Tuesday, May 31, 2011

button action

I remember back when Kevin and Ralph had just started Hollywood Babble-On. Last year. Kevin said something about needing something to close on, close with, a closing slogan, gag, tag line. Some button action was needed, he said.

It really didn't take them that long, busting through as a chart-topping podcast from the very beginning, to come up with several regular segments, a rough shape of each episode, and some tasty, tasty memetic obscenity I need not repeat here.

Similar to my HB-O obsession, I've been an almost regular viewer of the Rachel Maddow show. I remember her on Air America with Lizz and Chuck guiding us through some rough waters. Keith Olbermann is a stand-up guy with a fresh worldview I wish could be a regular on Real Time with Bill Maher.

I know there's "a story" behind a recent notable change in the ending segment of her show. I just don't care, that's not what interests me about it. Rachel has started closing the show with "the best thing in the world today" as an unmistakeable counterpoint to her former mentor's Worst Persons in the World segments.

Only because the stale, uninspired soundbitten tape-loop of GOP State Television over there at Fox Noize finally made enough pitiful whimpering about Keith's segment, weeks after his MSNBC show had ENDED...only then did any response become as little as an afterthought.

Socially divisive politics, fearmongering and religious blinders aside; anybody who stands up straight in the face of adversity and speaks truth to power without just worrying about their own ass...them's the ones you know you wanna watch. They're the ones acting like you wanna wish you could, given the chance. Canaries in the mines.

Shine truth like a light, get sunshine into all the darkest places. Kill the nastiness beneath all lies underwrit and subsidized by offering-plate monies.

For a Republican Party so utterly terrified of Sharia Law, it sure is redundant, repugnant that they pursue relentlessly a Christian Puritan version of Sharia Law for America. With their every waking moment right here and now in 2011. Just watch them...

Eek! We really digressed and drifted there. I didn't mean to whip out the soapbox and megaphone quite so fast.

Came in here to say/mention/notice that Rachel found her button moment, her button action as Kevin might say.

Of brief note today is that I think I've buttoned up a few large tasks, plates I'd had spinning for 3-4 months at a minimum and for some, closer to 2 years. I'm hoping this turns out to be The Summer Of Names Taken from whut All That Ass We Kicked.

Even just on a personal level, that would be just fine by me. I have two hands, I have new tools, I have a fresh perspective. I'm all about making It Happen. Won't you come along???

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

American Cellphones Suck, Give Me Something Cheaper, Better, NOW!

Herein Mr. Rantypants goes bazerk! Consider this your only warning.

***

The cellphone market is still absolutely worthless, useless, and every one of you suckers paying for your damn phone over again every month are convincing me the pod people have gotten everybody but me and a few other sturdy souls.

I must admit I’d like an android phone. Now that the apple sheep have worn the very idea of the cellphone into something resembling truly useful and not just a vain and overpriced, underpowered paperweight.

The concept of being able to view maps, inquire about points of interest or necessity while on the move, on the fly, in the car, or walking around a city, this appeals to me very much.

Paying a premium price for the chance to use it everyday when I might actually use it twice a week or less, strikes me as something so stupid I can't even compare those who do it to sheep. Because sheep can be cute.

Not zombies either, because zombies can kick ass. The kind of person who'd pay for the chance to do something he knows he won't is the logistic equivalent of a bucket of boiled assholes.

Tweeting, facebooking, goddamn Nascar and couchpotatovision on my phone? Tigger, please! Shoveling more mass-produced milquetoast muck into your trough for the sheep interests me NONE. Those are doors I’d choose to open very carefully at a distant future date on your device if I choose to make it mine. Pay extra? Nev-ar!

I will not pay more for any feature for one single day before I choose to be ready. Get over yourselves, it’s NEVER been worth $89.99-$149.99 every month for a godphone that won’t work everywhere because America’s cellular (if not our internet) infrastructure is an International Joke.

Someday all these zombie-sheep will wake up and cast your dimwitted capitalistic hubris into the lake, tied to a large stone! And I will still be laughing.

The device should damn well be able to PLAY anything I choose to load or throw at it, nimble as VLC and ready to stop on a dime and let me scratch video back and forth if I choose to. This isn’t rocket surgery.

Phone as camera? Normally I could care less if it takes pictures or video, sure that’s nice and all but I will never pay extra for it.

If it’s there at all it had better be 3mp and capable of video no less than NTSC 640x480 29.97 fps or just don’t bother. Decent zoom is mandatory during video as well as stills, and not locked but zooms in/out DURING recording, and the jitter control better be above-average to amazing, or don’t even bother.

The display had best be large, if not the entire face of the device. No flip phones, no double-wide suppositories. Touchscreen or easy FULL size dialpad and full qwerty, with no slider or crackberry form factor, either. Thin and narrow enough to be pocket sized is absolute, anything bigger invites being smashed by a hammer.

Just like any monthly cost above $29.99 for full internet, unlimited text and free to your mate’s handset regardless of carrier - anyone denying you these basic necessities deserves being hit with a hammer, too!

So just in review, starting from a product called the Samsung Replenish and extrapolating the desired experience, let us state that the product may require a 2-year contract. This is a new concession I have made, it has been a long time coming, and it is marginally acceptable if the rest of my terms are met without complaint.

