Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Things I run across that I find to be interesting, but might not have the time or inclination to craft a fuller post around it. Generally, short little “go here, look at this, isn’t it neat?” posts.
Entirely random and surprisingly addicting: LiveJournal Images, a page which displays the last 40 images posted to LiveJournal weblogs. So many pictures get posted so quickly that you can get an entirely new set every few seconds. Lots of kittens, anonymous people, celebrities, random wierdness, and the occasional NSFW image (be warned, just in case).
I just found this, for instance…
(via MeFi)
iTunes: “Personal Reality” by Guidance from the album Essential Chillout (2000, 6:53).
I’ve just stumbled across a wonderful little combination of technology, found audio, and music — Stark Effect’s ‘mic in track’.
A “mic in track” is a recording made on a PC using MusicMatch Jukebox, a music utility packaged with many new PC’s that allows the user to record from the microphone input of the PC’s sound card and save the recording in mp3 format. The default filename is “mic in track” followed by a number.
If that user also happens to be running a file-sharing program (WinMX, Audiognome, Kazaa, etc.), and shares the directory in which the mic in track is stored, then these personal recordings can be easily downloaded from the user’s computer. The vast majority of them are either silent or uninteresting, but many are like Christmas presents giftwrapped in nondescript serial numbers. They represent unique examples of audio vérité.
There are number of amusing ‘mic in track’ samples posted on the page, but the best ones have been turned into musical compositions, with five being offered as a DIY EP from Comfort Stand. I’ve been enjoying all the tracks, but the two standouts are definitely Eeples and Beeneenees and Bunnyrabbits, Satan, Cheese and Milk, both of which have been running through my head all day.
iTunes: “Bunnyrabbits, Satan, Cheese and Milk” by Stark Effect from the album Mic in Track (2003, 2:19).
So Phil was bouncing around the ‘net, trying to find Sonnet Technology’s website (which is right here, by the way). On one attempt, he made the guess of www.sonnet.com. Turns out that that’s actually the home of Sonnet Networking — “Your neighbors on the ‘net.”
Well, as long as you aren’t Mexican, at least.
Quite frankly, I was more than a little taken aback by this. There’s a certain almost surreal incongruency in the combination of banner ads promoting wireless networking and DSL-based broadband and the blatant racism plastered across the top of the page. 
There’s even a handy “Invasion Map” showing how much of the southwest has become overrun by Mexicans (this map appears to have been taken from La Voz de Aztlan, an independent Mexican-American news and opinion site based out of Los Angeles, which in turn seems to lean fairly anti-semetic…).
In the left-hand sidebar of the page, underneath links to Disney and Google is a link simply titled “Defending Citizenship” that goes into more detail about this “invasion”.
In the schools of Mexico, students are taught that the southwestern USA belongs to Mexico, an area called Aztlan, and that one day Mexico will reconquer it. For political reasons, the Mexican government encourages Mexicans to invade our country, relieving Mexico of its poor, and generating a stream of \$14.5 billion into Mexico every year. This is money that should be spent in local businesses, but instead becomes Mexico’s second largest source of foreign income. And so the invasion continues, and their vision of reconquista becomes real.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau, 96.8 percent of the population in East Los Angeles, Calif., was Hispanic/Mexican. Stockton, Calif. was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal story about the exploding Mexican illegal alien problem. A dead crack-mama Mexican with 9 children on welfare and father on workers comp disability was on the front page of the Modesto Bee just before Christmas. This problem is on our doorstep today.
It’s hard for me to come up with any other description for this than “disgusting.” Bad enough that there are people who feel this way, but to make such hateful views a large part of a corporate website?
Is this even legal? Wouldn’t anti-discrimination laws prohibit things like this? If nothing else, I’d think that the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Laws would make this display illegal…at least, if I were of Hispanic descent, I know that I would think twice about applying for a job with a company promoting such beliefs on their public website. What do you really think the chances are of anyone from Mexico, Spain, Peru, Portugal, or any similar heritage getting hired by this company? How about their customers — do service requests called in by someone with a Spanish accent get resolved with the same politeness, speed, and efficiency as requests called in by someone without an accent?
