Skippystalin is officially on suicide watch: Paris is abstaining from sex for a whole year! As the last person on Earth who hasn't boned her yet, I have to say it's a good idea. Let it cool down a bit, baby.

Where did these people get the idea we give a flying faloopus, anyway?

I'll be damned; Boxcar Willie, the World's Favorite Hobo, is on Bavarian TV right now. And, get this: he's singing "The Lord made a hobo outta me." Never heard the song, but it started off with his trademark train whistle schtick that he does. Or did. I think he'd dead now. Poor Boxcar Willie: First the Lord made him a hobo, then he made him a sad, bitter old man on late night commercials on WTCG, channel 17, pre-Superstation/TBS days, hawking used-up old railroad songs to unappreciative hobo-groupies.

You actually get a lot of the old Urban General late-night infomercial stars over here. Roger Whitaker, for example, is very big in Europe. I only ever knew him from those commercials where they used the infamous "Elvis and the Beatles combined!" loophole to say how many records he'd sold. But over here, he actually gets some TV-time on the variety shows. Or maybe he's dead too, now, and it's all just re-runs.

And now, at 12:27AM, the Oak Ridge Boys are on stage. Bunch of mincing Nancies, these guys. Funny I didn't notice that back in the 70s. One of them has got on Jordache jeans, for the love o' Jesus. And they're tucked into his spiffy little light-brown 'cowboy' boots. And, I might add, a bright red bandana around his neck, with a brooch, I swear to God. That would be the one in the mauve blazer.

As a followup, they have what has to be the gayest cowboy act I've ever seen. There's a gym-queen Indian running half-naked around the stage, being chased by a bunch of leather-chap-wearing cowboys. With whips.

Late-night TV in Germany: It's not just for cheese documentaries anymore.

A little trip through recent history with Sam.

We watched the game in a local biergarten last night. It was beautiful out, and the German flag was waving everywhere, and the German team played like champs. Until the second overtime, that is. In the last two minutes of the game, Italy put two into the net, running away with a 2-0 win.

I hate the Italian team. They're a bunch of crybabies. Against the Americans, one of the Italian players threw a vicious elbow into McBride's face that actually split his cheek open. Nevertheless, they earned the win last night. The two late goals were pretty spectacular.

On July 9, Italy will be playing against the winners of tonight's match between Portugal and France in the finals. With Germany out of the running, maybe there will even be seats somewhere so we can sit down and watch it. After that, I can finally go back to hating soccer.

Rob's services will be held today, Thursday, in Savannah; we figured we'd post a bit of incriminating evidence from last year's Wreckyll in Jeckyll, the one time we were fortunate enough to meet the man in person.

The winners of the Jeckyll Island Poker Classic: Catfish, Barbie, and Acidman, with a panty on his head.

The Usual Suspects: Dax, Eric, Catfish, Rob, Guido (Zonker's Parole officer), Recondo32 (with bullwhip), Rube, and Fiona, the Straight White Missus.

Catfish, Rob, Zonker's Parole officer, and Recondo32.

Rob, with a panty. I believe this particular panty was the prize in the poker championship.

Ann's lovely piggies, painted specially for Rob. No, I'm not jealous. Much.

And now, a little tune, sadly abridged, with Jim, Eric, Denny, Rob, and Rob's brother, Dave

Third Rate Romance, click to play

We would love to be in Savannah, today, to pay our respects and say goodbye. But we can't, so we'll just have to send our best wishes to his family, friends, and to Rob, bon voyage. It was great to know you, and we'll miss you.

Ann and Rube.

P.S. there's some more stuff laying around that I'd like to put out there, so stay tuned!

The first light fell on the magnificent castle upon the plain of Limbo. Ovid lay groaning in his bed. My freakin' head! he moaned inwardly, and turned off his alarm. He lay still for a moment, staring at the stone ceiling, waiting for it to stop spinning. Gingerly, he swung his feet to the cold stone floor and rooted around for his slippers.

He scuffled out of his small, tidy bedroom, and stood on the second floor railing, which overlooked the castle's central living area, and surveyed the damage from the night before. Squinting his eyes against the hangover, he briefly considered turning around, closing the door, and going back to bed.

Empty bottles, upset ashtrays, and general desolation reigned. The record player in the corner turned, forgotten, the needle bouncing endlessly against the inner groove with a soft clunk clunk clunk. From every iron candelabra about the room hung an item of women's underclothing; black stockings here, a garter there, and a bright red thong covered with the wax of the burned-down candles. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Ovid frowned and stumbled his way down the stone staircase.

Turning left, he made his way past the mounds of peanut shells, tiptoed past the snoring carcass that had, until recently, been Horace, and entered the dark kitchen. Feeling the wall next to the doorway, he found the light switch and flicked it upward.

"Oh, man, cut the lights!" It was Plato, covering his eyes, sitting at the table over a bubbling glass of Alka-Seltzer. All about him lay playing cards and the butt-ends of cigars. At one end of the table was an enormous mound of ivory chips, piled high around an untouched glass of whiskey.

Ovid grimaced. "Dude, you look like Hell."

"Very funny," answered Plato. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm working on a new Dialogue. Unfortunately, the dude with the jackhammer in my head won't let me get a word in edgewise."

Ovid relented, and dimmed the lights. Clearing a path, he grabbed the nearest empty chair and sat at the table. "What the blazes happened last night?"

Plato looked up from his glass and said, "The New Guy."

Oh, yeah, thought Ovid, The New Guy. "Man, I thought Limbo was supposed to be for the virtuous heathens!"

Plato grunted indifferently, and downed the glass of fizzy grey liquid at a gulp. He belched wetly, and for a moment seemed unsure if it had been a one-way trip. Once he became convinced, he looked at Ovid and asked, "Have you seen Elektra?"

"No," he answered. "But I'm pretty sure she's around." He couldn't imagine he'd missed seeing her. Elektra was a six-foot redhead with long legs, round hips, and a voice like an angel. Ovid looked thoughtful. "Hey Plato," he started. "Did you notice that she'd painted her toenails red yesterday afternoon?"

Plato shrugged. "Yeah, I did," he said. "Wonder what that was all about."

A loud crash outside the kitchen door caused both men to grab their heads and moan. Homer came into the kitchen. "Dudes," he said, "I can hear y'all talking all the way out in the stable." He felt his way to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and pulled out an ice pack. He smashed it clumsily onto his head, knocking his sunglasses sideways. Stretching out his free hand, he found a chair and sat at the kitchen table with the other two poets. "I got a four-alarm hangover, doggs." The others grunted in agreement.

"Hey, Homer," Plato said, "did you see The New Guy?"

Homer straightened his sunglasses, and rubbed his chin. "Well, that depends," he said. "You mean when he was clearing y'all out at the poker table? Or do you mean maybe when he was leadin' a hootenanny with my lute at all hours of the morning? Or maybe when he, Elektra, and Scheherazade were out playing Twister by the hot tub?" He waved his hand frantically in front of his black shades. "'Cause no, I didn't see him."

Plato and Ovid grimaced sourly at each other. "Well, anyway," said Ovid, "I wonder where he got off to."

Homer furrowed his brow. "I think he and the girls went to meet somebody out in the woods."

"Why do you say that?", asked Plato.

"I heard 'em heading out a few hours ago, giggling like schoolgirls, and I asked 'em where they was headed. The New Guy just said, 'Roscoe's baaaaaaaack' like he was all happy about it. Must be a long-lost friend of his." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The girls sounded pretty excited about meeting him, too."

Ovid pondered that for moment. "Well, they'll show up eventually, probably with this 'Roscoe' character." They all nodded. "Oh, and Homer," he continued, "what were you doing in the stable, anyway?"

Homer broke into a wide grin.

Plato shuddered. "Oh dude!"

The smug hipsters at Boing Boing are all awonder! 'How to open a bottle of beer the Scandinavian way'; which would mean, with another bottle.

I figured these guys had been around a lot more than that. That's not the 'Scandinavian Way.' It's more like, the 'Places That Don't Have Screw-Capped Bottles Way'. They do it here in Germany, too. They also use cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, and just about anything else you can think of. Really, if they think opening a beer bottle with another bottle is spectacular, they'd probably have a seizure if they saw 1000 Arten ein Bier zu öffnen (1000 ways to open a beer). They're all the way up to 971, at last count.

The coolest bottle-opening method I've seen was Glacier Bay's (sadly discontinued) opener-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle trick. Each bottle had a real opener in the bottom of it; so, when your beer was out, you just grabbed the next bottle and zisch! pop open the replacement. I drank an awful lot of Glacier Bay during my Georgia Tech days.

In a sad coincidence, in college I was walking through a shopping mall, and one of those survey people came up to me. She offered me $5, checked my age, and asked if I'd do a taste-test of foreign beer brands. Being 21, poor, and a borderline alcoholic, I had no choice but to comply. I followed the nice young lady to a small room at the end of a hallway, and they had about 12 different kinds of beer, stacked up in crates all around the room. Among the Heinekens and Beck's, I noticed an unfamiliar brand, whose red and white label struck a familiar chord. It was called Arctic Bay, and the bottle looked exactly like the Glacier Bay bottle I'd known and loved, albeit not in the familiar blue and silver. I asked the lady if that was a new beer from the same brewery, perhaps. She then told me that Glacier Bay was no more, and had been bought out by a competitor. Shocked, I hefted this usurper beer Arctic Bay, and cautiously checked the bottom of the bottle. No opener. Just flat and smooth, like every other cheap Canadian beer on the market.

I tried 7 different bottles of beer, just a swig from each. The others, though imports, were not unknown to me, and tasted pretty much as I suspected. The Arctic Bay, though, was like ashes in my mouth. After they were opened and sampled, I asked the survey lady what would happen to all the beer. She said she'd throw it out. We kind of looked at each other, and then drank all the beer. Then we had another round of taste tests, but under a different name. I think we stopped after the fourth, by which time I was filling out the forms with names like 'Philip McCracken' and 'I.P. Frehley'.

So there you have the story about how one time, in college, I actually got paid $5 a round to get 'faced in a room full of imported beer with a bored young coed.

In honor of the Australians' imminent pummeling of Brazil, I present the Brazil World Cup Drinking-Game!
And here's how it works.

You must drink every time a Brazilian:

• scores a goal - 1 drink
• raises hands in disbelief - 1 drink
• gets in the ref's face - 1 drink
• falls to the ground and grabs his ankle - 1 drink; if replay shows he didn't get kicked by anybody - drink again
• must be carried off the field - 1 drink
• comes back into the game after getting carried off the field - drink again
• stays on the ground injured until play stops - 1 drink
• gets right back up and starts running - drink again

Now, grab a piss get get playin'!

The soccer-boys managed a 1-1 tie last night against the heavily-favored italians! It's almost as impressive as the 1980 Lake Placid victory against the Russian hockey team. And, like that victory against the Russians, the hunt for the gold isn't over. Back then, we still had to beat Czech for the gold. Now, we just have to beat Ghana, Ecuador, and about 30 other Banana Republics.

It was an impressive show, all in all. And big props go out to Brian "Bleeder" McBride, who took an elbow to the face at the 30 minute mark. There was blood everywhere, and maybe even a couple of stitches. But big Bri marched off the field under his own power, let the medic take care of him, and was playing in the "Match of Shame", as the Times called it (dicks), in less than 2 minutes.

Now, for those of you who've never watched World Cup Soccer, it's kind of like basketball. Played by a high school Drama Club. The absolute lack of honor in the game is astounding. Apparently, one of the rules is that if somebody so much as breathes on you, you flign yourself to the ground, grab your ankle, and scream like a girl. Then, the referee feels bad for you, blows the whistle, and gives you an Icee. I saw people trying to draw fouls last night that should be ashamed of themselves. The Italian captain, for instance, threw himself to the ground once in the second half, although nobody was anywhere near him. There was no foul. He held onto his leg like he'd been shot, screaming and rolling around on the ground. He actually carried on like this until they came out with a stretcher and hauled him to the sidelines. Where, of course, he stood up, stretched a bit, and was back on the field at the next whistle.

This is because soccer is the only sport I can think of, besides basketball, that doesn't have a built-in justice system. In ice hockey, if you stop play by faking an injury just to draw a penalty, your ass better stay down, because the next time you touch the puck you're going to find yourself sailing over the boards with a skate up your behind. In baseball, if you're showboating like the Italian last night who did a pantomime violin performance in the corner after scoring, you're going to get a Dickie Thon fastball* to the face next time you're up. In soccer there isn't even a delay of game foul for faking an injury.

These pussies will literally lay on the ground, howling, stop the game, let themselves be carried off the field on a stretcher, when the replay shows clearly they never got touched. Then, they come right back into the game like nothing happened. I broke my hip playing ice hockey in college once, and still skated off the ice under my own power. Then went to a social at my girlfriend's sorority. In a tux! The problem is, doing this crap in soccer brings you an advantage because the refs reward it. If the other team's doing it, you've got to do it, too.

The Americans, thank goodness, don't really play that game. In North America, you'd get booed off the field, no matter what sport you're playing.

You can read more on the pussiness of soccer here.

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.

* - Mike Torrez, 1984. Man, was that really 22 years ago?!

If you're not an experienced computer geek with scads of free time on your hands, just stay as far away from Linux as you can. All the openness in the world will not buy back the hours lost in frustration and doubt, as you attempt to do even the simplest of tasks.

I just spent the last two days fighting with Ubuntu's sound support. If you're not a Linux gearhead, you'll probably be surprised – nay astonished! – to learn that there's no freakin' way to easily configure your sound card. This process still involves firing up your favorite text editor, pummeling Google for How-To's, and duking it out with 70s-era computer philosophy over who bears the burden of peripheral configuration, the user or the operating system. Things haven't changed much since the Slackware 1.0 days.

Case in point: Running MythTV on a Ubuntu box. Result: "/dev/dsp cannot be initialized: device or resource in use, Sound Disabled". This is still an issue in 2006? Even using the ultrahypermodern advanced ALSA drivers? I guess ALSA's intended for use in single-user, single-tasking multimedia appliances such as iPods rather than Linux. Which is a shame, considering it's made specifically for Linux!

Fact is, the user should never have to worry about sound card locking. There are no data integrity issues with a user hearing more than one sound at a time; the human ear is made for that, so sound card-locking should be considered a bug. The OS should queue up the requests for the driver, which should then schedule them to be sent to the hardware in an orderly manner.

Under Ubuntu Linux today, renowned as the User-Friendly Linux, the default configuration doesn't enable sharing your sound card among applications. If you're using KDE with the ARTS server running, a common scenario, and you launch Quake 4 or MythTV or any other program that requires sound, it'll bomb out with a "device busy" error.

There are workarounds, of course. You can create a down-mixing pseudo-driver in your ~/.asoundrc, if you can stay awake through the 3500-word how-to. This worked for me, at least for a bit. Once I rebooted my computer, my USB webcam's microphone and mixer had remarkably taken over the Card #0 slot, my USB speakers were Card #1, and my onboard sound had become Card #2. This order changed with every boot, in seemingly random fashion, so it meant I had to manually reassign card numbers in the .asoundrc file. This is also necessary whenever a USB peripheral is plugged in or out.

In addition to its not working, there are some other issues to consider:

It's user-specific
you have to be root to make it system-wide in the /etc/asoundrc, and, since there's no configuration utilities to speak of, you'll be mucking around /etc with a text-editor, a limited knowledge of the subject matter, and an appetite for self-destruction.

It's fragile
You use card numbers instead of GUIDs. If you've got USB sound devices, like speakers or a USB webcam, there's no predictable way to know which card number which device will have. And, of course, they change when you plug a device in or disconnect it. And they're different every time you reboot, for whatever ungodly reason.

It's not automatic
The default configuration for ALSA is that you have a single sound card and mixer that never changes; in addition, it will never be accessed simultaneously by multiple processes. The how-to (linked above) says the following:

NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing.

LIES!

When the operating system detects a sound card, it should automatically configure it to a) work, b) be accessible through an easy-to-use interface, c) be optimally configured for output quality and compatibility, and d) be accessible by multiple programs. For the OS, this should be easy: Set up the values, activate the hardware, and write out state to a configuration file automatically. Ideally, it would also send out a system notification that hardware was added, and the user's environment could deal with the information as it deems fit.

Linux unfairly places this burden on the user. The OS currently does nothing except load the bare-metal driver for the device, and configure it in a way that makes it almost useless. The existing environments, like KDE and Gnome, offer absolutely no hardware configuration interfaces, and the CLI offers nothing more than a text-editor and 40 man pages and a pat on the behind for luck. In fact, KDE (and I assume Gnome) compound the problem by loading an outdated "sound server", ARTS, which provides a lackluster facility simulating concurrent sound-card access with terrible latency, and then only for programs specifically written for ARTS.

For the record, I have never had a problem with this under Mac OS X, BeOS, or any Windows since 95. In fact, the only weirdness I've had under OS X is with the Videolan client. Sticking to its Open Source roots of user hatred and bad interface design, it makes the user put in a sound card "number" to play sound through external USB speakers. No drop-downs, no sanity checks, and no hint as to which number belongs to which card. Pathetic.

- If you configure it to use the second sound device, for example, it will still attempt to use it even after it's been removed, and there no longer is a second device.

If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?

While it may be a brilliant observation, Brian, maybe it's best if not everyone knows you're reading Charles Nelson Reilly's Wikipedia page...

According to this article at the Australian ABC-Online news site, Iranian president Mahuloonmibasjaaja (sp?) Ahmadinejad (sp?) has been asked by the EU's unelected transnational parliament to kindly keep his hairy, raving face out of Europe, at least for the duration of the World Cup.

We call upon the 25 EU member states and FIFA to declare the Iranian president 'persona non grata ad personam' within EU territory, as long as his positions on martyrdom, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, and Iran's uranium enrichment activities remain unchanged,"

No word as yet whether Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore will be allowed in.

Via J.F. Beck

Howdy, folks!

For the next few weeks I'll be over at the glorious Sistaweb, guest-bloggin' while my better half finishes up her master's thesis. Drop by if you want to freshen up your German, or just to say hello!

Meh.

Al Gore, by the way, can bite my hairy taint.

UPDATE: There is ice falling out of the sky!

My grandfather was a moonshiner, and a gunrunner. It was a hobby which would cost him his freedom for a spell, fostered by the same circumstances which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. During the Great Depression, when Reconstruction had finally run its course and moved on to the Great Failed Government Program Retirement Home in the sky, the American South looked a lot like present-day Iraq. To think that my grandfather actually supported his family running ordnance to outlaws in Tennessee boggles my mind, honestly. That illicit weaponry provided a thriving marketplace in 1930s America is a testament to the overall uncertainty and political climate that must have scared the bejesus out of honest folk like myself.

This was pre-World War II Earth, a place where horrors like the Holocaust and international Communism were not only possible, but inevitable. Henry Ford, who many consider a great American, was writing essays on the dangers of International Jewry, and it seemed harmless, sensible even. That was changed by the Nazis.

The path of Nazism was first through envy, then hate. Envy gave Hitler and his Socialist party hold on Germany. The workers' envy of the rich, of the powerful, of the French even. He promised the everyday man that he could be a prince, in return for control of his thoughts. With that power, he transformed his hate into a real bureaucratic system, which begat the Holocaust.

With this argument, I believe I make a sound case the we should once again legalize hate speech. Now, I realize this isn't one of your better bumper stickers, "Legalize Hate Speech". "Visualize World Bitchiness" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, either. And Lord knows, we're never going to get anywhere until we have a bumper sticker, or at the very least a web badge, that will appeal to the "Free Mumia" crowd.

