Writing
so crabby
(7 Words. December 12, 2011, 09:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
oh my. shut the fuck up dave….
Star Trek: TNG, directed by Sid and Marty Krofft
(691 Words. October 01, 2011, 04:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This morning I awakened from an epic dream which consisted of a never-extant ST:TNG episode guest starring William Shatner, Harvey Keitel, and which was directed by and featuring the puppets and sensibilities of Sid and Marty Krofft, circa 1972. I regaled Vivian with the whole thing as best I could without collapsing into fits of helpless laughter and then…
The Sun that Burns
(539 Words. August 30, 2010, 11:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Saturday, I spent the whole day sitting on the beach near the San Onofre nuclear plant, reading. The whole day was cool, and the morning, from 10 to 1 or so, was grey and misty, quite pleasant. Just as the clouds pushed back offshore, the Goodyear blimp mosied on by, headed south at about 800 feet. I friended…
RIP Harvey
(304 Words. July 12, 2010, 09:27 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Local-news site Cleveland.com reports that comic-book writer, jazz critic, and curmudgeon Harvey Pekar died overnight at his home: Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. I can’t help but think Harvey would be amused that his…
The Eve of the Feast of Osiris
(1005 Words. December 15, 2009, 04:32 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Recently, while conducting my annual researches into the origins of the beloved holiday legend of Osiris Claus, I had occasion to venture deep into the vaulted reaches of a dusky book-crypt. Far and far I had crept, flickering cell-phone my only source of illumination as I scanned the cobwebbed stacks in search of the rumored grimoire. Out amidst the…
Roger
(1 Words. September 19, 2008, 12:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
R….
Edits
(46 Words. January 28, 2007, 11:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Whoo boy, you take a year off the writins and it sho do show. I pledge greater vigilance on my part toward the grievous sins of run-on-sentencery, typos (especially if conjunctions) which dramatically decrease the apparent sensibility of a sentence, and of course multiple-post generating revisions….
Yard Arm
(1148 Words. February 02, 2006, 08:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In the back yard, I drop ants of differing appearance into the reservoir portion of a spray bottle filled with water. Peering into the neck of the bottle with one eye, the ants appear as huge as cars and people. They can walk along the walls of the bottle and do so, carefully gathering air into a diving-bell about…
Time and changes
(574 Words. February 01, 2006, 10:29 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I’m starting this entry too late to do it justice - 10 pm. Despite this, here are some dates and events associated with my family’s residence in my Bloomington childhood home. Summer, 1976. We move to Bloomington from West Lafayette. Previously my family had come to town for an academic conference or interview and stayed on the square in…
In my room
(513 Words. January 31, 2006, 08:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
My childhood bedroom was about the size of my current bedroom, but a bit more square. A closet faced with two bifold doors, I think, was bumped out from the wall that also held the entry door. I suppose the room must have been about fifteen feet square. In the center of the wall to one’s right, on entering,…
Stain Me
(316 Words. January 27, 2006, 11:15 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight I had the months-delayed pleasure of booting up a new computer; well before the move, planning to be as broke as I am, I had grabbed a refurbished Mac Mini with the intent of building it from scratch to be my internet services machine once we landed here. It’s neat, specifically due to that tiny size and dense…
La laa, la la laaa
(487 Words. November 14, 2005, 09:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
What do you call a workday that begins at 6 am and ends at 8 pm? In other news, we bought the floor for the house’s large family room over the weekend, about $1.5k, in a thicker-plank red oak than the existing oak that was under the carpets. On the whole, the remodel is on track to go over…
Mwa ha ha ha
(309 Words. November 05, 2005, 09:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
For some reason I got sucked into a decent, if ultimately pointless Ask MetaFilter thread on the problem of evil. I wrote a post but MeFi went down before I could post it and I didn’t want to lose it. So here it is. —- “transworld depravity?” Ill-mannered skateboard magazine readers? I don’t get it. I think a part…
Floating Couplets
(471 Words. September 08, 2005, 09:29 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
New Orleans was the original capitol of the American imagination, before this country owned Louisiana. The port at the end of the great midwestern river system that provided the economic engine which begat this nation, its’ place in the country’s heart - and mine - is as central as that of New York or San Francisco. A tad reduced…
Ink
(96 Words. June 27, 2005, 05:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
While Excavating Past, John Irving Finds His Family [NYT blogerated link]. I am a profoundly reluctant admirer of Irving’s work - I still find it gratingly self-absorbed - but this article unlocks some persistent themes in the man’s work, and I cannot help but be transfixed by the tragic narrative associated with his absent father and the conflict stemming…
bloglore
(211 Words. May 19, 2005, 10:51 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I wrote a 500-word-plus meditation on the changing fortunes of Broadway in my neighborhood today. I was sitting in Cafe Septieme waiting for Viv, watching the street as cloudburst after cloudburst cycled between sun and wet. Alas for me, my Palm-based blog app lacks an autosave and due to a moment of inattention on my part, poof, away it…
Piratical!
(69 Words. May 18, 2005, 10:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I read this amusing NYT piece to Viv aloud because she was asking why I was chuckling. Extra points to the author for assiduously avoiding the Napoleon Dynamite and Pirates of the Caribbean referents the photographer so carefully captured. While a tad glib, I am filled with admiration for the writing itself in this article. Geez, 2-for-2 from the…
Twenty-first Century Typist
(1110 Words. December 13, 2004, 07:12 AM, Comments: 14) MORE >>>
I have been enjoying Mark Frauenfelder’s transcription software links at BoingBoing over the past couple of days, and had reason to correspond with Mark about something unrelated this week. In the course of the correspondance, I mentioned to Mark how I was enjoying his stuff, and that he might be interested in my homebrewed transcription solution. I also mentioned that…
Sets
(108 Words. November 16, 2004, 08:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
You know, I have only ever visited one live movie set while work was going on, and it makes a huge difference in visualizing what my film people are talking about when I’m doing quote work with them. I can only assume this holds true for journalists without development experience when interviewing computer people. I think, though, there’s more…
The Seated Battle
(546 Words. October 05, 2004, 08:24 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Personae dramatis BOB, a meathead sports announcer out of central casting GOLDIE, a person of ethnicity with a background in sports bookmaking Setting: The television coverage of a second-rank mid-size purse wrestling match, with a title at stake, sometime in the nineteen-seventies. — BOB: Goldie, who’s your pick here tonite at the big Veep Smackdown? We’ve seen that “Big…
oops
(7 Words. April 04, 2004, 11:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Looks like the day got by me….
