Another day in the set

Rained out again. Somehow, that seems to be the luck of the draw this season. Lots of rainouts.

Something many people knew... in my opinion, it only makes it ironic that he was cast for Sephiroth's voice. Lance Bass likes boys. And it's all over the newsspace. Probably a distracting thing to keep people away from bigger issues.

Altercation with Scientology adherent leads to "Warning" posters appearing. Very suspicious. If they are, indeed misdemeanors, then it's not something to be overly worried about, and certainly not worth the expense of flyers. Makes me wonder just who's trying to put on who.

The Journal of 9/11 Studies is on-line. Even through threats, apparently, some have decided to publish. Go have a look and see if it's conspiracy-theory nonsense or solid science.

A xombie pub crawl ends up in arrests for suspected WMDs. So the shuffling, and calling out "Braaaaains" somehow didn't work? Getting tough these days to do anything that's creative or outside-the-box without someone trying to arrest or censor you for it.

An era is finishing - namely, Monopoly is switching over to a plastic card system and abandoning the cash. This probably won't make Monopoly a better game to play, or any shorter, but what it will do is add more calculators, batteries, and other such to the game. More parts to break, and less math to be done in the head.

Additional stuff and trying-to-make-sense: Today, although the source material has since vanish't into the ether (well, not the original source, which I suspect still exists, but the source that brought it to my attention), I got to thinking about malicious usage of characters and the expanses to which some people may go to make attacks. It's sort of the "Calvin pissing on X" situation. Watterson would definitely not approve of anything like that, yet it's ubiquitous enough that I'm sure most people recognize the image I'm talking about. How much of an image like that is created in "good fun" or parody sorts of material and how much of it is malice, taking the beautiful art and spraying it with graffiti, to attack the person, and how much of it is pure fuckery, defacing it because it's there and people will get a rise out of it. It happened to someone who could pass as this generation's Watterson, taking a relatively recently formed avatar and placing it in a very NC-17 rated scene. It felt like an attack, although there were some dinks who said it was "just Internet, stop paying attention and it'll go away" and others who said "these people will do these things, deal with it." Insensitive remarks, both of them, and their utterers received a just and fitting reward for them. Someone else attempted to post the image in question. Said posts were removed. Admittedly, the person who was affected by all this didn't really want to have such things brought to their attention, but once done, it had an effect on them.

So does pr0nifying a charcter count as a parody/fair use thing? Is it always intentionally malicious (discarding the cases where the original author welcomes pr0nification) toward the creator, or is it more of the second sort that's just lashing out for attention? What to do about such things? Do we just chalk it up to Internet-Beta and try not to let it affect us? Or something else?

I guess what I don't really understand the most is why such an idea would come to someone's mind, and then, secondly, why it would be acted upon, and finally, posted for the world and the original author to see, likely with the "See what I did!" sort of pride.

Anyway, g'night. There will likely be something else to talk about tomorrow.

Hrm. Another day gone by.

More of Organization XIII disintegrated into nothing. Also, the special movie for KH I makes a lot more sense. The weather has been significantly rainy. Even with flashes of lightning as I was driving home today. Very odd for July, but very nice as well, as it breaks the humidity. The weather here has been little short of unpredictable. Also, a little more than a month left on my internships? Where did all that time go, hehe.

It's xydexx's birthday - still the squeakiest, without doubt.

"Spirit of the Brand" spirits, from Bong Vodka. With those names together, I hope the booze is good and the bottles are excellently designed. Although they may get a lot just from marketing their names.

Carbon nanotubes to become a reality? Looks like the microtech is starting to get on its way... although there may have to be macrotech as well, as Americans are getting too fat for their medical scanners. Also, in medicine, Battery-powered healing. Adding a little juice to your flesh wound might actually help it heal faster.

Beauty in the darkest and most hidden of places. Japan makes even the underground look futuristic.

An adidas Tron jacket. Express thy geek in chic. Or pseudochic, whatever it ends up being. Also, for those more interested in board gaming, a history of how a conquest-type game came about.

Bamboo flatware. Now here's an idea. Wooden utensils, maybe designed to last for a while, but that degrade naturally. A good idea for picnics and campouts and such. Speaking of campouts, Frist's got a gem of an idea in his Support our Scouts Act - that the government won't deny equal access to any organization, or discriminate against them, if they want to use an open forum. So, finally, the Spiral Scouts can meet in the same place as the Boy Scouts, right? And will this put more pressure on the BSA to open up their own policies? (Yes, we know. "Morally straight." is the counterargument.)

Someone's taking on the RIAA, and has the money to last the distance... In addition to this - Why DRM and the DMCA, suck even more than usual.

Dog lands on man after owner pushes it out a window. More and more, I wonder whether owning a pet means you have to swear off drinking.

License plate reading technology. Taking data mining to a new advertising/tracking level. After all, if someone can read your license plate and pull up loads of data on you, it just gets easier to do illegal things with it, doesn't it?

What good a secular government and a free press will do for your country. Very attributed-to-Voltaire. Likable, too.

Last whacks for tonight - "Rejuveniles" - adults who have learned how to play again, much to the dismay of the people writing the article and at least one of the people interviewed. I think it's a good diea that the adults are learning how to play again. Will probably keep them healthier in the long run, because they'll be able to unwind and de-stress.