We should legalize hate speech, seeing as it provides an essential service, especially to those who aren't clear on what things they should hate. In its place, we should outlaw envy. Envy crimes should carry an exorbitant sentence. Capital punishment for envy-driven libel, for example. And not just any execution; I'm talking bring back drawing and quartering, live on CNN.

You've probably heard about the teenager who ran amok at the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

I heard on the news last night that one of the first victims was HIV-positive; so, they're frantically trying to find the later victims, because the guy used the same knife on all of them. That just sucks. I imagine that he'll get a 2nd-degree murder charge every person who gets HIV from the attacks, but I'm not really sure how that works over here.

Man, I've seen some bad desks in my time. At the last American company I worked for, the boss had a desk stacked so high with old computer magazines, catalogs, software manuals (remember those?) and hardware service guides that you couldn't tell if he was there or not. You had to walk up to the pile, peek around it slowly, and say "hello? anybody there?" like in some 80s horror movie.

But this is bad. Makes me feel better about the random assortment of wireless mice and NiCd batteries that litter my desk.

In order to get my permanent visa to stay in Germany, I have to send my landlord the following form.

Owner's Confirmation of Sufficient Living Space for Foreign Renters/Subletters

Family Name, Name

House number and Floor of Apartment

To whom it may concern,

before a visa can be issued, the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigners' Office) must approve your renter's living arrangements.


Requirements for the quality of construction for the apartment are described in Article 3, Section 2 of the Wohnungaufsichtsgesetzes of July 24, 1974.

Therefore, we require that you answer the following questions.

Please assist your renter by accurately filling out the form. This will accelerate the processing of the renter's request for a residence visa. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Has a leasing agreement beens signed with the foreigner? (yes/no)
2. The monthly rental fee, including housing costs, is €_
3. Is the foreigner's apartment self-contained? (yes/no)
4. Are there multiple families in the apartment? (yes/no) If yes, how many? _
5. How many and what type(s) of rooms are there in the foreigner's apartment? _
6. How man square meters are there in the apartment?
7. How many people live in the apartment?
⁃ Children under 6 Children over 6 Adults _
8. I have been informed that members of the foreigner's family, consisting of adults and children, will be moving into the apartment and have agreed to this.


Should the Foreigner's Office doubt the veracity of these statements, it reserves the right to visit and examine the premises.


Name of Foreigner


Address, Telephone
_

Of course, I'm sure it's all for my own protection. But I'm wondering how many landlords just say screw it, it's not worth having the government come in and make sure little mister Ausländer is getting enough fresh air and sunlight.

Here's a scan of the scary, rakishly yellow document.

Skippystalin is officially on suicide watch: Paris is abstaining from sex for a whole year! As the last person on Earth who hasn't boned her yet, I have to say it's a good idea. Let it cool down a bit, baby.

Where did these people get the idea we give a flying faloopus, anyway?

I'll be damned; Boxcar Willie, the World's Favorite Hobo, is on Bavarian TV right now. And, get this: he's singing "The Lord made a hobo outta me." Never heard the song, but it started off with his trademark train whistle schtick that he does. Or did. I think he'd dead now. Poor Boxcar Willie: First the Lord made him a hobo, then he made him a sad, bitter old man on late night commercials on WTCG, channel 17, pre-Superstation/TBS days, hawking used-up old railroad songs to unappreciative hobo-groupies.

You actually get a lot of the old Urban General late-night infomercial stars over here. Roger Whitaker, for example, is very big in Europe. I only ever knew him from those commercials where they used the infamous "Elvis and the Beatles combined!" loophole to say how many records he'd sold. But over here, he actually gets some TV-time on the variety shows. Or maybe he's dead too, now, and it's all just re-runs.

And now, at 12:27AM, the Oak Ridge Boys are on stage. Bunch of mincing Nancies, these guys. Funny I didn't notice that back in the 70s. One of them has got on Jordache jeans, for the love o' Jesus. And they're tucked into his spiffy little light-brown 'cowboy' boots. And, I might add, a bright red bandana around his neck, with a brooch, I swear to God. That would be the one in the mauve blazer.

As a followup, they have what has to be the gayest cowboy act I've ever seen. There's a gym-queen Indian running half-naked around the stage, being chased by a bunch of leather-chap-wearing cowboys. With whips.

Late-night TV in Germany: It's not just for cheese documentaries anymore.

A little trip through recent history with Sam.

We watched the game in a local biergarten last night. It was beautiful out, and the German flag was waving everywhere, and the German team played like champs. Until the second overtime, that is. In the last two minutes of the game, Italy put two into the net, running away with a 2-0 win.

I hate the Italian team. They're a bunch of crybabies. Against the Americans, one of the Italian players threw a vicious elbow into McBride's face that actually split his cheek open. Nevertheless, they earned the win last night. The two late goals were pretty spectacular.

On July 9, Italy will be playing against the winners of tonight's match between Portugal and France in the finals. With Germany out of the running, maybe there will even be seats somewhere so we can sit down and watch it. After that, I can finally go back to hating soccer.

Rob's services will be held today, Thursday, in Savannah; we figured we'd post a bit of incriminating evidence from last year's Wreckyll in Jeckyll, the one time we were fortunate enough to meet the man in person.

The winners of the Jeckyll Island Poker Classic: Catfish, Barbie, and Acidman, with a panty on his head.

The Usual Suspects: Dax, Eric, Catfish, Rob, Guido (Zonker's Parole officer), Recondo32 (with bullwhip), Rube, and Fiona, the Straight White Missus.

Catfish, Rob, Zonker's Parole officer, and Recondo32.

Rob, with a panty. I believe this particular panty was the prize in the poker championship.

Ann's lovely piggies, painted specially for Rob. No, I'm not jealous. Much.

And now, a little tune, sadly abridged, with Jim, Eric, Denny, Rob, and Rob's brother, Dave

Third Rate Romance, click to play

We would love to be in Savannah, today, to pay our respects and say goodbye. But we can't, so we'll just have to send our best wishes to his family, friends, and to Rob, bon voyage. It was great to know you, and we'll miss you.

Ann and Rube.

P.S. there's some more stuff laying around that I'd like to put out there, so stay tuned!

The first light fell on the magnificent castle upon the plain of Limbo. Ovid lay groaning in his bed. My freakin' head! he moaned inwardly, and turned off his alarm. He lay still for a moment, staring at the stone ceiling, waiting for it to stop spinning. Gingerly, he swung his feet to the cold stone floor and rooted around for his slippers.

He scuffled out of his small, tidy bedroom, and stood on the second floor railing, which overlooked the castle's central living area, and surveyed the damage from the night before. Squinting his eyes against the hangover, he briefly considered turning around, closing the door, and going back to bed.

Empty bottles, upset ashtrays, and general desolation reigned. The record player in the corner turned, forgotten, the needle bouncing endlessly against the inner groove with a soft clunk clunk clunk. From every iron candelabra about the room hung an item of women's underclothing; black stockings here, a garter there, and a bright red thong covered with the wax of the burned-down candles. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Ovid frowned and stumbled his way down the stone staircase.

Turning left, he made his way past the mounds of peanut shells, tiptoed past the snoring carcass that had, until recently, been Horace, and entered the dark kitchen. Feeling the wall next to the doorway, he found the light switch and flicked it upward.

"Oh, man, cut the lights!" It was Plato, covering his eyes, sitting at the table over a bubbling glass of Alka-Seltzer. All about him lay playing cards and the butt-ends of cigars. At one end of the table was an enormous mound of ivory chips, piled high around an untouched glass of whiskey.

Ovid grimaced. "Dude, you look like Hell."

"Very funny," answered Plato. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm working on a new Dialogue. Unfortunately, the dude with the jackhammer in my head won't let me get a word in edgewise."

Ovid relented, and dimmed the lights. Clearing a path, he grabbed the nearest empty chair and sat at the table. "What the blazes happened last night?"

Plato looked up from his glass and said, "The New Guy."

Oh, yeah, thought Ovid, The New Guy. "Man, I thought Limbo was supposed to be for the virtuous heathens!"

Plato grunted indifferently, and downed the glass of fizzy grey liquid at a gulp. He belched wetly, and for a moment seemed unsure if it had been a one-way trip. Once he became convinced, he looked at Ovid and asked, "Have you seen Elektra?"

"No," he answered. "But I'm pretty sure she's around." He couldn't imagine he'd missed seeing her. Elektra was a six-foot redhead with long legs, round hips, and a voice like an angel. Ovid looked thoughtful. "Hey Plato," he started. "Did you notice that she'd painted her toenails red yesterday afternoon?"

Plato shrugged. "Yeah, I did," he said. "Wonder what that was all about."

A loud crash outside the kitchen door caused both men to grab their heads and moan. Homer came into the kitchen. "Dudes," he said, "I can hear y'all talking all the way out in the stable." He felt his way to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and pulled out an ice pack. He smashed it clumsily onto his head, knocking his sunglasses sideways. Stretching out his free hand, he found a chair and sat at the kitchen table with the other two poets. "I got a four-alarm hangover, doggs." The others grunted in agreement.

"Hey, Homer," Plato said, "did you see The New Guy?"

Homer straightened his sunglasses, and rubbed his chin. "Well, that depends," he said. "You mean when he was clearing y'all out at the poker table? Or do you mean maybe when he was leadin' a hootenanny with my lute at all hours of the morning? Or maybe when he, Elektra, and Scheherazade were out playing Twister by the hot tub?" He waved his hand frantically in front of his black shades. "'Cause no, I didn't see him."

Plato and Ovid grimaced sourly at each other. "Well, anyway," said Ovid, "I wonder where he got off to."

Homer furrowed his brow. "I think he and the girls went to meet somebody out in the woods."

"Why do you say that?", asked Plato.

"I heard 'em heading out a few hours ago, giggling like schoolgirls, and I asked 'em where they was headed. The New Guy just said, 'Roscoe's baaaaaaaack' like he was all happy about it. Must be a long-lost friend of his." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The girls sounded pretty excited about meeting him, too."

Ovid pondered that for moment. "Well, they'll show up eventually, probably with this 'Roscoe' character." They all nodded. "Oh, and Homer," he continued, "what were you doing in the stable, anyway?"

Homer broke into a wide grin.

Plato shuddered. "Oh dude!"

The smug hipsters at Boing Boing are all awonder! 'How to open a bottle of beer the Scandinavian way'; which would mean, with another bottle.

I figured these guys had been around a lot more than that. That's not the 'Scandinavian Way.' It's more like, the 'Places That Don't Have Screw-Capped Bottles Way'. They do it here in Germany, too. They also use cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, and just about anything else you can think of. Really, if they think opening a beer bottle with another bottle is spectacular, they'd probably have a seizure if they saw 1000 Arten ein Bier zu öffnen (1000 ways to open a beer). They're all the way up to 971, at last count.

The coolest bottle-opening method I've seen was Glacier Bay's (sadly discontinued) opener-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle trick. Each bottle had a real opener in the bottom of it; so, when your beer was out, you just grabbed the next bottle and zisch! pop open the replacement. I drank an awful lot of Glacier Bay during my Georgia Tech days.

In a sad coincidence, in college I was walking through a shopping mall, and one of those survey people came up to me. She offered me $5, checked my age, and asked if I'd do a taste-test of foreign beer brands. Being 21, poor, and a borderline alcoholic, I had no choice but to comply. I followed the nice young lady to a small room at the end of a hallway, and they had about 12 different kinds of beer, stacked up in crates all around the room. Among the Heinekens and Beck's, I noticed an unfamiliar brand, whose red and white label struck a familiar chord. It was called Arctic Bay, and the bottle looked exactly like the Glacier Bay bottle I'd known and loved, albeit not in the familiar blue and silver. I asked the lady if that was a new beer from the same brewery, perhaps. She then told me that Glacier Bay was no more, and had been bought out by a competitor. Shocked, I hefted this usurper beer Arctic Bay, and cautiously checked the bottom of the bottle. No opener. Just flat and smooth, like every other cheap Canadian beer on the market.

I tried 7 different bottles of beer, just a swig from each. The others, though imports, were not unknown to me, and tasted pretty much as I suspected. The Arctic Bay, though, was like ashes in my mouth. After they were opened and sampled, I asked the survey lady what would happen to all the beer. She said she'd throw it out. We kind of looked at each other, and then drank all the beer. Then we had another round of taste tests, but under a different name. I think we stopped after the fourth, by which time I was filling out the forms with names like 'Philip McCracken' and 'I.P. Frehley'.

So there you have the story about how one time, in college, I actually got paid $5 a round to get 'faced in a room full of imported beer with a bored young coed.

In honor of the Australians' imminent pummeling of Brazil, I present the Brazil World Cup Drinking-Game!
And here's how it works.

You must drink every time a Brazilian:

• scores a goal - 1 drink
• raises hands in disbelief - 1 drink
• gets in the ref's face - 1 drink
• falls to the ground and grabs his ankle - 1 drink; if replay shows he didn't get kicked by anybody - drink again
• must be carried off the field - 1 drink
• comes back into the game after getting carried off the field - drink again
• stays on the ground injured until play stops - 1 drink
• gets right back up and starts running - drink again

Now, grab a piss get get playin'!

The soccer-boys managed a 1-1 tie last night against the heavily-favored italians! It's almost as impressive as the 1980 Lake Placid victory against the Russian hockey team. And, like that victory against the Russians, the hunt for the gold isn't over. Back then, we still had to beat Czech for the gold. Now, we just have to beat Ghana, Ecuador, and about 30 other Banana Republics.

It was an impressive show, all in all. And big props go out to Brian "Bleeder" McBride, who took an elbow to the face at the 30 minute mark. There was blood everywhere, and maybe even a couple of stitches. But big Bri marched off the field under his own power, let the medic take care of him, and was playing in the "Match of Shame", as the Times called it (dicks), in less than 2 minutes.

Now, for those of you who've never watched World Cup Soccer, it's kind of like basketball. Played by a high school Drama Club. The absolute lack of honor in the game is astounding. Apparently, one of the rules is that if somebody so much as breathes on you, you flign yourself to the ground, grab your ankle, and scream like a girl. Then, the referee feels bad for you, blows the whistle, and gives you an Icee. I saw people trying to draw fouls last night that should be ashamed of themselves. The Italian captain, for instance, threw himself to the ground once in the second half, although nobody was anywhere near him. There was no foul. He held onto his leg like he'd been shot, screaming and rolling around on the ground. He actually carried on like this until they came out with a stretcher and hauled him to the sidelines. Where, of course, he stood up, stretched a bit, and was back on the field at the next whistle.

This is because soccer is the only sport I can think of, besides basketball, that doesn't have a built-in justice system. In ice hockey, if you stop play by faking an injury just to draw a penalty, your ass better stay down, because the next time you touch the puck you're going to find yourself sailing over the boards with a skate up your behind. In baseball, if you're showboating like the Italian last night who did a pantomime violin performance in the corner after scoring, you're going to get a Dickie Thon fastball* to the face next time you're up. In soccer there isn't even a delay of game foul for faking an injury.

These pussies will literally lay on the ground, howling, stop the game, let themselves be carried off the field on a stretcher, when the replay shows clearly they never got touched. Then, they come right back into the game like nothing happened. I broke my hip playing ice hockey in college once, and still skated off the ice under my own power. Then went to a social at my girlfriend's sorority. In a tux! The problem is, doing this crap in soccer brings you an advantage because the refs reward it. If the other team's doing it, you've got to do it, too.

The Americans, thank goodness, don't really play that game. In North America, you'd get booed off the field, no matter what sport you're playing.

You can read more on the pussiness of soccer here.

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.

* - Mike Torrez, 1984. Man, was that really 22 years ago?!

If you're not an experienced computer geek with scads of free time on your hands, just stay as far away from Linux as you can. All the openness in the world will not buy back the hours lost in frustration and doubt, as you attempt to do even the simplest of tasks.

I just spent the last two days fighting with Ubuntu's sound support. If you're not a Linux gearhead, you'll probably be surprised – nay astonished! – to learn that there's no freakin' way to easily configure your sound card. This process still involves firing up your favorite text editor, pummeling Google for How-To's, and duking it out with 70s-era computer philosophy over who bears the burden of peripheral configuration, the user or the operating system. Things haven't changed much since the Slackware 1.0 days.

Case in point: Running MythTV on a Ubuntu box. Result: "/dev/dsp cannot be initialized: device or resource in use, Sound Disabled". This is still an issue in 2006? Even using the ultrahypermodern advanced ALSA drivers? I guess ALSA's intended for use in single-user, single-tasking multimedia appliances such as iPods rather than Linux. Which is a shame, considering it's made specifically for Linux!

Fact is, the user should never have to worry about sound card locking. There are no data integrity issues with a user hearing more than one sound at a time; the human ear is made for that, so sound card-locking should be considered a bug. The OS should queue up the requests for the driver, which should then schedule them to be sent to the hardware in an orderly manner.

Under Ubuntu Linux today, renowned as the User-Friendly Linux, the default configuration doesn't enable sharing your sound card among applications. If you're using KDE with the ARTS server running, a common scenario, and you launch Quake 4 or MythTV or any other program that requires sound, it'll bomb out with a "device busy" error.

There are workarounds, of course. You can create a down-mixing pseudo-driver in your ~/.asoundrc, if you can stay awake through the 3500-word how-to. This worked for me, at least for a bit. Once I rebooted my computer, my USB webcam's microphone and mixer had remarkably taken over the Card #0 slot, my USB speakers were Card #1, and my onboard sound had become Card #2. This order changed with every boot, in seemingly random fashion, so it meant I had to manually reassign card numbers in the .asoundrc file. This is also necessary whenever a USB peripheral is plugged in or out.

In addition to its not working, there are some other issues to consider:

It's user-specific
you have to be root to make it system-wide in the /etc/asoundrc, and, since there's no configuration utilities to speak of, you'll be mucking around /etc with a text-editor, a limited knowledge of the subject matter, and an appetite for self-destruction.

It's fragile
You use card numbers instead of GUIDs. If you've got USB sound devices, like speakers or a USB webcam, there's no predictable way to know which card number which device will have. And, of course, they change when you plug a device in or disconnect it. And they're different every time you reboot, for whatever ungodly reason.

It's not automatic
The default configuration for ALSA is that you have a single sound card and mixer that never changes; in addition, it will never be accessed simultaneously by multiple processes. The how-to (linked above) says the following:

NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing.

LIES!

When the operating system detects a sound card, it should automatically configure it to a) work, b) be accessible through an easy-to-use interface, c) be optimally configured for output quality and compatibility, and d) be accessible by multiple programs. For the OS, this should be easy: Set up the values, activate the hardware, and write out state to a configuration file automatically. Ideally, it would also send out a system notification that hardware was added, and the user's environment could deal with the information as it deems fit.

Linux unfairly places this burden on the user. The OS currently does nothing except load the bare-metal driver for the device, and configure it in a way that makes it almost useless. The existing environments, like KDE and Gnome, offer absolutely no hardware configuration interfaces, and the CLI offers nothing more than a text-editor and 40 man pages and a pat on the behind for luck. In fact, KDE (and I assume Gnome) compound the problem by loading an outdated "sound server", ARTS, which provides a lackluster facility simulating concurrent sound-card access with terrible latency, and then only for programs specifically written for ARTS.

For the record, I have never had a problem with this under Mac OS X, BeOS, or any Windows since 95. In fact, the only weirdness I've had under OS X is with the Videolan client. Sticking to its Open Source roots of user hatred and bad interface design, it makes the user put in a sound card "number" to play sound through external USB speakers. No drop-downs, no sanity checks, and no hint as to which number belongs to which card. Pathetic.

- If you configure it to use the second sound device, for example, it will still attempt to use it even after it's been removed, and there no longer is a second device.

