Please do go and read this week’s lovely Bar Exam column. I can vouch for all the improbable events she narrates, as I was there helping her celebrate her nativity. The right wine choice is vital.
Archive for August, 2008
28
Aug
Happy birthday, Bethany!
26
Aug
Barack Lobster
I just wanted to remind everyone that Google is always cleverer than you, or so it seems. Thanks a lot, Google!
Oh yeah, thanks to Jessie for pointing this out: Blackle is the low-energy-use search engine of choice. It doesn’t do GIS, which is a drag, but you can at least feel holier- or bat-cavier-than-thou.
24
Aug
Curiosity might kill me
Hey, if you read this in Safari or, god help you, IE, or some other, awesomely obscure, browser, would you mind dropping me a comment and letting me know whether or not the site looks or acts funny, and if so, how?
Lawrence Weschler’s writing is one of the things that keep getting me out of bed every morning. This, one of his earliest books, starts out as a bio of an LA artist dude who seems kind of frattish and empty inside, but turns into an exploration of the roots of perception and the artificial distinction between art and reality through the eyes of the same dude, who turns out to be the right kind of empty inside.
If you already know about Robert Irwin, you’re several steps ahead of me, but that should surprise no one. He moved from abstract painting to sculpture-as-cognitive-psych-experiment to site-specific perceptual enhancements (or reminders, maybe) and beyond toward artlessness, with a rigor and honesty that would be terrifying in any other field. Weschler makes his disruptions seem perfectly natural, and any writer who can get this reader interested in the formal art world has performed a mighty work.
“Oh, awesome – now it’s going to get really dirty.” (Not even a little irony there, this is going to be really, really great. I couldn’t be happier. Biden is going to get medieval on the GOP.)
Oh, and if CNN led me astray, well, let’s say it all together: I am an idiot.
22
Aug
Life’s all right
So yeah, I’m still working like someone with a real job, and am finding less and less time to just stare off into space and let my atoms shake themselves back into alignment, but somehow, for secret reasons, I feel pretty great today. Don’t tell my clients!
18
Aug
Woooooooooooooooork
Wow, I’ve fallen into a work-hole and can’t seem to climb back out. It’s hard to complain too much – I certainly want the $$, and each individual project is actually pretty cool unto itself. It’s also great to be working face-to-face with people again, and it doesn’t hurt that those people are way mass cool. But man, there just aren’t that many moments left in the day these days.
I know, I know, every parent in my world is shaking his or her head and pitying my criminal lack of perspective. At least I hope you’re pitying it, instead of arranging for the Department of Karmic Irony to teach me a lesson I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding. Please, please, please at least let me keep my ignorance – is that too much to ask?
And on that note, I say to you: Good night.
06
Aug
Muxtape
I made a Muxtape! It’s a weird little site that lets you upload perfectly legal MP3s which it will then play in order for your pals. It took me more than an instant to realize that you have to click on the first song title to get it started. I was going to explain the theme and show you the playlist, but if I do that, you won’t go listen, will you? I have no idea what kind of connection speed you need, but it plays OK on my vanilla DSL. Enjoy, or feel concerned about me, or have another drink.
I’m torn between writing down all the mean book-review-y things I felt while reading this and just saying “Look, this isn’t his best work by any means, but if you’re into Doctorow and Neal Gaiman, this will probably keep you happy for a while.” But there, I said it and I don’t feel done, so here goes:
Cory Doctorow is at his best when he’s nerding out and explaining ideas or projecting trends – that is, when he’s writing nonfiction (though, yes, he can get preachy). His short fiction can be great fun because he sticks to what he’s good at, but his novels, especially SCtT,SLT feel crowded and too clever by half. In this one, he tries to force an over-technical Neal Stephenson idea into an over-whimsical Neal Gaiman fable, which is just as ill-considered as it sounds. Then he stuffs in far too many one-dimensional secondary characters, a naming conceit that probably felt playful to him but comes across as clunky and distracting, and a story that feels as if it’s drowning in miscellanea when the reader can remember it at all. For all that, it would still make a fine airplane read for those with reasonable expectations; I kept at it and I’m glad I finished it despite my reservations.
Because he is who he is, you can get the book for free as a Creative Commons-licensed download.
You said it, sister