Calendar
Ongoing:
Ansel Adams at 100
(SF MOMA)
September 8 & 9:
Belle & Sebastian (Warfield)
Monday, September 10:
Modest Mouse (Warfield)
Tuesday, September 11:
Mike Watt (Bottom of the Hill)
October 12 & 13:
Widespread Panic (Greek Theatre)
Top Searches/ Fave Links:
Bill Hangley meets George Bush
Gorgeous Guy
@ 4th & Market
Icy Hot Stuntaz
PortaBush
Hyakugojyuuichu
Hamotam
Watt/ Mascis wreck
photos (see 06/20 entry)
That
Bitch Stole my HTML
I'm a Cow
Road to Springfield
::e m p t y a g e:: not just uncut, not just unedited... not even spell-checked.
tuesday, july 31
"The rocket fired from Vandenberg was carrying a global positioning satellite beacon that guided the kill vehicle toward it. In other words, it would be fair to say that the $100 million test was rigged. " -- Joe Conason, explining in Salon.com how the Bushies once again rigged something in their favor
Remember the budget surplus and the red-hot, ever expanding economy? Yeah? You do? Well, those days are over, bitch. Welcome to dubya's America.
My friend Raish turned me on to a really cool new musician from France (oops) named Manu Chao. Definitely worth a listen. One of the better albums I've heard in some time.
Well, July is almost over. But it brought me some traffic via a few incredibly strange search requests. I've posted them here if you want to check them out yourself. Note the incredible number of referrals who came here looking for pictures of J-Lo's ass. Sorry I can't help you out there.My favorites? "idiot bob barr," "sore shoulder stick shift," (alliteration!)"Wonder woman rape," and "Cool Jobs for Matt." Good luck, Matt.
Philip Morris, never the most responsible corporate citizen, has gone and done it again. If you thought its attempt to convince the Czech Republic that smoking could save the country $1 million in pensions (because smokers die young) was outrageous. Wait until you read the story behind the story of its humanitarian efforts in Kosovo. Turns out it spent more publicizing its good works than it did on the works themselves. For shame.Found in the always excellent Stay Free Magazine.
Sickness. Utter sickness. (thanks andy)
monday, july 30
Oh you've got no idea how much this excites me. Aside from San Francisco, my favorite place in the world is Athens, Georgia (and despite what you would think from reading this tripe, I've visited most of the states and all but one continent, two if you count antarctica). Anyway, it looks like Athens has a Critical Mass of sorts. Except in this case, it's called the Courteous Mass. Shouthern hospitality, go figure.
For more Athens bike links, be sure to visit Bike Athens, which links to a bunch of excellent features such as the The Nitty Gritty Bike Band and a whole lot more.
What !?! I'm only worth $2,622,734.00 on the black market? Damn, what a rip off. I really need to quit smoking.
I stand corrected. The "Who cares what you think" incident has been reported, in a roundabout fashion in the Rocky Mountain News. Apparently, there was some confusion as to the author of the email. Funny story. (thanks frank!)
I've been getting a lot of hits lately from search requests for "edna Krabappel nude." I can't even begin to imagine what sort of... nevermind
This Modern World reminds me of some of the things I said two weeks ago about the Levy investigation. And I'm not even going to comment on the hair again.
Here's the first news account I've seen of Bush's "Who cares what you think" comment. I'm amazed to see that the right-wing press picked up on it before any of the more progressive sites touched it.
sunday, july 29
I'm back from tromping about in the forest atop Mt. Adams in Washington state. We spent several days backpacking around the mountain (well, on the slopes of the mountain, ~ 6000 feet. Never went to the top), eating noodles and fending off legions of mosquitos. I'm short about a pint and a half now, I think. But I haven't checked my email since the 20th, and it's just gruesome. I've got several hundred messages waiting for me to attend to them, and that's just my personal account. I shudder to think about what awaits me at work...
While I was gone, the Bay Guardian's Best of the Bay issue came out. I wrote a bunch of them again this year, but am entirely too lazy to link to them all individually (which I'm not even sure I could.) But I also wrote the intro to the Outdoors section, and I'm pretty happy with it. No offense meant to New Yorkers, dot-commers (which I guess I am one of, sorta. Minus the paycheck.), folks from Jersey or the Professional Disc Golfing Association intended. As for Razor scooter riders, you can kiss my ass.
friday, july 20
Lincoln has a secretary named Kennedy, Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, and the similarities between George W. Bush and Warren G. Harding are just striking.
Yay! My vacation just started. No more work until July 30.
