After submitting 7 samples, it turns out I write like:
Dan Brown, Margeret Atwood, Stephen King, David Foster Wallace, William Gibson, William Gibson, and Raymond Chandler.

(Yes, I got William Gibson twice. I've only read one of his books, which bored me to sleep).

Of course, this was just using the posts from this site that I came up with in the past year or so and none of the fiction I almost never write anymore (new updates there, though!)

Still, I have no idea what this says about me, other than I probably shouldn't trust a web site to analyze my writing.

There's a great Baltermants collection over at tsutpen. Russian WWII war photography is bound to be pretty bleak stuff. But it's powerful as hell, and just incredible to look at.

This, incidentally, might be my favorite site on the internet.

Ping Pong was never played again

via fffound

Hey, you wanna watch this Spider Woman motion comic, but don't want to spend $10 on iTunes like I did? The good news is you don't have to. It's upon Hulu now (all but the last part, which I expact will be up in a week). I still don't know how I feel about the final result, I will probably prefer the print version in the end, but it still is an interesting foray into a new medium. Alex Maleev's art looked better in the book, but it still looks great here. What are you complaining about, it's free.

BTW I broke down and have a twitter account. It is a source of great shame, but at least now I can pay attention to the Best Show feuds. My favorite person to follow so far? Tie between Jon Wurster and Roger Ebert.

So, I've got this real bad habit of getting wrapped up in some album or TV Series or film, and then writing the better part of a post and shelving it. It's not that my interest in these things wanes, or that I move on to other stuff before I get a chance to finish. More often than not I just can't finish or won't. I've got half-finished, long-winded posts about The Sandbaggers, Underbelly, Eye of the Needle, Friends of Eddie Coyle, three character analyses from The West Wing, and a couple others. A personal favorite is my lengthy rant on why I'm pretty sure that Guy Ritchie has never read a Sherlock Holmes story, but I'm waiting for the film on that one.
Anyway, a lot of the time it's because I'm sure these are points you might have felt, or stories you don't feel like revisiting, or that my own take on it isn't all that astute. Right now, one of the 6-7 books on my coffee table is a book of George Orwell's essays, which are both comforting and embarrassing to read, when I consider the crap dredge that gets thrown up on this thing. Because while I don't post a lot of things out of fear of appearing a self-important literary windbag, George Orwell manages to write these things in such an approachable, hospitable way that it leaves me dumbstruck.
But this is neither here nor there. Because I'm not writing about anything today that's critically adored or obscure. I'm not even writing about something that's all that unpopular. I'm referring, of course, to The Rockford Files, which aired on NBC from 1974-80. It's a show I never really watched as a kid, probably because it was off the air when I was 2, and unlike Columbo, I don't remember all that many reruns peppering the airways.
Jim Rockford fits some of the noir-ish standards for a detective. He's almost always at odds with the cops, he has a shady past (including a stint in prison as an innocent man), and he's got a real smart mouth that gets him into trouble. He's poor, and his home is a dilapidated trailer outside of LA on the Pacific Coast highway. Oh, and he seems to end up banging half of his female clientele.
He's still not quite noir, though. He generally avoids a fight, and almost never carries a gun (he keeps it in his coffee pot to avoid rust form the salt air!). He's a lot more genuine in his concern for clients than Marlowe ever would've been, and he often will end up working for free or at a reduced rate if he has to. Oh, and his dad is around all the time. I really like this last part, because his dad is a cheap old drunk who wants him to get out of the private eye racket. Oh, and unlike a lot of the old stories, Rockford isn't wearing a fedora and trenchcoat. If anything, he dresses cheap and garishly, which is to say, normal for the Seventies.
So why do I like this stuff? Why is it that after a decade of reading detective fiction and watching all those old black and whites that I find myself enamored with this program? A couple things. One is James Garner. There's just something about him that you want to root for. Ever since I was a kid and saw him as Hendley the scrounger in The Great Escape, I've enjoyed that guy. I remember going through a Maverick phase at some point, too. There's also the time period. One of the reasons that the seventies work so well for crime/detective stories, is because it's the last really good time frame for this type of story. I guess the Eighties might work as well, but something about that decade I find hard to take seriously. Maybe it would have to be all about drugs, or funny hairstyles.
But anyone my age or younger will view this show as impossible. There's no way that someone could get away with some of the things that go on here. Part of it is technology, part of it is people wising up to giving personal information out, etc... To write a good detective story set in the last ten years is to write... I dunno, to write like Ed Burns and David Simon.
The bottom line is that I'm amazed how much I enjoy a network TV show that's older than I am and isn't hosted by Rod Serling. It's a testament to our pop culture. But the best part is that you can go watch this for free right now. There are at least 3 seasons up on Hulu, and the entire run of the series is up on Netflix. So go check it out if you're bored one night and watching some shitty celebrity dance show. Seriously, you can do better than that. If you don't watch TV, hey, more power to you. But I know most of you do, and watch some pretty appalling stuff. Just my 2 cents. This show has car chases! Non-Italian mob bosses! Pretty ladies! Awesome celebrity cameos (so far, Abe Vigoda, a young James Woods, Bill Mumy, Strother Martin, Ned Beatty, Lindsay Wagner, etc...), oh and one of the best theme songs EVER.

