Required viewing

I know this link is making the rounds again, but if you haven't seen Stephen Colbert beating the crap out of everything Washington - you really should.

Stephen Colbert rips Washington a new one.

(It's the full C-SPAN footage) You'll need to jump ahead to 51 minutes into the program.

Righteous.

Hijacking the Superbowl

This story is pretty damn funny...

MIAMI, FL (PRWeb) -- Just days after the Boston bomb scare, another team of Boston-based pranksters smuggled and distributed 2,350 suspicious light-up devices into the Super Bowl. Due to its attractiveness as a terrorist target, Dolphin Stadium was on a Level One security alert, a level usually reserved for Presidential inaugurations. By posing as media reporters, the pranksters were able to navigate 95 boxes through federal marshals, Homeland Security agents, bomb squads, police dogs, and a five-ton X-ray crane.

During the second quarter of the Super Bowl, the team of pranksters -- who call themselves the "Super Six" -- quietly distributed thousands of "Prince Party Packs" to an entire section of Dolphin Stadium. Each packet contained a light-up necklace with official-looking instructions. By turning on the necklace lights during the halftime show, Super Bowl fans believed they would be spelling out the word "PRINCE."

But they didn't. They spelled a secret message that was broadcast to 93.1 million people.

Yeah, they're shamless self promoters, but they're still pretty damn funny.

Ahh nature....

Umm....

Mr. duck....?




...mind getting the hell outta my back yard?

(just a visual from the other day's excitement...)

Number to beat

I'm a news junkie, always have been.

I want to be plugged in. It's never been enough to know the latest news, but to find multiple accounts of the same event - then look for the different granules of information they are based on. This pastime has become less enjoyable in recent years - as the news has (at least in my opinion) turned considerably darker. I'm finding myself so put off by traditional mass media that I find myself tuning out more and more.

This is where I'm at with Virginia Tech. Not that this story is unworthy of attention - it's just that I am sick to death of the kind of attention it is receiving.

We've seen this movie before.

---

Start with a place at random: Littleton... Springfield... Blacksburg.

At first, the media just does its job.

Tell us what happened/is happening.

Not long after this phase, things start to go wrong.

Video is obtained. Solemn newscasters caution it may be disturbing, and then play it on an endless loop next to talking head interviews.

Eyewitnesses are found and interviewed live. Newscasters inch their questions towards painful subjects: "Did you see the shooter?" "Did you know the victims?" and finally "Did you personally see anyone shot"

Tell us about the blood.

Frequently, the eyewitness will become upset. The interviewer will visibly show their concern, "How are you holding up?" "Tell us how you are feeling," "How are you dealing with this?"

Are you scared? Are you in pain?

Early reports will have come in - they will be wrong.

The shooter is dead. The shooter is at large.
Ten are dead. Twenty. Less than twenty. More.

Possibilities abound, and are trotted out one after another by speculative journalists who aim to point out that the event may be even worse than first thought.

The carnage is tallied. The networks wring their hands and dispatch live crews, because modern media has conditioned us to expect that the person reading copy off a teleprompter must have a backdrop that is both live and relevant.

The police hold a press conference. It serves to dispel the more sensational possibilities we have been offered by the news. The shooter is dead. We learn the identity of the shooter, the true number of victims.

We learn, to our horror - the 'What' and the 'How.'

The facts established. The chorus of 'whys' can now begin:
"Why here?" "Why did they do this?"

We delve into the recent history of the shooter. "Where did they live?" "What did people think of them?" "What was behind their rage?"

There is a why. Tell us what it is.

These questions only serve as filler while bios of the known victims can be assembled and edited. We are shown grieving family members, survivors in tears.

Experts in grief counseling arrive in the form of talking heads. "What is this community going through?" "Tell us what you've heard from the families."

Pain. Show us the pain.

Recriminations, previously thought unseemly, become acceptable. The police were too slow. This should have been prevented. Lessened. It didn't have to be this bad.

Someone is to blame.

In a natural segue, the news shifts to "How do we stop the next shooter?" Criminologists, law-enforcement officials, and politicians spend ever-increasing amounts of time telling us the same thing:

Disturbed people who have easy access to firearms can hurt lots of people before we can stop them.

We cannot stop this.

---
All of this - all of the horror - is recorded and broadcast into living rooms, dorm rooms, workstations, bus stations, cars, bars, coffee shops, restaurants, every-frickingwhere -

-even some dimly lit basement where some man (and it is always a man) stops to watch. They see suffering on a national scale. The “worst ever,” they hear, over and over. Powerless, angry, they reflect on their wounds and those they hold responsible.

Then they think:

32. Yeah. I can beat that.

Rock on!

C (of A&C) had a baby on April 11. All are doing well.

Best news I've heard all month.

You gotta be freaking kidding me...

Watching the current administration read from the same scandal script can get tiresome.

