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Transcendental Floss has moved to a different domain: transcendentalfloss.com.

Transcendental Floss is a multi-author weblog and online gathering place for people in the Pacific Northwest.

It is brought to you by a group of writers, representing Portland, Oregon, Seattle & Bellingham, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The content is meant to be provocative, to draw readers into conversation, and to build community.

Phases of transition

transcendental floss is in the process of a double switch. tf will be switching its blogware from Blogger to WordPress and moving from blogspot to a domain to call its own, transcendentalfloss.com.

Within the next week, heck, maybe later today, the move will be considered complete. Gonzo will post an official announcement.

raze the dead

'we the people' have crossed over. we're now in a place where the federal government is all-powerful.

a place where the dead are declared alive because the Government says so.

displaying their omnipotence, republicans stuck a feeding tube into the withered body of a brain-dead woman, and called it good.

"I will continue to stand on the side of those defending life for all Americans, including those with disabilities," said george w. bush, leader of the newly minted gods.

it's the first time i can recall death referred to as a disability.

the woman's husband is resisting this transition of power, and the redefinition of life. "Terri died 15 years ago," Michael Schiavo said, referring to the collapse and cardiac arrest that doctors say virtually destroyed his wife's brain. "Have they ever met her?" Schiavo said. "What color are her eyes? What's her middle name? What's her favorite color? They don't have any clue who Terri is. They should all be ashamed of themselves."

before he was elevated to deity, bush-the-governor signed a texas law giving doctors and hospitals the authority to pull the plug on patients beyond hope or help--even against the wishes of the patients' families. republican lawgivers also eliminated medicaid funding for the kind of care required by people with a 'disability' like terri schiavo.

but those decisions are part of the old america, the pre-deiocracy america. the america that respected states' rights and the rule of law and the right of the dead to rest in peace. this new country? i don't recognize it, and i will refuse to recognize it. as should all of you, if you find yourselves staring into the maw of this new, rough beast, its time come 'round at last.

"Come down, President Bush," Schiavo said in a telephone interview. "Come talk to me. Meet my wife. Talk to my wife and see if you get an answer. Ask her to lift her arm to shake your hand. She won't do it."

She won't, Schiavo said, because she can't.

even if she could, who would blame her for refusing? who would want to touch the hand of the republican god?

drilled again

once, before he blew his brains out, kurt cobain said "...mother nature is a whore."

there's probably no connection, but the u.s. senate confirmed nature's status today, voting to drill the arctic national wildlife refuge like a cheap hooker.

"We've got to use our technology to over time evolve away from reliance upon oil and gas, and at the same time use our technologies to make sure we can use our plentiful resources, like coal, in an environmentally friendly way."

who said that? why, george bush, of course. let the record show that george bush doesn't give a damn about the environment, or evolving away from oil and gas. not to mention that there's no such thing as evolution.

Republicans hailed the Senate's vote on the ANWR provision as a major step after 24 years of efforts to open the wildlife refuge for drilling.

it is! it is a major step...toward stuffing the pockets of bush's cronies in the gas & oil bidness.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton has said the first leases could not be issued until 2007, and that it would take another seven to 10 years to develop the sites and produce oil.

speaking of whores, gale norton has got to be wetting herself over the prospect of trashing a perfectly good wilderness. it's not like she's a fox in charge of the henhouse. it's more like she's a crack addict with her own meth lab, if i might mix a metaphor and a socially unacceptable, mutually destructive habit.

Arctic drilling is a central component of President Bush's energy policy. "This project will keep our economy growing by creating jobs and ensuring that businesses can expand," Mr. Bush said, "and it will make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy."

this last bit is actually fairly important. because tapping every barrel of oil in anwr will have zero (0) impact on u.s. reliance on foreign energy sources. none. have i mentioned recently that george bush is a grotesque, unrepentant liar?

