danh sent me a link to one of these comic strips, you know, everybody loves eric raymond starring eric raymond, linus torvalds, and my favourite rms. it’s prety funny, but robojoe cannot stop laughing at it. when we were looking at this one, robojoe kept reading lines and then laughing manically. not even laughing, more like giggling like a little kid. thank danh for drudging up the super nerd in robojoe, it’s all we needed.
for those of you down with fsf, enjoy the comics.
i keep meaning to blog about this, but i never seem to remember. in the dying minutes of wednesday, i will do so, and keep it brief.
who is the quintessential bearded geek? in some ways that ur-computer nerd that spawned a whole new genre of people. i didn’t really know how die-hard a band of certain pudgy bearded computer nerds could be until i got momentarily sucked into the world of rms- richard m. stallman.
it all happened the summer of 2002. slightly pre-robojoe. i was messing about yahoo, looking to find people to chat with about linguistics, history, german, the world cup, and i somehow got connected with emacrmsluver something or other. he lived in a basement apartment in washington d.c., was overweight, beardy, hairy, had bad breath, lonely, and miserable. sounds pretty sad, doesn’t it? he must have been into linguistics because he kept making stupid “cunning linguist” jokes, which weren’t cute. he was upset that i wasn’t attentive to his emotional needs, but how could i have been? i didn’t know the guy and i couldn’t figure out how to cut him out of my life without being mean. eventually his sad sack, woe-is-me whining killed it and i blocked him. he sent me a rant email about how mean i was, i told him no girl would date him if he kept being so whiny/hating himself, and that was that. i feel slightly guitly about it, but how the hell did i get started in the first place?
the only thing i remember about emacsrmsluver dude, besides how miserable he was and his fondness of monty python, was the fact that he was in love with richard stallman. he was shocked that i had a computer but never new about rms. he wanted me to switch to linux that moment! he did teach me a lot about open source stuff, but i just couldn’t jump on the stallman deovotional bandwagon. dude would send me stallman essay, pictures of him and rms together, and while i thought it was neat he was into it, i just thought it was a little much. i didn’t realise that he was not alone in his rms devotion. clearly, i’m not the target demographic, but i love that stallman still has a cult following. i know not all of them are the bear-like computer geeks, but i can’t help but think he started that trend, or acts as an icon to certain members of it.
i was just reminded of this from a laughingsquid post about an interview with rms. i found it because of the whole violet blue writing for the chronicle. seriously, i think the chronicle has jumped the shark. violet blue is horrible, and now i’m probably on a web 2.0 hit list or something for saying that. oh well…
robojoe and i get netflix. i wish there were a way for my non-friends to see my queue, but let’s just say it’s not so hot.
there’s flickr pool called notes to netflix which is and added bit of fun to the mix. i like this note especially. if you’re on flickr and netflix, you should join!
i’ve been consumed with so many stupid things lately, like getting my sims to hate eachother, that i forgot to blog. silly me.
for starters, we have new grad students here and they seem to love the library. there’s one of them already who might be my “favourite” but it’s hard to say for sure. there are certainly those who are easy to talk to, personable, and seem like they trust the library staff to help them, which is always a rare bonus. there are those who seem to think i’m a moron though, which is sad because it sometime reflects on the service the receive. i do feel bad about that, but i guess it’s human nature.
one guy is really web 2.0. he reads /. and boing boing, doesn’t understand why i don’t like xeni or cory, and told me sincerely that pitchfork is spot on in their reviews. kiss of death, really. he’s a good kid, but young, and totally fitting a very ugly mold (at least in my eyes), which is sad. today he walked in where kopshite gerrard’s england home kit. it was freaky because i almost wore my england away shirt today, instead opting for germany. psychic connection or karma, you be the judge. turns out he’s a liverpool fan, though he didn’t really know who everton were or where they played. he also never heard of sheffield wednesday, but he likes “stevie g”. (his words, not mine.) ahh… it bugs. (i’m thinking of a word that starts with p…)
so then i decided to get my everton kit today! not in a few months, but right now! it’s not going to happen. i can’t find it or the sheffield kit in my size without paying fill price uk and super expensive international shipping. kitbag’s let me down.
in other news, i need a new camera and i need it soon. my camera is doing odd things, and i’m not a fan. i need something small anyhow for my big trip to england, but we’ll see.
this week has sucked too much to try to be witty today. let’s just dish some free advice!!! amy, really?
