Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

June 2, 2005 / / 11 Comments

So I’m having one of those days. Must be the onset of the Hot and Wet season. Man I hate that.
A Few Random Things I Miss About Australia (or Canada, I guess), Because I Chose To Come Back To Korea For More Punishment

  • beer other than fizzy, metallic lager
  • cheese and deli meats of any description
  • driving
  • magazines
  • books made of paper
  • libraries
  • bookstores
  • bars and pubs
  • good bread
  • turkey
  • international food – Thai, Turkish, Mexican, you name it, other than Korean and nasty yankee junkfood badly imitated or franchised
  • having an oven
  • promotions and professional recognition
  • clean air and water
  • TV and movies (that I don’t have to download illicitly)
  • off-the-rack clothing and shoes that fit
  • random jocular interactions with people at shops
  • being invisible
  • cocktails
  • friends
  • beaches
  • ‘taking the piss’ and ‘going out on the piss’
  • Nicorette Inhalers
  • drug stores
  • nice apartments
  • community other than virtual
  • Edit: jesus christ on a popsicle stick, I forgot limes. I miss limes like you would not freakin’ believe.

AusThings I Don’t Miss So Much

  • exorbitant health insurance
  • telemarketers
  • rent and utility bills and ratbastard real estate agencies
  • pauperizing income tax rates
  • metred broadband
  • Australian banks
  • the utter lack of internet shopping

Could be worse. I could be a dog in outer space. [/obscure injoke]

Consumer Mindset

May 30, 2005 / / 15 Comments

This is a nice idea, actually. Whack a slider up there at the top of the search results, help you to filter out the omnipresent webshill crud. Shopping versus research, the infotainment revenue-generation cage-match of our times.
One of the things that annoys me greatly, every time I search for some information on an author or a book, is the way that Amazon (and the dense cloud of parasite associate gnats it trails behind it, all buzzing and jostling for a sip of the great beast’s blood) pops to the top, without fail.
Sometimes I even sigh quietly to myself, give in, and click through, hating myself for letting the shopping mall win.
So this Yahoo thing seemed like it might be right up my alley. Until, of course, I noticed that even with the bar slid hard a-starboard, pedal to the research-metal, the first (paid, placed-ad) result, helpfully highlighted, was for E-bay.
Ahhh, go screw yourself, Yahoo.
The irony of using a Yahoo-owned service to host the image I’m showing you is delicious, though. So there’s that.

Hike

May 28, 2005 / / No Comments

Went for a hike today, as part of the Corporate Team Building Exercises In Which All Must Participate, and even though it was compulsory in nature if not actually in name, I enjoyed the hell out of it, and took a few snapshots at random. As always when I post pics of stuff, I offer the disclaimer that I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ no babies takin’ no pictures. Snap snap grin grin all the way. (Click through to my Flickr thing if you want to add comments or stuff, or see larger versions. Flickr still has the Rock Juice, even if their buyout fairy godmother Yahoo sucks sweaty chocolate donkey balls.)
So, here, anyway. In lieu of words, which is what I ought to be, but can’t seem to, lately.

Maybe Creative, But Not Commons

May 26, 2005 / / 11 Comments

One of my old pieces, about sailing in Mexico, has been reproduced in its entirety, complete with images, here, I note through bloglines. There is a cursory link back to the original, which is just a sop, and not a very effective one, I reckon.
What the f–k?
On further investigation, this other site, which purports to be ‘frassle’s cache of a feed received from another site’ (ie, mine), is doing the same thing, which seems to me slightly less egregious, but still a bit dodgy.
A quick googling of the wonderchickeny phrase ‘living a life of madness and booze’ from the post also gives me this hit, with the extract text ‘Search results for Chicken boy man sex‘. Now that’s funny, I admit, but still annoys the living piss out of me. Upon inspecting the URL (http://five.admins-software.com/canadian-gay-sex-10100.html), I’ve decided I’m not even going to go see what repurposing of my writing has been done there, at least until I get home from work.
I note that I do not have teh ghey, although, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that.
I’m not writing a damn thing lately, in case you hadn’t noticed, but I’m not keen on this method of new Wonderchicken™ Content© hitting the wires. Not keen at all.
It’s punchinnaface time, friends and neighbours! I got yer creative commons right here!
(Advisory to my text-hijackers: I do not use cc licenses on this site, but old-fashioned copyright, because I haven’t had the goddamn energy to educate myself properly about it yet. Perhaps this is my karmic retribution for downloading Family Guy episodes and such.)

Advertising Communitarian-Style

May 9, 2005 / / 7 Comments

I’ve just found out that the supercheap hosting at Dreamhost deal I was pimping a while back is still going on. Cool.
Basically, it goes like this. There’s a 777 promotion code that allows new customers to sign up for DreamHost’s cheapest plan, which normally costs $9.95/mo, at $0.77/mo for the first year. All you need to do is enter 777 into the promotion code box on step 5 (after you enter your personal information but before you enter your credit card number). After the first year, if you re-up, you will pay the normal price of $9.95/mo paid one year at a time for the same plan.
I’ve been using it since February, and it’s been great. If you need hosting, give it a go. This is what you get for $10 for the year:

  • 120 GB/mo bandwidth,
  • 2.4 GB disk space,
  • One free domain registration (.com, .net, .org, or .info),
  • Hosting for up to 3 domains.
  • MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python, SSH login, mail, webmail, mailing lists, and access to raw Apache logs.

