December 29, 2006
Here we go, first beer at The Highlander to kick off National Drunk Blogging Day. So far, it’s Amber (natch), Griftdrift and me. We’re expecting two or three more. If you leave now, you can still catch us while we can sit up straight. For now, I’m just going to update this post when I think of something I want to write, but I’m sure there will be other ranting tangents in new posts soon enough.
UPDATE 1: This first update was slow to come because I was eating. We were just talking about beer drunk vs. wine drunk vs. liquor drunk. My take is beer drunk = good, liquor drunk = good, wine drunk = bad. Beer is a murky, lazy drunk. Liquor is a sharp, intense drunk. Wine is a murky, intense drunk. Fuck that noise.
UPDATE 2: I should have mentioned in Update 1 that Sara showed up. Hooray booze! Now we’ve moved on to talking about why passive-aggressive people suck. We’re having an aggressive argument about whether it’s passive-aggressive to not mention the person who made us think of the topic to begin with. I think it’s passive-aggressive not to mention that person, Amber disagrees.
UPDATE 3: I should have mentioned in Update 2 that I’m on beer #2. It’s about half down now.
UPDATE 4: So, the blogging is some boring shit so far, but I am having fun with the booze. Two almost down and a third on the way. My fingers are starting to feel a little heavier as I’m trying to type.
UPDATE 5: I should have mentioned in Updates 1, 2, 3 and 4 that I’m drinking Sweetwater 420. I wish they had the IPA. In other news, Shelby just showed up.
UPDATE 6: I feel like this blog jumped the shark a long time ago. I can’t pinpoint exactly when, but I think getting jobs that require me to think probably had a lot to do with it. I’m not fishing for compliments or insults, just sayin’. I like writing the Georgia Political Digest columns and podcasting a lot more than I like writing this blog. I have for a while. This blog probably would have been killed six or eight months ago if I thought Amber would tolerate it.
UPDATE 7: Is it too early to wax philosophical? I’ll tell you what a nerd I am. It took a lot of effort to pull me away from coding a web page to come and drink. I was coding some shit for the Georgia Podcast Network site. I get off on that shit. I read the fucking Drupal feeds every day. I jerk off at night thinking about the Forms API.
UPDATE 8: Where the fuck is our waitress? I’m through my fifth beer with no sixth waiting for me. That’s BULLSHIT.
UPDATE 9: Fuck! I had a whole elaborate update written out, and accidentally deleted it! Lameness. I was writing about how I’d kind of like a cigarette right now… and that I’ve never been a full-time smoker… and that my parents would freak out at the idea that I’d ever smoked… and that I think that approach actually made it more likely that I’d be a full-time, habitual-type smoker. But hey…
UPDATE 10: Amber’s ranting is putting me to shame. I don’t feel like I’ve even scratched the surface of what I could be talking about and using booze as an excuse to write off later.
Let’s see…
I’m through six beers…
Is anybody reading this shit?
UPDATE 11: Fuck, I wish I had a better rant in my head. I have a lot of things I’m insecure about. Doug Monroe just showed up.
UPDATE 12: Our waitress just called me out. I showed her my blog, and I cowered like a little bitch when she saw the part where I bitched about a beer not getting here immediately. And I should of. It was probably unfair for me to bitch about the service. It hasn’t been bad.
UPDATE 13: I was ranting about open source and value-add features, and even my girlfriend was laughing at me. This must be the end.
UPDATE 14: When I was at Ambers’ parents’ place earlier this week, I read a column by Bryan Williams, head douchebag at NBC about why social media hates America. I’m sure you can find the link yourself, but if his view is that more voices = more problems. I don’t even remember his bullshit rationalization, but I know he missed the point: that the main danger of new media is xenophobia; people only listening to voices they want to hear.
December 28, 2006
I‘ve never posted about National Drunk Blogging Day, so now I am. It’s Dec. 29. It will involve alcohol and blogging. Amber, Sara, Griftdrift and I will do the ATL proud, and when we finalize our location you’re welcome to join us if you live around here. Join us on the Internets if you don’t live close to here. Location announcement to follow.
Amber and I went to the world-famous Pink Pony last night. Per usual, the shot girls were much more fun than the strippers. I bought one lap dance and it was weak, but we bought four shots and they made up for it. Amber did one, and it was at least as hot to watch as you’re imagining it was.
UPDATE: We’ll be at The Highlander around 6:30. If you’re in the area and want to get drunk and blog, come on out.
December 24, 2006
December 23, 2006
The former Georgia head of elections is going to work for Diebold. I’m always suspicious of news that’s announced on weekends or near holidays. And anything involving Diebold. And anything involving a government official leaving the public sector to join a company (s)he formerly interacted with as part of his/her job. Also, Karen Handel used the phrase “non-starter,” which means it’s time for another drink.
December 22, 2006
You can listen to it on Jason Pye’s blog. There isn’t a lot I agree with Sen. Douglas on (he favors a state-level proposal similar to the Fairtax, he’s one of the staunchest opponents of commuter rail in the Legislature), but he is philosophically consistent at least. He described himself as “ambivalent” toward school vouchers, saying, “Government never pays for anything that it doesn’t put regulations on.” I’d advise anyone who supports school vouchers to be careful what they ask for precisely for that reason.
In the same interview, he did make this puzzling statement about the upcoming S.B. 10, which would allow vouchers for special needs children:
I like Senate Bill 10. I think that [state Sen.] Eric [Johnson] is onto something there. I think it would open a number of avenues for our disabled students that they don’t have right now. I’m not prepared to say right now that I’ll vote for it, but I am prepared to say that I’m looking on it very favorably, and that I think there’s a lot of merit to it.
