This blog will be migrating to a new home

Hey everybody,

Despite how easy it’s been to have my blog hosted by wordpress, and despite how much I like the domain, it’s time for me start the long slog of migration back to a self-managed installation.  I need the plugins and widgets, I need better customization, I need to control my own domain, email, etc.

After a couple of years on this thing, there’s a ton of content I don’t want to lose, and I have no plans to SHUT DOWN LOREM IPSUM.  But it’s going to see less love, and I may end up using it as a mostly private blog.

Meanwhile…

I’ve just made my first post at the still VERY UNFINISHED BUT UP AND RUNNING REGARDLESS TEXBURGHER.COM.

Please bookmark it, subscribe to its feed, pass the link around, give it lots of love, etc.  Thanks.

//Geoff

Who says presidents need to be edu-mc-cated anyhow?

A modest proposal

When it comes to job qualifications for the role of President of the United States, let’s do away with archaic showstoppers like “well-educated.” Shall we?

After all, our current president “earned” his undergraduate degree from Yale University and his MBA from Harvard.  While some have argued Mr. Bush was able to gain admission and enough credits to graduate only by wholly relying on his family connections, let us assume for the sake of argument that his poor showing as President is instead a reflection on the decaying quality of higher education.  Let us embrace this assumption and conclude that top-notch education is, in fact, detrimental to one’s preparedness to lead the United States.  It’s worthless.  If the best education in the world made spit’s difference in forging leadership qualities in those who undergo such rigors, we wouldn’t be in the mess in which we find ourselves today.

And if you can swallow that line of argument, then buddy have we got the presidential ticket for you!  You guessed it, it’s the everyman’s ticket: McCain and Palin.  With investigative research and commentary by Laura Hayward, and with the caveat that Wikipedia has been found to be occasionally imperfect, we present to you the comparative guide to the educational backgrounds our 2008 Presidential & Vice Presidential candidates.

Check out McCain’s class rank at US Naval academy!!!  What a Maverick!

McCain entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. McCain came into conflict with higher-ranking personnel, he did not always obey the rules, and that contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899) despite a strong intelligence.^[9][11] He did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he struggled with, such as mathematics.^[4][12] McCain graduated in 1958.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand had a hard time staying put anywhere for more than a semester…and no offense, but has anyone heard of these schools?? 

In 1982, Palin enrolled at Hawaii Pacific University but left after her first semester. From there she transferred to North Idaho College, where she spent two semesters as a general studies major. From there, she then transferred to the University of Idaho for two semesters.^[11][12] During this time Palin won the Miss Wasilla Pageant beauty contest,^[13][14] then finished third (second runner-up) in the Miss Alaska pageant,^[15][16] at which she won a college scholarship and the ‘Miss Congeniality’ award.^[17] She then left the University of Idaho and attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska for one term. The next year she returned to the University of Idaho where she spent three semesters completing her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.^[11][12]

Admittedly, Biden ranking is not much better than McCain’s, but at least he’s honest – he was lazy!

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark,^[10] where by his own later description he was a lazy student.^[11] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major inhistory and political science in 1965,^[2] ranked 506th of 688 in his class.^[12]

Finally, someone with a strong academic record qualified enough to be leading the country!!!  (Oh wait…we almost forgot that George went to Yale & Harvard, proving that education is worthless.)

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.^[10] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.^[11] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year, he was selected, based on his grades and a writing competition, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review.^[19]

Baby Bumble Bee

A new take on an old classic.  Yes, Conner’s totally over it, but that’s what the sedatives do.  And now for a sharp turn deep into mundane silliness…

America, according to West Side Story

Don’t sue me, okay, because I can’t afford it.  And after the last couple of weeks on Wall St., neither can you.  And that fact got me wondering about the mythology of the American Dream…

original lyrics:

AMERICA

ROSALIA
Puerto Rico,
You lovely island . . .
Island of tropical breezes.
Always the pineapples growing,
Always the coffee blossoms blowing . . .

ANITA
Puerto Rico . . .
You ugly island . . .
Island of tropic diseases.
Always the hurricanes blowing,
Always the population growing . . .
And the money owing,
And the babies crying,
And the bullets flying.
I like the island Manhattan.
Smoke on your pipe and put that in!

OTHERS
I like to be in America!
O.K. by me in America!
Ev’rything free in America
For a small fee in America!

ROSALIA
I like the city of San Juan.

ANITA
I know a boat you can get on.

ROSALIA
Hundreds of flowers in full bloom.

ANITA
Hundreds of people in each room!

ALL
Automobile in America,
Chromium steel in America,
Wire-spoke wheel in America,
Very big deal in America!

ROSALIA
I’ll drive a Buick through San Juan.

ANITA
If there’s a road you can drive on.

ROSALIA
I’ll give my cousins a free ride.

ANITA
How you get all of them inside?

ALL
Immigrant goes to America,
Many hellos in America;
Nobody knows in America
Puerto Rico’s in America!

ROSALIA
I’ll bring a T.V. to San Juan.

ANITA
If there a current to turn on!

ROSALIA
I’ll give them new washing machine.

ANITA
What have they got there to keep clean?

ALL
I like the shores of America!
Comfort is yours in America!
Knobs on the doors in America,
Wall-to-wall floors in America!

ROSALIA
When I will go back to San Juan.

ANITA
When you will shut up and get gone?

ROSALIA
Everyone there will give big cheer!

ANITA
Everyone there will have moved here!

Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed.
Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.

McPalin no McDucks Story

I think perhaps the most lucid 30,000-foot view of the prospect of Sarah Palin becoming Vice President (and very likely President within a couple of years) was articulated recently by Matt Damon when he compared the possibility to a “really bad Disney movie.”  When you realize the truth in his comparison, realize also that this is the script – the playbook – the McCain campaign is following.  Running a campaign is all about writing a story, and they’re writing their story according to a generic formula with which we’ve all got womblike comfort – the Disney formula of plain-old-gumption triumphing over massive, sophisticated machineries.  In the Disney movies, it always turns out those machineries are dopey and weak (which of course they’d have to be for a hockey mom to stare down Putin), but that fairy tale conception of the world doesn’t usually reflect reality.  That’s why these movies make so much money: they are rooted in fantasy and they facilitate a deeply craved escape from reality.  A real McCain/Palin presidency won’t follow the movie-version path.

Real tragedies happen.  McCain/Palin is a tragedy of epic proportions waiting to happen to the American people and the world.  Let’s not invite us in as if it’s an innocent remake of The Mighty Ducks.

Biography

First off, I’m an Information Architect for a living. Owing mainly to that, I’ve got a real love-hate relationship with the more cannonical organizational schemes for websites. Especially blogs. Now, most of the time I live in the -love- side of the street, but all these blogs, microblogs, whatevers, et cetera are playgrounds and I kind of treat them as such. So hopefully you’re not the kind of dork who gets all self-righteous if the “About” page is off-topic. And if you are, well, I love you but get over it.

So when I grabbed this blog address a few years ago, here’s what was going on: I had used wordpress as a stand-alone on a number of sites, including my own, way too personal blog site. Any veteran WP users can attest to the spam/hijack vulnerabilities that such installations represented. After a couple of years of it, I was fed up. I got tired of the constant vigilance involved with maintaining WP on my server, so I was drawn to this easier way.  I found a kickass subdomain on WP, traded in my domain addiction for simplicity, and washed my hands of the hassle.  I’ve been let known that I “should” post a lorem ipsum generator on this site, but there are a bundle of good ones out there already. If that’s what you’re looking for, follow this link.

Second off, I do relatively serious stuff a lot of the time (read: work). Which makes me a frustrated artist. Yeah yeah, it’s a stereotype, but it reflects reality. It’s not to say my job’s not creative, because it sure can be and often is. But I went to school not once, but twice, for fine arts. BFA 1994 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (no, I wasn’t pals with David Sedaris, though we shared writing workshop teacher Jim McManus) and MFA 1997 from the University of Oregon. Both degrees were, more or less, in painting. I taught painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design from 1997-2001. I showed and sold paintings pretty intensely. Painting was my life until my second son was born, which was only 8 years ago. So to end up practicing something as straight-laced as IA for a career means there’s a flipside that needs some serious outlet time. No single dumb blog’s got the facets to be the everything, but this is sometimes a good start.

Some of the rest, in no particular order:

I also spend cycles analyzing anatomies and classifying various types of tweets and trying to figure out the inflection of that galaxy.
I’m genuinely into the structures, movements, & relationship potential of social networking.
I paint when I can, I make things like furniture and dinner and all that jazz.
If you’ve ever gone to a Rite Aid to buy pencils and been shocked to find one in your pack of 10 replaced with a counterfeit pencil made entirely of wood, lacking lead or eraser, I may well be the responsible party.
In 1998, I opened an online confessional called confess-it.com, and received/collected thousands of mostly boring submissions – and a handful of the most disturbing confessions I’ve ever read. Confess-it.com is online today, but updated and changed and operated by New York State Council of the Arts.
I’m also responsible for a modest number of photos on flickr, and you can check them out but I’m not making any quality claims.
I’m the single father of three totally kickass kids who challenge me to grow more than I’m comfortable with nearly every day.

