So in my latest cry for help, I created a MySpace account. It’s not clear how much effort I will put into it, but now at least more of my friends can formalize our relationship by letting the Internets know.

This has the side effect of reorganizing my life goals. Success will now be measured by the number of people for whom I am a “Top 8″ friend. This is a fickle lifestyle, and I have to be constantly on my game. If you don’t hear from me in a while, it’s probably because you don’t have a MySpace account.

Mostly kidding.

As for the web site itself, holy crap. I can’t believe these people are still in business. There are ads everywhere and where there aren’t ads, there’s some kind of tag soup from the 90s and a billion links. They compartmentalize your account in at least 20 different places and link to each one on every page. Swear to god, I’m surprised there aren’t flaming GIFs to announce new mail.

Every URL is complete gibberish and their servers seem to sync up only during solar eclipses. As far as polish is concerned, Web 2.0 companies like Flickr and Google have these jokers way beat. And yet, MySpace is one of the (if not the) biggest web properties.

I don’t understand people sometimes. Though, I realize my complaint is tempered by my participation, so I’ll leave it at that.

So some myspace dude linked directly to my Bill the Butcher screenshot, causing a noticeable surge in data transfer (anything above zero is noticeable in my logs, sigh).

So now he gets:

Thank you bagofdicks.com!

Update (~8PM): Hah, a live one. He changed it, but not before sending me this touching email:

From: Kyle Touchton <mstouchton@comcast.net>
Subject: Dick

You the piece of shit bitching about hosting your own images? Fuck you
and your crappy ass reviews.

Pain in my ass.

Now he’s stealing bandwidth from movievillains.com (among others). Well done.

Here are some sites I am always pleased as punch to see pop up in my RSS reader:

• Girls Are Pretty — A new holiday every day just for you. And no, I don’t know why the site’s called Girls Are Pretty, though they do tend to be. Updated daily.

• A Softer World — Clever, dark captions. Updated Fridays. Each comic has a mouse-over comment.

• Dinosaur Comics — Using the same comic template, Ryan changes the dialog each time to something equally hilarious. Updated daily. There are three ‘hidden’ comments for each comic — the mouse-over, the default subject in the ‘comment’ link for the day, and the title of the comic (only displayed in the RSS feed?).

• And last but not least, Achewood. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Chris Onstad should be Poet Laureate. Achewood may be hard to get into at first, as it is pretty character-based. I’d recommend starting at the beginning. But if you want a quick survey of some favorites, you’ve got it:

  • Oooh, these knives!
  • Bone bone bone
  • Can Todd read?
  • I am sorry about this Roast Beef.
  • Roast Beef’s personal ad
  • Dainty little ovaries
  • Roast Beef’s shirt problems (one and two)
  • Everybody dance like there’s ass in your pants!
  • How would I know that that robot don’t ejaculate?
  • The dude owns property.
  • Asleep style
  • What’s the verdict on wooden nickels?
  • I just got weirded out
  • Talking like dogs
  • Debonair SysAdmin
  • Bible fan fic
  • A Boring place
  • Rap music my droogs!
  • Phillipe’s sense of subversity
  • Milk, old school style
  • Nothing else I could say would make more sense

  One great bonus about Achewood is that Chris maintains blogs for each of the principle characters. They complement the main comic well. The comic is updated mostly daily. The blogs whenever. Each comic has a mouse-over comment.

I just found out about LJ Talk, a beta Jabber service being offered by LiveJournal.

I am very pleased by the percolation of Jabber through various web properties, first Google and now LJ. I suspect and hope more in the future will add it.

Well, I just wanted to remind any of my friends that are experimenting with LJ Talk that they can add me as mike@mterry.name.

As big a fan as I am of the Estevez joke, I’m happy to announce the start of the Estevez Joke Repository.

I’ve seeded it with the three Estevenesday jokes, but I’m hoping that the Internet and my friends can give me lots of good ones to post.

One nice feature of my new host is a Jabber server. So now I have a shiny new Jabber account at mike@mterry.name.

You may not understand why anyone would want to join a party of self-described pirates. How could I want to grab bread from artists’ mouths or see the harm in DRM?

Thankfully, the Red Hat Summit is going on right now, and their videos of speakers happen to explain it for me.

I particularly recommend Cory Doctorow’s (of BoingBoing fame) speech. His is an accessible review of copyright and the evils of its misapplication.

Red Hat is doing some interesting non-OS stuff these days. There’s the One Laptop Per Child project, trying to make a rugged $100 laptop that will facilitate childhood exploration. It pleasantly reminds me of A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.

They also just launched Mugshot, for which I have yet to either receive a login or wrap my head around. But it seems interestingly ambitious for a traditional Linux company.

Update: It doesn’t rain but it pours. Lawrence Lessig just gave an interview in the Guardian about copyright.

The word on the street is that next Saturday — May 27th — is the first meeting of the Somerville chapter of the Boston Pillow Fight Club. Obviously, the first rule of Pillow Fight Club is talk about Pillow Fight Club.

The plan is to meet in Davis Square around 5PM. Come with a concealed pillow in a backpack or something. At the strike of 5, whip those babies out and pillow fight like it’s 1999!

Now, I would feel irresponsible if I didn’t say the obvious — namely, don’t hit anyone without a pillow and keep it safe and fun. Alright, kids, tell your friends, etc. and see you there!

Nick has finally succumbed to the ravishing desire to start a blog. I have been pushing for this for some time now.

Anyway, yay for blogging, and may you, Nick, entertain me on many of my lunch breaks.