If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?

While it may be a brilliant observation, Brian, maybe it's best if not everyone knows you're reading Charles Nelson Reilly's Wikipedia page...

According to this article at the Australian ABC-Online news site, Iranian president Mahuloonmibasjaaja (sp?) Ahmadinejad (sp?) has been asked by the EU's unelected transnational parliament to kindly keep his hairy, raving face out of Europe, at least for the duration of the World Cup.

We call upon the 25 EU member states and FIFA to declare the Iranian president 'persona non grata ad personam' within EU territory, as long as his positions on martyrdom, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, and Iran's uranium enrichment activities remain unchanged,"

No word as yet whether Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore will be allowed in.

Via J.F. Beck

Howdy, folks!

For the next few weeks I'll be over at the glorious Sistaweb, guest-bloggin' while my better half finishes up her master's thesis. Drop by if you want to freshen up your German, or just to say hello!

Meh.

Al Gore, by the way, can bite my hairy taint.

UPDATE: There is ice falling out of the sky!

My grandfather was a moonshiner, and a gunrunner. It was a hobby which would cost him his freedom for a spell, fostered by the same circumstances which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. During the Great Depression, when Reconstruction had finally run its course and moved on to the Great Failed Government Program Retirement Home in the sky, the American South looked a lot like present-day Iraq. To think that my grandfather actually supported his family running ordnance to outlaws in Tennessee boggles my mind, honestly. That illicit weaponry provided a thriving marketplace in 1930s America is a testament to the overall uncertainty and political climate that must have scared the bejesus out of honest folk like myself.

This was pre-World War II Earth, a place where horrors like the Holocaust and international Communism were not only possible, but inevitable. Henry Ford, who many consider a great American, was writing essays on the dangers of International Jewry, and it seemed harmless, sensible even. That was changed by the Nazis.

The path of Nazism was first through envy, then hate. Envy gave Hitler and his Socialist party hold on Germany. The workers' envy of the rich, of the powerful, of the French even. He promised the everyday man that he could be a prince, in return for control of his thoughts. With that power, he transformed his hate into a real bureaucratic system, which begat the Holocaust.

With this argument, I believe I make a sound case the we should once again legalize hate speech. Now, I realize this isn't one of your better bumper stickers, "Legalize Hate Speech". "Visualize World Bitchiness" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, either. And Lord knows, we're never going to get anywhere until we have a bumper sticker, or at the very least a web badge, that will appeal to the "Free Mumia" crowd.

We should legalize hate speech, seeing as it provides an essential service, especially to those who aren't clear on what things they should hate. In its place, we should outlaw envy. Envy crimes should carry an exorbitant sentence. Capital punishment for envy-driven libel, for example. And not just any execution; I'm talking bring back drawing and quartering, live on CNN.

You've probably heard about the teenager who ran amok at the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

I heard on the news last night that one of the first victims was HIV-positive; so, they're frantically trying to find the later victims, because the guy used the same knife on all of them. That just sucks. I imagine that he'll get a 2nd-degree murder charge every person who gets HIV from the attacks, but I'm not really sure how that works over here.

Man, I've seen some bad desks in my time. At the last American company I worked for, the boss had a desk stacked so high with old computer magazines, catalogs, software manuals (remember those?) and hardware service guides that you couldn't tell if he was there or not. You had to walk up to the pile, peek around it slowly, and say "hello? anybody there?" like in some 80s horror movie.

But this is bad. Makes me feel better about the random assortment of wireless mice and NiCd batteries that litter my desk.

In order to get my permanent visa to stay in Germany, I have to send my landlord the following form.

Owner's Confirmation of Sufficient Living Space for Foreign Renters/Subletters

Family Name, Name

House number and Floor of Apartment

To whom it may concern,

before a visa can be issued, the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigners' Office) must approve your renter's living arrangements.


Requirements for the quality of construction for the apartment are described in Article 3, Section 2 of the Wohnungaufsichtsgesetzes of July 24, 1974.

Therefore, we require that you answer the following questions.

Please assist your renter by accurately filling out the form. This will accelerate the processing of the renter's request for a residence visa. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Has a leasing agreement beens signed with the foreigner? (yes/no)
2. The monthly rental fee, including housing costs, is €_
3. Is the foreigner's apartment self-contained? (yes/no)
4. Are there multiple families in the apartment? (yes/no) If yes, how many? _
5. How many and what type(s) of rooms are there in the foreigner's apartment? _
6. How man square meters are there in the apartment?
7. How many people live in the apartment?
⁃ Children under 6 Children over 6 Adults _
8. I have been informed that members of the foreigner's family, consisting of adults and children, will be moving into the apartment and have agreed to this.


Should the Foreigner's Office doubt the veracity of these statements, it reserves the right to visit and examine the premises.


Name of Foreigner


Address, Telephone
_

Of course, I'm sure it's all for my own protection. But I'm wondering how many landlords just say screw it, it's not worth having the government come in and make sure little mister Ausländer is getting enough fresh air and sunlight.

Here's a scan of the scary, rakishly yellow document.

Skippystalin is officially on suicide watch: Paris is abstaining from sex for a whole year! As the last person on Earth who hasn't boned her yet, I have to say it's a good idea. Let it cool down a bit, baby.

Where did these people get the idea we give a flying faloopus, anyway?

I'll be damned; Boxcar Willie, the World's Favorite Hobo, is on Bavarian TV right now. And, get this: he's singing "The Lord made a hobo outta me." Never heard the song, but it started off with his trademark train whistle schtick that he does. Or did. I think he'd dead now. Poor Boxcar Willie: First the Lord made him a hobo, then he made him a sad, bitter old man on late night commercials on WTCG, channel 17, pre-Superstation/TBS days, hawking used-up old railroad songs to unappreciative hobo-groupies.

You actually get a lot of the old Urban General late-night infomercial stars over here. Roger Whitaker, for example, is very big in Europe. I only ever knew him from those commercials where they used the infamous "Elvis and the Beatles combined!" loophole to say how many records he'd sold. But over here, he actually gets some TV-time on the variety shows. Or maybe he's dead too, now, and it's all just re-runs.

And now, at 12:27AM, the Oak Ridge Boys are on stage. Bunch of mincing Nancies, these guys. Funny I didn't notice that back in the 70s. One of them has got on Jordache jeans, for the love o' Jesus. And they're tucked into his spiffy little light-brown 'cowboy' boots. And, I might add, a bright red bandana around his neck, with a brooch, I swear to God. That would be the one in the mauve blazer.

As a followup, they have what has to be the gayest cowboy act I've ever seen. There's a gym-queen Indian running half-naked around the stage, being chased by a bunch of leather-chap-wearing cowboys. With whips.

Late-night TV in Germany: It's not just for cheese documentaries anymore.

A little trip through recent history with Sam.

We watched the game in a local biergarten last night. It was beautiful out, and the German flag was waving everywhere, and the German team played like champs. Until the second overtime, that is. In the last two minutes of the game, Italy put two into the net, running away with a 2-0 win.

I hate the Italian team. They're a bunch of crybabies. Against the Americans, one of the Italian players threw a vicious elbow into McBride's face that actually split his cheek open. Nevertheless, they earned the win last night. The two late goals were pretty spectacular.

On July 9, Italy will be playing against the winners of tonight's match between Portugal and France in the finals. With Germany out of the running, maybe there will even be seats somewhere so we can sit down and watch it. After that, I can finally go back to hating soccer.

Rob's services will be held today, Thursday, in Savannah; we figured we'd post a bit of incriminating evidence from last year's Wreckyll in Jeckyll, the one time we were fortunate enough to meet the man in person.

The winners of the Jeckyll Island Poker Classic: Catfish, Barbie, and Acidman, with a panty on his head.

The Usual Suspects: Dax, Eric, Catfish, Rob, Guido (Zonker's Parole officer), Recondo32 (with bullwhip), Rube, and Fiona, the Straight White Missus.

Catfish, Rob, Zonker's Parole officer, and Recondo32.

Rob, with a panty. I believe this particular panty was the prize in the poker championship.

Ann's lovely piggies, painted specially for Rob. No, I'm not jealous. Much.

And now, a little tune, sadly abridged, with Jim, Eric, Denny, Rob, and Rob's brother, Dave

Third Rate Romance, click to play

We would love to be in Savannah, today, to pay our respects and say goodbye. But we can't, so we'll just have to send our best wishes to his family, friends, and to Rob, bon voyage. It was great to know you, and we'll miss you.

Ann and Rube.

P.S. there's some more stuff laying around that I'd like to put out there, so stay tuned!

The first light fell on the magnificent castle upon the plain of Limbo. Ovid lay groaning in his bed. My freakin' head! he moaned inwardly, and turned off his alarm. He lay still for a moment, staring at the stone ceiling, waiting for it to stop spinning. Gingerly, he swung his feet to the cold stone floor and rooted around for his slippers.

He scuffled out of his small, tidy bedroom, and stood on the second floor railing, which overlooked the castle's central living area, and surveyed the damage from the night before. Squinting his eyes against the hangover, he briefly considered turning around, closing the door, and going back to bed.

Empty bottles, upset ashtrays, and general desolation reigned. The record player in the corner turned, forgotten, the needle bouncing endlessly against the inner groove with a soft clunk clunk clunk. From every iron candelabra about the room hung an item of women's underclothing; black stockings here, a garter there, and a bright red thong covered with the wax of the burned-down candles. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Ovid frowned and stumbled his way down the stone staircase.

Turning left, he made his way past the mounds of peanut shells, tiptoed past the snoring carcass that had, until recently, been Horace, and entered the dark kitchen. Feeling the wall next to the doorway, he found the light switch and flicked it upward.

"Oh, man, cut the lights!" It was Plato, covering his eyes, sitting at the table over a bubbling glass of Alka-Seltzer. All about him lay playing cards and the butt-ends of cigars. At one end of the table was an enormous mound of ivory chips, piled high around an untouched glass of whiskey.

Ovid grimaced. "Dude, you look like Hell."

"Very funny," answered Plato. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm working on a new Dialogue. Unfortunately, the dude with the jackhammer in my head won't let me get a word in edgewise."

Ovid relented, and dimmed the lights. Clearing a path, he grabbed the nearest empty chair and sat at the table. "What the blazes happened last night?"

Plato looked up from his glass and said, "The New Guy."

Oh, yeah, thought Ovid, The New Guy. "Man, I thought Limbo was supposed to be for the virtuous heathens!"

Plato grunted indifferently, and downed the glass of fizzy grey liquid at a gulp. He belched wetly, and for a moment seemed unsure if it had been a one-way trip. Once he became convinced, he looked at Ovid and asked, "Have you seen Elektra?"

"No," he answered. "But I'm pretty sure she's around." He couldn't imagine he'd missed seeing her. Elektra was a six-foot redhead with long legs, round hips, and a voice like an angel. Ovid looked thoughtful. "Hey Plato," he started. "Did you notice that she'd painted her toenails red yesterday afternoon?"

Plato shrugged. "Yeah, I did," he said. "Wonder what that was all about."

A loud crash outside the kitchen door caused both men to grab their heads and moan. Homer came into the kitchen. "Dudes," he said, "I can hear y'all talking all the way out in the stable." He felt his way to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and pulled out an ice pack. He smashed it clumsily onto his head, knocking his sunglasses sideways. Stretching out his free hand, he found a chair and sat at the kitchen table with the other two poets. "I got a four-alarm hangover, doggs." The others grunted in agreement.

"Hey, Homer," Plato said, "did you see The New Guy?"

Homer straightened his sunglasses, and rubbed his chin. "Well, that depends," he said. "You mean when he was clearing y'all out at the poker table? Or do you mean maybe when he was leadin' a hootenanny with my lute at all hours of the morning? Or maybe when he, Elektra, and Scheherazade were out playing Twister by the hot tub?" He waved his hand frantically in front of his black shades. "'Cause no, I didn't see him."

Plato and Ovid grimaced sourly at each other. "Well, anyway," said Ovid, "I wonder where he got off to."

Homer furrowed his brow. "I think he and the girls went to meet somebody out in the woods."

"Why do you say that?", asked Plato.

"I heard 'em heading out a few hours ago, giggling like schoolgirls, and I asked 'em where they was headed. The New Guy just said, 'Roscoe's baaaaaaaack' like he was all happy about it. Must be a long-lost friend of his." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The girls sounded pretty excited about meeting him, too."

Ovid pondered that for moment. "Well, they'll show up eventually, probably with this 'Roscoe' character." They all nodded. "Oh, and Homer," he continued, "what were you doing in the stable, anyway?"

Homer broke into a wide grin.

Plato shuddered. "Oh dude!"

The smug hipsters at Boing Boing are all awonder! 'How to open a bottle of beer the Scandinavian way'; which would mean, with another bottle.

I figured these guys had been around a lot more than that. That's not the 'Scandinavian Way.' It's more like, the 'Places That Don't Have Screw-Capped Bottles Way'. They do it here in Germany, too. They also use cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, and just about anything else you can think of. Really, if they think opening a beer bottle with another bottle is spectacular, they'd probably have a seizure if they saw 1000 Arten ein Bier zu öffnen (1000 ways to open a beer). They're all the way up to 971, at last count.

The coolest bottle-opening method I've seen was Glacier Bay's (sadly discontinued) opener-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle trick. Each bottle had a real opener in the bottom of it; so, when your beer was out, you just grabbed the next bottle and zisch! pop open the replacement. I drank an awful lot of Glacier Bay during my Georgia Tech days.

In a sad coincidence, in college I was walking through a shopping mall, and one of those survey people came up to me. She offered me $5, checked my age, and asked if I'd do a taste-test of foreign beer brands. Being 21, poor, and a borderline alcoholic, I had no choice but to comply. I followed the nice young lady to a small room at the end of a hallway, and they had about 12 different kinds of beer, stacked up in crates all around the room. Among the Heinekens and Beck's, I noticed an unfamiliar brand, whose red and white label struck a familiar chord. It was called Arctic Bay, and the bottle looked exactly like the Glacier Bay bottle I'd known and loved, albeit not in the familiar blue and silver. I asked the lady if that was a new beer from the same brewery, perhaps. She then told me that Glacier Bay was no more, and had been bought out by a competitor. Shocked, I hefted this usurper beer Arctic Bay, and cautiously checked the bottom of the bottle. No opener. Just flat and smooth, like every other cheap Canadian beer on the market.

I tried 7 different bottles of beer, just a swig from each. The others, though imports, were not unknown to me, and tasted pretty much as I suspected. The Arctic Bay, though, was like ashes in my mouth. After they were opened and sampled, I asked the survey lady what would happen to all the beer. She said she'd throw it out. We kind of looked at each other, and then drank all the beer. Then we had another round of taste tests, but under a different name. I think we stopped after the fourth, by which time I was filling out the forms with names like 'Philip McCracken' and 'I.P. Frehley'.

So there you have the story about how one time, in college, I actually got paid $5 a round to get 'faced in a room full of imported beer with a bored young coed.

In honor of the Australians' imminent pummeling of Brazil, I present the Brazil World Cup Drinking-Game!
And here's how it works.

You must drink every time a Brazilian:

• scores a goal - 1 drink
• raises hands in disbelief - 1 drink
• gets in the ref's face - 1 drink
• falls to the ground and grabs his ankle - 1 drink; if replay shows he didn't get kicked by anybody - drink again
• must be carried off the field - 1 drink
• comes back into the game after getting carried off the field - drink again
• stays on the ground injured until play stops - 1 drink
• gets right back up and starts running - drink again

Now, grab a piss get get playin'!

The soccer-boys managed a 1-1 tie last night against the heavily-favored italians! It's almost as impressive as the 1980 Lake Placid victory against the Russian hockey team. And, like that victory against the Russians, the hunt for the gold isn't over. Back then, we still had to beat Czech for the gold. Now, we just have to beat Ghana, Ecuador, and about 30 other Banana Republics.

It was an impressive show, all in all. And big props go out to Brian "Bleeder" McBride, who took an elbow to the face at the 30 minute mark. There was blood everywhere, and maybe even a couple of stitches. But big Bri marched off the field under his own power, let the medic take care of him, and was playing in the "Match of Shame", as the Times called it (dicks), in less than 2 minutes.

Now, for those of you who've never watched World Cup Soccer, it's kind of like basketball. Played by a high school Drama Club. The absolute lack of honor in the game is astounding. Apparently, one of the rules is that if somebody so much as breathes on you, you flign yourself to the ground, grab your ankle, and scream like a girl. Then, the referee feels bad for you, blows the whistle, and gives you an Icee. I saw people trying to draw fouls last night that should be ashamed of themselves. The Italian captain, for instance, threw himself to the ground once in the second half, although nobody was anywhere near him. There was no foul. He held onto his leg like he'd been shot, screaming and rolling around on the ground. He actually carried on like this until they came out with a stretcher and hauled him to the sidelines. Where, of course, he stood up, stretched a bit, and was back on the field at the next whistle.

This is because soccer is the only sport I can think of, besides basketball, that doesn't have a built-in justice system. In ice hockey, if you stop play by faking an injury just to draw a penalty, your ass better stay down, because the next time you touch the puck you're going to find yourself sailing over the boards with a skate up your behind. In baseball, if you're showboating like the Italian last night who did a pantomime violin performance in the corner after scoring, you're going to get a Dickie Thon fastball* to the face next time you're up. In soccer there isn't even a delay of game foul for faking an injury.

These pussies will literally lay on the ground, howling, stop the game, let themselves be carried off the field on a stretcher, when the replay shows clearly they never got touched. Then, they come right back into the game like nothing happened. I broke my hip playing ice hockey in college once, and still skated off the ice under my own power. Then went to a social at my girlfriend's sorority. In a tux! The problem is, doing this crap in soccer brings you an advantage because the refs reward it. If the other team's doing it, you've got to do it, too.

The Americans, thank goodness, don't really play that game. In North America, you'd get booed off the field, no matter what sport you're playing.

You can read more on the pussiness of soccer here.

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.

* - Mike Torrez, 1984. Man, was that really 22 years ago?!

If you're not an experienced computer geek with scads of free time on your hands, just stay as far away from Linux as you can. All the openness in the world will not buy back the hours lost in frustration and doubt, as you attempt to do even the simplest of tasks.

I just spent the last two days fighting with Ubuntu's sound support. If you're not a Linux gearhead, you'll probably be surprised – nay astonished! – to learn that there's no freakin' way to easily configure your sound card. This process still involves firing up your favorite text editor, pummeling Google for How-To's, and duking it out with 70s-era computer philosophy over who bears the burden of peripheral configuration, the user or the operating system. Things haven't changed much since the Slackware 1.0 days.

Case in point: Running MythTV on a Ubuntu box. Result: "/dev/dsp cannot be initialized: device or resource in use, Sound Disabled". This is still an issue in 2006? Even using the ultrahypermodern advanced ALSA drivers? I guess ALSA's intended for use in single-user, single-tasking multimedia appliances such as iPods rather than Linux. Which is a shame, considering it's made specifically for Linux!

Fact is, the user should never have to worry about sound card locking. There are no data integrity issues with a user hearing more than one sound at a time; the human ear is made for that, so sound card-locking should be considered a bug. The OS should queue up the requests for the driver, which should then schedule them to be sent to the hardware in an orderly manner.

Under Ubuntu Linux today, renowned as the User-Friendly Linux, the default configuration doesn't enable sharing your sound card among applications. If you're using KDE with the ARTS server running, a common scenario, and you launch Quake 4 or MythTV or any other program that requires sound, it'll bomb out with a "device busy" error.

