2009/01/30

Dismality

Dismal. That's a good word.

At the same moment where this country seems to be shaking itself loose of the authoritarian control, some ugly things are coming to light. Perhaps it is a sign that people are finally willing to speak up and say the Emperor not only is lacking garments, but has been skinned.

The gorram body armor.

Republicans, even after running a disastrous economic experiment not once but twice (Reagan 80s, Bush 2000s), still are sticking their fingers in their ears and going "lalalala, I can't hear you" (via Norwegianity).

Is it tragically hilarious, or hilariously tragic? Seriously? It's been 221 years (scratch that, 139 years (scratch the scratch: 89 years (scratch, scratch, scratch: 38 years))) since we got our voting on; we haven't gotten things figured out yet? Oh wait, I know what this is: when I was in grade school, it was called being a spoil-sport. Sheesh. And if the tables were the other way, I'd say the same thing. Every time we do this kind of thing, it makes our electoral process seem even more quaint and hokey and pointless if the judiciary is the final arbiter at the end.

Honestly, I'm not surprised we are moving them towards utilities. Let's just regulate them, okay? Under the auspicious title of "Utility", AT&T (the real one), gave you: radio astronomy, transistors, Unix and C, and on and on and on. Oh, and a phone that worked. I know people nearing their 70s that still need 10 or less fingers to count when that old Ma' Bell phone didn't work. And what did the breaking and deregulation give us? A series of re-merged, unregulated oligopolies that don't provide nearly the same things. I'm not saying it was all rosy with Ma', but we sure got a lot of neat things.

So, who knows? Frankly, I'm glad some of this noise is now percolating upward in the media stream. Amazing, really. Hopefully it becomes a torrent that leaves the truth in the plain, hard light of day.

Random thought: why the love of monarchies, royalty in general?

0xFEE1DEAD

2009/01/02

Busy

Been busy. Very busy.

I've still not finished the Finite State Machine library. This is nothing new, really. I meant to finish it while I was on vacation, but I ended up reading books and webcomics instead.

I'm alive, somewhat.

And 2008 is firmly behind us. Of course, the bottom has yet to be reached. The question now is: will we coast to the bottom, or will we slam head on into the bottom at top speed? Are things going to go Mad Max on us?

Who knows.

Hopefully the manufactured, non-existent "instruments" the bankers cooked up will go away for a long while. Money from nothing for nothing. Amazing. But ridiculously dangerous.

0xDEADBEEF