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Last week I watched Battlestar Galactica on my computer, full screen, 10 hours before it aired on the sci-fi channel. There were 3 or 4 Intel commercials that were really short. I think networks are starting to get the picture. TV is going away, like CDs are, and like radio is, like all traditional media is.. But then again nothing is going away, fools, it’s resurfacing in new environments, with updated, perhaps tighter business models. If a band like Vampire Weekend can get big overnight because some pretentious website says they are the new “IT” band, well, you can hardly blame the internet pirates for ruining the world. The media is the message, the message is free, but the resulting buzz is what people will make money off.

Going but not gone. Tonight I thought I’d kick back and watch BSG on Hulu, which has been putting up the episodes, but someone at corporate sci-fi gave millions of sci-fi nerds blue balls and decided not to let them post it. The Gods giveth, the Gods taketh away.

Words of wisdom, no doubt:

Or are they? Here’s a rebuttal from my favorite anger movie of all time, Falling Down:

I think blowing shit up wins.

Mesmerized with Animal Planetesque curiosity I watched and listened to two very young hipsters have a conversation amid a flurry of electronic interruptions in a coffee shop and for the first time really noted the difference between the generation that has grown up inundated with technology and my own, which didn’t even really have a useful internet in college. I cannot speak for their internal conscious states, but this was no commercial for ADHD. On the contrary, they navigated the changes like expert gymnasts, or finely tuned computer processors, picking up exactly where they left off without missing a single beat. It flowed, noticeably different then most adults I see attempt this. We all think we can multitask these days, but the truth of the matter is that most people still can’t talk on the phone and drive at the same time (this is a fucking epidemic, actually.) I was beginning to think that these two were examples of The New Human, efficient in inhuman ways due to our co-evolution with technology. But then I saw another dude adjusting his slacker mop with the aid of his own webcam. iNarcissist?

For the first time in my life, I own a car that has real wheels and not plastic hubcaps. And while I did not get everything I wanted, like a parachute eject or turbo serenity overdrive with all-wheel noetic suspension, as I needed to quickly bail out of the ailing Honda, my 2005 Mazda3 hatchback did come with a sweet tint job. Laugh if you must. I figured I could endure the tint for a while, ironically of course, my mock So Cal gangster ride, but then something unexpected happened: I fell in love with it. Tint absolutely rules, especially when you have light squeamish vampire allergy eyes like mine. So the tint stays, and unironically so. But I might grow a mustache.

Update: Do to popular request, here is a picture of “el cholo.”

Who could have guessed Tuesday’s turnout!?! OMG, what an unpredictable world we live in! The Socialist Lady and the Endless War guy. Fuuuuuck me. Oh the sweet choices Democracy has laid before us yet again.

If you think I’m being facetious, get yourself a beer.

Say what you will about Ron Paul, the man made a mark, and if he runs for the election as an independent, he’ll make an even bigger one. I’ve never seen more steet signs and freaking airplanes and, good god, the Ron Paul meet-up emails in my inbox. But alas, the United States is not ready to mix reason with politics. It still prefers dynasty and fear, and the shit-sturm und drang of empty rhetorical pandering, to boring sound argument.

I’m not crazy about all of RP’s positions. I don’t agree with his stance on abortion, or his hard-line views on immigration or even his seductive yet somewhat over-simplified foreign policy (considering the mess we’ve made for ourselves is one we ought to atone for in my book.) But I think he’s got more of a coherent vision of the proper role of government in the United States according to its original charter (hint: think smaller) , than any other candidate. Government is too big, too intrusive, and has proven time and time again that it does not work. Both parties have lost sight of this.

Fans of utopia will chide me for being so simplistic. They will say “Don’t be so naive. Government can fix anything- it just has to be done in the right way.” This is the core fallacy of the modern status quoticians: the belief in a top-down, self-engineered utopia delivered by a big shiny government to your doorstep for free. Energy issues? Let them eat ethanol. Poverty? Just raise the minimum wage, and we’ll all become rich. Terrorism? Just start toppling rogue governments halfway across the world. Blowback? What blowback? At best, the idea that the powerful government can solve all of our woes, is misguided. At worst, it has brought us war, broken and unethical wealth redistribution schemes, disastrous protectionism and other economic meddling, and unconstitutional invasions of privacy (wiretapping, drug policy.) All of these scenarios have one thing in common: the oft ignored hidden consequences that are birthed by the “noble” intentions of government.

When Ron Paul talked about “blowback” he was lauded by both the left and right for making a connection that few politicians dared make. Why stop there? Blowback, mostly in the form of unintended consequences, is visible in all government policies. Prohibition put small business out and strengthened organized crime, just like the drug war today creates international crime and puts money in terrorists hands. The creation of the unnecessary Homeland Security bureaucracy contributed to the ineffective handling of Katrina. The training of the Mujahideen led to the rise of the Taliban and you know what.

This is not to say that government can’t ever get it right, just that usually it doesn’t, and that its actions often end up causing more harm than good. Furthermore, when government meddles we never get to see how people and markets and society adjust to a problem naturally. Patience! Economic stimulus plans are naive, needed pain is just put off until tomorrow. But we’ve grown so accustomed to the government “doing something” that we erroneously think of it as a physician. All of the leading candidates just sprinkle promises of money and programs and war to fix everything. They promise what they can’t deliver and it’s that false hope that gets them elected.

America is on the greatest crack bender ever.

After your bingeing finale to 2007 you might want to exercise a bit, if you care about regenerating those brain cells that is. Wouldn’t want you to forget how to “deal with ambiguity.” I like that. They make alcohol related brain damage sound like some kind of existential psychosis.

