by zach @ . October 30, 2009 . 11:59PM
by zach @ . October 23, 2009 . 11:59PM
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . October 19, 2009 . 12:35PM
Reading: Middlesex
Getting Read To Me: Atlas Shrugged
Watching: Dexter, Californication, House, Bones
So, I’ve been nurturing some wierd interests as of late, and instead of just emailing Jenny about it, how about I take a second and share with you, Internet? It would seem that as my courseload gets heavier, I find new and improved ways of goofing off.
School season means septa season which means podcast season. The problem is that I’ve managed to dry the well of podcasts I really like, and thusly started listening to entirely too much spoken word “junk,” including Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rynd. This is one of those books that one is “expected to know” when trying to compare intellect penises with some douchebag on the Internet. And what the hell, I liked Bioshock. I’d like to point you towards the Introduction of the text, in which the author basically says that nobody edited this floating wonder of dense word-poop. If you are okay with that, we are okay.
Also, I love how all the “masters of industry, thus the universe” are all smokers – because your context is showing! Ewww, nobody likes those bras anymore, thats all I saying.
Richard Jeni, by the way, genius. Much more engaging.
Elsewhere, Good Old Games is an amazing website that has some very decent product, they get do interesting computer science work (revamp old code to remove DRM, that ought to be fun!) and also are amusingly British. But what I looove more than anything is the design they use on thier product (and elsewhere) pages. Presumably, they use a photoshop filter to de-grey an area and toss some type above it. It’s wonderful and simple and I’m all sorts of pissed I didn’t think of it. I have the design chops of a manilla envelope full of pipe cleaners.
Basically what I’m saying is that they’re better at computers than I am.
Here’s a picture of Seinfeld’s head on a famous Bruce Lee photo, done in pencil on a tshirt. That is very far removed from those abs themselves. It’s random, and what else is there, really? It’s from Topatoco.
Ever catch yourself wondering where Ross Perot learned how to break out a chart to prove a political point? Oh, that was pretty easy to find out:
This happened on my way to find a copy of this print, which unfortunately cost more than the deleted scenes of the Zapruder film:
I can’t wait until I’m rich enough to have a decent-sized one of these, right next to my “Keep Calm” print – monochromaticization FTW. This shot, for me at least, reminds me of the duty and honor of brotherhood. And that’s something that definitely deserves to look at your TV as you sit under it, eating cheese from a can.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . October 18, 2009 . 3:06PM
Now that I have a DSLR, I can take pictures of my desk mess with close-up objects much sharper than objects in the background, as opposed to the whole thing being kinda blurry.
Yup.
by zach @ . October 16, 2009 . 11:59PM
by zach @ . October 9, 2009 . 11:59PM
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . October 9, 2009 . 12:58PM
There’s these twitter accounts where someone says “hey! I’m going to be fake steve jooobs” and then they get all excited and maybe even say something really funny before they get yelled at by their boss for goofing off online and then they’re never heard from again. Maybe they forgot all about having that clever idea, maybe they finally succumbed to the desire to live in a place without Internet, who knows.
(in case this isn’t obvious – this is every tweet on this account)
I wonder how many of these exist? And since I’m the first person I’ve ever heard of think on this phenomena, I get to name it, right? Thats how it works in Astronomy, according to my weekly viewing of Armageddon.
Let’s call these accounts… blue dwarfs? brown accounts? Crap, I need to name this to get social media expert pasted on my resume.
blue flashpans!
You’ve heard it here first, folks – Blue Flashpans (see the capitals?) are Twitter accounts that briefly were funny and now are defunct. You may call it a Stankiewicz-vector Twitter account. The formulae for identification of these will follow when I get this white paper published.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . October 8, 2009 . 3:31PM
well, maybe not “the best” – and certainly my favorite.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . October 7, 2009 . 1:07PM
Skip to the next heading if nirvana fanboydom is poison to you.
Yesterday, I was in what can only be described an an existential funk. While my mission hasn’t really deviated in what I’d like to be doing in six months and a year, the nuts and bolts in the trenches made me really wish I was back in the days before 22 credit semesters and sales quotas. Days where I could make after six in the morning and get home before 10.
