Remember, readers, you have until Saturday to cast your votes for the 2005 Naughty Reading Photo Contest! Be sure to visit the main page and vote on the sidebar!
Month / August 2006
Cell Phones: Enabling Passive-Aggressivism One Text Message at a Time
An old girlfriend once broke up with me by text messaging me. I thought that was the coldest form of text messaging I had ever seen, but it turns out that I was wrong. Consider the case of Katy Tanner, who was fired from her job through text messaging. (via Cheryl Floyd-Miller)
Terrorist Plot
I woke up to craziness this morning. News here.
What is the evidence of this plot? There are 21 people arrested, but they better be damn clear on what went down. The skeptic in me wonders if the “no liquids” ban is a disingenuous way for airlines and airports to sell more beverages.
Confessions of a Junket Whore
Eric Snider: “I, on the other hand, don’t work for the paper and wouldn’t be representing them specifically on the junket. I’d be a freelancer, representing only myself. So the only thing stopping me from going was whether I, personally, had any ethical qualms about it. I do have such qualms, but I also have a curious nature and enjoy doing things that I have never done before. That’s why I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, and that’s why I said yes to Paramount. This is the story of how I spent 24 hours as a junket whore.” (via The Hot Button)
Mish-Mash
Tanenhaus Actually Gets It Right for Once
Could it be? Joe Queenan has temporarily put away the hatchet (and the hubris)? Well, it’s true. And Sam Tanenhaus is (wait for it) to be commended for not only giving us a different side of Queenan’s, but also for writing an enjoyable overview of Richard Hofstadter (perhaps making up for the aborted Buckley bio) and being a little more relaxed on the recent edition of the NYTBR podcast. Did Sammy Boy get an unexpected refund check for the IRS? What explains this unexpectedly ebullient (well, as ebullient as the gruff-voiced man will be) Sammy-T?
Of course, I still have issues with the NYTBR‘s lack of literary fiction coverage, but perhaps the August sunshine might pierce Sam’s heart and spread some golden rays to make even Dwight Garner wear a pair of khaki shorts. Too bad the NYTBR is under no acknowledgment to accept the brownies.
In the meantime, Queenan wrote this surprisingly humble essay about reading far too many books simultaneously. Perhaps Queenan’s essay spoke to me because I am currently in the middle of reading about 17 books: many of them given to me by trusted people who have insisted that I read them, many of them having nothing to do with future Segundo interviews serving as a welcome respite. The usual figure around here is four books at a time, but books and reading desires pile up rather rapidly.
For the tome-loving multitaskers around here, how many books do you read at a time? The comments await.
Be Lucky She Didn’t Have An Axe and a Blowtorch
A Distant Soil: “I have been on the convention circuit for years, and I have never seen anything like this woman. I have seen fans sleep outside pro’s hotel rooms, grab them by the crotch, proposition them, kiss them without invitation, go from door to door looking for their rooms, flash them, you name it, but I have never seen a toothless, middle aged mother who gets fraudulent disability pay that she uses to fly around the country and stalk celebrities while using her young daughter as a lure, inducing her to weep on cue to get the desired response.” (via Warren Ellis)
Philip Chien: Another Journalist Making Up Sources?
Wired has removed three news items from its site, claiming that a freelance writer named Philip Chien contacted a “space historian” named Robert Ash (Ash says he isn’t). Further, it appears that Chien fabricated sources named Ted Collins and Robert Stevens. Interesting. I wonder if “psloss” is another Chien fabrication. If that forum thread can be believed, it looks like Chien killed his contact base. If so, perhaps this is why he resorted to making up sources.
I Read ________’s Interview and Thought It Was _____________
Chris Bolton talks with Scott Smith about The Ruins, and, in an effort to keep plot details unspoiled, the results resemble a Pentagon document.
Well, Someone Has to Chronicle It
A history of amateur porn (NSFW) (via Bloggasm)
Bloggers Triumph Over Mainstream Media on Mere Hunch
Using deductive prowess, several bloggers determined that Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph, “The Battle of Iwo Jima,” may have been staged by Rosenthal. The bloggers once again triumphed over the mainstream media by Googling the words “Joe Rosenthal staged” and turning up this Fortune City page, which offered nothing more than conjecture on the subject. The Google search result took 0.06 seconds.
“If someone is thinking about it, then someone is hiding the truth,” said the blogger behind Little Green Gerbils, who speculated upon Rosenthal’s photograph at his day job when his boss wasn’t looking.
