Today for the first time, my blog started getting spammed. How freaking lame. Like I don't have enough trouble with email spam. Luckily, I know SQL and it was fairly simple to just go into the mySQL shell and mass-delete all the spam comments. But I also looked around for some methods of preventing blog spam, and I foung this handy article,
"Seven quick tips for a spam-free blog". I've done 2 of them already. Hopefully this doesn't become a huge problem...

This column by Mark Morford about behavior modifying drugs is really freaking great. It has this totally biting, barbed, super-sarcastic, laser-focused blast of invective style to it. I really love it. Read it.

Godammit, i fucking HATE it when i have to listen to somebody sitting in a cafe talking on their damn mobile at elevated volumes, and even worse is what happened just now, when 2 of the jackasses where doing it. It would be hilarious if it weren't so annoying, 2 people sitting together at table, both talking on their cellphones, yelling into their phones, actually. I mean, it wouldn't be that bad if they would at least talk in a normal tone of voice, but so many people have this "HI!! YOU PROBABLY CAN'T HEAR ME CUZ YOU'RE ON THE PHONE WITH ME! SO I'LL TALK LOUDER" way of speaking.

The other day, walking into this same cafe and seeing all the wireless laptop wankers, I felt slightly annoyed, in that "and I'm one of them" kind of way. And I wondered if cafe laptops were the new mobile phones, in terms of people being annoyed and having contempt for them as a symbol of yuppie affluent lifestyle, now that mobile phones are used by everyone of all classes everywhere. But laptops will never, ever be as annoying as mobile phones. you don't yell into your fucking laptop, even if you're an asshole. grrrr....

This article about wireless access points that run linux is pretty interesting. Lots of semi-utopian (capitalist-utopian) ideas about what to do with the things. But the point is that they are what Cringely, the author, calls a "disruptive technology." Cell phones, personal computers, and the internet itself are other examples of disruptive technologies. Yes.

The thing he fails to mention is that disruptions caused by disruptive technologies are not always a good thing. Nuclear fission is another disruptive techology. The powered looms that spawned the Luddites was another. The list could go on. It's like the assumption that all change is good that so many new economy business gurus preached. uh uh....

It brings to mind one of my favorite Marcuse quotes:

"The traditional notion of the 'neutrality' of technology can no longer be maintained."
-Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man

(thanx matisse)

So I just found out about this rather promiscuous female blogger who worked in DC for a Republican Senator from Ohio. She blogged about her quite active sex life, juggling 6 different men. Not only did she fuck a lot of men in a short time but some of them were paying her to do it. Eventually she was fired, supposedly for "misuse of office equipment" (she posted to her blog from her office computer). Read more>>>

I've been keeping a journal since I was 17 (basically my entire adult life!). So this blogging thing seems redundant sometimes. Often, though, it seems like trying to keep 2 journals, because I obviously can write some things in my private little notebook that I wouldn't want to put here on the web. I value being transparent and open but there are limits. hah.

Also, the fact that this is syndicated on indyblogs has made me happy but also put a different feel on writing stuff. I feel like there is a definite audience of which I need to be conscious, and a larger audience. For example, there are a lot of uncomfortable, controversial things about Indymedia, both locally and globally, that I have been thinking about and discussing with others, but that I can't really voice here.

Meanwhile I keep losing my pens, my really good pens that make it a pleasure to write in my journal....

What am I doing, I guess I'm just providing excuses for why entries both here and in my journal have been few and far between...

sigh.

I'm finally doing a little paying work, and it's for something I can get behind ethically for once, the
Collaborative Technologies project/group.

CollabTech is a relatively new project of Free Geek, the non-profit computer recycling/rebuilding/educating organization here in Portland. Read more>>>

Kurt Vonnegut has always been one of my favorite writers. Such a wonderful way, he has, of mixing the humorous with the horrible. He just wrote a great little article called Cold Turkey for In These Times, about our current predicaments. (thanx 6rady)

I've been and will be super busy this week, not only because i've finally found some paying work but also i've been rushing to finish some videos about Bolivia in time for a an evening of talks and videos on Saturday called Bolivia In Crisis. One video is brand new and based on footage I shot when I was there in December. Another is from last February, made by Bolivia IMC which I was given a copy of by Libertino of Uruguay IMC, to which we are adding a voiceover translation. Then there's one from Argentina IMC, and another by a trio of gringos who I don't know much about - I got their film, called "No Se Vende El Gas" from a Colorado State University student who I met in Cochabamba.

All of this is to raise money for our project to send computers to Bolivia. So I hope lots of people show up... ok, gotta run... busybusybusy...

So I hapened to be listening to NPR's Marketplace just now and they had a little story about how The Passion of the Christ is the most popular illegally downloaded film on the internet right now, and how this popularity will surely lead to the making of a sequel. The commentator then suggested Hollywood would put out Starksy and Christ, since audiences liked Starsky but not Hutch. The guy went on to explain a little defensively how he only was thinking such crazy thoughts that others might think blasphemous because he lives in LA, and that's just how Hollywood types think. I found that the
idea is not new.

The most interesting thing about this, and otherwise I wouldn't mention it, is that before that segment on the radio show, during a break, an OPB announcer gave the warning that the next segment contained 'material that might be offensive to some listeners.' I listened to the whole segment and the only other stories were about Martha Stewart's show going on hiatus and a piece about skin creams that didn't really do anything to help with wrinkles.

So, it must have been the Christ thing that they were warning people about. Are there REALLY people out there, NPR listeners, that would be offended by that story? And was that something that just Oregon Public Broadcasting decided to do, or did all NPR affiliates make that announcement? Very strange.