thisiswhatyoushalldo

Ditch MS, Embrace The Fox

I have been saying it for over a year now, and even Microsoft, it seems, agrees. In this article in Slate (owned by Microsoft) the author advocates ditching Internet Explorer and embracing the tight, fun Mozilla Firefox browser. Leave the dark side and come over to the REAL internet. (Pop up? Spyware? what are those? I am sorry, I just don’t know what you are talking about.)
And it is so simple to make the switch” At only 4.7MB (Windows), Firefox only takes minutes to download over a fast connection. The installer gets you set up quickly, and the new Easy Transition system imports all of your settings – Favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers – so you can start surfing right away. ” If you don’t like it, uninstall. You needn’t remove IE, just move it off your start bar, take it off your desktop, move it to the bottom of the dirty laundry pile to use only in a real pinch, like when you are downloading stuff of Microsoft’s homepage (sometimes the guys in Washington get real mean and only allow their browser to download stuff)
Let me know if you try it and what you think.

Pump Up The Justice

I am flooded with jokes. Justice sucks. The growing eyes of sweet lady liberty. Replace the scales of justice with . . . Either way you pump it, this is one weird dude.

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

by Alastair Sutherland
from Free Agent March 1987 (a Portland Oregon alternative newspaper)
Republished in the Utne Reader Nov./Dec. 1993

We have been lucky to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Apparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy had hoped to write “a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever.” The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.
October 3
Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.
October 4
Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.
October 6
I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of cigarettes, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.
October 10
I find myself trying ever more radical interpretations of traditional dishes, in an effort to somehow express the void I feel so acutely. Today I tried this recipe:
Tuna Casserole
Ingredients: 1 large casserole dish
Place the casserole dish in a cold oven. Place a chair facing the oven and sit in it forever. Think about how hungry you are. When night falls, do not turn on the light. While a void is expressed in the recipe, I am struck by its inapplicability to the bourgeois lifestyle. How can the eater recognize that the food denied him is a tuna casserole and not some other dish? I am becoming more and more frustrated.
October 25
I have been forced to abandon the project of producing an entire cookbook. Rather, I now seek a single recipe which will, by itself, embody the plight of man in a world ruled by an unfeeling God, as well as providing the eater with at least one ingredient from each of the four basic food groups. To this end, I purchased six hundred pounds of foodstuffs from the corner grocery and locked myself in the kitchen, refusing to admit anyone. After several weeks of work, I produced a recipe calling for two eggs, half a cup of flour, four tons of beef, and a leek. While this is a start, I am afraid I still have much work ahead.
November 15
Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word cake. I was very pleased. Malraux said he admired it greatly, but could not stay for dessert. Still, I feel that this may be my most profound achievement yet, and have resolved to enter it in the Betty Crocker Bake-Off.
November 30
Today was the day of the Bake-Off. Alas, things did not go as I had hoped. During the judging, the beaver became agitated and bit Betty Crocker on the wrist. The beaver’s powerful jaws are capable of felling blue spruce in less than ten minutes and proved, needless to say, more than a match for the tender limbs of America’s favorite homemaker. I only got third place. Moreover, I am now the subject of a rather nasty lawsuit.
December 1
I have been gaining twenty-five pounds a week for two months, and I am now experiencing light tides. It is stupid to be so fat. My pain and ultimate solitude are still as authentic as they were when I was thin, but seem to impress girls far less. From now on, I will live on cigarettes and black coffee.

Best read with an affected fake French accent and a lot of sighs.

LOLLAPALOOZA, 2004 CANCELS ALL DATES

Not that I was going, but someone, somewhere cares.

“You can imagine the dismay I share at this moment with the artists and musicians who were looking forward to the tour. Lollapalooza could no longer see fit to continue this year. Our plight is a true indication of the general health of the touring industry and it is across musical genres. Unexhausted is our virtue. We are taking Lollapalooza back and plan on rebuilding and recreating the festival in surroundings more conducive to the cultural experience we’ve become known for.”
– Perry Farrell

In the wilderness a rave kid on ecstacy cries and hugs another . . .

New Wilco?

