Come to think of it,

"Pooh Corner" also sounds kinda gross.

Best headline of the day:

From the LA Times
Disney wins a ruling in long Pooh dispute

(heh heh heh. They said "long poo".)

I am now working on a new t-shirt design: Monkeys flinging Pooh.

Cracking the technology

Invariably, I find myself in the position of "tech support." Be it for my parents, co-workers, boss or random strangers affiliated with my work who call me. I waste a lot of my time with this, and often feel like banging my head against the wall when some people just cannot grasp the basics. (I find no fault with and make no judgments of the computer illeterate, unless these people are Directors or Managers and are clearly faking it to get by in their jobs. If you are in charge, you should be computer and software savvy.)

My friends at the reference desk often have similar frustrations with patrons.

This video (Swedish with English subtitles) speaks to both librarians and help desk staff alike.



I've been there.

Welcome Keith!

The lovely and talented Keith Hinkle just landed in OAK. He's here for work for a couple of days and will be staying with me Friday night. He would stay the weekend but he has to be back for the HRC dinner in Nashville Saturday night.

In honor of Mr. Hinkle's visit, Shilpa and I are hosting him for dinner Friday night-- complete with his two favorite things: authentic Indian cuisine and hot gay men. (yes,I am including myself in that assessment.) Cowboys and Indians. And all of it spicy.

To be followed by tragic drag at the Cinch.

Nashville is known for its drag, but Nashville drag is very "female illusionist" and all power ballads. SF drag is in your face, trashy (but in the good way), and f'cking hilarious. Now that Cockatalia's show (entitled "every F'cking Friday Night") at the Rendez-Vous is no more (b/c the Rendez-Vous is no more), we are taking him to Anna Conda's show at the Cinch in Polk Gulch. (Take note that we of the Polkestrasse are not yet accepting the business district's push to call it "Polk Village.")

Don't call us, we'll call you.

Actually, go ahead and call us.

Use Jangl for your jingles:

Rather than giving out your actual phone number to just any old person over the internet, web site Jangl lets users hand out Jangl IDs rather than phone numbers.

Once someone receives your ID, they can head over to Jangl, enter the ID you gave them to get a number to call you at. It's not your real phone number, mind you - it's a disposable number that will redirect to your phone.

Jangl's cute tagline: Freedom rings.

I love clever word play.

Via LifeHacker.

Hot towel?

Details had a sort of disturbing article recently (both in subject and coverage) of "Mandingo Parties" where white swingers pay to have parties where black men have sex with their wives. I'm all for letting your freak flag fly, but this leaves me with a feeling of "ew." Maybe its my sense of commitment in relationships, or the underlying self-delusion and ultimate self-destruction of this practice, or it may be just my own body facism as the people involved look like Boss Hog and Kathy Bates inviting the hired hand in for a romp. In any case, Pam has an interesting deconstuction of the story and comment on the phenomenon over at Pam's House Blend (always steamin').

If you are looking for a coffee break and a thoughtful appraisal of a sexual sub-sulture, give it a read.

And since this post is slightly sexual anyway, perhaps you'd like a pearl necklace.

No really.

Will there be t-shirts reading "I got all high and naked at a gay circuit party and all I got was a pearl necklace."?

Via the FAGAT Guide.



Hot towel?

Apu Nahasapeemapetilon says

ThankYouComeAgain.

In a marketing tie-in with the upcoming Simpsons movie,

7-Eleven to Remake Several Stores as Kwik-E-Marts

If all goes as planned, the convenience store chain plans to refit 11 stores across the U.S...to resemble the front of the Kwik-E-Mart, the convenience store that Homer and other characters frequent in the classic cartoon TV series.

Customers also will be able to buy products inspired by the nearly two-decades-old show, including KrustyO's cereal, Buzz Cola and iced Squishees (the cup says Squishee, but the contents will be Slurpee).

The chain also will use pictures of Simpsons characters to promote 7-Eleven's line of fresh foods, such as placing the face of Homer and his classic "Mmmm . . . sandwich" quip on sandwich wrappers.

AppleTV

As a Mac guy, some people have been asking me what I think about the AppleTV.

I've been seriously considering getting the AppleTV since I saw it at MacWorld, and have been eagerly awaiting its release. Now that it is here I am holding off on buying one. First of all, it's generally a good idea to wait until at least the second iteration of any new technology. Secondly, I don't really care about the watching downloaded TV or movies feature, but it would be nice to have that smooth interface to play all my iTunes music via the stereo. Right now I have a dock for an iPod, but having my entire library loaded, browseable, and available all the time would be really nice. That, and the iPhoto/slideshows feature would be useful too.

