October 19, 2005

By Sheila Lennon / The Providence (R.I.) Journal

4:05 a.m. Wednesday (Blogroll)

The Okie from Muskogee speaks out. Merle Haggard Takes Another Musical Stand: Outspoken Musical Icon Urges, "Rebuild America First." No audio yet, but Haggard's new Chicago Wind CD, out next Tuesday (Oct. 25), includes the tune in the headline.

Chet Flippo (yes, the early Rolling Stone senior editor, now at Country Music Television as CMT/CMT.com Editorial Director) quotes some of it:

"Yea, men in position but backing away/Freedom is stuck in reverse/Let's get out of Iraq and get back on the track/And let's rebuild America first."

Haggard also comments on the current political and social scene in the song, "Where's All the Freedom?" He describes a country almost paralyzed by uncertainty, a nation where the Ten Commandments can't be displayed, where the grandparent of a soldier in Iraq can't afford to buy gasoline to drive to the grocery store, where individual rights are uncertain anymore.

He concludes: "Are we a nation under God anymore/How long do we cower down/Is this really still our ground/Our country is like a prisoner of war/Where's all the freedom that we're fightin' for."

How to euthanize a fish, by Pharyngula, a Minnesota fish biologist. (Thanks, Jeneane)

Beautiful base: A totally new (and lovely) way to display ... a database? of sci-fi book covers? using a spectrum? in time.

No soul man: When it comes to blogs, maybe usability guru Jakob Nielsen just doesn't get it; maybe the engineer is lacking right-brain intelligence, and likes everything rigid and square. Whichever, his Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes has ignited some in the blogosphere — in part for the hubris of elevating his own boring preferences and uninspired examples of "good" headlines ("Ice cream trucks as church marketing") to benchmark status, in the process proclaiming everybody else wrong.

A frenzied horde has set out for his place with torches and pitchforks. Well ... he's at least a candidate for the dunk tank in some corners.

Author, programmer and photographer Shelley Powers, even as she sputters, is among the most articulate scofflaws. She also manages to convey his decrees with many fewer words than he does:

How Delightful

To find that I suck at weblogging. I post when I want, on what I want, do not have a photo, sometimes have an 'about me', and sometimes don't and I think we can safely say that I've lost employment opportunity because of what I write. More than once, most likely.

My titles are bizarre, I don't point out my 'hits', I rarely link to my old stories, and sometimes I use full names and sometimes I don't. I also don't use 'permalink' to mark same, and though I do have my own domain, I find Nielsen's comment, Having a weblog address ending in blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc. will soon be the equivalent of having an @aol.com email address or a Geocities website: the mark of a naive beginner who shouldn't be taken too seriously, to be elitist and foolish, considering that there are many, many weblogs on Blogspot much more popular than his...

Art school, Jakob, as a lowly freshman. It's your only hope.

(There are bloggers scurrying to "fix" their blogs tonight because they find themselves "guilty" of having made one of these "mistakes." Don't follow leaders, pay your parking meters...)

Bloody Finger Mail: From the Halloween Blog (which breaks all Jakob's rules), a nice idea. Draw your (very short) message in dripping blood and e-mail it off. When the recipient picks it up, the finger will draw it again, just as you did the first time.

"For those times when ink just doesn't cut it."

A Brain Pentagon Wants to Pick: Despite Controversy, Strategist Is Tapped (WaPo):

Global security guru Thomas P.M. Barnett is in the unique position of being embraced by Pentagon officials and top U.S. military commanders as a visionary strategist — even as he openly blames the defense establishment for botching post-invasion operations in Iraq.

Barnett's best-selling 2004 book, "The Pentagon's New Map," offered a thesis on the American military's future global role that the Defense Department found so compelling and easy to grasp that it has invited him to advise and brief hundreds of senior appointees and officers on strategy. His book sold as many as 85,000 copies, and his prolific blog entries — which mix humor with often cutting insights on Pentagon strategy — are closely read in military and intelligence circles....

So glad I don't live in L.A. like the Times (UK) guy: We can't invite her to dinner: she eats only cheeseburgers, mango and spinach happens everywhere, but the circles Chris Ayres moves in semm way too precious:

...Diners are now used to seeing their food being handled by chefs with hairnets and clear plastic gloves. In Los Angeles, restaurants even have official ratings based on the cleanliness of their kitchens, starting with A and ending with a roach-infested C. By law, restaurants must display the rating at their entrance.

It can come as a bit of culture shock, therefore, to visit a friend’s unrated kitchen, where raw meat is being prepared with unwashed hands as pets scurry about underfoot.

In much of the world the butcher shop is an open-air market where flies crawl on sides of beef, you point to the part you want, they hack it off and you take it home. This is why we cook our food.)

In Beverly Hills, the dinner party is already dying out. Residents instead rely on a company called Gourmet Courier, which hands out a booklet of menus from some of the area's fanciest restaurants, then delivers anything you want for a hefty mark-up. It is ideal for DPs: guests get what they want, hosts avoid having to prepare multiple dishes and everything is hygienically prepared.

In the interest of research, I ordered a cheeseburger from Gourmet Courier. It arrived 45 minutes later in a BMW 7-series, driven by a svelte blonde waitress/model in a fur coat. The price? A mere $45 (£26). That means a three-course meal for 12 guests, including nibbles and booze, would probably come to about $2,000....

Here in Providence, Mobile Menu delivers from normal family restaurants and delis, plus Indian, Italian, Thai and a barbeque joint, and the delivery charge is $3.95. This story makes me want to fly a Rhode Island redneck flag. Got one?

Posted by Sheila  at 4:05 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0