Back from holiday break
They say writing is a muscle (and I believe it), and if so, mine is weak and out-of-shape after a holiday break with no writing, minimal time online, and wave after wave of consumption of various holiday foodstuff. Come to think of it, I'm just flab all over. Much of the popularity of New Year's fitness resolutions can be explained by timing, New Years coming directly after typically the most protracted and gluttonous of American holidays.
Just as with going to the gym, every day I don't write adds to the output I feel I need to generate the next time I do write. After a while it feels impossible to make up for all the lost time. The only way to get rolling again is a little chunk at a time.
Lots of fun to play with, though there's little in the way of supporting evidence. A cursory kicking of the tires spilled these nuggets (my notes in parentheses):
At any rate, it's just an example of a type of humor which seems to be at the peak of its popularity: laughing at the person in the dark, the person who is being honest and genuine. It's the modern ironic mode of expression as entertainment.
Punk'd. The Ali G Show. All those reality television shows in which contestants are kept in the dark as to the real premise of the show, like My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance. Even The Colbert Report, at times.
I hope this mode of humor hit its saturation point in 2005. There's a mean-spiritedness at its core that isn't that funny and is only tolerable in small doses, a level it has long since surpassed in mass media.
Just as with going to the gym, every day I don't write adds to the output I feel I need to generate the next time I do write. After a while it feels impossible to make up for all the lost time. The only way to get rolling again is a little chunk at a time.
***
Do people still eat geese, or is it an anachronism from Dickens' novels and a time before people learned to appreciate other fowl? I never hear of anyone eating a Christmas goose anymore. Is it not good, or is it just too much hassle to farm-raise geese to make it a grocery store staple? Geese don't seem to be endangered. I see them everywhere.***
The BT Technology Timeline - BT has a futurology department, and they've built this interactive timeline that runs out to 2051 (which probably covers the remainder of my life expectancy). My first thought on seeing this was that some lucky SOB's job is to sit around and predict the future. The second was that even the most advanced futurologist has no clue when the Cubs will finally win a World Series.Lots of fun to play with, though there's little in the way of supporting evidence. A cursory kicking of the tires spilled these nuggets (my notes in parentheses):
- Androids will make up 10% of the population in 2015 (ensuring that already awkward blind dates will begin with the administration of the Voight-Kampff test)
- The world's population will peak at 10 billion in 2039 (you think finding an apartment in Manhattan is tough today)
- Virus crosses over from machine to human in 2025 (because some eager SOB forgot to do the Voight-Kampff test before jumping into the sack)
- Rise of a global machine dictator - date unknown (Skynet?)
- Robot superior to humans in 2030 or so (well, we still have 25 years to enjoy our supremacy)
- Creation of The Matrix in 2030 (related to the prediction above?)
- Fully telepathic communication in 2049
- Brain downloads in 2049 (shortly thereafter, someone will write a plug-in to allow direct sending of brain logs to all the major weblog software packages; confusion will reign as the term blog is re-appropriated to refer to brain-logs)
***
Some guys TiVo'd the previous night's Texas Lotto drawing and then bought their buddy a matching ticket that day. Then they set up a camcorder, played the drawing while their buddy was there, and put the video up on Google Video. I hope they take their buddy out for dinner or something. That's just cruel.At any rate, it's just an example of a type of humor which seems to be at the peak of its popularity: laughing at the person in the dark, the person who is being honest and genuine. It's the modern ironic mode of expression as entertainment.
Punk'd. The Ali G Show. All those reality television shows in which contestants are kept in the dark as to the real premise of the show, like My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance. Even The Colbert Report, at times.
I hope this mode of humor hit its saturation point in 2005. There's a mean-spiritedness at its core that isn't that funny and is only tolerable in small doses, a level it has long since surpassed in mass media.
***
While searching for a copy of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner on DVD, I stumbled across Nostalgia Family Video, a site which carries just such hard-to-find movies on DVD. The aforementioned DVD is just one of many gems in their catalog.