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Yesterday I went to go to the speech that Ann Coulter was giving here in Ottawa with my boyfriend. Unlike pretty much every single person I had talked to there, we had registered for the event. It was going to be awesome: we were going to witness extremist bigotry first hand. Unfortunately, the speech was canceled due to “security concerns.” Here’s how it all went down. (more…)

I had a neat referrer yesterday to the Rice Tea site. For those who don’t know, referrers are the address that a web browser was surfing on before they linked to your site. I keep track of these things for statistical purposes.

This was the referrer that stood out yesterday:

http://www.google.com.kw/search?num=100&hl=en&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=torrent+Rice+Tea+Julien+McArdle&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

In other words, someone tried to find a torrent of the book. Even though I distribute it for free on my site.

It could be that the visitor wanted to save me some bandwidth by getting the torrent instead. However, what’s much more likely is that the guy saw the book listed on the Wikipedia entry for Hacker, and wanted to grab a pirated copy – not realizing I’m already giving it away for free.

Pre-teen girls like Justin Bieber. I get that. Some music executive saw an opportunity for a new franchise and leapt on it. What’s rather unfortunate is that his fans also extend to the listeners of commercial radio.

I’m pretty tolerant when it comes to standing pop music. But even I have my limits. I had to walk out of a store today because they were playing his song “Baby.” How bad is it? Well, let’s do a bit of word frequency analysis.

The lyrics of the song consist of 280 words. Out of those:

• 56 (20%) are the word “baby“
• 21 (7.5%) are the word “yeah“

One out of every five words is “baby”. From a 15 year old kid. Being aired all throughout your shopping experience. Fun.

Alright, so I’m a little behind on the script writing. This is a busy week, so we’ll see how much progress I achieve come next Sunday.

Like Docks, I’m striving to only write the script in a manner that I know can be shot. There are no explosions, etc. Unlike Docks, however, I don’t have outright access to the sets. With Docks, I worked out a deal to have access to the boats, kiosks, etc. that I needed. Everything I needed was right there.

With Rice Tea, things are a little different. I’ll need to work out deals with tons of different places, and that won’t be easy. Eh well – that’s what all of May and June will be for. You can download the script in its current form below.

Downloads:

Script, March 21 2010

Today my boyfriend and I went out to Walmart so that he could refill a prescription. It was a pretty warm day as far as the weather in March goes, so my significant other wore shorts. He also brought some jeans in his backpack just in case the temperature dropped.

The Walmart we went to is about an hour away by bus. Sure enough, when we get there, the wind picks up. So my boyfriend goes into the washroom to change into his warmer clothes while I go get some supplies. On my way back to the store’s pharmacy, I see a girl in the main aisle with a shirt that says “Security.” She’s talking to a man in shirt and tie, presumably some manager, and I overhear her say “It’s the one with the belt and the backpack – but she didn’t see him do it.”

I follow the manager as he walks to the prescription counter, where sure enough my boyfriend – studded belt, backpack, and all – is standing. The manager approaches my boyfriend and asks him if he was filling a prescription, to which my mate replied that he was. The manager talks to the girl behind the desk, and leaves.

Ten minutes later, the prescription is ready. The pharmacist calls out my boyfriend’s name. The girl at the desk runs back, hushes something in her ear, and comes back to us informing us that it’ll be another five minutes. Minutes pass. She gets a call – and informs us again that it will be another five minutes. Finally, half an hour later, she receives a call that gives her the go ahead: she calls out his name, and gives him the bag with $200 worth of meds.

Jay had been accused of shoplifting the Old Navy pants he was wearing. That much we know. We presume that the delay was the security person reviewing the footage, seeing if he had in fact picked up anything.

This delay caused us to miss our bus back, which was rather frustrating. As a “fuck you” to Walmart, we shopped around at other stores, and then came back to eat at their own McDonald’s.