Category: Family

Hacking xoJane

May 23, 2012 /

Important Technology People have been calling RSS a dead technology for a couple years now, but I read more content via feed than ever—292 subscriptions in Google Reader, at the moment. But because my use case doesn’t get as much wheelgrease as it used to, a lot of sites will just throw one sitewide megafeed into their <head> tag and call it done, rather than allowing users to subscribe to substreams. They do this even when their site software supports subfeeds just fine!

Take a blogazine like xoJane. It’s produced by women, and the writing there is smart and honest and very funny. I was introduced to it when my twitter idol Julieanne Smolinski became a contributing editor. But while I knew I wanted to read all her columns, the only autosubscribable feed on her author page is the firehose of ALL xoJane content. That would overrun my Reader, and it would be a pain to sort out Ms. Smolinski’s posts, which are the guaranteed gold I’m after.

Fortunately, for certain values of “fortunately,” xoJane is built on Drupal, which some geek decided should let you subscribe to anything anywhere forever. To get a feed of a given author’s content there, you can construct a URL like this:

http://www.xojane.com/rss?author=Firstname%20Lastname&title=Firstname’s%20Posts

And then paste that into the “subscribe” box in whatever reader you use. For instance, here’s a Julieanne Smolinski feed, and here’s one for Kate C, whom I have recently discovered is also great.

Update 2012-08-07: WELP, xoJane broke their individual author feeds. The next-best solution, I suppose, is to follow Kate and Julieanne on their high-quality social media.

Straight By Fiat

February 16, 2012 /

I have this old favorite joke that almost no one else knows or gets, but I can’t stop thinking it’s funny, so I’m going to do my best to rid myself of it by the only method guaranteed to destroy humor: dissection.

Like many things stupid but great, and most things Devon Sawa, I would never have seen the 2002 comedy Slackers if not for its champion, my brother Ian. It’s a pretty slight movie and as teen comedies go it is not exactly shifting any paradigms, though it does feature some ringers in the cast, all of whom appear in the above clip. Yes, that’s Michael C. Maronna, Big Pete from Pete & Pete, playing a character (Jeff) whose sexuality is part of a slow-burning running gag throughout the movie. Here’s what makes it interesting: none of the jokes are homophobic. His friends know he’s gay and they’re fine with it. The target of the joke is repression, not sexual orientation, and it benefits greatly for that. (Note that this movie predates the genesis of Tobias Fünke by two years!)

Besides less-obvious targets, here are some things that I will always think are funny:

I don’t think the clip needs much context, but here it is just in case. Maronna, Sawa and Jason Segel are the scheming heroes, who have been milking the creepy Jason Schwartzman for money. Schwartzman comes to Maronna and Segel with evidence that Sawa has betrayed their confidence to his love interest (Jaime King). Upon seeing it, the guys are infuriated, and in a three-camera sitcom we would already know where this goes: they turn on Sawa together, then eventually they realize that Schwartzman is the real problem, kick him out and reunite. In fact, you can already see this playing out in Schwartzman’s head! Just before the clip begins, he sputters “he betrayed you! He stole my girl! He’s not our friend!” He’s transparency-oblivious character one.

Then Maronna starts his monologue, and it follows that scenario… for exactly five seconds, before veering off into his desperate fantasy of male bonding. He has rehearsed this speech, he has seen an opportunity, and now he siezes the moment to execute his pitch. He knows they will object–this sounds pretty gay!–but he has anticipated that, and before they can get a word in, addends that it is in fact not gay. Triumph. There is no way they can resist now.

In thirty seconds, Maronna covers all four of the humor angles listed above. The first three points are all basically about the tension between expectation and reality, which is also the root of all suffering, which in turn goes back to the old axiom that comedy is pain happening someone else. The magic of point four, commitment, is that he makes the other three completely implicit. Nobody hands him a straight line to set up the zinger. Nobody winks at the camera.* There’s a lot of trust in the audience here, and for me, at least, it pays off in a way that I’m still giggling at ten years later.

Okay, I think the frog is dead now. Mike Maronna is very talented and should get more work. This is all to explain why, whenever I express adulation bordering on the ecstatic for a male role model, I will make a sly face and add “but it’s not gay” after describing how I want to suck his cock.

* For a perfect example of how literally winking at the camera can undercut flawless commitment, see the last forty years of Dwight-and-Jim gags in The Office.

I am thirty now

May 7, 2011 /

Hand modeling by Kara.