Admittedly, it’s something of a Catch-22, but I’ve often found that the one thing I’m steadfastly intolerant of is intolerance. There is no justifiable excuse for any company to be so blatantly racist.
Should you be so moved, here’s the contact page for Sonnet Networking. I’ve rapidly reached the point where I’m out of anything more to say while remaining coherent.
You are a GRAMMAR GOD!
If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
Brought to you by Quizilla
In all honesty, I was a bit surprised — while I’m generally fairly sure of my ability to use the English language, some of the quiz questions actually had me debating and choosing whichever one “felt right”. Apparently my instincts haven’t gotten too terribly sloppy yet after all!
(via Shelley)
iTunes: “Habanera from Carmen” by Bizet, Georges from the album Trainspotting #2 (1994, 2:08).
So all the buzz over the past few days (aside from whether or not Google’s e-mail service is an April Fool’s Joke or not) has been Kinja. Essentially, Kinja is yet another web-based news aggregator, this time with the stated goal of exposing more weblogs to people who aren’t already sucked into the weblog world.
Of course, I’ve signed up, added all the feeds I subscribe to (hooray for data export and import), and made my Kinja page public so that anyone can stop by and get an idea of what I’m pumping into my brain each day.
Being a long-time NetNewsWire user, I’m a bit underwhelmed…but then, Kinja wasn’t made for people like me, but rather for the “unwashed masses” who still think that USA Today and Fox News are the best places to get all of their reading material. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.
iTunes: “Open Arms” by Journey from the album Pop Music: The Modern Era 1976-1999 (1981, 3:20).
Ellenoir pointed out a fascinating page that I’d not seen before: The Heirophant’s Proselytizer Questionnaire, one person’s response to being constantly harassed by missionaries of one faith or another trying to “save” or “convert” him.
The Heirophant’s Proselytizer Questionnaire is a series of offensively phrased questions that explain my problems with and objections to the various Christian churches. I originally wrote it in 1997 as a tool that I handed out to the too-numerous proselytes who were crowding at my door, explaining that I would consider entering into a dialogue with them if and only if they could answer each and every question to my satisfaction. …Though I have received numerous responses to the Questionnaire since I wrote it, none has satisfied me enough to tempt me back to Christianity.
The questionnaire itself is a list of 153 questions for the proselytizer to answer before discussion can continue. The author admits in the FAQ that the questions are written in a very aggressive, possibly offensive style…
…It’s meant to be really offensive. If you look at the reasons why I composed it in the first place, you’ll see that my primary motivation was, quite simply, to get proselytes to fuck off when they wouldn’t do so any other way. By setting a condition for them to fulfill before I’d engage in a dialogue with them and by making the condition more trouble than it was worth to most of them, I wound up able to sleep later in the mornings than I’d been able to when I had a constant stream of preachers on my doorstep. Ensuring that the phrasing of the Questionnaire was confrontational and offensive was an integral part of the process of getting people who had essentially nothing to say to me to leave me alone.
As someone brought up in the Episcopal church who still bases many of my core beliefs in the Christian faith (though I’ve certainly had my fair share of questions, concerns, and doubts over the years), I thought the idea was wonderful — and have no problem at all admitting that I would be very hard pressed to answer many (if not most) of the questions posed.
On a personal level, I stand very much in the same camp as the author (along with Ellenoir, too, from what she said in her post): believe anything you want, just don’t try to force your beliefs on me, convince me that you’re “right” and I’m “wrong”, or attempt to frighten me into joining your religion through threats of hellfire and damnation.
