9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

Get it? Retort? Re-tort?

From here:

Today, Reps. Rich Boucher (D-Va.) and John Dolittle (R-Calif.) introduced what they call the “Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship” (or FAIR USE) Act they say will make it easier for digital media consumers to use the content they buy.

The lawmakers seek to amend the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which content-makers, such as movie studios and record labels, fought to pass to protect their wares from getting stolen and pirated.

But that law goes too far, the lawmakers say.

“The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public’s right to fair use,” Boucher said in a statement. “Without a change in the law, individuals will be less willing to purchase digital media if their use of the media within the home is severely circumscribed and the manufacturers of equipment and software that enables circumvention for legitimate purposes will be reluctant to introduce the products into the market.”

Wait, wait, wait, what?

DRM is crippling? The DCMA is a royal screw job against the consumer?

And someone in Congress is working against it?

WTmuttaF?

I can hear the collective popping noise as heads come free of asses.

I was in Amarillo for a good chunk last week… and there happens to be big door down there that I just love to look at.

I don’t know what it is, but this massive old vault door is just the stuff of movies. It resides in my company’s Amarillo office (the building used to be a bank), so it is one of the few vaults that I have ever seen that you can walk up and touch everything.

I have always wanted to take a bunch of pictures of this beast, but never had had the chance. But Saturday, no one was around, and I was free to play with the gargantuan 16 ton door. The flickr set has a bunch of comments.

I read somewhere once that maintaining relationships is the hardest thing to do in your life. And as such, unless you are building a business, it should only take 10% of your time or less. It even went to say that if you aren’t trying to network in order to gain something, you shouldn’t really worry about it.

I kind of quell at such a thought. Then I realize that it really is the truth. Unless I am networking for some opportunity, or I work with you, I really don’t talk to people much. I guess I figure that the friendship shouldn’t atrophy too much in the gaps between hi’s and bye’s, but then again, it does have the chance to.

Take for instance my childhood friend, and for the sake of the discussion, we will call him Kegley. Kegley and I were the best of friends growing up, I moved away, and we were able to make it work pretty well. We had a long distance friendship without much effort and we made it point to visit each other’s homesteads pretty often. We hit high school, things were good. We went to college together too. We even lived about a block away from each other for a year or so. But since I met my wife, and about the time I moved away again, it all stopped. I am not going to assign blame to any party in this relationship, but we are probably both to blame. I moved into a marriage, he moved on with the life he was happy with. And the friendship has atrophied to the point that I barely recognized him when I saw him last (about a year ago). It’s a bummer.

And the same thing is happening with my other friend, Dave. Dave is a networker. He is good at it. Admittedly, I have let that be a saving grace in our friendship. And again, we have had a long friendship with ups and downs, but we made it work. But I seemed to have fallen off his radar the last year or so… and the last couple times I have tried talking to him, I kind of got brushed off. I am sure he is busy, but it still kind of sucks.

So the question is… how much is it worth to invest in the relationship? How much time should you invest in the people around you? Personally I find it exhausting, as I am not very good at small talk, and I often slip into a fit of daydreams while people are talking to me. No seriously, its true.

Happens all the time. Let me tell you, people swear I am checked out when it happens. Like I am nodding in the right places, grunting in agreement, but for the most part, nothing behind the eyes.

Seriously though… What is that fine line between patience and abandonment?

I think the answer is a matter of just how much you think a friendship is worth. Now Kegley and I will probably not be able to mend things… I am guessing we are two completely different people now and the sheer awkwardness of the previous relationship would continually erode whatever efforts we made in trying to fix it. Dave on the other hand is probably salvageable, but if I am getting the brush off, that isn’t really something that I can fix.

It’s hard to draw that line when life keeps interrupting you.

Isn’t that the coolest name ever? Minister Faust.

There is so much depth to that name, both in context and in subtlety. It almost sounds like the name of a character of a hero archetype in a Hellblazer comic. A foe perhaps of John Constantine or an elder spirit fighting the wars of demons.

Minister Faust. That is awesome spelled with two words.

Anyways… last year sometime, I read a book by Faust called “The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad”. It was a story of two friends living a simple life of work, friends, family, food and community involvement. Both are certifiable in their own way… both are deep thinkers with not much depth in the world around them. Quickly the story escalates into a whole bunch of mysteries… a strange but beautiful girl hiding a dark presence, an age old secret that a whole bunch of supernatural baddies are looking for, and the two friends, the coyote kings, are right in the middle of all of it. The book definitely is a good read.

Quirky and a nice change of pace from the harder scifi I was reading at the time.

I just started reading his latest effort… From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain. It is pseudo-self-help book for superheroes in a world no longer full of supervillains. All the heroes are thinly veiled references to many pop culture icons of the comic book heroes we all know. It takes some of the snarky “what if comics where real” scenarios we glimpse in Pixar’s The Incredibles, and wraps it all around a psychological case study of a rapidly crumbling “Justice League”.

One thing I think you can count on when you read Minister Faust is the fact that he is not a genre specific author. He leaps from culture reference to culture reference, a roller coaster so to speak of hidden commentary and overall general geekiness. It has made me smirk more than once… poking fun at many of the golden and silver age comics I loved as a kid (and still enjoy on tradebacks).

If you need something to read… I would suggest either or. Coyote Kings is definitely a more linear book, while Dr. Brain tends to be a more satirical look from a shrink’s perspective and tends to bounce around a bit. But both can be nice breaks from the usual fare that is on the shelves at your local bookstore.

with my mind on my money and my money on my mind