Notes: Davey Oil
(996 Words. March 29, 2004, 03:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Davey Oil is a fixture of the current Seattle cartooning and comics scene. Within that community he is renowned for his verbal ability, and his quick tongue always makes for an interesting interview experience. I have an extant talk with him in the can but not placed, alas, in which at one point he said something and immediately clapped both…
Notes: Dirk Deppey
(479 Words. March 29, 2004, 06:10 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dirk Deppey is the newly-appointed editor of The Comics Journal at Fantagraphics. Over the past year and change, prior to his appointment, he worked in Fantagraphics’ catalog department and launched and edited what quickly became the most-read comics-oriented web site (in my opinion, that is – I never saw the traffic logs), ¡Journalista!, on hiatus while Deppey settles in at…
Notes: Eric Reynolds
(822 Words. March 28, 2004, 02:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Eric Reynolds is Fantagraphics’ PR guy. He also has editorial duties, and is an accomplished cartoonist and illustrator in his own right. He once wrote a comics news column for The Stranger with, um, Stranger founder James Sturm? Unfortunately, the columns appear to predate the online archive. I spoke with Eric on February 17, 2004, in preparation for an article…
Notes: Brad Beshaw
(766 Words. March 28, 2004, 06:39 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Brad Beshaw is the owner of Confounded Books, currently Seattle’s best alternative print media outlet. Beshaw moved here from New Mexico several years ago, and although his drawings have rarely seen wide distribution in Seattle, is a talented cartoonist. He wrote the long-running column Hollywood Deathwatch for Tablet Newspaper. I spoke with Brad on February 17, 2004, in preparation for…
Notes: David Lasky
(655 Words. March 27, 2004, 02:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
David Lasky is a Seattle-based cartoonist who co-produces the occasional comic book Urban Hipster for Alternative Comics. He also produces smaller work which is widely admired, both for its quiet and polished quality and for its ambition. He’s a sort of social nexus of Seattle cartooning, widely liked and deeply knowledgeable. His good will and helpfulness are boundless. Among other…
Notes: Craig Thompson
(530 Words. March 27, 2004, 06:56 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
In preparation for my late February Stranger story on the Seattle comics community, i spoke to a number of observers and participants; I’m running my notes and transcriptions here for a few days. This entry features what I wrote down from my conversation with Portland’s Craig Thompson. Craig Thompson What can you tell me about the Seattle comics scene and…
Notes: Peter Bagge
(1845 Words. March 26, 2004, 06:31 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
These are my transcriptions of some of what Pete Bagge had to say when I spoke to him for my Stranger piece on Seattle comics last month. We spoke on February 17. In general, I asked for thoughts on how healthy the local comics creator ‘scene’ is, and I specifically asked for comparisons to a decade ago and at the…
Jumpin' Jack Frost
(551 Words. January 06, 2004, 02:44 PM, Comments: 17) MORE >>>
I strolled about in the snow on the Hill, camera in hand, from about 11:30 until 1:30. I noticed that they had a couple el cheapo mandolins at Capitol Hill Loans, and taught the guy who worked there how to tune ‘em. One sounded good, one sounded bad. Then, my fingers burning with cold, I thought a nice Guinness at…
T=+: +olkien and X
(92 Words. January 02, 2004, 09:38 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Dan viddys a link on the Prof and his religion. Of interest to those following certain topics here of late. On simply starting to read this I emphasize the potential interest. Good stuff. And on conclusion, I reiterate. Worth reading, but definitely concerned with a) the books and b) a catholic viewpoint of them. The parent site, Decent Films, specializes…
Review of the King
(1154 Words. January 02, 2004, 02:26 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
A few days ago, I posted a long review of The Return of the King, after noting that I had reservations about the critical judgments I formed while watching the movie for review. In essence, I did not find myself as emotionally involved in the film on first seeing as I had expected to be; and therefore the specific critical…
Sleuthing the mythical 'Fruit Detective' book
(275 Words. December 07, 2003, 03:15 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
One of my evergreen hit attractants, which favorably recounts the reading experience for an August 2002 issue of The New Yorker and highlights The Fruit Detective by John Seabrook, today generated an interesting query. My husband is under the impression that there is a book out there called The Fruit Detective that he saw in CBS Sunday Morning. I can’t…
Comics criticism
(324 Words. November 24, 2003, 03:17 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I’d hoped to link to the online version of the Ellen Forney story at Tablet today, but it’s still not up, which makes me think that probably it’s an error, and may never show up. So, you’ll just have to live with that. The transcript starts running tomorrow, with pictures! I mentioned offhand to a friend that it would be…
Figuring speech
(629 Words. November 22, 2003, 05:25 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I cannot beleive I still haven’t written about seeing the aurora in 1988. Maciej’s long piece on his stopover in Iceland calls it to mind. I really want to write about it seriously but I have a specific method in mind to pursue. I want to use voicerec for the first draft without correcting until I’m done with the draft….
Transcribing
(6 Words. November 18, 2003, 06:36 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Oh the transcribing takes all day……
NaDruWriNi
(116 Words. October 16, 2003, 08:33 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
MeNoWriFoNaNoWriMo: B2 proposes an alternative to NaNoWriMo, to which I say, what the heck, I do it anyway, right? Plus, I’ve always found it a soothing way to employ WiFi. Let’s choke this chicken, Brother B2! I’m ready to follow you to the land of glory! But is B3 aboard? Perhaps he’ll only be able to participate pseudononymously, perhaps as…
Quimby review at Tablet
(65 Words. August 12, 2003, 05:55 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Quimby the Mouse is my review of the fancy hardback republication of some of my favorite early Chis Ware material. It’s at Tablet, where I’m pleased to announce I’ll be turning in a regular 800-word column on regional indie and alternative comics culture for a while. I’m filing my first one this evening, and by jingo by cracky, I’m happy…
Let's see now...
