When The Silence of the Lambs came out in 1991, I was at that age where all the horror movies we watched every weekend had completely de-sensitized me. I still remember watching it at the Ready theater in Niles, MI and taking far too much enjoyment from certain scenes. While I wouldn’t consider it a comedy by any means, I’m sure that I laughed at a couple of inappropriate times.

While watching Grey’s Anatomy on Sunday, it suddenly dawned on me that I had just heard the words lotion, skin, hose, and basket emanating from my TV. After searching out the source, I now present to you: Greenskeepers – Lotion on iFilm. You will probably have to sit through an ad, but trust me when I tell you it is worth it.

Nope.

Michael Irvin arrested in Texas on drug charge

C’mon ESPN, this is the excuse you have been looking for to get rid of this walking punchline.

*Update*

“Oh man, that wasn’t my pipe. It belongs to my friend. Yeah, that’s the ticket…”

I ate too much yesterday–we ate dinner about 5pm and I was still full when I went to bed at 11pm. But I’m better today, so it’s off to the fridge for leftovers. The family is gone and the house is once again quiet. It is fun to eat the big meal and nice to see the family and all, but when mom is chattering away on her phone while I’m trying to watch Veronica Mars? Uh-uh, no. That isn’t gonna work. So today I will enjoy leftover dinner and silence during my TV time.

I’m pretty sure that I like Thanksgiving better after than I do during.

Originally seen here, and reproduced for your viewing pleasure:

Rock on Brother Pat…

Thanksgiving is almost here. What am I thankful for?

A new cd from The Darkness! That someone is still out there making music that is fun. And good old Rock & Roll.

Link to the video for the first single here.

The Sony rootkit fiasco has definitely done some damage to their public image. Well deserved damage too. So now, like Exxon after the Valdez accident, they are going into full “it’s not our fault but we are magnanimous enough to fix it anyway” mode. They finally succumbed to public calls for them to recall all of the “infected” cd’s that shipped with the rootkit. They have been lining up spin doctors from the RIAA to try and make them out to be an unwitting pawn in the DRM game. But the public, and more importantly many governments are not having any of it. Italy has decided to sue them. My heroes at the EFF have filed a class action suit. And finally somebody’s elected officials have taken action. The Texas attorney general has filed a civil lawsuit against them for violating their anti-spyware laws.

You know, I’m not normally one to praise anything from, about, or even related to Texas. But in this case…Go get’em cowboys!!!

Please make sure that you are not inadvertently letting Sony off the hook and take a look at the list of affected cd’s here. If you do by chance own one, then please send it back to Sony and force them to replace it. Unless it is the Bette Midler title. In which case you are a terribly sick individual who needs to be put away in a secure institution for your own safety and my piece of mind.

I’ve been minorly sickly over the past few days, so I’ve spent most of my time laying around trying to rest without having a lot of luck. I just starting a nice nappy yesterday when my mom called and woke me up. Well, the ringing phone woke me up. The phone was all the way upstairs and there was no way in hell I was going to make a race for it in my half-asleep state. Having not gotten a proper nap, I decided to actually go to bed early. 10:30pm I turned out the lights and laid down for a long sleep. Which would have been great. Except that I woke up at 6:00am with a headache of epic Guinness-induced-hangover-like proportions. I stumbled out of bed, swallowed whatever amount of pills came out of the Advil bottle, drank a bunch of water, and headed back for bed hoping to sleep off some of the pain. That didn’t work too well, as the pain just caused me to think about how much pain there was. So I rolled back out of bed at 6:30 and took a long shower to try and resolve things. That helped a little, as did the big cup of coffee I drank on the way into work. So now the headache has been reduced to a dull constant pain, instead of red hot blinding pain. While that is certainly an improvement, it isn’t really how I’d like to finish out my day.

Early to bed my ass.

This is just too cool.

“Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer!”

How much do I love that R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet saga not only has an entry in the Wikipedia, but that it is a detailed summary? If you are not familiar with this “masterpiece” of musical expression, give the entry a read. It is the most ridiculous, preposterous, ignorant and yet oddly compelling piece of entertainment since The Right Connections, a movie starring M.C. Hammer, Melissa Joan Hart and Meshach Taylor.

