Jack : gravatar silence

Gravatar is a "global avatar" service. In essence, you pick an avatar (a small square picture to represent yourself) and then you can expect it to show up on any site that supports gravatars (my personal blog is one of them).

Gravatar2 is supposedly coming soon. Honestly. Except their last blog post was a month ago. And the admin last posted to the forums in August. And the server is constantly down.

But we've been assured! In the old blog posts, he states in no uncertain terms that Gravatar is not going away! That they're close to a reliable serving mechanism and everything is going to be awesome! You know what would be really awesome? An update. So everyone can stop standing around holding their breath and hoping that a website they thought were awesome dicks them about.

Jack : V's Monologue

Here, for your reading pleasure, is V's introductory monologue:

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin van-guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Sexy, ain't it?

Jack : Dawn

Sunrise and sunset. Whenever the sun is out, it feels like someone is watching over us.

When I think of the sunrise, I think of a dark and lonely winter morning; waiting outside on the bus stop. It's 6:30 in the morning and I'm waiting to catch a bus to school. It's as dark as night and it's the first bus of the day. The bus slows and its brakes exhale slowly. I climb aboard and put my ticket in the machine. In and out.

"Good morning!"

I look up at the bus driver and all he can do is beam at me.

"It's a new day! Smile!"

I force a smile and sit down. Doesn't he understand? I am a teenager. I know things. I've seen the world for what it really is; I looked behind the curtain and I know it's shit. Why smile at a new day when every day from now on will be exactly the same because we are all flawed humans and doomed to drown in our own mediocrity?

The longer I sat their stewing in my cynicism the more it became clear to me. It became clear that sometimes it pays to just let go. To enjoy the specific but mundane uniqueness of each and every day and sure life is shit but at least you're not dead.

I never saw the sun rise that day. It rose without me as I slept onboard the train into the city. But when I got to school, I smiled.

Jack : Biased Liberal Media

I can't help but think that I'm being a bit blinded with all the liberal media that I absorb. From things to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to all the blogs I read that all originate from blue states.

I mean, sure, I believe that George W. Bush is a bad president. There's a lot of evidence to support that. There's a lot of stuff pointing to how this administration have screwed things up. I care enough about civil rights to know that some of the changes they have brought in are just plain bad.

But somewhere along the way, the cry of "Dubya sucks" was perverted into "Yay Democrats".

In Studio 60, a flustered Matthew Perry is questioned about why he doesn't make fun of the Democrats, he says something along the lines of, "I would, if only the Democrats would do something."

So maybe the Dems are exempt from political satire only because of their sheer inactivity. I don't have any doubt in my mind that comedians would quickly capitalise on any mistake made in the public eye regardless of political affiliation.

But it's easy to forget any misdemeanors committed by the Democrats when there's such a media circus around Bush.

Jack : 68 cents

Flipping around the intarblag this week, I stumbled upon a customer review of Walmart that someone had written. She had eaten a 68-cent candybar off the shelf and as she left the store, she was stopped by security and banned from Walmart for one year.

And she wants to tell the world about how "selfish and stingy" Walmart is.

Look, I'm not some crazy Walmart lover. But seriously?

You want to know why they banned you for a year? It's because there are shoplifters like you in all of its stores. People stealing nuts, grapes, cans of food, pop tarts, basketballs and television screens. They are all shoplifters and it's costing a pretty penny to hire all these security guys. 68 cents doesn't matter a whole lot to a bigass company but 68 cents times however many poor-people-cum-anarchists starts to add up.

You are the selfish one for trying to steal and arguing that it's right. If you had offered to pay for the candybar on your way out of the store, you might have a legitimate complaint. But all you did was prioritise your stomach above the law and fuck with the livelihood of however many thousands of people Walmart employs.

You want to take down a giant megacorp like Walmart because you think they're too rich? Fine, I support you. Start something political. Or open your own competing grocery store where people can eat all the candy off the shelves and leave. Go on a diet and stop eating so much candy. Whatever.

But don't steal and sell it like you're some kind of suburban martyr.

Jack : "the race"

This is an amazing piece of prose: the race at jane dark's sugarhigh!.

It is with mounting nausea that we watch poets race to cast their liberal votes for candidates more conservative than the Republicans they found beyond revulsion twenty years ago — and indeed not just to feed at this trough but serve the slop.

Jack : If the glove feach, you must impeach

I can't remember where I read/heard it from but there was someone who said that if the Democrats were to seize power away from this current Bush administration, they should not work to vilify, humiliate or punish the Bush administration over its handling of this War on Terror, Katrina, September 11, civil rights, etc.

The fear is that core members of this administration could become martyrs.

That's right. Martyrs.

Obviously, people aren't going to die as a result of any punitive actions. But it might spell the end of their political career. Or their credibility and reputation.

Hoenstly though, I don't think anybody worships this current administration enough to think that they have been without fault for their time in office.

Jack : 01

Hey Jack, I dare you to write out a whole bunch of fake Latin text.

Ok, you got it.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Vestibulum aliquam hendrerit felis. Morbi elit. Nulla sagittis nulla at sapien. Sed nec massa. Proin consectetuer pretium ipsum. Aliquam dignissim aliquam turpis. Suspendisse congue aliquet ligula. Suspendisse posuere vehicula neque. Proin malesuada viverra quam. Etiam tincidunt. Vivamus lobortis neque vel est.

Nunc venenatis ligula nec lacus. Suspendisse dignissim volutpat massa. Aenean venenatis. Etiam id tortor quis nisl volutpat pulvinar. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Cras non ipsum at velit malesuada mattis. Donec enim enim, hendrerit id, porta sed, laoreet vel, metus. Curabitur feugiat tempor nisl. Curabitur lobortis bibendum nisi. Sed ante mi, condimentum eu, vehicula at, tincidunt ac, nulla.