mama needs a new pair of kicks

i think the era of me wearing combat boots exclusively is over, or at least on hiatus. it's too hot out for heavy boots anyway; maybe i'll feel differently come autumn.

the zippers on my boots have been giving me static for awhile: one would stop working, then i would get it sorta-working again, then another zipper would break. or the pulltabs would come off completely. so i stopped wearing them a month or two ago. i've been wearing my old semi-worn chuck taylors from back in day (i've probably had them since high school, not that i wore them often in the past ten years [until recently]).

because today is my last day in town before going to san francisco for vacation, & my niece & her friend go home next week, the whole family went out for chinese buffet lunch one more time. we were there so early that no food was out yet when we arrived. but it was good, & the food came out promptly. afterward, "grampa" (my father; it's still weird referring to my own parents as grampa & grandma, though i guess those are their roles now) had plans to take the girls to shoe carnival. i'd been considering buying some new chucks anyway, so i tagged along. (i'm not exactly happy that nike is now the company making chuck taylors, but then again i have no clue who made any of my boots, or under what working conditions, so i can't complain too much.)

nike seems to be pushing the "flame" style of chucks pretty hard; i can't hang with that, sorry. like buying jncos, i have to be selective of what i will buy because some of the chuck designs are just too loud or gaudy for me. back in the day, by far the coolest chuck design was the "black mono", featuring black canvas as well as black rubber; if i'd seen those i would've snapped them up in an instant. shoe carnival had a "black mono flame", but that simply wasn't good enough.

shoe carnival had a "buy one get one-half sale", so i snagged two pairs: "gry/car/wht" and "navy/red/gold". grampa paid for one, as a birthday present. i also got a $3 discount coupon for being the first customer to touch my nose with my tongue, but i forgot to actually use it when at the register (true story). other than a pair or two of dress shoes that i never worn, this was the first time i'd bought new shoes in 8-10 years. so that's fun.

anyway, i have a couple errands to run, and i need to pack for my bay area vacation. i will have internet access there, but i don't know how often i'll get around to blogging. i'll be too busy hanging out with my lovely girlfriend, seeing the sights, going to shows, and so on.

after i return is the mms show. see awia news for more info about that show, as well as how to buy discounted badges for the whole conference.

get me some press or kill these people

there was a bit of a delay, but the new mp3ep from animals within animals, get me some press or kill these people, is now available for free download!

more info on awia news. check it out.

bring it on down rude boy

just returned from dnb night... it was a special event, a record release party for jahba & sumone (the two regular djs of the night). special guests for the night were enduser and soundmurderer.

we showed up maybe 10:45 or so. quahogs and crew were there, so we hung out with them & talked for awhile. that was fun. quahogs & scottfro were both wearing the "recycle your record collection" t-shirt (interesting because neither of them live in-state), but unfortunately i didn't get a chance to talk to scottfro, so he remains one of my few customers who i've never been in contact with other than to sell them something...

enduser started not long after we arrived. sounded like he played a bunch of new material (or at least there was a lot i didn't recognize; it couldn't have all come from records i don't have, because i have a decent percentage of his catalog). the crowd was pretty packed (much moreso than last week) & they were all over enduser. both drbmd & dj coppertop commented how it was almost shocking to see a crowd in indy get so into something so hard. when he played one of his "better known" tracks (i think it was "wreckin' shit"? i need to double-check), several in the crowd "sang along" to the sample "she asked me to give her 9 inches and make it hurt so i fucked her three times and punched her in the mouth"... i sure don't remember that happening when he played the same track when i saw him in march... though we also heard someone spin that track last week, so maybe it gets played a lot at dnb night.

after enduser came soundmurderer. he was playing from a laptop, but i guess it was a dj set (at least to some extent) because he straight up played "bucephalus bouncing ball" by aphex twin & i think i also recognized a mu-ziq track in there somewhere... the crowd was into that too, but they also started to thin out by this point. good set, anyway, from a pretty big name dnb dj.

