i'm so behind!

i have my google reader set up with a jillion RSS feeds.

(i have no idea how to explain what these things are, so please do whatever research you need to in order to get up to speed. it's not really important. let's liken it to...having a few weeks worth of 'the new yorker' sitting around, waiting to be read. or, your tivo is full of stuff that you haven't had time to watch. the point is, there's a lot and it's hard to keep up.)

anyway, if i don't keep up on a daily basis, it's nearly impossible to ever catch up. since one of them is headlines from NPR, there are hundreds of updates right there. then add in the page six gossip stories, which are 12 a day. then i subscribed to buzzfeed, which i am realizing is a total reader-killer. anyway, i am drowning in online content. i assume this must be how "real" bloggers keep up on things, because i can't imagine where anyone would find the time to search the internet for entirely original content. even if you were getting paid for it, which most bloggers aren't you'd get totally overwhelmed, i think. it takes hours to fully explore any really good site. so, it must be RSS.

in any case, i am WAY behind. i haven't check my RSS in days and it is telling me now that i have 1000+ stories. it literally says "1000+" like past 1000 the numbers are too fatiguing for it to even contemplate.

this blog entry will be a bunch of the stuff i like, as i am powering through my RSS feeds, many of which i am just going to delete, because life is short and i have a disk of 'battlestar gallactica' to watch and i have my priorities.

also, i am too lazy and too small time to worry about correctly citing where everything is from, but if you go to the site to pursue the link, obviously you'll see the original material, so i think i'm still doing okay and not violating any kind of blogger code of ethics. (as if i cared.)

* so glad i found this, because i was wondering about some of this stuff and was afraid to ask.

* sweet baby jesus, this is so upsetting, on so many levels. which levels? 1) there is a real person who has to go through his life looking like this. 2) he's so creepy looking that people assume he can't be real. 3) he is a fucking SEX OFFENDER, which is both icky and also kinda understandable because LOOK AT HIM. who is going to have sex with him voluntarily? my parents are big believers in the idea that we choose our lives each time - choose our parents and our life situations - to help us work out whatever lessons we need to this time around. sure, why not? but WOW, he chose a tough incarnation this time around. WHOA.

* i don't know who half of these people are, but the ones i do know are funny enough to make it worthwhile. (don't bother if you're not a music snob. it's a waste of time.)

* this is a joke site that is sure to offend all my fundamentalist christian readers. (i have no fundamentalist christian readers that i am aware of.) for everyone else, it's literally hours of hilarity making fun of fundamentalist christians.

* this article about a new slow food movement in new york made me want to move to brooklyn and get all foodie. don't tell shannon, but i think i am in love with one of the chocolate-making brothers. (the one who looks like shannon.)

* i know it's linguistic elitism to decry the devolution of my version of the english language, and to feel like it's all falling apart because of lazy grunters and endless IMing, but it makes me glad to know that someone, somewhere, finds this stuff worth noting. (though they're in the UK, which is a completely different language, but still....)

* you guys, poor bernard madoff has been under house arrest in his manhattan penthouse for WEEKS. hasn't the poor man suffered enough?! answer: not even close. i love the last part, where he says he should get to keep his penthouse and $60 mill in assets because they're in his wife's name. aside from publicly spanking him on his testicles 50 billion times, i can't think of a non-death penalty punishment strict enough for him.

* this month is the 150th birthday of dr. seuss himself, theodore geisel, so here are some seuss-related tid-bits
.

* i am literally sending healing vibes to coolio and his family right now. one might say they're in my prayers.

* i hesitate to even link to this sketch because some of you are going to think it's really disgusting and some are going to thinks it's really dumb. but somewhere, someone might see this and think it's really, really funny, too. i am warning you, though, guys (uncle keith), you're not going to think this is funny. it's partly about a guy who has sex with his cat. so, warning.

* i don't even watch tv and i have never seen this particular infomercial, but i laughed out loud anyway.



* dear justin timberlake, i love you. (via lisanti quarterly, which is awesome.)



* good luck not spending at least a few moments of your life jamming out with this. (via max silvestr, via a zillion other people.)

le plus ca change, the plus c'est le meme chose.

* stay classy, new york post.

* we're having some serious budget problems in california.

glad to see that the republicans in our state are moved by the spirit of bi-partisanship that's sweeping the nation.

just kidding, that's not happening in washington or in california.

what the fuck is wrong with america?

oh, i know. TOO MANY CHOICES and too many people whose opinions don't matter having a say in things.

this crap would NEVER happen if i were running stuff.

i'd take the head republicans and the governor and the head democrats and knock all their heads together, then give them all a public spanking for being a bunch of ninnies and letting things get to this point.

i'm so sick of the republicans and the democrats taking turns being the boss and then punishing whoever was in charge before. and i'm sick of whoever is on the bottom being a bunch of whiny contrarians. also, democrats, how the fuck did you let CALIFORNIA have so many republicans that they can completely stop these negotiations? blowing it, democrats. blowing it.

