Katinger.com

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I've actually found something that makes me want to be a kid again. Check out the new Schwinn Sting-Ray childrens bicycle. It's way cooler than my actual real motorcycle. I was watching the TV commercials for this thing and they totally nailed it. If I was a kid I would be all over this bike like a pitbull on a ham bone. I haven't really built much of a relationship with my girlfriends nephew David yet, but for $177.63 at Wal-Mart, well there's no time like the present for presents! "David I know we haven't talked much in the past, but here's a bike. Enjoy!"

Meet Guinness (a.k.a. Guin-Guin, Guiny-Goo-Goo, The Guinda-loon). He's my girlfriend Allison's doggie. We recently took some fun pictures of him. Here's my favorite. He just looks so damn happy...almost smiling.

I really wish he could come live with us, but until we get an apartment more conducive to his "lifestyle" he'll have to continue living with his brutha from anutha mutha.

There are more pictures of Guinness here.

I watched the Nick Berg beheading video online the other day. I’m not sure why I did it, but after watching it, I wished I hadn’t. I guess it took actually seeing it for me to completely process a few things:

1. The shear horror of watching someone die violently
2. The level that a mind and heart has to be at in order to do such a thing to another person

First of all, you can have the best special effects and most convincing acting in a shoot’em up film, but it still doesn’t effect you when the movie is over. The horror here lies in the fact that you just keep telling yourself that it’s REAL. Second of all; what has to happen to a person in their life to make their heart so cold, their resolve so strong, and their hate so intense that they have the ability to hack through an innocent living person’s neck until their head comes away from their body? Simply unfathomable.

The first 2/3 of the video consists of the murderers reading their statement in Arabic with Nick sitting in front of them staring blanking and occasionally shifting, clearly having no clue what is about to happen to him. Once the main killer finishes his statement he pulls a knife out and begins hacking. The others jump on top of Nick and hold him down until he bleeds out and his head comes off. It’s that simple, and that unbelievable.

It’s been several days since I looked at it, and even now just writing this description is making my heart race. Actually, the worst part of the video is the sound, believe it or not. The video is grainy, but not grainy enough. But those screams, which eventually turn into wheezing gasps as the knife cuts past his wind pipe, are sickening.

After my initial shock I began to picture this thing from the perspective of Nick’s family. What if this was video of my best friend, son, brother, or father being brutally murdered for the whole world to see on the internet? How would I feel if some punk in his office cubicle was satisfying his morbid curiosity by watching one of my loved ones get killed? I’d be pretty damn disgusted I bet. I feel kind of disgusted for having watched.

This is just another point/counter-point on my beloved internet. It offers the ability to instantly share experiences and knowledge, while simultaneously being able to spread hate and murder.

I guess I wrote this to tell you that if you think you want to see the video, think again.

I don't consider myself an overly sensitive or mushy guy. However, lots of guys have a certain something that brings out the inner wuss. I work with a guy who is about 6' 5" and his nick name is ELHB (extremely large human being), yet he has a kitten calendar on his office wall. For me...it's puppies. Any dogs really. I like dogs much better than people...for the most part. That's why this show on Animal Planet called Cell Dogs is really messing with my head.

Cell Dogs chronicles the progress of various prison inmate programs whose mission it is to have inmates train stray dogs to be highly adoptable house pets, or pure bred dogs to be one-in-a-million Seeing Eye dogs. Not only do I want every single damn one of those dogs to come live with me, but I find myself actually feeling for the prisoners who train them and then have to let them go to adoptive households. These hardened criminals sometimes come to tears when they have to separate. I find my death-row-advocating inner Republican and my mushy-puppy-loving inner wuss at odds. And of course my girlfriend would not be opposed to living with 450 puppies either. Who needs kids!? We just have to figure out how to get out of this awful apartment of ours as it is not conducive to doggies.

The other thing that gets me about this show and the one that comes on right after it is the unspeakable cruelty that many of the adopted dogs have dealt with in their lives. These dogs were brought to the brink of death by negligent or incredibly cruel humans. Most of them take a long while to get rehabilitated, but they still somehow trust people again. Dogs are amazing. Can I have one? Puh-leeeezze?????

So now that the world is getting comfortable with "blogs" it's time for the next deceivingly obvious web-based technology with a nutty name. Wikis are basically content managed web sites minus security. Anyone can edit the content on them and post new content. The fundamental idea is exciting; a web-based knowledge aggregator where anyone who has something to contribute can. However, this is the real world. While Wikis are fringe now, the first one that gets really big and popular is sure to be defaced by idiots on a regular basis. Or maybe I have the idiot mentality all wrong. I guess part of the fun of defacing a large corporate web site is getting past the security. With no security to conquer, why deface?

In any case, here are some good links describing what a Wiki is, where it came from, and pointers to some examples of the latest craze in open source fun...

• Wikis Described in Plain English
• Weave a wiki web
• Example: Wikipedia.org - The Wiki Encyclopedia

Punk rock demigod and bottomless pit of energy Henry Rollins, in his constant crusade against the mediocre, has taken his unique taste in music, as well as his violently refreshing world view to the airwaves of Southern California. Here's the dirt from Henry's email...

Here’s something that just happened. I was asked by the good folks at 103.1 FM here in Los Angeles CA if I would like to host a couple of hours. I said I was interested but in order to do it, I would have to be able to bring my own music and talk about anything I wanted to. They told me that’s what they had in mind and so I said yes. This is the only station you can turn on and hear the Buzzcocks twice in an hour. This is my kind of station. Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols is one of the hosts. It’s pretty damn cool.

They told me I could have Mondays 7-9pm starting on June 7th and I thought that was fine but told them I didn’t want to wait so they said how about trying it out this coming Monday, the 17th of May. I told them I would be there early.

If you aren't in LA you can listen to Henry online here http://www.indie1031.fm/listenlive.html from 10 PM - 12 Midnight Eastern time. I'm taking it in right now...pretty cool. Good tunes, lots of typical Henry. If you don't know what that means...tune in on June 7th once he gets back from his Middle East trip.

update: wow...and Henry replies to his email faster than most of my friends! Thanks Henry.

...me too. I know the world is full of pain and suffering, but isn't there room for the positive things that happen day-to-day? The Good News Network comes to the rescue...well, not quite. The thought is nice, but the news is old and doesn't link to credible sources. I want something like Google News, but filled with nothing but positive stories. I guess that is a tall order given all the bad news out there. Sure, an all-good-news site would be a naive view of the world...especially for a cynical bastard like me, but once in a while it's refreshing to remember that it's not ALL doom and gloom.

In the past year I've managed to get my after hours project FastMachines.com off the ground, but it's been at the expense of this site due to the time that I've been putting into FastMachines as well as various freelance projects. The recent re-launch of Blogger, since being purchased by Google, has inspired me to try to put something interesting here again. As far as what I mean by interesting? I'll determine that!

The new Blogger interface is really nice and even easier to use than before. And the new templates come courtesy of some of the best and brightest designers/developers in the industry today. The one I'm using right now was put together by Dan Cederholm, an "award-winning web designer and author." The real point here is that if I'm going to post stuff on a regular basis, it needs to be effortless...and the new Blogger system pretty much satisfies that need. If you've wanted a personal site or weblog...now is the time folks. You can't beat the price either...free.