ian glazer's tuesdaynight

So as of 10:45 am EST: 1) We are not at war. 2) Nothing has blown up yet. 3) Tractor Man , though he mucked up traffic this morning, is my hero. I listened to the monkey last night. What was the whole non sequitur about blackmail? What that a veiled threat against Turkey? Democrats? I am back in town… for nearly a week! I cannot believe it. I find myself staring into the fridge wondering how it got so empty and what is that stuff growing in back… best not to look to carefully. So I new bar opened right near my house: Saint Ex. It’s at the corner of T and 14th. Check it out it is very cool.

Go ahead. Sing Happy Birthday in a public setting. In order to do so, you’ll have to pay a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner royalty fees. Why? Because AOL Time Warner owns the copyright to Happy Birthday and because today the Supreme Court has ruled that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 is, in fact, Constitutionally sound. The law extended protection from life of the author plus fifty years to life of the author plus seventy years. This not only applies to newly granted copyrights but also previously granted ones as well. This means you can’t sing God Bless America in public until 2064 without playing a royalty. You can’t sing Happy Birthday until 2010. Disney and other major corporations lobbied very hard to have this bill passed. The earliest images of Mickey Mouse, Steamboat Willey, were set to come out from the monopoly granted by copyright and into the public domain. The real tragedy here is that now a great deal of works set to come into the public domain will no longer be able to do so. Our ability to archive and preserve parts of American culture and history has been severely hampered. We, every single American, has lost out on our own cultural heritage. For more info see… http://eldred.cc/ - the case that was actually decided today. The Majority opinion from the Court Justice Stevens’ dissent Justice Breyer’s dissent This helpful copyright timeline

So I have begun remodeling my kitchen. This is both an exciting and terrifying project. The demolition part, to which Ken and Fitz can attest, is fun. Ian smash. Ian smash bricks. Ian smash… shit, well, guess I’ll need to patch that hole. Demolition is fun. Unfortunately, I am not quite done yet with the demolition. Here’s why: In decreasing order of comfort here are the things that I feel okay about messing with: electrical, plumbing, gas. I’m pretty good with things electric. Putting in a new light fixture isn’t such a big deal. You only get a couple wires. I like working with those fun speed cap thingies. Next come plumbing stuff, and here’s where things get a bit dicey. I am pretty good at replacing parts of toilets. I am vaguely okay at taking sinks apart, but beyond that I need a plumber. Finally, there is gas. I do not work with gas pipes. There’s something extremely low level in my body that says, “Hey jackass, let’s not blow up the house. Get someone in here that knows what they are doing.” Surprisingly I listen to that little voice. Gas appliances are supposed to have cutoff valves. These little jobbers work like shutoff valves for sinks. Cut the valve and gas won’t flow into the appliance. Very simple, very easy. Well, the morons that put together my kitchen did not, seemingly, install a valve for the stove. This means two things: one, I ripped up my basement ceiling hunting for a valve only to find none, and two, I have to shut off gas to the whole house in order to remove the stove. Number two shouldn’t be a big deal but I do want to spend a bit of time on number one. If you come over and go into my basement you’ll see a strip of ceiling missing. I spent a good part of today trying to figure how my gas lines run and where the shutoffs are. In the process I found no gas shutoff valves, but I did find a nice major fire hazard. In the ceiling, drywall-ed in, was a recessed lighting fixture… totally hidden from the basement. It had aluminum wires. This, for those of you who don’t know, is a bad thing. Just ask Fitz why he grew up in a trailer park after his house burnt down. The moral of the story is for those of you who have homes or are looking to get one: though things may look all rosy on the outside, there is almost guaranteed to be some crazy shit behind the walls that a lowest bidder contractor installed. Enjoy.

When you have a fireplace, you must be careful with the fires you make. Simple lesson. I have a fireplace, well, two actually. I, therefore, must be doubly careful, which I am not. It figures that having gone from two plumbing problems in my guest bathroom, I would end up with a fire that is trying its best not to stay in the fireplace. You know, the calming cracking of a fire, accented by an occasional pop. How calming. Unfortunately, I have some wood which doesn’t create those playful pops. It is more of a wood howitzer. I get occasional explosions of hot embers. There is the distinct smell of burning hair… my hair, but I am not sure if an ember hit me or not. How calming. I have realized that the explosion of embers is actually nicely timed so that once I find a comfy place on couch, the fire explodes. How calming. I am writing this upstairs, where I can hear both the downstairs explosions of my fireplace and the dripping of my broken faucet behind me. A wonderful symphony of home owner bliss.

As you may or may not know, Access360 has been acquired by IBM. I am at IBM training. In Chicago. I am treating my time here at Big Blue like Jane Goodall among the apes. It is a social experiment. I am mezmerized by this whole affair, like a car wreck which involes my paycheck. Needless to say I have been preoccupied lately. I have a serial number. 9A0919. Not an employee number. A serial number. It’s in hexidecimal. Not base 10, but base 16. I have been reduced to a hex number, a cog, in a machine that is larger and more stable than most African nations. I have just completed my first day of training. I find myself a) partially excited for the future and b) hankering for a fight.

