I know that not a lot of people read my journal. I don't have that many close friends, so I know this won't be widely read, at least from this journal. But I felt that I needed to put this up here. Please, take a moment to read the article linked below, and try to see beyond the sarcasm and satire to see the undeniable truth.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-brooks18-2008sep18,0,7282720.column

Rosa Brooks
September 18, 2008

Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!

It's not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department's request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.

As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last week -- even before Wall Street's latest collapse -- 13 former finance ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you must fix your "broken financial system." Australia's Peter Costello noted that lately you've been "exporting instability" in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, "The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF."

We hope you won't feel embarrassed as we assess the stability of your economy and suggest needed changes. Remember, many other countries have been in your shoes. We've bailed out the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. But whether our work is in Sudan, Bangladesh or now the United States, our experts are committed to intervening in national economies with care and sensitivity.

We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.

Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.

Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee, whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As he recently put it, "I was chairman of the [Senate] Commerce Committee that oversights every part of the economy." No question about it: Your leaders' failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions.

Now you are facing the consequences. Income inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your citizens have access to affordable housing, healthcare or security in retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic woes went from chronic to acute, you responded -- like so many Third World states have -- with an extensive program of nationalizing private companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board seizing an 80% equity stake in the flailing company.

Some might deride this as socialism. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Admittedly, your transition to Third World status is far from over, and it won't be painless. At first, for instance, you may find it hard to get used to the shantytowns that will replace the exurban sprawl of McMansions that helped fuel the real estate speculation bubble. But in time, such shantytowns will simply become part of the landscape. Similarly, as unemployment rates continue to rise, you will initially struggle to find a use for the expanding pool of angry, jobless young men. But you will gradually realize that you can recruit them to fight in a ceaseless round of armed conflicts, a solution that has been utilized by many other Third World states before you. Indeed, with your wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are off to an excellent start.

Perhaps this letter comes as a surprise to you, and you feel you're not fully ready to join the Third World. Don't let this feeling concern you. Though you may never have realized it, you've been preparing for this moment for years.

rbrooks@latimescolumnists.com

Jesus, but has it been shitty weather wise this week, what with Tropical Storm Fay basically stalled out over Central Florida.

Flooding is everywhere, the rains just wouldn't stop (and its still raining here, though this seems to be our normal afternoon T-storms, but dammit! Water is water, and we do NOT need any more for a good long time)

The lake outside my complex is up at least 2 ft, if not more, and is threatening to flood. The always piss poor drainage in the complex itself is totally overwhelmed making it hard to stay dry. Hell, even driving to work last night I almost swamped my car in a lake that formed in the middle of a road. The road is unlighted, and so I could really see the water until I was in it. Almost stalled out like 3 times, and I thought I wasn't going to make it. Hope it didn't hurt my car :(

But finally the weather is being given a chance to normalize here. Hope it does, and for those of you hit hard in the south, my thoughts are with you.

So I went to FWA 2008. My first con since I dropped what little presence I had in the fandom in 2005. I wanted to do a few things at the con, but the idea wasn't to do the con, but to relax, hang out and just chill. It was a vacation I was looking forward to.

Fast forward through the weekend to tonight when I finally made it back home and all I can say is 'This was the worst vacation I have ever had!"

It started with the ride up to Atlanta in the furry caravan. The drive itself was alot of fun, always is as I love to drive. But the absolute shit conditions of I 75 between Ocala and Lake City left our cars sand blasted and me with about a dozen chips in my windshield; of my just days over a year old Yaris. I was pissed!

But it gets better. While I did have fun Thursday, the first night, I awoke on Friday morning with the worst pain I have ever felt in my left ankle and a severely swollen foot. I couldn't walk on it, and I could barely hobble around the hotel room. So I spent the vast majority of the con in intense pain in the hotel room, missing everything but the fursuit parade.

Sometime during the con, someone backed into my car and left a huge dent in the bumper and scratched the paint all to hell. They left no note, there was no surveillance of the lot and nothing the hotel or the con could do. Oh yes thank you whoever you are. I hope you die slowly of ass cancer, so that way while your suffering in pain, you'll never have to chance to get laid again. Serves ya right I say. You could have left a fucking note! It would have been the polite thing to do, never mind that it was required by law...

So with all that shit going on, Its finally leaving day and I get wheel-chaired out to my car (hence how I found out about the damage in the first place) and get on the road. I'm stiff and sore and in a lot of pain, but I'm on my way home dammit! But instead I get pulled over for speeding after the cop picks out of a line of cars n the caravan (because I was the last car of the group, dontcha know?) and get a $202.50 that probably will be $405.00 due to the construction zone we were in.

