A n a r c h i c _ U n i v e r s e ®

Why Have an iPhone? Have an iPod Touch Instead!

My son and I gave Nicolas an iPod Touch for his birthday and for Father's Day. It's exactly what he wished to have. You see, the French strongly dislike to speak on the phone. Their politeness oblige formula goes, as the other person picks up, "Am I bothering you?" That is unknown here, even for people who knock at your door or honk, which is even worse.
So the iPod Touch takes care of his needs. Music on the go and the Net at your fingertips. He is very happy and so am I. Our son just got back from the Apple Store with a brand new iPod. His went kaput a few days before the warranty would have expired.
We are all a happy Apple family. I had my 2003 MacBook replaced. Nic got what he wanted for his birthday and now enjoys it in Ottawa, at a conference. Mini-Me enjoys his new iPod. And his summer school English assignment is made easier that way. Hey, we are family, and this goes to Freaky Deaky and Swanksalot.

Got It! Google's First Laser Day

This was a cinch, really. If I had gone and scrolled my pointer of the touchpad over the word clearly forming Google, I'd see the meaning of it.

This is a link in which you can see Google's tribute to the first laser and more.
Just click here, please. I guess first laser beam asks for Pink Floyd. Right now, on a silver platter.

Did You Check Your iGoogle Page Today?

I've been intrigued about it since the wee hours this morning. If you don't have an iGoogle page yet, it's quite simple to have one and very convenient, too.

• Get yourself a Google gmail.com account.( 'Tis irrelevant, but get one anyway.) Its main advantage is the amount of storage available. When you sign up for your gmail.com account, make sure your home page on your computer is http://google.com.

• If it isn't, just type  http://google.com in case you live in the USA.

• To get to the iGoogle page, click on http://www.google.com/ig

• When you click and get to the iGoogle page, you'll see a strange way of spelling Google. I could have left it at that, but inquiring minds want to know...

• So, I typed a search on Google. It was google may 16 2008 . I putzed around with different searches. Then, I found this:http://google.client.shareholder.com/visitors/event/build2/ mediapresentation.cfm?MediaID=25550&Player=1#

• Was my question answered? I don't know. What I do know is if you ask your Google question logically, you'll get an answer. I'll get back with news from Daddy-o Google later. Click here, please, to hear where the expression Daddy-o came from.
 

Test of Firefox 3.0b5

Texttexttextexttextextextextextextextextextes

typetypetypetypetypetypetypetypetypetypetype

Nikita Khrushchev

The Twitter Bug

Well, my friends, I have been bitten by the Twitter bug. Not in a 24/7 way; there are house chores to administer, the garden, my son and husband, e-mail subscriptions, and that's the way the ball bounces for someone older with lots of responsibilities.

When I started teaching at LAUSD I finally learned to leave procrastination and tardiness behind. My principal was an old skool Japanese, Dr. Morita. She'd stand by the sign-in cards and show her loathing for tardy teachers. Even considering she was very small, her loathing darted from her eyes straight like a dagger into one's heart. So I learned to be punctual.  It was hard to commute from Central Los Angeles, a Salvadoran neighborhood where I lived, near Koreatown, to San Pedro and Adams, a couple of blocks from the L.A. river.

So, in learning how not to procrastinate, I learned to measure my time more efficiently. However, tardiness runs in the family. My father took his time to go out, my mother took double time to arrive anywhere, and my son seems to cultivate the rush of last-minute deals.

How did you like today's links? How about the one about UCLA's finding on cancer and marijuana?  Now, I didn't add the one on the passing of Bob Marley's mother's death. What am I supposed to add? Let's light up in your honor? I don't think so. I shot the sheriff but I didn't shoot no deputy?  You all must know the meaning of the previous sentence -- I got rid of the top guy but there are many others that remain. Um-hum.

What I am learning in Twitter is the art of being concise. Coming from a verbose country like Brazil, it'll take a while. Twitter is kewl; I am getting to "know" more people in the English-speaking community, which is so important for Anarchic_Universe.

Hey, "I Shot the Sheriff"; how about that?

