Weather.com is a hypochondriac

dear weather.com and accuweather,

Since when is potential frost an event that requires special notice? Oh no my garden plants!? its not even severe weather. its just weather. how can that be worthy of a yellow warning bar??

I'm sure farmers care but I'm also pretty sure that they aren't waiting to hear about it from you.

sincerely,

me

fuck you democrats.

nytimes: "democrats near deal on abortion"

also, fuck the stupid ass american public.

which do you think we will get first: gay marriage or the right to abortion for poor women?

likely gay marriage. at least then they will be able to adopt all the babies that cant be aborted.

voting: im too lazy

according to this state report, as of march 2008, there are roughly 4.3 million registered voters in new york city. about 300,000 were inactive. so there are slightly less than 4 million active voters in the five boroughs.

in today's mayoral election - the number of people actually voting: about 28 percent of all registered voters. (might actually be a lower percentage since the number of registered people is probably slightly higher as a result of fall 08)

in a case where bloomberg was expected to win by a landslide -- you get the normal people being too lazy to vote because there's no reason to waste time and all that's left at the polls is the crazies. so the election results come out looking all wonky. if people thought they really had to vote - like if the number of votes that you won by had any bearing - then the results would have definitely been much higher in bloomberg's favor.

what is actually interesting is the breakout of how people voted: nytimes results report w/graphic

who knew that the bronx fucking hates bloomberg. okay, im not really surprised. but still. why vote for thompson? i guess thompson is black so that's something in his favor theoretically, but that doesn't make him suck any less.

why you have to love the internets

how to open a bottle of wine w/out a corkscrew

brilliant!

the adhd life

open laptop with intention of checking weather for tomorrow before bed.

get immediately distracted. for two hours.

finally rip self away from internet. go brush teeth.

realize that never got around to actually checking the weather.

return to check the weather. write a blog post about how you forgot instead.

its nearly 2 am. still have not successfully checked the weather. aggghhhhhhhhhhhhh.

entertaining in retrospect. but so fucking annoying when all you really wanted to do was check the fucking weather!

there are certainly reasons to be very upset.

also - gang violence. how is it that two students can be shot dead in separate incidents in the same week and no one really gives a shit because hey, they were basically asking for it.

uhm really??

also - once again ladies vs work mentioning how its totally cool if some women want to be stay at home moms or what to sacrifice their career for their kids, since its their choice. seeing as how, lets see, the vast majority of women deciding to stay home or kill their career are women...and the vast majority "deciding" to not are men. hmm. can you really call that a choice?? you really think the only problem left is that women are treated poorly in the media? really?? isnt that actually reflecting that for all intensive purposes, in many parts of the country women still aren't even allowed to freely chose whether to have a child or not??

(and if you want to talk about poor women. they have even less choices. its take care of kids and try to hold a job while the baby daddy either takes little responsibility or is in jail. but at the end of the day - can you really say that a dad in jail is any worse than a dad that works 24-7 and never sees their kids? at least the guy in jail can blame poverty and a shitty education. what can the asshole who works blame? privilege?)

think of it this way. is is the same as when people say -- oh well, not everyone can go to college but then you take a closer look and you see that the vast majority of the kids not going to college are poor and under prepared, meanwhile their wealthier counterparts go in far higher numbers... there is no way anyone in good conscience could call that a choice.

the same with women having shitty opportunities and giving up. is that really a choice or is that rooted in how we operate as a society?

is it really a choice when women earn relatively little that for some they only barely break even if they work and pay someone to take care of the kids and/or they cant keep job because of the kids.

what if women went on strike and demanded to be paid what they rightful deserved?
teachers*? nurses? social workers? non-profits?

i dont support unions as lazy factories. but i do support the idea of a collective group standing up for itself. the while male establishment does it all the time. why shouldnt the rest of the assorted establishments do it too?

if i had my way poor people would riot in the streets protesting the shitty education their kids get. and women would go on strike demanding to be treated with respect - starting with the money.

*teachers w/caveat that the old crazy ones retire.

update: woman from ms magazine tells it like it is
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/opinion/l27lipman.html

fuck you at&t

seriously, dropped calls three times in a row in less than one minute? i mean can you even call that a phone anymore? like if your internet video convos are likely to be more reliable, is that a problem?

unfortunately att is like, no actually fuck you as always. we will continue to charge you 10000% the cost of sending a text message. and we will continue to make you buy 500 more minutes that you use just because we can.

id like to kick all the phone companies in the balls.

the cost of war

http://www.100eyes.org/beware-the-cost-of-war/slideshow/ (profiled in the nytimes)

suffering is suffering, regardless of whose side you are on or where your allegiances lie.

