Category Archives: Pop Culture

So, I guess I’m a freak

Posted on by

I got a call from the cable guy standing outside my apartment building today. [Short story: no buzzers on the building and the doors are locked. Guess I'm lucky I never get visitors.]

Seems they had never turned off the cable TV, which he had done. “It won’t affect your cable internet and I’d be happy to turn it back on. I can even offer you the 1st month at half off. ….” Actually, he was quite pleasant, but I said no thanks anyway.

I’d much rather spend my time reading Farradane, Coates, Beghtol, Green and others. My TV works just fine when fed DVDs.

I had never even thought to try hooking up the cable. Looking back at all the things I’ve read over the past 9 months makes me happy I didn’t. So much time could have been wasted. [I'm not claiming TV is worthless or that there is nothing good on; only that it is a time sucker. Personally, I've chosen other time suckers.]

Yes, I know I’m a freak.

A little Friday irreverence – Mr. Deity

Posted on by

You won’t often find me linking to internet video because I don’t watch much of it. But if it were all this funny—luckily it’s not—I’d get no work done at all.

This is some of the absolutely funniest stuff I’ve ever seen in my life. “Swear by mr.deity.”

To my friends who don’t appreciate religious humor, well, don’t watch it.

mr.deity

I think Episode 7 (Mr. Deity & the Tour de Hell) may be my favorite, although they all have moments of brilliance. All I’m saying is adulterers deserve the Hokey Pokey.

There’s even a free podcast available via the iTunes store or a RSS feed available.

Check it out. Absolutely brilliant!

Originally found at sivacracy.net

“A very different kind of multiple world theory, where the same sad little world is made over and over again.”

Posted on by

I have no doubt that by now everyone has seen this little beauty, but I love it so much that I feel the need to repost it as a visual intro to my 2nd link:

Work. Reproduce. Perish.

“Jowls are available: Jenny Diski on Second Life” at the London Review of Books.

Brilliant. Simply brilliant. I do not begrudge anyone their efforts at entertainment, relaxation, and fantasy, but if you think you are doing anything actually important, please think again.

First link courtesy of Richard at Inherent Vice. Second link courtesy of the ever illuminating 3 quarks daily.

For reading, I was directed to the Library, where, this being a simulacrum of the modern world, for a few Linden dollars I bought a copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. But reading, after all, is and always has been a second life. So now a virtual me was carrying around a virtual book of poetry. And if my avatar (Jehu, I called my/herself) could have read it I/she would have done so to keep the virtual world out, just as I have done for much of my real life. Though, of course, my fantasy self couldn’t actually read my unreal book because an avatar doesn’t read or do anything, being entirely dependent on the will and brainpower of a real self out here in First Life directing it. — Jenny Diski

Five things you don’t know about me

Posted on by

I got tagged by my friend, jennimi, a few days ago.

It has taken me a while to decide on what to reveal; sorry Jenn! This sort of ties in to many of the issues which caused me to “withdraw” somewhat recently, thus I was a bit “careful” about what to put here. I had several ideas but decided that that detail might be a bit more context sensitive, at least to me and when and to whom I might tell it. Shades of storytelling arising again….

Well, with any luck, these tidbits may be interesting, intriguing or entertaining, but not TMI.

  1. In a much younger life, I had the responsibility of unlocking and passing the Permissive Action Link codes to unlock the nuclear warheads on our missile site in West Germany.
  2. I used to collect beer cans, for almost 20 years. I still have some in storage.
  3. I cut two fingers on my right hand to the bone with an X-acto knife. On Christmas Day. When I was 12, I think.
  4. I listen to Lambchop’s song, “the new cobweb summer,” (almost) every night before I go to bed for the opening lyric, “The last thought that you think today / has already happened…”
  5. I, and the rest of my family (and many others), have a permanent life-time ban on donating blood. This is thanks to being in Europe during the beginnings of the Mad Cow scare, or more accurately, the rise of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy.

Hopefully nothing here will cost me a job someday. Hehe. Just some of the more mundane facts about my life.

If you haven’t done this yet, and you would like to, then feel free to feel tagged. I’m a little too out of shape right now to be tagging anyone and running away.

Social software (can) suck

Posted on by

When the flames rise around us and I can’t see the door
This is still my home and it has never burned before
This is where I’ve taken my solace and my peace
The walls are caving in but I am still a stubborn beast.

Jolie Holland. “Stubborn Beast.” Springtime Can Kill You.

I have decided that I do not like so-called social software. It has been building for a while now, but it has almost reached critical mass for me.

