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The question was, “Do you ever plan on making an original movie without rehashing any of your old characters that doesn’t suck?”

Kevin Smith Strikes Back

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10. Put in huge blocks of text and never break them up

I don’t care what that big, fat, snotty ass of an English teacher told you about writing. Writing for the web is different than writing for the approval of a washed up author. Most of the time, people don’t read your site, they skim it. Newspapers traditionally break up their paragraphs into smaller chunks to provide multiple places for your eye to rest on your way down the page. The web is exactly the same. When you give me big blocks of text, I lose my place a lot and end up getting aggravated. When I get aggravated, I read something else.

9. Make me hunt for your RSS feed

This one kills me. I think you’re awesome, so why won’t you let me subscribe to all of your updates? RSS has been around for over a decade now, so if you have a site, there’s no excuse not to have an RSS feed. All Blogger and Wordpress users have feeds created for them by default, and just need to advertise them. I might spend a couple of minutes making educated guesses as to where your feed might be, but the average person won’t. Do everyone a favor and put a big orange chicklet at the top of your blog so us lazy folk with bad eyes can find it, subscribe, and enjoy your posts.

8. Don’t allow comments at all

If you shut off commenting because you were drowning in a sea of comment spam, using Akismet and Bad Behavior for Wordpress will allow you to turn it back on by eliminating 99% of your spam for free. If you’re simply afraid that people will say something that might detract from your totally awesome post, then maybe your post isn’t that awesome after all. Come out from under your bed in that giant ivory tower and let people love or hate your posts. Eliminate barriers. Get some feedback. Make a couple of friends. Communicate. (Unless, of course, you are the Grand master of the Illuminati, in which case I apologize for even suggesting this. I wouldn’t dream that my comments would matter to you, Sir. Or Madam. Or Whatever. I, for one, would like to welcome our new insect overlords.)

7. Limit comments to Blogger users only

Look, I know Blogger is a big community and can provide you a ton of readers, but I don’t want to log on with a Google account just to leave a comment. I want to leave a comment under one of my more awesome pseudonyms, such as Seniorhotdog666. Why won’t you let me? Know what happens when people put up barriers? I stare at the screen for two seconds, maybe use a little foul language, and click the X in the corner of the screen. I have a ton of stuff to read and won’t waste time scaling walls just to tell you how great I thought your post was. Seniorhotdog666 might love your post, but you’ll never know because you shut him out. And no one shuts out Seniorhotdog666.

6. Simply vanish

Write really well, get me interested, and then drop your blog cold. Maybe even delete your domain in a fit of rage. Why do you treat me like you don’t even know me? Didn’t our time together mean anything to you? Oh, wait. You don’t know me. Well, that’s no excuse. You still suck. And I miss you. No, no, wait, I hate you. Are you coming back? Hello? Fine, be that way.

5. Suddenly make reading your blog invitation only

What, now I’m the pimply fat kid who’s not good enough for your crappy club for jerks? I was good enough two months ago when you were itching for readers. If someone found out that you were crapping all over your boss, I certainly didn’t tell them, so why am I suddenly on the wrong side of that new velvet rope in front of your blog? Bah. I’m taking my twelve sided die and going home. Don’t think I’ll check back either. I’m serious. If I only had magic missile in my bag of holding, I would cast it upon that velvet rope for +d12 damage. Not that I know what any of that means because I’m so friggin’ cool.

4. Try to make me register

The best way to piss me off with this is to tell me I need to register as a site member after I type out a long comment. Your site is so phenomenal that I have to become a member to leave a comment? Do you have any idea how many friggin’ accounts I have out there? Do you think I’m willing to create another one just to respond to you and let you know that I appreciate the work you’re putting in? Unless you’re some huge site that generates a bunch of awesome posts and offers free lower body massages for members, it’s not likely. Do you know why people get annoyed with the New York Times and get their information from other sources? Registration. Maybe The ‘Times can afford it because they’re huge. Unless you’re that big, take off the members only jacket, get rid of the club card, and let me in.

3. Switch gears hard

You had an awesome blog, and then you went and had an awesome baby. I know the little rug rats can take over every part of a new parent’s life, but if I read another post on how you’ve gotten no sleep and have sore nipples, I’m deleting your feed. This goes triple if you are a dude. I can certainly sympathize with you being tired, but throw me a bone once and a while and write a post about something other than the baby’s every move. I’m not requesting “The many sweaters of Mrs. Fussbudget the cat” either. Anything else. Please. I’m begging you.

2. Twitter around and leave me hanging

I know, I know. Point a finger at someone and three fingers point back at you. I will admit to being completely guilty of weekly posts full of mundane details so that when I’m 70 I’ll be able to look back and see what a tool I was, but those posts are for me. In the meantime, I write a lot of other posts in an attempt to inform or entertain you. There’s nothing wrong with a vanity post every so often, but when each post is a pointless catalog of every mundane minute, put it in a diary and chuck it under your pillow there, princess. I love catching up with you, but tie all the details together into a story and provide me with a point once and a while.

1. Jam Adwords into every crevice

I know you want to make money on the web. I do too. And I can understand placing ads down the side or at the top of your page to maximize your revenue, but when you start jamming ads every two paragraphs, or have links that pop up little ads whenever my mouse touches them, I get insanely annoyed. Sometimes I even growl at the screen. The more ads you jam in, the more I wonder about your intentions. When you enter that grey area, chances are I’m not going to waste any time validating your opinions before discounting them and moving on. If you’re one of those dinks that sticks me with pop under ads, I will immediately discount you, and avoid both returning or linking to you at all costs short of that free lower body massage mentioned earlier.

