Who Will Die For An iPhone?

Step into the WABAC (Wayback) Machine with me, Sherman. It’s not a long trip this time…

Police Arrest Two in Shooting of Man Waiting on Playstation 3 Line in Connecticut

Drive-by shooting at PS3 queue

PlayStation 3 Shooting Investigation Still On

Hello, Apple. Hello, AT&T.

You gonna have adequate security?

The people on line will be peaceful.

But with the frenzy for the iPhone, the people stalking the lines won’t be peaceful.

So There It Is: The Mysterious Missing Twelfth iPhone App. It’s YouTube!

Really, do you think I would forget something like this?

Apple’s “iPhone ad slip up” reveals “mystery app”

See the demo for YouTube on the iPhone [embedded Flash video… I think]

Oh my God!! Why do you keep weakening my boycott resolve, Jobs? Why why why?!!?

Damn, at least hold some sort of contest so I can get a free iPhone with a year’s free service. Oh, I don’t know… a contest along the lines of, Which Blog Entry Is Mike Cane’s Crankiest? Vote and he wins an iPhone!! (Well of course it has to be a rigged contest. How else would I ever win?)

Previously in this blog:
My Phony iPhone
Apple Boosts iPhone Battery In Effort To Kill Me
Two Weeks To iPhone
iPhone: No WiFi Without Data Contract?
Open For Comments: Should We Boycott The iPhone?
Now I Just Might Boycott The iPhone

You Mark These Words: YouTube Traffic Will Surpass P2P Traffic

YouTube taking over the UK … and the Internet

YouTube now comprises 10% of all Internet bandwidth consumption.

No, I am not kidding. And it will happen in less than three years from now. Possibly as little as two years.

Let me spell it out for you.

Do you want a hot song? You’ll find it on YouTube, not P2P!

Someone will grab some crap video footage and make a crap music video with that song. Then upload it to YouTube. There are programs — free programs — that can strip out the audio track and save it as a distinct MP3 file. You’ve now got a free song without having to go through the bandwidth-throttling bullshit of P2P.

That’s right, Universal Music Group! All those music videos you’ve officially posted on YouTube? Hey, thanks for all the free songs, you morons! Now stop crying about piracy and lost revenues. You’re the biggest pirate of your own artists now.

Previously in this blog:
As I Said: iPhone Vs. Universal Music
Applenomics, Or Why Steve Jobs Will Now Hate Me For Ever And Ever
Get Thee NOT To A Zunery

Is It Me Or Is It YahooMail?

I’ve already established that those thieving bastards of Time Warner are cheating millions of people with bait-and-switch broadband service.

But there are times today when the rest of the Net is OK but it’s taking me about two minutes to do anything on YahooMail!

Put in logon info, click, wait two minutes.

Click on Check Mail, wait two minutes.

Click on an email, wait two minutes!

Click on Reply, wait two fucking minutes!!!

Click on Send, wait two motherfucking goddammed minutes!!!!

Hey, Yahoo, if you want to know why you’ve lost your leadership to Google, you might start by looking at your mail service!

And right now, I can’t even get the logon screen for YahooMail!

WTF?!!?

Having Any Cardiac Surgery? A Heart Bypass? Better Know This!

A new fear for heart patients
A study by an Island institute reveals more are emerging from surgery with diabetes

About 18 months ago, the Heart Institute began monitoring patients’ blood-sugar levels after surgery. Since then, doctors have found that 70 percent of all patients at the Heart Institute require insulin injections to combat high blood-sugar levels in the weeks after their operation.

A little more than half of those patients were diagnosed diabetics; the rest tested positive for high blood-sugar levels after surgery, meaning they either had a previously undiagnosed case of diabetes, were in a pre-diabetic state or had impaired glucose tolerance.

“Not all of them are true diabetics, but under the stress of surgery, many of them clearly have elevated blood-sugar levels,” said Dr. Mark Jarrett, chief medical officer of Staten Island University Hospital.

Dr. Arsura said RUMC began closely tracking the blood-glucose levels of intensive care and coronary patients in the past six months.

Margie Cranston, a registered nurse and diabetes educator with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, called the high rate of heart surgery patients at risk of diabetes “astounding.”

“That kind of goes to the health crisis that diabetes is,” she said.

So far, the Heart Institute’s effort has substantially reduced the rate of post-surgery complications among patients, said Cam O’Reilly, a certified diabetes educator and member of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

“We’ve worked closely with Dr. McGinn and the cardiac tower for four years now because we had concerns, as they did, that patients were coming out without insulin,” she said. “There’s a hard push nationally to make sure this is happening.”

That is very, very weird. I wonder if it happens after any major procedure?

And, hmmmm, what about dental procedures?

Previously in this blog:
Regis Rises!
Regis Philbin: A Heart Bypass Account For You To Read
Godspeed, Regis Philbin

Sample Warren Ellis’s Upcoming Novel For Free

OK. Oh my God. I have never, ever read anything like this before. Never. Not. E.v.e.r.

The following excerpt I will quote here is Not Safe for Work, Christians or Other Children. As Ellis himself says of some links on his own blog, Don’t Look if you’re in one of those categories or just generally squeamish.

