If you’ve visited the site or looked at the RSS feed during the last twenty-four hours there’s a good chance that you saw one of a menagerie of errors. Sorry about that. This post will try to explain what the hell was going on as well as point out some changes to the way the site works.

Tuesday, prompted by a question from Chad Olson I decided to revamp how my “linked list” functioned.

Up until today, my linked list was implemented such that there were no links to my commentary on the linked item. For a while that was not a problem, but as I’ve increased the amount of list items that I’m posting that limitation has posed some problems. Yesterday I decided to correct that.

Bad fucking idea.

The plugin that I chose to implement a more “Daring Fireball-esque” linked list requires manually modifying my WordPress theme. Unfortunately the theme that I use here is vastly more complicated that the default WordPress theme that the plugin’s instructions were based on. Also, my PHP skills are abysmal at best. Several hours — and several hundred PHP errors — later I had managed to hack the theme files to put the linked list shit where I wanted it.

At this point it occurred to me that the mobile version of the site (served up by the WPTouch Pro plugin) uses its own template. So back to BBEdit I went. Fortunately the code for the mobile template is much more straightforward, so that part went quickly.

Once these changes were made I noticed that the linked list items in my RSS feed were corrupt. Whether it is the plugin, my theme or some conflict between the two linked list items were being presented in the RSS feed with extraneous data that caused the XML parsing to fail. Another hour in BBedit and the plugin was hacked to remove the extra crap.

Lastly, when I got into the office today and pulled the site up on my shit-box Windows XP laptop I discovered that, of course, the glyph-based linkage that I had set up failed to render in any browser other than Safari. “Fuck it,” I says, and ten minutes later everything has been made text based. It’s not like everything in the Mac blogosphere has to ape Daring Fireball.

The upshot is, going forward all “linked list” items will have a permalink back to this site at the bottom labeled “DrunkLink.” Huzzah!

now where’s the whiskey?

I’ll spare your sanity (and my bandwidth) and not reproduce the entire 750 word screed Instead let’s savor some choice bits o’ crazy. The whackaloon begins:

Reality is not about effort but about not applying effort when you lack the realisation of what that effort is truly meant for. Divinity exists but not when you lack reality, the absoluteness of the truth. Regardless of how one might deploy one’s weaponry, when you are not the principle, you will not be able to perceive whatever depth/sensibility that principle affords. The recognition of Divinity is a gift from The Divine for being “of divinity” [and not “for divinity”] whereas those of effort will never, ever, recognise Divinity…

Savor, savor the crazy. It should be noted that what I’ve quoted is only about half of the first paragraph. I refuse to actually analyse that shit, but Great Caesar’s Ghost this loon has a hard-on for “Divinity”, which confuses the fuck out of me since this article was ostensibly about what a shitty person Steve Jobs is. I must be insufficiently enlightened. Moving on:

The resignation by Jobs was an opportunity for benevolence but it merely became the straw that’ll break the camel’s back. Regardless, his time is limited, of course, but still the malingering is there, meaning the “Chairmanship” and “My Baby” bit. That means the end is nigh because what used to be within effort is now without. The liver is where one’s creativity/activity is centred, being located on the “right side” of the body [whereas the heart sits on the “left side”].

Ok? The freak then devotes a paragraph to glorifying the wonders of Chinese medicine and denouncing the evil ways of imperialistic Westerners…whatever hippy. Moving on:

Replacing one’s liver is more than a physical death sentence, death, in totality, being that which lacks the living. The liver is a gateway to the unseen dimensions, it is where one’s Attention resides. When the liver is overwhelmed, one’s Attention takes an enforced imprisonment/R&R. Witness an alcoholic drunkard, for example…

Fuck you

…To have the liver problem transcending onto the left/pancreas is the same as being drunk, but not through alcohol but via something entirely different. The left and right energies are like an electrical power grid where energy is channelled to balance the whole…

Sigh, more stupid “ancient Chinese secret” bullshit. I’m getting bored. Kwai Chang Kane finishes up:

Should re-birth be a reality, will, say, an “American” be reborn as one? You sure? Do not judge “Apple” for its complexity, judge it and other Infinitisers for their simplicity — their destructiveness.