(581 Words. July 27, 2003, 08:56 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Man, where to begin. Ah, I know. I have two stories in Tablet seventy-three: a quick look at the Dark Fairytales show up at Roq la Rue, and a review of the new French film Chaos. Neither story was up on their website as I write this, but my scanned clip is. (UPDATE: they are up now.) I was not…
Traction
(144 Words. June 25, 2003, 05:28 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
So, I’m getting a little bit of traction at work. I am working a mildly ill-defined gig at a former employer, a DVD and CD-ROM company that I worked for a few years ago. I was going to write about how much fun it is to write marketing copy. It’s like poetry, but without depth or feeling! I have been…
Fantagraphics article in TABLET
(145 Words. June 19, 2003, 03:07 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Tablet number 70’s Wiretappingleads with my 500-word piece on Fantagraphics’ successful plea for support that hit the web - and email inboxes throughout the comics world - at the end of May. The news is good, as I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear. In editing notes, I noted no changes from the story I filed, although I’ve not made…
David Lasky and Greg Stump
(306 Words. June 13, 2003, 07:34 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
On Thursday, I met alternative comics artists David Lasky and Greg Stump at Caffé Vita, formerly Café Paradiso, near my home on Seattle’s Capitol Hill for an interview which will form the basis of a story featuring them and their Seattle-set comic book, Urban Hipster. We talked about the book for a little over an hour and a half, and…
poat-ry
(179 Words. May 23, 2003, 11:45 AM, Comments: 5) MORE >>>
Paul sez, “post it.” Despite the fact of it’s being a quickie I will. Originally this was a line in a comment on Paul’s site, but it changed. “Bel” is an abbreviation I use to refer to bellerophon, this webserver. It’s also an old, old, North African name used by the Berber, who lived along the shores of the Mediterranean…
phew
(37 Words. May 07, 2003, 03:21 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Just finished a decent cut at an article for a regional travel mag: cross your fingers for me. Now, where can I place a piece about fan-produced retro Star Trek episodes? There’s some amazing stuff out there……
It has begun
(92 Words. May 02, 2003, 10:32 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
X-Men 2 opened this morning and both Danelope and Zannah went at midnight and enjoyed it. I thought perhaps some of my site visitors might enjoy a peek at the Cinescape piece I had a couple months back, reflecting my set visit. The link above starts you with the cover of the mag, and as with all Gallery-hosted material, a…
Seven Truths and One Lie
(293 Words. April 12, 2003, 12:31 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
A few days ago I noted that my personal fictions include a narrative whereby I cannot construct the fictional as a deliberate act of creation - I can lie, sure, but ask me to write a short story or develop a script for comics and I just shake my head, mute. Actually, that’s not what I noted. But whatever I…
busy
(187 Words. April 07, 2003, 10:10 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Geez, it never rains but it pours. Lots of stuff in the fire. All for upcoming publications so I can’t really talk about it. But still. I believe my long-mulled interviews project is beginning to boil and bubble away. The last piece for the puzzle is a tech publication that might be interested in material drawn from q-and-a’s with various…
One Year
(512 Words. March 25, 2003, 11:22 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
Initial Entry: mike.whybark.com is one year old, as of yesterday. The global archive page details the whole year’s stats. For me personally, highlights of the year have included The Death of Mr. Red Ears, The Wreck of the Shenandoah (as well as the rest of Blimp Week), the story of my sister’s passing, and a carefully written, accurate account of…
I AM FOOD!: idle clickery
(139 Words. February 25, 2003, 07:02 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Caterina.net: From the Taittiriya Upanishad O wonderful! O wonderful! O wonderful! I am food! I am food! I am food! I eat food! I eat food! I eat food! My name never dies, never dies, never dies! I was born first in the first of the worlds, earlier than the gods, in the belly of what has no death! Whoever…
Under The Cloud
(608 Words. February 15, 2003, 12:50 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Yesterday’s entry was a faithful, unembroidered recounting of a dream I had Friday morning, February 14, while NPR was offering live coverage of the UN Security Council ‘debate’. Confrontation is a better word for it. At any rate, I fell asleep just as Blix was speaking and awakened with a mighty shout of terror as the small child ran toward…
The Cloud
(907 Words. February 14, 2003, 05:20 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I stood on the steeply inclined hill’s sidewalk, looking into the center of downtown Seattle in the grey light of the late afternoon. The lowering clouds seemed darker than usual, as though something had blackened them, echoing the inky fogs of mid-century London. The air, however, remained free of the distinctive tang of burning coal and I rapidly forgot the…
A cover!
(180 Words. February 06, 2003, 03:16 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Cinescape went with my X-Men set visit story (think all the way back to October, not once, but three times.) for one of the mag’s covers this month. I’m pleased to report that the story ran more or less as written, although there’s the obligatory irritating edit. In this case, it comes at the very end of the article and…
Yawwwwnnnn
(48 Words. January 27, 2003, 07:57 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I am sleepy. And my forearms hurt. I think this is due to writing for too long a sustained period of time. I can only imagine the syntactical contortions that have resulted. Well, I must yet do the editing pass, so I won’t actually have to imagine anything….
Print week begins
(165 Words. January 26, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Outlandish deadlines for the March print ish of Cinescape this week. I’m heads down on the second-most time consuming one, a round-up of information on movies-in-production. I was greatly pleased to see that Word:mac from Office v.X can treat FileMaker Pro databases as a direct merge import source, something that will increase my consistency and accuracy by a large amount…
Stats
(368 Words. January 15, 2003, 10:18 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Following up on my metrically-oriented post: since March 24, 2002, this blog contains… 492 posts over a period of 296 days a total of 135,428 words in the entry bodies an average entry length of 276 words an average daily word count of 457 words This essentially demolishes my earlier estimates, even looking only at recent output. Over the past…
Running numbers, rock and rolling
(690 Words. January 14, 2003, 07:14 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
UPDATE: On installing the WordCount plugin, it’s apparent my blog-based productivity estimates are, uhm, a bit off. Sadly, I found no readily available statistics plugin for MT. I think my overall thrust in this enry is still correct. Generally speaking, my average blog entry is 1,200 words. Or so I think. That’s about an hour’s work. So in a week,…
Assignments
(247 Words. July 18, 2002, 07:39 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I have a good-sized assignment for Cinescape (writing their year-end episode guide to Enterprise: 4500 words. eight hours, including breaks and dawdling. I’m the MAN!) so I’m thinking I may have a few light days coming up. Today (the 18th) is my fourth anniversary, though! Don’t know what the plan is just yet, but I’m sure it involves some gooood…
Old. No doubt. Old.
(290 Words. July 12, 2002, 07:38 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
So, I was lying awake idly wondering how old our newest neighbors are. One’s in the community college down the street, one works doing IT stuff. Good, considerate neighbors. Twenty-something. Then I realized that persons who graduated from high school this spring, as tradition dictates, will be mostly eighteen years of age sometime in 2002. I graduated high school the…
Wired's new look, round two
(1268 Words. July 08, 2002, 07:37 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
As noted in my previous entry, on May 14, I inaccurately dissed Wired’s new house body and headline font as Helvetica. on June 28th, Wired Creative Director Darin Perry dropped by to set the record straight. It’s actually Aksidenz Grotesk. Prompted by this unexpected turn of events, I’m taking the opportunity to write more thoughtfully about Darrin’s recent changes to…
Great Googley Moogley!