Nightlife impresario David Sarner says he has severed ties with Lizzie Grubman. And it's about damn time. How she can get away with making racist, classist statements and running people down in her I'm-changing-the-climate-Benz-SUV is beyond me. It really bothers me that people like this are allowed to live free in our society, that society doesn't cast trolls like Lizzie tot he wind. I was thinking about it last night, and I decided that I'm never going to patronize any of her clients as long as she represents them (sorry Jay Z). I hope to start a boycott Lizzie movement.... Or something. Anyway, I'm tempted to call her up and tell her what I think. But I won't. Instead, I just won't buy that Sony Clie I was thinking about, and I'll email Sony and tell them why. Fat bitch.
Damn, I don't know why I did not go to the Webbys. I could have gone. I should have gone. Friends went. Why didn't I? Because I'm an antisocial bastard sometimes, that's why. Because I wanted to go home Wednesday and hang out with Harp and Jeff came over and we had pasta and watched South Park.South Park. It's on every week, and it really isn't that funny anymore.
and so I missed the Webbys. Again. I've wanted to go for the last three years now, this year I had the opportunity, and I didn't. Dumb-ass. Every year I regret it. The first year, I saw Cal the next day chilling on a giant inflatable lounge chair she had liberated from the Webbys. You don't go around stealing furniniture--even if its inflatable--unless you're having fun. Well, I don't at least. So why the Friday morning recriminations? I just read Mark Morford's column, and damn I wanted to see the Pixieland guy...
Brad sent me a great video this morning. Enjoy.
thursday, july 19
Happy birthday Harper!
A great Tom the Dancing Bug. I wonder if my wife feels this way...
This is just sour grapes. You shouldn't be savinf energy for the rebate anyway, you should be doing it because it's the right thing to do. We don't pay for power at our place, it's included in the lease. I've got no financial incentive whatsoever to turn off the lights. I do it because it's the right thing to do. Sure, people who conserve energy deserve kudos, but as The Ineffectual One says: "Their reward is the years of savings they've had for doing the right thing."
Lizzie's Hamptons 500 is a great, if completely mean-spirited, flash game. The object? You're a drunken Lizzie Grubman, and your mission is to rid the Hamptons of white trash by running them down in your Mercedes. (thanks ezra!)
wednesday, july 18
So in the last few weeks, I've posted stuff on Tim @ Blur, the gorgeous guy (original link and debunking), and the "who cares what you think" email. USA Today mentioned my web log, and I've gotten links from Salon, Plastic, Metafilter and a few other sites. Which is to say that now, instead of just some of my friends reading this page, suddenly lots of people are. (Well, lots to me; I'm small potatoes.) What's more, I appear to have quite a few regular visitors now.Anyway, so here's what I'd like to know. If you do drop in regularly, please email me and let me know what you like, what you don't like, how you found me and maybe even a little about yourself. Thanks in advance,
-mth
New(ish) iMacsNew(ish) iDVD
New(ish) OS X
New(ish) G4s.
phew. I'm pretty worn out for a whole lotta not much.
A better version of this page. Much more readable. If you're on crazy drugs, that is. (Thanks Andy)
It's going to be a busy day for me today. Macworld Expo, although exciting, means a lot of work (even if I am here in San Francisco), so I'm trying to savor the morning before stories start rolling in and it gets hectic. See me stress hereI read a spectacular story on the bus this morning about Sir Francis Drake's safe harbor on the west coast, which seems to have been up at Point Reyes. This is a fascinating story of a harbor that disappears and reappears every 50 years.
MWNY: Expo keynote live coverage. Happening now (8:18 pacific). New G4s, buncha software.
tuesday, july 17
"We believe that it is our calling, NAY... our duty to convince Billy Dee Williams that he should eat more Salsa, for if he were to do so, we believe he would become an unstoppable force of Smoothness!"
My cam is back up
At about 10 a.m., searchers found a pair of blue tennis shoes and a box cutter along the Piney Branch Parkway in Rock Creek Park. Police would not say whether the shoes were a men's or women's pair.At 11 a.m. police found a used condom and an empry carton of Camels. Police would not say if the cigarettes were regular or menthol. At 11:32 a.m., officers saw a tree they hadn't noticed before, and commented on its "pretty foliage." At 11:46 a.m., one of the the officers noted that his stomach was growling. At about 12 noon, officers discovered a hot dog stand near the edge of the park, and began eating.
I don't want to seem cynical, but must every minute detail of the Levy investigation be published? This thing has gone completely O.J.
Images of Racism. Worth a look.
