It’s sometimes difficult to be an art and music lover who is also a conservative, albeit leaning toward libertarian. Every band I love seems hopelessly and self-destructively devoted to the political left. Even when the music is free of an inherent political message, it’s discouraging to see the artists devoting their effort toward the hypocrisy of liberalism and moral relativism.

(This entry came about after a quick scan for a band name brought me to a Web site that basically claimed that our country is run by a repressive regime bent on enslaving our minds, until we all spend all our free time, presumably, watching “The Simple Life 12″ and sucking down Big Macs, Coca-Cola C2 and Ritalin until our eyeballs melt, our arteries explode, and our couches collapse.)

You might think after reading this, “Why on earth would you care what those people think?” It’s not a matter of having some false idolatry shattered by realizing that the people you look up to are actually not incisive thinkers. I have no illusions about that! Rather, it makes me feel somewhat conflicted because, with my financial support of their endeavors, I am putting my money toward causes for which I harbor varying degrees of opposition.

Normally, I listen to the music, or see the film, or look at the photographs and paintings, and try to digest those in the context of the artists’ political views, basically trying to empathize. It’s not always possible to do so, but for a lot of what I like, I don’t have to go to the trouble. Music fits into the latter category in most cases, thankfully, since that is the art on which I rely most critically to thrive as an artistic being.

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p>But at what point do I, by embracing the work and shunning the artist, become a contributor to hypocrisy? I absolutely refuse to believe that in order to be true to myself, I can never watch Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2, or look at a Mappelthorpe photograph, or listen to Death Cab for Cutie. How do I know when my personal moral compass is broken, short of letting someone else sell me theirs?

A coworker forwarded an interesting e-mail regarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington, D.C. Although it turned out to be only partly based in fact, it did lead me to look up the real site of the Honor Guard of the Tomb. The dedication of the Sentinels who guard the Tomb is both awesome and humbling. It is an example that all citizens should take to heart.

Arggghh… The new Fedora kernel, 2.6.8-1.521, fixed my IDE VFAT bug, but it is very s-l-u-g-g-i-s-h after exercising RAM. It apparently overuses swap for some reason. My tests were not on a powerhouse per se, but a perfectly respectable Athlon Tbird 1.4, with 512 MB RAM. It rocks under 2.6.7-1.494.2.2, but this latest kernel iteration really gums up the works. I’ll have to check traffic on the mailing lists this week to see if anyone else is having these problems.

Note to self: Emacs – Learn It, Love It! To wit, I offer this addition to .bashrc:

unalias vi
function vi()
{
  zenity --warning --text="You are commanded to only use Emacs!\nGo now and sin no more."
  if [ $? = 1 ]; then
    gvim "$@"
  else
    emacs "$@"
  fi
}

Today I got my ViewCVS interface working on my Web server. You can visit my Subversion repository to see the results. WOO-HOO!!!

Some goofball who is on one or more of the Fedora mailing lists I frequent has apparently picked up the MyDoom virus and is spreading it around, labeled as coming from my e-mail address. If you receive this virus in an e-mail that purports to be from me, you can be assured it’s not. I only use Linux on every station from which I send e-mail. I live a practically Microsoft-free life right now, and I love it. (Partly because I don’t spread these annoying viruses and worms around.)

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p>Practice safe computing — use Linux!

My dad is getting married (for the second time) at the end of September, and he asked me to be his best man. What I hadn’t considered before I said “yes” was that I would have to come up with a toast. This seems like a small thing, but when it’s for a friend it’s much easier than for your father. After all, how well do I really know my dad? Of course I’ve known him all my life, but your parents are always somewhat of a mystery to you.

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p>The bride has not been married before, although she is close to my dad’s age, so it’s doubly important that I do this right, since it will be a pretty formal occasion. (I only say that because many weddings where both the bride and the groom have been married before tend to be a little less formal in my experience. YMMV.)

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p>What to say? How to not make an ass out of myself in front of not only my dad’s peers? Most of them are already old enough to be my parents, but then you’ve also got the parents of the bride, who don’t want some idiotic whippersnapper like me screwing up the works.

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p>I’m usually very good at speaking in public, having given a lot of speeches and presentations, and having taught in classrooms, but I’m also worried about getting too sentimental. It could be easy to choke up, especially about my dad, who is kind of my hero, as most fathers are to their sons.

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p>I don’t need tips like “have notes,” or “don’t mention strippers,” thanks. But if anyone out there has tips for material for the speech, it would be appreciated.

If I didn’t look up to him as a musician so much, I might call him my friend. In any case, the inimitable Greg Howard is setting up a Stick seminar in Charlottesville during the weekend of October 16th and 17th. Looks like I’ll be going, hopefully with my friend Chris. He bought a Stick a couple of years ago and is actually practicing it these days (unlike, ahem, some people…).

Great, more lunkheads trying to pry open Paul’s Magic Box.

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p>Aug 7 16:49:18 sshd[27205]: Failed password for root from 212.152.182.100 port 36424 ssh2
Aug 7 16:49:18 sshd[27206]: Failed password for root from 212.152.182.100 port 36425 ssh2
...

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p>…and so on.

WARNING: The following fraction is maybe the scariest part of all.