The Sh*t L*st

SITEMETER LOG:
usdoj.gov Sep 28 2003 4:43:44 am

Ashcroft is watching.

My email to the San Diego Registrar of Voters was answered today by someone who obviously thinks I'm a drooling fucking retard. We'll see who laughs drooling all over himself last.

Fuck CNN with a big stick wrapped in razor wire. Nice that there's an Arnold movie on USA every night, fuck them too.

Ahhhnold. His newest ads target Native American groups who are tax-exempt as being an example of the problems inherent in bureaucratic red tape and special interests. How fucking lovely. A quick Austrian breeze come down from the hinterlands as it were, to clear our minds of misguided favoritism and make things more equal for everyone. I smell a Fascist. Do you smell a Fascist? I smell a Fascist. Do you smell a Fascist? Is Arnold a Fascist? Does it fucking matter? Fascist is as Fascist does.

In his ad, Schwarzenneger sets himself up as the person who will see through politically correct and therefore economically unsound policies and take them down. Great! That's just what we need. That and flaming bamboo skewers jammed under our fingernails. It's too bad that he has made no effort to demonstrate that he has any knowledge of how or why any standing policy exists, and that he clearly has no idea how to enact whatever change he wants to bring about in the end.

The plain truth is that he doesn't want anything in the end. The end, for Arnold, as he says again and again by saying nothing about any ends, is for him to ride a wave of opportunism and not-at-all-veiled hypocrisy to the governorship of California. It's the oldest, emptiest shit bag of them all--I want to be governor, so elect me.

Why should we not buy his "I'm a populist looking out for the everyman" wares? Because he's not and he won't. Because he's a direct recipient of the special interest money flowing from the pockets of millionare US Rep. Darrell Issa and others. Because he is backed by a group of the radically self-interested, who demand that we vote before the state's legally mandated improvements in voting equipment can be implemented. Because he's a one-trick pony, and his one trick, "I'm against the government," won't look so hot if he's ever running the government.

The fact that he chooses to single out Native American groups as too highly favored by the state's tax structure makes plain his willingness to pander to our most base and stupid "let's have a flat tax" instincts, and is as gross as his opposition to driver's licenses for unregistered immigrants. Dare I say that he has a calculating eye on our increasingly heightened racism and xenophobia? Yes I do. He will reduce complex questions into simple answers, blatant in his straightforward, pseudo-analytical "hating," and in this way will we be divided.

How about the real problems the state has? How about the property tax laws that make things insane for new home owners? How about the fact that we live off of anonymous immigrant labor but are willing to risk our public health (at the very least) by mostly disavowing it? On these questions Schwarzenegger is silent. His only solution to anything (what is our problem, in his view? who knows?) is to point at and shoot whatever existing policy he deems easiest to point at and shoot.

Don't trust a man who wants the power to govern so much that he says government is bad but can't explain why. Shoot him.

CNN released a poll today indicating the support for recalling Gov. Davis among likely voters in the coming recall election was running at 65% and that Schwarzeneggar leads Bustamante in the scab race 40% to 25%. Now it is possible that undecided voters so impressed that Arnold spoke in semi-intelligible soundbites, and didn't expose himself to Arianna Huffington, during the debate that they have been convinced in droves to overlook the utter lack of substance in his campaign (which doesn't require much convincing with many voters, I concede) and vote for him. Or CNN just doesn't fucking know how to run a scientific poll. Remember, this is the network that had Bush consistently up by 8-9 points going into the last presidential election (whereas most other polls were in the 3-4 point range -- the election, of course, ended up in a dead heatwhich, had it been decided by a poll, Bush would have lost.)

