The Colbert Nation The #1 Colbert Report Fan Site // fake fansite for colbert report done by the show itself ["by the show" =?] // unoffical, yet stunningly busted-looking Colbert Report fan-site [busted?]
Answers from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Colbert_Report: don't yet know about "busted-looking" but as for done by the show itself:
4 Colbert Nation
What do people know about Colbert Nation? It says it's unofficial and claims to be written by a man named Avery, but Colbert referenced it twice on tonight's show (Show #2) and it has a letter from him on it and a link to it from comedy central's website. It wouldn't suprise me to know that Colbert does the whole thing himself.
I would almost bet my life on the fact that the website is run by someone with the show, if not Colbert himself. My first clue was when the first show aired I went to the comedy central site and it already had a link to the "unofficial" site.
The domain is owned and hosted by Comedy Central. I simply assumed it was a joking poke at astroturfing { formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities } and written by TCR writers. --19 October 2005
A few weeks ago, most of the material that's on Colbert Nation now was on the Comedy Central Colbert Réport website - including Colbert's letter naming Avery Gordon as his webmaster, and a blurb from Gordon describing being tapped for the job. So it's safe to say it's official. --19 October 2005
That seems right. Okay, official website it is. --October 19, 2005
indeed: Colbert Nation official website

and also among Wikipedia's external links:

Del.icio.us RSS of Colbert TVlog posts

Unofficial one-trick Colbert Report website

NPR's Fresh Air With Terry Gross Pre-Debut Interview from April 8, 2005
NPR's Fresh Air With Terry Gross Post-Debut Interview from December 7, 2005
ooh check out Colbert with Terry Gross

What did I think of the Seminary Co-op?
Very good, although some deeply worrying books on display in some corners of the place. [???]I did like its claustrophobic air, though - wasn't at all what I expected, given how most US bookshops are.
Great selection, though - several I wanted to buy but decided to not blow every cent I had (not to mention inflicting charges for heavy luggage!). Good collection of Roger Scruton, which was good to see.
Posted by: Blimpish 24 May 2005 at 05:48
http://misspentlife.blogs.com/blog/2005/05/star_wars_1.html
These search terms have been highlighted: seminary co op used to

asking rh what people try to do when playing name a good band name
I haven't tht that was fun til today. today I said hey that wold make a good band name after saying site specific and this is work related. "Oh I love This Is Work-Related, their songs are so great!"
rh says when we were shorter and lived by the water is too long but I say one of the things people do is choose a name that will not fit easily into "last night we went to see ___" or make a joke in that like what people are talking about (mine!, rh says I cld market that)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22MAKES+A+GOOD+BAND+NAME%22&btnG=Google+Search

Video games come up a lot (and I saw this when I was teaching) as an obsession, becuase of the very short, tight feedback loop. That can become addictive to people who take in many streams of information quickly (as ADD people do); the instant feedback and fast pace feels about right. It's oddly satisfying in a druglike way.
It can become really negative because video gaming is a closed loop. Nothing about a person is likely to change in a good way as a result of gaming. It also encourages an illusion of control and mastery that sometimes seems to engender frustration when the gaming addict tries to deal with real problems in real life.I plead guilty to using MetaFilter, my email, and MetaChat as a fast-paced feedback loop sometimes. To keep it marginally healthier, I try to limit my internet activities to reading, writing, researching, and interpersonal communication, so that there will at least be some content knowledge or social network building that results. THis way I feel that I am connected to the world and open to change from it, rather than just stimulating my brain on a hamster-wheel cycle.I found gaming to be ultimately a waste of time, since once the game is over you walk away unimproved as a person, having lost hours of your life. ~up til here i'm with. but if you enjoy it, i think it's fine. don't need to be improving. (~acquiring)
posted by miko 25 February 13:17

"So much for never leaving her" YES!!!!! The little weasel. He could have stayed he could have held her in his arms and conforted her. Waited until the sobbing died down and made light of it. But no, takes his ineffective dick and storms out.
I dunno about comforting her, but yeah I was thinking his love-you-forever--never-leave-you stupidity was showed up by "boy when I'm wrong about people" - dumb dumb.
-What did he think would come of him and Meredith? His sense of entitlement and pity just makes me want to shake him.
- He should have asked her what was wrong. He should have stopped and let her talk. He should have been her friend at the very least, instead of storming out.
-George sucks.A woman starts crying during sex, and you're supposedly in love with her, and you get all huffy and stomp out? Talk about self-absorbed! And his self-pitying speeches to Cristina made me want to punch him.
-Yeah really, he's so in love with but because she didn't say oh please go down on me again your so much better than Derek, he gets all pissy, runs away, and moves out.
- I don't really think George knew what to do. He never seemed to expect her to actually sleep with him. I think he thought he would go and tell her, she would say no, and he would be crushed and have to move on. But she didn't, she took his shirt off. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Meredith deserves any more blame in this than George. But having the girl you like actually sleep with you and then when you are trying to make her happy she starts crying? I think most people would probably just want to be on any planet but the same one as her right then. ~
--If we are supposed to think that Derek's somehow conflicted between his commitment and his love for Meh they've left too much of that on the editing room floor. But when PD was laughing at/with Addison he was irresistable.

Talk:Hipster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hipster of 1990 onward are more "Hippie" than the real hippies were in the 1970's. ... How exactly is Beth Orton a notable contemporary hipster? ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hipster - 60k
read the talk page along with the article.


unrelated / ides moment: tvwop (Colbert, Boston Legal forums), mefi/cha ~,via rw -
what we have here.

when i scrolled past the link polybonded hipster coat, i knew i had to click it. when did it become acceptable to label a coat as a "hipster" coat? yes, i'm too old now to be talking about "cool" and the idea of cool and the right words to use for things. those sorts of discussions begin to become less interesting as you escape from your mid-20's. i can't help it in this case. "hipster." that's one of those words that only works when you toss it around semi-derisively. and now it's being used to label a coat?
www.balgavy.com/blog/marcblog/2005/01/everything_gets_a_label

Q: A friend of mine recently called me a “hipster,” and, I’m sorry, but I take offense to that. What’s so wrong with being a hipster? I mean, isn’t being interested in cool things, well, a good thing? dc.
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/the_nonexpert_hipster.php pretty dumb, too bad.
and 'called me' means said it AS an insult?otherwise this reads: a friend said I was something that I am pretty happy to be.

Hipster is the new fascist — you heard it here third. Just as '60s hippies labeled any enemies (real or imaginary) "fascists," "hipster" has become the new cultural bogeyman, always there wherever you turn ('cuz they get into all the cool parties before you, natch).
Flak Magazine: They Don't Love You Like We Do, Tracks 16-20, 02.03.04

not only is this, say, not as funny as the catbirdseat's Hipster Bingo -
parliament cigarettes.
high school sports t-shirt.
hoodie.
pumas. too small sweater. 70s ski vest.
___________________________
also, Guide To Indie Hair
funny, the grammar makes it funny:
Not indie-rock anymore, because of the hair is too long, THAT'S WHY.

