Menu Close

2001

Under the Milky Funk

Song I like very much tonight: “Under the Milky Way” by the Church. Which probably suggests that I’m in a funk. It’s meant that just about every other time since 1988 or so. Owning many hours of music videos which were taped during the very hardcore funks of one’s youth is either a blessing or a curse at moments like this…

It may just be a different level of the same mild funk I may have been in since about midway through my vacation. Or it may not be (nor ever have been) a funk at all. I’ll keep you posted. Either way, I’ll try to spare you further nostalgic ramblings…

Anybody want to hang out and listen to some Ultravox this weekend?

Web Design as a Profession

I’ll probably never work full-time as a web designer (nor, God forbid, as a developer). I don’t have the interest level nor the self-discipline required to teach myself every new technology. Web design has always been more of a means than an end for me. I don’t want to be a programmer. I’m a content-driven sort. I want to communicate simply, and in as aesthetically-pleasing a manner as this simplicity will allow…

That’s not to say that I don’t have strong opinions on the subject, nor is it meant as a criticism of those who blaze new territory. It’s just that I personally don’t see the need to add complicated functionality on my own sites just because I can. There has to be a really compelling reason for me to go to the effort required to learn new technologies, My sites (or my life) must be improved dramatically in some way to make it worth my time…

For example, I started using Dreamweaver templates a long time ago. It made my life and my updates much easier. I started using limited CSS for the same reasons (and to improve page loading times). I have not, however, found any particularly compelling reason to experiment with Flash, XML, PHP, or complete CSS-based layouts. I may at some later point…

I can write HTML from scratch (and often do, as it’s sometimes the only way to make the aforementioned Dreamweaver work properly), but I’d prefer not to have to do so on a daily basis. If I can come up with a reasonably attractive layout in a (good) WYSIWYG editor, which will load reasonably quickly for a reasonable percentage of browsers and operating systems, I’m happy. And I don’t feel particularly guilty nor low-tech…

At least I care about design and realize that not everyone on the planet is using Internet Explorer for Microlsloth Windoze with a resolution of 1024×768 on a 17-inch monitor, which will always put my stuff a few notches ahead of about half the websites out there…

Yes, I’ll occasionally play with something just to see if I can make it work, but it’s usually to solve a specific problem like complicated navigation or whatever…

I have the highest respect for those few people who are strong on content AND backbone. I guess I’m not one of them, although I probably know more about the nuts and bolts than most users and many designers. I don’t think I’d ever have a webhosting account which didn’t come with Unix shell access, just because I want it to be there the couple of times a month when I feel the need to “chmod” or to “ls-l”…

But dang it, I’m not completely convinced that the medium is the ENTIRE message, so while this may read like an apology, it really isn’t…

Medical Marijuana, and How Laws Work

I’m going to go out on a limb, risk being unpopular (heavens…), and say, without hesitation, that this medical marijuana ruling from the Supreme Court was the correct and only defensible decision given current law and the case presented. Period.

Before you get pissed off, read on. This is not a rant against medicinal marijuana. It’s aimed more at people who bitch and moan and whine about the law without bothering to learn how it works…

First, the Supreme Court did not “rule against medicinal marijuana”. It simply said that current US law does not make an excpetion for medical necessity. Which it doesn’t. In fact, the Controlled Substances Act SPECIFICALLY prohibits medicinal use…

Second, the Supreme Court did not “outlaw medicinal marijuana”, no matter what the BBC (which should know better) reported. It was already illegal. The Supreme Court simply confirmed that fact and acknowledged that it would continue to be illegal, at least until laws are changed…

What a lot of people seem to forget is that the question here was not “is the medicinal use of marijuana a good thing?”. The question was “is the medicinal use of marijuana justified under the current laws?”. You can argue all day long that it SHOULD be legal (and I might very well be inclined to join you), but that’s not the point…

Nor is the oft-argued assumption that a majority of Americans probably support medicinal use. Public opinion is completely irrelevant. The Supreme Court is not an elected, democratic body. Its purpose is to determine whether an activity is OK given currently-enacted laws. Or to decide whether currently-enacted laws past muster under the Constitution.