Proponents of drilling in the Arctic Refuge claim that massive amounts of oil are to be found underneath the Refuge's fragile coastal plain. They often quote an inflated figure of "technically recoverable oil" that might lie beneath the coastal plain. This is the amount of oil that could be recovered without any regard to cost. This figure does not take into account the actual cost of bringing the oil to domestic markets. When economic factors are considered, the mean amount of economically recoverable oil drops to just 3.2 billion barrels. The cost of drilling in the Arctic Refuge is so high, in fact, that the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) says if the price of oil fell to $16 a barrel, there would actually be NO economically recoverable oil in the coastal plain.

alaska's two senators, ted stevens and lisa murkowski, are giddy. the dollar signs in their eyes are lighting them up like a bright oil-burning lights burning brightly in the alaskan wilderness. it'd be kind of cute if it weren't so disturbing and distasteful. the two of them are bathed in enough petrochemical slime to keep them lubed up for any kind of activity where lubrication is required for more than four hours.

does all this sound like unsupported liberal bias? golly, i can't have that. let's see what the u.s. geological survey says!

The USGS estimated:

a 95 percent probability that at least 5.7 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil are in the ANWR coastal plain
a 5 percent probability that at least 16 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil are in the ANWR coastal plain
a mean or expected value of 10.3 billion barrels of technically recoverable undiscovered oil in the ANWR coastal plain.

there's that phrase again. "technically recoverable." which, as we've seen above, amounts to 3.2 billion barrels of oil.

What do 3.2 billion barrels of oil mean to Americans who are concerned about our dependence on foreign oil, particularly from the Middle East? Consider this: Each day, the United States consumes about 19.5 million barrels of oil, an annual total of about 7 billion barrels each year 2. Given this rate of consumption, if Arctic oil was our nation's only source, it would fuel America's demand for less than 6 months.

there it is ladies and germs. the u.s. senate has sold its soul, sold us out, sold conjugal visitation rights to anwr, for a six-month fuel supply.

not to mention that the senate went outside procedural boundaries to get this transaction past the vice squad. see, ordinarily the effort to deflower anwr would've been susceptible to filibuster, which drilling opponents have used to defeat such proposals in the past. this time, however, republicans attached the proposal to the federal budget, which is not subject to filibuster.

Senate Republicans were ebullient after the vote. "Another example of where the strength of the majority matters," said Senator George Allen, Republican of Virginia.

actually, george, a poll last december said that americans favored keeping drilling out of anwr, 55% to 38%. but don't let that get in the way of your gloat-fest.

looking forward: as a matter of bush energy policy, we can forget about conservation, higher mileage standards for the auto industry, and development of alternate energy sources. who needs 'em?

for that matter, who needs a conscience when mother nature is spread out before us, ready to be drilled?

what's wrong with a little propaganda?

"There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press."
--george w. bush

in the last 4 years the bush administration has spent $254 million in taxpayer money to churn out fake video news releases. the government accountability office (gao) subsequently found these pieces to be "covert propaganda," illegal in this country.

the administration has instructed its officials to ignore the gao, and to continue this method of undermining american values and principles.

What is more, these officials argued, it is the responsibility of television news directors to inform viewers that a segment about the government was in fact written by the government. "Talk to the television stations that ran it without attribution," said William A. Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. "This is not our problem. We can't be held responsible for their actions."

the cowardly liar

a recent google search of “cowardly liar” turned up this image:


“Read what my medal says: "Courage." Ain't it the truth? Ain't it the truth?”

exquisitely apt, don'tcha think? because no matter how you dress him up, the underlying truth remains: george w. bush is yellow.

there’s no other way to characterize a man who goes so far out of his way to avoid facing people who disagree with him.

these days he’s out on the road trying to sell his “plan” (if a scheme with no specifics can be referred to as such) to undermine social security. oh, he talks about “personal accounts” and “shoring up” the system, but folks with even a modicum of intellectual integrity have seen through this scam.

but i digress. this is not about social security, per se. it’s about the leader of the free world hiding from criticism behind goggle-eyed kool-aid drinkers who applaud his every word.

as described in the l.a. times, bush’s audiences for these social security road shows are prescreened to include only people who agree with him.

