This makes me want to play World of Warcraft slightly more than I did previously. We are now up to “probably never” from “definitely never.” This is the type of power Mr. T possesses.
Also: Shatner.
21
Nov
This makes me want to play World of Warcraft slightly more than I did previously. We are now up to “probably never” from “definitely never.” This is the type of power Mr. T possesses.
Also: Shatner.
21
Nov
Patrick Metzger, my fellow Torontoista, posted this recently on Facebook (presumably because Patrick is the very model of irony personified), and I thought it deserved wider distribution than his circle of Facebook friends.
Facebook, the bloom is off the rose. A few months back I gushed like a schoolgirl about the Internet phenom that’s turned millions into social trivia junkies, but the blinders are starting to come off.
Facebook doesn’t really do anything useful. No news, weather, not even sports updates, and certainly no learning. It’s not a gathering place for discussion, but narcissism central, a place for people to show off the person they want others to think they are. Here are my books, my music, my beliefs. Look at me, my attractive friends, my kids, my pets, my hip-hop group, my sports car, the places I’ve traveled, the movies I’ve watched. Here’s how I’m feeling right now. And now. And now. Do you like me? Want to be like me? It’s a conversation between 40 million drunks, each one shouting over the others to tell their story.
Facebook groups illustrate this self-congratulatory ethos. They rarely have a real-world function, but serve as popularity contests for ego-thespians to promote their latest low-budget film project or idiot political agenda, or joinable bumper sticker philosophies intended to demonstrate wit, wealth, non-conformity or some other personal attribute that members want to be seen as possessing. There are more than 500 groups with the word “crazy” in them, ditto for “sexy”, “drunk”, “boobs”, “bling”, and “Porsche”, not to mention “faith”, “hope”, and “charity”. Even more than individual profiles, groups are brand building gone wild – this is me, my mottos, my logos, my ideas! Love me! The addition of new advertising functionality to link people to genuine dollars and cents brands is a logical consequence of this mad rush to label ourselves online. Everyone knows Nike; by attaching myself to it I get an instant identity that millions of people can see instantly.
Still, in the meat world we all wear brands. We all project an image that we hope others will buy. What makes Facebook more harmful than the day-to-day self-promotion in which we all engage? Because for all its interactivity, it’s really a one-way conversation, where disinterest is easily mistaken for approval. On Facebook, there’s no one to tell you to shut up.
I like the piece, although Patrick fails to also include all those goddamned zombie/werewolf/vampire “games” that are little more than desperate cries for attention – here’s a hint, people who create those games, tag works as a game because you get to run around a lot, not because the tagging dynamic is that interesting.
That having been said, I think Patrick undervalues the importance of the personal representation that Facebook can generate. Being able to say “this is who I am and this is what I believe,” and then being able to aggregate those beliefs simply to show critical mass of opinion – what this amounts to is opinion polling not generated by the media elite, and I think that’s potentially invaluable. Would the push to save the Sam The Record Man storefront have been successful without people spontaneously using Facebook to demonstrate that a whole lot of Torontonians really wanted to keep the giant records on Yonge Street? Heck, a copycat campaign to save the truck coming out of the CityTV building was referred to by CP24 when they decided to keep the truck (which is the most wonderful kind of eyesore) exactly where it was.
This sort of independent issue-campaigning works because it makes clear to those in power – even when the power they’re in isn’t that massive or significant – where the interests and priorities of ordinary folks really lie. I think that’s worth a lot of annoying zombie games.
21
Nov
20
Nov
20
Nov
Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier has been hailed in some quarters as a masterpiece, in others as Alan Moore’s worst excesses all combined into a single dense volume. I’m not sure yet where I stand on this axis, but a few things about the book puzzled me.
– I realize that Moore’s taste for literary tomfoolery is well-known at this point, but I thought the grown man on page 56 clearly buttfucking a stuffed bear and referred to both as “Christopher” and “Robin” was fairly over-the-top. Yes, Alan Moore, we know, Victorian children’s literature is rife with sexual innuendo, blah blah Freud blah blah blah, we got it, okay? Christ, wasn’t three hundred pages of a Dorothy/Alice/Wendy tantric threeway in Lost Girls enough already?
– Likewise unsubtle was the photograph of Dan Didio on page 104 with a big handlebar moustache drawn on it and a crudely drawn word balloon saying “I like felching.” Really, was that necessary? I mean, it was kind of a stretch to suggest that Mina and Quartermain considered it “important evidence.”
– I know Moore enjoys references to other literary works, but including Anna Livia Plurabelle from Finnegans Wake is either Alan Moore bragging that he is the only person on the planet to have actually read Finnegans Wake all the way through and know what the fuck it is about, or alternately Alan Moore lying about same, and I could have done without either.
– That having been said, I’m willing to bet that in Finnegans Wake, Anna Livia Plurabelle does not have sex with a mutant donkey space invader.
– The addition of The Outrageous Hitler-Man to the team smacks of smartassedness, as his only superpower is “the power to enrage.” Also, I’m not sure where the hell Moore is going to pretend that The Outrageous Hitler-Man’s literary roots lie, although I understand Jess Nevins claims that The OH-M is actually a seventeenth-century Welsh folktale. Of course, Jess Nevins also claims that Alan Moore doesn’t send him kickbacks, so, you know. Grain of salt.
