“Automated surveillance of surveillance of surveillance.”
Simon Greenwold’s I Like to Watch is a computer program that watches television. So CopVision, then, is a version of I Like to Watch that watches, well, Cops.
“It analyzes every frame, searching the field for outlines that remind it of something it has seen before. When it recognizes a contour it tags it with a guess as to what might be going on, gathered from its experience of words and pictures that go together.”
CopVision... it's like watching TV with Johnny 5... 'cept you don't have to worry about Steve Guttenberg coming over and drinking the last of your MGDs.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Everything Isn't Meant to be Okay
From Wikipedia:
"The term 'Mccarthyism' originates from March 29, 1950 political cartoon by Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block. The cartoon depicted four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant (the traditional symbol of the Republican party) to stand on a teetering stack of ten tar buckets, the topmost of which was labeled "McCarthyism". The reluctant elephant was quoted in the caption as saying "You mean I'm supposed to stand on that?".
Supporters of McCarthyism have argued that McCarthy's intentions were good and that, before the worst of his anticommunist campaign, he acted in good faith against what he truly believed was a malicious communist conspiracy within the government. Recently declassified Soviet-era documents have, in fact, confirmed that Soviet spies had infiltrated the U.S. State Department in the 1930s and 1940s. However, as his accusations became more sweeping, and as he attacked more prominent figures within the government and military, his strength faltered.
McCarthyism faltered in 1954 as his hearings were televised live for the first time on the new American Broadcasting Company. ABC needed to fill its afternoon slots, which allowed the public and press to view first-hand McCarthy's interrogation of individuals and controversial tactics. During the trials, he was famously asked "Have you no sense of decency?" The press also started to publish stories about how McCarthyism was ruining the reputations and lives of many people with accusations that often lacked credible evidence."
I don't know what made me think of that....
Friday, June 10, 2005
Pictures for Pleasure
So, someone recently complained to me about those of my blog posts which are "just pictures."
No... let me start again.
This guy comes up to me and says "Dude! What the fuck with the posts that are just pictures?"
I backed away, and replied, "Isn't this a violation of the restraining order, Mr Cassidy?"
Look... here's the deal: When you see a picture all by it's lonesome on this page, odds are there's a link to something really, really cool embedded in its caption. Or a chance to win!
Sometimes, sure, a picture is just a picture... but when it's not "just a picture" you'll notice the "Comments" tag to the right of the pic... okay? Make sense?
The pictures themselves? You can click on those all you like... you'll generally get to see the pictures again... but bigger. If you like your pictures bigger, I suggest you click on them. Always. Especially if you see them tattooed on sleeping bikers in dark alleys behind bars in Guerneville.
Got it? Good! Now quit complaining to me in line at Arby's! And quit calling and hanging-up just as I'm shouting "I'm hanging-up on three, two, o--"! And stop staring at my house! And don't ever move that vase on the mantle again!
Jeeeezelouise... "just pictures...." You think they let just anyone keep one of these blogs?
No... let me start again.
This guy comes up to me and says "Dude! What the fuck with the posts that are just pictures?"
I backed away, and replied, "Isn't this a violation of the restraining order, Mr Cassidy?"
Look... here's the deal: When you see a picture all by it's lonesome on this page, odds are there's a link to something really, really cool embedded in its caption. Or a chance to win!
Sometimes, sure, a picture is just a picture... but when it's not "just a picture" you'll notice the "Comments" tag to the right of the pic... okay? Make sense?
The pictures themselves? You can click on those all you like... you'll generally get to see the pictures again... but bigger. If you like your pictures bigger, I suggest you click on them. Always. Especially if you see them tattooed on sleeping bikers in dark alleys behind bars in Guerneville.
Got it? Good! Now quit complaining to me in line at Arby's! And quit calling and hanging-up just as I'm shouting "I'm hanging-up on three, two, o--"! And stop staring at my house! And don't ever move that vase on the mantle again!
Jeeeezelouise... "just pictures...." You think they let just anyone keep one of these blogs?
Thursday, June 09, 2005
If That Mockingbird Don't Sing....
""I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off." "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.""
I admit, it's been a while since I've read Miss Lee's masterpiece... but, ummmm... ninjas?
I admit, it's been a while since I've read Miss Lee's masterpiece... but, ummmm... ninjas?
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Oh, God... Dancers Have Such Ugly Feet.
Anne Bancroft once said of her legendary role in The Graduate: "I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world.... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."
She was it. Talented and dignified, obviously. Larger than life and down to Earth, absolutely. She won a Tony (opposite Henry Fonda in Two for the Seesaw); she won an Oscar (for her 1962 portrayal of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker). Her other Academy Award nominations included: The Pumpkin Eater (1964); The Graduate (1967); The Turning Point (1977) and Agnes of God (1985). She convinced Mel Brooks that he should make The Producers into a musical.
I first saw her in New York Confidential... by that time the film was 20 years old... I was 10. Nothing about that film sucks (Three words: "Broderick fuckin' Crawford," alright?), but man oh man... she was a goddess. I made it a point to see her in everything she made... yes she was the reason I wanted to see Antz. I just... dug her.