Your total outlay for domain and hosting is ten bucks. Not too shabby.
All I ask is that if you do sign up and use the promo code, and you want to give me a hand with my own hosting costs, you use my ID stavrosthewonderchicken as your referrer, or just click through this link (a cookie will be written, I assume).
Full disclosure: I’ve read in some places that there are a few folks who have been unhappy with Dreamhost. All I can say is that it’s been perfect, powerful, and hassle-free for me so far, and none of the people I’ve referred have complained to me about anything. Also, since I first signed up, I’ve directly referred 41 people, and secondarily referred 14, and have made $100.73 from those referrals, which is almost enough to pay for my next year’s hosting at full price. Not riches, certainly, but a significant chunk of change, for me.

Hammers, Falling

May 3, 2005 / / 7 Comments

I’ve been thinking about dying again. Not that I’ve any intimations of impending mortality or anything, particularly. I’m as hale as I ever have been. My body is a good, strong vehicle, and I take reasonably diligent care of it, even if I am prone to taking it out for a venturi-clearing race around the nearest dirt track once in a while. Blowing the carbon out of the valves, all of that. Still, strong as it is, a wayward bus would squash it flat, and we rarely see the buses until it’s too late.
We’re all going to die, this I know. The far-flung remnants of my tiny, tattered tribe of blood-kin can attest to that. Shit happens to the best of us, and in the end, some random syllable of DNA gone squirrely, some unhinged bomber or drunk driver, some chicken-barracks virus or opportunistic infection emboldened by years of exposure to low-level antibiotics, some bus with our name on it, something‘s going to do us in.
This woolgathering I’ve been doing was hammered home by yet another piece of bad news from the folks this morning. Following on having their fishing lodge business being foreclosed on by the banks, on being made homeless but for the kind assistance of their many friends, and having to reinvent themselves and their means of livelihood in the 7th decade of their lives, the next hammerblow has fallen. Can’t get a break, my family.
I’ll let this bit from my mom’s email speak for itself:

On the 22nd I got a call to phone home. [Stepdad] had been in an industrial accident and had been taken to the [the hometown] hospital by ambulance. They wanted me here ASAP. I called the hospital and they told me he was being rushed by ambulance to [the nearest city] with head trauma.
In to town by 10 a.m., picked up the truck and the dog and was told he had been hit in the head with a 4 ton come-along chain and was in pretty bad shape. Go home and call [the hospital]. [They’d] done a Cat Scan and called in the Lear Medivac and flew him to Neurosurgery in [next biggest city, about 500 km away]. The doctor in [the nearer city] said go NOW! (so you know what I was thinking )
Got folks to look after the horses and dog, packed and headed for [the bigger city] (9 hour drive)the next morning.
He was a mess! He took the hit near his temple and was thrown back through scaffolding and over a wall. I almost didn’t recognize him; they couldn’t touch him because of the pain , blood all over his head and coming out of his ears, head swollen up like a pumpkin, oxygen up his nose, I.V., catheter. He was on morphine and nerve blockers to try and stop the pain. His brain was swelling and they were afraid his neck was damaged.
He knew me but was in and out all that day and the next.
So I got a room and settled in. He’s had two more CatScans, two blood clots on his brain and a bone chip floating around in there, cracked cervical vertebrae and still on the big M and nerve blockers but they let me bring him home last Friday.

So, shit. Happens. And it never rains but it pours, like they say.
I hope he’s going to be OK. He’s a tough old bastard, and he’s pulled through things like this before. There’s nothing I can do but hope, I suppose, here on the other side of the world.
When my own personal train comes barrelling down the track, I don’t expect I’ll have much warning about it, any more than my friend Rick did a couple of years ago, any more than my bro Barry did when he almost died a while before that, any more than my stepdad did last week. So I’m going to put some dead man switches in place, I think, here and elsewhere on the web. And I’m going to write about what I’d hope might be done for me, to me, and about me, after that inevitable hammerblow falls.
Just not today.

I’m still young, but I know my days are numbered
1234567 and so on
But a time will come when these numbers have all ended
And all I’ve ever seen will be forgotten
Won’t you come
To my funeral when my days are done
Life’s not long
And so I hope when I am finally dead and gone
That you’ll gather round when I am lowered into the ground
When my coffin is sealed and I’m safely 6 feet under
Perhaps my friends will see fit then to judge me
Oh when they pause to consider all my blunders
I hope they won’t be too quick to begrudge me

[Update: Broken vertebrae, blod clots and a bonechip in his brain, but he’s soldiering on. In agony, but he’s got the Serious Drugs prescribed. Doctor told him point blank a couple of days ago “I never expected to see you alive again.” The good news, such as it is, is that we’re talking about Canada here, and so his medical care is costing he and my mom literally nothing, and because the accident happened at work and was not a result of anything but bad luck, he is receiving workman’s compensation. Things could be worse, I suppose. Thanks for your thoughts, folks.]

