Thomas Mahoney

Free Software Foundation founder and Rick Rubin look-alike Richard Stallman recently ripped apart the idea of cloud computing, with concerns over privacy and potential costs. While I see cloud computing as inevitable, especially with the support of most of your major tech/web companies, Stallman raises important issues, hinting at the day when Google drops the “don’t be evil” phrase from its mission statement.

However, from a metaphorical standpoint, the idea of my data living in “the clouds” is still attractive, especially if it means I don’t have to own or maintain an expensive tower to do so.

Also, while Stallman pulls no punches, he could learn a little from Al Davis about how to appropriately wreak a hurricane-like path of destruction through the use of language.

One final note while I’m pretending to be intelligent: check out these problems. If you can solve one, you’ll get not only a lot of money, but a nice blurb in future textbooks histories of the world.

No theme. No reason. No context needed.

SIDE A
Suicide “Ghost Rider”
Swans “Right Wrong”
Einsturzende Neubauten “Die Interimsliebenden”
My Bloody Valentine “Sueisfine”
Lungfish “Fearfully and Wonderfully”
Ulan Bator “Hemisphere”

SIDE B
David Bowie “V-2 Schneider”
Wire “French Film Blurred”
Beach House “Gila”
Unwound “For Your Entertainment”
Popol Vuh “Ah!”
John Fahey “Hard Time Empty Bottle Blues II”

All of these songs are available via your international major-label supported download store, various illegal torrent sites, or directly from me via an interwebbed .zip file — choose your own adventure.

[photo of Daniel Higg's hands (Lungfish) by unknown]

This is today.

This is yesterday.

Stay tuned for notes on tomorrow.

Your Monday morning could always be worse.

Earlier in the year, I began to post about my fantasy baseball team, the Silverlake Monsters. My original lineup was pretty sick, and after some blockbuster trades and other roster adjustments, I took over the lead in week 2 of the season and never looked back.

Tonight, I defeated Casey’s team, the Burbank Bachelors, in an epic two-week duel that ended in the championship for my team by the close score of 13-12.

First, I’d like to thank the dudes I played with: Casey, Casper, Camerin, Gavin, Jamis, Shea, Kelly, Kyle, and Carmelo. I’d also like to say something else to them: YOU GOT HOUSED. At the beginning of the season, I stated I demanded satisfaction, just like Barry Lyndon, and I got. I invited you to come and get some, and you got it. Wooooooo!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank the players who ended up on the final roster for the Monsters: Joe Mauer, Ryan Howard, Brian Roberts, Miguel Cabrera, Cristian Guzman, Grady Sizemore, Jacoby Ellsbury, Lance Berkman, Kevin Youkilis, Brad Hawpe, Mike Aviles, Kosuke Fukudome, Randy Winn, Adam Wainwright, CC “MOTHERFUCKIN’” Sabathia, Salomon Torres, Zack Greinke, Carlos Zambrano, Josh Beckett, James Shields, and Francisco Liriano. I must also give a shout out to one time Monster Jerry Hairston, Jr., who for much of the summer served as my “two middle fingers high to the sky.”

Ian is screenprinting Silverlake Monsters 2008 Champs t-shirts all night long, so send me your size if you want one. I’ll also be self-publishing a collection of all my message board posts from the season, and my unique insights into how to fuck shit up in fantasy. Look for it on Amazon in time for Christmas.

Gavin, where is my $200? Woooooooooo. Get fucked! Mahoney’s Monsters pwn you! Pwned! Blargh…

The proof.

Taken from the Wikipedia entry on American novelist Don DeLillo:

George Will proclaimed the study of Lee Harvey Oswald in Libra as “sandbox existentialism” and “an act of literary vandalism and bad citizenship.” DeLillo responded “I don’t take it seriously, but being called a ‘bad citizen’ is a compliment to a novelist, at least to my mind. That’s exactly what we ought to do. We ought to be bad citizens. We ought to, in the sense that we’re writing against what power represents, and often what government represents, and what the corporation dictates, and what consumer consciousness has come to mean. In that sense, if we’re bad citizens, we’re doing our job.”

Three of my favorite songs about Los Angeles.

The Fall - L.A.

Frank Black - Los Angeles

X - Los Angeles