Grabbage for the esoteric geek
I love the rain. I do. I like nothing more than hearing buckets of rain splash against the roof and windows. Rain is conducive to wrapping up in a really old sweater and something polar fleecy, and reading a book.
I always felt bad singing "Rain, Rain Go Away" when I was a kid. Besides the fact that my mom would make me perform it in front of relatives and friends for food, I'd always imagined the rain felt bad about being told to go away by hundreds of children[1]. When the rain went, the plants would go, and if the plants went all the animals would go... it just seemed to be a terrible rhyme to teach us children. Right up there with "Rock-a-bye Baby".
So the past few summers, when the heatwave around here scorched the earth and, yea, burned the forests down, my inner child went "HAH! See what happens when you tell the rain to go away?" While everyone praised the hot days, I was sitting in the shade, praying for clouds; and while everyone bemoaned the coming of autumn rains, I happily bundled up in my Gr. 7 hoodie and left the blinds open to better see the deluge.
This is the Pacific RAINforest, people! You wouldn't get the verdant mountains, lush valleys, and snow-covered peaks without the RAIN. YEESH!
Now scientists tell us that a warmer world may lead to a decrease in rainfall. DO YOU SEE WHAT THAT SONG HAS DONE? It has driven the rain away. Y'know what comes after the rain goes away? ARMAGEDDON. Nice. Going.
* * *
And in other news, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, part of the Royal Society for the Arts' Adelphi Project, has helped create the Adelphi Charter which marks the first empirical principles for evaluating new exclusive rights proposals. I may or may not have spewed a bit about copyright and ownership of online content (or the ridiculousness thereof) as well as the idea of intellecutal property increasing to the point of ludicrousy. Siva Vaidhyanathan explains it more eloquently than I ever could[2] in this interview and his book, Copyright and Copywrongs[3].
"Before the digital world emerged, we agreed to allow the government to regulate copies, but we certainly didn't agree to allow the government to regulate reading, because reading a piece of material or listening to a song or watching a film was very different from making a copy of it. With digital works, you can't help but make a copy when you access something. To read something online is to make several copies of it. So by agreeing in 1976 to such a high level of regulation over copying, we've allowed government, and, by proxy, corporations, to regulate what we read and what we see."
I'm going off this high horse before I get giddy with intellectualism. Read Vaidhyanathan; read it now.
And just for the record, if I ever Make It, please fic my stories as much as you want. I want my characters in pr0n, slosh, with Mary Sues, and twisted up into plots that I know I could never come up with because I am but one person and the fen are legion.
FOOTNOTES
1)Had no concept of thousands or millions then.
2)Probably because, oh, he's a lawyer.
3)Which is so not worn and kept under my pillow. Really.
I always felt bad singing "Rain, Rain Go Away" when I was a kid. Besides the fact that my mom would make me perform it in front of relatives and friends for food, I'd always imagined the rain felt bad about being told to go away by hundreds of children[1]. When the rain went, the plants would go, and if the plants went all the animals would go... it just seemed to be a terrible rhyme to teach us children. Right up there with "Rock-a-bye Baby".
So the past few summers, when the heatwave around here scorched the earth and, yea, burned the forests down, my inner child went "HAH! See what happens when you tell the rain to go away?" While everyone praised the hot days, I was sitting in the shade, praying for clouds; and while everyone bemoaned the coming of autumn rains, I happily bundled up in my Gr. 7 hoodie and left the blinds open to better see the deluge.
This is the Pacific RAINforest, people! You wouldn't get the verdant mountains, lush valleys, and snow-covered peaks without the RAIN. YEESH!
Now scientists tell us that a warmer world may lead to a decrease in rainfall. DO YOU SEE WHAT THAT SONG HAS DONE? It has driven the rain away. Y'know what comes after the rain goes away? ARMAGEDDON. Nice. Going.
* * *
And in other news, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow, part of the Royal Society for the Arts' Adelphi Project, has helped create the Adelphi Charter which marks the first empirical principles for evaluating new exclusive rights proposals. I may or may not have spewed a bit about copyright and ownership of online content (or the ridiculousness thereof) as well as the idea of intellecutal property increasing to the point of ludicrousy. Siva Vaidhyanathan explains it more eloquently than I ever could[2] in this interview and his book, Copyright and Copywrongs[3].
"Before the digital world emerged, we agreed to allow the government to regulate copies, but we certainly didn't agree to allow the government to regulate reading, because reading a piece of material or listening to a song or watching a film was very different from making a copy of it. With digital works, you can't help but make a copy when you access something. To read something online is to make several copies of it. So by agreeing in 1976 to such a high level of regulation over copying, we've allowed government, and, by proxy, corporations, to regulate what we read and what we see."
I'm going off this high horse before I get giddy with intellectualism. Read Vaidhyanathan; read it now.
And just for the record, if I ever Make It, please fic my stories as much as you want. I want my characters in pr0n, slosh, with Mary Sues, and twisted up into plots that I know I could never come up with because I am but one person and the fen are legion.
FOOTNOTES
1)Had no concept of thousands or millions then.
2)Probably because, oh, he's a lawyer.
3)Which is so not worn and kept under my pillow. Really.