we didn't stick around too much after soundmurderer; we did hear the first jahba track from the record whose release party it was. it was good, but what most stuck me about it was that it seemed familiar... it was built around a ragga that i've definitely already heard sampled in ragga jungle ("murder dem"). it did sound good though. anyway, the record isn't even quite out; they were just playing the test pressing. i thought the point of a record release party is that you have copies of the record available?

this was also streamed over the internet at drumandbasstv.com. according to the marketing, it was the "first ever live tv webcast of an american jungle event". i didn't see the camera (though i did see the webcast stuff; maybe the camera was there), so for all i know people on the internet could see us sitting there at the table not talking to anyone.

okay, way past my bedtime... i'm off to brush my teeth. big ups to the cincinnati crew, including enduser, quahogs, grant, q's brother, etc.

the skinny puppy game

this game is a variant of "six degrees of kevin bacon", except the goal is to connect a given artist to the legendary industrial band skinny puppy. i don't remember the exact details of its origin (perhaps in the old radio freedom chat room?), but i do know that quahogs and i inspired tfy to post about it way back in april 2002.

anyway, i've been doing research for something i'm writing (more on this in a couple weeks when it comes out), & i suddenly remembered this game... it wouldn't really work for this thing i'm writing, but it occurred to me that now that otto von schirach has done some work on the latest skinny puppy record (and opened for them during part of their recent tour), it is extremely easy to connect just about anyone from the bad taste crew to skinny puppy in at most 3 degrees. which means that anyone who has a legitimate connection to me is at most 4 degrees from skinny puppy. allow me to demonstrate using tfy (as a treat because i know he used to play).

1. the former yugoslavia has a track on the free speech for sale compilation; also on that compilation is a track by animals within animals.
2. one of the collaborators on the animals within animals 2cd mono a mono was stunt rock.
3. stunt rock had a track on the Ye Olde Barn Compilation cd & record; otto von schirach also appeared on that release.
4. otto von schirach collaborated with skinny puppy on their cd "The Greater Wrong of the Right" and opened for them on several dates of that tour.

i chose to do this using only music releases. i could just as easily do it using live performance lineups. i don't necessarily have to go through stunt rock either; i picked him because the connection between us is strongest. for example:

1. the former yugoslavia performed live at recycled rainbow 5 (?); also performing that night was stAllio! (with animals within animals).
2. stAllio! had a track on the "Way to Go Dumb Ass" comp, along with doormouse, stunt rock, and loaf pincher (a side project of venetian snares and fanny).
3. doormouse, stunt rock, venetian snares, and fanny all appear on "Ye Olde Barn Compilation" alongside otto von schirach.
4. Q.E.D.

if you know anything about "Ye Olde Barn", you know it's dedicated to the wisconsin late "barn parties" thrown by the addict crew back in the day, & all the artists on it played at least one of those parties... otto played one or two, but i don't remember the specific lineup of the one he played, so i won't use it... i'm sure doormouse was on that bill, but not much else. and i did technically play a show on the same bill as doormouse in belvidere illinois in early may 2002, so you could use live shows exclusively if you wanted. i'm not vainly showing off, really. i'm just giving pointers for the skinny puppy game. it only feels like i'm showing off.

hey EU

because i feel obligated to cross-post important awia news items here to my blog (i imagine some visitors might regularly check one but not the other):

praxis now has my true data 12" in stock. i've had a couple europeans inquire about buying the record and i told them all that praxis would have some in stock eventually, and now they do, so go get you some.

last night a dj ruined my life

snugglers, rumorites, & locals might recall the story of berry's music, an indianapolis record store that was raided by the RIAA last fall. an excellent piece in this week's nuvo details how owner alan berry lost his business, lots of money, & almost his house while trying to fight off "the man". his crime: selling mixtapes.