Access to the president's events is controlled to ensure that the audiences will be friendly to his cause. Attendance is by invitation only, and tickets are dispensed by Republican lawmakers, state party organizations, business associations and conservative advocacy groups.

The White House insists that presidential security, not stagecraft, is the motive for restricting access.

oh. security. so, in other words, democrats and other heathens not on the ticket lists are actually security threats.

what kind of craven, cowering, spineless scaredy-cat are we dealing with here? the kind who’s afraid to face any american audacious enough to show up at a pre-scripted, taxpayer-funded play-act and call out this “president” on yet another big lie.

Dorothy: My Goodness, what a fuss you're making. Well naturally, when you go around picking on things weaker than you are. Why, you're nothing but a great big coward.
Cowardly Lion: [crying] You're right, I am a coward! I haven't any courage at all. I even scare myself. [sobs]
Cowardly Lion: Look at the circles under my eyes. I haven't slept in weeks.
Tin Woodsman: Why don't you try counting sheep?
Cowardly Lion: That doesn't do any good. I'm afraid of them.

it figures. in fact it's kind of funny:

the president who defined himself as a post-9/11 fear-monger is actually just a big pusillanimous cat.

Row after row of bright red jackets

It was quite a moving sight to see row after row of bright red jackets joining in memorial services for the four young RCMP officers who lost their lives.

To quote the CBC web site:

Thousands of police officers, mourners and dignitaries gathered inside an Edmonton pavilion to honour Constables Peter Schiemann, Leo Johnston, Anthony Gordon and Brock Myrol in the largest memorial service in the Mounties' history.

The officers were shot and killed while investigating stolen property and a marijuana grow operation last Thursday near Mayerthorpe, Alta. Their killer, James Roszko, also shot himself.

Memorial honours Mounties
Profiles of four fallen RCMP officers

The number four doesn't seem large, but apparently Canada has not lost that many law enforcement officers in maybe a century. Plus, the RCMP is an international symbol of Canada, so it seems that this story of loss is also resonating outside my country's borders.

I found it gratifying to see police and military from the US showing up to pay their respects. Cops from places like New York and Boston came to Alberta to attend the funeral and show solidarity. I was struck by an older man - I guess he was an officer in the US Marine Corp. - who said that he felt like the young RCMP officers were like his kids - "they're all my kids" or words to that effect. Logically, it doesn't make sense, but emotionally, he's expressing a feeling of shared loss.

As I mentioned here recently, my Grandfather was a Mountie between 1918 and 1948. He served in detachments all across western Canada. At his funeral in 1978, even though he had retired from the service over 30 years prior, two tall RCMPs in bright red blazers and wide Stetson hats, stood at attention at the front door throughout our quiet little family ceremony. There weren't many people there at "Poppy's" funeral in fact, but the memory of the two Mounties standing at the front door made a hell of a strong impression on me when I was 12, and it still affects me today. I can't even explain it.

I guess it's a shame that it takes a funeral to get people to come together, but in it's own right, the coming-together is still a blessing.

morons among us...

a seattle cop knocked on our door last night. at midnight.

someone had been calling 911, she said, because the back end of one of our cars was extending beyond our driveway and over the sidewalk in front of our house.

savor that for a moment.



a cop. a midnight rap on the door. a frantic call to 911. "help, there's a car parked on the sidewalk!"

(for the record, said car was NOT parked on top of anyone.)

"are we breaking some kind of law we're not aware of?" my wife groggily inquired.

"mmmph, maybe, i don't know, if some parking enforcement officer happened along, it's hard to say..." the officer responded. "we just want the person to stop calling 911."

