Tag: no

The Year in Review: Lists

Dear The Bloggers:

I understand the desire to emulate print media. It can be fun to write in the style of a columnist, assume the authority of an Op-Ed writer, and issue judgments about taste or politics in the voice of a successful journalist.

I also understand that you see journalistic types producing year-end lists, and that seems worthy of emulation too. Your model music reviewer or humor columnist or political analyst cranks out a Top 10 or 100 for the year, or the Cheers ‘n’ Jeers of the Yeer, or something like that. You want to be part of it, and as a self-identified journalist you feel it’s an obligation to carry through what you’d call a “meme”.

Don’t.

There is a reason for the “End of year list” phenomenon in journalism. The ink-stained wretches who are living out your dream want to spend a week with their families around now, and all but a skeleton crew of hard core news types do. The feature writers and columnists and reviewers all turn in their stupid lists around Dec. 20 and go off to open presents, drink, and reconsider their career choices. The lists suck, and they know it. It’s the lowest form of journalism. The only reason they exist is to give these poor bastards a breather for one week a year. Then it’s back to turning in the column and banging out the news for another 51 weeks.

So this year, feel lucky that you’re unpaid, and stop aping the survival behavior of exhausted journos. Your lists aren’t any better, and you have far less reason to dump them on us.

White people are weird.

I made the mistake of clicking on a weird looking ad link in the Mark Morford column email from sfgate.com and ended up in this pavilion of what. I spent a good half hour trying to figure out if there was anything going on there.

It is not clear that they have ever done anything.

Looking at the self-submitted biographies of their founders, staff members, employees, and “conversation hosts” reveals that they are all wealthy well-educated Bay Area white people. They take care to mention that they have been to other countries for months or even years and that they speak foreign languages, and that they ride bicycles and use solar and hybrid power. They’re all well-off, cheerful, and in fine physical shape.

Anyway they’re going to save the world by talking about saving the world. I think technology is involved, and there are certainly oboes and wide, beardy grins. The stages are apparently 1) noticing that history and biology have happened 2) meditating and making your own brain better and ready to evolvulate and conversatify and 3) something they’re putting on the web site Real Soon Now that will be a social network.

I’ve got a better idea. How about all of them stop with the website and the neurocosmology and the self-improving oneness of spirit exercises and just make sandwiches, say, 20 a week, all at once, on Saturday. They all have lots of time and money, so this isn’t a big deal. Then, take the sandwiches to a church in a really poor neighborhood and give them a cooler full, and say “Hey, give these sandwiches to people who don’t have anything to eat, okay?”

If they want to Create a Space to be Thoughtfully Open or work on their Epic Journeys, that’s cool too, but not until the 20 sandwiches are delivered. Deal?

computers are hard and the government spies on me from the air vent

flata points out that some people lost their heads because the all-knowing government spy agency, the NSA, put cookies on people’s computers.

A “privacy advocate” named Daniel Brandt is upset about this, and has previously been upset about the CIA using persistent cookies on their public website.

I feel sorry for the web monkey who put those in for whatever boring typical reason people use persistent cookies, because that person is in big trouble. I also think that a “no persistent cookies” policy for websites of this kind is a fine idea, almost entirely because it reduces this kind of pointless paranoia. But let’s get real, here. You can turn off cookies, and anyone who’s serious about privacy does. There’s no way the NSA is using persistent cookies to track individual website visitors; that’s inane.

Danny boy, the NSA has shit you don’t even know about, probably archiving the entire Internet way better than Alexa and analyzing it and putting it in databases and crunching it up to find Al-Qaeda and screw the Chinese. They don’t need “cookies”, okay? Oh, and by the way, you keep mispelling “rendez-vous” in your emails to your mistress, the one in Dayton. Get that shit straight, okay?

This was almost as “good” as the podjacking idiot.

The American Fuck Yeah Association

Driving down Westcliff Avenue last night I was obstructed by a big RV that was drifting in and out of lanes. The damned thing was so wide it could barely fit in one lane and was bumbling about dangerously. I passed the monster with a wide berth, tapping my horn and thinking “probably some drunk who lives in his RV.” Then I noticed it was painted all over with ads, logos, and signs. Racing team? Soft drink promotion? What the…

tale gators

Yes, there is such a thing as the American Tailgate Association.

The American Tailgaters Association (ATA) was founded for several reasons. The “sport” of tailgating has become a national phenomenon as a recreational activity, yet there has never been a venue for tailgaters to come together in a single place.until now!

The ATA will allow tailgaters all across our great nation to meet in forums, discuss the best tailgating places, talk about their favorite teams or sports, find discount merchandise, post pictures, and generally be the one stop tailgaters “community”.

[…]

Our desire is to promote ATA membership and our corporate partners and we believe by offering an entertaining, interactive, cost-effective and ever-expanding experience, our membership will in turn promote organizational allegiance, brand loyalty and name recognition for our corporate partners and ourselves.

