Tweety Birds: Mama Smurf

Why put on the trench coats and have the glamour shot? I think John Cowan nailed it: attentivores.

Culture satirizes any source that takes itself more seriously than it is essential or more novel than a new version of an old model. 1.6 million people willing to give you access to their raster attention budget is as trivial or non-trivial as what that 1.6 million will do given a message from the twitter account. Marketing speak particular; it's non-trivial. It is power.

Societal importance?

What will smurfs do for a smile from the smurfette? Sometimes, quite a lot.

UPDATE: Amber comments on the Lolita Effect. In the sense that this incident is about 30 somethings, it doesn't quite apply. In the sense that the objectification of women has been brought up, it does. Do read this:

http://www.alternet.org/story/85977/

The Flight of the Tweety Birds

It appears that the Flight of the Tweety Birds is this week's cause du jour among the geek women bloggers. The claims are getting evermore snarky and meant to justify a round of 'serious' web generation mystique but don't seem to offer a basis for complaint. Instead they are the victims of old people, old business, just old. Old frightens them. It could be they were had except the article was written by someone who isn't old and isn't that tied to old media. Vanity Fair is a glamour mag and glamour mags don't take up serious topics. If they did, they'd be Playboy. Sad but so.

The claim that gets to the heart of their complaint is one made by Felicia Day, that the author of the Vanity Fair piece failed:

to celebrate a new kind of independent and liberated woman

I guess she doesn't have the awareness to notice she is practicing the same sexist agism and generationism that got her into the mess. Ok, Felicia, somehow you think you are new? Challlenge: exactly how are you the example of a new independent liberated woman? What is it you've achieved that say, Carly Fiorina hasn't? Meg Whitman? Susan Sarandon? Dolly Parton? Over a million followers on Twitter? So now you have the power to change exactly what? Your fellow bloggers say you and they want to have THAT conversation, so get on with it.

You want to sling arrows because you believe you've been trivialized. Great. Just be sure you have a full quiver and a solid stance in the saddle because you're accelerating into the curve on a running horse, not out of it. The complaints you have and that of your fellow bloggers read like Danah Boyd crying over her Twitter-wall experience at her presentation. In other words, it's infantilism vs agism and somehow none of you seem to understand if you put your sex up front, it is the topic. Smart women or men get that and run with it. Hypocrites or just plain too full-of-themselves repeat the remarks that have stereotyped you as the whiniest generation since the Jazz Age. New and different? How? Say it or STFU because there are real victims out there who need attention a lot more than a 30 something living in LA with the TwitterNation hanging on her every burp.

Compared to Neda Soltan what have you suffered lately?

Nothing is more boring than a successful anything that complains when the spotlight turns green. Like the sign at Wentzel's says, if you want a place in the sun, expect blisters. Otherwise, get over yourself, or at least take a moment to study the career of Lenny Bruce. When commedians or commediennes turn serious, the laughter stops and so does the applause.

Tweety Birds

In the new edition of Vanity Fair, some ladies of the web are photographed wearing trench coats and posing just slightly provocatively. The article has the breezy tone of snark VF is famous for and in the text follows the tone of the photo. It isn't a serious portrait or all that demeaning but the subjects have taken upon themselves to become outraged, pissed, ready to 'thump skulls' and their fans are following suit. It is the usual herd response from a generation that seeks opportunities and creates technology to increase their herdiness through their nerdiness. The article is poking fun at that and I don't think too many geeks were harmed in the production of the article.

Still:

1. They signed up for the photo. If the trenchcoat poses didn't clue them in as to what was coming, these ladies aren't quite as media savvy as claimed.

2. They need the photos. The cult of celebrity requires a persistent thumping on the skulls of the public to keep them front and center. Celebrity is a brief fling with a bull-riding machine anyway. Day, for example, is someone who rather desperately wants to be a Hollywood insider despite her reputation for being a successful outsider. That is where the career and the money are and she is not a silly woman from the cheap seats.

3. Every ten years or so, the last media darling generation gets tossed on the fire of satire and ridicule to make room for a new generation. Thus has it ever been and the geeks don't seem to be prepared for the inevitable.

