Poster for 2012

Update II: removed the fake Brian May tweet.

The title of the song is Time for Miracles and Adam is mentioned on the movie poster (at the bottom).

Plaid

I have kind of a thing for plaid. Here's a plaid generator: www.tartanmaker.com

You can add bands and select colors for the bands. The slide bars for each color affect the relative size of the stripes. Then you can download a .png of one repeat of your plaid (that you can "tile" in graphics software to make a bigger sheet of your plaid, say, for example, for a desktop background).

I'm doing this rather than reading David Brooks for a second time to figure out what he's saying.

Update to show examples:

Not a great week - new update

I was remiss in not mentioning doctor appointment #2 that occurred last week. My personal opinion is that this doctor's specialty is closer to finding the problem than the other specialist I saw last week. Doctor #2 wants me to have 4 tests done before seeing him again - 2 of them are today (and I get to add a new specialist to the mix - doctor #3). The picture, I think, will become clearer by this evening (at least I hope so).

That being said, I'm in a weird mental place these last few days. It's frustrating not knowing what is going on with me, but it's a bit scary because I think it's going to be something more related to doctor #2, which is a much more serious proposition. And, if it turns out that it isn't related to doctor #2 and the tests he wants me to have, while I'll be happy that that whole range of stuff will be probably be ruled out, it doesn't get me any closer (in my mind) to figuring out what is going on.

I just have to keep telling myself that it's a process of elimination - figuring out what it ISN'T gets everyone closer to figuring out what it IS.

And for those of you keeping score at home:

doctor #1 - specialist that if it falls here isn't that serious of a deal.
doctor #2 - specialist that if it falls here is a more serious deal.
doctor #3 - specialist that if it falls here is a more serious deal.

Iceland

Is anyone following what's going on in Iceland? Iceland, faced with the banking disaster of 2008, let its banks go belly up rather than bail them out. Who knows? Maybe they'll be in better shape for it in the end, but right now, things are grim there.

Iceland's gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 2.0 percent in the second quarter from the preceding three-month period for an annual contraction of 6.5 percent, preliminary data from the statistics office showed on Friday.

[JUMP]

'Contrary to other countries in the region, quarterly growth in Iceland is probably going to remain negative for the rest of this year,' he added.

[JUMP]

Although the central bank sees the economy of the island of only 320,000 inhabitants contracting around nine percent this year and shrinking still further next year, there is little scope for reducing interest rates, currently at 12 percent.

There are a lot of fascinating things about the Iceland situation. I'm just beginning to follow it. Maybe others here know more and could write about it. Letting the banks fail is clearly not the end of the story when vast sums of money are owed to other countries or citizens thereof, regardless of what the Icelanders may want. The Iceland situation makes one ponder the meaning of national boundaries and sovereignty.

Update: Here's a link to a Vanity Fair article from April 2009 about Iceland's banking collapse and its response to it.

Sometimes 140 characters is plenty

Update: Well, a few more characters sharpens the point:

Update II: OK, I take it back. 140 characters are not enough to adequately skewer ridiculous ideas with sarcasm:

Fish

Wondering if this is how Scooter cleaned the pool.

The internet IS the real world - Part II: Pro Tennis and Twitter

First a few background facts for you:

1) Andy Roddick and Serena Williams are big Twitter users.

2) People bet on tennis.

3) There have been some stories about players allegedly being involved in throwing matches or otherwise being involved in betting shenanigans. The highest profile case involved Nikolay Davydenko. He was ultimately cleared of throwing a match in 2007. (Interesting story. This was a first round match. Davydenko was ranked 4th; his opponent was ranked 87th. Davydenko won the first set 6-2. THEN, a big chunk of $7 million was bet against him winning. He lost the second set and then retired with a foot injury in the third set. BetFair voided all wagers. The ATP launched an investigation, but cleared him of wrongdoing.) In July, another player, Mathieu Montcourt, was found dead after he was banned from tennis for betting on matches. He was found dead in a stairwell. The cause of death has not been determined. Make up your own story. There are lots of other stories about betting problems in tennis. I was going to catalog them, but it turns out that's a fairly big job, better left for a snow day.

4) Of course, there's a rule that precludes players from passing on insider information.

5) The U.S. Open is going on right now through Labor Day. (Watch on ESPN2; both McEnroe brothers are announcing together!)

6) Professional tennis is constantly struggling to generate public interest in tennis, particularly now when there's a dearth of U.S. players.

U.S. Open officials have banned on-court tweeting. (As far as I know, no one has tweeted from the court before, but they're anticipating it, I guess.) They've also posted warnings in the player locker rooms reminding players not to tweet "insider information" and encouraging them to tweet minimally.

