On Monday I made plans to flee the PC today. Yes, I have to schedule myself that far in advance!
It seems the weather is complying with my request for Nice Nice Nice.
Back tomorrow.
Archive for June 19, 2008
Blog Notes: I’m Outta Here!
June 19, 200806/19/08 Recent Reading
June 19, 2008The Library Police will be glad to see I’ve returned these two books today.
Queen of the Oddballs by Hillary Carlip
This is a hugely funny book that I had wanted to do some justice to with some excerpts. But no time. Sorry, Hillary! She’s led an amazing life. You know that one person who’s always telling you the most outrageous stories? They seem unbelievable but are always confirmed by others? She’s that person. If you want to laugh out loud — literally! — grab this one.
Here’s one of the outrageous things Hillary’s done in her life:
Gong Show Juggler Hillary Carlip
— and yes, she writes about it in her book! She made Gong Show history that night!
The Midnight Road by Tom Piccirilli
Piccirilli gets way with the most outrageous lines in his writing. I would have liked to have been watching him when he wrote this one:
He waited for salvation from a woman who’d been knocked down by a steak.
He must have hooted!
Look what I found on YouTube:
Book Trailer for Tom Piccirilli’s THE MIDNIGHT ROAD
Having read the book, I can state the trailer is accurate — but awful! That wouldn’t have encouraged me to read it at all. Don’t let it dissuade you. Piccirilli’s damned good.
Previously here:
Hillary Carlip’s New Book Gets Press!
Her Dinner With Phyllis Diller
Reading: Recently — Tom Piccirilli
iPod Air: See You In September?
June 19, 2008iPod touch supplies seeing shortages, changes due by September
“We believe Apple will need to reposition the iPod touch product by September now that the iPhone acquisition price is lower,” he says in the report. “We expect the iPod touch to experience significant cannibalization from lower-priced iPhones.”
In about a month, I expect the rumor mill to start grinding out whispers of Apple placing an order for screens they’ve never used before, perhaps screens between five to seven inches diagonal.
The iPod Touch can’t be sustained at is current price point.
Apple will have to move in something new to generate a fatter margin. And to continue the Apple excitement.
That will be the missing-in-action touchscreen device I’ve been calling the iPod Air. Or it could be called the Mac Mini Touch.
I’m not sure Apple will give it a Mac designation, as that would mislead people into thinking they could put current Mac OS X programs on it (similar to the confusion that lives on to this day regarding “Windows Mobile”).
This device will run what Apple has been calling the iPhone OS. So it makes sense to designate it as an iPod. And why waste the Air trademark attached to the MacBook? It’s worked well for them.
I believe that September will bring it. Just in time for college kids to grab one, just in time for everyone to pencil it in on their end-of-year gift-giving lists.
Let’s not forget that Apple owns this trademark:
That says “Air” to me. What about you?
Update: See here about that trademark.
Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #132
June 19, 2008Paulson To Urge New Fed Powers
Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. plans to call today for the Federal Reserve to be given new, explicit powers to intervene in the workings of Wall Street firms to protect the financial system, adapting his vision of how the financial world should be regulated to reflect the lessons of the collapse of Bear Stearns.
“Our nation has come to expect the Federal Reserve to step in to avert events that pose unacceptable systemic risk,” Paulson plans to say in a speech today, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Washington Post. But the central bank “has neither the clear statutory authority nor the mandate to anticipate and deal with risks across our entire financial system.”
Blah blah blah.
What’s important is this bit:
Over the course of a few days in March, the central bank took unprecedented steps, with Paulson’s support, to keep the rapid dissolution of Bear Stearns from causing an international financial catastrophe. The Fed provided financial backing for the acquisition of the investment bank by J.P. Morgan Chase and made emergency loans available to all major investment firms.
Emphasis added by me.
So it’s admitted, but they can still distance themselves by saying those are the reporter’s words, not their’s.
Here’s where we become the suckers — again:
Paulson’s argument, which is shared by leaders of the Fed, is that even when the emergency Fed lending program for investment banks goes away — it is scheduled to expire in September, though the central bank could choose to extend it — financial players will assume they would be bailed out again in a crisis. That means they may be more willing to take risks that could threaten the financial system and thus require greater policing.
“We must limit the perception that some institutions are either too big to fail or too interconnected to fail,” Paulson is to say. “If we are to do that credibly, we must address the reality that some are.”
Emphasis added by me.
Yeah, right. Watch them try to plug up the next hole in the rotting financial dike. You really think they’ll stand by?
The Fed: Safeguarding Greed For Bastards Like Him!
This was first noted in the post Red Headlines For March 29, 2008.
Creaky Boards Vs. That Other Band
June 19, 2008The song they didn’t write? Coldplay are accused of plagiarism by American band
It was all going so predictably well. Coldplay’s new album went straight to No 1 on Sunday, selling 300,000 copies in three days; concerts sold out; that iTunes ad was everywhere. Even their notoriously sniffy critics in the music press seemed, with the odd exception, unusually muted.
Then, things took a sudden turn for the worse – with a plagiarism row. Yesterday, the band was forced to issue a categorical denial of allegations that they copied the title track to their new record, Viva La Vida Or Death and All His Friends from a little-known US group, Creaky Boards.
coldplay + itunes steals viva la vida from creaky boards!
I’m no musician, so I’m unqualified to judge this.
All I can say is that I damn well like Creaky Boards’s music over at their MySpace page.
The Songs I Didn’t Write is damned good.
And Brooklyn starts out with this great lyric:
I moved to New York so full of life and hunger
Fell in love with its enormity
Played a lot of pianos and taught computers
Trying to afford conformity.
If you’re on MySpace, go Add them. If you’re not on MySpace, go listen.
That other band? I don’t have any of their songs, probably don’t want any, either. And that YouTube video is the first time I’ve heard that song of theirs. I’m not impressed.
Straight-Up Jackasses
June 19, 2008These are the exact kind of pricks who pass me in the street and sneer; these are the well-groomed bastards who walk the fancy corridors of corporations; these are the “entitled” slime who will destroy all of us.
US N-weapons parts missing, Pentagon says
The US military cannot locate hundreds of sensitive nuclear missile components, according to several government officials familiar with a Pentagon report on nuclear safeguards.
Robert Gates, US defence secretary, recently fired both the US Air Force chief of staff and air force secretary after an investigation blamed the air force for the inadvertent shipment of nuclear missile nose cones to Taiwan.
According to previously undisclosed details obtained by the FT, the investigation also concluded that the air force could not account for many sensitive components previously included in its nuclear inventory.
One official said the number of missing components was more than 1,000.
Emphasis added by me.
That terrorist nuke that will someday go off in America?
Parts of it will no doubt have little labels that read, Made In America.
Thanks a lot, you Suited fuckheads.
When you read your Bible, those scum Pharisees who Jesus condemned? You’re their descendants!
Mike Cane 2008 
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