More on Apple, Inc. and Tech Future

I'm writing from my Concord, the brand new super-powerful MacBook Pro, with a seventeen-inch screen, superloaded. The touchpad is soft and so are the keys. My "hillary" was a 2003 seventeen-inch, so this is a real treat.
The store had a different take on this replacement. The dork who spoke to my son made notes of screws missing, blah-bleh-blew. But the fact was my "hillary" was a lemon from the start, and was sent to Apple, accordingly, for repair.

That's the trick, friendos. The factory replaced my hillary with this spanking new MacBook Pro.  Some people have made snide remarks all Apple, Inc. has is good customer service. I would think that is very good, excellent.

However, Apple today has computers that are compatible with a lot of other software, op. systems, while MS-DOS, a dinosaur, is compatible with the seventies ... MS-DOS. I know we run the risk of having a vice-president who doesn't believe in evolution; however, the secret of technology lies in scientific parameters being surpassed. MS-DOS is like a marriage that never adjusts to time. In its proprietary stand it is also like marriage. Microsoft won't open its source to anyone in the market. Had Apple gone with Pentium chips a while ago it would have been king.

I wish the  metiches who talk about Apple could use a Mac for  a week before passing judgment on Apple computers. Macs are sexy, beautiful and so easy to use.

I named my computer a Concord after the British-French venture in aerospace. In France, as in Brazil, a beautiful woman is an airplane. The explanation is either her aerodynamics or the fact she makes you look up. My Concord is low-maintenance, and rocks big time.

So, if you want to be stuck to an OS with proprietary rights and no support, a.k.a Microsoft,  go ahead, make my day. Otherwise, give the little train that could a shot. You'll never regret your decision to go Mac.

On another note, still on planes, we watched the worst ever talk show last night featuring the snootiest A-hole in the universe, and he doesn't work for Google, imagine if he did. The arrogant jerk is the owner of Virgin. He want to send people to Mars, hello?  I can't believe he was serious, but he was indeed a serious case of a pompous arse. A second opinion? He's ug-lee!

Don't ever feel intimidated by these jerk-os. In the end it will be up to us to decide who wins and who loses. And that's all for this morning, folks. It's still cold at five a.m. here in sunny southern California.

Only Apple, Inc.

Hi this is GHR, my mother is sick today so please excuse me for the short post.
On the bad side, my mom's old PowerBook G4 had to go to Apple to get the logic board replaced. Unfortunately, they don't have any logic boards available to replace it for a long time.
To start from the beginning, my dad bought the computer for my mom's birthday about five years ago. It was the first generation of the PowerBook G4 platinum, and she was happy with the seventeen inch screen. As all computers are, this one was unlucky from the start, the computer was defective, the screen was phasing in and out of sync, the colors would change and look kinda like the first generation color screen computers.
    So, we went to the Apple store to get it fixed, they decided to take it in for three weeks and fixed it. And so, for four years the computer was serving my mother well. Ultimately, computers fail and become a lemon compared to a piece of gold, and about two months ago, the laptop was crashing and demanding a forced shut down (kernel panics). I took a look at it and found that there was a bad memory chip, which did solve the problem for two days, and of course, again it went on a frenzy of restarting on its own.
    I took a look at the panic logs, which only a mac expert child could figure out between two highly educated people (one of them being a computer software engineer), and i saw that the causes of the kernel panics was a faulty Airport Extreme Card, the wireless card built into the computer's logic board. And so, I took it the Apple Store and got a genius to take a look at it.
    The genius looked at the computer all around and started to claim that we could be liable for the defectiveness since we took into ourselves in replacing the hard drive three times, which would be something that is very likely to shock a chip and reck havoc to the computer, since there were marks of screwdrivers between the cover and the base and some screws missing. And I asked her, how much would it be to fix the thing. Her response: "Well, if it is found to be our defect in manufacturing, then it will be covered in around the $300 range, however, if it isn't our fault, then we charge you full price for the parts (around $1700 for a new logic board and airport card and the work) and no warranty would be set." So, I took it into my own hands to tell her, "send it to Apple, if they find it is our fault, then have them call us and ship it back, otherwise, we'll pay 300$ and get it fixed."
    Since then, my mother has been using my laptop, a PowerBook G4 15", which was better equiped than her laptop, and it is a year younger than hers. And so, she has been using it until...