MonkeyFilter How to Be a Hipster
First off, if you're not offended by being called a hipster, you're not a hipster.

I get paid to spend time with hipsters (I'm a rock writer), and this is written by someone who obviously can't keep his subcultures straight. First off, if you're not offended by being called a hipster, you're not a hipster. Second, fuckin' Moby? Malltronica is not with the hipster cred, comprende? Third, clear malt beverages are signifiers for metrosexuals, not hipsters. I know that sometimes it's confusing, what with the overlap between gay fashion and irony, but yer Schmeernoff ain't hip unless you're in a fuckin' ad. Which isn't hip. Unless it's in Vice. Who represent hipster assholes. ...more bunk crap, confusing consumer youth trends with, well, being hip. Sure, indier-than-thou is the boardgame of choice for hipsters. ...buying the Volkswagon doesn't protect your hipster cred. In fact, if you have a Volkswagon, you're no longer hip. You're a fucking well-dressed yuppie.
posted by js at 08:55PM UTC on September 30, 2004

I really liked this thread's earlier stuff, but now it's gone totally mainstream. hee.
posted by flashboy
Pfft. It was mainstream right off the bat. Mainstream where I come from hee, anyway.
posted by middleclasstool
Where I live, we're going through a big revival thing for the original threads that were doing this years ago, which is when I first got into them. Yeah, this one's pretty heavily influenced by that stuff. Y'know. heehee!
posted by flashboy

///oh and also flashboy earlier, he likes this joke, i don't mind: I know people who've done much better hipster parody sites than this. You probably wouldn't have heard of them, though, they're pretty underground and edgy.

Hunting the wild hipster. worth clicking-
posted by rocket88 at 09:41PM

I WAS BORN IN A SMALL TOWN IN INDIANA. ONE TIME I SAWR A BLIMP.
posted by mosessmith at 3:56 PM to...
My mom read it and thinks it's good. - 2 hours ago

on the agenda---

from tv today, 2 specials on A&E (on thx to rg here):
1. Ozzy Osbourne
2. Inside Polygamy

so 1: I've seen, like on gofugyourself, that Kelly Osbourne and maybe Jack? are publicly commented on, but I did not know there was a *recent* tv show of their life - cameras in their home. me to r - so this predate/saged all the current reality tv? r - no. oh, it's now... I guess I was thinking Osbourne = 70s (r- & lated 60s). and now Ozzy is well liked by 'the establishment' - clip of Bush recognizing him at an event "mom loves your stuff." ? r - he's loveable.
so read about the Osbournes... one daughter was not in the show, she was 16 she says and ~ wanted privacy (so did she live elsewhere?)

also, not really related, but group w/ Ozzy Osbourne over against topic of polygamy ans item of 'sicko marriage contract' on smokinggun:
"hipster" - talking w/ dB last nite after art show about what this subculture is and nobody calls themselves hipsters or scenesters do they (why not?) although "indie" ok. first of all about the music? dB-interactn char by lack of given cues. huh.

2: polygamy is interesting why/how? (I'm interested in new hbo show Big Love with Jeanne Triplehorn, Chloe Sevigne, Gennifer Goodwin as three wives) -- issues of jealousy/sharing/community. and tied up with incest.. this was a two hour show. see AETV.com it said at end. interviews with families in and leaders of "the true living church" = TLC ~as opposed to the church of latter day saints LDS = Mormon church. belief that a man must have 3 wives to enter the celestial kingdom (!? why?). polygamy is against the law. I have some question about how that can be ~ ? ~ meaning? I don't know. ok. the state can refuse to grant & legally recognize plural marriages, that makes sense. but if person takes another lover into their home... if they are not married, it's not illegal right? so how do you define polygamy in the law / how is it different from a group of people who are not married who live and sleep together multiply?
so look up this program, and other comments on polygamy...

-and look at: recently marked metafilter-pointed-out Travis Frey's "Contract of Wifely Expectations" -wh include "You will be naked within 20 minutes of the kids being in bed…You are to do everything that is requested or expected of you, if you do not, you are considered noncompliant." –which reminds me also of justin recommending Lust by Elfriede Jelinek...

SUM:
Osbournes.
hipster. DONE whew, some int links but is tedious.
polygamy.
sicko marriage contract. DONE.donedone.

These are rich people with poor people's problems - Jay Leno about the Osbournes - There are people in trailer parks all over the country fighting with their neighbors and...

The thing about videogames
(as I came upon this post -in Alice archives- was just thinking, what do people like about games?)

There's a particular story-game format out there that we're all I think familiar with - think Max Payne to Resident Evil to Lara Croft. Interactive narrative. Not branching narrative, but pure, linear story, with interactive bits stirred in with animated bits. Maybe a bit of sandbox these days if you're lucky, but usually it's start at point A, go through various traumas and challenges until you arrive at point Z, The End.
...
It's already an intense experience, this being in control thing, exploring something, coming up against characters, face to face, any angle I choose - except, most of the time we're face to face with some lump marching out his lines and waving a wooden arm around for emphasis. I know people are often asking, 'when are games going to make us cry?', but really. When? Here's my point: it's easy to forget, but games are still fantastically primitive when we're talking interactive entertainment. Hamming amateurs. If this kind of story and acting were on the television, we'd be throwing tomatoes, up in arms in outrage. Yet in games, we fall about, goggle-eyed with delight.
This can only mean one thing. We're not even close to what makes great "interactive entertainment". Interactive entertainment is going to get better, and better, and better, and it's all unfolding in front of us right now. There's a semi-popular view that the magic is all about gameplay, and graphics aren't everything, but it's not all about gameplay, because it's not just a simple game anymore. It's about play, and story, and environment, and story, and immersion, and story, and yes graphics matter, they matter a lot: you know that bit in Half Life 2 when the bloke on the train at the very beginning looks you in the EYE? Did you feel that? Creeped out? That's just the beginning of it.
Next-gen is here soon, and given a few years of practice, those wily designers should have us some characters we can really get into the heads of.
06:52 PM June 30, 2005 Permalink Comments (8)

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 1,330 for fark.is.the. (0.30 seconds)

Micro Persuasion: Fark is the New Slashdot ...comments:
-It's not really right to say that Fark will be a 'new' Slashdot. Fark has been around almost as long and the term "I was farked" is applied in the same fashion as being slashdotted. The only difference is really the focus of the sites. Well, that and the fact that fark is just more fun which probably is the cause of all their growth.

-Funny. I thought Boing Boing was the new Fark. Posted by: Esoos Bobnar Monday, March 14, 2005 at 03:25 PM

Boing Boing Fark photoshoppers on low-carb products: I swear, Fark is the new Mad Magazine. -March 22, 2004

NPR : Bush Defends Deal to Entrust Ports to Dubai Firm
All Things Considered, February 21, 2006 · President Bush says a deal to allow a company owned by the government of Dubai -- one of the United Arab Emirates -- to operate six U.S. seaports is no threat to port security. He promises to veto any effort to stop it. Lawmakers, including Republicans, have criticized the decision.