“Jay Rosenthal is a godless heathen and should be strung up in public before the weekend,” noted Michelle Milkme. “Never mind that he’s in his eighties. Vigilante justice applies even to those past their prime.”
The bloggers, who had abstained from ice cream to facilitate their anger, reportedly experienced higher blood pressure which coincided with their levels of outrage. The fever and hypertension spread to their readers, who offered more fury and amateur speculation in thousands of comments.
“What the maintream media doesn’t realize is that we too use Photoshop,” said Milkme. “I don’t quite understand all the filters and tools the way a professional art director does, but I do know how to crop a photo and save it as a new filename that I can upload to my site. So do most bloggers. The mainstream media will now think twice about messing with us. We have cropping and uploading skills!”
Journalism: The Human Element
Editor and Publisher: “A photographer for the Times-Picayune of New Orleans who has undergone severe personal trauma since Hurricana Katrina hit was arrested Tuesday after trying to get police to shoot him to death. Police said he claimed he was depressed after he found out he didn’t have enough insurance money to rebuild his Katrina-damaged home.”
Physical Graffiti
The Photoshopped Cover Girl: a disturbing interactive expose of magazine photo retouching. (via SJ)
Fiction + Math = 5
Mathematical Fiction: a list of fiction titles that involve math. (My own personal favorite is Edwin Abbott’s Flatland.) (via Books, Words, and Writing)
Today in Investigative Journalism: A Widow Who Loves Her Micturating Dogs
New York Times: “No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from ‘numb fingers’ to ’60 single men’ to ‘dog that urinates on everything.’…It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends’ medical ailments and loves her three dogs.”
Stephen Dixon’s Version of Musical Chairs
Failbetter: “I didn’t merge the last two novels of the I. trio into one. The trio became a duo when McSweeney’s rejected the second voume of the work, then called 2. They rejected it, they said, because they were cutting back on their fiction. So I removed 2 from the trio, rewrote it in its entirety (something I’ve been doing a lot with my work the last few years), gave the I. character a name, and submitted the work, as Old Friends, to Melville House, which took it in a couple of weeks. Then McSweeney’s wrote, saying they were starting a new fiction series and they’d like to see 2. I said 2 was now Old Friends and unavailable, would you like to see 3, which was now End of I. and also entirely rewritten from first page to last? They did and they took it.” (via Moorish Girl)
Move Over Merrick & Baratz-Logsted — There’s a New Turf War On
CBS: “A new kind of book is flying off the shelves of local stores and libraries. Gangsta lit, much like rap, often centers around pimps, prostitutes and drugs.”
“Carried Away By the Moment” is the New Buzz Term for “Wild, Out of Control, Animalistic and Quite Possibly Gratuitious Sex Thrown In To Boost Ratings”
BBC: “The sex scene, broadcast on 1 August, showed actors Kellie Shirley and Joel Beckett ripping off each others clothes and having sex on the floor of a nightclub….Ms Harwood again apologised for causing distress, but argued that ‘any sexual activity was implied rather than explicit’. ‘The intention of the scene was to indicate the passion of a couple being carried away by the moment,’ she continued.”
Ugly Kid Joe, “Everything About Ned”
Are you the guys on the Hill who mock everything? Ewww.
Is this some sort of hip voting that I don’t understand?
I, hate the man’s sunny demeanor,
And I, I hate those kissing photos too, boo-hoo
And I don’t like a thing about the ballot, no, no
And I, I, I hate the Democrats too!
And I, hate everything about Ned!
Everything about Ned!
And I, don’t like a thing about his platform
And I, I hate Ned’s daddy’s guts too, boo-hoo
And I don’t like a thing about Ned’s pollsters, no, no
Cause I, I, I think this is overrated too
And I, I’ll be around in November
I, can’t stand to be around,
I, hate everything about Ned!
Everything about Ned, everything about Ned, everything about Ned
Some say I’m just a sore loser
But that don’t change the way I feel about Ned
And if you think this might be bringing me down,
Look again I’ll be an Indie with a frown!
Get down!
