Howard Owens

Tony Pierce says, "there needs to be a health inspector for tv shows."

Indeed.

But why is he watching this shit in the first place? Just cause some hot chick digs it? I'd find a new hot chick.

I'm about to uninstall iTunes.

I had been thinking about installing iTunes for a few weeks, and when Bob Benz praised it in the comments to this post, I thought, "OK, maybe I'll give it a try now."

It's been nothing but an exercise in frustration. The only way it works is if I turn my firewall off, which I really don't want to do and shouldn't have to do each time I want to use iTunes. The firewall logs seem to indicate that iTunes wants to do something on port 1433. I've tried giving it permission of port 1433, giving it precedence over using port 1433, even disabling my block on port 1433 (which is really a bad move for my particular system configuration), but that didn't help. I also tried messing with port 1027, which is also normally blocked on my system. No go. I am stuck with my only option being to completely disable the firewall, as far as I can figure.

But that's not my only complaint about iTunes -- my biggest complaint is that there is no way to preview songs. You either buy and download or you don't hear. That's a deal breaker for me. If I'm going to pay for something, I want to ensure myself that I like it. If you know how to preview on iTunes, let me know, cause so far I can't see it.

Speaking of file sharing and software -- I did something really, really, really stupid a few weeks ago. I downloaded some free filesharing application. Download.com said it DIDN'T have any adware or spyware with it. Not true. I immediately uninstalled it, but by then it was too late. I haven't been able to get rid of this crapware since. Adaware hasn't helped. PestPatrol, which I paid $35 or something for, hasn't helped. I've also manually searched and destroyed. No good.

My system is getting a little bloated anyway, so I guess I might as well bring out the weapons of mass destruction next month and reformat my hard drives and reinstall everything from OS on up. That is apparently the only way I'm going to get rid of the crapware on my system.

Hey, you attorneys out there -- can't this crapware perpetrators be sued or something?

Glenn Franxman has a hot idea for combating spam.

There was a time when I'd walk into a music store and walk out with four or five CDs every time. No more.

It's not that I can't find good music. I can. Lots of it. Tonight I looked at Nick Cave, Nick Drake, Townes Van Zandt, Elvis Costello, Dwight Yoakam, Big Star, Big Sandy and Tom Russell. I would have bought all of them if I won the lottery recently.

And it seems like that's what you need to do if you want to buy music these days. I mean, $17.99 for a CD? Christ, I've heard of hookers who come cheaper.

Maybe I'm spoiled. I'm used to buying used LPs for a buck a piece, used CDs for no more than $8, Columbia House specials, Amazon sales and free review-copy albums. Put a price on a CD of more than $10 and you get me thinking about all the music I've got at home that I've already paid for -- more good stuff than I have time to listen to as it is, and more free and low-price stuff floating in all the time.

I just won't pay those kinds of prices any more. Especially when I can get something like this for only $12.60.

Since I "released" my last song (those, of course, are real scare quotes), I've written two more songs. I mentioned one previously, and mentioned that I wasn't playing it yet well enough to record it. Well now I'm playing it well, but still haven't recorded a final version of it. Meantime, I've written a third song. It's called (original title here), "Woke Up This Morning." Download the MP3 here.

As always, I only ask for a few words in the comments  ...
UPDATE: Buddy Blue gave me shit about the last line of the song ... and since he's a way better songwriter, I listened. I've changed the last line of the song (but I haven't re-recorded it yet) to "Now I know I'll never kill this memory"

Cool, I have an author's page on ESPN! And so does Britney Spears.(Via Matt Welch).

Via Instapundit, we learn the Opus Lives!

I left this comment on Drezner's site:

Back in the mid-late-'80s Breathed had Opus shout "Reagan Sucks." The San Diego Union refused the run the panel.

I wrote an editorial for my paper blasting the Union's lack of free-speech spirit. Won my first journalism award for that editorial. And I sent a copy of the paper to Breathed and he returned it signed. I've always wanted to get that framed ...

One of these days, I'll get around to spending the money on that. Of course, I still have my Opus plush.

