Author: Stagger Lee

…people always want to know what I think politically, so I’ll give you my one-shot quote:

“American politics is doomed until the last yuppie is choked to death with the guts of the last hippie.”

And there you go ;]

…but I just now discovered the word Rejuvenile, based on the book of the same name. “Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up.” Huh. I don’t mind the cupcake as such, but the cult of obsession around them is a little odd. But then, you could say that about just about anything on the Internet – and as somebody following a Scottish soccer team I will probably never see, even on television, I can’t really cast aspersion. Kickball…well, when we were playing softball in DC, we had this constant swarm of drink-addled kickballers trying to use fields we’d registered with the National Park Service to use on the appointed day, so I developed a healthy sense of disdain for them…now, apparently, FourSquare is the big thing in Silicon Valley (trust me not to notice until it shows up on the front page of the Chronicle)…

…hold up a minute.

It was bad enough when my generation was tarred as a bunch of slackers en route to skipping right over us so that the children of the baby-boomers could be painted as the Next Big Thing (that would be the generation of Britney, Paris and Lindsey, FYI), but now apparently we’re all entering our second childhood…and that’s a good thing? Put me down as a Harrumphing Codger if you must, but I’m not sure I see the appeal. I spent my whole life desperately waiting for my chronological age to catch up with my mental age (yes, I was one of those poor cursed SOBs who was “gifted”). I went through eight yards of hell to get to be an adult, and I am not particularly interested in going back.

And yet.

I suppose you could make a case that this is all about people wanting to shed their overweening sense of responsibility for a while, one gob of frosting at a time. Believe me when I say that I see the appeal. However, I guess my problem is that I still don’t live in the moment enough – that once the cupcake’s gone, you have to throw the wrapper out and get back to paying the bills, or diapering the kid, or working on tomorrow’s presentation. Not that I have a kid to diaper, but you get the idea. Ultimately, I don’t think I’m satisfied by the momentary escape – I need to either be allowed to magically get my 20s back and make a better go of it this time, or else seal it off and work on making sure that what happens now is all to the good. I guess I don’t have the patience to substitute distractions for solutions.

And yet.

(An aside: I am currently under obligation to produce at least one 500-word blurb a week for this blog, to discipline me into writing and taking on topics that would not normally spring to mind. I haven’t decided yet whether these should be explicitly labeled or not, and have done one each way. However, I assure you that the menace of flightless waterfowl and virtual sports-entertainment were not at the forefront of my mind desperately banging on the door to be set free…but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch out for those slick little SOBs parading around as Linux mascots. CONSTANT VIGILANCE, donkeys, and don’t you forget it.)

“Welcome back to the FU Center in Philadelphia! I’m your host Jim Ross here with Morty the Weasel! We have a real slobber-knocker of a main event for you tonight!”

“That’s right, JR – we have Stan Lee and Alan Greenspan, one fall to a finish, no disqualifications, no countouts, locked inside a steel cage. This might just be the biggest night in the history of our sport.”

“And yet, this was not our original main event.”

“That’s right, JR – we were first slated to match Cesar Milan and Tom Colicchio, but that was called off when there was a misunderstanding about Korean cuisine night on Top Chef. Then we scheduled Derek Jeter against Ted Allen.”

“Jeter went right up against Allen, all right, but not in a way we can show you even here on pay-per-view. So now we bring you our main event – And here come the competitors! First, the challenger, Stan Lee, being borne out on a litter carried by six pasty comic-store owners. Lee fighting in the ritual costume of his people, with the black jean shorts and the army surplus trenchcoat.”

“Don’t like seeing the knobby knees on our challenger, JR.”

“No indeed. And now the champion, Alan Greenspan, his golden throne being rolled into the arena while his attendants throw handfuls of cash into the crowd.”

“Hard to believe you could find that many topless virgins here in Philly, JR.”

“For a man with that kind of power and wealth, all things are possible. And now the locking of the cage, and our match is underway! Stan Lee circling warily from a distance, doesn’t want to show his hand too soon…Alan Greenspan with that sockful of quarters, a devastating weapon, and he lashes out but Lee dodges…well, the man who created Mr. Fantastic should know a thing or two about slippery dodges – and here he comes back with a burst of web fluid to the eyes of Greenspan!”

“Don’t know if that’s web fluid, JR.”

“Greenspan disoriented, unsure of where he is. He’s as crazy as a pet raccoon out there.”

“Being married to somebody from NBC News, some of the stupid was bound to rub off eventually, JR.”

“Greenspan is up now, making a move – and he increases the prime interest rate by a quarter percent! Stan Lee is trapped, unable to move, the inflationary pressure has him pinned in place…and Greenspan drops the rate by a half percent and the flood of easy money buries Lee under a pile of cheap commercial paper!”

