New album from The National

I'm late to the party, but forgive me if I've been busy.  New album out by The National, and I caught the first single on WKDU tonight, Bloodbuzz Ohio.  Fantastic.  Stop what you're doing, watch this video, then go order the album.  Get it on vinyl.  Seriously.  Vinyl.

Ask the Economist

Ask the Economist

Another great post from one of my new favorite blogs. Gosh darn it, why can't you kids be responsible with your money?

OZZY!!!!!

Nothing says "excessive substance abuse" like Ozzy.

Latest Foxconn jumper violated his no-jump contract

Latest Foxconn jumper violated his no-jump contract

I would like to point out that I don't have a no-jump clause in my contract, but this is PA, so I'm at will anyway. My employer has asked that we all give adequate notice before jumping so folks can move their cars.

You need a telephone to get a job

You need a telephone to get a job. It seems a pretty fundamental idea these days. Heck, it's nearly mandatory you have Internet access to find a job with a large number companies as Craigslist continues to usurp the lowly newspaper classified ad and a large number of jobs are only advertised online. This is not to say you need to own a computer, but at the very least you must have access to a public terminal at a library and a free email address from Google/Yahoo/Hotmail etc.
Of course, with continued threats of closures and cutbacks at the Philadelphia Free Library and I am sure similar situations in other cities, that's not necessarily a viable option. If you already have a job, but are looking to better your situation, and the library cuts evening and weekend hours, or shutters the branch in your neighborhood, then what do you do? You can't go to the library to check for new job postings during the day, you're already at work.  Options?  Did you see the new cyber cafe over on Tioga? I didn't either.
I can understand folks getting upset when they hear about the Free Government Provided Cell Phone! and wonder why their tax dollars are going to fund a life of luxury for someone else. But that's not really the case. From Slacktivist: "You can't get a job at McDonald's without a phone number." Further, that incredible luxury of a Free Cell Phone (with a whopping 68 minutes a month!!) assumes a maximum monthly income for a single person of just over 1,200 dollars, or about 14,600 dollars a year. Have a kid or two? How about gross income of 24K? Priced rent in Philly recently? A recent survey found a family of four in the City of Brotherly Shove needs nearly 60K a year to survive without government assistance.
Sobering numbers, and an interesting touchstone. What are you closer to, 60K/year or millionaire status? I'm guessing a majority of folks I interact with on a regular basis are far closer to, or even below, that 60K mark. So in a sense, most folks I know, and myself and family, are a lot closer to being poor than rich and have a far higher probability of becoming the former than the latter.

Brandy, You're a Fine Girl

I took my family to Disney World a couple of weeks ago, and got to see a sizable swath of "Average Americans" all in one spot. I don't get much of a chance to observe Americanus Suburbanus very often; I avoid malls, and other places the species congregates, if at all possible.
I realized we are a nation obsessed with labels. Not just the political labels we like to hurl about. "Socialist" "Fascist" or sometimes both seem to be particularly popular these days. But clothing labels. I didn't see a plain tee-shirt all week. Each one was emblazoned with the "designer's" name in large letters across the front, often repeating it in smaller letters on the back in case we forgot while they passed.
Designer's weren't the only ones capable of duping the unsuspecting herds into purchasing a $0.50 swatch of 50/50 blend with someone else's name on it for exorbitant amounts. Hollister, store and clothing line that seems to attempt an invocation of rebellion, based on the small CA town falsely celebrated for its 1947 "riot" by the film "The Wild One" was a frequent offender. Unfortunately the clothing line mostly succeeds in producing cheap cotton-blend crap in shades not seen since the walls of my Junior High School.
Decorated, of course, with the word "Hollister" in large block print everywhere visible.
I wasn't immune to the pressure to dress "like everybody else" as a teenager, so I understand and can even empathize with "the kids". A majority of the "labelitis" was perpetrated by the parents. People my age and older, tooling a toddler in a designer stroller, wearing a Perry Ellis hat, Ralph Lauren tee-shirt, Tommy Hilfiger jeans, and Nike sneakers. A walking advertisement. Not in discreet, alligator in the pocket, style but a billboard. 48 point font across the man-boobs. An embarrassingly large "Tommy" label on the zipper, dwarfing what passes for bulge.
Surely these shirts and pants are more expensive than my no-name pocket T, Wrangler jeans, and New Balance (they come in widths) sneakers. Why would anyone pay More!!! to be a walking billboard when they can pay less to just wear clothes? I'm not fucking Amish, and I've even been known to don a Hawaiian shirt or two, but I'm not wearing someone else's advertisement unless they pay me, not vice versa.
Or at least give me the shirt for free. (hint) ;-)

I'm not Windows 7

I'm not a PC.  This parody of the Windows 7 ads actually points out the biggest failure with Vista, and what will probably be the ultimate downfall of the Windows franchise - trying to be all things to all people. 