Emulating God On A Budget

March 30, 2005 / / 17 Comments

Dave Winer says: “…all creative people must have some right to the work they create, or else, truly, the incentive to create will disappear. ”
Now, I have no dogs in the fight, as they say, when it comes to copyright and the creative commons and Lessigophilia and all that revenue-generating jazz. I have no creative works, despite decades of making things because it amused me, either of words or pixels or pencil and ink or the ongoing ballet of the moments of my life, that are making me any money at all. More’s the pity, I guess.
And I must admit that I have little but contempt for the law. I live the way I choose according to the dictates of my conscience, and where my choices conflict with the laws in a place I’m currently living, I make as an informed a decision as I am able as to whether conforming to the law in a given situation is something that it’s more sensible to do from a strictly utilitarian perspective. Jail sucks. I know. I’ve been there. Ironically, it wasn’t for breaking any laws, though.
For the most part, I am a law-abiding citizen, but not because I have any innate respect for the laws, or for those who made or enforce them. Where my choices do not conflict with the laws of the land, no worries. That’s the way things usually are, because many laws, if not most, are relatively sensible. I understand some may find this kind of stance offensive, or sophomoric. I am unconcerned, if respectful of their opinions.
I regularly break laws by downloading copyrighted material. I have my reasons.
My argument with the phrase I’ve quoted from Dave above, finally, the one that a fortuitous combination of a good sleep and strong coffee has roused me from my customary lethargy to make, is this: I believe what he said is only correct if we alter ‘the incentive to create will disappear’ to ‘the incentive to create things for money will disappear’. I risk going all broken-record, here, I know. But this fits mortise-and-tenon with some of the things I’ve been saying recently, about money, about monetization, and about what some (most?) have been doing in this textspace of ours.
At the risk of committing the unpardonable sin of accidental synecdoche, I think that the phenomenon of weblogging, and the ways in which it has changed in the past couple of years as The Stupid Money rushed in to coca-colonize the new frontier, gives us our perfect example. Of the hundreds of thousands — millions, if Technorati tells us the truth — of people who have jumped all over this, and who are using the tools to do any of the heartcasting human constellation of different activities that we’ve drawn together under the ‘weblogging’ umbrella, only very recently have more than a tiny handful of them done it for the bucks.
Some are retrofitting revenue streams, sure. That’s their prerogative, of course. Some people wear clothes with company logos plastered all over their chests, unironically, for free. They aren’t as stupid as they are greedy and clueless, in my humble, but that’s just me being a playa-hata, or whatever it is the kids are saying these days.
See, what I’m saying here is that most of these people had no ‘incentive to create’ other than the burning gods inside their foreheads, clawing to get out. Or merely the mundane urge to share photos of their cute kitties. Or their travel anecdotes. Or their code. Or their jokes or dreams or fantasies and half-baked ideas. Or links the neat websites they’ve found. They did it out of loneliness, or love of craft, or anger, or the carefully buried ludic urge we all share. Out of a desire to emulate their god. Because they wanted to.
I challenge you to think about the creative output of artists and artisans whose work has touched you. Think of your favorite books, your favorite paintings. That piece of handmade furniture or that gloriously handtooled little application. The music you listen to or the writers-on-the-web you read because they get into your heart and fill you with the ineffable, simple joy of being alive and having a mind. I wonder how many of them would have done their work whether or not they eventually got paid for it. My guess is ‘most’.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be paid. Hell, if I could get paid for making the things I make because there’s something inside me that impels me to do it, I’d be thrilled. It’d be a dream come true, by crikey. But I do it, regardless. And so do you, probably, if you’re reading this.
Money is a very useful thing, but then, so is defecation. Or, if you prefer ‘How anal sex got to be THE ticket to blogging fame and fortune I don’t fully understand…‘
Take away the money, and you will still have people who are driven to create. This is what it is to be human. And, I’d submit, we’d have a lot less soulless sticky media poop clogging our minds and our souls if all of the hacks out there who oxymoronically ennoble their paid efforts by calling them ‘creative product’ would just do something useful instead for those sweet dollars. This is why I am in love with the idea of the ‘mass amateurization of nearly everything‘, and it’s why I push back against those who are snapping like bloody-snouted hyenas at the weblogging carcass in their unseemly urge to Get Noticed and Go Pro.
If you make money by selling the things that you are compelled to create — writing or music or design or code or ceramic ashtrays or whatever it may be — then good on ya. I’m genuinely happy for you. But if you would stop merely because you couldn’t make a buck at it, well, tough shit. We don’t need you. This is probably an unpopular opinion. Ah well.
The incentive to create will never disappear. But I would hail the departure of a world in which the incentive to create (for some) is predicated solely on one’s ability to sell those creations, sure I would. When those who were left standing were there because they did it out of love, maybe they’d get a few more bones thrown their way.
And that’s all I have to say about that, for the moment.
[Update: OK, that’s not entirely all. This is interesting, and most definitely on-topic.]

Antivertising

March 25, 2005 / / 1 Comment

I’m just about ready to stop flogging this whole blog-advertising ex-horse, but I thought rather than my normal negative nattering, I’d do something positive for a change, and, you know, like, reclaim the streets, or re-frame the conversation, or some damn thing. How? Well, some free advertising for people I know and love, to one degree or another, in my overlapping weblog neighbourhoods. Why flog what you can merely blog?
Here are some of the people that I like to read, and here are some of the books and things they’ve made. I’ve probably missed more than a few folks, what with my advanced beeriform encephalitis, but if you happen to be one of the ones I have missed, or you think of someone, then I entreat you to leave a quick comment, and I’ll pop you (or them) on to the list.
I’m breaking one of my personal rules about linking to Amazon, here, but I don’t have one of those bogus affiliate ID things, so I won’t make a dime off the deal if you buy any of the books or music here. The idea, see, is that the people who created the things will. What do I get out of it? A bathwater-warm wash of moral superiority, of course, that will no doubt make me more obnoxious than ever. And perhaps a smidgeon or two of goodwill, which I still believe has some value in our mercantilized metaverse of blogtribes.

So who have I forgotten in the local tribes? Drop a note in the comments if you think of someone, and I’ll happily advertise for them, too! No charge, no commission, just the sweet sound of barn-raising!

This has been another public service from the friendly people at wonderchicken Industries™.