Ok, I give up. This has to be a joke right? Please?!

I’m going to take a bit of a departure from my usual ranting about the tech media and politics today to express my utter and complete rage at the monumental cluster-fuck that is the current television series “V.” There will undoubtedly be spoilers in this rant, so deal with that.

For those who are unaware, ABC is currently airing a reboot of the classic 1980’s science-fiction mini-series “V.” In the original version Earth is visited by a race of extra-terrestrials claiming to offer humanity the hand of friendship. In reality, these “Visitors” are actually a race of Nazi lizard people armed with laser guns, big shoulder-pads and even bigger hair, whose true objective is to steal our water and eat us — not necessarily in that order. The Visitors are opposed by, and eventually defeated by a plucky gang of resistance fighters led by a photo-journalist, a science chick and Michael Fucking Ironside, with an assist by Freddy Kruger. In retrospect, the snakeheads never had a chance.

The original “V” miniseries was a simple parable about how average people acquiesce to an oppressive regime. The message is hammered home via the character of Abraham, a Holocaust survivor who teaches the youngin’s the proper way vandalize a Visitor propaganda poster, specifically by painting it with the titular V — “for victory.”

If the new “V” series has any similar message, it is buried under the fact that it is a massive, steaming pile of syphilitic gorilla shit.

The new series shares the premise that Earth is visited by extra-terrestrials who claim they’ve come to help us out. These aliens, who in this series actually call themselves “Vs” for no intelligible reason, are also lizards in disguise who have apparently been fucking about on Earth for at least sixty years. These Vs are not here to steal our water and our tasty, tasty man-flesh though. As far as can be discerned from the show so far, these Vs are here to breed with us. This begs the question: why bother with all the secrecy. I know plenty of neckbeards who would happily give up the juice to Morena Baccarin, Laura Vandervoort, or Rekha Sharma as long as they keep the skin-suit on. Hell, I know plenty who’d throw a bone in Jane Badler if given the chance.

Opposing the alien sex-fiends is the most incompetent band of freedom fighters assembled since the filming of Ernest Joins the Taliban. The team consists of Father Preachy McNon-Violence, The Most Incompetent FBI Agent in the World, The Mercenary with the Vaguely Australian Accent, The Lizard-Man who Turned Traitor for Love and The Most Clueless Media Personality Since Tucker Carlson. Seriously, I wouldn’t task these chumps with liberating a Snickers bar from the office vending machine.

Up until the last two episodes of V, the show was merely bad. I can tolerate crap like the fact that Elizabeth Mitchell’s Breasts (I honestly have no idea what the character’s name is) has actually killed or incarcerated more potential allies in the war against lizard sex than she’s recruited. What I cannot tolerate is a show that actively and literally insults my intelligence.

I’m referring here to the emerging story-line concerning Anna the Lizard Queen’s quest to find the Human Soul.

To be clear, I am not so atheist that I reject any notion of spirituality or religion in my Science Fiction. In fact, I was extremely annoyed at some of the whiners who flipped out at the finale of “Battlestar Galactica” because of the presence of an apparently god-like entity. What is offensive is the ham-handed and idiotic way in which “V” has approached the matter.

During last night’s episode The Blandest Traitor Ever, Joshua devises a device which will use superior V technology to “strip away all that is physically human to reveal the human soul.” Which will somehow allow Morena Baccarin’s neck-bones to defeat humanity, because flying saucers, lasers and her daughter’s magnificent tits are apparently not doing the trick. Yes, the Vs, who possess unlimited energy and FTL drives are seeking to prove the 21 Grams Theory — FOR VICTORY!

It is at this point where I have to bid this abomination of a show good day.

