Ovation TV FTW

If you asked me a month ago what my favorite cable channel was, I’d have told you it was Ovation TV. If you ask me today, I’d shout that answer at you.

On July 1st, Ovation kicked off a series called American Revolutionaries Rock and Soul that runs through the 18th. Normally I don’t get to watch much TV, but since I was already keeping tabs on Ovation I saw this coming in their promos and gave the DVR some appropriate pokes and prods well in advance. Today I was able to watch two exceptional shows:

Electric Purgatory is a thought-provoking look at how black musicians have had a more-than-challenging time making it as pure rock musicians. Footage and interviews with folks from Living Colour and Fishbone and Bad Brains brought back a lot of memories of the 1980s for me.

Welcome to Death Row is a  thorough history of Death Row Records – the notorious gangsta rap label created by Dr. Dre and Suge Knight (and maybe Harry O).

Neither of these are brand new documentaries. EP dates from 2006 and WtDR from 2001 (though with some updates at the end). Regardless, Ovation has done a stellar job  of pulling all sorts of amazing such shows together for this series. Thanks Ovation – keep ‘em comin’.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK

I think it’s time we moved the word FUCK into the common lexicon. It’s a stellar word. It’s no less stellar than MURMUR, LILT or SCINTILLA. It’s no less useful than LAUGH, SUNLIGHT, GO or COME.

A word has only those powers that a society agrees to confer upon it.

We are in complete control of those rules.

Words, strung together, are what should move us. Words, strung together, are to be loved or feared. Words, strung together, allow us to be rational, thoughtful, entertaining, disgusting, and beyond.

There is no net-positive reason for a sole word to be conferred such capabilities.

No rational society would allow the color #4E36C8 to be assigned, explicitly or implicitly, a politeness, usability, helpfulness, or appropriateness ’score’ – thus broadly limiting or mandating its use in societal functions. Folks would need to repaint their houses, change their corporate logos, throw away lots of clothes, and revamp their schools’ art classes. Picasso’s Guernica probably couldn’t exist without #4E36C8. It’s clearly irrational.

Imagine the global good that could come from the removal of irrational societal constraints on individual words. If epithets are made powerless, it means you have to string together words to hurl a (usually pointless) insult at someone – and in so doing you are suddenly halfway towards having a conversation with them…

So can we start with FUCK? Let’s decide to make it, singly, as powerless as the four letter words DOOR, BLUE, MAKE, and SIGN.

Nomenclature for Pre/Post Internet?

Do we have something like this yet in the lexicon?

I was in my mid twenties when I became a full-bore Internet geek in the very early 90s. Usenet, UUCP, PPP, and so on and so forth. While I may have misspent most of my youth at Fun & Games (it was a gargantuan, loud, dark, filthy drug-den back then – not the brightly-lit kiddie birthday parlor it is today), I have plenty of life experience that pre-dates the Internet.

So how do we refer to this time division? It is indeed a hugely important time division. Future historians will care, no?

I suppose a Latin solution would be nice, but the whole “ante/a/ab/abs” and “pro/pre/prae/post/praeter” thing really queers the use of the letters A and P for Latin reference. However I am rather fond of PI ‘pre’ and AI ‘after’, for numerous, obvious geeky reasons .

Anybody have any thoughts on how to do this right, or what others are doing about it?

Of course the big mess here is that it isn’t really a hard date like the year zero in the Gregorian calendar. 1986 AD is when NSFnet came into being – which basically looks a lot like what we think of today as the Internet. When did the Internet really get going? 1995 seems to be when most of the wonks started counting. So I’d guess that each of us has their own PI/AI moment somewhere in that 10 year window. Although I was goofing on NSFnet-connected UNIX boxen in the mid-1980s, I’d have to guess that my PI/AI moment was in 1989 or 1990 when I got my NeXTcube connected to the Net.

Or do we make the division a hardfast one (Month / Day / Year) and call it done?

Neat problem.

Barnes & Noble R.I.P.

Founded in 1917, the venerable Barnes & Noble retail chain appears to be well on its way out of business. My assumption is that that is not their goal, but as best I can tell, they are just throwing the grease out in front of themselves towards retail death.

Ever since I grokked Amazon in 1996, I have gotten progressively less and less interested in walking into a B&N retail store (I don’t believe I’ve ever used their online store). I think today put the final nail in the coffin for me.

B&N seems to be working to transform themselves into a “new releases” book seller. To wit, my local B&N has 4-6 rows of books that are just gone. Poof. The rows aren’t empty, but instead are now unlabeled and filled with new release stuff and/or promotional stuff. I went in this morning to find a book that might teach me how to repair rust on one of my cars. I know I need to sand it down and apply some smart chemical-y things and then prime it up so it doesn’t re-rust, but damn if I know the details. Normally I’d dig this kind of knowledge up off the inter-tubes, but I wanted something I could hold and read, with lots of photos and lots of deep discussion on alternatives and so on and so forth – not just a bullet-pointed how-to list from ‘DentFixerJerry83′ on CarBodyRepairAdvice.com.

