Today is the first Cal football home game of the season. GO BEARS! Tomorrow, I move for the first time in six years. GO ME! Updates may cease for a bit if there are connectivity issues at the new digs. Happy long weekend to everybody.

Pure Web fun: elevatormoods

I recommend starting with a selection other than #1, which is a bit of a downer (no pun intended).

You'd think that the events of the past couple of years would have taught Americans a lot about the danger of mixing religion and government, of the value of separating church and state. But no: Four out of five Americans do not understand the Constitution. Of that group, I'd have to guess that the vast majority are Christians; I doubt there are many American Hindus (or Buddhists or what-have-you) out there who think it's a good idea to erect Judeo-Christian monuments in government buildings. It matters not to the Bible-thumpers. They're gonna show up and shove God — their God — down your throat whether you like it or not. (And by the way, you're going to hell.)

[found on The Morning News]

Check this out, word-nerds.

[Thanks to LB for the link.]

And what it is ain't exactly clear. Some sort of ruling has come down on the California DVD Case, but the Associated Press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation seem to disagree on what was actually decided.

Skimming over the actual decision I think what I am seeing is that the original preliminary injunction — requiring the defendant to remove DeCSS code from the Web — has been upheld. That's what the A.P. article zeroes in on. But there is a bunch of other language in here that seems helpful to the EFF and all the other Good Guys in this saga. So that's where the EFF's optimism must be coming from. Hmm.

The Washington Post reports the story but misses the most important part, which Lessig brings out to some degree on his blog. Listen: Open Source and Free Software crusaders are not against such things as intellectual-property rights. What the General Public License (for example) basically says is this: more...

New Line has decided to release the extended versions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers — previously available only on DVD — to theaters in the weeks leading up to the premiere of the saga's last installment, The Return of the King. Kick ass!

Someone keyed my car last night. Not horribly — I think it will mostly come out with a good strong buffing — but still, this just stinks. I didn't do nothing to nobody: didn't steal no one's parking space, didn't mouth off to nobody, nothing. Nothing, I tell you. But out of the blue, this. Some people just suck beyond belief.

And yet, this cannot ruin my Friday. I move in just a week and a coupla days. Last night I bought rugs for the new digs. Tomorrow there is some serious freaking A/V shopping on tap. Life is wonderful, and nothing's going to convince me otherwise today.

If not, I highly recommend The Bear Went Over the Mountain. Just finished it. Don't think I've ever read anything quite like it. Very funny, and in its own strange way, very, very deep.

The closest thing to it I can think of is Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. (What? Never read that? Imagine the product of an early 20th-century Irish Douglas Adams. Drool.)

1) So I'm watching Letterman tonight, and suddenly the video is replaced by a screen of text, white on a red background, looking like something produced by an oldschool TV-studio character generator, the sort of crap they had for the video productions class at my high school, and it says:

Emergency Alert System
Tune to Channel 20 for Emergency Instructions
Child Abduction Emergency

more...

Google just got more powerful.

[found on Follow Me Here]

You know the crap the Republicans pulled in 1998. You know the crap they pulled in 2000. Most of my readers are probably pretty well up-to-date with the crap they're pulling now in California. But have you caught wind of the crap they're pulling in Texas? And can you spot the pattern here?

Tonight I saw Gigantic, a well-crafted documentary about one of my favorite bands, They Might Be Giants. The film kicked much ass and had some great footage of TMBG's John and John and the Band of Dans, but I think my favorite shot was a brief glimpse of the New York subway. The screen was suddenly filled with the unmistakable tile, a station sign in the unmistakable font, and then, the unmistakable shining silver behemoth, barreling into the station like something terribly out of control.

I arrived home to find that Gothamist (one helluva four-star blog that you must start reading if you love New York) had a posting about the subway, and a nice little picture. Sigh! Perhaps the universe is telling me I need to visit New York. After all, it's been nearly a year since I've been down below with my beloved silver trains. Or had decent deli. Who wants to go to New York with me?

(Alternatively, perhaps the universe is telling me it is time to return to and finally finish Major Art Project #2, which is intensely subway-related and has been on the back burner for so long that Major Art Project #3 has since been conceived and completed.)

Sometimes life gets busy, and in a good way. Something clicks in your brain. Things seem different. More possible. Inertia decreases. Momentum increases. Fog: Now gone. And if you're me, you suddenly find that you've found yourself a new place to live. My days in this place where I've lived for six years — six years! — are now finally, officially, numbered.

[Thanks to the_lucky_duck for this entry's title.]

John Ashcroft just called to say "I told you so." (I mentioned Mr. Hawash a while back).

You see the damnedest things on the streets of San Francisco.

If you're into politics (or you like to keep on top of Boosh's myriad lies as best you can) you really must start reading Billmon's Whiskey Bar. Today's post, "The Check is Not in the Mail," is a shining example of why.

Sez the New York Times:

Geoff Garin, a pollster who is working for Senator Bob Graham of Florida, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, said the Democratic anger toward Mr. Bush was "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years now of polling," and perhaps comes closest to the way many Democrats felt about President Richard M. Nixon.

[feel free to use gatsby/daisy as user/pass pair]

I've had a two-concert weekend, and lord, how it has soothed my soul. Friday night I saw blues legend B.B. King play out at Chronicle Pavillion. What a fantastic treat. I was never much into the blues until this past year, and now I just can't get enough. I've discovered there's nothing better to listen to when you're down: The blues doesn't hold you down in your depths; they make you realize that we all hit rough spots, that overall things aren't so bad, and that even in the midst of adversity, you can still let your light shine, and you can still create something breathtakingly beautiful. I feel blessed to have seen B.B. play. He's getting on up there in years, and we may not have him around for too much longer, although he looked and sounded awfully good to me. I'd bet my last dollar he keeps performing till the day he leaves us. more...

The Boy Scouts are in trouble in my hometown. Their 18-acre camp and council headquarters facility in Balboa Park is leased to them by the city for a buck a year, and that preferential treatment is now under fire in the courts due to the BSA's official policies that exclude gays and atheists from the organization. more...