Y'know, I'm usually sympathetic to SixApart, LiveJournal's parent company. They're trying to act like a responsible company that has to deal with customer-provided content. They're trying to comply with local laws about pornography (especially child porn) and adult content in a variety of areas around the world. Their ways of dealing with the problem are occasionally completely boneheaded, but what the hell. It's an imperfect universe. We learn by doing.

Then they create a feature like this, and I throw up my hands in horror, because it becomes clear that they haven't learned a damned thing:



The idea is that if you stumble on a LiveJournal that has illegal or adult content, you, the responsible citizen, can flag it appropriately. The offending post can then be deleted or blocked from registered users who've given a birthdate as under 18. See the LJ_Biz post for details.

Can anybody spot the design flaw?

Here's a hint: Most people on the Internet are not responsible citizens.

Or, put more succinctly by John Gabriel and the Penny Arcade people:



So, how can you appeal the unfair "child porn" rating of a dozen sockpuppets of some LiveJournal twit who doesn't like you? Um, the LiveJournal people haven't figured that out yet.

Seriously, there are days I don't know whether I should find a blog somewhere else or send SixApart a resume and a detailed business strategy for obeying local laws while not screwing their users.

Still not dead. Details to follow.

Regarding Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' attempt to channel Ronald Reagan in support of Nickels' massive ego transportation alternative of choice, my friend and fellow Metblogger Dylan has the following words of wisdom:

CONCRETE ISN'T BROUGHT TO CONTRACTORS BY THE MAGIC BUILDING MATERIALS FAIRY WHEN THEY LEAVE A PIECE OF BRICK UNDER THEIR PILLOWS AT NIGHT. [mb]

There's an important lesson there somewhere.

When Boston's mayor and chief of police have their next conversation, I dearly hope and pray that it includes the phrase "laughingstock of the entire nation."

Dear God, people, could we please apply some common sense before hitting the panic button?

What, you want to hear from a more well-known security expert than me? Okay. Oh, and then there's this.

Memo to Boston's city officials: drop the charges on those two artists now before you make your prosecuting attorneys look like complete dumbasses in front of national media.

---

On another topic, I do everything Neil Gaiman tells me to, so here's a link to Penn Jillette. Spread the joy.

Back in late June, I got into an accident driving our old Jetta. Nobody was hurt, but it was both ferociously expensive and embarrassing. Before this screwup, I'd managed to go more than 15 years without any serious accidents.

I'm going through some back mail, and found this tidbit from our insurance company, mailed bare weeks after the accident:

Dear Mr. WoS:

[Your insurance] is pleased to provide you with the enclosed Accident Assistance Packet(s), to be used in the event of an automobile accident.

Designed to store [sic] in the glove compartment of your car, the Accident Assistance Packet includes:

• Suggestions on what to do should an accident occur.
• An accident report form with two contact cards attached. These cards are to be given to the other drivers and injured parties.
• A list of frequently asked questions.

Gee, they never felt compelled to give me one of these packets *before* I cracked up my car. Thanks a pantload, guys.

(Yes, I know it's probably coincidental. Shaddup and let me wallow in my idiocy for a minute.)

Bad: We got into a car accident last weekend. Some of you have already heard the gory details.

Good: Apart from some bruising and general soreness, we're fine. I haven't heard anything about the other driver so must assume no news there is good news as well.

Ugly: The car is still in the shop. We've had no word on how long it will take to fix or, indeed, if it can be fixed. Nor have I gotten a report back on the brake system that we think caused the crash.

---

Good: I got through three parties last weekend and most of a work week while remaining reasonably social. I've driven several times since the accident.

Bad: It's mostly an act. I'm spending a lot of time forcing myself out of hiding.

Ugly: ...and driving for me right now is an activity akin to tooth extraction. But I'll keep doing it anyway.

---

Bad: I've barely been able to write a word all week.

Good: ...no, there's no good there. Inability to write leaves me psychically constipated. However, hopefully this post will break the logjam.

---

Good: The weather out here has been warm, sunny, and glorious, with endless days and cool nights. The mountain is out every day. This, I remind myself, is why I moved here in the first place.