“Don’t see how he’s going to dig out of that, JR. Looks like Greenspan will keep the belt for anoth–”

“My God! Stan Lee is hulking up! He is actually turning green! His jean shorts are ripping! My God! This is unbelievable!”

“He’s finding the range now, he’s out of the pile of bonds and stalking Greenspan…Greenspan going for a sack of money, but it’s all dollars! The depreciation has rendered it weightless!”

“And business is about to pick up! Greenspan running like a scalded dog, but Stan Lee unleashes those mighty green fists and beats the former Fed chairman like a government mule!”

And now Stan Lee is climbing the cage! He’s setting up his move, JR!”

“And Greenspan looking up – and it’s the Excelsior! Stan Lee has hit the Excelsior on Alan Greenspan and he is down! The ref runs in to count it…one, two, two and a half, two and three quarters, there’s a correction, two and one eighth, one and a half–”

“Greenspan’s bought the ref, JR!”

“And Stan Lee holds up one fist–”

SNIKT!

“THE CLAWS! MY GOD, HE’S POPPED THE CLAWS! AND GREENSPAN IS DEAD! STAN LEE HAS DECAPITATED ALAN GREENSPAN! MY GOD! WHAT A FINISH! WE HAVE A NEW CHAMPION!”

“Punctured my eardrum there, JR.”

I just got done watching the Celtic match from the weekend, where the highlight was Celtic’s 3-goal outburst in 5 minutes. Among them was another sterling free-kick from Shunsuke Nakamura, who is just incredible – Beckham wishes he could bend it like #25. And it’s amazing to think that 40 years ago, Celtic won the Champions League with a team composed entirely of players who lived within 30 miles of the stadium. Now, their most electrifying player is a 150-lb Japanese midfielder, and I’m watching them on satellite from California.

And now I’m watching a Premiership match. It’s Everton and Spurs, two teams in the second tier of my interest, but think about it – I’m watching the Premier League, from England, live from my recliner in my house in California – which I live in because I met and married a girl from Silicon Valley, who I met as the result of a group of Internet friends who led me to live in Washington DC at the time…

How different is it now? Twenty years ago, there was no public access to the Internet, no cheap mobile phones, no digital satellite TV, and long-distance telephony was expensive, not something given away as a free spiff to encourage you to get the service. Twenty years ago, if you chanced to meet a girl who lived a few states over, you were limited to cards and letters and hoping your parents wouldn’t notice the phone bill. Now we live in a world where long-distance relationships are practically routine, and living in DC and carrying on with a girl in California is hardly more difficult than carrying on with a girl in Baltimore.

So at some level, I am wildly envious of the kids these days, especially any who were in my situation in their youth – sure, maybe you’re stuck in some semi-rural exurban backwater a forty-mile drive from your friends, but as long as there’s a computer, a broadband connection and a $20 prepaid mobile phone, you don’t have to be alone. That right there should be all the justification we need to make sure there’s broadband everywhere in this country. Not the normal policy prescription, I know – but it’s stunning to imagine how profoundly different my life would have been in my teens and 20s with the application of 2007 technology.

Of course, as soon as I say that, the wireless router hangs. It’s not all cloudcuckooland here…

Celtic, Morton, Newcastle and the Redskins all win on the same day. hopefully a harbinger of Saturdays to come.

I don’t think people really grasp the extent to which penguins have been working to infiltrate our society. It’s been going on for years now, and nobody seems to have noticed. To understand the threat, we have to go back and see where it began.

The earliest days of the penguin plot against America can be traced to the 1980s. It was not an obvious conspiracy. Pengo looked for all the world like a bad Dig-Dug clone, not the penguin foray into computing. Opus seemed like an amusing cartoon character, not an attempt to insinuate the penguin into the consciousness of newspaper readers as an amusing and harmless creature. And Mario Lemieux seemed like a swift-skating sniper, not the human face of the flightless waterfowl empire slowly biding its time for takeover. Coincidences? How can anyone possibly think so?

But the penguins’ long game would not come to fruition for decades. Having softened up a generation and made them receptive to the notion of the penguin, they were content to lie in wait…for the children.

Don’t believe me? Look back on the last three years and watch the dominoes fall like hammer blows against the foundation of human society:

2005: The penguins, in cooperation with the French, launch the cinematic assault known as March of the Penguins. Produced in cooperation with the nest of treasonous vipers known as the National Geographic Society, this stunning piece of propaganda was a lightning strike into the heart of American political culture, seducing the right with its depiction of monogamous mating in even the most trying and tempting condition while luring in the left with…okay, I have no clue, but it won an Oscar so clearly Hollywood took the bait hook, line and sinker. Morgan Freeman narrated this picture and if you have the voice of God, you have won a smashing coup on the “hearts and minds” front.