Armed with search warrants, the officers grabbed all the mix-CDs from both stores, then headed to the Berrys’ warehouse. Though they had no search warrant for the warehouse, Alan, believing he had nothing to hide, let them look around there as well. “We didn’t have any duplicating equipment [for pirating CDs], if that’s what they were looking for. And as for the mixes, we never really questioned the legalities of them. We never did. Because, one, we were getting some of the mix-CDs through our regular vendors that we bought our quote-unquote ‘legit’ product from. The same place I would get the Interscope record from, I would get mix-CDs from, from national distributors. Two, the artists are on there endorsing the mixes. I mean, Eminem’s on the mix-CD saying, ‘Yo, this is Eminem. You’re listening to DJ Green Lantern.’ Then he drops three or four exclusive free-styles and he’s talking within the mix, about the mix itself, saying Lantern’s his man. You would kind of assume that Eminem’s fine with it.”

But arguing their case at the warehouse proved a waste of time and the police continued to gather up discs. It amounted to $10,000 worth of stock — a significant hit, but no arrests were made and Alan felt that if confiscating the mixes was the worst that happened, his store would survive. For about two months, it looked like that might be the case. Then came another knock at the back door. It was a Marion County sheriff, there to arrest Alan Berry on 13 felony counts of royalty theft and fraud. Alan was handcuffed, taken down to lockup, strip-searched, deloused, put in an orange jump suit — and finally released 12 hours later on $15,000 bond. Andy Berry, now living in Florida, went through the same ordeal once he flew back to Indy and turned himself in.

jeez, i just want to quote the whole damn article; it's well-written, compelling, and easily the definitive piece on the battle between berry's music & the law. if you're into copyright issues & all that, this is a must read.

i'll just let you go read it for yourself, but i do want to drop one more quote, because i was ranting about this bit last fall, so it feels good to see it finally pointed out by someone in "the media":

Then, some weeks later, Fox 59’s evening news featured a special report on counterfeit CDs “that look and sound so close to legitimate discs, even music store owners can’t tell the difference.” Donald Finch, a local investigator working for the RIAA, held up a fake Beyonce CD (that indeed looked pretty real) and confirmed that a “truck full” of such CDs had been confiscated locally over the previous few months. The discs taken from Berry’s Music had included no counterfeits — and the segment never cited Berry’s (or any other store) by name — but, coming on the heels of the raid and the Channel 8 story, viewers could certainly be forgiven for assuming that’s who the Fox story was referring to. As a kicker, the report ended by casually noting that many of the places selling counterfeits are also associated with drugs and organized crime.

(i blogged about the fox59 hatchet-job in november but i hadn't started my blog yet when the orignal story broke, so that's the only other post in my blog about it. i would link to the IMN threads about it, but those are in the hidden "off-topic" forum, only accessible to registered users).

[edit: i just located the village voice article from last fall; check it out]

lord ha'mercy

[ed note: in my not-entirely-sober state at 1:30am last night, i wrote this and mistakenly posted it to awia news instead of this blog. once it has been moved here i will delete the awia news post... just fyi in case someone gets confused]

just got back from dnb night at the melody inn... luckily, this afternoon i managed to find the one bulletin board where the dnb night kids actually promote their events online (for awhile they were pimpin' on the mw-dnb boards but i guess they got bored of that).

i wouldn't have even thought to go tonight, but i got an email from firestorm viper this morning mentioning that he was scheduled to play tonight. so i mentioned it to drbmd, thinking we should go (after all, we had booked firestorm viper for experiMENTAL, but he had to cancel due to his work schedule).

it was a good time, though we rarely left our comfy table (hey, i go to shows to hear the music, not to socialize, as evidenced by the fact that i usually just sit in one space during the show, hardly talking to anyone). fviper played a good set, perhaps somewhere between a PA and a dj set (we spotted a bit of doormouse & nasenbluten during the set, so it obviously wasn't 100% "original", whatever that means these days).

but we were in for a surprise when we reached the venue: the other out-of-town act booked for the evening was called reptile-kun. we had even checked out the website before going to the show. but when we arrived at the show (barely through the door), reptile-kun recognized us, calling out to dr butcher.