The shittiest part of these polls is that they have the potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies. We're tribal animals, many of us, unstimulated by the rigors of objective criticsm and reflexively predisposed to back a winner. At the same time, opponents of Schwarzenegger and the recall may be discouraged from voting if they are led to believe that the election is a fait accompli. With such a gross deviation from other poll results, CNN might have rerun its poll to check its results, or run concurrent polls in the first place, perhaps staggered by a day, to test the volatility in the numbers. They claim a 4% margin of error. Bullshit. Fuck CNN, fuck Arnold Schwarzenegger, and fuck you for seeing his wanker films and helping make him a celebrity.

I was talking to my dad earlier today, telling him about the utter confusion these ballots -- if they were like mine -- will spawn on election day. (It's going to take the old ladies working the polling places half the day just to figure out how to vote themselves.) He wasn't at all dismayed. In fact, he was rather cheered by the news: "Look on the bright side. With enough miscast votes, we may end up have one of the nobodies winning the election. Could you imagine that little tyrant, Gary Coleman, running California? They tried to give us the Terminator and we end up with the twerp."

Anyone who experienced what I did, who ends up on the losing side of the election, is immediately going to cry foul. They'd cry foul anyways. But this is only going to motivate their indignation and outrage. You saw what the Republicans did when county officials tried to continue counting votes in Florida. My dad figures whatever happens, we'll end up with another recall vote for the March primary.

Oh wait! I just figured it out. The grid is not just for the 135 candidates. It's for all the possible choices. Thus you are supposed to look in the Voter Information Pamphlet where for the recall measure it lists Yes as #3 and No as #4. So you make your choice (don't be ridiculous, vote No) and then go to your ballot and punch out #4. I'm not a complete retard -- I can use Microsoft software on my own -- and it took me an hour to figure this out. The instructions do not give any indication that this is how you are supposed to proceed. Like I said, this election is going to be a fucking mess. We'll be lucky if we don't end up with a civil war.

The voting irregularities have begun. I received my absentee ballot in the mail this week from the San Diego County Registrar of Voters. It included a badly printed pink instructions form. I read through the instructions twice then took up my ballot card and prepared to vote. Only I can't figure out how the fuck to do it. And believe me, I'm not some age-addled Florida senior having an episode in a cardboard box. The instructions say I should have received:

- Sample Ballot and Voter Information Pamphlet
- Ballot Card
- Punch Pin
- Pre-Addressed Return/Identification Envelope

I received all of these. But the ballot only shows the grid of numbers for all the gubernatorial candidates. I can't find the recall issue itself or the other two measures on the ballot. I think I was supposed to receive a second ballot card! The fucking bastards don't indicate anywhere that I was supposed to receive a second card, but in one of the grainy illustrations on the pink sheet, it does appear as though there's another ballot card. It's either a conspiracy to keep me as a registered Democrat from voting No on the recall. Or, worse, it sheer incompetence. In any case, the Registrar is on the shit-list.

I called the phone number listed on the pink form, but it was 5:15 and the office closed for the weekend at 5pm. I've sent off an email to the address on the web site. We'll see if I ever get a response for that.

If you thought Bush/Gore was bullshit, this election is going to be a fucking Texas cow pasture. The Court of Appeals had it right the first time. This election should be put off until the Registrar gets it fucking shit together.

As paradoxical, even ass-backwards, as it may seem, I am proud to announce a new friend to the Shit List : daibatsu. daibatsu and I first met in the early days of eharmony in an online match gone horribly wrong. He has a short list of enemies, but a long memory and a healthy sense of outrage that's growing steadily more unhealthy every day. Need to know more? See his Friendster profile.

In the spirit of the occasion, instead of spewing out the usual portion of bilious rancor, I'd thought I'd mention some things I'm rather fond of : specifically, a few typefaces. I've been keen on the following fonts lately:

Garamond | sample
This is the workhorse of my documenting formatting. I still haven't found anything better for a real, solid Henry James-dense piece of text. Times Roman makes me sick to my stomach. I have noticed that this is a common typeface in books that include a colophon.

