Kevin->Write(thoughts, browser, time)

This was passed around a few blogs that I read several months ago, including the Yeti I believe. I never got around to it because I didn't have my own internet access at the time, and therefore didn't have my own browser history. Basically, what you do is go through the alphabet, typing each letter into your browser and seeing what site it predicts you want to visit. Then, you post it in your blog so a) you can list your favorite links for everyone to share, b) blog space is filled without having to think of actual content, and most importantly, c) you can show everyone how cool your favorite sites are and therefore how cool you are! If you're thinking of doing this on your own blog, note that it works much better if you're using a browser that predicts by recent visit, like Firefox, and not alphabetically, like Internet Explorer. I'm not sure about Safari. Anyway, enjoy!

http://www.achewood.com: Home of a reasonably good web comic. I've linked directly to Ray's Place, a humorous advice column from an Achewood character, several times in the past.
http://www.blogger.com: This is where the magic happens.
http://www.cockeyed.com: One of the best websites in the world. Difficult to describe. You should be visiting about once a week; it should be in the Constitution. In fact, I believe that this may be a sticking point in the Roberts confirmation hearings.
http://www.defectiveyeti.com: Probably my favorite blog, by internet superstar Matt Baldwin. His Booklist 2005 is an inspiration for my own book-recording project chronicled on these pages. I think anyone who likes my blog would like his better.
http://www.espn.com: The worldwide leader. If I was trapped on a desert island with only one url, this would be it.
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/: Pretty, simple web games. These bounce around the internets pretty often; you've probably seen them before.
http://www.gamefaqs.com The best video game cheat website, for walkthroughs and secrets. Since I've been home, I've been cheating my way though a lot of older PC games that my brother has accumulated during the last five years that I haven't been around much.
www.hotmail.com: Look! It's my email account! Moving right along...
http://www.i-am-bored.com/: Web games, funny links and videos. Yawn.
http://www.jokesunlimited.com/: This is basically i-am-bored with more jokes and less games. Yawn.
http://www.kingdomofloathing.com: This is my favorite game. It's sort of a sarcastic, browser based, single player RPG with a massive attached community of item-trading, PvP, chat, clans, and forums. Tons of items, tons of silliness, lots of quests, purposely terrible graphics. A forty turn a day limit so it doesn't consume your life. Highly recommended.
http://www.leenks.com: Take I-Am-Bored, subtract games, add naked chicks. Yawn.
http://www.metafilter.com: Community weblog. The biggest, smartest community on the web. Big news, academia, pop culture, flash games about poop, it's all here at one time or another. Also features AskMetafilter, where one might ask a question about anything and have it answered by the intelligent masses, and of course browse thousands of other questions and answers. You should check MeFi twice a day at least.
http://www.netdragons.com: Flash Games. If you're a little nerdier than me, you might want to check out Vagabond's Quest.
http://www.osu.edu: Look ma! I's a grad student! Almost!
http://www.portalofevil.com: Websites of the Damned. Links to sexual oddities, totally insane people raving about totally insane things, incredibly untalented artists and their web design eyesores. Your #1 resource for people who get off on midget clowns doing each other up the butt.
Unbelievably, I have no entry for q. I have not been to a website that starts with q on this computer. Huh.
http://www.rcade.com/games/play.asp?id=32&catid=4: Free stock car racing game I was playing yesterday. Not much to see here.
http://www.sportsguy.net: My favorite sports columnist, associated with espn. I've linked to him here several times. He's a solid writer, cares a lot about the NBA, often funny. Check three times a week.
http://www.theonion.com: Elder statesman of internet comedy. Probably needs no link. Just went through a massive redesign; all archives now available.
http://www.ussoccer.com: Yesterday Will and I had a wild hair about going to the World Cup next summer in Germany. This is where I started my ticket search. FYI, budget about 2 grand a person for flight, lodging, and ticket to one game. Maybe in 2010 in South Africa...
www.vr-soccer-2006.com/index.html: Really dumb flash soccer game I played a few weeks ago.
www.worldelitesoccer.com/: Soccer management MMOLG. Never tried it...didn't have time
Nooooo x's....no x websites :|
www.yourdailymedia.com/media/1125315968: This is a link to a video where David Blaine rips the head off a chicken. Hey, you get what you pay for.
www.zipa.com/about/tour/?tour=6&ln=37: I'm pretty sure I've never seen this website before; its a web hosting company. Whaa?

