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When all your past experience tells you that you’re an idiot, it’s probably not a good idea to start playing fast and loose with your HTML. For over an hour I couldn’t get Blogback to work, nor could I figure out why it wasn’t working, and finally, when I somehow got it to work again, my weblog was taken over by error messages telling me that my version of Blogback had expired or was pirated, and at the very least should be deleted. Such is life. I’ve switched temporarily to a commenting system from uigui.net, and although customizable features like re-sizing would be nice, it does seem to be working. Leave a comment, why don’t you? Stop for a minute and say hello.

So my attempts to create a Windows boot disk on my office computer fell through, and whatever it is that I did create failed to work, possibly because all I have to work with is a copy of the Windows 2000 CD left by my predecessor. I should have known something was up when it had trouble copying to the disks I brought with me, but then again if I knew what I was doing I wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. When things like this happen, when a computer crashes and goes dead to the world, it’s an unwelcome reminder of just how computer-ignorant I am. I know how certain programs work, I recognize some terms, and I can navigate the web pretty easily. But in the greater scheme of things I haven’t got a clue. Hopefully tech support does.

Never let it be said that life is not full of surprises. It’s a little after ten o’clock at night, and I’m the last place I expected to be: at work. Not actually working, of course, but hunched over the keyboard in my office while outside in the hall, floor polishers whir and janitors talk amongst themselves from one end of the corridor to the other. See, at home, my computer crashed. I tried to upload some rinky-dink midi conversion software, because I can’t actually play any instruments but I have these other songs stuck in my head and I’ve been trying to figure out which notes I’ve been humming lately. After much trouble, I ended up restarting my computer, and I wound up with error messages across my screen telling me that I need to reinstall Windows. I came here to try and find a boot disk, because I am apparently too stupid to have made one for my own use, and because everything else Dell tech support suggested failed to work or get me beyond “Error Starting Program” and an otherwise empty desktop. But all I have here is the Windows 2000 CD, and while creating a boot disk from that probably isn’t terribly complicated, it’s getting late, I don’t need to use my home computer tonight, and I have no blank disks handy, it would seem. Besides, I think the janitors are getting restless.

I will say this much: technical support can be awful, as recent experience has taught me, but the guy on the phone at Dell was friendly and courteous, and their menu was intuitive and easy to navigate. That’s important when you’re in Panic Mode, like I was when I first called. When they don’t have the information you need, or can’t fix the problems you’re facing, it’s at least nice to know it isn’t because they don’t care.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because I didn’t. Here, then, is “A Pocketful of Penis”, lyrics written in a fit of boredom by yours truly and recorded with members of the Penn State Monty Python Society, who assure me that the rest of our CD, Sex, Drugs, and Graham Spanier, is really much, much better that this track lets on, and that I should be a good boy and go lie down now. We’ll be performing this and other original pieces again sometime in mid-April, and if you’re really desperate for attention you can write us and ask for a copy of the CD. We only hurt the ones we love.

And the rich man in his summer home

Singing just leave well enough alone.

But his pants are down, his cover’s blown…

And the politicians throwin’ stones,

So the kids they dance

And shake their bones,

And it’s all too clear we’re on our own.

Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down.

Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

– The Grateful Dead, Throwing Stones

America as an idea is so much better than America the reality. Every time I read something like this (sent to me by Erik Wilson), I want to hit someone, preferably someone who works for the propaganda machine that is Fox News. I quote:

And yet, the conservative agenda is and remains singularly unpopular with the population at large, as evidenced by the fact that the GOP can only win elections by hiding its true objectives and playing moderate, running scorched-earth campaigns of personal destruction, smear and slander, intimidation of minority voters and other means of depressing voter turnout – and even then only barely. As Rush Limbaugh gets never tired of telling his white, male and angry audience – it must be someone else’s fault. Unable to face the fact that a majority of the population simply does not want theocracy, social darwinism and corporate supremacy, they had to find a scapegoat – or invent one if needed. Thus The Liberal Media myth was born.

The Liberal Media myth is a propaganda tool employed by conservative radio hosts, columnists and pundits as a convenient excuse why after 20 years their ideology has failed to convince the public at large, and as a memetic inocculation of the public against the evidence that the media bias is in fact a conservative one.

Not only does the liberal media claim have no basis in fact, it also does not make sense considering the issues of media ownership and influence of advertisers. Most media outlets are owned by a handful of conservative corporations and individuals, and funded by usually economically conservative advertisers who have no need for an educated, alert, independent and critical citizenry. What they need is a dumb, bored, cynical and apathetic public that has abandoned all critical faculties and is easily distracted by celebrity gossip and mindless sports games. A public that will believe anything it is told, or nothing at all, which amounts to the same end result. This pro-corporate conservative bias of the media is well-documented and shows itself in consistent under-reporting or ignoring of any information that would lead people to question the fundamental status quo.

The 2004 election can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned.