Preference Personnelle
Sunday, October 27
 
Oh, and I just got Tony Hawk 4. The new career mode is great. I certainly miss using the 'perfect balance' cheat code, though. If the other games are any indication, it'll be leaked at some point. I just hope they didn't take it out. The NYT wrote about GTA. Interesting times. MTV uses night-vision technology a lot. "Indie rock and feminism, to me, are, like, the same thing."--some boy. I've just been noticing this while watching 'FM Nation' and being disgusted that the World Series went to a seventh game, thus delaying the airing of this year's Simpsons Halloween episode.

Better late than never (blame it on the blogger hacking), another Friday Five:

1. What is your favorite scary movie?
Probably 'Rosemary's Baby,' though I'm not sure how scary I find it.

2. What is your favorite Halloween treat?
Cider.

3. Do you dress up for Halloween? If so, describe your best Halloween costume.
Not anymore. My best costume was probably teevee painter Bob Ross (for the very young children who may be reading, Bob Ross was sort of like a cross between Stuart Smalley and Thomas Kinkade (the Painter of Light), with an Afro.)

4. Do you enjoy going to haunted houses or other spooky events?
No, not really. I don't like crowds. I also don't like, er... the appearance of something rather than that thing itself.

5. Will you dress up for Halloween this year?
I suppose it's possible.

Linkety-link: Dishonest anti-gun professor resigns, SF bans live rap, Gore Vidal takes a moderate position, Slate writer spills the wine, someone devotes a site to zippo tricks, someone devotes a site to banning dihydrogen monoxide.

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Dig this 'stereotypes' photo show, these Zen stories, 1000 blank white cards, some decent starting pages on election methods/voting systems (I was trying to get people interested in the topic the other day--it so didn't work.) and this glossary of poetic terms.

And, in music-biz news, record companies glue cd players shut. Hillary Rosen loses a debate at Oxford, makes the laughable claim that there have been no copy-protected cds released in the U.S.

 
 
blogger got hacked. i went to kat and brad's wedding. daylight savings time is stupid. more later.
 
Thursday, October 24
 
If TechTV ran 'Cribs': it'd be like this Wired article about celebrity houses. Wired, says some /. person, is the Cosmo of the geek world. Whoa. I learned another French word today: blague. Don't tell the militant grammarians at L'Academie francaise. Here's a Morning News editorial about branding. More sniper news: A U of Maryland student writes about working at a gas station in DC. Police chief delivers cryptic messages. Sniper may affect Maryland elections. May effect? Of course it will. Janis Ian's getting published in USA Today now. Not since 'At Seventeen' have her words struck such a chord. Here's a Frontline I somehow missed: The Monster that Ate Hollywood. Also from PBS, via Metafilter: The First Measured Century. Are there really people who want the second Lord of the Rings movie's title changed? I don't want to poke around the site to try to figure out if it's a joke. Oh, and here's a fairly lame Slate article about Nigerian email scams, an Atlantic article about the Darwinian aspects of religions, one about the recently-deceased Richard Helms, and a page of online books whose copyright has expired in basically everywhere but the U.S. My favorite is probably George Orwell's Politics and the English Language. Though Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are both way up there.
 
Wednesday, October 23
 
Wild E2 party: things to learn from 'Infinite Jest,' how to hook a tv to a computer, how to make a car last nearly forever, a literary criticism of Super Mario Brothers and a lot more how-tos. And, not from E2 but that's where I found it: a utility to change Opera's built-in searches; snopes stuff about dirty Disney movies. Wow, Kathy 'Mimi' Kinney is in this Larry Sanders rerun.
 
 
After that telemarketing link the other day, here's one to a story about a National Association of Convenience Stores convention. Article asks: is the DC sniper responding to media attention? About time someone asked a question like that. Metafilter readers reply.
 
Tuesday, October 22
 
wow, here's a moby 'pearl jam effect' posting.
 
 
Poor Christina Aguilera--first she promotes Thai sex tourism in that 'Dirty' video, then she... perhaps showed a little too much skin during the making-of program. "I'm not great," says Christina, "at faking my way through trying to live up to the perfect American virginal sweetheart kind of thing." I wonder if she has someone in mind. Here's a Washington Post article about telemarketers. And a NYT article on economic inequality. In more vaguely-political news, dig this very... well-thought-out posting from an administrator at 'Democratic Underground.' New restrictions on, well, free speech. My favorite part is the description of Republicans as 'the forces of evil.' Here's that Woody Harrelson op-ed, that Sean Penn ad (and coverage) and the Barbra Streisand 'truth report,' which, for me anyway, evokes the 'innocence report' that Homer put on local television after he was accused of sexual harassment. Oh, and here's a predictable opinion from the Rev. Moon's Washington Times on the recent rash of celebrity advocacy. Here's an Erik Davis essay about... the concept of 'jungle' and the artificiality of green Hollywood. And hey, some Doonesbury character got a weblog. Trudeau's kinda slow on the uptake this time, comparitively.
 