There are workarounds, of course. You can create a down-mixing pseudo-driver in your ~/.asoundrc, if you can stay awake through the 3500-word how-to. This worked for me, at least for a bit. Once I rebooted my computer, my USB webcam's microphone and mixer had remarkably taken over the Card #0 slot, my USB speakers were Card #1, and my onboard sound had become Card #2. This order changed with every boot, in seemingly random fashion, so it meant I had to manually reassign card numbers in the .asoundrc file. This is also necessary whenever a USB peripheral is plugged in or out.

In addition to its not working, there are some other issues to consider:

It's user-specific
you have to be root to make it system-wide in the /etc/asoundrc, and, since there's no configuration utilities to speak of, you'll be mucking around /etc with a text-editor, a limited knowledge of the subject matter, and an appetite for self-destruction.

It's fragile
You use card numbers instead of GUIDs. If you've got USB sound devices, like speakers or a USB webcam, there's no predictable way to know which card number which device will have. And, of course, they change when you plug a device in or disconnect it. And they're different every time you reboot, for whatever ungodly reason.

It's not automatic
The default configuration for ALSA is that you have a single sound card and mixer that never changes; in addition, it will never be accessed simultaneously by multiple processes. The how-to (linked above) says the following:

NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing.

LIES!

When the operating system detects a sound card, it should automatically configure it to a) work, b) be accessible through an easy-to-use interface, c) be optimally configured for output quality and compatibility, and d) be accessible by multiple programs. For the OS, this should be easy: Set up the values, activate the hardware, and write out state to a configuration file automatically. Ideally, it would also send out a system notification that hardware was added, and the user's environment could deal with the information as it deems fit.

Linux unfairly places this burden on the user. The OS currently does nothing except load the bare-metal driver for the device, and configure it in a way that makes it almost useless. The existing environments, like KDE and Gnome, offer absolutely no hardware configuration interfaces, and the CLI offers nothing more than a text-editor and 40 man pages and a pat on the behind for luck. In fact, KDE (and I assume Gnome) compound the problem by loading an outdated "sound server", ARTS, which provides a lackluster facility simulating concurrent sound-card access with terrible latency, and then only for programs specifically written for ARTS.

For the record, I have never had a problem with this under Mac OS X, BeOS, or any Windows since 95. In fact, the only weirdness I've had under OS X is with the Videolan client. Sticking to its Open Source roots of user hatred and bad interface design, it makes the user put in a sound card "number" to play sound through external USB speakers. No drop-downs, no sanity checks, and no hint as to which number belongs to which card. Pathetic.

- If you configure it to use the second sound device, for example, it will still attempt to use it even after it's been removed, and there no longer is a second device.

If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?

While it may be a brilliant observation, Brian, maybe it's best if not everyone knows you're reading Charles Nelson Reilly's Wikipedia page...

According to this article at the Australian ABC-Online news site, Iranian president Mahuloonmibasjaaja (sp?) Ahmadinejad (sp?) has been asked by the EU's unelected transnational parliament to kindly keep his hairy, raving face out of Europe, at least for the duration of the World Cup.

We call upon the 25 EU member states and FIFA to declare the Iranian president 'persona non grata ad personam' within EU territory, as long as his positions on martyrdom, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, and Iran's uranium enrichment activities remain unchanged,"

No word as yet whether Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore will be allowed in.

Via J.F. Beck

Howdy, folks!

For the next few weeks I'll be over at the glorious Sistaweb, guest-bloggin' while my better half finishes up her master's thesis. Drop by if you want to freshen up your German, or just to say hello!

Meh.

Al Gore, by the way, can bite my hairy taint.

UPDATE: There is ice falling out of the sky!

My grandfather was a moonshiner, and a gunrunner. It was a hobby which would cost him his freedom for a spell, fostered by the same circumstances which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. During the Great Depression, when Reconstruction had finally run its course and moved on to the Great Failed Government Program Retirement Home in the sky, the American South looked a lot like present-day Iraq. To think that my grandfather actually supported his family running ordnance to outlaws in Tennessee boggles my mind, honestly. That illicit weaponry provided a thriving marketplace in 1930s America is a testament to the overall uncertainty and political climate that must have scared the bejesus out of honest folk like myself.

This was pre-World War II Earth, a place where horrors like the Holocaust and international Communism were not only possible, but inevitable. Henry Ford, who many consider a great American, was writing essays on the dangers of International Jewry, and it seemed harmless, sensible even. That was changed by the Nazis.

The path of Nazism was first through envy, then hate. Envy gave Hitler and his Socialist party hold on Germany. The workers' envy of the rich, of the powerful, of the French even. He promised the everyday man that he could be a prince, in return for control of his thoughts. With that power, he transformed his hate into a real bureaucratic system, which begat the Holocaust.

With this argument, I believe I make a sound case the we should once again legalize hate speech. Now, I realize this isn't one of your better bumper stickers, "Legalize Hate Speech". "Visualize World Bitchiness" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, either. And Lord knows, we're never going to get anywhere until we have a bumper sticker, or at the very least a web badge, that will appeal to the "Free Mumia" crowd.

We should legalize hate speech, seeing as it provides an essential service, especially to those who aren't clear on what things they should hate. In its place, we should outlaw envy. Envy crimes should carry an exorbitant sentence. Capital punishment for envy-driven libel, for example. And not just any execution; I'm talking bring back drawing and quartering, live on CNN.

You've probably heard about the teenager who ran amok at the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

I heard on the news last night that one of the first victims was HIV-positive; so, they're frantically trying to find the later victims, because the guy used the same knife on all of them. That just sucks. I imagine that he'll get a 2nd-degree murder charge every person who gets HIV from the attacks, but I'm not really sure how that works over here.

Man, I've seen some bad desks in my time. At the last American company I worked for, the boss had a desk stacked so high with old computer magazines, catalogs, software manuals (remember those?) and hardware service guides that you couldn't tell if he was there or not. You had to walk up to the pile, peek around it slowly, and say "hello? anybody there?" like in some 80s horror movie.

But this is bad. Makes me feel better about the random assortment of wireless mice and NiCd batteries that litter my desk.

In order to get my permanent visa to stay in Germany, I have to send my landlord the following form.

Owner's Confirmation of Sufficient Living Space for Foreign Renters/Subletters

Family Name, Name

House number and Floor of Apartment

To whom it may concern,

before a visa can be issued, the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigners' Office) must approve your renter's living arrangements.


Requirements for the quality of construction for the apartment are described in Article 3, Section 2 of the Wohnungaufsichtsgesetzes of July 24, 1974.

Therefore, we require that you answer the following questions.

Please assist your renter by accurately filling out the form. This will accelerate the processing of the renter's request for a residence visa. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Has a leasing agreement beens signed with the foreigner? (yes/no)
2. The monthly rental fee, including housing costs, is €_
3. Is the foreigner's apartment self-contained? (yes/no)
4. Are there multiple families in the apartment? (yes/no) If yes, how many? _
5. How many and what type(s) of rooms are there in the foreigner's apartment? _
6. How man square meters are there in the apartment?
7. How many people live in the apartment?
⁃ Children under 6 Children over 6 Adults _
8. I have been informed that members of the foreigner's family, consisting of adults and children, will be moving into the apartment and have agreed to this.


Should the Foreigner's Office doubt the veracity of these statements, it reserves the right to visit and examine the premises.


Name of Foreigner


Address, Telephone
_

Of course, I'm sure it's all for my own protection. But I'm wondering how many landlords just say screw it, it's not worth having the government come in and make sure little mister Ausländer is getting enough fresh air and sunlight.

Here's a scan of the scary, rakishly yellow document.

Skippystalin is officially on suicide watch: Paris is abstaining from sex for a whole year! As the last person on Earth who hasn't boned her yet, I have to say it's a good idea. Let it cool down a bit, baby.

Where did these people get the idea we give a flying faloopus, anyway?

I'll be damned; Boxcar Willie, the World's Favorite Hobo, is on Bavarian TV right now. And, get this: he's singing "The Lord made a hobo outta me." Never heard the song, but it started off with his trademark train whistle schtick that he does. Or did. I think he'd dead now. Poor Boxcar Willie: First the Lord made him a hobo, then he made him a sad, bitter old man on late night commercials on WTCG, channel 17, pre-Superstation/TBS days, hawking used-up old railroad songs to unappreciative hobo-groupies.

You actually get a lot of the old Urban General late-night infomercial stars over here. Roger Whitaker, for example, is very big in Europe. I only ever knew him from those commercials where they used the infamous "Elvis and the Beatles combined!" loophole to say how many records he'd sold. But over here, he actually gets some TV-time on the variety shows. Or maybe he's dead too, now, and it's all just re-runs.

And now, at 12:27AM, the Oak Ridge Boys are on stage. Bunch of mincing Nancies, these guys. Funny I didn't notice that back in the 70s. One of them has got on Jordache jeans, for the love o' Jesus. And they're tucked into his spiffy little light-brown 'cowboy' boots. And, I might add, a bright red bandana around his neck, with a brooch, I swear to God. That would be the one in the mauve blazer.

As a followup, they have what has to be the gayest cowboy act I've ever seen. There's a gym-queen Indian running half-naked around the stage, being chased by a bunch of leather-chap-wearing cowboys. With whips.

Late-night TV in Germany: It's not just for cheese documentaries anymore.

A little trip through recent history with Sam.

We watched the game in a local biergarten last night. It was beautiful out, and the German flag was waving everywhere, and the German team played like champs. Until the second overtime, that is. In the last two minutes of the game, Italy put two into the net, running away with a 2-0 win.

I hate the Italian team. They're a bunch of crybabies. Against the Americans, one of the Italian players threw a vicious elbow into McBride's face that actually split his cheek open. Nevertheless, they earned the win last night. The two late goals were pretty spectacular.

On July 9, Italy will be playing against the winners of tonight's match between Portugal and France in the finals. With Germany out of the running, maybe there will even be seats somewhere so we can sit down and watch it. After that, I can finally go back to hating soccer.

Rob's services will be held today, Thursday, in Savannah; we figured we'd post a bit of incriminating evidence from last year's Wreckyll in Jeckyll, the one time we were fortunate enough to meet the man in person.

The winners of the Jeckyll Island Poker Classic: Catfish, Barbie, and Acidman, with a panty on his head.

The Usual Suspects: Dax, Eric, Catfish, Rob, Guido (Zonker's Parole officer), Recondo32 (with bullwhip), Rube, and Fiona, the Straight White Missus.

Catfish, Rob, Zonker's Parole officer, and Recondo32.

Rob, with a panty. I believe this particular panty was the prize in the poker championship.

Ann's lovely piggies, painted specially for Rob. No, I'm not jealous. Much.

And now, a little tune, sadly abridged, with Jim, Eric, Denny, Rob, and Rob's brother, Dave

Third Rate Romance, click to play

We would love to be in Savannah, today, to pay our respects and say goodbye. But we can't, so we'll just have to send our best wishes to his family, friends, and to Rob, bon voyage. It was great to know you, and we'll miss you.

Ann and Rube.

P.S. there's some more stuff laying around that I'd like to put out there, so stay tuned!

The first light fell on the magnificent castle upon the plain of Limbo. Ovid lay groaning in his bed. My freakin' head! he moaned inwardly, and turned off his alarm. He lay still for a moment, staring at the stone ceiling, waiting for it to stop spinning. Gingerly, he swung his feet to the cold stone floor and rooted around for his slippers.

He scuffled out of his small, tidy bedroom, and stood on the second floor railing, which overlooked the castle's central living area, and surveyed the damage from the night before. Squinting his eyes against the hangover, he briefly considered turning around, closing the door, and going back to bed.

Empty bottles, upset ashtrays, and general desolation reigned. The record player in the corner turned, forgotten, the needle bouncing endlessly against the inner groove with a soft clunk clunk clunk. From every iron candelabra about the room hung an item of women's underclothing; black stockings here, a garter there, and a bright red thong covered with the wax of the burned-down candles. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Ovid frowned and stumbled his way down the stone staircase.

Turning left, he made his way past the mounds of peanut shells, tiptoed past the snoring carcass that had, until recently, been Horace, and entered the dark kitchen. Feeling the wall next to the doorway, he found the light switch and flicked it upward.

"Oh, man, cut the lights!" It was Plato, covering his eyes, sitting at the table over a bubbling glass of Alka-Seltzer. All about him lay playing cards and the butt-ends of cigars. At one end of the table was an enormous mound of ivory chips, piled high around an untouched glass of whiskey.

Ovid grimaced. "Dude, you look like Hell."

"Very funny," answered Plato. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm working on a new Dialogue. Unfortunately, the dude with the jackhammer in my head won't let me get a word in edgewise."

Ovid relented, and dimmed the lights. Clearing a path, he grabbed the nearest empty chair and sat at the table. "What the blazes happened last night?"

Plato looked up from his glass and said, "The New Guy."

Oh, yeah, thought Ovid, The New Guy. "Man, I thought Limbo was supposed to be for the virtuous heathens!"

Plato grunted indifferently, and downed the glass of fizzy grey liquid at a gulp. He belched wetly, and for a moment seemed unsure if it had been a one-way trip. Once he became convinced, he looked at Ovid and asked, "Have you seen Elektra?"

"No," he answered. "But I'm pretty sure she's around." He couldn't imagine he'd missed seeing her. Elektra was a six-foot redhead with long legs, round hips, and a voice like an angel. Ovid looked thoughtful. "Hey Plato," he started. "Did you notice that she'd painted her toenails red yesterday afternoon?"

Plato shrugged. "Yeah, I did," he said. "Wonder what that was all about."

A loud crash outside the kitchen door caused both men to grab their heads and moan. Homer came into the kitchen. "Dudes," he said, "I can hear y'all talking all the way out in the stable." He felt his way to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and pulled out an ice pack. He smashed it clumsily onto his head, knocking his sunglasses sideways. Stretching out his free hand, he found a chair and sat at the kitchen table with the other two poets. "I got a four-alarm hangover, doggs." The others grunted in agreement.

"Hey, Homer," Plato said, "did you see The New Guy?"

Homer straightened his sunglasses, and rubbed his chin. "Well, that depends," he said. "You mean when he was clearing y'all out at the poker table? Or do you mean maybe when he was leadin' a hootenanny with my lute at all hours of the morning? Or maybe when he, Elektra, and Scheherazade were out playing Twister by the hot tub?" He waved his hand frantically in front of his black shades. "'Cause no, I didn't see him."

Plato and Ovid grimaced sourly at each other. "Well, anyway," said Ovid, "I wonder where he got off to."

Homer furrowed his brow. "I think he and the girls went to meet somebody out in the woods."

"Why do you say that?", asked Plato.

"I heard 'em heading out a few hours ago, giggling like schoolgirls, and I asked 'em where they was headed. The New Guy just said, 'Roscoe's baaaaaaaack' like he was all happy about it. Must be a long-lost friend of his." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The girls sounded pretty excited about meeting him, too."

Ovid pondered that for moment. "Well, they'll show up eventually, probably with this 'Roscoe' character." They all nodded. "Oh, and Homer," he continued, "what were you doing in the stable, anyway?"

Homer broke into a wide grin.

Plato shuddered. "Oh dude!"

The smug hipsters at Boing Boing are all awonder! 'How to open a bottle of beer the Scandinavian way'; which would mean, with another bottle.

I figured these guys had been around a lot more than that. That's not the 'Scandinavian Way.' It's more like, the 'Places That Don't Have Screw-Capped Bottles Way'. They do it here in Germany, too. They also use cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, and just about anything else you can think of. Really, if they think opening a beer bottle with another bottle is spectacular, they'd probably have a seizure if they saw 1000 Arten ein Bier zu öffnen (1000 ways to open a beer). They're all the way up to 971, at last count.

The coolest bottle-opening method I've seen was Glacier Bay's (sadly discontinued) opener-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle trick. Each bottle had a real opener in the bottom of it; so, when your beer was out, you just grabbed the next bottle and zisch! pop open the replacement. I drank an awful lot of Glacier Bay during my Georgia Tech days.

In a sad coincidence, in college I was walking through a shopping mall, and one of those survey people came up to me. She offered me $5, checked my age, and asked if I'd do a taste-test of foreign beer brands. Being 21, poor, and a borderline alcoholic, I had no choice but to comply. I followed the nice young lady to a small room at the end of a hallway, and they had about 12 different kinds of beer, stacked up in crates all around the room. Among the Heinekens and Beck's, I noticed an unfamiliar brand, whose red and white label struck a familiar chord. It was called Arctic Bay, and the bottle looked exactly like the Glacier Bay bottle I'd known and loved, albeit not in the familiar blue and silver. I asked the lady if that was a new beer from the same brewery, perhaps. She then told me that Glacier Bay was no more, and had been bought out by a competitor. Shocked, I hefted this usurper beer Arctic Bay, and cautiously checked the bottom of the bottle. No opener. Just flat and smooth, like every other cheap Canadian beer on the market.

I tried 7 different bottles of beer, just a swig from each. The others, though imports, were not unknown to me, and tasted pretty much as I suspected. The Arctic Bay, though, was like ashes in my mouth. After they were opened and sampled, I asked the survey lady what would happen to all the beer. She said she'd throw it out. We kind of looked at each other, and then drank all the beer. Then we had another round of taste tests, but under a different name. I think we stopped after the fourth, by which time I was filling out the forms with names like 'Philip McCracken' and 'I.P. Frehley'.

So there you have the story about how one time, in college, I actually got paid $5 a round to get 'faced in a room full of imported beer with a bored young coed.

In honor of the Australians' imminent pummeling of Brazil, I present the Brazil World Cup Drinking-Game!
And here's how it works.

You must drink every time a Brazilian:

• scores a goal - 1 drink
• raises hands in disbelief - 1 drink
• gets in the ref's face - 1 drink
• falls to the ground and grabs his ankle - 1 drink; if replay shows he didn't get kicked by anybody - drink again
• must be carried off the field - 1 drink
• comes back into the game after getting carried off the field - drink again
• stays on the ground injured until play stops - 1 drink
• gets right back up and starts running - drink again

Now, grab a piss get get playin'!

The soccer-boys managed a 1-1 tie last night against the heavily-favored italians! It's almost as impressive as the 1980 Lake Placid victory against the Russian hockey team. And, like that victory against the Russians, the hunt for the gold isn't over. Back then, we still had to beat Czech for the gold. Now, we just have to beat Ghana, Ecuador, and about 30 other Banana Republics.

It was an impressive show, all in all. And big props go out to Brian "Bleeder" McBride, who took an elbow to the face at the 30 minute mark. There was blood everywhere, and maybe even a couple of stitches. But big Bri marched off the field under his own power, let the medic take care of him, and was playing in the "Match of Shame", as the Times called it (dicks), in less than 2 minutes.

Now, for those of you who've never watched World Cup Soccer, it's kind of like basketball. Played by a high school Drama Club. The absolute lack of honor in the game is astounding. Apparently, one of the rules is that if somebody so much as breathes on you, you flign yourself to the ground, grab your ankle, and scream like a girl. Then, the referee feels bad for you, blows the whistle, and gives you an Icee. I saw people trying to draw fouls last night that should be ashamed of themselves. The Italian captain, for instance, threw himself to the ground once in the second half, although nobody was anywhere near him. There was no foul. He held onto his leg like he'd been shot, screaming and rolling around on the ground. He actually carried on like this until they came out with a stretcher and hauled him to the sidelines. Where, of course, he stood up, stretched a bit, and was back on the field at the next whistle.