At 3:00 pm, today, we receive a call from Apple, the factory and labs for repairs, telling us that they find that it is a manufacturing defect in the logic board, which they need to replace. However, the woman tells us that the logic board is back ordered and cannont replace it, so, since they wanted to keep with the agreement of fixing the laptop or replacing it, they decided to replace the laptop with a brand new MacBook Pro 17". Somebody pinch me, is it really true??? She told us that it was within the agreement and only charge us the repair cost of $350!!!

I told her about the excellent news and my dad didn't hesitate to accept this offer. Only Apple would do something like this, for a five year old computer to have a faulty logic board and cause it to be replaced with a standard similar computer of the same screen size (but much more memory and processing speeds by 2 times) at no extra cost.

Take that PC! Only Apple will do the job.

I Know What You Did Last Night - Apple, Inc.

After blogging all day, and I have to write slowly so I avoid typos, I fell asleep from seven to nine. When I get up, guess what my husband and teen son had been doing? No wonder the journalist in the Los Angeles Times called Apple users "Followers." That's right. That is a link in today's del.icio.us. links below.

While I was sleeping the boys were watching Steve Jobs annual presentation at the annual Apple convention. You'll ask what I did. I watched it, too, and scolded them to go to bed, both. I had no patience, however, to watch Steve Jobs after Number 3, whatever that was. The thin Air computer is awesome, the renting of films will be the last blow on neighborhood cinemas, coupled with Apple TV 2. I pooh-pooh iPods because I don't need them. The rest, iPhone, all power to Apple, seems to have gone beyond my tech sophistication or needs.

The best news was Apple's alliance with Google. Only Google can make Apple computers more palatable to the rest of the world. I was really happy to hear about their small alliance for now in the iPhone.

I went to read on Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. I highly recommend you read these entries on wikipedia.

You may ask if I am part of the flock of the Apple faithful? Yes, I am, but a little tired of Steve's presentations and repeated "Kewl, really kewl. Innit?" He's really thin, I guess on purpose, and looks older than he should. It must be the pressure, self-imposed and imposed on others. I kinda feel sorry for him. There is no use for millions when you are stressed and unhappy even remarried to a much younger wife.

So that was what we were doing last night. Now it's breakfast and newspaper. I tried to get info from CNN last night on Hill, Bill and Obama to no avail. Oh, well, enjoy our del.icio.us links, whose comments are open. I'll be back shortly after my long breakkfast break. I have been working since six-thirty and now must eat. Oh, the comments on our anarchic_universe links are open. Go ahead and make my day. Good line for a cop movie.
See ya!

Tut-tut, Google; thanks Blogs.ie

My contact with http://blogs.ie  was quite pleasant and effective. But the fake profile of a DUCK in Orkut.com, which transmits the links of rogue photologs impersonating me is still up.

Thanks to swift work by Blogs.ie this photolog is down.

For Fotolog.com I had to actually become a member of their outfit, powered by Google. Then it came down. Complaining to Google's Orkut has been a fruitless effort. Get a grip already. The profile is of a DUCK. Pull it down, already, Orkut.com.

Shame on Google, though. They have been harboring this fake profile, a DUCK, which used fotolog.com and then blogs.ie to display rogue photologs impersonating me, using my photos, which have full copyright, writing in extremely base language. Users of Brazilian Portuguese love the ignorance most everybody has of Portuguese. Years of lawlessness have generated a young people without respect.

An example of how low these people can get.

Their last duck supper at blogs.ie was about my age. They already dislike the fact I am an American. Well, it's been pointless to tell these folks about the Civil Rights Act. I am a Catholic in a Protestant country, a woman, and ageism doesn't go down too well with statements such as,

"Tina is so old that Eve was created from Adam's ribs and God was created from hers."

I'm one more non-practicing Catholic, but the weight of this statement was heavy for me.

C'mon, Google. A profile of a DUCK?  The profile is of a DUCK. Pull it down, already, Orkut.com.

Then they wonder why they lost their bid to Facebook.com.