Monday, October 21
 
Geek chic. Ana Marie Cox asks the Baffler-esque question, 'Is there even a way out?' Wow, Dilbert burritos. Yuck.
 
 
i am so sad.
 
 
You're not going to (expletive) believe this!

Rocker and one-time Nashvillian Ryan Adams made quite an impression at his Ryman show Monday night. Tennessean music writer Peter Cooper described an incident in which Ryan went off on a guy who jokingly requested a Bryan Adams song, a story that now has been reported around the world. Peter also wrote a less-than-flattering review.

Ryan left Peter a less-than-flattering voice mail. Here 'tis:

''You're just so smart, aren't you, man? You're so (expletive) smart. 'I'm so smart. I'm so post-collegiate with all my (expletive) little references.' 'Punkish hardcore.' What about 'Quintessential (expletive) band,' moron?

''What the (expletive) is wrong with you? Little redneck newspaper. Ooh, The Tennessean. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. You wouldn't know a (expletive) good show if it bit you in the (expletive).

''You and your senior citizen, little redneck (expletive) (expletive). Whatever, you know? Let's like ? let's create it, let's judge it, you know? Like, 'Let's turn it into what it's supposed to be.' But you don't know (expletive). You and your (expletive) (expletive) paper. (Expletive) you.''--Ryan Adams, big asshole? Who'd've thought?
 
Sunday, October 20
 
News agencies love to report misdeeds occurring in or around libraries, hoping the Madonna-Sodom dichotomy of innocent libraries and criminal sin will give their stories extra oomph. Don't be fooled. Libraries are far from the rarefied cathedrals of secular humanism they pretend to be, while librarians are the shadiest creatures this side of the Russian mob. Scratch the adamantly bland demeanor of any librarian and you'll find trails of broken hearts, bathtubs full of meth fixings, and covert careers in porn. You can't even get a job interview at a library unless you've gone to jail twice. Trust us, and beware.--from The Stranger via Jessamyn West's librarian.net page.
 
 
Someone wrote an essay: Librarians: we're not what you think. I'm preaching to the choir by linking to this, but it's not like that's ever stopped me before.
 
Saturday, October 19
 
Matt Damon plugs 'A People's History of the United States' in 'Good Will Hunting'? Hahahahaha. I should read it. Or at least listen to the Matt-Damon-narrated abridged version. That version is published by the Rupert-Murdoch-owned HarperCollins. The Zinn lecture of the same name? Anarchist collective AK Press and punk rock indie label Alternative Tentacles. Where's that list of books from the liner notes of that disappointing second Rage Against the Machine album? Oh, here it is.
 
Friday, October 18
 
Wow, tattooed pig art. Europeans don't like each other--hahaha. Librarians in the movies--that piece of crap 'Party Girl,' for example. Rocklopedia Fakebandica--something like that. Fake musical groups from teevee/movies/etc. Ooh, and, after the TV Guide best and worst teevee show lists, the Rocklopedia people provide a list of the most average. In the same spirit, The Onion AV Club lists the least essential albums of the 90s. The fake band list also contains a link to this wonderful Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem site. Oh, and this tidbit: the severed-horse's head scene in 'The Godfather' was supposedly based on events involving Frank Sinatra and 'From Here to Eternity.' The E-vest. Do I love it, or do I think it's insane? Here's a LOC maps page. This was posted on Slashdot. The poster says: "Who thought the LOC could be so 31337?" I did. Dig this Yale photonegative search, too.
 
 
Here, via Metafilter: Japanese Apple switch ads. Snazzy ceramic and metal sculptures from Clayton Bailey. PowerPoint anthology of literature. The Sound of Magic. Ooh, and Ninja Tune videos. The Amon Tobin Tron one is just the tip of the iceberg. And, via some book I read a while ago, a NYT article about 'fauxhemians' (and here's fauxhemian.dk, one of at least two weblogs). And I forget where it's from, but here's a New Yorker article about the trouble with being the only superpower.
 