I have also put off getting an AppleTV because I need a new DVD player, and as long as I am getting a new one of those I might as well ditch my 5-CD changer and just play CDs through the DVD player, since longer playlists or mix-cds will be replaced by the AppleTV. And I could use the component real estate (the 5-CD changer is enormous).

But if I get a new DVD player that can play MP3s, CDRs, DVRs, DIVX, etc, I may need a new receiver. The receiver I have now only has a single optical audio input for the 5.1 decoding, but the DVD players I've looked at tend to have only coaxial component audio out. My parents gave me a gift certificate for a new DVD player for Christmas but I don't want to spend too much. I also have a gift certificate to the Apple store which would abate my cost of the Apple TV. But now researching and pricing a new DVD player, and a new receiver, getting the AppleTV, and rewiring all my components just seems less like geek fun and more like a hassle. The hassle factor sort of dulls the shine on the AppleTV, for which I wasn't all that passionate anyway.

However, reviews are in and are favorable. I just think the 40GB hard drive is anemic. Now that the Apple TV has been out for a couple of weeks, blogs are starting to post the hacks to make the most out of the device, including how to switch out the drive for a 120GB model.

Cult of Mac: AppleTV Hacked Six Ways to Sunday
Gizmodo: Top 5 AppleTV Hacks

Update: Best review (thoroughness, style) so far is this one from ArsTechnica.

sphere without the nap

If you are no so tired that you want to catch some REM in the Napmosphere, then maybe you just want to chill in the Relaxone.

Frankly, I think the Napmosphere was genious. The close-your-self-in-a-giant-plastic-easter-egg Relaxone is just creepy. And kinda hideous. Gizmodo describes it as "What Happens When a Crazy Inventor and Big Bird Have Sex."

That's a myth. Myth!

Yes?

I usually walk home for lunch (benefits of living three blocks away), but by the time I got to the lower levels and to the street, the sky had opened up and it was pouring. I turned around and decided just to take a sandwhich at my desk. Walking back into my building I ran into Adam Savage and his Mythbusters crew who had sprinted down the street and into our doorway to get shelter from the downpour.

A few months ago the Mythbusters visited my friend and hypnotist Andrew Gentile to investigate, as apart of their "can you sneak past guard dogs like in the movies" segment, if one could hypnotize a dog. Even though he was successful (although he admits the dog may have just been sleepy), when I tuned into the broadcast last week I saw that they did not use his segment.

I gave Adam a tap on the shoulder and "said, "Hey, Love the show." to which he and the crew sort of lit up (nice on such a crappy day).

Ah, the fame of blowing stuff to smithereens on a weekly basis on the tarmac in Alameda.

(There's a country song in there somewhere, I just know it.)

Trailergasm

OMG. The trailer for Stardust premiered today. Exclusive release at Yahoo! Movies.


Stardust is an excellent graphic novel, then novel, now movie by
Neil Gaiman.

VvG

Vanderbilt vs Georgetown-- starting about now.

RMJ, Georgetown alumnus, is trying to find a place where we can meet up to watch the game (me being from Nashville and a Vandy supporter).

Robert also knows what big Vandy fans my parents are. Mom and Dad are both alumni, and have had season tickets to the basketball games for about 30 years. For Christmas they gave my nephew weekend season tickets. Robert called my Mom and Dad this morning to send a little NCAA March Madness love before the face off.

Robert e-mailed me this afternoon:

Wilson,
Your mom is an absolute delight.

Such a joy to have a basketball minute with her ... I guess Bradley is in love with Team Vanderbilt and they have been enjoying Saturday games ("so not as to interfere with school nights) together thru the season.

She will very much be watching tonight. "I hope I can stay up late enough to see the end."

So cute.

xRoMo

Walk with me here

Even though it comes from CureSpinalCordInjury.com, I am very skeptical of this.

Electronic Nerve Stimulator Enables Walking

For those of us at the AAAS meeting, nothing was more impressive than the demonstration given by Jennifer French. She's not a scientist. She's a young woman sitting in a wheelchair, paralyzed from a snowboarding accident. She presses a button on a control box strapped to her waist ... and then she stands up.

"So here you see the functional benefit and the fact that I can stand out of my wheelchair," she explained. "I can reach for things I usually can't reach. I can move around into spaces where the wheelchair wouldn't fit. And I can transfer onto spaces that I normally wouldn't be able to transfer onto."

In the case of a spinal cord injury like Jennifer French's, the leg muscles, for example, aren't damaged. They just don't receive a signal from the brain telling them what to do. The system developed by Hunter Peckham and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University bypasses the injured part of the nervous system and applies an electrical stimulation to replicate the signal that the muscles no longer receive. But the artificial system takes some getting used to.