(285 Words. July 07, 2002, 07:03 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In my May 14 entry, I flippantly dimissed the new look of Wired magazine with particular attention to the new house body and headline font. First: a correction. I identified the new font choice as Helvetica. It’s actually Aksidenz Grotesk. How did I learn this? Well, Wired’s Creative Director, Darrin Perry, was curious or kind enough to drop by the…
New Cinescape reviews up
(105 Words. July 05, 2002, 12:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Since last fall, I’ve been writing reviews of comics (with occasional Star Trek coverage, working with interviews of people on the crew of Enterprise) for Cinescape, a sort of latter-day Starlog or Fangoria which is much snappier, and broader in coverage, than these precursors. Anyway, I recently turned in six reviews, and the first two of that batch have been…
I'm so Bored with Punk History
(1487 Words. July 02, 2002, 02:28 PM, Comments: 6) MORE >>>
So, a few people independently mentioned “American Hardcore: A Tribal History” (by Steven Blush) to me, and each said “It’s like ‘Please Kill Me’. It’s pretty good.”. Multiple unsolicited reccomendations from disparate persons, each apparently making the same critical judgement. “Alright,” I thought. “Let’s read them back to back.” Reading them crammed against one another is an interesting experience, but…
Professor Sea Gould and Professor Mitchell: my belated $.02
(824 Words. June 26, 2002, 07:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Whilst in California, I ran short of reading material, and happened upon a paperback edition of the celebrated Joseph Mitchell omnibus, “Up in the Old Hotel”, beloved to many. I anticipated reading it with glee. Encountering Mitchell’s extended elegy for the coots, crannies, crooks, and coke cellars of Old New York was lovely, as enjoyable as I’d expected. What surprised…
YA Clones review, as required
(388 Words. June 09, 2002, 09:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, we finally saw Attack of the Clones tonight, at one of the few digitally-equipped theaters nationwide (I heard, but, like, don’t quote me on this, that there are only two on the West Coast: Mumble’s [formerly Graumann’s] Chinese, in Hollywood, where the film premiered and one of the places we visited while in Cali, and the Cinerama here in…
Summer Readin' so far
(414 Words. June 07, 2002, 01:29 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Currently: The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Robert Zacks. Tasty! Me timbers are shivrin’ to this exhaustively researched historical recounting of how the good Cap’n, one of the leading lights of the striving bourgeosie of 1680’s New York City was, er, tarred with the brush of piracy. See, Kidd started out on a voyage of pirate…
Once Upon a Time in America
(169 Words. June 06, 2002, 01:02 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
“Noodles… I… slipped!” I flipped into what I thought must have been the last 30 minutes of Leone’s spaghetti gangster epic (make that matzoh gangster epic, the only pasta in the pic is De Niro’s character name, Noodles). Oops! The film actually starts with a grisly scene that turns into a transition from flashback to 1968 NYC, with virtually no…
bits and books and school
(745 Words. May 28, 2002, 07:32 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
NYT (May 2, 2002): Lessons learned at Dot-Com U. I found this article on the fairly complete failure of online education to live up to the hype it endengered (is that a word?) in the higher education community to be very interesting. I’ve been hearing about the future of school and distributed education from my Dad, a professor in the…
Wired redesign
(320 Words. May 14, 2002, 12:55 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Venerable technocapitalist cheerleader (or apologist) Wired has undergone a sobering redesign, in which quite a few changes have taken place. Gone, gone, gone, are the Wired Index (which is messed up: watching how tech stocks fare in a downturn is MUCH more interesting than watching them in a giant boom - wait, maybe they canned this a while ago) and…
update experiment
(367 Words. May 12, 2002, 09:59 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I experimentally updated a post here to see how it would affect the MT front page update list. It was immediately visible there, and stayed on their front page for just over 35 minutes. One site visitor came here from there in that time. Although I know that updating their full donors list (a donation enables the update list there)…
The Wreck of the Shenandoah
(1781 Words. May 07, 2002, 11:23 AM, Comments: 28) MORE >>>
The screaming of the aluminum girders suddenly ceased. The deep spanging thrum of cables popping slowed. Charles E. Rosendahl clung to a girder and watched the rear half of the great dirigible dwindle below him into the, uh, dark and stormy night. Rosendahl was the navigator on the USS Shenandoah, the first of the US Navy’s four great dirigibles. Reverse-engineered…
Online Job Hunting
(469 Words. April 14, 2002, 06:21 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I spent Sunday, as I usually do, wrestling with the ever proliferating hell of online job application interfaces. It seems that every newspaper, recruiting company, and mid-to-large-sized business in the country now has an online job application procedure that lurks behind the simple classified ad or job listing. This is highly attractive to the organizations, naturally. I suspect that it…
TIME TRAVEL and its' discontents.
(803 Words. April 03, 2002, 07:44 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I awakened this morning to the familiar voice of Susan Stamberg introducing a feature on one of my favorite places in the world - San Francisco’s Musée Mécanique, apparently in danger of closing. As the piece continued it became clear that the possible closure would most likely be temporary, due to a two-year refurb of the building that contains it…
On LONGWINDEDNESS
(82 Words. March 26, 2002, 09:25 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Geez, I can really go on and on, huh? OK, I pledge: a) shorter entries b) more focused entries c) multipart entries when I get my steam up d) shorter sentences e) fewer nested clauses I don’t know why it comes out that way. It is how I actually think, in my head. Long, complex, gramatically correct sentences. I think…
THE DEATH OF MR. RED EARS
(820 Words. March 24, 2002, 04:30 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
act one: The CHILD, playing in the sunny afternoon, sings an aria of innocence and love, yearning for life, and so forth, entitled ” A Lizard in the Sun”. The time frame, early 1970’s, is set with pop culture references within the libretto. As he finishes, enter MOM and DAD, with a Mysterious Box…
so crabby
(7 Words. December 12, 2011, 09:55 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
oh my. shut the fuck up dave….
