watching my odometer

Like my dear friend ScioScio, I have come to the conclusion that it's time to retire this blog.
And this time with some finality.

So, if you're a glutton for punishment, you can always continue to read my meanderings at my new location:
http://urbanfrontiersman.wordpress.com/

Onward and upward.

This Vox account has been dying.  For a long time.

It began quietly enough, with a post about smelling like vomit.  Then it quickly evolved into a daily blogging challenge.  I found myself thrown into a frenzy of creativity, forcing out some horrible chunks of text that would, eventually, result in my piecing together at least a few worthwhile posts.  But, over the nearly two years since, it's slowly dwindled down to nothing.  What once was a swaggering and proud piece of the internet world has now been reduced to a crumbling shell of its former glory.

When I started out this Vox account I didn't really count on getting this kind of mileage out of a blog.  When I started up the daily blogging challenge with Scrambler Biggs, it never occurred to me that it would take up quite as many joyous hours of my life as it did.  And, despite the overwhelming reality that I'm not a very good writer, I feel that my prose-creation process was somehow bettered throughout this little project.

That's why I've decided to move on to a new location somewhere on this vast and loose network that we like to call the internet.

My reasoning for this is based on a few of the features that Vox doesn't currently provide (nor would I expect them to at this point in their development) including:

• an auto-save feature
• automated posting process through the use of future-dated posts
• more flexibility in layout design management
• unregistered reader comment capabilities
  

That being said, most platforms don't necessarily allow you to network with the same fluidity that Vox does - there won't be any groups to cross-post to and no neighbor pages to glean through.  However, I'll likely continue to monitor my neighbor page via my RSS reader and maintain my Vox account for the purposes of commenting on posts or administering for the groups I'm involved in.  Hell, I might even do some cross-posting to this account, just to make myself feel involved again.

But, as they say, nothing golden stays.  So, instead, I'm in talks with a certain blogging-nemesis of mine to determine what sort of schedule we can both agree to conduct our future blogging duels within.  I'll make more details available as they develop.

In the meantime, keep your chin up, my dear readers - all none of you.  Soon, I hope to return to blugdeoning the world wide web to death with more of my meaningless chatter.  And you're all going to be invited.

Roger Simon wrote a piece dripping with sarcasm for Politico today.  And I love it.

Focusing on the outcry over the media coverage Sarah Palin has been receiving since the announcement about her taking the Republican VP slot last week, Simon perfectly enunciates what I never could in my severely limited attempts at voicing my opinions:

…On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.   We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.  We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

…We should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.  Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”

…Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq.  Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.  Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)

On the other hand, I think that a portion of the coverage Palin has received is unfair.  And, apparently, some of Hillary Clinton’s aides agree with me:

Georgetown University professor Deborah Tannen, who has written best-selling books on gender differences, said she agrees with complaints that Palin skeptics — including prominent voices in the news media — have crossed a line by speculating about whether the Alaska governor is neglecting her family in pursuit of national office.

“What we’re dealing with now, there’s nothing subtle about it,” said Tannen. “We’re dealing with the assumption that child-rearing is the job of women and not men. Is it sexist? Yes.”

“There’s no way those questions would be asked of a male candidate,” said Howard Wolfson a former top strategist for Clinton’s presidential campaign.

Ultimately, I like Palin.  A lot.

But there’s still no way in hell that I’d ever attached my vote to a McCain campaign.  The fact that they managed to find someone to run in the VP position who would do much better headlining the ticket doesn’t change the fact that McCain is a slimeball with nothing better to do than sell Americans out at the domestic level while playing up his foreign policy credentials.  If we’re going to have four more years of mismanaged policy at home, why not put it all in the lap of someone as easy to write-off as Barack Obama?

Barring the possibility of McCain dropping out of the race in the next two months for age-related reasons, I will continue to throw my vote in for a post-Obamalyptic dystopian future where Americans are finally shaken back to reality.

Yeah, it sounds bad, but we have a nasty tendency of finding order only after chaos.  Just look at Carter and his inspiration for Reagan.

Dear America,
I don't claim to be an expert in economics, but I'm certainly impressed by the generic understanding of supply and demand that you have exhibited as you've watched the gas prices rise over the last couple years.  According to the Federal Highway Administration, you are driving less these days - presumably because you're fed up with paying high prices for gas.  Given this reality, it's likely that this has led to more stability when it comes to the price of crude oil on the market.  This, I assume, has contributed to the gradually dropping prices that we are paying at the pump.