This is because soccer is the only sport I can think of, besides basketball, that doesn't have a built-in justice system. In ice hockey, if you stop play by faking an injury just to draw a penalty, your ass better stay down, because the next time you touch the puck you're going to find yourself sailing over the boards with a skate up your behind. In baseball, if you're showboating like the Italian last night who did a pantomime violin performance in the corner after scoring, you're going to get a Dickie Thon fastball* to the face next time you're up. In soccer there isn't even a delay of game foul for faking an injury.

These pussies will literally lay on the ground, howling, stop the game, let themselves be carried off the field on a stretcher, when the replay shows clearly they never got touched. Then, they come right back into the game like nothing happened. I broke my hip playing ice hockey in college once, and still skated off the ice under my own power. Then went to a social at my girlfriend's sorority. In a tux! The problem is, doing this crap in soccer brings you an advantage because the refs reward it. If the other team's doing it, you've got to do it, too.

The Americans, thank goodness, don't really play that game. In North America, you'd get booed off the field, no matter what sport you're playing.

You can read more on the pussiness of soccer here.

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.

* - Mike Torrez, 1984. Man, was that really 22 years ago?!

If you're not an experienced computer geek with scads of free time on your hands, just stay as far away from Linux as you can. All the openness in the world will not buy back the hours lost in frustration and doubt, as you attempt to do even the simplest of tasks.

I just spent the last two days fighting with Ubuntu's sound support. If you're not a Linux gearhead, you'll probably be surprised – nay astonished! – to learn that there's no freakin' way to easily configure your sound card. This process still involves firing up your favorite text editor, pummeling Google for How-To's, and duking it out with 70s-era computer philosophy over who bears the burden of peripheral configuration, the user or the operating system. Things haven't changed much since the Slackware 1.0 days.

Case in point: Running MythTV on a Ubuntu box. Result: "/dev/dsp cannot be initialized: device or resource in use, Sound Disabled". This is still an issue in 2006? Even using the ultrahypermodern advanced ALSA drivers? I guess ALSA's intended for use in single-user, single-tasking multimedia appliances such as iPods rather than Linux. Which is a shame, considering it's made specifically for Linux!

Fact is, the user should never have to worry about sound card locking. There are no data integrity issues with a user hearing more than one sound at a time; the human ear is made for that, so sound card-locking should be considered a bug. The OS should queue up the requests for the driver, which should then schedule them to be sent to the hardware in an orderly manner.

Under Ubuntu Linux today, renowned as the User-Friendly Linux, the default configuration doesn't enable sharing your sound card among applications. If you're using KDE with the ARTS server running, a common scenario, and you launch Quake 4 or MythTV or any other program that requires sound, it'll bomb out with a "device busy" error.

There are workarounds, of course. You can create a down-mixing pseudo-driver in your ~/.asoundrc, if you can stay awake through the 3500-word how-to. This worked for me, at least for a bit. Once I rebooted my computer, my USB webcam's microphone and mixer had remarkably taken over the Card #0 slot, my USB speakers were Card #1, and my onboard sound had become Card #2. This order changed with every boot, in seemingly random fashion, so it meant I had to manually reassign card numbers in the .asoundrc file. This is also necessary whenever a USB peripheral is plugged in or out.

In addition to its not working, there are some other issues to consider:

It's user-specific
you have to be root to make it system-wide in the /etc/asoundrc, and, since there's no configuration utilities to speak of, you'll be mucking around /etc with a text-editor, a limited knowledge of the subject matter, and an appetite for self-destruction.

It's fragile
You use card numbers instead of GUIDs. If you've got USB sound devices, like speakers or a USB webcam, there's no predictable way to know which card number which device will have. And, of course, they change when you plug a device in or disconnect it. And they're different every time you reboot, for whatever ungodly reason.

It's not automatic
The default configuration for ALSA is that you have a single sound card and mixer that never changes; in addition, it will never be accessed simultaneously by multiple processes. The how-to (linked above) says the following:

NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing.

LIES!

When the operating system detects a sound card, it should automatically configure it to a) work, b) be accessible through an easy-to-use interface, c) be optimally configured for output quality and compatibility, and d) be accessible by multiple programs. For the OS, this should be easy: Set up the values, activate the hardware, and write out state to a configuration file automatically. Ideally, it would also send out a system notification that hardware was added, and the user's environment could deal with the information as it deems fit.

Linux unfairly places this burden on the user. The OS currently does nothing except load the bare-metal driver for the device, and configure it in a way that makes it almost useless. The existing environments, like KDE and Gnome, offer absolutely no hardware configuration interfaces, and the CLI offers nothing more than a text-editor and 40 man pages and a pat on the behind for luck. In fact, KDE (and I assume Gnome) compound the problem by loading an outdated "sound server", ARTS, which provides a lackluster facility simulating concurrent sound-card access with terrible latency, and then only for programs specifically written for ARTS.

For the record, I have never had a problem with this under Mac OS X, BeOS, or any Windows since 95. In fact, the only weirdness I've had under OS X is with the Videolan client. Sticking to its Open Source roots of user hatred and bad interface design, it makes the user put in a sound card "number" to play sound through external USB speakers. No drop-downs, no sanity checks, and no hint as to which number belongs to which card. Pathetic.

- If you configure it to use the second sound device, for example, it will still attempt to use it even after it's been removed, and there no longer is a second device.

If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?

While it may be a brilliant observation, Brian, maybe it's best if not everyone knows you're reading Charles Nelson Reilly's Wikipedia page...

According to this article at the Australian ABC-Online news site, Iranian president Mahuloonmibasjaaja (sp?) Ahmadinejad (sp?) has been asked by the EU's unelected transnational parliament to kindly keep his hairy, raving face out of Europe, at least for the duration of the World Cup.

We call upon the 25 EU member states and FIFA to declare the Iranian president 'persona non grata ad personam' within EU territory, as long as his positions on martyrdom, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, and Iran's uranium enrichment activities remain unchanged,"

No word as yet whether Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore will be allowed in.

Via J.F. Beck

Howdy, folks!

For the next few weeks I'll be over at the glorious Sistaweb, guest-bloggin' while my better half finishes up her master's thesis. Drop by if you want to freshen up your German, or just to say hello!

Meh.

Al Gore, by the way, can bite my hairy taint.

UPDATE: There is ice falling out of the sky!

My grandfather was a moonshiner, and a gunrunner. It was a hobby which would cost him his freedom for a spell, fostered by the same circumstances which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. During the Great Depression, when Reconstruction had finally run its course and moved on to the Great Failed Government Program Retirement Home in the sky, the American South looked a lot like present-day Iraq. To think that my grandfather actually supported his family running ordnance to outlaws in Tennessee boggles my mind, honestly. That illicit weaponry provided a thriving marketplace in 1930s America is a testament to the overall uncertainty and political climate that must have scared the bejesus out of honest folk like myself.

This was pre-World War II Earth, a place where horrors like the Holocaust and international Communism were not only possible, but inevitable. Henry Ford, who many consider a great American, was writing essays on the dangers of International Jewry, and it seemed harmless, sensible even. That was changed by the Nazis.

The path of Nazism was first through envy, then hate. Envy gave Hitler and his Socialist party hold on Germany. The workers' envy of the rich, of the powerful, of the French even. He promised the everyday man that he could be a prince, in return for control of his thoughts. With that power, he transformed his hate into a real bureaucratic system, which begat the Holocaust.

With this argument, I believe I make a sound case the we should once again legalize hate speech. Now, I realize this isn't one of your better bumper stickers, "Legalize Hate Speech". "Visualize World Bitchiness" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, either. And Lord knows, we're never going to get anywhere until we have a bumper sticker, or at the very least a web badge, that will appeal to the "Free Mumia" crowd.

We should legalize hate speech, seeing as it provides an essential service, especially to those who aren't clear on what things they should hate. In its place, we should outlaw envy. Envy crimes should carry an exorbitant sentence. Capital punishment for envy-driven libel, for example. And not just any execution; I'm talking bring back drawing and quartering, live on CNN.

You've probably heard about the teenager who ran amok at the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

I heard on the news last night that one of the first victims was HIV-positive; so, they're frantically trying to find the later victims, because the guy used the same knife on all of them. That just sucks. I imagine that he'll get a 2nd-degree murder charge every person who gets HIV from the attacks, but I'm not really sure how that works over here.

Man, I've seen some bad desks in my time. At the last American company I worked for, the boss had a desk stacked so high with old computer magazines, catalogs, software manuals (remember those?) and hardware service guides that you couldn't tell if he was there or not. You had to walk up to the pile, peek around it slowly, and say "hello? anybody there?" like in some 80s horror movie.

But this is bad. Makes me feel better about the random assortment of wireless mice and NiCd batteries that litter my desk.

In order to get my permanent visa to stay in Germany, I have to send my landlord the following form.

Owner's Confirmation of Sufficient Living Space for Foreign Renters/Subletters

Family Name, Name

House number and Floor of Apartment

To whom it may concern,

before a visa can be issued, the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigners' Office) must approve your renter's living arrangements.


Requirements for the quality of construction for the apartment are described in Article 3, Section 2 of the Wohnungaufsichtsgesetzes of July 24, 1974.

Therefore, we require that you answer the following questions.

Please assist your renter by accurately filling out the form. This will accelerate the processing of the renter's request for a residence visa. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Has a leasing agreement beens signed with the foreigner? (yes/no)
2. The monthly rental fee, including housing costs, is €_
3. Is the foreigner's apartment self-contained? (yes/no)
4. Are there multiple families in the apartment? (yes/no) If yes, how many? _
5. How many and what type(s) of rooms are there in the foreigner's apartment? _
6. How man square meters are there in the apartment?
7. How many people live in the apartment?
⁃ Children under 6 Children over 6 Adults _
8. I have been informed that members of the foreigner's family, consisting of adults and children, will be moving into the apartment and have agreed to this.


Should the Foreigner's Office doubt the veracity of these statements, it reserves the right to visit and examine the premises.


Name of Foreigner


Address, Telephone
_

Of course, I'm sure it's all for my own protection. But I'm wondering how many landlords just say screw it, it's not worth having the government come in and make sure little mister Ausländer is getting enough fresh air and sunlight.

Here's a scan of the scary, rakishly yellow document.

Skippystalin is officially on suicide watch: Paris is abstaining from sex for a whole year! As the last person on Earth who hasn't boned her yet, I have to say it's a good idea. Let it cool down a bit, baby.

Where did these people get the idea we give a flying faloopus, anyway?

I'll be damned; Boxcar Willie, the World's Favorite Hobo, is on Bavarian TV right now. And, get this: he's singing "The Lord made a hobo outta me." Never heard the song, but it started off with his trademark train whistle schtick that he does. Or did. I think he'd dead now. Poor Boxcar Willie: First the Lord made him a hobo, then he made him a sad, bitter old man on late night commercials on WTCG, channel 17, pre-Superstation/TBS days, hawking used-up old railroad songs to unappreciative hobo-groupies.

You actually get a lot of the old Urban General late-night infomercial stars over here. Roger Whitaker, for example, is very big in Europe. I only ever knew him from those commercials where they used the infamous "Elvis and the Beatles combined!" loophole to say how many records he'd sold. But over here, he actually gets some TV-time on the variety shows. Or maybe he's dead too, now, and it's all just re-runs.

And now, at 12:27AM, the Oak Ridge Boys are on stage. Bunch of mincing Nancies, these guys. Funny I didn't notice that back in the 70s. One of them has got on Jordache jeans, for the love o' Jesus. And they're tucked into his spiffy little light-brown 'cowboy' boots. And, I might add, a bright red bandana around his neck, with a brooch, I swear to God. That would be the one in the mauve blazer.

As a followup, they have what has to be the gayest cowboy act I've ever seen. There's a gym-queen Indian running half-naked around the stage, being chased by a bunch of leather-chap-wearing cowboys. With whips.

Late-night TV in Germany: It's not just for cheese documentaries anymore.

A little trip through recent history with Sam.

We watched the game in a local biergarten last night. It was beautiful out, and the German flag was waving everywhere, and the German team played like champs. Until the second overtime, that is. In the last two minutes of the game, Italy put two into the net, running away with a 2-0 win.

I hate the Italian team. They're a bunch of crybabies. Against the Americans, one of the Italian players threw a vicious elbow into McBride's face that actually split his cheek open. Nevertheless, they earned the win last night. The two late goals were pretty spectacular.

On July 9, Italy will be playing against the winners of tonight's match between Portugal and France in the finals. With Germany out of the running, maybe there will even be seats somewhere so we can sit down and watch it. After that, I can finally go back to hating soccer.

Rob's services will be held today, Thursday, in Savannah; we figured we'd post a bit of incriminating evidence from last year's Wreckyll in Jeckyll, the one time we were fortunate enough to meet the man in person.

The winners of the Jeckyll Island Poker Classic: Catfish, Barbie, and Acidman, with a panty on his head.

The Usual Suspects: Dax, Eric, Catfish, Rob, Guido (Zonker's Parole officer), Recondo32 (with bullwhip), Rube, and Fiona, the Straight White Missus.

Catfish, Rob, Zonker's Parole officer, and Recondo32.

Rob, with a panty. I believe this particular panty was the prize in the poker championship.

Ann's lovely piggies, painted specially for Rob. No, I'm not jealous. Much.

And now, a little tune, sadly abridged, with Jim, Eric, Denny, Rob, and Rob's brother, Dave

Third Rate Romance, click to play

We would love to be in Savannah, today, to pay our respects and say goodbye. But we can't, so we'll just have to send our best wishes to his family, friends, and to Rob, bon voyage. It was great to know you, and we'll miss you.

Ann and Rube.

P.S. there's some more stuff laying around that I'd like to put out there, so stay tuned!

The first light fell on the magnificent castle upon the plain of Limbo. Ovid lay groaning in his bed. My freakin' head! he moaned inwardly, and turned off his alarm. He lay still for a moment, staring at the stone ceiling, waiting for it to stop spinning. Gingerly, he swung his feet to the cold stone floor and rooted around for his slippers.

He scuffled out of his small, tidy bedroom, and stood on the second floor railing, which overlooked the castle's central living area, and surveyed the damage from the night before. Squinting his eyes against the hangover, he briefly considered turning around, closing the door, and going back to bed.

Empty bottles, upset ashtrays, and general desolation reigned. The record player in the corner turned, forgotten, the needle bouncing endlessly against the inner groove with a soft clunk clunk clunk. From every iron candelabra about the room hung an item of women's underclothing; black stockings here, a garter there, and a bright red thong covered with the wax of the burned-down candles. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Ovid frowned and stumbled his way down the stone staircase.

Turning left, he made his way past the mounds of peanut shells, tiptoed past the snoring carcass that had, until recently, been Horace, and entered the dark kitchen. Feeling the wall next to the doorway, he found the light switch and flicked it upward.

"Oh, man, cut the lights!" It was Plato, covering his eyes, sitting at the table over a bubbling glass of Alka-Seltzer. All about him lay playing cards and the butt-ends of cigars. At one end of the table was an enormous mound of ivory chips, piled high around an untouched glass of whiskey.

Ovid grimaced. "Dude, you look like Hell."

"Very funny," answered Plato. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm working on a new Dialogue. Unfortunately, the dude with the jackhammer in my head won't let me get a word in edgewise."

Ovid relented, and dimmed the lights. Clearing a path, he grabbed the nearest empty chair and sat at the table. "What the blazes happened last night?"

Plato looked up from his glass and said, "The New Guy."

Oh, yeah, thought Ovid, The New Guy. "Man, I thought Limbo was supposed to be for the virtuous heathens!"

Plato grunted indifferently, and downed the glass of fizzy grey liquid at a gulp. He belched wetly, and for a moment seemed unsure if it had been a one-way trip. Once he became convinced, he looked at Ovid and asked, "Have you seen Elektra?"

"No," he answered. "But I'm pretty sure she's around." He couldn't imagine he'd missed seeing her. Elektra was a six-foot redhead with long legs, round hips, and a voice like an angel. Ovid looked thoughtful. "Hey Plato," he started. "Did you notice that she'd painted her toenails red yesterday afternoon?"

Plato shrugged. "Yeah, I did," he said. "Wonder what that was all about."

A loud crash outside the kitchen door caused both men to grab their heads and moan. Homer came into the kitchen. "Dudes," he said, "I can hear y'all talking all the way out in the stable." He felt his way to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and pulled out an ice pack. He smashed it clumsily onto his head, knocking his sunglasses sideways. Stretching out his free hand, he found a chair and sat at the kitchen table with the other two poets. "I got a four-alarm hangover, doggs." The others grunted in agreement.

"Hey, Homer," Plato said, "did you see The New Guy?"

Homer straightened his sunglasses, and rubbed his chin. "Well, that depends," he said. "You mean when he was clearing y'all out at the poker table? Or do you mean maybe when he was leadin' a hootenanny with my lute at all hours of the morning? Or maybe when he, Elektra, and Scheherazade were out playing Twister by the hot tub?" He waved his hand frantically in front of his black shades. "'Cause no, I didn't see him."

Plato and Ovid grimaced sourly at each other. "Well, anyway," said Ovid, "I wonder where he got off to."

Homer furrowed his brow. "I think he and the girls went to meet somebody out in the woods."

"Why do you say that?", asked Plato.

"I heard 'em heading out a few hours ago, giggling like schoolgirls, and I asked 'em where they was headed. The New Guy just said, 'Roscoe's baaaaaaaack' like he was all happy about it. Must be a long-lost friend of his." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The girls sounded pretty excited about meeting him, too."

Ovid pondered that for moment. "Well, they'll show up eventually, probably with this 'Roscoe' character." They all nodded. "Oh, and Homer," he continued, "what were you doing in the stable, anyway?"

Homer broke into a wide grin.

Plato shuddered. "Oh dude!"

The smug hipsters at Boing Boing are all awonder! 'How to open a bottle of beer the Scandinavian way'; which would mean, with another bottle.

I figured these guys had been around a lot more than that. That's not the 'Scandinavian Way.' It's more like, the 'Places That Don't Have Screw-Capped Bottles Way'. They do it here in Germany, too. They also use cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, and just about anything else you can think of. Really, if they think opening a beer bottle with another bottle is spectacular, they'd probably have a seizure if they saw 1000 Arten ein Bier zu öffnen (1000 ways to open a beer). They're all the way up to 971, at last count.

The coolest bottle-opening method I've seen was Glacier Bay's (sadly discontinued) opener-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle trick. Each bottle had a real opener in the bottom of it; so, when your beer was out, you just grabbed the next bottle and zisch! pop open the replacement. I drank an awful lot of Glacier Bay during my Georgia Tech days.

In a sad coincidence, in college I was walking through a shopping mall, and one of those survey people came up to me. She offered me $5, checked my age, and asked if I'd do a taste-test of foreign beer brands. Being 21, poor, and a borderline alcoholic, I had no choice but to comply. I followed the nice young lady to a small room at the end of a hallway, and they had about 12 different kinds of beer, stacked up in crates all around the room. Among the Heinekens and Beck's, I noticed an unfamiliar brand, whose red and white label struck a familiar chord. It was called Arctic Bay, and the bottle looked exactly like the Glacier Bay bottle I'd known and loved, albeit not in the familiar blue and silver. I asked the lady if that was a new beer from the same brewery, perhaps. She then told me that Glacier Bay was no more, and had been bought out by a competitor. Shocked, I hefted this usurper beer Arctic Bay, and cautiously checked the bottom of the bottle. No opener. Just flat and smooth, like every other cheap Canadian beer on the market.

I tried 7 different bottles of beer, just a swig from each. The others, though imports, were not unknown to me, and tasted pretty much as I suspected. The Arctic Bay, though, was like ashes in my mouth. After they were opened and sampled, I asked the survey lady what would happen to all the beer. She said she'd throw it out. We kind of looked at each other, and then drank all the beer. Then we had another round of taste tests, but under a different name. I think we stopped after the fourth, by which time I was filling out the forms with names like 'Philip McCracken' and 'I.P. Frehley'.