Super Angry Bonus Round! Newscasters with blogs

I’m going to break something if I see another TV newscaster encourage people to check out their blog during a newscast. YOU’RE A PROFESSIONAL NEWSCASTER. You already have a media outlet to give your opinions on. It’s called television and it reaches a zillion people an hour. Blogs are an alternate stream of getting information. Pro blogs from newscasters are a contrived stream. Stop invading the blogshphere with useless crap because some exec decided that this new “blogging thing” might encourage your career by humanizing your big, talking head. Leave the useless crap to us. We know useless crap. I do, anyway. I’m like the king of it. Look at this post for crying out loud. I’m the king of crap, there is none higher…

Got more things that burn your muffin about blogs? Feel free to post them in the comments…

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According to the government, the whole reason for spending the effort was that it would result in substantial energy savings. Personally, I just don’t see it.

When I got up this morning, I switched on the light because I found that the fucking moon didn’t provide the same illumination that I normally enjoy from the sun at that time of the morning. Because this is New England in March, I also switched on the heat. Because I was groggy from having to get up an hour earlier, I ended up taking a longer shower. When finally I got out the door, I started the car a little earlier than normal because the sun hadn’t heated up the windows enough to melt off the frost as it normally does.

I then worked all day, where for eight or so hours I used the same amount of electricity that I normally do. After that, I went to the gym and consumed the same amount of electricity while working out. Once I was satisfied that I was jacked up to the size of Hulk Hogan, I gave them the signal to crank up “Eye of the Tiger”, which helped me win several pose downs. This didn’t really consume any extra energy, but I thought I’d mention it because I do it every day. Plus, everyone knows that “Eye of the Tiger” doesn’t consume energy. It produces it.

Afterward, I squeezed all my trophies into my car where I spent the same amount of gas driving home that I normally do. When I got home, I turned on the PC, started dinner, and took a shower. I did all this with the lights on because I’ve found that no matter if it’s 6PM or 7PM, cleaning things without light doesn’t really get things clean, and lighting fires in the dark can get expensive. Plus, if anyone broke in, being able to see the crazy, Hulk Hogan motherfucker charging through a shower curtain wielding a pose down trophy like an angry rhino is known to be more of an effective theft deterrent than not seeing him.

So, let’s see. Despite all the effort we spent to push back DST in the name of saving energy, I used the same amount of energy during my day, with the exception of the morning, when I used more electricity, more water, more heat, and ran my car for longer.

So how is using more considered saving again?

Maybe we could’ve saved a lot of trouble if the government made a simple call to Survivor to ask how they do it.

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And I guess that was the point of shutting the box off: Make the house more boring and force the need for more human contact. Reawaken the brain. Get out of the house. Make the strangers acquaintances, the acquaintances friends, and the friends into good friends.

Yet, it was an uphill battle, because even though I was consciously making an effort not to watch, TV’s are everywhere. They’re at the gym facing all the cardio equipment distracting me from my workout. They’re in the bar facing the dining room distracting me from my lovely date. Fuck, there is even a big ass, widescreen flat panel in the kitchen at work that runs CNN all day that drags me under whenever I want a drink of water. There have been several occasions in the last week where I’ve snapped out of an unconscious haze and found myself staring at a random TV watching nothing in particular.

By shutting the TV off, I found that I switched my brain on. Unfortunately, instead of transforming into a big, enlightened Buddha, with peaceful thoughts flowing around the meaning of life, I found myself becoming increasingly antsy and frustrated a lot of the time. Not only did I have plenty of time to dedicate to thinking about both large and small issues, but I had the time to dwell on them. And as my brain ramped up, I noticed a decrease in both my complacent attitude and my tolerance for being treated like an idiot.

While probably positive in the long run, this has pretty much precluded me from getting any enjoyment from morning drive time radio or my job. Just this morning, I found myself getting excessively frustrated as the radio “personalities” punctuated their re-hashed, unfunny jokes with poorly chosen sounds clips and moronic callers. The thought of topping that forty minute fucktard sundae with eight hours as a zombie had me ready to attempt a ’70’s action hero jump from the car.

But, I didn’t.

I went to work and did my job.

Like I always do.

Tonight, because I’m tired of feeling like there’s something wrong with me, I turned the TV back on and let myself slip back under the wave.

Because I really don’t know what else to do.

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When it was finally revealed that the whole amounted to nothing but a bunch of advertisements that would, with any luck, be the least threatening thing gracing some lucky college kid’s dorm room, our embarrassed mayor had the people who put up the signs up for Turner arrested and charged with distributing “hoax devices”, under a statute used to prevent people from distributing fake bombs to cause a panic. He also claimed that he had his lawyers working on a case to sue and possibly level criminal charges against Turner Broadcasting. The mayor claimed a $500,000 damage figure, which had to be repeated several times because I don’t think that the microphone was positioned close enough to his asshole to hear.

When I talked about this, I was surprised to hear that a lot of the people actually agreed with the Mayor. In their minds, these guys should have known that lite-brites hung up around a city would be construed as a bomb threat in a post 9/11 world. Advertising should have a permit. There is no room for jokes. Anything could be a bomb and should be regarded with suspicion and treated with overreaction.

