I have been busy doing other things, both off and on-line. I admit that IJ does not have the strong appeal I used to have for LiveJournal. But I am casual about most of the items my Friends have been scrawling anyway.

I mention that I shall be attending Cinema Wasteland in Strongsville, OH. next weekend.
I suspect you can tell I enjoy the exposition, even though I am not a keen fan of science-fiction and horror movies.

If you attend, the way to try and find me is to go into the dealers' room. Either Andy Copp, Dave Kosanke, Jon Kitley, or especially 42nd Street Pete can give you the data of what I am wearing (& it will be distinctive).

If you are at the Kitley's Krypt table, look inside the closed box labelled "XXX". It contains mostly gay porn. {!}
Yes, I will have selected Japanese Adult Videos on hand.

The persons at this Wasteland whom I want to see and hear are Christina Lindberg and Danny Steinmann. Christina was one of the most beautiful females to appear in Swedish "Soft-X" movies of the early 1970s. Yes, she was frequently nude. [But scenes of her apparantly performing a hardcore act were a body double.]
Danny Steinmann, under a pseudonym, directed the amazing explicit movie "High Rise" [1973]. The movie must be available out here somewhere. There is no jolting imagery preventing a DVD re-release. The scene you must view is where our female protagonist happens upon an apartment where two other lesbians are grateful to have another female join them. The scene is choreographed completely using mirrors.

I have again been accredited by F.I.F.A. (yes, the international soccer hotshots), and shall be travelling to Japan; specifically, Tokyo & Yokohama; to cover its F.I.F.A. Club World Cup Japan 2008.
I will be there from the 10th to the 23rd. This time, I am staying at a facility in Shibuya-ku, closest to the Tokyo Metro Chiyoda Line.
But it is also near the Odakyu Line.

I will be shopping for items on the soccer off-days, and I also anticipate experimenting with ramen restaurants and izekayas.
Yes, I am sure I will finally get to Shimo-Kitazawa.

I hope I will get an outlet for my soccer reportage with somebody on-line. But if everybody declines me, a story or two could wind up here on IJ.

As for the teams, the bookmakers are giving prohibitive odds to Manchester United, the European champion. This is likely due that the South American champion are not from Brazil or Argentina. They are “Liga” [L.D.U. Quito] of Ecuador.
North America is again represented by Pachuca F.C. of Mexico. This was the last year that CONCACAF used a direct knock-out format to select its team. The 2009 format features a group stage, and proceeds to a knock-out final. Pachuca crashed out in their first match last year versus a team from Tunisia.
So, this year, F.I.F.A. restored the fifth place match.
Africa is Al Ahly of Egypt. This is the third time in the four years I have covered the tournament that Al Ahly are the African team.
Gamba Osaka of Japan are the Asian representative. In the two years that F.I.F.A. rejiggered the tournament to include the host nation's domestic champion, to try and increase Japanese attendance of the matches prior to the final; a Japanese team have managed to claim the ‘proper’ spot for Asia. The ‘play-in’ match will feature the Asian runner-up, Adelaide United of Australia, versus Waitakere United of New Zealand. That is the first match, occurring on Wednesday, 11 December at National Stadium in Tokyo.
Al Ahly contest Pachuca on Saturday, 13 December at 13:45 hours [GMT + 9] in Tokyo.
View the tournament bracket here.

F.I.F.A. will move this tournament to the United Arab Emirates in 2009 & 2010. Japan will host it again in 2011 & 2012.
Is there a chance I would travel to the U.A.E. to cover the 2009 tournament?
Yes, but it would necessitate either Montreal IMPACT [Canada] or Puerto Rico ISLANDERS [Puerto Rico - doh], both of the second division of professional soccer in North America, winning out.
Sorry; but I have the impression that the U.A.E. is far too straight-laced for my tastes.

As somebody who enjoys inserting color into Insane Journal,
and other forums' posts, here is a fascinating meme.

Hello, everyone. I have managed to upgrade my computer. I now run Windows® Vista. You know that I obtained this computer at Aldi®. It was cheap. But there was one key piece of hardware it did not have: A modem.

So I had to wait a while for a internal V.92 modem to arrive here.
Opening up a computer case is something I try to avoid. (I am not a gamer who tinkers with overclocking his CPU.) But this was relatively simple, as long as you have the proper screwdriver.
There are two slots inside the Medion® case where you can add a card. One of those will accept a modem.