So there you have the story about how one time, in college, I actually got paid $5 a round to get 'faced in a room full of imported beer with a bored young coed.

In honor of the Australians' imminent pummeling of Brazil, I present the Brazil World Cup Drinking-Game!
And here's how it works.

You must drink every time a Brazilian:

• scores a goal - 1 drink
• raises hands in disbelief - 1 drink
• gets in the ref's face - 1 drink
• falls to the ground and grabs his ankle - 1 drink; if replay shows he didn't get kicked by anybody - drink again
• must be carried off the field - 1 drink
• comes back into the game after getting carried off the field - drink again
• stays on the ground injured until play stops - 1 drink
• gets right back up and starts running - drink again

Now, grab a piss get get playin'!

The soccer-boys managed a 1-1 tie last night against the heavily-favored italians! It's almost as impressive as the 1980 Lake Placid victory against the Russian hockey team. And, like that victory against the Russians, the hunt for the gold isn't over. Back then, we still had to beat Czech for the gold. Now, we just have to beat Ghana, Ecuador, and about 30 other Banana Republics.

It was an impressive show, all in all. And big props go out to Brian "Bleeder" McBride, who took an elbow to the face at the 30 minute mark. There was blood everywhere, and maybe even a couple of stitches. But big Bri marched off the field under his own power, let the medic take care of him, and was playing in the "Match of Shame", as the Times called it (dicks), in less than 2 minutes.

Now, for those of you who've never watched World Cup Soccer, it's kind of like basketball. Played by a high school Drama Club. The absolute lack of honor in the game is astounding. Apparently, one of the rules is that if somebody so much as breathes on you, you flign yourself to the ground, grab your ankle, and scream like a girl. Then, the referee feels bad for you, blows the whistle, and gives you an Icee. I saw people trying to draw fouls last night that should be ashamed of themselves. The Italian captain, for instance, threw himself to the ground once in the second half, although nobody was anywhere near him. There was no foul. He held onto his leg like he'd been shot, screaming and rolling around on the ground. He actually carried on like this until they came out with a stretcher and hauled him to the sidelines. Where, of course, he stood up, stretched a bit, and was back on the field at the next whistle.

This is because soccer is the only sport I can think of, besides basketball, that doesn't have a built-in justice system. In ice hockey, if you stop play by faking an injury just to draw a penalty, your ass better stay down, because the next time you touch the puck you're going to find yourself sailing over the boards with a skate up your behind. In baseball, if you're showboating like the Italian last night who did a pantomime violin performance in the corner after scoring, you're going to get a Dickie Thon fastball* to the face next time you're up. In soccer there isn't even a delay of game foul for faking an injury.

These pussies will literally lay on the ground, howling, stop the game, let themselves be carried off the field on a stretcher, when the replay shows clearly they never got touched. Then, they come right back into the game like nothing happened. I broke my hip playing ice hockey in college once, and still skated off the ice under my own power. Then went to a social at my girlfriend's sorority. In a tux! The problem is, doing this crap in soccer brings you an advantage because the refs reward it. If the other team's doing it, you've got to do it, too.

The Americans, thank goodness, don't really play that game. In North America, you'd get booed off the field, no matter what sport you're playing.

You can read more on the pussiness of soccer here.

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.

* - Mike Torrez, 1984. Man, was that really 22 years ago?!

If you're not an experienced computer geek with scads of free time on your hands, just stay as far away from Linux as you can. All the openness in the world will not buy back the hours lost in frustration and doubt, as you attempt to do even the simplest of tasks.

I just spent the last two days fighting with Ubuntu's sound support. If you're not a Linux gearhead, you'll probably be surprised – nay astonished! – to learn that there's no freakin' way to easily configure your sound card. This process still involves firing up your favorite text editor, pummeling Google for How-To's, and duking it out with 70s-era computer philosophy over who bears the burden of peripheral configuration, the user or the operating system. Things haven't changed much since the Slackware 1.0 days.

Case in point: Running MythTV on a Ubuntu box. Result: "/dev/dsp cannot be initialized: device or resource in use, Sound Disabled". This is still an issue in 2006? Even using the ultrahypermodern advanced ALSA drivers? I guess ALSA's intended for use in single-user, single-tasking multimedia appliances such as iPods rather than Linux. Which is a shame, considering it's made specifically for Linux!

Fact is, the user should never have to worry about sound card locking. There are no data integrity issues with a user hearing more than one sound at a time; the human ear is made for that, so sound card-locking should be considered a bug. The OS should queue up the requests for the driver, which should then schedule them to be sent to the hardware in an orderly manner.

Under Ubuntu Linux today, renowned as the User-Friendly Linux, the default configuration doesn't enable sharing your sound card among applications. If you're using KDE with the ARTS server running, a common scenario, and you launch Quake 4 or MythTV or any other program that requires sound, it'll bomb out with a "device busy" error.

There are workarounds, of course. You can create a down-mixing pseudo-driver in your ~/.asoundrc, if you can stay awake through the 3500-word how-to. This worked for me, at least for a bit. Once I rebooted my computer, my USB webcam's microphone and mixer had remarkably taken over the Card #0 slot, my USB speakers were Card #1, and my onboard sound had become Card #2. This order changed with every boot, in seemingly random fashion, so it meant I had to manually reassign card numbers in the .asoundrc file. This is also necessary whenever a USB peripheral is plugged in or out.

In addition to its not working, there are some other issues to consider:

It's user-specific
you have to be root to make it system-wide in the /etc/asoundrc, and, since there's no configuration utilities to speak of, you'll be mucking around /etc with a text-editor, a limited knowledge of the subject matter, and an appetite for self-destruction.

It's fragile
You use card numbers instead of GUIDs. If you've got USB sound devices, like speakers or a USB webcam, there's no predictable way to know which card number which device will have. And, of course, they change when you plug a device in or disconnect it. And they're different every time you reboot, for whatever ungodly reason.

It's not automatic
The default configuration for ALSA is that you have a single sound card and mixer that never changes; in addition, it will never be accessed simultaneously by multiple processes. The how-to (linked above) says the following:

NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing.

LIES!

When the operating system detects a sound card, it should automatically configure it to a) work, b) be accessible through an easy-to-use interface, c) be optimally configured for output quality and compatibility, and d) be accessible by multiple programs. For the OS, this should be easy: Set up the values, activate the hardware, and write out state to a configuration file automatically. Ideally, it would also send out a system notification that hardware was added, and the user's environment could deal with the information as it deems fit.

Linux unfairly places this burden on the user. The OS currently does nothing except load the bare-metal driver for the device, and configure it in a way that makes it almost useless. The existing environments, like KDE and Gnome, offer absolutely no hardware configuration interfaces, and the CLI offers nothing more than a text-editor and 40 man pages and a pat on the behind for luck. In fact, KDE (and I assume Gnome) compound the problem by loading an outdated "sound server", ARTS, which provides a lackluster facility simulating concurrent sound-card access with terrible latency, and then only for programs specifically written for ARTS.

For the record, I have never had a problem with this under Mac OS X, BeOS, or any Windows since 95. In fact, the only weirdness I've had under OS X is with the Videolan client. Sticking to its Open Source roots of user hatred and bad interface design, it makes the user put in a sound card "number" to play sound through external USB speakers. No drop-downs, no sanity checks, and no hint as to which number belongs to which card. Pathetic.

- If you configure it to use the second sound device, for example, it will still attempt to use it even after it's been removed, and there no longer is a second device.

If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?

While it may be a brilliant observation, Brian, maybe it's best if not everyone knows you're reading Charles Nelson Reilly's Wikipedia page...

According to this article at the Australian ABC-Online news site, Iranian president Mahuloonmibasjaaja (sp?) Ahmadinejad (sp?) has been asked by the EU's unelected transnational parliament to kindly keep his hairy, raving face out of Europe, at least for the duration of the World Cup.

We call upon the 25 EU member states and FIFA to declare the Iranian president 'persona non grata ad personam' within EU territory, as long as his positions on martyrdom, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, and Iran's uranium enrichment activities remain unchanged,"

No word as yet whether Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore will be allowed in.

Via J.F. Beck

Howdy, folks!

For the next few weeks I'll be over at the glorious Sistaweb, guest-bloggin' while my better half finishes up her master's thesis. Drop by if you want to freshen up your German, or just to say hello!

Meh.

Al Gore, by the way, can bite my hairy taint.

UPDATE: There is ice falling out of the sky!

My grandfather was a moonshiner, and a gunrunner. It was a hobby which would cost him his freedom for a spell, fostered by the same circumstances which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. During the Great Depression, when Reconstruction had finally run its course and moved on to the Great Failed Government Program Retirement Home in the sky, the American South looked a lot like present-day Iraq. To think that my grandfather actually supported his family running ordnance to outlaws in Tennessee boggles my mind, honestly. That illicit weaponry provided a thriving marketplace in 1930s America is a testament to the overall uncertainty and political climate that must have scared the bejesus out of honest folk like myself.

This was pre-World War II Earth, a place where horrors like the Holocaust and international Communism were not only possible, but inevitable. Henry Ford, who many consider a great American, was writing essays on the dangers of International Jewry, and it seemed harmless, sensible even. That was changed by the Nazis.

The path of Nazism was first through envy, then hate. Envy gave Hitler and his Socialist party hold on Germany. The workers' envy of the rich, of the powerful, of the French even. He promised the everyday man that he could be a prince, in return for control of his thoughts. With that power, he transformed his hate into a real bureaucratic system, which begat the Holocaust.

With this argument, I believe I make a sound case the we should once again legalize hate speech. Now, I realize this isn't one of your better bumper stickers, "Legalize Hate Speech". "Visualize World Bitchiness" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, either. And Lord knows, we're never going to get anywhere until we have a bumper sticker, or at the very least a web badge, that will appeal to the "Free Mumia" crowd.

We should legalize hate speech, seeing as it provides an essential service, especially to those who aren't clear on what things they should hate. In its place, we should outlaw envy. Envy crimes should carry an exorbitant sentence. Capital punishment for envy-driven libel, for example. And not just any execution; I'm talking bring back drawing and quartering, live on CNN.

You've probably heard about the teenager who ran amok at the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

I heard on the news last night that one of the first victims was HIV-positive; so, they're frantically trying to find the later victims, because the guy used the same knife on all of them. That just sucks. I imagine that he'll get a 2nd-degree murder charge every person who gets HIV from the attacks, but I'm not really sure how that works over here.

Man, I've seen some bad desks in my time. At the last American company I worked for, the boss had a desk stacked so high with old computer magazines, catalogs, software manuals (remember those?) and hardware service guides that you couldn't tell if he was there or not. You had to walk up to the pile, peek around it slowly, and say "hello? anybody there?" like in some 80s horror movie.

But this is bad. Makes me feel better about the random assortment of wireless mice and NiCd batteries that litter my desk.

In order to get my permanent visa to stay in Germany, I have to send my landlord the following form.

Owner's Confirmation of Sufficient Living Space for Foreign Renters/Subletters

Family Name, Name

House number and Floor of Apartment

To whom it may concern,

before a visa can be issued, the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigners' Office) must approve your renter's living arrangements.


Requirements for the quality of construction for the apartment are described in Article 3, Section 2 of the Wohnungaufsichtsgesetzes of July 24, 1974.

Therefore, we require that you answer the following questions.

Please assist your renter by accurately filling out the form. This will accelerate the processing of the renter's request for a residence visa. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Has a leasing agreement beens signed with the foreigner? (yes/no)
2. The monthly rental fee, including housing costs, is €_
3. Is the foreigner's apartment self-contained? (yes/no)
4. Are there multiple families in the apartment? (yes/no) If yes, how many? _
5. How many and what type(s) of rooms are there in the foreigner's apartment? _
6. How man square meters are there in the apartment?
7. How many people live in the apartment?
⁃ Children under 6 Children over 6 Adults _
8. I have been informed that members of the foreigner's family, consisting of adults and children, will be moving into the apartment and have agreed to this.


Should the Foreigner's Office doubt the veracity of these statements, it reserves the right to visit and examine the premises.


Name of Foreigner


Address, Telephone
_

Of course, I'm sure it's all for my own protection. But I'm wondering how many landlords just say screw it, it's not worth having the government come in and make sure little mister Ausländer is getting enough fresh air and sunlight.

Here's a scan of the scary, rakishly yellow document.

Skippystalin is officially on suicide watch: Paris is abstaining from sex for a whole year! As the last person on Earth who hasn't boned her yet, I have to say it's a good idea. Let it cool down a bit, baby.

Where did these people get the idea we give a flying faloopus, anyway?

I'll be damned; Boxcar Willie, the World's Favorite Hobo, is on Bavarian TV right now. And, get this: he's singing "The Lord made a hobo outta me." Never heard the song, but it started off with his trademark train whistle schtick that he does. Or did. I think he'd dead now. Poor Boxcar Willie: First the Lord made him a hobo, then he made him a sad, bitter old man on late night commercials on WTCG, channel 17, pre-Superstation/TBS days, hawking used-up old railroad songs to unappreciative hobo-groupies.

You actually get a lot of the old Urban General late-night infomercial stars over here. Roger Whitaker, for example, is very big in Europe. I only ever knew him from those commercials where they used the infamous "Elvis and the Beatles combined!" loophole to say how many records he'd sold. But over here, he actually gets some TV-time on the variety shows. Or maybe he's dead too, now, and it's all just re-runs.

And now, at 12:27AM, the Oak Ridge Boys are on stage. Bunch of mincing Nancies, these guys. Funny I didn't notice that back in the 70s. One of them has got on Jordache jeans, for the love o' Jesus. And they're tucked into his spiffy little light-brown 'cowboy' boots. And, I might add, a bright red bandana around his neck, with a brooch, I swear to God. That would be the one in the mauve blazer.

As a followup, they have what has to be the gayest cowboy act I've ever seen. There's a gym-queen Indian running half-naked around the stage, being chased by a bunch of leather-chap-wearing cowboys. With whips.

Late-night TV in Germany: It's not just for cheese documentaries anymore.

A little trip through recent history with Sam.

We watched the game in a local biergarten last night. It was beautiful out, and the German flag was waving everywhere, and the German team played like champs. Until the second overtime, that is. In the last two minutes of the game, Italy put two into the net, running away with a 2-0 win.

I hate the Italian team. They're a bunch of crybabies. Against the Americans, one of the Italian players threw a vicious elbow into McBride's face that actually split his cheek open. Nevertheless, they earned the win last night. The two late goals were pretty spectacular.

On July 9, Italy will be playing against the winners of tonight's match between Portugal and France in the finals. With Germany out of the running, maybe there will even be seats somewhere so we can sit down and watch it. After that, I can finally go back to hating soccer.

Rob's services will be held today, Thursday, in Savannah; we figured we'd post a bit of incriminating evidence from last year's Wreckyll in Jeckyll, the one time we were fortunate enough to meet the man in person.

The winners of the Jeckyll Island Poker Classic: Catfish, Barbie, and Acidman, with a panty on his head.

The Usual Suspects: Dax, Eric, Catfish, Rob, Guido (Zonker's Parole officer), Recondo32 (with bullwhip), Rube, and Fiona, the Straight White Missus.

Catfish, Rob, Zonker's Parole officer, and Recondo32.

Rob, with a panty. I believe this particular panty was the prize in the poker championship.

Ann's lovely piggies, painted specially for Rob. No, I'm not jealous. Much.

And now, a little tune, sadly abridged, with Jim, Eric, Denny, Rob, and Rob's brother, Dave

Third Rate Romance, click to play

We would love to be in Savannah, today, to pay our respects and say goodbye. But we can't, so we'll just have to send our best wishes to his family, friends, and to Rob, bon voyage. It was great to know you, and we'll miss you.

Ann and Rube.

P.S. there's some more stuff laying around that I'd like to put out there, so stay tuned!

The first light fell on the magnificent castle upon the plain of Limbo. Ovid lay groaning in his bed. My freakin' head! he moaned inwardly, and turned off his alarm. He lay still for a moment, staring at the stone ceiling, waiting for it to stop spinning. Gingerly, he swung his feet to the cold stone floor and rooted around for his slippers.

He scuffled out of his small, tidy bedroom, and stood on the second floor railing, which overlooked the castle's central living area, and surveyed the damage from the night before. Squinting his eyes against the hangover, he briefly considered turning around, closing the door, and going back to bed.

Empty bottles, upset ashtrays, and general desolation reigned. The record player in the corner turned, forgotten, the needle bouncing endlessly against the inner groove with a soft clunk clunk clunk. From every iron candelabra about the room hung an item of women's underclothing; black stockings here, a garter there, and a bright red thong covered with the wax of the burned-down candles. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Ovid frowned and stumbled his way down the stone staircase.

Turning left, he made his way past the mounds of peanut shells, tiptoed past the snoring carcass that had, until recently, been Horace, and entered the dark kitchen. Feeling the wall next to the doorway, he found the light switch and flicked it upward.

"Oh, man, cut the lights!" It was Plato, covering his eyes, sitting at the table over a bubbling glass of Alka-Seltzer. All about him lay playing cards and the butt-ends of cigars. At one end of the table was an enormous mound of ivory chips, piled high around an untouched glass of whiskey.

Ovid grimaced. "Dude, you look like Hell."

"Very funny," answered Plato. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm working on a new Dialogue. Unfortunately, the dude with the jackhammer in my head won't let me get a word in edgewise."

Ovid relented, and dimmed the lights. Clearing a path, he grabbed the nearest empty chair and sat at the table. "What the blazes happened last night?"

Plato looked up from his glass and said, "The New Guy."

Oh, yeah, thought Ovid, The New Guy. "Man, I thought Limbo was supposed to be for the virtuous heathens!"

Plato grunted indifferently, and downed the glass of fizzy grey liquid at a gulp. He belched wetly, and for a moment seemed unsure if it had been a one-way trip. Once he became convinced, he looked at Ovid and asked, "Have you seen Elektra?"

"No," he answered. "But I'm pretty sure she's around." He couldn't imagine he'd missed seeing her. Elektra was a six-foot redhead with long legs, round hips, and a voice like an angel. Ovid looked thoughtful. "Hey Plato," he started. "Did you notice that she'd painted her toenails red yesterday afternoon?"

Plato shrugged. "Yeah, I did," he said. "Wonder what that was all about."

A loud crash outside the kitchen door caused both men to grab their heads and moan. Homer came into the kitchen. "Dudes," he said, "I can hear y'all talking all the way out in the stable." He felt his way to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and pulled out an ice pack. He smashed it clumsily onto his head, knocking his sunglasses sideways. Stretching out his free hand, he found a chair and sat at the kitchen table with the other two poets. "I got a four-alarm hangover, doggs." The others grunted in agreement.

"Hey, Homer," Plato said, "did you see The New Guy?"

Homer straightened his sunglasses, and rubbed his chin. "Well, that depends," he said. "You mean when he was clearing y'all out at the poker table? Or do you mean maybe when he was leadin' a hootenanny with my lute at all hours of the morning? Or maybe when he, Elektra, and Scheherazade were out playing Twister by the hot tub?" He waved his hand frantically in front of his black shades. "'Cause no, I didn't see him."

Plato and Ovid grimaced sourly at each other. "Well, anyway," said Ovid, "I wonder where he got off to."

Homer furrowed his brow. "I think he and the girls went to meet somebody out in the woods."

"Why do you say that?", asked Plato.