Whoring For Fun and Profit

March 17, 2005 / / 5 Comments

I have thought, like so many seem to be doing lately, about slapping up some ads on the ‘bottle. I’ve called those who do so ‘blogwhores’, of course, and told them, in my inimitable and charming way, to ‘f–k off’, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seriously considered pasting a couple of ads for Viagra on my own nubile butt and hustling a few johns down on blogstreet. I don’t claim to be consistent, except in the byzantine recesses of what’s left of my mind.
I still agree with Dave Rogers when he says that the much-abused blunt instrument ‘authenticity’ is the difference between speaking the truth, and trying to sell it, though. And I still think that money, lovely and fleeting and delicious and sexy as it is, turns everything to sh-t.
I even, all a-chuckle, submitted the ‘bottle’s URL to Google’s adsense program, expecting all the while the response I eventually received: “You’re a dirty dirty man, and you use dirty words, and tell filthy, violent, scatological stories about yourself and certain venerated public figures, and you’re just generally not the sort of person who writes the sort of happy bibblebibble that we want to encourage, because we don’t do evil, you dirty sh-theel.” That may be mildly paraphrased, but you get the picture.
I was thinking at the time — despairing that I wouldn’t be able to scrape up the dosh for another year’s hosting and positively trembling with horror at the prospect of depriving you all of the magnificence of my maunderings — that I might pop those googleads into my archive pages, where nobody in their right mind deliberately goes beyond a week or two after posting, anyway. I could even get fancy and whack ’em into divs that wouldn’t display unless a certain period since posting had elapsed. If, of course, Google inexplicably decided that I was clean enough to make the grade. Which, of course, they didn’t.
But it struck me today, after ruminating a bit about Shelley Powers‘ recent decision to throw up ads (which I’ll never see, because I block ads as a matter of course), that we’re looking at the advertising Ouroboros here. Google eating its own tail. Or sucking its own dick, but that doesn’t let me use clever mythological allusions, now, does it?
I would estimate that 99% of all of the hits that my individual archive pages receive, once they fall off the front page, are from searches, generally for such tried and tested combinations as ‘bottle f–k’ or ‘korea f–k’ or even ‘beer chicken f–k’ (don’t ask). The vast majority of these arrive from Google itself, or from one of the search sites that license the googlengine. If I threw up Google ads on those pages, the only people that would see them would be googlenauts, who’d presumably launch themselves back out into googlespace riding the googlead booster rockets, lured by the promise of bottlef–king or whatever they were in search of in the first place. Google is creating its own customers for a service that it sells.
Does his remind you of anything bubbly and evanescent and doomed? It does me. It’s either pure brilliance or utter chicanery. Maybe both. *scratches chin contemplatively while gazing off into the middle distance*
Look, I’m not one to turn up my nose at FREE!! CASH!!, but I’m still on the fence about this ad thing, and if I can find another way of doing it that doesn’t support and encourage advertising scum (have I made that clear yet, that I think, Hicks-like, that advertisers are the sh-tstreaked tapeworms of commerce?), I will. My recent Dreamhost signup drive was quite a success, for example — more than 40 people got cheap, kickass hosting for 10 measly bucks, I made $60 out of it, and if half of them stay on for another year at Dreamhost, I’ll make enough to pay for my own hosting next year. Win-win, all around, and there’s no whoring of anyone, for anything, involved.
Then again, whoring sounds like such fun sometimes. I like fun.
Update : Jonathon says some interesting things, and well, as always.
Update 2: See also Google transforming ads into ‘content’. Evil, I’m tellin’ you. [via]
Update 3: boingboing, ka-ching ka ching.

Beavering Away

March 12, 2005 / / 6 Comments

It is true that I haven’t been writing much of anything of late, but I have been beavering away at various other projects; slapping together code and design ideas in my own haphazard, ill-organized and only occasionally successful style. Throw it against the screen and see what sticks!
I have these phases, when my beer-battered brain (mmm, beer batter) produces more squirts of pleasure-juice when it’s kept busy writing code as opposed to deathless prose. There are also times, of course, when the my brain is happier just sitting there in my brainpan marinating. Those times actually tend to outnumber my brief flurries of productivity. So it goes. My brain is my second favorite organ, like Woody said, and I willingly aquiesce to its frequent outlandish demands and coddle it after its temper tantrums.
I’ve got a couple of projects of my own that I’m fiddle-farting around with, including a redesign of the ancillary pages here at the ‘bottle, a separate Korea-centric site, and an all-singing, all-dancing Wonderchicken Industries™ Portal site as a free service to all those who just can’t seem to get enough of all things miraculous and fouwl.
Just off the presses, though, is a showcase site I built for ‘drinking buddy J’, my American friend and neighbour, who I’ve mentioned a few times here. Though no longer my neighbour — he’s girded his loins and left the comfortable Employment Womb that is Korea Inc, while remaining in Korea — we still enjoy sinking a few litres of beer together, even if it has to be virtually, via Skype. Did it last night, in fact. My head hurts.
So, anyway, J is an outdoorsman of great enthusiasm and no small erudition, and the set of foreign, English-speaking flora and fauna experts in Korea is a very tiny one indeed. It would probably be no exaggeration to say he’s one of, if not the, English-speaking authority on freshwater fishing in Korea. If you’re into that sort of thing, he’s setting up a guiding service as part of his new, self-employed life, and I recommend him wholeheartedly, even if I’m not personally all that big on the whole ‘fishing’ part of fishing.
He’s also a freelance writer, with a long and respectable series of publications to his credit, something I envy enormously. Of course, I am far too lazy and insecure about my skills to try to emulate that with any real diligence.
Wonderchicken Industries™: Waiting For The World To Beat A Path To The Door Since 2001.
So go visit him, have a look around. There are still a few rough edges and nailheads sticking out here and there, but I’m quite pleased with how the site came out. If you’re into fishing in Korea at all, well, drop him a line. Even better, if you work for a print publication that might be interested in buying some writing on the Korean outdoors, he’s your man.
Of course, if you work for a print publication that might be interested in buying some writing on pretty much anything else Korean, well, I work cheap. *nudge* And I’m usually unruffled by editorial excision of 90% of my uses of the word ‘f–k’. Usually.