So ladies and irate fans, putting up blogs about how unfair VF is, how they are ignoring your serious accomplishments (lifecaster? really?), or how the old media is just jealous of the new media (we be fast; you be slow), is what is expected of you and it will fuel the flames of support, and it will drive up the sales of that issue. Mission accomplished. It will also make put you on the path to the C-list and start the crack down the middle of the ice that holds your feeds above the waters of oblivion because the more you emphasize your serious accomplishments, the more boring you will become.

Vanity Fair and articles to follow elsewhere aren't doing this for jealousy, spite or lack of 'getting it'. They are doing it because it's time. If "what the web thinks you are, you are, deal with it" as Tim Bray wrote is the meme du jour, you have just been bathed in how that comes about and how very little control you have over it except possibly in watching your warddrobe.

Deal with that.

What Will Happen When YouTube Isn't Free

Bono has written an op-ed in the New York Times touching on the topic of music piracy. The usual counter-arguments are presented in the comments to the article and the usual lunatics tend to prevail.

Fine for now. In the near future, maybe not.

At some point the free services that the indies who give away their work rely on will no longer be free. Today YouTube is the radio. Anyone wanting to keep up in the arms race of art competition (with each other; the audience is passive) has to be able to make videos on the cheap or otherwise. Fortunately, it isn't that hard and like other tools, costs are down considerably even as skills have to catch up.

Yet like it or not, the term is 'hypermedia' not hypermedium and there are costs to producing at that level of complexity that can't be dismissed as easily as "we give away our CDs" because while one doesn't have to manufacture, one is still having to climb the complexity curve. Frankly, most bands and songwriters aren't up to the challenge.

Other costs will creep up. This will dry up a lot of what far too many rely on for entertainment sources. Having choked the life out of several industries, it will be Nebraska morning noon and night for about a decade as those with access to capital realign among themselves to control the distribution of the works of those who used these services to develop themselves during the 'everything should be free because that benefits me' period of internet market development.

Bono is right. It simply doesn't matter at the moment but he is right nonetheless. Unfortunately, he is talking to the wrong audience. He's arguing with the pig and as the old joke goes, the pig only gets irritated and he comes up smelling of sow. The people who need to understand where this is going ARE the artists and particularly the young ones just getting into what is left of the music business.

A Christmas Carol: Marley's Ghost

Merry Christmas! I made my Christmas card. I hope it suits and brings good cheer. There is an extra treat at the end.

Buyer's Remorse

Don't get into the habit of the Republicans with Clinton: every time Bush made a misstep, the Republicans would cite something from Clinton and say 'this is better than that'. It may be but successful governance unlike some politics is about what is Next more than What Just Happened. I'm a Democrat and I say Obama is losing his support faster than the Titanic lost passengers. With all the first class advantages he has or had, he is too stupid to find a life vest or too proud to swim.

The problem of learning from history is that those who do are never in the majority when the time comes to use that knowledge. Among those that didn't learn, those that refused to learn, those that refuse to remember and those that are too young to know and have only the glossy reimaginings of those who pretend otherwise, perhaps the last are most to blame because they have the energy to act on a dream but not the real grit to see through it.

Of the rest, they were lost to cause at birth.

Politics is about individuals and unless the character is there by dint of experience, the substance is not no matter how compelling a dream they sell. A puffpiece bio and two years in the Senate do not a President make. Hillary was our best shot and Democrats aimed it at her head. Que lastima.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~cbullard/mp3/CursesFoiledAgain.mp3

So You Wanta Start A Rock 'n Roll Band

Sometimes I get asked why I still record my songs and release them on YouTube for essentially free. The truth is I enjoy it and it's a lot of fun. I listened to Arlo Guthrie talk about the music business at The Church two months ago and as a veteran he described how marvelous it is that the young musicians no longer had to sell their souls to the entertainment industry. I listened to Sam Phillips (the female singer, not the dead Elvis producer) explain how despite the time she worked with T-Bone Burnett and thrived, she really likes the immediacy of the web that enables her to release straight to the public.

In other words, while most of us believe we really want a major label deal and the instant riches and fame that flow from that, veterans of the industry seem to think otherwise. Why?

Here are two articles that you should read to understand the economics of the deal. Once you understand this, then step back and ask why you really want to be in that business if this is the probable outcome. Meanwhile, I'll go back to making my homebrew videos. I never expect any measure of real success except insofar as I still enjoy the heck out of it.