"I heard 'em heading out a few hours ago, giggling like schoolgirls, and I asked 'em where they was headed. The New Guy just said, 'Roscoe's baaaaaaaack' like he was all happy about it. Must be a long-lost friend of his." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The girls sounded pretty excited about meeting him, too."

Ovid pondered that for moment. "Well, they'll show up eventually, probably with this 'Roscoe' character." They all nodded. "Oh, and Homer," he continued, "what were you doing in the stable, anyway?"

Homer broke into a wide grin.

Plato shuddered. "Oh dude!"

The smug hipsters at Boing Boing are all awonder! 'How to open a bottle of beer the Scandinavian way'; which would mean, with another bottle.

I figured these guys had been around a lot more than that. That's not the 'Scandinavian Way.' It's more like, the 'Places That Don't Have Screw-Capped Bottles Way'. They do it here in Germany, too. They also use cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, and just about anything else you can think of. Really, if they think opening a beer bottle with another bottle is spectacular, they'd probably have a seizure if they saw 1000 Arten ein Bier zu öffnen (1000 ways to open a beer). They're all the way up to 971, at last count.

The coolest bottle-opening method I've seen was Glacier Bay's (sadly discontinued) opener-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle trick. Each bottle had a real opener in the bottom of it; so, when your beer was out, you just grabbed the next bottle and zisch! pop open the replacement. I drank an awful lot of Glacier Bay during my Georgia Tech days.

In a sad coincidence, in college I was walking through a shopping mall, and one of those survey people came up to me. She offered me $5, checked my age, and asked if I'd do a taste-test of foreign beer brands. Being 21, poor, and a borderline alcoholic, I had no choice but to comply. I followed the nice young lady to a small room at the end of a hallway, and they had about 12 different kinds of beer, stacked up in crates all around the room. Among the Heinekens and Beck's, I noticed an unfamiliar brand, whose red and white label struck a familiar chord. It was called Arctic Bay, and the bottle looked exactly like the Glacier Bay bottle I'd known and loved, albeit not in the familiar blue and silver. I asked the lady if that was a new beer from the same brewery, perhaps. She then told me that Glacier Bay was no more, and had been bought out by a competitor. Shocked, I hefted this usurper beer Arctic Bay, and cautiously checked the bottom of the bottle. No opener. Just flat and smooth, like every other cheap Canadian beer on the market.

I tried 7 different bottles of beer, just a swig from each. The others, though imports, were not unknown to me, and tasted pretty much as I suspected. The Arctic Bay, though, was like ashes in my mouth. After they were opened and sampled, I asked the survey lady what would happen to all the beer. She said she'd throw it out. We kind of looked at each other, and then drank all the beer. Then we had another round of taste tests, but under a different name. I think we stopped after the fourth, by which time I was filling out the forms with names like 'Philip McCracken' and 'I.P. Frehley'.

So there you have the story about how one time, in college, I actually got paid $5 a round to get 'faced in a room full of imported beer with a bored young coed.

In honor of the Australians' imminent pummeling of Brazil, I present the Brazil World Cup Drinking-Game!
And here's how it works.

You must drink every time a Brazilian:

• scores a goal - 1 drink
• raises hands in disbelief - 1 drink
• gets in the ref's face - 1 drink
• falls to the ground and grabs his ankle - 1 drink; if replay shows he didn't get kicked by anybody - drink again
• must be carried off the field - 1 drink
• comes back into the game after getting carried off the field - drink again
• stays on the ground injured until play stops - 1 drink
• gets right back up and starts running - drink again

Now, grab a piss get get playin'!

The soccer-boys managed a 1-1 tie last night against the heavily-favored italians! It's almost as impressive as the 1980 Lake Placid victory against the Russian hockey team. And, like that victory against the Russians, the hunt for the gold isn't over. Back then, we still had to beat Czech for the gold. Now, we just have to beat Ghana, Ecuador, and about 30 other Banana Republics.

It was an impressive show, all in all. And big props go out to Brian "Bleeder" McBride, who took an elbow to the face at the 30 minute mark. There was blood everywhere, and maybe even a couple of stitches. But big Bri marched off the field under his own power, let the medic take care of him, and was playing in the "Match of Shame", as the Times called it (dicks), in less than 2 minutes.

Now, for those of you who've never watched World Cup Soccer, it's kind of like basketball. Played by a high school Drama Club. The absolute lack of honor in the game is astounding. Apparently, one of the rules is that if somebody so much as breathes on you, you flign yourself to the ground, grab your ankle, and scream like a girl. Then, the referee feels bad for you, blows the whistle, and gives you an Icee. I saw people trying to draw fouls last night that should be ashamed of themselves. The Italian captain, for instance, threw himself to the ground once in the second half, although nobody was anywhere near him. There was no foul. He held onto his leg like he'd been shot, screaming and rolling around on the ground. He actually carried on like this until they came out with a stretcher and hauled him to the sidelines. Where, of course, he stood up, stretched a bit, and was back on the field at the next whistle.

This is because soccer is the only sport I can think of, besides basketball, that doesn't have a built-in justice system. In ice hockey, if you stop play by faking an injury just to draw a penalty, your ass better stay down, because the next time you touch the puck you're going to find yourself sailing over the boards with a skate up your behind. In baseball, if you're showboating like the Italian last night who did a pantomime violin performance in the corner after scoring, you're going to get a Dickie Thon fastball* to the face next time you're up. In soccer there isn't even a delay of game foul for faking an injury.

These pussies will literally lay on the ground, howling, stop the game, let themselves be carried off the field on a stretcher, when the replay shows clearly they never got touched. Then, they come right back into the game like nothing happened. I broke my hip playing ice hockey in college once, and still skated off the ice under my own power. Then went to a social at my girlfriend's sorority. In a tux! The problem is, doing this crap in soccer brings you an advantage because the refs reward it. If the other team's doing it, you've got to do it, too.

The Americans, thank goodness, don't really play that game. In North America, you'd get booed off the field, no matter what sport you're playing.

You can read more on the pussiness of soccer here.

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.

* - Mike Torrez, 1984. Man, was that really 22 years ago?!

If you're not an experienced computer geek with scads of free time on your hands, just stay as far away from Linux as you can. All the openness in the world will not buy back the hours lost in frustration and doubt, as you attempt to do even the simplest of tasks.

I just spent the last two days fighting with Ubuntu's sound support. If you're not a Linux gearhead, you'll probably be surprised – nay astonished! – to learn that there's no freakin' way to easily configure your sound card. This process still involves firing up your favorite text editor, pummeling Google for How-To's, and duking it out with 70s-era computer philosophy over who bears the burden of peripheral configuration, the user or the operating system. Things haven't changed much since the Slackware 1.0 days.

Case in point: Running MythTV on a Ubuntu box. Result: "/dev/dsp cannot be initialized: device or resource in use, Sound Disabled". This is still an issue in 2006? Even using the ultrahypermodern advanced ALSA drivers? I guess ALSA's intended for use in single-user, single-tasking multimedia appliances such as iPods rather than Linux. Which is a shame, considering it's made specifically for Linux!

Fact is, the user should never have to worry about sound card locking. There are no data integrity issues with a user hearing more than one sound at a time; the human ear is made for that, so sound card-locking should be considered a bug. The OS should queue up the requests for the driver, which should then schedule them to be sent to the hardware in an orderly manner.

Under Ubuntu Linux today, renowned as the User-Friendly Linux, the default configuration doesn't enable sharing your sound card among applications. If you're using KDE with the ARTS server running, a common scenario, and you launch Quake 4 or MythTV or any other program that requires sound, it'll bomb out with a "device busy" error.

There are workarounds, of course. You can create a down-mixing pseudo-driver in your ~/.asoundrc, if you can stay awake through the 3500-word how-to. This worked for me, at least for a bit. Once I rebooted my computer, my USB webcam's microphone and mixer had remarkably taken over the Card #0 slot, my USB speakers were Card #1, and my onboard sound had become Card #2. This order changed with every boot, in seemingly random fashion, so it meant I had to manually reassign card numbers in the .asoundrc file. This is also necessary whenever a USB peripheral is plugged in or out.

In addition to its not working, there are some other issues to consider:

It's user-specific
you have to be root to make it system-wide in the /etc/asoundrc, and, since there's no configuration utilities to speak of, you'll be mucking around /etc with a text-editor, a limited knowledge of the subject matter, and an appetite for self-destruction.

It's fragile
You use card numbers instead of GUIDs. If you've got USB sound devices, like speakers or a USB webcam, there's no predictable way to know which card number which device will have. And, of course, they change when you plug a device in or disconnect it. And they're different every time you reboot, for whatever ungodly reason.

It's not automatic
The default configuration for ALSA is that you have a single sound card and mixer that never changes; in addition, it will never be accessed simultaneously by multiple processes. The how-to (linked above) says the following:

NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing.

LIES!

When the operating system detects a sound card, it should automatically configure it to a) work, b) be accessible through an easy-to-use interface, c) be optimally configured for output quality and compatibility, and d) be accessible by multiple programs. For the OS, this should be easy: Set up the values, activate the hardware, and write out state to a configuration file automatically. Ideally, it would also send out a system notification that hardware was added, and the user's environment could deal with the information as it deems fit.

Linux unfairly places this burden on the user. The OS currently does nothing except load the bare-metal driver for the device, and configure it in a way that makes it almost useless. The existing environments, like KDE and Gnome, offer absolutely no hardware configuration interfaces, and the CLI offers nothing more than a text-editor and 40 man pages and a pat on the behind for luck. In fact, KDE (and I assume Gnome) compound the problem by loading an outdated "sound server", ARTS, which provides a lackluster facility simulating concurrent sound-card access with terrible latency, and then only for programs specifically written for ARTS.

For the record, I have never had a problem with this under Mac OS X, BeOS, or any Windows since 95. In fact, the only weirdness I've had under OS X is with the Videolan client. Sticking to its Open Source roots of user hatred and bad interface design, it makes the user put in a sound card "number" to play sound through external USB speakers. No drop-downs, no sanity checks, and no hint as to which number belongs to which card. Pathetic.

- If you configure it to use the second sound device, for example, it will still attempt to use it even after it's been removed, and there no longer is a second device.

If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?

While it may be a brilliant observation, Brian, maybe it's best if not everyone knows you're reading Charles Nelson Reilly's Wikipedia page...

According to this article at the Australian ABC-Online news site, Iranian president Mahuloonmibasjaaja (sp?) Ahmadinejad (sp?) has been asked by the EU's unelected transnational parliament to kindly keep his hairy, raving face out of Europe, at least for the duration of the World Cup.

We call upon the 25 EU member states and FIFA to declare the Iranian president 'persona non grata ad personam' within EU territory, as long as his positions on martyrdom, the Holocaust and the destruction of Israel, and Iran's uranium enrichment activities remain unchanged,"

No word as yet whether Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore will be allowed in.

Via J.F. Beck

Howdy, folks!

For the next few weeks I'll be over at the glorious Sistaweb, guest-bloggin' while my better half finishes up her master's thesis. Drop by if you want to freshen up your German, or just to say hello!

Meh.

Al Gore, by the way, can bite my hairy taint.

UPDATE: There is ice falling out of the sky!

My grandfather was a moonshiner, and a gunrunner. It was a hobby which would cost him his freedom for a spell, fostered by the same circumstances which gave us Bonnie and Clyde. During the Great Depression, when Reconstruction had finally run its course and moved on to the Great Failed Government Program Retirement Home in the sky, the American South looked a lot like present-day Iraq. To think that my grandfather actually supported his family running ordnance to outlaws in Tennessee boggles my mind, honestly. That illicit weaponry provided a thriving marketplace in 1930s America is a testament to the overall uncertainty and political climate that must have scared the bejesus out of honest folk like myself.

This was pre-World War II Earth, a place where horrors like the Holocaust and international Communism were not only possible, but inevitable. Henry Ford, who many consider a great American, was writing essays on the dangers of International Jewry, and it seemed harmless, sensible even. That was changed by the Nazis.

The path of Nazism was first through envy, then hate. Envy gave Hitler and his Socialist party hold on Germany. The workers' envy of the rich, of the powerful, of the French even. He promised the everyday man that he could be a prince, in return for control of his thoughts. With that power, he transformed his hate into a real bureaucratic system, which begat the Holocaust.

With this argument, I believe I make a sound case the we should once again legalize hate speech. Now, I realize this isn't one of your better bumper stickers, "Legalize Hate Speech". "Visualize World Bitchiness" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, either. And Lord knows, we're never going to get anywhere until we have a bumper sticker, or at the very least a web badge, that will appeal to the "Free Mumia" crowd.

We should legalize hate speech, seeing as it provides an essential service, especially to those who aren't clear on what things they should hate. In its place, we should outlaw envy. Envy crimes should carry an exorbitant sentence. Capital punishment for envy-driven libel, for example. And not just any execution; I'm talking bring back drawing and quartering, live on CNN.

You've probably heard about the teenager who ran amok at the opening of the new Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

I heard on the news last night that one of the first victims was HIV-positive; so, they're frantically trying to find the later victims, because the guy used the same knife on all of them. That just sucks. I imagine that he'll get a 2nd-degree murder charge every person who gets HIV from the attacks, but I'm not really sure how that works over here.

Man, I've seen some bad desks in my time. At the last American company I worked for, the boss had a desk stacked so high with old computer magazines, catalogs, software manuals (remember those?) and hardware service guides that you couldn't tell if he was there or not. You had to walk up to the pile, peek around it slowly, and say "hello? anybody there?" like in some 80s horror movie.

But this is bad. Makes me feel better about the random assortment of wireless mice and NiCd batteries that litter my desk.

In order to get my permanent visa to stay in Germany, I have to send my landlord the following form.

Owner's Confirmation of Sufficient Living Space for Foreign Renters/Subletters

Family Name, Name

House number and Floor of Apartment

To whom it may concern,

before a visa can be issued, the Ausländerbehörde (Foreigners' Office) must approve your renter's living arrangements.


Requirements for the quality of construction for the apartment are described in Article 3, Section 2 of the Wohnungaufsichtsgesetzes of July 24, 1974.

Therefore, we require that you answer the following questions.

Please assist your renter by accurately filling out the form. This will accelerate the processing of the renter's request for a residence visa. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Has a leasing agreement beens signed with the foreigner? (yes/no)
2. The monthly rental fee, including housing costs, is €_
3. Is the foreigner's apartment self-contained? (yes/no)
4. Are there multiple families in the apartment? (yes/no) If yes, how many? _
5. How many and what type(s) of rooms are there in the foreigner's apartment? _
6. How man square meters are there in the apartment?
7. How many people live in the apartment?
⁃ Children under 6 Children over 6 Adults _
8. I have been informed that members of the foreigner's family, consisting of adults and children, will be moving into the apartment and have agreed to this.


Should the Foreigner's Office doubt the veracity of these statements, it reserves the right to visit and examine the premises.


Name of Foreigner


Address, Telephone
_

Of course, I'm sure it's all for my own protection. But I'm wondering how many landlords just say screw it, it's not worth having the government come in and make sure little mister Ausländer is getting enough fresh air and sunlight.

Here's a scan of the scary, rakishly yellow document.

Skippystalin is officially on suicide watch: Paris is abstaining from sex for a whole year! As the last person on Earth who hasn't boned her yet, I have to say it's a good idea. Let it cool down a bit, baby.

Where did these people get the idea we give a flying faloopus, anyway?

I'll be damned; Boxcar Willie, the World's Favorite Hobo, is on Bavarian TV right now. And, get this: he's singing "The Lord made a hobo outta me." Never heard the song, but it started off with his trademark train whistle schtick that he does. Or did. I think he'd dead now. Poor Boxcar Willie: First the Lord made him a hobo, then he made him a sad, bitter old man on late night commercials on WTCG, channel 17, pre-Superstation/TBS days, hawking used-up old railroad songs to unappreciative hobo-groupies.

You actually get a lot of the old Urban General late-night infomercial stars over here. Roger Whitaker, for example, is very big in Europe. I only ever knew him from those commercials where they used the infamous "Elvis and the Beatles combined!" loophole to say how many records he'd sold. But over here, he actually gets some TV-time on the variety shows. Or maybe he's dead too, now, and it's all just re-runs.

And now, at 12:27AM, the Oak Ridge Boys are on stage. Bunch of mincing Nancies, these guys. Funny I didn't notice that back in the 70s. One of them has got on Jordache jeans, for the love o' Jesus. And they're tucked into his spiffy little light-brown 'cowboy' boots. And, I might add, a bright red bandana around his neck, with a brooch, I swear to God. That would be the one in the mauve blazer.

As a followup, they have what has to be the gayest cowboy act I've ever seen. There's a gym-queen Indian running half-naked around the stage, being chased by a bunch of leather-chap-wearing cowboys. With whips.

Late-night TV in Germany: It's not just for cheese documentaries anymore.

A little trip through recent history with Sam.

We watched the game in a local biergarten last night. It was beautiful out, and the German flag was waving everywhere, and the German team played like champs. Until the second overtime, that is. In the last two minutes of the game, Italy put two into the net, running away with a 2-0 win.

I hate the Italian team. They're a bunch of crybabies. Against the Americans, one of the Italian players threw a vicious elbow into McBride's face that actually split his cheek open. Nevertheless, they earned the win last night. The two late goals were pretty spectacular.

On July 9, Italy will be playing against the winners of tonight's match between Portugal and France in the finals. With Germany out of the running, maybe there will even be seats somewhere so we can sit down and watch it. After that, I can finally go back to hating soccer.

Rob's services will be held today, Thursday, in Savannah; we figured we'd post a bit of incriminating evidence from last year's Wreckyll in Jeckyll, the one time we were fortunate enough to meet the man in person.

The winners of the Jeckyll Island Poker Classic: Catfish, Barbie, and Acidman, with a panty on his head.

The Usual Suspects: Dax, Eric, Catfish, Rob, Guido (Zonker's Parole officer), Recondo32 (with bullwhip), Rube, and Fiona, the Straight White Missus.

Catfish, Rob, Zonker's Parole officer, and Recondo32.

Rob, with a panty. I believe this particular panty was the prize in the poker championship.

Ann's lovely piggies, painted specially for Rob. No, I'm not jealous. Much.

And now, a little tune, sadly abridged, with Jim, Eric, Denny, Rob, and Rob's brother, Dave

Third Rate Romance, click to play

We would love to be in Savannah, today, to pay our respects and say goodbye. But we can't, so we'll just have to send our best wishes to his family, friends, and to Rob, bon voyage. It was great to know you, and we'll miss you.

Ann and Rube.

P.S. there's some more stuff laying around that I'd like to put out there, so stay tuned!

The first light fell on the magnificent castle upon the plain of Limbo. Ovid lay groaning in his bed. My freakin' head! he moaned inwardly, and turned off his alarm. He lay still for a moment, staring at the stone ceiling, waiting for it to stop spinning. Gingerly, he swung his feet to the cold stone floor and rooted around for his slippers.

He scuffled out of his small, tidy bedroom, and stood on the second floor railing, which overlooked the castle's central living area, and surveyed the damage from the night before. Squinting his eyes against the hangover, he briefly considered turning around, closing the door, and going back to bed.

Empty bottles, upset ashtrays, and general desolation reigned. The record player in the corner turned, forgotten, the needle bouncing endlessly against the inner groove with a soft clunk clunk clunk. From every iron candelabra about the room hung an item of women's underclothing; black stockings here, a garter there, and a bright red thong covered with the wax of the burned-down candles. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, Ovid frowned and stumbled his way down the stone staircase.

Turning left, he made his way past the mounds of peanut shells, tiptoed past the snoring carcass that had, until recently, been Horace, and entered the dark kitchen. Feeling the wall next to the doorway, he found the light switch and flicked it upward.