I guess we’ll find out just how ambivalent toward vouchers the senator is in the upcoming session. Perhaps he’s being diplomatic so as not to upset Sen. Johnson. Or, perhaps he’s talking out of both sides of his mouth.
December 21, 2006
You should be reading Griftdrift’s and Moe Beers’ Porn Hunt 2006:
Stellar work fellas.
December 18, 2006
Via an email from Spacey Gracey, I was asked to answer a question posed by Dan Greenfield, corporate communications director for Earthlink. On his blog Bernaise Source, he asks, “What was (were) the most notable PR/marketing social media trend(s) or event(s) in 2006 and why?”
As the 800-lb. broadcasts are wrestled to the ground and pricked to death by millions of pint-sized narrowcasts, the trend I see arising on an epidemic scale is the waning ability to fund media ventures with advertising revenue. Advertising with traditional media companies has become as fashionable as any movie starring The Coreys, and no one has really figured out how to make money with newer forms of media.
Hear the sucking noise from newspapers…
Sites like eBay, Monster.com and Craigslist are killing the newspaper classified ad business. Even if they weren’t, newspaper circulation saw its sharpest circulation drop in 15 years during the past six months, which means that newspapers would do just fine killing advertising revenue on their own without help from those sites.
Hear the sucking noise from television…
Tivo and other DVRs are projected to suck $600 million from TV ad revenues in 2007. That doesn’t sound like a big piece of the $46 billion TV ads pie, but it should be noted that $600 million would be a 100 percent increase over the year before. That number will hit the multiple billions in a few years, and the explosion of Internet video isn’t going to help either.
And wait for the sucking noise from terrestrial radio…
Terrestrial radio ad revenue was flat last year, while the number of podcasts exploded, and are projected to grow from 840,000 in 2005 to 56 million in 2010. Terrestrial radio is a dinosaur standing in the way of an oncoming comet.
So, old media’s revenue stream is dying. Now what?
Every time I’ve asked a media company how they’re going to make money on these emerging technologies, I’m answered with a shrug and/or an “I-dunno.”
If I knew the answer, I’d be rich right now. Amber and I have a few ideas we plan to test out in the next year or two, and we would of course love to hear yours.
See also: Responses from Griftdrift and Grayson. I’ll add more to this list if you email them to me or leave links in the comments.
Cross-posted on my Georgia Podcast Network blog
December 15, 2006
I have a new Georgia Political Digest column and an accompanying Georgia Podcast Network podcast up today. Read and/or listen and be amused as I argue that supporting a minimum wage is in line with free market principles and that the Republican Party is full of socialists.
Jason Pye has already weighed in with commentary on the column.
December 14, 2006
Since October 23 when I wrote my missive about not being able to eat what I want anymore, I went on the South Beach Diet. And when I weighed myself this morning, I clocked in at 225 lbs., which is 25 less than I was when I started. Not too shabby for about a month and a half (didn’t start until a week or two after the post).
I say I went on the South Beach Diet, but I only stuck to it strictly for the first two weeks. What’s followed has been more “inspired by the South Beach Diet,” but it’s worked. Instead of flogging myself for not sticking to it 100 percent, which would be near impossible right now with work catering three meals per day, I’ve broken it down to some core things to avoid:
- No refined grains (white bread, white rice, flour tortillas)
- No potatoes
- Cut out beer except on special occasions (yes, I had three beers at the office Christmas party.. and a lot more than that on my birthday… and three or four at our last podcast party… but the standard two beers after work and one with dinner is out)
- Avoid drinks with sugar added (no soda and grocery store fruit juices mainly, but also use Splenda in my coffee instead of sugar)
- Limited condiments… avoid ketchup, fatty or sugary salad dressings
- Eat fatty meats in moderation. Take the skin off chicken.
- Limit caffeine to just the one cup of morning coffee since caffeine increases insulin production.
And that’s mostly been it. I’ve broken plenty of rules.
- When on the South Beach, you’re supposed to limit fresh fruit intake because fruit has tons of natural sugar. But I eat as much fresh fruit as I want.
- They say limit starch intake, but I’ve not really paid much attention to how much bread I’ve eaten as long as it’s whole wheat. I don’t sit around and snack on it or anything, but I’ve had sandwiches for both lunch and dinner with no adverse effects from eating more bread than I’m supposed to.
- When we have pizza, I eat just the toppings, which means I eat a lot of fatty cheese I’m probably not supposed to be eating.
- See aforementioned special occasional beers.
- I even ate a cookie yesterday.
So, we’ll see if this continues to work. I’d like to be around 210 lbs., though I already feel a lot better at 225 than I did at 250. No carb comas (which may be diet as much as weight) and less heartburn (which I think is directly attributable to weight). Less feelings of sluggishness.
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If you’re in north Atlanta and interested in boozing it up with a Republican-leaning but somewhat multi-partisan crowd of bloggers tonight, Will Hinton is hosting a party (Will a.k.a. Dignan… who toyed with the idea of running against Cynthia McKinney in the 4th District but supported Democrat Hank Johnson in the primary instead… read his new blog here).
Relevant info:
Host: Will Hinton
Location: Taco Mac
2430 Piedmont Rd, Atlanta, GA View Map
When: Thursday, December 14, 8:00pm
Phone: 404-210-1821
You can get additional info here. Amber and I are heading there after work (will be a little late since we’re working 8-8 right now), and she plans to dance on the Festivus pole.
This is a spiritual sequel to the Peach Pundit get-together from a couple of months ago, which was overwhelmingly white and male. So, special invite to anyone who isn’t white and male to show up and add some color and a more diverse range of genitals.