Star Trek: TNG, directed by Sid and Marty Krofft
(691 Words. October 01, 2011, 04:03 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
This morning I awakened from an epic dream which consisted of a never-extant ST:TNG episode guest starring William Shatner, Harvey Keitel, and which was directed by and featuring the puppets and sensibilities of Sid and Marty Krofft, circa 1972. I regaled Vivian with the whole thing as best I could without collapsing into fits of helpless laughter and then…
The Sun that Burns
(539 Words. August 30, 2010, 11:23 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
On Saturday, I spent the whole day sitting on the beach near the San Onofre nuclear plant, reading. The whole day was cool, and the morning, from 10 to 1 or so, was grey and misty, quite pleasant. Just as the clouds pushed back offshore, the Goodyear blimp mosied on by, headed south at about 800 feet. I friended…
RIP Harvey
(304 Words. July 12, 2010, 09:27 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Local-news site Cleveland.com reports that comic-book writer, jazz critic, and curmudgeon Harvey Pekar died overnight at his home: Pekar, 70, was found dead shortly before 1 a.m. today by his wife, Joyce Brabner, in their Cleveland Heights home, said Powell Caesar, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Coroner Frank Miller. I can’t help but think Harvey would be amused that his…
The Eve of the Feast of Osiris
(1005 Words. December 15, 2009, 04:32 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Recently, while conducting my annual researches into the origins of the beloved holiday legend of Osiris Claus, I had occasion to venture deep into the vaulted reaches of a dusky book-crypt. Far and far I had crept, flickering cell-phone my only source of illumination as I scanned the cobwebbed stacks in search of the rumored grimoire. Out amidst the…
Roger
(1 Words. September 19, 2008, 12:14 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
R….
Edits
(46 Words. January 28, 2007, 11:06 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Whoo boy, you take a year off the writins and it sho do show. I pledge greater vigilance on my part toward the grievous sins of run-on-sentencery, typos (especially if conjunctions) which dramatically decrease the apparent sensibility of a sentence, and of course multiple-post generating revisions….
Yard Arm
(1148 Words. February 02, 2006, 08:43 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In the back yard, I drop ants of differing appearance into the reservoir portion of a spray bottle filled with water. Peering into the neck of the bottle with one eye, the ants appear as huge as cars and people. They can walk along the walls of the bottle and do so, carefully gathering air into a diving-bell about…
Time and changes
(574 Words. February 01, 2006, 10:29 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I’m starting this entry too late to do it justice - 10 pm. Despite this, here are some dates and events associated with my family’s residence in my Bloomington childhood home. Summer, 1976. We move to Bloomington from West Lafayette. Previously my family had come to town for an academic conference or interview and stayed on the square in…
In my room
(513 Words. January 31, 2006, 08:45 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
My childhood bedroom was about the size of my current bedroom, but a bit more square. A closet faced with two bifold doors, I think, was bumped out from the wall that also held the entry door. I suppose the room must have been about fifteen feet square. In the center of the wall to one’s right, on entering,…
Stain Me
(316 Words. January 27, 2006, 11:15 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Tonight I had the months-delayed pleasure of booting up a new computer; well before the move, planning to be as broke as I am, I had grabbed a refurbished Mac Mini with the intent of building it from scratch to be my internet services machine once we landed here. It’s neat, specifically due to that tiny size and dense…
La laa, la la laaa
(487 Words. November 14, 2005, 09:40 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
What do you call a workday that begins at 6 am and ends at 8 pm? In other news, we bought the floor for the house’s large family room over the weekend, about $1.5k, in a thicker-plank red oak than the existing oak that was under the carpets. On the whole, the remodel is on track to go over…
Mwa ha ha ha
(309 Words. November 05, 2005, 09:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
For some reason I got sucked into a decent, if ultimately pointless Ask MetaFilter thread on the problem of evil. I wrote a post but MeFi went down before I could post it and I didn’t want to lose it. So here it is. —- “transworld depravity?” Ill-mannered skateboard magazine readers? I don’t get it. I think a part…
Floating Couplets
(471 Words. September 08, 2005, 09:29 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
New Orleans was the original capitol of the American imagination, before this country owned Louisiana. The port at the end of the great midwestern river system that provided the economic engine which begat this nation, its’ place in the country’s heart - and mine - is as central as that of New York or San Francisco. A tad reduced…
Ink
(96 Words. June 27, 2005, 05:08 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
While Excavating Past, John Irving Finds His Family [NYT blogerated link]. I am a profoundly reluctant admirer of Irving’s work - I still find it gratingly self-absorbed - but this article unlocks some persistent themes in the man’s work, and I cannot help but be transfixed by the tragic narrative associated with his absent father and the conflict stemming…
bloglore
(211 Words. May 19, 2005, 10:51 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I wrote a 500-word-plus meditation on the changing fortunes of Broadway in my neighborhood today. I was sitting in Cafe Septieme waiting for Viv, watching the street as cloudburst after cloudburst cycled between sun and wet. Alas for me, my Palm-based blog app lacks an autosave and due to a moment of inattention on my part, poof, away it…
Piratical!
(69 Words. May 18, 2005, 10:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I read this amusing NYT piece to Viv aloud because she was asking why I was chuckling. Extra points to the author for assiduously avoiding the Napoleon Dynamite and Pirates of the Caribbean referents the photographer so carefully captured. While a tad glib, I am filled with admiration for the writing itself in this article. Geez, 2-for-2 from the…
Twenty-first Century Typist
(1110 Words. December 13, 2004, 07:12 AM, Comments: 14) MORE >>>
I have been enjoying Mark Frauenfelder’s transcription software links at BoingBoing over the past couple of days, and had reason to correspond with Mark about something unrelated this week. In the course of the correspondance, I mentioned to Mark how I was enjoying his stuff, and that he might be interested in my homebrewed transcription solution. I also mentioned that…
Sets
(108 Words. November 16, 2004, 08:40 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
You know, I have only ever visited one live movie set while work was going on, and it makes a huge difference in visualizing what my film people are talking about when I’m doing quote work with them. I can only assume this holds true for journalists without development experience when interviewing computer people. I think, though, there’s more…
The Seated Battle
(546 Words. October 05, 2004, 08:24 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Personae dramatis BOB, a meathead sports announcer out of central casting GOLDIE, a person of ethnicity with a background in sports bookmaking Setting: The television coverage of a second-rank mid-size purse wrestling match, with a title at stake, sometime in the nineteen-seventies. — BOB: Goldie, who’s your pick here tonite at the big Veep Smackdown? We’ve seen that “Big…
oops
(7 Words. April 04, 2004, 11:28 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Looks like the day got by me….