if you haven't seen it yet, go watch an episode. It's been making my week.

Orange Herald

prepared for test at the Christmas Island Grapple series on 31 May 1957. Yield was 720 kT. The spherical implosion device is seen in this photograph housed in the centre section of a Blue Danube carcass with the nose, tail and panelling removed. The 32-lens implosion system can be clearly seen. The firing unit adapted from Blue Danube can be see at the top left attached to the tubular bulkhead, and with 64 cables radiating from it. Each of the 32 firing cables was duplicated.

huh. Pretty fun.

Bomb shelter pictures!

These are from a book of Photographs taken by Richard Ross of one of my favorite things: bomb shelters.

While I don't have the time to ruminate right now, click on over and take a peek. They're pretty awesome.

Your morning terror: "Vampire Squid from Hell"

I've mentioned my utter fear of marine biology here before, and at 2 AM this morning, after trying to dose myself with some Tylenol PM, I still sat there in shock watching the Blue Planet episode "The Deep". Some people can't watch horror movies before going to bed, I simply cannot watch stuff like this. It's really an unsettling feeling, to be frozen in terror in a dark room watching deep sea biology at work while drowsy and sleep-deprived.

Of course, most of this is beautiful. A major theme of this episode is bioluminescence, and it's amazing to see what goes on that deep. That said, you start seeing footage of the Gulper Eel, the Viperfish, and of course, the Vampire Squid from Hell:



I don't know what asshole named this thing, but I came away from that video admiring it more than fearing it. Sure, if I saw a dead one washed up on a beach, I'd still hit it with a stick and run away peeing, but it's still a pretty impressive cephalopod, no?

But yeah, if you get the chance, watch this video (you can watch it on Netflix RIGHT NOW) because it's insanely entertaining. and because David Attenborough's voice might just help you sleep more than it helps me...

Why I don't read X-Men comics

Strangely, this is pretty calm when compared to the whole time travel thing.

from Eye on Springfield

Thru You: Imagine slapping together songs a la Garageband, only with Youtube videos. The result is this hodgepodge of guys pretending to film instructional videos, jagoffs videotaping themselves shredding in their bedroom, distraught girls singing to themselves, etc... The list goes on. It sort of gels, and sort of looks like a bunch of people whose videos were chopped up and arranged into songs on more YouTube videos.

Anyway, it's worth checking out. It's real evidence that with enough pot and editing software, you can truly put something together. I recommend tracks 1,3,4, and 7.

edit: and pets. There seem to be a lot of pets around these people.

In Tacoma, Washington, an 84 year-old man beat the crap out of 2 carjackers.

AWESOME.

Also, the Sixers are now up 2 games to 1.

AWESOME.

Men Who Experimented with Beards: The Quiz

(I got 8/10, though one answer was sheer luck).

Entertaining Flickr stream

Best compaint letter EVER

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.

Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].

I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in: [see image 2, above].

I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn't custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.

Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.

I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.

Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this: [see image 3, above].

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.

Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.

By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation: [see image 4, above].

It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.

I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.

Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on: [see image 5, above].

I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel: [see image 6, above].

Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.

My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations: [see image 7, above].

Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.

Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.

So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.

As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.

