Xanga Sucks.

Here’s why: The editor used to work. Now it doesn’t. They don’t have a tech updates ‘blog. Well, they do, but they don’t really use it. You have to subscribe to a seeming revolving-door’s-worth of personal ‘blogs set up by individual developers. Their tech updates ‘blog never allows comments, and always links you to the individual developer’s ‘blog, which announces features or whatever. And there’s always 1000+ comments on that, and they all say: “Yay! That’s really great! You guys rock!” Which means that if you want to say, “Hey, it’s broken. Fix it.” there’s no place to do it. And you can’t be sure who to email with your problem, because there’s no official tech updates blog to email.

I think they’re #3 by total accident. They don’t understand the irony of this.

Via one of the ‘blogs I end up watching a piece taped off the Imus show on MSNBC.

The deal here is that Imus’ daughter (I guess its his daughter) wife, and some others have been campaigning on behalf of a piece of legislation called the ‘Combating Autism Act,’ and now that Santorum has voted for it (it passed unanimously), he wants Imus’ daughter to write a glowing op-ed for him. Which itself is pretty awful, but that’s not why I’m writing this.

‘Combating Autism?’ Why does everything in the American political landscape have to use a military metaphor? The bill spends $860 million over five years on research, screening, and education. That it was spearheaded in part by Diedre Imus, who describes autistic children as ‘damaged,’ means that this education money is desperately needed.

It’s just offensive. I’m autistic. The things that make me *me* come from being autistic. Don’t ‘combat’ me, and don’t declare to the world that I’m broken or that my mother suffers endless torment because of it.

It’s just sickening. In order to pass what looks like a reasonable bill, the Senate finds it necessary to ‘combat’ little children with autism, not to mention the adults with autism who will see *nothing* from this bill, which is focused on research and early detection.

You’d think there were no such things as adults with autism, to read the combatingautism.org web site.

I like Frameshop.

For instance, you can take the quiz: Are you Ned-A-Licious?

I’d seen it before, but Kung Fu Monkey linked to it again, with a comparison to the comedy of Bill Hicks. And comparisons to Bill Hicks should not come lightly… But I think it’s valid in this case.

Ladies and gentlemen, satire of the highest caliber (pun intentional):

No doubt you’ve gotten a spam email with that subject line: US GOVT’S new Colorado State Oil-Discovery!!!

It’s oil *shale,* which is basically oil-soaked rocks. There’s currently no technology available to take the oil out of the rocks in an economically-feasable, environmentally-sound fashion. You have to *mine* it, rather than drill for it.

We might one day reach a point when that kind of economic reasoning turns on its head, and we’ll be desperate to pull it out of the ground and turn it into petro. But I doubt it. I think that oil shale will stay in the ground for a really, really long time. Basically forever.

And why do I think that? Because the direction our energy economy will turn won’t be that one.

But there’s a compelling image that goes along with this piece of spam. It’s the image of a junkie who just found out there’s some guy selling contaminated heroin at a slight discount. You want in on it? You melt it over a flame anyway, so what disease could you possibly catch? What could really go wrong? The junkie buys it, rigs up, and then searches for a place that isn’t already scarred…

And that’s literally what we’d be doing if we developed this oil shale. You know what’s on top of it? National Parks and forests and important wildlife preserves. It’s a stretch of already-scarred land from western Colorado up into southwestern Wyoming. It’s been logged, mined, cleared, fenced… Rivers dammed up, areas set aside for migratory birds and pronghorns… It’s really an amazing place, with scars from use and misuse and disuse.

And now some hucksters want to rip you off because you don’t know the difference between oil shale and oil.

The Editors make a great point.

You start the sausage by putting it in a cast-iron skillet, with a little bit of oil and just enough water to cover the whole bottom of the pan. Put it on medium high heat until it starts to firm up. Puncture it with a fork so the grease leaks out. Let it start to brown in its own grease over medium low heat.

Fill up a pan with the right amount of water and put it on the stove just after puncturing the sausage. When it boils, we’ll put the ramen in, but in the meantime, chop up some veggies. Broccoli and carrots and snow peas… Whatever.

Open a beer. Sip some while waiting for the water to boil. When it boils, put in the ramen, reduce heat so it doesn’t boil over.

Fetch the sausage. (I like saying ‘fetch the sausage!’) Put it on a plastic cutting board. Wood is bad. You know why. Cut the sausage into slices however you prefer. I like thick coin-like slices. You may find something else more aesthetically pleasing. Don’t worry if the sausage is a little under-done in the middle. It’s actually better that it’s under-done, because…

Sip some more beer while you wait for the ramen to be almost done. You don’t want it to be completely done. When you’ve reached that point, pour off the excess water (or don’t). Add the sausage and veggies.

Pour some beer into the sausage grease. Stir it up and reduce. Pour into the soup. Bring the soup back to a boil, and leave it for the length of time it takes to clean the cutting board and knife. Put the soup in a bowl and then do the rest of the cleanup. It will be the right temperature when you’re done.

Serve with slices of wheat bread, honey, and remaining beer.

David Sylvian’s finally circling back to ‘Gone To Earth’ territory, bringing back sounds he collected along the way. This a very accessible project, and should bring a whole new set of fans into the club.

I was initially disappointed; I like Sylvian’s weird side, with ‘Flux and Mutability’ as a high point. But it’s nice to be able to groove along with a band under Sylvian’s thick, rich lyrics. There’s the occasional complicated orchestration, and a couple of excursions into avante-garde-world, but mostly it’s Steve Jansen quirky grooves. Call it the upbeat sequel to the Rain Tree Crow project.

Thumbs way up.

You’ve heard about the terrorist plot to blow up some planes in midair. But did you know that the White House knew about it days before it made the news? They politicized the event, leading up to it with rhetoric designed to play on the news they knew would break. Digby lays it down.

Don’t make me learn to read HTML for line breaks, OK? Sometimes people re-edit their posts, and they don’t have the WYSIWYG editor. Like, say, me.

Yes, I use a Mac, and yes, I use Safari. It worked before, now it doesn’t work. Why does every technology change on Xanga have to happen this way?