Dear [Kendra]: A few months ago I took my very modest wife to a tropical island to celebrate our 30th anniversary.
Well, I asked, begged and pleaded with her to loosen up and go topless on the beach. After more begging (and several umbrella drinks) she did, as she was sure that she did not know anyone at this resort.
Now three months later, a good friend showed me a picture. It was of a young woman who was topless, and in the background clear as day was the image of my wife (also topless) and me! My friend said that this picture was posted on the Internet on a free site!
I contacted the site and they removed the picture, but by this time the photo had been shown for two weeks.
Now what should I do? I know that if I tell the wife she will freak out about this! Yet if she finds out from someone else that could be worse!
I know that this is all my fault.
Should I just ignore this and hope nothing happens? I need some advice from you and your readers.
– Vacationer from New York
dear vacationer,
ignore it and hope your wife was too drunk to remember and never sees it. you did a stupid thing, i guess you’re truly sorry, but what the hell were you thinking? boozing your wife up and guilting her into going topless, why? it’s stupid. why not just have a nice romantic holiday? you had to cheapen the whole thing.
don’t be a creep.
i hope this helps.
Dear [Kendra]: I am the mom of a 3-year-old. I take him to the pool almost daily. My problem is while I take my son to the pool and get in and play with him, I get pulled, tugged and squirted/dumped with water by children in the pool.
I ask them politely to stop (loud enough for their parents to hear). The parents say nothing. It’s worse when I am in the deep end to catch my son and the children still try to get me to play with them.
I can’t even begin to count on my fingers and toes how many times this has happened. There was also a time when a parent (on a cell phone) put her 3-year-old in the kiddy pool area (no lifeguard) to continue her phone call at the adult pool area while I was in the pool.
How do I politely let parents know that I am no baby-sitting pool toy?
– Mom in Deep
dear mom,
i feel sorry for those other kids who seem so starved for adult supervision that they’re harrassing you for it, somebody has to and it sure isn’t you. you don’t need to be those kids’ parent, but you need to stop being passive aggressive about it. don’t try reasoning with the kids, talk to their parents or the life guard. get those people to do their jobs. that way you can go back to brainwashing your baby into being a momma’s boy.
i hope this helps.
Dear [Kendra]: I was pleased to see someone else as bothered as I am about the long, ugly hairstyles worn by female television announcers such as Paula Zahn, Elizabeth Vargas, Katie Couric and too many others who are influenced by their hair stylists. I call them the Bearded Ladies as their hair surrounds their chins like Osama bin Laden.
– Hate Their Hairdos in D.C.
dear hate,
i totally agree! katie couric is just like osama bin laden, only perkier. i blame skeletor, i mean maria shriver for starting the trend. she’s gross.
you’ve made my day.
i hope this helps.
it’s late august, which means berkeley is swarmed by students. my condolences go out to anybody working in an academic environment, like jason and liz. right now calapalooza’s taking place just outside my window on memorial glade, and it’s loud. really loud. i’ve worked it in the past, when i was a student, for kalx, and even then i didn’t like welcome week. i didn’t go when i was a freshman and am not sorry about it. this year the organizers got a very loud sound system. it started off with bad bad bad emo music, but i’m ok with the indian dance music now- not my choice to work too, but acceptable.
