spam honeypot

I totally understand why they didn't want people to have fewer than 6 characters in their name. Is this some sort of chat-request record?

I don't use this email account. Every single email in there is unsolicited.

Lollapalooza 2008 Recap

Music i saw at Lollapalooza (definitely not entire sets for all these bands):

Friday:
Rogue Wave
The Enemy UK
Louis XIV
James Curd (DJ)
The Black Keys
Mates of State
Bloc Party
CSS
Radiohead

Saturday:
Booka Shade
Explosions in the Sky
Does it Offend You, Yeah (the DJ set)
a tiny bit of Lupe Fiasco
Wilco

Sunday:
Black Kids / Chromeo (I wandered)
Iron and Wine
Girl Talk (i nearly died)
Mark Ronson
half of Kanye West
half of Nine Inch Nails (awesome)

My thoughts: It's hard, man, staying out in the sun all day and running up and down Grant Park to see all these damn hyped up bands. After Friday, and my sunburn, I was like, I'm taking it easy. Hence the shorter schedules Saturday and Sunday. Also, 75,000 people on one field for Radiohead basically means that unless you're willing to be a rabid psycho and camp out for half the day, you're going to be waaay in the back, watching the pretty flashing lights -- that sort of sucked, cause i love Radiohead, but i've seen them twice already. oh well. Everyone said their concert was terrific, and it did look that way. From 0.4 miles away.

Girl Talk was excellent, and I was totally right up in front, along with this douchebag 7 foot asshole and friend who started humping people and saying mean racist things. Also stuff like "I'm tall. yeeaaahhh. you better get out of my way, i'm going right to the front." who does that? I am posting his picture in retaliation:


Doesn't he look like a douchebag? If you see this man, punch him in the nuts. thank you.

Anyway I was up in the front until people started moshing and falling everywhere and it got really scary. Then I hightailed it to the side, because I am a 5'2 scaredy cat (see, this is why I didn't go to rage). The funniest part was the end, when he put his music on autoplay and surfed the crowd in a big inflatable raft:


There was so much shit left on that field after the show -- shoes, a bazillion plastic cups, clothes. There was a bra hanging from a tree:



See, I'm not kidding. Is Gregg Gillis really worth your bra, ladies? I mean when it gets down to it, he is just clicking buttons on a macbook.

Anyway, the DJ tent (Perry's) was all around very good and fun. Lots of awesome music and dancing there. Also, I was surprised by how much I liked the quieter bands like Iron and Wine and Explosions in the Sky -- it was so pleasant to just chill out in the grass and listen. CSS and Mark Ronson were sort of lame, in different ways. Wilco was very good but boring since I only know Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and they only played 3 songs from it, and I kind of regretted a little not at least checking out the Rage Against the Machine show, though I heard they had to stop playing 3 times because people at the front were getting crushed through the front barrier. Insane.

Kanye is a baller, and puts on a great show. I even had an excellent stairs position, so I could see everything, but I had this nagging feeling that I would regret it if I didn't go see Trent Reznor. So halfway through I ran across the gigantic park and made it to NIN right in time for Terrible Lies, soon to be followed by Head Like a Hole. which was AWESOME. so incredible. I don't think of myself as being really into NIN, but when I was in 9th grade, man. I bought their CD. I remember that supposedly one of our high school math teachers DATED TRENT REZNOR when she was in high school. and she was a CHEERLEADER. that's the type of thing that blew our minds when we were 14. The second to last song was Hurt, which was also great.


All in all I'm way too old for this shit. If I do this again, I'm going princess and buying VIP tickets. I am so dirty right now. My feet really really hurt, my hair is disgusting, and my shoulders are sunburnt. I'm pretty sure I've lost some hearing, too. Also, Bud Light is really gross. None of the shows were as amazing as Daft Punk 2007, which ranks as the Best Concert I Have Ever Been to in My Life, but it looked like Radiohead might have given it a run for its money if I were closer. I don't think I'm able to anoint a best of Lollapalooza 2008! And for all my whining, it was fun, and made me realize I should listen to more music (I used to listen to new music like crazy, but then Napster shut down and I got confused. Oh yeah, I'm that old). But first, tomorrow I am going to get the most gigantic pedicure ever.

radiohead

a nice story on tax cuts

Today I just had a chat with my roommate where he expressed incredulity that anyone could even consider voting for McCain. I listed a few reasons; I mean the majority of the country voted for Bush in 2004, so clearly there's some strong polarization and probably a bubble surrounding us in liberal cities (I'm not convinced that things have changed thaaaat much since 2004, either). The last point I raised was taxes. Obama will almost certainly increase taxes, and there's a smaller chance of that happening with McCain. Then we got into a little discussion on higher taxes -- if it's only the richest, say, 5% (this is generous) affected by the increased marginal tax rate, then why should the rest of the voting electorate care? They're not the ones being taxed. I pointed out that an innate part of being American is believing in your own economic and social upward mobility. This seems sort of weak. Or maybe, the rest of the voting electorate actually thinks about it in the way written out by this economics professor (story emailed to a mailing list I read). Ha. I don't have that much faith in the electorate's intellectual upward mobility.

http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=5806

Thursday, December 30th, 2004
Never Hurts to Say It Again

A friend of mine sent me this analogy of why the Left hates tax cuts,
and why they shouldn't:

"Understanding Tax Cuts"
by: David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D

Sometimes politicians, journalists and the liberal
left exclaim; "It's just a tax cut for the rich!" and
it is just accepted to be fact.

But what does that really mean?
Just in case you are not completely clear on this
issue, I hope the following will help. Please read
it carefully.

Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for dinner
and the bill for all ten comes to $100.

If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it
would go something like this:
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.
The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day
and seemed quite happy with the arrangement,
until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said,
"I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily meal by
$20." Dinner for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so
the first four men were unaffected.
They would still eat for free. But what about the other six men - the
paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that
everyone would get his 'fair share?'
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth
man
would each end up being paid to eat their meal.
So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce
each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work
out the amounts each should pay.
And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).
Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four
continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men
began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He
pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a
dollar, too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"

"That's true!!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back
when I got only two?
The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison.
"We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine
sat down and ate without him. But when it came time to pay the bill,
they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money
between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how
our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the
most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them
for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they
might start eating overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat
friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia"

Of course the story begs the question of why not just make everyone's deduction equal or the amount of taxes that they are currently paying if an equal portion would take them negative. But, it does show how you can spin numbers almost any way to play on people's ideas on "fairness".

Taxes are hard. In more ways than one.

the wire

ok, stop what you're doing and go rent the first season of the wire. like, immediately. this is the best show i've ever watched on television. and ok, that might not be saying much coming from me, queen of gossip girl and degrassi and pre-teen stuff like icarly, but seriously. i can appreciate good television, and this is it. something clicked in the middle of the first season and now all i want to do is hunker down and watch seasons 2-5 immediately, forsaking all other human contact and sunlight (sunlight makes this annoying glare on the television). this is just an amazing story. i find myself, in typical weird white guilt fashion (i'm not white yes i understand that) wanting to go to oakland and find some projects and be like "oh, do you pack heat? is the stash in a different place than the money? have you been arrested?" and all sorts of other horrible stuff like that that i probably shouldn't be saying in public. is every police department in the country like this? it's incredible. i love mcnulty, kima, daniels, bunk, omar (he is my FAVORITE), stringer bell, bodie, all of them! and i never, ever, ever want to go to baltimore. this is like the anti-tourist video for baltimore. apparently the mayor had some issues with it as well. every character is an anti-hero, real and raw.

go watch the wire! now!