From up here you can watch the ersatz cumuli as they ghost up out of half-a-dozen buildings’ rooftop HVAC systems, to dissolve in the rain which comes down from the natural clouds which graze the tops of the buildings. Little steamlets, reaching up to their big sibs above, blossiming with heat and then dying in the cool downpour, dreaming of country life maybe, the grand thunderheads which roam free over trailer parks and strip malls. (I wrote this hours ago and had no time to post. It's dark out now, and there's no cloud-commerce to be seen.)
Bits and ephemera for an aqualogged Friday:
-last night I’m walking up Carroll Street and see, suddenly, a ball or stone fly out of the darkness, across the street, and into the parlor-floor picture window of a house, knocking off some outer grate. An angry woman and her daughter appear instantly, calling down to passerby “Did you see who threw that?” No response: the woman shouts into the darkness: “WHOEVER DID THAT I’M GONNA SIC POPO ON YOU!” It sounded like the guilty party would know who, or what, “Popo” is…
-has anybody else seen the current Nestle Quik ad campaign? “Slam It!” Yes, the metaphor of raw, wrestling-inflected violence can be applied to the drinking of chocolate milk. I’m waiting for this rhetoric to be applied to all consumer goods: Extreme Furniture (“Serta Perfect Sleeper: Crush Your Fatigue”)...
More limericks, I say!
I’m in one of those moods where I erase everything I write: where every thought seems fragmentary and insubstantial, and sentences like this one don’t know where they’re supposed to conclude. I have looked at nothing today besides my work (and a couple of the links that Mike suggested), and I have that running-in-place feeling about it all.
A moment’s elation an hour ago: Jessica downloaded Journey’s 1979(?) semi-hit “Feelin’ That Way” – a song which impressed itself so deeply upon my consciousness, in the dark backward of pre-teen time, that I had completely forgotten about it, buried it under the 80’s power ballads that my cooler junior high classmates necked to in the back of the bus, coming home from some regional choir competition…and suddenly today it surfaced again in memory: Steve Perry’s faux-soul stylings twining around the mellower vocals by…that other guy. It became an itch in the mind, until scratching it became overpoweringly necessary. Ah…
OK: the occasional contributor tries again. First, I'm pleased that our publisher, BT, liked my link! Try the Martin Amis story: the line about the national speech impediment is spot on. In the same vein as Bill, I was actually moved by a desire to own a digital camera by the pictures on Eric Costello's site. Being a text guy rather than an image guy, this is saying something. Of course, I was there in the first place because I had to have my own three column css layout.
I wrote my first limerick last night, and I wanted to share. (Actually, I wrote most of it last year and only finished it and adjusted the meter last night, but let's not quibble.)
There was an angry young man from Limerick;
The Welsh people he despised and would kick.
"You should learn to talk, you cur!
And use a brogue, not a burr!
Gentlemen speak in Gaelic, not Cymric."
Just an operational note to occasional contributors -- you can post without publishing. Once you've logged into Blogger, and made an entry under "Post to Wombat File", just click on "Post" in the toolbar above the entry space. That posts your entry in the Wombat File on the server -- even if you don't publish it to the site (which you need the FTP username and password for). Does this mean that your contribution is for naught? Far from it: the next time I add something to the site, I'll see that there's a new post, and publish it myself. You don't have to do nuthin' else.
Again, the steps: Log in to Blogger, select Wombat File, type (or paste from another document) your posting into the "Post to Wombat File" space, and click on "Post" above. Simplicity is Wombacity.
Jon Katz has an interesting discussion on Slashdot called The Dark Side of "Me Media", in which he discusses republic.com, a new book by Constitutional scholar Cass Sunstein. It's interesting: moderating "systems" (which involve varying degrees of automation) do provide some relief in the war of signal versus noise on the web -- looks like Sunstein is meditating on the broader implications.
Sorry I'm doing nothing but linking to other people's thoughts today...
I should have mentioned that the artist responsible for the screenshots I posted about yesterday is Jon Haddock, who also produced these images.
I want to mention that my friend Laurie Gwen Shapiro and her brother David have a new documentary, Keep The River On Your Right, about to be shown in theatres nationwide. There was a nice piece on it in this week's Times magazine. I haven't seen the film, but it looks like something worth chasing down, and the website gives locations and dates for all the cities its playing in. I don't *think* it has Julia Roberts in it, but if you can handle that, it looks like a good time.
