I Am Not Dead Yet, I Can Dance and I Can Sing…

If I’ve been quiet for the last couple of weeks it’s because I have been pretty busy picking up after events that you normally don’t write about on your blog. Potentially fatal car accidents, for example.

Two weeks ago, on my way to the airport to visit friends in Seattle, my car got off the road in Sonoma, ran down a ditch and got totaled. Needless to say, I was in it. That’s really about as much as I can write about the accident – I don’t remember much of it, anyway. I don’t know if the car flipped or not (it looks like it did), I don’t know how I got off the road in the first place (the surface was wet from the previous night, but it’s hard to accept that that was the sole cause). I don’t even know how long I was unconscious inside the car until I got out, managed to call the CHP and got taken to the hospital. But I do know that was alone in the car and nobody else was involved in the accident. So far, so good.

The next six hours were spent in the hospital, laying on my back and not moving, while various doctors performed various scans, put staples in my head to stitch the laceration I had endured and generally made sure that nothing else was terribly wrong with my body. Luckily, there wasn’t – I’m fine, and a nasty concussion and said gash in the head are all that I took from what could have been a much more serious accident. So far, even better. Remember to wear your seatbelts people, they save lifes!

So the car is totaled, but luckily that’s covered by insurance. I took my time looking for a new car and considered several options. I finally settled on a 2007 VW Rabbit (that’s a Golf for all European readers, VW has decided to rebrand the car again for the US market). It’s certainly not as racy as the old car, but drives nicely, and VW increased the engine power for the 2007 models.

Two weeks later everything is (almost) back to normal. Victoria has been a great help and support through all of this. Above are some images from this episode – they say pictures say more than a 1000 words and stuff, I hear. Sorry for the watermarks, but I don’t want this picture to show up on any other webpages that happily celebrate car crashes. This hasn’t been all that funny, and I’m posting this for readers of my page, not anonymous amusement. I’m certainly glad that this is an interesting episode I get to tell people about, not a life-changing event.

Beware the Extremists, There’s Always a Reason For Why They Are the Way They Are

“I am a deceiver and a liar. There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life,” wrote Ted Haggard, 50, who was fired Saturday as head of the 14,000-member church.

*sigh* How can you get it so incredibly backwards? The problem, dear Ted Haggard, is not that you think you have a sexual problem. The problem is that you and your followers don’t realize that you don’t have a problem. But instead of accepting the inevitable conclusion of this episode, that maybe it’s just good old human nature and not a choice as you so often claim, you cling to millenia-old scriptures that were written in a time when people were ignorant, thought that the world is a disc, women had no rights and homophobia still reigned supreme.

The other problem, of course, is that you’re a hypocritical asshole who wasn’t man enough to stand up to his nature and channelled his “demons” into public campaigns of intollerance instead. But that is almost incidental – not being able to cope with the first issue and looking for an outlet paved the road to where we are now.

In other news: people protesting the message of tollerance. Gotta love the irony of that. I’m assuming that the play in question is The Laramie Project. Victoria was assistant director on that play a few years ago, now I’m glad I know about it.

Maybe I’m Projecting…But Probably Not

You know what’s sad about the whole Ted Haggard story? All those Evangelical Christians on their “we’re protecting the family values of America” high horses won’t wake up and smell the roses, realizing that hypocricy reigns supreme in many of their circles. Instead, every second sermon on Sunday morning will cite this event as proof that the devil is well alive and walking this world, just waiting to seduce every single one of them – unless they are ever watchful and keep going to their ritualistic megachurch ceremonies of course. Because obviously, if it can happen to somebody with as much integrity and high moral values as Ted Haggard, it can happen to everybody! And only strict following of the church’s rules – not a healthy and relaxed outlook on life – will protect you.

I don’t mean to offend religious and spiritual people or lump them together in the same category as the lot above. But to me megachurches and TV priests symbolize everything that is wrong with organized religion and institutionalizing what, at its core, is a good idea.

iTunes Fun

What does that even mean? Gotta love cryptic error messages.

Cruisin’ USA

It’s not that I hate American drivers. It’s just that I hate driving in America. And I’m reminded of it every morning on my way to work. I’ve never seen such an unorganized and inefficient mess. And nobody seems to notice or care.

But before we delve any further, consider the fact that in Germany:

• Passing cars on the right is a moving violation.
• Cruising in the left lane is a moving violation.
• Most highways are only two lanes wide. That might be hard to believe for American readers but yes, large parts of the fabled German Autobahn network are only two lanes.
• People often are going 130mph or more.

It should be easy to see that people are going to get very mad when they approach at 130 mph and you are blocking the left lane. Most drivers stay in the right lanes and only go to the left to pass people. Those staying on the left side pull over to the right as soon as somebody who is going faster approaches from behind. Of course there’s the occasional asshole that thinks he owns the left lane, but 99% of the time, this works out great.

