Dave Mancuso dot Com

I think that some people at work need to find better things to do at the end of the day than this kind of activity. They really blew the lid off my planned hairstyle change–now it’ll have to be something completely different.

And why do I look like that painter guy from PBS a few years ago?

It’s interesting to see pressure mount on news media to “get the news first!” the pressure is self-inflicted, but based ultimately on advertising dollars (isn’t everything based on dollars or power? The ultimate greases that make the worldgears revolve).

This time it’s The Onion that makes the “normal” news media circus look like Ripley’s Believe it Or Not. Traditional news media are starting to use sites like The Onion for serious sources, because they dont’ fact check properly and don’t know any better. So we’re starting to see news parodies taken as news fact.

Here see here and here to read for yourself.

So eventually we’ll be reading urban legends as fact, and “reality” will be even further skewed toward fantasy.

It’s all a meme, people.

Apparently I’ve been dropping the “S” word around the house too much. My children have caught me at it, and boy do they let me know. “Oooooooooohhhhh! Daddy said the “S” word!!!!!”

I know it’s bad, and that five and six year old children shouldn’t be exposed to these words. I’ve made a promise to not use the word around the house, but sometimes it slips out.

And they catch me, and again they waste no time in letting me have it: “Daddy, you said it again!”

Yes, the “S” word: Stupid.

After sickness and on to health, I come back. just a bit of posting tonight, but much more later.

Or does it? I’d be ticked if I were one of these restaurant patrons. The owner calls the police because I’m eating too much roast beef from the buffet? (Yes, to be fair, the owner called the police because when he approached the customers and told them to stop eating roast beef, they asked for their money back. Still, pretty weak.)

Here’s the full story. By the way, isn’t it funny that low carb food is the more expensive foodstuffs? Couldn’t have something to do with nutrition content, could it?

The Nokia 6600:

I’ve been waiting since October for it to become available in the states.
It should be here by Wednesday or Thursday. Woohoo!

I’m watching Inside the Actor’s Studio tonight (actually a TiVoed recording from earlier), and James Lipton is interiewing Tom Cruise. When they got to the film Magnolia, everyone cheered. I hadn’t known it got Oscar nominations.

Was it really that good a movie? If I recall correctly, I remember that Brad wasn’t too impressed by it. Should I check it out? Why was it so highly regarded?

There’s a story on Mac Daily News about a USC student who reputedly bought 2,500 Pepsi bottles of soda (pop for you west of Pittsburgh)–with his college semester meal plan? He has pictures to apparently prove it.

OK–but there’s a flaw here. Each user can only redeem 200 songs, according to the giveaway rules (it’s under rule #6, Song Prize Limits). Who did he give the other 2,300 caps to?

The funniest comment on his webpage: “Congratulations–but I hope you redeemed all of those codes that are in your photos before you posted the images. “

Me? Thanks to my wife and her efforts in collecting unwanted caps from her coworkers, I got 53 free songs total. $53 of free songs was more than I’d hoped for–a fun couple of months.

I think that this gets to the core of what I feel about Bush and the 9/11 hearings. I understand if you want to deconstruct the Bush presidency for its failings, but the 9/11 hearing is the wrong forum. Conversely, those who read this as vindication of the Bush presidency as a whole are taking the concept too far out of context. It’s just that 9/11 probably couldn’t have happened any other way–it’s fantasy to suppose otherwise.

I think that the issues to concentrate on are the economic plans, the Patriot Act, and the social issues. Frankly, from a cold-blooded standpoint, 9/11 obfuscated the issue of what the Bush presidency means to America. The previous sentence is asinine, though–9/11 did happen, and it influences everything that goes after. When we vote this year, we vote on our economy, our social issues, our privacy, and our freedom–but also our protection as we go about our lives, and our place in the world among our brethren, politically and religiously. I don’t know if there’s a single votable answer to most, let alone all, of those questions.

If you’re interested in some better reading on the stuff we’ve been discussing, you might take a look at this reviewer’s list on Amazon. Dr. Robinson is one of the few reviewers I’ve seen who have critiqued books intelligently and without partisan subjectivity. A shame you can’t see his extended reviews on the “listmania” page–they’re very well reasoned (and don’t contain the egregious grammar mistakes I see in other reviewer posts–what a turnoff).

I think I’m going to get (or take out of the library) House of Bush, House of Saud next.