David Brooks? Ugh. What a horrible guest. It's really saying something when a fake news pundit runs circles around a New York Times columnist. Not that Colbert isn't the equal, if not superior, of any NYT columnist, just that you expect said columnist to at least be able to defend his position with a little more than a shrug!
That's how I felt during the whole interview as well. I kept thinking how the man isn't really giving more depth to his position to those that haven't read his article. And of course "Colbert" wasn't making his life easier -- by constantly jabbing (though annoying, but actually quite needed) at the the question "why is the contract good?" Dude just kept smiling and saying "No, it's good.." Okaay.
I have seen reasonable discussions about why the port deal isn't so bad, but I'm loving the political fix. It's funny to see the Bushies, after all these years of so successfully selling truthiness, trying to sell a reasonable argument. They don't know how!
twop colbert forum 105 106

Good Night, Good Luck -- and What’s Stephen Colbert Up To, Anyway? 31 Oct 2005
While Jon Stewart’s Daily Show (of which Colbert is an alum) parodies a newscast, Colbert is taking on the Alpha-male, self-righteous commentators that take up space between news breaks on cable news networks. But mostly, he’s taking on Bill O’Reilly -- because, let’s face it, O’Reilly’s the ripest of the bunch.
Colbert is a deft and clever writer, and as a performer, he manages to carry off his portrayal of “Stephen Colbert, host” without the slightest wink to his true identity. It’s a fearless approach, a real high-wire act, that makes his show much more akin to the productions of Ali G than of Jon Stewart – and while critics seem to love what’s going on, as quickly as they give praise they wonder if it all can be sustained. (rg)
Jon Stewart’s success came as a complete surprise to those who watched him fill the shoes of The Daily Show’s founding “anchor,” Craig Kilborn. In fact, however, it was Kilborn’s stridently detached hipness – all sarcasm, without the mitigating goofiness of Kilborn’s progenitor, David Letterman – that shut down Kilborn after he left The Daily Show. Stewart showed up Kilborn by being a genuinely good-natured human being and by permitting himself to be humiliated from time to time. He is also, unexpectedly to those of us who had our doubts (recalling his ill-fated tenure at MTV), a consummate performer of the old school – a superior mimic, and a take-artist to out-Benny Jack Benny.
So far, Colbert’s real strength comes as an interviewer. yes. In a recent segment with CNN’s Lou Dobbs, Colbert ran roughshod over Dobbs’ pet issues – immigration and outsourcing – by suggesting to him that the U.S. should just outsource all those jobs that those illegals keep coming here for. yep that's the colbert way*. Even Dobbs had to laugh. Colbert’s schtick -- which combines a singleness of satiric purpose with a disarming (though non-winking) playfulness -- does require otherwise serious people to play along, but when it happens, it is as satisfying as anything on TV these days.
*after vacation during wh cheney shooting happened, stephen said he didn't know what was going on in news but had sth to tell us, "it'sgoing to come out anyway: I shot a man. (shrug:) It happens."
I do not worry so much about Colbert’s ability to keep his on-screen characterization afloat over the long term. I worry more about the defensive humorlessness of those he would hope to book for his show. While Stephen Colbert is having as much fun as anyone should be allowed to have on TV, I can imagine that his booking agent is walking around looking like Ray Wise as Don Hollenbeck in Good Night, and Good News – dodging the post-McCarthyite terror and precious image management that pervades American political TV today.
posted by RSchuler at 12:22 PM Categories: New-Cinema, TV

Dear Matt: If enough of us bitch loudly enough, will you close signups?
posted by Kwantsar to etiquette/policy at 9:06 AM PST (149 comments total)

Not really, no.posted by mathowie at 9:08 AM PST on February 22

This thread isn't about me. It was an honest question, and my feelings aren't strong either way.
I asked it publically because I figured that someone else might like to see the answers.
posted by Kwantsar at 5:31 PM

hahahahaha posted by trey at 2:55 PM

This thread is why I love this place. Kwanstar asks a simple question, Matt immediately answers in no uncertain terms, and then 140+ comments are tacked on, as if they meant something. Comedy gold... posted by paulsc at 9:24 AM PST on February 23

Doppelganger Mystery, September 7, 2004
Reviewer:foundpoem - See all my reviews-- So, so wonderful. If you haven't read the book description, I recommend you don't. The one-sentence description reveals something not revealed in the book until nearly its end.
I recommend this book, particularly as a plot-driven, less ethereal read for those who prefer that side of Nabokov (not to say his stamp is missing). Also interesting is that it was written in the 1930's and much revised by Nabokov in the 1960's, in English, after a literal Russian-to-English translation by his son. So the historic value that I find so interesting in his early work is there, yet his skill-level is far higher than in the books of his I've read from the 20's and 30's. To me, this plot, a doppelganger/crime in Nabokov's hands, is an original -- the way it unfolds, its structure; its breadth of characters, concepts and details. And Despair, brilliant, is an "easy" read, a suspenseful, highly enjoyable book.
I love an unreliable narrator, and thought the pacing with which Hermann's credence becomes questionable was seamless. But what I want to say most is something Nabokov denies in his Foreward. However, having read some of the other Forewards from this reissue series, he had a clear disrespect for those who "need a Foreward to explain the book" [Quote from the Foreward of "The Defense"], so part of me thinks he's messing with us in his intros. In any event (intentional on VN's part or not), this is something I loved: the political implication of the main way Hermann's credibility is sketchy -- his likeness to another person. Hermann himself mentions the word Marxism very near the end, and when he ultimately concedes that he and Felix may look different, says, All people are really alike anyway. I thought about the book's entirety, the time in history it was written, and the ideology / social construct itself. As an American, at this time in history, I found this (what?)particularly powerful. Driving this politic home in "Despair" is their precise opposite lots: Hermann wealthy; Felix poor, a beggar, someone who goes to Hermann for money. The rich and the poor men, in Despair, are doubles, "alike in every way," Hermann writes.

humbert = hermann lite, December 20, 2005
Reviewer:E. Keaveney "westernswine" - See all my reviews as vlad puts it: "hermann and humbert (of Lolita) are alike only in the sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of his life resemble each other. both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a green lane in paradise where humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year; but hell shall never parole hermann." both are self-obsessed, manipulative, solipsistic sociopaths...initially they charm readers with their wit and meticulous deconstruction of their surroundings...and by then end they have you laughing wildly...pitying them even, as if they simply cannot help the fact that they feel emotion for nothing other than themselves...like a person with cretinism. it isn't their fault, simply a flaw in their makeup. combine arrogance and intelligence with self-obsession and an emotional black hole in place of a heart...and you get a brilliantly entertaining comedy. but the character in despair is hardly worthy of contempt. he is a jester and a mastermind...as is nabokov himself.