(for the record, we live at the end of a street that sees very little traffic─auto, pedestrian, or otherwise. and yes, there was room to walk behind the car without venturing into the nonexistent traffic. oh, and did i mention it was MIDNIGHT?)

we have three areas of concern here:

1. instead of leaving a note on the car (or, god forbid, speaking to us personally), one of our neighbors was aggrieved enough to call in the cops.

2. instead of calling a local police station, during normal hours, this person called 911. at midnight. on a tuesday.

3. one of our neighbors is a ratting, finking, rat-fink.

in the brief time we stayed awake after this event, my wife and i tried to figure out which of our neighbors possesses the low character and matching IQ to do such a thing. we have no suspects. we didn't even attempt to discern what we might have done to inspire such a vendetta, since we've never had anything but a pleasant (or at least polite) relationship with the folks who live near us.

not any more, by god. from now on, all our neighbors are guilty until proven innocent. they’re stupid until proven intelligent. you got a problem with us, sport? bring it on! go ahead, call 911 and tell them our grass is too long. while you’re at it, tell them to send the fire department, because we’re going to torch that tree that’s sort of, maybe, hanging over our side of the fence.

god help you if we even suspect you sent the cops to wake us up on a random tuesday night. and you can tell the rest of the neighbors the same thing. tell ‘em the law is coming. you tell 'em i'm coming! and hell's coming with me, you hear? hell's coming with me!

How much force is enough? Is a Taser too much?

Hi. I thought I'd start my first article on TDF with a bang, er... with a "zap"...

The issue in my mind currently is the use of Tasers by law enforcement in the US and Canada. My opinion (both as a gut feeling and after a little bit of reading and research) is that Tasers are an overkill measure - pun unintentional. Their use seems rarely justifiable to me, and they are probably in danger of becoming law enforcement's societal and public relations equivalent to a certain controversial missile defence technology. (Yes, my name is John, and I am Canadian.)

So, now that I've pissed off the cops and soldiers out there (not to mention anyone right-of-centre), allow me to back-peddle a little. My grandfather was a Mountie (Corporal Clarke of the RCMP) from 1918 to 1948. My Dad was a Military Policeman in the Canadian Armed Forces during WWII, as well as an Air Force officer in later years. Me, I may be a peace-lovin' left-wing techie-artist kind of person and generally useless where defending the security of my neighbourhood or country are concerned, but I do have a lot of respect for the difficult jobs expected of professional peacekeepers at the municipal, federal and international levels, and how hard it is (at least in Canada) to keep them adequately funded and supplied so that they can do their job effectively. In a nutshell, I like cops, and I try to respect soldiers to the extent that I believe in their causes and agree with their tactics.

Okay, so we're back full circle... Let's think about tactics...

The other day, I found this article describing 90 cases of deaths related to the use of Tasers in the US and Canada: http://www.saveourcivilliberties.org/en/2005/02/943.shtml

90 cases is in itself amazing, but I also knew the man listed at Number 54:

54. Robert Bagnell, 44, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
June 23, 2004
Police responding to a disturbance at a rooming house found Bagnell frenzied and destroying a washroom. Police shot him with a Taser and he stopped breathing and died at the scene. Police did not disclose the details surrounding Bagnell's death for more than a month while waiting for toxicology reports. A preliminary autopsy could not determine the cause of death. A coroner said Bagnell might have had a lethal level of cocaine in his system.

Bob Bagnell was a long-time drug user and used to do a little panhandling and sell his artwork outside my local 7-11 store. We got to talking and trading stories about artists or musicians or where we were born or whatever, just out of friendliness. Over the years, I gradually watched him kick his hardcore vices, get cleaner and in the months before he died, he even attended church and made some new friends.

