rant: April 2002 Archives

This is just fuckin' disturbing.

Maybe I'm slow and I missed something everyone else knew long ago. But in playing around with a flash presentation on the Post web site, and went into the flash document settings. I'm sure it's intended to be a legitimat feature, but the window that pops up asks you if the web site can have access to your web cam and microphone.

I was able to recreate this on about half the flash presentations I tried on various web sites.

No... no potential there for invasion of privacy. I'm sure noooooo one would find a way to make the default setting for this to be "on".

Wait... you're telling me that Robert Blake is still alive?

Frankly, Tony WIlliams can stick his party animals where the soft money doesn't flow.

Enron is dead -- hand me a shovel.

AOL is deathly ill -- hand me a garrotte.

Trains, planes, the Shrub, and the Catholic Church are all crashing.

Why the hell should it take half an hour of channel surfing to find out... well... anything... in the morning. I nearly sprain my thumb on the worn-out remote trying to flip past morning shows before they exhibit another picture of whats-her-name's colon. And if you subject me to one more traffic report from some bubbly bimbo with a cute name in a helicopter, I am going to cause my own jam by pitching the TV into the traffic outside my apartment.

We live in an age where we can watch live footage of military assaults on foriegn capitals live via television or 'net. But all I see on every channel when I wake up in the morning is Barry Manilow singing in the middle of some New York street. (Do they have morning shows in LA?)

How much would you be willing to pay to see, unedited and unnarrated, the sun rising over a carribean rainforest? Or maybe morning prayers at a buddist shrine in Japan? Sunset in the desert?

You get the idea.

The more massive our technological capabilities become, the more massive amounts of crap we shovel with them.

I would pay every cent I have just to get that fucking body-builder infomercial off TV; replaced with a half hour of footage of someone hangliding through the Grand Canyon.

I thought when I heard the first motorcade pass my apartment, that it was the start of a long weekend. These meetings always bring in hundreds of diplomats and VIPs, roveing around town in their limos.

But this time... nothing. One motorcade and that was it.

Until the same thing happened before me one too many times.

You would be walking down the street, and see a police car or two. They weren't apparently in sequence or after someone. They're just waiting at the streetlight. Near them is a large white passenger van with tinted windows but no markings. And close by is a white compact car with the emblem of a private security company on the door.

Did it finally sink into someone's thick head that maybe the police escorted motorcade may actually make for a larger target?

A note to all salespeople, on how not to be my friend.

When you come in to my job trying to sell us new telecommunication service, I will very likely not be interested, since I have sat through too many of those presentations, and been screwed over by too many ignorant salespeople.

Even so, I will politely tell you that we are not looking for any new service at the time, but that you can take our card and let us know about any new products or promotions you have, by mail.

At this point you ask me if I am really authorized to make decisions about my companies telecommunications service, or would the owner have the final say.

Dispite the fact you are being an obnoxious prick, I will tell you that the owner and I jointly make those decisions.

After you ask me if I'm sure, I will politely show you the door and walk away.

At this point you, the salesperson, will turn to the receptionist and ask if I was really the person authorized to be making decisions about the company's telecommunications service. Since she is much more tolerant than I am, she will again tell you that I am that person.

We'll all laugh at you after your gone.

Then, an hour later, you will call up the owner directly, and ask him if I have the authority to make such decisions, or if you, the salesperson, can deal with the owner directly.

Thankfully, the owner is a relatively intelligent and nice guy, and I'm sure he politely told you to fuck off.

This is how not to be my friend.

This is a time for bigger men.

Without bigger men, there will be no final outcome from this conflict in the Middle East.

Say the US sticks to it's standard of supporting Isreal no matter what. What if every Western nation supported Isreal. It wouldn't take much of an effort at all for Isreal to wipe Palestein from history and the planet.

However, the minute Isreal declares war, it signs away the lives of millions of it's own people. Every Arab nation in the region -- all of which have been amassing weapons and troops in the general vicinity of Isreal -- will come across that border and they aren't going to stop. If there's one people Sadam Hussein hates more than Americans and Kurds, it's the Isrealies.

But what if we went the other way. Could we find some way to justify palestinian actions and side with them, against Isreal? Could western civilization overcome their 60 year old guilt-trip long enough to bitch-slap Isreal and tell them they better start playing nice with their neighbors because they aren't going to be bailed out any more?

I don't see it happening.

So we either do the impossible, or we watch one state commit hari-kari by destroying a nation.

Or will this be the time of bigger men?

Colin Powell is in Isreal and Palestein, again trying to broker a peace between the Jews and Arab Palestinians.

And every one laughs.

No one believes it will help any more. They look at the situation and see it utterly hopeless.

I am looking at the man, and think he may be the best chance they have right now.

This is General Colin Powell we are talking about. The former Head of the Joint Chiefs. He has been on a battlefield and seen his friends die. He has been a commander and ordered men to commit acts which would lead to their deaths. He has led the entire military complex of the most powerful nation on earth. He now is the very embodiment of this country's foriegn policy.

This man is one big ass 900 pound gorilla. You better give him whatever banana he asks for.

There is a beautiful idea taught in classrooms across the country that the founding leaders of this country where men who believed in equality for all, and that every man was your brother.

It's very pretty. And very wrong. The government, as it was set up then, very much protected the rights of wealthy individuals from the "Mob", as the majority of the poor and ignorant were known. There is no direct election of the president. There was no direct election of the Senate. The Supreme Court is appointed by the President. Of the three branches of the federal government, only seventeen percent were even marginally elected directly by the whole of the people (barring slaves of course). Even then, the elected officials were more likely to be mmen of a certian class.

It is now 2002.

1. The Secretary of State advises all government agencies to resist Freadom of Information Act requests. We wouldn't want people being able to oibtain some information perfectly legally.

2. Director of Homeland Defense, who is third in power of the Executive branch, behind only the President and his Chief of Staff, refuses to testify publicly before congress, stateing he will only do so in closed hearings. (When did this become a homeland? Maybe more on this later.)

3. The Shrub issues an Executive Order that all presidential documents and communications are the property of the President's estate. This violates so many laws it isn't even funny.

This is a man who know's he will not be in office for a second term.

Keep watching, out there in TV land. You don't think he's done trying to protect 'them' from the Mob yet, do you?