I've never "reblogged" something before, as blogger doesn't have a button for it and I feel weird copy/pasting the entire content of a website posting from elsewhere, but I have never wanted to do so more than now. About two years ago I first heard an excellent interview with Dr. Christopher Oldstone-Moore, a historian at Wright State University. He is a pogonologist, or studier of beards (among other things, I presume). The interview is conducted by David Malki ! of Wondermark.com, an excellent website featuring repurposed Victorian illustrations used to make comic strips. Malki ! (the exclamation point is part of his name) is a very vocal beard advocate, so I was not surprised to see/hear him follow his interest into the academic realm.
I think it is safe to say that this interview is fascinating, even if you are not as thoroughly interested in beards as I am. Particularly notable is the discussion of the origins of shaving, and how it came to be the "default" look of men. Then later, the time when beards suddenly burst back on to the fashion scene. Both can be traced to remarkably specific historical events (hint: they are 2179 years apart)!
To quote Dr. Oldstone-Moore: "The one thing I’m absolutely sure of is that these changes are connected to whatever conceptions we are developing of masculinity. Ultimately, it is always tied to the question of what is it to be a man, and 'how should I be a man?' That’s the existential version of that question, as a man. However that question gets answered is going to have a lot to do with what you do with facial hair. And that’s why I’m interested in studying facial hair, because I think it’s a way of looking at the history of how people think about their masculinity."
It is easy to think of the internet as a massive sea of trivialities, memes and pop-culture references. There is a lot of creativity out there but, maybe because of the sheer volume of media one consumes in 10 minutes of internetting, it is easy to think that the actual work took as little time and effort to create as it did to enjoy. Of course it doesn't. A lot of time and effort can go into silly video or a good joke. Even lolcats, perhaps the most ubiquitous and trivial of internet trivialities, require a good photo.
A few months ago my friend Whitney directed me to this neat poster/flowchart describing the logic of crediting an image online. (As it was created on a design blog, it is also appropriately cool looking.) A cartoonist/author/general creative-type person I follow recently wrote about his corner of this emerging debate, extending the conversation to creativity in merchandising authorship and pop-culture commentary. It also gets at why we feel the need to wear images on t-shirts, the motivations behind that impulse that I've not heard articulated as efficiently anywhere else. It's a short but excellent blog post by an internet creator and merchant who is walking the line between "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and "give credit where credit is due." Or between "nobody 'owns' a funny sentence" and "simply repeating a funny sentence isn't funny."
"I’m glad that our knee-jerk reaction to seeing a ripoff is to call it out and shame it. I think we’re right to feel proud of someone coming up with a new idea, or creating a new combination of old ideas, but bored or sickened by the same old lazy references being regurgitated for profit. Don’t tolerate it! Having high standards pushes the culture forward faster." (Read the excellent original piece here.)
By the way, apparently the original insult was removed, from at least one website.
Happy Memorial Day. I hope your plans are a little easier to figure out than mine.
We're trying to meet some friends at Squaw Island, a possibly-offensively-named but apparently cool park in the city of Buffalo. Not having been there, I consulted Google Maps, the best online map/directions provider by far. But Google appears to be setting me up for a more interesting journey than I anticipated:
I wasn't really sure what to do with that, so I tried to readjust the view so that I could see what was going on better. First it launched me over the edge of the off-ramp. It didn't show a pile of ruined cars at the bottom, so I'm pretty sure that was a mistake on Google's part. I'm hoping it was a mistake. (I mean, I'm REALLY hoping that's a mistake.) But once I got the all-seeing eye of Google adjusted to staying on the ramp, you can see above that it wasn't any better. It appears that I'm supposed to swerve around a few lanes of traffic then launch myself straight into the air. My rocketcar is in the shop, so I'm understandably worried.
I tried to readjust again, just to get a better view of the exit sign/launch coordinates, and this is what it came up with:
After flying straight up into the air, I need to come crashing down about 5 feet later and continue on the highway. Then about 50 feet after that I need to turn my car 90 degrees vertically and take off again. (Understandably, these lines could not be seen in the previous picture because they were covered up by the first skyward rocketline.) I tried to angle the view upward to see where the lines go, particularly that last line where it just disappears. Unfortunately the lines appear infinite within the constraints of Google Maps' vertical axis. And they appear to be perfectly straight despite their contiguousness. In order to appear that way that they must either 1. have a sharp turn but go really high up; or 2. have (an)other turn(s) that aren't accounted for here. I'm imagining a Super Mario-style cloud level full of moving platforms and koopa paratroopas.
Then, one step later in the directions (with no mention of the harrowing cloudworld adventure), the line bursts up out of the ground outside a "water jet cutting showroom," proceeds straight up into the stratosphere again, then comes crashing down not a foot later. It then hops the curb into the center of an intersection:
I'm not sure if these maneuvers would be possible even in a Harrier Jet, but my Chevy Cobalt is certainly going to have some trouble. Maybe there's a spring-loaded panel under the road that pops up as I drive over it? Or a scary magnet that comes down to pick up my car? However it goes, Google is not adequately preparing me. I'll let you know if I make it.
I would like to know the algorithm that decided that this was the ad for me. I feel like this kind of advertising is not as dignified as Don Draper makes it look.
I have to admit, while sifting through junk mail this really did catch my eye:
To whomever is in charge of Case's fundraising: Well done. I haven't stopped carrying the torch of Futurism and I appreciate you appealing to that sentiment. I'm still not in a place where I can be giving money to anyone else, but someday I hope to be. Keep this up.