Obviously as any other vaguely creative person, I was quiye the angst ridden adolsesant. One of my missions in life was to just listen to the same three nirvana albumns over and over. From the muddy banks of the wishkah, the second of what is now a half dozen post Cobain offerings was the third cd I ever owned. Having …Wishkah only made my hunger stronger’ and before you knew it, I was wearing tattered flannel shirts and going on about how much Pearl Jam and Silverchair sucked. Instead the the four albums on three tapes was all I ever needed: In Utero, Bleach, …Wishkah, and the evergreen Opiate by Tool.
My good friend in high school, a die hard blue collar Nirvana fan if there ever was one, let me borrow Michael Azerrad’s come as you are. It inspired me to be the next Chris Novoselic (I was the tall one), and I took the electric bass.
Wait, what about the book?
The book itself is something of a frankenstien of biography, music business primer, punk music theory lecture, and an examination abot poor people in the 1980s.
This book really seemed well written and through when I was 14.
Seemingly of its own accord, come as you are jumps around the dozen or so formative years leading up to the suicide of Cobain in 1994. While Azerrad is billed as “Nirvana Biographer” on the likes of wikipedia, its fairly obvious that this title was awarded posthumously, or simply not used properly.
An example of this is a 1992 interview that was given to the Cobains as they were in a custody fight over the simple matter of Love using heroin during her pregency. While either side on the facts of the issue could of been right to me, Azerrad takes his “insider” story and runs as fast as he can to the presses. Without having anyone seperate having seperate say in this matter that so many trees died to tell us about, it leaves a rushed impression, or maybe the inability to get anyone on the opposite issue to come forth, which makes it somewhat of a non-issue, doesn’t it?
Without fail, the book is painfully succient in all the wrong places. While the 1991-2 custody fight received an exorbitant amount of ink, the meat and potatoes of what any Nirvana fan would love to be hearing about, the actual genesis of Nirvana’s groundbreaking “grunge” sound, or Nirvana’s touring days. Azzerad only describes a few sets in any detail, instead focusing on the destruction of instruments.
When I was 10 years younger, I didn’t notice. I hope that in another 10 years, I can look back at this review, and point out that the lack of contractions doesn’t come from my writing better, but because I typed this on a Blackberry and tried my best to avoid having to place anything but periods and question marks.
Some biographer. He only was on the clock when the media was apeshit over Nirvana and the Cobains.
The big finish?
Obviously enough from all the re-releases of star wars on dvd, people want to relive that magic feeling of being introduced to a cultural love. Its simple unfortunate that azzerad bet against the music being the part we wanted to lose ourselves in, not that stupid Vanity Fair cigarette picture.
Sadly however, Nirvana is not the Beatles, and won’t have a small army of biographers chasing after them to set the record straight. In only what can be seen as a race to the press both times (after Nirvana’s sudden rise to fame, and Cobain’s untimely passing), the meat and potatoes taste like they’ve been left in the freezer and potato bin just a bit too long, leaving this the literary equivalent of the hungry man dinner.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . October 5, 2009 . 9:30PM
but dontcha worry, undergraduate science students, I have the answer: productive hobbies! Me, I’m a drinking-mid-shelf-whiskey-watch-Casino-again kind of guy. This however, does not meet the criteria of being a productive use of one’s leisure time, and I sure as hell don’t want to end up doing dishes.
Hey, what about photography? I have a habit of ending up in places I don’t belong in anyways, I might as well record the experience. Then I wouldn’t be using a DSLR to take pictures of how messy my desk is! Last night I got a Nikon D40 for a hefty discount at my local Target, which I won’t be reviewing. I know more about headphones, 19th century British politics, ikea furniture, and a $20-30 Gin than I do about photography, anyways, this thing came out like a million years ago. Ask Kevin Rose how he likes his.
Anyways, it (pictures, and the taking of them) is something I’m going to be doing (badly) going forward. I look forward to adding yet another kind of way of inflicting punishment on the internet’s sensibilities.
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