After months (and months, and months) of enduring Rupert Murdoch’s noise and the news industry’s anti-Google rhetoric (including accusations of vampirism), we learned today that The New York Times will charge for content beginning in 2011. Their plan is to allow a limited number of articles on NYTimes.com to be accessed for free each month, and a fee will be charged for unlimited access. Seems as reasonable as any paid content scheme, which is to say it’s fraught with problems, but hey power to ‘em for finally putting their money where their mouth is.

And thank God!

Ever since Murdoch began yammering about this I prayed the news industry would follow his lead. Like most people, I will never, ever, pay to read articles on NYTimes.com or any other website, so this kind of thing is exactly what I need to keep from inadvertently consuming news, which has brought me nothing but heartache and misery.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to know what’s going on in the world, but I can do without the “in depth reporting” and “insightful analysis”. Usually a few words (y’know, like those found in a tweet) is sufficient to let me know what’s happening. I don’t need the high definition photos either; a shot from a camera phone is just fine. The vast majority of “news” articles out there are just so much blather. Am I a better person for “being informed”? Nope. Would I have acted differently if I hadn’t “been informed” during those years I was addicted to news? Probably not.

Sure, keeping up on current affairs, analyzing them, and debating the issues is a nice exercise for the brain, but unless you have some direct connection to the story that’s pretty much all it is. You’d be better off trading in the New York Times for Sartre, Camus, or Lao-Tzu.

And let’s face it, most of us, most of the time, don’t have that direct connection with news stories. Will your familiarity with the current health care debate cause you to take actions you wouldn’t otherwise have taken? Do your daily obligations change depending on Obama’s standing in the polls? Has Google’s decision on China resulted in any change in your behavior? I’m guessing the answer is no.

I say good riddance, NYT. Hopefully other news organizations will follow suit and the internet will be cleansed of their drivel.

In an age of banal status updates, recycled quotes, retweets and shared links, I want to take a moment to salute the content creators – the thinkers, artists, musicians, writers, philosophers, coders, and everyone else who contributes original content to our digital lives.

Cheers to the bloggers, webmasters, wiki editors, copywriters and all who add substance to the web.

Cheers to the tweeters with something meaningful to say.

Cheers to the forum members and commentators who listen, reply, and carry on a dialogue.

Cheers to the programmers and designers who put flesh on the web’s bones.

Cheers to the artists, photographers, and videographers who feed our eyes’ appetites.

Cheers to the musicians who crank out new material, knowing we may or may not pay for it.

Cheers to anyone and everyone who conceives an original thought, offers unique insight, or shares a novel idea.

Cheers to those who give us something new.

Welp, I’ve had about enough of 2009. Frankly the whole last decade is passé at this point. It’s time to put the past behind us and move forward, so I’ve compiled a list of things I hope to accomplish in 2010. Next to each item is the probability that it’ll actually happen. These figures were determined using a sophisticated algorithm factoring in past experience, motivation cycles, financial scenarios, and many other variables. Trust me, it’s sophisticated.

Mattdude’s Goals for 2010:

1. Stay More in Touch with Friends & Family – 98%
2. Stay Current on Utility Bills to Avoid Late Fees – 47%
3. Visit Mikedude in Colorado At Least Once – 99%
4. Get a New, Newer Model Blue Lumina – 2%
5. Redesign Mattdude.com – 97%
6. Perform Better at My Job – 74%
7. Read Some Books – 25%
8. Never Login to Facebook – 0.4%
9. Hold My Own with Patchdude in a Quake Live Duel – 7%
10. Be Nice at Work – 51%

Sometimes when I’m half asleep I speak in tongues. Does this ever happen to you? They call it “somniloquy“. With me it often happens when I’m on the verge of passing out after a night of drinking with my brother, and he always tries to maximize the experience by egging me on. One night he transcribed our conversation. I offer that transcript here for your entertainment:

Mattdude: Shit is fucked up is what it is… selling the ice rings.

Voidious: What’s fucked up about selling the ice rings?

Mattdude: You don’t have to spend anything.

Voidious: Why would I care about spending anything?

Mattdude: ‘Cuz… it’s expenditures yo.