There's some arresting isometric screenshot art at this site; found courtesy of Blogger-Master Evhead. I know repeating some other weblog's posted link is considered to be less-than-sophisticated, but I'm just an internet yokel anyway, so why try to keep up appearances?
Spent a couple of hours in a Project Sunset Review, this morning, gathering material for more installments of the pain of corporatespeak. It's quite a haul: we're going to be as busy as B2B's here at the Buzzword Factory just sorting through the possible candidates. I may even have to postpone my extended treatment of leverage.
THE BIZNESS BUZZWORD FACTORY and the publishers of WORD FIND SUPER-SPECIAL #100
present part two of a continuing series
the pain of corporatespeak
Today's entry: incent (transitive verb).
Example: By implementing a controlled rumor of upcoming reductions in force, we hope to incent associates to a higher level of productivity.
Mir Re-Entry Leaves Social Psychologist Unscathed
MOSCOW (AP) Mar 21 – Spurred on by a wave of national anxiety about “one of our own,” a special team of Lithuanian scientists were rushed to Moscow in the final hours of the Mir descent to help insure that the space station's re-entry would not fall on Lithuanian-American social psychologist Arthur Stukas. Although Alexei Splushkin, the Russian Cosmonautical Minister, described the odds of such a Stukas-cidal event as “incalculably low,” the Lithuanian team insisted on being involved. “We aren’t taking any chances,” said Vytautas Kamantuas, leader of the Emergency Squashing Prevention Team, as he and his ten-man engineering unit swung into action. “Look how close they came with Skylab!” Although tensions ran high between the Lithuanian team and Russian Mir controllers, after a safe splashdown the sense of mutual congratulation swept through the command center, and toasts to the health of “the beloved Arturas” were quietly made.
Mr. Stukas, who was attending a faculty barbie near his home in Melbourne, Australia, could not be reached for comment.
Thanks for the encouragement, Bill. The frequency of my posts is perfectly correlated with the number of "funny" things that happen to me. Thus, my life is probably _less_ interesting than yours--though not necessarily worse. Nevertheless, I feel it my personal obligation to take small moments in my life and use email and the blog to work them up into full-blown dramatic episodes (a la Mir). Now where's my hard hat?
The Man is good at coming up with stuff that just makes you want to keep on consumin'.
If Art posted more frequently, this would be a much funnier and more interesting weblog. Art, your life is much more interesting than mine. Not necessarily better, I'm sure. But it makes better reading.
If you're reading this you are probably, like me, not fully up to speed on all the in-jokes that spread through net-savvy websites faster than your PDA becomes obsolete. If you have been wondering about the increasingly wide circulation of "All Your Base Are Belong to Us", you can view its origin as part of a poorly translated video game. If you go to Zany Video Game Quotes and scroll down to "Zero Wing," all will be explained. And there's a history of the joke here (thanks to Mr. Kottke for the reference.
With absolutely no irony, I say that I am thrilled that people document all this stuff. It's the only hope I have that in ten years I will still have the slightest idea about what people are talking about. I'm too late to laugh at this one, but at least I don't feel so much like a non-native speaker of 21st-century cyberEnglish. Which, of course, is exactly what I am.
And speaking of not having the slightest idea, I completely misunderstood Grim's point about the crime story (see yesterday's post), which was only to comment, quote, "Searching for the killers? You don't have to be Lenny Briscoe to figure out who ordered the Crispy Beef." I thought his reference to the Droopiest Detective meant that he was focused on the whole Law & Order thing, instead of the sheer boneheadedness of the robbers' criminal M.O.
I'm an idiot.
Prior to lecture yesterday, one of my students announced that there was a graffito about me in the women's room. She assured me it was "good"--but the whole thing discombobulated me for a few moments. I'm thinking of sending some spies in there to see what it says--or not. Weird.
Grim Rosary calls our attention to this story, in which life imitates an episode of Law and Order that was, in all likelihood, ripped from some headlines I never saw.
Pretty horrible.
Anybody who wants to go with me to see this statue of one of the great ones, give me a call. I'm going to make the appointment soon. You'll want to come too, I'm sure of it.
I should add to the below that I don't at all know if impactful is a recent neologism or one that's been stinkin' up the joint for much longer. Any ideas?
THE BIZNESS BUZZWORD FACTORY and Campbell's Alphabet Soup PRESENT
the pain of corporatespeak
an ongoing series
A new word that's been in two presentations today that's driving me out of my increasingly tiny and poorly-decorated mind:
impactful. As in "Creating a financially impactful strategic solution."