Optima | sample
This, I discovered a few years ago after hours of research, is the typeface used on the Vietnam War Memorial. (Do you know how hard it is to identify a typeface you just sort of come across at random?) Maya Lin is a genius. (The Vietnam War Memorial is also one of the most inspired uses of right-justification that I've ever seen.)

Century Gothic | sample
A thin, minimalist sort of font. Great capitalized for elegant headings. Notice the small 't' has no serifing whatsoever. Every once in a while, poor people in South America (or San Bernadino) will start flocking to a bit of ad-copy done in Century Gothic for a chance to witness a lowercase 't' with the hope of grace, salvation, and good luck in the following week's lottery.

Frutigar Linotype | sample
Just started using this one recently. Emboldened, it has a nice hefty frame -- hearty and robust -- for a heading, or even better, a subheading. The default font for MS Pocket Reader

Arial | sample
A bit commonplace, but it has the versatility and dark good looks of a Johnny Depp, combined with the solid work ethic and reliability of a Jerry Rice. When you don't know what the hell to use, you could do a lot worse than to use Arial.

Greetings. Am chiming in to fulfill my promise to vent my increasing hatred of life and the universe on these pages. It seems pretty clear to me that the infrastructure is already in place to turn file swapping into something good for we merry capitalists, even if that isn't in line with the spirit of complete and utter online liberty that seems to prevail among users of limewire or whatever other software, myself included. Why is no one talking about this? Walker is right when he says it shouldn't break down into an either/or moral & legal issue, but that's what seems to be happening, which is really dumb because the "problem" doesn't seem that hard to see around. It's clearly a case of the industry trying to protect its existing interests instead of following the scent of the money, which is what its job is in the first place. Tell me if I'm wrong. Another thing--file sharing can be made legal without giving the FCC or whatever federal body knowledge of what kind of music you listen to; right now music licensing is handled by "middle man"-type companies, and there's no reason that this couldn't continue to be the case. So why can't we just do that? Your credit card gets charged twenty five cents every time you get something off kazaa, so what? This is a clearly superior technology, one that's better harnessed than quashed, and there's no reason everyone can't be more or less happy.

Arnold was on tv today lying again. Straight out of Shrub's book, seems like. Blah blah I'm for the environment, blah blah I'm for education. He was actually talking about building a "hydrogen highway" for hydrogen-powered vehicles while letting the economy trickle down. I think that's what the Simpsons would call a "Crazy Promise."

Everyone in my family and half of my friends are teachers. Here's a report from the homefront: every child has been left behind. Here's another: since poor schools are now punished for being poor, and since immigrant children are punished for being immigrants, it is a given in many schools that teachers will nod their heads or do something to indicate a certain percentage of the right answers on standardized tests that are administered out loud, as is the case I think in 3rd grade and below. Otherwise their funding gets sucked away to districts whose property values are high and stable to begin with. Doesn't it. Yay for educational accountability. Don't give me any oh the morals! crap either. Tests are good. But Bush-mandated standardized tests have become an obstacle to teaching because they are punitive rather than evaluative. Everyone who has failed and then worked hard to pass knows the difference.

Someone shoot Paul Wolfowitz in the face with a shotgun before he becomes secretary of state. Maybe he, Bush, Cheney, and Rice will fall down the stairs and end up in a circle with their heads up each others' asses and die. Elaine Chao too. Powell at least has the sense to get out before god strikes him down with lightning bolts like the rest of them. 60 minutes reported tonight that Haliburton got a still-classified, non-bid, purportedly 7 billion dollar contract to clean up Iraq. You don't fucking say. How's this for investigative reporting: water is wet. Fire is hot. Wind is windy.

