I Want to Belief-O-Matic

Thanks to the incredible Belief-O-Matic, I have discovered that my true religious nature is that of Unitarian Universalism/Secular Humanism (doesn't surprise me much, I have to say).

I also largely get along with Liberal Quakers, Liberal Christrians/Protestants, Buddhists, Pagans, Baha'i, New Agers, Taoists, and Jews (that is to say, my beliefs agree with these groups 50% of the time or higher).

Apparently Scientologists, Conservative Christians/Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sikhs, Seventh-Day Adventists, Muslims and Hindus would not find me a good person to chat with.

Coming in dead last in the compatibility charts is Roman Catholic (17% of shared views). This strikes me as funny as I have several dear friends who are Catholic in one form or another, including a couple of very devout ones. I guess "friendly" overcomes incompatible beliefs sometimes. :)

A tip o' the cap to James Bow for pointing me to Belief-O-Matic. Give it a whirl yourself!

Shiver Me Timbers!

Arrr, I were so busy putting together this here Brick Steele skit thing that I completely missed out on Talk Like A Pirate Day, may my bones rot in Davy Jones' Locker! But at least I had the good sense to ask me parrot friend to look up me Official Pirate Name:

Your pirate name is:
Captain Sam Rackham

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Who be I to argue with such wisdom? Arrrr!

Attention Both Remaining Bush Supporters

Okay, Bushies ... explain your way out of this one. (Realplayer clip for dialup here, for cable/DSL here)

*Drool*

Steele Crazy After All These Years

Well here's a weird twist of fate ... after nearly 20 years of hardly ever thinking about my old radio show Brick Steele, my old pal Dan (see picture) has asked me to whip up a mini-adventure for a mate's going-away party this weekend. Ooh, this must be what Woody Allen feels like when people whine about why doesn't he make films like his old, funnier movies.

Not many people know, but many many moons ago I wrote and starred in a short-lived radio comedy-verite show called "Brick Steele, Semi-Private Eye and Part-Time Nose" that aired on WRAS-FM in Atlanta (college station). It was about an actor in a bad radio detective series -- and he thought (as did the public at large) that he really was a detective, so he would invariably and incompetently fall into one adventure after another. A radio show about a radio show -- with me so far?

If I may say so myself, it was mildly clever and mildly amusing. Bad puns, silly parodies and outrageous characters were the order of the day. I eventually wrote some 50 five-minute scripts and a Christmas special, but almost all of this was destroyed in a fire (no, not by the listeners).

Somebody else thought some of the ideas were good too -- the original show got a fair amount of praise, but I was really surprised about four years later when a series on ABC-TV called Sledge Hammer! turned up that was more than eerily similar, right down to the title character's obsession with his tie!

All that remains of Brick Steele are a few precious tapes I wisely made of the "demos" -- practice sessions with me doing all the voices and sound effects -- and some later "re-stagings" with my gang of friends when I would come down to Orlando to visit. My pal Jim lovingly preserved a few on CD, even!

So anyway, here I am trying to recreate the magic that was Brick Steele one more time -- it's a very weird feeling, particularly after 20 years. Anyone out there ever try to do something like this?

Woo Hoo!

BlogApp is working again! Yeah, baby, YEAH!

New Information in a New Way!

Thanks to Apple for their incredible (particularly for a 1.0 release) iCal software, I'm now publishing a monthly version of my TimeOut column online.

This is a great way for people who are in or visiting Orlando to find out about some of the more interesting events that aren't on your Disney/Corporate America schedule. I hope you'll have a look, and remember to bookmark the page so you can check back every now and again. There's also a link on the sidebar of this page in case you forget.

Chas' CULTural Calendar

Mac OS X 10.2 users who download iCal can also subscribe to the calendar and have it downloaded into their iCal automatically. Cool.

Oh Mr. POTTER!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is just so terribly, terribly wrong on so many levels. I cannot even begin to comment. Be sure to read what it does.

Rush Limbaugh, Don't Read This

This piece by The Onion (rapidly gaining on Tom Tomorrow as one of this country's last few bastions of sanity) sums up my feelings about the rapidly-becoming-intolderable Sept. 11th wallow-fest.

You know what I'm going to be doing that day? I'll tell you. Living my life in my usual optimistic, hopeful and loving fashion, that's what. I refuse to be any part of some manufactured exercise in "healing," "remembrance" or "closure."

Anniversaries like these are one of the reasons I hate the far-right media so much. No, that's not a typo: the mainstream media is not now nor ever was "liberal." There might be certain exceptions out there (some say the New York Times is demonstratably left-of-center, but I don't read it so I can't say for sure), but by and large all of the television and cable-news networks (and of course our embarrassingly pro-right local paper are so unbelievably conservative that I've completely given up on getting any real news out of them, and now get my news from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

One's relationship with tragedy is, to me, like one's relationship with God/religion: an intensely private affair. That's not to say that there can't be public outpourings of emotion or grief, but too often these displays get manipulated and played on by those with a completely different agenda.

You want to commemorate those who died in the tragedy of Sept. 11? Here's an idea for you: turn OFF the TV, go down to the Red Cross office and give some blood. You haven't done it since this time last year, have you? Thought not. So go. If you can't go or can't donate blood, pick a charity (any charity at all) and donate some time or money. Do it in the name of those who died.

You want to pray? Fine. Pray that we as a nation soon turn our back on the weird parody of Nazi Germany this country is rapidly turning into. Pray that we learn to understand our enemies before we fight them, lest we be defeated. Pray that we as Americans as well as those in other lands learn more about tolerance, compassion and forgiveness so that we can move past these ridiculous vendettas and petty squabbles that have ruined a promising start to a new century.

The people who died in the attacks -- regardless of whether they died as cowards or heroes -- are dead, and there's nothing we can do for them. The best revenge against those who attacked us is to live more freely, to reflect on what makes America and her people truly great and to work harder towards those lofty ideals, to relish our liberty and spread the blessings of our enormous wealth even more than we did before.

Now will somebody please explain to the Bush administration that the right reaction to attacks on freedom is to be more free, not less free?

The New, Improved Holy War!

While chatting amiably with some friends last night about how much technology has changed in the last couple of years (yes, just the last couple of years!), I brought them up to speed on the whole Mac vs. PC thing. As I was making the analogy, a light bulb I had lit before but not really considered suddenly came back on: there are now only two operating systems: Windows-based, and UNIX-based. Moreover, we can now finally let go of that tired old Mac versus PC thing, and focus on the new Holy War: open-source-based versus closed-source-based.

Apple is, of course, again on the side of the good guys, and is now the leader in Open Source both in terms of units installed (far outnumbering UNIX and Linux desktops combined) and in terms of leading the OS industry with the Open Source release of Rendezvous (more on that another time, but if you want to learn more have a look at this), and their previous OS contributions including Quicktime Streaming Server and Darwin, the Intel-compatible core of Mac OS X.

So, the Mac versus PC war is over, let the Open Source versus Closed Source war begin. :)

(and if you're asking yourself "can't we all just get along?", remember this: it is these kinds of debates that fuel the drive to make technology in the first place.)

By the way, if you're at all interested in being a soldier on either side of this war, have a look at an objective study that finally shows Mac OS versus Windows in a light that is (for once) actually relevant to everybody: a useability shootout. You can find it here. It's a bit long, but very fair, very in-depth, and brutally honest about each platform's strengths and weaknesses where it really counts: the user experience.