Despair-- by Vladimir Nabokov
Russian-born Hermann Karlovich, 36, is a married and disappointed purveyor of chocolates in pre-war Berlin. When he meets a young vagrant he considers to be his physical double, he undertakes to exploit their likeness to commit the perfect crime.

posted by miko 22 February 23:40:
In my Roaring 20s I took off to Michigan for a summer with a couple of friends. We were gonna play music in bars and for money and live large and have adventures. We moved into a house rented by the friends of one of my buds. A typical suburban college-town house, a nice one, roomy. The fact that this house was already full of people when we arrived didn't bother anybody. The three of us fellow-travelers lived in one room. In fact, we slept on one extremely large pallet made out of a few futons put together. Other people were similarly crashed all over the house: the guy whose name the lease was in, a painter and musician, the people in his band, girlfriends, friends of girlfriends, people who drank too much & crashed, people who were in between their semester abroad & their summer session at the college, people's sisters, etc.
It was hard to get a bead on* the house population. Many mornings you'd be introducing yourself to new people in the kitchen while you made toast and coffee. It was possible to buy enough cigarettes and food to live on, simply by cashing in the cases of returnable beer bottles for the 10c MI deposit.
Anyway, one day the landlord happened by to put in a new faucet or something. Most people were out; I was there, and so was the guy whose name was on the lease. The landlord went into the house and peered around a bit, becoming progressively angrier each time he looked into a bedroom and noticed more and more twin and double futons, foam pads, mattresses, and duffel bags. It was not the kind of flophouse he wished to run. He went ripshit, red faced, veins bursting, etc. "How many people do you have here?" he screamed at Lease Boy. "Your lease is for. three. people. What do you, think I'm an idiot? Doesn't matter what I say? What are you doing -- telling your buddies 'Hey everybody! Come live on Dorothy Street! Don't tell the landlord! Is that the deal?" Eventually he left.
We named our band "Don't Tell the Landlord" and played several good gigs at this bar under that name.It has a happy ending, too. He came back and apologized and recognized that we were all nice people who were broke, young, & stupid. At the end of the summer, we decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner because we'd really had such good luck during our adventure. We invited him, and he donated the turkey & stuffing. We sat down and broke bread at the backyard picnic table.


*Language Log: And the bead goes on:
[..an expression that,] while mistaken, is arguably common because it's poetically as well as phonetically and syntactically apt.
A common poetic mistake is the substitution of 'beat' for 'bead' in the expression "get a bead on" or "draw a bead on". The original version of this idiom involves the word 'bead', for which the OED gives this sense:
d. The small metal knob which forms the front sight of a gun; esp. in the phrase (of U.S. origin) to draw a bead upon: to take aim at.
But Americans don't spend as much time looking at things over a bead sight as they used to -- even those who regularly use a rifle for hunting probably have a telescopic sight -- so this metaphor is getting old and stale. The sportswriters seem to have stepped in with a fresh idea, making a new idiom out of an old one. In sports, the idea of getting a (musical) beat ahead of someone else makes sense -- marching to a different and faster drummer, so to speak.
"Getting a beat on someone" has another poetic resonance that may be inspiring some of these writers: you could interpret 'beat' as "an edge" or a "a competitive advantage," a nominalization of the verbal sense "to defeat [someone]." ah nice: to beat, get the beat on.
The "faster rhythm" interpretation and the "competitive advantage" interpretation..

One morning I got up, ground some coffee, then put it in the soap dispenser of my dishwasher. Its a conundrum: how to make coffee before you've had coffee?
posted by stickycarpet 22 February 17:01 metachat

Prosepoem paean to Malibu Barbie (wStair)
Haters can say whay they will about her moony Malibu beauty and her fan-fucking-tastic legs--how such things harmed the egos of brunettes and the shrimpy, how they later stuck fingers down throats in the dorms of Vassar in memory of her unrealistic ideal. Yes, Barbie is tacky, Barbie is unimaginative, she is unrealistic, but Barbie is us.
You had many educational toys, and you loved the wooden architectural blocks most. You had read more by age 12 than most people do in their life. But Malibu Barbie. You could never put her away for too long, never forget the drawer where she radiated uncomplicated sex and awesome American glamour.

rw: Instant-classic on nonlinear text-mashups (McGrath-shortish):
These days, we do not order things into tidy beginnings, middles and ends. Consider this: a personal weblog is like an essay without an end. The end is always moving, always co-located with the last entry on the weblog. We just push everything out electronically, all together, every day, changing it all the time. Everything is live. We add order through instant findability provided by search engines, we add commentary using blogs, we slice'n'dice views of the content with WIKIs. Views that go way beyond mere Tables of Contents.
Sure the world of information is chaotic and changing all the time but how could it be any other way? It is chaotic in the same sense that downtown is chaotic.

I'm into the celebration of this, and maybe the denegration of an always-ness / an imperative of structured beginning-middle-end writing. just want to say: there is also a use a pleasure a sometimes-appropriateness-even:perfection to the intentionally beginningtoend Arranged.

How'd you get the Dr to do it? I'm Denny Crane. I was still the real thing then.
oh. what got me crying though was Rene AuberPaul with his daughter, especially the hug in the park at the end. the daughter too was acted very well.
and the alzheimers case - as I was supposed to and like Alan, I did not see that coming: the look btw the nurse and the man who morphined his wife. whoa. just as powerful as when I saw it on The Practice (no Alzheimers but the same trial ending moment - the lawyer (was it Bobby) seeing the look between the just pronounced 'not-guilty' defendant and the woman we suddenly realize is his mistress. It's got outstanding dramatic punch...
Denny: we don't know if he's guilty or not. I hate that. aw Denny.
and in the preview - next week: Denny gets it on with another woman in the coatroom at.his.wedding!? cut to divorce. quick quick. ~too bad. Bev was going to sit on Denny and or Alan should either's mind become that of a 2 yr old.

tvwop forum- Jayne Brook is a terrific actress, and she and Rene were total powerhouse in their confrontation scene in Paul's office.

W's facial asymmetry explored [small jpeg] [source]

In fact, it is probable that but for Mary's existence and Fred's love for her, his conscience would have been much less active both in previously urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare himself after his usual fashion by deferring an unpleasant task, but to act as directly and simply as he could. Even much stronger mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best. "The theatre of all my actions is fallen," said an antique personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who get a theatre where the audience demands their best. Certainly it would have made a considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary Garth had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.
George Eliot: Middlemarch BOOK III. WAITING FOR DEATH. 24. CHAPTER XXIV.


prufrockdancer: morality theatre

Predawn babblish: I'm still a musical idiot (RWx-shortish): i've never been much of a concertgoerstadium rock is of course incomprehensible to meinfectious imbecilitythe madness of crowdsbut these hipster hits-listsseem to throw out the artbabywith the commercebathwaterhonoring only thosewho assert sheer awfulnessletting stuff-i-like thruonly by accident

there was a point i meant to makewhen i undertook this postabout being dragged off the streetinto a barby a friend sayingyou have to check these guys outand how at that pointit's just you and themand you don't ask for a slick showyou just let them lay it out for youand maybe it rings your bellsor maybe it doesn'tbut whether they're hipstersor shiny clean folkstersor gospellers or popsters or whateveryour friend's enthusiasmshould be enough to carry youpast the genre preconceptions
posted by Jorn at 2:34 AM
<<>