Yet, on one of the news reports, they talked to a guy at Fenway Park who had known about the signs for weeks and thought they were just a funny prank. In Seattle, a police Sergent was quoted as saying, “At this point we wouldn’t even begin an investigation, because there’s no reason to believe a crime has occurred.”

Frankly, I agree. Let’s be honest. These things don’t remotely resemble bombs. They look like Lite-brites. At worst they might be a choking hazard for children under three and possibly the mayor of Boston.

To continually call them “devices” on the news instead of “signs” incites unnecessary concern. To charge these two guys with trying to panic the public is nothing but an idiot Mayor looking for a scapegoat to make him look like less of an idiot. To passively accept these overreactions makes Massholes look like a panicky bunch of pussies who don’t deserve the tattered scraps of freedom that are gradually being pulled through our fingers.

When what is funny makes you afraid, and when the smallest actions get massive overreactions, how can a citizen remain free?

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One: MABeGroMo

I failed to mention the start of MaBeGroMo on December 1. I started on November 7th to beat the holiday rush. Like women synching their menstrual cycles, Team Beardo at work started around the same time without discussion or provocation. My beard is now two months old. How’s yours?

Two: Macafuckingrena

I read an e-mail from a guy whose signature not only bestowed upon himself the title of “Guru”, but included a quote from someone named “Evil Overlord”. Although I can’t recall the quote exactly, it was of the “I’m so fucking smart and everyone else is an idiot” nature. Now, I might be wrong, but didn’t adding little quotes to your personal e-mail signature go out of style around the same time people stopped thinking the Macarena was cool and CCMail was hot? If you answered “no”, do yourself a favor and delete your quote because no one thinks it’s clever except you. If you’re that guy who wrote that e-mail, I already know that you’re going to add a second clever and scathing quote to your signature just to prove me wrong. That is assuming that you can climb into your lucky quote-searching Underoos and clean the ho-hos from your fingers before getting distracted by some sort of Japanese cartoon porn and falling asleep on your big, guru pillow.

Three: Levi and the Magic Cards

My sister gave me a Christmas card that she bought from a nine year old in Portland who makes and sells his own greeting cards. I wish the card was available at his website, alienswithafros.com, but it’s not.

Above the hand-drawn picture of a Mr. T. with a Santa hat on, it simply reads, “I Pity the fool that Doesn’t Believe in Santa.”

Four: Ultimate Battle Prep

My sister also gave me a single Hulk Hand that she squirreled away when she found it at work. Despite the plethora of paired hulk hands available six months ago for dirt cheap, I find myself unable to find a reasonably priced pair to send to her. I’m thinking that I’d much rather locate a set of Thing Hands and Thing Feet to send along for the ultimate battle. If I could only find them… HULK SMASH!

Five: Corey Hart

#1GF! and I traveled into Boston on New Year’s Eve Day to see the paltry four ice sculptures and four crappy, weirdo plastic wrap sculptures that the city splurged on. I haven’t been in to town in a couple of years, and couldn’t remember how to get from the Public Garden to Copley Place. I refused to ask for directions under the pretense that I’ve been in there a million fucking times and to ask where it was to admit a full and unconditional suburban surrender.

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While we stood waiting to spend less than the length of this particular line warranted, a checker in the next aisle opened her register with, “I can take the next person in line.” The Russian Neanderthal in front of us quickly walked around the front of the registers to be first in line, while the two gay dudes in back of us bolted around the correct way, just missing the pole position.

Although the Russian guy was technically next in line and had arrived at the register first, the gay dudes argued that he didn’t bolt around the proper way down the aisle. While they got into a heated argument, the rest of us sat back and enjoyed passing time watching our new found drama.

The whole thing devolved into a battle of contradictory accents that made my head spin, eventually ending with the Russian dude grunting, “I was next. I don’t care. Get out of my face,” to which the gay dudes hissed, “Oh we all have faces. Get out of our face!”

We all have faces? I think it was the worst. Comeback. Ever. As punishment, I kind of hope that durning the whole ride home that guy was saying things like, “Shit. You know what I should’ve said? You know what I should’ve said? “I couldn’t get into that face if you bagged it and put 6 martinis in me….’ Damn it.”

Or something like that.

(Note: I really don’t think it matters what gender people decide to rub their parts against, but on the two occasions that people read or heard this story, they all got that “uh oh” expression on their face. Is this somehow bigoted, or is mentioning a gay person in a story somehow off-limits?)

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What do you get when you combine a wireless mouse, a PC that’s hooked up to the TV, and a bunch of flash based games? In my house, you end up with a stinky, bleary-eyed couple who skips showering and orders out for food because they are so focussed on beating each others scores. Good times. Gooooooood times.

Sunday

After washing off a days worth of gaming stink, we raided Michael’s and Home Depot, gathering ideas for all sorts of new and useless projects to eat spare brain cycles. Although we did not go so far as to buy a soap making kit, we bought plenty of stuff that will probably end up being pulled from the back of a closet in a couple of years with a quizzical, “Now, what the hell did we buy this for?”

Monday

We did a small amount of shopping at Ikea to find more junk for our projects, ate baked potato soup in a bread bowl, and watched a movie. I also think we drank tea. I spent the tail end of the day staring at the parts to my project as if my brain could force them to assemble themselves. Despite a lot of advanced raised eyebrow staring, this did not happen. In the meantime, #1GF! secretly continued gaming, to ensure victory lest she be challenged again.