Notes: Davey Oil
(996 Words. March 29, 2004, 03:25 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Davey Oil is a fixture of the current Seattle cartooning and comics scene. Within that community he is renowned for his verbal ability, and his quick tongue always makes for an interesting interview experience. I have an extant talk with him in the can but not placed, alas, in which at one point he said something and immediately clapped both…
Notes: Dirk Deppey
(479 Words. March 29, 2004, 06:10 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Dirk Deppey is the newly-appointed editor of The Comics Journal at Fantagraphics. Over the past year and change, prior to his appointment, he worked in Fantagraphics’ catalog department and launched and edited what quickly became the most-read comics-oriented web site (in my opinion, that is – I never saw the traffic logs), ¡Journalista!, on hiatus while Deppey settles in at…
Notes: Eric Reynolds
(822 Words. March 28, 2004, 02:57 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Eric Reynolds is Fantagraphics’ PR guy. He also has editorial duties, and is an accomplished cartoonist and illustrator in his own right. He once wrote a comics news column for The Stranger with, um, Stranger founder James Sturm? Unfortunately, the columns appear to predate the online archive. I spoke with Eric on February 17, 2004, in preparation for an article…
Notes: Brad Beshaw
(766 Words. March 28, 2004, 06:39 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Brad Beshaw is the owner of Confounded Books, currently Seattle’s best alternative print media outlet. Beshaw moved here from New Mexico several years ago, and although his drawings have rarely seen wide distribution in Seattle, is a talented cartoonist. He wrote the long-running column Hollywood Deathwatch for Tablet Newspaper. I spoke with Brad on February 17, 2004, in preparation for…
Notes: David Lasky
(655 Words. March 27, 2004, 02:17 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
David Lasky is a Seattle-based cartoonist who co-produces the occasional comic book Urban Hipster for Alternative Comics. He also produces smaller work which is widely admired, both for its quiet and polished quality and for its ambition. He’s a sort of social nexus of Seattle cartooning, widely liked and deeply knowledgeable. His good will and helpfulness are boundless. Among other…
Notes: Craig Thompson
(530 Words. March 27, 2004, 06:56 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
In preparation for my late February Stranger story on the Seattle comics community, i spoke to a number of observers and participants; I’m running my notes and transcriptions here for a few days. This entry features what I wrote down from my conversation with Portland’s Craig Thompson. Craig Thompson What can you tell me about the Seattle comics scene and…
Notes: Peter Bagge
(1845 Words. March 26, 2004, 06:31 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
These are my transcriptions of some of what Pete Bagge had to say when I spoke to him for my Stranger piece on Seattle comics last month. We spoke on February 17. In general, I asked for thoughts on how healthy the local comics creator ‘scene’ is, and I specifically asked for comparisons to a decade ago and at the…
Jumpin' Jack Frost
(551 Words. January 06, 2004, 02:44 PM, Comments: 17) MORE >>>
I strolled about in the snow on the Hill, camera in hand, from about 11:30 until 1:30. I noticed that they had a couple el cheapo mandolins at Capitol Hill Loans, and taught the guy who worked there how to tune ‘em. One sounded good, one sounded bad. Then, my fingers burning with cold, I thought a nice Guinness at…
T=+: +olkien and X
(92 Words. January 02, 2004, 09:38 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Dan viddys a link on the Prof and his religion. Of interest to those following certain topics here of late. On simply starting to read this I emphasize the potential interest. Good stuff. And on conclusion, I reiterate. Worth reading, but definitely concerned with a) the books and b) a catholic viewpoint of them. The parent site, Decent Films, specializes…
Review of the King
(1154 Words. January 02, 2004, 02:26 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
A few days ago, I posted a long review of The Return of the King, after noting that I had reservations about the critical judgments I formed while watching the movie for review. In essence, I did not find myself as emotionally involved in the film on first seeing as I had expected to be; and therefore the specific critical…
Sleuthing the mythical 'Fruit Detective' book
(275 Words. December 07, 2003, 03:15 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
One of my evergreen hit attractants, which favorably recounts the reading experience for an August 2002 issue of The New Yorker and highlights The Fruit Detective by John Seabrook, today generated an interesting query. My husband is under the impression that there is a book out there called The Fruit Detective that he saw in CBS Sunday Morning. I can’t…
Comics criticism
(324 Words. November 24, 2003, 03:17 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I’d hoped to link to the online version of the Ellen Forney story at Tablet today, but it’s still not up, which makes me think that probably it’s an error, and may never show up. So, you’ll just have to live with that. The transcript starts running tomorrow, with pictures! I mentioned offhand to a friend that it would be…
Figuring speech
(629 Words. November 22, 2003, 05:25 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
I cannot beleive I still haven’t written about seeing the aurora in 1988. Maciej’s long piece on his stopover in Iceland calls it to mind. I really want to write about it seriously but I have a specific method in mind to pursue. I want to use voicerec for the first draft without correcting until I’m done with the draft….
Transcribing
(6 Words. November 18, 2003, 06:36 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Oh the transcribing takes all day……
NaDruWriNi
(116 Words. October 16, 2003, 08:33 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
MeNoWriFoNaNoWriMo: B2 proposes an alternative to NaNoWriMo, to which I say, what the heck, I do it anyway, right? Plus, I’ve always found it a soothing way to employ WiFi. Let’s choke this chicken, Brother B2! I’m ready to follow you to the land of glory! But is B3 aboard? Perhaps he’ll only be able to participate pseudononymously, perhaps as…
Quimby review at Tablet
(65 Words. August 12, 2003, 05:55 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Quimby the Mouse is my review of the fancy hardback republication of some of my favorite early Chis Ware material. It’s at Tablet, where I’m pleased to announce I’ll be turning in a regular 800-word column on regional indie and alternative comics culture for a while. I’m filing my first one this evening, and by jingo by cracky, I’m happy…
Let's see now...