Two articles on file-sharing in this morning's New York Times online. The Sunday magazine article, "Turn On. Tune In. Download.," is especially worth a look. Rob Walker writes:

What the music industry is doing might be thought of as administering a dose of tough love, an intervention that will remind wayward youth not just that stealing is wrong but also that we have a system here wherein goods and services carry a cost. It's called capitalism, kid, and chances are very high that your favorite recording artist -- and every other cultural figure you admire -- loves it. Better to learn this now and kick the download habit before it leads to harder stuff, like a general unwillingness to pay for material goods of any kind, or a failure to grasp the magic of a great brand. If these consumer delinquents don't get scared straight back to the mall, the cost to us all will be much greater than lost revenue for the music business. The very morals of a generation are at stake.

Don't forget, too, that, according to Sony Music's chief, online music swapping is also a gateway to child-porn trafficking.

Damn, I ran into the union reps at orientation today. They had a fucking dragnet set up. It's like running into walking spam. I guess I should join the union. I just don't like the arm-twisting. I've met evangelical Christians who are less zealous and pushy. It doesn't help that they're all in my department. One mentioned that we have 100% membership -- reason enough not to join right there, I suppose. (The union gets monthly dues out of me regardless.) I'm more worried about all the mailing lists and ancillary harrassment I can expect once they have my name, phone number, and email address. And I really hope we don't go on strike in the next four years.

Query: if certain tracks on a CD I've purchased begin to skip and halt, am I ethically entitled to go online and download those tracks?

A small but significant step forward in my campaign to go paperless by 2005 : UC and CSU will require online applications for fall 2005.

Daily Californian article

I just received the following email. (I've reprinted it unedited as a matter of historical record and as food for spam-bots.) My poem follows.



Fat Puppy
by Tomohiro Idokoro

A four letter word for snug friar,
third letter C.

The corgies next door bicker --
something about pills.
The bitch barks, "Hurry up."
Their fat boy sniffs along the fence between
our yards, as if trying to escape something.
I reach for a beebee gun in my mind, then tear open
a croissant of sympathy.
French doors slam shut.

Eleven down : cherubic borzoi,
eight letters, second letter A,
fifth letter T.

The garage rolls open, the Lexus
hums like an itch in my throat.
Car doors slam shut.

Fourteen across : Napolean complex
M-I-L-L-E-F-E-U-I-L-L-E

Thy sky tips over like a fluted champagne glass, clouds
shatter like pieces of glass, light
spills across the lawn,
floods the veranda.

Will Sundays never cease?

From article in this morning's New York Times, "Crackdown May Send Music Traders Into Software Underground" :

"Some experts wonder if the industry's efforts will create more trouble for it than ever. `The R.I.A.A. is breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria,' said Clay Shirky, a software developer who teaches new media at New York University."

Article in this morning's New York Times about artists and musicians caught in the middle between fans and their labels by the new RIAA lawsuits. I was surprised to discover Louden Wainwright III aligned with Metallica as an outspoken proponent for the lawsuits. (Since I like Metallica's music less, I'll put them on the shit list as representatives of fan-hating performers everywhere.) Moby comes off as a voice of reason:

"The record companies should approach that 14-year-old and say: `Hey, it's great that you love music. Instead of downloading music for free, why don't you try this very inexpensive service that will enable you to listen to a lot of music and also have access to unreleased tracks and ticket discounts and free merchandise?'"

Eminem will stand up to Britney Spears. Will he stand up to his record label?

Surfed yesterday morning. Experienced first-hand the latest scum epidemic plaguing the San Diego shoreline. It's a heavy white froth -- presumably harmless -- that gathers at the waterline like the head on a Guinness. In the line-up, usually after a set wave, it's sometimes thick enough to skim off the surface and make a Santa beard with. I mentioned it to a biologist friend of mine at poker last night. She supposed it was the corpses of microorganisms -- the death rattle of the red tide that had been out in the waters the last few weeks.

Johnny Cash is about the only person I can think of (excepting, maybe, Queen Elizabeth I -- and E.O. Wilson) who was cooler at 65 than most people at 25.

