I was going to write something intellectual, but I couldn’t think of a topic. So, instead I’m writing a list of TV shows that I currently watch:

• How I Met Your Mother
• House
• Full Metal Alchemist
• Adventure Time

UPDATE: Also, I’m eating Ding Dongs.

I want to be more disconnected from the news cycle. The feeling of being hyper-connected to the news can sometimes be a substitute for action.

Let’s analogize this to friendship. Via facebook, you can passively keep track of a friend. From their updates, you can learn what’s going on in their lives. So, you can feel connected, even if you aren’t actually talking to that person. This passive hyper-connectiveness can be a substitute for real friendship.

The same thing can happen with politics. I can feel like I’m involved, just by the massive amount of time I spend keeping myself informed. However, keeping myself informed doesn’t mean I’m actually doing anything.

Big 5

Openness: High (90)
Conscientiousness: Average (56)
Extraversion: Average (66)
Agreeableness: Average (65)
Neuroticism: Low (4)

I’ve decided to remove ads from The Chalkboard Manifesto. The pennies per day for me aren’t enough to offset how much of an eyesore it is for hundreds of people. I was considering moving the banner to the bottom, but I think my comic is better off without the ads at all.

I also removed the contact page. I’m gonna put a bar across the top so people can subscribe to RSS, follow me on twitter, or follow Chalkboard Manifesto on facebook.

Sorry, for the downtime. I switched to a new web host. I brought up Chalkboard Manifesto first, and then this weblog. I’m not sure if I lost any entries from April. The WP export only went up to April 1, 2010, but I didn’t notice this until after the import. I was able to find entries from April 3 to April 16, and then another entry from April 22. The only important one, I think, was from the 22nd, so I’m really glad I found that.

The database backup for Chalkboard Manifesto was missing 5 entries in the middle. Luckily, I had all the comics saved so I just had to put in the missing data into the databases. I could find this via ohnorobot, which stores transcripts of my comics, and the Google.

I really have to check the integrity of my backups.

I also decided I wanted a new theme for my blog, so I didn’t copy over the old one. I just upgraded my version of WordPress and am currently looking for a new one to customize.

One day, I’m going to create my own blogging software, and it’s going to be really simple to use. I dislike WordPress these days. It’s not super-intuitive to use and it has way too many features. Mine will allow you to write entries, but if you want any formatting, you’ll have to write the HTML yourself. I don’t even know if it will have categories or tags. The main thing I want is for the front admin page to have a large text box where you can just write. Editing and administration are secondary.

All the internal links in my blog probably don’t work. I’ll have to fix that at some point.

Via facebook:

Introducing the Like button
Starting today people will be able to connect with your Page by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.” We hope this action will feel much more lightweight, and that it will increase the number of connections made across the site. Learn more.

Facebook: Making life even more superficial. Our social connections are now more “lightweight.”

So first with News feed, we, as human beings, were replaced by memes. No one has a profile; instead, they have a never-ending stream of narcissistic nonsense. Our personhood is not defined by our interests or activities, but by bits of text that float in the stream.

Now, we no longer even have social connection. We are ephemeral memes connected by lightweight strands of “like.” We went from joining groups, to becoming fans, to merely liking something. Pretty soon we won’t have friends (however diluted that term has already become), but there will just be people that we “like.” Our assimilation into the stream will be complete after that final step. First, you could like bits of text. Now, you can like “pages”. Soon, you’ll be able to like news articles and products and songs. Once you can like people, there will be no difference between you and a bag of Doritos. I like you both, with no indication of degree. Welcome to relationship inflation — as the connections go up, each connection will be worth less and less.

Yes, soon we will all be assimilated into memes in the stream — bits of you intermingled with bits of products. This will be the new form of human connection. Imagine the future: You won’t attend events, you’ll “like” them. Who cares if anyone went? How many people liked it? The best products and the best people won’t be defined by virtue or profitability, but by how many likes they have accumulated.

You + consumerism. Facebook likes this.

49ers traded for Ted Ginn Jr. Nice.