Today

So, this wasn’t a part of the long weekend, because we went to work, but I had to include it for contrast, and to suggest that there is balance in the world.

My morning commute choices were limited to driving behind a school bus, a city bus, a dump truck, or cars filled with morons who couldn’t grasp the purpose of the strange white dashes on the road. Whenever a lane choice presented itself, I inevitably chose incorrectly, adding another 20 minutes to my commute.

After finally making it to work, the hallway containing mailbox that would take the 8 letters off my hands was suddenly under construction, leaving me to stare at the construction like an ant who suddenly has snot wiped across his trail.

I walked back to my desk, picked up my cup to get some water only to find out that not one, but both water machines were dead. I managed to get a trickle out of one, which I foolishly drank.

The water led to an upset stomach and eventual migraine, which I tried to ignore on my lunch hour while raiding Home Depot for more items to take apart and strew all over #1GF!’s clean counter and floor.

Upon arriving at Home Depot, I parked waaaaay in the back of the parking lot, in a spot that was far away from any carriages and only open to company on one side. I even parked far enough from the truck in the next spot that I would’ve had to have left my passenger door open in order for him to hit my car. Feeling satisfactorily safe, I went into the Depot in search of more project related stuff to disassemble.

When I returned, I found that despite my efforts, the driver of the truck next to me managed to use my generously donated extra space to put a dent in the side of my car with what looks like the corner of a piece of sheet rock. The white smear on the side of my black car wasn’t something you could miss, but the fucker tucked his tail between his legs and drove off before I could get back. I exclaimed, “Fuckin’ Douchebags” loud and to no one in particular before shaking my head and returning to work for the next 4 hours before getting in my car and heading home.

And just when I figured that I was in the clear, some jackhole in a barge who couldn’t get his stupid ass to the dock in one of the twenty other non-rush hour hours, forced the Fore River Bridge open, leaving me stranded in a parking lot of rush hour traffic.

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to shower up and shut off the games.

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You might remember that in September, IPOWERWEB shut down my site and rolled it back 2 weeks without telling me. Like a fool in a bad relationship, I decided to stay with them when they promised that they would fix their backup process. I even gave them another year’s fees in early September.

This week, they decided to shut down my site and delete three months of data. When I called them with the big, “What the fuck happened and how are you going to fix it?”, they just batted their eyelashes, squeezed their jugs together, and shrugged.

Reason #2: No Backups

When I asked them to put it back the way it was, they said the last backup they had was from August. It was actually the same backup from the last time they blew away my site. They then assured me that they would open another ticket to correct the backup process so this wouldn’t happen a third time. Before they hung up, they told me that I would hear from them in 24 hours.

Reason #3: Poor Customer Service

That was 3 days ago.

I restored one of my backups, reworked what was missing transferred my site over to a newly set up account with Wingsix (thanks, Brian!).

Then, I blew the old site away and called IPOWERWEB to cancel. Even though I have been with them for years and was within 32 days of my last sign up, the customer service rep. was pro-rating and deducting mystery fees from my “unconditional” refund. When I explained that they had deleted data from my site twice in the last three months, he started giving me attitude. When I told him that I would’ve canceled within 30 days if I hadn’t been waiting for their tech support to fix my site, he gave me more attitude. When I asked to speak with a manager, he told me that they’d “tell me the same thing” before throwing me on hold for ten minutes.

When he came back he angrily told me that I’d get a full refund, and before I could get out a full thank you, he hung up on me.

I think I’ll believe this relationship has come to an end when I actually see the full refund on my credit card statement.

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It seems my web host, ipowerweb.com, blew away my site on 9/1, and decided to roll it back to 8/15. They then locked me out of my site for 9 hours (violating their 99.9% uptime guarantee) and set my space quota to 0 MB. I spent the last 4 days talking to 8 different techs who brushed me off and misinformed me about the issue. They never responded to my e-mails and they even tried to charge me $50 to do a restore of a database they blew away.

Nice, huh?

Finally, today, four days later, despite prior assurances, they admitted that there was nothing they could do to restore the data they destroyed. They also suggested that I keep regular site backups, which I think is a good idea, but should you have to keep backups to prevent data loss by people who you pay to host your site to protect it from data loss?

Fuckin’ A.

A few posts, 25 unpublished CD reviews, and a lot of other writing down the drain. This is not to mention the time spent trying to get answers from their technical support. I know it’s just a blog, but it’s a lot of fucking work to write these posts. I can’t imagine if I was some sort of store and they had lost 2 weeks of orders with no explanation.

I need PHP and MySQL, and some reliable web hosting suggestions…

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When I got home, I luckily found my card in another pair of pants, and since the credit card company caught it in time, I’m not responsible for any of the douche’s charges. I suppose things could’ve been a lot worse, but come on. My jaw is tired.

I’m not one for wishing ill will on people, but I hope another douche gets a hold of this douche’s credit card and charges up a years supply of anti-douche cream. Then, his credit card company won’t bother to call him about the uncharacteristically large charge because, well, the guy is a big, fat fucking douchebag. Then, the douche will spend the rest of his life paying off not only his karma, but a massive credit card debt. And he’ll still be a douche.

Douche.

(Douche count: 12)

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None of it is a big deal, but man, I find my jaw is clenched an awful lot.

