I have listened to people talk about their past and how it moulded them into the person they are today.  Others have only hinted at past experiences but have shared current feelings that imply that their past was more traumatic than they are willing to talk about or maybe even admit to themselves.  I guess it’s explainable, but it seems that the vast majority of people that offer up details about their “horrible” past tend to have stories that are pretty mild.  Generally, the more painful the experiences the less likely it is that a person is willing to talk about it.

I have friends that lost loved ones early in life, were beaten and abused.  Some will only hint at what was done to them, but have phobias today that make me assume it was worse than what they are willing to admit.  I experienced a bit of the trauma a few of my friends were put through first hand.  After some time passed, I managed to convince myself that what I “remembered” didn’t really happened – it must have been a dream.  Then I talked to others that were involved and found out that not only did what I remember actually happen but that there was more that happened to them than I was aware of at the time.

It’s really kind of a miracle that any of us live through the things that make us who we are… Hopefully, not all of the memories that make us who we are were sad or horrible. Here are a few random memories that shaped me. Most weren’t traumatic (at least outwardly) but they all added together to make me who I am today (in no particular order):

• Sitting in church and smelling perfume that absolutely drove me crazy.
• Trying to help a girl in pre-algebra only to have her bite my head off (this changed my entire outlook on school).
• Holding the hand of a young lady on the church bus and admitting feelings for her, only to find out she was asleep.
• Being “friends” with a girl only to offend her, have her club me up the back of my head with her pom pom and then never really talk to me again.
• Borrowing a calculator for a math test.
• Having someone admit to having a crush on me, but not believing it (low self esteem sucks)
• Every first kiss.
• Having a crush on a girl and knowing her sister had a crush on me.
• Being the guy that dads thought was “safe” for their daughters to hang out with.
• Going bowling after school.
• Riding double on a motorcycle.
• Having my best friend die in a car crash.
• Trying to be a gentleman, when that wasn’t what was wanted.
• A winter hay ride.
• A mirror and a balance scale in the chem lab.
• Cracking the skull of the Jr. High bully and leaving him lying in the dust.
• Chemistry party.
• The ‘Thing”.
• Always being in the “friend zone”.
• And yes, there are a few memories I don’t want to talk about or even think about, but those are my daemons.

Oh, and before you ask…. No, I’m not admitting who any of the parties involved were.  If it was you, I hope the memory was a good one….  If not, I apologize!

If you like this post, you might like the following (as well as other posts on my blog):  http://arkienet.com/blog/2008/05/have_you_noticed/

So, if it wasn’t the Gawker leak that explains the Twitter storm today, what does?  My guess is that someone either hacked Twitters account system (or one of the software programs that posts Twitter messages for you) or there is a new way to send a Tweet that is attributable to someone else.  Who knows….

Why is Twitter blaming Gawker?  It could be as simple as “because they can”….

Sample post on Facebook.

Well, it seems we have a new wave of Facebook Trojans loose on the internet.  The one that I researched while writing this post, links to a cast.cc web site that is actually a phishing scheme that presents a FAKE Facebook login screen.  If you provide your Email and Password, it starts spamming your friends on Facebook with links to it. It appears that it also does the more typical thing and installs a Facebook application for you that will spam your friends with links to it (and sometimes other links).

If you fell for this (or a similar scam), the first thing to do is to change your Facebook password and then go to “Account / Privacy Settings / Applications and Websites / Applications You Use / Edit Settings” and remove everything you don’t recognize (watch the video below for step by step instructions on how to remove unwanted Facebook apps)!

Bogus Facebook Login Screen

I’ve also seen some posts that suggest that at least some of these links attempt to install the Koobface Virus, however I can’t confirm this.  The article I linked to implies that this virus is virulent across Windows, OS X and Linux.

If you are on Windows, it’s highly recommended that you have a good virus checker installed and current.  I personally recommend AVG Free, which (as the name implies) is free and quite good.

BTW, if you use Firefox, Chrome and / or Open DNS, you will be presented a warning page for this site that tells you it’s a phishing site BEFORE you get the login page.

Sophos has a good video on how to remove applications (like “Stop Txting Lk Ths”, “NFee”, etc.) that you have already set up (if you aren’t already a fan of Sophos, I would recommend doing it as they tend to notify you of Facebook scams pretty quickly and have good general security advice).  Here’s their video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or-qR0Y300w

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Facebook has stated clearly, that Facebook Profile Trackers DO NOT Exist!  If you installed one, you need to follow the suggestions in this article to remove the scam application that was installed.

Facebook post:  Funniest baby a live you must watch !!!   Cry from Laughter after watching this baby.  See all the funniest videos on the net in one place!!!  My gosh you have to see this baby its the funniest thing every!!!  Baby sitting on the toilet reading a newspaper. This American GUY must be Stoned to Death for doing this to a GIRL. 10 things every GIRL wants in a MAN! This Teen Killed Herself After her Dad Posted This On Her Facebook! OMG this father crashed and died after THIS message from is daughter on his blackberry! See Who Is Viewing Your Profile!

Buzz will be playing Saturday 11/13 at Thirst N’ Howl (14710 Cantrell Road, Little Rock, AR) .  This is an “all ages” show with no cover charge.  I would get there early and eat dinner if you want a seat, this place is pretty small and tends to fill up early. 

Have fun!

