For the first time since 2006, I just got smashed by a huge welter of spam, about 150 comments that dodged the spam filter in the last eight hours. I’ve turned off comments on the entries that were getting hit, and hopefully they’ll leave me alone now.
I still wonder what spam is gonna look like in the age of Google Wave. Did you ever watch the big presentation Google did about Wave? (Here’s the highlight reel.) Wave is the goog’s new hybrid: email + chatroom + blogs + social networking + project collaboration + ??? Wave invites are starting to filter out into the networks now, and it looks like it’s going to be a pretty big deal. But I confess that watching the original presentation, all I could think was that this will be a spambots paradise; you’ll be swapping recipes with your mother while insistent bots mess around with the live conversation stream, redirecting all your images to point at porn advertisements and adding dodgy hyperlinks to everything you say. I’m sure the dev team have thought long and hard about the risks but it just seems an order of magnitude more open to exploitation than anything else on the internets. Interesting times, anyway.
(The Squeakquel is the subtitle of the new Alvin & The Chipmunks film. I picked it up in the AV Club comment section, where commenters will sequelise pretty much everything in range with the greatest post-colon subtitles of all time – The Quickening, The Search for Curly’s Gold, The Secret of the Ooze, Smokey is the Bandit, and of course the all-time champion of sequel subtitles, Electric Boogaloo.)
Writing Update: September
Regarding tne twelve-short-stories target for the year, I’m finally hitting par with this set of written pieces:
– “The Tape”
– “Buckets”
– “Babel”
– “The Twelve Times I Drank Too Much”
– “Lift Story”
– “The Apotheosis of Melvin Rameka”
– “Inappropriate Boss”
– “The Intervention Upstairs”
– “The Confessions”
Not a single one of them is really ready for prime-time though, they all need at least an edit if not more. Only five of them have been out to other human beings for comment, four of them exist solely as pen-in-notebook scribbles, so got to get those typed up. Still work to do! I’m seeing some themes/types coming through in my stories, also; maybe I’ll try and break out of that for the last three pieces. Maybe not.
Notable scratchings ‘n’ failed drafts include:
– “Walking story”
– “The Big Drive”
– “Corrina’s Walk”
“The Beast” comic ticks along.
Having meetings about the follow-up to “Affair of the Diamond Necklace”.
Recorded my pieces for Dan’s podcast version of “Urban Driftwood”, the anthology of our work as young writers. This was a really challenging little gig, trying to get to the meat of stuff I wrote a long time ago and respect it for what it was. I ended up liking some of it more than I did before, and some of it less, and in the case of one piece I ended up really liking the first half and really disliking the second half. Anyway, when it goes live you’ll read about it here…
“Ron the Body” is still inert. Must get that submission train rolling again, so easy to slack off on it.
And working away also on “Lament”, a role-playing game I’ve had in my to-do list for years, Mr 2Trees did some wonderful art for it a few years back. Enjoying that process.
Ummm I think that’s it. [Last writing update]
Portrait Linky
From this flickr set
Get yer full-on serious proper culture, none of this internet-age garbage, this is the real deal: Bulfinch’s Mythology and friends, a collection of free literary works with a focus on mythology, everything from Paradise Lost to Flatland.
Romance novel covers re-imagined
Sokky’s singing blog has a fascinating post that helped me grok how singing feels when you’re really good at it
Diaries of the vampires
Amazing views of glaciers from space
30 Mosques in 30 days – two New York Muslims visit a different mosque every day of Ramadan and take photos. Neat fun. I’ve linked to the last one in the series.
And finally, the 100 greatest hits of YouTube in four minutes:
Filament Issue 2
So, a while back I received issue 2 of Filament in the post. I’ve been dipping in and out of it since, and finally feel I can write usefully about it. Here’s the thing: it’s really pretty amazing.
Filament, subtitled the thinking woman’s crumpet, is an adult magazine aimed at women, with a mix of smart articles and sexy pictures of men. The editor, Suraya Singh, aims to provide images of men that are aimed at straight women, rather than gay men. I wrote about it back before launch, here.
This issue includes an interview with the new member of Placebo, some short fiction*, and articles on: cover trends in erotic fiction for women; autism and neurodiversity; pegging; Brazilian dance/martial art/game capoeira; working as a television editor; drugs and fair trade; living with a low sex drive; and the Contagious Diseases Act of 1864. The content mix is wonderfully diverse and interesting; this is how you do “womens content” in a way that makes sense to me, i.e., that reflects the diverse interests and opinions of all the smart women I know. (Compare with this example of how not to do it.)
Almost all the articles are from a woman’s perspective, but the tone is as far from Woman’s Day as you can get; for example the autism article was written by a mother who talks about her autistic son, but the focus is on how disability is positioned in society and completely devoid of the confessional/empathetic style that would dominate a glossy’s approach to the same subject.
