, 2006

What Would This World Be Without People?

A LOT less interesting, for sure.

Naked man with secreted awl arrested (via BoingBoing)

Blank

Wow... have you ever experienced one of those times where you would like to post something profound and life altering and all you come up with is... *BLANK*.



I haven't come across anything WOW-ish on the 'net for awhile.

Lesse, what can I muster up?

- Celebrated another birfday. Things are starting to creak, but nothing's fallen off yet.

- Confused a girl at Starbucks. I was in the drive-thru listening to Yes' "Fragile". When I pulled up to the window the girl asked what I was listening to. I said "Yes". She gave me this odd look and stammered out a "what?". I again said "Yes". She looked even more perplexed and told me that she didn't know what I meant. So I helped her out by describing the band as "The opposite of No". That's when a big, bright, shiny light bulb popped on over her head. All this time, she thought I had been saying "Guess".

- Still going to Hawaii the day after Thanksgiving. YAY! We're going to try and fly first class. BIGGER YAY! I got a new pair of Bose headphones to use on the plane. EVEN BIGGER YAY!

Okay, stuff did happen. So... how you doin'?