Googel Hypocrisy: Bingo! YouTube

When I say TV is not good for you, I mean it. This afternoon I caught a program on CNN which reported a fact that made my chins drop. Both of them.
YouTube suspended the account of a civil rights activist who used his YouTube videos to complement his blog on torture in our friendly Middle Eastern countries.

Google cannot get rid of the anonymous crowd that plagues my life in orkut.com. Today I filled out a report again on the fake profile, a DUCK, which uses a board on Orkut to publish links to a new blog impersonating me. The old one I terminated after hunting it down for a week.  For a report of abuse it seems you need to submit DNA to Google, Orkut, whichever of the tentacles of Mini-Me, Maxi_me being You-Know-Who.

Last year I fled Blogger after a mob flooded my first Universo Anárquico. Don't take me wrong. I love Google products, except Blogger, thanks but no thanks.

The DUCK (PATO) is still around, today I filed my second report to Orkut.com. The bloggers who people "Blogueiros do Orkut" complain about me, the owner didn't like to receive a note from me for the owner to do something about it. Honey, S**t or get off the Pot, really. Pass the ownership to any other. Nobody would do a better job than you. And Happy Birthday, too.

What's the difference between me and the violation of my rights and this Middle-Eastern blogger kicked out of world visibility by YouTube?

Our friends have oil. That's all. Or That's oil. Crummy joke.  Good night.

No posts, no blogs to read

Tool for bloggng kaput.Ke1s non respons1ve. W1ll get back A.S.A.P. <3  U All.

Son's coca-cola catapulted to computer. To Apple soon.  Take care.

A Quickie

I would like to thank http://www.fotolog.com/ for discontinuing the rogue fotolog cretinismos they hosted. My question is whether they have control over the creation of yet another one with my copyright images or whether I will have to be keeping track of this type of stuff on Google's orkut.com, for example, where the fotolog made its appearance?  Or was it it took several days and mail for Flickr/Yahoo, Google, Orkut and Fotolog to realize I meant what I wrote about this stealth of photos with copyright and impersonation, derisive language, etc.?
Whatever it is, this nightmare is over for the time being.

My other nighmare will take all week. No, it's not called French rocket scientist on vacation from work. Engineers are not that hard to handle.  It's a complicated scenario which will be time-consuming, to say the least.

A friend of mine in Rio says my only visible feminine personality trait is my fondness of the artt of biatching. I miss Seth A. Feminine or teh only visible one, I don't know. I hope I will be able to keep on visiting with you and I have great links from del.icio.us. Check them out.  Will I be the only losangelino(by adoption) happy to see fake Kobe Bryant gone? I guess. Nite-nite, see you soon!

Identity Theft and Impersonation

I feel somewhat discouraged as a blogger to report how poor services on the Net serve us. The problem I have tried to solve contacting all Internet organizations involved is a photolog inside an organization called Fotolog, which accepts complaints from members only, and once you try to solve your problem, well...
They have a board to discuss problems. But that requires separate username and password. In two hours inside Fotolog.com I couldn't solve my problem. Someone made montages with photos I own, hosted in Flickr.com, shown by a fake profile on orkut.com, in Fotolog, powered by Google.com.
PRO Users of Flickr are required to report any breach of Terms of Service or Terms of Use. These are pretty much the same for most services.

So, somebody has been impersonating me and I can't take the photolog of "my interviews" down from Fotolog.com. The energy these Internet menial workers in customer service spend to tell you they can't solve the problem reveals the downgrading of our work force and the fact these Internet giants don't care about laws in their own country. My country.

I don't own this photolog, for you to see for yourselves how Flickr(Yahoo), orkut(Google) and Fotolog, powered by Google, treat their fellow Americans in their own territory.

I hate to admit the Internet is still a lawless country just like the Far west. Unfortunately for us, that will remain just like that until somebody makes these Internet giants obey the law of the land, the USA.

The photolog in question is at http://www.photolog.com/cretinismos/ Today is the fifth day I try to bring it down for copyright infringement, abuse and impersonation of the one and only yours truly Tina Oiticica of the Anarchic_Universe and the Universo Anárquico.

Just check out my copyright collection of Os Mutantes on Flickr and you can see where some of the photos came from. http://www.flickr.com/photos/anarchic_universe/

Be my guests.

