This is a nice birthday present (or Mother’s Day present, since it’s from Sunday). Tim Hulsey, brilliant cultural dude, talks about the Western movie:

And here, as they say, is where I get off. Granted, if you’re a fan of repertory cinema, you’re not likely to see a classic Western in New York City, the very mention of which inspires a grizzled cowboy in a picante sauce commercial to cry, “Git a rope!” But ironically, you’re much more likely to see these movies in Manhattan than in Omaha, or Santa Fe, or any of the other places traditionally associated with the movie Western. Being a fan of movie westerns is much more lonely, when you have only a television and a DVD player to give you your cowboy fix.

You might not know this, or be able to guess, but I loooooove the Western. The age of the satellite teevee has ruined me, too, because I can get two or three channels devoted to the Western. Is there any possible way life could get better, short of free beer? And they come with all the schtick that surrounds the Western movie, like re-runs of Bonanza and Rawhide and The Virginian.

Well, anyway…Tim talks about the Western, how it relates to film noir (my other fave movie genre), and how audiences are still (still!) influenced by the Western. May it ever be thus, hombres…

One day I’ll bore you all to tears with my contention that the absolute top-dog best treatise on the duality of man is embodied in the characters of Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove.

Cobb on wacky GUI tools:

I take that back. What’s so absolutely perfect about this product is that it allows you to generate executable code that you can drop into obscure directories on your customer’s servers. Only you know what they do and only you can fix them. That’s evil genius.

I know a former mainframe systems programmer who worked like that…he’s in sales now, though.

Love this line: idiot proof visual drag and drop fecal-torium

Man, sometimes I really do miss coding…bare-metal assembler was my milieu, back when 16MB of core was a daily reality, and the dream gig was whipping the OS into shape for multiple partitions. I just stop sometimes and dream of what I could have done with a gigabyte of memory. I would have had tape drives dancing the jitterbug…

It’s my birthday (koff45koff), but that’s not important — it’s also

Like I needed an excuse…

My sensei (to whom I bow) Hog On Ice caught this. He has a superb cookbook called Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man - The World’s Unhealthiest Cookbook. I just love that…

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.

Jumpin’ Jeebus — it’s STILL going on. Some brainless idiot has managed to suck up a template that re-displays RSS feeds from the poker bloggers and is presenting it under the name “poker.all-information.info“. Clearly, that has caused some personal problems for the site owner/thief:

This site has been redesigned to use a better blogging system. Previous posts are no longer available. This site uses RSS feeds. RSS feeds are provided by blog’s owners themselves so their information is syndicated for use on other blogs and websites. All feeds used on this site are from www.syndic8.com. They are all poker blog feeds. Many poker blogs report news items found on other blogs and news sites. This site is no different. Take a look at the blog empire created by www.weblogsinc.com. They link to all their blogs which include cancer, diabetes, technology, video games, etc. This blog does the same. Local law enforcement and attornies have been contacted regarding the threats, and harrassment by guinnessandpoker.blogspot.com and harrassment, false statements and inciting harrassment by www.kebzweb.com. Emails from both parties have been blocked since May 5, 2005 and are not being received.

It’s fairly clear from this jackass’ lead paragraph that s/he knows what s/he is doing is wrong, but is attempting to find ways to weasel out of it. Let’s take it point by point, shall we?
Read the rest of this entry »

Good OpinionJournal article by James Taranto about the so-called Religous Right. I wish everyone would read this who’s ever typed one word about the coming theocratic takeover of America by Bible-thumping, Jesus-shouting, cross-brandishing weirdos:

For the most part, the religious right has responded in good civic-minded fashion: by organizing, becoming politically active, and supporting like-minded candidates. This has required exquisite discipline and patience, since changing court-imposed policies entails first changing the courts, a process that can take decades. Even then, “conservative” judges are not about to impose conservative policies; the best the religious right can hope for is the opportunity to make its case through ordinary democratic means.

In the past three elections, the religious right has helped to elect a conservative Republican president and a bigger, and increasingly conservative, Republican Senate majority. This should make it possible to move the courts in a conservative direction. But Senate Democrats, taking their cue from liberal interest groups, have responded by subverting the democratic process, using the filibuster to impose an unprecedented supermajority requirement on the confirmation of judges.

…but I know they won’t — it’s easier to be sarcastic and dismissive.

This is unheard-of for me, that I actually finished last month’s Atlantic before this one showed up in the mail. But such did happen, so I got to settle in with this month’s cover story, and it’s a humdinger. I strongly suggest that you out there who fancy yourselves foreign policy / military wonks hasten out to pick one up at the bookstore, if you don’t already subscribe. The title is How We Would Fight China

The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was

There is a ton of information and material in there to chew on, and it’s worth every nickel. If I can ever find the time, I’d like to discuss some of the stuff in the article here. We’ll see.

It also pleases me that I beat Craig to the punch for once about an Atlantic article.

Good riddance to bad politicos. Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya.

“This is a repudiation of Mayor Miller’s leadership,” said Michael A. Gonzales, deputy director for the Dallas chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “Her ideas were archaic, and the city is looking for new leadership to guide us.”

Political analysts say the strong-mayor measure would have had better success if voters hadn’t associated it with Ms. Miller. She’s unpopular among the city’s black residents. And many of those interested in changing the city’s form of government felt uneasy having Ms. Miller – with her sharp tongue and polarizing nature – as the city’s first strong mayor.

Let me state unequivocally that the current form of government in the City of Dallas is a broken-down, smoking wreck. Dallas needs a strong mayor…but Dallas just needs a strong mayor that isn’t Mayor Mommy with her stupid Park Cities ideas about idiotic bridges, smoking bans, and dance halls.

I’m glad to see the southern part of the city pull together and vote with some self-interest, but I’m damn sorry it has to be under the filthy banner of racial politics. I was also heartened by this note:

“I think the business community played very little role, and that’s what doomed this,” Dr. Wilson said. “If this was going to pass, it needed some powerful political segment there. And there was nobody who stepped in on the pro side to counter this.”

What little business community there is in Dallas today, relative to the olden days of yore, just doesn’t like Laura Miller, I bet. She was a muck-raking rich-kid journo at the alterna-fishwrap, she swung to power by promising the moon to everybody in her wacky liberal constituency and mouthing platitudes about potholes to the generic proles, then jumped right into bed with the movers & shakers in this town — real estate dudes, mainly, these days. And if anybody knows anything about stabbing you in the back while licking your face, it’s real-estate dudes.

So, next up for this death-spiral city — maybe we can find someone born here, raised here, and interested in building something permanent here (hint: not stupid damn bridges but the damn river itself), to run on a strong-mayor platform. And I ain’t got a clue who that would be…maybe someone from the south side, an entrepreneurial type, who can afford to do the job that needs to be done, without visions of political grandeur and senatorships. I’d vote for that guy or gal.

NB: I love it when the Claremont Remedy agrees with me. heh heh

That was kind of a surprise.

Cuban made a big mistake firing off the confetti cannons. Pretty silly for a first round playoff series win. I really wish he would remove himself from the bench, too. Even when he’s just standing there next to the NBA greyhounds, he looks…spastic.

TEEVEE UPDATE: I forgot to mention how much I enjoy the work of Bob Ortegel, Mavs tv analyst. I am a basketball idiot, but Ortegel does an excellent job explaining the game, the players, and the situation to schmoes like me.