"Oh, man, cut the lights!" It was Plato, covering his eyes, sitting at the table over a bubbling glass of Alka-Seltzer. All about him lay playing cards and the butt-ends of cigars. At one end of the table was an enormous mound of ivory chips, piled high around an untouched glass of whiskey.

Ovid grimaced. "Dude, you look like Hell."

"Very funny," answered Plato. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm working on a new Dialogue. Unfortunately, the dude with the jackhammer in my head won't let me get a word in edgewise."

Ovid relented, and dimmed the lights. Clearing a path, he grabbed the nearest empty chair and sat at the table. "What the blazes happened last night?"

Plato looked up from his glass and said, "The New Guy."

Oh, yeah, thought Ovid, The New Guy. "Man, I thought Limbo was supposed to be for the virtuous heathens!"

Plato grunted indifferently, and downed the glass of fizzy grey liquid at a gulp. He belched wetly, and for a moment seemed unsure if it had been a one-way trip. Once he became convinced, he looked at Ovid and asked, "Have you seen Elektra?"

"No," he answered. "But I'm pretty sure she's around." He couldn't imagine he'd missed seeing her. Elektra was a six-foot redhead with long legs, round hips, and a voice like an angel. Ovid looked thoughtful. "Hey Plato," he started. "Did you notice that she'd painted her toenails red yesterday afternoon?"

Plato shrugged. "Yeah, I did," he said. "Wonder what that was all about."

A loud crash outside the kitchen door caused both men to grab their heads and moan. Homer came into the kitchen. "Dudes," he said, "I can hear y'all talking all the way out in the stable." He felt his way to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door, and pulled out an ice pack. He smashed it clumsily onto his head, knocking his sunglasses sideways. Stretching out his free hand, he found a chair and sat at the kitchen table with the other two poets. "I got a four-alarm hangover, doggs." The others grunted in agreement.

"Hey, Homer," Plato said, "did you see The New Guy?"

Homer straightened his sunglasses, and rubbed his chin. "Well, that depends," he said. "You mean when he was clearing y'all out at the poker table? Or do you mean maybe when he was leadin' a hootenanny with my lute at all hours of the morning? Or maybe when he, Elektra, and Scheherazade were out playing Twister by the hot tub?" He waved his hand frantically in front of his black shades. "'Cause no, I didn't see him."

Plato and Ovid grimaced sourly at each other. "Well, anyway," said Ovid, "I wonder where he got off to."

Homer furrowed his brow. "I think he and the girls went to meet somebody out in the woods."

"Why do you say that?", asked Plato.

"I heard 'em heading out a few hours ago, giggling like schoolgirls, and I asked 'em where they was headed. The New Guy just said, 'Roscoe's baaaaaaaack' like he was all happy about it. Must be a long-lost friend of his." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The girls sounded pretty excited about meeting him, too."

Ovid pondered that for moment. "Well, they'll show up eventually, probably with this 'Roscoe' character." They all nodded. "Oh, and Homer," he continued, "what were you doing in the stable, anyway?"

Homer broke into a wide grin.

Plato shuddered. "Oh dude!"

The smug hipsters at Boing Boing are all awonder! 'How to open a bottle of beer the Scandinavian way'; which would mean, with another bottle.

I figured these guys had been around a lot more than that. That's not the 'Scandinavian Way.' It's more like, the 'Places That Don't Have Screw-Capped Bottles Way'. They do it here in Germany, too. They also use cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, and just about anything else you can think of. Really, if they think opening a beer bottle with another bottle is spectacular, they'd probably have a seizure if they saw 1000 Arten ein Bier zu öffnen (1000 ways to open a beer). They're all the way up to 971, at last count.

The coolest bottle-opening method I've seen was Glacier Bay's (sadly discontinued) opener-in-the-bottom-of-the-bottle trick. Each bottle had a real opener in the bottom of it; so, when your beer was out, you just grabbed the next bottle and zisch! pop open the replacement. I drank an awful lot of Glacier Bay during my Georgia Tech days.

In a sad coincidence, in college I was walking through a shopping mall, and one of those survey people came up to me. She offered me $5, checked my age, and asked if I'd do a taste-test of foreign beer brands. Being 21, poor, and a borderline alcoholic, I had no choice but to comply. I followed the nice young lady to a small room at the end of a hallway, and they had about 12 different kinds of beer, stacked up in crates all around the room. Among the Heinekens and Beck's, I noticed an unfamiliar brand, whose red and white label struck a familiar chord. It was called Arctic Bay, and the bottle looked exactly like the Glacier Bay bottle I'd known and loved, albeit not in the familiar blue and silver. I asked the lady if that was a new beer from the same brewery, perhaps. She then told me that Glacier Bay was no more, and had been bought out by a competitor. Shocked, I hefted this usurper beer Arctic Bay, and cautiously checked the bottom of the bottle. No opener. Just flat and smooth, like every other cheap Canadian beer on the market.

I tried 7 different bottles of beer, just a swig from each. The others, though imports, were not unknown to me, and tasted pretty much as I suspected. The Arctic Bay, though, was like ashes in my mouth. After they were opened and sampled, I asked the survey lady what would happen to all the beer. She said she'd throw it out. We kind of looked at each other, and then drank all the beer. Then we had another round of taste tests, but under a different name. I think we stopped after the fourth, by which time I was filling out the forms with names like 'Philip McCracken' and 'I.P. Frehley'.

So there you have the story about how one time, in college, I actually got paid $5 a round to get 'faced in a room full of imported beer with a bored young coed.

In honor of the Australians' imminent pummeling of Brazil, I present the Brazil World Cup Drinking-Game!
And here's how it works.

You must drink every time a Brazilian:

• scores a goal - 1 drink
• raises hands in disbelief - 1 drink
• gets in the ref's face - 1 drink
• falls to the ground and grabs his ankle - 1 drink; if replay shows he didn't get kicked by anybody - drink again
• must be carried off the field - 1 drink
• comes back into the game after getting carried off the field - drink again
• stays on the ground injured until play stops - 1 drink
• gets right back up and starts running - drink again

Now, grab a piss get get playin'!

The soccer-boys managed a 1-1 tie last night against the heavily-favored italians! It's almost as impressive as the 1980 Lake Placid victory against the Russian hockey team. And, like that victory against the Russians, the hunt for the gold isn't over. Back then, we still had to beat Czech for the gold. Now, we just have to beat Ghana, Ecuador, and about 30 other Banana Republics.

It was an impressive show, all in all. And big props go out to Brian "Bleeder" McBride, who took an elbow to the face at the 30 minute mark. There was blood everywhere, and maybe even a couple of stitches. But big Bri marched off the field under his own power, let the medic take care of him, and was playing in the "Match of Shame", as the Times called it (dicks), in less than 2 minutes.

Now, for those of you who've never watched World Cup Soccer, it's kind of like basketball. Played by a high school Drama Club. The absolute lack of honor in the game is astounding. Apparently, one of the rules is that if somebody so much as breathes on you, you flign yourself to the ground, grab your ankle, and scream like a girl. Then, the referee feels bad for you, blows the whistle, and gives you an Icee. I saw people trying to draw fouls last night that should be ashamed of themselves. The Italian captain, for instance, threw himself to the ground once in the second half, although nobody was anywhere near him. There was no foul. He held onto his leg like he'd been shot, screaming and rolling around on the ground. He actually carried on like this until they came out with a stretcher and hauled him to the sidelines. Where, of course, he stood up, stretched a bit, and was back on the field at the next whistle.

This is because soccer is the only sport I can think of, besides basketball, that doesn't have a built-in justice system. In ice hockey, if you stop play by faking an injury just to draw a penalty, your ass better stay down, because the next time you touch the puck you're going to find yourself sailing over the boards with a skate up your behind. In baseball, if you're showboating like the Italian last night who did a pantomime violin performance in the corner after scoring, you're going to get a Dickie Thon fastball* to the face next time you're up. In soccer there isn't even a delay of game foul for faking an injury.

These pussies will literally lay on the ground, howling, stop the game, let themselves be carried off the field on a stretcher, when the replay shows clearly they never got touched. Then, they come right back into the game like nothing happened. I broke my hip playing ice hockey in college once, and still skated off the ice under my own power. Then went to a social at my girlfriend's sorority. In a tux! The problem is, doing this crap in soccer brings you an advantage because the refs reward it. If the other team's doing it, you've got to do it, too.

The Americans, thank goodness, don't really play that game. In North America, you'd get booed off the field, no matter what sport you're playing.

You can read more on the pussiness of soccer here.

Cross-posted at Sistaweb.

* - Mike Torrez, 1984. Man, was that really 22 years ago?!

If you're not an experienced computer geek with scads of free time on your hands, just stay as far away from Linux as you can. All the openness in the world will not buy back the hours lost in frustration and doubt, as you attempt to do even the simplest of tasks.

I just spent the last two days fighting with Ubuntu's sound support. If you're not a Linux gearhead, you'll probably be surprised – nay astonished! – to learn that there's no freakin' way to easily configure your sound card. This process still involves firing up your favorite text editor, pummeling Google for How-To's, and duking it out with 70s-era computer philosophy over who bears the burden of peripheral configuration, the user or the operating system. Things haven't changed much since the Slackware 1.0 days.

Case in point: Running MythTV on a Ubuntu box. Result: "/dev/dsp cannot be initialized: device or resource in use, Sound Disabled". This is still an issue in 2006? Even using the ultrahypermodern advanced ALSA drivers? I guess ALSA's intended for use in single-user, single-tasking multimedia appliances such as iPods rather than Linux. Which is a shame, considering it's made specifically for Linux!

Fact is, the user should never have to worry about sound card locking. There are no data integrity issues with a user hearing more than one sound at a time; the human ear is made for that, so sound card-locking should be considered a bug. The OS should queue up the requests for the driver, which should then schedule them to be sent to the hardware in an orderly manner.

Under Ubuntu Linux today, renowned as the User-Friendly Linux, the default configuration doesn't enable sharing your sound card among applications. If you're using KDE with the ARTS server running, a common scenario, and you launch Quake 4 or MythTV or any other program that requires sound, it'll bomb out with a "device busy" error.

There are workarounds, of course. You can create a down-mixing pseudo-driver in your ~/.asoundrc, if you can stay awake through the 3500-word how-to. This worked for me, at least for a bit. Once I rebooted my computer, my USB webcam's microphone and mixer had remarkably taken over the Card #0 slot, my USB speakers were Card #1, and my onboard sound had become Card #2. This order changed with every boot, in seemingly random fashion, so it meant I had to manually reassign card numbers in the .asoundrc file. This is also necessary whenever a USB peripheral is plugged in or out.

In addition to its not working, there are some other issues to consider:

It's user-specific
you have to be root to make it system-wide in the /etc/asoundrc, and, since there's no configuration utilities to speak of, you'll be mucking around /etc with a text-editor, a limited knowledge of the subject matter, and an appetite for self-destruction.

It's fragile
You use card numbers instead of GUIDs. If you've got USB sound devices, like speakers or a USB webcam, there's no predictable way to know which card number which device will have. And, of course, they change when you plug a device in or disconnect it. And they're different every time you reboot, for whatever ungodly reason.

It's not automatic
The default configuration for ALSA is that you have a single sound card and mixer that never changes; in addition, it will never be accessed simultaneously by multiple processes. The how-to (linked above) says the following:

NOTE: For ALSA 1.0.9rc2 and higher you don't need to setup dmix. Dmix is enabled as default for soundcards which don't support hw mixing.

LIES!

When the operating system detects a sound card, it should automatically configure it to a) work, b) be accessible through an easy-to-use interface, c) be optimally configured for output quality and compatibility, and d) be accessible by multiple programs. For the OS, this should be easy: Set up the values, activate the hardware, and write out state to a configuration file automatically. Ideally, it would also send out a system notification that hardware was added, and the user's environment could deal with the information as it deems fit.

Linux unfairly places this burden on the user. The OS currently does nothing except load the bare-metal driver for the device, and configure it in a way that makes it almost useless. The existing environments, like KDE and Gnome, offer absolutely no hardware configuration interfaces, and the CLI offers nothing more than a text-editor and 40 man pages and a pat on the behind for luck. In fact, KDE (and I assume Gnome) compound the problem by loading an outdated "sound server", ARTS, which provides a lackluster facility simulating concurrent sound-card access with terrible latency, and then only for programs specifically written for ARTS.

For the record, I have never had a problem with this under Mac OS X, BeOS, or any Windows since 95. In fact, the only weirdness I've had under OS X is with the Videolan client. Sticking to its Open Source roots of user hatred and bad interface design, it makes the user put in a sound card "number" to play sound through external USB speakers. No drop-downs, no sanity checks, and no hint as to which number belongs to which card. Pathetic.

- If you configure it to use the second sound device, for example, it will still attempt to use it even after it's been removed, and there no longer is a second device.

If I learned anything from watching old cop shows, it's this: If you know something about a crime, and you don't reveal the information to the police, you're guilty of aiding and abetting a criminal. Of course, there are ways around that. For instance, you could just blog it!

Why are journalists, and now bloggers, above the law? Shouldn't they be liable for illegal knowledge they receive from sources? What exactly are the limitations? If someone is planning, say, to assassinate the president, and gives a journalist the information beforehand without saying where or how, is the journalist required by law to reveal his identity to the police? It certainly doesn't seem like it nowadays. Anybody with a Myspace account apparently has carte blanche.

Apparently, an unnamed, unconfirmed source on the ground in Baqouba says, "U.S. troops may have beaten wounded al-Zarqawi before he died". I actually made a joke about this happening, when I was watching the news conference. And I was right.

The witness, who lived near the scene of the bombing, claimed in an interview with AP Television News to have seen U.S. soldiers beating an injured man resembling al-Zarqawi until blood flowed from the man's nose.

Can you imaging getting 1000 lbs. (907kg 453kg) of TNT dropped on you, and then the guys who dropped it run up and punch you in the nose? What a bunch of dicks!

I guess this is the point where we're supposed to curb our enthusiasm, look at the ground in shame, and then kind of snigger unter our breath when the Sanctimonious Sympathy Club at the AFP isn't looking. I feel horrible about the whole thing.

Man, these yahoos really fucking dig soccer around here!

I wish I'd get off my ass and switch to wordpress. Either that, or finish up my CMS I've been working on since, oh, 1999.

:-(

Frequent Iowahawk Guest-Blogger Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi had his dissent viciously quashed today by the U.S. Air Force, using 500-lb bombs dropped from two F-16 fighter jets. Zarqawi, who's been blogging from Iraq since the war began in 2003, could not be reached for comment, though his thumbs have now been found.

You can get reactions from around the world by watching the non-partisan coverage on the Pentagon Channel at ChannelChooser, at channel #2. But whatever you do, don't go down to channels 62-70, because that's where the naughty stuff is.

I would be James Lileks:

Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night.

And then I could say smart-boy stuff like he does. Actually, I've probably talked too much about Lileks lately. My girlfriend's starting to suspect something. But he's so darn...homey! I can't help myself.

Via Hot Air.

*** MUST CREDIT RUBE ***

THE NEW YORK TIMES IS A HACKISH PARTISAN FISH-WRAPPER!

* MUST CREDIT RUBE *

OK, maybe that's not really what you might call a huge newsflash, at least to anybody who's been paying attention the last, oh, 5 years. But check out how they describe Francine "You don't need no steeenking Papers!" Busby:

For her part, Ms. Busby supported legislation passed by the Senate that would, among other provisions, permit some illegal immigrants to apply for citizenship.

Hmmm...that's not all she did to ease illegal immigration. Now, why wouldn't the Times mention that?

On June 6, 1944, 2 of my grand-uncles landed in Normandy, France. One of them didn't make it off the beach. The other, Lloyd, marched on foot through France, Belgium, Holland, and halfway across Germany fighting the Nazis. He did much of this in the winter of '44-'45, with towels wrapped around his feet to keep from getting frostbite. At my grandfather Arry's funeral, Uncle Lloyd told me the story about how he, along with the rest of his platoon, was forced to give up his winter boots to liberated French POW's on the Belgian border, who'd been in German Stalags since the fall of France in 1940. After lugging those heavy things on his back throughout the summer and fall of 1944, he was, needless to say, pissed.

Read more about the most important military operation of World War II, and maybe of the 20th century.
More links at Hot Air.

- Not 'Republicans'. Actual Nazis, the ones with the monocles and little mustaches.

Ok, it's now 6/6/06 here in the Old Country, and that for a couple of hours now. Nothing's happened yet, knock on wood. But I've got my eye on things. I'll let you know if there's any nefariousness out there. I imagine the close proximity to Whitsunday, a holiday here in Germany, has negated some of the more dastardly effects, like apocalypse and such.

Stay tuned!

7 years ago today.

June 5, 1999
Juara Village, Malaysia

We woke up late this morning. well, I did, at least. D_ had been walking around, looking for better rooms to stay in. We decided to leave "My Friend's Place". After a little walking around, we heard about a quiet little place on the other side of the island called Juara Village. The only catch was, we were going to have to walk a few miles over the mountains with our packs on to reach it. Which we set out to do.

We walked from Air Batang to Ketek, and turned left towards the east. About 10 meters into the hike, we came across a green tree-snake, which was crawling across the trail. It looked just like a long leaf, and I normally wouldn't have seen it. I was already day-dreaming and looking at the ground and saw it. We took a short break, and headed across the mountain. The sign at Ketek said 4 km to Juara Village, but a smaller, hand-written sign said 7.

Once we entered the jungle, the trail turned into a two-and-a-half mile stone staircase; which, with the jungle heat and humidity, was a sweaty bastard to climb. It took us about 2 hours to reach the top of the the mountain. There was a cafe there, a small bamboo hut really, but alas! it was closed.

From there it was all downhill, and we started feeling sore in all the places the climb up had missed. At one point, we saw a family of monkeys crawling around on the big electrical cables that connect the two sides of the island. We also saw some very big ants, but luckily none of them killed us.

We eventually staggered into the Village, and it was very, very nice. The beaches were clean and wide, with soft sand. We had lunch right off, and the prices were much lower than on the other side. We walked up the beach a bit, and found ourselves a little bungalow for the night. It was just a little shack, really, but it was clean, and only about Rm15 (about $4.00 US) per night.

Once we got unpacked, we walked up and down the beach. We sat on the pier and looked at the fish. While we were there, a fisher boat pulled in, and all the townies walked out and bought their fish for the evening. It got dark shortly thereafter, and we went to the nearest open-air beach cafe as the Muslims sang their call to prayer. There was no menu, just a Rm10 all-you-can-eat fish and chicken barbecue. I had some nasi goreng, salad and fruit for dinner, while D at a few fish, a squid, and a chicken's arms and legs. The cafe's cats were all over us throughout dinner, as you can imagine.

After dinner, we went back to the bungalow, and D_ took a shower while I wrote.

IMG_0066.JPG
Originally uploaded by ethanz.

The One Laptop Per Child Project promises to put an underpowered, ideology-driven computer into the hands of every child. Which certainly sounds noble, if I'm anyone to judge such things.

There are 2 billion children in the world; getting a laptop to each and every one of them is going to cost $200,000,000,000.00, assuming the cost of development and production are not being subsidized to reach the $100 price. Applying the first law of Rubean Mechanics, I'd like to ask a few questions to the people running this project.

Who's going to pay for this thing, and who's going to profit from it?

So, is this thing also going to be available for middle-class American kids, or is it another misguided "White Man's Burden" attempt at European colonial guilt alleviation?

Is it going to be an open-source hardware design, with schematics etc. available to whomever wants to build it, or is it a government money-grab for a small consortium of 'well-intentioned' hardware and software players?