(581 Words. July 27, 2003, 08:56 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Man, where to begin. Ah, I know. I have two stories in Tablet seventy-three: a quick look at the Dark Fairytales show up at Roq la Rue, and a review of the new French film Chaos. Neither story was up on their website as I write this, but my scanned clip is. (UPDATE: they are up now.) I was not…
Traction
(144 Words. June 25, 2003, 05:28 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
So, I’m getting a little bit of traction at work. I am working a mildly ill-defined gig at a former employer, a DVD and CD-ROM company that I worked for a few years ago. I was going to write about how much fun it is to write marketing copy. It’s like poetry, but without depth or feeling! I have been…
Fantagraphics article in TABLET
(145 Words. June 19, 2003, 03:07 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Tablet number 70’s Wiretappingleads with my 500-word piece on Fantagraphics’ successful plea for support that hit the web - and email inboxes throughout the comics world - at the end of May. The news is good, as I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear. In editing notes, I noted no changes from the story I filed, although I’ve not made…
David Lasky and Greg Stump
(306 Words. June 13, 2003, 07:34 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
On Thursday, I met alternative comics artists David Lasky and Greg Stump at Caffé Vita, formerly Café Paradiso, near my home on Seattle’s Capitol Hill for an interview which will form the basis of a story featuring them and their Seattle-set comic book, Urban Hipster. We talked about the book for a little over an hour and a half, and…
poat-ry
(179 Words. May 23, 2003, 11:45 AM, Comments: 5) MORE >>>
Paul sez, “post it.” Despite the fact of it’s being a quickie I will. Originally this was a line in a comment on Paul’s site, but it changed. “Bel” is an abbreviation I use to refer to bellerophon, this webserver. It’s also an old, old, North African name used by the Berber, who lived along the shores of the Mediterranean…
phew
(37 Words. May 07, 2003, 03:21 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Just finished a decent cut at an article for a regional travel mag: cross your fingers for me. Now, where can I place a piece about fan-produced retro Star Trek episodes? There’s some amazing stuff out there……
It has begun
(92 Words. May 02, 2003, 10:32 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
X-Men 2 opened this morning and both Danelope and Zannah went at midnight and enjoyed it. I thought perhaps some of my site visitors might enjoy a peek at the Cinescape piece I had a couple months back, reflecting my set visit. The link above starts you with the cover of the mag, and as with all Gallery-hosted material, a…
Seven Truths and One Lie
(293 Words. April 12, 2003, 12:31 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
A few days ago I noted that my personal fictions include a narrative whereby I cannot construct the fictional as a deliberate act of creation - I can lie, sure, but ask me to write a short story or develop a script for comics and I just shake my head, mute. Actually, that’s not what I noted. But whatever I…
busy
(187 Words. April 07, 2003, 10:10 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Geez, it never rains but it pours. Lots of stuff in the fire. All for upcoming publications so I can’t really talk about it. But still. I believe my long-mulled interviews project is beginning to boil and bubble away. The last piece for the puzzle is a tech publication that might be interested in material drawn from q-and-a’s with various…
One Year
(512 Words. March 25, 2003, 11:22 AM, Comments: 7) MORE >>>
Initial Entry: mike.whybark.com is one year old, as of yesterday. The global archive page details the whole year’s stats. For me personally, highlights of the year have included The Death of Mr. Red Ears, The Wreck of the Shenandoah (as well as the rest of Blimp Week), the story of my sister’s passing, and a carefully written, accurate account of…
I AM FOOD!: idle clickery
(139 Words. February 25, 2003, 07:02 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Caterina.net: From the Taittiriya Upanishad O wonderful! O wonderful! O wonderful! I am food! I am food! I am food! I eat food! I eat food! I eat food! My name never dies, never dies, never dies! I was born first in the first of the worlds, earlier than the gods, in the belly of what has no death! Whoever…
Under The Cloud
(608 Words. February 15, 2003, 12:50 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Yesterday’s entry was a faithful, unembroidered recounting of a dream I had Friday morning, February 14, while NPR was offering live coverage of the UN Security Council ‘debate’. Confrontation is a better word for it. At any rate, I fell asleep just as Blix was speaking and awakened with a mighty shout of terror as the small child ran toward…
The Cloud
(907 Words. February 14, 2003, 05:20 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I stood on the steeply inclined hill’s sidewalk, looking into the center of downtown Seattle in the grey light of the late afternoon. The lowering clouds seemed darker than usual, as though something had blackened them, echoing the inky fogs of mid-century London. The air, however, remained free of the distinctive tang of burning coal and I rapidly forgot the…
A cover!
(180 Words. February 06, 2003, 03:16 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
Cinescape went with my X-Men set visit story (think all the way back to October, not once, but three times.) for one of the mag’s covers this month. I’m pleased to report that the story ran more or less as written, although there’s the obligatory irritating edit. In this case, it comes at the very end of the article and…
Yawwwwnnnn
(48 Words. January 27, 2003, 07:57 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I am sleepy. And my forearms hurt. I think this is due to writing for too long a sustained period of time. I can only imagine the syntactical contortions that have resulted. Well, I must yet do the editing pass, so I won’t actually have to imagine anything….
Print week begins
(165 Words. January 26, 2003, 07:17 AM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Outlandish deadlines for the March print ish of Cinescape this week. I’m heads down on the second-most time consuming one, a round-up of information on movies-in-production. I was greatly pleased to see that Word:mac from Office v.X can treat FileMaker Pro databases as a direct merge import source, something that will increase my consistency and accuracy by a large amount…
Stats
(368 Words. January 15, 2003, 10:18 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
Following up on my metrically-oriented post: since March 24, 2002, this blog contains… 492 posts over a period of 296 days a total of 135,428 words in the entry bodies an average entry length of 276 words an average daily word count of 457 words This essentially demolishes my earlier estimates, even looking only at recent output. Over the past…
Running numbers, rock and rolling
(690 Words. January 14, 2003, 07:14 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
UPDATE: On installing the WordCount plugin, it’s apparent my blog-based productivity estimates are, uhm, a bit off. Sadly, I found no readily available statistics plugin for MT. I think my overall thrust in this enry is still correct. Generally speaking, my average blog entry is 1,200 words. Or so I think. That’s about an hour’s work. So in a week,…
Assignments
(247 Words. July 18, 2002, 07:39 AM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I have a good-sized assignment for Cinescape (writing their year-end episode guide to Enterprise: 4500 words. eight hours, including breaks and dawdling. I’m the MAN!) so I’m thinking I may have a few light days coming up. Today (the 18th) is my fourth anniversary, though! Don’t know what the plan is just yet, but I’m sure it involves some gooood…
Old. No doubt. Old.
