Daily Archives: February 12, 2011

29 posts

Valentines Kisses

53 comments

Ok, so I’m a happily married Gay who gets kissed more than his fair share, sometimes as gratitude for a taystay dinner and sometimes – the best times – just because.  Let’s review some smooching stuff before Monday, ok?

Kisses derive from something immensely gross – an adult mammal passing chewed-up food to a youngun.  But we love to kiss – at least, those of us with passion do, and it is a language all its own.

The Blown Kiss: “Daddy, I’m on a roller coaster!” or “You vicious ex-wife.” Either way, it has little meaning.

The Euro / Hollywood / WASP Air Kiss: This one says “I publicly ally myself with you, and I respect your makeup artist.”

The Kitty / Doggie / Toddler Kiss:  You have always been nice to me, and as a fine judge of character, I pronounce you to be desirable company.  The intent is pure and sincere.

The Neck Rub With Scruff: Obviously for men only.  Dude, take your unshaven (but clean!) chin and run it down the side of the neck of your beloved, very lightly, while adding kisses along the way.  He or she will go absolutely insane.

The Face Caress: For either gender, but women are better at it.  Softly run your hand along your beloved’s jawline, then kiss him or her.  This makes them “yours”,

The Big Bro Kiss: “I am secure in my masculinity and honesty to the point where I can publicly take you in my arms and declare that you are my family.  I do not care if you are my buddy or my best friend’s wife, you are someone who I would take a bullet for and I don’t care who knows it. ” (Often tear-inducing.)

The Big Sis Kiss:  “Were you having a crisis? You aren’t now.  I’m here and you can let it all out.  And, since I’m a Strong Woman, I will fix it.  Oh, and about Mom?  Yes, she is a bitch, and no, it isn’t you.”

The Man Sex Kiss:  “You’re the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen and I must have you right this minute and please do me the honor of letting me take you, over and over again, because you’re so damn hot and all I can think about is you and your body and where to touch next.”

The (Straight) Woman Sex Kiss: “If you don’t take this to the next level I will scream and I may scream anyway because you smell like a man who I want to make a baby with even though I can’t do that now and your eyes make me feel like the most desirable thing on the planet and I want and need and need and want.”

The I Love You Kiss: There are no words, but there is a process.  It’s a kiss, followed by eye contact, then another kiss.

Staten Island, in 30 Seconds

21 comments

To quote the inimitable Dan Hopper over at the Best Week Ever blog (where I first saw this gem), “Even if you brace yourself for the locallest commercial that ever localled, you’re still not expecting this ad for Staten Island’s Empire State Gold Buyers. You’re not prepared for Randomly Singing Mom. You’re just not.”

I’m not being facetious when I say that I need to see more of this woman on my television, right now.

Tell Me

205 comments

We all know the real strength of Crasstalk is, well, us! And lately there’s been some back and forth about a place to request posts from other people, but I haven’t seen anything official made yet. So take a second and tell us what you’re good at. Tell us what you want more of. Tell us your ideas for future posts. And I’ll update this post with categories.

Coffee & Cigs

Art & Design

Photoshopping

High fashion both current and vintage

Tell Me

The Latest In Nonsensical “Anti-Piracy” Arguments

34 comments

So this article is from a South African publication, but its statistics were compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the attitudes expressed in it are indicative of those opposed to piracy. It also exemplifies the contradictory arguments made by those who champion big labels’ rights to continue overcharging for obsolete media formats.

The piece shows its hand in the first line: “Digital piracy is inhibiting the growth in the legitimate digital market in SA.” You’d expect that the article would attempt to prove this thesis with corroborative facts and figures, right?

PWC also points out that, while the digital market is still very young, growth is expected to continue over the same forecast period.

“Digital has been increasing and spending will more than triple from R130 million in 2009 to R425 million in 2014, with an average compound annual growth of 26.7%,” PWC says.

Ah yes, piracy is killing the “legitimate” digital music market so much that the market is expected to “more than triple” over the next five years. The article then goes on to mention that sales of physical CDs will continue to decline, and it doesn’t event attempt to pin this on piracy. In fact, it ends with a quote from an industry executive who admits that “prices for digital formats are significantly lower than that for physical formats and this will result in a shift in the consumption between the two.”

