Courtesy of Sadie. I posted over there, then, the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got.

Usually, I can be as snarky as the next blogger. Particularly when it comes to idiotic behavior on the part of showbiz denizens. I generally don't have an issue with this because a. if I can dish it out, I can also take it and b. if someone puts themselves out there they'd better be prepared to take it. Once you throw your hat into the ring---particularly when it comes to Hollywood's PR circus---you're fair game. You'd better be prepared to take it because I have no sympathy at all for people who want all that the PR can buy them, then whine about how "intrusive" it all is.

But this is just fucking mean.

Forgive us, Lord, for it is late in the day and we are so very, very weak. And realize that we are trying, for we spent the last ten minutes debating whether or not to go with the title above or, “Whoa! I know reverse peristalsis.”

Weak is right. At least he got that part right.

Note that Bunsen apparently had fewer qualms about actually posting the photo than he did about whether or not to use that particular headline.

Keanu isn't Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton. He pretty much keeps to himself unless he's got a film out, and even then he doesn't look too enthused to be out there flogging his product. I'm also sure this isn't something he did to try and get people to go see Constantine. It's probably the flu or food poisoning. But because he's an actor, it's fair game when he throws up in public.

I don't think so.

This is cheap. It's a sucker punch. Hence it's not really all that funny.

Rather, it's weak.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Because if I did this....

Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden
Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden

....I might get sued for trademark infringement.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I love it how certain folk in the UK berate the US about our "barbaric" use of the death penalty, when it's apparent they have their own issues dealing with so-called mob justice.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What the hell does heteronormative mean?

Posted by: Kathy at 11:13 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Christ, women!

Let me give you a clue.

{Kathy puts a cigarette in her mouth, fires zippo, lights the smoky treat, inhales deeply, then begins}

If you want revenge for a cheating boyfriend/husband/pet monkey, cutting off their naughty bits by means of a Ginsu is not the best way to go about making them pay. The Ginsu may slice and dice and even cut through a tin can, but it is not the best tool for the job. You may put him through a great deal of pain, but it will be temporary pain. He will eventually heal, and in best man fashion, he will do his absolute darndest to put the matter behind him. Because he will be able to put the matter behind him. Because they---ahem---always seem to find a way to reattach the offending item.

If you hadn't noticed, the vascular surgeons of the world are getting pretty darned good at hooking the wee beasties back up. I'm sure if you looked it up, there are any number of medical journals which have published many o' a study that detail the best way to do this. While there have been any number of these sorts of cases over the years, gender reassignment surgery has helped surgeons make huge leaps in this department. They've learned a lot, obviously. After all this guy's whatsit made its way through the sewer system and was reattached! They're freakin' miracle workers!

And if you're wondering if it would work, may I present to you, Exhibit A: John Wayne Bobbit. He works in the pr0n industry. One needs to have working parts for that sort of a job. This doesn't work. He won't reform his wicked ways, he'll just get a new and improved whatsitcalled (which, of course, he'll be enamored with) and---provided he doesn't bleed to death in the process---your ass will land in the pokey for two to five. What's the freakin' point of all that? Do you actually think he'll mind his manners in the future? Ha! I think not. First off, he won't have a damn thing to do with you, and second, well, I told you he'd be enamored of his new and improved whatsit. He will be raring to go and try it out. You will, in fact, have made him worse in this department and not better. So, I ask you again, what's the freakin' point?

It's time to think outside of the box, ladies. It's time to be proactive so the red haze of fury will never descend upon you at a bad time. If you're interested, read on after the jump. more...

Posted by: Kathy at 12:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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As if gamers needed anything else to feed their obsessive compulsive behavior.

Heh.

(You can find Ctrl-Alt-Del Here every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Well, that bit about it being available every day and twice on Sundays really isn't true, but it should be. And I didn't lie about where you could find it, either. How's that for truthfulness?)

Posted by: Kathy at 11:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I saw this one yesterday, but was too gobsmacked to comment on it.

Fortunately Michele saved me from my angst and said it all perfectly.

Whichever eedjit came up with this harebrained scheme deserves to be struck down by a Wagnerian lightning bolt.

But I'm pretty damn sure Elmer wouldn't weep over his/her remains.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Bastards.

Complete, utter and incredibly greedy bastards.

When these people do get their acts together and there's a season in the offing, I would ask my fellow hockey fans to make them pay for their behavior. Don't buy your season tickets. Don't pay gobs of money to go to a game. Don't watch them on TV and deprive them of ratings-driven payola.

