work; fratellis; guillemots; who toys; olbermann re: bush

[amezri]

There's a job I want to apply for. It would require a lot of travel. But the job itself is something I like doing -- training people how to use software. Hm. I will write a pro/con list later.

While at work today, I listened to a couple of new CDs I ordered from Amazon.co.uk. The Fratellis are really, really fun (yay, Glaswegians!). They're a bit.. hrm.. Franz Ferdinand I suppose. "Chelsea Dagger" was the song I heard on Vrigin Radio and really liked. The second half of the day I listened to the Guillemots, which I didn't really like at first. It could be that I was just really tired and so not into it at the time. After a few listens of the album, though, it started to grow on me. Their website is pretty nuts, I'll give them that. "Annie, Let's Not Wait" is my favorite track on the album. The rest of them.., will just have to sink in a while long.

sweetwildandmad passed along this news article: MPAA Caught Uploading Fake Torrents

Uhm. This is another good reason for me to cut back on the torrenting. Heh.

Doctor Who gadgets and toys for those on my flist who are interested:

+ Who North America - Has a load of stuff at a decent price. Their Season 2 Region 1 set is the cheapest I've seen anywhere ($69.99) so far. I sort of want the Werewolf figure. And another Ten so I can keep one in a box. Heh.
+ Characters 'n' Toons - they have the phone flasher and some keychains.
+ Who Blackpool - based in the UK, but they will ship international. I like their keyring selection. Want a TARDIS and maybe a TARDIS key....
+ The Sonic Screwdriver LED torch (flashlight) is available at Amazon.co.uk, Go Bazaar, Voga. All in the UK. The only US sources i could find are eBay, and at that point I might as well just order from the UK. (though the reviews seem not so good)

Okay, not that I'm not happy about Teh Hewlett ruling Teh Mediaz, but... a Starcorssed tv series? OMG. I'm.... not sure how I feel about it. It could be really, really funny or really cringe-worthy.

Saw this on chaodai's LJ: Keith Olbermann's commentary on Bush's speech last night. That is full of awesome.

And here's a transcript (that may not be entirely accurate) from MSNBC.com

OLBERMANN: And lastly, as promised, a special comment about the president's address last night. Only this president, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even messianic, certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq by offering instead an entrance strategy for Iran. Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me, only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake in Iran.

Only this president could extol the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and then take it‘s most far sighted recommendation, engage Syria and Iran, and transform it into threaten Syria and Iran, when al Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten to Syria, and when President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming. It is internationalism by drawing pictures of superman in the margins of the textbooks. It is a presidency of Cliff Notes. And to Iran and Syria, and yes, also to the insurgents in the Iraq, we must look like a country run by the equivalent of the drunken pest, who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet and shouts at the other guy‘s friends, OK, which one of you is next?

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer what are you thinking, but rather, are you thinking at all? I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq's other leaders that America‘s commitment is not open-ended, you said last night. And yet, without any authorization from the public, who spoke loudly and clearly to you in November's elections, without any consultation with the Congress, in which key members of your own party, like Senator Brownback and Senator Coleman and Senator Hagel, are fleeing for higher ground, without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker/Hamilton urged you to do, you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment on America‘s behalf to do whatever you want in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq that even a majority of serving personnel are willing now to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war. It is so weary that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq will be on their second tours, or their third tours, or their fourth tours, and now you are going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir? Who are you going to send to interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria? Laura and Barney? The line is from the movie Chinatown, and I quote it often, middle of a drought, the mortician chuckles, and the water commissioner drowns, only in L.A. Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq, and the president wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria? Maybe that‘s the point, to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish is this latest war strategy, strategy that is for the war already underway, not the one on deck.

We are to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad, and 4,000 more into province, to give the Iraqi government breathing space. In and of itself, that is an awful and insulting term. The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered to give breathing space to a government that just turned the first, and perhaps the most sober act of any democracy, the capital punishment of an ousted dictator, into vengeance lynching, so barbaric and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority that it might have offended the Klu Klux Klan of the 19th century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do? The ones who will truly live and die during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a year ahead which will demand more patience, sacrifice and resolve. They will try to seal up Sadr City and other part of Baghdad, in which the civil war is worst. Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other, but rather, they can focus anew on killing our people, because last night the president foolishly all but announced that we will be sending those 21,500 pour souls over, but no more after that

And if the whole thing fizzles out, we're going home. The plan fails militarily. The plan fails symbolically. The plans fails politically. Most important, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility. You speak of mistakes and the responsibility resting with you, but you do not admit to making those mistakes, and you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist towards Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents, off the record, before that speech, they were told, once again, if you knew what we knew, if you saw what we saw. If you knew what we knew was how we got into this morass in Iraq in the first place. The problem arose when it turned out that the question was not whether or not we knew what you knew, but whether or not you knew what you knew?

You, sir, have become the president that cried wolf. All that you say about Iraq now could be gospel. All that you say about Iran and Syria now could be prescient and essential. We no longer have a clue, sir. We heard too many stories. Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the director of national intelligence over to the State Department because he thought you were wrong about Iran. Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of the grounds wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture. They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories. They are now fertilizer indeed. The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care. I read this list last night before the president‘s speech, and it bears repetition, because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital. He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them in Iraqi units. He told us about WMD, mobile labs, secret sources, aluminum tubes, yellow cake. He has told us the war in necessary because Saddam was a material threat, because of 9/11, because of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, terrorism in general, to liberate Iraq, to spread freedom, to spread democracy, to prevent terrorism by gas price increases, because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad, because 439 words into that speech last night he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war, he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab al Zarqawi, to get Moqtada al Sadr, to get bin Laden. He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government de-Baathified. He shortchanged Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for wide spread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence. He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there based on partisanship, not professionalism

He and his government told us America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throws. He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary. He has insisted it‘s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points, the fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam, elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam.