Meanwhile, CrunchGear reports that the Hot New Rumor is that “music piracy has all but disappeared.” It’s true that music is no longer the most pirated file type–that distinction goes to movies and porn–but then the author ends his post with a bit of editorializing:

Not that this means anything, but I genuinely don’t know anybody who still downloads anything from public BitTorrent trackers. You’d be a fool to do so in 2011. That’s not to say that private BitTorrent sites aren’t still popular—they are, and they’re generally of a very high quality—but the days of the public BitTorrent tracker being the “go-to” place to grab your “stuff” surely has fallen out of favor within my sphere of influence.

And this seems to be the source of recent confidence in music piracy’s demise. But, um, I only use BitTorrent trackers for live audio rips, out-of-print releases, and hi-fidelity versions of music I already own. Where do the kids get most of their music these days?

They get it from Google. All they have to do is Google the name of the album they want and follow it with “Mediafire” or “Rapidshare” or even just “zip” or “rar.” The RIAA and MPAA have been catching on as of late–the MPAA recently sued Hotfile, for example–but this is a losing battle, because file hosting services themselves aren’t illegal. It’s the proliferation of “pirated” files on these services that rankles the industry. Any attempt to shut down a service like Mediafire will probably fail, for one of several reasons:

  1. There are, believe it or not, legitimate uses for file-hosting services like Hotfile and Mediafire, and banning these services outright would be seen as an unfair attack on their legal users.
  2. Moving your servers outside the U.S. makes it much more difficult for groups like the MPAA to sue you.
  3. It’s not Mediafire’s fault that people illegally upload copyrighted material to its site; it may or may not be their responsibility, depending on your perspective, but all shutting down Mediafire (or whatever site the industry’s attacking) will accomplish is getting someone somewhere to launch a new Mediafire. Ultimately, it’s end users’ responsibility to not illegally transfer files, and the RIAA stopped focusing on individual users back in 2008.

What can we learn from all this? Well, for one thing, industry leaders seem to be oblivious to the changing realities of online file sharing. Also, music piracy isn’t killing the industry as much as lawmakers and industry lobbyists would have you believe; according to Nielsen, digital album sales in the United States went up 13% in 2010.

Saturday News: Taxes, gas, and LOLbears

21 comments
I refuse to give up image macros
Picture is not related
  • A new “DNA spray” is being used in Amsterdam to catch thieves by covering them with a non-washable mist in the event of a hold-up, which is filled with chemical that correspond to a specific time and place. Invisible to the naked eye, it can be seen under a UV light, and can also be used on objects.
  • A new study by the Congressional Budget Office shows federal taxes are for the third year in a row lower than under the Bush administration, and are actually at their lowest level since the Truman administration.
  • Gas prices are at a record high for this time of year.
  • Are you ready for this one, dog lovers? Inmates at a Missouri prison taught a deaf dachshund to respond to sign language, and then gave him to a school for deaf children.

Happy Saturday, crasstalkers.

Hitler’s Flying Saucers?

20 comments

The image at the beginning of this article is of a site in Germany known as The Henge (Fly Trap) where a magnetic levitation device – aka flying saucer – known as The Bell was reportedly developed by German scientists in the late 1930’s.

I watched a program the other night which I was surprised to see was not on the SciFi (SyFy) network, but on Canada’s History Television, one part in a series on the subject of extraterrestrials.  What follows is the network’s description of this episode.

°

Ancient Aliens: Aliens and the Third Reich

If ancient aliens visited Earth in the remote past, could they have given us advanced technology, passed down through human history?And could this technology have helped the Third Reich build mysterious weapons and crafts far beyond the limits of 20th century science?

During World War II, there were reports that the Germans built an operational flying saucer, known as the Hanebu, which was said to use mythical technology found in ancient Indian texts. Another craft was rumored to have been constructed with the help of psychics and mediums who claimed to have received detailed blueprints from extraterrestrial beings.

Is it possible Hitler’s quest for world domination was aided and abetted by ancient extraterrestrial technology that was rediscovered? And could the allegedly rebuilt alien devices developed in Germany have played a role in America’s ability to land a man on the moon?

°

The program posited that a number of Nazi scientists were recruited by the American government after the fall of the Third Reich. According to the show, these scientists were almost entirely responsible for the technology that resulted in the U.S. space program and putting the first man on the moon, aided in part by alien intelligence which had been passed on to them.  They cited Adolf Hitler’s devotion to occult mysticism as the impetus for the extraterrestrial contact.