In the Sisterhood of .com

Talk was cheap and categorical at a Brazilian blog. Google.com, a.k.a. http://www.google.com/ had changed its Page Ranking to punish blogs that collect too many bloglinks, especially fake reciprocal ones, a practice recognized in the Blogosphere as farming.
There were two problems in the Brazilian reasoning. First, a tool or tools created for the Brazilian blogosphere written by Brazilians linked to this blog, wouldn't recognize my Universo Anárquico while I did use these blog tools for Brazilians only. Their claim was I am not Brazilian. The real discussion lies in what a Page Ranking, Google's creation, is for.  This discussion is irrelevant to you, my reader, unless you want to know how complex a blogger's duties aside from writing are.
Page Ranking is the measure a blogger has to gauge her popularity and see how much she can make out of AdSense, one of Google's ad system, the other one being AdWorks.
Google.com is a corporation whose headquarters lie in Mountain View, California. Corporations, my friends, know no frontiers. Its center in the USA, it would be unconstitutional to discriminate people by national origin. A pearl of chauvinistic  Brazilian  thinking  went, "We don't need  Bolivian workers;  Brazilians  go to the USA to work."  It was indeed very hard to have and keep Brazilian citizenship.  Although the three former Guyanas speak languages different than Portuguese or Spanish, they are ignored in favor of a Continent whose center is in Miami.
In a survey conducted by most always excellent
Marcus Nunes about xenophobia, religion and money, the USA and Saudi Arabia held the distinguished position of theocracies pornographically rich, contrary to African countries, very faithful to their gods and horribly poor. As to xenophobia, Brazil and the USA tied at 72% distaste for foreign labor.  Here is the link to this fascinating study.
The last sentence strikes gold: 'Brazilians don't want Bolivians in the same way Americans don't want immigration.  Is it the case that chili pepper in someone's behind is another's delight?' Free translation of main idea by yours truly, once a lousy translator by trade. Are we still together?
Two countries that are rich and theocratic are the USA and Saudi Arabia. Brazil is xenophobic and so are liberal Canada and the USA. I loved Marcus' findings.  and that is where work beyond writing begins.  Say what, Tina?

Google, facebook, Yahoo

There are days when the sun shines up a monkey's ass.  Yesterday was not one of them.  I will never trust sending stuff over to Facebook, where  I had been, from Orkut.com.
While Yahoo makes your life easier when explaining rules, Google's persevering behavior of inaction facing the same vandals Luiz Barroso was supposed to take care of with his awesome engineering is just staggering.
I love the Mac-compatible Google apps. I dislike vagueness and maybes.  I don't want AdSense; the rap is so bad it's scary.  All I want is a "tell it like it is."

Lots of bloggers spend time divining Google,Inc. Oh, they want three columns. Oh, they want white background and no blogrolls.
I am willing to transfer files from orkut.com to Facebook the day this is safe. orkut isn't safe according to Google Alerts; now, that is democratic.

For now, I'll trust Yahoo can take care of my photos and Image Google did a great job placing them in attu.typepad.com. Let's wait for better days at Google, Inc.

The rest goes, "Piss in one hand and wish in the other; see which fills faster.
I'm off for a few.  Take care!  Deep Purple: What else do you need when your singer is Jesus Christ (Superstar)?

I Was on My Way to Get Coffee...

I was on my way to get coffee,

No Recess! Microsoft's iPhone - in Australia

I received the feed of a bigtime blog in Brazil, Contraditorium.  I traveled to Google.au . That's Google Australia.

The story is tr00.  They published, well... You'll see. Click to enlarge, please.

Anniversary

I'm off, it's the first anniversary of my rental agreement at Typepad.com.

The link for Galizia is working. Dorvizou. I'm going back to bed not without paying visits to the links here.

O'Realy?

I'm so tired, my mind is on the blink.

Later, please don't feel I neglect you readers. I'm tired today.

Check out why we left The Bronx:

Giant and West Side Story. More where they came from.

Nice links today? See you later!

Photo:Zefa Leite-Oiticica, one of the first females to graaduate in law in Brazil and moi. The Brrrrrrronx.

