a little fishfood for your funnybone

this is brilliant! the cheesy metal band HammerFall did this vid with the women's swedish curling team, in hopes of inspiring them to win gold in torino. Keep watching - it just gets better and better (or at least funnier and funnier).

WTF?!?!?! Fish

and how about selling a halfdozen US ports to the UAE? must've sounded like a good idea to someone....

one little fish rant

ok so i'm a bit pissed off and don't know what to do about it. it seems like such a little thing - especially given the state of freedom in the world and in our country - but it's irritating the hell out of me, so i thought i'd share...

i never run updates from Adobe, for a number of reasons, and stay as far away from .pdf's in my personal life as possible (because i believe they are spawns of the devil) - so of course, when i wasn't thinking and ran the update, it crashed the program right out from under me and, Murphy be praise, right when i needed it.

being the good little tech that i am, i uninstalled the program, went to adobe.com, followed the links to get to the installation of the free Adobe Reader and BAM!

they, oh so casually, invaded my privacy...

after clicking on the link to get to the installation files ("for MACs and Windows), the window came up with the "installation for your current OS" and there was the installation file for XP and no other link.

as far as i am concerned, once i buy a computer, it is my property and once i buy software, it too becomes my property. scanning my machine to find out what OS i am using (even for the simple marketing reason of making sure that i, as the customer, receive compatible software) without my permission is like someone walking into my house without my permission just to take a look at what i own - all they had to do was ask.

in the wake of Microsoft's announcement that running updates from their site scans your machine to find "legitimate" software and all of the issues with spyware, adware and pop-ups, you'd think companies would be more careful and that people would raise bigger stinks about these invasions. but there is a fine line between planning marketing strategies to outwit stupid people from sabotaging their own systems and trying to catch pirates. so fine, that most people hardly even bother to care.

in other circumstances, i would boycott Adobe products - however, pdf's happen (sad but true) and no one else has software to deal with them - and as far as image manipulation software, Adobe PhotoShop and Imaging are among the best. as for taking them to court, i'd not only lose because the scan really was innocuous, but i'm poor. sometimes i wish i knew hunter s. thompson - he'd be able to do something about this - but he shot himself - so i'm stuck ranting to you, my dear little fishies and maybe i'll write a letter (for what little good that may do).


ok - i'm done now. thanks for reading.

to recover, click on the link below and enjoy the shirts and sexy nerds:
http://www.nerdyshirts.com/

a bowl of serial - no milk

warning - may contain nuts.

so finally, after about four partial starts, a month and a few headaches, i finished the second part of "Miles and Miles".

(yes, I know monkey 0 - i should have taken your advice, but you don't have to gloat about it and i promise i will stop ignoring the tags)

if this was not the one you voted on - too bad. and if you have no idea what i'm talking about, get with the program, man and check it out!

Enjoy!

happy f***ing VD

why do i hate this wonderful day of love and kisses?

is it because i don't have a romantic bone in my body? no.

is it because i'm all alone on this day set aside to celebrate that we cling to each other to get through life? no.

is it because i've never had anyone do something nice for me on this day for people to do something nice for someone special? no.

it is because i don't feel special? no.

i have long been in a battle against valentine's day but i can't fault other people for their desire to participate in this highly successful consumeristic attempt to make a good deal of people very depressed and make the rest of us spend our money on something - anything - or else... as a co-worker put it, "i'm not into this whole romantic thing, i just like the candy."

here's my advice: if you feel obligated to do something nice for your sweetheart, you should do it the day or a week before or even the day after valentine's day (though if your sweetheart buys into this shit, this may not be such a good idea - you wouldn't want to give the indication that you forgot or waited for after-holiday sales, would you?). a dozen roses given on any other day would mean a little more than anything given on this day. and fuck roses - find out her favorite flower and give her a bunch of those. oh yeah, and fuck hallmark.

granted, my war is ultimately fruitless and like last year, sometimes my protests fall flat on their face - but at least i try. and it's not like i'll disdain from appreciating gifts on this day, but i just would rather receive them on any other day - is that so bad?

i'm sure hamlet appreciates that i expect nothing from him, will not be disappointed if we do nothing and would rather eat fast food than fancy feast today. and i am not alone.

thanks to carl v. for leading my fish to the anti-valentine's cards shown with this post.

however, in my quest to despoil this "holiday", to come up with something unromantic and anti-vd to do, i have realized that perhaps ignoring the day altogether would be, if less fun, than at least more effective.

perhaps i hate valentine's day because i am a hopeful romantic: i want to believe that romance is more than obligation; that people, on the whole, do nice things for their sweethearts because they want to; and that they don't need a reminder. i want to believe things i know to be false. so? i'm still not a hopeless romantic.

perhaps i hate valentine's day because i don't want to be reminded that we take each other for granted. i never said that i wasn't idealistic.

the hopeless romantic.
i have never understood this description. helpless - maybe. hapless - definitely. but hopeless? it's impossible to remain a romantic for long without hope.

so whatever you decide to do - try not to let a little thing like VD get you down and remember:

technofishisms

(a sort of response to my last post)

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three. ~Alice Kahn

Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ~C.P. Snow, New York Times, 15 March 1971

I like my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is perfect, but Lord, I miss my mind! ~Author Unknown

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people. ~Karl Marx

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment. ~Warren G. Bennis

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. ~John Stuart Mill

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. ~Alfred North Whitehead

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. ~Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988

The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology. ~E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours. ~John F. Kennedy

The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday. ~Dennis Gabor, Innovations: Scientific, Technological and Social, 1970