So, a teevee commercial influenced, for the first time I can remember, a buying decision. Two nights ago, I bought "Get Born" by Jet, all because of the Apple IPod commercial.

"Are You Gonna Be My Girl" is the IPod song, and an early favorite off the CD, but it's also a good indication of what to expect from the rest of the 13-song set, both in sonic simularities, songwriting quality and musical aptitude. Jet is pure garage band energy, power-pop hooks and respectful nods to the Beatles and the Who and the Stones, without spirialing into pastiche. If you like the Strokes and the White Stripes, you might find yourself enjoying Jet even more.

My recommendation: buy.

As for the IPod, I'm still not sold.

This job probably doesn't pay enough to entice me, but if you're conservative, a blogger and can stomach David Horowitz, check it out. They probably wouldn't hire Matt Welch.

Is it possible to make an action film full of dazzling special effects that is slow, ponderous and uneventful? Yes, and I've just seen it. It's the Matrix: Revolutions. Not only is the paper-thin plot tedious and the dialogue insipid, it is full of insufferable self importance. Yes, a million monkeys typing endlessly might eventually write Hamlet, but first they would churn out a hundred thousand copies of Revolutions. In fact, I think monkeys wrote this movie. Surely, no writer who's graduated high school drama class could churn out crap like, "When I saw your face, I knew you weren't coming back. And when you looked at me, I knew I was going with you." Cue steam train on railroad track and Dudley Doright theme ... "Oh, WOE IS ME ... "

The war scenes, the fight scenes, the death scenes -- interminable all.

The worst part is, The Matrix was such a great movie. One of the greatest ever, and II and III have pretty much soiled its reputation. The Matrix brand has lost its luster because II was, at best, OK (I loved the highway chase scene, though some critics panned it), and there were some interesting new characters and the plot, while labored, didn't plod. III has no redeeming qualities. The special effects are stunning, but you've seen them all already and they lack the panache of I and the poetry of II. Revolutions is more like a parody than a thoughtful, satisify conclusion.

The best I can say about Revolutions is that if you've seen I and II, you'll want to complete the trilogy, but that can be done cheaper with a DVD rental (I certainly wouldn't dump $20 on this turkey).

What's most embarrassing about admitting that we paid full price for this crap is that we passed up a chance to see a free screening. We got to the theater late and didn't want to stand in line and wind up with a lousy seat. A friend who's seen the screening told me the free movie was better than Revolutions, but I didn't listen. Maybe he should have been more explicit and warned me away altogether.

Real writers write because they enjoy the process, the exploration, the way words sound when strung together, and the chance to memorialize their own ideas. If anybody reads their words, great. If not, that's fine, too. Real writers write with an audience in mind, and love to know their words connect with other people, but they write first for themselves. Let's get this straight: Real writers love to write. Hack writers think "writing is tiresome." (via Instapundit).

Where have I been the last several days, inquiring minds want to know?

I've been working -- there are big changes afoot at the job, and that could be a good thing for me, so I've been toiling to make sure things go my way. And if I'm not working, I'm spending more time with my guitar.

Last weekend, the wife and I went to San Diego. I planned this elaborate post about the trip, full of horrid sentiment about my old hometown, but when I sat down to write it, my keyboard was sprinkled with some fine fairy dust that rendered it inoperable, hence you were spared my purple prose. But I still want to post a couple of pictures, so you'll find a small slideshow here.

We watched the CMT tribute to Johnny Cash last night. It wasn't as maudlin as some such shows, and it was punctuated by a few fine performances -- Sheryl Crow, Marty Stuart, Travis Tritt, Kid Rock and Hank Williams Jr. (surprise!). I don't know if it was coincidence or not, but the anti-war crowd was strongly represented, from the host Tim Robbins, to John Mellencamp, Steve Earle and Al Gore. There was lots of talk, including a speech from Robbins, about Cash's concern for the downtrodden, the disadvantaged, the poor and the struggling, which is all fine and well and true, but what's also true is Johnny Cash loved his country and can't be easily pigeon-holed as a leftist icon. I hope the Cash family isn't planning that sort of legacy for him.