The Brighter Side Isn't Suicide. Dance Tonight!

I  would like to inform you my hours are reduced. I am swelling a lot while waiting for a doctor's report.
A couple of hours ago I read a harrowing true story in the California Section of The Los Angeles Times. The story is by Christine Hanley, Times Staff Writer.
Less than two weeks ago I found a MySpace profile I reported to MySpace, filled with bogus info about us and my child.  It's been deleted.  My own profile receives bogus invites from "friends" who are "spam."

I remember the old days when I belonged to a board on Nirvana@AOL.  Steve Case used to answer our mail.  The board moderators actually moderated, what a concept.  I met a few friends on-line.  One was a woman, Kurtcobaniac; the other a man, HeartShapedBox. Even Courtney Love was on line on AOL.  My female friend was very warm and we were close for a while.

She developed fibromyalgia in 1998-99.  I didn't pay much attention to her complaints, such is human nature.  Then I had it in 1999.
In 2000, she had breast cancer.  Gee, that was really bad. I had it in 2001 and got my nice new breasts in 2002.

My friend was extremely zealous over her daughters use of the Internet.  I thought she was too paranoid.  Now I wish I knew better. Had known better. Our teen is addicted to "free games."  That's nothing, you'd say.  It'd be nothing if our teen did homework.

The story Christine Hanley reports is very sad.  My recollection is that a 14-year-old girl was stalked by a 29-year-old Texan on MySpace. Her parents confiscated her computer.  The relationship continues. He comes to California, she has sex with him, he dumps her.
She was a virgin. A dreamy teen.  She commits suicide.
The parents did what they could do.  I was in a commentary box a few days ago in which the kids, most of them, defended the right to suicide.  I understand the right to abortion and euthanasia.  Suicide is a consequence of an unwell being.  Drugs, depression, even anti-depressants can trigger suicide.

I feel sorry for the family and remember my AOL friend, from the days previous to all the sites available on the Internet.  She was so right.

Nirvana ?- You Know You're Right  Lyrics

However, on a brighter note, today is the birthday of Sir Paul, former Beatle.
He's 65 today. Woah!  I remember when I thought my mother was old at 50!

So, here's to Paul McCartney.  Dance Tonight!  Maybe later?

©Anarchic_Universe, 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Google Page Ranking; More of the Same

I got into this discussion over the long weekend.  It was all Greek to me; not quite: my father spoke Greek. Contrary to French popular belief, the modern Greeks are heterosexual.  Anyway, I found a video in which an Asian-American attempted to explain Google's Page Ranking.  The magic number can make you or break you, in a way. The PR is based on incoming links, your blogroll, for example; the outgoing links, the ones that point at your blog. The further away from your country, the more valuable they are.  Finally, your content, and how often you update it.

A good idea is to build a map with the tools Google provides you.

After all the info is plotted in,  Google can show you how to improve your PR.

Google Webmaster  Mapping  .  This is your official Google PR tool.  And it's free.

I read somewhere Google stopped giving out some sort of ID after the end of 2006.  Bear with my hesitations. They show you where your links can improve.

On Google's take on Search? Beta Version from Google.

Or still, Google Guide Please refer to the source when using it.  Not me, silly! The author of the guide or Google.com.  They are a 10 PR. Not in Public Relations. There, they could all use Charm School.

Time you have been around counts.  So the Old Skool will have a advantage over people who transition from Blogger, a PR = 9 to a private domain, with no Internet trace of previous work in Blogland.

For Alexa I noticed there are other factors, such as eye candy on your page.  But I am not really into multi-tasking. I want to perfect my photo/sharing/blogging; cell-photo/blogging.  A few things like that bring a blogger Technorati.com visibility. There are the WTFs. The photography, the videos... ! Ay !  Ch'suis fatiguée.  How about an early 70s Tropicalia song, from the days we let hairs exposed on the beach, Ipanema, natch.  We were all thin and beautiful.  With you, "Vapor Barato" by Jards Macalé,Wally Salomão; lyrics by Gal, with Gal Costa and Zeca Baleiro.  The words describe a guy dead tired in his Sargeant Pepper's jacket, red pants, wearing many rings. Vapor is the person who brings the marijuana from the hills or "vapor-smoke"; barato has two meanings, "cheap" and "far-out". It's a blue song; a good-bye from Vapor Barato to his "honey-baby." Down the slopes towards an old boat to catch.  1972 was still hippie-hot in Brazil, unless the young person wanted to fight the dictators in guerrillas, kidnapping, bank robberies.  That's for some other time. I must go.