So, it's hard to describe on a personal level, the realization that someone I'd spoken to and gotten to know over a few years had died in such a violent circumstance. Bob died in a altercation with Police, apparently in a coke fueled rage. This is the gist of the official police reports about it. There will undoubtedly be people who will say that it was more likely to happen due to Mr. Bagnell's long history of drug abuse or lifestyle. My issue is not that Bob was going to die - we're all headed that way in our own time - but my gut says that the 22,000 volt Taser shock must have had some effect on Bob's heart failure. Cops and soldiers have been restraining aggressive people hand-to-hand, or with batons or other non-electrical tools. So why now is the human equivalent of an electric cattle prod coming into such vogue for human defense?

I'm not saying that I know anything about Bob Bagnell's actions or state of mind during his fatal altercation with the Vancouver Police. That will be for the official coroner's inquest to determine.

My point is just this: I want to find out if Bob Bagnell might not have died that particular day if a Taser had not been used by the officers in trying to restrain him. It makes me feel cynical that the preliminary coroner's results took 30 days before being made public, toxicology reports notwithstanding, and it makes me feel cynical when I read of numerous other Taser-related deaths, and really suspicious of the Taser's manufacturer and sales agents. It is not a coincidence that Tasers are being used in so many police forces. There must be a plan for some logistical-financial benefit on the part of under-funded and over-worked police forces to bring this particular tool into the trade; more bang per buck, literally. So, here we are dealing with fallout - an unexpected cost that the bean counters and Taser marketing execs didn't expect. When I say "Taser-related deaths", I can only say that I have read that a Taser was used on the victim in during events directly preceding their death. Like I said, the rest will be up to the coroners to determine.

In the meantime, I'll pay some tribute to the man whom I knew who died, and hope for some clarity and facts to put some of my cynicism and suspicions to rest.

More investigation into Vancouver-area deaths related to Taser use:
http://www.thetyee.ca/Views/current/TaserFollowup.htm

And, finally, the beginning's of my little web tribute to Robert Wayne Bagnell:
http://robertbagnell.ejohnlove.com

Nudge-nudge, wink-wink. Say no more, say no more.

This post is brought to you by Professor Yousoupoff's Potency Pills.

Lately, there have been some TV commercials with copywriting that may have slipped by the clients.

One of the ads is by Verizon. I think. Either Google is dropping the ball or there is not a single web page containing this ad campaign's tag line. Shame on the marketing director. Anyway, some cellular company has had an ad campaign out for quite a while now. And I get a chuckle every time I see the spot. Especially, those spots with mobile shots of cars under four bars in places of odd spaces. Enough already, You want to know the tagline, right? Well, the tag for each spot is "more bars for more places". Sure, I'm in favor. Who isn't? Funny, but I have not heard of an outcry from Mothers Against Drunk Driving, though.

Tonight, however, I saw an ad that takes the cake. Trust me. You won't take this ad seriously if you hung out with my friends in college or friends of theirs. Well, actually, I really was not paying attention to the ad. My back was turned. I did not know what the product was. Nor was I sure about the product category. But when I heard Do you see pink in the sink?, college conversations flooded my head immediately. And I about spit out coffee all over my apartment. WTF did I just hear?! Yup, confirmed while ROTFLMFAO, I did hear what I heard correctly.

Now maybe I had strange friends in college, but I heard several of the fairer sex on several occasions refer to "pink in the sink" and the four words had nothing to do with gingivitis. It had more to do with, well, never mind, if you do not get it, then it isn't funny. Oh, alright, they were asking how much pink got in the sink. Nudge-nudge. Yes, they were discussing sex, okay? Do you get it now? Sometimes women will do that. Talk sex. And this was even before "Sex in the City" aired. The horror! Wink-wink. At least their talk made for interesting conversation. And provided a line to use at the ad agency later in life. Really, I should track down the copywriter. We may well have "attended" class together. Say no more, say no more.

Do you see pink in the sink? Seriously, Colgate, WTF.

Dildo or no dildo...

That's a funny photo.