Note also the article on living with a low sex drive – for a mag with a strong positive focus on sexuality and on women, to live up to its own ideals, it needs to be inclusive, and it achieves that here, with a smart piece interviewing women with low sex drive that allows women to decide for themselves if that’s a problem for them, and discusses what they can do if it is. (Compare to every single magazine targetted at men, and most of the glossy mags for women, where high sex-drive is the assumed default and alternatives are either invisible or actively derided.)
So much for the words. Also, lots of photos of chaps in various states of undress, including one photo of a man with an erection. This pic was the source of a lot of difficulty in getting the magazine printed and distributed, but I think the resultant controversy (e.g. NZ newspaper articles) gave the mag a lot of publicity so a good result overall.
Anyway, it’s a great slab of culture, and while I continue to be not the target audience, I really enjoy it. It occurred to me, reading this issue, that this is the magazine that the lead character of my Ron the Body manuscript** was looking for; magazine culture is an sub-theme and motif in the book, and it’s entirely possible that Cass wouldn’t be so bloody grumpy at the start of the story if she knew Filament existed. So, definitely worth a look, especially if you’re a smart woman who’s feeling out of synch with the culture. It will remind you that you’re not crazy.
Check it out here, including plentiful preview pages.
Final note of awesome: there’s a rumour that Warren Ellis will be answering reader’s etiquette questions in issue 3.
* including the first published work by my buddy Jenni Talula
** currently accumulating rejection slips if you were wondering
Dollhouse S2 Ep 1 (No Spoilers)
Well, that didn’t waste any time.
Dealing out a dozen-and-a-half plot twists, mixing in some dialogue that’s fully too clever but works anyway, and running scenes that have their beats honed to perfection like a champion tap dancer – this is amazing, smart TV. It sets up the rest of the season without even trying.
Best stuff in the episode is Amy Acker as Dr Saunders, who has a great storyline with Fran Kranz as Topher. They take a revelation from the end of the last season, one that was offered in almost an off-handed way, and use it to drive the characters full-speed at each other. Pity that Amy Acker’s only available for a handful of episodes this season, she’s got huge presence here (and having watched her early work in Angel recently, it’s great to see how far she’s come).
But, yeah. Dollhouse somehow, miraculously, scored a second season. Broadcast ratings will be abysmal, of course – but this is TV that is worth watching. Thumbs up.
(I probably won’t talk about Dollhouse again until the end of the season. Unless something AMAZING! happens along the way.)
An Internet Scam That Amused Me
(This is a rather pointless post. But the subject amused me so here it is.)
Here in New Zealand we have what’s known as a “cultural cringe”. It’s basically a national inferiority complex. We’re famous for getting overexcited when celebrities know our country exists, and for being a bit ashamed of our own cultural production. We crave the validation of big important foreigners. The cringe still exists, although the fact we’ve teamed up with the Aussies to pretty much take over Hollywood in the last decade alleviates some of the anxiety.
Which is a longwinded way of expressing my odd pleasure when I stumbled upon a scam site disguised as a blog. It appeared, I presume, as a pop-up ad when I visited some site this morning – my work computer doesn’t have much blockery going on.
I won’t link to the site, because that’s bad form (and makes google think it’s legitimate). Here’s a cut-and-paste of the text that caught my eye…
My name is Erin Jones from Wellington, New Zealand, and I started this blog because I want everyone to know how I went from being broke to completely paying off my debt in 30 days by spending a few minutes filling out a form online that qualified me for a $12,000 Financial Aid Check from the New Zealand Government.
So far, so standard – websites long ago figured out that they could detect your location and customise their content to suit. (This can lead to unintended amusement – “Dating Action – hot girls like Shawanna waiting for u in Wainuiomata New Zealand“) But the cultural cringe kicked in. They weren’t just popping up a location – they were talking about my government, dude! I wanted to see just how much they loved my country, so I scrolled down further – and saw this “picture of the actual grant check I received in the mail”:
Wow! That says New Zealand and even has a little NZ flag on the image! IT MUST BE TRUE! THEY LOVE US!
I checked out the picture’s properties and noted that the url ended “/gr-nz.jpg”
Hmm, I thought, I wonder what I’d find if I put in “/gr-us.jpg”? Or…
Well, see for yourself:
http://www.erinsgrantblog.com/erinsgrantblog/files1/gr-us.jpg
http://www.erinsgrantblog.com/erinsgrantblog/files1/gr-ca.jpg
http://www.erinsgrantblog.com/erinsgrantblog/files1/gr-au.jpg
http://www.erinsgrantblog.com/erinsgrantblog/files1/gr-uk.jpg
So I’m proud to announce that Erin’s Grant Blog thinks that NZ’s con marks are worth just as much as those in the US, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. I’ve tried a few other letter combinations but I can’t find any other countries that enjoy the same status. So that means that today we Kiwis can stand proud, because we are being treated just like the others! We’re in the big boys gang! Our internets are being targetted just as theirs are! That fake bank check didn’t create itself you know – somewhere out there is a scammer who cares about New Zealand.
