ask your questions. take your chances. see what happens. rock!

an excerpt from the Tribune:

Steve Dahl, a Chicago radio personality for more than 30 years whose broadcast style inspired a generation of voices, told his WJMK-FM 104.3 listeners that he was leaving the CBS Radio outlet after today’s broadcast.

Dahl’s announcement confirms longstanding rumors that he would become the latest top-paid CBS Radio Chicago host cut loose in recent months despite a contract that extends to mid-2011 worth more than $1 million annually.

“This is our last show here,” Dahl said.

Dahl, 54, has been a seminal figure in the radio business both as a solo performer and as part of a team over the years, including pairings with Garry Meier and Buzz Kilman, his most recent partner.

Seen as an influence on Howard Stern and others, Dahl was among the first to return radio, which had become a time-temperature-song medium, to something approaching theater of the mind. He did not have a classic old-school radio voice, but that was part of bringing a certain “reality” to the air, taking listeners into his world, his head and behind the scenes at the stations where he worked.

Does this mean Howard could do the right thing and offer Steve a show on Sirius XM?

Christmas is coming… and Sirius’ stock couldnt be lower. If I was Mel and Howard I’d say, what the hell, lets do this damn thing.

but seriously, CBS, what are you doing paying a guy over a million a year for three more years and not having him work for you? why give Dahl a three year paid vacation?

because we have decided that you cant threaten to do harm to people, you can’t “kidnap” them by making them stay in their vegas hotel rooms, and you cant use a gun while you do all this crazy nonsense when you should be in florida counting your lucky stars that the glove didnt fit, etc.

because the sentencing is so stiff for this sort of illegal activity you dont hear about a lot of people doing these sorts of crimes.

however there is a multimillion dollar industry to protect people from catching computer viruses. unlike illnesses that strike the human body due to viruses, computer viruses are man-made and solely intended to injure people’s computers. it’s like taking a machine gun up a clock tower and just spraying bullets at the innocent people below.

but unlike such a crime, the internet virus spreader has the benefit of having others do their bidding for them. once his program strikes the first person, the evil spreads from computer to computer at breakneck speed.

OJ will be going to jail for at least 6 years and after those are served, because he used a gun, he will have to do a few more years. internet criminals should face the same tough sentencing: years for trying to ruin people’s personal and professional equipment, and because they used a computer they should have to get more years.

imagine if you intentionally attempted and then was successful in infecting 1 million people’s computers – ruining months of hard work, stymieing projects at work, and generally being a dickwad. now imagine if that crime could get you 15 years to life. dont you think this bs would stop immediately?

it’s indeed time for change.

that i have turned my twitter feed into what jason sutter calls “a link blog”, and because i respect all of those people a great deal, most of all sutter, i will explain why i politely disagree with them.

the job of black people, of which i am proudly a card carrying member, is to take something somewhat interesting (a guitar, a turntable, spray paint, a basketball, an old cadillac, the english language, the executive branch) and make it really interesting.

i am an early adopter. im friendly with the boys of twitter. i owe much of what i have now to the boys of twitter. and yet when i used it and when i talked to people about it folks would say “i dont get it”, and i would say “i dont get it either”.

now and then i will fake myself into thinking that i do get twitter. for example when Typepad appears to be down but status.sixapart.com doesnt say its down, i will go to search.twitter.com and do a search for “typepad” and see what the twitters are saying, if a few of them are all “wtf typepad?!?! down again?!@?!1” then i can tell my bloggers to chill, that its not us, it’s typepad.

it’s in those moments that i believe that the nature of twitter isnt to be the star of the show (like it is in blogging), but its to be a thread in the tapestry. people enjoyed the tweets from India which helped tell that tragic story. others hated the east coast tweets several months ago which gave away the winner of American Idol. thus twitter becomes a double edged tapestry of love+hate, and one is forced to go back to thinking it’s not only Not All That, but one of those things simply destined for the second volume of Stuff White People Like.

anyways, for as many people who said that they loved the fact that i didnt blog like everyone else, some were put off by the Nothing in Here is True part, including a particular young lady who i last made out with but then said she never wanted to see me again, and then gave me the longest most lovely kiss that lasted til the morn.