As you can probably view, I have managed to get back online. The first website where I opted to visit was Mozilla, in order to download Firefox v3.
Perhaps at some future date, this computer will acquire a broadband connection.

Just about everything I had on the old computer was left behind. Figuring out how to remove a hard drive from it and putting it in this computer is beyond my ken. The programs were all for Windows® 98. I had a lot of pictures & videos, including the full-sized ones of my avatars, but it is not worth the time and effort now.

What I want to do with this computer is transfer my VHS videocassettes to DVD-Rs. (I bought Memorex® DVD-Rs made in Taiwan as the test media.) Nero v8 is included on here.

I spent time at SourceForge.net looking for open source versions of a media player, compression, image manipulation, and an FTP Client.
I reverted to Download Accelerator Plus, Teleport Pro, and mIRC.
What may surprise you is that I downloaded Azureus - a very popular torrent reader.

I have updated all the security patches from when this computer was built [12 June 2008]. I have tweaked {whoops} the display on it to custom colors. [You knew I would do that.]

I also lost my netcam. There seems to be no way I can hook it up. The video card on the Medion does not have an input for its plug. It appears that Microsoft finally omitted NetMeeting from the software bundle. [It is included in Windows XP, if you know where to look, or what to type.]
But the upside is that I can resume viewing netcams on free websites like JMeeting and Ashcast.
Also; I had no choice on this: Flash® is installed on here and enabled.

I shall reiterate. If you have cash, this Medion computer seems to be a solid value. Just remember to obtain a modem for it (even if only as a backup for when your broadband connection goes out). [I wonder if Aldi stores still have these? It was a “Special Value”].]

I really do not have that much to scribe here.
But I would be remiss if I did not point out some under-reported news that occurred in the U.S.A. this day.

Elfwreck blogs about the thirty-five articles of impeachment brought up against the President of the United States of America.
As somebody who lucidly serves as an example of why one needs to practice security and anonymity when on the Internet; note Articles XXIV & XXV.

It has nearly bubbled onto the public's cognizance that Verizon has an 0c3 (a huge Internet pipeline) from its switching office to computers operated by the F.B.I. and the N.S.A.
(Have you espied a Verizon print ad? At least one of the persons in the background of those ads is a tacit admission of the spying program.)

I shall make one of my rare public appearances this weekend at Cinema Wasteland in Strongsville, OH. [near Cleveland] at the Holiday Inn. I'll be there all three days.

Yes; a handful of the DVDs obtained in Tokyo will be brought along. Perhaps I'll trade some of them to the purveyors in the dealers' room. Or maybe I'll get lucky and wind up in somebody's room in which it has a DVD player. (I'm not staying at the Holiday Inn. I'm at the Motel 6 next door.)
I don't know yet what I'll be wearing. If you go into the dealers' room, ask Andy Copp at the Nightcrew Video table, or Dave Kosanke at the Xploited Cinema table if he's seen Vincent.

I am renting an auto. I anticipate going to a couple of stores to get beer (and a cheap bucket in which to haul around the beers).
I also intend to go to the Brew Kettle brewpub (the best brewpub in the U.S.A. to the members of RateBeer.com) sometime on Saturday night. Weather for Cleveland on Saturday has a zero percent chance of an ice storm.

So come on out and meet me. Judge for yourself in person whether I am being too paranoid.

I will persist at some things until I accomplish what I intend to do.

I am again attending Cinema Wasteland in Strongsville, OH. (suburban Cleveland). The Spring show is 4-6 April.
I post this now because, if you register for it before 8 March, the three-day V.I.P. registration costs only thirty dollars.

If you reside anywhere along the midwestern corridor of Megabus, its schedule is open through the show dates. Enter the Promotional Code "WIN2008" [without the quotes - with the capitals] in the indicated field on the page and you could win a free ride to Cleveland (You would pay only the 50¢ reservation fee.).
Look for the Click 6 internet rate for the adjacent Motel 6 next door to the Holiday Inn for a less-expensive room rate.

I will have a rental auto, so if you want to go with me to the top-rated Brew Kettle Brewpub close to the expo, you can.

If you click through, you will notice it is showing some incredible movies.
If you broach the subject of Fem Doms to the typical vanilla person, the iconography which he/she will express is that of the "Ilsa" movies.

