News You Can Bruise for 2005 July

Update: This web page explains what the switch does but only in a tiny clause does it actually explain which setting is which. "Save (Normal)" is the setting I want, unless I start seeing a damp exterior, in which case I should switch to "Use (Damp Exterior)" to get rid of the damp exterior.

Manoj showed up! I'm pretty excited about this. Manoj was on the east coast for a while but he came back here to work for Google. I'm glad because Manoj is the model for a character in a story I'm writing and I want to keep him under close observation.

PS: Kevin, your cheese and cracker arrangement was a big hit. Thanks for helping me set up!

[0] Except for Jake's cover and semi-cover of Chickadee and Check Yourself (For Ticks)), which I have cunningly mirrored to boost my own ego.

The Lavender Hill Mob was okay but definitely the low point of the Alec Guinness comedies from Ealing. I believe we've seen them all now so I can say that. It started losing my interest after the caper was pulled off, and the ending was an interminable Laurel and Hardy-type chase sequence which made me not like the movie. But if I ignore that part it was definitely enjoyable. I was hoping there'd be more of a mob.

In non-awful news, my mother and Rachel are here, and today we went to 826 Valencia.

But Foreign Policy demonstrates Jake and his guitar and the rain alone in his bedroom and not even sounding as high-quality as stuff I've done that people ribbed me about afterwards. Leading me to believe that these seemingly artless recordings are actually microsecond samples of ambient noise, twisted into an approximation of the Berendan vocal cords like the Guns 'n' Roses Self-Similar Midi Synth. Just as the song lyrics have been constructed from the shattered hopes of people who asked the web for something and got Jake Berendes instead. Each song fulfils a search request while giving the listener the feeling that they have failed to find something.

Songs to watch out for as they climb the pop charts: "jla dreamer", "history of sour candy", "old lamborghinis", and the Matthew Barney-esque "synchromaids".

Let me quote the noted sage, "earlier version of myself":

Entry with link in it to follow.

The author figured that since Conan Doyle was sick of using the Holmes character, he could just steal it and use it in his own works (I wonder if you could use Holmes this way today.) But then the story's canonality was invalidated when Conan Doyle started writing Holmes stories again, claiming that Holmes didn't actually die. Retcon is a cruel mistress.

As previously noted, the illustration captions make a good story on their own:

“‘DR. JOHNSON’S POINT IS WELL TAKEN’”
“‘WHAT HAS ALL THIS GOT TO DO WITH THE QUESTION?’”
“POOR OLD BOSWELL WAS PUSHED OVERBOARD”
“THE STRANGER DREW FORTH A BUNDLE OF BUSINESS CARDS”
“THREE ROUSING CHEERS, LED BY HAMLET, WERE GIVEN”

Update: I ego-grepped the domain list and found "leonardispizza". Who dares claim that I am pizza? A search engine bait domain, that's who.

Dear Life in These United States
I sew plush squids and sharks and skates
And as these photos indicate
They're really great
Honest injun

Among my spices are many whole spices which I figured I would grind as needed to make them last longer. This has not worked out very well because I have found no good way to grind spices in small amounts. I got a tiny coffee grinder because that's what Alton Brown recommended, but you have to fill it to the top with spices to get a good grind, which defeats the purpose. Should I just buy a mortar and pestle?

Gabe Koerner was kind of odd, but my BBS was geared towards people who were kind of odd, so he fit right in. He was a big Star Trek nut, but so was I. "Ah," you might say, trying to look for the essential difference between him and me. "But Gabe was in fact such a Star Trek nut that he wrote fanfic Star Trek parodies." Which is also what I did. I thought Gabe was annoying sometimes, and that his Star Trek parodies were somewhat derivative of mine, but it's obvious in retrospect that I was also annoying at that age, and forensic analysis would reveal my own Star Trek parodies to be somewhat derivative of Robert I. Brayer's. So I don't think there was really any qualitative difference between my dysfunction and Gabe's.

However, my dysfunction remained mostly unnoticed in those pre-web days and even now manifests itself only on this obscure weblog, whereas Gabe's was captured on film in the hit independent film Trekkies, a film about Star Trek geeks and their awkward differences from consensus society. I haven't seen the movie but here's how Gabe describes himself on screen: "[S]o snyde [sic], so condescending and unappreciative. So damned whiny and anal retentive." Not a good foot to put forward.

Over the years I sometimes heard discussion of Trekkies, and Gabriel Koerner was always mentioned as the film's pinnacle of hopeless geekdom. Now, when you say that kind of thing about someone who used to call my BBS, it's like saying it about a member of my family, albeit a member of my family so distantly removed by blood that I probably don't really do anything about your saying it. Anyway, what could I say? The common Trekkies-derived perception of Gabe was not wholly incompatible with Gabe as I knew him; I just felt it was in bad taste to make a documentary about it.

But it turns out that Gabe doesn't need any lame "put up your dukes!" type defense from me, because he has managed to parlay his geekdom and his appearance in Trekkies (not to mention Trekkies II, which I think they missed a golden opportunity to tack a The Wrath Of onto the title) into a series of gigs making CGI models for science fiction TV shows and movies. He worked on the last two episodes of Enterprise (in fact, I think he was just about the only good thing about the last episode), and on the Serenity movie, and he's working on the Battlestar Galactica remake that's taking up 15 hours of my TiVo space. So without selling out to consensus society Gabe has made a place for himself. Here's his weblog where he posts occasional notes about his projects.

Once again Danny O'Brien's advice proves its worth. In fact, I think it needs to be given its own name for easier reference. Ideally something like "The O'Brien Heuristic" that sounds like a Star Trek reference in its own right.

The other day I got mail from Gabe letting me know that he and the rest of the Battlestar Galactica effects team are up for an Emmy. He has made me want to watch (part of) an awards show, something that has never happened before. Good luck, Gabe.

For instance, Catcher in the Rye. Boringest goddamned book I ever read. I also really hated Bless Me, Ultima, but that might have been because I was forced to read it in high school. The Goosebumps series: pure fluff. Etcetera. It would be useful if the book-banners consistently banned only stuff like Huckleberry Finn and A Wrinkle In Time, because then we could use their reactions as an oracle for literary quality, but unfortunately that doesn't work.