Friend: if it was possible for me to turn gay, it would be this coworker that did it
Friend: (sidenote)
Me: ooooh, that’s hot
Friend: what???
Me: oh wait, sorry
Friend: oh wait i just realized that coulda probably been taken the wrong way
Me: I totally misinterpreted that
Friend: HAHAHAHA!
Me: instead of the frustrating guy coworker
Friend: u thought it was a girl
Me: I thought you had an incredibly sexy female coworker
Friend: HAHAHAHA!
Me: whom you had fantasies about
Friend: i mean
Me: well, now you know how guys think
Friend: it’s not completely out of the question but
Friend: it’s a question of spectrum here
Friend: hahaha

I may be completely wrong, but when markets are completely unfettered, the end result is the collusion of the rich with the rich. You get monopolies and swindlers. To actually get a “free” market and competition, you need regulation.

I find it bizarre that one could be pro-regulation or anti-regulation. Shouldn’t the content of regulation be the object of debate? Doesn’t context matter? This seems to be precisely the type of thing that would elude a general rule.

I remember when broadband meant freedom. With a faster connection, you could get everything done faster and spend less time on the internet. If it’s always on, you don’t have to wait for it to connect. Of course, instead of freeing us, broadband turned us into the internet’s slaves.

I know there are products that block the internet for periods of time. I wonder if introducing more barriers would be effective. What if I had to wait a minute for your internet connection? Would I use the internet less? My instincts say yes. When I made Opera stop remembering my facebook password, I stopped signing on facebook as often.

I wonder if I could take this further. I used to limit internet time because it tied up the phone. What if the internet tied up my computer? I mean, what if I could no longer multi-task and was just tied to the browser (and maybe a word processor)?

I need to tie myself to a mast to elude the internet’s siren calls.

Muse, Picnic Day, and Lindsay’s birthday party: This week is going to be awesome.

I read a book during lunch today. Engrossing and liberating. (Liberating because I escaped the nowness of blogs.)

I’m not sure when’s the last time I read a book.

I’m going to stop reading blogs during lunch break.

I’m very busy these days, and I’ve not updated my comic a few times. This is making me feel really guilty. There are two steps to fix this: 1) Create a buffer. 2) Temporarily cut back on hanging out so I can make said buffer. (Those steps were presented in reverse order.)

Hopefully this will help me juggle all my priorities in such a way that I drop the ball less often.

Is our partisan-centric news coverage blinding us from class warfare? It’s rather interesting to view recent events using this lens. Take a peak at Enron and the recent recession, where execs are raking it in while jobs are still hard to find. You’ll see an economic elite profiting by screwing over the middle class and poor. Moreover, it’s the result of collusion and incest between government and private corporations. You could consider this class warfare. From the other end, you’ll see what’s often characterized as anti-government sentiment, but there’s also a lot of anti-corporate sentiment too. The bailout left a lot of people pissed off at government and corporations. Now consider the recent incidents of political violence: the Pentagon shooting and Joseph Stack’s terrorist act. From the lens of class warfare, you can interpret the violence as acting out against an economic elite.

I’m not saying anything definite. It’s just something to seriously ponder, at least.

After figuring out that I could sort my text messages by sender, I decided to see if my text messages followed an 80/20 rule. Did 80% of my texts come from 20% of the people who texted me? Turns out, the top 20% of people who text me account for about 75% of my texts. This is something that is only interesting to me; luckily, this is my blog.

A thought to explore: One of the main deficiencies of capitalism is the fact that competition does not necessarily produce virtue.

On an unrelated note: It’s about time to re-read Edmund Burke.

The current level of corporate influence on government is a terrible thing. In general, I’d like corporations to have less political power.

If this is true in the US, what of China? Here I am, cheering on how Google is finally standing up to the government there.

Yet to remain philosophically coherent, shouldn’t I not cheer this on? Process does matter, and I shouldn’t like a big corporation having so much influence on government, regardless of whether I like the results or not.

That much is true. I should at least try to be coherent, but I don’t know if these situations really are similar. Is the problem really corporate influence, or is it the incestuous relationship between government and corporations. These would suggest different things between the US and China.

Something to ponder.

Well, Opera’s at 10.51 now and it’s pretty sweet, except I have a few complaints.

1) Ctrl-z doesn’t work on the Speed Dial for reopening the last tab. I set up the ctrl-shift-t shortcut to ctrl-z to take care of that.