yesterday was our grad student orientation in the library- my day to shine. instead i ended up looking shell shocked by 5:00pm. the new grad students seemed to appreciate our hospitality though. i have the reputation of not only being able to find them any book/article/paper/journal they’re looking for, but also giving advice on housing/food/activities/music/love. how i got to be library assistant and barmaid is beyond me, but it’s better than contempt. i like the students, they seem like a good batch. it was weird how people have found out that i’m starting library school next month. (i need to remind myself of this, i need more loans!) some people are surprised that i’m not already a librarian and seem more patronizing than before, others seem really excited for me and seem to take my word with more weight. i’m assuming a fair number of these people didn’t realize i wasn’t an undergrad student worker, but i’ll take what i can get.
it’s interesting to think more and more about library school and what i want to study. things keep coming up at work that make me want to hit my head against a wall, but i think getting my mls/msis is a better solution. i never knew there were so many philosophical arguments one could get into with information science/management, but i find myself getting more and more passionate about things like accessibility and usability. what good’s the collection if nobody uses it? well… i suppose it’s all relative.
now they’re playing the new pornographer’s on memorial glade. “letter from occupant” i loved that song when it first came out, but it’s not the same. i should go listen to the evaporators for my jc/dc fix.
i’ve already sort of weighed in on günter grass admitting he was in the waffen ss. my pseudo-intellectual boyfriend christopher hitchens (i say this in jest, i don’t agree with him on everything and my real world boyfriend cringes everytime i call hitch that.) wrote a good assesment of why people are upset by grass’ admission in slate this week. i meant to post it earlier, but i’ve been busy with freaking out about work. it’s the big story on slate right now though, so why not check it out. for those who haven’t had to devote your undergraduate career to the nazi problem, or talk about how awesome grass is for making germans think about their role in the third reich, or the required fawning over willy brandt, grass’ owning up to his past now might not seem so odd and so crass. i think hitchens does a good job of conveying that, and you don’t have to agree with him on iraq at all! it’s all very old school hitchens.
in slightly let related news. i’ve decided to try to add joe scarborough to my arsenal of conservative tv dudes i like, but his show is horrible. maybe if it was actually about politics, but i can’t stand his hollywood gossip. chris matthews is still #1. i’m waiting for a day like that one day when chris matthews had hitchen and andrew sullivan on his show… that was a show to remember.
have you met the browns yet? have at it! gordon, sarah, john, and fraser. they sent their family portrait to the bbc. they look so happy.
the bbc has a column today from a baby boomer who reaffirms that he is responsible for all the great things in the world. well, not him personally, but the baby boomer generation. way to stand up and proclaim, “i want to be middle class!” ugh.
did you hear about pakistan’s forfeit in cricket against enlgand? it’s close to becoming an international incident. ball tampering is cheating, which the pakistanis are credited with starting, and quite a serious offence. here’s the bbc’s account of how it happenend, i like the bit about the pint-pot snake. news has just come down that pakistani skipper inzamamam-ul-haq will be will be charged in the cheating row. it’s sad because the umpire, darrell hair is extremely controversial in his own right. i wonder what will come of this.
crowd shot., originally uploaded by kendrak.
hmm, what did i do last night? i wonder…
jenn and i met up for dinner at stank-un, which is my ultra-hip lingo for cancun. i dug it. then we went to pegasus downtown to watch dr. frank sing songs and read from hi book. i’m not sure how it compared to new york, but i thought it went pretty well. larry might not agree, oh well. jenn and i sat in a church pew in the back on the upper level. it was behind bars, as you can see from the picture. i’d like to consider it the vip pew, as we were sitting with pat and erika, the fine proprietors of little type. it’s always fun hanging out with them. i took some photos, but i don’t think they were that good. there is this video on youtube of frank doing “how’d the date end?”, but i must apologize for the bit where pat and i talk about whether or not frank needs a beer in the middle. there was one person in a kalx shirt, which was cool because it’s an old old design. i just wish more kids would have showed up.