How Major Labels Cook The Books

The Problem With Music

Here is a new homebrew video.

Silent Night

An early Christmas card before it is too late...

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, 1.35 million U.S. children are homeless on any given night. (2000)

Families with children are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population, accounting for almost 41% of the nation's homeless. (2005)

In 2003, children under the age of 18 accounted for 39% of the homeless population.

42% of homeless children are under the age of five.

http://www.misd.net/Homeless/statistics.htm

Moo Boo Bouree

I was playing with the video editor. It seems gif animations will work as drag and drop video objects. Obvious, but I'd never tried it before. Since the web is brimming with free gif animations, it's a nice add to the library of cheap tricks.

UPDATE: I win Stump The Googler. After a week it can't find a video to relate this to. All those billions and billions invested and beaten by a lowly children's folk song about tap dancing cows. There is a God and she loves barnyard humor.

Arlo and The People - Episode 1: The Pumpkin Singers

Episode I - The Pumpkin Singers. Where The People sing the ceremonial Pumpkin Song to disturb The Monster and the good citizens of Great Barrington Massachusetts.



Episode II: The TailGators. Where Loopy Len and Dutiful Dana explore the mysteries of the magic parking lot and The Church.



Episode III: Sailing on the Golden River

A beautiful voice sings a beautiful song. If you have it to give, send a few shekels to the Guthrie Center. They feed the poor, help the needy and put on the best concerts in the northeast. And they need HEAT!

This Little Light of Mine

This nation needs a rebirth. It has lost its soul. - Jim Flynn

Lost? Misplaced in my opinion. The soul of America is no longer to be found in the malls, in the megaconcerts, or even in a lot of town halls. It has retreated into the small places where neighbors are still helping neighbors, cleaning up after storms, taking children to school, singing in the church choirs, in short, to quote my wife, "choosing to be family".



Globally, economically and militarily we are mightily messed up at the moment. We did that to ourselves. Our fathers did it too. We almost recovered and then we let the city on the hill hawks lead us again and when we let the stupid rise to power, we pay because once in, they are tediously difficult to root out.

Choose your family. Choose to be with them. Watch the nefarious and don’t let your own need for significance blind you to the harm they do. Vote cautiously and often. Buy local. Read the lyrics to the songs your children listen to.



Give a damm but not a dime. Evolve your way. The nation is not due for rebirth. Our soul is intact. The universe sings to us. We quit listening.

Why? Someone trying to make a bigger buck told us we had to belong to a party, a cause or a hair club and we bought it.

Our soul is right where it’s always been in the small places where the chosen gather for the joy of being together, to be family.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

The Trickster

Photo Credit: Arlo Guthrie

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes others and who is always duped himself. He wills nothing consciously. At all times he is constrained to behave as he does from impulses over which he has no control. He knows neither good nor evil yet he is responsible for both. He possesses no values, moral or social, is at the mercy of his passions and appetites, yet through his actions all values come into being. - Paul Radin

Again, knowledge cannot be aggregated into a single ruling body." John Papola

That quote from Papola isn’t precisely true. It is actually a limit on tracking identified resources in real time, that is, kinds, types and precision converted to actionable intelligence. The entire focus of web/Internet design has been to increase the precision given real time feeds.

No, you can’t know what goes on inside a human mind but you can observe, record and analyze speech acts. So trying to use human purposefulness as a defense or offense is to hide behind the rat hole of intensionality. You can know enough to make locally rational decisions.

To provide investors and other control mavens such information, you’ve been steadily and eagerly giving up your privacy and submitting to a 365 x 24 x 7 surveillance society. You did it for your convenience, fun and need to increase your self-perceived significance. By the very same game rules for markets, you are now hostage to the business models of IBM, Oracle/Sun, Microsoft, Apple and so on where next year’s profits rely absolutely on increasing your use and submission to the very technologies that provide that transparency.

After almost two decades of crying in the wilderness about this, my best advice is find a little place full of good people where you are secure with whatever your ambitions are and adapt.

Feed the trolls whatever will cause them to evolve. You can use the greed of others to modify their behaviors. That is the role of The Trickster.

Eat more rabbits.

Apple: Rouge The Corpse

When Apple ripped off Gary Lewis and The Playboys for the music to their new commercial, the emerging crack in their brand became obvious.