The scythe went through here today.
If you were one of the Insane Journal users who I unfriended (because you had not yet friended me), but you would still like me to read your IJ, please respond here.
(Comments are screened.)

I have revised my User Info page to include my terse thoughts about SUP (Russia) buying out Six Apart's portion of Live Journal.

I will actually be in attendance at Cinema Wasteland in Cleveland (Strongsville), OH. this weekend.

I will be fairly noticable.
I will be the attendee not wearing black.
heh heh heh heh

But in the dealer room at the Holiday Inn, you might find me hanging around either Dave Kosanke at the Xploited Cinema table (in the rear on the left), or Andy Copp at the Nightcrew Video table (usually on the right lane, in the interior, just short of the celebrities' tables). If I am not there, ask them what Vincent looks like.

Yes, I probably will have something found in Tokyo with me.
I will have an automobile this time, because I intend to go get some good beers to drink there this time, and not have to sponge off some other guests. Maybe I'll even get together some people to go to a local brewpub. I bet I won't encounter an ice storm.

{Edited: Dave Kosanke was not there; and I misspelled Andy Copp's name.}

Warning! This is a soliloquy which delves into a controversial topic. It would be more appropriate for a personal weblog entry. Which it did not have for some time.

I've been shot.
Less than a week after I mentioned the DVD Maniacs' Forum on it {Ian Jane, or someone with access to the referrer logs, could let us know how many World-Wide Web surfers came here from there.}, my LiveJournal weblog associated with this personae has been "permanently suspended" by LiveJournal / Six Apart.
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Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 19:37:57 UT
From: "LiveJournal Abuse Team - abuse@livejournal.com" <+lj04+vincez2702+d0f6f6ff72.abuse#livejournal.com@spamgourmet.com>
To: lj04.vincez2702@spamgourmet.com
Subject: Your LiveJournal Account [404-748881] (lj04: message 3 of 18)
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Dear LiveJournal user smooot4,

Your journal and/or its associated profile or interests has been reported to us as containing material which expresses interest in, solicits, or encourages illegal activity. As this is a violation of both LiveJournal's Terms of Service and United States law, we have permanently suspended the journal.

If we become aware of any additional violations of LiveJournal’s policies or United States laws in the future, we reserve the right to permanently suspend any other journals you may have and terminate your account without warning.

Regards,
Cassie
LiveJournal Abuse Team
(The only modification is that which would show the true E-Mail name instead displays the SpamGourmet name shielding it.)
The 'official' E-Mail is generic boilerplate. The specific allegation is never disclosed therein.

I've been swept away and discarded due to a “do-gooder” organization called Warriors for Innocence (unlinked for multiple reasons). This organization considered some of my interests and public statments to be 'pedophiliac'. It contacted LiveJournal / Six Apart and demanded my termination, along with many other webloggers, and the termination of an additional number of communities. [c.v.: the Cartoon Porn rubric in Erotica.]

Incredibly, LiveJournal / Six Apart capitulated to its demands.

It troubles me that I have to issue this proclamation: I have never been, am not currently, and shall never become, a molester of children.

Let me return momentarily to the 'official' notice. On my travels on LJ, I have encountered entries in which all of these “illegal” activities have been recorded. These are for illustrative purposes only.

• Possession and/or consumption of marijuana (including links to NORML & other marijuana law reform advocacy groups).
• Operation of a motor vehicle with simultaneous use of a mobile telephone.
• Identification of road locations with stealthy deployment of speed monitoring units and/or personnel.
• Wagering on amateur sporting contests (e.g.: the National Collegiate Athletic Association's men's Division I basketball tournament).

I can be chalked up as somebody who has been drowned in the riptide of hysteria concerning on-line “predators”. What is particularly enraging is that not only am I not a “predator”, but that I was branded and vilified as one without any semblance of a fair hearing. From what I have ‘heard’ (second-hand quotes from other W-WW sites), this group of on-line vigilantes used LiveJournal's 'Search' function, entered selected words or phrases, and collated the names of journals & communities which had that word or phrase in their 'Interests' list. All those journals & communities were implored for termination.