If you were at all interested in Christopher Hitchens' lengthy-but-worth-it indictment of Henry Kissinger, and want more, more, more, there's a transcript of a recent Harper's-sponsored forum on the subject available on their site.
Also in praise of my favorite highbrow monthly -- although I can't refer you to any online sources for it, you might wish to go out and buy the new issue, which is jam-packed with the kind of reading I can't get enough of -- an enjoyable D.F Wallace excursion to the land of usage dictionaries, plus a mean-spirited but entertaining bash of Gopnik's Paris to the Moon by Christina Nehring, and an off-putting but compelling anthropological discussion of the idea of "human rights." Go buy a copy, go buy two copies already and give one to somebody. With that other culture organ focusing on cranking out double-length thematic advert-clearinghouses with riveting titles like "The Style Issue," it's the least we can do.
I already have another link to the same NY Times front page below -- but Laura also just pointed out to me the cool intereactive census map which you can access from the same page.
And in re Snoop -- an earlier Salon piece (actually it was my friend Amy's column) about this had an unbeatable quotation from Mr. Dogg: ""We're rapping about it when we're doing records. We're in the studio doing it, we're making hardcore, and we should be able to put out hardcore. And this is an avenue to do it."
It's a beautful Doggy Dogg day outside -- even from the 16th floor, with the windows cracked open one could hear birdsong a few minutes ago.
As I haven't posted in a while, I offer a grab-bag of ephemera to make up for my recent sloth:
Snoop Goes Hef-Style. Or Maybe Larry Flynt-style. By the way, am I the only one for whom the original version of "Gin and Juice" has been mentally replaced by the sound of the Gourds' hillbilly version? Now that I've heard the cover, I have a hard time remembering that the line "and a fat-ass jay-hay" wasn't originally vocalized by a guy who sounds like he went to my junior high school down in Mississippi.
More evidence that the primary function of the internet is smart-assedly screwing around. It is, however, actually funny.
Credit Industry Lobbyist -- $200,000/ year.
"War room" facility in Washington for Legislative Policy Team -- $2000 a month.
Bankruptcy "reform" allowing you to squeeze more money out of the saps you sold high-interest credit to...priceless!
There are some kinds of corporate welfare only a rigged election can buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
The Pre-Springer has shuffled off this mortal coil; the New York Times obit asserts that Mr. Downey was the composer of surf-rock hits "Wipeout" and "Pipeline." But CNN says that the ccredit is merely apocryphal. I'd never heard the claim before. Anybody out there have the real information?
My primary Skylab memory is the novelty hats you could buy the summer it was descending as a fiery ball of destruction. They each had a big paper spike sticking upwards, making you look like you had been given a German WWI infantryman helmet as a promotional item at a hamburger chain. The text on the hat indicated that the spike served as an early warning system; if Skylab landed on your head, the spike would grant you 0.00003 seconds to get out of the way.
Hmmm...I think your mother is probably the source of the anxiety here, Art. If she was going around making rhymes like that all the time, it's no wonder that you have been fixated on bad stuff falling from above.
As my mom used to say,
"Birdie, birdie, in the sky,
Why'd you drop that in my eye,
Gee, I'm glad elephants can't fly!"
(sorry for that).
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia has taken
out $200 million in insurance
policies to cover possible damages
after the Mir space station is dumped
in the South Pacific this month, a
space official was quoted as saying
Sunday.
Yes, indeed, space fungus, space junk hurtling at 500,000 miles per hour--all aiming directly for Melbourne. My colleagues have lent me a hard hat. Something about things from the sky landing on me has always been a kind of palpable fear--perhaps because I'm tall and I'm always cracking my skull on things, perhaps because I have some generalized anxiety issues and this is how they are manifesting themselves (and I wouldn't be surprised really). Back in the '70s, I did worry myself a bit about space junk (i.e., Skylab), but who wouldn't be worried now with the threat of rogue comets and killer asteroids, not to mention bumbling Russians. Plus, my 9th grade English teacher was killed aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger. All of this indicates to me that space isn't the place.
OK, maybe it WAS that alien abduction years ago...
Well, they went ahead and did it. A horrible event which I admit to a lurid fascination with. Sorry, oh Enlightened One. Like all good Amurrican Boys, explosions capture my imagination.