– I’m still not sure why page 81 was edible.
– Everybody has already said their piece about the three-dimensional portion of the book, and I think the idea was clever and well-executed. Except for the one panel where a figure looking suspiciously like Alan Moore points at you and says “now YOU are part of the League, by proxy of imagination!” Honestly. Just sell fake membership cards like everybody else.
– Does Allan Quatermain have to speak in Victorian English all the way through the book? Towards the end of the book, when the setting is the 1960s, he starts to sound irritatingly like Mr. Burns. The reference to the Beatles “not being true vaudevillians” seemed kind of forced.
– I don’t have much criticism for Kevin O’Neill, who is rightfully acclaimed as a genius sort of artist. I didn’t even mind the pornographic woodcuts he kept hiding in the background, presumably at Moore’s insistence. However, I draw the line at hidden pictures of Twiki from the old Buck Rogers TV show.
– The first letter of every page in the book spells “Fuck you, Grant Morrison. Yeah, you heard me, fuck you, Mister “God of All Comics.” I’m the man, not you. I’m the guy who’s won actual literary awards. All you’ve done is some rubbish non-linear narrative and rewritten some crap Superman stories from the Sixties. I fucking ended the Superman story, right? “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?” I did that in a day and a half while I was high on coke. You heard me, you Scottish twat. Let’s see some Hollywood producer rape YOUR work and turn it into shitty movies designed to lull people into a catatonic consumerist sleep.” I can’t help but think this is rude, even if it is horribly hard to find.
– Finally, although I understand the meaning is obviously one that’s supposed to be ironic, having a page labeled “How To Kill The Dreaded Nee-Gro” is just in poor taste, okay?
Other than that, though? Pretty good.
Okay, so it was sold out everywhere I looked. Come on, I’m probably pretty close.
19
Nov
My weekly television column is, as it is every Monday, up at Torontoist. Go forth, and read.
19
Nov
Specifically, Canada is totally getting the shaft when it comes to mobile phone costs. Check out those graphs. We’re worse than Rwanda, for crissake.
This is just another example of how Canadian politicians’ rhetoric about wanting to make Canadian industry competitive are all too often just empty rhetoric. See also: Canada’s continuing paucity of funding for scientific research, especially at the university level. It really annoys the shit out of me no end.
19
Nov
New Zealand to rest of world: “no fatties, please.”
19
Nov
Just so everybody knows, I joined the New Democratic Party today. This may make a difference to some people, it may not.
Some of you might ask: “Why the NDP? Come to think, why join a political party period?” Consider it the best way I can think of to express the belief that politics in Canada have drifted too far rightward, particularly considering the political proclivities of the nation as a whole – which drifts majority centre-left and has done so pretty much since World War II. This is not to say that I agree with all of the NDP’s party positions – I’m probably a bit more centrist than the party would prefer in a few areas, to say the least. But I am an avowed small-L liberal, and proud of the fact, and there’s only one party in Canada that seems particularly willing to be proud of liberalism along with me. Besides, if there are things about the party that I disagree with, what better place to try and affect those elements than from within, right?
Rest assured I plan to grow a Jack Layton moustache as soon as humanly possible in solidarity with The Beloved Leader.
18
Nov
I remembered reading a while back about Nanosolar, the company trying to perfect extremely cheap, non-silicon based solar cells. And it occurred to me yesterday, “hey, how is that going, anyhow?”
After some Googling, it turns out that the answer to that question is very, very good indeed. The dawn of individual power generation is very nearly upon us, and it can’t come fast enough.
(Mind you, the United States alone uses over three terawatts of energy at peak hours right now, so, yeah, being able to produce 430 megawatts of generation capacity per year is, you know, not nearly enough. On the other hand, though, now that there’s a cheap model for people to copy, nanosolar production can be very easily advanced through government incentive programs. Imagine about a hundred of these factories and suddenly you’re producing 43 gigs of generation capacity every year; that’s the United States taken care of in a decade with room to spare. And that’s before someone unscrupulous just steals the technology outright and starts putting up factories in China.)
17
Nov
Someone tell me again about how voluntary emissions reduction is the answer to the global warming crisis, please?
16
Nov
Namely, “liberals can beat people up too, so long as they are bad people.”
He be spiny like an Agave Cactus, he be the painbringer, he be Bahlactus.
16
Nov
In the first year of law school – at least, at Osgoode Hall, where I go – you get exactly one course option in first year to go along with the usual slate of tort law, contract law, criminal law, property law, public and constitutional law, ethics, and legal process and writing. Because these are small-group seminar classes, you’re expected to rank your top five preferences in case of overflow.
Mine were:
1.) Legal Challenges In Intellectual Property
2.) Tax Law As A Reflection Of Social Policy
3.) Globalization And The Law
4.) Legal Realities Of Urbanization
5.) “something that will help me in case I need to determine the legal status of a superintelligent gorilla.”
I have my reasons.
16
Nov
Deadly funny. Only one joke, but a really, really good one.
15
Nov
Come on, you can’t go wrong with a story like “impoverished surfer comes up with workable unified theory of physics.” That is sublimely awesome.
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