after the reading, we got to watch everybody line up and wait for their books to be signed. it felt pretty voyeuristic in the pew, so the pew crew mostly chatted about joel mchale of the soup. (the soup is a good show by the way. if i don’t fall asleep before 10:00pm tonight, i’ll watch it.) i did stuff some books with little type fliers for the ivymike picked us up for the 11:00pm showing of snakes on a plane. i felt bad because mike actually had to come inside and collect us, but i was having fun pumping myself full of coffee so i wouldn’t sleep through the film like i did for deuce bigalow: european gigolo.
we got to emeryville with plenty of time to loaf about before the movie. that was my mistake, but i was excited to see the film. as for snakes on a plane, it was what you’d expect. three words to describe it: fun, gross, cheesey. i’d see it again. the cobra starship video at the end was pretty bad, but it was ok.
now i’m at work running on fumes and feeling icky. hooray!
here’s another thing about npr from the sound of young america:
NPR News listeners are 84% white.
They are 78% more likely to categorize themselves as “liberal” and 2.27 times more likely to categorize themselves as “very liberal.”
They are 97% more likely to belong to a country club.
They are 8.86 times more likely to read The Atlantic Monthly, and 5.66 times more likely to read The New Yorker. They are 73% less likely to read The Source. They are 76% more likely to watch The West Wing, which is double impressive because that’s pretty close to the only prime time TV show they’re MORE likely to watch.
the full npr report can be found here. i admit it- i buy boca burgers and soy milk. i’m also white, but i hate new age music and don’t shop at nordstrom.
somebody from kalx just forwarded an email about college radio cliches to the kalx staff email list. the list misses some spots at kalx because it’s not a typical college radio station, but it hits the major categories. arrogant 19-year olds who think they’re the first and only people ever to play sonic youth/my bloody valentine/squarepusher? check. friendlyold timers who know more than anybody, and kindly dispense their sage wisdom? check. bitter old timers who are cranky? check. people who just want a job in public radio, and see college radio as a stepping stone to being the next terry gross/ira glass? check. anybody who’s spent any time in a college radio station can understand these. the list is a little hippie/reggae centric, at least for kalx. you don’t find that much reggae on the air. instead of hippies, i think it’s aged hipsters who still cling to proto-indie and punk rock. i’m sure if i stuck around kalx for another 10 years or so, i’ll be one of them. (as much as i love kalx, i truly do, i hope i’m not going to be like that.)
the best part of the email though, came in an aside about public radio:
That’s right: Terry Gross controls all of public radio. Turn on NPR right now – the voice you’re hearing? Terry Gross. EVEN IF IT CLAIMS TO BE SOMEONE ELSE.Scott Simon? Actually just Terry Gross talking into one of those “Talkman” tape recorders from Home Alone 2.Tom & Ray from Car Talk? Terry Gross + Talkman + Recording of maniacal laughter.Ira Glass? Terry Gross + Talkman + Liberal use of the word “uhm.”Sylvia Poggioli? Terry Gross doing a voice she learned from watching Olive Garden commercials.Until a few years ago, Morning Edition’s Bob Edwards was the sole exception to this all-Terry-Gross rule, and look what happened – he got fired. When he left, he was told in no uncertain terms that if he revealed the secret, Terry Gross would hunt him down, and Terry Gross would execute him. Gangland style.\n
“,0] ); D(["ce"]); //–>Ms. Gross even uses a system of levers and pulleys to single-handedly operate member stations across the country. Thanks to the miracles of radio station automation, the sole actual paid employee of public radio, nationwide, is Terry Gross.Upon learning all of this, Aspiring Public Radio Producers typically consider quitting public radio, then start writing snarky features for local alt-weeklies.
apparently people have been working on the jonbenet ramsey case after all. it’s been announced today that a 41-year old man has been arrested in thailand in connection with the 10-year old murder. who knew?
