BOINGY BOINGY BOINGY BOINGY!

Good morning, InterSluts.

I didn’t do one of these last Monday, due to traveling issues and lack of time.

So I’ll make it up to you the only way I know how: with gratuitous footage of Tony Curtis ogling Sharon Tate.

On a trampoline.

IN SLOW MOTION.

If yr wondering, it’s from this movie.



Meaty beaty big and bouncy,

This is dF

WELCOME TO THE WORKING WEEK, PART 4: HYAAAAAAH!

Well, I was going to stop at three for this series, but the last episode was a bit of a downer, and who wants to go out like that?

I mean sure, the point of capitalism is that the rich get richer and the poor don’t, but I don’t mean to imply that minimum-wage work is a bad thing. It can be fun, even.

Provided that you live in a They Might Be Giants fan video.

FUN FACT: Hong Kong doesn’t have a minimum wage, though it’s been under discussion for years. As usual, the people against it are business owners, the Cato Insititute and other people who have well-paying salaried jobs, although some workers are also against it because they know full well that their employers would just as soon sack them as pay them more, and they figure it’s better to have a job that pays peanuts than to have no job whatsoever.

Imagine that.

The exception, incidentally, is migrant domestic helpers (you may know them as “maids”) from the Philippines and Indonesia, whose wages are set by the govt. And it’s peanuts for the hours they put in. I should know – we used to hire them back when we had a 90+-year-old aunt to take care of, and ...

Damn. I’m bumming you out again, aren’t I? That’s not what I was shooting for. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I’ll do better tomorrow, I promise.

Crack the whip,

This is dF

DREAM A LITTLE DREAMWIDTH

So I’ve seen some talk on the f-list about Dreamwidth, which – if you don’t know – is a sort of Old School LJ blog site. It was started by two former LJ employees and, as near as I can tell, aims to go back to the original LJ mandate of being a true community site with none of that pesky corporate ownership and advertising that allegedly ruined it for everyone.

I checked it out, and so far it looks nice. It’s not radically different from LJ – in fact, it’s almost identical, and even sports a few improvements, like a much easier filter system for posts about yr personal life. One feature that appeals to me, besides an apparently more liberal attitude towards content, is the ability to import yr entire existing LJ to it. The Google Analytics support isn’t bad either. And it’s more user-friendly for people who want to use a blogging site to promote their professional work (provided it’s in a creative field – so novelists, artists and photographers who don’t want to build a separate commercial site have an option to combine it with their LJ – only not on LJ, if you follow me).

If there’s a downside, it’s that you currently need an invite code for a free account, and a paid account costs about $5 a year more than LJ. I understand the rationale of keeping their growth under control, and I understand that they have to charge a little more to avoid going the ad route. Still, while it’s tempting to set up something there and cross-post to here, paying for two blogs is a bit overkill for me.

The other thing, of course, is that there’s no real reason to move off of LJ at the moment. LJ has its issues, but so far none of them have been an inconvenience to me personally. And maybe it’s because I cover the Internet for a living, but the social networking space is clogged with wannabe companies that want to be the next Facebook or Twitter. When competition is fierce in a medium where it’s easier to get VC funding than it is to actually make money, few survive. Dreamwidth might, but they’ve only been in beta for five days, so it’s hard to tell.

Personally, I’m in no hurry. If nothing else, I think I’ll wait until all the cybersquatting yahoos have had their fun before I commit to it. If any of you who have already set up accounts there can make a really good case for Dreamwidth, I’m all ears.

Invite codes are also welcome. :)

Meanwhile, the official Team Def blog will stay here on LJ at least until 70% of you head off to Dreamwidth.

Of course, this would be the ideal time to start that sex blog I’ve always wanted ... because God knows there aren’t enough of THOSE on the Internet ...

Don’t dream it, be it,

This is dF

HOW SHEPARD SMITH, HOWARD STERN AND JANET JACKSON CAN SAVE THE F***ING ECONOMY

I saw this last week, but didn’t have time to process it. But it’s worth passing on.

ITEM: The Supreme Court ruled that the FCC can keep its “fleeting expletives” policy – also known as The Bono Rule – in place for the time being.

As you might expect, I don’t care for the Bono Rule or the Supremes’ ruling, if only because it leads to stupid shit like monkey-fighting snakes and national panic over nipples.

But I can’t say I’m surprised, either. Broadcast censorship has never really been based on rational thought. Why start now? Still, even the pre-Bono policy at least allowed for potentially sensible guidelines like context. But then the Bush II Admin pretty much killed context as a concept, so again, the Supremes arguably couldn’t have ruled any other way.

That said, the Supremes didn’t address the constitutionality of an FCC ban on specific words, and they’ve directed the appeals court to make a ruling on that issue. So at least they'll have a chance to revisit this from a 1A angle.

In the meantime, the upshot of all this that Shepard Smith could still cost Fox News at least $325K in fines.

But hey, that economic stimulus bill isn’t going to pay for itself, you know. And with the FCC’s current backlog of indecency complaints now at 820,000 (most of them probably from Jim Dobson) the subsequent fines could cover the cost of stimulating the economy of Oklahoma.

So in that sense, I guess it’s win-win.

Profanity pays,

This is dF