Regardless of whether the technology pans out or not, I think this will be fairly usless for people like my sister-in-law whose injuries were suffered long ago and whose leg muscles have since atrophied. For the record, at her wedding she did wheel herself down the aisle with her father by her side, and looked radiant doing so. And she recessed in my brother's arms.

Walk with me.

That crazy Mel...

Oh, I'm sorry. Let's make that batshit crazy.

From the TMZ:
Mel Goes Ballistic -- "Lady, F**k Off!"

TMZ has learned Mel Gibson exploded in anger last night on a college campus after an expert on Mayan culture accussed him of racially stereotyping the Mayans in the movie "Apocalypto." It happened last night at Cal State University at Northridge in the San Fernando Valley. Gibson was speaking to a film class about his movies, and several members of the Mayan community came to hear the famous director.

After Gibson's presentation, the crowd was allowed to ask questions. Alicia Estrada, an Assistant Professor of Central American Studies at CSUN, challenged Gibson, asking him if he had read about the Mayan culture before shooting the controversial film. Gibson said he had.

Estrada persisted, stating that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist. Estrada and others tell TMZ that Gibson exploded in anger, responding, "Lady, F**k off."

Homer erotic

Another take on 300.



Me likey.

Lactose intolerant? Look at this.

Sent in from Alert Reader, Theater Professor, and Father of Two (one quite fresh) Brad Griffin:


Our spring break trip took us not to Bermuda or Hawaii, but to Twentynine Palms, California - that's right - smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Why? We're still not sure. Perhaps we were answering the siren call of the Art Queen...

Of course, this sign doesn't even rival one we passed driving from Phoenix to Tucson (sadly no photo of it) advertising bridal wear and barbecue. (Two great tastes that taste great together? Tastes great/Less filling?)

Grand Slam Breakfast

No, not at Denny's.

Morning e-mail from Alert Reader Robert-Michael:

Subject: now i really, really want to go to the French Open

Lesbian-Pollock-chic for the new millennium ...
happy Friday!

From the BBC:

Navratilova serves up tennis art
An exhibition of artwork produced by tennis star Martina Navratilova hitting tennis balls dipped in paint has opened in Paris.

YouTube stats

I noted that the Tucson video had been viewed more than 2,000 times (as of now: 2,088 times) on YouTube.

But that is nothing compared to the little slideshow of Kevin getting his ass grabbed repeatedly at his bf's birthday party. I originally uploaded the slideshow with the music "Baby Got Back," but then that was sort of insulting to Kevin's tight posterior so I changed the music to "Ooh La La," but never deleted the other file. Combined, these slideshows (just snaps of Kevin getting his buns squeezed) have been viewed 15,811 times (as of this minute).

I'm guessing "ass" is a more popular search tag than "Tucson."

(Not that this says anything about Tucson mind you.)

Tucson Adventure Redux

It seems my little video has gotten some attention.

It isn't really a video as much as a slideshow. While there is a quality version of this vid on my personal site, I uploaded the video to YouTube so that I could embed the video on the blog.

You may recall that last year, Kevin planned a mystery date weekend. He told me to pack a bag and be prepared to go away for the weekend. I didn't know where I was going until I got my boarding pass. Kevin flew me (and Kelly in from Minnesota) to Phoenix and rented a convertible so we could take a drive through the desert to Tucson for the premiere performance of the touring company of Bombay Dreams (Bill met us in Tucson). Even though show was poorly done, we all had much, much fun. Kelly and Kevin and I are always up for an adventure-- and pretty much game for anything.

The video on YouTube has now been viewed over 2,000 times. (Who are these people?) It has received four or five comments (some I delete if they are annoying) and I still get personal e-mails from random Tucson ex-pats who found the video and appreciate an homage to their hometown.

One YouTube visitor is a University of Arizona reporter for the Tucson Citizen and asked if she could interview me about our "Tucson party weekend" and why I posed the pics/vid to YouTube.

She called me this morning and I gave her an interview. The piece on Tucson visitors and events on YouTube will be the magazine cover story next week.

Stay tuned.



Update!

good example of new media coverage

While this blog clearly falls in the amusment/self-indulgent categoary, bloggers are most certainly journalists.

I think this post on the SF MetroBlog is such a good example of local news reporting/gathering. Personal observations with links to diverse other sources for news, personal accounts, and images.

Fire in Hayes Valley (Monday evening, March 19, 2007)

When I want to know more about an incident (anywhere), I check the local papers for the "official" blurb, then I check the local blogs. There's always more to know.

............................................
Particularly when blogs provide updates.

But don't panic.

From the good people over at the N-Judah Chronicles:



Manufactured and available via the new site GoodStorm.

This for you Paul Day, Amy Day, and Shilpa.

I wonder what Shilpa's boyfriend will have to say about this.