the stage is set for stoned slackers

[shameless plug] Now that the 'stoned slackers' story has hit the mainstream media, the shirts and stickers are ready. stonedslackers.us has been a work in progress, but now that I have 11 or 12 designs ready for viewers to pick up, especially if they have tickets to the October 7th taping in New York. Wouldn't it be hilarious if the whole audience was decked out in stoned slackers wear. Imagine the look on Bill O'Reilly's face. :-)

stoned slackers is up, mostly

[shameless plug] The stoned slackers section on weber blue is up and mostly running with at least the bumper stickers. Now I need to bust out the shirts and other items. Stoned slackers came about after Jon Stewart went on Bill O'Reilly's the Factor. While the full transcript can be found on this page here, the gist of the conversation was Bill telling Jon that the Daily Show's audience was a bunch of 'stoned slackers' and that '87% of the audience was intoxicated' while watching. This from a man who stands rule over one of the most ill-informed (vice, uninformed) audiences in tv land.

bicycles - the new anarchists

[political] It is no longer safe to assume that the NYPD is there to ensure your bicycle doesn't get stolen. They are now the ones doing the stealing. Apparently Bloomberg has decided that parking a bicycle and locking it up is a crime, one that gets the bike confiscated. That's right - the NYPD is cutting through locks to confiscte bicycles that may or may not belong to cyclists riding in Critical Mass. If you happen to ride your bike down to the cafe, be careful. There is a new band of theives in town.

Time to create new designs for next month's Critical Mass ride in New York. I still need to do the artwork, but I have come up with "Bicycles are anarchists too - Bloomberg", "My bicycle was arrested for loitering and being under the influence of a lock." and "Now even my bicycle wants Bloomberg out of office."

[update 10:50 a.m. EDT] I put 3 Critical Mass stickers up in my Pier 57 section, next come the shirts...

time to kill while waiting on cafepress

[bitchmoanrantwhine] Yesterday I dropped $60 for a years' service on CafePress, the firm handling my designs. Unfortunately, the site was bogging all afternoon long, and now the damn thing has crashed altogether. It was a few hours into waiting for them to get the site repaired before I realized I hadn't shut down my google adwords campaign. There is nothing like paying for clicks that lead nowhere. Now I'm refreshing every few minutes in the hopes of launching my next section - stoned slackers.

too late to grab pajama blogger .com

[shameless plug] I was so caught up in creating anti-bush designs that I hadn't stopped to follow much of the CBS 60 Minutes screwup with Dan Rather. As more and more came out, I finally stumbled across the comment made by Jonathan Klein,

"You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing."

I knew there would be an uproar, so I ran to see if pajamablogger.com was taken. It was. So then I scambled to grab pajamablogger.us so I could point it to my section on cafepress and began designing pajamahadeen wear. Now, please push the paypal button and donate some more ram... ;-) 256M grumble grumble.

I am a potentate

[games] Take a minute for a quick brain teaser called Petals around the Rose if you have not done so already. I got it, but I'm not saying how many tries it took. heh heh heh.

I'm gonna have to learn show tunes

[sacrilege] koaloha from brooklyn recounts a fabulous tale of dealing with bible thumpers on the subway.

what I thought of darklight last night on scifi

[television] Darklight grabbed me right from the beginning. Grabbed my head that is, and forced it right to the pillow. I honestly didn't get past Jim Ellison (Richard Burgi) being given the order to bring Lilith in. I was filled with a papable sense of yawn, and slept right through the night. It still kills me that SciFi can cancel Farscape and put their money into dogs like this. I still think the PKW is a weak attemp to mollify the fan base.

If you are using IE, you are not seeing this site right

[tools] The border in the top frame has two lines. If you are using firefox or any of the other standards compliant browsers, you see two lines - If not, you only see one. If you're not seeing the page the way it was designed (css and strict xhtml) then you have to ask yourself, what else are you missing on the pages you visit. It's a lot like saying you enjoy your 19" television until you watch hdtv on a quality widescreen. Do yourself a favor and upgrade your browser to firefox. You can install it as your default browser or not. Take some time and look at pages in both browsers - take two cars out for a test drive at the same time - and see which you like better. You might even thank me later. Oh, and if you think it's not a big thing, more than 700,000 people have downloaded it this week alone.

I knew polls sucked, and here is why

[commentary] Steve Soto over at the Left Coaster has a piece about the analysis of how the Gallup poll conducts its surveys. Needless to say, there is more than enough there to re-evaluate the validity of these polls. I know it sounds lame to say I have leaned from television (CSI and Monk have taught me I could never get away with a crime), but look at what West Wing has taught us about polls. The answer you get on a question depends on how you phrase it. Without knowing exactly how a poll was put together, and who it was targeted to, I value its data as much as I value sound bites from politicians.