Art, our audience of millions is deluging me with e-mails saying "Tell us more about the Skylab Nightmares!" Actually, it was just Gavin. But I feel that way too! Share the pain with us and purge your soul of those dreams of falling space-trash.
I heard something in the The Guardian about a potentially hazardous "space fungus" that Mir might carry with it back into the atmosphere. I'd worry more about deadly astro-spores than about chunks of space station actually falling on my head.
Good luck, mate!
The Russians say that there is a 2% chance that space station MIR will land on Australia. They also predict that it will "touchdown" between March 15th and March 22nd--somewhere in the South Pacific. My question is: should I be scared? [Note: I did have nightmares about SkyLab back in the 1970s--luckily that did not land on my summer camp in Northern New Hampshire; but it did land in Australia].
Those big copycats at the RIAA and NEA have stolen our beloved List-O-Mania! Worse, they don't seem to have read any of my rules or helpful suggestions: it's a conceptual mess.
If anyone was wondering what the post-Karen-Finley-yams-up-the-kiester NEA would be spending its time doing, now you know.
Last night I saw Proof, an actual Stage Play, which is starting to feel like a whole species of activity I will have to explain at length and with no real hope of success to my grandchildren –
Me: Well, it was a little like ‘The Real World,’ sweetie, only they wrote everything down first, and all of the cast members had to live in a fake house they build on a stage for three hours.
Child: Now Grandpa, stop telling lies or we’ll turn you in to the Dear Leader!
The play is worth seeing – there’s nothing unusual about it that leaps out at you as a play, if you see what I mean. A small cast of characters, realistically rendered in a contemporary setting, struggling with inner demons etc. etc. But everyone’s engaged in what they’re doing, working hard to make it work – Mary-Louise Parker particularly – and it does work. Despite the familiarity of any number of devices or plot twists (or maybe because of them) I found myself thoroughly involved and engrossed, and while no grreat philosophical point is made, nor poetic transformation of language performed, the very act of the performance left me not a little uplifted. It was warm last night after the snow all day, and calm, and walking back from the train down 6th Ave. at midnight it felt like everything retained the glow that comes from watching people on a stage move through a life that is, despite its obvious constructedness, more real than your own.
Excuse the half-assed Wildean rhetoric – it’s the coffee talking.
You must explore this site fully to understand its bizarrely convoluted fantasy of control. There's a mind-bogglingly obsessive Something About Mary which I am more than impressed by. Here's wishing her luck in finding that truly chivalrous man who will put all of her "signal phrases" in that contact email, and submit his whole heart to her.
Thanks to Little.Yellow.Different for the tip.
The Devil and the Dentist and the divers in the sea
Search for the pearl of wisdom but they should have come to me
So grab your mate and raise your glass and make a cheerful noise
And pray to God to send a pair of Handsome Corduroys.
Thanks to Sheri for finally getting us to Jackson Heights for silk and spices from the East (or, in this case, the immediate North East). Last night's dinner: homemade miso soup w/mushrooms and scallions (I'll get the seaweed next time); sticky rice; seared tuna sashimi on greens. All that was missing was the sake. Serenity itself.
A New Jersey teen's yearlong Vow of Silence passes the six-month mark. On his site, he keeps mentioning how much he's "earned" with his publicity stun -- pardon me, I meant "personal commitment to be a better listener." Let Brett tell you how he wants to inspire you! Make the changes you never had the willpower to make before!
Also, he loves to breakdance.
I actually overheard a guy on Prince Street say the following into a cell phone at about 10:30 on a recent Friday night: "Yeah? Well, Sartre's a dick."
LOCKED OUT. Weird morning here at the Bizness Buzzword Factory. As some of you know, we moved the factory to a new location in midtown, with lots of spiffy new furniture. It's a weird setup, whereby you enter in the middle and go into one of two wings -- and there's a cardkey-enabled door to each wing.
Except that the cardkeys aren't working yet, and there's only one mechanical key to each wing. And this morning the only person with the key to my wing left it on her desk last night. So we're all locked out. I've got the laptop, so I found an empty desk on the other side and plugged in, but as more people get in to work, that's going to become a tougher proposition, since there won't be any available desks.
It was pretty funny to watch frustrated manager after manager trying to pick the locks on the brand new doors.
yet another "test": let this "super-scientific" program determine your gender!
http://test3.thespark.com/gendertest/
I discovered that, yes, I am a "dude"--perhaps you will too.