by Smitty
…Bob Belvedere over at The Camp of the Saints. Continue reading Also in the ‘New Digs’ Club… →
Yes, I Am This Crazy . . .
By the time you read this, I’ll be somewhere over the American heartland, cooped up in economy class on a United Airlines flight to California. With less than $200 cash in my pockets, my checking account overdrawn and overdue bills at the house, I’m flying to Pasadena to cover Alabama’s glorious championship. I’ll be lucky if they don’t shut off my cell-phone while I’m in Pasadena.
Many people praise as virtues such qualities as being “spontaneous” and “non-materialistic.” They praise these qualities, because praise is cheap. And they’re not the ones who let Dan Collins double-dog-dare them into this crazy scheme. Trying to raise $2,000 in tip-jar hits in December? Madness.
As I calculated at the outset, that would require $70 a day, every day for 30 days. There were good days and bad days, but the sum total wasn’t $2,000. Nevertheless, we got close enough to the goal that I figured, “What the hell? Book the flight. The readers will come through. They won’t let me die in obscurity and poverty.”
Monday, exactly three people hit the tip jar for a combined total of $45. One of them was film producer Ladd Ehlinger, who has just about gone broke producing Hive Mind. A couple of regular tip-jar hitters — a guy named Mike and a guy named Chris — also gave money yesterday.
Well, too late to worry about it now. Crazy is as crazy does. I’ve got a carton of smokes, so I’ll manage to survive.
I’m writing this at 3 a.m. My flight boards at 6 a.m. My wife’s upstairs waiting for me to pack up the laptop so she can drive me an hour and a half to the airport. Say a prayer for me, and for her. She married me because, as she later explained, she knew I was going to be somebody some day. And I’ve spent 20 years trying to prove her right.
No guts, no glory.
Brief Technical Note
by Smitty
I ratcheted down my resolution to 800X600 and confirmed the email reports that, yes, this blog is slammed to the left side of the screen.
To work on this, I save the blog locally, open that copy in the browser, get out the BFH, and tweak the .css.
Except that there is enough voodoo in the .css for the page to thumb its nose at me. So your indulgence is sought. I’m still standing up my local LAMP stack so I can break this thing in a blatantly irresponsible manner without any anguished screams peeling down at me from out along I-70. One can blog or one can geek, but I know of none doing both simultaneously. Hats off to those who are more graceful task switchers than I.
This post will also test the WordPress 2.9.1 install to see if that godforsaken scheduling bug is really gone. Open Source: no whining, Smitty!
NOTE (RSM): Now readers see the source of my insane rage in “The Making of The Other McCain.” Smitty’s always talking this 2.9.1 IT code-geek stuff and forgetting the most important part: Hit the tip jar!
If we were pulling in $10K/month here, everything would be so much easier. To borrow a phrase from P.J. O’Rourke, we’d be farting through silk. Instead, it’s 2:30 a.m. and I’m about to leave for California with an overdrawn ATM card and less than $200 cash in my pocket to last until my plane gets back Sunday morning.
Just Printed My Boarding Pass; Ready
for Fear and Loathing in Pasadena?
Less than 12 hours from now, I’ll be flying the friendly skies of United — economy class with a two–hour layover in San Francisco — to sunny California to cover the BCS Championship game.
The “friendly skies” are billing me $15 for checked baggage. Maybe one of our tip-jar hitters can fork over for that. I thought about just trying to do the trip with a carry-on bag — my laptop, socks and a change of underwear — but I figure the readers have gotten me this far, surely one of y’all could come up with a measly $15. ROLL TIDE!
UPDATE: Kay Bailey Hutchison will air a Senate campaign ad during the ABC broadcast. That’s got to be a bad omen of some kind, and not for Gov. Rick Perry. Hutchison’s an internecine Republican feud to a football game? When the Longhorns lose Thursday, Texas voters will blame KBH for jinxing them.
UPDATE II: A Twitter friend in Costa Mesa reports from the scene where the undefeated Crimson Tide is practicing:
Looking at the field that the boys are practicing at as I leave work. 🙂 Full police madness here in CM.
Hmmm. “Police madness,” huh? Obviously they’ve brought in extra security. Someone must have warned them I was coming.
Hunter S. Thompson got tear-gassed at the ’68 Democratic Convention. If I get tasered in Costa Mesa, blame Dan Collins.
Don’t worry. I doubt even the notoriously tough cops in Costa Mesa would tase a professional journalist. They don’t need that kind of bad media mojo. But just in case, somebody hit the tip jar for $12 so I can Continue reading Just Printed My Boarding Pass; Ready
for Fear and Loathing in Pasadena? →
If Not the SOU, then Tax Day
by Smitty (h/t RPV Network)
I’m still trying to coordinate lunch with the Pink Elephant Pundit to see what, if anything, will be shaking on the Mall for the State of the Union address this month. The abject failure of Al Gore’s Global Warming (colleague: “I told you: it’s Climate Change!”, to which I replied, “It’s warming in the negative direction.”) shouldn’t scare those who understand the Valley Forge symbolism of it all.
The weather and the schedule uncertainties will not accentuate the turnout for a State of the Union protest, in any case.
Continue reading If Not the SOU, then Tax Day →
Obama Discriminates Against Foreigners
Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that was imposed after the Christmas Day bombing plot, Obama administration officials announced Sunday.
(Via Memeorandum.) Spencer Ackerman appears to be skeptical, which means Continue reading Obama Discriminates Against Foreigners →
The Apocalypse of Culture: People Spend $1 Billion to See Sucky 3-D SciFi Movie
No need to wonder what morons did with their stimulus checks. Two words: Avatar tickets.
When “Avatar” opened, its solid but far from stellar results left 20th Century Fox uncertain about whether the $430 million that it and two financing partners had invested to produce and market the 3-D film would pay off.
Less than three weeks later, there’s no doubt. Director James Cameron’s science-fiction epic on Sunday became only the fifth movie in history to gross more than $1 billion worldwide and, by far, was the fastest to do so. Continue reading The Apocalypse of Culture: People Spend $1 Billion to See Sucky 3-D SciFi Movie →
Join Coach McCain’s Winning Team
If you’ve already hit the tip-jar for the Pasadena trip, thank you. If not, you certainly should, because here’s the plan Continue reading Join Coach McCain’s Winning Team →