Puck teasing
2011-01-28
The Confessions Of A Former Adolescent Puck Tease
But there was to be no life-changing climactic scene at my hockey game, no angry announcements by Au Revoire, no black roses thrown out on the ice, no outbursts or outings or murders. What happened was, when we came out from the locker room to start the third period he was simply, poof, gone from the stands, my friends and my coaches and my parents all none the wiser. I guess it makes sense — what could he have said, really, what could he have done, that wouldn’t have made him look like the bad guy, the predator, the creep, when in fact the real villain was me?
[…]
Isn’t that the ultimate blessing of the Internet? Sure, it lets you lie and deceive. But it also lets you confess, and draw a small community to your confession, and find, eventually, a clean, well-lighted place for your real self.
base64 is the devil
2011-01-24
Why You Should Never Search For Free WordPress Themes in Google or Anywhere Else
Out of the top 10 search results on Google for WP themes, 8 have themes that include bogus code.
via Metafilter
Little Big Numbers
OR: Alec – How to be an Artist, and why some stories are just too fucking massive not to be told
As a writer of some of the best autobiographical fiction around, Campbell’s talent for using the right story at the right time has been carefully honed over the years, so it’s no surprise that account of the story of Big Numbers adds to the totality of How to be an Artist. The factors that prevented the series’ completion have just the right mixture of the predictable and the arbitrary, the personal and the financial, to bring Campbell’s narrative home, and you find yourself truly appreciating the depth of Campbell’s craft when you figure this out.
On a third, even more careful reading, however, you realised that How to be an Artist doesn’t just contain the story of the unmaking of Big Numbers, but that it actually is Big Numbers. Or at least, it’s Campbell’s version of it – let’s call it Little Big Numbers, for silliness’s sake.
ALEC: The Years Have Pants has my highest recommendation. At the very least, it’s very thick and will prop open the stoutest of doors.
“the ultimate defeat is never to have lived”
2010-11-05
To Live (or Life After the Deluge)
For as Watanabe said in the film when asked why he wasn’t angry at being stymied and turned down over and over again by the politicians and bureaucrats who preferred the status quo of doing nothing rather than taking action to help others:
I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.
“This cannot possibly be right”
2010-11-03
Did somebody just try to buy the British government?
I have come to the absolute conclusion that foundation X [sic] is completely genuine and sincere and that it directly wishes to make the United Kingdom one of the principal points that it will use to disseminate its extraordinarily great wealth into the world at this present moment, as part of an attempt to seek the recovery of the global economy.
How is it as a lampshade though?
2010-11-02
The lampshade that drives its owners mad: Strange truth behind 20th century’s most disturbing object
The lampshade’s current proprietor […] won’t keep it in his home and says that, even now that it’s here, safely in storage, he feels more at ease when he knows the shade is shut away in its white cardboard box. The longer I am left alone with it, standing by a window as the daylight is beginning to fade, the more I can understand why.
Blocks and lines
2010-10-18
James Elkins: How to Look at Mondrian
He wasn’t especially careful with his repainting, which is a clue to how closely he expected people to look. Art historians have noticed his change of mind, and it has been said that before the early 1920s, Mondrian thought of his compositions as part of an infinite plane, which could go on indefinitely in all directions. Starting with paintings like this one, the canvas is the whole object, the whole universe, and there is nothing beyond it.
(via Metafilter)
Zap, pow, boom
2010-10-07
Margaret Atwood & Ursula K. Le Guin – Space Canon
[…] they’ve evidently been friends for years.
[…]
Le Guin works very comfortably under the mantle of science fiction, having penned some of the classics of the genre, while Atwood waffles, preferring to stay in the mainstream literary conversation.
With respect to SF, Le Guin is invariably right and Atwood is almost always wrong.
Atwood: “What about Star Wars?”
Le Guin: “There have been really few science fiction movies. They have mostly been fantasies, with spaceships.”
and yet, the National Post is still worse
2010-09-30
Reinstate Rick Salutin << Murray Dobbin's Blog
That the Globe would fire him is indicative of the final stage of the Canadian political and economic elite’s betrayal of the country’s traditions and values. It’s all just business now and anything that isn’t business – certainly anything that questions it’s “natural” dominance – is simply dispensable. I can just imagine the suits at the Globe having a brief conversation about Rick’s column: “By the way, why are still publishing Rick Salutin?” Long silence. “Rick who?” I wonder if any of these guys ever even read him. It reminds me of a Star Trek episode where a representative of a race completely dedicated to trade and commerce, looks at Captain Picard who is trying to engage him in civilized conversation and says “Why are we speaking?”
Indeed, why are we speaking?
via rabble.ca
Good advice for anyone.
2010-09-30
Kieron Gillen’s Workblog >> On Leaving RPS
What they don’t tell you is that they don’t pick the writers randomly. From that mob of people who want to be games journalists, they can pick. And, because these are not stupid people, they pick the best available. They’re not going to pay for better writing, but since it doesn’t cost them any more, they may as well have it.
In other words, don’t think about the fact you’re replaceable. Think about the fact that out of the enormous mob of people who wanted your job, you’re the one who got it. No matter how much they treat you with disdain, they actually think you’re the best.
In other words, have some pride.
