• Not to get all Andy Rooney or anything, but I am getting damned tired of having a crappy user experience on simple web forms. I was just filling out a form to get a white paper for the day job, entered the requisite amount of bullshit, and then was thrown back to the entry page without any obvious reason. After closely scanning the page I discovered that I had entered my phone number in a format the page couldn't parse. In a throwback to the old days, you are required to enter your phone number as (###) ###-####. Leaving out the parentheses, the hyphen, or the space will return an error. Idiots. Strip the damned non-numerics and store it in your database in whatever format you want, you bunch of twits.
• NPR had a fascinating story this morning about the original video footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It seems that the footage I watched as a wee bairn was a crappy second-generation copy, even as a live broadcast. The camera created for the trip to the moon created images of a much higher resolution than television could display, and no converter existed at that time. So the images that captivated the world came from a TV camera pointed at a video monitor displaying the high-res feed. Fascinating, but not as perplexing as the idea that the original tapes have been misplaced. Perhaps all that additional detail made it more obvious that it was all faked.
• So the president is in Miami tying up traffic, as presidential visits do. I don't particularly care about that, but I did find the opening paragraph from the Herald article unintentionally funny: "President Bush swooped into Miami late Sunday, startling bikini-clad beachgoers along Collins Avenue as his motorcade revved to dinner at Joe's Stone Crab in Miami Beach -- part of a White House strategy to get the commander in chief out of the Beltway bubble and amid regular folks." Because as far as the White House is concerned, "regular folks" eat at Joe's all the time. I mean, don't we all? I think they have dollar beers on NASCAR days, right?
• Reasons to be cheerful, parts four and five?
• Product placement is a plague upon art. How much worse, then, is ideological product placement?
• A hat-tip to Tim for the post title, and for finding this delicious Crossfire censorship debate between Robert "Gargoyle" Novak, some drooling hack, and the inimitable Frank Zappa. Ah, FZ, how we need you now...

My apologies for my vague and ill-defined presence of late. I'm just living in interesting times, I suppose.

The only good thing about a talking urinal cake is that it grants me the opportunity to literally piss on marketing.

Note to my friends in advertising: Don't take this personally.

Judging from the way this week is going, reports of my survival may have been exaggerated. Nevertheless, here is a something I've been thinking about of late.

When enjoying the arts — visual, literary, athletic, whatever — is your appreciation affected by the opinions or actions of the person who created it?

Here's the perspective of author Neil Gaiman, when asked by one of his fans how he felt about this age-old dilemma:

If I were only allowed to read or enjoy art or listen to music made by people whose opinions and beliefs were the same as mine, I think the world would be a pretty dismal sort of a place. I love the work of many creators who self-avowedly believe or believed things that I consider to be "fairly wretched", not to mention wrong-headed, lunatic, irresponsible or simply wrong. Worse yet: there are artists, actors, songwriters, authors, whose work I love, like or admire and who, biographers or historians tell us, actually did things that were utterly reprehensible. And worse even than that, there are all those things by Anonymous, who could have been or thought or done, well, anything, and we'll never know...

Are you willing to overlook the odious beliefs and habits of artists who create work you admire, or does your distaste override any aesthetic enjoyment? Or, on the opposite end, have you ever tried to make yourself like an artists because they are "on your team" philosophically?

While not exactly well, I am still among what passes for the living in South Florida, sufficiently so to go to the office and earn my cat food. I no longer have any physical symptoms other than an almost debilitating fatigue, though, so it isn't like I'm spreading the plague. Besides, the century old air ducts in the building are full of alien spores, so any cold bugs are a secondary threat at best.

For those few who might not have heard, we won, and the courts appropriately humiliated the Bolaños crew. They may still file an appeal, though, depending solely on how Frankie's doing in the polls.

And how's this as a way to start your day? I stepped out of my house this morning to go to work, and a nicely dressed fellow was walking past. I said good morning, and he peered over at me through the drooping poinciana branches, smiled, and said "My, aren't we looking entrepreneurial today!"

I laughed, he walked on, I got to my car, and wondered what the hell he was talking about. Was it the laptop case, the linen pants and shirt, the sunglasses? I know this is a low rent neighborhood, but c'mon!

A West Palm Beach strip club has a fully-equipped male gargoyle sculpture as a mascot. I'm sure you will be shocked to learn this has caused a controversy. Of course, just how big a controversy is a matter of debate.

"This statue has an impressive (!) genital area," Sager e-mailed Assistant County Attorney Lenny Berger.

But Berger, who has a background with the county's arts council, looked at the photos and fired back this response: "You call that impressive? You need a zoom lens to photograph it!"