Moving

March 1, 2005 / / 6 Comments

The move to the new server is underway, and although DNS propagation is a bit sketchy, everything seems to be working pretty well, with one exception.
I used the very cool Typemover plugin to speed things along, and although it did its job, somehow trackbacks have become decoupled from their associated entries. I can see the entry list fine, and the trackback list is still there, but it looks like the key field between the tables has gone kablooie, since no entries have the associated trackbacks against them.
Does anyone have any ideas how to fix it? If it involves messing with the database, I’m prepared to do so, but my SQL is rusty at best.
[Update : OK, so what I think I need is an Update statement that will fix the ‘trackback_entry_id’ field in the ‘mt_trackback’ table (which begins with 413 and ranges upward) to match up with the ‘entry_id’ fields in the ‘mt_entry’ table (which begins at 1 and ranges upward), if that is indeed the correct key relationship. Unfortunately, I don’t know what if any other dependencies may exist, so I’m hesitant to go in and try it myself. It’s probably just that, but if there’s anyone out there with a more detailed knowledge of the data structure, I love some guidance. Also, like I said, my SQL syntax is rustier than hell. Anyone?]
Any suggestions would be appreciated, as would any reports of general site-move weirdness.
Thanks!
[Update the second: the move seems to have gone off without a hitch, other than the trackbacks issue. I’m in codemode at the moment, messing around under the hood and designing the sites for some new projects, so please let me know if something’s broken here. Thanks again.]
[Updated update: I’ve switched over to the very cool Feedburner for my XMLery. It should just work seamlessly; I’ve updated the autodiscovery code and am redirecting requests for the old Atom, RSS 1.0 and 2.0 feeds. This post will be the last one that updates those files, so you may need to switch if the ol’ bottle starts to seem even quieter than usual. This is the feed URI now if you want to hop on to that manually.
Bloglines is the only service that seems to have hiccupped so far, near as I can tell, but that may just be temporary. I’ll be feedburnerizing the Coasters sidebar linkblog too, soon. [Update to the updated update: done! I also redesigned the index page, finally]. As always, bug reports are welcomed.]

Hosting Matters

February 11, 2005 / / 7 Comments

This is kind of an odd thing to post about, for me, but I’m all about the sharin’ and the carin’. If you want or need a new webhost, one with a good reputation, and want to pay $9.24 for an entire year, including a free domain registration, read on.
About a year back, I begged for a few bucks from you, friends and neighbours, so I could pony up for another year of hosting, and was overwhelmed with your kindness. The fee was about US$180 for the year, which my friend Allan (as a reseller) generously dropped down to $150. Once I’d sorted out the Paypal stupidity — if I had a credit card, I’d use it! — which made me inconvenience Allan enormously, forcing him to wait months for the cash, all went swimmingly, and the few bucks left over I saved to use for the next year.
But this year I’ve found a pretty amazing deal at Dreamhost. I’m going to cut over to them soonish, and I want to share my good fortune with you (with apologies to Allan, but I’m sure he’ll understand). On the ‘Crazy Insane Domain’ plan, you get

  • 2400 MBDisk Storage
  • 120 GB Monthly Bandwidth
  • Unlimited MySQL Databases
  • 600 E-Mail Accounts (POP / IMAP)
  • 75 Shell / FTP Accounts
  • 1 Free Domain Registration
  • 3 Domains hosted
  • 15 subdomains hosted
  • unlimited domain forwarding

and all the other usual good stuff that most good hosts offer these days, of course. These numbers blow away anything I’ve seen elsewhere, and they throw in a free domain registration for you (which stays free forever, if you continue hosting with them)! It was easier to set up the latest version of Movable Type than I’ve ever had it before. Flawless, first time, no tweaks necessary.
But this is where it gets good. The normal 1-year prepayment price for this is $9.95 a month, no set-up fee. That’s about $120 for the year, which ain’t bad.
If you enter this 7-year birthday code — 777 — in the Promo Code, then hit update, you’ll get the same huge hosting deal, which at $120 would be much cheaper than I paid last year (for a less kick-ass service), for $9.24.
Yep, $10 for a domain and some stonkin’ hosting, for a full year. Their support has been miles better than what I was accustomed to at my old host as well, and though they don’t use the popular CPanel as their admin interface, I actually like their toolset better.
If you go for it, I have one request. If you sign up (and I’ve just gotten my drinking buddy J signed up) please please use the ID stavrosthewonderchicken when it asks you for a referral, and I’ll get a bit o’cash that will help the ‘bottle (and my other upcoming projects) stay on the web for years to come, without having the ‘bottle get all weird and lucre-besmirched again.
(Because I signed up with the promo code as well, I might not actually get referrer money, which is fine if true, but it’s worth a try. Either way, you guys get a hell of a hosting deal, and, like I said, I’m all about the sharin’ and the carin’…)
[Update : apparently the ‘777’ deal ends on February 28 2005, so if you’re going to go for it, this week is the last chance.]