If public opinion were a valid argument in the Supreme Court, we would most likely still have poll taxes and segregated schools. OK, we still have segregated schools, but at least they’re theoretically illegal…

Whether the law is right or wrong was not a concern. If there were no specific mention of medicinal use in the law, it MIGHT have been possible to invoke a medical necessity argument. And it may still be possible. But with the case as made, and the law as written, there was no way the Court could logically have ruled any other way…

Jeff Jones of the Oakland Cannabis Cooperative says the decision was “wrong-headed” and warns that laws will change over the coming years, invalidating the decision. He’s right, even though he evidently doesn’t know exactly why…

I don’t smoke pot and I generally don’t think it’s a very good thing to do so in most cases, in pretty much the same way I don’t think drinking and smoking cigarettes (which I have been known to do) are healthy. However, I do support legalizing medicinal marijuana and I’m not generally in favor of controlling drug abuse through criminal penalties. But the Supreme Court was right on the money today…

Look on it as a call to action…

About High Point

Note to one condescending yuppie bitch from Marin County (where the level of pretentiousness is matched only be the level of faux liberal hypocrisy):

  • I managed to live ten miles from High Point NC for the better part of 25 years without once drinking chicory.
  • I’ve yet to see a single egg being cooked in lard, even at Waffle House, although we also never used organic eucalyptus secretions or whatever.
  • When the overwhelming majority of your customers want their tea sweet (as opposed to unsweetened and brewed sometime last month as it often is in California), it’s ony natural that this would be the default option.
  • Judging from the lines in Union City and Mountain View, Krispy Kreme doughnuts are somewhat of a delicacy here too.

I will grant, though, that it’s probably easier to find a $300 hotel room in the Bay Area than in the Triad…

Happiness

Happiness is:

  • Really old Simpsons reruns you haven’t seen in a long time. Homer gets a heart bypass. Bart gets a Big Brother. Lisa can’t stop caling the Corey Hotline. Yes, I realize I’m mixing episodes…
  • Finding a good parking space on street cleaning night…
  • Remembering to take out the trash BEFORE you hear the truck out front…
  • A 7-Up cake from the Super K-mart in Oakland…
  • Switching over to the SciFi channel just in time to catch (unexpectedly) the very first episode of Dark Shadows from 1966…

Found Money

Supposing, for the sake of argument, that you were about to come into a sizeable amount of money you weren’t really expecting. Not an “independently wealthy” sum, mind you, but a “moderately significant changes in your life might be possible” sum which is a great deal more than you’ve ever had before…

Would you bank the money and carry on as usual, but with a fairly large safety net? Would you invest it in some major changes which might be geographic and educational in nature? Or would you just live it up like crazy?

I think I might be more inclined toward the first two options. But I’m just wondering…

Dudez

Why does it annoy me so much when complete strangers email me and call me “dude”? Probably has something to do with the fact that I’m neither a surfer, a stoner, nor a drunk frat boy…

And why do faggot video pornographers get that whole skater thing so dreadfully wrong? A couple of tips: real skaters do not refer to each other as “skater boys” nor “skater punks”, they do not generally look and dress like circuit clones (nor like a spandex version of the woman in Flashdance), and they generally don’t hold bladers in very high regard…

Of course, they don’t generally fuck each other like rabbits in heat either, so I guess you have to draw the line somewhere. But what’s with this sodomite tendency to turn everything real into a bland, cutesy, cartoon version of itself? Witness the Castro…

That’s more than I was really going to type on this, my day for pretending I don’t have a computer, but I just got started and I couldn’t stop…

My World, 1980

When I was a kid, my orbit wasn’t very large. Within a mile or so of my house was just about everything I needed: the record store, the supermarket where my mom caught me buying beer when I was 15, my high school, and the mall, where sex, drugs, and rock and roll were always available…

I’ve always been glad I didn’t grow up in the hardcore suburbs, where you have to go two or three miles just to find a convenience store. How do kids without cars manage areas like that? I’d hate it even as an adult who HAS a car…

That’s one really great thing about San Francisco: if you don’t want to drive, you really don’t have to. In fact, it’s very often better NOT to drive here. Except for the occasional Safeway run, the purpose for having a car in the city is to get the hell out of it, not to navigate within it…

Which is a lesson an awful lot of people need to learn…

Nucular Spaceships

I’m beat. After watching the Voyager farewell, I sort of feel like I piloted the damned ship back to the Alpha Quadrant myself. Damned temporal mechanics…

But I’m not too tired to ask this one simple question: how did someone like SF Chronicle and KRON reporter Phil Matier ever get airtime on one of the top-rated stations in one of America’s largest TV markets without knowing how to pronounce the word “nuclear?”

Repeat after me, Phil, before you make yourself look any more ignorant. It’s NU-KLEE-ERR, not NU-KU-LER. One more time. NU-KLEE-ERR. Got it? Did the capital letters help?

Wow. The aforementioned Star Trek site is currently “403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected”. Somebody’s gonna get screamed at tomorrow…

Number One

Wanna feel old? “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes was the number one song in America twenty years ago this week. Pretty horrifying, huh?

While I’m at it, note that the Beatles were at number one this Memorial Day weekend in 1964 (“Love Me Do”) and 1969 (“Get Back”), Ray Stevens was at the top in 1970 (“Everything IS Beautiful”) and 1974 (“The Streak”), and George Micheal and/or Wham hit in 1985 (“Everyting She Wants”) and 1988 (“One More Try”).

And to think I learned all this while taking a crap. It’s always a good thing to have entertaining bathroom books.