Now, please do not misunderstand me, social software can be extremely useful. It has been (and still is) useful to me. If I thought it was totally useless I would have pulled my Flickr, Facebook and MySpace accounts.

But I (and I have no doubt many of the “kids” out there not quite geeky enough to be one of the new cool kids) really didn’t need another reminder of the fact that I am occasionally “tolerated.”

Like I said to someone the other night, “It is always complicated.” Heck, I’m not even breaking up with someone and I’m still confused about how to handle this problem.

[And, no, jdm, this has nothing to do with you. Just a useful quotation.]

Movies, movies, movies

Posted on by

I have been watching a couple movies during this break. Maybe I could be doing more productive things, but my mind also needs a break, time to do some leisurely processing in the background. So movies it is.

I have mentioned some of them already, but would like to flesh them out with wsome mini-reviews.

Friday, I watched Steamboy. It was OK, but ambivalent on “science” in the end. [Should rightly be applied science and, thus, technology, though. The movie referred to it as "science."] Set mostly in England, and particularly London during the Great Exhibition of 1851—Crystal Palace and all—steam was king and “science” was ascendant. Science was portrayed as the means of helping humanity or as a highly dangerous way to make more powerful and efficient weapons of war to be sold to the highest bidders. The latter way was winning. Motives in the movie were rarely this simplistic, but this simplistic dichotomy was nonetheless explicitly set up for the”purpose” of science. It was an entertaining movie, well done in many ways; I just feel cheated by its vague and simplistic stand on one of the supreme (and complex) moral issues of all of human history.

Sunday, I watched The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. This was a good, but odd movie. I’m not sure what I felt about this movie; may have to watch it again some day. It is very complex morally. In the end, it is hard to embrace any of the characters. In this sense, it is a vastly human movie. I do not necessarily require “clean and tidy” movies, but this one seemed to be pushing at the edges of “clean and tidy” for me. But then life is rarely clean and tidy, either.

Kingdom of Heaven was watched over Sunday and Monday. While a visually lush movie (Ridley Scott), this just did not resonate much with me. There is a fair amount of character development, and almost everyone learns some hard lessons, but they do little for the characters or the film, in the end. I did find the premise interesting, and it’s a timely topic. I just wanted more. Maybe it was supposed to be representative of the time and not judge that time morally, but we need nuanced discussion and views in these matters today and not simply lush, big budget, films that have no real statement to make. Yes, it seems I am expecting too much of mass entertainment.

Monday I watched Adaptation. I really don’t know what to say about this one. Not really very good, nor recommended.

I watched Paradise Now on Tuesday. My comments are at the LibraryTavern post that caused me to put it on my list, assuming Liz approves my comment. Recommended, but (for me) lacking.

Word Wars (Scrabble) is a pretty good documentary, but knowing words just as objects and combinations of specific numbers of letters on lists is a seriously bad “word issue” to have, IMHO. I’ve enjoyed some Scrabble in my day, but that is a wrong reason (and way) to know words. It seems to me that that would be (is) a good use of computing technology; we humans ought to know words in the sense that computers cannot. The people in this movie are all characters, full of real quirks, predilections, and motives. I watched this Wednesday.

After Word Wars, I watched Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I had already seen this but wanted some mindless entertainment for one of my movie slots where I wasn’t prepared to really concentrate. Not really a good movie at all, but it has its moments. Really, read the books, or any other format in which you prefer some version of the story.

Yesterday, I watched Junebug, Sirens, and Napoleon Dynamite. I feel that all of these were oversold to me, but in vastly different ways. They weren’t bad movies, and for what I paid were worth it, but … I got nothing else either.

Still to watch:

Maria Full of Grace. I need to watch this today so I can return it before 9 PM.

Spellbound (1999 National Spelling Bee). More folks with word issues. I have until tomorrow for this one.

Mark does even more social networking

Posted on by

Seeing as I don’t often like being told to “Just do” something, I have taken my time coming to most social software.

First, I took up blogging in late Jan 2005 after reading quite a few for a while.

Flickr was second in Jan of this year.

I took up IM in April of this year after some of the lengthiest and most intense conversation on my blog after I asked, “IM, Why?” I followed that post up after much discussion with “IM? Here’s why!”

In late May I then took up MySpace [second post about it] because my son whom I had not been talking with for over 18 months invited me in to his MySpace to see his reply to something I had posted on my blog much earlier.

On Monday morning (2 Oct) I finally got a Facebook account. Why? Some of the newer students had been talking about it lately, the whole fiasco with them showing everyone everything, and then with them opening it up to everyone, and also watching danah boyd’s recent talk at UNC-Chapel Hill. All of these convinced me it was time to give it a try.