An outstanding characteristic of my country is our inability to have fun without creating an association with bylaws, getting corporate sponsors, copyrighting and trademarking it, having an annual competition, and finally and inevitably adopting a mission and vision statement. See: Little League, car stereo enthusiasts, etc.

America, fuck yeah!

well im 18, i love to party and go crazy; I hate people who belong to cliques, I need sex, I love sex, etc….YEAH UM but i dont think I’m a sexaholic!!! I work at Polly’s Pies in Orange so come visit me and get some fuckin PIE!!! I wanna be an exotic dancer…AKA STRIPPER!!!! friends get free lap dances! or a bartender. I love my body and everything about it, especially my 36DD breasts. Im an outgoing red-head who loves to party, so watch out!! !……………………………………………..well thats the old me, ive done alotta stupid shit in my life, hurt the one i love the most and had to wait for my mothr while she did time. ive learned alot over the last few months embrace relationships, dont push them away. try not to lie, it hurts you worse that ne1 else and dont sleep around evryone finds out, cheating is NEVER worth it. i am still a sexaholic, or so i do very much believe. Ihave issues but if you care about me ull wanna help not shy away. so yeah…dont be afraid to leave me a message, comment wutevr..latr u crazy people who love to drive me into insanity ALSO IM NOT LOOKING TO MEET NEW PEOPLE ON MYSPACE IM HERE FOR MY FRIENDS..SO DONT BOTHER THANKYOU AND YES I KNOW IM BEAUTIFUL AND MY TITS R REAL-SO QUIT FUKNG ASKING=EVERYONE!

Cultural notes from all over

Observations from tonight:

People going to an office Christmas party are well-dressed (but not flashy), carry one present each, and look incredibly nervous. I saw about 30 of them tonight. They were being jovial at each other with dead empty dread in their eyes.

The satellite-provided music at the brewpub tonight was eerily perfect for someone of my age and background. It was the greatest hits of college radio from 1984 to 1987. What kind of radio station plays Prefab Sprout’s “Appetite” and Shriekback’s “Everything that Rises must Converge” in the same set in 2005?

At the chain bookstore, where I did not buy a thing, they of course had the whole front of the place devoted to Christmas books. One chunk of bookshelf was entirely given over to… wait for it… Christmas Mysteries. What the FUCK? I’m not sure how things are in your family, but around here if someone got murdered Christmas week we’d call the whole thing off, even if a sharp-eyed local Christian ladies’ sewing club solved the whole thing by the morning of the 24th. Take the tinsel down so we can just stare blankly into space, shaking. We’ll make it up to the kids somehow.

One of the clerks was hugely overweight, so much so that he puffed a bit and walked with the gait of a man whose knees are badly damaged. He had to help a young couple who looked like Vanguard-bots and who were very upset that they couldn’t find some Christian book about the essence of love.

I was gazing at the sad array of self-help books, most of which have titles in the form Stop ________! or _______ no more!, where the blank can be filled in with your unwanted behavior or emotion of choice: Smoking, Loving Too Much, Checking Things Over And Over, Leaving The House Without Pants, Putting Beans In Your Nose, etc. They were arranged in sections: General Self-Help, Addiction & Recovery, Dating. Then I saw a section labeled “Oversize”. Hmm. Odd euphemism for fat people. Oh, maybe it was for people who were “Big ‘n’ Tall” and included the towering as well as the obese? Oh, DOH! It was just the oversize books. Time to go home, substitute. Brain no work good.

Academic stories from all over

Well, just from my father. He taught English, comparative literature, translation, and fiction writing. Most of his later career was spent helping MFA students write first novels, so he had a low idiot ratio. He taught undergrads too, though, and there were moments. I now present two: one goofy final exam quote, and one what the FUCK story.

Dante was a traditional figure. He had one foot firmly planted in the medieval world, while with the other he waved a triumphant greeting to the dawn of the Renaissance.

At one point he taught an upper division short story writing class. This was mostly English majors but not mostly people serious about fiction, so generally nice kids who wanted to learn the basics of writing stories. Along with the outlining and exercises and other Writing 101 stuff, there was required reading from an anthology of classic short stories.

On reading the final story for one student Dad found a bad problem. He called her in.

“I have something very serious to tell you,” he said. “This story is plagiarized, almost completely. You could be dismissed from the University.” The girl burst into tears immediately. After she regained her composure, he went on.

“Actually, it’s a bit worse than that. You’ve plagiarized a story from the required reading. This means that not only did you steal a story as your own, but you stole one from a well-known author, and one that you should have read in the second week of class if you were participating.” Again she collapsed in tears.

“It’s even worse!” she wailed.

“How?”

“I didn’t read the book anywhere, not even in the reading for the class. I stole it all from a Twilight Zone episode I saw in the Thanksgiving marathon!”

He gave her an incomplete in the class so she could take it over with a different teacher, on the condition that she never take another fiction class at that university again. Clearly she had no idea what she was doing on any level.

Then he came home and had a really big drink.