This B&N store no longer sells any sort of automotive books, as best I can tell. In fact the entire row that used to house automotive books (and much much more) was stripped back and replaced with who knows how many linear feet of Twilight books and other related crap (what IS the attraction, anyway?). I hope whoever owns that brand is paying through the nose for the privilege. I walked all around the store – a few times (much to the chagrin of my kids) – and saw aisle after aisle that had received similar treatments.

Now I have no reason to beat B&N up for admitting they can’t profitably serve the long tail at retail. They can’t. Nobody ever could, and Amazon made that clear – as clear as an azure sky of deepest summer.

I know some of you reading this blog have never bought music, but if you’ll indulge me for a moment, imagine that people used to buy LPs and Cassettes and CDs at retail stores. Those of you with as much or more gray hair as I will remember a slew of retail music chains like Musicland, Strawberries, Sam Goody, et. al. The Musicland at the Natick Mall (back before it was the Collection, and when it was about 1/10th the size it is today!) got a lot of my lawmowing and babysitting dollars back in the 80s. Once I discovered Newbury Comics (though back then it required a trip from the ‘burbs in to Harvard Square or Back Bay), I stopped visiting the mall stores. Why? The only “long tail” I grokked back then had to do with pets and D&D, yet it was as clear as an unmuddied lake to me that there was no reason to pay high mall prices when I could get the popular stuff cheaper at Newbury while simultaneously gaining acces to a hugely more diverse selection! Never mind that going into Cambridge for the day was a great excuse to skip school . For the record (bwahahahaha), I’m still a huge Newbury Comics customer and fan.

In an identical analog, during the 90s we saw Waldenbooks and other similar (and similarly useless) mall bookstores behave likewise and ultimately disappear. B&N gobbled up or crushed them – and they deserved all the gobbling and crushing they got!

Now all indications are that B&N is working hard torepeat that history. I wish them luck.

Gotta run folks – time to visit with Amazon’s search engine…

Ablogging

Holy crap – that was my first blog post in over two months.

Apparently I have time to Twitter, but no time to blog. Now that I think about it, I’ve probably paid proportionally similar attention to my RSS feeds during the same period.

Interesting.

Twitter as a US Phenomenon

I was poking around on #hashtags this afternoon when I stumbled upon this ultra-familiar pattern in the graphs:

Ignoring the single-day events, I was surprised to see the obvious wake/sleep pattern of North America represented. I guess I expected less-deep valleys. All in due time, I imagine…

Employment Agreements – WTF?

Below is an excerpt from an employment-at-will agreement that a well-known, >$5B market cap public engineering company makes its employees sign (emphases mine):

WHEREAS, INVENTIONS include only those conceived or made by the EMPLOYEE solely or jointly with others during or outside working hours within the term of the EMPLOYEE’S employment by the EMPLOYER…

1. What the fuck? This company must have a HUGE wheelbarrow they use to carry their cojones around in. It is entirely unreasonable to suggest every conceivable, commercializable thought that runs throgh your brain belongs to the employer. In the end, I’m certain this is not enforceable – but who the hell wants to pay to litigate it?

2. Notice that the ‘jointly’ language doesn’t say anything about ‘co-workers’ – it’s anybody. If this employee is kickin’ around ideas about widgets with his sister-in-law over Sunday dinner? Blammo. Chatting with random buds before the movie starts? Blammo. Walks into a meeting of entrpreneurs and suggests great improvements to some random dude’s product? Blammo. In-fucking-sane.

3. Shame on any employee for signing something like this. Ya gotta read these things, folks. DO NOT agree to moronic language like this!

Leroy R.I.P. :-(

We lost one of our cats yesterday

Leroy – the old lug, big galoot, golden kitty – called it a day. He had developed a very unpleasant tumor in his throat.

He was a great kitty. We referred to him as the “insta-purr” cat since the second you started showing him any sort of affection, he revved up the purr engine. Although he wasn’t with us long enough, we’re happy we had him in our home for the time we did, and we’re happy we were able to rescue him from the shelter. The kids spent last night and a chunk of this morning making “I miss Leroy” pictures of him.

He will certainly be missed.

[Insert Hold Music Here]

My in box is impressively backed up due to filtering through a few hundred TechStars applications last week and now managing the next stage of our process (plus my other jobs!).

Please be patient if you’ve emailed me. I WILL get back to you – but it might take me as long as week for non-urgent (but still important!) messages.

Thanks!

Something Cool For Every Geek!

Go ahead and try to pick your favorite aspect of this video – I dare you! Is it that it’s an insane 11 (eleven) string bass? Perhaps the torzal twist neck? The fanned frets? Or simply the fact that this tapping deity is hauling ass on the Super Mario theme!? Enjoy!!!!