This document is not meant as a personal challenge to you or to your beliefs. As far as I’m concerned, you can worship Jesus or be a Buddhist or a Muslim or have sex with Tinky Winky and call that a religion: It’s all the same to me. Really. The HPQ was meant to state my own reasons why I’m not a Christian; it’s not meant to imply that you shouldn’t be one. (There’s a big difference between the two, and many Christians would do well to learn it.) Be a member of whatever religion you want; just leave me alone and don’t push it on me. I’m not knocking on your door asking you to be a Wiccan or a Buddhist or a Satanist or an atheist or a Muslim or anything else that you’re not; all that I ask is that you extend me the same courtesy.
iTunes: “Blasphemous Rumours” by Depeche Mode from the album Blasphemous Rumours (1984, 6:23).
Last January, I passed on a story involving a pickled baby dragon in a jar that was making its way around the ‘net. Turns out the entire thing was a hoax…a hoax that landed the perpetrator a book deal!
An author who was so desperate to get his book published that he staged a hoax involving a baby dragon has won a lucrative publishing contract.
After numerous rejections Allistair Mitchell concocted a tale that a dragon had been found in a garage last year.
He said: “I created the hoax in order to attract potential readers.”
Mr Mitchell, based in Oxford, has now signed an book deal with Waterstone’s for his book Unearthly History, a thriller featuring a dragon.
Nicely done!
(via Neil Gaiman)
A few weeks ago, as I was standing in downtown Seattle waiting for my bus to work, I started looking around at all the logos, advertising, and slogans plastered all over the city. From the sides of delivery vans to shop windows, from faded paint on old brick buildings to garish posters hurriedly tacked onto construction barriers, advertising was everywhere.
Suddenly, I started wondering what the city would look like if all of those logos were removed.
And the word “PROJECT” flashed before my eyes…
My goal at that point was to wander through the city, taking random pictures, then come home, take them into Photoshop, and remove every logo, every piece of identifiable advertising, leaving only the “empty” buildings, automobiles, and walls. It seemed like a really interesting idea.
Then two things happened.
First, and most importantly, I lost my camera. Kind of makes it difficult to work on a photography project.
Secondly — someone else beat me to the idea.
The Untitled Project is a series of photographs of urban settings accompanied by a graphical text layout. The photographs have been digitally stripped of all traces of textual information. The text pieces show the removed text in the approximate location and font as it was found in the photograph.
Well, damn. Even if I didn’t get my chance to do it, and even if it’s a slightly different take on the idea, it’s a fascinating look at an ad-free (or at least text-free) world.
(via Kottke)
iTunes: “God is an Astronaut (Hot Tracks)” by Blunt Funkers from the album Roadkill! 2.13 (1995, 6:06).
A new site today from the people behind Grey Tuesday: BannedMusic.org.
Bannedmusic.org is a peer-to-peer collaboration that makes it impossible for the major record labels to ban or censor musical works. When record labels send legal threats to musicians, record stores, or websites, we will post the music here for download and publicize the censorship attempt. There is a clear fair use right to distribute this music, and for the public to decide whether current copyright law is serving musicians and the public, they need to be able to hear what’s being suppressed.
iTunes: “Without Words” by Hamen from the album Techno-Trax Vol. 2 (1991, 4:11).
This makes me grin for two reasons: one, because of all the people who claim that homosexuality “isn’t natural”, and two, because it’s penguins! ;)
Wendell and Cass, two penguins at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island, Brooklyn, live in a soap opera world of seduction and intrigue. Among the 22 male and 10 female African black-footed penguins in the aquarium’s exhibit, tales of love, lust and betrayal are the norm. These birds mate for life. But given the disproportionate male-female ratio at the aquarium, some of the females flirt profusely and dump their partners for single males with better nests.
Wendell and Cass, however, take no part in these cunning schemes. They have been completely devoted to each other for the last eight years. In fact, neither one of them has ever been with anyone else, says their keeper, Stephanie Mitchell.
But the partnership of Wendell and Cass adds drama in another way. They’re both male. That is to say, they’re gay penguins.
Maybe there’s another reason Opus’ relationship with Quiche Lorraine never worked out? ;)
(via DeAnna)
iTunes: “Angel (Dusted)” by McLachlan, Sarah from the album Remixed (2003, 5:29).