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. ~Albert Einstein

and for a look into just how right Einstein was, check out this link - especially funny for anyone who has done any type of tech support - but anne is right, there are idiots on both ends of the phone...

my fish chats online with tech support

You are now chatting with 'Tech Support'

Tech Support: Good Day
you: hi
Tech Support: how can we help you?
you: I just got a brand new USB 2.0 datastick Pro
Tech Support: ok
you: i put some files on it last night
you: after some doing, since it crashed my computer first
you: and when i plug it into this computer found hardware says it's fine
you: and installed and ready to use, but when i try to access it - it offers to format the drive
you: I have windows XP pro - should i try to down load the drivers
you: from your support site?
Tech Support: you don't need driver with XP
you: so it says but then why is it trying to format the USB stick?
Tech Support: can you call our tech support Dept at 1-800-9 C****N they can trouble shoot it for you
you: what? aren't you tech support?
(long pause)

(a little later i got a response from them and we chatted amicably enough, getting past the mutual 'you're an idiot' attitude - my theory is that at this point in the conversation, the 'tech support' person went and got someone else)

my fish agrees with the scientists

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Mysfit!

1. A lump of mysfit the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court!
2. It's bad luck to whistle near mysfit.
3. American Airlines saved forty thousand dollars a year by eliminating mysfit from each salad served in first class!
4. Scientists believe that mysfit began billions of years ago as an enormous ball of dust and gas.
5. In Japan it is considered rude to talk with mysfit in your mouth.
6. It takes 8 minutes for light to travel from the Sun's surface to mysfit!
7. Mysfit cannot burp - there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in her stomach!
8. Mysfit was first grown in America by the grandmother Maria Ann Smith, from whom her name comes.
9. Some people in Malaysia bathe their babies in beer to protect them from mysfit.
10. Mysfit kept at the window will keep vampires at bay!

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

if the fish don't know, the groundhog will?

so it's official:
Phil Says Six More Weeks of Winter!
Phil's official forecast as read 2/2/06 at sunrise at Gobbler's Knob

here's a bunch of silly looking men:

for some reason they remind me of The Napoleon of Notting Hill

(oh and about jenn see seeing her shadow - when a marmalade fetcher sees her shadow in february, and depending on the amount of spunk inherent in the fetcher - this one is near to bursting - it means that there will be intermittent rains of fish sandwiches as well as six more weeks of 'blue mountain spotting' - they float through the clouds, you know)

i've been advised that my fish misses me...

in case you were wondering this comes out on dvd on february 14

ah february - a month of ups and downs.

no doubt some of my friends from college will be journeying tomorrow to a small town in Pennsylvania to see an overgrown rat who has gotten too big for his britches, if you ask me. lives hang in the balance as these 'grown-ups' bet their life-savings and at least two hats on whether Punxsutawney Phil (the groundhog) will see his shadow. as i understand it, if he doesn't then it means we will have six more weeks of winter, right? w-e-ll - HAPPY GROUNDHOG'S DAY! to all my little fishies. (just between you and me - this is, by far, one of my favorite holidays - shhhhh...)

more implies that it's been winter right? i don't know where you are, but it has snowed twice here. TWICE! ok ok, so the mountains (you know, the rocky ones) have been slammed with snow and this has been one of the best ski seasons in decades, but we poor folks who huddle at the base of these behemoths of dirt and stone are still waiting for the winter wonderland we were promised as children. (by the way, i went skiing on monday and fell off a cliff. ok, so slid down a cliff is more accurate, but the nice fluffy powder caught me, so i'm only a little bruised, thanks for asking)

nope, i didn't have a white christmas at all - granted my delightful family and i celebrated christmas last weekend in L.A. but you get my drift.

oh yeah, this means that christmas
is
finally
over!!! yay!

i got an Epson stylus Photo r220 printer (which even survived the plane ride home), a USB memory stick and an espresso machine! so, as you may have guessed i am in the market for a new digital camera that takes good pictures of espresso beans and steams (soy) milk. suggestions welcome, but not necessarily adhered to.

the best was i gave my one of my bros a mask:

but didn't feel like taking it with us. so Hamlet and I snuck into his house (using the conveniently hidden key on my keychain) and took pictures of it all over the house to make a card for him. we then left the mask casually leaning in a corner of his guest bedroom, uncovered and totally unhidden. i figured he never went in there, but when we went to hang out with him before heading for the flight, he went in the room at least four times but never noticed the three-foot-tall mask. So, my plan, which was doomed to fail, succeeded beautifully.

The End.

i know you people have been waiting, sitting on the edges of seats in places i can hardly imagine, for more chaos journals - for the stories i promised a mere week or so ago. i know i know, but don't get your undies in a bunch - they will out and all; chaos has it's roots in the fish, and it's my fish, so don't despair.

as for the downs of this month, don't look now but black death day (a.k.a. valentine's day) is creeping up on us. last year i ate mickey d's and watched a horror movie and now, i'm trying to figure out what to set fire to for this year. again, suggestions are welcome, but most likely will be ignored.

all opinions expressed in this, well frankly, rant are the opinions of the voices in my head and have little or nothing to do with reality - except the printer and the caffeine-machine, those are very real - oh and the dates: though time is merely a figment of a masochistic mind, they too exist - because, believe what you must, but i can't argue against the existence of minds: minds take up a lot of space in the cosmos, so much so in fact that many galactic clusters have outlawed them entirely.

so until my fish swings me back this way: Peace!

-mysfit signing off

artist fish

Who Should Paint You: M.C. Escher

Open and raw, you would let your true self show for your portrait. And even if your painting turned out a bit dark, it would be honest.

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?