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Actually as someone who spent 6 years at music college I have every right to judge music and will tell you for fact, that is NOT music.

Granted, you have the majority agreeing with you but that is how life is now. Blind to modernism killing the music.

As a cum laude graduate of a music college myself, fuck you.

Ditto.

Jimmy Cliff - "Many Rivers to Cross"

Yeah, so far I'd say it's middle-ground for Pratchett. Certainly not on par with, say, Night Watch or Thief of Time, but it's also using mostly new-to-the-book characters, which can put some people off as they're not getting another, say, Rincewind or Vimes story.

At this point, it just seems like Pratchett REALLY wanted to spoof soccer hooligans, and this is the story he came up with. Not terrible, not amazing, but a fun read so far. Admittedly, I'm just seeing the new-character development and the UU wizards are always fun to me, and the plot hasn't really started to kick in yet - the main pieces are just in place so things should start picking up shortly.

Damn.  And I had just finished arranging my bookcase in order to get all my Pratchett on one shelf...

Yeah, my Pratchett shelf is already overflowing, with Making Money (which I thought was excellent) sitting on top of all the paperbacks. And I'm still missing a few! 

Unseen Academicals, the latest from Terry Pratchett. This one is going after soccer/football hooligans via Unseen University and has been very entertaining so far in the first 70 or so pages.

It was definitely a tough choice for me between IANAR, AKK and the Taboo Soup Lamanite thread. In the end, though, I had to go with AKK, because he really BELIEVED he was that awesome, right at all times, and deserved to be considered the coolest human being alive.

IANAR had that same level of conviction, but that thread to me was too much of a looping, repetitive mess, with everything going back to Assburgers in seemingly every post. With AKK, you had all SORTS of fail, from Luke claiming he had legally changed his name to AKK (hahaha ... no), to the whole nazis/military/fascism glorification posts, to the music promotion (and massive ego based on how "good" he thought he was at music). He gave a little bit of everything in that thread, from conviction with earnest intent to intentional trolling to the "social experiment" defense to us coining the "pledge" due to him just keeping at it from every angle no matter WHAT was thrown back in his face.

With Lamanite, the fact that he was really, blatantly trying to troll everyone came through, and we all took it and ran with it, although the Taboo Soup thread had some of what seemed like legitimate Lamanite philosophy/opinions and was IMO a better trolling thread than the more blatant BIP/Niger thread. 

Easy solution to get this repealed if it actually goes into effect - accuse all .gov ISPs of copyright infringement. Better than DoS attacks! Hell, the last bullet point (archiving material, disability access, etc.) is essentially the Library of Congress, HUD, HHS, etc. main reason for existing, so they'll be able to be used to shut down all of it.

Gotta love all this 

Don't forget the Taboo Soup thread from Lamanite! It was the combo of the BIP thread and the Taboo Soup thread that really made Lamanite one of our all-star trolls.

As for who gets my vote for ultimate troll,  it's too close to call between AKK and Lamanite, but I'd have to give the edge to AKK, for sheer persistence, self-promotion and massive ego. Unlike many of the other trolls (IANAR being the most notable exception) AKK really seemed like he believed in his bullshit, and went from legitimately looking for people to stroke his ego and accept him to lashing out at the board for not doing so.

Also, don't forget AKK's horrible, horrible attempt to create a separate forum to rival and attack PD. How many of our greatest trolls have gone that far?

10 tons of awesome in a 5-ton box! I love Mojo Nixon, so I'm definitely going to grab all this stuff.

For That One Guy:

Death - The Philosopher

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGvDSuycarg

Mostly because of the groovy bass line. 

Fuck yeah! I loved Death in high school (their logo adorned my first bass) - definitely need to re-grab their stuff. Thanks muchly 

I"d like to offer an alternative list for TROOF about monkeys.


Whereas humans are simians that often act on base impulses and hurt other people, and

whereas the majority of human relations is power games meant to assert dominance in some manner, and

whereas neither of these traits seem to have any specificity, they are ubiquitous,

therefore, the following suggestions:

1. Be Prepared - Crazy prepared if possible (cf. Richter). Have the right tools for the right situation. If a can of pepper spray suits your situation then have one. A person should be dependent upon their own items, skills and abilities whenever possible, and not rely on someone else, because who knows when they will actually come through?

2. Watch your back - Simians have the tendency to turn any situation into a bad one. Be responsible, look out for these situations coming. Take martial arts or self defense, or at least know where the vulnerable points on a human body are located. Learn to read your surroundings, have constant awareness of whats going on around you, especially in situations where you are the sole person watching your back. Learn to read people and their reactions.