The only possible way for this fucktardery to redeem itself would be for the finale to consist of a crack team composed of Richard Dawkins, PZ Meyers, Phil Plait and Chris Hitchens explaining that Anna’s defeat was inevitable, because she is a superstitious idiot who squandered her species resources attempting to eradicate something that doesn’t exist.

A lesbian love scene between Morena Baccarin and Elizabeth Mitchell would also be acceptable.

Of course, right off the bat we have the standard New Media Douchebag idiocy of redefining terms as they go along in order to support whatever cockamamie idea that they’re pedaling this week. “Recession” has a meaning, and while actual economists may argue over the specific metrics that define a “recession,” we don’t get to re-define it to mean what would be better termed the complete destruction of the middle-class.”

Godin opens up with some quasi-economic babble larded with barely-understood jargon:

This is the recession of the industrial age, the receding wave of bounty that workers and businesses got as a result of rising productivity but imperfect market communication.

In short: if you’re local, we need to buy from you. If you work in town, we need to hire you. If you can do a craft, we can’t replace you with a machine.

No longer.

The lowest price for any good worth pricing is now available to anyone, anywhere. Which makes the market for boring stuff a lot more perfect than it used to be.

Barring a clear and concise statement of his fucking thesis, I’ll assume that Godin is playing on the hoary old argument that the shift in industrial manufacturing from the “West” to developing nations such as China and Mexico is an inevitable consequence of the march of civilization. To which I respond: why?

We can have valid debate as to the desirability of ceding our manufacturing capability to other nations and whether governments should attempt to prevent such, but let’s not pretend that some Randoid fantasy land where it’s inevitable and desirable for Capital to race to the cheapest possible solutions in all cases is the only possible state.

Seth continues:

Since the ‘factory’ work we did is now being mechanized, outsourced or eliminated, it’s hard to pay extra for it. And since buyers have so many choices (and much more perfect information about pricing and availability) it’s hard to charge extra.

Thus, middle class jobs that existed because companies had no choice are now gone.

Ugh. The first paragraph is techno-lolbertarian babble. The second, however is despicable New Media Douchebag elitism. How DARE those tedious middle-class people, those blue-collar workers, those farmers, those grey-flannel suits think that they can continue to perform the work that actually created the society that Seth now enjoys. Why, I doubt that any of them have managed to write 12 books that most of the world has never heard of, let alone become a successful blogger. The nerve of them.

Then, of course, we come to the crux of the matter. Seth’s prescription for the tired masses. The solution for those poor saps who thought that they could build a career actually producing things before the corporations realized that they could just have some slave-laborer in a third-world sweatshop do the work for pennies on the dollar. Well, as usuall with these sort of articles, the solution is somewhat slippery.

The networked revolution is creating huge profits, significant opportunities and a lot of change. What it’s not doing is providing millions of brain-dead, corner office, follow-the-manual middle class jobs. And it’s not going to.

Fast, smart and flexible are embraced by the network. Linchpin behavior. People and companies we can’t live without (because if I can live without you, I’m sure going to try if the alternative is to save money).

Yes! be “smart” “fast” and “flexible.” Work the “network” like some gap-toothed street whore.

What does any of that actually mean you ask. Fuck if I know, but I’m sure Seth and his ilk will be willing to tell you. Just purchase their next book from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or wherever New Media Douchebag fuckwittery is sold.

Nah, just joshing you, but I am enjoying a frosty pint of ale from the wonderful Angry Mac Bastards beer stein. You know you fucking want one.  Kudos to Melissa Findley (@Mercuralis on Twitter) for the design. It truly rocks.

Have any of you ever been in the following situation? You know a guy. He’s a smart guy, and you agree with almost all of his opinions, but he’s done or said something so monumentally annoying that you just have to smack him around a bit for it. Well, I’ve just encountered the intertubes version of that.

So, who’s the dipshit in question? I’m glad you asked. It’s “Cousin Avi” of Veritas Nihilum Vincet.