Pretty rad, huh? No? Ok.

One more Aristocrats thing. Does anyone else not feel like reading The Onion anymore after seeing what they look like and how they come up with their comedy, or is it just me? The one fat nerd who talked a lot, in particular, just ruined it for me. Everyone deferred to him sort of, and laughed at all his mediocre jokes. I picture him using his status as a shield to deflect reality..."I might not be good at anything else, but I write for The Onion! I'm goddamn funny and I will show you at all times! I'm a valuable person who contributes to society!" For some reason I pictured The Onion staffers as being cooler...I should have known that they probably make chainmail and fight orcs in their spare time. Anyway, no more wearing the Onion shirt for me.

Also, week of Daily Show reruns makes Kevinwrites sad.

Finished 8/24. This is at least, at LEAST, mind you now, the sixth time that I have read this book. It could well be ten. I first read it when I was in the fourth grade. I come back to it from time to time, and it generally holds up pretty well in terms of me enjoying myself. In my mind, nobody does political thrillers like Clancy. I want to be clear that I don't think this book is very good. I read* it because it reads fast and it reminds me of my youth. O halcyon days! Strange but true: I have never seen the movie. Not all the way through, at least. I know that it stars that dreamy Alec Baldwin though, and that he makes a better Jack Ryan than Harrison Ford did in other Clancy, who is too swashbuckly, and then there is He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named**. And Sean Connery, in a fit of poor casting(Ramius should be played by Ben Kingsley). And, they made Jonesy black! Not that this bothers me, but it sticks in my mind because there is a specific passage when the Americans meet the Russians on Red October, in which Clancy tells us that the Russians are amazed at the sight of Lt. Mannion because they do not see black people in Russia. At this point, Jonesy has been with them for almost a day, so he clearly is white in Clancy's mind. I remember catching a piece of the movie on USA network or some such maybe ten years ago, and just being shocked when Jonesy was black.

*When you read my blog aloud, as I know all of you do each night before the orderlies strap you into bed, you may pronounce this word "reed" or "red", and it will still apply.
**Affleck

Finished 8/20. I read this little guy in one late night. It's about the fourth time I've read it. When I'm at home, I tend to pick up books that we have laying around and read them, and if they're quick reads I'll plow through them. Books are an addiction, it's an addiction to the process, to the eyes scanning the page and the fingers turning and the brain churning, and it doesn't matter what the words say. It's almost better if I've read it before...then the book almost reads itself. I'm not really interested in reviewing Sphere here...just need to make a note of it as read for posterity, since those are the terms of my agreement with myself. Sphere is alright. Scroll down for LN's comment on Crichton.

Books Ranked Thus Far*
1. The Time Traveller's Wife, Niffenegger
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Clarke
3. The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn
4. The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq
5. House of Leaves, Danielewski
6. Brideshead Revisted, Waugh
7. Blue Blood, Conlon
8. Gringos, Portis
9. Little Children, Perotta
10. Oracle Night, Auster
11. Into Thin Air, Krakauer
12. Oryx and Crake, Atwood
13. Fermata, Baker
14. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Malkiel
15. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark
16. Pattern Recognition, Gibson
17. Sphere, Crichton (fourth reading...could be five to ten spots higher if this were the first time)
18. The Book on Bush, Alterman and Brooks
19. Savage Love, Savage
20. Design For The Real World, Papanek (technically unfinished)
21. Sports Guy, Pierce

*Rankings to Appear Every Third Book

All up in here. Point of order: The farcical theme for today's book reviews is, "Literatuoooooor" But first, the next installment of an extremely sporadic feature which I will pretend has always been called "Reviews of Movies That I Have Recently Seen"

Reviews of Movies That I Have Recently Seen

The Aristocrats: Disappointing. Not funny enough. Reviews completely ruined the best parts for me already, which I will not do for you here. Completely Insane Carrie Fisher(tm) appearance was appreciated.