Messin' With The Pod People

January 28, 2005 / / 16 Comments

I’m sicker than a gut-shot monkey on the set of a Russ Meyer titty-spectacular, I’m boreder than a glory-hole sander at Bar Sinister in Amsterdam, I’m queasier than Buzz Aldrin chokin’ down the buzzcut nitrogen punishment in orbit.
Whatever. I’ve been infected by self-important look-at-me wanktards* spurting their goofy podcast jism all over the blogobucket, so I got hammered and recorded my last post for posterity.
DOWNLOAD AND READ ALONG WITH THE WONDERCHICKEN (or die) [5Mb], MOTHERBASTERS!
*of which I am one, or else why would I do this?
Update: My old good friend the mighty Bearman

Barry - Paris sunrise - edit.jpg

has taken the audio and backed it with some of his superb piano playing. The web is so damn cool. Thanks, man!

Bird, Mountains

January 7, 2005 / / 16 Comments

Here’s a story.
I’m smoking a cigarette, sweating, panting a bit, buzzed. I’m looking out to the north towards Horseshoe Bay, sorta leaning against my seat, straddling the bike, after climbing hard a-pedal most of the way up the hill from Spanish Banks to UBC.

ubcview

Out on the edge of the cliff, at the end of a little trail half a dozen metres from the road, in the bushes, private-like. The same place I usually stop for a smoke after doing the Big Circle. I’m… what? 21? Strong, young, full of juice and big ideas. Spotty, callow and dancing perilously close to full-blown alcoholism, too, but the world is my oyster, by god. You can fuck right off. I love you.
I’m wearing my Walkman, of course, because that thing has changed my life. I’m listening to Elvis Costello’s King Of America, and he’s singing

I wish that I could push a button
And talk in the past and not the present tense
And watch this lovin’ feeling disappear
Like it was common sense
I was a fine idea at the time
Now I’m a brilliant mistake

and it’s the album that I love, right now. Women.
The sky is smeared with grey goth-lipstick clouds, as usual, but the blue is showing through, and I feel magnificent, looking at the mountains and the wrinkly sea, smoking my Player’s Light. Fully oxygenated blood, full balls and, if not full volume, and least plans for full and frantic Friday night.
A raven — big, black, alive — lands with a thump and clink on my handlebars.
No shit. A fucking raven. It’s like a foot and a half high, and it’s right there, wabiggety baw!
I’m in that place, though. In that moment. I’m in the place that drugs only rarely managed to take me over the ensuing years, much as I tried.
So I calmly look the raven in the eye as it jinks around on the handlebars until it’s facing me. It looks me in the eye. No, it fucking does, I’m serious. Not straight on, but with its head tilted a bit to my right, so it can really lay the eye on me. I don’t know what to do, exactly, so I do nothing.
It checks me out, takes a minute or two, looks me up and down, jerkily, from crotch to crown, then flies off. I think to myself ‘well, that was pretty cool’, drop my earphones down around the back of my neck, pull out another cigarette, and think about the trickster god of the Kwakiutl and Haida and all the rest, their totem poles stolen and replanted just a few hundred metres away at the museum.
There’s a rustle, another thump, a sudden grip and weight on my right shoulder.
The raven is back. It’s perched on my shoulder. It’s perched. On my. Shoulder. I turn my head slowly, and peer as best I can through the corners of my scratched, smudged lenses into the little black eyes. It sits on my shoulder, gripping tightly, and looks back at me.
I don’t know what to do, exactly, so I do nothing.
And I turn away and look at the mountains again, and love the place I’m in, the body I’m in, the life I’m living. The raven stays with me for a few more minutes, enjoying the view, and then it leaves. Its wing flicks me in the right ear as it launches itself out into the void, over the edge of the cliff.
This really happened, in 1985 or so. I woke up this morning remembering it. It makes me proud, although I’m not exactly sure why.

Tsunami

December 29, 2004 / / 9 Comments

I can’t stop thinking about this guy.
He’s dead now, this guy.

From news.com.au: 'Doomed ... The man struggles to keep his head above water as he is buffetted by the currents. His body was found a kilometre away / Hellmut Issels'

Look at him, so calm, amidst the fury. But the water looks so clean, doesn’t it? So much like the pure salt surf that I’ve always loved. Who was he? Did he make his living from the sea, there in Phuket? Was he a dive instructor, or a bartender? Did he rent umbrellas and chairs on the beach? Was he a tourist himself, from somewhere else entirely?
He looks so calm.
I’ve always had a relationship with water. My brother died in the water, and I spent all the years after that, in my subarctic hometown, snorkeling back and forth in that same water from a couple of weeks after the ice broke up until well after the leaves had all fallen. Looking for something.
I almost froze to death, on purpose, naked out on the ice of that same lake in the snow, one stupid teenage New Year’s Eve long ago after I’d fought with my girlfriend, who I thought I loved enough to die for.
I’ve always been drawn into the water, in the sea, wherever I’ve been, from Wales to Fiji, when the waves were big. Stood there, always, pounding my chest, literally, and shouting into the teeth of it. Challenging it. You can’t kill me, I was saying, every time. I love you, you can’t kill me. Your power is my plaything.
Maybe this guy felt the same way, as he rode the chaos, as the tsunami washed him over the pool, across the grass, into the focus of some tourist’s camera. Confident, exhiliarated.
But he died.
Him and what, today? 60,000 80,000 120,000 150,000 other people.
Words are.
Update : Apparently, he’s alive![login:vanitas password:vain]
Mike Diack gives us more information inside. Thanks, Mike! It’s silly, but somehow this guy became iconic for me of the whole incomprehensible tragedy. Holy sh-t. He’s alive.