Oh, uh, um, sorry. The cutline could just as well have been: Phil Mickelson reacted as his wedge shot rimmed out (seriously, that's what golfers say, I am not making this up) allowing Tiger Woods to win the Ford Championship on Sunday.

when dildos are outlawed...

...only outlaws will have dildos.

does it surprise anyone that it's illegal to sell uh, phallic-shaped sexual devices in alabama?

no, i suspect not. but in this hilarious take, mark morford skewers all that is wrong with this red state, and its ideological brethren, wherever they may skulk.

"...as the last deeply disturbing election proved, we on the dildo-happy side of the fence must be very, very wary, on alert, keenly observant of these rigid and dangerous little laws and of these genital-free religious leaders, as Alabama's is the mind-set that put Bush in office and these are the voting blocs that keep noxious abstinence programs alive in public schools and this is the viewpoint that buys 20 million copies of the Left Behind series of silly apocalyptica, all hoping for the End of the World real soon now so why not abuse the planet as we damn well please and wait for the Rapture, uptight and righteous and dildo free."

i thought about posting a photo of a "genital stimulating device" here, but that isn't really necessary, is it? we're all adults, sort of, right? no, we'll just stipulate the image, and get right to the point: in states where such things are outlawed, what will the outlaws do?

will they put bumper stickers on their chevys threatening, "you'll get my dildo when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers"? will the south rise again to march on the statehouse, candles in one hand and vibrators in the other?

pffft. not likely. not in the bible belt, close kin to the chastity belt. no, the good citizens of the former confederate states will retreat to their gardens, their farms, their backyard flower beds. and one day, soon, the south will bust out with a bumper crop of cucumbers and zucchini and gourds not seen since...well since ever.

a new kind of black market will spring up, and moonshining will take on a whole 'nother meaning. rural legends will be born, and a fresh generation of "fun-runners" will emulate burt reynolds in "smokey and the bandit." indeed, the term "bootlegging" takes on a new and more interesting connotation, doesn't it?

"east-bound and down, loaded up and truckin' we gonna do what they say can't be done. we got a long way to go and a short time to get there, bla bla bla just watch ol' bandit run..."

the devil's bracelets

i've given it a lot of thought, and i've decided that beelzebub is running the country.

and get this: i'm not (necessarily) talking about george w. bush this time.

there are just too many evil things going on to dismiss them all as random occurrences. this scene from 'broadcast news' neatly describes my premise...

albert brooks: ...please don't take it wrong when I tell you that I believe that Tom, while a very nice guy, is the Devil.

holly hunter: This isn't friendship.

albert brooks: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen. And he'll get all the great women.

lowering our standards. slowly, implacably moving the line separating the acceptable from the unacceptable. this story, from npr, is exactly the kind of thing brooks was talking about.

The Department of Homeland Security is experimenting with a controversial new method to keep better track of immigrants who are applying to remain in the United States. It is requiring aliens in eight cities to wear electronic monitors 24 hours a day.

The ankle bracelets are the same monitors that some rapists and other convicted criminals have to wear on parole. But the government's pilot project is putting monitors on aliens who have never been accused of a crime.

So far, the Department of Homeland Security has put electronic monitors on more than 1,700 immigrants. Victor Cerda, director of Detention and Removal Operations at Homeland Security, says the anklets will help prevent tens of thousands of immigrants who are ordered to leave the country each year from "absconding" -- going into hiding to avoid deportation.

But critics say Cerda and other Homeland Security officials have exaggerated the extent of the problem. They point to a Justice Department study that put part of the blame on immigration officials, saying they'd failed to keep adequate records to track aliens.

government-issued electronic monitors on people who have done nothing wrong. got that? are we okay with that? i hope so, because right now “we the people” are responsible for our government engaging in a spectacular array of activities that once were considered un-American. instead of taking to the streets in protest, we are enabling the corrosion of Americanism, all in the name of patriotism and fighting “terrists” and scaring children.

bit by little bit we are lowering our standards where they are important. and we don’t even notice it happening.

george bush may not be the devil incarnate—but at the very least, W has the cell phone number of the beast tattooed on his ass. what’s more likely is that the administration has beelzebub on retainer, paid for with your tax dollars, and is keeping our god-fearing nation in the dark about it.

i’ve given it a lot of thought. and i’m pretty sure i was right to tell you.