I live by routines and rituals. I'm not sure why, but I compulsively do the same things over and over again. When I skip some of my little rituals, things just aren't right for me all day long. One of these is listening to KQED radio as I get ready in the mornings. Today, I heard a "perspectives" segment by a guy named James Nestor, an office worker in South Park. Nestor was talking about how he enjoys the rolling blackouts. How they can be fun, and relieve some of the tedium that bored "office drones" experience every day. This struck me because I've said the same thing several times. I look at the periodic blackouts (and we haven't had one in a while, no thanks to President Dick Cheney) as snow days. They offer a break from the normal routine, and walking through a city wihout power--or just a section of the city--can give you a fresh perspective in much the same way Critical Mass, or a snowdrift can.Anyway, I enjoyed Nestor's commentary, but then started to wonder how people get their perspectives on KQED. Ever wondered the same thing? Here's how.
We almost went on this ride
. Now I'm feeling a little guilty that we did not.
monday, july 16
HAMOTAM has broken up, reformed, rebroken and reformed again. HAMOTAM is everyman. HAMOTAM is never the same song twice. Here is Fuego
missing intern David Kerns
The OS X Show, by yours truly, who would like to be at Expo, but would alltogether prefer to stay in SF.
There's this bubbling movement underway to "clean up" San Francisco, and it seems to be focusing on the mid Market / Civic Center area. Over the last couple of months, the propaganda for cleansing the city center has been progressively ratcheted up. On Friday, even the Fangzaminer got into the act with a histrionic report on all the sex offenders in the area (and it would have been frightening indeed had it appeared in a real newspaper. You know, one that can spell Wednesday). The campaign in already underway in earnest. Plans have already been hatched to transform the area. In the latest development, it looks like the Yups are coming. Luxury apartments will certainly change the character of the place, and put all sorts of yuppies on the ground who will demand the area be sanitized, which seems to be what the city wants.I'm not an advocate of pee or poo. But nor do I want to live in Manhattan. The current plan seems to be "let's get the stinky folk away from UN Plaza." Fine. But where do you intend for them to go? I ride my bike through mid-Market every day. Some days I walk through. I've been accosted, I've nearly been urinated on, I've been frightened and I've been in a situation where I felt like I should protect an elderly woman walking near me. I've never been to one of the sex theaters, nor do I have any intention of going. Ever. Even if I wanted to go for a lark, I'm too paranoid about germs to ever step foot inside. I'm all for revitalizing the area. But I don't think that has to mean running all of the poor people and homeless out of there. Unless we can move them en masse into the Marina.
Undoubtedly you saw the missile defense test over the weekend and all of the associated propaganda. But if you're like most folks (me included) you don't know too much about the technology aside from the theory that missile come down from out the sky and we shoot 'em before they land. Well, want to see how Star Wars works? (Stop laughing. I only mean that in a theoretical sense.) Check out this Flash demo on the Guardian. I've got $5 that says you'll know more about missile defense than dubya does after watching this. It only takes a few seconds.
sunday, july 15
Harp has been saying similar things about Yoga Journal for some time now.
Google's Zeitgeist, like most everything else on the site, is amazing.
Can you speak Italian?
friday, july 13
Freezing, out of food and lost near the top of one of the world's highest mountains, type 1 Colby Smith has to decide. Should he save himself, head down the mountain to safety and leave his friend behind to die, or stay with his friend, which could kill them both?Smith and his friend, Mike Heiser, lost their way on one of the coldest and windiest climbs on earth, and could not find a shelter to sleep in. After 23 hours of exposure and no sleep, they were out of food. Smith was surviving on glucose tablets; he ate 70 to stay alive.
Colby was a friend of mine in college. I'd heard he was mountain-climbing now, but I had no idea it was this intense. The first article is from Diabetes Interview, this is from CBS Healthwatch.
"What do you get when you cross a struggling internet consultancy with a group of disillusioned, music-obsessed employees? Answer: an underground rave in a secret location."Crazy. I was at this party. I can't believe it made The Telegraph. (see bottom. thanks Andy)
thursday, july 12
Best. Link. Ever. (thanks Tim!)
and if yr too lazy to click, it's an application to intern for gary condit
Check it out, it's an expert.
The Washington Monthly has an excellent and frightening look at AOL's entry into journalism. Not only that, but both David Cassel and Ken Layne are quoted in the article. Speaking of Ken, I found the article via his site, and I found out that his book is available via Josh's site.