Voidious: So what you’re saying is that I need to buy some ice rings.

Mattdude: No… I’m just saying that…

Voidious: That what?

Mattdude: That Google needs to fucking kiss my ass.

Voidious: Why do you say that?

Mattdude: Dude, don’t toy with me dude… Do not be toying with me yo. I can tell, yo, when I’m being toyed with yo.

Voidious: Dude I thought we were talking about ice rings.

Mattdude: Dude, I got my special no-fuck-with-me glasses on dude. I think there’s something Rachel wants to say to me yo.

Voidious: Well, I dunno dude.

On another occasion he recorded a video of my half-conscious ramblings, but I’ll save that for a future post.

I get a lot of ideas that never manifest as fully realized blog posts. Ok, maybe “fully realized” isn’t the right phrase. “Half baked” is more accurate, but I digress. Anyway, all my posts start as a few words in a digital sticky note, followed by a slow fleshing-out in a text file. If I’m lucky, they finally, hopefully, become reasonably coherent posts.

Most don’t, however. They linger, languish, even, for months and years on end. These undeveloped, orphan thoughts stare at me day after day until eventually I just tune them out. I know I’ll never cultivate them but I just can’t admit it to myself.

So rather than letting these ideas fester and rot, I present them to you. Here are my currently pending incomplete thoughts. Links to any notes I compiled are provided after each summary. Perhaps someone out there can develop them further because, apparently, I sure as hell won’t.

Star Wars vs. Star Trek

The idea here was to create an objective comparison of the two legendary franchises. No subjective interpretation or philosophical discussions, just hard data: box office, advertising, and merchandising revenue, viewing hours, and any other objective measure of success I could imagine. It was easy to find box office revenue for the feature films and I was just getting started on viewing hours, but then I realized the whole endeavor would be far too difficult. How would I determine revenue from advertising? Should I also account for novels, comics, video games, and all the myriad “expanded universe” properties? The data could probably be obtained somewhere, somehow, likely after exhausting research and leg work, but I’m way too lazy for all of that.
View Notes for “Star Wars vs. Star Trek”.

Fox Mulder Ultimate Rant

This one was inspired by an episode of The Simpsons featuring Dana Scully and Fox Mulder from The X-Files. I recalled a hilarious rant by Mulder in that episode which perfectly lampooned his wacky but passionate character. I thought it would be a riot to string together most or all of Mulder’s ramblings about government conspiracy into a single, ultimate rant. I was off to a good start, but it just proved too hard to find enough appropriate quotes and combine them in a sensible way.
View Notes for “Fox Mulder Ultimate Rant”.

Why Burn Notice is Better than Lost

Of all my unrealized ideas this was closest to fruition. It seemed like a very simple premise: explain why I enjoy one television program more than another. I was all proud of myself for coming up with the idea to correlate the differences between the two shows to the contrast between Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. The idea never evolved beyond a few bullet points.
View notes for “Why Burn Notice is Better than Lost“.

100 Reasons to Keep Smoking

I’ve had this idea in mind for years. It occurred to me one day as I lit up while stuck in traffic. I experienced a glimmer of euphoria as my thoughts drifted away from the insufferable delay and toward getting my nicotine fix. Being able to smoke made the traffic more bearable. I started thinking of other good reasons to keep smoking: suppresses appetite, gives cause to carry a lighter which can come in handy, things like that. Furthermore, it seemed like a radical thing to put out there. Everybody talks about how you should stop smoking, so why not be different and propose reasons to keep smoking? At the very least, it might get a rise out of the vocal anti-smoker crowd. >;-]

Laziness Manifesto

It pains me a little to include this here, but after so many years of dwelling on the idea I think it’s time to let it go. In fact, I’ve grown comfortable believing that not pursuing this idea honors its essence more than actually doing anything with it. The concept was basically that “laziness” has been the prime motivator for all of humanity’s greatest inventions. Every great piece of technology we have was created because someone wanted to do less work.

Well there you have it. I hereby cast these neglected seedlings out into the interwebz, in the hopes they take root and grow. If not, that’s ok, at least I have a clean slate.