therefore you folk can use twitter for the things you like, and im gonna fuel it with my friendfeed and pretend that thats why it was invented: so people can find out what im thinking about, reading, favoriting, uploading, downloading, statusing, and stalking.

in other news, im currently watching mr woodcock on tivo.

photo of madonna from her new louis v ad campaign via goldenfiddlr via the apt

delete it IMMEDIATELY. it’s a trap, it’s a lie, worse… its A VIRUS!

why people would create such things is beyond me. but they do. it’s called the Koobface Virus, and David Sarno on the Tech blog has the scoop:

Reports circulated today about a virulent piece of malware making its way around Facebook, a major hub of the social Web with 120 million users. Because of its walled-off internal e-mail system, Facebook has long been a tough target for spammers and other fraudsters, but the “Koobface” virus is a sign that the relative viral calm on the site — which just today announced an ambitious program to extend its services outside its own tight perimeter — may have been a luxury.

The virus’ most insidious property is that users receive the offending message from a friend: On Facebook, only people whom users have explicitly approved as friends can send them e-mails.

The Koobface e-mails have a subject like “You look so amazing funny on our new video,” and contain a link to a YouTube-like video site that appears to contain a movie clip (see image). The video, however, doesn’t play, and the website then asks the user to update his or her video software by downloading a file. It’s that file that contains the malicious code.

Read the rest here on the LAT Technology Blog, but before you do, check your FB in box, make sure it’s not in there, if it is delete it, and you might wanna warn your friends and family.

she said why would anyone wanna talk to me.
i said shhhh she said what i said

shhhhh

she said quit calling my name.

i said i cant hear you

she got closer and said

stop saying hi to me

i said shhhh

she said no really

i said i what

she got closer

so close i could smell the closeness

she said dont kiss me

i said .

then she got closer.

then you probably dont remember Pud who founded and ran a super mean website at the turn of the century called f**kedcompany

if youre old enough to remember the site, you’ll probably recall that it was a site that almost gleefully documented dozens and dozens of dot coms a month death spiral down to bankruptcy.

nothing but a glorified black message board, f-edcompany proudly displayed how many lawsuits were being filed against them as they fearlessly published internal emails of startups from bitter employees many of whom were so young they had never been laid off before.

i liked f-ed company until my dot com started to have to lay people off. in fact i was canned twice from the start up, which oddly survived the dot com bubble and recently sold itself to someone pretty huge. (it was also the place where i met lots of cool people including karisa.)

anyways, thanks to the magic of Google Reader and the fact that Ev shared it, we can all revel in the fact that Pud is back and has a blog. not only that but he has a Twitter account which he loves (who knew Pud was capable of loving something that wasnt tragic and or sad?). earlier this week Pud asked Twitter folks to ask him anything. and of course much of the questioning revolved around his dark, dead, old message board.

What happened to F***edcompany.com, the dot-com deadpool? Did you close it cuz it was getting in the way of your real business? Also, were those dudes cheating in the high scores? I could never figure out how those top 5 always got so many points! They must have found a loophole!?

D. Mack Daddy

I closed F***edcompany a few years ago because traffic was slowing and I figured my full-time attention would be better spent working on the ad network I founded, AdBrite. There was a small time when I was working on both simultaneously, but I felt I was doing a half-assed job on both. I wanted AdBrite to be full-assed (or zero-assed?) so I shut down FC.

Regarding the folks who were always in the top-5 for guessing which companies would go out of business (the deadpool game) — yes, they found a loophole that I never got around to fixing. I always felt a little guilty about that. But not guilty enough to fix it.

this one was a good one too, and something i had been thinking about recently

Why haven’t you begun tracking the layoff situations on f***cdompany again?

Colby

I’ve been working on other things, and I don’t think I could make F***edcompany as funny/mean as I used to, because I live in the Silicon Valley area now and know too many of the people involved. When I was running FC in 2000, I was living in NYC and didn’t know anyone.

the whole thread is here and some of it is actually sorta funny. pud’s blog is here. and if you wanna see his twitter feed its here. but even better is Ev’s Shared Items, which are here.

Ev, fyi, is the dude who possibly turned down a half billion dollar offer from Facebook to sell them Twitter. and you all thought that kid at facebook had balls.

if you have a Twitter and the busblog isnt following you, say so in the comments with your twitter name, yo.