Broken Flowers: Disappointing. I was excited for this one. As someone who counts Rushmore and Lost in Translation among his ten favorite flicks, I might reasonably expect another sad sack Bill Murray doofus to bring quiet happy tears(AAA AAA AAA THIS IS BAD WRITING STOP NOT BOTHERING TO EDIT STOP BUT STILL SELF-CONSCIOUS ENOUGH TO WRITE THIS QUALIFICATORY PASSAGE STOP AT LEAST IT'S CREATIVE STOP AT LEAST MARGINALLY CREATIVE ANYWAY STOP MUST STOP STOP STOP QUALIFICATION STOP ARRGH STOP). First all of*, poor editing. Lingering shots of Mr. Murray sitting on his couch. Lingering shots of Mr. Murray driving his car. Lingering shots of Mr. Murray walking between houses, or walking between his car and his house. I think that I saw more establishing, transistional shots between cars and houses in this movie than in GREAT LARGE MASSIVE MODERATELY HUMOROUS HYPERBOLIC COMPARISON. Poor writing? Poor writing indeed. In Rushmore Mr. Murray is a sad sack driven by the desire to get the girl and the desire to beat Max. In LoT sad sack Mr. Murray is driven by the desire to temporarily escape his aging, settling life into the unfamiliarity of another culture, where he can be young again. Ladies and gentleman, in this film, Mr. Murray is a sad sack with no drive. He doesn't care about the journey which consumes the film, his friend Winston makes him do it. He doesn't care about his girlfriend leaving. He doesn't care about his old girlfriends. He gets to sleep with Sharon Stone** and beaten up when he visits Tilda Swinton, and his reaction is exactly the same. At the end of the film, he sort of almost nearly but not quite cares about meeting his son. Annnnnnd curtain! Why must we watch a movie about him? Why should we care? I'd rather watch a movie about Winston, a wannabe private detective. I want my money back.

40 Year Old Virgin: Extremely funny movie that you should see. Different than you might expect.

*I did this by accident and left it because I thought it was pretty, continuing to build my leitmotif: This review shall be as obtuse as possible!
**Sharon's daughter is named Lolita, and she prances around naked. Do you know what is symbolic, deep, thought-provoking, or even funny about that? Abso-fuckin-lutely nothing.

Finished 8/17. On Defective Yeti list. Picked this up along with several others from la bibliotec Bexley shortly after arriving in Columbus(more accurately, you know...Bexley). I really liked this book because it reminded me of my brief encounter with Mexican society during my kayaking trip in Baja in 2001. The main character in Gringos is a gringo (good title, Chuck) who drifts around the Yucatan peninsula illegally, living in hotels, peddling everything from driftwood to Mayan artifacts. He's a man of few words, he doesn't have much luck with the ladies, he's trustworthy, earthly, honest, humble. He knows how to handle himself. In another life, I hope to be him. The plot of this book is kinda dumb, in retrospect, but the characters are good to great, and the setting is totally compelling to me. While you will like House of Leaves more than I did, you will like Gringos less.

Finished 8/16. I grabbed this off the shelf at Alison's parent's place when she was mucking about with their new eMac. Many of you have probably read this; most likely all of you have heard of it. Alison read it for summer reading when we were in high school. I picked something else, but I can't remember what it was or even for which class. She says it was junior year, AP English with Denise Novak, and I tend to believe her. Anyone who might remember what I might have read instead, leave a comment*.

Anyway, books like this I like for the technical information. If there was a book called "Nonfiction Book About What You Have To Do To Climb Big Mountains And Not Die And Maybe A Little Bit Of Big-Mountain-Climbing History" I would totally eat that shit up. If you took that book and mashed it together with another book called "True Story of Life And Death Survival With Lots Of Personal Information And Stories and Particulars About Jon Krakaurer's Life and Particular Tough Experience," you would have a book called, oddly enough, Into Thin Air. I liked it ok.