Summer is slowly fading away. It’s still hot. It’s still humid. But it seems that the intense heat and humidity has given up for a while. This makes me very happy. Every summer I question why I live in DC. Every summer I don’t get an answer. I think, in retrospect, that this was The Summer That Wasn’t. This summer absolutely rocked by leaving only vague memories of extreme heat, malaria, and West Nile virus behind. In other news, Warren Zevon has inoperable lung cancer, in both lungs. He seems to be taking it in a way that I would expect him to: “I’m okay with it, but it’ll be a drag if I don’t make it till the next James Bond movie comes out,” said Zevon. For more info check this out. The List wishes him as well as he can be given the circumstances. Painting and home repair… lots of fun. Presently, the Poo Poo Palace is undergoing a bit of a renovation. Chef-in-the-Dungeon Joe is painting his cave. It’s a very nice yellow gold color. Evil-Landlord Ian has been working on his guest bathroom. I had a two hour conference with IBM’s HR department to give an overview of the benefits that they offer their employees. (In case you didn’t see this, IBM is buying Access360.) Well, two hours of HR fun is just a bit too much for me. I muted the speakerphone and started ripping out old bathroom stuff from my guest bathroom: true homeowner multitasking. If anyone would like to help paint, spackle, or rewire the Poo Poo Palace, please let me know.

I just flew back through BWI. Now I am not a fan of BWI. Never have been. The airport seemed like it was a practice airport, on the real airport on-deck circle. Everything was for practice, nothing really counted. A Junior Varsity airport. After this trip, I am reassessing this position. I believe BWI is somewhere between a Little League and a Tee Ball League airport. BWI, in a word, sucks. #1 Services. BWI sucks. The best I can do for food is the City Deli. I was served by a woman, and I am not making this up, who could not see over the mound of lettuce in fixin’s bar in front of her. She practically had to stand on a box to get my sandwich over the sneeze guard that separated her from the hungry angry customers. All in all, BWI doesn’t have much to offer a traveler. There’s the standard news shop. There’s a few Starbucks. Not much to speak of in the way of bars. #2 Ease of Use. BWI sucks. Okay, okay, so the government is testing the new security procedures at BWI. Yes, it does make BWI appear to be a safer airport. BUT, a) they are a huge pain in the ass, and b) why didn’t the government choose an airport better suited to deal with rules. (See Clientele #3) BWI is far away. Let’s not kid ourselves here, it is in Baltimore. It’s so far away that there is a train to reach it. #3 Clientele. BWI sucks. You have two basic kinds of travelers at BWI. The first are the cost conscious folks looking for a slightly better fare with a higher level of hassle. These are typically frequent travelers. They surf the web. They shop for deals. They didn’t want to use precious frequent flyer miles on a short hop flight. They know the usual procedures in an airport and can efficiently get the hell out of my way and through security and onto the plane without causing a ruckus. The other kind of traveler is the first time flier. This is the first time that they have left the trailer park (except for the little drunk and disorderly thing that was cleared up a few years ago). These are the people who complain the airplane seats aren’t wide enough for “normal” people. These are the people who make flying Southwest safe. The problem is that they usually don’t have a clue as to how to deal with the good folks from TSA. They don’t follow the typical convention of “get on the plane and shut the hell up.” Worse yet, they take up parking spaces. #4 Parking. BWI sucks. BWI sucks. BWI sucks. You have three options at BWI. First, you can get robbed blind by the parking lot in the middle of the airport. At $30 a day, there go any savings you might have had on your plane ticket. Second, you can park in an economy lot that is located thirty to forty miles away. In fact, it is easier and more cost effective to park at you house and wait for a BWI bus to come and pick you up. Third, there is the Extra Special Parking lot. And in an ESP lot I did recently realize that we have learned nothing since September 11, 2001. Nothing. Not a single solitary thing. Sunday night, I was returning from Jess and Ed’s wedding (an incredibly fun to-do - a big congrats from the List to them). I hiked across BWI to get to Southwest’s baggage claim. Then the fun begins. Heading outside, I grab a bus to the ESP lot. So far, so good… ish. We weave and wind our way to the lot. The nice driver man tries to lighten the mood of my weary companions, and sadly just makes things worse. We stop at one space and a rather large lady in pants cut from a shower curtain barges from one end of the bus, over my legs, and out the door. Whatever… I just wanted to get to my car and get home. So I pile out at my car and then get in the line from hell. You see, BWI only has one cashier for their parking lots and he has to run from lot to lot to lot to help people get robbed blind and then run to another lot and do the same again. While sitting (it took me nearly thirty minutes to get out of the lot all told) I noticed a very strange driving spectacle in front of me. When the Trail Blazer two cars up would roll forward a foot, the car in front of me would roll two feet. I thought at first that the driver in front of a me was distracted, took her foot of the brake, and absent mindedly rolled too far forward. She surely wouldn’t do it again. But I was wrong. The Trail Blazer rolls up a bit, and this time the car in front of me, driven by none other than the grumpy woman, rolls smack into the back of it. The Trail Blazer keeps his cool and says nothing. But it happens again! This woman rolls into the Trail Blazer again. Well, the two drivers exchange words. At this point I just want to go home so badly I am considering walking. But it’s at this point that I realize why the grumpy woman was rolling forward so aggressively. There was another car coming from the opposite direction that was trying to merge in. He, like all of us, wanted to go home too. This lady was smashing into the car in front of her to prevent this guy from getting in line. No common decency. No courtesy. No, this lady had to be first and she was willing to bash into another car to stay in front. That’s America folks. That’s BWI at its best. Have we learned nothing? Where has our generous spirit gone? Where has our desires to be good to one another gone? Is there any compassion left for our fellow man? Sadly, I think I know the answer. We have learned nothing. September 11 taught us nothing. We are still self-centered. We are still unwilling to sacrifice a little of our own bounty for the good of others. I hope a race of mutant dolphins comes and takes over the world… oh and, BWI still sucks!