In memory, Shel Silverstein's sequel to "A Boy Named Sue" :

The Father of the Boy Named Sue

Yeah, I lef� home when the kid was three.
It sure felt good to be fancy free
Tho I knew it wasn�t quite the fatherly thing to do.
But that kid kept screamin� and throwin� up
And pissin� in his pants til I had enough
So just for revenge I went and named him Sue.

It was Gatlinberg in mid July
I was gettin' drunk but gettin' by
Gettin' old and going from bad to worse
When thru the door with an awful scream
Comes the ugliest queen I�ve ever seen
He says my name is Sue. How do you do?
Then he hits me with his purse.

Now this ain�t the way he tells the tale
But he scratched my face with his fingernails
And then he bit my thumb
and kicked me with his high-heeled shoe.
So I hit him in the nose, and he started to cry
And he threw some perfume in my eye
And it sure ain�t easy fightin with a boy named Sue.

So I hit him in the head with a caned-back chair
And he screamed, �Hey Dad, you mussed my hair!�
And he hit me in the navel and knocked out a piece of my lint.
He was spittin' blood. I was spittin teeth.
And we crashed through the wall and out into the street
A-kickin and gougin' in the mud and the blood and the cr�me de menth.

Then out of his garter he pulls a gun.
I�m about to get shot by my very own son.
He�s screamin' about Sigmund Freud and lookin' grim.
So I thought fast and I told him some stuff
How I named him Sue just to make him tough.
And I guess he bought it, cuz now I�m livin' with him.

Yeah, he cooks and sews and cleans up the place.
He cuts my hair and shaves my face.
And irons my shirts better than a daughter could do.
And on the nights that I can�t score,
Well, I can�t tell you anymore.

Sure is a joy to have a boy named Sue.
Yeah, a son is fun,
But it�s a joy to have a boy named Sue.

In honor of the second anniversary of 9/11, I republish the following recent email exchange between my sister and myself:

My brother tells me that if you want to see some fucked-up shit, go for a round of frisbee golf at Central Park in Huntington Beach. Last week, he saw a guy with a tattoo on his back of a guy riding an ATV. A tattoo of a guy riding a fucking ATV!

Last Thursday, my friend Jackson and I went to the Cedros District for gallery night. The first Thursday of every month, the galleries along the strip there stay open late and serve wine and cheese. It's like trick-or-treating for musicians and consultants. We arrived early so that we could roam the nursery and marvel over the beauty and rising costs of nature. The nursery started closing up around a quarter to five, so we headed for the galleries. We began at the Ordover Gallery. I guess the festivities aren't supposed to start until 5:30pm, and when we arrived, the gallery was empty. Jackson and I walked around contemplating the blurried canvases with a silence equal parts religious and pretentious. After about 5 minutes, the gallery manager walked in and retrieved some wine and nibblies for us. By 5:30, we were on our second cup of chardonnay and in good spirits. By 6:30, we had been up and down the street and found ourselves at Solo, on our seventh cup of wine, looking at overpriced soaps shaped like pigs.

I said to my friend Jackson, "See, this is the tragedy of it. If Clinton was still in office, I'd be buying this pig soap and this beaded napkin ring and these photos of a truck stop and this-- this-- I'm not sure what it is, but I'd be buying it. Not because I'd have any more money, but because I wouldn't be worrying about money. None of us would. We know there would just be more of it in the future for all of us. And because we believed that, it would happen.

"But now we got Rumsfeld and Cheney and Ashcroft, and a born-again glue-sniffer who can barely read his lines. And you know what, no one wants to buy pig soap. Because Bush spent his first six months in office telling us how bad the economy was to justify his voodoo tax breaks for the rich. And then he sold middle America a bill of goods on the war. And so he fulfilled his own prophecy. And now I can't even buy a fucking bar of pig soap because I'm too busy trying to scrounge up enough money to order cable from the one cable provider in town."