The episode ended by purporting that many Nazi officers who disappeared after the fall of Berlin had actually been whisked away in a time machine. As if by means of validation they mentioned that Albert Einstein had deemed time travel to be theoretically possible.

My questions to you interesting – and hopefully interested – folks are such: (1) Why was this on a history channel? and (2) How fine is the line between genius and insanity?

°

Smartphones and QR

9 comments

Forget hashbangs.

With the advent of smartphones with cameras and barcode scanners come QR as advertisement. I noticed this billboard for a local (and annoying) restaurant go up last month:Chino Latino

That square in the middle is a QR code, if you scan it from the street with your phone, it will reveal a special (or whatever information they choose to encode in it).

This isn’t new technology, but its emergence as an advertising tool – especially as an advertising tool that many people can use – is somewhat new.

You can turn pretty much anything made of content into one of these little codes:

Like text:

qrcode

URLs:

qrcode

Even SMS messages:

qrcode

There are a bunch of generators to play with, so go nuts.

…and the Crasstalk Anthem?

120 comments

So far there seems to be some consensus that all of our glitches are caused by DJ Lance Rock.  Our banhammer will be named after our first ban-victim.  (Watch out Tony Kaye, your insider status puts you in immediate jeopardy! Plus the irony would be kind of awesome.)  There is currently some movement to make the Honey Badger the Official Mascot.

But what about our Anthem?

There have been at least two proposals put forward, but we need more.

1) From slackjawed yoda, the following, which had me tearing up this morning.

2) A worthy counter-proposal, from BaldwinP

Both are appropriately overly-dramatic and ironic while actually capturing exactly how I sincerely feel!

What do you all think?

This Post is Hazardous to your Health: A Review

101 comments

This is going to be a horribly unpopular post, and I don’t care.  You know why I don’t care?  Because I’m a smoker.  And, from what I hear, all the time, regularly, ad nauseum, by virtue of my being a smoker, I don’t care about myself or anyone else.  So, that’s cool.  Easier for me.

On to the reviews/memoir.

These were the first cigarettes I smoked.  Because that’s what she smoked.

(Surprise, surprise.  Yes, I started smoking because of a girl.)

The original blend was really nice.  It was a really light cigarette, but with a nice leafy flavor.

Dry without tasting burnt.

Then Winston went “additive-free,” and they started to taste like urine.  Figure that one out.

Marlboro Lights.  They made me feel nauseous.  I didn’t smoke them for very long.

The taste was good, but seriously they were like smoking MSG.

Totally decent cigarette.  The Budweiser of Cigarettes.  Nothing fancy, but inoffensive.

I went through this phase briefly before I found…

Now this was my brand.  The King of Smokes.  They say they’re toasted.  I believe it.  The perfect golden leaf.  Flavorful, nice smell, full-bodied, really tobacco-ey.  No additive after-taste.

I picked a picture with non-U.S. packaging for a reason.  They don’t sell them in the U.S. anymore.  Bastards.

Oh, yeah, I went through this phase too.  I’m not proud.  I was in my mid-20’s and living in New York.  I thought it was some kind of City Regulation that I had to smoke them.

They actually aren’t bad.

The flavor is a little thin, but the little air pocket at the end of the filter is pretty cool.

I’ve also tried plenty of others along the way.  Menthol I just don’t get.  Why cover up the tobacco?  Reds and Non-filtered Luckies?  Good, but I tend to need my voice the next day.

Nat Shermans and assorted French and Canadian cigarettes?  Yummy, but I just feel too much like a prick when I smoke them.  (And smoking makes me feel enough like a prick by itself.)

I do love, however, the way Canadian cigarettes pack 25 shorties instead of 20 longer ones.

That’s genius.  Because really I rarely want a full cigarette.

Well, I guess it’s genius for me, but probably not for the cigarette companies, because I would have to buy new cigarettes less often.

Here is where I am now.  It’s a damned fine cigarette.  The taxes in New York make all cigarettes so expensive that they aren’t any more expensive than any of the ones above anymore.

They last longer, really full flavor.  No additives.  They pack them so tight that you have to loosen the tobacco for an even burn instead of tamping the box to pack the leaf like with other smokes.

So that’s the history of my slow march to lung disease.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have.  Although, from what I hear, you probably haven’t.