2) Opera 10.50 was extremely slow behind the proxy at work. I had to make a change to the config, but the average user would just switch to a different browser. It makes me sad because I love Opera.

3) Search bar gets squished when I put my Delicious bookmark next to it. Still have to report that.

Other than that, I love the update! Especially all the CSS support!

EDIT: Here’s how to fix the proxy issue: http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=433781

Online poker is a transfer of wealth from the ignorant to the savvy. A professional poker player qua poker player doesn’t create any value or do anything meaningful. While poker can teach good lessons (as can most games and sports), it isn’t a great career choice.

I’d have to categorize poker differently from other spectator sports (using the term “sports” loosely). While I can admire football for its athletic aesthetics, it doesn’t inspire me to go out and become a football star. Poker, though, inspires millions of idiots to lose their money. So the sharks get more fish in the sea. It makes the tournaments tougher to weather, but I suppose overall it is a net benefit for the savvy.

If poker is your thing, I’m not going to knock you. I love the game too. But I have to make things in order to be happy. I have to add value to society.

I keep forgetting to hit send when I write messages. If my life were a book, this would be some kind of symbolic insight into my character or my state of mind. Instead, it just means that I’m stupid with Outlook.

I want to redesign The Chalkboard Manifesto website. It’s pretty cluttered right now, with the comic pushed halfway down the page.

I’m going to take away the navigation links. I don’t update the blog anymore. There’s no reason for a comic to have a faq that I’m never going to update. I don’t need a contact page; that’s so 1999. People can contact me via facebook or e-mail. I need the archive, but I can put that elsewhere and the same goes for the RSS feed. No one ever visits the links page, but I may put a box somewhere for my favorite comics.

I’ll probably move the search to the top of the page.

I’ve decided to pull the advertising box. The pennies (or the occasional dime) I get per day isn’t nearly enough to make the distraction to my readers worth it.

I want to keep the thumbnail navigation. I love that stuff.

Since I’m going to do a redesign, should I put in a tag system? I wanted to a long time ago, but I never finished it. Hmm. Maybe I’ll do it.

I also had an idea for something way more complicated, so people could collect albums and share them and rate comics and such. Sure, it’d be kind of cool, but would anyone actually use it? Hardly. I do kind of like the album idea, but I don’t think the work I put in will be worth it. At least, not at this point in the game. I don’t really want to deal with managing users.

I suppose I should put some kind of deadline on this so that it gets done. End of April? Is that enough time?

Compare Muse’s Uprising:

With Public Enemy’s Fight the Power:

I mean, seriously, compare “Motherfuck him [Elvis] and John Wayne!” with “It’s time the fat cats had a heart attack.” Uprising is vague and makes you feel good, so protest music it is not. Don’t get me wrong; I love the song, but it has absolutely no power.

Listening to this…

If a system of “preventative detention” (or rather, arbitrary jailing) is implemented during the Obama administration, I can only judge his presidency as a failure and a stain on America. It will be a most radical shredding of constitutional principles. It can only be described as tyranny. Whatever else he does will be tainted.

So far, he has escalated the war in Afghanistan and there is good reason to doubt that he will live up to his promise to end the war in Iraq. If so, he will be a warmonger with a Nobel Peace Prize. What a world we live in!

It is still to early to talk about an Obama legacy, but as of now, I cannot judge this president positively. The revolution must come from elsewhere.

I’m sitting here bored after a fun day chomping on Dino Chicken Nuggets with my friends. I’m out with people quite a bit these days. I put parties together. I enjoy being the center of attention.

I have always been incredibly sure of the fact that I was an introvert. That I needed time alone to recharge was definitely true.

But now I have much greater compulsions to see people and talk to people. It’s almost as if I’ve been equipped with another battery. Curious.

OH and there’s the phone. Salvation.

I just designed this website for my friend Jason: Kahala Kitchens.

Actual exchange with the cashier at Michael’s:

Cashier: “Why are you dressed up all snazzy? Do you have a hot date or something?”

Me: “No, I always look this good.”

I’m ridiculous. I don’t know how I say these things with a straight face.

Real rule: Take off your tie before eating. I don’t care where you are or who you are with. Even with a tie clip, life is too dangerous.

And another thing: Buy more ties from the thrift store. These should be used on wild nights out. Also, it would be good to have more ties anyway.