With you, now! Vapor Barato

Utopia v. Dystopia

This is a summarized version of today's post at Universo Anárquico. I know I should have gone to the beach.  How could I go to the beach after seeing this in the LATimes?  I never knew we had an Arlington West in Santa Monica.

Utopia and Dystopia go hand in hand.  A Utopia is a fantasy world in which everything is perfect. A dystopia is a society where things go wrong.  Utopia-dream/dystopia-nightmare.  Generally dystopias are placed in the future.

The most famous ones, for my generation, are:

• Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.  A dystopia in which people are engineered genetically, there is no sex, but lots of soma, a feelgood drug.  Things go wrong when one Alpha whose mother was a runaway, and had sex,  goes ...

• Nineteen-eighty-four, by  George Orwell.  I saw the movie and many years later read the book.  In this dystopia everybody is in a permanent state of paranoia. There is a war nobody knows much about.  Big Brother is watching through the telly at all times.  Winston falls in love, uh-oh.  Doesn't this one sound familiar?

• Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which goes quite well with Truffaut's film.
Ray Bradbury explained how the first seed was planted when he was walking in the San Fernando Valley, in Los Angeles.  The seed was a short story, The Pedestrian. I read it at age thirteen.  It is here:

The Pedestrian


I will write about the paranoid Phillip K. Dick, whose work Hollywood loves.

And then about William Gibson, the Cyberpunk creator, whose Neuromancer is coming up.

I'll be back!

Nicole :Wub: Is Back! And My Privacy Is...

Exactly when I needed some comic relief, and I don't mean Robin Williams, I get this news from the Los Angeles Times: Google bought some click click company for several reasons, none personal as explains to us my dear friend Nicole Wong. Her mouth has been busy with stuff other than words, no silly statements since the big one in Brazil in August 2006.

"Unfortunately, we won't be able to work like this here and we will exclude Brazil from the Google Evil Empire Wonderland." That meant excluding over 33 million Internet users from the benefit of being guinea pigs for Google. Google would not comply with the local laws, nothing new, it was worse in Belgium, where their loss means French Belgium anything must be looked up in Google Fr. Her diplomatic threat lasted less than twelve hours. IDG Now published Mountain View contradicting Nicole, and I published that. August 25, I think. Nobody followed the lead. The next day a São Paulo journalist was angry at me. Sorry, dude.

Nicole Wong certainly keeps herself busy. She is associate general counselor now, a step up from lawyer last year. Congrats. Now just look up the word oxymoron, Nicole. No, it's not in the Chinese yearly calendar, it's not a food, either, or an IQ condition. Of course you are smart. You may just be a little bit linguistically challenged.

When you say Google and Click Click are going to optimize ads for the companies so that people aren't over-exposed to the same ads, oops, people refers to individual choices. So this policy does involve people.

What's the idea? I can't see an ad with García Bernal many times because you determine when enough is enough? Do I have a choice here?

It's nothing personal, but since I never shave is Google going to place ads of wax and creams my way or send me a barber-gram to sing at my door in his birthday suit? Oh, and he looks like Garcia Bernal, too?

My cousins Ana Lúcia, Renato, whose Japanese is fluent and is a tr00 lawyer, and MSN, my architect friend, whose NGO was quite numerous when all of us were young and Renato didn't exist. NGO is slang for all those women who chase follow some men, preferrably those who are taken.

The whole thing is funny but scary. At least it's funny. The Level 2 Room of the INS at IAD was scary in terms of waste of my money and disposition for despots of some. Click please. IAD story below.

I Will Protect You, My Google!