turns out "reptile-kun" is a newish name for the guy who had set up a bad taste show for us in rockford illinois (actually belvidere IL) back in 2002. (fans of my tracks "rockford fillinois" and "live-in butler" might note the significance of this show, since i wrote those tracks [or at least the original version of "live-in butler" specifically for that show.) we knew him as 1/2 of the a group called no-tech; i guess reptile-kun is his solo/dj name. so it was fairly strange that we went to the show because we sorta-knew one of the out-of-town performers, & it turns out that we knew the other out-of-town act even better, in a way. so it was a damn good thing we showed up tonight.

so reptile-kun had an interesting set, starting out with almost straight hip-hop & dancehall for a couple tracks before working his way into the breakcore. it was definitely a different-sounding set than i'm used to from dnb night (where mashed amens, 2-step beats, & ragga samples are the usual flavor). conveniently firestorm viper was up after that, so we didn't have to stay super late just to hear the acts we wanted. yes, we stayed until almost 2, but we could've left at 1:15 or so & not have missed the out of towners.

next week at dnb night is the big "mos-hi" record release party, with enduser and soundmurderer. we'll probably go to that too, & there might be a much bigger crowd. the crowd tonight wasn't too small, but definitely smaller than the past couple dnb night events i'd attended (though admittedly, i hadn't been for awhile except for the "special events" like the doormouse show).

okay, i'm up well past my bedtime, so now that this post is finished i need to brush my teeth & go to bed....

when it rains it snows pt. ii

i just received the imn newsletter. at the top is a picture of me (actually a cropped version of this picture from my online press kit). right next to me is paul stanley. (click here for screenshot)

at first i only knew about the pic on the actual review page, which was a collage of images relating to the 4 cds being reviewed. i think a couple days passed before i realized that link to the reviews on the imn main page had my picture alone:



a bunch of people go to the imn main page, & a bunch more get the newsletter. so i expect lots of people to start recognizing me on the streets soon. i'll need to get cosmetic surgery to change my appearance. eventually, that is, once i get tired of the rockstar lifestyle.

but seriously, i guess the lesson is to keep some high-quality images on your band's website where press types can easily find them (this is assuming you want press attention, of course). i hear references to 200dpi images as a good standard. i don't actually have any crisp images that big; the ones in my gallery are 1280x960. but they need to be pretty big if you want any chance of the pics seeing print (obviously this image hasn't seen print yet, only web use, so consider this a useful tangent from someone who works in print).

so anyway, paul stanley of KISS and stAllio! are the only two photos in the newsletter, both at the top. the equal billing means i'm equally as important as KISS, right?

take them at their words

like i was mentioning to quahogs in my last post, today i donated to buzzflash so they would send me the new movie outfoxed (as well as a copy of the new book banana republicans. buzzflash can be a bit over the top at times, but they do a good job of collecting information so i don't mind paying a few bucks extra to kick it back to them.

outfoxed is a new documentary that claims to expose the manipulative practices and blatant right-wing bias of fox news. everyone knows fnc is biased, but they refuse to admit it. this is supposed to be the movie that proves it.

also interesting about the film, according to the nytimes, it apparently pushes the envelope for fair use rights:

Though the existence of ''Outfoxed'' has been quietly publicized, its particular nature and content have been closely guarded for fear, Greenwald says, that Fox would try to stop the film's release by filing a copyright-infringement lawsuit. Nobody has ever made a critical documentary about a media company that uses as much footage without permission as Greenwald has, and the legal precedents governing the ''fair use'' of such material, while theoretically strong, are not well established in case law.

so clearly this is on my must-see list. i'm willing to chunk out $16 to get a copy sight unseen (or you can get it from the outfoxed site for $9.95 if you don't want to donate to any PACs or media outlets).

as further proof of fox's biased agenda, the outfoxed people have released copies of "the memo" sent out daily by fnc mgt directing that day's content. 33 days' worth of memos, to be exact, and wonkette has posted them all. this is not subtle stuff; it's blatant right-wing editorializing. after reading through the whole list, you hardly even need to see the movie because they're already proven their thesis with this filedump.

there's no way i'm taking the time to analyze the whole thing or pick out a bunch of excerpts (other sources have the excerpt scene covered but i at least want to post this one, perhaps my favorite so far:

Air America, featuring Al Franken and other liberals, got on the air last week, but at what cost? Well, in New York, it took the place of an ethnic show. In LA, it knocked off a Korean program. And in CHicago,a spanish language broadcast was replaced. None of these people are happy.

now that's just silly.

it's not all damning... a few of the editorial decisions are even honorable (like the part about avoiding showing the victim's face when cover the kobe trial). but taken as a whole, it's hard to deny that john moody (author of "the memo") is trying to steer the channel's coverage in a pro-war conservative direction... and the movie supposedly shows just how much the memo affects content (check out jon du pre clip on the site for a taste [i'm downloading the trailer torrent now]).

apparently the gay marriage amendment has been a total wash so far... it was never going to pass anyway, since even those who oppose gay marriage for whatever reason don't want to look like total bigots. the whole vote was always a sham, an attempt to force democrats to vote against the amendment so they could then point and say: "look at the queer loving democrats! they want to destroy our hetero values by refusing the demonize gayness!" but now they can't even do that, making it all a collosal waste of time when they could've been trying to pass actual important bills like "pass a budget resolution or any appropriations bills".

quoth the fineman:

In proposing a constitutional amendment to define marriage only as "the union of a man and a woman," the GOP's goal was to put Democrats on the cultural defensive and to inspire religious conservatives who form the core of modern the party today. Instead, the White House and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have exposed divisions among Republicans and, through a well-meaning procedural mistake, allowed the Democratic ticket to wriggle free of the need to cast a potentially harmful vote on the matter.

In the end, Frist and White House strategist Karl Rove couldn't decide whether they really wanted to pass the measure or merely have a vote they could campaign on. The result is that they got neither.

Rather than seek an up-or-down vote on a toughly worded version of the amendment, Frist and his allies (led by Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania) allowed discussion of a second, milder one. But since that one (which would leave latitude to the states) might actually pass, Democrats opted to mount a filibuster. As a result, the central (and only) vote turned out to be on a motion to shut off debate — a harder vote to use in an attack TV ad.

The procedural posture also allowed Sens. John Kerry and John Edwards to slip the noose. Since the motion to shut off debate requires 60 votes, the John-John ticket can pay homage to gay rights by merely not showing up — but can claim neutrality of a sort on the core issue by not having to vote on it.

the motion to end debate only got 48 votes: 48 more than it should've, but way way fewer than would be needed to actually insert homophobia into the constitution.

when it rains it snows....i wonder why

just when i'm still reeling from being booked at the midwest music summit, i find this: a brand-spankin'-new review of maura's milk chocolate bath in the indy spins (local reviews) section of IMN. strange. (you also might want to check out the chatter on the message board thread... naturally the talk is all about the cover.)

the review is by rob g of the free zone. he's been doing a great job of supporting me since i sent them a package a couple months back... last week they spent a good minute discussing the concept behind my
true data 12", the week before they played a track off mmcb (though i forgot to listen that week, dumb dumb dumb), & they're even name-dropped me before as well as played selections from free speech for sale (which i sent them). so in short: you should check out the show, because it's possibly the coolest thing on indianapolis radio.

block the vote

no, i'm not talking about the gop's appalling attempts to actually prevent democrats from voting, though that is where i got the term from.

no, this is a little more urgent. apparently the arch-conservatives and homophobes in govt are currently debating the travesty known as the "same sex marriage amendment." & they hope to put it to a vote this wednesday!

i get a lot of mail from moveon & sometimes it seems like there isn't enough time in the day to even read them all... but this time around i made sure to sign the petition immediately because this isn't just any crackpot bill they're talking about... they want to amend the constitution in order to discriminate, to inject a li'l bit o' hate that wasn't in the constitution before. if the us constitution is to mean anything at all, this must not pass. like moveon says:

This is unprecedented -- never before has our Constitution been amended to take away anyone's rights.

so sign the petition & let everyone know you won't stand for this befouling of our most important document.

more spider-man 2 thoughts

now that i've had a few hours to recover from this hangover...

