I went back and looked at the “torquemen” wall again this morning. Turns out it was actually “Fortitude, guts, tenacity.” Synonyms: close but no cigar.

Disney is acting hostile to consumers on behalf of the motion picture industry, and apparently made some snarky remarks about "rip, mix, burn." Then Leslie L. Vadasz, Executive VP, Intel, steps up to the defense:

Another major point of misunderstanding is our differing perspectives on the role of the PC in the hands of the consumer. Mr. Eisner's characterization of the phrase "rip, mix, burn" as emblematic of our industry's perspective on piracy is utterly false. What the content community fails to recognize is that these utilities - the ability to copy content, remix and manage it and port it to other storage media for personal use in a protected fashion - are features that consumers have come to expect. The ability to rip, mix and burn in a protected manner is not piracy, it is simply fair use of content as permitted by law.

The music (and movie) industries need to hear this. If you're at war with your customers, at war with their rights under the law, then of course CD sales will fall. If you persist in implementing ham handed and insulting copyright protection on your media that render it unplayable and remove features that consumers like, you'll render yourselves irrelevant and illiquid in less time than it takes you to cut loose quality acts like Wilco, Tori Amos, or Cowboy Junkies--or for one of your innumerable teen pop bands to peak, fade, or be forgotten.

Dave has kindly reminded me that grief is part of a bigger issue, male feelings in general. His Davenet on the subject from 1998 suggests that manhood = controlling emotions in our culture. He suggests that if the culture were more open to receiving male expressions of emotion, that men would be better at expressing their feelings.

I don't know that I necessarily agree with the first point (though I'm not sure how I would define manhood otherwise), but I definitely believe the second. It's a reinforcing loop. As men stay silent, the culture becomes accustomed to men not expressing their feelings. Eventually, expressing feelings becomes an exception, exceptions aren't tolerated, and the cost of not expressing feelings becomes over time too high to bear.

How do we break the loop? Men have to stop being afraid of the cost. Everyone needs to stop treating expressions of male emotion like they're antisocial behavior.

This link will probably break, but if it does it's worth going to inkiboo.com and finding the post yourself. There are so few male role models to show us how to deal with grief. This blog entry, about the death of the author's mother, is one.

I wish I had seen this a long time ago. I don't think I could have managed to be nearly as adult or effective as the writer. But I might have had an easier time dealing with the death of my grandmother last year. I was totally unprepared and I didn't allow myself to grieve. Because I never acknowledged how I felt, I just felt bad all the time. I ended up putting myself into a deep depression that it took me months to come out of--I'm still not sure I'm out of it. Why can't men grieve? Or maybe just why couldn't I?

More proof that we Mac users are a weird bunch: Undress your Mac for thrills. I've never taken pictures, but I confess that when I got my PowerBook G3 a year and a half ago I set up a big work area, reverently unpacked each of the pieces, and, salivating, turned on the machine to hear the chime. I've never ever said anything like this, however: "I'm pretty sure it's as close to sex as you can get with a machine. I mean, look at this photo."