La Rubujo

Backstabber update

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:53:03 GMT

I hear from the post-show chat on Break Room Live that Randi Rhodes, exhibit #1 in the museum of inferiority complexes, still is badmouthing Al Franken. This is how she congratulates the nationally known person whose lead-in resulted in Randi’s name recognition outside of South Florida.

Randi, stop for a second and read what I have to say. You are a binge-drinking ex-cokehead who occasionally has to be bleeped because you have on-air meltdowns. Al Franken OTOH is a US senator who will operate on the principle ‘What would Paul Wellstone have done?’ To do your job well you need to see the difference.

I don’t know how anybody can stand to listen anymore if you are spewing the same garbage you were spewing on Nova M.

Keith Olbermann gets my gall

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:01:09 GMT

I just watched Keith Olbermann make completely baseless accusations against Michael Scheuer, of ‘disloyalty’ and ‘giving aid and comfort to the enemy’.

Look. Michael Scheuer is a complete loon, which, unlike many others of my left-leaning persuasion, I recognized immediately upon his coming out of the shadows. Frankly, Scheuer is Hitler-like in his opinions and his recent statements are completely in character and not at all a disappointment to me; he was like this all along. But I never dreamt of calling him disloyal or of befriending an ‘enemy’. Bush, sure – but never Michael Scheuer.

This may come as a shock to Keith Olbermann, but it is not illegal nor even unethical to count on a bad occurrence to shock people into action. I do it all the time; for instance I hope New York gets flooded by natural causes if that’s what it takes to get us moving seriously on climate change and hurricane preparedness, especially after New Orleans didn’t do it. Am I a freaking traitor, Keith Olbermann?

The whole point of this is that it is other people who are leaving the nation in bad shape, and one hopes their failures become apparent soon enough.

Where are the media priorities?

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:30:05 GMT

How can the media be covering the memorial for Michael Jackson so intensively, yet completely ignore that Flook is getting together for one last concert?!!!

(Too bad it’s in Belfast and not Minneapolis.)

Regarding Montel Williams

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:57:43 GMT

I’ve grown since the old days when I watched Montel on TV a lot, but he hasn’t kept up with me. (Not surprising, because I have moved past television itself. :) )

Ron Reagan and Jack Rice are much, much better among the more recent Air Americans.

(And, of course, the best of the best Air Americans is SENATOR Alan S. Franken. :) And the election system here worked just fine, by the way; it took so long precisely because the system functioned as designed.)

Holy cow, another Republican makes an ass of himself on healthcare

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:55:00 GMT

Last time Olympia Snowe, this time Chuck Grassley: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/03/grassley-fed-health-care/

Interestingly, those are two of the Republicans that don’t sound like a dull-witted example of Homo erectus. Imagine what the erectoids must be saying ...

Yay! It's published

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:35:30 GMT

I see that Igino Marini http://ikern.com/k1/the-tool/ has nicely published on his algorithm for autospacing and autokerning. This puts an end to my misgivings about his methods – that he wasn’t going to share them with the world. Excellent! And maybe it’s better he offer iKern as a service than publish binary-only code.

I, myself, like to have full control, and so will continue to use my semi-automated spacing and kerning system that is handled by diverting FontForge’s named base-to-mark anchors to another task. There isn’t any real math to it. Essentially I have to tell my programs how close to let things get to the various parts of a letter, and then they fit letters together as tightly as possible (although there is also support for special cases in case the method fails in a given instance). Spacing and kerning are handled more or less together, and most accented letters are handled automatically.

(It gets a bit complicated for italic fonts, unfortunately.)

Olympia Snowe complains that public insurance would be too inexpensive

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:36:59 GMT

See http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/two-steps-forward-one-step-back-snowe-talks-triggers.php

Opponents have no idea how they are portraying themselves; they think it ‘normal’ to worry about the welfare of healthcare extortion outfits.

Older

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:56:15 GMT

Okay, now I’m not only older than the president; I’m also older than the Tonight Show host.

And I’m cold and frightened.

A query

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:21:44 GMT

Why in the world would I want to join in riotous street protest with someone who pronounces the Americans a ‘sheeple’ rather than a people? I wouldn’t know whether to throw my rocks at the authorities or at you.

Faux News viewers are a sheeple, of course, but that is something you can show by research and mathematics. It is not an expression of contempt for the American people, who are my people.

Jackson's death

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:27:04 GMT

Whoa, I guess it's starting too look like MJ got killed by Demerol.

