Meesa gonna be missing from da wedding cake!

Yesterday I wrote about enlisting a coworker to play a prank on her Star Wars fan of a fiancé by suggesting they include Jar Jar Binks on their Star Wars themed wedding cake.

She couldn’t wait to carry out the plan, and, well, here’s the recap she emailed to me this morning:

So last night I had my BlackBerry out and I pretended I was looking something up on the internet, but really I was reading from the script you wrote.  His reactions were almost EXACTLY what you wrote.  It was hilarious.  I only made it to his reaction to the name Jar Jar Binks… I laughed too much to finish.

I let him read your email and he was impressed by your Star Wars knowledge.

So there you go – I’d say that went well! And hey, they’re still together, so I don’t have to feel guilty about unintentionally breaking up the happy couple!

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Meesa most hated character in Star Wars!

Those three innocuous words fill any die-hard Star Wars fan with revulsion.

A coworker of mine is engaged to a die-hard fan.  She never watched any of the Star Wars movies until she met him.  He has only “allowed” her to watch Episodes IV, V, and VI (the older ones). [Don't worry, it's a healthy relationship - she has absolutely no desire to watch the new ones.]

As I said, he’s a die-hard fan.  They’ve talked about having Han and Leia cake toppers on their wedding cake (I’ll give you one guess whose idea that was.)

So I’m enlisting her in a prank.  I’ve explained who Jar Jar Binks is to her, and she’s going to bring it up to him in a little scene that should go something like this:

Her: Oh honey, I saw the coolest thing today.

Him: Yeah, what was it?

Her: It’s something from Star Wars.  And I want to include it on our cake, ok?

Him: *eyes lighting up* Yes? What was it? A working replica of a light saber? A tie fighter? A foot-high model of the Death Star?

Her: No silly, none of those things.  No, I saw a clip on Youtube.  He’s the cutest character, and so silly.  Let’s see, his name was…Jar Jar Binks, I think?

Him: *aghast* No. No no no no no nononono.  For all that is holy, no. Anything but that.

Her: Oh, why not sweetie?  He’s so cute, with that long tongue, and big floppy ears.  And that cute accent? “Meesa hungry!”  I love that!

Him: …

Her: Oh come on baby, pleeeeease?

Him: No. Anything but that.

Her: Oh, ok, fine.  How about an Ewok then? Or one of those “pod racers” that Jar Jar Binks was fixing? OOH! How about an Ewok riding IN a pod racer? Wouldn’t that be adorable?

Him: …

Him: I’d like the engagement ring back, please.

.

Come to think of it, maybe this isn’t such a good idea for a prank, after all.

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Lauowolf pointed me to Mary Robinette Kowal’s post on A Month of Letters challenge.

The idea is simple – in the month of February, commit to mailing one piece of correspondence for every day of the month that the postal service runs in your country.  You can mail postcards, letters, packages.  You can hand-write them, you can type them, you can make a ransom note out of words cut out of the newspaper, if you want.  You can send one out each day of the month, or mail them in a big batch once a week.  But send out REAL MAIL, and brighten someone’s day.  (Challenge part 2 is writing back to everyone who writes to you – I’ll leave this as an extra mission for you, should you choose to accept it.  This message will NOT self-destruct in 5 seconds.)

I’m going to participate, but so far I’m short on addresses of people to write to.  If you’d like to receive some REAL MAIL from me, send me an note with your address to rossruns@gmail.com – I promise not to share it or sell it, just like I promise that if you send me your address, you’ll get something from me in the mail!

And hey, if you want to participate too, awesome! Lauowolf is gathering peoples’ names together to get a circle of ex-Voxers and others in on the fun – if you want to participate, head over here and send Lauowolf your address (the email address is buried in the post on that link), and you’ll get some addresses in return to help you on your way.  And don’t be dissuaded by a whole Month of Letters – if you can only get out 1, or 2, or 5 letters, those are that many more that will go help put a smile on someone’s face.