I'm more loquacious than usual after six or seven cups of wine, and I continued:

"See, if Clinton was in office, well, first off, he probably would have done a much better job managing the various economic stimulators at his disposal -- to the extent that the hayseed-dominated congress would let him. He wouldn't be taking money from the rest of America to feed the rich. As Joe Klein said, he'd be taking from the rich to give to the middle class. But more importantly, he'd have been telling us everything was going to be all right. And we'd believe him because even if we didn't believe him, we know everybody else would. And I'd be buying this pig soap. We'd all be buying pig soap and ceramic armchairs and jelly-fish baubles. But now we got Bush lying to our face and we don't believe him. Not for a second. And even those who support him and say he's a strong leader and a fine man don't believe him. They'll vote for him and they'll praise his vapid speeches, but they don't believe him. They just don't have the neocortical structures to formulate a more exact understanding of their hopeless situation."

We had dinner at the Wild Note Cafe -- salad and seared Ahi. By the time we got back on the street, things had picked up a little, and it really did feel like NPR Halloween.

On Bush's economic mismanagement, Robert Reich made a point on the radio the other day which, though somewhat obvious, had never occurred to me.

He was discussing public schools and the serious budget crises they are facing because of economic woes on the state and local level. The problem is exacerbated by the new federal mandates (which, of course, the Bush administration is underfunding.) Reich points out a fallacy in the supply-side rationale offered to justify Bush's huge top-heavy tax-cuts: the economic problems we face are national and local, but we live in a global economy and members of the investing class with surplus wealth to invest will send their money abroad if it promises a better return there than here. I hadn't even considered this -- I had always figured supply-side economics bad policy because it redistributes wealth from the underprivileged to the overprivileged (mostly indirectly as states lose income and sales tax revenue and start cutting programs and imposing user fees that disproportionately burden the bottom). In redistributing the wealth to the top, and taking purchasing power away for the bottom, it creates bottlenecks in the economy that may help a few sectors and industries that cater to the top, but will hurt the broader economy whose engine is oiled by activity at middle and bottom. But that assumes a closed system which, as Reich points out, isn't even the case. And so part of our resources go toward helping develop third-world economies in which the lopsided distribution of wealth is even more pronounced (and, increasingly perhaps, Europe, where a better educated workforce promises to offset our unparalleled capacity to go without vacation.) And pig-shaped soap just sits there collecting dust on shelves.

Just signed the MoveOn.org "Recall No! Democracy Yes!" pledge. I encourage you to do the same. I've simplified the sales pitch for you:

Dear friend,

Don't be a fucking idiot. I know it's hard in this era of arbitrary national security alerts and horse movies, but you can at least go through the motions of not being a media-tropic Sobig-vector by signing a "Recall No! Democracy Yes!" pledge to defeat the California recall. Click here to sign:

http://moveon.org/pac/recall?id=-3257285-j6QlR3IjrMZH_RIqSZMjIg

For the PERSONAL STATEMENT box, you can just cut and paste the following message:

Recall No! Tomohiro Idokoro Yes! He subsidizes professional football teams!

Once again, don't be a fucking idiot. Sign the pledge and remember to vote October 7.

Thank you.

I knew something was up when Morning Becomes Eclectic opened with Werewolves of London this morning. I knew it was bad news when it was followed by a second Warren Zevon song. A quick glance at Yahoo! just now confirmed the bad news. (Query : How many other songwriters have had David Letterman sing backup for them?)

Werewolves of London

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's
Going to get himself a big dish of beef chow mein
Werewolves of London

If you hear him howling around your kitchen door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated late last night
Werewolves of London again
Werewolves of London

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair
Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor
Werewolves of London

Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen
Doing the Werewolves of London
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the Werewolves of London
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
His hair was perfect
Werewolves of London

Draw blood

This tears it. Just saw the following article in today's New York Times (online):

Aiming at Pornography to Hit Music Piracy

These two paragraphs sum it up:

"As a guy in the record industry and as a parent, I am shocked that these services are being used to lure children to stuff that is really ugly," said Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment.