School day drinking

Quietly though, a few districts around the country, from Indiana to Connecticut to Long Island, have begun to integrate breath-testing devices into the regular school day, a move that adds a new wrinkle to the ongoing struggle between students' privacy rights and a school's duty to limit drug and alcohol abuse.

...

Things seemed to be getting out of hand, even for East Hampton, a summer oasis for wealthy New Yorkers that reverts to a rural small town in the off-season where teenagers can get away with holding beach bonfire parties where alcohol flows freely, and year-round residents describe 16 as the de facto drinking age.
New York Times

Wake up, America! That's the de facto drinking age of any U.S. town (and especially city). Oh, sure, there are some towns filled with students who may not drink at sixteen, but the "opinion leaders" of the student crowd who get everyone else to drink by 18 (cuz unless a kid was raised by teetotallers or is bejeezus scared of a whooping s/he's taking a drink by 18, especially those headed for college).

Oops, I got off on the wrong foot here. All I wanted to really make note of is where is the mention of breathalyzers for the teachers. Perhaps, my junior highs and high school are the exceptions, but I know which teachers were drinking on the job. They still did well in the classroom, so I did not make a stink. Besides, I held it over some of them. This is why as a student it is important to ask for a hall pass during class and use the pass to barge into the teachers lounge unannounced. Amazing what went on in there.

As for other schools across the country, I am sure plenty are filled with boozed up teachers succumbing to the pressures of dealing with "today's" students. Start there. Then the kids.

That or students should unionize. I'll bet that district-union contracts have language stipulating that teachers do not have to put up with breathalyzers. ;)

lakers sinking

i play basketball. and i would never want a guy like kobe bryant on my team.



bryant is one of the top 5 players in the world right now, alongside tim duncan, shaq, and kevin garnett. throw lebron james in there too. and if i were in a pick-up game i’d love to run with any of those last four.

but kobe? no thanks, i’ll take a player to be named later.

because he’s almost always the best player on the floor, kobe never passes up a chance to let everybody know that he’s the whole game. anything his teammates do better be a set-up for him. don’t shoot, don’t pass to someone else, don’t set a screen for anyone else.

it’s funny to me that bryant feels it necessary to do all that alpha dog posturing. because at every level of play, from the ymca to the association, the other guys on the floor always defer to the best player. everybody knows who the go-to guy is, and he gets the ball when it matters most.

what’s also funny is that kobe will bitch when his teammates do what he expects them to do. like at the end of the recent lakers loss to the lowly knicks. with little time left on the clock, luke walton passed up a good look at the basket to get the ball to bryant. kobe muffed the pass, time expired, game over.

afterward bryant complained that walton should’ve taken the shot.

of course if walton had taken the shot and missed, kobe would’ve bitched about not getting the ball.

bottom line, bryant’s a lousy teammate, and the lakers will go nowhere until he's gone.

p.s. tsk, i almost forgot: he’s also a lying, cheating, settling-out-of-court rapist.

It's Y2K all over again

Letting out some steam

Even a few phone calls hasn't eased my anxiety of what is ahead...

Today, I did a bad, bad thing. Well, it has nothing to do with a girl unless hard drives are females. [The phrase "did a bad, bad thing" reminds me always of a Chris Isaak song. I'd tell you which song it was if I hadn't lost 10,000 songs off my PC today. That isn't the bad, bad thing. It's only part of it. All those songs are backed up by CD or CD-ROM.