Fuck!!

Im alittle too pissed and way too tired to go into more detail, but I do want to thank the guys in the caravan for the commiseration and aide they gave me on the ride back. Its was generally decided I think that I must have been cursed.

I know I got a strong vibe that I should never, ever do this shit again, but the could just be anger coloring the experience....

Fuck!!

So I went with antimon to King Elliott's Summer Celebration along with another fur from Somewhere waaaayyyyy up north. Its a loooonnngg drive out to the middle of nowhere, but when your entertaining 200 some furs with a PA system belting out dance stuff for hours, a complete light show, not to mention quite a few bottles of spirits, well then distance to your neighbors is actually a good thing.

I can't say that I had fun, but neither did I have a bad time. Despite the kiln like temperatures , and the general over crowdedness of the smallish home, there were plenty of things to do, like gaming, both on consoles like the Wii, PS3, and a PS2 which had no TV, (sucks seeing as how we brought GH2 and wireless guitars to rock out with) there were movies, anime, card games, and dancing all going on.

The main thing was I knew next no one there, except for eb, antimon, and seven. So I spent the majority of my time moving from place to place watching people and keeping to myself. Seems its what I always do in a party situation. Go me, party animal I R!!!1

So I followed a link from you Google homepage news to Toms Hardware Video that had Ben Meyer (of Toms) and Rob Wright of TwitchGuru talking about the Digg "Digital Boston tea Party." (If you dont know what I mean, do a little searching on the NY times, cnn, and google news pages for 'AACS', 'DMCA' and 'HD DVD key' and then get away from that rock your hiding under for a minute to catch up with the world.

Mr. Wright while stating his opinion, which he is of course free to do, went so far as to call the thousands of people who participated in the "Bigg Digg Revolt 07" as unintelligent, thieves who lack the common sense to understand that the DMCA is law (a good law he says). His touting of the posters as stereotypical geeks waiting to steal DVD's because they feel they "are entitled to it is nothing short of derogitory, imflammitory, and blatantly bigoted!"

Watch the video for yourself and if you will, follow me in sending letters to this Mr. Wright to tell him how you feel. here is my letter:


Mr. Wright
I just wanted to write in about the video I saw in which expressed many severely negative, ugly stereotypes about the kind of person who would (and did) post about the HD-DVD key on Digg.

First off, I am not a Digg user, I dont read the site much unless /. sends me there, and I did not participate in this "Digital Boston Teaparty."

Your characterization of everyone involved as without intelligence and common sense, wanting nothing more than to steal from corporate America. Your blatant biased condemnation of this issue smacks of nothing more than ignorance and intolerance on your part.

Several times you made reference to the DMCA and that posting the code was and is illegal. That is not the case as this legal grey area has not be ruled on in court, nor has any legal precedence been set that would give ever a patina of legitimacy to the take down notices.

On the other hand, the USSC has recently ruled that software is not a device, and therefore may very well be ineligible for copyright protection. But thats also if you could reasonably convince a judge, or better yet a jury that a 16 hexadecimal number is 'software.' I dont belive it is, nor do I think a reasonable person could either.

Now most people think the AACS LA is using this part of the DMCA to legitimize their actions:

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--

1) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
2) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
3) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

Part 1 doesn't cover this issue because no product, method, or service was produce or designed to circumvent a technical measure. This is just a hex string, not a program or a device, nor in the vast majority of the Digg stories was there instructions to "effectively control access to a work protected under this title"

Part 2 wont cover this as the string itself cannot and will never allow circumvention of the technology "that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title"

Part 3 cannot be used as no direct means of circumvention was given. No software, device, product, or instructions were given.

While some may claim that the wording "or part thereof," may have some bearing on this issue, it must be said that the DMCA is vague about keys, passwords, and algorithms and how they may or may not be disseminated when not part of a device, software, or comprehensive instruction set. Therefore it would be up to a judge/jury to determine if the wording as it applies to this case.

To be honest here, I hope that the vast majority of your user base take your flippant stereotypical remarks as insult and abandon your publication. but what does happen, i truely hope that you would atleast do your research before claiming that hundreds of thousands of internet users are unintelligent, thieving, Neanderthals who can do nothing more than bang their keyboards with their wooden clubs grunting "its mine, I deserve it!"

Jesus but I don't want to be at work today! Just about everyone here is either pissing me off to no end, or just plain grating on my last good nerve. I don't want to deal tonight, I just want to curl up and purr myself to sleep...

