Dripmail

[ http://www.livejournal.com/users/popov/93587.html?view=451475 ]

Bilyana:

"i havent seen entire episodes of the chapelle show. but i've heard a
considerable portion of his standup. and compared to the general quality
of his sets, is "rick james, bitch" really that funny? why is everyone
quoting it?"

http://www.livejournal.com/users/popov/93587.html?thread=451475#t451475

My overthought out response:

The problem with all sketch comedy is that audiences are dumb. In order to
play to that dumb audience, all sketch comedy that is not done by people
with a serious contempt for their audience, or has serious oversight by
people who care about ratings will eventually gravitate towards mindless,
repetitious "character" sketches based on a catch phrase.

For example, watch any episode of Saturday Night Live in the last ten
years. Then compare them to episodes of Mr. Show. (It's been a while, but
I'm pretty sure the State mocked this concept with their "I want to dip my
balls in it" guy. I'd probably put this in the contempt for the audience
and other sketch comedy shows category.)

See, also, YTMND and enter in any catch phrase you can think of. There
will probably be half a dozen pages dedicated to it.

But you shouldn't write off Chapelle's Show. It's actually quite good, and
generally isn't of the "stupid catch phrase" variety. In fact, other than
one recurring character (the horrible crack-head sketches) I don't think
there have been any stupid catch-phrase centered bullshit. And he doesn't
even have a real catch-phrase. "Crack? Got crack?" doesn't really cut it.

Seriously, the sketch with Wayne Brady is fucking brilliant.

Fuck, I should be studying for finals.

No, wait, I shouldn't, grad school is ezeee.

i think the majority of the humor of the rick james thing stems from
the fact that it's rick james in the sketch. and the other guy. and
they aren't just telling jokes, they're telling a story that both of
them remember, differently.

i mean, i didn't think about this as much as adam, but i don't even
have a tv, much less cable tv. i get all of my tv shows hand drawn in
flip books and have to do all the voices myself.

So I tried to use Blogger.com's new "mail to blog" feature for my secret
never-updated-test-blog at trenchant.blogspot.com and it worked, which
made this AWESOME email I got in response much less awesome.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 9 May 2004 19:10:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mail Delivery System <MAILER-DAEMON@[xxx]
To: adam@[xxx]
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

This is the Postfix program at host blogger.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.

The Postfix program

<bloggermail+amathes.poopstick@[xxx] Command died with status 1: "IFS='
'&&exec /home/bloggermail/processmail||exit 75 #bloggermail". Command
output: tee: ../pipedmessages: File too large

I mean, sure, dripmail may not always work, and it's ugly, and it really
only works for me and Dakota's version dies all the time, but at least it
doesn't complain to you about its problems.

drip not drop, yo.

but yeah, the fact that anybody can post just by sending it to an email
address (rather than say, at least requiring a specific email address and a
string in the email and only from a whitelisted address) is super insecure.
i hesitate to even call it a password.


-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Santangelo [mailto:josh@[xxx]
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 1:01 PM
To: dropmail@[xxx]
Subject: re: that's why dripmail is better


And it doesn't return your password to you in its error messages (well,
if it had error messages it wouldn't), either.

-josh

adammathes: it's astounding how they managed to take a bunch of supposed
HCI "experts" and "design gurus" and make Blogger into a less usable,
ugly mess

adammathes: but the logo is ROUNDED NOW

dakotasmith: whatever i want to snort shit up my nose and it doesn't have
a button for that. asses!

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/dripmail

Although, nobody can join unless I approve. I like the dripmail model
better - anyone can post but only I get to decide if it shows up.
(Although I can give an address permission to show up without
intervention with the whitelist.)

Interesting - Google groups has syndication feeds, but in Atom.

Not valid Atom (although what does it really mean to be valid with a
pre-alpha whatever pseudo spec. Then again, there isn't even a fucking DTD
for RSS that isn't like 10 years old and from Netscape so whatever.)

http://feeds.archive.org/validator/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fgroups-beta.google.com%2Fgroup%2Fdripmail%2Ffeed%2Fmsgs.xml

Interestingly, it's deficiencies are some of the things that I assumed
would be most problematic with the format (the requirement of three
seperate dates to be associated with each post being the most obvious.)
Google group feeds (at least this one) only have one - created, not issued
or modified. This asinine insistence on three is one of the things I
dislike most about Atom. That is, there are many valid instances where a
publisher would not in any way be interested in sharing a creation or
modification date, and syndication and aggregation, while it may be
*helped* by the presence of dates, certainly don't *require* them to such
an extent that three *must* be present in all posts.

The requirement of a unique identifier on each entry is also, in my
opinion, a bit too stringent, but it *is* required and isn't there.

The incorrect date format is just a minor issue, but, again, if fucking
Google can't get the details right, is there really any hope of a massive
amount of tool developers and site creators getting it right? And if
people are just going to break the Atom spec as casually as people do with
the RSS "spec" (prose documentation is not the same as a DTD or schema)
then what is the point of adding all these insane requirements to Atom?

...clever.

random garfield dadaizer generator = better than real garfield

http://fairway.dyndns.org/~dan/cgi-bin/garfield.pl?panels=&coherency=4

Best ad ever for X-Arcade

[ http://trenchant.org/misc/x-arcade-ad.gif ]


via 2ndhandglory
[ http://www.secondhandglory.com/2004_05_01_shg.php3#108566960436802935 ]

[ http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/ ]

"Prepared at the direction of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the Iraq on the Record
Database is a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements
about the threat posed by Iraq made by the five Administration officials
most responsible for providing public information and shaping public
opinion on Iraq: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Powell, and National Security Advisor
Rice.The Iraq on the Record Report is a comprehensive examination of these
statements."