Surprise over Michael Jackson's death

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:35:03 GMT

I am a little taken aback that there is as much surprise over the death of Michael Jackson as there has been; to me, Jackson has looked for many years as if he were on the verge of death.

I suppose he might have been overworking physically, lately, and succumbed to the middle-aged-man-dies-from-snow-shoveling syndrome.

Ooh, some more examples of Faux News labeling Republicans as Democrats

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:13:12 GMT

Arlen Specter and John McCain, no less: http://crooksandliars.com/logan-murphy/shocking-fox-news-labels-disgraced-re

An amazing thing is that the sheeple who devour Faux News don’t respond with torches and pitchforks for being treated like such idiots.

(BTW the Michael Brown thing seems to me likely to have been an honest error – similar to when, at the RNC, a public school appeared on the screen behind John McCain, when it was supposed to be a military hospital but the names were similar.)

What it would take

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:35:00 GMT

Nicole Sandler on Air America Radio just asked (with a hostile tone) what would it take to get Americans to go protest in the streets like the Iranians.

It’s very easy to answer that, Nicole, and I know you are smart enough to figure this out for yourself: it would take a tyrannical theocracy that hanged people with forklifts, had an army of brownshirts, and who didn’t care how we voted. Obviously we have nothing of the sort.

Remember that we had an American Revolution, followed by a Constitutional Convention, and not a French Revolution, followed by a Reign of Terror.

(Ask Ron Kuby about it, he has pointed out something similar, recently.)

That’s the other way I can be sent into a rage: unfair dumping on the American people. The first way (which Ron Reagan did earlier on AAR) is to dump on ‘kids these days’. So many people learned nothing from their own experiences as kids. It’s like squirting yourself in the face with seltzer, all seriously, even though you’d spent a lifetime observing that this is something done by clowns and jesters.

Faux News does it again

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:07:34 GMT

See http://mediamatters.org/blog/200906240026

Three words that provoke violent rage in me

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:50:06 GMT

‘Kids these days ...’

And it’s not the kids who are enraging me.

"Barack Obama Is Not Afraid of You and He Will Kick Your Ass"

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:16:24 GMT

I would like to second the Rude Pundit's posting, except for its ruder sections, which are puerile and make no sense.

Much better vision today

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:06:06 GMT

Much better today. Vision in my right eye is pretty much clear, and in the left eye isn’t extremely blurry.

Yesterday I woke up to a cluster headache attack in both eyes simultaneously, and kept having attacks in one or the other eye until the series naturally toned down enough for me to get an Imitrex. When the Imitrex kicked in, the attacks stopped.

Pain was fairly bad but could have been much worse.

Oyyyyy!!!

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:18:57 GMT

It's the rare 2-sided cluster headache series followed by 2-eyed blurry vision.

Don't expect much activity from me for now. I can't even read what I'm writing.

Note to self

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:02:13 GMT

Note to self: Let the Lactaid tablet sit for a few minutes, or prepare for a half hour of nausea.

Michele Bachmann promises civil disobedience

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:30:16 GMT

See http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/bachmann-vows-to-shun-acorn-influence-leave-census-form-partly-blank-note-this-is-illegal.php

What Brent said

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:00:09 GMT

See http://pundits.thehill.com/2009/06/19/presidential-pooch-or-public-health-plan/

The people have got Obama’s back on this one, and nothing but public insurance is going to work.

Urge to kill rising

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:45:18 GMT

Fathers want us to celebrate a day for them after they’ve badmouthed today’s (or yesterday’s, or the day before’s) children.

(Note: This urge to kill is not instigated by anything my dad has done, because he doesn’t do that kind of thing. It is an observation on others. Well, Montel Williams specifically.)

The world's whiniest, most trivial politicians

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:50:47 GMT

See http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/house-gopers-tweet-on-similarities-between-iranian-unrest-and-oppression-of-house-republicans.php

(Actually there were the handful of whiny British hereditary peers who resisted having their seats taken away, but those guys aren’t politicians anymore.)

Cups and Cakes

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:20:20 GMT

The track of ‘Cups and Cakes’ on the new Spinal Tap album is really sweet. :)

Reggae Flower People

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:41:05 GMT

I wonder if littlelinguist knows there is a reggae version of ‘Flower People’ on the new Spinal Tap album.

There’s also a funk version of ‘Sex Farm’ that made me laugh. I’ve not listened the album through yet.