This post from Tyler or Volokh got me thinking about a file sharing scheme that would frustrate the RIAA no end. If I had the time and programtic expertise (and given the time, I could figure the tech details out), I'd build a file sharing network that would allow users to restrict who they share files with. In other words, you would only let your friends and trusted associates on your hub of the network. It would be a self-policing effort to keep RIAA thugs out. Of course, you might belong to more than one hub, and other people in your hub might belong to multiple hubs, and in that way, files would get pass around. Sure, it would be harder to find stuff, but if friends helped friends, the job would get done, you know. Only hub owners could authorize new hub members, and it would be in a hub owners own self interest to know new members well enough to ensure they weren't RIAA goons. It might work.

Speaking of music, go buy Layne's new CD (I haven't gotten mine yet, but I will).

Further on the entertainment front, go see Master and Commander.

Master and Commander does for early 19th Century naval warfare what Saving Private Ryan did for D-Day. It is gritty, nuanced and spectacular without being forced. It never plucks the wrong note. It doesn't beat you over the head with plot twists, or overplay its dramatic crescendos. It is a sea adventure without swashbuckling cliches. It is Moby Dick without the whale, and Pirates of the Caribbean with a "ghost ship," but without the camp.

One of the beauties of Master and Commander is it doesn't play politics. It makes no attempt to be contemporary and relevant. It doesn't sermonize about war being hell or the evils of imperialism. It is simply about a crew of seamen who have a job to do -- a bloody and ugly job, but it is nonetheless their job. If the movie teaches us anything, it teaches us that in 1805, the seafarer's life was brutal, hard and treacherous. Survival depended on strong leaders, but stronger men.

I've never sailed on a big ship, so call me a chickenalbatross if you like, but I have little doubt that life aboard a ship in His Majesty's Navy was much like it was in this movie. Or at least movie sells the idea well enough that from the start the suspension of disbelief necessary to good drama is at full sail.

DirecTV screwed me over, man. Some technical glitch caused them to lose service during last night's Survivor. Went to watch it tonight, and it's not there -- and it was a key episode, too.

Anybody out there have it on tape or DVD and could send it to me?  Hit the "Contact" link to the right, drop me a note and I'll send you my mailing address.

Please, no spoilers in the comments, in case I do manage to find a copy.

First, we learned that the U.S. Forest service ordered a helicopter in San Diego not to drop water on the then infant Cedar fire, now we're told that a massive Russian-built plane that could have made fighting the fires much easier is being refused by the Feds.

The IL-76 can drop a near-solid sheet of water on an area the size of 12 football fields in 10 seconds, and because it uses a gravitational, rather than a pressurized, release system, which creates a simulated downpour rather than an aerosol mist, much more of the water released from its holds actually makes it to the ground. Since 1995, the Russians have repeatedly offered a pair of manned, tanked and waiting IL-76s during major U.S. fire outbreaks—asking only for primary expenses to be covered—but the US Forest Service, the body in charge of all wildfire control on federal land, has told them time and again that their services were neither needed nor wanted. Now, they no longer keep the immense aircrafts waiting in the wings, and are waiting for someone from the US government to step forward and ask them over.

Ah, you've got to marvel at the small minds in big bureaucracies.

My first reaction to this story: Energy crisis? What energy crisis? My second reaction: An environmentalist begging to keep an energy generating plant open?

New Media News Executives Read This. That is, if you're site is, um, planning, yah, user, ah, registration. Read the comments, too. Hope your sites fair better ...

It's the dead time of the year. Yes, the leaves are changing color. Bears are hibernating and sparrows are migrating. But the deadness of fall and winter has to do with forces far more fundamental than Mother Nature's cornucopia.

It is the time of year when God snoozes. Football (yawn). Basketball (snooze). Hockey (zzzzzz). There isn't even a good golf tournament to quicken the pulse.

But most of all, there are no four-seamers. No frozen ropes. No thawk. No thumpf. No dirt on the plate and no chalk on the uni. You can't smell the grass, and you can't yell at blue.

The year is officially dormant. And it won't begin again until pitchers and catcher report.