3. Don't compromise your intuition - Alcohol is great but it muddles the mind. Don't drink or take substances in situations you are not completely confident of your abilities and are not surrounded by people you trust. It's far too easy to make mistakes of judgment and end up in a bad way because humans suck and will take advantage of your disadvantage. Just sayin.

4. Have friends watch your back - Only be friends with people you can really trust, and let everyone else be merely acquaintance. Telling the difference comes with experience. A friend will drag you out of a bad situation when you are unable to do it yourself. Walk in groups whenever possible, because simians go after the loner. Conversely, don't follow this suggestion to failure on the other suggestions.

5. Watch your friends backs - Because this is the sort of thing friends do. Furthermore, it builds trust with them so they are more likely to watch your back when needed.

and

Del tha Funkee Homosapien - I Wish My Brother George Was Here (I've just been rotating through the whole album the past day or so)

God DAMN this album is amazing, and it's only brushing the surface of what Del showed he'd be capable of later.

Here's a link to one of the more entertaining tracks, Mistadobalina: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13CJ77DGsBI

[hit number three:]

Google News for Glenn Beck

hit number three:
http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m9d3-Some-liberals-going-too-far-in-attacking-Glenn-Beck-with-falsehoods   

Um...

Some are employing the rhetorical tactic that Beck sometimes uses in saying, "if it is untrue why has he not responded."  My answer is that he should not have to respond to completely absurd statements.  Furthermore if he does not respond that does not "prove" anything.  We do not convict people in this country merely based on their silence.

Satire man is without satire.

That was the best bit of that whole, useless article! I think it melted my irony meter, too. Also, to the bolded part,


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

*breathes deeply*

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA ... Haha. Oh my.

Hi all -

I know I haven't been posting as much lately, but there's a reason for that - two bands are keeping me pretty busy, along with a new girlfriend. I've got enough time to read the quality posted here, just not too much time to contribute my own.

So, I figured I'd post some videos from a show my band played at Harper's Ferry a while back. The show was a tribute to Jam Master Jay benefiting the JMJ Foundation (there were 12 of the best New England DJs that night spinning - amazing stuff!) and also had performances from a bunch of people that are part of the Peace Boston Foundation (benefiting families of those killed by gang violence in Boston). My band played with all of the Peace Boston people, doing a mix of hip-hop and pop-R&B.

Here is our band's website's links  to the videos from that show. It's a good sampling of some of the best local Boston hip-hop and it was a hell of a lot of fun to play.

Hope you enjoy it!

[how?]

technical question ... how? without shutting down phone lines every where ?    servers are privately owned and located all over right? a cop at the door of every server location? 

How hard would it really be to shut the phone lines down, though? You'd only have to have the ear of Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Roadrunner, and maybe a few more and that would allow you to shut off the internets of a shit-ton of people. The major phone/cable companies have already shown their willingness to roll over for the government in the illegal wire-tapping brouhaha, so it'd just be a matter of shutting off access to the servers, rather than shutting the servers themselves off.

Think about it - if Comcast, say, shut down their routers or were ordered to block a certain IP range for their customers, per gov't order, how would anyone getting their service be able to access the "prohibited" servers? Dial up? But your phone is also through Comcast if it's a landline. If you try to use a cell, wouldn't your carrier also have disabled data services/IP access too if it's a gov't order?

The servers themselves are scattered widely, but the access to those servers for most people is bottlenecked through a very small number of companies that have already shown their desire to have this kind of power and control.

I'm telling you, we need to stop thinking about the "The Internet", and start thinking about "internets" with a lower cased i. The networks are decentralized and ubiquitous. Shutting them down would be as easy as shutting down all highways, that is, not easy at all.

But why shut down the highways when you can effectively stop the gas fueling the cars driving along it? If my internet provider shuts me off (cuts off my "gas"), then how can I ride the highway and reach those isolated servers?

Admittedly, it doesn't look like this bill would be giving the gov't the power to go to providers and tell them to "shut it down" (it seems to limit gov't authority to shutting down specific local servers or server clusters) but it certainly would be something within the realm of possibility, especially given the prior history of telecom companies rolling over at gov't (illegal) behest.

Also - the easiest way to ensure academic compliance with a gov't issued shutdown order is to threaten to revoke federal grant money. Watch how quickly they'd follow orders then!

I'd lay claim to Allston, but I have no desire to deal with the administrative crap from the morons/hipster assholes here. You guys can run the place and deal with the headaches! Suckers!

Oh, and I'll continue to ignore any borders I feel get in my way. Enjoy