2006: Happy Feet. With the willing collaboration of the Hollywood fifth column (see above), the penguins produced a staggering work of self-engrandizement that would have put Leni Riefenstahl to shame. This all-singing, all-dancing festival of manipulation was every bit as potent as its predecessor – conservatives were so distracted by the message of environmentalism that they failed to grasp how the film is objectively pro-penguinist. And Hollywood – well, they gave this film an Oscar, snubbing a Pixar feature for the first time ever. Think of that – in only two films, the penguins managed to triumph over the forces of Steve Jobs. At this point, any thinking person should have been terrified – but worse was yet to come:

2007: Surf’s Up. it’s a penguin movie – about surfing! Penguins don’t surf! From the days of Pablo and Chilly Willy, we have known that penguins are cold-weather creatures, yet here they are depicted in warm climates – and we accept this depiction. When the penguins reach our shores, we will not be alert, we will not be aware – for we will have come to assume that it is perfectly normal for penguins to inhabit temperate or even tropical climates!

At this point, it hardly seems worth it to mention the Discovery Channel’s insidious Planet Earth – a slow, steady drip drip drip of penguinism to keep us lolled into complacency. But that’s not the worst of it by far. No, indeed – the penguin menace extends into cyberspace. Club Penguin – a massively multiplayer online game that targets kids! It teaches them to build igloos! It teaches them to waddle around in the show! IT FEATURES A SECRET AGENT PROGRAM! Right under our noses, our children are being turned into the fifth column for the forthcoming penguin onslaught – and we are paying them to do it! The Disney corporation gave Club Penguin $350 million – with the promise of another $350 million if profit targets are reached – to place this program under the Disney banner! Right now, the ice that freezes Walt’s head is the training ground for the enemy within!

The penguin menace is real, my friends. We know they exist. We know they are plotting. The evidence is incontrovertible and plain as the beaks on their tiny speckled faces. The only question – the unanswerable question, the horrifying unknown –

WHAT DO THEY WANT??

I’ll have plenty of time during my week of recovery to play with online stuff…so I have reverted to Flock as my go-to browser once again.  Version 0.9 seems to be a lot cleaner than before – and if it can actually replace Camino, NNWL and ecto, that would be nice.  Funny – I can remember when Netscape Navigator 3 was your browser, mail client, newsreader and web page designer – now I have an all-in-one web browser, blogging client, feed reader…plus ca change…
Anyway, yes, I go in to get my knee scoped on Friday, hopefully reversing (or at least stalling) two decades of damage from my brother’s post-hole-covered-with-leaves stunt from the latter days of the Reagan administration.  Thanks for nothing, bro ;]

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We’re back in business, baby! Look out First Division!

I was asked today what I’d like to see in the iPhone. Leaving aside flights of fancy like direct download from the iTMS, a terminal client, a VNC client, text dictation, etc etc, I narrowed it down to a tiny handful of things that I think are reasonable expectations:

* Phone-side spam filtering, ideally feeding back to Yahoo or Google or whoever

* Support for the receipt of MMS. (They can always be sent in the form of e-mail, but not being able to receive them to a number kind of stinks)

* Multi-recipient SMS. (I admit, it breaks the carefully-crafted chat metaphor, but sometimes you gotta.)

* Some way to get text into the Notes app other than endless tapping. (Although I wouldn’t be surprised to see this sync with the Leopard version of Mail.)

My suspicion is that we’ll see a lot more things happen about the time that Leopard drops, especially in the sync area. Remember, it was supposed to be out by now, and inasmuch as the iPhone runs a version of OS X, it’s definitely Leopard (CoreAnimation is a critical part of the UI, and that’s 10.5 all the way). I wouldn’t mind seeing the new Movies widget in Dashboard as an iPhone app, though all things being equal I’m not sure I’d use one of the four remaining squares on that.

You’ll notice I didn’t say anything about ringtones. Not that I wouldn’t mind having Yakety Sax or the Vandy version of Also Sprach, but honestly, I almost *like* the extremely limited selection of ringers – it’s a nice backlash against the endless stream of bad hip-hop clips at $3 a throw. In fact, one of the best things about the iPhone is that AT&T was denied any control over UI or apps load – so it’s not burdened with “Cingular Video” or “My MEdia” or a 5-provider java mail client that replaced the perfectly useful open Moto mail piece. AT&T is a bug, not a feature, and if I had my way I’d be using this trick on T-Mob instead of Big Orange…but it wasn’t my call.

I’m still enjoying the hell out of the iPhone, make no mistake, but I find it’s not replacing the laptop when I’m at home on the couch. That’s not entirely surprising, just because 1200×800 beats the hell out of 480×320 any way you cut it. Especially when trying to catch up on a dozen feeds at once. But I am irritated that i can’t just touch the laptop screen and zoom in on Safari. =)

Now I’m just being an ass. 🙂