South Park had a great episode this week that combined Trapped in the Closet with an exposé on the Church of Scientology. I’m sure it will replay this weekend if you have interest in checking it out. It is worth it for the end credit gag alone.

-John Smith

It’s Thursday, and I’m sitting at home instead of the office.

Yay for vacation days. Have fun at work, suckers!

Seen on cnn.com:

Madonna: ‘I’m a different person now’

Nobody cares. Shut your trap unless there is singing coming out of it. I don’t care what kind of person you were, I don’t care what kind of person you are. Make records, or shut your everlovin’ mouth.

Her new cd is pretty good though.

Things I’m mad about today:

• The rainstorm that changed from a sprinkle to a downpour as soon as I got in my car to drive downtown
• The lady that didn’t signal when ramming her way into my lane during said rainstorm
• The same lady when she did the exact same thing again about 200 yards further down the road
• Hydroplaning my way down I-24 (Technically, this was more terrifying than anger inducing)
• The super long line at the post office
• The lady at the front of the post office line who I distinctly heard tell the worker that the contents of her package were homemade items and irreplaceable three different times, wrote out a check, and pretty much performed every other act of holding up a line known to man
• The fact that said lady was at the front of the line long enough to make that proclamation three different times
• The weird bank teller who has “J-O-E-Y” tattooed on the knuckles of her right hand

According to the IMDB, Jonathan Winters is still alive.

I did not know that. Good for him.

Can someone please explain to me exactly what is so difficult about piloting a motor vehicle BETWEEN the painted lines on the road? I seem to be able to accomplish this feat on a regular basis, but perhaps I have some special aptitude and other people have to do everything in their power to keep their cars and trucks on the road let alone between those pesky lines.

I swear, the next car that veers into my lane on I-75 had better be driven by a person actually having a seizure. Because if I get beside them and see a lipstick container or a cell phone, I’m reaching into the backseat for the softball bat and following them home…

As I was on my way home last night, I noticed that my neighbor had decorated the front of his house. With Christmas lights. On November 8th. You know, there is a reason that people like me get all “bah humbug” about Christmas. One of those reasons being that we have to suffer through this kind of crap for two damn months! The gaudy decorations, the crappy music, the oblivious idiots trying to make their way to and through shopping areas. The horrible “Nick and Jessica” TV specials instead of the awesome Rankin / Bass ones that are relegated to ABC Family on cable, and all the people that want to grouse at me because I’m not filled with the so-called Christmas Spririt. The stupid Advent calendar doesn’t even start until December 1st for cryin’ out loud. Christmas decorations, fine. Christmas decorations more that two weeks before Thanksgiving? No. No way in hell.

The bright side is that I now know what to get him for Christmas. This year, I’m going to show mercy and NOT burn his house to the ground. Next year, all bets are off.

The Bossman is out on vacation today, and I’m not going to do a lick of wor–oh crap, he might be reading this. Damn those wifi hotspots!

Let me rephrase: I’ve never worked this diligently or efficiently on a Monday before.

(Think he bought it?)

I must say that I was quite excited when I saw episodes of Beavis and Butthead on the Comedy Central schedule. The episodes are airing at 7pm on weeknights in a 1/2 hour timeslot. I, much like all males between the ages of about 25 and 35, was a big fan of the original episodes when they were first run. Having seen all of these episodes multiple times, they didn’t exactly have me overly excited when I sat down to watch them last night. However the thing that I was excited about is that unlike the DVD releases, these episodes contain the videos. Even if the B&B episodes haven’t aged that well, the videos are a blast from the past and instant nostalgia. Sometimes they remind you of a CD you need to dig out of the back of the desk drawer. And sometimes they remind you that you still never want to hear that song again. Last nights videos included:

Tom Jones – Walk the Dog
The The – I Saw the Light
Silverchair – Frog Stomp
Rednex – Cotton Eye Joe

OK, so maybe none of these reminded me of a cd that I desperately needed to find. But today is another day, and there is hope that a hidden gem that was long forgotten will be uncovered.

Hidden gems are cool. Huh huh.

