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Deep Throat, Episode III

NYT: F.B.I. Official Revealed He Was Watergate Source in Interview

WASHINGTON, May 31 — W. Mark Felt, a senior F.B.I. official during the Nixon administration, was the “Deep Throat” of Watergate lore, the secret source who provided information that helped Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post unravel the scandals of Richard Nixon’s White House, the newspaper said today.



Well, it’s certainly not like this is breaking news at this point. I must, however, for what is presumably the final time, note that this “M. Wark Flannel” character or whateva is most certainly NOT Deep Throat. Deep Throat, as we revealed here some three years ago, is the deceptively youthful Ken Goldstein, late of the blogosphere and Seattle precincts, and missed quite heartily in both districts.

I would nitpick over spelling but that’s burned me recently so a derisive, virtual sniff will have to do.

(For the record, Deep Throat is a great American hero, the preceding is satire, and even though in the current climate of absurdity and repression it’s unlikely he’s gonna get the Congressional Medal of Honor, it’s clear to me that no-one in the entire history of the Republic deserves it more.)

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Rodent update

Um, apparently the problem resided in one of the USB ports, not the almost absurdly bent-up USB plug on the end of the mouse. I still welcome original Intellimice Explorers, however. Insurance! Hoarding!

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Sith Mental Muddle!

As multiple perceptive readers have joyfully pointed out, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.

But the signs I refer to are spelled “Capital Hill.” They may have been removed. I hope so.

Seriously, once I knew that the capital of North Dakota was Bismarck, and the capitol of North Dakota resided therein. Again, I blame the Sith and their evil, evil ways.

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Episode III: Capital!

Viv and I saw Star Wars Ep. III tonight after a wander about the Pike Place Market Festival. In short, my opinion is on the median – much better than the other two recent films, not the greatest SF film I have ever seen, a few scenes that were quite successful on any terms.

I’m sure everyone in the world got the Frankenstein quote, a few got the at-least two 2001 quotes, and some may have made the Close Encounters samples. But why is it that as of this writing (pre-Google though it is) I have not read of one person pointing out the typo – practically a Freudian slip – in the title crawl?

We read of “War!” et cetera. Apparently, General Greivous has sneakily kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine from the very heart of the “capital” of the Republic.

Who knew that the old sneakerino was being kept in Scrooge McDuck’s money vault?

Seriously, this totally disrupted my enjoyment of the film. Film is an art in which insane attention to detail and insane control freaks are often mistaken for one another and encouraged to reach for the outer limits of sanity. George Lucas’ final word in commercial cinema is apparently to be misspelled in ignorance. It’s a fitting testament to one of the means whereby democracy perishes to applause.

The homonym, of course, is well chosen, as it’s capital to which essentially all the failings of the prior two films can be laid, and of course, it’s capital to which the failings of our own great nation’s system of checks and balances ever owes its’ tottersome state.

As I am certain one or two of you may be wondering what the rumpus is about: “capital” is large concentrations of currency, with a significance of power, while “capitol” is the geographical center of political power. I live in an optimistically-named neighboorhood, Capitol Hill. The misspelling is common enough that it is immortalized upon several signs that welcome persons to this neighborhood. the mispelling is so well-ingrained, in fact, that I wonder if we aren’t witnessing a socially-mandated spelling shift. As money corrodes democratic expression, the perceptual gap between “capitol” and “capital” fades softly to nil.

I should note that “captial” employed as an ejaculatory statement also means “excellent” or “satisfactory;” such use carries a whiff of anachronism.

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MFT

Musical Family Tree is working toward the goal of providing a comprehensive archive for independent music stemming from the scenes I grew up in, Bloomington and Indianapolis. There’s a ton on there and I have some stuff that needs to be digitized, such as the amazing live farewell show by the Pit Bulls on Crack circa 1987. I alos have a bunch of stuff from John Terril that I should see if he wants shared, just amazing material.

Matt, had you seen this thing? Your stuff should go up there, immediately!

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Cynics

Iocnm LogoPer request, the International Organization of Cynics, Ne’er-Do-Wells, and Misanthropes has re-opened their Cafe Press store. Don’t forget to join!

I designed this logo many years ago for a friend. At the time, I was working as a designer for the region’s largest provider of labor-union identity goods, and this design is a sort of in-joke based on the many, many serious designs I produced for local labor unions over that several year period. I still see many of these designs in circulation today and I am really pretty proud of this work. To date, it appears to be my longest-lasting contribution to Northwest society. When I was a kid, I was deeply fascinated by logos in general and the logos of labor unions and military units in particular. To me, these appeared to be survivals of a heraldic tradition that was otherwise lost.

While the actual ties of these insignia to genuine medieval heraldry is at best debatable, I don’t think it’s inaccurate to characterize the insignia as used as such. Believing this allowed me to be pretty effective, I think, in designing, redesigning and rehabilitating the logos that these labor organizations use to express a shorthand visual identity.

The personal highlight of this came in 1999, on the first day of the WTO protests, when a huge labor march coincided with the less-disciplined activists to produce a crowd of over a hundred thousand in downtown Seattle’s streets. Many, probably most, of the labor union locals that were present that day were from the Pacific Northwest, and almost every one of them was wearing jackets or hats or carrying banners or signs with art that I had created. Thousands of people, using the art I had made for them in the way I had hoped to see it used. I’m grateful for the rare privilege of actually observing this in person.

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Mouse Madness

Five years ago, I picked up a pair of first-generation 3.x MS Intellimouse Explorers. In the business move on Friday, one was crushed.

“No problem,” I cheerily thought. “I’ll just pick up the most recent discontinued Explorer on eBay or in a store locally.” I did locate one, but to my horror, the crisp scroll wheel had been replaced by a mushy thing referred to as the “tilt-wheel.” The tilt-wheel lacked tactile feedback and was notably less precise than the clicky-wheel on my five-year-old rodent. In fact, it lacked precision to an extent that I was actually able to roll the wheel without scrolling the front-most screen window at all; the wheel simply ignored fine input and only responded to gross input. Terrible, and unnecessarily fingerstraining. Without tactile feedback we tense our muscles. The mushy tilt-wheel is a ruination, pure and simple.

Ms Intellimouse Exp4 Big

Further drawing oaths from me is the now apparently industry-standard placement of the left-side dual thumb buttons above the thumb’s resting location. In the 4.0 version of the Explorer that I used, they were actually on a protruding ridge above the thumb groove – another recipe for musclestrain.

The mouse that I have looks like this:

Msxm3X

Apparently, the large-size thumb-buttons came under fire for being to easy to hit, and the mouse was revised to look like this:

Msexplorer3Apic

Several hours of eBay combing, and it’s this latter revision I can locate. I suppose I’ll order one, but I don’t have high hopes for it. The original version is the only mouse I’ve ever had that did not create unbearable musclestrain. I am not a happy person at the moment.