Rubber Cat Productions

I mean it

you're going to get me in trouble

I have a lot of affinity for Newsweek. I first started reading it when I was around 12. Slowly I grew from reading one substanceless entertainment article per issue to reading the meatier, real news articles to reading entire issues cover to cover. I started to remember the names of the people who worked there: Fareed Zakaria, Michael Isikoff, Jonathan Alter, George Will, Sally Quinn, Steven Levy. I don't remember ever really reading the news on the internet, or watching cable news during that time; Newsweek was pretty much my primary news source. In the days and weeks after September 11th, the lead-up to the war in Iraq, the 2004 presidential election... Newsweek was the place I turned to for answers. If not for Newsweek I doubt I would've become a news junkie, an armchair politico, someone with Opinions on Things.

Eventually I got smarter and came to recognize the magazine's many faults, and as I went off to college I stopped being a regular reader. And yet, like Mad Magazine, I still wish it well. I'll check it out every once in a while at the library, or in bookstores, or in airport newsstands. I even liked the widely-panned 2009 redesign. Over the past two years, it's been distressing to see this humble print magazine flailing around, just trying to survive in a dying medium during an economic recession, hemorrhaging millions of dollars each year, trying desperately to figure out this "web" thing as it's sold off by its parent corporation, seeing its staffers flee the sinking ship, being ridiculed by its many critics, before finally grabbing ahold on Tina Brown in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. How did Newsweek get into this mess? Can it ever get out of it? I just want Newsweek to get to a point of fiscal stability, to become profitable, and, if it's not too much trouble, to become worth reading again.

And then I see garbage like this, and I realize it deserves all the flak it gets, if not more.

Yahoo! Kids (née Yahooligans!) is terrible

Here are the search results for "phineas and ferb," the name of a popular Disney cartoon:

Are you freakin kidding me

So, Google+ looks interesting. They've clearly put a lot of thought into these things. The "Circles" thing sounds boss for people like me who like putting people into lists. Facebook has "lists" like that except they've been sorta phasing it out and hiding it in drop down lists because no one used it, which annoys me. I don't get the "Sparks" thing, isn't that just Google Reader? And what is Google Buzz's place in this whole thing?

Over on Regular Google, they appear to be getting rid of the colorful icons that I love so much in favor of some unGooglely red & gray jazz:

current	redesign

Is there no end to their tyranny?

jesus chloe get a freakin pen

for the last time: im gonna dive into the ocean, save bin ladens brain, and implant it into a robot body so america has a constant threat, and i can go back to torturin people & stuff

i don't know about this jack i rather like fighting greenhouse gases

it's really calming and i feel like i'm actually doing something you know? back when we were bombing terrorists all we did was create new generations of terrorists... it was really bummin me out

dammit chloe stfu and open another socket, im about to put on the wetsuit

heh heh... id like to see jeff try to shoot an undestructable robot... thatll show him... maybe then hell stop bragging about shooting osama... then mom will see who the true hero is... and ill finally get the love and affection i never got as a kid...

uh i'm still on the line jack

6:23:57
6:23:58
6:23:59
6:24:00

• Big Oil
• Big Tobacco
• Big Govt.
• Big Box
• Big Hollywood
• Big Pharma
• Big Water
• Big Milk
• Big Corn
• Big Mac
• Big Gulp
• Big Dog
• Big Boy

Wow, eight years. I remember back when I was writing the fifth anniversary post, and now here we are. If this website were a child he'd (yes, my site would be a boy, deal with it) be starting third grade in the fall. Or maybe fourth grade, because he'd probably have skipped a grade, on account of being so smart #whoa #crazy

 

Cowboys & Aliens is paying Michael Kupperman royalties, right?

Well, that was a scary forty-five minutes... I was trying to renew my hosting and the thing wouldn't let me use my dang card

But it's all good now, I think

Last night, there was a hockey game and a political debate happening AT THE SAME TIME, so I attempted to liveblog both

5:26 PM: what a cheap shot

5:35 PM: the man from massachusetts makes a good point

6:03 PM: too many men

6:13 PM: blatant pizza advertising

6:48 PM: nice deflection

6:49 PM: these guys are like twins

Accidentally looked at a tech blog again

There was a nice little "floater" in the Chicago Tribune a week or two ago about Ivan Brunetti, one of my favorite comics people. Always good to hear how he's doing

Apparently Matt Groening introduced Patton Oswalt to him, which is a picture I'd very much like to see on that awesome people hanging out together tumblr

All this talk about "Weinergate" made me think about Weinerville, which was probably my favorite TV show when I was in third grade. To YouTube!

Initial thoughts: 1. Wow, I'd forgotten so much about this show! 2. Wow, this has not aged well at all! But it's still sorta charming, because I always find puppets charming (even if they're freakish human/puppet hybrids), and it has a humble "gee whiz gang, let's put on a show!" vibe going for it. I can't imagine a puppet show ever making it onto today's Nickelodeon, now that every kids show is about teenagers who sing

Time to stop reading tech blogs

I'm not sure what to make of the "Windows 8" teaser... it looks like such a big departure that it's hard to get my mind around it. I think one of the interesting things about it is that there's now a "share" button, which appears to be a core feature of the operating system. That really shows what an enormous influence social networking has had on computing, and it's only going to permeate our lives even further

SIDE PROJECTS UPDATE

• rubbercat.net/simpsons now has a Facebook page! I've been having a lot of fun on Twitter with @rubbrcatsimp, and I'd like to bring that fun to a new venue. Maybe there are people out there who'd like to get updates, but aren't into the whole "tweeting" thing? I don't know. Anyway, please come and "like" it!!! I promise to not be annoying and spam your newsfeed
• AnimeJihad is now hosted on Blogspot instead of its own domain, please make a note of it. Technically it was always hosted on Blogspot, but some crazy voodoo internet magic made it appear to be on its own domain. It was nice owning a silly ironic domain name for a while, but over time I've come to see it as a needless luxury
• I'm going to get back to working on the From Here To Insanity website, I swear. The problem is that I've been trying to figure out how best to present magazine material in a web format that feels natural. Right now there's a bunch of inconsistency and I keep restarting everything. It's frustrating.