Today I began my winter project. In my substantial collection of books are a number of titles that purport to tell us something about God's Game. Most of these I've owned for years, or longer, and have never read. My project, beginning today, is take a baseball book with me to the gym as my shield against the monotony of the spinmaster. The goal -- to get through three or four of them before Bruce Bochy fills out his first line-up card of 2004.

My salve against the cruelest of months will be words on paper -- a ballpark of the imagination. Today, I started with Bernard Malamud's The Natural.

Check out Steven Den Beste's animated gif of how the San Diego wild fires spread.

The U-T is reporting: Fires end in sight. Good news.

I've heard talk that next Sunday's Chargers game might be moved to San Fransico. Another reason to root for more rain in San Diego. I'm planning on going to that game, and I won't be going to SF.

That's all that may have stood between a small fire that wouldn't even have made the news and 273,000 acres charred, hundreds of homes destroyed, wildlife ravaged, human lives lost, including a firefighter ... but the Feds told a friggin' helicopter with that bucket to return to base!

On the other hand, Tony Perry says that one helicopter doesn't even exist.

Who's telling the truth? You tell me. Either way, I'm one pissed-off former (and potentially future) San Diego resident. If the Cedar Fire was preventable, some heads should roll. Not that they will. But they should.

Mickey Kaus goes on at great length about why blogs shouldn't have editors. Read it. If you can poke holes in his argument, I'd like to hear them.

We needed some supplies tonight, so I stopped at the Von's on Telephone Road after work.

As I walked the isles picking up a half dozen items or so, the striking workers shouted into the store, "Boycott Von's. Don't Shop Von's."

At the checkout stand, a youngish black woman said to the checker, "How irritating."

"We just ignore it," the checker said in obvious good cheer.

I shook my head and said, "Why should these people get better benefits than I get."

The woman in line said, "Oh, I know."

While the checker ran my soda pop through the laser scan (how hard is that to do?), she said, "They can stay out there as long as they want, because as long as they're out there, I'm in here. I've got a job."

I said, "Good for you."

"They can call me scab all they want," She said. "It doesn't bother me. I was unemployed for six months and I've got two children to feed."

As I told one of the baggers at my local Von's once -- do what you have to do. Strike, carry your picket signs, if that's what you think you have to do, but don't harrass people because they're doing what they think is right for their families.

The news on the home page of SignOn San Diego was grim this morning: "Julian Under Siege."

I grew up charmed by Julian. We made nearly annual trips to the mountains. For a kid growing up in sun-drenched San Diego, a winter trip into the Laguna and Cuyamaca mountains was a Megellian adventure. There were big trees, interesting rocks and animals and funky old buildings scattered in the hills, and there was snow.

I grew up thinking Julian was a magical place. They once dug gold there. And it was the place to go to get apple pie that would make your tongue want to dance a jig. The old buildings clinging to that mountainside inspired dreams of how life was when there were no cars, only horses and a trip to San Diego took hours instead of minutes.

In the first year of our marriage, Billie and I stayed at a beautiful bed and breakfast called the Julian White House. There was snow on the ground, and our room was warm, cozy and an enclave against whatever troubles I left behind.

Not long after, we stayed at friends cabin on the other side of town. We had the place to ourselves. It was another weekend of romance and friendship, while we enjoyed the view over the tree tops into town. There is nothing like seeing the sun set over San Diego County from up in the mountains.

Both Billie and I covered what us East County reporters called the "backcountry." The backcountry is filled with colorful people, as fiercely independent as they are devoted to the beauty around them. The backcountry is spotted with funky little restaurants and gift shops. I did a story for the Union-Tribune once about the backcountry eateries. The research for that story was one of the most entertaining jobs I've done.

I wonder how many of those restaurants have survived the fires?

There was Tom's Chicken Shack. Best fried chicken in the county. And the building was haunted, too boot. Tom's old partner, who survived World War II, was killed in a car accident around the time the restaurant opened (1945, I think). That's one place I particular miss, and would hate to see destroyed.