The bad, bad thing is that I lost data dating back to 1995. Nearly every file I have worked on since then I had kept. Well, I am sure I can recover 95% of that as

I have CD-ROMs backing up all that too. But the really bad, bad thing of all this is that I spent hours tagging those songs. Correcting spelling, researching label and other things. AMG and Gracenote are all right, but they still miss a ton of stuff. I had each song tagged by genre, style and sub-genre or sub-style. All of it gone! Poof! The data was organized meticulously. 100s of 1,000s of files categoried into twenty categories. Poof! Gone! E-mail dating back to January 1, 1997? Poof! Gone! Well, even that is backed by CD-ROM. I'll probably only lose the last two months of e-mail. Except all that too was meticulously filed by personal or businss and then by 20 categories. Oh, crap, I just realized I lost two months of financial data. I made the mistake of backing up to hard drive only eight weeks ago after deciding that a third internal drive was not gonna get accidentally deleted before I had my DVD-RW fixed to back up everything.

The lesson today, if it takes four hours to back up data, take the extra five minutes to physically remove a hard drive before restoring the other drive. Didn't get a warning about that, I didn't. I was just killing the c: and d: drives. Sigh.

...

moving forward
Sunny side up: Connecting to the Internet was painless! I am using Windows ME and Internet Explorer 5.5. So very 2000. But you know what? My PC is so speedy! None of that bloat from countless applications. Maybe I'll hold off on the OS upgrades and reinstalling of bloated Adobe graphics apps and office suite software. Yeah, right. I live and die on Excel.

Oh, and wow! But you wouldn't believe how much of your more (alas, but not most) crucial info can be so easily stored away on the Internet. For me, that means I get to recover all my contacts (up-to-date as of Saturday). Alas, I wiped out my e-mail earlier today cuz well I had... wait, I'm focusing on the good here, but I still should have a ton of recent e-mail either in Hotmail, Yahoo!, Google or IMAP. Multiple redundancy. I breathe it. Oh, all my website files are all good. That's a major, amajor plus. Cannot imagine the work that would have been lost there. okay, this isn't so bad. Anyway, had this happened one month later, I'd have been prepared.

The lesson again, if it takes four hours to back up data, take the extra five minutes to physically remove a hard drive from the PC before restoring the other hard drive.

Well, time to see whether or not my self-training as a digital archivalist/recovery guru pays off or not. Then again that may cost money for the applications required to do that properly. All I've really done is read and researched it. Self-training? Bah! Reading ain't experience. Like Robin Williams said in Good Will Hunting, "gotta see a man about a mule".

Yeah, I know, Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. I can't recall what Robin said on the park bench to Will but he did say in a story told in his office, "gotta see about a girl"!

Baby, did a bad, bad thing... - Chris Isaak

...straight from the CD. Almost can hear the pops and crackles of the needle-like laser. There, I feel much, much better.

...

postscript
Laughing in the Face of Digital Disaster,
Or thirteen hours later in "losing" everything

The lesson as always is to think when panicking. That and read 2005's Moneyball, Malcolm Gladwell's cognitive psych book, Blink while waiting through all of the restarts. It is amazing how clear my mind gets when I fret. I have been absolutely lucid the entire time since realizing what was happening upon the advice from Microsoft. It helps also that I realized that once I got to Windows XPsp2 that I'd be able to recover all my files, all my music and all my e-mail. So happy!

Thanks to all those who took phone calls from me tonight. Er, yesterday. My brother shared a phony* bit about Blink he had read at slashdot:

Master of Disaster: What's this book about, this Blink?
Kernel Chicken0711: It's about first impressions.
Master of Disaster: Good, then I don't have to read it.

*Oy, I just crashed. I meant funny and that the dialogue was paraphrased, and thus I naturally wrote "phony". Does not anyone understand? President Bush is a goddamn genius!

I may not have sounded it, but that joke made my night. And then I sat down and read the book. Report later.