I really don’t have much to say about it yet. I doubt I’ll use it much the way it is described being used by typical aged college students [see EDUCAUSE report below and elsewhere]. It has some affordances, as one might say. Most of those affordances are not ones I need at this point in my life; many are ones I actively shun.

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian posted this morning about EDUCAUSE’s newest issue: “Seven Things You Should Know About Facebook.” I thought the timing was excellent. As usual, though, this piece told me nothing. I don’t mean to disparage EDUCAUSE here (I’ve given up on that), but this series has a limited but at the same time potentiallly huge audience—the clueless.

I have read several of the items in this series and I don’t know if there was ever a word/idea/thought in any of them that I wasn’t already aware of. Considering how clueless I am (in my opinion) about many of these things, I find that stunning. I have to wonder how many are really reading these things but, even more so, who is actually getting much out of them. That is, are they really reaching their intended audience.

Within the space of the “work week,” I already have almost as many friends on Facebook as I do in MySpace. Take out the one amazing cat and the 3 bands that are my “friends” [I have met and talked to 2 of them, though] on MySpace and the numbers are even closer. Remove my kids and half-sister and I think they’re even, although slightly different. That is, they are all people I go to school with, whether oncampus or LEEP.

There are some slightly interesting things going on, but not much that I wasn’t already aware of. I mean I already knew who was friendly with who. Again, I do see how some more could be going on wit hthe affordances that Facebook allows, but I don’t know how useful they will be to me.

At least now, when I hear people in our profession going on about how I have to be in these places because my patrons are I can honestly think, “Oh, shut up already until you have a better argument.” Because there are much better motivational arguments than “Just do it” and “Everyone else is.”

Now, I best get some homework done so I can go do some real social networking tonight. That is, go to the bar and talk in that good ol’ archaic way—face-to-face. With many of the people who are in my virtual social networks.

Me. Call me old, if you like. I much prefer the archaic way.

Smurf or ’70s Girl

Posted on by

I went to take a look the quiz Liz at LibraryTavern posted about yesterday, but I just wasn’t in the mood to display that I am supposedly 67% Seventies Girl. Oops!

But I did see the Smurf Name Generator and couldn’t resist. And once I had my new Smurf name firmly in my electronic grasp I certainly had to share. So apropos:

Your Smurf Name is
Strange Smurf
Get Your Smurf Name at Quizopolis.comQuizopolis

[Sorry about that, but the nutcases who coded the results made the text the same color as the background. With so many nested tables it took me a couple seconds to figure that out.]

[OK, this things was coded by a complete idiot!  I tried fix it up some, but it is not worth the effort.]

Piratical

Posted on by

This one’s for Jason and in honor of International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Richard had a Pirate party Saturday night. I was at a loss for a costume so I ended up adapting an old Army PT shirt. My letter sizing and spacing was a bit off so what was going to be “Pirate” became “Piratical.”

Several people loved the word “piratical.” Jason was fine with it, but questioned its authenticity and wondered about it vs. “piratic.” I told him it would sound less odd if we used words like “pirate” and its various forms more often. If we talked about pirates we would have more chance to use piratical.

So besides such wonderful words like piratedom, pirately, piratically, piratism, piratize, and piratously, the OED lists both piratic and piratical. Might I mention that many of these forms start out “= piratical.”

piratic, adj. Of, relating to, or resembling a pirate or pirates; piratical. Piratic War the war waged by Gaius Pompeius Magnus (106-48 B.C. in order to regain control of the Mediterranean for Rome from pirates.

1st use: 1640J. DAY Parl. Bees (1641) sig. C1, He..Out-law-like doth challenge as his owne Your Highnes due, nay Pyratick detaines The waxen fleet sailing upon your plaines.

piratical, adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a pirate or piracy; engaged in or promoting acts of piracy; inhabited by pirates.

1st use: 1550 T. NICOLLS tr. Thucydides Hist. Peloponnesian War I. i, The sayde Pyratycall or theuyshe crafte. 1579-80 in D. Masson Reg. Privy Council Scotl. (1880) 1st Ser. III. 255 Thair piraticall and weikit deidis. 1622 BACON Advt. Holy Warre in Wks. (1879) I. 528/1 The piratical war which was achieved by Pompey the Great.

So, “piratical” has three uses before “piratic,” including one by Bacon. Hmmm. Well, lest I be accused of my own “piraticall and weikit deidis,” I will not link to any photos. But I will ask whether any man in a grass skirt ought to be questioning the adjectival usage of Pirate Bruno the Infected?