I don't think there's anything I can add to that.

Post title stolen shamelessly from the mailing list wherein I first saw the story.

Our difficulties continue, albeit on a biological rather than technical level. Regular publishing should resume shortly. We thank you for your patience.

It is silly and pointless, but if this was available in the US I would totally buy a USB hub disguised as a sci-fi nuclear firing button.

There's a long (i.e., more than two years) tradition of weirdly shaped and decorated USB devices and hubs, particularly in Asia. The button is one of the best I've seen.

We're experiencing some technical difficulties, but will be back soon, I promise.

In the interim, those of you with an interest in the fine art of mixology may want to peruse Jerry Thomas' Bartenders Guide, originally published in 1862. Spend a few minutes perusing the fine libations offered inside, then head over to your favorite watering hole and order up a Bimbo Punch.

Google's personalized home page has a "quote of the day" service. Today's offering from Edward R. Murrow was undoubtedly chosen with blogging in mind.

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

Not that so-called professional journalists get a pass on this, mind you. I can think of several people with tall soapboxes who should have this tattooed somewhere on their scabrous hides.

Smashed icons, Miami City Cemetary, 2001

Imagine that civilization came crashing down in 1929. Small bands of people are still picking through the rubble looking for useful items, while knowing in their hearts that it's all over. New York City's streets are littered with overturned automobiles and fluttering newspapers, while its growing skyline is collapsing, leaving brilliantly blue and cloud-strewn vistas set off by broken concrete teeth. Nature has rapidly overtaken most buildings, with thick vines and wet mosses covering the lower stories.

But look! A small group of survivors has gathered at the foot of the steps of the public library, dressed in shabby tuxedos and patchy sequined dresses. They have cleared away some of the debris and assembled a collection of unsteady tables and chairs, grouped into the semblance of a nightclub, complete with once-white linens and cracked stemware. A cadaverous man shambles among the tattered remnants of the city's elite, dispensing questionable libations from a dented silver shaker, drinks the ladies and gentlemen sip slowly as they look toward the ruined library.

On the wide steps, a motley quintet of musicians are performing. The instrumentation is eclectic in the extreme — from tuba to accordion to banjo to typewriter — but the talent is undeniable. A certain fin de siécle resignation is heard in the singer's voice as he leans into the microphone and croons his deranged lyrics of end times and apocalypse to the fading aristocracy of the doomed civilization. The mood shifts seamlessly from slow syncopation to snappy shuffles: it is a sinister, sardonic, and wholly marvelous send-off to a decadent world.

But of course the world didn't end in 1929, and this entire vision is just a fever dream. However, to hear what humanity's closing night performance might have sounded like, listen to the debut CD from The Scarring Party. It's a rollicking cabaret of the damned, with clever lyrics and strong performances the likes of which you haven't heard before. You can hear two tracks on their website: No More Room and Eat Your Young. It is almost enough to make you look forward to the end times, and I mean that in the best possible way.

When I first moved into my little DMZ of a neighborhood I was forced to listen to the sounds of open warfare every weekend, and some evenings, as well. You could hear the gangs coming in the distance if you were outside, or if the weather was cool enough to leave your windows open. Each time I heard their audible colors I would cringe, and offer a silent prayer that they wouldn't meet in front of my house this time.

Eventually I would hear the cough and sputter of a badly tuned diesel engine, and I knew to stay low until the trucks passed. There was no way I was going to subject my musical sensibilities to the hideous digital tintinnabulation of competing ice cream trucks.

Turkey In the Straw, loathsome as it is, still beats a screechy Casio rendition of Fur Elise, and even that is better than the nightmarish qualities of the Brahms Lullaby as performed by the electro hordes of hell. (That last one always put me in mind of Kraftwerk running a death camp somewhere in Bavaria.) Why there were three competing routes all going through my neighborhood is a question I'll never have answered, but last year Kraftwerk hit the Autobahn for the last time, and now the turkey's thrown in the towel, as well. Was blood shed, or did only brain cells die in the cacophonous digital rumble? I'll never know for certain.

But now, thanks to the good people at WFMU, you can stage your own aural recreation of the Great North Miami Ice Cream War. Relieve your childhood — or just shudder in terror — with the soothing melodies of Ice Cream Truck Music, Revisited.

As if there was any need for further proof of my madness, I went to the Fairchild Mango Festival this morning. Although the mango is my favorite fruit, this is not my favorite event at FTG, particularly in recent years. As it has grown in popularity, it has become harder and harder to participate in the events. I enjoy the mango tasting — there are dozens of different cultivars, each with an obviously different flavor — but the line is now tremendously long, and forms up in the direct sun. I don't love mangos that much.