Others ask whether raising this issue is more than a little cynical from an industry that heavily promotes music with sexual and violent themes.

Of all the self-righteous, hypocritical, ugly, nasty, money-grubbing bullshit, this tops the pile. Andrew Lack and Sony Music, welcome to the shit list. You've hit the charts at no. 1.

And I make this vow to you: if elected governor of California, I will outlaw the commercially produced CD and sink our state even further into debt by pouring millions of dollars into alternative public radio and shitty, sexed-up, non-label, indie bands.

Those rat-bastards at NetBank are skating on thin ice. I checked my latest electronic statement this week and there was a $3 inactivity fee. Inactivity fee? Those coin-rollers should be paying me a fee for saving them the work! I couldn't get their mail form to work, so I dug out the 800 number and gave them a ring. I will give them credit on this point -- they've got solid professional customer service. The guy I talked to sounded like he might actually have a high school degree. Anyway, I tell him my greivance, he asks for all my secret identity codes, looks up my account, and tells me that I have two inactivity fees! There was one for the previous month also that I hadn't even noticed -- that's how inactive I've been. Well, I say, that's fine, but my regular bank doesn't charge me any of these and when I signed up for this account, I carefully checked it out for hidden fees. So if you're going to charge me fees, I'm going to have to close it. He doesn't get emotional, but says that there is a one-time fee amnesty and that I can avoid them if I just have some kind of activity -- any activity -- every three months. Well, that seems fair enough. I have been thinking about setting up online payment for my phone bill. Ok, you can reverse the charges? He can reverse the charges. Ok, I won't close the account. But let this be a warning to you charlatans, any more of this bullshit (they assessed two erroneous $3 fees earlier this year, too, that had to be reversed), and I'm pullingout my $274 balance and stashing it under my mattress.

A link to the Introvertster site mentioned in last post:

Introvertster

Also, don't miss STD-ster:

STD-ster

A Friendster friend passed along the following article on Friendster from the Washington Post today:

"A 'Friendster' Counting Culture"

The article is subtitled, "Site Becomes Who-Knows-How-Many Contest." I just added my third friend on Friendster, so if it's a contest, I'm bringing up the rear with all you other antisocial losers out there. (The article, incidentally, mentions a reactionary site called "Introvertster" that "promotes itself as an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harassing them online.")

What I found most interesting in the article was the revelation that Friendster plans to start charging a subscription fee. The crash test dummies interview in the article are asked if they would pay to use Friendster : "Not a chance," one replies. I agree. What makes Friendster a success is the very fact that it is free and that its user base has reached a critical mass where you can meet completely random but interesting people through your network, or that guy or girl you once went out with but haven't talked to in months. Also, it's mostly used by generation-xanga twentysomethings who appreciate clever, free stuff but don't particularly care to pay for it. They'll just move on to the next fad in its beta stage. (More mature users like myself already feel enough shame in using it that the fee may be just the boot we need to give it up and go out and find a mate and start having children, like we should've done long ago.)

An AP article linked from the Post article notes that Friendster only "eventually plans to charge for some features." The some is the circumstance in this case. For if Friendster tries to charge for its essential services -- signing up, searching, adding friends -- I predict it will fold quicker than Napster. What that leaves it to make money by, apart from advertising, I have no idea.

In fact, I'm not much of a fan of scatalogical humor, but it seems to have become (aptly enough, I suppose) a regular theme of this blog.

We were talking about health care over the weekend and my grandmother mentioned having a young doctor whom she really liked. She said that the first time she saw him, she said, "I've had diarrhea that last two weeks and I love it!" When she saw him six months later, she said, "Do you remember me? I'm the one who liked having diarrhea." He remembered. She said, "Well, I don't have it anymore. Can you write me a prescription for diarrhea?" She says he wrote one.