Or Perhaps Some Folks Need a Surrogate Baby Blanket To Cling To
Cato Institute (PDF): “In the end, it is not clear how one can deal with the public’s often irrational — or at least erratic — fears about remote dangers. Some people say they prefer comparatively dangerous forms of transportation like the private passenger automobile (the cause of over 3 million deaths during the 20th century) to safe ones like commercial airlines because they feel they have more ‘control.’ But they seem to feel no fear on buses and trains — which actually are more dangerous than airliners — even without having that sense of control and even though derailing a speeding train or crashing a speeding bus is likely to be much easier for a terrorist than downing an airliner. And people tend to be more alarmed by dramatic fatalities — which the September 11 crashes certainly provided — than by ones that cumulate statistically. Thus, the 3,000 deaths of September 11 inspire far more grief and fear than the 100,000 deaths from auto accidents that have taken place since then. In some respects, fear of terror may be something like playing the lottery except in reverse: the chances of winning the lottery or dying from terrorism may be microscopic, but for monumental events that are, or seem, random, one can irrelevantly conclude that one’s chances are just as good, or bad, as those of anyone else.” (via Boing Boing)
Fragile Egos Have No Business Being in the Film Industry, Much Less Directing Shitty Movies
Dark Horizons: “‘Lady In The Water’ director M Night Shyamalan admits he considered taking his name off the credits for next film ‘Life Of Pi’ to stop negative reviews.” (via Romancing the Tome)
RIP Sue Bierman
Former San Francisco Sue Bierman died today. She apparently crashed her car into a dumpster in Cole Valley. Bierman was always one of my favorite supervisors and I certainly missed her when term limitations forced her out of office. Now I’ll miss her even more.
While she got a late start in politics (she was 68 when she first became Supervisor), Bierman brought a compassionate touch and a wise, no-bullshit voice of skepticism to almost every issue she took on. It was Bierman who stopped the freeway from expanding into the Panhandle.
Bierman offered a progressive voice that was distinctly San Franciscan: tolerant, quirky, and independent. She frequently adopted interesting and controversial positions, such as voting against an alcohol ban in the Panhandle, arguing that the homeless should have a place to drink alcohol as the homeowners did. (The only other supe to vote against the ban was Ammiano.) She even passionately defended the rights of the petitioners to reinstate the former Doggie Diner restaurant as a landmark.
I’ll miss Bierman, one of the few local politicians I never got a chance to meet. But her run as Supervisor through the 90s is a clear reminder that it’s never too late to get involved in politics.
(via SFist)
Holy Shit!
A.L. Kennedy writing an episode of Doctor Who! If this is true, this is a brilliant move on the part of Russell T. Davies and company.
A rumor, but I’m on the case. Calls to be made. (Perhaps Ms. Kennedy might want to jump in and clarify herself.)
[UPDATE: Maud’s been in touch with Kennedy. It’s only a rumor. She’s had no contact with the Who people. Perhaps Russell T. Davies might want to get in touch with Kennedy?]
Current Political Mudslinging Now Reduced to “You Hacked My Website!”
Stanford Advocate: “Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, locked in a battle with an anti-war challenger in the nation’s most closely watched primary race Tuesday, accused his opponent’s supporters of hacking his campaign Web site and e-mail system.”
The MeFites have plenty of evidence suggesting that this wasn’t a DoS attack. It may be possible that Joe didn’t pay his bills.
Meanwhle, the Lamont campaign has offered to send in their tech guy to fix the Leiberman website problem and offers a cached link to Leiberman at the top of the page. On a microcosmic level, I ask the Connecticut voters to consider this: would you prefer a man who freaks out, makes accusations and calls the DA when he can’t figure out his website problems or a man who offers to fix his competitor’s website as your Senator?
[RELATED: These signs are hilarious.]
Or Perhaps the Man Was Enthusiastic Whenever Paper Was Around
OGIC offers some fascinating excerpts from Anthony Powell’s Memoirs: “…Fitzgerald took a pen from his pocket, and a scrap of paper. On the paper he drew a rough map of North America. Then he added three arrows pointing to the continent. The arrows showed the directions from which culture had flowed into the United States. I am ashamed to say I cannot now remember precisely which these channels were: possibly the New England seabaord; the South (the Old Dominion); up through Latin America; yet I seem to retain some impression of an arrow lancing in from the Pacific. The point of mentioning this diagram is, however, the manner in which a characteristic side of Fitzgerald was revealed. He loved instructing. There was a schoolmasterly streak, a sudden enthusiasm, simplicity of exposition, qualities that might have offered a brilliant career as a teacher or lecturer at school or university.”
In Praise of Charles Willeford
Thanks to the coercive efforts of a certain someone, I have begun reading the works of the late Charles Willeford. I’m now almost done with Miami Blues, the first of Willeford’s Hoke Moseley books, and I’m kicking myself for not having heard of the guy before. (I was familiar with the 1989 film based on the book, which I enjoyed, but I had no idea it was based on a source. Willeford is best experienced on the page.)