 
Welcome, capitalization. And, to celebrate, here's a Friday Five:

1. How many TVs do you have in your home?
There's one in the living room, and one, not plugged in, in an upstairs bedroom.

2. On average, how much TV do you watch in a week?
A couple hours a day times seven days equals... maybe 15-20 hours in an average week. Damn, that's a lot of teevee.

3. Do you feel that television is bad for young children?
I feel lack of parental supervision is bad for young children. And focusing on the same distance for long periods might not be good for their eyes. Also, the teevee could fall on the child--I remember scary but somehow tantalizing stickers on the A/V carts when I was in elementary school. As to whether teevee programming is bad for children, well, it seems pretty clear to me that one must decide on a program-by-program basis. Good programs, off the top of my head, include Sesame Street and presidential debates. Bad programs include animated programs that serve largely as cross-promotion opportunities.

4. What TV shows do you absolutely HAVE to watch, and if you miss them, you're heartbroken?
New Simpsons episodes, Frontline, the King of the Hill murder mystery 2-parter. Still, though, 'heartbroken' might be a little strong.

5. If you had the power to create your own television network, what would your line-up look like?
I envision lots of news, documentaries, jazz concerts, shorts, Schoolhouse Rock, reruns of short-lived prime-time animated shows, 20-year-old episodes of The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts and 3 a.m. Law & Order reruns. Oh, and music videos that other networks refused to play ("What it Feels Like for a Girl," "This Note's for You," "Natural Born Killaz" and "By the Time I Get to Arizona" come to mind), and that Robert Smigel media-opoly short.

 
 
I never get sick of these insane Lego projects--here's a working pistol. And, should one feel a violent-toy-fueled urge to reenact Columbine, for example, in Lego, there's a near-infinite (that construction doesn't really make any sense, does it? It is, like the late John Entwistle, a high number.) number of possible victims.
 
Thursday, October 17
 
what's with that bond-themed madonna video? would they show spear-gun shootings and cat decapitations if it were jay-z or some rap-rockers?
 
 
sybian--there's also a chatroom.
 
Wednesday, October 16
 
this 'whose line' episode has wayne brady singing a song as public enemy.
wow. this woman from costco who refused to remove her eyebrow ring is claiming it's a religious thing. bme promoted those churchofbodmod people like whoa.
 
 
in two days, it'll be a year that i've been keeping this weblog. i think i'm going to celebrate with some capitalization.
 
Tuesday, October 15
 
slashdot, daypop, metafilter, etc.: jessamyn west writes about google answers, finds out she's fired.

the 18-34 year old demo doesn't matter anymore, says the nyt. schmoes at acclaim disagree, and try to follow in rockstar's footsteps with a game called 'bmx xxx.' i'm sure it'll be another classic from the minds that brought us nba jam and turok. nyt fires back: you're too fat. ny press agrees, and offers a modest proposal. a washington post film critic examines the recent sniper attacks. cesspool, cesspool! joni mitchell steals a page from dissatisfied music types like janis ian and mikejack. more cribbed-from-slashdot news, this time via salon: aol's floundering. and just when the other big internet-brand-for-suckers is hyping their yahoo!/sbc dsl service.

use babelfish/systran for something fun: lost in translation. someone considers the self-portrait. colleges are losing money to cell phone companies after ripping off students on long-distance for years. happily for long-distance companies, there's still the prison market. here's socilogist mike males' online book about kids, guns and fear of youth. oh, and iusedtobelieve.com--kids say the dumbedest things.

illegal-art.org's got a lot of neat stuff.

 
Monday, October 14
 
wow, microsoft had this 'switch' ad. they pulled it, though, apparently. slashdot, as one might expect, has the story. and an update.
 
 
i've probably linked to this before, but it's a risk i'm willing to take: akron tattoos. this isn't something i'd normally link to (it gets a little blue), but nevertheless: plastic wrap pr0n contest.

incidentally, here are a few of the songs on that rod stewart standards album: it had to be you, every time we say goodbye, they can't take that away from me. people like the gershwins and cole porter wrote these songs. they've been famously interpreted by billie holiday, frank sinatra, duke ellington and sideshow bob, among hundreds of others (ella 'i never liked dr. pepper' fitzgerald! robbie williams! sun ra!). what does rod think he's bringing to the table? (while finding the links for this post, i learned that robbie williams has covered george michael's 'freedom '90.' and he, like rod, did a standards album. it includes a duet of 'somethin' stupid' with nicole kidman, and it's still worlds better than the rod album.)