(290 Words. July 12, 2002, 07:38 AM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
So, I was lying awake idly wondering how old our newest neighbors are. One’s in the community college down the street, one works doing IT stuff. Good, considerate neighbors. Twenty-something. Then I realized that persons who graduated from high school this spring, as tradition dictates, will be mostly eighteen years of age sometime in 2002. I graduated high school the…
Wired's new look, round two
(1268 Words. July 08, 2002, 07:37 AM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
As noted in my previous entry, on May 14, I inaccurately dissed Wired’s new house body and headline font as Helvetica. on June 28th, Wired Creative Director Darin Perry dropped by to set the record straight. It’s actually Aksidenz Grotesk. Prompted by this unexpected turn of events, I’m taking the opportunity to write more thoughtfully about Darrin’s recent changes to…
Great Googley Moogley!
(285 Words. July 07, 2002, 07:03 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
In my May 14 entry, I flippantly dimissed the new look of Wired magazine with particular attention to the new house body and headline font. First: a correction. I identified the new font choice as Helvetica. It’s actually Aksidenz Grotesk. How did I learn this? Well, Wired’s Creative Director, Darrin Perry, was curious or kind enough to drop by the…
New Cinescape reviews up
(105 Words. July 05, 2002, 12:30 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Since last fall, I’ve been writing reviews of comics (with occasional Star Trek coverage, working with interviews of people on the crew of Enterprise) for Cinescape, a sort of latter-day Starlog or Fangoria which is much snappier, and broader in coverage, than these precursors. Anyway, I recently turned in six reviews, and the first two of that batch have been…
I'm so Bored with Punk History
(1487 Words. July 02, 2002, 02:28 PM, Comments: 6) MORE >>>
So, a few people independently mentioned “American Hardcore: A Tribal History” (by Steven Blush) to me, and each said “It’s like ‘Please Kill Me’. It’s pretty good.”. Multiple unsolicited reccomendations from disparate persons, each apparently making the same critical judgement. “Alright,” I thought. “Let’s read them back to back.” Reading them crammed against one another is an interesting experience, but…
Professor Sea Gould and Professor Mitchell: my belated $.02
(824 Words. June 26, 2002, 07:45 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Whilst in California, I ran short of reading material, and happened upon a paperback edition of the celebrated Joseph Mitchell omnibus, “Up in the Old Hotel”, beloved to many. I anticipated reading it with glee. Encountering Mitchell’s extended elegy for the coots, crannies, crooks, and coke cellars of Old New York was lovely, as enjoyable as I’d expected. What surprised…
YA Clones review, as required
(388 Words. June 09, 2002, 09:54 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
So, we finally saw Attack of the Clones tonight, at one of the few digitally-equipped theaters nationwide (I heard, but, like, don’t quote me on this, that there are only two on the West Coast: Mumble’s [formerly Graumann’s] Chinese, in Hollywood, where the film premiered and one of the places we visited while in Cali, and the Cinerama here in…
Summer Readin' so far
(414 Words. June 07, 2002, 01:29 PM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Currently: The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Robert Zacks. Tasty! Me timbers are shivrin’ to this exhaustively researched historical recounting of how the good Cap’n, one of the leading lights of the striving bourgeosie of 1680’s New York City was, er, tarred with the brush of piracy. See, Kidd started out on a voyage of pirate…
Once Upon a Time in America
(169 Words. June 06, 2002, 01:02 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
“Noodles… I… slipped!” I flipped into what I thought must have been the last 30 minutes of Leone’s spaghetti gangster epic (make that matzoh gangster epic, the only pasta in the pic is De Niro’s character name, Noodles). Oops! The film actually starts with a grisly scene that turns into a transition from flashback to 1968 NYC, with virtually no…
bits and books and school
(745 Words. May 28, 2002, 07:32 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
NYT (May 2, 2002): Lessons learned at Dot-Com U. I found this article on the fairly complete failure of online education to live up to the hype it endengered (is that a word?) in the higher education community to be very interesting. I’ve been hearing about the future of school and distributed education from my Dad, a professor in the…
Wired redesign
(320 Words. May 14, 2002, 12:55 PM, Comments: 1) MORE >>>
Venerable technocapitalist cheerleader (or apologist) Wired has undergone a sobering redesign, in which quite a few changes have taken place. Gone, gone, gone, are the Wired Index (which is messed up: watching how tech stocks fare in a downturn is MUCH more interesting than watching them in a giant boom - wait, maybe they canned this a while ago) and…
update experiment
(367 Words. May 12, 2002, 09:59 PM, Comments: 3) MORE >>>
I experimentally updated a post here to see how it would affect the MT front page update list. It was immediately visible there, and stayed on their front page for just over 35 minutes. One site visitor came here from there in that time. Although I know that updating their full donors list (a donation enables the update list there)…
The Wreck of the Shenandoah
(1781 Words. May 07, 2002, 11:23 AM, Comments: 28) MORE >>>
The screaming of the aluminum girders suddenly ceased. The deep spanging thrum of cables popping slowed. Charles E. Rosendahl clung to a girder and watched the rear half of the great dirigible dwindle below him into the, uh, dark and stormy night. Rosendahl was the navigator on the USS Shenandoah, the first of the US Navy’s four great dirigibles. Reverse-engineered…
Online Job Hunting
(469 Words. April 14, 2002, 06:21 PM, Comments: 2) MORE >>>
I spent Sunday, as I usually do, wrestling with the ever proliferating hell of online job application interfaces. It seems that every newspaper, recruiting company, and mid-to-large-sized business in the country now has an online job application procedure that lurks behind the simple classified ad or job listing. This is highly attractive to the organizations, naturally. I suspect that it…
TIME TRAVEL and its' discontents.
(803 Words. April 03, 2002, 07:44 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
I awakened this morning to the familiar voice of Susan Stamberg introducing a feature on one of my favorite places in the world - San Francisco’s Musée Mécanique, apparently in danger of closing. As the piece continued it became clear that the possible closure would most likely be temporary, due to a two-year refurb of the building that contains it…
On LONGWINDEDNESS
(82 Words. March 26, 2002, 09:25 AM, Comments: 0) MORE >>>
Geez, I can really go on and on, huh? OK, I pledge: a) shorter entries b) more focused entries c) multipart entries when I get my steam up d) shorter sentences e) fewer nested clauses I don’t know why it comes out that way. It is how I actually think, in my head. Long, complex, gramatically correct sentences. I think…
THE DEATH OF MR. RED EARS
(820 Words. March 24, 2002, 04:30 PM, Comments: 4) MORE >>>
act one: The CHILD, playing in the sunny afternoon, sings an aria of innocence and love, yearning for life, and so forth, entitled ” A Lizard in the Sun”. The time frame, early 1970’s, is set with pop culture references within the libretto. As he finishes, enter MOM and DAD, with a Mysterious Box…