I hear these pompous politico stand in front of the camera and say the other guy voted against a bill and should be thrown out. No go. I am not going to follow the political cattle who base their decisions on talking points and not on critical thought. I would vote against the war too if you tacked a blank check for a company on to the bill as well. The American public deserves the representation it gets in Washington, because it has developed into a "vote them off the island" mentality - Not just in the amount of thought involved but also for the one hour taken to analyze the issues and the people involved. Personally, I'm going to do the extra legwork involved to find out the truth, and also remember who was spouting crap before the elections.

feedster problems?

[tools] A few days ago I sent an email to Feedster inquiring into advertising, only to get no reply. Then, I don't know if it's my machine or others are getting the same message, but every time I try to make changes to my settings in Feedster, I get

Unable to get the recently changed feeds for current user, or

string(23) "192.168.0.19 via TCP/IP" Database link is:
We're sorry but Feedster is temporarily down for maintenance. We'll be back soon., or

error retrieving feeds to edit

I know they're doing the merge with Eurekster, but does this mean all of the techs and salepersons are out celebrating?

the dailykos is on the trail of the RNC lease story

[political] On Sunday I wondered what exactly the ties between the RNC and Hudson River Park Trust were, and how it was the RNC leased Pier 57. Well, the daily Kos is all over it. Stopr reading this and go here. I wish I had more time and resources to help out in this...

if you're not a criminal, it doesn't matter if the police have your fingerprints, right?

[legal] When was the last time you were fingerprinted for jay walking or littering? It doesn't happen because the police know these are charges that they usually don't fingerprint for. It appears thought, that this is known by just about every force in the US except the NYPD. While keeping track of the Pier 57 story, I came across a post at Static Ephemera talking about this story on New York Newsday.

The reason that was given for the arrestees being held for more than the standard 24 hours? Fingerprinting. That's right, the NYPD fingerprinted arrestees who would not typically GET fingerprinted. Either every officer involved forgot how the system worked for a few days, or there was an order from above. I wonder how many OTHER standard procedures were set aside that week?

giving t-shirtcountdown a try

[marketing] Tonight I dropped $20 and registered one of my shirts (it is not Morally Wrong, an affront to God, or a threat to Homeland Security to question George W. Bush's destructive policies) on t-shirtcountdown.com for a couple of reasons. The first was to see if my work had any merit, the second was in the hope of driving additional traffic in to the store. Since weber blue is new, the only persons buying merchandise are the other merchants on cafepress. Amazingly, I have been getting a .19 visit to purchase ratio - My wife freaked when I told her. We'll see in the morning how the ratings turn out.

/logging off with fingers crossed

want a GMail account or have one to share?

[tools] The fine folks over at isnoop have a repository of GMail invitations. They could also use more if you have one sitting around. Thank you isnoop people.

claiming my feed

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Let me ram my politics down your throat or you're fired

[copious idiocy] While reporters have yet to confirm whether Phil at EnviroMate Insulation actually fired Lynne Gobbell over her bumper sticker, it sounds like a lawsuit in the making. You can ask Phil yourself by email: phil@pgeddes.com ; or by phone: 256.350.0442. The reporter did print Phil's name wrong though, see more at pgeddes.com

[update: here I was thinking I was being slick tracking down phil's contact infor when jasonbuckley beat me to it by, well, a day. back to the art...]

My small part to stop INDUCE

I batted 2 for 3 in getting ahold of an actual human. My script went like this:

"I'm calling to let the Senator/Congresswoman know that I am an artist and web designer, but I am also an electronic engineer, and in it's currrent form I could not support the INDUCE Act. If they went back and rewrote it, I would reconsider it, but not the way it is currently written. Thank you."

My results:
15:40 EDT - Congressperson Pelosi's Office - The woman I spoke with (forgot to get her name) replied "I'll pass that along."
15:43 EDT - Senator Hatch's Office - A woman named Erin said she would "let the Senator know."
15:45 EDT - Senator McCain's Office - I tried twice, got no answer on the first and a machine on the second. I left a message with my script and my contact information.