Maxell XLII

December 20, 2004 / / 10 Comments

This stopped me in my tracks this evening, while a flood of rock and roll memories washed over me.
This :

maxell_xl_2_90_c.jpg

I wonder if the sight of that piece of molded plastic ramps up in you the same welter of blurry, beery, hormonal reminiscences that it does in me. If you’re pushing 40, and rocked out with your [insert gender-appropriate appendage here] out, and spent long nights at the stereo making offerings, making entertainment for your friends and lovers, thrilled by the fact that you could actually tear songs from those big black frisbees and rearrange them any way you wanted, if you spent weeks and months, years of your life swapping one Maxell after another into the cassette player of your patient buddy’s Datsun F10, wiping off the rye you’d spilled, dropping your Player’s Light on the carpet again, waiting for the hiss that marked the end of the leader and knowing to the 10th of a second when the first kerrang of that fuckin’ kickass tune dude was going to swoop down and tweak your heart, if you remember that one night with a thermos full of vodka and pink lemonade as the snow fell like magic out of a sky that was so close and black and solid that you felt like the air was getting squeezed out of you, wearing red and white Santa gloves in the back seat of that big black fast ’65 Barracuda with the first girl you’d ever really loved, the girl you still hadn’t gotten up the nerve to tell, being tossed laughing to and fro as the car whipped around corners slick and roaring, if you remember shit like that now, then you know how I feel tonight.

Thanks to project c-90, via Mefi.

Blogger Whores fcuk Off

December 2, 2004 / / 6 Comments

I thought I’d offer a balanced, reasonable perspective on this whole whoreblogger phenomenon that was so shocking a couple of years ago (remember that Raging Cow cockbucketry?) but is now barely a radar pinger.
Instead, here’s this.
With apologies, of course, to the Dead Kennedys.

Blog ain’t no damn focus group
Blog means thinking for yourself
You ain’t Zeldman with your css
When a shill still lives on your front page
Blogger whores
Blogger whores
Blogger whores f–k off!
Blogger whores
Blogger whores
Blogger whores f–k off!
If you blog to sell, get outa here
You ain’t no better than the journos
We ain’t trying to be media
When you ape that crap it ain’t democracy
[Repeat chorus]
Ten blogs praise war, what a man
You link each other, the advertiser wins
Stab your backs when the cash means all
Trash wonderchicken if you’ve got real balls
You still think banner ads look cool
The real sellouts run your schools
They’re bloggers, journalists and geeks
In a real blog putsch you’ll be the first to go
[Repeat chorus]
You’ll be the first to go
You’ll be the first to go
You’ll be the first to go
Unless you think

[If you actually are a whoreblogger, well, don’t take it personal, mmkay? Whores is folks, too.]
[Update] I had some more to say on this, over at AKMA‘s, to wit (or witless, as the case may be):

My objections to the idea — not so much my attacks on individuals concerned, which, I hope, are clearly just over-the-top screeds intended as much to entertain as anything else — are rooted in anger and contempt at the continuing Monetarization of Nearly Everything (with apologies to Tom Coates).
I am aware of the tightrope to be walked when talking about this kind of thing: it has become common received wisdom (which I trust less and less in these times) that those who argue that applying monetary value to something has the consequence of immediately robbing it of all real value are foolish hippies and incompetent idealists. It is de rigeur to ridicule them — of course they are laughable loons! How counter to the deepest streams of our culture the idea that money is anything but the highest measure of worth, or that adding value is not necessary the same as adding worth.
But I’m a great one for lost causes and tilting at ethical windmills.
It doesn’t bother me if someone makes the decision to use their web space to sell crap. They want to hawk Amway out of their apartment, that’s fine. They go and slap vinyl ads on their car, or tattoo the McDonalds logo on their childrens’ foreheads, well that’s their prerogative. Go nuts, I say.
But in the process of doing so, they haven’t lost my trust (which I may or may not have had reason to extend, at some earlier point) so much as diminished the possibility that we may ever agree in any significant way about the fundamental questions of value and of the good which dominate the way I attempt to live my life.
Which, in effect, may mean that the possibility of me respecting them for what they do (as well as, possibly, what they say) has leaked away. Not that they should really give a damn, but there it is.
Of course, all that is pretty much the extremity of the matter, which is where I tend to hang out, it must be said. In the case of Chris Locke, for example, I know that he’s been to the edge of the abyss, financially, and I don’t begrudge him his naked grab for a few shillings from whatever corporate scum he can shake down, and more power to him.
Less well do I know the circumstances of anyone else who deliberately whores out their personality for dollars — because, when in comes down to it, most of the currency of the blogoblogland minted until recently has issued from the forges of personality and talent, which has been fine and right — and I don’t begrudge them doing so, honestly.
[Hell, I put up a tip jar 6 months back or so, begging for a few bucks to pay for my next year’s hosting. Almost entirely killed my desire to keep doing this, though, that did, much as I appreciated the generosity of so many.]
But I do think that what money touches, money turns to sh-t. That may not operate on the level of individuals, or it may. I don’t know, and it’s almost certainly the case that no-one does. But I do think that to monetarize something is to lose sight of the true value of that thing.
So I’m waiting for the next Great Leap Forward I guess, me and Billy Bragg, marching off into obscurity, secure in the knowledge as we become irrelevant that at least we stuck to our guns.
On the other hand, I may just start blogging for dollars next week. I need the damned money.

