Archive for the ‘Rambling’ Category

Wandering through Walmart today – in my defense, my power was out and I needed to kill time someplace full of colorful distractions and air conditioning – I found the next step in subscription begging: Buy a T-shirt, get a subscription.

A table full of Rolling Stone licensed shirts, with images from classic RS covers featuring Jimi Hendrix, U2, Run-DMC and more, plus a few with generic guitar and amplifier designs, were on sale for $10. And each one came with a card for a 12-issue subscription, about a half a year's worth. The magazines cost $4.50 apiece off the shelf, and here for the price of 2 of them you could get 12 plus a shirt! And the card was even postage-prepaid! How desperate do your circulation numbers have to be before you offer your print product as a sweetener to sell a shirt?

These came out last year on sale at Macy's for $42, which is more understandable, but now they're on a $10 table at Walmart (at least Macy's hasn't gone any lower than $14.99) and the subscription offer is still good.

Magazine subscriptions amaze me. I was a bit less impressed when I found out that you can get a year's worth of the Stone – 26 issues – for 15 bucks online (no shirt).  The reason why is obvious: most print products like magazines and newspapers make their money from advertising, and to get/keep those advertisers, they need to keep their circulation numbers nice and high. Actual subscription rates are proportionately a much smaller portion of their revenue. They just need you to help make a specific number nice and fat.

Which means if you need or want any magazine subscriptions at all, now's the time. Those deals you see where you can get 2 years of mags for, like, thirty cents and an aluminum can are probably true. Want Popular Science? Don't pay $47 to actually buy the things from a sweaty and possibly diseased retailer, send the company 10 bucks and allow them to mail them to you like a civilized person. Pay $192.50 for a year's worth of Entertainment Weekly? Are you mad? Send them a twenty and make them beg to serve you (may include weekend breakfasts in bed from B-list celebrities, in selected areas). A year of Time would be $277.20 were you foolish/brain-damaged enough to actually pay money for the wretched things, but twenty bucks will get you a subscription, a private guided tour of the juiciest scandals in D.C.  and the junior senator of your choice, to take home. Conde Nast will practically have sex with you if you'll subscribe to anything, dammit, anything.

So I bought a shirt for my son. And I'll send in the free subscription card. If I remember to.

The more alert readers may have noticed some small, subtle changes in the SerenityStuff website. A tiny change in the logo, a slight deepening of the color palette, the fact that it's gone completely…

Well, not gone. All of the posts are still here, but I've combined my other blog with it to create a new one, BashingInMinds.com. There's just not as much Serenity merchandise news these days as everyone involved in the movie has gone on to do more cool stuff and I'd like to talk about them as well. And other things of a geekish nature. So here we are, on the raggedly edge.

As you can see from the tag cloud over on the bottom of the sidebar, "serenitystuff" is still by far the biggest topic. Your old links should still work, the pre-existing RSS feed should still be the same, and with luck all this will mean is that you get to hear me talk more. I'll leave it to you as to whether that's a good thing or not…

Expect some further site changes as I continue to play with this and integrate everything more fully — there's a lot of stuff here. If you're only familiar with my Serenity pimping, welcome! I also write, essays and stories and bad poetry and parodies, and you'll find many years worth here. If you came here looking for cabridges.com or chrisbridges.com, my site serenitystuff.com about merchandise by and for Browncoats has just been folded in (and those old links and RSS feeds will still work as well).

I hope you'll hang around. There's a lot to talk about…

@minnesotian > Hey, how's everybody doing? Temp's dropping like a rock here.

@heapless_in_seattle > Here, too. No bright, fluffy snow, just slush slush slush.

@bostonbeaner > Snow's five feet deep. I'm kinda trapped at the moment.

@cabridges > Hi from Florida! Supposed to get cold this week here, not looking forward to it.

@heapless_in_seattle > How cold?

@cabridges > Down in the 40s, maybe 30s. You know what it's like, having to deal with that?

@bostonbeaner > Um…

@heapless_in_seattle > Um…

@minnesotian > Running out of food, really don't want to go out in that. It's snowing sideways.

@bostonbeaner > The dog was just out for 30 seconds tops, and all his whiskers broke off.

@minnesotian > Ow! Poor thing.

@bostonbeaner > He's huddled by the fireplace now. I think part of his brain may have frozen.

@heapless_in_seattle > Try holding his head in warm water, thaw it gently.

@heapless_in_seattle > With his nose and mouth OUT! boston? boston?

@bostonbeaner > He's OK, I think. He just keeps wandering in tight circles. We're supposed to get three more feet of snow tonight.