Down the mountain a bit, and toward the border is a little place called Barrett Lake Junction, and there you'll find the Barrett Lake Cafe. There isn't (or wasn't, maybe) a better fish fry in Southern California. The funky quonset hut, with it's beer posters on every wall, and barrack-like seating, was a favorite of my grandfather's. Me, too.

I know Cuyamaca is gone. Wiped off the map in a single night after more than a hundred years of ornery liberation from what urbanites might call civilization.

There was also a Boy Scout camp near Cuyamaca. I camped there twice. On another Boy Scout trip to Laguna, we rode the original snowboard -- a surfboard with the tail removed. We were able to pack six pre-teens on that board. I've never slid down a mountain faster.

And there were also the school camping trips -- sixth-grade camp, eighth-grade camp, and camping with the DeMolays.

It's particularly bitter sweet to remember the DeMolay trip. Back then, I was sweet on a girl who was tender and gentle and as natural as the grass in the meadows. We spent a lot of time together on that trip. I let her wear my straw cowboy hat. We spent some time together after that trip, but never got past the phase of being sweet on each other. About 10 years ago, her estranged husband hunted her down at a Lucky Supermarket in Spring Valley and shot her dead. He killed her dad, as well. I didn't even find out until my 20-year high school reunion. Her bother, who was in my class and in DeMolay also, told me.

So there's a lot of memories wrapped up in San Diego's backcountry.

I will go to bed tonight saddened by the loses in the backcountry, and I will pray for Julian, and the safety of all the people who call the backcountry home, and the people risking their lives to save what is left on San Diego's backyard garden.

Here's a little songwriting lesson, kiddies ... never write a song that takes more talent to perform than you currently possess.

Just tonight, I wrote a new song, and the guitar part is over my head.  Oh, I can play it. Sometimes. But not consistently, and not with the sustained quality necessary to get me through all three and a half minutes of the song.

Sure, I'll keep practicing it. It's a good song and worth the effort, I think. But for me to record it now would be more effort than I can muster. So I'll cipher on my household finances, instead.

This morning ash covers our patio furniture. The sky is brown. The sunlight falling on the deck is orange. Smoke lingers in the air. Fire is consuming our backcountry, and it's grown big enough, and possibly close enough, that the evidence now reaches the beach. That wasn't the case yesterday, even though my more inland friends said it was true where they lived.

Fires also ravages San Diego County.

In the '70s, there was a huge fire on Mt. Laguna in San Diego. We lived many, many miles from the conflagration, but smoke and ash filled the air. My friend Steve and I procured two empty coffee cans and proceed with an energetic attempt to fill them up with ash falling from the sky. Some of the flakes of ash were as big as a quarter. We probably shouldn't even have been outside. Who knew what damage we did to our lungs!

That night, we drove out to my grandparents' little pink house in El Cajon and watched the fire, which was at least 30 miles away. You could see it moving across the mountain -- up one ridge, then disappearing behind another.

The Mt. Laguna fire is still the most dramatic I remember. It's the fire by which others are measured, in my mind. From what I'm reading, and seeing, today's fires may be challengers to the crown.

The best reason to prowl thrift stores, picking through dusty bins of old LPs is the chance that you might find a hidden treasure -- a forgotten piece of music that remains obscure, but is still remarkable.

To this day, I think my best find was a single song -- "Quien Sera," performed by an unknown group of Porta Rican muscians on side two of an LP that surely began it's life in the drugstore bargain bin. The LP is Cha Cha Anyone? and features, primarily, the work of Paquitin Lara. Lara's work is good, but side two, which isn't Lara at all, is truly a gem, capped by that moving performance of "Quein Sera." (The LP is now available on CD as Latin Heat.)

But why take my word for it? Here's what I'm talking about.

The melody, which is pure passion, will be familiar to fans of Dean Martin, who recorded the Anglosized "Sway With Me."

I've never considered myself a math person. I'm a word person.

Sometimes, when I tell people this, they say, but you're a PROGRAMMER!

It was the perception for most of my youth that programming and math were symbiotic disciplines. This misperception kept me from computers and programming for a long time. It was only the desire to eat that got me looking to the internet for my livelihood. And it was then that I discovered that programming isn't all about numbers.

