Day: January 20, 2005

Hear him Bleat, “My bandwidth, my bandwidth!”

James Lileks does it* daily, Monday through Friday, as well as maintaining his columns, writing such wondrous works as “Interior Desecrations” (a look at ’70s interior “design”) and caring for his daughter, Gnat.

A sample from The Bleat:

“Hewitt has been asking for suggestions to revitalize CBS news and bring in the younger demographic. I have a simple solution: animate it. Give it over to Kent Brockman, the Simpsons anchor. Have Alf Clausen score a new parody network news them [sic]. Upside: since it takes six months to animate an episode, any attempts by the news division to push a particular agenda will be someone [somewhat?] blunted. Or give it over to Space Ghost: three shots, endlessly repeated, with deadpan Zorak reaction shots…”

I’d be inclined to watch the Space Ghost remake of CBS “News,” otherwise, I’ll just continue to boycott everything CBS: news, local, everything.

*Yeh, yeh, so what is “it”? “It” is insightful snark, amusing commentary, griping about his popularity (“I have to increase my bandwidth!” or some such), post touching and amusing vignettes about daily life, etc. Just bang away at his bandwidth for a while and you’ll agree: Lileks is a daily “must check.”

Simply the best browsing experience…

http://my.opera.com/mnmus/journal

Yeh, I do use Firefox to post here, but that’s darned near the only thing I use Firefox for.

Opera is really that much better for most web browsing. Firefox is still too clunky and uncustomizable for me. (Now, if customizing Firefox disn’t DEMAND a new plugin for every damned [BTW, not “profane” just a comment upon the curséd lameness of Mozilla software developers –heh] itty bitty thing I wanted to change/add and if I could move the curséd tabs to the bottom of my screen and if I could open a new tab as easily as in Opera, and… etc. )

But even Opera needs help, sometimes. And that’s another thing I like about it. Microsoft is useless in supporting Internet Exploder. Mozilla “support” is a mess. The Opera support site is rich with discussion groups, techies, external links, etc. Nice place.

And then they offered me another (free) place to bloviate.

What great folks!

🙂

Speaking of which, what’s taking them so long to organize the State Funeral for WJC? Can’t locate enough blue dresses for the pallbearers?

For some reason I was reminded today of the fiasco surrounding Rene Descartes’ funeral.

First, there was the manner of his death. He should have known better. Sitting in a Parisian coffee house. The waiter came by and asked him if Descartes wanted a fresh cup. Descartes replied, “I think not” and immediately… was not.

But the funeral procession for this famous mathematician/philosopher… Oh. My. Heavens. What a fiasco. As the horse-drawn hearse proceeded down the narrow streets of Paris, some juvenile merrymakers thought it fun to spook the horse by throwing stones at it. The horse took off, running wildly, the hearse careening through the narrow streets until finally, on a sharp turn, it jacknifed and the horse went down in front of the hearse, the coffin went flying off, skidding and bumping on down the cobblestone streets… and Descartes’ body came tumbling out to roll, finally to a stop some yards beyond the knackered horse, the broken hearse and the smashed coffin.

Yes, the worst case of getting Descartes before the hearse known to this day.