So the gist of the situation is that Sony Music is essentially installing malware on your PC in order for you to have to ability to listen to one of their copy-protected “cd’s” on your PC. An aside, I use quotes around “cd” because any music disc that includes copy protection is no longer a cd.

This is not an issue of copyrights or an issue of the music companies “protecting” their artists or property. When they start forcing an install of malicious software on my PC, and then use a rootkit to hide what they have done, they aren’t just crossing a line, they are jumping over it and then kicking sand on top so the line is gone. Keep in mind that this is on a legally purchased cd, so they are basically going out of there way to give their customers the finger. Fair use is already under siege from the RIAA, the MPAA, and pretty much any of the huge entertainment corporations that are desperately trying to “protect” their so-called property. All of the protection schemes that are used infringe on the ability of the customer to do what they wish to with the product, whether that product be a cd, tv show, HDTV, video game, dvd, or whatever else I can’t think of right now.

I have several problems with all of this DRM / content protection:

1. that we as consumers are rolling over and taking it in the backside. A lot of this nonsense flies under the radar of most people, and even the tech savvy people who tend to know about are also tech savvy enough to break the protection, so they are happy with that. That is not enough. Buying the content and then working around it is sending the wrong message to these companies, the message that customers are willing to purchase content that limits fair use.
2. the reason that this flies under the radar is that traditional journalists are too gutless to call them out on it because they probably work for a company that is promoting these protection schemes. Joe Dimwit at BigMediaCorp isn’t going to blow the whistle because another branch of that company is using copy protection on their products.
3. our government which is falling all over itself to accommodate these media corporations and their bid to restrict people from using their content without unreasonable hassle and privacy infringement.
4. the fact that copy protection only hurts those that legitimately acquire the content. People who pirate or “steal” content have already broken the protection, so it really only causes problems for those that legitimately are trying to purchase it.

We as consumers are not alone in the fight, as The Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as other organizations are out there battling for our digital rights, but they need us as content users to stand up for ourselves against these blood suckers. I’ve decided that from now on, I will refuse to purchase any music cd that has copy protection on it. I don’t care if the protection is negligible or easily defeated. These companies must be shown that the public will not stand for this attack on our rights as both consumers and citizens of the United States. For those of you who don’t live in Chattanooga, I would urge you write your Representative and express your concerns. I would do that, except my Representative is a corporate puppet and cocaine addict.

Sorry to get all preachy and riled up, but I’m just sick and tired of these corporations trying to compensate for their refusal to change by suing their customers and making their content nearly impossible to use. The DMCA is one of the worst pieces of legislation in the history of history, and these corporations are taking advantage of that fact to pile even more restrictive crap on top of it. Pretty soon, we will have to rent a Sony Music Employee to sit next to us while they carefully insert their gold plated cd into the Sony cd player that we had to purchase in order to play the Sony music cd. Then, the employee will remove the cd after one listen, punch us in the stomach until we give them some more money, and then schedule another appointment tomorrow.

More ranting to come later, but until I have more time check out this link:

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

Sony is using DRM software that uses rootkit technology, in essence compromising the security of your PC without full-disclosure in the EULA. An excerpt from the above link:

“Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall.”

We live in a wondrous world. There are all kinds of new inventions and technology to make our lives easier. One of these new inventions is the automated phone system. Unfortunately, this technology still depends on a little bit of user interaction or prompting to work.

That is the fly in the ointment.

In our office, my extension doubles as “0″ or the operator. Which is fine. What is not fine is that people who call our office regularly still can’t be bothered to learn the extension of the person they want to talk to or even listen to the menu long enough to have the extension told to them. I even try to tell them the correct extension, but they just refuse to use it. I hate these people. I really can’t even understand why they do it. Whenever I have to use an automated phone system, I want to use the correct extension so I don’t have to talk to someone else.

People, these systems are here to stay. The days of talking to a live person when you call a business are going away. There is a reason for this: the people hiding behind the automated system don’t want to talk to your dumb ass that can’t be bothered to remember a 2-digit extension, especially when you call that office several times a day. So learn to cope, learn to deal, and learn a damn extension.