 
Sunday, October 13
 
"Beck transcended his unwitting low budget slacker anthem 'Loser' to become a bona fide entertainer who retained some musical credibility. By the end of the decade his shows were practically one-stop shopping for the aging hipster--a little folk, a little punk, Seventies threads, a lot of hip-hop. (Radiohead has also survived one-hit-wonderdom to provide similar one-stop service for a mopier constituency raised on angst-ridden guitar rock and 'The Wall' but swayed by electronica, too.)"

"The popularity of Ralph Nader's candidacy during the 2000 campaigns is the legacy of social semi-responsibility.... Naively thinking that Bush's stupidity would result in a shoo-in Gore victory (didn't anyone remember Reagan? or Forrest Gump?), aging Xers' political consciousness was awakened by an 'alternative' candidate in the same way their ambition had been sparked by an 'alternative' career path with the Internet. As if they were choosing Sleater-Kinney over Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera; as if they were choosing an outsider like Daniel Johnston over a couple of president's/senator's sons like Jakob Dylan and Sean Lennon; as if the next logical step from a rock and roll president is a punk rock president; as if they had the luxury of assuaging their fauxhemian guilt over creating the new economy by committing to an anti-corporate left wing candidate with no commercial potential (I'm surprised no one made a CORPORATE CANDIDATES STILL SUCK t-shirt). I'll bet playing his guitar at a Nader rally or two made Eddie Vedder feel less like a corporate rocker. A Nader vote was like a magic wand to make you punk rock again. It was my generation's Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac."

--both from alan licht's 'an emotional memoir of martha quinn,' short and hilarious.

 
Saturday, October 12
 
is there a god? the onion gets heavy. this exhibit, about intellectual property, is at least occasionally appealing.

last night, laura and i watched the brady bunch variety hour. astonishingly bad. among other things, fake jan seemed to be obsessed with her own death (sounds better than it is), and it featured an extended, slapstick-y water ballet number that involved many underwater shots of people in clown makeup. greg gave the phone number to his new apartment: 321-1321. no 555, so be sure to call that number and ask for greg. supposedly, tvland cut that sketch when they aired the bbvh. also, there was a segment where tony randall read an edith sitwell poem while people in bear suits capered around behind him. it didn't sit well. another episode, for reasons unbeknownst to me left off the dvd, featured the ohio players and redd foxx.

The premise of "The Brady Bunch Hour" is hard to understand. The Brady
family was chosen to star in a variety show on ABC. They left their
familiar two story home somewhere in southern California for a place on
the beach. (The first installment had a completely different set from
both the rest of the installments and the original series.) The series
includes not only "the variety show on ABC," but also the
behind-the-scenes doings of the Bradys as they go about making their
variety series. There were also some sketches, described below, which
were more or less a continuation of the original "Brady Bunch" episodes
and which had nothing to do with the "ABC variety series." Unfortunately,
the seams between the two modes are not clear, and this results in
continuity errors such as Rip Taylor playing a character named Jack
Merrill on the variety show, but the Bradys also know him as Mr. Merrill
when they're not on TV, and the Bradys announce him as "our own Rip
Taylor" in the opening and closing. It is not always clear what the
Bradys are doing or what audience they are playing to.--from a faq

 
Friday, October 11
 
I abhor cautionary tales that necessitate the characters be dumber than doorknobs. Those people deserve what they get. It's called natural selection.--from a review of that awful swimfan.
 
Thursday, October 10
 
there's probably a huge market for a rod-stewart-sings-standards album. i suppose he's... not worse than michael bolton.
 
 
this local news network has a group of four reporters working to cover the local college football team. astonishing.
 
Wednesday, October 9
 
ooh, the cheesecake factory versus outback steakhouse versus olive garden in a battle royal. possible next-big-thing: tiny radio-controlled cars. my fave is, by far, the mario kart one. why was i just reminded of that piece of shit shasta mcnasty? ah, yes, gary busey true hollywood story. who cares?
 
Monday, October 7
 
dj qbert and tony hawk use 'em, but the most popular apple switcher might be ellen feiss.
 
