Direct link for the feedreaders.

A couple of things. First, I understand how he can pooh-pooh Dawkins and Hitchens, since to him that's old news. To me, it wasn't. I used to believe, but it was through the efforts of those two, as well as Jonathan Miller and others, that I finally managed to wake up and realize what sort of LARP I was inhabiting.

Also, education is terribly important. Speaking as someone who survived public education in Alabama, I can tell you there isn't enough of it happening there. Cosette constantly refers to a Bible class she took in college that treated the book as literature–I think that would be immensely helpful for most people. Hell, for me just reading The Five Gospels was helpful. But I think if you educate people–not just about the world and science but also about their own belief system–it'll go a long way towards waking people up.

Anyway, great vid. Found via Brian Denham by way of Andy Diggle.

It was already on my nerves because it seems to be incredibly slow. Even on my new spiffy mega-mondo desktop it feels bloated–it's got that bad-comedian-in-a-fat-suit slowness going on. I was all excited at the prospect of a 64-bit iTunes…but after running it for a while I wondered why it had gotten slow again. Then I discovered that the installer was the only 64-bit part. The regular iTunes was still 32. Now I'm not a technical guy (not anymore–I don't count myself in that particular club) but why in the hell would you want the installer to be 64-bit? The only reason I can come up with is that the 32-bit version wasn't playing nice with a 64-bit OS.

Anyway, so that was annoying.

Now I found today I had somehow turned on a feechur I'd never witnessed before nor desired: that of "album ratings." I have MP3s that I've pulled in from God knows where–a lot of old-time radio files, audiobooks and other things. As a result, I am missing a lot of artist and album titles (which I use this previously mentioned method to go through on the run).

iTunes, of course, treats that whole "unknown artist" and "unknown album" as one album. And today I was greeted by a lot of tracks with "phantom stars." I've seen them described as "white stars" or "hollow stars" as well. Here's what they look like:

oooh, spooky

After my initial attempts at exorcising my machine did no good–and screwed up the monitor with the blessed tap water–I started rooting around on Google and found this is a lovely feechur of iTunes called "Album Rating." It will basically take the individual ratings of tracks, average them, and assign a rating to the album as a whole.

I found the solution here. Basically you have to open up the "Album Rating" column in your main library (right click the top and select it so it appears) and then un-rate the album.

Here's what I don't understand: why do people feel the need to make feechurs mandatory? Why is there no switch in here that I can throw to disable this bit that simply doesn't work with how I use the program? If there is one, I haven't found it. Just like I can't turn off the threaded conversations in Gmail–and thus can't use it as my primary e-mail client. Why must these companies be so goddamn narrow-minded and try to force us to use their stuff only the way they want?

I will say this: for as much as Firefox sometimes gets on my nerves, at least it appears to have a whole slew of plugins and settings and hacks that will let you do just about anything any way you want it.

Companies: give us the control panel. Don't add a damn thing without giving us the ability to turn it off. You're just annoying us.

Okay, rant ends. How have you been?

So here's the shot: you might have noticed that the website went into a bit of hibernation there. And the reason was simple: I had no idea what to put on here. In an effort to boost content on Needcoffee and boost the audience for that content, most of my stuff has gone there.

However, in recent weeks it's become clear that not everything fits over there, even as free form and chaotic as Needcoffee is. Sure, I can rant and rave over there as long as it's aligned with the core mission of Needcoffee, which is to entertain.

One thing that's not very entertaining, though–or at least hard to make entertaining–is looking for work. And talking about the things that I work on. So while it's fine to talk about, for example, Twitter and how it's amazing in the context of something like Bad Movie Club, it's another thing to talk about Twitter and why you need it for your business. I mean, a lot of people will tell you their reasoning for that, but a lot of it's rehashed and isn't thought about from the standpoint of normal people.

Let's face it: I run websites and can think in HTML and PHP code and, if you gave me the chance, could crank out content all day long. That's not normal.