@cabridges > Just came back from walking my dogs around the park. Getting serious, I think, I'm going to have to consider putting on a long-sleeve shirt if this keeps up.

@bostonbeaner > Mom just came back inside, car wouldn't start. Looking around kitchen for food.

@minnesotian > Really getting cold, now. Wind is blowing and I think the carport just went over.

@heapless_in_seattle > hey guys? I can't see out of the windows anymore.

@minnesotian > So cold, so cold. Fingers burning. Mom breaking up computer desk for wood.

@bostonbeaner > No food. Thawing frozen tree branches we can reach from the upstairs window for the leaf sap.

@minnesotian > Boston? How attached are you to your dog? I mean, meat's meat, and if the dog is brain-damaged anyway…

@cabridges > This is agony. I actually had to dig out my hoodie and wear it this morning with my shorts. Back up in the 60s by lunch, though, so walking to the deli was no prob. Roast beast sub! NOM NOM NOM…

@heapless_in_seattle > Neighbors banding together for protection against lower east side gangs. I'm the 2-3am lookout for our apartment building. Killed a man yesterday, got 1/2 a Snickers bar.

@bostonbeaner > Cuddlebear will keep us alive for another week, with luck. Good dog. Good dog.

@minnesotian > Front door doorknob just broke in my hand. Entire house frame is frozen solid, starting to crack from the weight of the roof. May God have mercy on our souls.

@bostonbeaner > So sleepy. I'm warm when I sleep.

@cabridges > Just posted pics of our day at the beach. Little chilly to swim, but we did anyway. Can't wait for the warm weather to come back, you know? Guys? Guys?

I'm still deep in the "add 5 cool apps, delete 4 after trying each one once, immediately add 5 more" phase of my iPod Touch love affair. My little mini-desktops are constantly spinning with apps that zoom in just long enough to wiggle the others aside before I bore of them and consign them to iTunes hell.

And yet, even with the amazing time-wasting bonanza available to me through the iTunes store — and that's not even counting the new world open to me if I ever hold my breath and jail-break the thing — there are still whole categories of applications I can't find. So, with a hopeful hint to restless programmers who just need a direction, here are the apps I want.

RealTip

I want to enter the total of my dinner and get the amount of the tip. But, and this is important, only after I check off boxes to describe my waitperson's performance, which would then positively or adversely affect the amount of the gratuity. Did she smile and remember everything, but spill ketchup on my wife's head? Was the food present, warmer than room temperature, and more or less on the plate? Were we treated to unwanted dinner theater involving our waiter and his ex-girlfriend-who-still-lives-with-him? Were we left waiting less than the time it would have taken to hunt, kill, and prepare the food ourselves? RealTip should take it all into account and give me a total I can live with.

GeoPerv

Not sure about your new neighbor? Shivering whenever you walk by your new babysitter? Wondering why your date seems so creepy? Snap a surreptitious pic of him and GeoPerv will instantly compare it to the local sexual offenders database (determined by geolocation) and "To Catch a Predator" reruns.

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The Fnords have come to the iPhone and iPod Touch!

The newly launched app from Steve Jackson Games allows the Illuminati to send you messages… more obviously than usual, I mean.

Use it to boggle your friends… or ask it for help when you need to make a decision. Think of it as an I Ching for paranoids.

Also comes with stylish Illuminated wallpaper you can use for your iPhone or iTouch.

Free app, and worth every shekel.

So where's the iPhone version of the Principia Discordia?

In other news, I got an iPod Touch. You'll hear more of this later. Oh, yes.

Breastfeed your child on Facebook, even in a private account only friends can see, and Facebook will frown upon you. That's what happened to Heather Farley, who was told to remove a photo she'd posted of herself. She wrote and asked why, and upon receiving nothing back she posted another, only to be told to lose it or lose her account entirely.

This has resulted in some bad publicity for Facebook and a new group, "Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding in Public is not Obscene" which quickly grew to over 90,000 members, 11,000 comments, and over 3,000 breastfeeding photos (along with paintings of Madonna and Child, and a few Hooters pics that snuck in there). In the face of this public outcry and public picketing, will Facebook change its TOS to accommodate such images, which it says violates their no-aureole policy?

Probably not. (Although shouldn't that mean that BF pictures that are aureoleless are OK?) But as long as we're removing images from Facebook that are patently offensive to the eye, I'd like to suggest they take care of the following:

– Guys with hairy backs, wearing thongs.

– Any "cute dog" picture, especially involving costumes, where the poor animal is clearly begging for death's sweet release.