The joy of a (relatively) free economy, like the one you are currently a part of, is that the consumer always has the final say in whether the economy fails or succeeds.  If you don't like the price of something, you simply stop purchasing it or, in this case, limit your purchasing.  This will force the producers to limit the prices that they apply to their products and, ultimately, both parties will benefit from a competitive market in which reasonable prices for quality products becomes the standard.

However, this slight deviation from your normal ignorance of the inner workings of our economy appears to have faltered in the realm of politics.

Currently, John McCain is desperately pushing his plan to expand drilling for oil off of the American coastlines.  Inherently, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a potential future where we produce more of our gasoline locally.  That, though, won't do much to alter gas prices - especially in the near future.  According to just about everyone who seems to understand the gasoline-production process, any expansion in our local drilling would take several years to impact us directly, if at all.  McCain's attempt to impress you with his deep understanding of your day-to-day struggle to fill up your gas tank at a reasonable price is certainly an attempt to pander to you for your vote.  Please don't encourage this sort of thing, as you appear to know better than that - remember, supply and demand is the name of the game.

McCain, though, isn't the only politician trying to pull the wool over your eyes.  His opponent, Barack Obama, is now pushing his plan to institute something called a 'windfall profits' tax on the oil companies.  Now, being the good economists that you've demonstrated yourselves to be, you obviously know the difference between regular 'profits' and something called a 'profit margin.'  You are also aware, of course, of the fact that the profit margins for our major oil companies remains at a steady 8% - 10% rate.

This means that our oil companies, who are the only producers available to us for gasoline, would be staring down the barrel of a serious cut into that significantly light profit margin rate in order to pay for Obama's attempt to pander to you.

Now, I'm not trying to tell you who you should vote for because, frankly, I'm not impressed with either plan.  But I did want to address the fact that you are apparently aware (or should be) that the best way to deal with high gas prices is through limiting your use of it.  Congratulations.  Perhaps soon you'll come around to the fact that income taxes are the ultimate in modern techniques of federal enslavement.

Best of luck in November,
W.

I stumbled across an artist by the name of 'Brad Sucks' recently and thought I'd pass him along to you, my adoring public.
All none of you.

Never Get Out

Brad Sucks

According to Wikipedia, that internet bastion of knowledge, Brad Sucks was one of the first few artists to utilize the Creative Commons license for his music distribution.

Posting his music online for free, as well as making the audio tracks fully available for any remixing that might be done by the general public, his original aim was to create 'open source music.'  This, alone, is something that makes him worthy of mention.

I don't think it takes a genius to recognize that the music industry is in the middle of a major paradigm shift.  The public wants their music for cheap (or for free), and they have the means to get it that way.  Record Labels and Distributors, having always functioned as the middle-man between the producer and the consumer, are left with little to do but try to sue anyone who recognizes and takes advantage of the business-model shift.

I have the sneaking suspicion that artists like Brad Sucks will become more and more common in the near future.  At least, until the music industry can figure out a way to continue making money in a world now fueled by high-speed internet connections - all navigated by crafty digital pirates.

Beyond that, Brad Sucks doesn't really suck that much.  Give him a listen and try to tell me I'm wrong.

This weekend is shaping up to be an eventful time for me - J hasn't been around the place lately because of projects both at work as well as at the theatre, and I've been a terribly irresponsible dog-owner in that I've been shortening L's usual 45 minute walks down to less than half of that.

But my animal-abusive solitude has not been without personal gain.

A gamer friend of mine recently suggested that I take a gander at a new title that's been released on the XBox Live Marketplace: a pretty little something by the name of 'Braid.'

Braid

This wonderful piece of interactive artwork is the rare kind of thing that simultaneously induces in me both rampant admiration and suicidal levels of frustration.  Where I don't usually fall under the spell of your run-of-the-mill platformer, Braid focuses more on puzzle-solving than the usual Mario Brother knock-off.  Not only that, but the look, feel, and sound of the game is a fully immersive experience.  The central source of puzzle-building here is based around your ability to manipulate time, something that I thought would be easy to master early on in my experience with the game.
I was wrong.

Easily floating my way through the first few levels (available in the XBox Marketplace for free), I felt like I'd bested even the Prince of Persia in a 2D, side-scrolling world.  Then I promptly hit a wall.  As it turns out, the people designing the puzzles knew that I was going to be able to manipulate the flow of time.  And, like vengeful gods, the designers appear to have created one of the most torturous (and interesting) pieces of puzzle-based gaming I've ever seen.