Both sides have shown they're all about the money---so much so that they're willing to completely abdicate their livelihoods to make a point about salary caps. Let's show them we're all about the hockey. They will undoubtedly get their acts together sometime before the next season is to begin. Sometime in late September/early October 2005 would be my bet. One season they could take. Two? I don't think so. Major League Baseball learned its lesson after its players strike: don't piss off the fans as they pay for all this largesse. Can we teach the NHL and its players the same thing? Yep. It could be even more satisfying than ignoring MLB, if you ask me, given the attendance levels at games, which would whoop MLB game attendance each and every time. Which says nothing of the ratings. Particularly during the playoffs. But attendance is the key, because I know the Wild has a sweetheart deal with the Xcel Energy Center and derives almost half of their revenue from ticket sales. How many other teams are the same, I wonder. Cut that off and you've got them.

I can go another year without hockey. What say you?

UPDATE Courtesy o' Michele: FREE STANLEY!

This is a great idea. The cup should be awarded this year---NHL or no NHL. Lord Stanley did hockey a great service by presenting the sport with this cup. And he never played hockey!. He was, however, a hockey parent. It was because of his sons' love of the sport that he commissioned the cup to present to the best amateur team in Canada. It was never meant to be held hostage by those greedy bastards in the NHL. The NHL doesn't deserve it.

FREE LORD STANLEY'S CUP!

Posted by: Kathy at 12:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Courtesy o' Martini Boy, there's new DVD copy protection on the loose.

Macrovision announced new technology today that it hopes will stop users from illegally copying DVD movies. The technology is called RipGuard DVD and it's going to make its way into DVDs starting with the new High Definition DVD films later this year.

The idea behind RipGuard is that it plugs the original security hole that was exposed by the DeCSS software back in 1999, which bypassed the CSS encryption program. This allowed even the average consumer to copy a complete DVD to their computer and distribute the DVD on file sharing networks.{...}

Now, this may seem like the logical choice for the Hollywood higher-ups, but it's not, particularly when there was a better encryption option out there. According to Forbes {registration required}, a gentleman by the name of Paul Kocher, who wrote part of the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), had a better and cheaper solution to the problem. One, I daresay, which might have actually worked. For a time, anyway.

{...}What Kocher is pushing is the concept of renewable security. Any attempt to erect a one-time, rigid barrier between thieves and content, he says, is useless, including the current method pushed through by the Japanese consumer electronics companies. "With very few exceptions, all the major security systems being used by the studios today are either broken and can't be fixed, or they're not deployed widely enough to be worth hacking," says Kocher.

Under the existing Content Scrambling System, electronics makers install the exact same encryption code into nearly every DVD player. But that was broken by European hackers in 1999 and the trick disseminated widely on the Internet. Even the least sophisticated user can now download a program that easily copies protected movies.

Kocher's alternative is to allow for constant change. His system, called self-protecting digital content, places the security on the disc instead of in the player. A software "recipe" running into the millions of steps is burned onto every new movie disc. Each DVD player would contain a small chip costing only a few extra cents that would follow the recipe faithfully. If the DVD player decides the disc is secure, it will decode it and play the movie. But each film could have a different recipe. So if a pirate breaks the code on Spider-Man 2, he wouldn't necessarily be able to break the code on Elf. The studios would always be one step ahead of the thieves; at the very least it would take pirates more time to break each film. Not a big deal: Studios make most of their money from DVDs in the first three months, anyway. {...}

Well, Hollywood didn't go for that option, which actually makes sense and would provide a relatively small wall against hackers and ther P2P-using ilk. But they didn't go for it. They went for the exceedingly dumb option instead.

At some point in time Hollywood has to realize that technology isn't only good for producing the latest and greatest special effects or the newest blockbuster from Pixar. It's not like I want them to get with the program. {cough, cough} I also derive a great deal of amusement from their idiotic efforts. It would, however, be nice to not have to hear them whine anymore.

Maybe if they weren't all using Macs, they might get an idea.

Ya think?

Posted by: Kathy at 05:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Bleech.

Posted by: Kathy at 03:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's pretty obvious that I'm a Minnesota blogger. Locals will have been tipped off by the phrase "Cake Eater" in the title. Non-locals will have read my various scribblings about what it's like to live in the Twin Cities. People know where I live. Recently, however, some of my very nice fellow Minnesota bloggers have added me onto their blogrolls as a member of the "Minnesota Organization of Bloggers." This is a facetious titling to lump all of us who live around here into a barely coherent group. Short form: I moseyed to a bar in downtown and met a bunch of fellow bloggers who were nice enough to blogroll me. This pleases me and I'm proud to be one of the chosen few. (And I will be reciprocating shortly. I've just been lazy.)