There can be no doubt there is no lost love between Google,Inc. and me ever since the beginning of my blogging career, at that sucky tenement hall called Blogger. There I had two blogs vandalized. In Orkut, another prized Google property, I was the butt of these same punks, who spread porn-photomontages, slurs, threats, all the good stuff. They never did anything about it; actually, they played with the Brazilian lack of knowledge of our laws to do nothing. Sometime last year, a Joe Blow from San Diego called here to listen and called back to say they would do nothing.

They trampled on rights of bloggers. Of Belgium. Sour losers. They are Google. The Google.

A sense of justice compels me to defend Google. Ever since YouTube became Google's everybody wants a bite. Dodo Cicarelli, the boyfriend, You can call me XXX kelp," went ahead to sue and shut down YouTube, if only for a day, in Brazil. Money makes the world go around.

Now, the righteous Empty V and Viacom want 1.64 bill. to let go of the meaty bone of video clips/film that belong to them. I thought EmpTv didn't want videos anymore. I've been paying extra to get VH1 Classics. The way things are going, the Stanford brethen will be holding a cup somewhere around Union Square. And it won't be for Java.

Therefore, comrades, fellow bloggers, the conversation begins. Let's defend the Mini Me Evil Empire. How can we blog without a YouTube video to make up for our lack of creativity, time, dedication, whatever and nevermind?

Google, I stand by your side. Won't you believe me and marry me for the rest of your 64 billions? Oh, only one of you, okay, 32 billion is okay. I won't call it porn wealth. I'm not into either. :Wub:

Tell Us, Cory Kennedy, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Am I a sucker or am I sucker? At Mark Hunter's USA website the latest is the selling of T-shirts and very few photos of Cory Kennedy. Okay... But there is a site in French where Cory's photos migrated to. Not all of them, but some.

The Fashion Goddess is back on the Net, posting photos of parties and name-dropping. Nothing seems to have changed. The talk about a boarding school whose price we picked up, we meaning Santa Monica tax payers seems to be bull. No behavior mod for this kiddo. Nada.

I wish West would do a follow-up on their story and tell it like it is. Shawn Hubler, how about that?

Read: Cory Kennedy

Are You Interested In a...

I just read a Google Alert-Orkut too good to pass. Orkut is the primeval MySpace Google created back in 03-04. Most of its users are from Brazil. Actually most of YouTube users are from Brazil,too. And from Viacom.
Many Orkut users are selling their body organs in order to raise money. That is a great idea! I make nada from this blog, I'm getting closer to the end of my life than I am to its beginning. So there come my ads, in an experimental trial. Should you mail me and show interest, I will make sure I post on Orkut.

• For sale: both my auditory organs. In good condition, slightly clogged. Nothing a doctor can't solve. Slightly deaf. Anybody who listened to rock and roll and taught elementary school brats knows what I mean.

• For sale. One eye. Iris is brown. Myopia and astigmatism. If Sammy Davis Junior survived with one eye, why not me, especially in the days of karaoke?

• For sale. My left hand. No hair grew on it, perfect size for a woman. Nice manicure. Some numbness, nothing an orthopædic doctor cannot heal. Since the numbness is a back problem, who knows the hand will be just perfect?

• For sale . Both knees. These are shot. Arthroses and menisci. One was operated on. Ha! I ain't tellin' which one. I want plastic ones, anyway.

• For sale. Both hips. I have reached an age,35, when I can replace them. Worn from grinding to rock and roll, samba and you-know-what. Advantageous to stiff dancers.

• One kidney. I never drank anything other than water. It's in perfect condition. That'll save me money I spend o Depends©. Will consider trading for a Mercedes S-class with a chauffeur. C-class offers need not apply.

• One anus. In mint condition. Will succeed in any military check. All creases perfect. Not too dilated, not too constricted -- a pity or I would be producing diamonds from carbon up my arse. Constriction can be increased. Exit only, no entry. A great asset if you plan to go Greek.

• One vagina, recently reconstructed, in mint condition. No use for 18 years, too much use at different times. No use at
delivery. As tight as Uncle Scrooge. I have no need for it in the mad house I'm in.

• One lung, one only. I admit I smoked, but I stopped. Recently checked, excellent condition. I did not yell at this club.

Should any of these be of interest, please contact owner of this Anarchic Universe. After my death, I will gladly donat