Anyone heard, bought, like the new Wilco album yet? I really dig Uncle Tupelo and thought Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was amazing and the Wilco/Billy Bragg compendium Mermaid Avenue was also great.
I have heard remnants of it online this spring but haven’t heard much radio play. Not surprised. One song is eleven minutes long and mostly guitar solo explorations.
So lemme know about the new one, will ya.

Plan “B”

The carnage wasn’t nearly as bad as expected. We come out from behind the cardboard refrigerator box that we used as a makeshift shield. I grabbed an old golf club and we walked over to the overturned wash bucket.
We heard the crash. The raccoon had to be trapped this time – we had been trying to catch the ‘coon all day.
For the last month it had been rummaging through the trash out back, promptly at a quarter to four each morning. Today, that ‘coon was going to pay the price.
Me and Pete, we fixed up this trap out behind the garage – an old up-turned wash bucket with an old piece of fence propping it up. Some baling twine was tied and threaded through our site hole in the refrigerator box. Pete suggested we use peanut butter to lure the critter in.
Pete knows about these kinds of things. Once, last fall, he caught a skunk in a trashcan on the way to school. He got in a lot of trouble for brining it in to class but besides, on this there was no debate. If Pete said the situation called for peanut butter, then peanut butter it was.
We never thought past the next step. What do you do with a trapped ‘coon behind the garage. From the sounds of things it was pretty mad.
Pete offered nothing.
“This is a different situation entirely,” he said.
Tommy the little kid from across the alley came out from behind the neighbor’s dumpster.
“Are ya going to kill it.”
Me and Pete looked at each other. I was positive we weren’t but I needed Pete’s reassurance.
Pete’s eyes were as big as pancakes as he just looked down at the basin. It was starting to move across the floor, scraping along as the caged animal inside hissed and growled.
“No, Tommy, we aren’t gonna kill it.”
“But what are ya gonna do?”
Just then the whole trap – washbasin, fence post, baling twine and the cardboard blind made a run for the alley.
No time to think, Pete shouted:
“Let’s go, its getting away!”
Traipsing along down the alley after it, I got embarrassed at the noise.
“Maybe we should just let it go.”
“No way, man. We have worked too hard now,” Pete shouted.
He reached for the string and pulled, hoping to halt the washbasin in its tracks.
Contrary to our best calculations, this was a bad plan. The string went tight and lifted the bucket up on end just as the raccoon had worked his way up to Mr. Richardson’s back garden wall.
All them stories that you hear about madder than a mad raccoon, well, they’re true.
That bucket opened up on its end and there we were:
Sammy Clint all of 9-years-old; Pete McKinney, 9-½ years old; and Timmy, 6. Starring down the raccoon, the bane of the neighborhood’s morning sleep all summer.
I screamed. Like a little damned girl, I screamed and looked over at Pete. He was pale and shook up pretty good. Timmy was laughing.
He took the fence post and starting wagging at the old raccoon and soon it was running down the alley.
“Christ, Timmy, we had been working on catching that thing all morning.”
Laughing, Timmy just ran back home, carrying that fence post with him.
“Maybe we should switch to salami,” Pete suggested.
And back to the garage we headed. Broken but not down.
That ‘coon’s days are numbered.

Just something I messed with instead of the real work today -- R-Dub

Church & State

Neal Pollack is a Seattle author and part of the Dave Eggers crowd over at McSeeney’s. His most recent article in The Stranger, takes a long loud poke at the extreme right wing fundamentalist Christian establisment now in control at the White House. Compared to his premiere work, The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature: The Collected Writings of Neal Pollack
a very funny poke at an imagined literary great’s fantastic life. He also has a rock and roll memoir Never Mind the Pollacks : A Rock and Roll Novel a novel about a fictional Rock and Roll critic named Neal Pollack. Funny stuff.
But his words and venom in The Stranger article is in a different vein as he asks aloud how did our country get totally controlled by right wing religious zealots.
I often ask that question myself.

I Am Smirking

One the geekiest posts I have made. But it is not only cute, but true. I go to IE 6.0 about once a month, otherwise it is a useless application embedded onto my system.