Lindsay: left you some presents on the blog
me: oooooooooooo. what could they be? hey – pics! thanks!!
Lindsay: I’ll be taking special requests all week seeing as I will be officially unemployed as of tomorrow afternoon
me: hmmmm. does bro read your blog?
Lindsay: i’m not really certain. i don’t think so but who knows. he has mysterious super powers.
me: do you care if he does?
Lindsay: not particularly
me: ok here are some requests – a tour of your bachelorette pad, a fashion show, an update regarding the puggles, and a retrospective about why you were with bro and why you left. also, what would you do if the architect came back. also, how you really feel about the xcon
Lindsay: those are all fantastic

me: whats taking these employers to hire you, i thought you had your 2nd interview weeks ago
Lindsay: no, 2nd interview was today,1st was last tuesday. this is fast compared to my other experiences. i’ve interviewed with 7 people thus far.
me: whoah. whats the company?
Lindsay: promise you won’t tell?
me: promise!! vikings??!? twin/tone? al franken for senate?
Lindsay: http://www.kumandgo.com
me: none in LA 🙁
Lindsay: big in the midwest and arkansas, which would be my territory
me: web development?
Lindsay: yep

Lindsay: are you still dating that cheerleader i met?
me: sometimes. to piss her off i call her “the cougar” even though shes close to half my age.
Lindsay: so mean. and here i thought she was really a cougar. how do you get these women?
me: if you havent figured out by now, i dont really pick them as much as they pick me
Lindsay: well yes I suppose, wouldn’t that be nice. I am jealous
me: jealous of nba cheerleaders who read yr blog, email you, and then bore you on dates?
Lindsay: no silly, of not having a following of dudes that eliminate my need to exert effort in the dating arena
me: well. something tells me if thats what you wanted, you could have it pretty easily. although i woulda said the same thing about danielle and sass, theyve had zero luck for way too long

Lindsay: men are not as easy as women make them out to be. you think I could have kept the billionaire happy by cooking, cleaning and dressing up in really expensive lingerie…but no, not enough
me: all you did was dress up? there wasnt anything more?
Lindsay: ok, so I took it off too
me: ahahaha
Lindsay: like three times a day every day
me: but no sex?
Lindsay: that too, three times a day every day
me: hello. yeah, effers crazy. what more did he want from you?
Lindsay: i needed to be skinnier, prettier, nicer, smarter, etc.
me: !!!!!

Lindsay: he’s clearly delusional. and i just simply gave up trying to meet the ever increasing standard.
me: how long had you known him before you started dating?
Lindsay: about a year and a half, maybe two years
me: during that time did you see him date girls better than you?
Lindsay: no, they were all umm, how do I say this, not cute at all? and they didn’t have jobs.
me: does his friends have hotter gfs/wives than you?
Lindsay: no
me: then who was he comparing himself and you to?
Lindsay: the movies?
me: ahahahahaha. porn movies i hope. cuz youre ten times hotter than jennifer anniston

Lindsay: unnecessary compliments! besides i was thinking he and i were more like angelina jolie and chris farley in a hypothetical movie never made
me: aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhahahah. hopefully you laughed a lot in your time together
Lindsay: it wasn’t all bad, just mostly the last 6 months
me: please tell me you kept the lingerie
Lindsay: closets full of it!
me: hmmmm what on earth do i want for christmas. I KNOW!
Lindsay: well good thing i will have all of this spare time to go to the gym. i hear danity kane is looking for a new member
me: you dont wanna learn those dance moves. the group to be in is the one with ryan starr

Lindsay: hahaha awesome. i’ll have to come up with an amazing hollywood name first
me: the only reason i wanna come out with a new blook, is to reintroduce the name i gave my last gf, Shhhhhh
Lindsay: that seems like an excellent reason. and the name is….?
me: i just told you!
Lindsay: shhhh?
me: yes, isnt it great?
Lindsay: and how does one get a name like that?
me: be a very shy really cute and pretty much angelic.
Lindsay: it is all coming together now

me: what other good things did you get from the divorce?
Lindsay: the dog, free sex if I want it
me: you had the dog before! and the sex!
Lindsay: soo, yes, pretty much nothing has come of the divorce. i need a new lawyer
me: well you got freedom. i was very nervous you were going to be married, and an unhappy bride at that
Lindsay: i was nervous about that too. i had to talk him out of proposing three times
luckily his parents hated me, so that put an end to marriage talk towards the end