I used the word there. It is meaningful. These organizations all claim to be performing a needed service on the World-Wide Web. But all they truly are are vigilante gangs. Members here have seen numerous depictions vis-a-vis genuine law enforcement agencies' view of vigilantes, from old Westerns, to episodes of television's "Dragnet". But since law enforcement agencies have earned distrust with many pockets of people throughout the U.S.A., were the agencies to publicly decry the actions of these vigilantes, they would be raked over the coals by both the vigilantes and the mainstream media. (One of these vigilante gangs is cohabiting with a terrestrial television network in the U.S.A. The television network is owned by the same movie studio which was the U.S.A. presenter for "Guyana, Crime Of The Century" [1980]; an "R"-Rated movie with some genuinely shocking depictions of child molestation.)

Vigilantes are unconcerned with logic and pragmatism. They have an objective they seek to accomplish. They have no compunctions to the methods they utilize to reach their goal. Any bystanders who may fall victim to their actions are disparaged as being too close to their fire.

When did this occur? When was the U.S. jurisprudence bylaw of "Innocent until proven guilty." abhorrently transformed into "Guilty unless proven innocent."? Cable television corporations in the mid-1980s {"If you are not subscribing to cable television, you must be stealing it."}?

For as powerful as the U.S.A. has become, it could be much more powerful and more respected worldwide if it was not for regularly-recurring episodes of paranoid hysteria. It just has to relapse into an absurd “witch hunt”. "I am not a..

• witch."
• member of the Communist Party."
• member of La Cosa Nostra."
• member of a terrorist organization."
• member of the American Civil Liberties Union."
• pedophile."

A vigilante gang is unconcerned with “gray areas”. To it, everything is black & white. "If you do not support us, you are against us.", "You are either part of the solution, or part of the problem." It is also ignorant of any distinctions someone would make between a legal instance and an “illegal” instance. This vigilante gang would probably consider you a “pedophile” if you expressed anything short of contempt and condemnation for any or all of these motion pictures:

• "Bilitis" [1976]
• "Maladolescenza" [1977]
• "Pretty Baby" [1978]
• "The Tin Drum" [1979]
• "À Nos Amours" [1983]
• "36 Fillette" [1988]
• "Child Bride" [1941]

This exposes the underbelly of the vigilante gang which it does not want you to notice. Just as, 28 years ago, the ‘anti-disco’ movement was captured and subverted/perverted by intolerant types who used the ‘populist’ front to legitimize their core belief of bigotry and discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals; the hysteria against pedophiles is being manipulated by intolerant types who loathe any and all positive viewpoints and presentations of erotica, sensuality, and non-procreative sex.

A vigilante gang sees any opinions contending it as something to be silenced. The only opinion allowed to be expressed on this topic must be its. Because, if more reports like this were allowed to traffic in the on-line universe, it would accomplish at least one aspect which the vigilante gang knows it cannot legitimately defeat: It would present an authentic human viewpoint versus a bastard movement which strives mightily to characterize its “enemy” as cold, cruel, faceless, monstrous miscreants. When confronted with this response, the only move which the vigilante gang can attempt is to strike the words of the respondent by any means whatsoever.

Sadly, LJ / 6 Apart has subjugated itself to this vigilante gang. And GreatestJournal has ordered some users to remove information from their own User Info pages lest they be terminated.

This indicates that what I feared, and wrote about in my LJ, has come to fruition.
My 'hidden' LJ was born after the November 2004 election, when I saw that the pieces were all aligned for anti-erotica zealots in the U.S.A. to finally accomplish their objective of eradicating all displays of erotica from the country, and its citizens. I cleaved all the erotic interests from my above-ground LJ {Can I trust you? That one is still extant.}. I re-assigned all of them to the hidden one (smooot4 - it was reinstated - but it might be re-suspended).

Where did I get that nickname? The night I established the hidden LJ, I had read Steve Puchalski's "Shock Cinema" magazine: The issue with the interview with [R.I.P.] Stephen C. Apostolof. The response where he insisted, "I don't make smoot." was at the front of my memory. When you established a new LJ then, it didn't tell you beforehand if a nickname was available. I decided to add a third 'o', and put a number after it in case somebody else had also thought of this. My original public post was that, as a connoisseur of erotica, and somebody who was a registered Democrat in a state which was one whose results were litigated in the Federal Appellate Courts; the ruling party might be endeavoring to remove me from the voting rolls. I felt that my affection for erotica would be the hook on which it would try to impale me.