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out the pattern has been:

1. Questions about administration conduct are raised.
2. Administration denies wrongdoing.
3. Administration officials selectively and voluntarily disclose exculpatory documents, appear before Congress, assure everyone that safeguards are in place, deny wrongdoing, and claim the conduct in question is used only for proper purposes (e.g., protecting country again terrorism).
4. Administration followers -- led by those controlling Congress -- insist that no investigation is needed because Official X made clear that there are safeguards in place protecting us and everything is being done for proper purposes.
5. Congressional Republicans block Congressional investigations, compel no disclosure of evidence, do nothing to investigate administration claims.
6.Scandal ends, unresolved.

So, now that the White House is facing a hostile Congress. The game plan doesn't work so well.

In the recent Gonzalez brew up - we've learned that White House staffers have been using email accounts sponsored by the Republican National Committee. Why would they do that? Because RNC communications aren't subject to open records requests, as they aren't government documents.

Unfortunately for the White House, this tactic will protect them from the curious citizen or watchdog group, but not a Congressional investigation. The White House can't claim executive privilege, since these are political communications.

At this point, those in the administration realize they are off the script - so they improvise-
(From the AP via TalkingPointsMemo)

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys' ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

Okay, so they're not being tiresome anymore - but just how freaking stupid do these people expect us be anyway?

I'm hoping a group of forensic computer specialists tear these idiots a new one.

The other shoe falls

JR was canned today.

Which turned today into a mad scramble to figure out:

1) What should have already been done
2) What has actually been done; and
3) What is on the near horizon

I was ramping up the person who will take up JR's slack when they stopped me up short.

"Before we get started, um... what happened?"

I'd completely forgotten about this aspect. Believing for so long that JR was on the way out for so long, I'd assumed that this was common knowledge to everyone. Given that most of us operate in relative isolation - people were understandably a bit mystified.

---

JR was likable - casual conversation, they'd be pretty entertaining up to a point. From the outside, people would see a person who is rushing on this or that project and think, "JR's got it together."

Except they didn't. At least, not in any way that was measurable.

They'd be able to talk around an issue, but any time you wanted hard answers - they just weren't there. JR was good at maintaining the facade. I don't know if they were intentionally deceptive - or if they really believed that they were busy and getting things done.

We all have moments when we're coasting at work: after you finish a big chunk of work, you're too sick/tired/inebriated to function at full throttle - it happens.

JR was like that every day. "I'm busy, I'm busy," but when you'd look over at them, they're shopping online, or on their cell, or surfing through a catalog - wasting time.

Worse, they just did the bare minimum on any project - then would puff it up like "wow, that was hard." With my boss out of town for over a week, I made it my business to make sure JR wasn't shipping the clients crap.

The more I looked, the worse it got. I tried to handle it internally - meet with JR - tell them the score - all I got was smiles and assurances, and the most polite form of pushback. They liked my "suggestions," but first they wanted to "get the boss's input as well."

i.e. Soon as you're not available, I'm going to feed the boss a line of crap. Then it'll be "I'd like to do what you say, but the boss said..."

Screw that.

---

Where was I? Anyway, CorpWorld can make you nervous and any time someone's plug gets pulled - everyone starts to wonder if they're on the bubble. JR's successor was expressing the very real fear that something they'd do in future would get them in trouble as well.

So I spill my guts on the subject. This seems to make them feel better - but it has the opposite effect for me.

This would be three times I've been in this boat, and each time the pattern repeats: people sidle up to me and ask (on the down-low, you understand) 'what the hell happened?'

It underscores the paranoia of CorpWorld, since these are people who, I would have thought, are completely secure in their professional life. Some of them have Masters degrees, some have Doctorates - these are people who should not worry. I'm some guy off the street with some working experience and a big mouth - I get to tell them not to worry?

Messed up.

"...we've traced the call, they're inside the building! Run!"

Working in a business as large as my current employer, I suppose I should not be surprised when I run into people I used to know. I live in the area, they (likely) live in the area - the odds aren't that long.

Previously, I'd run into a former co-worker from my past life (who I did not get on terribly well with) and managed to deal. They've moved on, I'd moved on - actually, there really wasn't anything to move on from. Start from zero.

For the past few weeks, I've been seeing (or swore I was seeing) somebody I used to know. Walking down the stairs, crossing the hall - Hey! was that...?

This was a person I'd always regarded as odd - they hung out in our group, mainly in the company of another associate who I've since lost track of.

This person was always.... odd. They'd eat food off of someone else's plate without asking - they'd make dark observations about topics of light conversation-

They were the sort of person you'd envision hearing someone describing in a newscast as "Quiet, always kept to themselves. Never would have suspected that they had a severed head in the fridge..."

That kind of person.

This person was known as potatohead, and now I see them everywhere.

Question is, now what do I do? I don't even remember their real name. One of these days, we'll end up in the elevator together and they'll say "hi," and I won't have the foggiest idea of what to say.

"Hey, how's the... uh? Remember when you creeped us all out that one time? Wow, that was... uh..."

Too freakin' weird.