Rather than do something constructive, I will now attempt to drown any issues in hours and hours of video games.

*This title came to me in a vision from Jebus.

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Today, while I was passing through Hingham Harbor in my normal left lane approach to the rotary, a driver in an SUV couldn’t decide if she felt like stopping short or changing lanes. Being the skilled driver that she was, she failed miserably at both tasks, forcing me to stop short as she plugged up two lanes. My next impulse was to get the hell away from her before she rolled me into her pile-up, so I shot up to the speed limit, went through the rotary and headed for home.

Then, “Slow Ride” by Foghat came the radio. For the next mile and a half, I was cruising along, semi-oblivious to the outside world singing, “Slow Ride… nah nah nuhnuh nahnuhnuh… Take it Easaay…” when all of a sudden, the blue lights of a police car filled my rear view.

You know that sick feeling you get when you see the blue lights directly behind you? I didn’t feel that. I just pulled over and tried to let the cruiser pass. When it didn’t, I just thought, “That’s weird,” and wondered what was going on. I shut off “Slow ride,” shut the car down, and rolled down my window.

License and Registration,” the officer said, without giving me any sort of explanation as to what was going on.
“Uh, ok.” I said, as I fumbled for my wallet in my sweatshirt.
“Roll up your window for me?” he said, as I kept looking.
“Uh, ok.” I said, trying to figure out what was going on.

Then, it dawned on me: Although he still hadn’t told me why he had pulled me over, he was checking the legality of my window tint.

“Ohhh. The tint. It’s legal.”
“It doesn’t look legal.”
“It is. You can check it if you like.”
“I have a light meter in the cruiser.”
“Ok.”
“Maybe the fronts are legal, but not the backs.”
“They’re all the same…”
“No, they’re not…”
“The place I got them from doesn’t do illeg…
“Do you want me to get the light meter? Do you? It’s a $300 fine if I find that it’s not legal.”

At that point, the officer had no interest in what I had to say, and was getting more combative. I still didn’t know why I had been pulled over and tried to diffuse the situation.

“Listen, I’m not trying to be argumentative here…”
“Do you want me to get the meter? Because I’ll go get it right now.”
“The place I got these windows tinted at doesn’t do illegal tint.”
“Where was it done?”
“On the North Shore. The same place that tints the windows on the John Hancock Building.”
“The reason I pulled you over is you went into that rotary back there too fast.”

I stared at him confused, at first because of the lack of transition, and my first thought was, “what rotary?” By the time I figured out that he was talking about the the rotary a good mile and a half behind me, he had already moved on.

“…and I had you at 50 while following you”
[confused stammering] What? I don’t think…”
“When was the last time you got pulled over?”
“Geez I don’t know… years ago.”

I think I said that to the wind as he returned to his cruiser. Within 2 minutes he was back at my car…

“I’m going to let you off this time, Jon, because you were wearing your seat belt.”

Seat belts are actually required by Massachusetts law, so wearing them is not an optional action, but a required one. I also wasn’t really happy that he felt he could skip the respectful “Mr. Dyer” or even “Jonathan,” and jump directly to calling me “Jon.” I was getting further confused, but I seemed to be off the chopping block, so I just shut the fuck up and let him finish.

“Ok. Thanks.”
“When you drive on an unposted road, the speed limit is thirty.”

If it’s not thickly settled, I thought the limit was forty. The road we were on was desolate enough to have a posted limit of 45 MPH. I was seriously beyond confused…

“Ok,” I said.

He then went back to his cruiser and I headed home confused at why I got pulled over for supposedly speeding, only to get released because I was wearing a seat belt, which I’m required to do by law.

The only way that I can piece the whole thing together was to concoct this story:

The officer saw a black, tinted car with a big ass wing go through the rotary faster than some of the complete idiots who can’t get it together enough to merge, let alone handle driving in a circle. As I passed through the rotary, I was either under the speed limit, or he would’ve put on the lights and given chase. He then followed my car for a 1.5 miles to a straight, 1 mile road with a posted speed limit of 40 to maximize the chances of a speeding ticket. As we rolled along at the speed limit for a half mile (with me oblivious to the fact that he was even behind me thanks to Foghat) he realized that his ticket chances were dropping drastically as we approached the town border. He then lit them up, and pulled me over. Because the supposed speed limit variance was probably more like 5 MPH, the officer was aware that it was small enough that it could be explained away by calibration issues or error. When combined with a clean record, the odds of wasting a day in court for no reason were high enough that he sought other opportunities to write a ticket by focusing on my supposedly illegal tint. When that didn’t pan out, he let me go.

I was lucky to not have to fight this one out in court, but it the officer was confusingly combative and seemed to be looking for any excuse to write me up. He didn’t, though, which was even more confusing. I like to believe that he was just trying to keep the streets safe, but the whole thing seemed a little predatory.

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Even though I felt like I was validating hipsters everywhere, I somehow ended up with the album in my hands right before I hit the register. And trust me in that I felt more than a little dirty handing over that ten spot for it. The only small way that I felt could wash off some of the shame was to avoid listening to the album until after I got home…which seemed to work for me.

After settling in and listening to about three songs, I realized that even though hipsters are generally 98% noise, there is an undercurrent of truth somewhere in what they are saying. That distorted, annoying sound spewing forth from the hipster in the store was probably once a nice, clean signal. If you can cut through the magpie opinion amplification in the hipster community, sometimes you find a nugget of truth way, way underneath. I certainly didn’t think Morningwood was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I could see why people would latch on to it. If the White Stripes had grown up on The Knack rather than Led Zeppelin, they would be Morningwood. Their influences are pretty transparent, but it’s catchy, and on some level it works.