Andy wasn't too pleased about the insider info warnings. Andy seems to be thinking that all tweets are public, so that sending info by tweet would be stupid because a) there'd be a public record of your rule violation and b) the info, divulged to the world, wouldn't be helpful to the bettor you were trying to feed. I suspect Andy doesn't realize that one can have more than one account, that an account can be anonymous and that one can "lock" one's tweets so that only approved followers can read them. But still, Twitter doesn't give any ability to communicate info that didn't already exist with text messaging via cell phone, except that it allows broadcasting (which is not a useful tool for betting manipulation) so I think he's right that the U.S. Open officials are being silly.

Frankly, I think the officials are missing an opportunity. I think they should instead REQUIRE players to tweet on change-overs. And require them to think of something amusing and entertaining. Tennis needs more fans.

Personal note: I follow Andy Roddick on Twitter. As a tennis lover, I'm probably inordinately interested in things like what time he gets up, and what time he practices and how many hours he works out and what he's eating, so even his boring tweets are fun for me. Also, he has a bulldog that he tweets pictures of fairly often and bulldog pictures are always fun. He lives in Austin, btw.

What?!

Ezra Klein is only 24 years old.

It's not been a great week - update

Had doctor appointment #1 this morning. A typical "good news/bad news" scenario in which the good news is that this doctor says that they DO know what I DON'T have - the bad news is that they DON'T know what I DO have. I'm not presenting the typical and/or normal symptoms to fit me into the 2 or 3 usual suspected conditions. So....I go back to see this doctor in a month for additional tests.

In the meantime, they suggested that I keep doctor appointment #2 on Thursday, if just to rule out other possibilities and for my peace of mind.

It still sucks getting old....

Attitudes about capital punishment

K always tells me that as soon as there's a case where it is proved that we've executed an innocent person, people who support the death penalty will change their minds. But I don't think he has that right. I presume that folks who support the death penalty recognize that we execute an innocent person now and then, but they feel that is an acceptable cost for what they perceive the benefits to be.

So in this case, I think they're comfortable saying this:

Here's what you get for a life: you'll watch your kids die in a fire, then we'll wrongly accuse you of killing them (by burning them up in a fire, no less) and then we'll execute you. Sorry about your life, bud. Cost/benefit analysis, don't you know.

Here's a link to The Innocence Project. They can use donations.

Get unlucky

I'm just going to offer some silliness for a distraction for a minute.

There's a website that allows you to execute an internet search, ala Google, but it returns purposefully bad search results.

I searched for "secondhand smoking jacks" and got this:



Update: another attempt yields:

It's not been a great week and an event put on hold

As I talked about in late June, I had a big July planned. A trip to Telluride, CO over July 4th; getting my concealed handgun license and taking a motorcycle riding course. 2 of the 3 were accomplished - well, while I've passed the CHL test, I haven't received it. Supposedly because of the deluge of applications, the state of Texas is running behind in issuing them. The one that hasn't happened yet is the motorcycle course. Between days of rain and 100+ temps, I put it off until I could try to get days with no rain, not a lot of wind and below 95 temps.

However, the wait has been extended indefinitely due to some medical issues. I'm not so much of an ego-manic to believe that anyone other than a very few even care what it is, but I thought I had to mention a bit more of an explanation about why I haven't taken the course yet (in case anyone recalled that I had mentioned that I was going to do it).

I don't want to go into much detail for a couple of reasons - (1) not exactly sure what is causing the problem right now and (2) want some degree of privacy. That being said, I'm torn about talking about what is going on once the cause has been determined. I will say that the symptoms are such that I do not feel safe being on a motorcycle unless and until it's all figured out and straightened out.

I first became aware of a potential problem with taking the course in late July and was in the process of trying to work the course in during Sept between Arkansas football game trips when that had to be rethought due to the events of the past week. I can't recall too many weeks in my life (that being said, my memory isn't the greatest to begin with) that were as bad as last Tuesday thru Saturday (not counting a week long stay in the hospital with an appendix problem in the late 80's). Hopefully, by the end of this week, I'll know more about what is going on (since I have a couple of doctor's appointments) and I'll post, in more detail, about the events of last week and what happened back in late July.

As I've said to C repeatedly during the last week, it sucks getting old.

Inglourious Basterds

I liked it. Richly imagined. I'm always tickled when someone WRITES SOMETHING, and Tarantino did. It's WWII depicted as a bit of a western. Brad Pitt was a problem for me; I was distracted by how hard he was working at maintaining some sort of Southern accent, but K was not bothered. Christoph Walz on the other hand is worth the price of admission. I only had to close my eyes for a few brief spells.

Cassidy Haley in the Houston Chronicle (with comparison to Trent Reznor)

Here. Joey Guerra describes Cassidy's music thusly:

The songs on Little Boys and Dinosaurs are lushly produced, dark and theatrical. It's like Trent Reznor lightened up a bit and got a bit of a groove on.

