May 2010
2 posts
“I’ve been saying for years that irony is now the last refuge of a coward....”
– Jay Smooth
“As a young person in high school with little money and not much to do, I enjoyed...”
– Jack Terricloth
March 2010
2 posts
“Mars Inc.’s decision to rebrand the Twix candy bar as the confection of...”
– slacktivist: Things I don’t much care for
“A chief virtue of digital books is said to be their economical size—they take up...”
– Kevin Hartnett (via Ryan)
February 2010
17 posts
1 tag
1 tag
“There are two kinds of people in the world: In the first group, we have those...”
– Simon Doonan
1 tag
“Very few peoples’ vision is so absolute and compelling in its pure form that it...”
– Franz Nicolay
2 tags
Tuesday, 24 October 2006 (unfinished)
It hurts too much to sleep so here I am
out of bed at my little desk trying to
write a poem about you. It’s twelve
seventeen a.m. and my lower back
aches. I have toothpaste breath
and words elude me, lost in the barefoot
shuffle from bed, left somewhere
on the floor for the cats to find.
Outside: a brown sky and dun streets.
I want to start with a beer bottle,
green like your eyes...
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Listening to:
downy’s fourth untitled record
Peter Gabriel covering Radiohead’s “Street Spirit”
My brother’s new song “Ampersand”
Reading:
Dahlia Lithwick on Terrorism Derangement Syndrome in Slate
The Rude Pundit’s pro–health care reform ad pitches
The archives of Damn Interesting
Slaughterhouse-Five, for the first time since (cringe) high...
1 tag
Slaughterhouse 90210 →
This blog pushes so many of my buttons:
1) Finding, or creating, depth in the superficial.
2) Getting way too emotionally and intellectually involved with TV shows.
3) Exploring the difference—if and whether it exists—between “high art” and “low art.”
4) Speaking volumes using nothing but other people’s words.
5) Related: My boundless love of epigraphs.
6)...
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done...”
– Peter F. Drucker
Well, shit.
1 tag
Internet weather forecast
There’s a high-pressure No True Scotsman front moving in from the west, and it’s gonna collide with a tu quoque mass of red herrings over the Rockies later today. We’re looking at a seventy percent chance of ad hominems starting this afternoon and carrying on overnight, with severe cognitive bias and straw men up to six paragraphs in length. Be on the lookout for appeals to...
1 tag
On the inventor of the Hokey Pokey (QI B.11)
Stephen Fry: He died in 1996; what happened at his funeral?
Alan Davies: Oh, it was terrible, they couldn't get him into his coffin.
Stephen Fry: Why was that?
Alan Davies: Well, they put the left leg in... Then the trouble started.
1 tag
Pitchfork interviews Will Sheff →
Late to the party, as usual, but I’m enjoying The Stage Names immensely. Here’s an excellent interview from around its release, and the two tidbits I’m particularly chewing on this morning:
There is a kind of fan that will come up to talk to you… and you start to realize that they have an idea of you in their head that has nothing to do—well, it actually has something...
3 tags
If you can’t beat ’em
It’s not a punchline to me. It’s not delivered with a shrug and a disingenuously rueful smile.
It’s a temptation, insidious, that I struggle with every day. If you can’t beat them, join them. If you can’t win, it wasn’t worth fighting for. If you can’t elevate them, let them drag you down to their level.
It’s screaming at my mother across the kitchen, incoherent with rage, logical arguments...
3 tags
Dear God, Did I Actually Do That, or: Recovered...
Throwing an arm around Faruk and yelling to anyone within earshot “I use this guy’s JavaScript! It’s awesome! I love this guy’s JavaScript!”
Instructing Jelisa not to fake an orgasm after ordering “what she’s having,” lest the bartender get the wrong idea.
Sexually harassing Ryan to within an inch of his heterosexuality.
Hugging Justine so hard...
1 tag
1 tag
January 2010
54 posts
3 tags
“Almost nothing you ever do that is worth doing is any good the first time. Beer,...”
– Ross
1 tag
“When you find yourself hating someone (who did not directly hurt you) with...”