Cultural archaeology is one way to get ideas but at least rouge the corpse.

The Ballad of Rip Van Freaker

I was riding home from Woodstock
Tokin' on a spliff
When my psychedelic hippie van
Went flying over a cliff
Maybe it was the hand of God
That bent time in a wrinkle
I'd slept like a dog for forty years
A modern Rip Van Winkle
So I hitched a ride to the nearest town
To see what I had missed
And oh man what a bummer
2009 is this

TV is a picture hanging on the wall
Women dress like men
But the men don't care at all
Underwear is advertised
Where everyone can see
Gasoline is expensive
But pornography is free
Milk will give you cancer
Water is a snack
The cars are made of plastic
The president is black
The Chinese are our bankers
Ho Chi Minh's our friend
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

The criminals go on talking tours
While preachers go to jail
They'll take your right to own a gun
But ammo's still for sale
A hunter needs a license
But an animal can sue
With the whole world turning upside down
What's a freakin man to do
The hippie thing is all messed up
A long hair just can't win
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

The Russians fly our astronauts
To an international station
While the United States of America
Becomes a third world nation
Good men just can't find a job
While bad ones still get rich
Some things keep on keepin on
And Brother, that's a bitch
Designer drugs are legal
But reefer's still a sin
And Arlo Guthrie's a Republican

I wasn’t sure how it all went down
I was sure I didn’t care
We’d had it right in 69
And now we’re running scared?
I prepared to hide my love away
When a voice said, “No kid, Wait!
You can’t change their wicked ways
But you can infiltrate!”
And that was what I needed to hear
The Revolution is style
Before the next election
Put an R beside a smile
"What’s in a name?" a poet asked
When your heart comes marching in
Singing “Arlo Guthrie’s a Republican.”

Urge for Going: The Weird Ways of What Comes To Us

Most references to this song I see on the web cite Joni Mitchell who authored it but apparently didn't record it or Tom Paxton who recorded it and some say made it famous.

I'd never heard of either of them when I learned it in 1967 although I saw Joni's name as the author on the RCA 45 produced by Chet Atkins and performed by George Hamilton IV. The funny bit is that I learned it on solo guitar and couldn't reproduce the Atkins arrangement so by the time I played it, my part sounded like Joni. It's still one of my favorites to play this time of the year. My old 45 is not playable so I'm glad to find this, though now I prefer Joni's version from a live Canadian TV show on YouTube. Still, it's fun to hear this again. I wonder if I had heard the others if I would have attempted it.

Getting To No Me

Are you tired of answering Facebook quizzes designed to help your friends help the marketing departments of the companies that pay Facebook to pester you with these questionnaires? Consider them an opportunity to throw mustard on their spyglasses.

Getting to No Me

1. What time did you get up this morning? 3:15AM. Ask me when I went back to bed.

2. How do you like your steak? I take roses to the pasture.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Butter on the seat cushion.

4. What is your favorite TV show? A form of entertainment.

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? As long as I'm breathing, I'm there.

6. What did you have for breakfast? My health.

7. What is your favorite cuisine? I don't date relatives.

8. What foods do you dislike? Humans. They are too salty.

9. Favorite Place to Eat? Wherever she sets the table.

10. Favorite dressing? Blue jeans.

11.What kind of vehicle do you drive? The kind that run on gas.

12. What are your favorite clothes? Loose.

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? The 23 century... meet Jane Jetson.

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? Which side?

15. Where would you want to retire? Off the interstate. OTW, one gets run over.

16. Favorite time of day? Quitting time.

17. Where were you born? Next to Mom.

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Bingo.

19. Who do you think will not tag you back? Kelly.

20. Person you expect to tag you back first? Kelly.

21. Who are you most curious about their responses to this? Kelly.

22. Bird watcher? Poll watcher.

23. Are you a morning person or a night person? I'm a might person.

24. Do you have any pets? Kelly. Almost trained.

25. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? Whatever you report.