13 January 2006 I'm a musical idiot about... Panic! at the Disco i wanted to post an image here from PostSecretbut they already took it downthe postcard was a picture of an iPodand handwritten"i think my taste in musicis better than everyone else's"because every creative geniusneeds to nurture that faithto create something so goodit fills a gap that's stood emptysince foreverbut it may be unhealthyto think your taste ineverythingmusic art literature movies politics philosophyis all the bestso (eg) i have no idea howmy peculiar music tastesfit into the worldschemewhen i started the jukeboxfor blogging mp3si made sure to declareloud and clearmy unhip un-credenyaand worsemr bojangles(a little poetic masterpiecein my peculiar opinion)but as i tapped into the onlinereservoirof indie musici started to feel a bit more confident...

http://jorn.wordpress.com/ = RobotWisdom mp3 blog

re Mark: why is he suturing his own face?
Cristina: to turn me on.

aw. Carlos w/ Gabi on DH - that was sweet. having just heard from G's mother that she 'forgave' G for seducing her husband (when she was 15, raped by him!), Carlos goes home and is sweet to G. and tells her maybe they shld look into adoption. G: but I tht you wanted a child with yr dna? C: blood isn't everything. wh, at first I tht he was just moved to be generous to Gabi, but then realized - right, blood isn't evth: he's just seen the G's (blood)mother is a monster to her child.
maybe I could like Carlos & Gabi. have thought, do I like anyone on this show?
tonite Carl (Susan's ex) was also likeable.

YouTube - Gnome - Featuring Lauren Graham Short film with Lauren Graham, 2005.
Lauren Graham collides with a carload of transsexuals in Gnome -- LG is wonderful; the short is just ok. "Gnome," starring Lauren Graham as a suburban housewife who gets a ride home from a bunch of lively transsexuals, was written and directed by "Sex and the City" former writer Jenny Bicks. It's part of a series of five short films commissioned by Glamour magazine from stories written by their readers. Glamour magazine solicited readers' inspirational moments and turned the top five into short films. Moxie Pictures, which represents a lot of cool directors like Cameron Crowe, did the production work. (It's very high quality.)

YouTube - Lauren Graham
cool lots of LG appearances. // oh and look! seems she wore the same red dress w/ white jacket on Ellen this valentines 2/14/06 as 2 yrs ago on 2/17/04. cool.

Om Malik on Broadband : » Google, You Tube & Dark Side Of Online Video
"Our terms of use make it clear that users should own or have permission from copyright holders to post any videos." // are "unavailable" videos ones that have been removed? why still show up in 'related videos'?
ok well whatever the case all the LG ones that are unavailable are those that were uploaded by nicxoxo
wh is many of the goodlooking ones - more Ellen, DvdLttrman (I wanna see!), Conan. owell.

the following are available:

YouTube - Lauren Graham on The View (5/6/04)
good clip//lg looks like Oprah here? the hair, eye makeup?// a host says 'jimmy' seinfeld// lg says she is awkward, ppl expect actrsses to be more socially graceful // what is The View? group of women hosting talk show...

YouTube - Gilmore Girls Bloopers
-lg at fnd scene pulls tblclth/sth flies at edwHermn, who laughs, funny.// roryfallsoffbed~// lg to luke "I just said I love you,wh is not really the line" luke: I love you too lg: well then the show's over. sp laughs at that. (at fair, Rachel)

oh and (elsewhere):

Gilmore Girls News » Gilmore Girls spoof on Family Guy
pretty good, the emphatically fast reference-filled talking: which Dean? Howard Dean, James Dean, or Jimmy Dean? ach, too old, too dead, too fatterning. You don't have to tell that to my thighs. ...wanna make out? no. You are so lying. I so am.

YouTube - founded February 2005 so why all sudden everywhere 1 yr later?
by early commerce pioneers of PayPal. Prior to YouTube, there was no easy way for individuals to share video on the Web. Dealing with hundreds of multimedia formats, massive file sizes and difficult uploading methods made sharing personal video clips on the Web a daunting task for even the most tech savvy individual. With its revolutionary technology (?), YouTube has given people the ability to easily upload, tag and share video clips through youtube.com.
flickr for video - is this being said everywhere? yep: Ggle -youtube "flickr for"

rw: How scary is it that RigorousIntuition blog rings so many bells? (wStair-short w/link) also Cursor, SusieB, etc :
It's terrible how uninteresting I find contemporary politics these days. I used to be better, but like with many supposedly complicated subjects, I find myself looking behind them to the personal psychology of the players, which is dreary; and then there's the fact that politics are peopled by old men, and that this means that American political affairs are not visually interesting.
But then I discovered Rigorous Intuition (via Robotwisdom as usual) and now I find I can wrap my news in the musings of kooky paranoid sex abuse books, flying saucer theories, quotes from great rock albums, and in a recent instance, a brilliant analysis of the psychosexual atrocities of Abu Ghraib via Pasolini's anti-fascist film "Salo."
The great insights and great humor of satire ebb and flow in blogger Jeff Wells' writing. Only recourse to fringe thinking seems to be able to account for the weirdness that's really out there.

you tube drag

- One question - how do I keep the films from stopping and just playing straight through? It's a drag to have to keep starting from where it stops every few seconds. I just want to watch it smoothly the first time.
-It's a very big Flash file, and if you're on dial-up, it probably takes forever to load... so if you're playing it at the same time, it's gonna be choppy. What you can do is pause the player 'til the whole file loads (it could be about a 20 minute wait, though). does that work? it keeps loading? yes it does (grey bar continues to extend...) good. I was letting it play, then re'wind'ing and then again, and only watching it after doing that several times.
-That's sad, because I have to do that and I have highspeed!
-Oh, I had to do it too, and I have cable internet. I think it took about 3-4 minutes to load on my computer. It must take FOREVER on dial-up.
Now: what is the situation when it informs me that the video I clicked on is "not available"? says may take a while if I just uploaded it - but someone uploaded it, eg, a month ago. ? has it been removed for copyright reasons and inconveniently still shows in 'related videos'? but I'd think that they'd say 'Removed.'

On the Road Avec M. Lévy. Review by GARRISON KEILLOR. Published: January 29, 2006--NYTimes Books.

Garrison Keillor, Vulgarian. In defense of Bernard-Henri Lévy. By Christopher Hitchens. posted Monday, Feb. 13, 2006--SLATE.
Christopher Hitchens takes Garrison Keillor to task (SLATE) for slamming (NYT) Bernard-Henri Levy's take on the US, American Vertigo. I'm patiently waiting for someone to take on Hitchens on Keillor on Levy on America. #
I dunno.~not really an unusual extent of (meta)commentary~ but ok the Slate headline does maybe produce confusion about who on who on who: Hitchens vs (Keillor vs Levy).