Bad: The warm weather required me to spend an hour and a half last night carefully watering all the plants in my yard lest they choke and die. This would have been easier except:

Ugly: I don't have a lawn sprinkler. Why don't I have a lawn sprinkler?!? Must solve the problem this weekend. I'm tired of watering the grass by hand in three-foot-by-three-foot sections.

---

Bad: In looking over some paperwork, I discovered that they don't pay me on my departure for any unused floating holidays. I still have two floating holidays I need to use.

Really Really Good: WOOHOO UNEXPECTED LONG WEEKEND!

Inspired by someone on my Friends list, today I bring you:

Things You Should Never, Ever, Do While You're Interviewing For A Job

(also applicable for meetings, sales pitches, office hours with your professor, and any occasion where you're asking someone for a thing they are disinclined to give to you)

Each and every rule on here has been broken either by someone I've interviewed, or by a candidate who interviewed with a friend of mine.

1. Do not sneeze on your interviewer.


2. Do not hit on your interviewer. I don't care how hot they are. ESPECIALLY do not hit on your interviewer in a last ditch attempt to retrieve an interview that has already gone downhill.


3. Do not make cell phone calls in the middle of your interview.


4. In fact, set your cell phone to silent. Or, better yet, turn it off. If you absolutely have to keep your cell phone on, explain to the interviewer up front what call you're waiting for, and make sure it's a good excuse.


5. Good excuse: "My parent/boyfriend/cat is in the hospital and I'm waiting for the test results." Bad excuse:"My boyfriend is supposed to call me to tell me where we're meeting up tonight."


6. Do not chew gum in your interview. Many interviewers, including me, find it intensely annoying. Also it makes it harder to understand you and tends to make interviewers take you far less seriously.


7. Take a bath or shower before the interview.


8. Do not wear heavy cologne or perfume. I once had to leave my office for six hours to air out after an interview with a woman wearing particularly heavy perfume.


9. Do not explain your religion or political beliefs to your interviewer. We don't care. Furthermore, unless it's directly applicable to your job, we're not allowed to listen.


10. Don't pretend you know more than you do. You will nearly always get caught at it.


11. Avoid saying things like, "Yeah, actually this is just my practice interview."

Anybody got any good interview stories from hell?

1. Yes, the idea of smoke-easies is kinda ridiculous. That's because the law is kinda ridiculous. Hello, Mommy-Knows-Best government.

Here's a novel idea: why not let the establishment decide what its own smoking policy is? If you don't like the smoke, give your money to someone else. Either you'll drive the smoky places out of business or you won't, but you'll be healthier without interfering in other people's lives.

While we're on the subject, helmet laws are also stupid and anti-Darwinian. However, that's a different rant.

2. Pillow fights are fun. They have, however, been done. If you're going to organize a flash mob, guys, do something original. I vote for whipping out cameras and taking pictures of everyone and everything in sight, including and especially all the other photographers.

3. Despite all the news coverage, I don't care that Katie Couric has changed jobs. I realize that this makes me unAmerican.

Y'know, maybe I didn't provide enough context for my description of the Oregon state capitol.

There's a picture here, but the coloring is wrong and it doesn't really do the building justice. The building is a dull marble white, while the statue is a bright, bright, BRIGHT golden god of metrosexuality.

It looks, as I told a friend earlier, like Brigham Young, L. Ron Hubbard, and Donald Trump's faucet designer got together over drinks and somebody said "I know! Let's design a capitol building!"

Seriously, I'd be embarrassed to live in the state.

Of course, they're building a library in my neighborhood that looks about as out of place as a Patrick Nagel print in an Andrew Wyeth exhibit, so I suppose I shouldn't say too much.

There is a CD called Kidz Bop 8. It is a bunch of cover songs of kids and teenagers singing sanitized versions of pop songs.

One of the songs is called "Axel F (The Frog Song)."

So they've recorded a lame cover...

of an insidiously annoying synth song...

based on a ringtone...

of an 80's movie soundtrack theme.

I don't think you can get much farther away from actual music and still have notes.

So my question is:

Who buys this stuff?

These are the things you think about when you're watching TV at 4:30 in the morning.

Back in the dark ages, I used to go to concerts. A LOT of concerts. I had a solid wall of ticket stubs that had completely filled my bulletin board after about two years or so.