Sunday, October 6
 
why is starbucks suddenly selling the frappucino as a, like, relaxation drink?
 
 
wow. the first person on cribs with a tivo? beverley '7th heaven' mitchell. who'd've guessed? wow, and she just got into reading. "there's so many things you can learn about, like spontaneous human combustion. have you ever heard of that?" i guess i've only heard it being repeatedly debunked.
 
 
wow, i hope mtv2 shows this jurassic 5 countdown again. i've never seen the video for 'paid in full' before in my life, and it's really good. question: is rakim's favorite dish really fish? he is a five-percenter, if memory serves me.
 
Saturday, October 5
 
bookmark-cleaning, pt ii: here's aretha's bike, cars-r-coffins' excellent link page, the radical bmx museum and modern cruisers from electra and phat. and here are junk science, logical fallacies, common myths and the straight dope.
 
Friday, October 4
 
cleaning out my bookmarks: here's a series about those automated red-light cameras. the smoking gun has celeb mugshots. this nifty color-matching tool only seems to work with ie, but a hexadecimal color chart works with almost anything. the last country in the world to get television was bhutan, which legalized it in 1999. here, buried in the middle of a nondescript paragraph, is a link to my home server page. that's where my webcam is located. shh. here are a bunch of m$ win2k tools. many of 'em are even freely available. this guy has some more tools, including the wonderful regcleaner. here are yet more utilities. jinx and infiltration have the lowdown on urban exploration. dynamism has really snazzy computers. the sci.electronics.repair faq is amazing. here's the ever-useful list of words removed from the ospd3. why not get a second (or third, or tenth) aim screen name? my pal helen's brother is a... fascinating guy. how much information is there in the world? whoa. hard drives--astonishing.
 
Thursday, October 3
 
this diagram of connections between martha stewart, imclone, enron and so forth is great. it's as great as the columbia journalism review's ongoing 'who owns what' project.

i really like my ergonomic keyboard. the only fault is that caps lock is right next to 'a,' and it's not too hard to hit it by accident. it took a fair amount of searching to find how to change the key mapping, but it's possible (with win2k, anyway). this pdf tells how.

okay, so that upcoming gta game, vice city, is going to have a set of '80s soundtrack cds. and apparently, they're going to pre-release a box set of 'em.

simpsons feature films? i am cautiously optimistic. well, maybe i'm cynically skeptical.

 
Tuesday, October 1
 
Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie
Jay and The Techniques

Ready or not here I come
Gee that used to be such fun

Apples peaches pumpkin pie
Who's afraid to holler I?
That's a game we used to play.
Hide and seek was its name.
Oh ready or not, hear I come,
Gee that used to be such fun.
I always used to find a hiding place,
Times have changed.
Well I'm one step behind you, but still I can't find you.
Apple peaches pumpkin pie,
You were young and so was I.
Now that we've grown up it seems
You just keep ignoring me.
I'll find you anywhere you go,
I'll follow you high and low.
You can't escape this love of mine anytime.
Well, I'll sneak up behind you,
Be careful where I find you.
Apple peaches pumpkin pie,
Soon your love will be all mine.
Then I'm gonna take you home,
Marry you so you won't roam.
Marry you so you won't roam. Right now
I'll find you anywhere you go,
I'm gonna look high and low.
You can't escape this love of mine anytime.
Well, I'll sneak up behind you,
Be careful where I find you.
Ready or not here I come,
Gee that used to be such fun

(repeat and fade)
 
 
did i ever link to this clearchannel artist availability page? i think i have. bargain: dj spooky, $5k. ripoff: kc & the sunshine band, $35k.

memepool has the story: some mechanic went joy-riding in a customer's car. the customer's ticked.

 
 
daypop/blogdex roundup--dateline: coldwater, michigan. clueless sheriff's department produces press release based largely on information gleaned from the onion.

the morning news' latest etiquette installment: weddings.

david hasselhoff told tv guide he hit 'rock bottom' after a trip to a hotel minibar. oh, and just coincidentally, there's (supposedly) a baywatch reunion made-for-teevee movie coming out. it's (supposedly) going to be aired on fox, the same people who (undoubtedly) own tv guide.

here's a heavily-cited page--rageboy, the "babe magnet of blogdom." from the same page, a link to a five-year-old's amazon wishlist.

 
 
this salon article is about that awful financing-terrorism anti-drug campaign. truly, don't get me started.

also, here's something that eric 'fast food nation' schlosser wrote for 'the atlantic' in 1998 about the prison-industrial complex. he's working on a book on the topic, too, i'm told. last but not least, here's an atlantic article he did about marijuana.

 
A lagniappe of cultural kitsch and B-movie claptrap

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