Pleasure aside, though, because of said lumping into Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (aka The Journey to Keegan's), well, I got an interesting email yesterday. From a state level politician who's running for one of the biggie state level offices. I don't want to out the guy until he announces his intentions publicly, so he will remain nameless. I don't mean to diss his campaign manager, either, because he's just doing his job by getting the word out, but... I have to wonder what the hell were they thinking by sending me an email full of paragraphs like this one?

"{...}recognizes the key role that bloggers, and especially Minnesota bloggers, have begun to play on the forefront of the new media
revolution. As 'journalists', in both the original and traditional meanings of
the word, Minnesota bloggers are increasingly becoming opinion leaders
and sources for original information...wants to acknowledge that
vital role in public policy discussion by including bloggers as part of
'the media' as they release information.

While I think it's good that campaigns are bringing bloggers into the fold and I applaud their efforts, my main reaction is what the fuck are these people thinking? I ask you, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, when did The Cake Eater Chronicles turn into blog where the author actually gave a rat's ass about Minnesota politics?

I spend very little, if any, time writing about Minnesota politics. And anyone who actually read my blog would know this. There are many reasons I avoid it, but the main reason would be I abhor state-level politics. It bores me. I know other people love this sort of thing but I don't. Yet all is not lost. The beauty that is the blogosphere dictates that if something doesn't interest you, well you don't have to write about it because many, many other people will. But because it was a bulk email thrown out to many people, it's obvious I've been lumped into the CITIZEN JOURNALIST* blog category.

Bleh

Note to campaign managers everywhere: this is my personal op-ed page. I am not a CITIZEN JOURNALIST. I am a citizen op-ed writer. There's a difference. Good luck with everything. I wish you well, but save yourself time and effort in the long run and don't bother me.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:33 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Martini Boy on hockey season being officially over:

The last time the NHL failed to award Lord Stanley's Cup, it was due to a global flu epidemic that killed 20 million people. This time, millionaire owners and millionaire players can't agree on a few contractural issue.

Now my stomach is really upset.

Mine too.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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...why they call Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, "Red Ken."

LONDON (Reuters) - London's outspoken Mayor Ken Livingstone has refused to apologise for calling a Jewish newspaper reporter a war criminal and concentration camp guard, despite complaints from Britain's main Jewish group.

"Are you a German war criminal?" Livingstone was heard saying on a tape recording of the exchange with the Evening Standard journalist at a event to mark the 20th anniversary of former cabinet member Chris Smith announcing he is gay.

When the journalist said he was Jewish and was offended by the mayor's remarks, Livingstone replied: "Actually you are just like a concentration camp guard."{...}

But wait, there's more...

{...} A statement from the mayor's office blamed the paper for harassing guests and provoking the mayor. His office said the mayor would not comment further.{...}

Catch that one? Livingstone was the one who was harrassed and provoked. Not the reporter who was compared to a concentration camp guard.

Using Livingstone's own standards for acceptable rhetoric, I believe a comeback including the phrases, "Uncle Joe," "Purges" and "Wanker Mayor not having the necessary skills available to survive them," would have been appropriate under the circumstances.

UPDATE: The husband challenged me in the comments. Here is the transcript of the conversation. Further developments can be found here.

Livingstone is a wanker.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:32 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The past couple of days, as you might have sussed due to a dearth of posts, I've had errands to run. Now, since we here in the Cake Eater household are automobile-less for the time being, this means, on occasion, riding the bus to get places we cannot walk to. On Monday, I had to hop the bus to the library. Yesterday, I had to go down to the area around Southdale. I have to tell ya, I've had it with the sidewalks, or rather the lack thereof, in either place.

I'm sure you know what I'm talking about if you've ever ridden the bus to the suburbs of your fair city: sidewalks made for drivers, not walkers. Any sidewalks that might be around are added strictly as an afterhtought so drivers do not have to risk life and limb walking through an unwieldy parking lot, rather than for walkers/mass transport riders who don't have cars. After being dropped off at the central hub that is the mall, these mass transport users/walkers find themselves walking across great swathes of parking lot to get where they need to go, because the fastest way from Point A to Point B is, indeed, a straight line. At other times, they find themselves having to walk through and then practically halfway around a mall because some landscape designer/urban planner/mall designer dude thought the parking lot would look better from the air if they designed the parking lot in a circle. They find themselves having to dodge traffic because there are no crosswalks and when there are crosswalks, well, the drivers are so surprised to see someone actually walking they forget how to brake. They find themselves, as in my case, hopping off the bus at the library and having to walk from the bus stop and all the way around this huge wrought iron fence and into the parking lot, where the cars enter, because no one thought that it would be necessary to include a break in the fence, let alone lay down seven feet of sidewalk, for someone who had----GASP---taken the bus to the library.