These days, on average, I get to about one show every two to three years or so.

What happened?

Well, for one thing, Ticketmaster's "convenience charges" and "service charges" and "internet service charges" finally pissed me off. The only way to deal with a monopoly you don't like is to avoid buying the monopoly's products, and so I do.

But, you say, you could still go to small club shows. Or buy tickets at the venue.

Well, yeah I could. Except that most of the club shows I'd be interested in are industrial or metal, and they've sunk deeply into self parody. On jwz's journal, gnat23 posted the following Industrial Bingo card to help explain:



O, do I ever miss the Iron Horse.

Ganked this from jwz, originally from someone named Joshua Ellis. When I write my resignation letter, I'm quoting this piece.

Feeding poor people is useful tech, but it's not very sexy and it won't get you on the cover of Wired. Talk about it too much and you sound like an earnest hippie. So nobody wants to do that.

They want to make cell phones that can scan your personal measurements and send them real-time to potential sex partners. Because, you know, the fucking Japanese teenagers love it, and Japanese teenagers are clearly the smartest people on the planet.

The upshot of all of this is that the Future gets divided; the cute, insulated future that Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow and you and I inhabit, and the grim meathook future that most of the world is facing, in which they watch their squats and under-developed fields get turned into a giant game of Counterstrike between crazy faith-ridden jihadist motherfuckers and crazy faith-ridden American redneck motherfuckers, each doing their best to turn the entire world into one type of fascist nightmare or another.

Of course, nobody really wants to talk about that future, because it's depressing and not fun and doesn't have Fischerspooner doing the soundtrack. So everybody pretends they don't know what the future holds, when the unfortunate fact is that -- unless we start paying very serious attention -- it holds what the past holds: a great deal of extreme boredom punctuated by occasional horror and the odd moment of grace.

I returned home from my doctor's appointment this morning, intending to grab my briefcase and run to the office. I even left my car outside with its blinkers on, knowing that I'd only be a moment. Then I got inside, played with my dog for a few minutes, skritched both of my cats, picked up my briefcase...

...put it back down, put the car away, made and ate lunch, came upstairs, and parked in front of my computer.

So far I've sent five or six work e-mails and gotten five out-of-office replies. Clearly, spring fever has struck. I'm glad I didn't bother driving a half hour and skipping lunch to find that out. Even if I'm catching up on work, work is much more fun with a purring cat keeping me company.

---

It turned out my chest wasn't quite as healed up as I thought. The most major problem I've had is my energy level, which is near zero. I've only been able to work four hour days this week, and I've been sleeping twelve to fourteen hours a day.

So now I've been prescribed some Magic Happy Pills that are supposed to clear up my chest and give me an energy boost to boot. I hate pills as a general rule, but at the moment, I'm desperate.

---

( How Laws Are Made. Not Unlike Sausage. )

It's 9:00 on a Saturday night. I've been at work for about 8 hours and have at least two to three more hours to go to get a minimum amount of material prepped for my Monday morning meeting. I haven't had a damn thing to eat today except for a Taco Bell meal earlier tonight.

An inattentive driver earlier this week sideswiped my legally parked, empty car, doing at least $1500 of damage. Their insurance company is giving me a great deal of static about the bill, to the point that I may yet need to get my insurance company and/or lawyers involved.

I went home today briefly about noon to discover that one of my cats had eaten a bunch of dog food and liberally coated a sizeable portion of the basement in vomit, requiring considerable cleanup. While I was at it, I discovered that our basement was a damp cave as the dehumidifiers hadn't been emptied in a couple of days.

My lovely wife is pissed off and upset at me, with cause. Note to self, not for the first time: do not suppress annoyance and concern until it all comes tumbling out in a giant roar. Address while still calm and cogent. (Requests for any further explanation will be cheerfully ignored.)

My Thanskgiving vacation was apparently an utterly useless waste of time, as I'm now more stressed and further behind than when I started. I have well over four weeks of backlogged vacation time at this point and no way to use it. I haven't been able to do any work on the Round Robin project since I got back from Friday Harbor, let alone something as mundane as sitting at home and watching TV.

And how's your weekend going?