There are two things in that picture. One of them is a FREAKING IPAD. Kara and her family got it for me for my birthday because they are ridiculous. I am still figuring out what it is for (besides giving me yet another platform on which to play Worms), but I already know that a) Flipboard is amazing and b) an iPad makes a much, much better laptop-analog than my poor phone. I’m typing this on it right now!

The other thing in the picture is a card from my Uncle John and Aunt Dana. I’ve told you about UJ’s birthday cards before, but this one is something else. You should click on this high-res version to get a better look.

Cross-section.

It’s covered in names from that thing I did for a while, which my aunt and uncle have always supported to an unwarranted degree. I can’t remember whether I told them I was bringing the project to a close, but I think I must have to get such a perfect gift! I’m framing it.

I started writing this on Friday evening, thinking that my awesome birthday was pretty much over, but I was mistaken. The entry immediately following this will elaborate.

Bruce

January 8, 2011 /

These days I carry around most of the information in the world in my pocket. Ten years ago I was still thrilled to have my dorm-room connection and a Dell desktop. But a few years before that, I didn’t have anything you could really call the Internet. Instead I had Bruce.

Bruce was my eldest cousin, fifteen years my senior, and I revered him. I was interested in sci-fi and fantasy books; Bruce knew about them. I liked board games; Bruce won them all. He had the sharpest wit I have ever encountered, but he was also unfailingly kind, and I never heard him use it to be cruel to anyone.

That included me, even at my most juvenile and annoying, when he spent a while living in our basement and attending classes at EKU. Remembering those days now, I would have been unable to stand me. Bruce listened, and laughed at my jokes, and gave me things.

That was another thing about him: he was never attached to material possessions, and generous with them almost to the point of carelessness. At one point he gave me what must have been nearly his entire collection of gaming books, obviously something in which he’d invested years and hundreds of dollars. He was offhand about it, as if he’d found an odd thing I might like in his pocket.

I treasured those books. For years I could reliably be found in a corner paging through a banged-up hardback with monsters on the cover, spending far more time reading them than actually playing, and blissful to be doing so. I’m sure I didn’t thank him enough, but I hope he saw how much they meant to me.

But if Bruce helped doom me to geekdom, he also rescued me. I was undersized for a long time, and at one point I lagged so far behind the curve that Mom was consulting growth-specialist doctors. When he heard about that, Bruce took a long look at me, then told me to finish my dinner every night instead of leaving most of it on the plate. I listened, and that was when my growth spurt finally hit.

It shames me to say that Bruce and I drifted apart. He waited most of his life for a kidney transplant, and got one, only to have his body reject it a few years later; his health was never the same after that, and his illness frightened me (I had another male role model who got very sick, you see). We had political differences, and the geographical distance between us grew as well. But his patience, kindness and generosity never changed.

I didn’t find the time to see Bruce on my most recent trip back to Kentucky, a few weeks ago, and I will spend the rest of my life regretting that.

When somebody you love dies you’re supposed to put together all the good words you can about him, and assemble an image for your memory that omits their shortcomings and sharp edges. But I can’t do that, because I see now that I was always the one coming up short. All my memories of my cousin are of a man who was better to me than I ever deserved.

I’m sorry, Bruce. I miss you.

More cooking stuff

August 21, 2010 /

I have these two recipes in text files on my desktop, which is dumb because I can’t see my desktop when I need to use them and I am separated from my desktop by three hours and a mountain range. Both are extremely healthy and require a sophisticated palate to appreciate.

Dirty Chicken
(so named by Kara & co on True Blood night; brought to us from Kentucky by Monica)

1 cup shredded or cubed mozzarella
1/2 cup cheap ranch dressing
1/2 cup hot wing sauce (yes, you can buy this in bottles at Safeway)
8 oz cream cheese
1 10-12 oz can chicken (like canned tuna, only… it’s chicken)

Mash up in a glass or ceramic bowl. Microwave for three or four minutes, stirring every minute. Eat with chips. Serves party.

This next one is what I made for months when I wanted potatoes until I discovered an amazing secret recipe for perfect french fries, which I am not going to link to because it is too awesome. MY THIRD-BEST POTATO RECIPE: I HEREBY BEQUEATH IT.

Boiled Fried Potatoes

About 8-10 new potatoes, either Yukon gold or red
3 Tbsp butter
Kosher salt
1 Tbsp thyme
1/2 tsp white pepper
Water

You need a seasoned cast-iron skillet for this because otherwise they’ll stick like demons.