– The Last Psychiatrist
Constructed identity is one of those things I think about a lot. I’ve been rolling a few ideas around in my head lately that might turn into an interesting blog post or six, but this week has been a little distracting. (Hi, SFTUers! Hi, terrifying mountain of work I...
2 tags
In other vaccine-related news making me happy... →
Twelve years after his now discredited claim in The Lancet that injections of the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella might cause autism and bowel disorders in children, Andrew Wakefield is closer than ever to being banned from practising as a doctor.
2 tags
Bill and Melinda Gates announced today that their... →
The foundation used a model developed by a consortium led by the Institute of International Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to project the potential impact of vaccines on childhood deaths over the next 10 years.
By significantly scaling up the delivery of life-saving vaccines in developing countries to 90 percent coverage—including new vaccines to prevent...
1 tag
1 tag
Metagames and Containers →
I don’t need to tell an audience of Twitter users how important—and useful—boundaries are to creativity. David Cole points out the flipside: that boundaries are just as important to consuming as to creating.
(via lonelysandwich)
2 tags
“Highly personal and vulnerable terms do not belong in the public square unless...”
– Sady Doyle has the internet pretty much figured out.
“When the iMac came out, Apple drew a line in the sand. They said: we are no...”
– Steven Frank has a way with words.
1 tag
1 tag
The perception of $100 000 →
Jens Nilsson of Frictional Games, creators of the fantastic Penumbra series, on the costs of indie game development.
2 tags
“If you continue to depend on other people and alternate situations to bring you...”
– Theresa
1 tag
“[PowerPoint is] the most misused technological innovation since the handgun.”
– James Gray
3 tags
1 tag
1 tag
Attn: Canadian iPhone Users
If you happen to be, oh, I don’t know, going to San Francisco this weekend, Rogers offers travel packs valid for one months for voice, data, and text messaging that are considerably cheaper than their regular roaming rates:
The “Order Now” buttons on their website don’t work, but if you call *611, they can set you up in about a minute.
1 tag
The cyclical nature of dickheads.
Early 00’s: Mainstream media criticizes the banality, narcissism, and general uselessness of blogs, which are as pale shadows of the depth, meaning, and importance of the mainstream media to public discourse and culture as a whole.
Late 00’s: Bloggers criticize the banality, narcissism, and overall uselessness of Twitter, which is as a pale shadow of the depth, meaning, and...
1 tag
It's all about bromance. →
Sady Doyle of the fantastic Tiger Beatdown:
It’s okay, Apatow movies tell their intended audience of straight men: you can love your bros, and think that they’re the most important people in the world, and still think that Coldplay is for faggots.
Humpday is not that kind of story. The questions it asks are at once simple and disarming: if you love your bro, why don’t...
1 tag
1 tag
Rumor: No Half-Life In 2010 →
The February 2010 issue of Game Informer states that there won’t be a new Half-Life game released in 2010.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—
2 tags
“I fell in love like people lose their money or their minds: gradually, then...”
– Annie
1 tag
3 tags
Momentum.
[I spit on your imaginary internet deadlines.]
Monday evening. It’s quiet. Steph’s at work and the cat’s asleep, probably resting up for frantic two-a.m. laps around the apartment. I put some music on when I got home, but when the album finished I didn’t queue up another one.
I had an energy drink a couple of hours ago and I shouldn’t have. I’m too restless to do nothing, and too listless to...
1 tag
“I am not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr., 15 January 1968
1 tag
“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the...”
– Bertrand Russell, “What I Have Lived For”
3 tags
Hendiadys →
Hendiadys (pronounced /hɛnˈdaɪ.ədɨs/) is a figure of speech used for emphasis — “The substitution of a conjunction for a subordination”.
The typical result of a hendiadys is to transform a noun-plus-adjective into two nouns joined by a conjunction. For example, “sound and fury” (from act V, scene 5 of Macbeth) seems to offer a more striking image than “furious...
1 tag
WatchThe Whitest Kids You Know, “Slow Jerk.” (h/t Nolan)
1 tag
WatchKinetic Typography: blink-182, “Online Songs” (h/t Ross)