Yet, while laying there trying to listen, two things started to irk me about the disc. The first was a simple matter of numbers: there are only two people listed in the band, yet there are four on the cover. Being the ultimate paranoid, I started to feel like I was being sold a corporate marketing package of what an indie band is supposed to look like rather than the indie band that I had “discovered”. Not that it matters when listening to music, but I had this weird feeling that I was being duped. I sort of brushed it off, but by the time the fourth song rolled around, I had found my second issue prominently eating up about half of the space dedicated to the liner notes. To me this was not a simple matter of words:

“This recording and artwork are protected by copyright law. Using internet services to distribute copyrighted music, giving away illegal copies of discs, or lending discs to others for them to copy is illegal and does not support those involved in making this piece of music – especially the artist. By carrying out any of these actions it has the same effect as stealing music. Applicable laws provide severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution and digital transmission of copyrighted sound recordings.”

Here I was intentionally trying to steer clear of the major labels to devote some attention to what I thought was an indie band, and before I could get through track 4, I was being preached to about the in’s and out’s of copyright law in a paragraph that was larger than I’ve found on any mass produced, corporate-backed disc. The day I want a band to give me legal advice is the same day that I ask my lawyer to jump up on the desk, strap on an axe, and rock like Great White at a fireman’s ball.

Led Zeppelin never had giant copyright notices in their liner notes. No. They had evil looking guys with swords and lanterns. AC/DC? Nope. They had a guitar jammed right through Angus Young’s chest. Even tame ol’ Pink Floyd had a freakin’ guy with his hair on fire. That’s what I want to see in liner notes: I want rock. I want to feel like the artist I’m listening to wears leather pants and tears up hotel rooms while flipping off the man right before throwing up on him. Don’t turn my listening time into something inherently uncool.

If you’re going to ruin my fantasy about you actually being as cool as classic Metallica, at least don’t show me that you’re Lars Ulrich. I buy a lot of CDs. And I have never used a P2P application to copy MP3s from the net. If I want the music, I buy it at the store or online, and take whatever legal mp3’s the artists give away for free. So, one of the last things that I want to read in some liner notes is a big, pseudo legal warning about what I can and can’t do with my purchase. If you’re determined to go this route, have the courtesy to be brief, accurate, and honest with what you write. And have the cojones to put your extensive warnings on the outside of the CD, so I can see what you’re all about before I lay down the $10.

“Using internet services to distribute copyrighted music…”

I will assume that Morningwood is targeting Peer to Peer distribution systems with this line, but it should be noted that using the internet to distribute copyrighted music is not inherently illegal. I actually first heard a few of Morningwood’s songs by downloading them directly from their website. Some artists and labels actively encourage the copying of their files over the internet while retaining copyright to the their work. If someone holds a copyright on a work, the use of the internet is not an important deciding factor in whether copyright infringement has occurred. Copying CDs and trucking them to Georgia is the same as dropping a CD in various locations on the internet. The copying is the action in dispute, not the medium by which it is distributed.

“Giving away illegal copies of discs…”

So, copying CD’s for other people is technically copyright infringement if the artist makes a claim against you. It’s true. If you got busted, you may be able to claim that those copies are covered under the doctrine of Fair Use, but that would probably be one expensive battle, and the climate of the courts these days seems to favor the indefinite expansion of copyright holder’s rights. You probably won’t win, but it’s certainly not black and white. You could also have created your copy on home audio equipment covered under the Audio Home Recording Act (sorry, PC’s are not covered) in which case you would be free from prosecution as long as you give away the discs in accordance with the rules of the act.

“lending discs to others for them to copy…”

Now we’re getting silly. The Doctrine of First Sale allows you to re-sell or lend your CD to whoever you want after you get it out of the store. Once you buy it, it’s perfectly within your rights to lend it to someone. If the person you lend it to makes a copy, then he or she may be violating copyright law, but the lender is not. Saying that the lender is breaking the law is more than a little misleading. Shame on Morningwood. Lending CDs to people is how some people communicate. And what they are doing with that communication is free, evangelical advertising for the bands that they lend. To lie and say that this is illegal is beyond stupid: It alienates the fans, stops free advertising without loss of sale, and actually insults the people who actually took the time to read your liner notes. Like me.

“has the same effect as stealing music…”

I’m no one to question the genius and legal expertise of pop artists, but according to the Supreme Court’s 1985 decision in case of Dowling v. United States:

“interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The infringer of a copyright does not assume physical control over the copyright nor wholly deprive its owner of its use.”

So, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, copying a CD is not legally equivalent to stealing it off of the rack. Copying is not equivalent to theft. If you want to argue that one, call the Supreme Court. I’m sure they have the time to listen to the pseudo legal opinions of a couple of musicians.

“and does not support those involved in making this piece of music – especially the artist…”

Know what really kills artist support more than kids trading CDs? Fans feeling like an artist is trying to snow them. Without word of mouth and organic advertising there are no sales. So, Morningwood, if you want to have your gospel spread, cut back on the fake legal warnings. Don’t think that your fans lack the sophistication to recognize patently misleading legal warnings (or threats). Respect your fans, because without them, you’re not on stage doing what you love: You’re painting houses for your uncle in Jersey.