Background time. VNV is a decent enough little blog with a decidedly progressive political bent. I’ve had it in my feed reader for some time, and I quite enjoy reading. Unfortunately, Cousin Avi is apparently as savvy about the internet as his fictional namesake is about the London mob scene.

See, this week I went ahead and switched to Shaun Inman’s nifty new feed reader Fever. For those who’ve somehow missed all the press that Fever has received over the last week, but who still managed to not piss me the fuck off, Fever uses a somewhat unique method of installation. Instead of being a application that you run from your desktop, or something that runs in the cloud (CLOUD!!!) a’la Google Reader, you install Fever to a webserver that you control. In my case the angrydrunk.com webserver.

So Fever, like all newsreaders sends a HTTP referrer string each time it connects to a blog. If you are running a blog and have access to your referrers you’ll see an entry for each connection. For example, here is an entry from my blog stats program (Mint, also by Shuan Inman)

google.com/reader/view/

Pretty simple isn’t it. It just means that a Google Reader user clicked through to a page here. An entry from a Fever user would look much the same, but since Fever runs on my webserver, the originating domain would be www.thangrydrunk.com/fever. If you click that link, since you ain’t me, you’ll see a Fever login screen.

Which brings us to Cousin Avi. My boy Avi reached the login screen, and apparently had a fucking aneurysm. Then, confused and possibly drooling, Avi pokes around the old homestead long enough to find my email address and fires off a half-assed rant at me. Back when the internet first sprang, Athena-like, from Al Gore’s noggin it was considered impolite to publicly post private emails, but fuck that shit. Avi-me-boy opens up with.

So…every once in awhile one of the “referring links” in my blog stats says “Angry drunk dot com / fever“
Slash Fever is some password protected bit of horseshit I’m not permitted to see.  So it goes.
So i have a peek at Angry Drunk dot com.
I think…no, I’m certain…I am angrier.

First of all, I want to make a point. Here is a cap of the login screen for Fever:

Fever Login

It may not be obvious here, but there are no less than four links that one may click to take you to either the Fever homepage or Shaun Inman’s page. But let’s ignore that little bit of idiocy.

Avi, I’m so very fucking sorry that my little blog here upset you. No wait, I’m not. Since you didn’t feel the need to comment on any particular bit of content I’ll have to assume that you don’t like the choice of fonts. Well, fuck you. Helvetica rocks.

At this point Avi descends to the standard backup set of insults when someone can’t dredge up any sort of cogent or interesting criticism. “I’m a bigger drunk/angrier guy than you.” Whatever internet tough guy. Come out this hellish desert and I’ll drink you into a stupor, bludgeon you to death, then piss on your corpse. Two can play at the keyboard warrior schtick.

I have to admit, I lied: Avi did offer some bumbling insight into what has drawn his mighty ire.

On closer inspection, you appear to be an obsessed MAC freak.
Jesus.  God curses me and I reject the very premise of the obviously hateful cunt.  Go figure.

You got me fucknuts, I am utterly obsessed with Media Access Control. Oh, wait, you mean “Mac” as in Macintosh computers? Well, even I admit that I do tend to write about Apple frequently, but then again, I also write about New Media Douchbags, politics and my fucked up finger. Besides what did Apple ever do to you? Did a Powerbook kill your pappy?

Avi then eventually rambles off to an mostly unsatisfactory conclusion, much like his sexual encounters I’d imagine, closing with this gem.

Still tho…what the FUCK is “/fever”?.…don’t make come over there all stabby.

Like you’d know, Avi, had you spent the two fucking seconds it takes to click any of the links on the Fever page, Fever is a feed reader. Do you spazz the fuck out when you see that Google is spying on you? Hell, you probably do. And, as for the “stabby,” I have what they call around here an Evil Hand, and it’s getting bored with gutting hobos and hookers.

To conclude, if you’re into progressive politics and atheist rants read the Veritas Nihilum Vincet blog, but for the love of Zoroaster, don’t do anything to confuse or startle the mother-fucker running the joint. He might just draft a strongly worded letter at you.

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