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In my first apartment after college, in 2001, I had my computer connected up through Time Warner Cable.  One day, they shut off my internet.  When I called to inquire, they said the a record label associated with the RIAA had reported me as in violation of copyright infringement for sharing copyrighted music files.  I think they had a list of about 40-50 tracks they specifically had called out as hosted by my computer available for people to download.

This was before all the RIAA lawsuits started. TWC told me to remove any file sharing software and public access to my music and they would reinstate my internet connection.  No harm, no foul.  I got off with a warning.

Had this been 2-5 years later, I could have been hit with a $3000-$5000 “settlement fee” for the same offense.  Or if I fought it? I might have ended up with a $2 million judgement against me, like Jammie Thomas-Rasset in 2007.  I got lucky.  I don’t download or share music anymore.

Piracy today is rampant.  If you could persuade teenagers to be honest with you, most would tell you they don’t buy music – they have tools to rip the tracks off of the audio in Youtube videos, or they torrent them, or download from sites like the recently-shut-down MegaUpload. Some people boast of terabytes of music in their archives – an amount which would cost any normal purchaser thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to acquire “honestly”.

SOPA and PIPA are obviously flawed measures, and would do a much greater order of magnitude of damage to the internet than any benefit they’d provide to the RIAA and MPAA.  But lobbyists and lawmakers are going to continue to push and push for these kind of regulatory actions because of all this piracy.  The recording and motion picture industries are mired in old technology, and they believe they cannot survive if the piracy continues.  (Whether they actually can or not is something I’ve not seen enough information on to have a firm opinion about, but I suspect that there are enough innovative groups and labels out there that are getting by without the frivolous lawsuits that the RIAA and MPAA’s whole arguments are thrown into a doubtful light.)

So if SOPA and PIPA won’t work, can we eliminate piracy by means other than legislation? Probably not. Especially not if the public mindset continues to be “Everyone’s Doing It”, and people believe they’re immune from reprisal because they’re “just one in a million”, or they’re “just downloading one movie only, and not even a good one at that” (both arguments I’ve actually heard for justifying piracy).

Killing piracy is like curing poverty – idealistically, it would just require enough people to care enough to take action (or stop taking action, as the case may be) to effect change.  Realistically, if parents don’t govern their kids’ behavior, colleges don’t crack down on their students’ activities, and ISPs don’t punish ALL offenders, the number of incidences of piracy is not going to decrease.  And the only way to really get ANY of that to occur is to make piracy not only so illegal, but so prohibitively costly to NOT monitor and protect against it that ISPs, college campuses, and individual families begin to comply.

The men and women in Congress know this.  Every day, lobbyists from the RIAA and MPAA hound them with this truth.  And so they work to develop bills like SOPA and PIPA to fight back.  Yes, these bills are horrendous and could break the internet as we know it today.  If they do come to a vote next week, they probably won’t pass.  But that doesn’t mean they’re going to just go away.  Just like music and movie piracy, the legislation to combat piracy is going to keep popping up, rearing its ugly head until the lobbyists can ram through something to help out the record and movie labels (assuming anything can, at this point).

So stay strong, stay informed, and keep fighting against censorship, but be aware that it’s going to be a long battle ahead.  Oh, and if you can, consider obtaining your music and movies legally instead of bootlegging them.  It’s not going to end the piracy, but I’d REALLY hate to see your name on the next lawsuit filed by the RIAA/MPAA.

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Reminds me of a Da Vinci drawing...

And of course, this also reminds me of the famous Groucho Marx quote:

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

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1. We’ve got at least one individual with very strong passive-aggressive tendencies in the office.  They also apparently don’t know how to use their spell-check program, although they did quite a nice job at the formatting for the “Low Coffee Level” contestants.  (I would have centered the headings above the blank spaces, but that’s just a personal preference.)
2. We’ve got at least one smartass in the office (not counting myself [and I did not write either the note or the response])
3. I am almost positive this is going to escalate into a conflict of epic proportions, and the only solution will be to nuke the coffee machine and have everyone start drinking tea.  Stocking up on my Earl Grey, just in case.

