FFEJWORLD:

JibJab’s flash animation cartoon parody of the presidential campaign, which is sung to the tune of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” has gotten them threatened with a lawauit by the rights holders, the leperous, amoral Richmond Organisation (TRO). These are the same scumbags who happily copywrote tunes alreay in the public domain. They hold the copyright to Mbube, a song better known to you as Pete Seeger’s “Whimoway”, or the Token’s “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” This three part article tells that whole sad story.

Here’s Woody’s original copyright notice:

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

One of the newspaper syndicates polled it’s editors and decided to drop the Doonesbury cartoon.

“Wilkerson said he conducted the survey because Garry Trudeau’s comic “created more controversy than other strips.” In the poll e-mail he sent Continental’s newspaper clients this spring, Wilkerson wrote: “(I)t is my feeling that a change in one of the features is required. I have fielded numerous complaints about ‘Doonesbury’ in the past and feel it is time to drop this feature and add another in its place. … If the majority of the group favors a replacement, you will be expected to accept that change.”

“The Continental head said he doesn’t know exactly when “Doonesbury” will leave the package; he’s currently polling clients to see if they want to replace it with “Agnes,” “Get Fuzzy,” “Pickles,” “Zits,” or another comic.

“Turner added that he doesn’t recall Continental doing polls about any of the other 22 comics in its package; “Doonesbury” was singled out. Wilkerson acknowledged that the survey was out of the norm.”

My executive summary syle review of the 12″ 1.33ghz combo drive Powerboook: It’s almost perfect.

Pros: Resonably fast–more responsive then similar or faster Wintel laptops; small, light weight, well laid out, very strong, very pretty; best keyboard i’ve ever used on a computer; ok sound, not quite as loud as my 500mhz iBook, but much better fidelity; 3+ hours on year old battery, 4+ on new battery; great screen, good viewing off angle; Bluetooth and Wi-fi (802.11G) built in. As always your milage may vary.

Cons: No DVD burner, gets hot, fan is loud, no illuminated keyboard, power users may desire USB port on right side for mouse (i no longer have a external mouse), Kensington laptop lock port is at front of keyboard (may interfer with typing, i no longer have one to test with), ships with ridiculously small amount of RAM, only one firewire port.

This one of the few small laptops that feels like it’s worth it’s price. It’s as much a tool as a fetish object. I’m in love. I will anyone who try to take it way from me.

Masybre there is still hope left for the world: The Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings is still in print

Hairball will periodically errupt into “’twas pity that stayed his hand–tis a pity i’ve run out out of bullets…” I have been known to murder a few lines from “Heaven Help the Working Elf.” It’s better then the original in many (most?) ways, and much easier to carry then the trilogy of the ring plus hobbit. For rapidly aging boomers it’s a lovingly opened window into a lost time and place when good was drug humour (and it was actually funny, not just stoner jokes), and evil was the president…oh wait, sauron is still the president!

Which brings me to my main rant. When times are bad, humor takes off. You can’t have A Great Depression without an explosion of great humorists. Times are rotten, evil is in washington, and where is our new (St.)Lenny Bruce, our new Smothers Brothers, our (finally) funny replacment for Saterday Night Live? the last bad time that failed to create great humor was inside Nazi Germany.

houston, we have a problem here…
Continue reading ‘no hope?’

I can’t catch up, I can’t get my rhythm back. I can’t get a working workflow. I still feel disconnected. No position is comfortable for reading or typing. I could spend all day reading, and still not know what to blog. And I haven’t gotten around to use the computer for creating anything. Nothing but a few emails and posts.

The heat isn’t helping, I can’t think and my back and chest are turning into oceans of soggy dead skin. I itch constantly, my allergies and sinuses are acting up. The wonder PowerBook is getting bloody fucking hot too, I actually have to leave the end of it hanging off the table to cool it. I’m thinking about improvising a prop to jack the back end up and provide more airflow (much cheaper then the handle/prop Shane uses).

I haven’t been on a bike in days. When I was riding, all I could think of waas bloging.

Oddly enough I have been posting more to other blogs. trying to get some blog cred, I guess.

I just downloaded PulpFiction Lite to try and get through the morass of RSS i usually read, and I’m going to reload Archipelago for writing blog entriesd in (this despite it’s font handling). I’m noticing weird little bugs and glitches in OS X, things that don’t repeat like clicking on the close window button and getting minimize window instead, to the infuriating way the finder windows loose column view after I do a search.