All warned? OK…

Here goes:

SIXTEEN

I found that I had to kind of limbo into my car, leaning back and almost heaving my hideous genital weight in ahead of me.

With the car door shut and my scrotum on my lap, I sighed, switched the car radio on, and settled down to wait for Trix. Looking at my watch. Looking out the window. Wondering exactly how long it took to inflate a woman’s labia until they passed as gonads. Minutes crawled.

Read the rest of it at his LiveJournal site.

[Excerpt © Copyright Warren Ellis 2007 All Rights Reserved. This is a chapter from CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, published in hardback by William Morrow in the United States July 24 2007.]

Author Christopher Fowler Torments Me With An Email

[…] I feel humbled in the knowledge that you get what I’m doing (a lot of people don’t, but then I don’t write for them).

With ‘White Corridor’ and ‘Victoria Vanishes’ you’ll see how all the strands start to come together, tying everything up, so that I can finish the series there if I want to – or go on.

What?

The possible end of Bryant and May?

If that happens, I hope it’ll only be a pause for him to catch his breath. Take a break and do some one-offs to flex his writer muscles. And then to come back with more Bryant & May! (I’m a Bryant & May junkie!)

In another email from someone else, it was reported of writer Dow Mossman:

Lately, he’s been deep into a 51-set Balzac, whom he claims helped put the nail in the coffin of his own writing long ago when he first read him and realized he would never get near him.

Balzac‘s epic La Comédie humaine (Human Comedy) spans decades, with characters from earlier volumes showing up in later ones; time has passed, they are older and more experienced.

Now imagine trying to plan all that ahead of time. That’s what Christopher Fowler is doing with his Bryant & May series. It’s an absolutely audacious idea, unique in all of fiction, and it’s a huge amount of fun too (for us readers, at least; it must be hell for Fowler to keep track of everything… like Bryant’s shoes!).

You’ve got to read it!

Christopher Fowler’s website is in the Blogroll.

Additional:
Christopher Fowler wikipedia entry

Previously in this blog:
The Astounding Christopher Fowler
Writer Added
Christopher Fowler’s Bryant & May
Christopher Fowler Slays Me

Ken Bruen To Get First David Goodis Award!

Author Ken Bruen will be presented with the first ever David L. Goodis award at NoirCon to be held April 3-6, 2008 in Philadelphia, PA.

Earlier this year, a gathering for Goodis fans was held, called GoodisCon. A delightful article about it — with several links to other coverage — can be read here.

Check out the photo: Robert Polito visits the room on North 11th Street where David Goodis did his writing. Photo by Louis Boxer. Christ, I’ve been in rooms like that. It’s a miracle Goodis was even able to sleep in it, never mind write.

In addition to all this, a documentary about Goodis is also in the works.

It’s too damned bad honors like these come too late for the admired writer himself to enjoy. Still, it’s good to see any recognition. I hope it will lead to all of Goodis’s work coming back into print — to thrill the hell out of readers and to inspire other writers.

Previously in this blog:
Thank You Again, Ken Bruen!
Victor Gischler Has A New Internet Berth
Going Offline
Derek Raymond: He Makes All Others Look Like Shit
Just Read & Now Reading
No More Blogging Today. Blame Author Ken Bruen!
Get The Word, Nerd
Nerd Word

Writer Barry Eisler: Rain’s Man

Writer Barry Eisler did a reading and signing at Partners & Crime bookstore in NYC last night.

I went and took a bunch of pics. None of which I can post until I pay for more image storage space! (My YahooMail just went to unlimited storage. I wish WordPress image storage would mimic that!)

Eisler is the guy behind a series of novels starring a half-Japanese half-Caucasian former government agent and assassin named John Rain. I read the first when it came out, but the rest are in my Endless Queue To Read (sorry, Barry!).

But don’t let my disability stop you. Go get his Rain series.

One point that should satisfy readers who crave verisimilitude is that Eisler himself is a former employee of our very own CIA (no, not during the run-up to the current mid-east debacle!). His takes: “You don’t want all the government that you pay for!” and “Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” Plus, and it’s such a sacrifice for him!, he has actually been to all the exotic locales mentioned in his books. And he speaks Japanese (Gambatte, Eisler-san!) and lived there for three years.

Barry is a hugely funny guy. He’s a fellow connoisseur of the defunct Loompanics library. Unlike my mild attempts at quasi-illegal literature (fake ID!) — he went, uh, whole hog and got one volume called Contingency Cannibalism! He floored me — and the SRO audience — by being able to recite the catalog’s promo copy! (“What if I like it?”)

If Barry contacts me, I’ll be giving him copies of the photos I can’t yet run. Maybe they’ll show up on his site or his MySpace page. Stay tuned.

Now go get his books!

FSJ Has Guts Like RSJ

He published my Comment in which I point to my post about boycotting the iPhone.

Which didn’t lead to a huge spike in traffic here.

Hell, the searches just today for Heather surpass FSJ referrals.

So, he has guts like RSJ. But if RSJ mentioned this blog, I think I’d see a spike…

Gotta work on That Magic, FSJ!