WORK IT OUT.

compassionate fascism works because we just make the right decisions for everyone and we're not really interested in ideological differences of opinions because we've got a fucking country to run and it's possible we know a little more about running a country that moonbeam stargazer in berkeley, or cletus q. overbite in spitoon, tx.

obviously we can't solve the budget crisis with ALL spending cuts, nor can it be ALL tax hikes. it'll be a combination of both because that's what needs to happen.

enough. shut up. make it happen.

* i know i'm kinda fixated on this octuplets lady, but i just keep having her shoved in my face. this article is upsetting because she is so obviously obsessed with angelina jolie and is lying about it. also because of her poor mother's quote at the end.

* this article is upsetting because it just adds on to the established pattern of behavior from this family. i'll admit, my first thought when reading that headline was to think about what losers that family is, which is unlike me. i lay a greater weight of responsibility on unscrupulous lenders in this whole housing mess, because they were making loans that they knew the people could never afford. these idiots ought to have known that the deals they were getting were too good to be true, but obviously common sense and the ability to take responsibility for one's actions is not a highly prized skill in our culture, so how could they be expected to NOT think that they deserved to own homes they couldn't afford? but those lenders, THEY knew. so, shame on them.

so, this family, with the parents who are behind on their house payments because they had an adjustable rate mortgage, and the daughter who keeps making kids in her freaky science experiment way... could they cost tax payers more money? because i'm sure the parents are going to want help negotiating their mortgage, which they should be able to do, definitely, but is that going to come out of this new housing package? because being behind on your house payments because you're working full time raising the illegitimate children of your own (obviously) poorly-raised daughters isn't a very good excuse.

(i know it is easy to blame parents for kids who turn out idiots or criminals or just bad people. sometimes good parents end up with kids who are duds. i know being a parent isn't easy, and i certainly don't suggest that it is. you do the best you can and hope for the best, like in everything else in life. but to look at this baby-hoarder, and see her behavior, and see what a weirdo she is, doesn't that suggest something went awry in her upbringing? if the only problem is that they keep enabling her to make these catastrophically terrible decisions, isn't that a huge, huge mistake? yes, it is.)

so this family is costing us for the daughter's disability. it's costing us for her food stamps and disability payments for her kids who have special needs. it's costing us for her hospital stay, including a few weeks of care for SEVEN babies. it's costing us for her future student loans, which she imagines will be enough to support her and her 14 kids. it's probably going to cost us for them to keep their shoebox of a house. i just feel like it's not fair that people who aren't making terrible decisions or raising their kids to be selfish monsters should have to foot the bill. i'm bankrolling this crazy lady's lifestyle. not cool.

* last 'best night ever' with one of my internet boyfriends, max silvestri. i am making a sad face as i watch this. if you haven't watched it before, feel free to watch them all on that same site because they are consistently really, really funny. i don't even watch TV and i find them entertaining despite being entirely about tv.

* i'm really curious about the amazon kindle. i love the idea of saving the paper wasted to print books. i know that the traditional print industries are all struggling right now, and i feel not great about abandoning them, but i also feel like a paper-based industry is just asking for an overhaul. if we're all so concerned about trees and recycling and conserving, it seems like any industry that is built on semi- or non-renewable resources is out of sync. i can't count the number of books and magazines i've purchased or been given which i then gave to the library or left at the gym. i totally didn't need my own copy of either, because i had no intention of rereading them. like buying an mp3 instead of a cd, it uses a lot less resources to get the digital version of media instead, or at least first. if i love an album i got online, i'll often buy the cd. also, how futuristic is the kindle, right? imagine having THAT with you on vacation, instead of lugging around a paperback or something, trying to buy english language books in a foreign country, having the new yorker with you already. good stuff, right?

but what if it totally sucks, or it lacks the magic of paper books? i know the having music in digital format has sort of ruined music for me. apparently having access to so much music devalues my music and makes it a lot harder to bond intensely with any single album the way i used to. though, could that be age? i just find that since i got my first ipod, i have had much faster turnaround time with music, where i'll be intensely interested in an album or artist, then it fades. what if the kindle does that for books?

i also question whether reading something on a hand held will be icky feeling, like reading stuff online is. i find it much more difficult to retain information that i've read online, like an article i am supposed to download for school vs. a printed hand out. what if the kindle is the same way?

any thoughts?

some thoughts on education and the future.

shannon and i talked through some ideas about the educational system under compassionate fascism.

the whole talk started with a discussion of the operating system used in a lot of computers in future movies. you might be familiar with the one i talking about. it's the one tony stark uses in 'ironman.' they use it in 'minority report' too. they also use it in 'vanilla sky.' the basic idea is that everything is controlled with your hands. 'ironman' has it floating in 3D space, and he's just poking stuff and tossing it around and talking to his super-computer. i was more impressed with the one in 'vanilla sky,' which was otherwise a totally weird, forgettable movie.

in that movie, the computer was a flat panel on tilda swinton's desk, and she was using it a lot like we use iphones. again with the poking and flinging and dragging, but with her hands.

that is some future technology that i think isn't far away, and i am stoked on ways it can be applied to schools and to business.