But the real issue I have with the festival is timing. Yes, it would be pointless to have a mango festival when the damned things aren't in season, but it is so unbelievably hot in Miami in July, particularly in flat open spaces. It is almost unbearable.

When I stopped in the gift shop to get out of the sun for a few minutes, the woman at the register became concerned that I was going to collapse from exhaustion in the middle of the store. She actually followed me around, telling me to go get some water and sit down before I went back into the sun. It was sweet of her, I guess, but her insistence started to irk me. I can't help looking like I'm going to burst into flame at any moment — I'm a nocturnal creature, damn it.

Still, it's a chance to get out of the house for a while, take a few photos, and pick up some new hot sauces. I'll probably make the same mistake again next year.

Many South Florida sites were visited by a new commenter last night: Michael Caputo. He went from site to site cutting and pasting the same Frank "Bully" Bolaños editorial, in which he puts forth the preposterous claim that it's okay to remove a book for political purposes.

Caputo, if you didn't know (and there's no reason why you should), is a Republican PR flack. I don't know for certain that he's being paid by Bolaños' campaign — the campaign site can't seem to stay up long enough to do anything — but given that he's done this sort of work in the past (Bush I campaign in 1992, Boris Yeltsin campaign in 1996, Michael Moore smear campaign in 2000), it certainly seems likely. The only question is one of payroll: is he an official member of the Bolañ campaign, or is he being paid out of an astroturf fund kept in David Rivera's pocket.

I really don't like to talk about local politics here, as it tends to stink up the place. But since I have gathered that many of my readers keep their distance as well, I'm going to break my own rule (It's good to be the king!), and give a little background on the whole Vamos a Cuba concocted controversy.

State Senator Alex Villalobos pissed off the Republican machine this year by voting to support his constituents, not the governor. On two key education votes he voted against his masters, one on changes to the class size amendment, and once against the unconstitutional voucher program. Since in the Republican party the penalty for independent thought is political death, he was stripped of his senate rank, and the party black hat team started looking for another Republican to run against him, preferably one incapable of original thought.

Enter Frank Bolaños: an easily manipulated, anti-public education Cuban school board member. The problem is that no-one in Miami knew who he was, let alone anyone in the rest of the state. Villalobos would kick his ass in a heart-beat. Clearly a controversy was needed, something to get Bolaños free press time, and maybe do a little blustering and pandering on TV, too.

Enter Vamos a Cuba, an utterly inoffensive kindergarten book which actually manages to make Cuba look worse than it really is, while still remaining kid-friendly. While it isn't known if Republican triggerman Rivera actually put the book into Bolañ'os' hands, his fingerprints are all over the deal.

Thus far it seems to be working. The taxpayer's have agreed to pay for the Bolaños campaign's publicity, by funding the school board's legal defense to keep this in the papers for a while. My guess is that shortly before the election they'll negotiate a deal to put the book back on the shelves, giving Frankie a last chance to grab some air time ranting about the evil anti-American, pro-Castro ACLU and liberals. Then he'll waltz through election day and we'll have yet another mindless toady in Tallahassee, and one beholden to Rivera and the black hat team, at that.

So I'll let your little bit of comment spam go this time, Mr. Caputo. In the future, however, please be advised that I charge for use of this site as political advertising. (My rates vary, depending on the extent to which I agree with the politics.) So the next time you've got a huge wad of Rivera's money burning a hole in your pocket, drop me a note. Until then, back off, flack.

As part of my not-formally-discussed day job, I help people write. When they have some manner of internal communication they need to send out via e-mail, particularly if there's some kind of technical information they need the masses to comprehend, it ends up on my desk. This has nothing to do with my title or official function, mind you; it has just evolved that I am one of the "go-to" people for wordcraft.

I try to be understanding of the varying skills involved here. Many of these people work pretty much exclusively in numbers, so if it can't be expressed in a grid they get scared and insecure. Nonetheless, I can't help but be annoyed when I am given a long document to polish, and it's been typed up in Microsoft Excel. When they get to where they think the line should end, they just move down a row and start typing in a new cell.

This is where my better nature gets me in trouble. If I was sane I would reject it utterly, and tell them to do it themselves. But then the communication would just go out as an Excel attachment without any further explanation, and that would annoy me more, as I would end up getting the questions. So instead I am copying and pasting the whole damned thing into Word so I can start formatting and editing it.

Some days I wish I had never seen a computer.

