After watching MTV for an hour at the gym, I fear for the state of popular music and the future of our children. Good christ. What is that?
And now for something completely different: Kevin "Scoop" Casey's (Weekly?) News Roundup!
Kevin is Editor 'n Chief of Bobby Bangs, a vaguely amusing humor site. Here is the world as he saw it this week:
Special "Scoop" Casey Valentine's Day Bonus:
If you've made it this far, you obviously don't have a whole lot to do. So email me! My dad is the only one who ever does, and I'm curious to know if anyone's actually reading this thing. Is the link in the left-side bar not obvious enough? I need feedback, people! I cannot work in a vacuum! ßßß
This just in: getting the blawg to go just got easier! If you were previously daunted by the prospect of following all those steps with the crazy numbers and stuff, fear no more. Just click here! Then click Save Channel. Then sync. Then go forth and read the blawg.
Netflix is really starting to piss me off. I no longer recommend them unconditionally; in fact, I'm not sure that I can recommend them at all. My dad, who lives on the East Coast, says it takes him like eight days to get and return a single movie. And of late, they've been noticably slower in receiving my returned movies and sending out new ones. So that sucks. The latest boondoggle is that they're now counting DVDs with more than one disc (i.e., Fight Club, Beastie Boys Anthology, Michael Moore's The Awful Truth, et al.) as multiple rentals. And that really sucks. The whole idea of a Fight Club DVD set is to be able to watch the damn movie and then watch the commentary to get insight into the movie you just watched. Not the movie you watched two or three weeks ago. Boo.
And I've had a bad Netflix run lately. Kurt & Courtney was beyond terrible. A fellow Netflixer put it pretty succinctly:
The difficulties Broomfield encountered in the making of this documentary show themselves too readily. Without the cooperation of the principals all that remains is filler, and pretty dull filler at that. You won't get to hear any of Kurt's music, instead you get the horrible wail of bands that Kurt might have once heard. And you'll hear how Courtney was obsessed with success and money... well duh!
Here's a thing I left off the list yesterday that I remembered today: I have learned that television commercials are often more entertaining than the programs they interrupt. ßßß
Things That I Have Learned
When, exactly, did MTV2 turn into the Spice Channel?!? Good God, y'all. I'm at the gym on the elliptical trainer, just minding my own business, and they're showing porn on the big screen TV. Turns out it wasn't porn at all, but a video by Pink. Whoever that is. Whoever she is, she was practically buck naked.
Hot on the heels of that video came J. Lo's Love Don't Cost a Thing video, which gives those Playboy Playmate videos a run for their money. Probably not suitable for workplace viewing.
Speaking of the gym, somebody forwarded this ironminds story a while back. Entitled "Please Cover Up!", it's a diatribe against all those naked old guys at the gym. Favorite line: "It’s a gym, fellas, not a nudist colony." I couldn't agree more. I don't mind seeing a scantily clad Jennifer Lopez first thing in the morning, but I do mind seeing stark naked old guys. Yucch.
Tom and Nicole are no more, gorillas like Orange Slice (apparently they're the only ones), and a crybaby San Francisco lawyer is suing Survivor for getting kicked off. Aren't these things in the Book of Revelations somewhere?
If the end of the world is, indeed, nigh, you're gonna want to be sure to have the religious superhero action figures appropriate to your faith. Or lack thereof. ßßß
Thanks to all who wrote, called or leaned over to ask if I was OK after my ordeal on Friday. I was only slightly the worse for wear this weekend, with a stiff neck and a swollen elbow bursa. That sounds kinda gross, don't it?
A word about the banners at the tops of these pages:
I got on a banner-creation tear last week. There's a super-cool shareware program called GIF Construction Set that lets you create animated GIFs in seconds. So I made one advertising my nephew's website and one for his site pointing back here, in a kind of an ad hoc banner exchange. The one that's up today is for a coworker's site, and no, it's not porn. Perfectly OK for family viewing.
Did you know you can get blawg for your PDA or Web-enabled cell phone? Well, neither did I, but apparently you can! The instructions are a little involved, so I've created an instructions page here. Or click the Get blawg to go link in the sidebar if you wanna get it later.
I know most of you are sick of my Jakob Nielsen-related ramblings, but love him or hate him, you gotta pay attention to him. And his latest Alertbox column is a real winner. Entitled "Are Users Stupid?", it breaks down usability stats for people who are usually too shortsighted to pay attention to 'em: namely designers and business types. The bottom line is that usability has a huge impact on your bottom line.
I played loud rock 'n' roll yesterday for the first time in ages, and it was awesome. I'm doing a new twangy countrified rock thang with some old friends, and the first practice was really cool. I will post band-related stuff, including gig and download info, here, for those who are interested.
Rock on. ßßß
Don't miss last week's brilliant insight.
