Bob Cesca's recent blog entry hits a political nail right on the corrupt head, check it out.

I like to refer to the media as stenographers because they so rarely do anything other than write down what they are told. This seems to be particularly true over the last 8 years of the Bush administration, but it's a trend that has been ongoing for much longer than that. I'm also fond of saying that if Nixon were in the white house in the current media climate, he would never have been impeached. Conversely, if you look at the articles of impeachment for Nixon it is hard to define why Bush hasn't been impeached.

Gov'ment, whaddyagonnado?

I think I need more bass...

It's old news that oil companies keep reporting record profits the last few quarters, and that doesn't seem to surprise anyone. Of course revenues are up, just look at the price of gas. But for record profits to be up, as I've said many times, they are gouging us more than ever. What I never realized until now, however, is why.

Not why they're gouging us, because the real truth of capitalism is not that competition keeps prices down but that corporations will always strive to find out how much people are willing to pay. But what I mean is that all of this is basically unintentional. They aren't trying to make record profits - they are just trying to meet growth projections, which are always conveniently and erroneously listed as percentages. If your projects say you'll grow by 15% and you only grow by 10%, your stock tanks. And if your revenues are up because oil prices are through the roof, and you have to tack on another X% on top of that to meet percentage growth projections, voila - you make record profits too.

So as I've also said many times before, it all comes down to the stock market. It ought to be outlawed. The Enron et al fiascos all came down to trying to make a dishonest buck on the stock market. Take away the incentive by making companies only be worth what they actually do, and the fantasy world of the stock market no longer encourages corruption.

Too bad it will never happen.

Dude, I can't help it - I get hungry here at night!

Here's a song I used to sing to Rissy when she was little (you can guess the melody):

Rissy da Pooh, Rissy da Pooh,
Tubby little baby all stuffed with love,
She's Rissy da Pooh, Rissy da Pooh,
Willy-nilly silly ol' girl.

A sister named Jenna is her friend,
With Katie, that makes two.
There's mommy, and daddy, but that's not all,
Most of all there's Rissy da Pooh!

Technorati Tags: family

I recently sat down with my 12 year old daughter to have a good daddy-daughter talk. As she's getting older we're not as close as we once were, and that's natural. I won't go into details, but it seemed to really mean something to her, that I both recognized our growing apart and the desire to bring us closer together.

We decided to have a couple nights a week where we set aside time to do things together, one night she gets to choose the activity and the other I do. We used to have daddy-daugther nights but they were haphazardly scheduled. I'm not much of a scheduled person, but I'll just have to overcome that so that she can count on this time, no matter what is going on.

Where did the time go?

Technorati Tags: family

I swear, I won't pee on the keyboard again!

So just how curious are you, George?

I remember there was time when i was in college when I would ride my bike to classes. Not exactly a shocker is it, a college student riding a bike to campus. Of course I lived 25 miles from campus, so it was not a minor undertaking.

I remember one semester I had Latin at 7:00 Monday through Thursday. The instructor was a very kind older woman who we all loved and respected a great deal. I got up one morning at 4:30, as I always did on days I would ride to campus, fixed myself an egg and cheese on toast sandwich and got on my bike by 5. This particular day it was raining steadily, and needless to say I was quite thoroughly soaked by the time I reached class. Despite the rain I made good time this morning and arrived well before anyone else. I sloshed into my normal front-row seat and put my head down in the mostly dark classroom and promptly fell asleep.

I was awoken by my kindly professor - at the end of class. She gently told me that perhaps that night I should get more sleep, because she liked it when I participated in class.

Technorati Tags: memories

Today at the 2UU we celebrated Earth Day. At the end of the service people related what places on the Earth meant the most to them. I was filled with memories of two places that were important to me from growing up.

The first was the woods behind our house. I loved to go out there in the winter after a fresh, heavy snowfall. The snow was beautifully pristine upon the trees and the ground, and I always found the woods to be the most still and serene at such times. I could hike back there for 2 hours at a time, all alone in the snow-covered woods and hills, wandering without reason, want, or worry.

During that time and for years following, I found a similar sense of connection to the world (and not people) though riding my bicycle. In high school in the summer I would often get up on a Sunday at sunrise and ride my bike into town - about 4 miles over gravel. I would just ride though the still and silent small town of Louisburg, Kansas, with absolutely no point or destination whatsoever. I enjoyed being totally alone in the middle of a population of people I knew were there but would not see, unknown and unseen to them. The gentle click of the coasting 10-speed bike was all that could be heard, and all I wanted to hear. I'm not sure why even now, looking back from a distance of 30-odd years. I did it for the simple joy it brought to me, and maybe even because it had no point.

For years after high school I rode, reveling in the solitude of my thoughts on the open road in the middle of nowhere, with my heart pounding in my ears as I struggled against the Kansas and later Nebraska hills and wind. It was not enough to merely be alone - I had to be struggling against my own physical limitations as I would ride 50 or 100 miles in a day for no reason other than to have that time for my mind and for my body. As I got older it became mostly just riding 12-15 miles in a day to and from work, but it was time I can realize now I needed for me.

I can't say I miss these things, really. All of our experiences bring us to who and where we are now - and you can never really go back again, except in your memories.

Technorati Tags: childhood, memories

Remember to keep your monkey supple and irritation free.

Hijack Recorder is an Applescript I wrote a couple of years ago to automate the re-encoding of MP4 files (like those purchased from the iTunes store) into MP3 files (to play on non-Apple MP3 players). This script requires both iTunes and Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro to do its job.

Hijack Recorder can take any playlist in iTunes and automatically use Hijack Pro to record all the tracks as MP3 files, stored in your user Music folder.

"Now, I don't mean to get off on a rant here" (Dennis Miller), but I don't like DRM. The entire concept seems wrong to me - I bought it, I own that copy, if I want to make copies in other formats for my enjoyment, I should be able to do so. Hijack Recorder was written with that purpose in mind. I had an extensive library of purchased iTunes albums that I wanted to make available on my iRiver MP3 player. I could have burned CDs, one at a time, and then reimported them. (So what exactly does DRM protect?) But given the number of albums, I didn't want to do that. With Hijack Recorder, I just selected all my purchased iTunes albums before I went to bed. When I got up, everything had been converted. What could be easier than that?

Hijack recorder.app Hijack Recorder executable Applescript file

Hijack recorder.scpt Hijack Recorder Applescript source file

Kent can't remember #$&@, but I can! Happy birthday, mom!

You wanna dance, cube-boy?