I don't often have a nightcap during the week, but I find I'm in just the right mood: contemplative, slightly melancholy, and not at all sleepy.

So raise a glass with me, my friends, and help me bid farewell to a longtime companion. I've signed all the papers, cashed the check, and handed over the keys. I no longer own a motorcycle.

( motorcycle stories )

Just like everyone else my age, I loved the original Star Wars trilogy. Along with Tom Swift and the Robert Heinlein juveniles, it launched my lifelong love of SF/fantasy and storytelling.

However:

I am not buying the DVDs. I am not renting the DVDs. I am not paying one more DIME to the Lucasfilm empire until Lucas QUITS SCREWING WITH THE DAMN MOVIES and releases them on DVD the way he originally shot them, with Han shooting first, Sebastian Shaw as Anakin Skywalker, and no ridiculous Jabba's palace dance scenes.

Clean up and preserve the originals, fine. Re-edit and CGI them to death: bad.

*razzum frazzum sonofabitch messing with my childhood growl*

There was a long front-page article in this morning's Seattle Times about one of the local anti-gay marriage activists, a highly successful evangelical minister named Pastor Joseph Fuiten.

I'm suspicious of the motives of many of the anti-gay marriage activists. I believe most of the smart Republican politicians who are pushing this issue actually don't really give a damn. They're using it as an election-year distraction from Bush's horrendous record in the Iraq war and the turbulent economy, and as a means of getting the Republican conservative base out to vote. But the Times article interested me, because it portrayed Fuiten as a guy who genuinely believes that gay marriage is a social and religious ill.

Possibly not by coincidence, there was a full page ad in the newspaper this morning trotting out the usual line: marriage is between a man and a woman; gay marriage changes that definition and thereby fundamentally changes the nature of marriage. "The traditional definition of marriage has served civilization and protected families since Fred Flintstone married Wilma," says one columnist. I've also seen the standard line of "kids need a mother and a father."

I have a very hard time wrapping my head around these arguments. I know an awful lot of people who grew up in single-parent households and did just fine. I also know an intolerable number of children of "traditional" households who were abandoned young, ignored, or abused beyond endurance. Having a traditional household is no panacea and not a requirement. Having parental figure(s) who love you and care for you is what matters. In my experience, age, gender, and sexual preference of the parents has very little to do with it.

Still: when I drive out to visit my family in the small central Washington town of Yakima in a couple of weeks, I guarantee that the "save traditional marriage" signs will outnumber the pride flags by about ten or twenty to one. It's too easy for those of us who live in liberal bastions like Seattle, San Francisco, or Boston to forget or dismiss our neighbors who don't think the way that we do.

So awhile back I called up my father and asked him about it. He's a recently retired college professor and author who's extremely active in his church, one of the only deeply religious people in my family. He's twice married, the second time for over twenty years, and has three kids ranging in age from 30 to 14. A very traditional, educated white American man in many ways. He tends to be quite liberal in his views: his church was "open and affirming" even before the rights of gays became a major public issue in American life. However, as a churchgoing man, he tends to have much more social contact with conservatives than someone like me.

In general, he told me, most of the arguments against gay marriage are based on fear. There's simple homophobia, of course, but for many people it's more complex. You can parcel out the fears a bit, if you look at it:

- Fear: What if they make me/my spouse/my children gay?
- Fear: What if they're more openly sexual than I'm comfortable with?
- Fear: What if they don't/can't treat children well? What if they abuse them?
- Fear: If a marriage isn't blessed by God, how can it last? (All-too-common corollary: "If it weren't for God's grace, I'd have killed my spouse years ago.")
- Fear: What's next, legal polygamy? Incest? Bestiality? If we break this taboo, what taboos are next?
- Fear: How can I believe that homosexuality is wrong if it's legally sanctioned?

Most of the leftist publications I read tend to focus on these as "hate" rants, but Dad suggests this is the wrong way to look at it. Yes, there's hatred, but behind the hatred is fear. People like Pastor Fuiten may be beyond convincing, but to convince our friends out in towns like Yakima, we on the left need to address their fears rather than our self-righteousness.

I think he has a point.

Here endeth the political rant for the day.

No good salad should include olives.

Thank you. Resume whatever it was you were doing.