Enter America, and roads like Highway 37. It’s two lanes with a (for America) generous speed limit of 65mph. People are all over the place. All. Over. The. Place. Left, right, top and bottom, seemingly going whatever speed strikes their fancy. It’s not even that I’m speeding, my cruise control is set to a carefully calculated “8 mph over”, which accounts for speedometer inaccuracies and the fact that no CHP will pull you over for less than 5 miles over the limit.
It’s impossible to maintain that speed. Inadvertantly some asshole will be blocking the left lane. Then, as much as it pains me, I will pull over to the right to pass, just to be faced with a slow driver to the right. Highway slalom, hurray! Just what I need in the morning. Don’t even get me started about 3/4-lane highway 80, where the right lane might as well not exist and everybody occupies the middle and left.

So, how can it be that a 2-lane highway in Germany works spendidly, and the typical 4-lane American highway makes you want to scrape your eyes out? The American solution might be to add another lane. Maybe we can make it a bit cheaper and educate drivers?

Dear Record Industry

Fuck you.

Today seems like a good day to give a shoutout to our dear friends at most music labels. And of course it’s related to some haywire copy protection scheme.

I don’t even buy that many CDs anymore, it’s iTunes all the way. The CDs that I do buy are purchased in Germany – somewhat obscure bands that I can’t get here. One trip to the store per year, no easy way to make a return. So I expect those CDs to work! And “work” means iPod. End of discussion. People listen to music a certain way these days, and I don’t even have a working CD player in my home office (or car!) anymore.
So of course one of the CDs that I bought over xmas last year, Deine Lakaien‘s latest offering “april skies”, is copy protected. It’s advertised on the CD, but devoid of any other purchasing options (iTunes America doesn’t carry the band), and considering the fact that I was able to rip all other “copy controlled” CDs, I decided to get the CD anyway.

I can’t rip the CD.

iTunes 6 seemingly did it once, but the songs were stuttering all over the place. After that – nada. iTunes 7, which I hoped might finally fix the problem, won’t even acknowledge the inserted CD. Might be that the first rip installed some hidden DRM files somewhere on the machine that I can’t find, but I won’t reinstall the entire computer based on that theory.

So congratulations Capitol Records, you have created a copy protection scheme that works! I can’t rip this CD of yours. You also lost a customer – for good. This isn’t some flavor-of-the-day band that I decided to give a try and hey, if it doesn’t work no big deal. This is one of the oldest groups I have listened to. Over 15 years. I have all albums in my CD rack. And this experience has spoiled my entire history with the band, because I have to assume that I won’t be able to listen to this or any of their future albums

So this might be it. I can’t even laugh at the irony of those “Don’t copy this CD, it takes away money from the artists!” statements inside the jewel case. I don’t see why I should support a record label that punishes me for purchasing their stuff, so I won’t. I got a pretty good memory when it comes to things like this. Of course it won’t be more than a drop in a bucket, but at least it will make me feel a bit better.

Paraskevidekatriaphobics

Wow. $900 million lost to people afraid of Friday the 13th. Personally, I’m more scared of the word than the date. But that’s just me. I’m a rebel and stuff.

iTunes

I’m not a huge fan of iTunes, I use it because it’s the best way to access Apple’s music store and there’s probably worse music players out there. But what’s with all the dependencies? I have to download and install iTunes 7 just so that I can buy the new Beck album? WTF? I just want some new music for my iPod, and don’t really care much for all the video gimmicks that come with it. I’m pretty damn sure that the old iTunes could already do music, can I please download it like I used to be able to? Ah well, I’ll just suck it up as usual and be annoyed by the additional Quicktime installation that Apple automatically forces on me. I already had that too and didn’t feel like upgrading, you know…

Update: Oh great, and now, with iTunes 7 installed, most of my purchased songs fail to authorize and transfer to the iPod. Thank you, Apple! I don’t mind DRM, but if you’re doing it, but better make sure that it works!

Update 2: Took a few days, but customer support has fixed the problem.

If You Are an AT&T customer

Now would be a good time to cancel your account and tell them why.

The Fog

I have often struggled to accurately convey the density of the smog that constantly conceils Los Angeles from the outside world. “You feel like you’re in a bubble”, “You can’t see hills that are two miles away” are graphic, but don’t quite seem to make the same impression as experiencing it first-hand. I think after this year’s E3 trip I finally got it:

The smog in Los Angeles is so bad that you can look almost directly into the sun without going blind.

People will accuse me of exaggerating. I don’t think I am Speaking of Los Angeles and E3, pictures to follow shortly!