From Joe B:
hey matt: the chron's web site also has a 3-D animated fog forecast map of San Francisco, with overhead and side views.Tres cool.
wednesday, july 11
Huh. So there's a referral in my stats from Yahoo! search for "dell layoffs august rumor 2001." Nothing particularly compelling about that. Except that it came from a us.dell.com IP address.
So today, on missed connections, it seems like everyone wants to be the next gorgeous guy.
Eric Tucker, the missing hiker, showed up in a campground yesterday. Why was he gone for 10 days? He fell 40 feet and hurt his ankle. This is a really cool story.
Tangled Web snares S.F.'s 'gorgeous guy'.The gorgeous guy hoax is starting to unravel. USA today has a good story, and CNN has a small item today as well. Since the USA Today article already says that Cassel has an article coming out, I guess it's safe to reveal that now. When it runs, I'll reveal my role in all this.But on another note, I feel sorry for the gorgeous guy. Yeah, he hoaxed CNN, and who knows what else, but I don't believe that makes him a bad guy. I'm sure it is a confusing time for him right now. I hope people don't act cruelly towards him. I think that the exposure he's faced with is ample punishment. Were I one of the reporters he lied to, I'd be furious with him as his actions could have had dire consequences for my career. But to the rest of us, it's inconsequential. It affects us in no way whatsoever. It's just a story, no more, no less. Don't mock the gorgeous guy. Mock CNN.com's Johnny Blowdry (and *man* do I wish that video was still up. If you haven't seen the crap-eating questions lobbed at gorgeous guy, or heard Johnny Blowdry (Hattori) make harsh tabloidesque pronouncements about Gorgeous being "harrassed," you're missing unintentional humor at its finest.) who never bothered to check out his subject's story.
Watt sent out this hysterical email from a guy named Bill Hangley, Jr. Bill met president Dubya on July 4th, and managed to get a candid view of the president select. Bush's attitude towards the American is exactly what you'd expect of of a man who lost the popular vote and puts policies in place designed to please his donors rather than the American people: Who cares what you think? It's a great story. And I hope he does make up the T-shirts.
tuesday, july 10
craigslist's missed connections is buzzing with gorgeous guy posts again. I wish I had not taken down what I posted Friday. I feel for you Dan. But hey, at least you duped a whole lot of people who congratulate themselves daily on being know-it-alls, on being above it all. GG just took advantage of that media maw, of the yearning for a good story. The others, they flat out fucked up. These are the rules of the media machine: Try to tell the truth and you'll get insulted and have accusations thrown at you. Expect a little credit and you'll be told it would have happened without you. Ask for an apology and you'll be ignored. Those involved know what happened, and who did what. That's enough for me. For now.Stay tuned for the sound of media beans spilling across the kitchen floor.
monday, july 9
Wanna see the new iMac? Peep it here.
"By bicycling to work, I am also contributing to the greater public health. Unlike my car-commuting colleagues, my bicycle releases no pollutants -- car exhaust is a major cause of asthma and other respiratory illnesses... Today, an estimated 25,000 people bike commute regularly in San Francisco. Join us."From an excellent Op Ed in today's Chron.
Are you viewing this site from Washington State? If so, email me please.
There's a very cool article in today's Chron on San Francisco's summer microclimates.
If Gorillaz isn't the greatest site ever, I don't know what is. I spent several hours Sunday (hey, it was cold and foggy) fiddling around on the site. If you don't feel like playing, kick back and watch Gorillaz cinema.
sunday, july 8
Suck Tabloid Smug Gettingit Green Feed The Finger Word. Fuck. I'm going to have to start reading things printed on paper if this keeps up.
Don't get me wrong, I love Godspeed, but indie rock has gotten a bit big for its britches lately (not that it hasn't always been that way). This review of Jim Yoshii Pile-Up in Flak Magazine sums it up aptly: if you aren't Godspeed You Black Emporer, Fly Pan Am to Sigur Ros scoring some tragic film lost in a Great Northern winter, then you might as well be playing pop/punk at a frat party.
This is really Jorn's thing, but here's one for the cliche watch: dot bust.
saturday, july 7
I've never seen Halfbakery before, and I'm still not sure I completely get it, but man, what an amazing site. It's self described as "a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users," and I want my damn dual film camera.