It warms my heart.
Right Gettin’ Fringier
Let’s talk about politics in the USA, huh? Ten years ago, the right-wing talk radio masses were still in a fury at Bill Clinton. Clinton was accused of:
- being a liar (he was)
- who cheated on his wife (he did)
- who was involved in some big-money real estate fraud (he wasn’t)
Out at the fringes, people talked darkly about the Clintons getting people bumped off for co-operating with the Whitewater investigators (they really, really didn’t).
Now, it’s 2009, and we’re back with a Democrat President. Now, the right-wing talk radio masses and Fox News punditry are:
- turning out in their thousands to protest against a healthcare system that might actually work, and along the way they’re claiming that their rally was bigger than the inauguration (er, noooo).
- shouting down govt spokespeople in public meetings
- adulating as a hero a politican who interrupted the President’s speech to scream red-faced that he was a liar
- openly speculating in detail about whether the military will side with Obama in the coming civil war, or with The People (they made a TV show to run through the various scenarios – they seriously did this)
- revering as their champion a former radio shock jock who dove into Mormon fundamentalism complete with imminent end-times, a devotee of an ideologue anti-semitic conspiracy theorist who was too extreme for the Goldwater era conservatives, and who believes that the New World Order coded secret communist symbols into sculptures in the lobby of the Rockefeller Centre.
- afraid, or convinced, that the U.S. has already been seized by the dark anti-freedom forces behind Obama, because Obama is an agent of the New World Order, and the the end times are upon us.
It really has gone bananas over there. The political ground has shifted significantly in the direction of completely bugfunk.
This is the other legacy of the Bush era. On the one hand, Bush’s ineptitude and his complete capitulation to the Cheney faction led to massive social division, which created a thus-far unique opportunity for a black man to win the nomination and be elected. On the other hand, that same social division has allowed the right-wing base to fall completely off Planet Sanity. This is the logical conclusion of the mindset that derided the reality-based community.
And yes, this matters. Because when your civic discourse starts out with people shouting that the President of the United States faked his own birth certificate, there’s nowhere useful you can go; you really need to throw the whole thing out and start over. Except you can’t. There’s no easy way out of this; like a crayfish in a pot, we’re stuck here now.
This is not good. With all this chaos, it’s hard to actually engage with what the Obama administration is doing. While the terrified Glenn Beck base tremble in fear that Obama is too far to the left, many voices in the progressive movement are beginning to claim that Obama is in fact too far to the right; that the clothes worn by the Obama administration include a surprising number of CheneyBush hand-me-downs. But how can these criticisms possibly be taken up and addressed by the citizenry, when there are birthers punching the window glass and screaming through cupped hands?
Bill Clinton said the other day that the forces against Obama are being driven by the same forces within the GOP as ever. He’s right – but what those forces are tapping into has mutated, like a Toxic Avenger villain who’s spent too long in the radioactive slime. Things have changed. It doesn’t get any prettier from here on in.
Sparkle Motion Vampire Linky
Karen Healey’s first column on Young Adult fiction at Strange Horizons
Play the moon – using the moon’s topography as a musical notation.
White noise a la carte.
Lucasfilms staffer tries out Jabba the Hutt costume for a day. (And some on-the-set Star Wars photos you might not have seen. The last one was new to me and a crack-up.)
OKCupid uses stats to tell you exactly what to say in your online dating messages. There’s a thesis in this.
TV critic Alan Sepinwall blogs his way through various great TV series. Try Freaks and Geeks, The Wire for Wire newbies, and The Wire for Wire veterans.
wall of cute fluffy critters! (How I found baby beavers)
And finally… All the Single Babies
When China Invaded NZ
Just finished a series of posts on Gametime about games played at the Chimera LARP convention, which raised some really interesting (to me) issues about culture, ethics, nationalism, and representation of minority communities.
Interested parties can find them all under the “culture” tag on Gametime.
Moon (UK, 2009)
Plot summary: dude is on the moon
Lovely, funny, starchy take on self-knowledge, fate and destiny. Heartwarming effects that don’t use computer techniques. Sam Rockwell as the dude on the moon is ace. Robot companion is well-figured. Nice music. Plot development well-structured, timing its reveals just right, and never trying too hard to blindside the audience. Verra enjoyable.
Go see.