Buzz Cason’s Home Page

Buzz Carson’s ReverbNation Page

Thirst N’ Howl’s Home Page

Thirst N’ Howl’s Google Places

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDHIUZ3wFjw

They will be playing at Thirst N’ Howl, 14710 Cantrell Rd in West Little Rock. Sometimes this place fills up on Friday night, so you may want to get there early. They have good food and $1 domestic drafts from 4-7 (as well as other drink specials) – no cover charge – under 21 allowed.

http://maps.google.com/places/us/ar/little-rock/cantrell-rd/14710/-thirst-n-howl-bar-&-grill

http://www.thirst-n-howl.com/

Here is why I say that: The movie was basically a teen morality play (an ‘After School Special‘ if you will) that had a real comic book kind of feel to it (Stan Lee) and LOTS of martial arts action scenes (Jackie Chan).  The plot was kind of twisted and surreal (even without the comic book feel and martial arts scenes) and felt like something that Philip K. Dick might have wrote.  Honestly, it felt like the 60′s Batman TV show had a collision with Resident Evil.

I have a good friend that is a serious SciFi fan.  After reading several Philip K. Dick books, he went to see the movie “Total Recall” and told me that when he saw the movie was based on a book by Philip K. Dick, he almost got up and walked out because he wasn’t sure he would be able to handle Dick’s twisted plots as a movie (which from this friend is high praise for an author).

I would give Scott Pilgrim vs. the World about 6 (I should probably make it a little higher than that, but it is what it is)…  We laughed quite a bit, and we felt for the characters (trust me, they were ALL characters).    Worth a watch.

For a more serious and in depth review of the film, check out TwitchFilms.net.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni4C9hg6m5w

I hope everyone will share this video with others.   Gary wants people to keep Oct. 30 in mind.  He’s working on a Fall Back/Take Back campaign and hopes to get a million pills off the street that date.  I think that is an awesome goal!  If even one other father doesn’t have to go through what this father and group of friends did, the video will have been a success!  Thanks for sharing this with us Gary!

Here is a link to a story about Albert by Chanel 11.
Here is a longer article about “Prescription drugs find place in teen culture” from USA Today.

]]> http://arkienet.com/2010/06/dont-give-up-your-dreams/feed/ 0 http://arkienet.com/2010/06/who-is-playing-where/ http://arkienet.com/2010/06/who-is-playing-where/#comments Sat, 05 Jun 2010 22:50:13 +0000 arkieguy http://arkienet.com/blog/?p=143 Continue reading →]]> Why is it so hard to find out what band is playing where? In central Arkansas there are a handful of venues where bands play and a few dozen bands but there isn’t ANY one place you can go to see who is playing where.

I’ve spent way too much time trying to come up with a consolidated list of events (see left column of my blog) but both the bands and the venue’s make it tough.  Everybody uses different calendars.  Some are simply web pages, some are MySpace pages or Facebook events, some use Google Cal, some don’t seem to publish anything.  Some are using listing services and some are web based calendar software.

The one thing in common is that there is very little in common and even though it’s in everybody best interest, almost no one shares!  To do the consolidated list, I have to spend a lot of time figuring out the format the band or venue is using and then write an interface to read it.  To add insult to injury, Myspace (which is probably the most common format for bands) is not consistent in what they provide (band to band) and they don’t provide a legit data feed.  Facebook doesn’t give anyone much of a way to get ANY event info (even though they give away all of your other data) and the “listing services” like Eventful consider the band’s upcoming dates THEIR data if it’s on their site.

My plea to bands and venues….  If you upgrade your calendar any time soon, please make sure that you have some kind of standard data feed available (XML, RSS, iCAL, something) and make it possible for people to find your feed!

Now for the question I’m sure many of you are asking, why should YOU care as a venue or a act?  Well, if you’ve done much promoting you already know that you have to send your info to a dozen different places so you know you are covered.  If everyone put out a consistent data feed, many of those places you manually send updates to now, would be able to simply pull your updated calendar feed – no fuss, no muss.    For instance, instead of setting up the event on your web page and then sending it to Eventful and Sync and Night Flying, you would just set it up on your website.  Obviously, the three publications just mentioned probably won’t start pulling immediately, but other smaller players (like me) will aggregate as many feeds as we can find and eventually, the bigger boys will either start pulling your feed or will grab one of the aggregated feeds.

If you need help setting up a data feed, feel free to leave me a message and I’ll see what I can do and if you set up a feed, don’t forget to let me know so I can add it to my feed.  :)

As far as what I thought of the movie…  It had a few laughs and if you watched the TV show even occasionally, it was about par for the course.  The funniest thing in the movie was about three quarters of the way through when my daughter said (quite loudly) “get the mic out of the picture”, which elicited more laugher from the theater than any of the jokes in the movie.  After it was over she said “it was like Where’s Waldo with a boom mic”….   Wow..   I give it about a 5.5 (with 2 being for the Waldo moments).

It was over the top crude and I’ve been told that I’m crude and over the top myself.  And let me say, I was pretty offended by the celery – there are just some places you shouldn’t go for a joke!

With that said, some reviewers seem to LIKE it, but I honestly can’t see why.

Other reviews:

• “MacGruber,” seems to have hit the nail on the head and is a return to their former feature film glory.
• “MacGruber is Juvenile, but Funny“.
• “MacGruber: Kind of a Bomb, Kind of the Bomb“.