Gage: gimme a song lyric that describes your headspace right now. What about last year? 5 years ago? Is that too many questions?

now: Let’s get lost tonight / You can be my black Kate Moss tonight
last year: I need you to hurry up now / ‘Cause I can’t wait much longer. / I know I got to be right now / ‘Cause I can’t get much wronger.
five years ago: You should be honored by my lateness / That I would even show up to this fake sh*t.

Keira-Anne: What should I do?

pray, dream, do the things to make those dreams come true, thank God, repeat

Edward Padgett: Who will own the Los Angeles Times after the breakup of the Tribune Company?

Google

tina: If you had a magical purple crayon with which to draw things in your life into fruition, what would you draw?

a screeching gibson sg of fire lust and righteousness, thirsty for truth, hungry for evil, and more than willing to be set aflame for art.

Kris: In a fist fight between a young Robert Plant and a current Axl Rose – who would win?

robert plant has never been anything more than a long haired lover more into chrystals dungeons and dragons and flower power. axl is from indiana who will jump into a crowd while wearing a leather vest and an oakland raider jersey. axl might not be able to write appetite for destruction any more, but he can beat down yr ass.

matt mills: just quit my soul sucking day job. where can I find a real photography job (doing good creative work)?

if i knew the answer to that, i would tell my buddies joey maloney and kogasnake who take the most beautiful rock photos and for some reason they dont end up in the pages of rolling stone or spin. my advice, keep clicking, give them to your local version of LAist or heck maybe even LAist themselves. and then pray to get discovered.

Edward Padgett: Caught a rumor on Twitter regarding the firing of Nikki Finke, is this true?

if you look at the chain of Nikki rumors on Twitter – first someone said that Nikki reported that Viacom had laid off lots of MTV folk. then someone said that Viacom fired Nikki (she doesnt work for Viacom, she is one of the stars of the LA Weekly), then someone said they wont miss Nikki due to her firing. so i think it was a typical game of Telephone and she is still writing like crazy for the Weekly.

sass: What is your favourite Christmas song? What should I wear when I record that for Sunday’s Sing-A-Long?

“Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Springsteen – but they play it way too much nowadays. You should record the Little Drummer Boy song, cuz when a hot babe sings it chills usually go down the spine of the audience.

Ali: How old do you have to be to not be described as “hot” anymore?

69, ironically.

4rilla: Your thoughts on the NHL Winter Classic taking place @ Wrigley Field on New Years Day.

as you might recall, i was about 20 minutes away from Buffalo last new years day with a beautiful stripper/blogger and i said hey lets go see this craziness, and ended up watching it on tv and saying “why did i let her say no to me???”

this year i will be in chicago but i wont be there thru new years. but if i did find myself there i wouldnt go. even though i like the idea of playing hockey outside in a football or baseball stadium, Wrigley Field is a holy place. it could be one of the most sacred places in all of North America. because of that they shouldnt play football games there unless Pappa Bear is roaming the sidelines, they shouldnt let Jimmy Buffett do concerts there, hell they shouldnt even be playing baseball there at night. so no, they shouldnt play hockey there. send that crud to the southside.

Alys: If you could remove one word from the English language forever, what would it be, and why? (Would it be “Moist”? ‘Cause that’s such a gross-sounding word.)

terrorist. because we’ve misused that word for far too long and now we’ve overused it to the point that it doesnt mean anything any more.

timmay: saturday or monday show? how will you prepare? how will you recover?

probably monday because i dont have tickets and it will probably be easier to get a seat monday than saturday. i will drink in the parking lot, as i should. but not to extreme because i have to drive home. theres no recovery from an AC/DC show at the forum. your life is changed forever.

Dan: did you get the facebook virus?

no, im pretty lucky. but i wanted to make it so that more people didnt have to rely on luck to save their precious computers and the priceless materials within.

miguel: Knowing how sh*tty it feels when I hit on a girl I really like and she blows me off I have a hard time on the rare occasions when it’s my turn to turn down advances from females I’m not interested in, especially because I appreciate so much the courage it takes to make the first move. Being a blogging superstar I’m sure you’ve had to deal with this issue. How do you put them down gently?

i have never encountered a polite rejection. by that i mean, every rejection that i receive stings just as badly as the next one. no matter how sweet they are or how not sweet they are when they say no to me, i dont like it. mostly because romantic rejection, unlike any other sort of rejection (job, poetry submission, hot or not poll, etc) is a complete rejection of YOU – literally body soul and mind. and worse, your love machine.

with that said, when i break up or if i dont even wanna go there, i will usually say “you should run from me, im evil, and when im at my worst im Christian. and im gonna wanna make out with your friends and then blog about it. so run.” if your blog is any good, they’ll gladly follow your advice.

adriel: why does money change people?

because money is the most unnatural part of human existence. money has no place in the animal kingdom and none in Heaven. its purely a mundane concept that even Jesus himself rejected “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”. it puts employees in the awkward position of biting their tongues because they dont wanna get fired, it puts employers in the awkward position of sometimes firing the best people because they get paid “too much”, it makes ridiculous men attractive to women who should know better, and it tempts people to take on professions that they would otherwise have no interest in if it didnt pay so much. rarely does it lead people to achieve their dreams or to act in a purely honest, holy way.

one of the more interesting things that i have discovered living in LA for as long as i have, is that children of very rich parents usually turn into the most f-ed up adults. there are exceptions of course, and sometimes those kids can get out of the death spiral, but compared to children of middle classed parents, rich kids are almost always bonkers for a much longer time.

it drove my mother insane that i resisted jobs that could have paid me double or triple than what i could have made. when i was first laid off of my (relatively) high paying job at the dot com, i begged to return to the company at a significant pay cut ($12/hr) because i believed in the company (its still around today) and because i loved the people (like karisa and others). at $12 an hour my shift started at 6am, i had very little power, and i had to deal with angry customers who didnt understand technology. but i enjoyed that job way more than if i had been paid tons more than that and it led to a chain of events that led to where i am now, which is a great place that i still cant believe.

its that journey thats valuable. not any bank account, and certainly not any stock portfolio. whats important about the journey is you learn (especially when youre broke) what truly makes you happy and satisfied. rarely is it fancy gadgets or the “security” of a wad of cash. usually its faith, love, and charity, as corny as that sounds.

David: are you a fan of either entourage or its always sunny in philadelphia? if so, do you think the latter’s a good outlet for danny devito?

big fan of entourage because i love perpetuating the myth of hollywood and i think its one of the few shows out there that does that. never seen asip but i hear good things. but i dont think its a good outlet for danny cuz not enough people (myself included) watch F/X or whatever channel its on.

theres a sale today in the OC

ten dollar tshirts, good prices on jackets, dress shirts, wallets, jewlery, lots of stuff

i even wrote about it on our shopping blog.

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.