The damn junebugs are here.

So when you have two pair on the flop, Ks and Js, after raising it up to 4x BB, and you’re betting the pot every single freaking time you have a chance to bet, and you still can’t run off the guy drawing to a 3-outer…and he hits…on the river…for about the fifth time in one session…do you just go ahead and quit playing? I mean, what’s the fucking point? How big a roll do you have to have?* Does everything require an All-In today? Is that the only way to play?

* ANSWER: Bigger than anything I’ve got, apparently. I’ve entered the Trough of Despair.

The anonymous toad ripping off poker bloggers’ content for it’s banner-farm poked it’s head out of the cesspool of “internet marketing” long enough to hip me to the whys and wherefores of this new form of thievery. I spent a few minutes dismantling this schmuck, but first, a word from the US Copyright Office, courtesy of pal The Everlasting Phelps (who I’m pretty sure is a JD):

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Everything that is not explicitly placed in the public domain is copyrighted. Not just things that have the little “c” at the bottom, or have a copyright line on them. EVERYTHING.

Don’t take my word for it. Ask the U.S. Fing Copyright Office:

When is my work protected?
Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created.

Oh, and this, for all the folks getting ripped off by script kiddies hijacking your work:

And, since you are running ads, you are liable for damages. IIRC, the damages can be trebled, meaning that TFG [ed: affected bloggers] can get triple everything you have ever been paid for those ads. Before you take out expenses; he gets triple the gross.

Who did you say your lawyer was? Some guys might want to talk to him about damages.

Now, on to my stunning display of petty intellectual one-upmanship:

Read the rest of this entry »

New Sparks, including an A Manifesto. I love Manifestos.

The True Hillbillies disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing Twang conditions. Let the Greedy Corporate classes of Nashville recording and Mainstream Radio tremble at a Twang Revolution. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win.

HARD-WORKING, TWO-STEPPING HILLBILLIES OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

Read it all, brothers…

Yes, I still want to bring him to Raz. I must get cracking on that.

Pursuant to this rant published last night under the influence of dental-induced pain:
Honest to Pete, I don’t think there’s any way for us web hippies to get around thieves.

I think there is, at least for the bloggers who have their own domain. It goes something like this:

if requesting_page NE offender then exit;
transpose(real_rss_feed, garbage_rss_feed);

OK, my coding is a little out of date (quit laughing RIGHT NOW). You get the idea. You could even array the offenders. I think we’ve got a few poker-playing coding geniuses that can put together an .htaccess using mod_rewrite that will do that. Give me a few days and I’ll hack it out myself. Heck, it’s probably already done.

My garbage_rss_feed would contain graphics of vile barnyard pr0n, but I’m a very evil bastard when it comes to pinheads stealing content & getting huffy when asked to stop.

Anyway, one of you under-utilized day-jobbers get on it…

Another item I meant to post last week, this time about property rights and protecting them from local governments (“…and we’re here to help”), from the Claremont dudes. It dovetails nicely with the slapdown of the strong-mayor plan this weekend in Dallas, though:

This is too good – the concept that the city might have to consider the potential cost of its regulations is totally foreign to Madame Mayor. Apparently, the option of regulating a little less doesn’t even occur to her.

What she’s really irate about, it turns out, is that her beloved smoking ban may now be in jeopardy. The Dallas business owners who’ve lost a ton of business as a result of the city-wide ban on smoking in public places are already lining up to demand compensation if this bill passes. It will be fun to watch.

The linked MorningSnooze article is full of shock and outrage from the politicos who are learning (maybe, but doubtful) that being elected to the City Council does not make them King of the World.

• “Good God almighty, they are killing us,” said Dallas City Council member Leo Chaney
• “The cities are getting the short end of the stick,” she [Miller] said. “They are capping our ability to make money and limiting our ability to hire lawyers to defend cases. It’s a strange vibe here.”
• “Like we have extra money to spend,” Ms. Miller said.

I meant to post about this last week when I read it at The Wife’s place, but events overtake. Micheal Johnson of Rockzilla.net fame is holding a food drive with the North Texas Food Bank. The bottom line is that it’s a good place to donate some of your ill-gotten poker gains to help out the less fortunate in our great Republic. The really thing* about this is that it’s all virtual — clicky, clicky, clicky, done. No digging around the pantry for dusty tins of pork-n-beans, peas-n-carrots, yellow wax beans, or *SHUDDER* lima beans.

Let me take a moment to sing the praises of Rockzilla World, and Mikie. It’s simply some of the best writing and reviewing on the net for the alt.country / Americana / call-it-what-you-will musicosphere. Mike has collected up a posse of dudes and dudettes who really love the music, and it shows. You can’t go wrong checking there on a regular basis if you need some twang in your life.

* Random phrase uttered by a drunken friend that makes no sense, except it makes sense.