---------------------------now content:

Kiellor: You meet Sharon Stone and John Kerry and a woman who once weighed 488 pounds and an obese couple carrying rifles, but there's nobody here whom you recognize. In more than 300 pages, nobody tells a joke. Nobody does much work. Nobody sits and eats and enjoys their food. You've lived all your life in America, never attended a megachurch or a brothel, don't own guns, are non-Amish, and it dawns on you that this is a book about the French. There's no reason for it to exist in English, except as evidence that travel need not be broadening and one should be wary of books with Tocqueville in the title. well! I enjoyed that, Kiellor. surprised. nicely biting.
...America is changing, he concludes, but America will endure. "I still don't think there's reason to despair of this country. No matter how many derangements, dysfunctions, driftings there may be . . . no matter how fragmented the political and social space may be; despite this nihilist hypertrophy of petty antiquarian memory yikes I think I'm with you on this Kiellor yikes ; despite this hyperobesity - increasingly less metaphorical - of the great social bodies that form the invisible edifice of the country; despite the utter misery of the ghettos . . . I can't manage to convince myself of the collapse, heralded in Europe, of the American model."
Thanks, pal. I don't imagine France collapsing anytime soon either. Thanks for coming. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. For your next book, tell us about those riots in France, the cars burning in the suburbs of Paris. What was that all about? Were fat people involved?
--
other bits, still Keillor re Levy (the hits just keep on coming! garrison, I did not know you-):
wow syntax: He blows a radiator hee writing about baseball - "this sport that contributes to establishing people's identities and that has truly become part of their civic and patriotic religion, which is baseball" -this syntax, this syntax that says things, which is syntax. whoa.
...Uh, actually not. Negatory on "pope" and "national" and "entire" and "most" and "embodies" and "Doubleday."
Lévy is quite comfortable with phrases like "as always in America."
And good Lord, the childlike love of paradox. And so the reader is fascinated and exhausted hee- by Lévy's tedious and original-hee thinking: "A strong bond holds America together, but a minimal one. An attachment of great force, but not fiercely resolute. A place of high - extremely high - symbolic tension, but a neutral one, a nearly empty one." And what's with the flurries of rhetorical questions? Is this how the French talk or is it something they save for books about America? "What does this experience tell us?" he writes about the Mall of America. "What do we learn about American civilization from this mausoleum of merchandise, this funeral accumulation of false goods and nondesires in this end-of-the-world setting? What is the effect on the Americans of today of this confined space, this aquarium, where only a semblance of life seems to subsist?" And what is one to make hee (oh,mc, what would it mean? et up all yr french foucault dija?) of the series of questions - 20 in a row! - about Hillary Clinton, in which Lévy implies she is seeking the White House to erase the shame of the Lewinsky affair? Was Lévy aware of the game 20 Questions, commonly played on long car trips in America? Are we to read this passage as a metaphor of American restlessness? Does he understand how irritating this is? Does he? Do you? May I stop now?

well Hitchens, I'm sold. what are you going to say to this? now, you did write that pretty funny 'college essay" (in Nyr oh no you didn't that was Christopher Buckley! The New Yorker 11/28 issue: Shouts and Murmurs - College Essay) and I wld have tht you'd have the advantage with me over Keillor, but wow I don't think I will think that in the future. ok, gimme what you got.

huh. nothing really. calls Keillor a humorless philistine (but I found his article -unexecpectedly- Totally Funny. and sharp) and suggests GK probably doesn't specify other French writers because he hasn't read Foucault or Hollebecq. and you CH are calling him a jerk? not.howitfeels.to me. full-blown, corn-fed, white-bread American nativist bloviation. sheesh man. and CH talks about "an arsenal of Francophobic clichés" in his introductory paragraph but did GK use any? CH unsarcastically calls Levy's praise of Seattle "this minor paean" and seems to consider it cutting to point to the contrastingly simple statement by Keillor: The response consists of nine words and two letters. "OK, fine. The Eiffel Tower is quite the deal, too." oooh, ok is not a word to an intellectual? holymoly. the thing is I find Keillor here funny and smart exactly in contrast to how bombastic (Keillor's word) BHL's quoted prose is; and CH only reinforces this, I'm surprise he doesn't say anything I like!

and in conclusion, an agreeable voice from Salon's frey: HansEisenbeis defending keillor (1) Feb 17 11:07AM: I was not much surprised to read Chris Hitchens defending his friend Bernard Henri Levy. ...In the realm of dueling reviews, I have to say that Keillor provides a lot more evidence for his more tenable argument that Levy basically doesn't have a clue ye-ah, and it's emphatically yes not because he somehow overlooked Lake Woebegon in his travels, as Hitch seems to imply. It is merely tit-for-tat-for-tit. The Frenchman reduces his America to a saccharine shot of lukewarm cliches, the American takes a sip and spits it out nice, and the boozy Brit drops his coat on the floor and starts in on the "vulgar, nativist American" nonsense. Vulgar, of course, means common--and Keillor's populist shtick (Hitch apparently got his dander up too early in the review to recognize that it was, in fact, shtick playing off of Levy's stereotypes) is precisely the antidote to Anglo-Franco-American miscommunication that is needed, but it is a shtick that almost always is too subtle for British ears huh. ... I'm loathe to review a review of a review, but what the hey. I fear Keillor has, in recent years, lost energy for the public parley, the way he used to do. Still, it would be fun to read him responding to Hitch, since Keillor is more than the expat's equal, and has the advantage of a native's sober understanding of the quick jab and the non-nonsense uppercut, so easy to land when a man like Hitch is running around the ring loudly protesting what he in the first place misread.

Driving through Chicago, comparing what Bellow wrote with what we saw, I could only think of how filthy Chicago isn't anymore. More specifically, I kept trying to imagine the smell then versus the absence of smell now. With coal heating gone, so many factories and their smokestacks closed, the dirt and stink of Augie's time has been removed.
Today's Chicago had no discernable odor, just the steady hum of highways that Augie wouldn't have recognized. Who would have thought of noise pollution in 1930?
These photos don't fully capture the smell, but I do think they show how much Chicago has changed. And is changing — almost every photo outside the Loop was framed by new condo developments and newly constructed housing. The city Augie knew is changing again. Despite his old age, I don't think he'd mind.
You can find the entire photo essay here on GapersBlock: then & now the adventures of Augie March.

