is a blog by Brendan
For the first time, I can say that I’ve posted a year’s worth of Anacrusis without skipping a single day. It would have been much sooner but for the two days I missed before last year’s Worst Christmas Ever.
Christmas was much better this year, but we all missed Joe.
I was disappointed to notice My Morning Jacket, Louisville band turned critical darling and national success, on the list of Sony CDs carrying MediaMax DRM software, which has recently shown to cause vulnerabilities as badly as the infamous XCP rootkit. I knew the band probably had little input in whether their CD would be DRMed, but it was still bad news. Then the EFF blog brought to my attention that MMJ is offering their own recall–a more ethical, more friendly and more business-sensible path to their audience than the one their own label has taken. I am positively flush with Louisville pride.
Neil Gaiman gets vicious about Disney’s plans to replace Christopher Robin. I wonder if he ever read Checkerboard Nightmare.
Post-sweeps, Arrested Development reappears tonight, and it’s on the front page of Wikipedia today.
Arrested Development has been cancelled, which is also sad. Every year or two people are angry and vocal about the fact that Fox will air one brilliant show, and then, as soon as it’s been running for nine episodes, kill it off. It’s kind of amazing that Arrested Development lasted as long as it did. The simple fact is that network executives like audiences that watch many of their programs–the people who will watch not just the primetime hit, but the lead-in and the follow-up. Even if a show has decent ratings and a psychotic interweb following, it won’t last if its audience only watches it. Sic AD, sic Wonderfalls, sic Firefly.
Personally, I think TV Land, which gave the show a Future Classic award, should put its money where its mouth is. Arrested Development’s budget can’t cost that much more than the syndication rights to M*A*S*H or whatever. I mean, what are you paying for? Four sets and Ron Howard’s roboharem?
Sumana asked the other night whether there was any depth to which I wouldn’t sink for a story idea. I have discovered that there is. I just can’t try to pawn this off as fiction.
C O R Y
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PALO ALTO, CA — Researchers at Stanford University have announced that the hole in Earth’s ozone layer is rapidly being filled by another stratum of the atmosphere.
“We’ve done spectroscopic analysis,” said Doctor Cory Wonkette-Searls on Thursday, “and Dooce Gaiman at Washington State has obtained confirming results. The replacement gas is coming from the blogosphere.”
“I wouldn’t want to be in Antarctica right now,” he added. “Wheeoo.”
The ozone layer absorbs ultraviolet radiation, and has been depleted by chlorofluorocarbon pollution. The blogosphere, composed of superheated air and self-absorbed methane, is separated from life on Earth by several orders of magnitude.
My favorite webcomic is over, if not necessarily done. I am sad anyway.
Not that I hold any particular love for MySpace, the Geocities of the subscriptkiddie set, but have you ever seen a more blatant call to kill the messenger? My favorite quote:
“‘It just seems to me that if you put up a public web site, and you allow students, teenagers, minors to post their thoughts and ideas, and not monitor it in an adult manner, you are asking for trouble,’ Gonzales said.”
This man is in charge of a school district. Thoughts and ideas! My God! Who let them have those!
Update 11.10.2005 1519 hrs: Adam’s priceless comment:
“MySpace isn’t even the messenger in this case – it’s the medium. In other news, local school district sues air for allowing the ‘verbal’ transmission of thoughts and ideas between teenagers!”
Sony has resorted to the tactics of virus writers to stop people from listening to music. Paris is burning with frustration from the bottom up, and the response from the top is “zero tolerance.” And we, the United States–without public approval, without accountability, without even visibility–have been literally putting our prisoners in the gulag.