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• Youngest son’s inheritance is a cat.
• Puss demands and receives a pair of boots.
• Puss proceeds to hunt and catch animals in the forest and present them to the King as gifts from the fictional Marquis de Carabas.
• Puss tells his master to strip naked and hide in the river while he cons the King and his daughter into thinking the young man is the Marquis de Carabas and has been robbed.
• Puss runs ahead and coerces the peasants along the road into telling the King that the fields, farms, and game preserves he passes all belong to the Marquis de Carabas.  Puss threatens to cut them up into mincemeat if they don’t comply.
• Puss enters a castle where an ogre lives, tricks the ogre into turning into a mouse, kills and eats him, and claims ownership of the castle for his master.
• The King, impressed by the wealth of the “Marquis”, gives the impostor his princess’ hand in marriage and makes him heir to the throne.
• Puss lives high on the hog and only chases mice when he feels like it, thereafter.

My thoughts:

1. Puss is kind of a dick.
2. This sounds oddly like the set of actions that created the last big Real Estate Bubble.
3. This is the best example I can find in literature where lying is rewarded, where an apparently completely undeserving individual (the third son) ends up on top of it all through trickery and deception, and appearance and wealth are stressed above all other things as the driving forces for marriage.
4. I’m pretty sure I’m going to avoid reading this story to my kids until they’re old enough to understand how truly twisted it is.

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Chardonnay Lionheart.

That is one truly awesome name for a laptop.

And you know what?

My poor laptop has been struggling along under the weight of my numerous endeavors for YEARS now with the same lack of respect I bestow on my garbage can.

My car has a name (Abe, aka The Silver Sparrow).

My children have many names (not all of them fit for company).

Hell, even my house has a name (Casa de Bedlam).

But my poor computer? It is as anonymous as, well, Anonymous.

So now, I am engaging in a quest.  A quest for the perfect name.

I expect it will end one evening with the storm looming outside and the windows blowing open, and I will shout my laptop’s given name into the raging tempest and save Fantasia from The Nothing.

Oh wait, sorry, that’s already been done.  Scrap that last paragraph.

Ok, I actually expect it will end one evening with me cleaning the fingerprint-smudged screen and, after closing the laptop’s cover and giving it a single pat on its hard casing, speaking aloud the words, “That’ll do, __________.  Good night.”

So here’s to finding the perfect name.  My laptop has faithfully stood by me for years of unquestioning service – it’s about time I show it how much I care for it in return.

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Paul Thie, an artist friend of a friend of a friend has a new project he’s doing called Everyone. It’s a really neat idea – he accepts photograph submissions from friends, relatives, and now total strangers and turns them into mini ink portraits (1.25″ by 1″).  The results run the gamut in styles (it looks like there are some cubist, expressionist, surrealist, and realist pieces up there, among others), but all feel linked together by a common thread of the medium and composition.  After he draws them, he scans and posts the complete portrait on the site, and, if you’re so inclined, it appears you can buy the original artwork for $25.

I submitted my photo a couple of days ago and he already worked his magic and put up my portrait.  I’m the 6th row, on the end (hover your mouse over it to see the tooltip “RG”), and this is the photo I submitted for his inspiration, if you want to get a peek into the artist’s mind:

He hasn’t said anything about stopping any time soon, but I’m sure there’s a limit to how many he’s going to end up doing, so if you want your photo interpreted by a talented artist, go over to his site and submit your own picture!

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Although I’m not a fan of installing yet another app installer, this looks like it could be worthwhile if Amazon’s going to help subsidize the cost of some of the paid apps out there and offer some worthwhile apps for free (if only for a day).  Plus, by going through Amazon you also get to use their always-helpful recommendation engine, which helped me to find 2 or 3 other apps I was interested in but would have had extreme difficulty finding on the hard-to-navigate Android Market on my phone.

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