Fashion week initiates the two major seasons—fall and spring—in which designers present their new collections for the fashion press, retail buyers, and others with influence in the fashion world. Fashion journalists review the collections just as film critics might cover new releases at Cannes.
Fashion magazine editors assess the mood of the season and identify the trends to be photographed and written about.
Buyers, who make selections for department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue or smaller boutiques, identify those same trends and assess how their funds might be best spent.
Others with influence—Hollywood stylists in search of Oscar night dresses, socialites and celebrities whose wardrobe choices are widely copied—make what essentially are shopping lists of the looks they'll buy and wear. Slate- Fashion Week FAQ
...there are too many shows, particularly in New York, where the clothes are not ridiculous enough, if ridiculous means imaginative. Fashion is not simply about utility, especially on a runway, where ideas are on parade. Do we really need to see a tank top and trousers trotting down a runway and masquerading as fashion? (Remember that fashion and clothes are not the same thing: Clothes keep you from being naked or cold, and pockets provide a place for your house keys. Fashion, when it's good, sends the imagination racing and speaks for the wearer's dreams in a way words can't.)
So, why do designers go for what might seem over the top? Fashion is both democratic and exclusive. Some fashion is meant for broad audiences—New York showman-extraordinaire Isaac Mizrahi, for example, has revived his defunct high-priced label by designing clothes for Target—and some—like the extreme styles of Nicolas Ghesquiere's work for Balenciaga—is frankly not intended for uneducated eyes. The opinion of the man on the street is irrelevant when it comes to clothes designed for connoisseurs. When great designers such as Rei Kawakubo at Commes des Garcons or her protégé Junya Watanabe propose extreme—what some might call ridiculous—style, it is because they are working with the formal properties of fashion (cut, fabrics, complex finishing techniques) in an innovative way. Their client base is intentionally small because a larger business would require responding to mass market demands, and the influence of their innovation is felt primarily within the industry. But so what? Fashion is a community as well as a business, and communities have their own language. A unique use of lace or a well-cut dress are nuances that might be lost on your average shopper but provide secret thrills to fashion insiders.

ogleearth - So what does this center of gravity calculator do, precisely?
Practically speaking, the spot you get back minimizes the total distance (among points) people at placemarks will need to travel in order to meet up together. And if you calculate the center of gravity for just two placemarks, the straight line you can draw through all three points will be the shortest distance as the jumbo jet flies between your two placemarks.
Mathematically speaking, the code first finds the center of gravity for given points of equal mass on the surface of a sphere in three dimensional space. (The center of gravity will thus be inside the sphere.) It then finds the point on the sphere closest to the center of gravity by projecting a straight line from the center of the sphere through the center of gravity to the surface of the sphere. cool.
The algorithm assumes Earth is a sphere, even though it is actually a geoid, so errors of tens of meters will persist. Correcting for those is something I am two PhDs short of being able to do.

The original story is three posts down, here:
Blogger "Brammeleman" writes in Dutch (so I'll translate loosely) that his family is discussing where to have the next family reunion. It must be a nerdy family, as everyone immediately agreed it should be at the family's center of gravity. The only question remaining is, what determines the weighting of each individual family member?While the rest of the family argues it out (age? generation? marital status?), our blogger has gone off and produced a center of gravity calculator for Google Earth. In the true political tradition of the Dutch, the calculator assigns everyone an equal weighting.
... I tried it. My immediate family is all over the place — London, Switzerland and me here in Stockholm, yet the center of gravity for us is in tiny Belgium. As we're Belgian, that's rather spooky.

Neat "center of gravity" calculator for Google Earth. following on Cory's map of the center of gravity of Manhattan's Starbucks. #

Gmail Mass Delete - I can search for them easily because they all have a subject [mailinglist]. I want to just automatically delete every message with that in the subject without having to download 2+gigs of e-mails through pop, delete all of them, and then forward the rest back to gmail. And no, deleting 100 messages at a time is no the answer (can only delete all at a max of 100 per page). These are messages that I've read, going back over a year, and I'm at 96%. I just want to dump all of the old messages at once to clear up space. posted by empath

-Why isn't deleting 100 messages at once the answer? Once you do a search for them, it only takes a second and a half to check the select all box and then trash. The next 100 will pop up automatically, and repeat. Doing it this way will only take you a couple minutes at most. posted by Meredith
--10,000/100 = 1000 pages. Let's say it takes me 3 seconds to delete a page of messages, that's going to be like an hour of deleting threads. And I really have more than 10,000 threads I'd like to delete. posted by empath
--- No, it's equal to 100 pages. posted by Kickstart70

- As far as I know, there is no way to natively mass-delete mail in gmail. posted by charmston
- The consensus on the Gmail group is that this is not something that is currently possible. I'd be interested to see if anyone has a workaround. posted by jessamyn
- No GreaseMonkey script for this yet, and no programming volunteers? That's very un-Metafilterish. GM scriptage was the first extension to add a separate delete button for Gmail, back before Google added the button themselves. Seems like mass delete support is well within GM's capabilities. I'd try it myself, but I never hopped on the Gmail train for an account. posted by mdevore

I'm really kind of pissed off at Google. I'm on ONE high-traffic e-mail list. Google CLAIMS that you never have to delete messages, but it's not true, and by now, they should know that perfectly well. It's a dead simple feature to implement, and it boggles my mind that they haven't done it. posted by empath at 9:34 AM PST on Feb 17

Smug vs. Giggly Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog: colbert February 1, 2006
Luckily, my need for a smug comedy news show have been answered; everything I was missing is available in spades on The Colbert Report. Colbert is amazing, to the point where I am tempted to switch languages and use a term such as en fuego to emphasize the degree to which he is on fire. The writing is razor sharp (sample: "I'm not mad at James Frey for stretching the truth - hey, we stretch taffy. And that only makes it more delicious."). The pacing is brisk, despite being largely a one-man show. It transcends merely being a parody of O'Reilly or Fox News; it is a consistently funny show. One that you should be watching right now, if it's on.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is: hand me my passport, because I am emigrating to the Colbert Nation. I have tickets for the taping on February 27th, and I cannot wait.

ah but Colbert, Colbert: and James Frey, if someday you write the story of your life, I recommend that you choose to not have had this happen. excellent.
Truthiness, Continued -- Oprah, on existence of Stephen Colbert: "Yeah"

great The Word too - Unscripted!
Unscripted -- Isn't it time more people thanked Stephen Colbert?

and guest Annie Duke, poker champion is great, also cute, lovely.
c: they say to look around the table and if you can't spot the mark, you're it. - who's the mark at this table?
annie: are we playing poker or d&d? (reference to colbert's introductory comment that if poker was anything like d&d, he'd be ...) got good smiling out of stephen. what a sweetie.
Annie Duke -- The professional poker player and Stephen talk about people's "tells."

jon stewart really very cute, and funny. who -who- does he remind me of?? like the voice of GWB on Mario ... I know these men.
this is one worth watching again tomorrow at 7.
Fox news, thank- you-.
Republicans using star wars story about the evil democrat Empire.
JS: Empire? at best -at best- the democrats are the ewoks. why don't you guys admit it? you're in charge! you control the white house, congress, the supreme court. you're not a bunch of rag-tag rebels fighting the Empire. drop-voice: You're the Empire.
then, Know your comments - white house press correspondent "not going to speculate about this ongoing investigation" - was he talking about? a- b- c- d- ... e- f- g- h- i- j- k- (looo0ng list of republican questionables including torture at abugraib prison, no wmd, bungling of hurricane response...)

well this series is very good. (2 for 2). Penny Hardy - current Design Interact Insights:
What’s currently your favorite site/project? Or, what site do you look at every day? Archive.org. What’s the subject/topic of it? It’s an online library. What’s so great about it? I love this site because it tracks the evolution of the Web. You type in a URL for a site and can see all its different iterations over time. wow great. It’s fascinating to see a company’s evolution online. You can go back to their first site, see how brave they were initially and how they’re growing over time. Making information/history accessible is such a powerful tool online.
What makes it technically compelling? It’s amazing how much territory all those spiders cover. The interface of the site itself is not the best, but the technology behind it is impressive.
How would you improve it? Or would you? I would improve the interface to make it more approachable, enticing. The homepage bombards you with information and it’s hard to understand what the site is offering. yeah I was totally put off by the look of it.
What’s your job/Where do you work? Partner/creative director of PS, a creative studio in New York and Los Angeles.

