Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Call me an old curmudgeon, but I find a lot of what passes for new music boring in the extreme: manufactured pop, pseudo-country, and studio produced crap. There are a few things interesting that I've chanced upon - most of it stuff my offspring have turned me on to - but not a lot. Lately I've been supplementing my (ahem) legally purchased music from Amazon (yes - as awful as they are , I still patronize them) with a new source - Archive.org . Archive.org , in case you've never been there, bills itself rather cumbersomely as "Digital Library of Free Books, Movies, Music and Wayback Machine." While accurate, it's a bit of a mouthful. I could write several posts on this amazing site and barely scratch the surface. If you've never visited it, just do it. Just. Do. It. You won't be sorry. Some basics about me: I love music - especially old music. The funkier the better. Growing up, my dad had numerous Spike Jones 78's, which we listened to endle...

Years later I worked with a guy who was a couple of years older than me who said he never dated anyone who couldn't tell him where they were when Kennedy was assassinated - they were, he opined, either too young or too out of it. As for me, my family had moved from Fort Worth to the Chicago suburbs the summer I turned nine. The elementary school I attended in Park Forest was close enough that I used to walk home for lunch. That Friday 50 years ago, my brother and I had come home as usual and were watching Bozo's Circus on WGN when the station broke away for news flashes that President Kennedy had been shot. I wasn't sure what to think other than it seemed shocking - impossible to believe. But I'd seen it on television. My class had introduced to the idea of  "current events" that year. We were supposed to tell something we'd heard or read about in the news. This seemed like the ultimate current event. I headed back to my classroom (I have no recoll...

It's heresy, I  know. I've used Windows for a while, usually grudgingly, and I'll admit: I've been a hater. I won't bore you with a laundry list of  objections I've had over the years.  "The triumph of marketing over technology," sums up my feelings. After sticking with Windows XP's bubble gum look and feel (it puts a whole new spin on "gooey interface") I finally made the jump to Windows 7, after skipping the over-hyped and under-performing Vista, and thought it was....not bad. Being an IT geek I of course had to try out the new Windows 8 prereleases, featuring the new Metro Interface. I thought: this sucks. But a funny thing happened. I picked up a copy of Windows 8 on the cheap (for a while you could snag a legit copy from Microsoft for $15 if you knew how to game the system) and installed it on a new Zotac ZBOX microcomputer that doubles as a video server. There are several add-ons one can install that bring back the St...

In a delicious bit of irony (at least from where I sit) the Internet is teaching Ron Paul a thing or two about free enterprise in the Net Economy. It seems a collection of his fans registered the domain "RonPaul.com" a while back and have amassed quite a mailing list through it:  170,000+  email addresses. Ron Paul now wants to buy it, but considers their asking price much too high. They generously offered him "RonPaul.org" for free, but he wants the .com version. Such is the nature of supply and demand, Dr. Paul. Refusing the free offer of RonPaul.org, and unwilling to pony up the $250,000 the current holders are asking for RonPaul.com, the libertarian icon is filing his case with the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization, demanding the current holders turn over *both* domains to him. This is, of course, the very same U.N. he was referring to in 1998, when he said: The choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submi...

Am I alone in thinking 2013 will probably suck about as much as 2013? At least we have maybe a year before the next campaign cycle begins.