The monthly rate locked in for the life of the contract, with no overage fees EVER agreed to never ever ever, maxes out at $29.99 for a period of 24 months.

With this fee there is free long distance after 8pm;
unlimited internet use;
unlimited text messages;
optional add-on for video or image messaging
beginning at $2.99 per month for 250 messages;
GPS capabilities at extremely reasonable rates;
option to lock out Nascar and television completely
without express, specific consent;

and an optional $3.99 monthly equipment protection plan that replaces the phone via USPS with tracking/delivery confirmation for your replacement within 48 hours.

Let’s see it, America, right now. Give me what I want, baby! Meet my demands, show me you still know how to do anything better than everybody else does.

I’ll be right here, waiting...and not accepting any less than I know you can provide.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Resurrecting Advertising

I know, I know. Any of you actually reading this who've known me in meatspace will say "but don't you hate ads and turn them off any chance you get?"

I do. But bear me out.

I grew up hearing WCCO AM radio in the car because we waz poor white trash who couldn't afford an FM radio, let alone an 8-track deck in the dash, or Star-Trek-worthy unimaginable things like Powered Windows or Air Conditioning. Not for us, nope.

Anyway, WCCO did live spots. Ads read live on air from prepared copy, but often ad-libbed, peppered with topicality, and improved in the process.

Flash forward 2011 and I'm sitting hear listening to Kevin Smith and his lovely wife Jen Schwalbach doing their Plus One Per Diem daily radio show on the internet. (Or a podcast. I think you can get it any way but mainlining it, honestly. And somebody's sure to figure out a way to do that soon enough.)

I do not like ads. I hate it when youtube or hulu or whoever just zaps a totally random-length ad before a clip that may be SHORTER than the damned ad. Hello, stupid! Thy name is Advertising.

But then Kevin and Jen start doing live spots. And they remind me why I didn't mind Boone & Erickson or the Cannon Mess doing their stupid live spots, and I didn't tune them out or turn them off. This sh-t is funny!

Jennifer and Kevin can flub their lines, goof off, laugh, start over, berate each other, support each other. There's so many ways the understanding provided by a background in their Plus One weekly podcast will make these ads transcend their capitalist intent, it's just unreal.

So I say to Fox and whoever else still cares to shovel their advertising shite into prime time teevee: want viewers to stay for the ads? Get your stars to do a few live spots like Lucy and Ricky and Ed Sullivan had to do. Let them have leeway to screw it up or make it better, and people are gonna stay TUNED for that spot.

It's not like you haven't figured this out, youse Ad Media in general. There's great examples of breaking the paradigm more often lately than in previous decades, from this lapsed teevee viewer's perspective.

But I just noticed I don't listen to the streams of Kev/Jen on SIR, I listen to the podcasts. I press pause and step away for a minute, often. So I found myself just now pausing them in the midst of another live spot ad.

And I thought to myself: "Whatsamattayou?" for just a second before noticing that I actually WANT to hear this one.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

4 the people who r still alive (work in progress)

THIS is the summer won by BAMFs
half man, half seal

THIS is the summer of BRINGING back the LOVE

maybe we'll actually get to BRING 'EM HOME!

let the sunshine in!

I cannot be the only man unashamed to be so happy he cries

THANK YOU America 4 being MOAR than we expected!

I ain't afraid no more!

We made it through the night!!

an incredible gift of a day to be alive

SO God and Goddess blesst
that everybody, especially minorities

but even the skeptics, the cynics and the trolls
can't help but at least imagine

if not feel it in the marrow of their very bones

what it feels like when America keeps Her promises!

So let's mend our fences
let's put our house in order

then we'll bring our promises
to everyone
everywhere

someday sooner than we thought possible if you'd asked us a week ago.

++++++++++++++++++Happy CINCO!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you artists and bands linked here, for helping keep us sane all this time with your incredible songs.

Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - It's A Wonderful Life

Steve Earle - Home To Houston

the Honeydogs - 10,000 Years

Soul Asylum - Lately

Son Volt - Jet Pilot

Jason Isbell - Dress Blues

Ben Folds - All U Can Eat

Mike Doughty - Fort Hood

Ani DiFranco - November 4th 2008

Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion - Hurry Up And Wait

Monday, May 2, 2011

help turn "yes we did" into "yes we will!"

A full night. No even slight hint of regret I haven’t gamed yet. Portal 2 will still love me longtime when I get to it.

President Obama reported to the American people that the persons tasked with such soldierly skills have killed Osama Bin Laden. Despite never wishing to cheer at death, I am complicated by emotions.

So despite that cognitive conflict, I hope everyone feels like it's a New Day.



I’ve been moved to tears repeatedly and it don’t matter. It’s a big damn day in America. "We" got Osama Bin Laden. I think that long sigh we're all letting out is a breath we've been holding together for ten whole years.

There are a great many happy people at this moment in NY and DC and everywhere else. It’s hard to keep myself from welling up just thinking about it. Joyful tears indeed.

Yes we did!

And now let me compose contemporaneously to the tune of Pete Seeger's "Bring 'em Home."

“will we bring the troops back home? Yes we will, yes we will!
will we win health care for our elderly? yes we will, yes we will!
will we protect social security? yes we will, yes we will!”

more verses coming...