i've never been a big fan of dr octopus (though he's not as lame as, say, the rhino). but he was pretty fucking badass in this movie. i wasn't really familiar with alfred molina but apparently he's done a lot of work (including several other movies i've seen).

the character work is fantastic. doc ock's arc is pretty good, and all the important character arcs from the first movie are continued here. even aunt may gets a couple powerful moments. and i was pretty satisfied with the ending, something i can't really say about the first movie.

so yeah, maybe it is better than the first one. i still need to see it again before i decide that, though.

dial tone

it was all a lie. tone loc was not at my reunion. but i had a fun enough time anyway. it was strange seeing some of those people again, some of whom i barely recognized or remembered. everyone was nice & some of them were pretty excited to see me. i even got a profuse apology from my high school "bully" (he never beat me up or anything, but abused me verbally... he's clearly done some growing up since graduation). there were a few people i wished were there but weren't (i tended to hang out with a lot of outsiders), but it was a good time.

i got pretty drunk on wine (which was free... until 10pm. what's up with that?), passed out relatively early for a saturday night, & woke up very early. now i'm nursing a hangover; nothing too terrible, just a bit of a headache & that mildly queasy sensation of feeling the previous night's toxins still filtering out of my bloodstream.

we also went to see spider-man 2 yesterday. good movie. my sister said she liked it more than the first movie. i don't know if i would go that far (maybe i need to see it again to really compare) but it is very well made & a worthy successor to the first spider-man movie, which i thought was great.

well what do you know...

i haven't actually been contacted yet about this, but it looks like i will be performing at mms after all! how about that!

go to midwestmusicsummit.com, click on "showcases", & check out day 3 (which is saturday, august 14). i'm playing at united states of mind. & curiously, infinite number of sounds is playing the same showcase! (they have also performed at recycled rainbow a couple times.)

fearandhype 9/11

it's really amazing that michael moore frightens and upsets conservatives so badly that they will pick apart every cut and camera angle to try to discredit him. and for every detail they find that they disagree with, they'll scream LIES and DECEIT and THE SKY IS FALLING. as if michael moore sits there in the editing booth thinking "how can i make the most maliciously misleading, unfair, and untrue piece of slander ever in order to further my anti-american goals?"

i looked at 5 pages of posts on moorewatch.com after they counterintuitively decided to "attack" moore by releasing the movie (illegally) online for free. (moore has said he doesn't care if people pirate the movie as long as they see it. so his enemies decide to help him out by ensuring that many more people will watch?) i was not impressed by the site. all of the posts that were worth reading were reprinted from other media outlets. much of the rest was self-important back-patting, speculation, trivial bickering about minor editing choices, with the occasional "why didn't he include all the kickass pro-iraq-war argument?" or the super-lame "here's a pleasant story about iraq; if michael moore had his way blah blah blah." these are the kinds of people who were talking about how horribly inaccurate the film was before they'd even seen it. but, if you like partisan bickering and petty flamewars, you might enjoy reading some of the comments.

other sites like this one that compile all the "deceits" in the film are similarly subjective: every possible error and opinion that the writer disagrees with are "lies" no matter how trivial. they don't bother to analyze whether any of these anti-moore arguments or claims of inaccuracies are truly accurate or even make sense: they get added into the pot. the site is quick to point out when moore uses bush's jokes against him, but if moore dares to make a joke it's cataloged as a "deceit" (or even three: see 8-10). it pulls a "hitchens" and if it finds a fault with anything moore has ever said, even unrelated to the film, that too is cataloged as being a problem with fahrenheit 9/11. it attributes opinions and conclusions to the film that are not actually there. sure, some are the complaints listed are actually valid. but let's just put it this way... the introduction states:

Although the evidence in this report demonstrates dozens of plain deceits by Moore, there are some "deceits" in this report regarding which reasonable people may disagree. So if you find me unpersuasive on, for example, three alleged deceits, consider this article to have identified "Fifty-six Deceits" rather than fifty-nine.

i haven't taken the time to actually count how many of these i think are deceits (nor will i bother), but if i did i'm not sure it would even fall into the double digits. sorry dave.