Anger Is An Energy

November 23, 2004 / / 2 Comments

Shelley says over here that ‘there’s something impersonal and dispassionate about anger.” I know how well she writes, and how carefully, and so I’ve been turning over what she wrote, looking at it from different angles, trying to puzzle out what she meant. Can anger really be dispassionate? Is that what people mean when they talk about ‘cold anger’? Could that be a bad thing?
I’m pretty sure anger is an energy, cold or hot. I remember being an angry punk, once upon a time. Well, more of a drunken yahoo of a punk, perhaps. Angry though, in between episodes of skipping around like a loon shouting about ‘joy’. Regardless, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel rage welling up in me the moment I stopped to think about the glories of our civilization, and the wonder of our achievements.
Call in the airstrikes.

I could be wrong I could be right
could be wrong
I could be wrong I could be right
I could be black I could be white
I could be right I could be wrong
I could be white I could be black
Your time has come your second skin
The cost so high the gain so low
Walk through the valley
The written word is a lie

Still, I’ve always been the eternal optimist, sifting through the dung looking for a diamond, and I wandered all around this planet, wide-eyed, pushing myself to be childlike and unangry. A real hippie twat, basically. Trying to see the god within each and every person I met. Failing too often, succeeding far too rarely, flying my freak flag high. Peace, love and vegetable rights, man. Anger? Love! Rage? Peace!
That worked pretty well for a time, but the drugs probably helped more than I cared to admit.

May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
Could be wrong I could be right
Could be wrong I could be right
I could be wrong I could be right
I could be black I could be white
I could be right I could be wrong
I could be black I could be white
They put a hot wire to my head
cos of the thing I did and said
And made these feelings go away
Model citizen in every way

I’m still expatriate, of course, and I still am unfailingly kind to people, until they cross me. Then, well, then I puff up and turn all the colours of a sunset, and browbeat them until they submit or go away. And then I get quickly unangry again. I’m like that.
I have never stopped being angry at hypocrisy and hate and stupidity and cupidity, either. And yeah, angry at the sinner as well as the sin. Turning the other cheek’s all well and good for the meek, but I’m not going to be around to inherit the earth. I just don’t have the patience. So, model citizen, me, right? Going around with a big red ‘W’ on my chest, fighting for the common man, righting wrongs and kissing babies.
f–k no. But the other thing that Shelley said, that ‘anger is the ultimate camouflage for what’s really going on in our heads and our lives’ doesn’t make sense for me, at least. Anger is the the natural and consequent reaction to taking a good hard look at our lives and the lives most of us are shoehorned into, through our own weakness and through the strength of others and through random dumbf–k chance, and realizing that we’re going to die. Much too soon, each and every one of us. Ashes or wormfood, or, if maybe scraps for the birds to tear at. In anger, we reveal that we know there can be more, and wish for more, for better, for ourselves and others, and we also reveal that we are too bound by our own chemistry or history to do more than pound the bones and screech like apes before the monolith.
But that’s OK.
Because the coin of anger rotating in the air, reflecting those glints of sunlight, has an ouroboros head as well as a tail. There is no anger, for me, at least, that is not backed an impulse similar to the one that some buddhists express when they perform a wai — palms pressed together, fingers pointing skyward, with a shallow bow. I acknowledge the god within you.
Anger is peace, thwarted. Love, unrequited. The face of god, almost touched. The heartbreaking awareness that you (and so, all) just might not get there, wherever there might be. And ranging as it does in denomination, like our coin flipping up there in the air, the anger can be fire banked against the coming night, or a bolus of flaming tar catapulted at those who thwart the good.

Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Could be wrong I could be right
Could be wrong I could be right
I could be wrong I could be right
I could be black I could be white
I could be right I could be wrong
I could be black I could be white
Your time has come your second skin
The cost so high the gain so low
Walk through the valley
The written word is a lie

But what the hell do I know? The written word is a lie, and it’s possible that I’m just stringing together justifications for my rage, popcorn-garlanding words, holding up another mask, more for the fun of it than from any necessity. I found my own path. Quite possibly not the right one, but it’s the one I found, and so that f–ker is holy to me.

May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
Could be wrong I could be right
Could be wrong
They put a hot wire to my head
Cos of the things I did and said
They made these feelings go away
A model citizen in every way
Your time has come your second skin
The cost so high the gain so low
May the road rise with you (Hey)
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
May the road rise with you
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy
Anger is an energy

There was a time when I was one of those Seekers After Truth that the hip, ironic-McDonald’s kids tend to laugh at, often with good reason. Looking for some kind of truth outside myself, raging against the machine. Now I’m a model citizen, older and less convinced that any truth that could have any meaning for me lies anywhere outside myself and the threads that bind me to other people.
But I remain angry, and I maintain that that is the outward sign of my attempts to be honest with myself. It’s my honesty with the rest of the world, and it’s both personal and passionate.
I only speak for myself. Your mileage, as they say, may vary. That’s cool.

GFY

November 18, 2004 / / 10 Comments

I’ve been writing these long screeds then changing my mind, stopping and starting and just generally mucking up my state of exquisite zen rage by second-guessing myself and revising.
Revising is just plain evil.
So here, in no particular order, are the hard black slippery cores of the three pieces I’m probably not going to end up writing.
To the Bush Administration (and ever single last one of you Yank bastards who voted for them) :
Go f–k yourselves.
To Korean men, one in five of whom (according to the Korean Institute of Criminology) purchase sex four times a month (thus making it a US$21 billion dollar industry, worth 4.1% of GDP) :
Go f–k yourselves.
To the whorebloggers intent on monetarizing this virtual place of ours (and thus turning it into a sea of sh-t) :
Go f–k yourselves.
There. That feels better.