Day: August 21, 2001

Wil Wheaton Can’t Be All Bad

Okay, I absolutely hate Wesley Crusher (though that’s the least of things I hate about Star Trek), but when Memepool decided to link to several sites related to Wil Wheaton, they missed this Wheaton’s excellent interview with the Aint-It-Cool-News folks.

Anyway, I’m reading through this thinking this is one of the better interviews with people who aren’t famous anymore when I come to this part which makes me clap my hands. Wheaton talks about how lucky he felt when he was asked by the Make A Wish Foundation to give a dying child a backstage tour of the Star Trek: The Next Generation set. And then launches into a very un-PC attack on the enemy of all things good in the world, The Backstreet Boys,

Like The Backstreet Boys refused to let a little girl, through the Make A Wish Foundation, come backstage at the end of one of their concerts. So, I’d just like to say right now, on record, fuck them. Fuck them. I mean, honestly, was it going to kill them to take 15 minutes away from sitting back there, drinking beer, patting themselves on their collective back, talking about how great they are? Honestly. There are times when you get an opportunity to do something, to really make a difference. Not the way everybody says, “I’m going to make a difference.” I mean really, right now, directly make a difference in somebody’s life. You gotta seize those opportunities and if you don’t, then fuck you and I hope you fail. OK. Off the soapbox now.

Now that’s the kind of thing I want to read in celebrity interviews. Besides, whatever you say about Wesley Crusher, you gotta admit he never sucked as bad as any of The Backstreet Boys (I’m not sure that’s much of a compliment, but it will have to do).

Of Course Excite@Home Is Doomed: The Company Was Run By Morons

So the usual slate of sites are abuzz over the impending implosion of broadband provide Excite@Home. This comes after independent auditors filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying they had “substantial doubt” that the company could survive.

Fine, but where were the auditors who should have filed a report back in 1999 that by all appearances the company was being run by monkeys randomly hitting keys on a typewriter.

Don’t believe me? How else do you explain Excite@Home paying $780 million for Blue Mountain Arts? If anyone knows of a dumber dot.com acquisition, I’d love to hear about it.

At the time of the acquisition, Excite@Home president George Bell actually said,

We see this as a powerful ecommerce opportunity. Blue Mountain provides a rich, creative environment. And obviously, animated (rich media) cards will be more appealing in the long run than the current narrowband content.

Yeah, right. People in 1999 were just dying to pay $50/month for a cable modem so they could send and receive glorified HTML e-mail.

Personally, the e-greeting card was a fad that I was glad to see die (does anybody actually use Blue Mountain anymore?)

But hold on, the deal wasn’t just to benefit people who wanted to swap 40 megabyte greeting cards. No, no, no. How’s this quote, again from Bell, for the ultimate in stupid business models,

To introduce Excite@Home’s cable modem service to Blue Mountain Arts’ nine million unique users which will broaden Excite@Home’s total reach by 40 percent.

They were going to expand their cable business by marketing to people visiting a site to send and receive free greeting cards? Sure.

My Over Indulged Child

The National Post has a story about whether or not affluence is leading people to over-indulge their children. The opening paragraph mentions that people actually buy Gucci baby booties at $220 a pop.

I guess I didn’t follow infant clothing trends closely, but I wasn’t even aware anyone made designer baby clothes until shortly after my daughter was born. One of my favorite relatives is extremely wealthy (yes, she was my favorite even before she became wealthy) and about a week after my daughter was born a package from this relative arrived at our house containing something that I thought portended the end of the world — a Baby Dior (which is a brand owned by Christian Dior) sleeper.

I was literally shocked. Most of the things my daughter wore as an infant and wears today as a toddler came from second hand clothing stores, not because we couldn’t afford to buy Emma the latest toddler fashions, but because it seems like a pretty lousy idea to spend so much money on new clothes that are going to last 6 months at most.

On the other hand, I’ve been on the other end of that with some of my relatives thinking my wife and I were out of our minds to drop a few hundred dollars on a computer for my daughter for her fourth birthday. (Though part of the concern there was that Emma would simply spend all of her time in front of the computer — which might happen, if she ever slowed down enough to sit anywhere for more than 15 minutes at a time).

Of course the same relatives who were concerned about the computer are the same ones who bought my four year old a small TV/VCR, an enormous kitchen playset that doesn’t even fit in my new house, and enough Barbie toys and stuffed animals to start our own army and take over the world (and that was just one birthday).

Not that I’m too worried about my daughter becoming spoiled. Most of the time she doesn’t even play with all of the expensive toys and gadgets, but is instead preparing for her musical career with a variety of cheap musical instruments which she plays while making up songs off the top of her head (in fact, she often drags out a little stool, stands on top of it, and performs a mini-concert which is hilarious).

Drought and Food Shortages Hit Central America

After being devastated by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, another natural disaster — drought — has hit Central America causing crop failures and concerns that the region faces an impending food crisis.

The World Food Program estimates that as many as one million people in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua may face potential food shortages after rainfall was substantially below normal levels in June and July of this year.

The BBC reported that in Honduras, which was hit hardest by Hurricane Mitch and now this drought, farmers in eight provinces have lost almost all of their first harvest. Farmers in Central America typically plant corn and beans in late May and then plant again in August. The Honduran government declared a state of emergency in those eight provinces.

In Guatemala, meanwhile, the agriculture ministry claimed that the country will lose 47 thousand hectares of corn, beans and rice due to the drought.

Sources:

Central America alarmed at crop failure. The BBC, July 22, 2001.

Honduras declares drought emergency. Mike Lanchin, The BBC, July 25, 2001.