honestly, after spending 4+ hours writing that lengthy rebuttal to the over-the-top rantings of christopher hitchens, i have pretty much cashed myself out on this debate. but that's okay: michael moore and especially craig unger are doing a decent job of defending themselves on their own. right now unger's site has several letters at the top that totally blow holes in the arguments of isikoff at newsweek (lib: this is the article you emailed me last week)... and unger knows a lot more about the bush-saudi connections (with detailed records and documents) than most of the people attacking f9/11's "accuracy". (but craig, why no permalinks to the letters?)

it only took 3 years....

ken lay has finally been indicted. but will kenny boy's downfall rub off on his buddy bush? obviously bush distanced himself from lay immediately after the enron scandal broke; will the public remember their close ties? or perhaps more pertinently, will the media conveniently forget?

i'm reminded of the "two justice systems" sketch on chappelle's show, where dave reversed the treatment of blue collar & white collar criminals: a swat team raids the unethical executive's home, shooting his dog and railroading him through an unsympathetic court into prison, while the drug dealer receives a polite phone call asking him to turn himself in, pleads the fifth, and gets off on a technicality. enron's victims (and there are possibly millions of them, even if you don't count the citizens of california, who were screwed over by the energy crisis enron engineered) have been howling for lay's head for years. indicting him now is better than not indicting at all, but i'm not sure how comforting that will be to all those workers who lost their retirement funds.

where do you want to infect today?

the savvy & geeky have long used "alternative browsers" like mozilla (i have firefox at home; mozilla at work) or opera instead of that steaming heap of security holes and non-standard-compliance called internet explorer. i give mozilla (and mozilla firefox) my highest recommendation for its wonderful features like tabbed browsing and built-in pop-up blocking (you can't get tabbed browsing in IE at all, & need to add a third party plug-in to get pop-up blocking in IE). i adamantly refuse to even open IE unless i'm going to a site that won't work without it (in which case i'll try to ignore that site) or for browser compatibility testing when i'm doing web design.

but recently reports of IE security flaws have reached such a fever pitch that security heavyweights like CERT and others are in the news beseeching people to install other browsers, saying that IE is too insecure to use at all. of course, this is what many geeks have been saying for years, but for this to show up in headlines on places like cbs is a new development.

m$ just released a patch to fix some of the newest flaws, but reports are that this band-aid is virtually useless at keeping out attacks. no worries, m$ says, because service pack 2 will address all these problems... but SP2 will only be available for winXP so if you are using any other operating system (win98, win2k, mac os [like any self-respecting mac user would want IE anyway], or whatever... or if you have a pirate version of xp, for that matter) then you are not going to see any IE fix anytime soon.

alas, if you're a wage slave like me, you might not have the option of installing a usable browser, because in many "enterprises" (read: ginormous faceless behemoths), users and IT managers don't want to switch. the problem is that many of these enterprises fucked themselves over by making their sites dependent on m$'s proprietary "activeX" controls. m$ won't release the information necessary for other browsers to make activeX work, though maybe that's a good thing because activeX controls are what hackers are using to install malware on your machine in the first place. but the good news is that others are trying to build their own alternative to activeX that will use open standards, so the time might soon come when the only reason smart users will ever need to use IE is for browser compatibility testing.

it sells the product and makes everybody laugh

the recording of my set from rr8 is now online! check out the rr8 art gallery to download it (and keep checking back for future recordings). it's a big-ass file, but the download speed is hecka fast (it only took me 3 mins to dl here at work!) so if you have broadband you should be fine.

today they will announce the musicians who've been chosen to perform at the midwest music summit here in indy in august. i fully expect to be rejected, but maybe they'll surprise me. if i actually get chosen, i'll post it here and at awia news.

to anacreon, from US with love

any negativland fan already knows that the tune of the US national anthem was actually "appropriated" from a british drinking song. but this is still a bit of trivia that most americans don't know. does the story pop up somewhere in the news each year? i don't know, but it's hit a few places this year, even indianapolis star.