so, computers will be one panel, either propped up in front of you with perhaps a wireless, touch-sensitive mouse pad, or laying flat on the table in front of you. the entire thing will be a screen, like an iphone. the keyboard will hide or be shown as needed. you'll drag things manually from one place to another. you'll poke a file with your finger and drag it into the trash. easy as pie, right? i'm predicting this isn't far away. not next year but within the next 10 years, i think we'll probably see that.

students will have laptops that they are given when they arrive at school, probably from the youngest possible age. preschool kids will play shape and color games on them. they'll have writing recognition programs, so that you'll learn to write on them, too, using a stylus. all tests will be taken on them, and then sent to the teacher's computer, via wireless internet. no textbooks, because everything will be downloaded to the computers as needed.

bibliophiles, you'll still be able to buy real paper books. but we need to do something about the paper useage in books and people we don't need to be printing hundreds of thousands of copies of the newest diet fad book. save the trees for something that matters. like celebrity gossip magazines.

kids will take notes on their school laptops. they can have their own home laptops, but the ones for school will be mandatory. everyone will carry flash drives with them everywhere they go, in case they need to get some work from their school/work computer onto their home, or vice versa. lectures will be automatically recorded and made available to students. attendance to classes will be monitored by thumb scans at the doorways of classes. each professor will decide on their attendance policy.

all papers will be written on the laptops and, again, sent to the professor via wireless connection.

shannon and i had some disagreements about upgrades, like what will happen when it's time to get new computers.

i felt like the old school computers would be collected, expertly refurbished, and sold online, with proceeds going to the ministry of education. perhaps they could be refurbished by students in higher level computer engineering classes!

shannon brought up an interesting point. he suggested that products under compassionate fascism be built to last, like old american cars. there is no conceivable reason why people need to buy the newest model of computer every year when the majority of the really important changes are software and operating system changes. so why not have a body that is so simple but so reliable that there's really nothing to update for? what if it was built to be used for an entire lifetime? so a kid is assigned a school computer when they're in kindergarten and they use the same one for their entire educational careers, until they graduate. any new changes to the model will be because of significant advances, not something dumb like changing the sharp edges into rounded ones, or changing the body from black plastic to titanium alloy.

i like this idea. i like the idea of america making cars that are built to be passed on to your kids and your grandkids with pride. and not as a cool, expensive luxury, like many classic cars are now, but as heirlooms, with standardized parts that make it fixable by a wide array of people, not just people with the expensive computers for diagnostics and crap. to balance the need for consumer spending to fuel the economy with our government's firm commitment to sustainability in all industries, at every level, we would allow auto upgrades for each driver every 5 years, let's say. no changing before that. you certainly don't have to upgrade every five years, and in fact you're encouraged not to, but as long as you wait five years, you are allowed to buy trade for a new model. that being said, i think the the auto industry, and all consumer industries, will be strictly controlled in the amount of new products or new models of old products that they're allowed to put out. if the main change is blue fog lights instead of yellow, wait until you have some other, seriously important changes and then release something new. say, every ten years, the auto industry gets to release a brand new model. however, all subsequent models need to be adaptable to the older models, and new advances in car components need to take into account that most people will just be getting upgrades to their old cars, because as a society we frown on conspicuous consumption.

some other odds and ends:

1) all professions are paid the same amount. you can be given bonuses for good performance, but there are no professions that are guaranteed money-makers. likewise, there are no specializations in medicine that pay more or less. being in public health will pay the same as holistic nutrition. also there will be no plastic surgery allowed unless the situation is related to a medical problem, like a burn or something. no gastric by-passes, no lipo, no vaginal rejuvenation. doctors of these things, you're wasting the world's time and money. please devote yourself to something that actually benefits mankind, not helps it become more lazy and image-obsessed.

2) doctors don't get paid by their patients until they've either cured the problem, passed the patient along to a different practitioner, or made a measurable contribution to the curing of the ailment. there will be no repeated visits for issues that aren't ever solved, for which you, the patient, are expected to pay. not that it matters because we'll OBVIOUSLY have universal health care and the insurance industry will seem as quaint and bizarre as the idea of barbers as surgeons.

3) there are way more doctors, and each doctor has fewer patients. this will give them more time to devote to solving individual problems, instead of making the patient clamor for help to no avail. doctors will be trained to understand that curing illness is their only job, and to the extent that illness is not being cured on their watch, they're failing. this won't put pressure on doctors to solve difficult cases, and there will be unlimited resources available for consultations with other doctors, and trying experimental treatments, or collaborating with practitioners of other healing styles (e.g. chinese herbs, ayurveda (sp?)) what it will do is force them to keep their attention focused on a case for as long as it takes to resolve the problem, or create a long-term treatment plan. for debilitating, long-term cases, one doctor will be in charge of all aspects of treatment, coordinating with the various others.

4) everyone automatically has a chiropractor, a therapist, a dentist, a doctor and a massage therapist.

i have more thoughts but it's late and i need to go to bed, so i'll leave you with this question to ponder for next time's discussion: while considering the case of the nutbar who gave birth to octuplets, is there such a thing as a country that's too free? (obviously that fertility doctor is also crazy and should be retired and sent to work in an apiary or something. no more medicine for you.)