Wine bars, cat breeders, couture fashion etc.

what do they all have in common? obscure knowledge that has no intrinsic value. that simply exists for its own sake.

went to a snobby wine bar and found it entertaining. its not intimidating when you realize that its just someones hobby. and you dont have to give a shit about someones hobby if you dont want to.

also I just like the idea of comparing wine people to fancy cat people. in my opinion they are all crazy and weird.

booze!

pigs, vegetarianism

if you give a pig a mirror it quickly figures out how to use it to find stuff that it cant see directly.
i think that might mean that pigs are smarter than me.

but seriously. if pigs are as smart, if not smarter than cats and other dumb household pets, how do we justify eating them?

bacon is amazing but if pigs are smarter than things we would never think of eating doesn't make it a bit harder to justify? i mean wouldnt we theoretically be better off eating dumb as rocks golden retrievers? (j.s.foer in nytimes mag also made me feel guilty for eating any meat. asshole.)

then again my great-grand father raised rabbits as quasi-pets and also ate them. well he ate most of them and then kept one or two of the big fat ones because he liked them. rabbit eating is actually something i can get behind. those things are dumb as rocks and are already programmed to breed excessively - hence the phrase 'multiplying like rabbits.' and rabbits also grow really quickly. and rabbit meat is actually not bad. its slightly more tasty than chicken and about equal with pork.

i sense an ecologically friendly get rich while saving the pigs at the expense of rabbits scheme!

(and i know cuteness to tastyness doesn't actually matter because babe was adorable but that didnt stop anyone from eating him.)

oh noes! the sea blobs!

sea mucus is as disgusting as it sounds.

scientists also think that jellyfish will become more common as the oceans get progressively more fucked up by global warming.

and then we will move to a spaceship and be blobs people like in wall-e. [insert image of home alone kid here]

why is it only tuesday and other musings

first of all, why does itunes keep trying to pretend that it can select what i want to hear better than i can?? because let me tell you, that shit is no google algorithm. its like your mom selecting songs based on random words in the title. terrible.

second of all, how is it still only tuesday (for at least 20 more minutes technically)?

third, why did i buy two books at the strand when i have three others that ive been trying to get through since before i moved well over a year ago? i take this as a vote of confidence in the book industry. i mean why in the fuck did i buy more books - i dont even read them!

there is something about the fact that books and records covers are paper, perhaps the smell which makes browsing in a used book or record store wonderful. i didnt grow up with records per se (we had a record player and i had records but mostly i bought in cds). but if given the choice, i would prefer to browse and buy records as opposed to cds. and i think i would prefer to browse books as opposed to e-books. there's just something about the physicality of it. then again, i also have the luxury of being able to walk to two great used books stores from my apartment, one with an amazing selection. but used books are also great and cheap.

at the end of the day, unlike newspapers, there are simply too many books and they are just too convenient and lovely to ever die out completely. however academic books -- that is a different story. as far as i am concerned the sooner google books get those fuckers scanned the better. its fucking ridiculous that we haven't done that sooner. if i had my own book - i would hope that it was something that would be useful and so i would certainly want it to be scanned. why would you want to spend all that time writing a book only to have it stuffed on a shelf for all eternity, read once or twice every 50 years? its ridiculous that people claim to have valid problems with google books. while copyright is certainly something to be considered - why would you hold up a project? why not just sue for damages after if its really that horrible? i mean seriously. fuck off. what are you worried that poor kids might read obscure books about communism?

nytimes mayoral debate recap: giant douche vs turd sandwich

the nytimes: fact checking the first nyc mayoral debate: bloomberg vs. the douche that is owned by the teachers unions even more that bloomberg (aka Thompson).

bloomberg is no saint for sure, but thompson is a douche plus idiot.

its the classic conundrum: cheez doodle that fell on the subway platform vs turd sandwich. frankly i prefer a slightly dirty cheez doodle to a full turd sandwich.

meanwhile, the original giant douche vs turd sandwich from south park (around time of 2004 election) -- still cracks me up. every time.


also more background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd
and the full episode i think: http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/808/

crazy people in love with reality tv

the whole fake child in balloon incident.

damn those kids are going to be circus freaks. or will be going to ivy league schools.

also, you can tell the police are embarrassed that they jumped on the bandwagon so quickly and made a mockery of themselves. everyone loves a media circus.

has our country reached a new low involving children in this shit?

libarrarieis

nytimes recommended reading: ebooks and public libraries, with a mention of google books. who knew that public libraries already had ebooks? not me!

the article also includes book publishers talking about how they cant wait to put the final nails in their own coffin. including such gems as the one at the bottom of this excerpt:

Pam Sandlian Smith, library director of the Rangeview Library District, which serves a suburban community north of Denver, said that instead of purchasing a set number of digital copies of a book, she would prefer to buy one copy and pay a nominal licensing fee each time a patron downloaded it.

Publishers, inevitably, are nervous about allowing too much of their intellectual property to be offered free. Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said Ms. Smith’s proposal was “not a sustainable model for publishers or authors.”

librarian suggesting that book publishers figure out a more sustainable model, suggestion includes offer to actually pay per use, book industry's reply: fuck off librarians with no cash.

maybe the librarians dont matter, but then again, why would a struggling industry tell willing customers to eff off? hmmm. maybe they are struggling because their heads are too far up their asses.

ps nytimes, give yourself a pat on the back for some good, insightful reporting.