Category: Pulverbatch

Three things make a roundup

I cannot avoid using the word “viral” here and I’m sorry.

Somyr Perry, whom we know from the following clause has fantastic taste in writing, discovered Ommatidia and made a meme out of it on her blogging community, Open Salon, which as far as I can tell is Livejournal for real journalists. Most of the posts are getting tagged or collected (except the ones that aren’t), and some of them are really excellent, that last in particular. You are awesome, Open Saloners! Now buy my book.

Emblematism

Barack Obama can do more pullups than me.

“Two staffers had just passed this site and done two pull-ups. Not to be outdone, Obama did three with ease, dropped and walked out to make a speech.”

–Callie Shell

In August of 2005 I added two keywords to my personalized Google News page: “creative commons” and “obama.” It had been a year since his convention address, and it had become clear that the man simply wasn’t fading. I also wrote a journal entry, never posted, about the fact that plans to assassinate his character had already begun. “Opposition research” has a long lead time; there are folders stuffed with scandal about people who never even receive nominations, but we saw every last scrap from the file on Obama, real and imaginary.

I woke up this morning with sarcastic headlines at the ready: “Relieved Obama dons headscarf, ululates, brandishes AK-47.” “Secret Service orders pre-emptive strike against Atlanta.” “Iraq declares victory.” Cynicism is playing catchup with the unrepentant joy of last night (though even that was tempered by disappointment at Mitch McConnell and Prop 8). But at least, for once, it’s not the other way around.

In April, I drove almost literally from coast to coast across the United States–from Winston-Salem, North Carolina to San Francisco, California–in nine days and a tiny car, packed up to my eyes. I was alone for most of each day, between eight and fourteen hours on the road. I listened to podcasts for company, and music when I wanted to sing, but in between I listened to Dreams from my Father.

That kind of trip would be a transformative experience for anyone. I’d only even been a licensed driver for six months. I’m sure I’m displaying any number of issues here that tie into my own lost father, my long-delayed exit from adolescence, and the way we approach elections as the process of choosing new parents. But if nothing else, I can at last say that I chose this President, and he is a writer who does voices when he reads aloud.

I wonder what that will be like?

Anyone? Anyone?

The other day I ripped off a 2007 Lyttle Lytton winner and wrote Rooney, a vision of the latter days of a movie which I always thought held sinister undertones. After I posted it, I realized that the premise really could probably stand further explanation, and I was not wrong! First Peter wrote Cameron Frye, and then William followed up with Rooney again:

Rooney is on the run.

It had started as a careful stroll by the river to dump the rifle: then a quiet ride home to find some people in ‘Save Ferris’ shirts quietly breaking into his house as he pulled up.

But Rooney was nothing if not prepared. Six months later and they’re still looking for the ‘Man who killed Chicago’. Meanwhile, Rooney’s shaved his moustache, pays in cash, and has a California Driver’s License that proclaims him to be

“Edward Rooney?”

He turns, halfway to his car, to find Sloane Peterson with a ‘Save Ferris’ lapel pin. And a gun.

Sometimes I really am tempted to turn on WordPress comments on Anacrusis, but come on, the LJ community is already so much fun!

Somebody Comes to Google

When I first heard that Cory Doctorow had published a book called Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, I thought, aha! I get that reference! It points to a list of archetypal story plots that I have seen on the Internet. How clever.

Now I actually need to find that list again and it appears to have been Googlebombed out of existence, thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Doctorow. Even with his surname eliminated from the search results, my google kwon do is failing me. Does anybody remember what I’m talking about?

Google’s making their own browser! Golly! Neat! Another goddamn rendering engine for me to test my CSS in!

Whee.

(I’ll probably like it.)

“It’s actually Jacobean rather than Shakespearean.”

Ian and I are a bit obsessed with Brian Cox, and I was very happy to notice that the AV Club had done a Random Roles bit with him (an excellent interview schema, which takes the annoying bolded reporter-voice almost entirely out of it and just leaves the meat of the subject rambling about cool stuff). I was not disappointed. You might say I was reappointed. I mean, read this stunningly clear and concise evaluation of American film versus British theatre, prompted by a little question about his career arc post-Rob Roy:

If you grow up in these islands—especially where I grew up in these islands—the theatre is very powerful, very potent. It’s a part of our heritage. Our culture is really a theatrical culture, not a cinematic culture. Feudal societies don’t create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don’t fall into ‘Everybody in their place and who’s who,’ and all that. But the theatre’s full of that. Especially in Shakespeare. So in a way, it behooves you as a British actor to try and master the classics and become a classical player. I got caught up in it. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I was too late.

“You see, the free cinema, the cinema of Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole, Alan Bates, Tom Courtenay… That all ended by the time I came along. So I went to work in the Royal Court, because they weren’t going to be making any more of those movies.”

Tech Tip!® Minute

Remember, dear reader and also future Brendan, an attribute that’s hyphenated in CSS is camelCapped in Javascript! So background-image becomes style.backgroundImage. For no real reason except psychotic, alias-hating adherence to meaningless language conventions.

While I’m at it, ROLLOVER HIGHLIGHT IMAGES ARE GODDAMN POINTLESS. Nobody cares about them except graphic designers who have never written a web page, and even they ignore them on every site but the ones they themselves mocked up.

(Yes, I know rollovers need not make use of Javascript. These two blurts are only sort of related.)

Punch line!