I hope it helped. When I signed up, there were a few hundred people signed up to participate. When I left my feedback, it was over 4900. and climbing with every tick of the clock.

today I call a few Legislators

[political] Last light I received my email from Save Betamax with the list of Legislators they asked me to call today. I will be calling Senators John McCain, and Orrin Hatch and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. Fortunately, since I am an electronic engineer, it was easy to agree with the stance taken by the IEEE - that the INDUCE Act, in its current form, can have unintended consequences. Imagine if they wrote a law that banned the production of anything that induced people to violate traffic laws? Take away the vehicles so the drivers don't run red lights. To my mind, this bill is a lot like the pre-emptive arrests at the RNC - they weren't doing anything wrong, but they could have. When I think of just how stupid and scary this is, I keep remembering the old joke:

The Judge turns to the Defendant and says "You're charged with destruction of private property. It says here in the report you were seen walking with a hammer and there were vehicles found with broken windows. How dou you plead?"
The Defendant replies "Not guilty, your Honor."
The Prosecutor stands and "You had the hammer in your hands."
Defendant: "But I wasn't anywhere near the cars."
Judge: "You had the tool, so you're a reasonable suspect."
Defendant: "Well then your Honor, you might as well charge me with rape too."
Judge: "Why is that? Did you commit a rape?"
Defendant: "No, but I had the tool."

I burn mp3s to disc to use in my truck and I video tape my daughter growing up. All it would take is one poorly thought out law to make that illegal. I'm not against copyright protections, I just think the INDUCE was poorly written. Go back and try again boys and girls...

Hudson River Park Trust political contributions

[political] I forget where, but I saw a post with something to the effect of "the HRPT didn't want to rent to the RNC, but..." So, after doing a search on opensecrets to see how the BoD for HRPT make their political contributions, I came up with this:

Total Contributions to Kerry or the DNC - $5,450
Total Contributions to Bush or the RNC - $80,350

I can see how it must have been hard for the HRPT to concede to providing greasy floors to the RNC NYPD for the RNC.

Pier 57 leased by the RNC?

[political] In a letter attributed to Erin Starr, mother to Summer Starr who was arested and sent to Pier 57, she claims that the NYPD told her husband that the Certificate of Occupancy for the site was issued by the RNC. I think that should have read 'issued to,' but the point is, it sounds like the RNC leased themselves a little prison and then handed over the keys to the NYPD. I'm waiting with baited breath for a copy of the CoO to appear. While there is no mention of this in the Maui News article about Summer's arrest, the reporter may have thought it wasn't interesting enough to follow or is still doing research on that aspect of the story. I especially loved the editorial comment inserted in Portland Indy's coverage of the letter:

Warning signs that reporters saw posted around Pier 57 said not to enter without protective clothing and mask.

While the commercial media has fallen on it's butt covering this story or simply reiterated the NYPD line, there are too many people still talking about this story to let it die. Now if I could just sell one single Pier 57 sticker I would be happy my message was getting out too. I'm still searching to see if the HRPT had any indirect links to the Republican party, like big contributors :-)

and thus begins everyone's mad dash to redesign their site

With the release of the Eyetrack III research will come an onslaught of site redesign. If it appears that many sites appear changed in the weeks and months to come, this research may be the reason why. Three column designs will be shifted or possibly even traded in for two column designs, depending on how the interface designers interpret the data. Unfortunately, your eyes have already left this post and headed farther down the page...

For fans of Angel and opponents of Bush

[shameless plug] I'm still working hard at creating artwork for this year's presidential elections. This time I took a supportive turn with the anti-bush message, supportive in a bad way. For those who were dedicated Angel watchers, the name Wolfram & Hart is known as the shadowy law firm working behind the scenes to ensure evil prevailed. If (?) Wolfram & Hart was real, we know who they would back with contributions, several well financed 527's, and a spell or two. Help them show their support and show the world who should rule preside.

Take just one day to stop INDUCE

Save Betamax is coordinating a day of call-ins to Senators and they need everyone's help. Registered voter or not, you can still place a call to your representatives in D.C. If you give a name, email and zip code, they will email you names and times for a coordinated campaign for letting Washington know INDUCE is wrong. Not sure if this has anything to do with you? Have you or do you plan on using: a VCR, tape recorder, CD-burner, DVD-burner, iPod, or TiVo?

for more information...
http://www.savebetamax.org/
http://eff.org/

the artwork is done

[Shameless plug] I just didn't think it was right that the developers, Hudson River Park Trust, got to make some cash of the protesters and then go ahead and develop the property as if nothing happened there. If you would like to keep the spirit of Pier 57 alive, check out the artwork I did as a rememberance / commentary.

Pier 57 Gitmo
and
I endured Pier 57

for other anti-bush art:
weber blue at cafe press

Here's what they hope Pier 57 turns into: Chelsea Piers NY

now that you've fallen on your sword, here's the back door

Oh, the hilarious irony. After turning his back on the Democatic Party, the Republicans turn around less than 24 hours later and let him know he is persona non grata. I don't know if anyone in the history of politics has commited political suicide with both parties in less than 24 hours before. It couldn't happen to a nicer traitor.