Willeford was a mystery writer, but, unlike other criminal anthropologists, he dared to venture down some pretty batty avenues of human behavior. Consider the opening of Miami Blues, where “blithe psychopath” Freddy Frenger breaks the middle finger of a Hare Krishna at an airport simply because he is bothered by him. Much to the surprise of Frenger (and you have to love the way that this name connotes “finger”) and all concerned parties, the Krishna ends up dying of shock. And detective Hoke Moseley is on the case. But Moseley, while having a shrewd instinct for spotting an ex-con, is a terribly lazy man in denial of his investigative talents. He prefers to park his car on the lawn than find a parking spot.
What makes this book so good isn’t just these great behavioral ironies or the way that seemingly inconsequential violence transforms into a grand mess. Willeford is equally concerned with a batty precision for details, which reminded me very much of Murakami’s work. Having stolen a suitcase with a size 6 dress, Frenger then has the hotel clerk call up a prostitute who will fit the dress, so that he can use this dress as a commodity.
Also, I haven’t read any other novel that’s dared to reveal a character who can’t copulate through the usual orifice because he was so used to sodomy in the joint. Anyone who could whip up this scenario is both a ballsy and entertaining writer, a gleefully warped mind who deserves your attention.
This forthcoming approach to grit, which feels lived in and genuine, together with Willeford’s concentration on the cultural and economic forces disrupting Miami (and his characters’ oft racist reactions to it), is what makes Willeford’s work substantial enough for those who hover between that troubling threshold between mystery and literary fiction.
Incidentally, Willeford had initially penned a second Hoke Moseley book called Grimhaven, where Moseley killed his daughters. But the book was rejected because of this audacious move and remains, to this day, unpublished, with hard-core Willeford collectors offering considerable dinero for fourth-generation photocopies of the manuscript. Willeford would end up writing more Moseley books (Miami Blues was, after all, a strong seller), but I’m hoping that some indie publisher (Akashic, are you listening?) might find a way to get this published today. I think Willeford might be amused that even from beyond the grave, he still has the power to shake things up.
The Naughty Reading Photo Contest Finalists
Well, it took me about a year to get back to this. But I am a man of my word. I’m pleased to announce that the finalists of last year’s Naughty Reading Photo Contest have been announced!
They are:
1. Naughty Reading Entry #1
2. Naughty Reading Entry #4
3. Naughty Reading Entry #6
A poll has been set up on the sidebar for you to cast your vote. Which of these entries is the 2005 Naughty Reading Photo of the Year? The winner will, as promised, receive a $20 Powell’s gift card.
Vote smart, vote naughty. The polls close at 11:59 PM (or thereabouts) on Saturday, August 12, 2006.
Once we get this out of the way, I will begin proceedings for the Second Annual RotR Naughty Reading Photo Contest. Unlike my pals over at Galleycat, the contest will not be exclusive to the publishing industry. More to come!
In the meantime, congratulations finalists!
The Will Franken Podcast
I listened to the first installment this afternoon, and I have to say that local comedian Will Franken has a very promising comedy podcast. Alternating between lazy California social commentary to cultural obsession (perhaps too much, but he’s just starting out) to the crazed juxtaposition of a cheery guy working at a battered women clinic, Franken’s “Things We Did Before Reality” is a one-man sketch comedy that revives my closet hope that some podcasters out there might just revive old-style radio comedy for a new age of listeners.
A Boyle Manifesto
StorySouth: “But when you read Boyle’s fiction, you know the [Baby Boomer] generation for what it is: just a large number of individuals with individual stories and individual themes, all striving to live, love, and create something that will be remembered after they are gone. Thanks to the fiction of T. Coraghessan Boyle, the BB will be remembered in a much more truthful way than they could otherwise have any reason to hope for.” (via Dan Wickett)
Will They Get This Right?
Source material: Robert Sheckley, Harlan Ellison, Walter Mosley, and Robert Heinlein.
Thespians: Sam Waterson, Judy Davis, Malcolm McDowell, James Cromwell, and Brian Dennehy.
Sam Egan, who wrote many of the better episodes of the Outer Limits revival, is writing two of these. Stephen Hawking is providing introductions to each episode. This augurs well, but given the shaky quality of last year’s Masters of Horror, I still fear the worst.