Yours Sincerely

[name withheld]

-source

My favorite site of the day: Abandoned Places. This is probably as predictable as I can get, but what can I say, I enjoy rust, overgrowth and uninhabitance. Anyway, it was nice to see some local sights on there. Also, this Magnetic Mansion thing is completely crazy, though I have no idea if any of it's true:

"Zack Heikel buys on a whim an old abandoned mansion and after moving in, he stumbles upon an enormous vault hidden in a secret room in the basement. After using an acetylene torch to gain entry, he finds four million dollars in cash, along with journal records from illegal rackets in the Chicago and Detroit areas in the 1930's. More surprising was a jar of formaldehyde containing nine severed human fingers, three of which wore a very unusual silver signet ring. An ancient manuscript found among the rubble in an upstairs library explains the rings and also spoke of an order of men from biblical times calling themselves "The Knights of Zion." Zack spends years trying to find answers to these mysteries woven into the old mansion as well as why it was built the way it was and who is the old hunchback caretaker that still lives in a shack on the rear of the property. Stranger still, who were the nine bodies buried in the woods behind the mansion and what exactly was the secret elevator shaft that enabled a phantom observer to spy on guests in various parts of the house? Zack finally meets an old time gangster at the hunchback's funeral who is all too familiar with the interior of the mansion. He gives Zack several answers to the mysteries surrounding the old place because he was once a prisoner in the basement dungeon".

Okay, so maybe none of it.

Night in Moscow

Wow. (via EnglishRussia)

via riotclitshave

Podcast roundup

So, I'm only going to give loose descriptions and I'm linking directly to the feeds. There are others I listen to (particularly music ones), but I never stick to long enough to list here. So this is what I have on file at the moment.

News/Politics
Democracy Now! (audio) - Daily. I listen to at least the headlines every day, usually most of the show.
The Rachel Maddow Show (audio) - Daily. I'll listen to this every other day or so, but I tend to not pay attention to some of it, depending on if I've seen the Daily Show recently.
The Economist - Comes out a few times a week. Usually I listen to the complete audio version of the magazine, but if I can't find that falling off a truck somewhere, this is always a nice mini-fix
Meet The Press (audio) - Once a week. It largely depends on who the guest is (and there is some hesitance now to listen to Dave Gregory's voice for that long every week), but this is still the round table.
Slate's Political Gabfest - Once a week. ...another round table.

Comedy/Entertainment
WFMU's The Best Show on WFMU - Once a week. 3 Hours of mirth, music, and mayhem. Mostly the latter. Sometimes I listen to this live, sometimes I tune to the podcast. It's all relative.
Jordan Jesse GO! - Once a week. I go from bored and barely complacent to zealous fan on this, depending on the episode. I'm currently waiting for them to bat out of this slump.
The Sound of Young America - Once a week. This depends entirely on the guest, though I should state here thast Jesse Thorn has become a favorite interviewer of mine, recently. Both because his interests and mine overlap often and so I tend to like his guests, but also because he conducts these in a more relaxed tempo, and in his home, which is nice.
Never Not Funny - Once a week. I recently subscribed to the primo podcast, which is much longer. It varies, but honestly, listening to Andy richter's interview alone was worth it. I just wish Paul F. Tompkins was still on it twice a season. Weird: I kind of love and hate host Jimmy Pardo.
The Moth - Just people telling stories. I switched for this instead of This American Life for some reason some time back. I think TAL started getting too precocious for me? Or maybe I felt bad about never contributing. Either way, I'm comfortable with my decision.

Music
WFMU's Sinner's Crossroads - Weekly. Gospel music. See post the other day.
NPR: All Songs Considered - I have like 4 of these I haven't listened to yet, so I don't know why I'm counting this, but I do like it whenever I'm listening to it. And Tom Moon appears on it quite a bit, which I like.
KEXP Live Performances - I only download these rarely, and it depends entirely on who is playing, but it's still great when it's great.
*I just deleted all of the NPR live concert series, because it kept downloading the same Laura Gibson video show without asking me, and I didn't want it or it's cumbersome file size.

History Nerds
Stuff You Missed in History Class - Every couple of days. I like history. A little while ago, I actually had to get out of bed I was laughing so hard at one of the hosts, when talking about serial killers in the Countess of Bathory episode, says: "...650 victims over 54 years, No one's even come close to that. Some guy in Brazil murdered 300, and actually he's on the loose right now, so... look out Brazil". He was talking about the "Monster of the Andes", Pedro Lopez, who operated in Peru, Columbia, and Ecuador, but has certainly been wanted by authorities since 2001.
Stuff You Should Know - Every couple of days. I also like stuff.

Comics
Ifanboy Pick of the Week - Three guys talking about comic books.
WordBalloon - No idea. Usually, these are extended interviews with comic book creators. I listen every once in awhile, but not often enough to know how often it comes out.

Sports
ESPN: NBA Today - Ball. I just found this the other day, after the disappearance of the Inside dish in July.
Basketball Jones (audio) - This reminds me of listening to the sports writers from my college newspapers sitting around bullshitting. I don't agree with everything they say, but they know boatloads more than I do about the league. Warning: Canadian Accents.