"I'm sorry Mr. Miller, those seats are taken, but we did get you an interview on C-Span2 which is currently airing coverage from previous conventions. Thanks for coming."

Miller Brewing Sues Republican Party

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Headline - Miller Brewing Company Files Civil Suit Over Trademark Infringement

MILWAUKEE, WI (PRWEB) September 02, 2004 - Miller Brewing filed suit over the use of "Miller Time" in the Zell Miller signs at the Republican Convention last night.

Attorneys for Miller Brewing filed suit today over the Republican Party's illegal appropriation of the trademarked phrase "Miller Time." The suit alleges that the Party, without authorization, used the trademerked phrase during last night's convention coverage in signs labeled "Zell Miller Time."

Attorney Ron Ferment said in a statement ealier today "Miller Time" means good taste to a lot of people. Zell Miller left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths last night. When people think of Miller Beer, we want them to think of a cool, refreshing adult beverage, not some freak who doesn't know what party he belongs to. The Republicans blast Kerry as a flip-flopper but unashamedly embrace this pinhead."

About Miller Brewing: Our company is a family of nearly 6,500 people worldwide, sharing a strong commitment to responsibly brew, bottle and market the highest quality beer for you, our consumer.

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Joseph Brewski
Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, WI
414-931-2222

Swift Boat Veterans for Falsifying Declarations

Hey Steve? Yeah? How about we put these other names on the list as well? They never read the news...

Anderson said he first learned about the situation last week when he received an e-mail from a third party. The e-mail, from a Tom Pyle, said Pyle had contacted a dozen men whose names showed up on the list. Of the dozen, three said they had not given permission, Anderson said.

"That leads me to believe that as many as 25 percent of the names are fictitious supporters of that group," he said.

And then to top it off, the SwiftVets for Falsifying Documents won't even retun the guy's email. At the time of this writing, these are the only outlets list in the news feeds carrying the story (searching google news, yahoo news, technorati, daypop, blogdex, feedster, etc.):
Great Falls Tribune
oh, wait, that's all...

New York City Council Member calls for inquiry into Pier 57

New York City Council member Charles Barron has asked the offices of Mayor Bloomberg and the Police Commission to answer question relating to the handling of protesters being detained at Pier 57.

I’d like to know whether, A.) they were aware there was the history of this building, and if so, B.) what did they do to investigate the asbestos problem, and if they didn't do anything about it, they should do it immediately. I have not heard anything yet. I am going to have a press conference today. We should not create any kind of a public health problem for people who are protesting and are detained on the Westside Highway.

Not only are there stories [here, here, here, here, and here ctnow, here nyt downplaying the conditions (bmn reqd. on the last 2)] of people having to spend the night in a grimy, oil soaked environment, but now there are reports that the site has a history of asbestos contamination. At least from the indy press. No word yet from ABCCBSNBCFOX. Even if the asbestos has already been properly removed, that still leaves a nasty way to deal with protesters.

I'm surprised and saddened that the mainstream media is not covering the handling of prisoners. If the allegations about the conditions are overblown, then the public would see. It would not be the first time the media has gone inside the justice system to cover the conditions of prisoners being held. I was on a shoot about Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the pink jumpsuits he assigned. I would think the Republicans watching at home would be happy let FOX show them what the pesky protesters were being subjected to. When it comes time to look back, I wonder how the press will rationalize their (in)actions.

[updated 9/7 with add'l stories]
journalists needing legal assitance
Capital (WI) Times: Bruce Renwick, parent of college student
Akron Beacon: Beth Rankin, reporter, Daily Kent Stater
MassLive: Richard Y. Hardie, 73
Tom Tomorrow
secondhand story on the Daily Kos
eddie codel
JoAnn Wypijewski
secondhand on East Broadway Ron's

NYPD unilaterally revokes freedom of the press

Listen as a reporter from Wisconsin Radio Network gets hit by police and threatened with the revocation of his credentials for attempting to cover the arrest of demonstrators Tuesday night.

stagefright

Slowly but surely I am working my way through all of the blogging self-help sites. One of the steps recommended on Simon World is to go to Showcase and put your blog to the test by letting others review / critique your work. Any hope of self-delusion about the quality of my work should soon be laid to rest. I know I have spent countless hours learning css and xml, validating my pages (although, I am still behind in getting all of the site up to strict xhtml) and creating new buttons for the linkage. This is where I admit I need help and turn to the masses and listen, at least to the constructive ones.