Potato chips

I see from This Day in History that today is the birthday of the potato chip. Thank you very much, George Crum.

I wonder why it took 150 years, give or take, for someone to make jalapeno-flavored potato chips.

District 9 OR Mmmmm, Cat Food

The older I get, the less I'm able to watch violence. This was unbearable for me.

Trent Reznor on marketing for unknown artists

Not only do I love his music, but his passion for getting his music to the people (either live or recordings) in the cheapest way possible. Radiohead, again one of my favorites, used something in a similar vein with offering their last cd as a "pay as much or little as you want". I thought that was a genuis move - Trent disagrees and actually makes an intelligent argument against what they did...
"that works for one time for one band once - and you are not Radiohead".

Anyway, I found this posting on the official NIN website by Trent very enlightening.

Cassidy Haley OR I Love the Internet

Several years ago, Cassidy Haley met Adam Lambert on MySpace.

Both were LA musicians and had posted their original music on their MySpace pages for streaming. Cassidy and Adam liked each other’s music and became MySpace friends and then real-life friends. Cassidy was/is also a designer/creator of clothing, including leather jackets.

Fast forward to 2009. Adam performs on American Idol. He has a distinctive fashion style and his leather jackets get noticed.



During the Idol season, Adam mentions in an interview that his Idol jackets are from SkinGraft, a design house owned by a friend of his.

Adam’s fandom whirs into action to find out what this crumb of information might reveal about Adam's life before and outside of Idol. They learn that SkinGraft is owned in part by Cassidy Haley and they see Cassidy's picture on Skingraft’s web page. They squee!!! when they realize that they’ve seen him before, in pictures of Adam that had surfaced previously from Adam's old MySpace page and from the FB and MS pages of Adam's friends and family. They find Cassidy’s MySpace and Facebook pages. One bold fan “friends” Cassidy on Facebook and he surprises her by “accepting” her friendship. She reveals to the fan community that he’ll friend strangers, so hundreds of people friend him and discover his music and a small fan base is born.

On Sunday (Update: Saturday), Adam, via tweet, encouraged his followers to check out a music video by Cassidy. At least one Idol fan forum (ontd_ai, for all Idols but it's a particularly Adam-loving place) went to work encouraging its members to not only check out the video, but also buy Cassidy’s self-produced and just-released EP on iTunes. In less than 24 hours, the album went from nowhere to #3 on the electronic album chart. It stayed in the top 10 for a bit more than a day and is holding in the Top 25 seven days later.

Journalists have picked up the story, first internet bloggers (Lyndsey Parker for Yahoo Music blogs about Adam being an Idolmaker himself) and coming soon to the mainstream press, i.e. the Houston Chronicle. Lyndsay Parker's piece describes Cassidy's efforts to mobilize the fans to do the marketing for him by generating ideas for getting his music heard and taking on tasks themselves to get it done. Cassidy mobilizes them via Twitter exchanges like this:

Who knows how it’ll go for Cassidy’s music career from here. If he makes it big, it’ll be a crazy illustration of the intertwining of the real world and the internet world; they are not separate. Relationships on the internet are not meaningless; social networking on the internet can make big things happen in real life; a 140-character tweet can be as powerful as ad time on network TV (and it’s free). Meeting someone on MySpace may change your life.

Meanwhile, a 44-yr old mother of three living in California has a date with herself for the September day that her kids will go back to school. She plans to shut the windows and the blinds, have a drink or two, put on Cassidy’s EP that she bought on iTunes, turn the volume up to 11, and dance until she can’t stand up. How did she find Cassidy’s music? It's simple, but yet amazing. She went to nursery school with me and now we’re in touch daily via Facebook (after decades of barely staying in touch) and I watched Season 8 of American Idol and became an Adam fan, crazed enough to keep tabs on an internet fan forum where I learned about Cassidy. And Cassidy has six of her dollars and six of mine in his pocket. I love the internet.

I don't expect that Cassidy's music will appeal to others writing here, but I was all wrong about LJ and Dropkick Murphys (still puzzled by that) so what do I know. Try it:


And another one (Whiskey in Churches) here. This is dancier. And a little bit racier. (Possible trivia: Adam might be the headless man, but Cassidy refuses to confirm or deny, which I think has to mean it is Adam.)

Update 9/30/10: We learned a while back that Adam is not the headless man in Whiskey in Churches.

Johnny Law...

got his man.

Favre

Favre becoming a Viking is just odd. I grew up a Packers fan and I still root for them except when they play the Vikings. So I feel bad for Packer fans. And I can't get excited for the Vikings since I don't think Favre will be very effective. (He's old and he hasn't practiced.) It's a win for Favre's bank account, I guess and maybe the Vikings ticket sales will be improved for a few games. I must say I enjoyed his press conference yesterday. It's been eons since the Vikings had a quarterback who spoke in paragraphs.