And I'm not even going to get into how the few sidewalks that are meant for pedestrians disappear when it snows because that's where the plows put the snow they clear from the roads.

I am sick and tired of hearing from the Met Council how fabulous the Twin Cities' public transportation system is. I am sick of having to pay increased taxes for the mucho fabulouso 11.5 mile long light rail line that doesn't serve anyone other than the Mall of Gomorrah, the airport and the east side of Minneapolis. I am sick and tired of listening to the bus drivers whine about their pay and benefits. I am sick of service cutbacks and schedule rearrangements. But mostly, I am sick and fucking tired of being told what a great alternative mass transit is compared to driving a car and then having to walk extra because of modern transportation logistics and sidewalks that are designed for drivers rather than walkers! If I have to go downtown or to uptown, I have no issues with riding the bus. Why? Not only is it quicker than driving, but also mainly because there are plenty of sidewalks to accomodate pedestrian traffic. In the suburbs, however, I have yet to see that they even think of pedestrians when they design sidewalks. This is why no one in their right mind wants to ride the bus out in the hinterlands. And this is what the Met Council fails to appreciate. This is what everyone fails to appreciate.

Honestly. Designers don't even think about the fact that people will take the bus places in the suburbs. It does not cross their minds. Case in point: the Edina Branch of the Hennepin County Library. This building is less than two-years old, its former location having been appropriated for the new City Hall/Cop Shop. They put in a bus stop right across the street from the library. Did they perhaps think that someone would take the bus to the library? No, hence no sidewalk through the massive wrought iron fence. This is bureaucratic blindness at its finest. Oh, we have to make sure people have acccess to the library, so we'll make sure the bus stops there, but most people drive and the biggest complaint we had at the old location was that there wasn't enough parking, so we'll must make sure to add more parking! And honestly, that's as far as their thought processes go.

While this is a pain and a half for me, what about other people who ride the bus? The elderly shouldn't have to walk for ages through a non-crosswalked street or climb a snowbank to get to the safety of the sidewalk. And then you have the handicapped. Because no one ever looked at the situation outside of a driver's perspective someone who takes the bus and who is in a wheelchair would have to dodge traffic to get to either end of this library parking lot where they could enter. They wouldn't even have the option of getting onto the sidewalk because cars park on the street, and that's only if there isn't a snowbank the size of Pike's Peak blocking the sidewalk. While there are special buses for the handicapped that do drop them at the door, the regular street buses are enabled for handicapped riders, too. How is someone who is handicapped to handle this? They'd better have a motorized wheelchair, because the library is at the top of a hill, too, and if they had to manually push their way to safety it would take some time. The City of Edina, in an inspired act of idiocy, has just make wheelchair riders more vulnerable to being hit by a car because they didn't think!

Posted by: Kathy at 02:28 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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MSNBC's officially scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Yeah. That'll get your ratings out of the ninth level of hell.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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While it might be a bit much to take this early in the morning, I really do mean that.

There's two sides to this story: the nonsensical and the sensible.

First for the nonsensical:

A schoolteacher in France has been fined 10,200 euros (£7,033) for illegally swapping hundreds of music albums on the internet.
The 28-year-old man must pay the money to copyright companies, in a decision aimed at deterring others.

Officials said he was one of the worst offenders for sharing music online, making available up to 10,000 songs.

{...}He also had his computer confiscated and was ordered to take out newspaper advertisements announcing the verdict and punishment.

Poor guy.

Now for the sensible part.

{...}The court case came as 70 musicians, academics and politicians signed a petition calling for a halt to legal action against people who download music for their own use.

"Like at least eight million other French people, we have also downloaded music online and are thus part of a growing number of 'criminals'. We ask that these absurd lawsuits stop," the petition published in the Nouvel Observateur states. {...}

As Mike from TechDirt says,

{...}Either way, as more musicians seem to be recognizing that unauthorized distribution is actually good for them, the claims from the recording industry that they're doing this to protect musicians is looking increasingly weak.

Now if only Metallica, et.al. would jump on that bus.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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