I don't know whether or not you own an XBox 360 or if you have any interest in video games - hell, I don't even know if your reading this - but if you do, you really need to take the time to try this game.  And, if you get the chance, please tell me how to get all the puzzle-pieces in the fifth world.  I'm desperate.

I got sucked in by the hype about a month ago - 'microblogging' they called it.  Where everyone can share their inner thoughts in short bursts and everyone else can read them and respond appropriately (or inappropriately, if the mood hits you).

Failwhale

I signed up for a Twitter account and got to work trying to dismantle my life and feed it to the masses piece by piece.  Scrambler Biggs and his wife were on there, so I had a couple of people to reach out to in those early days.  As time has passed, though, I have picked up more and more interesting Twitter-feeds that I follow and respond to - including such engaging people as Wil Wheaton and John Cleese.  Slowly, I was forced to succumb to the addiction.

But nothing golden stays, as the old saying goes, and I continually find myself teetering between joy and panic as I am greeted by what's been dubbed the Failwhale more often than I am greeted by the microblogging habits of those individuals whom I choose to follow.

When I meet St. Peter at the pearly gates, I'm going to have a few questions for him.  The first thing I'll ask him, of course, is why I wasn't born with the same mutant powers as Wolverine.  The second will be 'how does a service as popular as Twitter remain popular despite it's frequent downtimes?'

Half-heartedly, I am seeking out other options for this newly-ingrained habit of mine, other forums within which to cough up my passing thoughts and fancies.  But for now, it seems, I am just going to have to forge on and accept the knowing smile of that jackass whale.

Watching Barak Obama's climb from nameless state senator to Democratic frontrunner has been an interesting one.
Watching his gradual slide from the liberal end of the spectrum to something more moderate, though, has been thoroughly entertaining.

For the life of me, I can't figure out how someone who runs as the candidate of hope can possibly expect to run successfully through November when he appears to be nothing more than a maneuvering politician as it comes time to face the general voting population in America - a population that remains historically more conservative than all the hope in the world could change.

My good friend Greg over at the Office of the Independent Blogger linked to a piece from the Wall Street Journal focusing on the growing similarities between Obama's campaign posturing and Bush's own posturing.  Granted, these similarities are slight, but they should be troubling to the true-believers out there who might've been holding out for this guy to remain true to his roots.

Of course, the other side of the coin is John McCain's absolute inability to sell himself as anything but an angry old man.

I'd like to bring you a musical reference that I suggest you follow up on.

Pretty Girl From San Diego

The Avett Brothers

Like the Devil Makes Three, I first discovered the Avett Brothers over at theSixtyOne.com.  They only had one song posted over there at the time (they still do), but it was enough to get me hooked.  They've got the kind of feel that makes me want to pay them to write the soundtrack to my life right now.  Or maybe just follow me around for a day.

Unfortunately, my 'pay people to hang out with me and write music' budget is sorely lacking lately, what with gas prices being high as they are.  Instead, I'm resigned to merely playing them as loud and as often as possible.  It's rare to find a band these days who can draw a picture with their lyrics, let alone convince me to wander out into the light of day to purchase a concert ticket - and these guys can do both.

Give them a listen.  You'll be glad you did.

My life, as of late, has involved little beyond walking my dog through the heated souther-california afternoons, mixing my own margaritas, and playing video games.  This all between my regular work hours.

As the summer starts to grow longer, J and I will be trekking out to Vermont to stay with my immediately family at my not-so-immediately family cabin on Lake Champlain.  While there, I plan on doing some canoeing, some fishing, some snorkeling, and some lazing.  I don't think that there's much more to be desired in a summer.

I'd like to promise to spend more time writing online, but I'm getting a little too involved in the minutia of spending weekends with friends and coping with the hot breeze snaking in through my living room from the open patio door.

Some minor details, though, to keep you occupied:

• I am most likely to vote for Obama come November
• Wall-E happens to be one of only two movies I suspect to be worth the $10 to see in theatres this summer
• You can't keep a good dog down
• My car is has been detailed and I still want to get rid of it
• Photography is a skill that I wish I had
• Writing is a skill that I desperately wish I had
• Barack Obama is the most comical presidential nominee I think I'm likely to see in my lifetime
• Nothing beats a little inebriation like some New York style pizza