me: why on earth did they hate you?
Lindsay: oh! this is funny. i can’t believe ive never written about it. mostly, they hated me because i was too independent, had too many opinions, cared too much about my career and education, and was not subservient enough.
me: wtf with this family!
Lindsay: they should all be committed or at least subjected to therapy
me: everyone wanted you to just Obey chris farley? insanity
Lindsay: pretty much
me: did his mom just obey his dad?
Lindsay: yep, the woman barely ever said a word.
me: wow
Lindsay: they still live in 1955
me: the best thing about that year, angus young was born

me: ok so why did you even stay with him for more than a month? it sounded horrible
Lindsay: well it wasnt always so bad. he is the nicest person on the planet most of the time. but he is just so screwed up from his family life. but he always expected something for being nice
me: he figured if he was being nice then he could demand that you be his little bitch/ho?
Lindsay: pretty much
me: did he really think that would satisfy him in life?
Lindsay: deep down, i don’t know. but his family tried to convince him that being able to control his wife would make him happy
me: he should get some mailorder russian girl who wants a green card or something, or would the fam look down on that too?
Lindsay: no foreigners allowed
me: well… theres girls for him out there
Lindsay: his last two girlfriends fit the bill perfectly
me: did he get bored ?
Lindsay: yep!
me: then hes a dumbass. he knows the formulae doesnt work, he has the hottest girl in america underneath him and he cant figure out to let it be
Lindsay: i’m not waiting around for him to resolve his internal dilemma. I prefer hottest girl in this zipcode, you never know whats out there
me: you, lindsay, are the total package. and the hottest part about you cant be worked on in the gym
Lindsay: you’re too sweet, now I am blushing
me: awwww. i hope you find a smarter billionaire next time
Lindsay: i’ll settle for a smart anything

me: you went to the rnc convention parties, right?
Lindsay: yep
me: any cute smart men there?
Lindsay: they were all very lame. and just stared at my boobs
me: ahahahaahahaha
Lindsay: i do best with the really laid back type. so maybe i need to visit an artists colony or something. or date a dude in a band
me: not sure about a dude in a band. do you read Sass’s blog?
Lindsay: of course
me: doesnt sound like her band dudes are that laid back
Lindsay: true
me: but theyre also yuppie rnc types

Lindsay: maybe jason mraz is single, he seems laid back
me: cant say i know his work
Lindsay: oh its terrible
me: ahahahaa
Lindsay: like if john mayer and jack johnson had a baby
me: yikes. you just like him cuz hes hot
Lindsay: no, he isnt. he is just kind of quirky
me: have you heard of josh ritter?
Lindsay: nope
me: he was the nicest musician i ever met. had this private show at Virgin hq, and after he signed your cd hed hug you
Lindsay: no kidding?
me: i was all, this guy will sell 7 cds in his entire career. fortunately i know zero about music and hes turnedout to be mildly successful
Lindsay: too bad he isn’t cute enough
me: but quirky!
Lindsay: true, i’ll put him on my list alongside my pro hockey player

me: oh i know who you want. btw – the cougar in her natural environment
Lindsay: who do I want? oh she is really pretty. she has a very friendly smile. wait, is that against the t-wolves?
me: yep. last year. ok im searching, i cant remember his name. hippie dude
Lindsay: hmmm, i dated a hippie once
me: how did it go?
Lindsay: ok not great
me: yr new man

Lindsay: hmmm this could work
me: “some songs i cant sing, i draw“. just broke up with natalie portman in sept
Lindsay: thats why he looks familar. natalie portman is pretty much my idol, so that would be hard to live up to
im sure hed appreciate being with a woman after effing around with a little girl
Lindsay: possibly, unless he is into little girls
if hes really a hippie he was just going with the flow
Lindsay: regardless, i will begin stalking him
me: ahahah perfect!
Lindsay: new blog topic! i will write him letters
dont forget to include pics!
Lindsay: pics for sure. i better get to bed, i have to go into work tomorrow to take down all of my audrey hepburn posters
me: ahahaha

how will Lindsay fare as a single girl in the midwest, billionaire-less? find out by following her on her blog: etorre.blogspot.com