Vision? Nary!

“Too Hip for the Room”

Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland: Golden Anniversary Special Edition (Hardcover Book with Audio CD) by David Koenig

Not the greatest writing in the world but it perks up when the tragedies and injuries rear their heads. That’s what you’re reading it for anyway. Still, the prose does not shine. It’s like reading a business journal. Also the writer declared that the Yippies started the riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, when the governments own report afterwards referred to the event as “the Chicago police riot.”

Bob the Angry Flower expounds on the bag quandary.

You have not lived until you have enjoyed the Ramones classic “I wanna be sedated” played on a Ukulele by a non-native speaker of english. Taped on cell phone video.

I just read and enjoyed ROOM 19 A Night Inside the Joyce by Katia Dunn in the Portland Mercury.

Yes, it is several years old. I looked the Joyce Hotel up because a few weeks ago I was taking photos in Portland and one of the shots was of the Joyce/Fish Grotto sign.

A great movie, but the merchandising crap will sit in the landfill right next to Godzilla ‘98 merch and a million Thighmasters.

BoingBoing has banned author Will Shetterly from commenting on its site over his views on the Violet Blue matter and a comment thread on Moderation.

Boingboing’s moderators have banned me from criticizing their moderation in the moderation discussion thread. You can’t make this stuff up. Mark Twain and Joseph Heller would have a field day.

link

Disclosures and observations.

1. I haven’t read BB in years so on some level I don’t care what they do. I have no real animosity toward them, most of their posts just don’t interest me.

2. I do read Shetterly’s blog.

3. The Violet Blue matter was spectacularly misshandled. Not the unpublishing. By all means unpublish all posts about her (Mass internet opinion on this is WRONG). Don’t give her any positive press after her move to legally control the use of a color.
No, the problem is not the unpublishing- the problem is the fact that it was unexplained. Explicitly denounce her and explain why she is being unpublished. This is the proper way.

4. Shetterly is right about the Tibet hoax. Banning him for that comment is weak. It displays a hair trigger finger and an intolerance to constructive criticism.

5. Shetterly doesn’t need BB.

Recently I’ve been plugging Tom Disch. He has a new book just out called The Word of God.
Unfortunately he died on the fourth of July.

What may be his last interview is on The Bat Segundo Show. (audio here.)

I first read Disch in his book Getting into Death (and other stories). You may know him from his more well known The Brave Little Toaster (a bedtime story for appliances).

He also wrote Fun with your New Head; The Genocides; On Wings of Song; Camp Concentration, and others.

Everyone says freedom

There has been much talk of terrorism in the last few years. I want to say this clearly so that it is well understood: Terrorism is peachy. Otherwise we would not have funded it. It’s stimulating the economy.
This country was built on terrorism. It was not for nothing our founding fathers stole and destroyed tea. It was so that we, their heirs, would be free to steal and destroy tea. Do not let anyone tell you it is not your right to steal and destroy tea! Our boys in uniform fought and died to insure that right. The stores are filled with tea. Go out and do your duty citizen! Anyone who tries to stop you is a traitor.

also The American Dream

In Chardmanistan Chardman opines:

My grandpa always told me not to interfere in a fight between a trendy sex writer and a pornstar, so I don’t have dog in this fight, per se….

I do. Because I and the pornstar are both fellow alumni of TESC I am sworn to her side in any fight involving trademark, lawsuits, plagues of locusts, or Writ of Certiorari.

Besides, always side with the pornstar. This is clear polite etiquette. Sex-writers are dime-a-dozen. Unpersons even. After all, when a popular site deletes all links to a person and it takes a year for anyone to notice…
It is not a tragedy therefore, but a farce. (According to Marxism, this then is the second time around.)

When you trademark a color and sue over it you become a pariah. Especially when you try to market yourself with buzzwords like “open source.” Let this be a lesson to other trendy poseurs.

Bump of old post:

Trademark weasels

A few years ago Archie comics declared they owned the name “Veronica.” A common name that predates them by… a couple thousand years.

A company called Orange claims they own the color Orange.
T-Mobile claims they own the rights to the color Magenta.

Trite, boring “sex writer” Violet Blue claims she owns the moniker “Violet Blue” and has filed a lawsuit against the other Violet Blue. The other Violet Blue is an adult movie performer who started appearing in films back in 1999. That’s the previous century for you kids. Violet Blue (the trite, boring one) claims a trademark on the words Violet Blue. A recent one. She is seeking monetary “damages” over the use of the name.

Violet Blue sounds like a crayon color. Perhaps Crayola will get in on the sue-happy bandwagon.

I am not choosing sides based on the fact that the defendant is local and we share the same alma mater; rather on sound principles.

Violet Blue is a color. It is not trade-markable.
Violet Blue (not the trite, boring one) has been making films for eight years. In fact, she’s semi-retired, running her website from WA state and no longer making films.

This is trademark abuse. Bullying of the little guy. Where is the geek outrage?

“The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.

But there, the clever people are such a very insignificant minority that it really doesn’t much matter if they are unhappy. So long as the foolish people can be made comfortable the world, as a whole, will get on tolerably well.”

- Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome

Portland, OR leads the way in stacking bikes for parking.

The wave of the future. Art. Bike Jenga.

Where do Sleestacks go when they get sick, or perhaps injured by a dinosaur or filthy human?

To the Sleestack General Hospital in Tacoma, WA. Note the splendid Sleestack design that invokes the Lost City. The Round Windows and the Carved out of Rock look. Inside are the latest in ancient Sleestack crystal technology. And patients are treated with cold unemotionalism and not the least bit of sympathy, just like Mom.

If you are in Tacoma, and have been say, Mauled by a Bear, and you’re a Sleestack… well, where better to go?
(No Humans, Please.)

I was out and had no water in the ninety degree heat. So I stop at the Subway (one of the millions of Subways) and buy overpriced bottled water. It says, “with lemon"; so I think, “like in a restaurant, a slight twist of lemon.” Wrong.
It was bottled water, overpriced tap water, with a twist of artificial lemon flavor and heaping dollop of sickeningly sweet artificial sweetener crapola. And it said so, in tiny print on the side bottom, “contains a twist of artificial lemon flavor and heaping dollop of sickeningly sweet artificial sweetener crapola! Enjoy.”

They have to print it tiny like that. Because I desire that about as much as a case of intestinal worms.

It reminds me of when I bought fruit juice years ago and, finding it sickeningly sweet, observed it said in tiny print, “fruit juice with artificial sweetener. Enjoy!” Because fruit is not sweet enough on its own, as you well know.

And what is it with 10% fruit juice? Why is that the magic number for the mysteriously named “fruit drink"?
10% fruit juice 80% tap water, 10% high fructose corn syrup, just as nature intended?

The salt and the artificial sweetener serves to make you thirsty and that means they hope to sell you another two dollar bottle of tap water and artificial chemical additives, marketed as “flavor enhancements.”

Me, I have an unopened bottle of Chem-Water here in the fridge, if you want it to conduct scientific experiments.

One day, when the water is all privatized, Chem-Water will be all you get. There will be two brand names so you get to make a choice of brand loyalty.

George Carlin
“I don’t like to think of laws as rules you have to follow, but more as suggestions.”
“I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.”