Ever played Grand Theft Auto 3? For those of you who haven’t, here’s the gist: you are a low-end punk working your way up the ranks of a crime organization by means of vehicular homicide, stashing bodies, and general murder and mayhem. I find GTA3 hilarious. It’s a great way to blow off some steam. It is just too ridiculous to be taken seriously. But of course people do. And then the fun police come and start breaking down doors and replacing all those cool toys with My Little Ponies and video games that Ned Flanders would approve of. Check out this article for more on the fun. I especially like the Post’s comparison of GTA3 to Pac-man: “In today’s virtual mean streets, Pac-Man wouldn’t last a day. The yellow sphere with the slanted pie-hole that gobbled up pellets back in the ’80s probably would get carjacked and beaten to a yellow wad of pulp.” What does this all have to do with the President? I’m glad you asked. The way I figure it, the W, even with his month long vacation, has not really relaxed in a while. It might be nerves over the fact that he is, in fact, President, and scares even him. It might be that Ashcroft has become insistent that Bush proves he’s Christian and not Muslim. Who knows? But one thing I do know is that he needs to blow off steam. Having seen footage from the Gulf War, Daddy’s video game war, I think W has found his way to relax. He’ll get hisself a big ole war too. And it’s gonna be a great sequel, cuz’ the bad guy from Daddy’s war is still the bad guy. This time there’ll be a killer soundtrack, way cooler graphics, and none of that Declaration of War stuff that Congress keeps griping about. It’ll be so cool. Tell ya what, I’ll offer the Pres any game he wants, in fact, I’ll buy him a whole gaming station, if he promises to respect the Constitution and get a Declaration of War for when he needs a rating boost and goes after Saddam Hussein.

I has always like the Talking Heads’ True Stories… the album (http://store.artistdirect.com/store/artist/album/0,,172362,00.html). I knew that there was a movie (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0092117) that the music was based off of. A little strange… the band recorded an album of songs that characters in the movie sang. I think there are some of the most real and yet positive,uplifting lyrics on this album that I have ever heard. Dream Operator and Radio Head are two great examples of this. At any rate, I now am watching the movie. (Side note, Netflix really is a good service. Thanks to them I have caught up on some of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 I haven’t seen… oh, yeah, and I got True Stories from them.) I am about a third into the movie. It is a combination of Bowling Alone, Leap of Faith, and a Ken Burn’s documentary all rolled into one. And I like it. A lot. And that scares me. Ever listened to David Byrne talk? He speaks slowly in strange off-beat phrases. An example: He is in his red convertible, looks at the camera and says, “I want to saying something about the difference between American cities and European cities… … … but I forgot it. … … I have it written down at home.” I am really scaring myself here. Maybe it is just the heat getting to me.

Ah, Bermuda, the most remote habitable (by British standards) island in the world. It’s a coral cap on top of a very extinct volcano. They drive on the left-side of the road, use dollars as currency, by their gas is liters, measure distance in kilometers… a very confused place. The Bermudian accent is an interesting nut to crack. They say their A’s like Bostonians, their O’s like Brits, and the rest is a big jumble. In fact, it is far too difficult a topic to bring up here. I suggest you check this out for a better explanation. Sitting in the Hog Penny pub and one of the people at the table nearly ordered a Scorched Monk’s Nuts Coffee. This drink involves some horrid combination of liqueurs and a vague hint of coffee. More importantly the Scorched Monk’s Nuts is a very very popular drink among the parishioners of Cardinal Bernard Law. This, of course, brings us to the discussion of the native Bermudian Tree Swine. The tree swine is the only native mammal on the island. Strange things, these tree swine. They look, from all accounts, to be very happy looking piggies. They, when in adulthood, act like completely normally piggies: very large, very lazy, very edible. But the strange aspect of these pigs is when they are a big younger. They have a propensity to climb trees and lay on the branch. It far cooler in the branches and the tree swine can laze happily there. Another amazing thing about the tree swine is the noise these youngsters make at night. It’s fairly high pitched noise, something between a yip, a squeak, and the call of a morning dove. The entire island rings of this surprisingly soothing noise.