Stick to what you know. Be honest. Rock your ass off. And please, please follow some good advice often ignored by bands who inevitably find themselves kicked into obscurity:

“Less talk, more rock.”

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Q. What choices do I have about information sharing?

A. We offer you the following two choices about sharing information that identifies you:

Choice #1. You may tell us not to share information about you with non-financial companies outside of our family of companies. Even if you do tell us not to share, we may do so as required or permitted by law. Also if you have authorized us to share information in connection with a particular product or service, we will continue to share information about you in connection with that product or service. For example, you might have a credit card with one of our airline, retail or university partners that offers rewards programs.

and

Choice #2. You may tell us not to share the following information about you within our family of companies:

Information from your applications to be used to determine your eligibility, such as your income.
Information from credit reports, such as your credit history.
Information from sources used to verify information you provide us, such as outstanding loans or employment history.

Even if you do tell us not to share, we may share other types of information within our family. For example, we may share name and address, information about transactions or balances with us, as well as survey results.

So my choices are: Tell you not to share, and you ignore me and share info as long as it is legal, OR tell you not to share and you’ll share info if you feel like it. I’m wondering how long it’s going to be before privacy policies just say, “You’re not the boss of us. If you don’t like it, hoard cash.”

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The spending of the $20 should be a required, not optional.

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While I was sitting in heavy traffic approaching a merge, the contact in my right eye decided that it had had enough and leaped out of my eye, presumably because the wind could’ve carried it to work faster than I was moving.

I tried unsuccessfully to put it back in a couple of times before deciding to be safe and pull off the road to take care of it. The particular stretch of road that I was on had a median to prevent turning around, there were no auxiliary roads connected to it, and traffic had moved a mere 8 feet in the five minutes that it took me to get the contact in.

Now, when I tried to pull back in, you’d think that one of the cars would let me back into the clogged traffic right? It was obvious that I wasn’t trying to pull a dick move like cutting through a parking lot to get a few cars ahead or something. I was actually trying to pull in a few cars behind where I had been.

So you’d think they’d let me in right? No. No, they didn’t. Ever get to the point where you just starting uncontrollably blurting out random explicatives? That’s always fun, isn’t it? I think I said, “Fuckin’ cock nobber ass shit pole frig neck fuck.” really loud before regaining what little sanity I had stored away for days like this.

Ugh.

I finally got let in by someone else who realizes that merges aren’t competitions, and jockeying for position in heavy traffic is pointless. I finally made it to work, thinking that I could put the whole thing behind me. If I didn’t get a good annual review and have another CD for the CD challenge dropped on my desk today, there’s no telling what pseudo swears I would’ve come up with.

Then, on the way home, the bridge opened again, costing me another hour and a half. 1 day. 18 miles. 3 hours. 6 MPH.

You’d think there would be a law against opening a bridge on a major artery during rush hour. There are 16 hours that are not rush hour, so why do we accept that a single ship should be allowed to inconvenience a few thousand people? Shouldn’t the majority rule? Bah ha ha. I know. I’m a fool. Puny humans.

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The guy doesn’t have the resources to fight a lawsuit for an application that he wrote for free, so he complied with the order and took his app offline.

If everything published on the web is copyrighted once it is published to a public web server, then my question is: When a search engine like google spiders my site and picks up all this incredibly well-written, copyrighted material and provides it to anyone who cares to search for it, aren’t they then aiding people in copyright infringement the same way that pearLyrics was?

Every time a search engine caches one of my pages, aren’t they infringing on my copyright by copying my pages? Doesn’t every computer on the net and, in turn, the internet’s servers themselves, have the capability of creating a copy of this page, which violates my sole, irrefutable copyright to this work? If the Warner lawyers are correct in their assumptions, maybe we can assume that they are.

And if it were possible or advisable to enforce my copyright to this site, I’d be, how you say, offline. I’d have the only copy of this material, and you’d never read it. Even if I could figure out how to get you to read this page with a single, non-downloadble copy on the web, you’d never find it, anyway. If caches were illegal copyright infringements, all search engines would be out of business, not just the ones that are convenient and cost-efficient to bully. Then, the internet could go back to the way I remember it back in the early 90’s.

If you’re old enough to remember dialing into bulletin boards or not being able to find a single fucking thing on the internet because you had to remember if it was on the world wide web, gopher, or some private bulletin board, you are aware of what a blessing search engines have become in recent history. If not, you might remember having to search 5 different engines because they all worked differently and cached different information. If you don’t remember any of this, you’re either not old enough, not nerdy enough, or just plain lucky.

If these lawyers want to get copyrighted lyrics off of the internet, they should seek to take down the illegal lyrics servers rather than make bogus claims about the legality of searching for information on the net. If they really want to control the flow of information rather than the information itself, then they need to stop bullying the little guys, grow some nuts, and sue Google for caching lyrics sites. I’d like to see how far they get with that one.

Fuckers.

Not to sidetrack, but do people really think there is an original thought left in the world that they really can claim that no one else has said it before? Is information so unquestionably original that a dead person has more of a right to copy a work than someone that outlives them? How can the dead have more rights than the living? It’s getting to the point where copyright is as rotten as the corpses that it serves.