Normal people don't want to have to think about this crap, nor should they. Normal people have lives. They are busy running businesses in the real world. They, you know, sleep.

This blog is now going to be about all the stuff that I should be getting paid for. All the stuff that I had to learn in order to publish and run a website and even a server. And the stuff I've learned working for somebody else.

So if you have a question–and I do get them from time to time–e-mail me at widgett at one tusk dot com. Or send me a message via Twitter @widgett. And let's see what happens.

As a P.S. to the coda, there was a booth at Comic-Con that was selling Exorcism Kits. "The Pope needs your help!" Priceless.

Yes, cassette labels created for my old band, The Frame.

Copyright 1992, 1994. Life was so much…something then.

You're not the only disappointed that I'm not Kevin Smith. I'm pretty disappointed about it myself.

I'm on StumbleUpon here, BTW. Friend me if you're on it.

I agree that Mr. Smith has been in some eminently forgettable films. I AM LEGEND and I ROBOT spring to mind. And I think that among his action flicks, ID4 will probably be remembered as fondly as any other Irwin Allen film or perhaps as the 90s version of something like DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. But, in Smith's defense, while he knows that the cash comes from his stint as Action Guy, he does still strive for things like ALI and PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS. He did work for Redford in BAGGER VANCE and although Schepisi might have a warm spot in only my heart for ROXANNE, Smith was in his version of SIX DEGREES.

But Clooney's box office has come from mainly the OCEAN's series (which was driven by star power) and *cough* BATMAN. So yeah, my question would be what kind of deal does Clooney have so that he can be in a string of films that don't have huge box office gains and yet still basically pick and choose whatever he wants. Maybe he makes that much money off of ER reruns? I have no idea. I wanted to say it's because the small films he's in still turn a profit because they *are* small, and maybe that's the case. SOLARIS underperformed given its budget. But SYRIANA almost doubled its production budget in worldwide box office, THREE KINGS made a profit worldwide, PEACEMAKER doubled its budget worldwide, and the rest…well, Box Office Mojo doesn't have budgets listed for them and I'm too lazy to go hunt them up right now. And I'm sure Clooney is who sold the tickets to those.

Clooney does have star power. And I think he's an excellent actor. Even though I'm one of the five people on Earth who didn't enjoy O BROTHER, it's still the film in which (among his that I've seen anyway) he does the most acting and isn't playing his usual Clooney on-screen persona.

I'm not quite sure if I even made a point in here. And I don't feel like formatting this properly. Just had to put this somewhere. And oh, that's what this is for, isn't it?

Direct link for the feedreaders.

"Five astronauts…one space station…one gun." Of course, make each astronaut from a different country and then that sounds like one of their heavyhanded message productions that would happen from time to time.

I would love to recreate those same productions with a new cast, but using the same classic foley techniques.

98 percent of the atoms in the body are replaced every year. 98 percent! Water molecules stays in your body for two weeks (and for an even shorter time in a hot climate), the atoms in your bones stays there for a few months. Some atoms stay for years. But almost not one single atom stay with you in your body from cradle to grave.

What is constant in you is not material. An average person takes in 1.5 ton of matter every year as food, drinks and oxygen. All this matter has to learn to be you. Every year. New atoms will have to learn to remember your childhood.

These numbers has been known for half a century or more, mostly from studies of radioactive isotopes. Physicist Richard Feynman said in 1955: "Last week's potatoes! They now can remember what was going on in your mind a year ago."

I love this. First of all, it's exactly the sentiment I was trying to get across in my poem, "The Stygian Depths of You and I and All." Secondly, "Last Week's Potatoes" is tremendous name for a band.

This music video is pretty…well, it's what you would expect from Maynard, I think.

Direct link for the feedreaders.

Available from Amazon.

He's dead, assholes. Why not see to the living, like that guy Jesus would have wanted you to do? Jesus. You might have heard of the guy.

And folks, remember, if you don't believe in their God, he will show his unending love for you by boiling you in hell for all eternity.

I much prefer this.