It now appears to me that it is a speck of dust/lint somehow trapped underneath the screen's protective covering, judging from its position relative to the angle at which I view it (as opposed to the fixed position of the pixels on the screen image itself). There must be a way to rectify this matter, but short of cracking open the lid I am at a loss for answers. Outsourced tech support, I imagine, will be of little assistance.

Those of you used to chatting with me on AIM may have noticed that I haven't been around too much lately. That is because I'd kind of gotten used to using the laptop as my primary computing device, and then I discovered... a stuck/dead pixel. Actually, there may be several of them in the same vicinity, but one is darker than the others and really really bugs me. Could it always have been there? I don't know, but now that I've noticed it I can't take my bloody eyes off of it. Hell, it's basically rendered the rightmost 150 pixels of my monitor useless, since I'm running all of my program windows dragged that much to the left to avoid making it show up on white backgrounds. I hate it. But as far as I've been able to discern, there's nothing that can be done about it. So I haven't been using the laptop much and have only been using the desktop for work (not much these days) and to check e-mail. It kinda sucks -- this thing cost $4K and I can hardly stand to use it now. What a waste.

Anyway, since my laptop looks almost exactly like Foamy's laptop and is (also) a Dell, I found the latest Ill Will Press cartoon (Tech-Support III) to be especially relevant (and fairly humorous, especially given that I have had similarly infuriating experiences with outsourced Dell tech support since getting the laptop). Unfortunately, the creator isn't taking e-mails so I can't ask him if Dell actually gave him a working solution.

Don't buy a Dell.

I could care less about the Oscars, so I only caught a few parts of it in passing. Thoughts:

Can somebody who finds Jon Stewart funny explain to me... why? No, seriously. Pick a joke he's told and explain to me, in the comments, what's funny about it. Then, provided that you can, convince me that he regularly tells jokes of that nature. I've never found the guy to be terribly amusing -- not on "The Daily Show" (which largely consists of people making idiotic remarks that speak for themselves, so the bullshit he adds is pointless and unnecessary), not in the related books supposedly written by him, not on his guest spots on talk shows (though that may not quite be his fault), and now, not on the Oscars. As best I can tell, people find him amusing because of that one goofy face he makes, but if you think about it, that is, quite literally, infantile humor. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people find it funny, given that humanity almost entirely consists of gibbering idiots figuratively regurgitating on themselves and pissing in the air. Goo-goo, ga-ga, bitches.

Reese Witherspoon. Fucking hell. I listened to a brief commentary about the Oscars on a random news site, and the commentator went on for a bit about the "fantastic" speech that she gave. Excuse me? I actually caught that speech and I wanted to punch her in the fucking face the entire time. Was she irritating or what? The only movie I ever thought she was good in was Election, and only then because it was her only believable performance. Reese Witherspoon is annoying as all hell -- she's not a sweetheart that I can see anyone genuinely desiring (unless that desire includes a certain element of brutality and hatred). I seriously wish I'd been at the show (like Tamara -- updated link!) so I could've yelled, "HEY! SOMEBODY SHUT THAT BITCH UP!" And then when people gasped and inquired aloud who said it, I'd jump up on my chair and shout, "IT WAS ME!!!" And then crayons would rain from the sky.

A movie about gay cowboys actually won awards. Does anyone else have a craving for pudding?

And Crash for Best Picture. Now, I didn't see any of the other nominated films, so I can't comment on how deserving Crash was in comparison, but I didn't think the movie deserved that kind of award. It certainly wasn't the best picture that I saw in 2005. (Of course, with the exception of The Godfather, I've found very few of the winners that I've seen to be worthy of that distinction, but still.) And Crash had a message? It struck me as a pretty shallow and cartoony depiction of racism with an artsy "everything comes full circle" undercurrent that offered very little in the way of actual depth, solutions, or even condemnation. You want to talk about real racism, we'll talk about how films like Hustle & Flow further negative stereotypes and hinder actual progress in this department. "It's hard out here for a pimp?" It should be fucking harder, because pimps should be in jail getting anally raped. Fuck that movie.

All for now -- ja ne, minna-san.

I totally want this.

Couldn't let the month go by without commenting at length on the subject, could we? Actually, I'd very much intended to, but then I happened to catch the latter half of this "That's So Raven" episode. If you get around to reading it, lemme know what you think of the article. Later!