Part of my blah is my BiPolar disorder again. I get these incredible highs when I make goals and projects, but if I run into even a little resistance, the whole thing falls through and I get into this low low funk. I hate it, I hate the feeling, and I hate that there never seems to be anything I can do to avoid it *sighs*

The other part of it is I'm soooo over some of these people at work. There is another with BiPolar Disorder here as well, seeming much worse than my own. He is always going off on this or that and basically causing everyone to walk around on egg shells when he is here. Im tired of it, very fucking tired of it.

Tonight I bit his head off, and he just turned around and shut up, but I still felt the asshole about it, which I don't think is fair. He flips out, and I tell him to basically STFU, after reaching my proverbial limit (shit, only been building for 6 months) and yet Im the bad guy? W.T.F. over?

The final ingredient for my blahness is a combination of the time of year; lot of memories I could do without, and the fact that time and money for X-mas are quite slim. I just feel like things are too rushed, and therefore crap. The gifts I got for the others feel too impersonal, and not up to snuff.

*Sighs tiredly* I just want to go home

Okay, so Im extremely pissed right about now.

Walked into work tonight only to be told that the company isnt catering Thanksgiving for the call center this year. Instead they are providing bagels of all things. This is, of course, after they have completed the volunteer signups for working the holiday knowing that most, if not all of us eho did volunteer did so because we thought we would still get a turkey dinner!

This company has done holiday catering for working employees basically since its inception back in the late 70's. Most people opt to work the holiday, away from their family and friends because the money is good, and they still give us the holiday dinner that goes along with whatever holiday is being celebrated.

To do so now, after all the signups are done, and you cannot back out is the purest form of employee abuse I can think of. And its not because of budget problems, though I know thasts the excuse they will use. We recently won two JD Power awards for our services and have reaped the rewards of that with an almost explosive run of new customers. Managers have gotten bonuses that would make your jaw drop, and several charities have gotten million dollar checks. hell, they even put 57 million over 15 years towards the new UCF Arena so there is no way they can justify a "Its just not in the budget" since we know that the budget is built with these expenses in mind.

Sorry about the rant, but damnit, it just pisses me off to no end *growls and snarls*


[Edit 11/22/06 12:41am] So, the overnight crew is going to put on a potluck, but since there is no real time to coordinate, we are just collecting $5-10 from each person and getting publix fried chicken and fixings. So its not a total loss, but the sneaky underhanded way they did this is what annoys me the most.

Jesus!

Found out why they (they being Brighthouse's HR department) are all freaking out about 'net usage on the team.

It was romured that one of the team memebers was looking at porn on the net when they got monitored on a call. Our QA department of course gets a video feed of everything on your computer desktop as well as the audio. Anyways, so theres this huge issue going around; everyone in the know is tighted lipped about it, and nothing is reaching the grape vine... till this morning

Apparently is was ME!

Jesus WHAT-THE-FUCK Christ?!?!? What is this shit I ask my buddy, snice its after work, and nothing happened to me about this situation. What he tells me is this:

"Remember when I sent that forum post to you with all the YTMND links in it? Well apparently they got you on tape clicking on one labeled 'Japanese Sex Chat.'" and Im all like "Yeah i remeber that, I killed it as soon as I saw what it was... damned thing was labeled DBZfunnay or some such."

So for like 20 minutes I am all WTF, and finally he tells me that they didnt pin it on me because they saw in the capture an aim window from him with the link on it. So the end of the story is, I raked myself over the coals for 2 days thinking I might get fired because one dude, who sits in the desk next to me I might add, sent me a link that looked totally innoculous. They told him to never do it again, and I didnt even get spoken to.

2 days of OMG! Im getting fired over this and it boils down to a stupid sent to me by my buddy *growls*

Been given three fuck you's this week.. hell since Sunday really.

1st was the debacle at the Sprint store. My new phone was on web special for $99 with a 2 yr contract, but in the store it was $99 after a $50 mail in rebate... And now Sprint wont refund the money as they say they dont match web prices, even those on thier own mother fucking website

2nd was not just the fact that I badly failed the NCTI I was taking (NCTI is a set of course studies on cable networks that factors into promotions and raises) but the restest I had been waiting for never made it to me. Instead I was greeted with a letter saying the course expired and I had to renew it.... for $70 out of my own pocket because Brighthouse wont cover it since I didnt pass *growls*

3rd and most improtantly, the rent hike of $80 a month. Thats just a kick in the fucking tail! Jesus, you know rent always goes up, but by $160 a month?? I mean WTF is up with that?

So Im $120+ down this month, and looking for more to come out in the next few months. Yee-fucking-haw *snarls in fustration*