To a certain extent, programming is like math. There are formulas and rules of logic that must be learned and mastered. But programming is a lot like writing.

Both programming and writing are about solving problems. As any experienced writer knows, especially writers who deal in structured genres, such as news stories or essays, the exercise of writing often involves figuring out what you need to say within the confines of the tools the English language provides to you. There are rules to be followed, and audience expectations to be met.

Programming is like that. The creative side of programming involves finding the most elegant solution to any given problem.

Programming reminds me of writing news stories, and writing inverted pyramid news stories always reminded me of writing poems. So, you see, for me, writing code is no less creative than writing couplets.

But there is that math thing.

The more I get into programming, the more I regret all of the math classes I slept through, and all of the math solutions I assiduously worked to forget as soon as the term was over.

The other day, a book slipped into the newsroom for review called "The Math Explorer: A Journey Though the Beauty if Mathematics."

The book purports to be a breezy, entertaining explanation of mathematics for the lay person.

I'm probably a step or two below "lay" when it comes to math, but I thought I would give it a try.

I'm only a few pages into it, but I found these thoughts interesting:

Mathematics is an intellectual endeavor governed by precise, unchanging rules. It is therefore far more predictable and, in a sense, more comforting, than almost any other discipline. You will either have the correct or incorrect answer to a problem. There is no such thing as a mathematical answer that is "sort of" correct. This state of affairs is somewhat different among the liberal arts where subjective interpretations of a literary work, for example, can cause an answer or a response to be viewed by the all-knowing instructor as being anything from "marvelous" to "partially correct" to "possible" to "absolutely dense."

But that is precisely my problem with math. For most of my life I've had little interest in formulaic answers. How many times can you solve 2+2 and still find it interesting? How many times can you calculate the radius of a circle and still get excited about it. How much depth is there in finding the factorial square root of a subquadrant triangle multiplied by PI? (Ed: Did you just make that bullshit up? Yes? I have no idea what it means, if any thing).

A poem, on the other hand, can be read a thousand times and never be read the same way twice. Words when used to convey emotion and experience are never precise as numbers, no matter how well intentioned the author. And whether you are talking literature, history or politics, there is always something to learn, a new way of viewing any given object, of parsing any given sentiment, of layering on new perceptions or new experiences.

I can understand why, maybe, some people may find that sort of marsh-land existance unsettling. The instability of ideas can be daunting. But, to me at least, human existance is far too complex to reduce to formulas or pat answers. If we want to understand the human race, we need to delve into art and literature and history. We need to find as many pieces of the puzzle as possible, realizing it will never be complete.

Obviously, math is important. All of human scientific advancement and achievement is a credit to the mathematicians who worked out all of these great number crunching miracles. And I now see that I need to pay more attention to math and make up for some lost education, but I don't think I'll buy the idea that math is some how more profound and important than the liberal arts.

The most clear-headed approach to the Easterbrook thing I've seen yet ... from Jim Henley:

What the hell was Easterbrook trying to say? In outline: Movie violence causes terrorism. Jews disproportionately suffer from terrorism. Two Jewish executive responsible for a particular violent movie are acting against their (group) self-interest by releasing a violent movie for the sake of profit. I don't want you to think I think they worship money because they are Jews - they are no worse than other Hollywood executives in that regard. BUT THEY SHOULD BE BETTER.

This is a really dumb argument, but it's not written out of loathing for the Jews, and it does not ascribe loathsome qualities to Jews qua Jews. (It's pretty hard on Muslim filmgoers, though.) It's not hate speech, but it's patronizing as hell, and as sloppily written as it has been sloppily read.

Agreed.

Yeah, I noticed it, too. And what was cool? People seemed to get the joke.

So, have you listened to my latest release yet?

It's not like I'm asking you to pay for it.

P.S. I posted a link to my song on Blogcritics, and a commenter left a link to his music. Not exactly my style of stuff, but pretty damn good. Check it out.

This is the punk way to do it, right? ... write, record, mix, master and release a new song in a single night! Here it is, Trouble and Turmoil.

P.S. There's nothing political about it.