Mash up a tablespoon of the salt and the thyme with a mortar and pestle. Scrub the potatoes and chop them into 2-3 little discs per potato, cutting off the ends so both sides have an exposed surface. Place the potatoes in a single layer on the skillet, add just enough water to cover them, turn the burner to medium-high and add the mixed salt and thyme and the butter. Then wait for the water to all boil off.

When it’s gone–you will know because the tenor of the hissing sound has changed and the bubbles look different–turn the heat down to medium. Continue to fry the potatoes, flipping once and moving the interior potatoes to the sides of the pan once the first side is golden and crusty. When both sides are golden and crusty, add more salt and pepper, then eat. This serves about two hungry people.

NOTE: You can substitute olive oil for the butter but it’s not as bad for you.

Attention conservation notice

February 3, 2010 /

I know I’m kind of harping on this, but I remain really upset and angry about the Citizens United decision, and it would appear I am not alone. Public Citizen and three other organizations have launched Free Speech for People, a campaign to fix the problem, constitutionally or otherwise. Even if you don’t feel like signing their petition or throwing some money at them, they’ve got a blog that I hope will be a good clearinghouse for news on the fight.

Uncle John has made the case that requiring full disclosure of corporate campaign spending would be a good compromise solution–that transparency would allow voters to simply turn away from candidates if they didn’t like where their money was coming from. I respect that opinion, but I really couldn’t disagree more.

We already have disclosure requirements that the decision didn’t affect, and they haven’t yet solved anything. Disclosure didn’t keep Max Baucus from getting the tiller on health care reform after taking four million dollars from the health care industry. It didn’t keep Mitch McConnell from taking three hundred thousand from coal and then, coincidentally, fighting to keep mine owners from having to measure mercury discharge. It’s already a shock when an entrenched politician manages to say a few stern words about a regressive, destructive industrial backer; actual voting that way is unheard of. Doesn’t that indicate our ingrained acceptance that our representatives’ ballots are already purchased?

About half the people who voted against Obama didn’t believe he was born in the United States. A quarter of those, in turn, believed that he was born in Hawaii, but that Hawaii was not a state. What does that mean? That people don’t vote on passive facts; they vote on what they hear and see. Money isn’t speech, it’s volume, and when you turn the volume up too high, it distorts.

My sister got married!

January 4, 2010 /

I have to write about that, but first I have to pull some wedding pictures off the camera, which is way over there.

So instead, a quick navel-gaze: according to fan mail and a vague sense of the Ommatidia Facebook community, my writing tends to attract people who are a) very clever and gifted and b) much, much younger than me. Like, around a decade younger than me, because a lot of them are in late high school or early college.

Does this say something about the genre-trappings of the stories, the methods by which fandom propagates, or just the appeal of the format? The hoary journalistic trope to fall back on here is a bunch of rumbling about Kids These Days and Short Attention Spans and Nothing Longer than a Text Message, but I am resisting that because it’s dumb.

I suspect the reason is simpler: many of my favorite books are YA novels, because those are the best ones to read if you like stories where people do stuff and things happen. I write stories that I think I would like, and the influence of YA authors is heavy upon them. By definition, then, they appeal to young adults.

I think that is awesome. I wonder how long I can keep getting away with it?

Speaking of decades and youth, I’ve been a fan of Erika Moen’s for almost ten years now, since Scott Thigpen linked to Vera Brosgol who in turn linked to her. (Man, look at the arc of those three careers alone!) Erika just ended DAR, her autobiographical webcomic; it was sometimes explicit, always brutally honest, and very, very funny over its six-year run. I’ll miss reading it.

But I’m very excited about her new projects, in part because one of them is a graphic novel that I’m scripting! This is the most exciting thing that has ever happened! Erika broke the news first, and I’m not going to give too many more details than she did: it’s called Grimm, it’s YA, and it will probably run around six to eight “issues.” Not sure yet whether she’ll be posting a weekly page or one whole arc at a time a la Octopus Pie. Very sure that it is going to be great!

Three things make a roundup

December 31, 2008 /

In which I already break a promise

July 30, 2008 /

I know I said I wasn’t going to tell you every time we updated the podcast–I reserve that for spamming Facebook and Twitter–but seriously, you gotta listen to episode ten. One of the not-so-secret purposes behind the inception of the Hour of Knowledge was to help Stephen build a demo reel for his voice acting career, and this week’s show is a glorious vocal achievement. Even after engineering the audio (which means listening to every show, in chunks, about six hundred times), I still can’t make it through his half-improvised monologue without cracking up.

And Mom, this one doesn’t have any cusses!