Thomas Mahoney

Mozilla has released a beta of Ubiquity. What is Ubiquity? According to the company, it is an “experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.” Mozilla can explain what it does, but in my words, it does rad shit. Forget about new browser windows, tabs, and living (or dying) by the Google Toolbar. Woo.

Sarah Palin? Are you kidding me?

Game over. Congrats to your new president, Barack Obama.

From the Slavoj Zizek Department of Pop Culture-influenced Psychiatry:

I stumbled across Gladiator on DirecTV the other day and decided to watch the last remaining half. This is a movie I’ve seen several times, and I believe it’s ranked very high on those “movies that guys like” lists. I’m mostly ambivalent about it, since it’s basically Braveheart in a different era.

A particular line of dialogue struck me this time though. After one of the big fight scenes, Maximus meets Commodus in the center of the coliseum and towards the end of a brief conversation says, “the time for honoring yourself will soon be at an end, Highness.”

Everyone has a Commodus in their life, sometimes several — these vague acquaintances who will stop at nothing to bring you down for no reason other than it makes them feel better. Maybe they’ll kill your family, or beat you down, or force you into slavery, or steal your money, but these people only exist in one plane of consciousness, and that’s the physical plane, where everything is debased; pleasures are simple, intelligence is ignored, and the idea of what is right conflicts with what is wrong.

My advice? Don’t sweat it. When they expect your frustration or anger or sadness, give them a slight smile and a “who are you again?” kind of look. These people can only honor themselves if you allow them to. It took me a long time to adapt this strategy, and I’m still not perfect at it, but I’m getting better. These kinds of enemies are ghosts, and ghosts are only as real as you allow them to be. Do you want to be haunted?

Nothing is physical. We live inside our minds. And if you refuse to let negative forces control your mind, then you will make it, you will survive, you will not be trapped, you will live.

Forever.

It’s Labor Day. Let’s try and enjoy it.

This is Sparky. He is also known as Skimps. Or Matt. Sparky is technically his cat’s name. Sparky is also known as Brains on Fire.

Sparky got mad at me a few weeks ago because he is very sensitive and I’m not sensitive, and I think he thought Sparky the cat was really sick, so he took it out on me. In the end, all he had to do was shove a pill up Sparky the cat’s butt. We still haven’t figured out why the vet made him do it, but we are on the vet’s side either way.

Sparky likes to screenprint t-shirts with images of his cat on them. Sometimes he likes to screenprint shirts that are simultaneously vaguely Satanic and post-ironic semi-anti-consumerist. Or something. Sparky, like everyone else I consider a friend, is out of his mind.

Sparky is currently stuck in Las Vegas post-Magic with Ian and Santos. They are apparently at Hew’s house. Sparky promises me he will not be following Roscoe (a.k.a. Rama) up to San Francisco and will instead spend Labor Day at the Silverlake Lodge playing golf, drinking vodka, and walking to the Cha Cha Lounge.

Little does Sparky know that for the past 6 months while he has been texting me threats and calling me very late at night to tell me he is going to murder me that I’ve been training for this day. I’ve been patiently awaiting the chance to powerbomb him through a ping pong table. Other than Steve Ford, I can’t think of an individual on earth I’d rather see.

Hey, Sparky! This is Los Angeles, not Brooklyn. COME AND GET SOME!

Tonight, Casper told me Shin posted some swimming video on his blog. Knowing that Shin is in Brooklyn somewhere depressed that he can’t see Michael Phelps parade around in nut-huggers is amusing enough, especially considering he has probably already blown through several liters of weed. Anyway, I tracked down the video. I dedicate it to Shin’s pre-school blunts and my mother, who assumes that even dry drugs come in Coke-bottle-sized amounts:

You may have already seen Gawker’s post about Bloomberg’s newswire erroneously posting an obit for Apple’s Steve Jobs. What might have got lost in the shuffle is a direct quote from Jobs about life:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.” 

Steve Jobs. Buddhist. Vegetarian. Billionaire. Philosopher?

Speaking of vegetarians, I had this friend whose stepdad was, er, “fascinated” by the fact that several of his stepson’s friends were vegan. One night at the dinner table he asked one of them a question.

“So, you don’t eat meat, eh? Well, do you eat pussy?”

I don’t know what my point was, but either way, I rest my case.

I realized tonight that another valid reason to vote for Obama is for the chance that after winning the election, he goes off behind a closed door somewhere and cranks James Brown’s classic “Funky President (People It’s Bad).” That scenario is much more entertaining than McCain listening to Sinatra and having a flashback.