Will Hines Dot Net

I like how many stories are on digg but there’s a bit too many little boys posting stories like “10 Reasons PHP is better than a woman” — that type of awesome humor.

Slashdot is okay, but too often above my head. And it’s, by definition, all tech stuff.

Grown-up reddit is a smarter and better mix of stories, but doesn’t update frequently enough.

Marginal Revolution is bold and fun.

Where do I go for community-filtered news, people?

Separately, next year’s awesome trainwreck might be Van Halen’s proposed new lineup (Eddie, Alex, Eddie’s teenage son who’s only been playing bass 3 months and Diamond Dave).

I just got this email from my brother Brian: “Booyar is not sure what to get Kevin.”
I responded: “Does Booyar want help thinking of things?”
He answered “Booyar will think of something.”

I still have no evidence that Brian is Booyar. If anyone has any ideas for gifts Booyar might offer, please let me know and I will ask Brian to pass on those ideas to Booyar.

Story of Booyar:
http://www.willhines.net/photos/gallery.php?pf=xmaseve04&ac=ds&pic=5

Past Booyar gifts:

• A pack of Camels
• Home baked brownies, wrapped in foil
• A human skull piggy bank
• A sweatshirt with ironed on letters “Kevin -n- Booyar” spelled incorrectly, I believe
• A copy of the Canterbury Tales, with the inscription “My Favorite Book” — misspelled, with the e backwards

Ten minutes after I posted how I would never put ads on My Fellow Jerks, I thought to myself, “Uh, why not?” If I can do it in a way that isn’t overly intrusive and also covers the costs of the webserver (five dollars a month), that would be good.

So I’m testing out Google AdSense on my blog here first. There’s one vertical one to the left of the main blog, and another one that appears on the page when you view a post in its entirety. It is fun seeing which ads Google feels are appropriate for the words we type here. Just in testing this, I’ve seen ads for Agatha Christie, Marvel Comics and… “Mom Blogs.” [...]

Isn’t that nice?

This image is from comic book dude Fred Hembeck’s page “The Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, Many, MANY Faces of Santa Claus!” Fun.

I stole the idea in its entirety from the Rocketship Comics blog.

My Fellow Jerks has been loading slowly, so I removed some blogs which update less often than once every few months. If I took you off, and you start posting again — as infrequently as like twice a month — let me know and I’ll put you back on the list. My Fellow Jerks gets 100-200 reads a day! Pretty cool. I’m tempted to put Google Ad Sense on there, but that would destroy its monstorous indie cred.

I get so cold that I don’t worry about how I look. My winter coat is beige and bulky with a tweed-ish pattern. It looks I lifted it off of Glenn Miller’s mother. I also wear thick green scarves that look like a boa, except they are made of frilly yarn. I tend to have Philip K. Dick short story collections in one pocket and an Agatha Christie novel in the other. I look down at my shoes, hands shoved deep in my pockets, listening to my iPod and probably talking to myself.

Were I to be struck down by a bus, I imagine the police who found my body would first assume that I live in the sewer. They’d bring [...]

Stickerbook is a band. They played Mo Pitkins last night. They are amazing! If you haven’t been to a Stickerbook show, you should go. Among the many things that make them cool:

• A great mix of complete deadpan silliness mixed with frequent applauding for each other.
• A higher than average number of theramins (1) and saws (1) being played.
• That everyone switches instruments at least once.
• The moments when Eliza’s “Sweet Child Of Mine” morphs into “Since U Been Gone” — the room goes crazy.
• That Becky Yamamoto wears a beard.
• That you can almost feel every girl, maybe every person, in the room want to be in the band, or start one just like it. Stickerbook will one day be remembered [...]

I’m feeling pluggy today. I’ve been working with Sara Schaefer at her online TV show The DL. It’s an indie music show — we review CDs, interview bands, and do things like this Coldplay montage of Sara making a peanut butter sandwich.

The show is a blast. I kind of can’t believe it’s being produced by AOL, but it is. Content at least twice daily each weekday, people! It’s, like, a real show.

I spent a couple of weekends this fall directing and editing a five-minute homage to the Three Stooges called “The Sac Brothers” for Channel 102. It’s created, written by and starring Matt DeCoster, Andy Rocco and Dave Thunder. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, part of the editing process was importing Matt’s CD of sound effects into my iTunes. That was two months ago. Here’s my top ten most played songs as of right now:

1) We Live In A Dump – TMBG
2) Bloop
3) Punk Rock Girl – Dead Milkmen
4) Panama – Van Halen
5) Zzzzwert!
6) Enjoy the Silence – Depeche Mode
7) The Boy With The Thorn In His Side – The Smiths
8) Fred’s (Flintstone) Hard Head [...]

• I have forgone coffee for tea, as a favor to my increasingly sensitive stomach. No more cylinder of Starbucks — now it’s a ceramic mug of Earl Grey. I’m sure I’ll go back to coffee — tea just tastes too THIN, somehow. But it’s welcome and easy detox to temporarily step into. Plus grabbing a mug of tea makes you feel like foppish member of the House of Lords each morning, even if your hair is sticking up and you’re wearing five year old blue jeans that have a baggy ass. It’s a fun contrast.
• I’m hardly on MySpace because Friendster took up too much of my time. It also tended to hurt more feelings than it helped. If I didn’t [...]