Design Interact: Insights -this1reMySpace
series where responder answers set questions (I guess), starting with 1.What’s currently your favorite site/project?
here, Chris Henderson says MySpace...
how the Web is evolving. In the past, sites have been looked at as tools to get information and resources. In the very near future (and I think MySpace is one of the strongest examples of this) they will be all about communicating with other people.
Another reason it’s so interesting is the number of active users on the site. People are always on it and engaged with it in some way. The member pages harken back to the early days of the Web when people made personal pages for fun. You never know what you’re going to find. It’s all about building a community that people want to belong to.
What makes it technically compelling? Being able to maintain the whole thing. I think I heard that it’s currently the fourth most-visited site. Just the scale of upkeep for something with so much personalization is amazing.
How would you improve it? Or would you? It’s totally chaotic and that’s what I love about it, but to make up for the chaos they could think of a stronger global navigation to give users more of a sense of location.
What’s your job? Interactive creative director. Where do you work? At Olson in Minneapolis. It’s an 80-person, full-service agency that’s got a really non-traditional agency environment that stresses, above all things, integration and collaboration.
What’s your biggest Web (design) turn-off? Sites that feel like they are more about graphic design than communication. Keep it simple and don’t be afraid to embrace the obvious.

csmonitor: The market-research firm Energy BBDO ran a study called GenWorld that polled teens from 13 countries about big brands The top three affinity slots went to Sony (Japan), Nokia (Finland), and Adidas (Germany). Top US finisher: Nike at No. 4, a somewhat surprising result given that US firms have traditionally wielded a collective hegemony with this very desirable demographic.
The study suggests that control is slipping from brands that try to impose images on teens rather than reflecting teens' perceptions of themselves.
"[The Adidas slogan] 'Impossible is Nothing' resonates with this generation almost like no other campaign that I've seen," says Walker, who calls global teens engaged, optimistic, and connected.

ruinedending: Never Been Kissed: Sam finds out that Josie is really a reporter at the prom, and her brother Rob gets found out too, and both are really angry at her. She uses her position as a reporter to get a sports reporter at a baseball game if the team coach lets her brother to be assistant manager, and she writes in the newspaper for Sam that he should meet her at the begining of the game so she could have her first real kiss. He is a little late but eventually comes, and kisses her. I like this movie kiss.

Prince Charming: A Memoir ~Christopher Logue - Faber and Faber Paperback - November 5, 2001
Amazon.co.uk Review: Christopher Logue has had an extraordinary and varied career. After turbulent schooldays he was court-martialled out of the army for illegally being in possession of Pay books (erotica?), and spent two years in a boot camp--except this was no ordinary boot-camp, but the Crusader castle of Acre. He sat in a dungeon and read Shakespeare. Later he lived in Paris and wrote pornography for a while, including such unforgettable works as Lust--which he doesn't recommend. Later still he was imprisoned again for his involvement in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and joined Private Eye producing the True Stories and Pseud's Corner columns for decades. His most important achievements have always been in poetry, though: his own work, and his brilliant, universally acclaimed translations of Homer.
Logue is so honest, so hard on himself and his (admittedly plentiful) faults, that it can sometimes make you wince. But the honesty is also what makes this a brilliant self-portrait of a man at odds with the world, a natural drifter and bohemian, somehow contriving to survive in a difficult age, and produce some magnificent poetry along the way. --Christopher Hart
SynopsisThis is the story of Christopher Logue, poet and literary maverick, who counted Ken Russell, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe among his friends. It tells of his Southern England childhood, his stint in the army, the years in Paris, offending T.S. Eliot and everything else, all in his own words.

War Music : An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer's Iliad by Christopher Logue
All Day Permanent Red: An Account of the First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad by Christopher Logue
All Day Permanent Red : The First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad Rewritten by Christopher Logue
all day afternoon (judybats) and anne carson's autobiography of red -- this is what I
War and the Iliad by Simone Weil

az: Logue's Homer - Cold Calls: War Music Cont (by Christopher Logue) :
British poet Christopher Logue has been working on his "account" of Homer's Iliad since the early 1960s, and I've long feared he might not live to complete it, especially when you consider how long it takes him to write. "War Music," published in 1962, was the first piece he released, covering Book 16 of the Iliad. Over forty years later, and he's only covered Books 1-6 and 17-19. But now we have Cold Calls, which covers Books 7-8, and is apparently the penultimate chapter. According to his publisher, Logue is even now working on the final (!) volume of War Music. Logue's installments have been released years (even decades) apart from one another, but the day will come when they are placed together, in order, in one volume.
Cold Calls contains some of the best lines Logue's written. Here's one such example, as Zeus speaks to Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena: "Darlings," He said, "You know that being a god means being blamed. Do this - no good. Do that - the same. The answer is: Avoid humanity. Remember - I am God. I see the bigger picture."
Only here, in Logue's fabulous Iliad, will you find Aphrodite calling Hera a "blubber-bummed wife" with "gobstopper nipples," and Athena an "undercurved preceptatrix." Only here will you find this same goddess appearing in "grey silk lounge pyjamas piped with gold" and "snakeskin flip-flops," and referred to as "Our Lady of the Thong."
and another excerpt: Around the tower 1000 Greeks, 1000 Ilians; amid their swirl, His green hair dressed in braids, each braid Tipped with a little silver bell, note Nyro of Simi - the handsomest of all the Greeks, save A. nice:'A.' I like that. The trouble was, he had no fight. He dashed from fight to fight, Struck a quick blow, then dashed straight out again. Save that this time he caught, As Prince Aeneas caught his breath, That Prince's eye very nice syntax; who blocked his dash, And as lord Panda waved and walked away, Took his head off his spine with a backhand slice - Beautiful stuff...straight from the blade... Still, as it was a special head, Mowgag, Aeneas' minder - Bright as a box of rocks, but musical - Spiked it, then hoisted it, and twizzling the pole Beneath the blue, the miles of empty air mm, Marched to the chingaling of its tinklers, A majorette, towards the Greeks, the tower. very good.