From the maniacal insistence on backwards compatibility that makes security a nightmare to the kitchen-sink inclusion of new features just to say "we have search, too" Microsoft has made features, which are marketable to the masses the sales department are targeting, the goal over security, stability, and malleability. 

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Will Bunch pretty much nails it.
" The only insane people here are the ones who call Joe Stack a hero. He wasn't a hero. He was a coward. To see Joe Stack as something more than a two-bit killer is the greatest case of adding insult to injury that I have ever seen."

When, as an elected official of the U.S. Government, you can't take a stand against someone that murdered Government employees, Veterans of our military, or as a gubernatorial candidate instead claim that a nut-job flying a plane into a building is representative of the "hopelessness" people feel about the government these days?
I don't know about you, but murder-suicide is a cowardly act carried out by the mentally ill and deranged. Not by heroes.
Our priorities are a little bit screwed up, doncha think?

What happens when you crank a Victrola reaalllly fast?

Generation Hex

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWkZltugu4c
According to Wikipedia my generation, Generation X, is the one that reverses the trend, the generation that does worse (by 12%) than the one preceding it.
I'd feel badly about this, except I never truly gave a fuck about the almighty dollar. Yeah, the fact that my 12 year old retirement account has nearly exactly the same amount of money in it as it had when I started it? Sucks. Thanks to George W. Bush and his 3 (THREE!!!!!) market crashes in 8 years.
But I figure I'll figure it out. After all, Gen X-ers statistically hold the highest level of education, right? Okay, maybe that's not everything. But we are the generation largely responsible for GNU/Linux so I'm pretty sure that money is both not our main interest, nor something that is actually necessary. After all, an entire operating system for free? Why worry.
We are, in fact, the generation that currently keeps the world from sucking.
Oh, and why is Paul McCartney bare-foot on the cover of Abbey Road? I don’t give a fuck.

Conan Gets Paid

Looks like Conan will get paid
Okay, I know what with the earthquake in Haiti, and any number of pressing humanitarian tragedies going on right now, a white guy getting paid 40 million dollars to quit his job is well, kinda insignificant. But I think Conan is funny. And I also think he's getting shafted by his employer, the only difference between him and me in this regard is he has a contract that ensures his employer will pay handsomely for the privilege of screwing him, whereas I, in the "right to work" (snort) state of PA, lacking representation by a proper union or Civil Servant designation, can be fired for either a) no good reason, or b) no reason at all.
Without any cause, whatsoever. In fact, a previous employer of mine went so far as to _make_stuff_up to cover their own incompetent identity-thieving screw-ups and attempted to fire me in the process. I kept my job, but lost some dignity. And some money. I kept working there, mostly because I liked the folks I worked with, and I enjoyed the job, but a small part of me stayed long enough to vest my pension, so the company some day would have to pay me back for what they tried to do.
Unions get vilified in the press a lot these days (who do a lot of pundits blame for the failure of GM and Chrysler) and no doubt they are not without blame, but stupid CEOs and upper management (hellooooo, NBC? Anyone Home?) are just as much if not more so to blame. No one vilified the cost of paying U.A.W. salaries when the U.S. Automakers were making large profits on SUVs, but when short-sighted management got caught with there pants on the groundand no small, high-quality fuel-efficient cars when gas went to $4.00 a gallon, suddenly the evil Unions were to blame.
As if the Union were responsible for the allocation of R&D dollars, Engineering resources, and "next-quarter" instead of "next 10 or 20 years" planning for the future allocations done by the boardroom.
Right, blame the folks tasked with assembling and selling a shitty product, not the folks in charge of it being a piece of shit to begin with.