Today, Al Gore pledged $6,000,000 toward this fall's Democratic Party election efforts. The money is left over from his election bid four years ago. Under FEC rules, such funds can be donated to national political parties.
One question, Al: how come you had six million fucking dollars left over?!?! You couldn't find anything to spend that on?! What the hell is the matter with you?! Thwap Thwap!!
All right, I guess that was three questions.
I was watching the Sharks attempt to sweep their series against the Avs tonight. A Yahoo! ad came on, and as it ended, one of those strange, over-tired realizations washed over me: that yodel, so familiar, catchy in its unashamed lameness...it's, it's...Slim Whitman! It's gotta be! It sounds just fucking like him!
A quick search, however, reveals the truth. It's not Slim Whitman. It's some dude named Wylie Gustafson, who was originally paid $590 to do it for one commercial. Then Yahoo! used it over and over again, and Wylie sued them for $5,000,000.
I vaguely recall having heard this at the time. I'm glad Wylie got his money. But it begged the question: shouldn't Slim Whitman be suing Wylie for copying his signature stylings? And that question begged another question: would Slim himself sue, or would it be the estate of the late Slim Whitman? I mean to say, is Slim still kicking? Another quick search revealed this site, which is definitely worth a look. Slim's got a smiley face, which means he's still alive. He's 80! Dead people get a skull. Hey, Archibald Cox is still alive! Alfred Hitchcock died on this day in 1980!
As near as I can tell, Slim never sued Wylie for combining twang with yodel. There's still time, Slim! Turns out, you're still alive! Can you hear me? Turn the hearing aid up, Slim! Get out of that casket and sue that warbly bastard!
I've just been smacked with my first primitive form of RSS spam. To be sure, unlike e-mail spam, it doesn't just discover you and attack: I willfully signed up for this one (several months ago). But here's the thing. Check out:
Moreover's Webmaster Tips RSS Feed
At the moment, the very first item is an ad for a product called "SpinSite." It has an amazingly ridiculous url. Note the code that looks something like "bhngbonjbhngbgnobmnhzcxerarorb." Now refresh the page. Neat, huh? So every time an aggregator hits it, it has a unique url. Depending on how your aggregator's coded, it'll show up as new and unread every time you refresh the feed (I imagine most aggregators suffer this problem). Simple, but effective...and incredibly lame.
Bastards!! Now I have to make a determination over whether the information contained within is enough for me to deal with the ads, and the aggravation of what I perceive to be a violation of principle. Nope, fuck 'em: I'm hitting "Unsubscribe."
(If this is something common that I've just never stumbled across before, I apologize for wasting your time. But it's a new one on me. Bastards.)
Bastards!! You hear me, bastards?! BASTARDS!!!
So I killed a little living thing today. It darted out into the road, under my rear tires. Didn't see it until it was next to the car...just a glimpse of gray tail. Too late to react. Sorry pal. Keeping my fingers crossed for reincarnation.
I woke up in the hotel room, relaxed and grinning happy. I yawned and stretched, shuffled to the curtain and threw it open.
The day was grey. Grey sky above grey ocean. White sea foam. The waves, after a full day of rain, pounded the land, chaotic.
I thought about the waves, how I'd never really considered the physics until the day before:
"Why do the waves break on land, but not out to sea?""Well, uh...hm...ah. The earth slopes upward, and the tops of the waves run up and over the receeding water, and suddenly, they don't have enough to support them anymore, so they break and receed themselves..."
As I stared and thought of this, the waves became dismal allegory. My life was like those waves: my decisions, my directions, my being. I felt like I was constantly running one way, and parts of me were going the other: I was doomed to trip over myself. How can we know we're doing the right things in life? What if we're going the wrong way? What if there is no right way? How come things aren't easy?
No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.
I was suddenly so unsure of myself, the things I do. What was I doing with my life? While my friends were getting married, having kids, moving across the country, making good money, I was doing none of these things. I had no desire to get married, no drive to father a child, no wish to leave my beloved home state. And money never seemed so important to me. What shallow ground my water had run upon.
My reflections browsed my life and leisure pursuits. I love playing bass, and spend much of my time on it. But I don't practice enough to be a professional. Certainly no one would listen to me and use the phrase "accomplished bassist." "Capable" and "passable" are more apt terms. And I'm pleased for it. But I'm not building a great life out of it.
I experiment with web development, and I love that too: it's the perfect creative environment for someone with my creative strengths. The blank canvas terrifies me, to be sure...but put the tiniest flaw, a little splotch of color, an accidental mark, and I can tweak it until it's something pleasing. Web development provides me with enough structure to let me do good things. I love the challenge, and the learning. But honestly, can I really expect to turn it into a profitable business? Perhaps. But perhaps not. And that day, it seemed likely to fail.
And yet, if I shouldn't be doing these, then what? Pissing away my life on TV and games and junk food? And I realized that what was really bothering me was the sudden realization that my life wasn't going to amount to anything. I'd always assumed it would. People always told me if you were smart, you'd do great things: invent something, write a book, help the needy. And I'd always tried to reflect on that hope when I was depressed. Somehow, no matter how bad life was, I maintained this expectation of grandeur. Sure, I'm smart! Great things are headed my way! And now that expectation was seeming like a delusion, and with the realization, I was stripped even of the comfort of delusion. My intelligence was a mirage: the "book smarts" of the American Educational System. Sit in this desk. Read this text. Explain. Take a test. Repeat. It was like waking up from a nice dream.
I'd hit the shore, turned, and run the other way, tripping over myself. I landed face-up on the cold, wet sand, and felt a tugging at my feet. I was dragged out to sea, back under the water. It covered up my face, and weighed heavy on me...the weight of a long, mediocre life looming ahead.
I was stunned, numbed. Paranoia gripped me. And the negative emotion became like the sea: ebbing and flowing, rising and falling, but always present, unignorable. I moved through the day like an automaton, thinking of nothing but my impending lame, meaningless existence. Not to be enjoyed by myself or others, to leave no lasting mark after it was gone.
Then I thought, "Wait: who am I to think I deserved a grand life in the first place? What makes me so fucking special?" Ah, the grand existentialist question. Somehow, it just made me feel worse, so I left it unanswered.
Eventually my mood softened. I smiled, made conversation with those around me, took interest in food and travel. But the knowledge remained, like a stain on the wall covered with a painting: no one may see it, but you know it's there. It's there. It's there. It's there.
The Root Beer Blog's fixed!
I can't say the fix was quick, or fun: it was pretty much the opposite of both. Let's just say MT uses some needlessly complex filenames, and I got really good at typing "db_dump185 -f...".
Fortunately, I haven't done anything particularly interesting during the downtime. Quick updates (though most of my readers know much of this):
Nice to be back. See you in a week :P