Now on to my predictions for 2008:

1. More Republicans will be caught promoting “family values” in public restrooms, thereby inspiring the long awaited Log Cabin Republicans coup to take the GOP.
2. UBL will be brought to justice by Captain America (with possible assistance from Iron Man) and thereafter Iraq, the little democracy that could, will stabilize and flourish, quickly becoming the number one tourist destination on the planet. CNN’s Morgan Neill will be there to report it all, but will refuse to grow a beard to look “tougher.”
3. American football will be replaced by the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame, Ulama. Losers will be sacrificed. Dick Cheney will play some part in this.
4. Apple will release a product that no one knew they needed but quickly becomes seductively irresistible. Google will release “Google Sex” which allows users to upload their own “sex content” to share with friends and family.
5. All 80s throwback fashion trends will begin to give way to 90s throwback fashion trends. Yesterdays hipsters will begin to feel old.
6. The indoor helicopter craze will reach irrational heights as copters replace traditional pets.
7. Guerrilla open source hackers will replace abandoned pay phones with VOIP kiosks out of retro-nostalgic respect, yo.
8. Unintelligent people will continue to breed at an alarming rate. Intelligent people will continue to occasionally sleep with unintelligent people, for sport.
9. People will suddenly stop wearing sandals; Crocs will be made illegal.
10. Defective Real Doll prototypes will be secretly released into the population, creating an apocalyptic “Westworld” type situation (only much sexier), that only reincarnated Real Doll Yul Brenner can save us from.
11. Georgia will move to number 1 in national housing foreclosures and retain its championship in bank robberies. I predict some spectacular “Point Break” style bank robberies in Atlanta.
12. A new president will be elected. No matter who it is Americans will feel relief for a few weeks.

It is with great sadness that I report that my George Foreman (aka. “grilla”) has finally passed away. It has served me well over these past 5 or so years that I have owned it, doling out the salmon or occasional burgs with quickness and ease. Oh, and the sandwiches. I always would forget to make sandwiches with it, and they were so good, panini pressed style. It worked like a champ, well into it’s golden years, even after it lost bun warmer functionality.

And honestly, now that my once sleek, sexy and stylish Honda Civic, has paid it’s historical dues (oh the stories it could tell…), becoming a dingy, clunky, transmission-challenged husk of a former supermodel in the process, I feel as if I need to commemorate this aging, passing and renewing of technologies. For there is no denying our own technological mortality. Like these gadgets, will will reach a physical end, sooner, or later. The doctor said I have high cholesterol. I looked at him like you look at someone that tells you your shoes suck. I was oddly, insulted. What did he mean high cholesterol? Is he saying I’m old? But there’s no denying the entropy of physiology. And in a strange way, the death of “grilla” is a mini-death to help me prepare for my own. Thanks, little buddy.

Now as I contemplate purchasing a new George Foreman, perhaps the one with built-in burger chef intelligence, and a new ride, something with clairvoyant brakes and noetic suspension, I usher in a new mini-era of immortality, the second coming of me.

Factcheck.org gettin all meta-psychological on our ass. Now I’ve been a pious fan of research cherry-picking watchdog groups for about as long I’ve been politically aware and internet enabled, and perhaps therein lies part of the problem, one man’s statistically sound study, another man’s crock-full-a…

But Factcheck, who remain all too infrequent and obscure, contemplate the mind-bending proposition that perhaps de-obscuring the truth just leads to further obscuring, by way of a complex pattern of downwardly spiraling retardation, which manifests itself mainly in dumb people. While I agree with the premise, which is that most people who walk upright and get occasional haircuts are intellectually not much further along than the Bonobo, but do we have to draw attention to it? Perhaps they should go the logical step further and simply pronounce that, “all I know is that I know nothing.”

That’s the end game.

End times, baby. As we’ve been pondering and predicting and hoping for years, the paradigm shift in the music “industry” seems to be finally upon us. In an effort to topple pathetically desperate Big Music, who have taken to suing fans and consumers that they overcharged for years, it seems a flurry of your favorite kewl bands like the Radioheads, are dumping their labels and shunning the evil recording industry once and for all, opting for more direct online sales type openness. Hands together, world, you can doooo it (with the interwebs of course.) Keep Radiohead rich without their square suited benefactors! The music industry never suited music in the first place. This is a natural break.

Irony aside, the real shocker isn’t that Radiohead, or Nine Inch Nails, has gone utterly idealistic, but fucking Madonna? Although she is really just shifting from Warner to some other huge-ass promotional company, it is still a huge departure.

The only real question now is how fast will the music industry model come tumbling down. When Radiohead led the way in offering their music directly to fans many predicted that the move was the beginning of the end; Madonna may well be the tipping point from where we will now see a flood of recording artists dumping record labels and where todays model will shortly become a footnote in Wikipedia.

Let the apocalypse begin. I predict that in 5 years every band will be selling songs off their website directly to hungry consumers. Or maybe just giving them away for free in hopes that some really good music blog or mag gives you glowing reviews so that people will come to your shows and buy a t-shirt and your limited number of vinyl pressings.

4am. Been working the overnights lately and seen my bedtime creep from the usual 3am to 6am. Finishing early tonight. Enjoying some ice cream, which got me thinking, they should have a mix of chocolate and Combos, my other favorite late night snack. That’s right the cheese filled pretzels. Ok, I just tried it, and you can’t really taste the cheese with the ice cream. Still, this is a really good idea putting two powerhouse snacks together to create something special. But we need something more. We’ve got to cut through the aisles of banal consumables. Todays marketplace is filled with foods mixed up with other foods, like the peanut butter with jelly already in it. We need to take it to the next level. Ice cream and Combos and…what? How about Xanax? Oh, fuck yeah. Or, the inverse product would be Combos filled with chocolate and Xanax? Fuck yeah. I could totally design award winning snack foods.