The Savior of Small Business

While getting gas at a small, privately owned gas station today I had to go inside and make sure the payment thing was working (because small, privately owned gas stations, or SPOGS, have archaic gas pumps).

The inside had that accumulated clutter you see in SPOGS -- crackers from the last century, linoleum with dark smudges permanently ingrained in it. And one wonders how such a humble place could compete with the gleaming corporate monstrosities, cross-promoted with Dunkin donuts and Taco Bell.

The answer is on the rack next to the checkout -- at least 12 square feet of unrepentant porn. This is not the nice porn that you might mention when you talk about porn, but the nasty porn that you actually think about when you think about porn -- porn that would likely get various appendages chopped off you if carried into most countries.

A friend's family owned a video store for a time, and how did this small place compete with the vast economies of scale that places like Blockbuster could achieve?

PORN

Porn is the savior of small business -- the champion of the mom and pop store -- the last bastion holding back the tide of complete corporate takeover.

We're not getting back to nature, we're getting away from people

Jaru has received a tenure track offer from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA -- so we'll be heading there this summer.

As an object demonstration in supply and demand, the salary offered by Washington & Lee is 50% higher than the typical starting salary at colleges in California (such as the state college system), where the cost of living is probably twice as high. One of Jaru's friends was interviewed at a school and the people warned her that she might have a hard time surviving on the salary since the school was in the Silicon Valley.

We'll enjoy doing some hiking up in the woods and hills around the area for a while, but I suspect Jaru might get tired of the lack of ethnic food. One great research item is that a bunch of the houses in the area were built in 1892, so I'll get first hand experience with haunts!

Oscar Season Bonus?

One benefit of the Oscars is that afterward some of the more obscure films end up getting screen time in theaters close to you. San Antonio is actually good for getting movies, but I'm hoping that Last King of Scotland and Pan's Labyrinth will end up in the walking-distance theater.


In unrelated news, the street that they just repaved outside our apartment last summer is now being torn up for some reason. Maybe somebody lost a contact. I'm almost certain that the whole roads department in San Antonio is hopelessly corrupt. We moved here almost three years ago and they're still only halfway finished at putting in the interchange ramps at the intersection of two of the major freeways, which they started before we got here.

Another major interchange on the north end of town (where the majority of the development is occurring) also lacks ramps. People tear off the roads at 65+ mph, crowd into street traffic, then make left turns at the lights to get on the other freeway. And all this happens at an already busy intersection. Nobody had the foresight when building the freeway overpasses and such in the first place, that a lot of people might switching between them?

That kind of planning ensures that your cousin who owns a construction company is always at 100% work load.

I Can Relate

Tycho (brown-haired guy) must be married to a grad student/prof. (Click on image to see a full-size version).

-- from Penny Arcade

KKK Membership Doubles, Mass Quadruples

via Wonkette

Niggers and Zionists

In concert with Israel and Washington's Zionist and fundamentalist Christian lobbies, the Bushites say their "strategy" is to end Iran's nuclear threat.

-- from AntiWar.com via The Leiter Reports.

Given that the Leiter Reports have tried to (rightfully) support the idea that one can criticize Israel's policies without being anti-Semitic, posting an article that uses a quote like the above strikes me as seriously problematic.

While there are certainly some self-identified Zionist organizations, and I imagine a few of which are worthy of criticism, the use of Zionist as a pejorative must certainly be understood to evoke emotional responses above and beyond what would be associated with the more neutral use of the term.

For instance, the above quote relies on the rhetorical image of the militant Zionist lobbying America to support their program -- an image evocative of the Protocols of Zion (an "antisemitic literary forgery that purports to describe a Jewish plot to achieve world domination"). If the writers did not wish to subtly or not so subtly conjure up these images, why use the term "Zionist" instead of the more neutral and less historically-laden term, pro-Israel lobby?

How many millions of people in the world when they hear "Zionist" think of the various competing political and ideological movements compared to how many think of the secret Jew seeking dominion over the world?

When I was in the service, some otherwise progressive folks referred to one of the black guys in our unit as a nigger. They quickly explained that here they meant simply "nigger as generic term for asshole", and that white guys could be niggers too. Admittedly, the guy was kind of an asshole. But we already have a more neutral and less historically-laden term for asshole.

It's called "asshole".

Kevin Costner Porn Blog

A couple days ago I received a very polite email inviting me to join a cat-lovers blog-ring...

In response I've decided to add this photo of Kevin Costner's butt, so as to increase the Costner-porn:cat ratio and hopefully be invited to a Costner-porn blog-ring instead.

In other random bits, I've finished up a free re-write for one company. Writers are generally recommended not to do this, but I thought I'd give it a try and see how it works out.


And one recommendation: when making pizza at home, put the pepperoni on last (the very top) if you like it to be crispy. I was putting it on above the cheese but below the hamburger and that made it a little soggy.

Productivity Enhancing Keyboard

If you could invent that...

Government Abuse Chicken

This news is probably spreading around a bit, but my wife sent me a link to this article about how Beijing wants to promote more careful translation practices. She figures that her students will get a kick out of it.

Some examples of the old translations:

Kung Po Chicken = Government Abuse Chicken
Ethnic Minorities Park = Racist Park

Make sure to read the comments since there are some good ones there too.

8 Feet from Perfect

One nice thing about San Antonio is the 15 minute door to door trip from our apartment to the airport.

On the trip we just got back from we managed to get the second best parking space in the long-term lot [#3, see the floor] -- that bastard in the white pickup got the best one [#2]. Handicap spaces don't count [#1]. I don't normally go searching for parking spaces, but I figured that this being the slowest travel week, maybe we'd score. Moreover, the spaces really close to the walkway are on the exit path for the parking lot, not the entrance path -- so people don't get to them unless they're desperate or already on their way home.

The real advantage of that parking space was that it was easy to find our car when we got back.

Final Draft 8? Already?

Crafty Screenwriter, Alex Epstein, recently posted that the makers of Final Draft are now fielding requests for what should go into Final Draft 8.

After downloading the recent 7.1.3 update, uninstalling the old version, installing the new version, then locking up, crashing, and reporting the error to Microsoft, I'm trying to figure out if the snarkier response is:

1. A working version of Final Draft 7.
2. Final Draft 6, again, but with a prettier splash page.

A slightly less-snarky response is that Final Draft 6 actually works quite well, and I'll go back to using it just like I've done every other time I've patched FD7. This has led me to wonder how many other people have purchased Final Draft 7 but are still using an earlier version. So I set up a poll:

Do you own Final Draft 7 but use an earlier version of Final Draft anyway?
	Yes
	No
pollcode.com free polls

Personally, I don't think purchasing FD7 but still using Movie Magic Screenwriter or some other software counts, so I didn't make that an option. This is because we often prefer older versions of one brand to shiny new versions of another, whereas new versions of the same utility software should, in theory, just be better.

Of course, I figure that I don't get much screenwriter traffic nowadays, but maybe the handful of people that drop by will show a trend.

So Much Truth in One Cartoon

--From the deliciously nerdy Piled Higher and Deeper.

The only bit that could use adjustment is that the adjunct faculty should look poorer, more harried, and lonely.