So I got on this train via a link from BoingBoing to Neil Gaiman's weblog, and I thought it fitting for (e:Strip).

Looks like Bush's Dept of Education has created a new list of television shows that will be barred from being captioned for the hearing impaired (apparently there's not much going on in education these days). Here's a link to the list:

Needless to say, the approved and disapproved lists reflect the far-right, rabidly Puritan values of the current administration. What can I even say about it? It's ludicrous mistreatment and abuse of a service intended to aid people. But apparently BushCo doesn't think the hearing impaired are smart enough to protect their children from the evils of The Amazing Spiderman... Needless to say, the National Association of the Deaf are upset about the whole thing (http://www.nad.org/openhouse/action/alerts/captioningcensorship/pr.html).

And not many folks are talking about this. The decisions went into effect last October. The effect is that groups applying for federal funds to caption television programming will not be eligible if they are captioning the disapproved shows. So no captions for "Gay Hollywood" or "Papparazzi Part 1: New York", which may or may not be so bad (many of the shows on both the approved and disapproved lists are probably better off not being watched by the general public, IMO), but it also means that poor little hearing impaired children won't be able to get their Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, or Samurai Jack fixes. It's classic class-oriented cultural eugenics. Cartoons and fantasy are bad for kids and might get them doing things like reading Harry Potter novels and sacrificing babies to Satan.

In the eyes of the right wing radicals, it's better to watch The Fountainhead (approved) or Amazing Animal Videos (also approved). But regardless of who is making the list, the whole endeavour is dumb. Why isn't everything captioned? Can't we pull that off? To cut any group out of the loop when it is so feasible to provide a modicum of accessibility is just treacherous. When making lists like this to fasttrack the meager distribution of a pathetic amount of funds is how the Department of Education spends its time, things must be really rough.

Has anyone seen the documentary "The Gift"? It's an independent flick, check out what little info they have on IMDB:

Anyway, it's about a subculture of men who fetishize the HIV virus, and it's one of the most disturbing and sad things I've ever seen. But I was struck at the connections to web culture and web communities. The general trend of porn sites is to fetishize the repulsive -- in many ways it has been claimed that net.culture drives us to the fringe of acceptability and palatability. Sites like SnuffX (http://www.snuffx.com) and Stileproject (http://www.stileproject.com) have been longtime suppliers of images and movie files of mixed porn and snuff. I saw this as really connected to that sort of gruesome one-upmanship that goes on in these "backrooms" of the Internet. I think that once there's a whole group of people ingesting and commenting on these kinds of subjects, then it's inevitable that some kind of community would be formed. I've seen design sites where you could be shot for using a dropshadow. Or gaming sites that cater (unofficially) to very particular tastes. There are the meta-customs we see in all boards and forums, but each individual site has particular rules and traditions. In many ways, the phenomena described in "The Gift" reminded me of these odd, insular discussion groups.

Anyway, I was just really struck by how much the Web and websites were involved in building and maintaining the subculture covered in the documentary. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Wow, I'm so sad I haven't written on here more. Here, check out and come back soon. I'll write something more. I promise.

How Time Flies. I can't even believe that it's been over 30 days since I touched this journal. Shows you how good I am at this kind of thing, huh? I would like to use the excuse of being in Idaho for a couple of weeks, but I would then have to confess that I had easy access to the web, piggybacking on some unknown neighbors with an open wifi node on my in-laws' block. So no excuses. In fact, I feel extra guilty because I was recently told that my good buddy Tim has been journalling consistently for several years now, making precise notes of his life. How cool would it be to look back and see what you had for lunch three years ago? My grandfather kept a ledger of his expenses and income for his whole life. I've always been fascinated by it -- how much was rent in 1954? What did my mother and her brothers get for Xmas in 1961? It's all there.

So until I come up with a better form of documentation, I suppose sporadic updates on Elmwood Strip will be the most detailed listings of what I've been doing. So far I've had no expenses today. No food, either. And not even a cup of coffee. I must be mad... Time to go get me some...

OK, so Paul got back to me re:my last post and brought my attention to this humorous poster that Matthew put on his (e:strip) blog. Then I saw Holly's PhotoChop of the image, which is way funny. So then I thought: Well, I should do a PhotoChop, too... So here ya go...