It's Not Happening

Slog coverage of PAX

blight — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:04:43 +0000

…brought to you by the Stranger Testing Department, which includes Paul Hughes, yours truly and nobody else. For now, anyway. Here’s our PAX posts:

Day Zero.

Day One.

Day Two. (By the way, we never thanked Sean Dawson for the awesome headline. Thanks, Sean!)

Day Three.

I finally added a link over yonder (and cleared out a few very old links). If I get ambitious this week, I’ll add a few new ones. Enjoy!

Spam poem

blight — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:39:14 +0000

I know it’s the oldest meme in Memylvania, but I loved this one. There was no link:

its a must read
you have got to check it out
this is a must see
if i can offer you one thing, this is it
you absolutely have to check this out
this is worth trying
its definitely worth it
you have got to try
This is something you need to see
this is great
i feel great about this
I haven’t felt this good about something in a long time
i would feel wrong for not sharing this
I felt like i had to share this
have you seen this before
have you seen this
i hope you take a look
it will be great if this works out for you
i sure hope you give it a try
well here it is
i’ll be glad to hear how you do
hope to hear about your story
hopefully you do as well as I have
i bet you’ll do even better than me
it would be good if you check this out
this will help you greatly
I know this can help you out
this can and will work
I trusted someone and tried this, thank god
you’ll be pleasantly surprised

I’m on vacation but I can still frame

blight — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:25:08 +0000

In the unlikely event that you find yourself arguing with someone who thinks we should tell people where they can or can’t build mosques, try this:

Gingrich, Palin and all their cronies are working hard to ensure that America becomes exactly what Al Qaeda claims it is.

You’re welcome! See you in a few days.

Noted w/o comment

blight — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:54:45 +0000

????? from David OReilly on Vimeo.

Thanks, Warren Ellis.

Arrested Development: The Action Movie

blight — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:25:10 +0000

Neko Case is a serious lady

blight — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:17:48 +0000

Audience member throws CD at stage. Neko Case threatens mass mayhem. Lots of swears!

What is this?

blight — Wed, 19 May 2010 00:16:32 +0000

This post by Matt Yglesias, while not especially noteworthy in terms of content, offers an example of something that’s been bugging me for a while now. Check out this snippet:

For quite a long time now people have been urging Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to run for hire office[...]

Note the homophone. I’ve seen these pop up quite a lot lately in blog posts, and while I haven’t been tracking carefully, I think Yglesias and Ezra Klein are the worst (maybe only) offenders. I don’t recall seeing homophone typos much, if ever, before, except when people forget their/they’re/there or other similar rules. Are they using voice transcription? Is it just a stupid spell-check error? Signifiers of unedited authenticity? None of those seem right to me for various reasons – I can’t imagine why they’d want to use transcription and I think I would have noticed spell-check errors long ago. Ideas?

Food Party!

blight — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:32:47 +0000

Jessie and I watched the first episode of IFC’s Food Party last night, and holy wow did we love it. Imagine Pee-Wee Herman making a baby with Cibo Matto and then sending it to live with John Waters every summer. Your reaction to that description should be all you need to know. Plus, they are short enough to not drag. Ride out the first minute of episode one and you won’t be sorry. Go to!

Oh wow look, IFC has embeddable clips. I am your new best friend:

Good advice

blight — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:12:36 +0000

(Via Damn, Gina, a mst excllnt tumblr blg)

The bullet train doesn’t slow down for anyone

blight — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:08:27 +0000

Bullet trains making long trips can shave quite a bit of time off the total ride (as well as avoid some wear and tear on braking and fuel on acceleration) by whizzing past stations and using pods to transfer passengers on and off. Cool or dehumanizing? I think it only feels off-putting because it’s new, but it does feel a little like we’re serving the tech rather than the other way around (cf. cars and their infrastructure):

The narration is in Chinese, but the concept is pretty well explained visually for those of us who are unlearned.