CRUNK

If anyone can tell me the location of the Terich brothers' "crunk" new website I'd be most grateful.

Ransomnotification

I think my blog has been kidnapped.

Survey: employees overworked, stressed out, fed up - Nov. 11, 2003

Yikes! I knew it was bad, but not this bad. CNN reports that eight out of ten employees plan to look for another job once the economy picks up again.

Many employees are overworked, stressed out, fed up -- and eager to quit their jobs once the economy picks up. In fact, worker angst is so pronounced it has surprised even the most tuned-in human resource professionals. They say employee anger is now almost palpable.

Well, at least I'm in good company. (So to speak)

The People! United! etc.

No Ralphs, no Vons, no Pavilions. And no Borders, no Amazon.com.

Palaeos

Palaeos is an incredible palaeontology/evolution/geochronology/ecology website that you can get lost in for hours. This is the kind of thing that hypertext was made for, kids.

D&X procedure (a.k.a.Partial Birth Abortion) - All sides

Much talk lately about the horrors of the so-called "Partial Birth Abortion". But what exactly is it?

From www.religioustolerance.org, some information about what obstetricians and gynecologists call Dilation and Extraction.

I think that I shall never see...

Autumn color in the Sierra, courtesy of the Sacramento Bee.

Wingnut Debating School

The always informative Atrios brings us a collection of rhetorical tactics misused by right wingers in their arguments: the War on Metaphor, the War on Analogy, Pick the Definition, and the Obsession with Irrelevant Context.

Radio Darvish

Radio Darvish, an online radio station dedicated to Persian traditional music. (I prefer the instrumental works over the vocal pieces, but chacun à son goût, as the Persians say.)

Yahoo! News - Bicyclists Accuse DJs of Inciting Attacks

Every so often we like to do another "Clear Channel Sucks" post, and, obligingly, Clear Channel helps us out by doing something particularly idiotic. Clear Channel DJs in Cleveland, Houston and Raleigh (if that's where they really were) encouraged drivers to intimidate, and even assualt bicyclists. The three stations have apologized, and Clear Channel has donated $10,000 and air time to promote bicycle safely.

A sampling of the spam "names" in my email inbox right now:

• Hartquist Langlands
  
• Rothbart Rodeen
  
• Alden Livingston
  
• Liza H. White
  
• Larochelle Asbury
  
• Charlyn Chang
  
• Stefanie Summers
  
• Rosario C. Wilkerson
  
• Stram Hoots
  
• Layla Fox
  
• Chima Bendlage
  
• Maryanne Bravo
  
• Irwin H. Aguilar
  
• Essie Fitzgerald
  
• Luis Sutton
  
• Thaddeus Dodge
  
• Lenore Kemp
  
• Lydia Cantu
  
• Litvin Michelman
  
• Mark Xiong
  
• Melisa Beal
  
• Sue Mock
  
• Terrance Terich
  

The Davis Enterprise 10/29/03

"Nancy Servis watched the demolition of the Pence Gallery this morning with the mixed emotions that often come at the end of one stage of life and the beginning of a new one."

There Is No There There, Part XXVIII

mrjeff3000`s Fotolog

Fotolog

CNN.com - Solar burst could scramble phones, power lines - Oct. 24, 2003

Freaky Sky Friday: Not only is the local atmosphere looking like another planet, what with the smoke from the San Bernadino fires to the east and the fog coming off the ocean, but now we hear that a giant magnetic storm ejected from the sun is about to hit the earth.

Everything is orange, and there's a faint smell of smoke.

I shoulda stood in bed.

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Behind the masks

Philip Pullman, in The Guardian, on Maus.

Shut UP!

If you have access to Apple's iTunes Music Store, you can purchase -- or at the very least, preview -- Bill O'Reilly's Those Who Trespass... (read by the author!)

"..did not want to be recognized. The man staring at Costello wanted complete anonymity. The ferry from Woods Hole on Cape Cod had carried this observer to Vineyard Haven just three hours prior. He checked into a small bed-and-breakfast house a few yards away from the ferry terminal, and soon after, took a cab to the media center located in an elementary school just outside of Edgartown. Telling the cabbie to wait, the man circled the media center while staying close to the wall. He wanted no one to see him.

Then he was handed his first stroke of luck. On the door outside the center, a posted sign told of that evening's party in Edgartown. Knowing how Rod Costello operated away from home, he suspected Costello would be there. He was about to do something he had never done before. It had taken him more than a year to decide to act, but now he was determined and apprehensive. The man in the shadows watched patiently as Costello began speaking to a well-built brunette. Though much too far away to hear the conversation, he sensed what was going on.

"Let's get out of here. I have some really good weed back at the hotel."

"Ron, you know I don't smoke. Beside, what would your wife say?"

"We're separated."

"Oh, bullshit, Ron."

"She's in D.C., and I'm here. That's separated, Suzanne."

The young woman silently sighed, her brown eyes darting to the floor. She wanted no part of the disagreeable Ron Costello. Her friends at GNN had warned her about the lecherous correspondent..."

CNN.com - Dude, where's my endorsement? - Oct. 19, 2003

Shibby!

The recent trip up to Bellevue and the Seattle area reminds me, in conjunction with one of the staff favorites on the Apple iTunes Music Store, of the last time my family went up to Washington, when my aunt and uncle and cousins were brand new to Bellevue in 1986. The main things I remember about that trip were an image - the sky, overcast, as we passed through Tacoma near the end of our journey north toward Lake Washington, past 255th (or some other incredibly high number) Street; and listening to Suzanne Vega's eponymously titled debut album on my cassette player.

Every so often, as I realize that the music of my youth is turning twenty, or twenty-five, it reminds me that I'm not just a grown-up. I'm those people who, when I was younger, were remembering the "summer of love", and Woodstock, and disco. That was my senior year in high school, the year that Sgt. Pepper came out on CD 20 years after its original release. Now I'm the one reminiscing about Suzanne Vega and Stop Making Sense and Men at Work (Business as Usual was voted top album of 1982-1983 by my seventh grade class).

I think I'm starting to get it now...

Time-lapse photography is really cool. And kind of creepy.

iCrack

Well, it's the talk of the blogosphere, so I figure I might as well get on board. The much-anticipated iTunes for Windows is out, and it's pretty darn good. One of my favorite things about the program is the crossfade feature, which fades out on one song as the next fades in -- it makes me feel like a classy big shot radio station!

And, of course, there's the famous iTunes Music Store, now open to a much, much wider customer base. And there's some good deals to be had there, too. $9.99 for Los Lobos' Just Another Band from East L.A. (41 songs!) $9.99 for Elvis: 30 #1 Hits (31 songs!) $6.93 for Miles Davis's Bitches Brew (7 tracks, originally on two albums!)

And - here's what I can't wait for - in the early months of next year, Pepsi will be giving away 100,000,000 iTunes songs! (Send your winning Pepsi bottle caps to: MRJEFF3000, c/o mrjeff3000.blogspot.com, kids!)