If you want to get in touch with me, use the contact/comments thingy on this site. I get stuff, and I write back. Follow me on twitter too if you don’t already. Find me there at www.twitter.com/texburgher and follow. And be good. Until then,

Geoff

MVM: Spandau Ballet’s True

After a twitter link-sniping exchange a few weeks ago, True (by Spandau Ballet) found its way into my ironicaly named youtube favorites file.  These guys’ sincerity make Rick Astley blush. So true…

The meaning of the word Interrogatory

Yesterday, I came home from work to find 50 pages of questions in my mailbox.  Not just any questions, but questions from my ex-wife’s attorney: “Interrogatories.”  Questions about where I spend my money, where I earn my money, whether or not I’m seeing a psychiatrist.  All told, over 150 questions designed to uncover hidden money, embarrass, harrass, and ruffle feathers.

This, from a woman who spent half of our marriage lying about her alchoholism and drug abuse, keeping herself drunk or high all day long, even while at home with our kids.  A woman who refused to work (thanks, drunken incapacitation) while claiming parental duties precluded her ability to do so.  From a woman who, in the end, had three affairs – in order to end the marriage.

I can’t fathom the real purpose of this document.  I can’t imagine she really believes I’ve hidden assets, income, etc.  It’s deeply ironic to me that a document designed to uncover waste and misspent money where none exists to uncover, will cost her thousands of dollars she could (and clearly should) devote to her own support, to our children’s needs, to her betterment.

Is there a form I can fill out that will simply demonstrate that, while I had nothing to hide and wasted nothing, she squandered thousands trying to quench her endless thirst for conflict?

Yahoo! chat is full of these, um, bots?

Lovely conversationalist, that Jordan. Er, I mean Bob…

bobsheppard61: rnganbfrchR u there?zrfbykghaakxrclpazaozzofy
Geoff Barnes: Yes, I’m here.  Are you there?
bobsheppard61: wbsvyhi emailgeoff, i got urwbbxvinfo from Angela, i hope u dont minduqgja
Geoff Barnes: nah, I don’t mind a bit. Angela’s a real peach.  What’s up?
bobsheppard61: xjqftI’m Jordan BTW LoL,uupafI just moved here from outta town ezdnu
Geoff Barnes: Hi Jordan, where did you move here from?
bobsheppard61: jdxgzR u busy this weekend?udbnci’m looking for some one to have a little… fun with hcxfe
Geoff Barnes: Oh that’s a shame, because I’m really busy already.  But I’m interested to know where you moved from.
Geoff Barnes: Why do you type so funny?
bobsheppard61: ilzxgTo remove your id visityzshthttp://yremoveyourid.com    ykgbhhjlgv
Geoff Barnes: idsfdfecbksOkay I’llfherfblqexbdo that fdfgwsgalater.
bobsheppard61: hxeio here are my details if u wanna meet uptifruhttp://www.%61%64u%6c%74h%6f%6f%6b-u%70s%2ene%74  ojofghfqlh
Geoff Barnes: Really?  adulthook-ups.net?
bobsheppard61: bgrlu here are my details if u wanna meet updwlzfhttp://www.h%6fok%2d%75%70s-%72%2d%75s%2e%63o%6d  vlplrjypau
Geoff Barnes: That’s your site?  Good work on the home page.
bobsheppard61: pipoo here are my details if u wanna meet upkrobfhttp://www.%61d%75%6c%74%68%6fok%2du%70s%2en%65t  hnxnzmrynf
Geoff Barnes: Uh oh, I think I broke you.
bobsheppard61: qqblv here are my details if u wanna meet upkpwbjhttp://www.%61%64ul%74hoo%6b%2d%75%70%73.%6e%65t

Spam on the IM-ernets.

In fact, I think there’s some sort of code here.  Can you decipher it?*  Here’s the transcript…

johnnyjacobsonnpghgwdinnbi 7:53
kajxzetyvwfhifyHijgbjagtsihmpsti

geoff barnes 7:54
ahh, good. I have been waiting for your message.

johnnyjacobsonnpghgwdinnbi 7:54
wcamfheyksuauhowqrybqrczjdrya?ttxpi

geoff barnes 7:54
yes

johnnyjacobsonnpghgwdinnbi 7:54
gziaadoonpoduwhmsvremembercszcfme?

geoff barnes 7:54
sometimes, but not today.

johnnyjacobsonnpghgwdinnbi 7:54
usmgvit’sqpiovme Taylormdioejlbpleyfxh

geoff barnes 7:55
Really?

johnnyjacobsonnpghgwdinnbi 7:55
rjawyvcukiu busynidshthis weekend?szfxpi’m lookingemduwfor somengptsone toortubhavezpkxvazhuinlittle…bgxwefunuzvyiwithyjane mxbdj

geoff barnes 7:55
Oh well.  I’m having trouble reading that gibberish.
56:00
I guess we’ll talk again later, right?

* Check out what’s underlined.