- Your package has finally arrived. Open it. It is a refurbished MacBook!
- Boot it up to see if it works. It does! Have Maria show you neat tricks in OS X.
- Snip open the mylar packets of RAM and new hard drive that you bought to make this thing more than a toy. Crack the case and immediately fall prey to the shit hell middle screw of death.
- Break Maria’s screwdriver trying to get it out. Yes, the screwdriver. Don’t even scratch the screw.
- Become very irritable and take it out on the dog. Buy more screwdrivers and, in a fit of bad decision-making, WD-40.
- Screw will suddenly decide to pop out about six hours later. Replace hard drive and RAM. Upgrade mood.
- Reinstall OS X. Install Boot Camp. Try to set up partition for Windows.
- You have erased OS X! GOTO 7
- Obtain Microsoft Windows™ XP Professional patented encrypto-mathic secure Protectivation Key™ by advanced method of asking a couple dudes.
- Install Windows. Accompany Maria to hospital (she is working; note that in current state of health she should possibly be a resident). Find Wifi. Post.
- Profit!
Category: Obsessions
Court-mandated Studio 60 post
Okay, Sorkin. That time you set the bar.
Now clear it.
I have a new teevee show
Recent invitees to my birthday party: Kari and Grant.
The Law of Meta
To do meta well, you must first do well the thing within. Checkerboard Nightmare did metahumor and it worked, because Kris Straub was already a skilled humorist; by contrast, almost all webcomics attempt it within their first couple of weeks and fail, because their creators haven’t developed any skill at comedy. So you can see why I’m worried about Studio 60.
Not that Aaron Sorkin’s not a funny writer–with Mitch Hurwitz out, he’s the funniest writer on network television–but he’s not a sketch writer. Sketch comedy is hard, and even harder to do consistently. The best writers in the history of the format have had a hit rate of maybe one in five; even in the age of viral video, the only success Saturday Night Live has found on the intertube was a fluke that relied on hip name-dropping and the tired joke of white guys and gangsta poseury. And that’s out of what, three hundred skits a year? William Hung has a better batting average.
Even if Studio 60 focuses mostly on the weekly downtime and not the show proper, eventually it’s going to have to back up its premise that Matt Albie is good at his job. That means showing us a sketch at least every few episodes. Last night they went as far as showing us the cold open, and it was just a joke they made five minutes earlier repeated to music. It was a nice dramatic moment, with the orchestra and the bold statement of purpose. But it wasn’t funny the second time through, or the third, or the tenth.
A special case of the Law of Meta is the Law of Writing A Character Who is a Writer. The law is: don’t. Doing so almost invariably turns into massive self-indulgence and, worse, annoys me. Even Sports Night couldn’t escape that toward the end. And given that Studio 60 is already nicking from SN (homage to Felicity Huffman, fights with Standards and Practices, I understand next episode the power goes out), well, you understand why I’m worried again.
But I want to see the next episode now.
Remember when I said my family was pirates again? This year I had a camera. Coming soon: proof.
Other people that write good
UJ wrote a fantastic response to my “Christ of the Barricades” challenge, and Will wrote a prequel to Beloit, saved here from the LJ feed:
Tarnished as it is, the dirty chrome armour of the Heliocrashers shines as they blast through the wall: Erythrophobia zaps at a guard, but canon says that sonoluminescence doesn’t cause bubble fusion. So she punches him through a wall.
The other ‘crashers are covering her while she sets a charge against the generator’s critical weak point when canon oozes out of a grate and tears Erythrophobia in half. The charge doesn’t detonate because canon says they use fusion to fly, not fight: instead, her top half flies into a duct and her suit’s failing containment does the job just as well.
And then there’s stuff like Sumana’s MC Masala, which… you know about MC Masala, right? And Leonard is getting the kind of rejection letters most of us would kill for, for a story you will (when you get to see it) kill to have come up with.
There’s no unifying characteristic between the amazing writers with whom I associate, no New School or Movement, even though I keep trying to assign one. I guess I’m just going to have to publish all you guys?
Baudrillard would actually get a kick out of this whole thing
The phrase “Christ of the Barricades” popped into my head this evening and won’t leave. I knew I didn’t invent it, but my usual sources for cultural context nearly failed me–Maria hadn’t heard it, nor had Wikipedia, and Google gave me only one result. That result led me to historian Frank Paul Bowman, who wrote a book in French called Le Christ des barricades in 1987. Yes, in French, and no, it doesn’t appear to be available in translation.
Putting the phrase in French and applying it to 1789-1848 (the book’s subtitle) certainly places it in context, but that only makes me want to read more. Unfortunately, I know from painful experience that academic texts with intriguing titles end up being, too often, boring and labored with odd extended rants about Disneyland. Also I don’t know French. So I’ll probably never read Le Christ des barricades.
But that’s what we have participatory media for, I suppose. What does “Christ of the Barricades” mean to you? In 101 words?
Sumana, is this the party that bored you?
Hey, look guys! Guys, look! A major label is sponsoring a P2P service! It’s KillAweCellent! Let’s look at all you have to gain by switching from your current P2P network:
- Download one of literally hundreds of songs, in just hours, from another QTrax user!
- That means hours of fun avoiding “rollover to annoy” Flash ads for the Motorola BoxKuttr!
- Then listen to your music a certain number of times!
- And every time you listen, there’s a flashing ad on the screen telling you how to pay more money to listen to it again, or pay a monthly subscription fee!
- And you can’t put it on your iPod!
- Or listen to it in Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media or MusicMatch!
- L-Linux? Gnrt! Mpf! GnaHA HA HA HA! That was pretty funny. You’re funny!
- Our poor, hungry artists get compensated! Where by “compensated” we mean “a fraction of the profit we make off the ad displayed while you’re downloading, which was already less than one cent!”
- Now, if you have ever used any other P2P network, you will be aware that certain software tools will break the DRM on QTrax songs and allow you to listen to them as long as you want. The tool for QTrax files, called “mpq2mp3,” will be available roughly ten days before the service launches!
- Don’t get it or use it!
- Because we’ll still try to sue you!
So what have we got here? A service that offloads bandwidth and hosting costs onto you, that allows you to do what you were already doing, only with broken legs and a leaky gut wound, and you can watch ads or pay to do it. Sounds like a BitTorrent killer, guys! WHOO HOO! Champagne enemas all around!
No one outside of EMI will ever use QTrax.
Been a while
My Uncle John brings news of Sigurdur Petursson’s official food supplier.
I am hyperventilating
A secret source with the initials “David Clark” brought me first the rumor, then the confirmation: Brick will be showing at the Baxter Avenue Theatres this Friday, June 2, at 12:50, 3:10, 5:30, 7:50 and 10:05. Normally I’d want to see it as soon as I left work, but I’d also like to see it with Maria, who has to electrocute children until after 8:00, and anyway I bet this is a movie better seen after dark.
SO! If you live in or around Louisville and love either a) me or b) good nasty detective stories, please show up at the Baxter for the 10:05 show! It will be a party! I will buy your popcorn!