"I'd say the audio-video ratio of podcasts is 10-to-1. It's still so much easier to create audio than video, and people have much more time in their day to listen than to watch. You can listen while driving. You lose viewers really fast when they watch while they're driving."

I have a quick question for you today. Do you listen to podcasts?

I'll admit to being a little bitter and cynical about the current state of this nation. So many of the values on which this nation was founded have been eroded or flatly discarded by our elected officials that it can be difficult to harbor hope for the future. Even if change comes, a hard road is ahead if we want to recover our values, and be a force for good in the world.

For that change to come, though, we need to be active. There are groups — non-partisan groups — who are trying to safeguard our freedoms against those in our own government who want to remove them in the name of "security." If you still believe in the core American values, if the rule of law matters to you, if you want all Americans to enjoy the guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness they were promised, consider joining one of those organizations in whatever capacity you can. Money is tight for a lot of folks, so if you can't afford the $20 to join the ACLU, for example, consider helping out with your time. You might be surprised how many ways there are for you to help.

Have a safe and fun Independence Day, and try not to lose any fingers.

Arthur Flegenheimer was better known as Dutch Schultz, a notorious bootlegger and mobster of the 1920-30 era. While he was a vicious and ruthless gangster, his biggest mark on the world came from his last words — a mad stream-of-consciousness rant which lasted for hours. They have inspired speculation and scholarship, and been the subject (directly or indirectly) of many literary endeavors, including a bizarre mock screenplay by William S Burroughs.

Dutch Schultz had converted to Roman Catholicism in the weeks prior to his murder. Is there any connection, then, with the glossolalia claimed by some Christian Pentecostal sects? It's a long way from a Holy Roller speaking in tongues to the pomp and ceremony of mass, but it is also a long way from the violence of organized crime to the poetry of "A boy has never wept...nor dashed a thousand kin." But perhaps it is all just chemical, and the peritonitis ravaging Dutch's bullet-torn frame had just shorted out his brain.

I find the same kind of incomprehensible poetry in the ravings I find in my inbox. Junk mail filters trap messages based on their content (Bayesian spam filtering)which judges the merit of a message based on the words it contains. To bypass this, some automatic mailers (spammer software) build unique messages from a database of phrases, usually clippings from literature or dictionaries. This use of Brion Gysin's cut-up technique can, on occasion, create something strangely beautiful.

injustice in centigrade when lysergic
not contract or prescript not thatch
But of what is he dying asked acidulous
Life is simply eyesight out replied the reporter choral
Perhaps he is telling
jessie the demon it's isocline
when polymorph it's aforethought

Which leads me to wonder about this strange convergence of criminal intent and unintentional art. Is there some force driving this use of poetry to advance criminal activity? Could it be that Arthur Flegenheimer lives on, leading a spectral syndicate operation? Is Dutch Schultz the ghost in the machine?

It was a grey and listless Sunday following a largely sleepless Saturday night, so I was a touch out of sorts today. Here's what I've been looking at (other than a whole lot of X-Files DVDs).

• So the first month of hurricane season has passed without incident. Feel a little more relaxed? This AP animation will put a stop to that.
• Anyone know anything about kaboo.org? A friend got hit with some weird kind of phishing thing on their site, ending up with her entire yahoo.com address book being used to solicit members. I was only able to find out a limited about of information.
• If, like me, you find yourself suffering from occasional bouts of outrage fatigue, our friends at the ACLU have some handy tips on avoiding activist burnout.
• "When I come into someone's house, the first thing I do is look at their bookshelf," Mr. Spalding admits. "This is totally that thing -- it's books as mental furniture." From a Wall Street Journal interview with Tim Spaulding, creator of LibraryThing, the service bookslut.com calls "MySpace for people who are over 16 and can spell."
• Speaking of MySpace, as a lark I set up a page for myself. Six hours later I had come-ons from several prostitutes. I begin to see why this site is popular. But hey, two musicians I enjoy turned out to have pages, so it's far from a total loss. [Warning to those unfamiliar with MySpace: it often plays music in your face whether you like it or not.] As an aside, Blogger's spell-check wants to replace MySpace with mishaps; I find this humorous.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to catalog some more books. Why yes, I do lead an exciting life, don't I?

Well, I made it through the month of June without missing a day of updates. I won't pretend they were all stellar quality (present company included), but I am gratified that some interesting discussions came about through them.

I am truly gratified by the thoughtful, funny, informed, in-depth, and sincere comments left here. A community is only as good as its members, and by that measure, South Florida has a pretty damned fine blogging community. My thanks to you all for being a part of it.