Ouch
friday, july 6
Okay, since everything else is, well, heavy, here's something a little lighter. It's a dog playing in the freeway. Don't worry, he's okay. And I'm going to resist the urge to comment on how "newsworthy" this is. (via fark)
Ted Rall has a good essay on the pros of globalization in Motherjones.com. Rall asks: "The question is whether lefties can pick and choose. Can we keep the positive socializing influence of globalization while taming the unfettered capitalism that currently goes with it? Or, conversely, could we withdraw from and discourage free trade agreements while keeping the world on our backs about state-sanctioned murder of the mentally handicapped?" To me this is a vital question in that the American radical movement is opposing the wrong thing: globalization rather than the "unfettered capitalism that currently goes with it," as Rall says. They are two intrinsically different things. Globalization is, in my opinion, a good thing. Nations are antiquated, quaint. Every time I hear someone yapping about how the US is the world's lone superpower, I think "yes, and as such we ought to use our power to eliminate our sovereignty." We ought to be working towards No More Nations. Use the American model for the rest of the world, if you want (just don’t put Republican appointees in the court system if you want to hang onto democracy). Just get rid of nations. Globalization is good. It will help stop war, famine and disease. Opposing it out of habit is just idiotic.
thursday, july 5
Stay Free! #17 has so much good stuff in it, I don't even know where to begin. But I'll start with the two features Carrie McLaren posted today. The first article is really more of a photo essay. Check out the guy in the Tommy shirt. The second is a story by Jason Torchinsky in which he tries to win back his name from the clutches of an evil--or at least dorky--doppelganger. (And for the record while we're on the subject here, Matt Honan, I'm sorry for any confusion I may have caused if I've alarmed your friends or family with my innane ramblings. And please know that I have no desire to besmirch your good, good name. But dammit! Quit handing out my email address to people as your own. I'm sick of it. Really. Stop.) Where were we... Oh yeah, Stay Free. My favorite piece in SF is on using the dead to hawk products--and I'm not talking about the grateful kind here unless you mean Jerry.
Damn. I think I'm going to head down to the Bargain Bank this weekend.
The HAMOTAM world premeire live show takes plave on Friday the 13th at Cafe International. If you've never seen HAMOTAM, make the drive up from the Penninsula and get in on it before the scene blows up and you're forced to shun it completely.
How do you oppose the policies of a presidential administration when the U.S. is operating without a legitimate president? How do you participate in a democracy when Rehnquist and the four other thugs on his court -- Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor and Kennedy -- have used the democratic system to nullify the very idea of democracy?
Strong words in Salon in a review of books on the election. But ones we need to hear too, lest we forget how the election was stolen by the Republican party in order to put their Dauphin puppet in power. If you ask me, Rehnquist should be tried for treason. He and his cronies subverted democracy, and have effectively handed our governemnt over to the monied interests willing to pay most for it.
tuesday, july 3
Here's one last update before the holiday. My latest Macworld article, in which I say things such as: The Cube's timing could not have been worse had it shown up at Boston Harbor on a chilly December evening in 1773 dressed as a bag of English Breakfast tea.
I won't be posting any updates tomorrow. Sorry. but in the meantime, I've posted the beginnings of something I'm working on. When I was a kid, I lived in Iran. I want to go back, but before I do, I want to try and collect the memories of place that I have.
The Mark & Lard Present DJ Castle mini-site on the BBC is simply hillarious. I wish these cats were broadcasting stateside.
"We are training young people to change their desire to eat chimpanzees and develop an appetite for other meat like goat."
I've linked to a couple of these environmental impact self-tests before, but here's another cool one. This is from New Scientist. What's more, it's got the word "nappies" in it. Nappies. I love the English.
monday, july 2
For the last few years, the ratio of jobs to houses on Craigslist has been almost completely inverse. At one point, there were tons of jobs, and hardly any houses. Now, you can find a place to live all over town, but good fucking luck trying to get a job, buddy. But don't take my word for it, check out the graph on Craigslist. (That yellow text that you can't read says "sfo sublets wanted," I believe.) Crazy. Our rent just went up again this month, so now we're paying $1700 w/ utilities for a one-bedroom. I think it's about time to find something new.
I am always intending to link to this, yet always forgetting. So before I forget again, be sure to check out Kenny G's (no not that one) Popular Guide to Unpopular Music. You probably won't find most of these in your local record store (unless you have a particularly sweet local record store, which many of us here in the fair City by the Bay do. So, er, disregard that.), but most all of these artists are well worth rooting out. Others remind me of the sound made when you drop a large tomcat into a washing machine. So in either case, you'll be entertained.
Apparently condoms aren't working.
From the duh file: Fox News Channel Said Unbalanced. That's news? I can't believe that it takes a study for the media to call GOPNN to task for being the Drudge Limbaugh of network news.
It's probably not at the top of your Monday morning reading list, but the mysterious oak disease, called sudden oak death, that's been killing trees all over California is a pretty fastinating story. In the latest developments, it has spread to buckeyes.
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