*Best of luck with that, suckers.

Finished 8/7/05. On defective yeti list, and many thanks to Clint! for seconding the recommendation and for loaning me his copy. And while we're here, temporally, many kudos to him for finding gainful employment. Clint!, may your rent always be paid. Now, House of Leaves is a book that has been talked up as being the bestest book in the land both by Mr. Clint! (Is everyone tired of the ! yet? I rather like it, so all y'alls momses) and by Matt Baldwin. I found it to be...not quite the bestest book in the land, but not far off. In fact, however, I cannot quibble with the execution. That is to say, there isn't anything that I would change about the book to make it better. For example, I thought that the Johnny Truant sections became tiresome. You might love them. You might love him. My mind just...drifted at times. I wasn't compelled.
All this said, it's good and you should all go it read it at some point. I don't want to tell you much about the plot, such as it is. I second Baldwin's contention that the less you know about the book going in the better. This book just isn't the sort of book that gives me warm fancy glow...but it is the sort of thing that might bookgasm a lot of people, I feel. Give it a run.

Books Ranked Thus Far*
1. The Time Traveller's Wife, Niffenegger
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Clarke
3. The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn
4. The Elementary Particles, Houellebecq
5. House of Leaves, Danielewski
6. Brideshead Revisted, Waugh
7. Blue Blood, Conlon
8. Little Children, Perotta
9. Oracle Night, Auster
10. Oryx and Crake, Atwood
11. Fermata, Baker
12. A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Malkiel
13. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Spark
14. Pattern Recognition, Gibson
15. The Book on Bush, Alterman and Brooks
16. Savage Love, Savage
17. Design For The Real World, Papanek (technically unfinished)
18. Sports Guy, Pierce

*Rankings to Appear Every Third Book

Um, probably I should have mentioned this before now, but I'm starting a Phd program in philosophy at Ohio State in about a month. I'll be moving into an apartment 9/1 at 3rd and Neil. Living with the folks until then. Maybe I'll post with my address or something once I remember it. It's definitely a number...probably a short series of numbers? Maybe I should say some more boring things about my life, but instead! To the book reviews!

Read this

My response, emailed to him today:

The only difference between an excuse and an argument is a value judgment: an excuse is a special subset of an argument, containing those arguments that we do not find convincing. An excuse is a bad argument, in short. Therefore, your characterization of arguments against public security cameras as "excuses" requires a special burden of proof on your part: you must show that the arguments presented are so very poor that "excuse" is the only possible label. You fail to provide such an argument in your column.
One "excuse" that you present is that public security cameras represent an intrusion into privacy. Your response is that it is perfectly legal for anyone to watch anyone else in a public area, as long as their is no restraining order, and that "it isn't any more of an infringement if they watch you with a hidden camera than if they do it with their naked eyeballs." Of course, the argument wasn't that it was illegal, but simply that it was an infringement. You seem to agree that it would be an infringement, but that you are willing to make such compromises to ensure security, though you don't actually say this. This is what the thrust of your article should have been: an argument that security concerns trump the infringement into privacy rights represented by the security cameras(and the subway searches).
The closest that you come to making such an argument is, "Sure, it may not do enough, but it will surely do something." This is certainly true, in the loosest, weakest possible sense. What will it do? What effect will it have? How much will it cut terrorist attacks? You admit that "...no one thing will stop terrorism." How close will these privacy infringements come to stopping terrorism?The burden of proof is on you to show us why these infringements on our privacy are necessary. Otherwise, I assert that we should just shut down the New York subway system altogether, and fund the police to follow each and every one of us during all of our public space visits. Your argument, "Sure, it might not do enough, but it will surely do something" serves my premises just as well. When you couple this misguided, misdirected, lack of argument with the assertion that arguments against your position are mere "excuses," it makes me angry that writing of this quality gets printed in major newspapers across the country. How does one get your job, exactly?
Sincerely,
Kevin Connor