My commentary attracted significant interest. I was friended by scores of other LJ users, ranging from practitioners of Wicca, to other devotees of on-line erotica, and to webloggers who were adherents to free speech. In all the time since then, I posted a variety of informative and/or erotic posts, both in my personal LJ, and a handful of other erotic LJ Communities [kaizersoze125, allporn, adult_links, iloveporn, orgasmoids, pee_erotic, sick_fetish, __loli_lovin, rape_porn].
But also under this name, I responded to posts in which the poster indicated some reticence to posting the associated content.

A bad sign was when LiveJournal was purchased by Six Apart. Six Apart made some modifications which were obviously designed and intended to make Livejournal.com more appealing to advertisers. The default sign-up mode for LJ was changed to the Sponsored Plus+ Account. (Later, the 'Sponsored' was dropped. I believe the “bean counters” at Six Apart felt a newbie would be more likely to accept the Plus+ account if he/she did not realize it meant advertisements.) LJ had originally aquired many sign-ups by pledging to "never have ads appear on LiveJournal pages". After Six Apart took over, this 'promise' was trashed. If you go to the LJ main page right now, you'll see an ad in the right center of your screen. {Do not click on it!} It dangled the hook of 'more avatar pictures' for the Free users who would convert. What a pathetic spectacle. Not many bit for that. Its next step was to force the display of ads on the User Info pages of communities whose creators has not specifically prohibited the display thereof (in many instances, because those users no longer had LJ accounts). All these moves were ‘seducing’ advertisers to want to place their ads on LJ pages.

I succinctly discerned what this meant to an LJ weblogger. If an LJ weblogger professed an interest in a 'controversial' topic, he/she could be subject to censorship by LJ, especially if he/she allowed ads to appear on his/her pages.

I must believe that this is a part of the reason why LJ / Six Apart was willing to terminate my weblog. {A paid LJ member could glimpse my replies to other still-extant LJs (I suspect a lot of those where I made a reply like this were also terminated.) in which I responded with a cautionary message to beware about an advertisement appearing on his/her LJ, lest an advertiser object to what was being expressed thereupon.}

What is my personal opinion about actual depictions or actions of pedophilia? It was in two sentences on my User Info page. Which, of course, the vigilante gang did not bother to read.

Genuine “child pornography” is despicable, especially if its makers believe they can profit from its production.
Genuine child molestation is reprehensible.

My confidence in LJ / Six Apart is irrevocably shattered. It is so much in the grip of “bean counters” who desperately covet investors' and advertisers' dollars. Such that it will do everything to placate them, including terminating accounts in which a user admits to a controversial interest, lest an advertisement which can be maligned by a vigilante gang appears on a page which that user maintains. This is a far more grave "chilling effect" than nearly anything else the United States' Department of Justice has promulgated in the past twelve years. LJ / Six Apart is inured to vigilantes. It will do everything the vigilantes ask of it.

Shame on LJ / Six Apart. If you have an extant weblog on LJ, back it up to the .pdf file now. More accounts will likely be terminated in the upcoming month; especially if they voice opinions supporting webloggers like me.

How was I able to produce this report for you here? Were the authorities given the personal data of all those in the U.S.A. (or Canada) who maintained one of the terminated LJs? Have those persons been arrested?

I never underestimated the depths to which an anti-erotica zealot would stoop. Whenever I surf on the World-Wide Web, I typically have an anonymous proxy configured in my web browser (and my web browser is not Microsoft©® Internet Explorer). I never envisioned LJ as a destination where it was necessary (e.g.: a number of free porn Thumbnail Group Page [TGP] websites), but it was part of my surfing habits. LJ never received my real name and location. Don't expect me to tell you where I reside now. Maybe "Guelph, Ontario, Canada" is fudging a little (or a lot).

My 'safer surfing' habits have literally and figuratively saved my hide. I don't know about you, but I doubt this generation's Alfred Hitchcock is going to make a motion picture with me as the protagonist under unwarranted suspicion. For the mere allegation of 'pedophilia' is in many instances today sufficient in the mainstream media's eyes to ruin an innocent person's life. If anybody else here decides to ensue surfing in a similar matter (whether you want to view lolicon hentai anime or not), you have my approval, and if you need any help, you can certainly ask me.