– Women with hairy backs, wearing thongs.

– Photoshopped images of Sarah Palin. That ship has sailed, my friend.

– Pictures of injuries, abcesses, running sores, open wounds, or gangrenous feet posted with a "hey, check this out" message.

– Dangerously ugly people. You know who you are.

– Profile pics cranked out by the latest make-your-own-avatar fad in the forms of anime characters, elves, M&Ms, vampires, or rotting pirates that look just like the other 3,000,000 avatars that everyone else made.

– Pictures of drunken hijinks, unless the person involved is attractive enough to overcome the stigma of red eyes, slack jaws, goofy grins, and dried vomit. Very few people are.

– Any vacation pics where the person in frame is cleverly positioned so that it appears he or she is holding up a massive monument. Honestly, we're all rooting for the monument to fall and crush you. Seriously.

– Any profile photo made "artsy" by the application of a single, apparently random Photoshop filter.

– Any picture of a person with a design shaved into their hair, at any location.

– Pictures of your adorable children doing something that would get a grownup put in prison.

– Any topless man boasting more than a B cup.

So, Facebook, as long as you're being arbiters of good taste, let's get on these, OK? Any one of them — or, shudder, any combination — is far more offensive to me than an infant suckling at a mother's breast.

I love this specific time of year. 2 o'clock in the morning, Christmas day. This is when things happen.

This is the magic time when bikes get assembled, game systems get quietly hooked up, surprise presents make their appearance from carefully concealed locations, and a few cookies get eaten.

Everyone in the house is asleep. I feel like I should be doing something. Finished up a last-minute gift for Teres she's not expecting, but it's not a big deal (new homemade bumper stickers to replace the ones she's worn out, a match set of "I LOVE BON JOVI" and 'AND MY HUBBY TOO, PROBABLY"). I'm used to extravagant surprises. Our Christmas mornings used to involve a fair amount of showmanship.

One morning many years back, my oldest (only, at the time) son woke abruptly at six in the morning to see Santa Claus, white beard,, red suit, hat and all, leaning over him. Santa told him "Merry Christmas, Tony," smiled, and ran for it. By the time he struggled out of his carefully-tucked-in sheets and came after me, I was in my own bed, unKringled and snoring better than Gielgud. The rest of the day his presents were almost untouched; he was still raving about his visitor.

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• @templesmith I think his problem is he's been a little vague on everything lately. I'd just rather pick the battles he can't defend. #
• @templesmith Love to see someone pick lines out McC's last few speeches and compare them to Bush speeches. More of the same… #
• @templesmith I think that's why Lieberman would be a good veep for him. Another honorable man who seems to have strayed from his principles. #
• Just spent a half hour updating book covers in my LibraryThing account. Not sure why. I'm going to bed now. #
• The strip will be posted tonight. I have decided to blame Tropical Storm Fay for this and all other delays in my life, for at least a month. #
• McCain has announced his running mate: his POW story. His story will accompany him to all functions, and in need will take over the office. #
• Buying a home in Florida? Now's the time to drive around and see where it floods… #
• Five days of steady rain, massive flooding, and two more storm systems forming out in the Atlantic. Welcome to the Sunshine State! #
• Apparently the no-fly list really only protects terrorists. I feel so much safer. http://tinyurl.com/59z99s #
• Currently working up flood photos and being very thankful we didn't have to wade out of our house this morning. #
• Blog: Don't make Superman dark, make him Superman http://tinyurl.com/5zcv39 #

From Thinkprogress.org: "The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco has just recently submitted enough signatures to city election officials ' hoping to place on the ballot an initiative that would rechristen the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant as the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.' But on CBC radio last Friday, one of the commission's founders, Brian McConnell, said the group ran in to some unexpected opposition to changing the name: "What we didn't expect was that most of the opposition was coming from people who didn't want to name anything. They just wanted to forget about the past eight years and move on or they felt that this is a facility that does something really quite useful and it would be inappropriate to put his name on it. . . . If you get to the point where people are defending the sewage plant, that's a sign that things have not gone so well."

Well, we have the battle I was really hoping for: Obama/McCain. I didn't think I'd get it, but I'm really looking forward to the next few months. I was really, truly terrified we'd have a Clinton/Giuliani race and I figured that was about it for bi-partisanship in the United States.

However, while I have said in the past that I favor Obama but wouldn't mind McCain in the president's chair, I may have to retract that. McCain has apparently changed his views on presidential power in the last six months. Where he condemned warrentless wiretapping before, now he seems to be condoning it. I want a president who will return the executive branch to being only 1/3 of the government.