I am no longer a burden on the unemployment system. OK, my benifits ran out anyway, but the important thing is that I got a job! Yep, an honest to gosh, 9-6 job! It's at a company called Ebook Systems. They make a neat piece of software called FlipViewer that give you a nice, book like interface on your computer. You can use it for simple things like photoalbums or books/manuals or you can use it for direct conversions of print magazines to the web. It sounds sort of pointless when I describe it, but once you see it in action it's really cool. Gives you the experience of a magazine on the web.

Anyway, I had forgotten HOW to work 8 hours straight. The first few days I had trouble concentrating for protracted periods. Sad, huh? I'm over that hurdle now, but I still haven't gotten myself to the gym at 6:30 pm. Now we can all pester Lizzy until SHE gets a job... :-)

Hey People-

Here's hoping for a Darkfin chapter later this month... or maybe not. I'm still in the midst of a competitive writing project and Barron has his hands full with other things (hehehe).

All I can say is thank the gods that remain for the internet because this is the last best hope for artistic expression and alternative thought without being crushed by a profit-driven, zombie-producing mega media monolith. If it weren't for the web, there would be no Darkfin. Period. Below is a brilliant opinion by an amazing SF columnist and it pretty much reflects how I feel about this week's FCC vote. Enjoy!

DisneyAOLViacom Owns Your Ass
After all, who the hell wants diversity and choice in major media?
Thanks, FCC! By Mark Morford

Ah, screw it. Let's just give in. Let's just laugh bitterly and toss
back a shot of something potent and grain based and throw ourselves
under the GOP steamroller and give in to the great excruciating cosmic
joke of it all.

Because here comes the hilarious bit about the three corporate-slut
Republicans who voted down the two pro-choice Democrats to relax FCC
restrictions and allow gluttonous media megacorps to own multiple (and,
yes, competing) media outlets in the same market, the same city, in
your very town.

Which is of course just another way of saying: bigger companies, more
consolidation, fewer indie voices, yay yay go go
ViacomDisneyAOLMicrosoftNewsCorpExxonWalMartSatan!

To put it another way, the gods of draconian blandness over at Disney
could, right now, hypothetically, snatch up as many as three major TV
stations, eight radio stations, the cable-TV company and the only major
newspaper, all in the very same city. Maybe your city. Aww look, it
really is a small media world after all.

Even if they compete with one another, even if each outlet draws its
resources from the other, even if they all hew to the same tightly
controlled story lines, spin, marketing gimmicks, perspective,
thuddingly mediocre opinioneering, bottom lines, they can still own it
all. Isn't that heartening? God bless America.

"Our actions will advance our goals of diversity and localism," FCC
Chairman and noted sniveling GOP errand boy Michael Powell actually had
the nerve to say, in public, as lightning, surprisingly, did not strike
him dead on the spot.

And if you don't laugh at this, if you don't absolutely insist on
enjoying the bitter ironies of the massive shameless corporatization of
this nation like Satan enjoys shrieking root canals, if you don't
passionately demand that your soul view U.S. political culture as a
massive reeling circus masquerading as a solemn drama, you will be
compelled to scream and narcotize and run off to the woods with a case
of Grey Goose and the collected W.H. Auden and an iPod loaded with only
Metallica and Chopin, never to be heard from again.

You simply have to admire the utterly shameless anti-choice rallying
cry, the "more power for corporations" sloganeering, the astounding
brazenness with which the GOP machine is working like frothing dogs to
quell independent voices and Keep America Dumb.

Hell, even the NRA was opposed to this vote, as were countless consumer
groups, religious organizations, small broadcasters, writers, academics
and countless more (and yes, even some Republicans). Strange indeed are
the bedfellows when you realize it ain't only liberal or alternative
voices that will be actively pummeled and restricted.

Simply and obviously put, the charming pro-corporate FCC vote
enthusiastically slaps all-American ideas of diversity and free speech
and open-ended dialogue and dissent, and does everything to promote
ideas of more and more benumbed media voices owned by fewer and fewer
companies that couldn't care one whit less about anything but profit
and control and the further consolidation of power.

And here's the kicker: Still conservatives pule, "Damn that liberal
media." Still you hear the GOP endlessly whine, "Damn liberals won't
let America flourish." Oh you glorious bastards. Oh you self-indulgent
pseudo-geniuses.

And oh how they love the irony of that lie, of how they'd be hard
pressed to find a single truly liberal major pundit expounding her
views on any of the major networks, anywhere, while the airwaves are
absolutely saturated with Hannity and Limbaugh and Stern, Anne Coulter
and G. Gordon Liddy and George Will and Pat Robertson and Ollie North.

Spread all over, they are, from CNN to CBS to Fox News, each happily
spouting largely jingoistic, pro-war rhetoric. Hey, fearmongering and
isolationism and anti-lib screeching -- it's where the money is, baby.

And now, with this FCC decision, it will only get worse. Now a nation
already completely exhausted from the major media's (and BushCo's)
incessant beat of the drums of war and fear and terror and isolationism
will feel their very eardrums scream, as the muscles that pound those
drums will get even stronger.

Ah, screw it. Wal-Mart is already the world's largest and most powerful
retailer, a wicked arbiter of taste and censorship. Starbucks is
already the world's largest coffee chain, often opening new stores
within latte-spitting distance of one another. McDonald's is already
the world's most toxic garbage-food purveyor, helping keep America
obese and cancerous and happily drugged.

So then, why not the media? Why not let AOL Time Warner or Murdoch's
draconian News Corp. own every major media joint in town? It is, after
all, just another part of the mad pageant, all part of America's
absolutely lethal fascination with unchecked capitalism and our
leaders' utter devotion to creating a modern-day oligarchy, a fabulous
and heavily branded and cleverly trademarked and well-packaged type of
easily digestible made-for-TV fascism.

And you just have to laugh. Aloud. Right now. At BushCo following
through on his one major promise, to run this country just like a
failing, top-heavy, megalomaniacal corporation, full of greed-drunk
execs who rake their peons over the coals, gut their 401(k)s, cook the
books and run the factory into massive debt and dysfunction, all while
emaciated slave boys polish their golden escape pods.

What, too bitter? Too fatalistic? Too extremist liberal fantasy? Nah.
Just part of the divine circus, really. It's right there on your
Viacom-owned TV. And all they want you to do is tune in, shut up, and
stop caring.