She had it all: beauty, brains, talent, drive, disarming humor... at 10-years old I knew that she was the perfect woman.
Okay... I had a huge crush on her... but then? Then I heard that she was already married... to Mel Brooks.
My mind reeled! Mel Brooks. How was that possible? The fart joke guy?
She said in an '84 interview that the day after she first met the infamous Mel Brooks that she told her psychiatrist the next day: "Let's speed this process up — I've met the right man. See, I'd never had so much pleasure being with another human being. I wanted him to enjoy me too. It was that simple."
Of her, Mel once said: "We're so close we interchange roles; I can become the wonderfully statuesque, feminine Anne Bancroft, she becomes the Yiddish Mel. Well, have you ever seen me in eyelashes and Dior, or her in a yarmulke?"
I tell you, those two taught me that anything's possible.
So... I watched her movies for years; and yeah... in a way, I spent years looking for my "Anne Bancroft..." and I finally found her.
I'm sad tonight; I'm sad for our loss... but Mel? I'm so, so sorry for yours.
God rest you please, Miss Bancroft.
Euphemismly Yours
So, a while ago I mentioned that I didn't really have a grasp on euphemisms. As soon as I posted that, I realized that admission was worse than embarassing... it was pathetic. Thing is, I'd just typed a lot of crap, and I kinda' liked that particular line, so rather than deleting that entire entry, and preserving my dignity, I left it for all to see... and embarked on a journey of personal growth. That, my friends, is a euphemism for "I asked someone to look up "euphemism" online for me, and tell me what it meant."
Eu·phe·mism Pronunciation: 'yü-f&-"mi-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek euphEmismos, from euphEmos auspicious, sounding good, from eu- + phEmE speech, from phanai to speak -- more at BAN: the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant; also : the expression so substituted.
Obviously, learning the definition of any word is only the half the battle. The best way to understand a word is to deconstruct its usage, right? And what's the best way to do that? To examine not just how it's used, but how it's not used. How much more did we learn about Mr Spock's character through the actions of his evil Mirror, Mirror twin? KnowwhatI'msayin'?
How to accomplish that... thinkthinkthink... I know! What happens when a press release stops getting politically correct (Hey! That's a euphemism for "unoffensive!"), and starts getting real? What happens when we strip the euphemisms in the news of the day down to their Superman skivvies? Read on!
Kelly Osbourne Back in Rehab*
Papa, don't preach -- Kelly Osbourne's completely screwed and involuntarily committed.
The 20-year-old spawn of Ozzy was abducted in her sleep by meddling interventionists, thrown in the trunk of a Hyundai, and eventually abandoned in the basement of a collapsing bordello in Tijuana, Mexico, according to Us Weekly.
Calls to a guy I met online who was funny, sweet, 23 and single and not living with his mom... there's no way that could happen to me twice... were not immediately returned late Friday night, but a neighbor who never really liked the Osbornes is quoted in the magazine saying, "I hated that show of hers; the one where she lived in Seattle, and... and... what did she do on that show, anyway? Absolute crap. Sweet Jesus I was happy to hear that was cancelled. Oh, is that thing on?"
A hooker leaving our building this morning tells Us Weekly, "I'm surprised anyone's even noticed she's, you know, not around. Is this even news? You a cop?"
She's a two-time loser. In April 2004, the wannabe-waitress was tricked into voluntarily entering a Pasadena treatment hospital's lobby when a friend told her there were gin-soaked Valiums on the other side of "that door with the painted bars over the window."
This time, she's in another dank, dimly-lit hellhole --the same place her brother Jack logged time in 2003 for his addictions to baby aspirin, Pier 1 incense and Shirley Temples-- which is, coincidentally, one of the dank, dimly-lit hellholes that has catered to that evil bitch who killed her husband and stole his songs.
Of course, the family's barely-vertical "father," Ozzy, is a junky of biblical proportions who needs to be lead around on a leash.
Although the overrated, mildly-entertaining if you were on the nod in a room where you could barely hear the television Osbournes ended its run on MTV in March, Kelly has been desperately scrabbling at ignominy. She had a cameo as an end table last fall on the now defunct ABC drama Life as We Know It. And her incarceration for what even the dullest of observers would have to logically assume will be for the rest of her natural life comes just six days before her new album, Someone, Anyone, Please Love Me, hits bargain bins at the Wherehouse. The disc, to be released by her new label, Sanctuary Records, is a follow-up to 2002's pile of steaming shit Shut Up, which was released by the company owned by that guy who married Mariah Carey.
Shouting at a security guard in the lobby of the Reuter's corporate offices, Osbourne called the pop-punk rock-flavored Shut Up a "marketing ploy" to capitalize on her quickly-dwindling 15 minutes of fame. Her new disc can only be worse, but hopefuly in a different way.