26. What did you want to be when you were little? Bigger.

27. What is your best childhood memory? My children standing at the window when I came home.

28. Are you a cat or dog person? I'm a Batman.

29. Are you married? I'm not your type.

30. Always wear your seat belt? Only in the car. It chafes in the shower.

31. Been in a car accident? I hiked to the top of one once.

32. Any pet peeves? No. Peeves is a house servant.

33. Favorite Pizza Toppings? Cash.

34. Favorite Flower? Martha White Self-Rising.

35. Favorite ice cream? Frozen.

36. Favorite fast food restaurant? Our kitchen.

37. How many times did you fail your driver's test? Only once, but I found the bug and recompiled.

38. From whom did you get your last email? Ethiopia.

39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Don't they have their own?

40. Do anything spontaneous lately? I regenerated my liver.

41. Like your job? Almost as much as Noah.

42. Broccoli? Didn't he make Bond movies?

43. What was your favorite vacation? When we moved out of my old apartment.

44. Last person you went out to dinner with? Me.

45. What are you listening to right now? Oh Happy Days. It's stuck in my head.

46. What is your favorite color? Petunia.

47. How many tattoos do you have? All of them.

49. What time did you finish this quiz? Quitting time.

50. Coffee? I never rent.

The Undisputed Truth

You can watch 24 x 7 x 365 violence on Spike TV, or watch YouTube for the undisputed truth. It will be fun to read the defenders of laissez faire business models argue about this.

Where There Is Sadness, Joy!

This is the beautiful and ever inspiring Burns Sisters. With the passing of Mary Travers and the resurgence of racism and hatred in America, take a moment to listen to a prayer for joy.

Mama Told Me Not To Come

Want some whiskey in your water?
Sugar in your tea?
Whats all these crazy questions theyre askin me?
This is the craziest party that could ever be
Dont turn on the lights cause I dont wanna see
Mama told me not to come
Mama told me not to come
She said that aint the way to have fun, son
That aint the way to have fun, son

As the days of protest ground on in the Sixties, it got louder, noisier, nuttier and finally the cities were on fire.

Anyone up for a repeat of that except this time without the good music?

Not moi. Some pointers:

1. The tea baggers are Americans. They have the right to protest. One may not agree with their signs but then we did ourselves no favors with the Sarah Palin bashing and the Hillary Clinton bashing. Don't say it's not the same. It's EXACTLY the same.

2. The tea baggers have some points to make. Listen to them. If you can refute those points calmly and with facts, do so. Otherwise, DO NOT ENGAGE. This is critical. Having both sides throwing gas on a log fire is bound to set the forests ablaze. Everyone will lose.

3. Change doesn't come without discomfort. These people are scared. They should be. The forces out there who are pouring money into these campaigns are doing their best to scare them. Before calling them ignorant, racist rednecks, take a look at those cool cats on Wall Street and in the multi-nationals paying the big money to scare them.

4. Some of these people are racists. That's a fact. It is a disease and it will never be vanquished as long as there are differences to fear however stupidly. Calling them that won't change it. Worse, many of them, in fact the majority are not racists. Save that tag for when someone's civil rights are being denied them. The race card is too important to play it when all the other side has is a pair of deuces. Worse, it is incindiary. It sets a fire that won't be easily put out. Save it for the real thing.

Stay cool. Learn the facts. Answer the charges with the facts. Most of those people are good people upset and scared but determined. In their minds and hearts they believe they have to stand up for America. Let them know you are marching with them wherever our freedoms are threatened. Use reason and calm presentation to show them their freedoms are in fact not being threatened.

Don't surrender to your rage. As the rabbi said, an eye for eye leaves us all blind.

On 9/11

I was pulling into the parking lot at Intergraph when the DJ said a plane had struck the WTC. Because our business was 911 systems and a pilot had explained the scenario to me years earlier while we were flying into Reagan, I suspected this was the one predicted.

I also knew our business was suddenly solid gold.

It was a terrible feeling so instead of watching the TV with the others, I went to my desk to remove from our web pages the name of a colleague who had died from heart attack a month earlier. I walked down the hall in time to see the second tower collapse. A lady in the room said, "What happened to the firemen that ran in there?" and I said, "They're dead. You just watched them die."

It was macabre.

The irony is some of us who are analysts began the research into how our systems could be used to protect us. As a result, Intergraph Public Safety would become a sub to Lockheed for New York/New Jersey MTA and today, that is newsworthy on ABC.

You can know what will happen, what to do, try to do it and fail. The usual meme is you learn from your mistakes. That isn't always true for reasons I won't go into here and now because even if you believe me, it won't make a damm bit of difference.