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This happened today when I caught a mere 15 seconds of a 20 something young woman who’s college mouth had yet to catch up with her business look. I couldn’t tell you a single word of what she said, but the way she like um totally said it was like you know ugh [eye roll] like um these girls who are like all like believe that they are like the like made of like the greatest like ingredients in the world, but like under the surface, they’re all like you know ugh [eye roll] venom. what. ev’r.

Maybe it was simply a reaction to the venom or the maintenance contracts, but even if the outer me did remain as cool as a lunch gathering ninja, there has to be a better reason for such a strong reaction.

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Co-worker2, diligently wading through a bog of server support, turns to him and in a very even and almost ethereal tone means to say, “You need to slow down. I’m having trouble shifting gears and understanding what you’re talking about.”

What he actually says is,

“Every time you open your mouth, my. Fuckin’. Head. Wants. To. Explode.”

After the peals of geek laughter died down, all I could say was, “I’m putting that on this little scrap of paper so that you can’t claim that I misquote you later on.”

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When I was within 15 feet of the door, I hear the WRX fly up behind me and come to a fast stop within 3 feet of my right shoulder in a “I saw your car, and I’m showing off” sort of way. I just turned and looked at him like the fucktard that he was, and kept walking.

Then, from the passenger seat, his GF said “What’s up?” in that challenging way that only fat ass, tight pants wearing, wet curl bitches that get a cheap thrill from watching their boyfriends get punched in the face can.

Reaction 1: Put my fucking lug sole hard enough into the door that it dents it enough that he can’t open it and then either smile at him or punch him through the window.

Reaction 2 (too late): “Oh, you should dump her. She’s the kind of girl who gets guys like us punched in the face.”

Rection 3: “Cute Blue car.”

But, the funny thing was that the guy just turned to her and said “Don’t do that” really fast and wouldn’t turn back to me, completely extinguishing the situation.

For some reason, I felt like I won something.

Later, the whole thing sort of struck me. I haven’t been in a fight in years, yet 15 years of having to know how to deal with getting jumped or picked on have left me with instincts that are about as useful to an adult male as his appendix.

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I then somehow developed a motherfucker of a migraine and spent 4 hours hiding from light and sound, recovering just enough to go to a cookout with some of my friends. Even though I’ve known them for at least 15 years, no one hit me in the nuts once. That shouldn’t have to be counted as a benefit for a cookout, should it?

Friday
We went kayaking with my parents and I accidentally swamped my kayak while goofing off. A dry hold is where you store all the stuff you want to stay dry when you swamp your kayak. The air pocket that it creates also stabilizes the kayak while you get back to normal. When you treat a regular hold like a dry hold, you will have to drag all your wet stuff to shore before you can even think about emptying it out.

Thursday
We went to the beach all day. While walking around…
#1GF!: “Jon!”
Jon: “Huh?”
#1GF!: “You look like you’re going to kick someone’s ass.”
Jon: “Me? [guy sidesteps me] I think it’s just the way my face is.”

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That was probably the best part of my day.

After that, I agreed to attend a party which I is something that I rarely do.

Some notes:

• If you intentionally hit me in the nuts and spit water on me, you had better be a really good fucking friend of mine and we had better be 17.
• If you ask someone why they don’t drink in front of a group of people that they’ve just met, you will, nine times out of ten, force the person to reveal something personal that will make people uncomfortable.
• If you disregard the last rule and the person gets uncomfortable and says something like “Oh, I liked to drink, it’s just that other people didn’t really like me when I drank,” you are free to read “Alcoholic” between the lines.
• If you don’t read “alcoholic” and keep pushing the person to drink by handing them glasses of wine or saying things like “jussht shmell thish wine,” the alcoholic will inevitably assume that you are either stupid, an asshole, or both.
• If you missed the last rule, please don’t make “mmmmmmm” noises and waft the smell of your chocolate cake to a diabetic. They will assume the same about you that the alcoholic does. And they could die at your party. And nothing fucks up a party like a dead guy.
• If someone you just met is sitting quietly listening to a conversation, you will inevitably confuse the shit out of them if you break into the conversation and yell across the table, “You said people didn’t like you when you drank, and your personality sucks now.” This goes double if there isn’t a hint of jesting in your voice or demeanor. For this, you will probably not have the benefit of being assumed stupid.

I guess I’m not 17 anymore. People party, and some party hard. That’s cool with me. What’s not cool is wasting my life defending why I’m not following you off the cliff. I’ve done my share of drinking, and corked that bottle 9 years ago. If you haven’t, have at it. In either case, make a fucking decision and follow it. Don’t waste time trying to garner me as support for your decisions. The day that you get up, pour the shots, and bang in sick to work for a 3 day bender is the day that my respect for you actually goes up. Because even though you’re making bad decisions, at least you’re standing on your own two feet and making your own decisions. And on that day, call me. I’ve been there and might be able to help.

So, I’m not a party animal anymore. So, I have to waste 4 hours listening to why that’s wrong. Big deal. I’m actually really happy that 99% of the time I’m surrounded by people who don’t believe that my sobriety is the problem. I’m a lucky boy.

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On the next run, the drive died while reading, leaving me sitting on a floor saying things like “Don’t you die on my, you bastard!”

Now, I have to see if I can get a $200 refund and the drive is going back to Western Digital for replacement. Once I get a hankering to go near a computer again, I’ll need to buy something with a nice racing stripe or speed holes to help re-ripping all that music.

But for now, it’s all over.

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