Preference Personnelle
Tranquility Bay. Sounds nice, eh? It's like boot camp for screwup rich kids. I have a feeling I've got a foaf that went there. Here's an Observer (UK) article (parts
one and
two), and
k5 comments.
'Isn't it ironic?' You hear it all the time - and, most of the time, actually no, it isn't. Hypocritical, cynical, lazy, coincidental, more likely.Here's a Slate article about Harry Potter, knockoffs and copyright. And a NYT article about Potter, The Hulk and kids these days, and a Slashdot thread about new ESRB video-game ratings.
Sam Goody is '
hemorrhaging money,' and they're not alone. Business Week offers a brief item. Here are
Slashdot comments, and an article from '
The Stranger' about how indie music stores are thriving. Good news for
Dustin. Will this be the end of crumbum mall record stores? I'm amazed it's taken this long.
I'm not usually a big online-petition guy, but anything I can do that might help get '
Freaks and Geeks' released on DVD is worth it.
Also, even more excitingly, Trio is airing Danny Hoch's 'Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop' this month. It's not available on video/DVD either. They're showing it on the 26th at 11 pm, and the 28th at 3 pm. If you speak to me between now and then, say 'Hey, don't forget to tape 'Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop,' you big dummy!' I'll be eternally grateful.
Evangelism is War. At Microsoft in the late '90s, anyway. So says some guy. Here's the
Slashdot story.
I just watched a great documentary, '
Flag Wars,' about gentrification in Columbus' Olde Towne East neighborhood. It airs again on June 19 at 1 am, in Columbus (
WOSU) anyway. Here's a link to the
filmmakers' site.Moron preacher Chuck Spingola, who I used to shout at at KSU, also appears therein.
Cynthia Ozick writes about Helen Keller for the New Yorker. A fascinating article.
This guy built a periodic table table. Here's his advice on how to get elements, and a page about periodic table posters (he even mentions the Periodic Table of Vegetables).
"Earth is sexy, just as sex is earthy. Each of us is a landscape of plains and peaks, valleys and thickets. I speak in metaphors, as through a garbled phone line, but what I mean is plain and simple: body and land are one flesh. They are made of the same stuff. Their beauty is one beauty, their wounds the same wounds. They call to us in the same perennial voice, crying
Come see, come touch, come listen and smell, and O come taste. We explore them alike, honor or abuse them alike. The health or sickness of one is inseparable from that of the other. There is no division between where we live and what we are."
--from Scott Russell Sanders' 'Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World.'
You a funny man, ain't ya? You thought it was real funny, throwing that hot sauce in my brother's eyes and burning him with that hot comb. You got the same sense of humor as my daddy.
It ain't the heat, it's the stupidity.
Now where would I be if I ran to a book every time I faced a problem? I wouldn't be a super in the projects, I'll tell you that much.
Thurgood: I sure am happy I ran into you, Smokey. I'm trying to clean up this neighborhood, and I thought you could help me get out some of the drug addicts.
Smokey: Ok, but, ah, nowadays, drug addicts have some pretty peculiar names.
Thurgood: You mean nicknames?
Smokey: Well, street names. Like, Who's on crack, Say What's on smack, and I Don't Know freebases.
Thurgood: Well, do you know the fellows' names?
Smokey: I said, Who's on crack,
Say What's on smack, and I Don't Know freebases.
Thurgood: Well, who's on crack?
Smokey: Yes.
Thurgood: I mean, the fellow's name.
Smokey: Who!
Thurgood: The guy on crack!
Smokey: Who!
Thurgood: The crack addict!
Smokey: Who is on crack.
Thurgood: I don't know!
Smokey: I don't know freebases.
Thurgood: Who freebases?
Smokey: No, who's on crack.
Thurgood: Say what?
Smokey: No, he's on smack.
Thurgood: Who's on smack?
Smokey: No, who's on crack.
Thurgood: I don't know!
Smokey: Freebase!
Thurgood: Shut up, you damn stupid crackhead!
[Audience laughs]
Thurgood: We're running a little late. Good night, everybody!
I love The PJs.
Here's that
Susan Orlean article that was the ostensible inspiration for surfer-girl movie
Blue Crush.
And, my latest 'Making the Band II' beef: At the beginning of one of the episodes, they play Common's 'The Sixth Sense,' which opens with the Gil Scott-Heron chestnut (I mean that in a good way), 'The revolution will not be televised.' MTV edited out the 'not.' The sheer chutzpah just amazes me. MTV's balls never looked that big to me, but maybe it was the baggy pants. (Normally I wouldn't use a word like 'balls,' but that's a 'Black & White' reference, a movie that everyone I know thinks is terrible.)
I've been looking for a copy of the
Wonderlic, the 12-minute simplified IQ test that the NFL gives prospective players. No luck yet, but here are
some sets of
sample questions. Ooh, and here's an
article about employers screening the excessively-smart. Sample quote:
The corporate world seems fully aware that most jobs require relatively low intelligence. High intelligence is seen as a hindrance, because there�s no way that intelligent people would tolerate 40 hours of tedious monotony every week.
So I was reading Slate, chasing down old
columns by ESPN columnist and
Brookings scholar Gregg Easterbrook, and I happened to see this
article about mail-in rebates. They're a scam. No, really.
Update: Here's another of Easterbrook's articles, this one from Wired, about science and theology. And here's one about the Six Commandments. And one about SUVs. What won't this guy write about?
GameSpy has a
series about the 25 dumbest moments in video game history. If there's anything I like more than other peoples' stupidity, it's video games. Ooh, and these elaborately-customized Japanese
trucks? Wild.
Update: Linked to in that article is an interview an Atari honcho gave to Next Generation magazine during the Jaguar years. Especially funny in retrospect.
Here's another
article about Friendster, from the Village Voice. Thanks, Sumei.
Here's an
article from the NYT about
file-sharing. They claim that 43 million Americans, or half of the Internet-connected ones, did it last month alone.
This five-part
series, about the history of copyright and technology, is pretty okay. I can't vouch for dude's accuracy, but it's at least reasonably well-written and, for an article on an mp3 site, not ludicrously biased. The series was linked to on Slashdot, repeatedly even. Speaking of things that, like, someone might be borrowing from me--the Quasimoto cd. Where the hell is it?