"Dance, electro, '80s music has always been what I heard coming from our maids' headphones -I guess they always wore them so they wouldn't have to interract with us at all- so it's really exciting for me that I get to be really, really bad at something else in public now instead of begging for parts in WB sitcoms and Chris Tucker movies," she told the wire service. "This album made me a lot of money up front; now I can buy a baby harp seal-skin messenger bag hefty enough to carry twice the bottles of hillbilly heroin."
While drunkenly staggering from the set of The View to her rented golf cart in the parking lot behind the studio, Osbourne revealed that she was high pretty much since she was old enough to work the "baby-proof" cabinet doors in her parents' bathroom.
"Yup... I've been on something oh, for... ever, really." Osbourne was quoted by a most-likely fictional, yet strangely-impressive media news outlet.
"They found something like 50-gazillion pills in my room when they burst in with those drug-sniffing dogs, and two SWAT teams."
Learning! It's neat!
*Wanna' see the original, pre-de-euphemismed article? Click here!
Eu·phe·mism Pronunciation: 'yü-f&-"mi-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek euphEmismos, from euphEmos auspicious, sounding good, from eu- + phEmE speech, from phanai to speak -- more at BAN: the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant; also : the expression so substituted.
Obviously, learning the definition of any word is only the half the battle. The best way to understand a word is to deconstruct its usage, right? And what's the best way to do that? To examine not just how it's used, but how it's not used. How much more did we learn about Mr Spock's character through the actions of his evil Mirror, Mirror twin? KnowwhatI'msayin'?
How to accomplish that... thinkthinkthink... I know! What happens when a press release stops getting politically correct (Hey! That's a euphemism for "unoffensive!"), and starts getting real? What happens when we strip the euphemisms in the news of the day down to their Superman skivvies? Read on!
Kelly Osbourne Back in Rehab*
Papa, don't preach -- Kelly Osbourne's completely screwed and involuntarily committed.
The 20-year-old spawn of Ozzy was abducted in her sleep by meddling interventionists, thrown in the trunk of a Hyundai, and eventually abandoned in the basement of a collapsing bordello in Tijuana, Mexico, according to Us Weekly.
Calls to a guy I met online who was funny, sweet, 23 and single and not living with his mom... there's no way that could happen to me twice... were not immediately returned late Friday night, but a neighbor who never really liked the Osbornes is quoted in the magazine saying, "I hated that show of hers; the one where she lived in Seattle, and... and... what did she do on that show, anyway? Absolute crap. Sweet Jesus I was happy to hear that was cancelled. Oh, is that thing on?"
A hooker leaving our building this morning tells Us Weekly, "I'm surprised anyone's even noticed she's, you know, not around. Is this even news? You a cop?"
She's a two-time loser. In April 2004, the wannabe-waitress was tricked into voluntarily entering a Pasadena treatment hospital's lobby when a friend told her there were gin-soaked Valiums on the other side of "that door with the painted bars over the window."
This time, she's in another dank, dimly-lit hellhole --the same place her brother Jack logged time in 2003 for his addictions to baby aspirin, Pier 1 incense and Shirley Temples-- which is, coincidentally, one of the dank, dimly-lit hellholes that has catered to that evil bitch who killed her husband and stole his songs.
Of course, the family's barely-vertical "father," Ozzy, is a junky of biblical proportions who needs to be lead around on a leash.
Although the overrated, mildly-entertaining if you were on the nod in a room where you could barely hear the television Osbournes ended its run on MTV in March, Kelly has been desperately scrabbling at ignominy. She had a cameo as an end table last fall on the now defunct ABC drama Life as We Know It. And her incarceration for what even the dullest of observers would have to logically assume will be for the rest of her natural life comes just six days before her new album, Someone, Anyone, Please Love Me, hits bargain bins at the Wherehouse. The disc, to be released by her new label, Sanctuary Records, is a follow-up to 2002's pile of steaming shit Shut Up, which was released by the company owned by that guy who married Mariah Carey.
Shouting at a security guard in the lobby of the Reuter's corporate offices, Osbourne called the pop-punk rock-flavored Shut Up a "marketing ploy" to capitalize on her quickly-dwindling 15 minutes of fame. Her new disc can only be worse, but hopefuly in a different way.
"Dance, electro, '80s music has always been what I heard coming from our maids' headphones -I guess they always wore them so they wouldn't have to interract with us at all- so it's really exciting for me that I get to be really, really bad at something else in public now instead of begging for parts in WB sitcoms and Chris Tucker movies," she told the wire service. "This album made me a lot of money up front; now I can buy a baby harp seal-skin messenger bag hefty enough to carry twice the bottles of hillbilly heroin."
While drunkenly staggering from the set of The View to her rented golf cart in the parking lot behind the studio, Osbourne revealed that she was high pretty much since she was old enough to work the "baby-proof" cabinet doors in her parents' bathroom.
"Yup... I've been on something oh, for... ever, really." Osbourne was quoted by a most-likely fictional, yet strangely-impressive media news outlet.
"They found something like 50-gazillion pills in my room when they burst in with those drug-sniffing dogs, and two SWAT teams."
Learning! It's neat!
*Wanna' see the original, pre-de-euphemismed article? Click here!
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