He has assured us we would be greeted as liberators with flowers. As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course. We were never about stay the course. We would never have to go door to door in Baghdad, and last night, that to gain Iraqi‘s trust, we would go door to door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was al Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria. The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost us another 6 billion. And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of Generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and there is one more to add to the list tonight, Oceania has always been at war with east Asia. Mr. Bush, this is madness. You have lost the military. You lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost most of the Iraqis. You have lost many of the Republicans. You have lost our allies in this. You are losing the credibility not just of your presidency, sir, but more importantly, of your office itself. And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing that. This becomes your legacy sir, how many of those you addressed last night as your fellow citizens, you just sent to their deaths.

And for what, Mr. Bush? So that the next president has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you? Good night, and good luck.

Comments

[veracity]

Well, shit. I only torrent shows I can't afford to get or haven't come out. Like Torchwood or Doctor Who. If DW was at a reasonable price, I could get it. But since I won't spend more than 20 bucks a season, I can't do that with it. If they would stop trying to amp up the sales numbers, they might find a more reasonable group of buying. I know it's a hard task for them to understand but it's a pretty simple concept. It's not like they're going to stop making hand over fist. I haven't bought SeaQuest, and I've wanted it since it first came out, because 40 bucks is pretty pricey in my opinion.

And that Starcrossed show will get like six weeks and be canceled. You know Skiffy doesn't like things connected with Stargate, whether it be people or shows. They're "special" like that.

Oh, and Keith's little speech was spot on with what the rest of the country's been saying for a long time now. Unfortunately President (boy, that's a joke!) Bush has my aunt's disease of twisting what doesn't work into whatever fits and ignoring the truth. What an idiot the man is.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

The MPAA will find new ways to track the torrenters and the torrenters will find new ways to thwart them. It is the way. *shrug*

And you'd think they'd realize that lowering prices would move more units, but it never occurs to those big corporate types. That's why software still costs a ridiculous amount of money and some CDs are still well over $20. They complain that people pirate them, but they don't think that if they cost less, people would be more inclined to pay for them.

Oi. Starcrossed. It sounds as though SciFi approached Hewlett to do the show, and I'm not sure it's going to be related to Stargate (well.. perhaps just via Hewlett and cast/crew, which could be enough).

[veracity]

I think these people just don't have lives and this is how the fill up their hours earning their salary. It's the only excuse, really. I mean, the concepts are basic Marketing 101 ones. Not exactly rocket science. Lower prices would move more units because people would be more willing to buy extra copies for presents and such.

I don't buy expensive things, because (a) no money, (b) too many options on the market, (c) and I generally download things, like songs, when I already have the albums, just I can listen to them mixed together. Not all, but majority. They don't understand that it's not cheap to live right now, and we can't afford to be all willy-nilly with money.

Starcrossed won't last. And I say that with sadness, even I'm not *the end all, be all* fan of Hewlett, but there is a significant Gate connection. How will it work for him, working one show and acting in the other? I mean, he's gonna Joss himself, meaning spreading too thin. Kind of a no-brainer there, really.

[aadikah.livejournal.com]

Ooh, the 12" Clockwork Droid and the Die-Cast 5" TARDIS on the Who Blackpool site are neat!

[amezri.livejournal.com]

It's really silly how much I want a TARDIS model...

[fyrdrakken]

Gah to the fake torrents. I need to remember to pass that link on when next I post to LJ -- though it probably won't be today, since as soon as I close out these browser windows I'm going to get some cocoa and start knitting.

Who NA I've already bought from -- got my DW pencil case (which I use as a knitting project bag) and a poster from them. Thanks for the other two links -- I'm particularly pleased to see TARDIS key pendants going for cheaper than this one vendor on eBay who has them. Also, thanks for pointing out the reviews on the LED screwdrivers -- just as well that was at the bottom of my Who-goodies priorities list. (After an old school sonic screwdriver -- and I just turned up a couple in eBay auctions over the weekend! and wish I'd seen the buy-it-now pen one before bidding on the prop replica one -- and a TARDIS key pendant.)

There's nothing I can add to Olbermann's speech. Except a call for impeachment, because it looks like we really can't just let the Shrub ride out the clock for the next couple of years. He won't learn and we can't afford to have him throwing his weight around when he knows he's got nothing left to lose.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

I really want to get one of those LED screwdrivers, but I've just blown this week's fun-money buying some DVDs, so it'll have to wait. When I get it, I'll be sure to report back on the quality. Hmm... perhaps I can get a friend in the UK to send me one.

Shrub needs some weed killer....

[fyrdrakken]

Just as well I've got a version of same already -- and perhaps a better-quality one as well as having more bells and whistles. I'm severely tempted to start carrying it around in the project bag with my Four scarf, because I need to stick a pen in that bag because I'm scratching each stripe off the list on the pattern printout after I complete it. (Which is another reason I was kicking myself about bidding on the one old-school sonic screwdriver before going to the third page of the search and discovering the pen made to look like a Three/Four model screwdriver with the buy-it-now price still there. Because now I'm stressing that I'll get outbid on the prop replica but the pen will have been snatched up by the time I do, and crossing my fingers that more will show up between now and DragonCon.)