My parents recently decided that they are, for some reason, uninterested in keeping the boxes of magazines and scrap paper that I left in their house when I moved out a decade ago. I suppose someone else will have to become my archivist. I assume that I should have archivist, because whenever historians are trying to understand people they look back at their personal correspondence. If I become famous, perhaps the world will be enlightened by the marginalia and doodles in my "global studies" notebook. Until then, my parents quit themselves of the boxes. Feeling that it is inappropriate to be my own historian (that would be conceited), I am throwing much of it away. But one piece of paper caught my eye.
Some background: When I was in high school I was in the Student Congress, and one year during Homecoming Week I organized a school-wide trivia contest. The questions were read during the morning announcements (by me). Each homeroom got an answer sheet, which was collected, scored, and returned to them each day (by me). The homeroom with the best score at the end of the week won some sort of prize. Or maybe it was the class with the highest total points from all the classrooms. I don't remember the logistics, but I do remember that people got really into it and I was really proud that this whole idea came together. But the best part was the topic. What kind of trivia would I ask during homecoming week? Surely it was sports trivia, you say, and I say No, I don't care about that. Maybe something about the school. Or recent movies, or history, or fun facts. No, no, no, no. Or what about super nerdy stuff that only a sliver of the high school population would know anything about? And I say, BINGO.
So I now present to you, for the first time in its entirety, "Homecoming Homeroom Trivia: Old School Cartoons." The following is copied directly from my decade-old handwritten notes when I came up with the questions. Mind you, these were in the days before Google. (Remember WebCrawler?) There was just enough internet in the world for me to find the GIF's you see below (which decorated the answer sheet), but not enough for people to cheat while sitting in homeroom. So same goes for you, gentle readers, no Wikipedia allowed. See how you do... Day 1: Thundercats 1. What was Lionel's sword's name? 2. What was the red insignia on the sword called (pictured on the right)?
Day 2: Masters of the Universe 1. Who was He-Man's twin sister and accomplice as a Master of the Universe? 2. What was He-Man's tiger named? 3. [BONUS QUESTION] He-Man's arch nemesis was Skeletor. What was Skeletor's lair called? Day 3: Ninja Turtles 1. Name all 4 turtles and the colors of their bandanas. 2. What substance created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
Day 4: Gummi Bears 1. What did the Gummi Bears live in? 2. What magic potion was the source of the Gummi Bear' powers? 3. What monsters were the Gummi Bears always outsmarting?
Day 5: Transformers 1. The brave and fearless Autobots were in a constant battle with what group of evil transformers? 2. What was the name of the leader of the Autobots (pictured here)?
DELETED SCENES The following was originally scheduled for Day 3, but it was deemed too difficult by the other people who were helping me... Day 3 (original): Voltron 1. How many lions were in the Voltron Force? 2. Name one of the Voltron Force's three arch nemeses.
This was also in the days before the 80's were nostalgic and cool, before Transformers became a (live action) movie, before the TMNT got reworked as "edgy" anime-influenced nonsense, and before Cartoon Network began rebroadcasting almost all of these shows. So if you've seen the shows since their original before/after-school or Saturday morning timeslots, that's cheating too. But I'm glad that these shows are coming back. If anything, I wish they'd bring back DinoRidersand Silverhawks. But my age group is only beginning to flex our nostalgia muscles, and everything gets brought back eventually, so here's hoping. Until then, here are the answers...
Thundercats 1. The Sword of Omens 2. Eye of Thundera ("Eye of Thundera, give me sight beyond sight!")
Masters of the Universe 1. She-ra 2. Battle-Cat ("Cringer" was also acceptable, though that was his name before Prince Adam turned into He-Man. Nobody put that though, because nobody cared about stupid Prince Adam or his scaredy-tiger.) 3. Snake Mountain (if you said Castle Greyskull you are WRONG. That was He-man's castle, and Skeletor's perennial goal.)
Ninja Turtles 1. Leonardo (blue), Donatello (purple), Raphael (red), Michelangelo (orange). • (As a colorblind kid, I was always annoyed that the blue and purple looked very similar to me. Especially because Donatello was my favorite and Leonardo was my least favorite.) • BONUS QUESTION: What were each of their weapons? (L=katana blades, D=bo staff, R=sais, M=nunchaku) 2. Retromutagen ooze (half credit for "ooze")
Gummi Bears 1. Inside a tree (not just "in the forest") 2. Gummiberry juice 3. Ogres
Transformers 1. Decepticons 2. Optimus Prime (This was the only picture that I couldn't match to the one I used back in the day. At the time I used one that was almost identical to this, including the logo, but didn't have his big ol' gun. Columbine still was very fresh at the time and public schools were jumpy about anything related to guns. I guess that as it's gotten farther away people don't mind their cartoon characters having guns. That or school violence has become so ubiquitous that people aren't trying to blame cartoons anymore. But that's a different blog post.)
DELETED SCENES 1. Five lions (I would say that Power Rangers was a terrible rip-off, but it was made by the same people so it was more of a re-make. The main hero(s) looked almost the same, except that it was live action, set in a high school not a cool space base, and used robot dinosaurs instead of robot lions.) 2. Zarkon, Prince Lotor, Haggar the witch.
How did you do? And what do the results of this quiz tell us? Specific answers not withstanding, if this took you on a trip down memory lane, you may be a nerd. Talk to your doctor. Or treat by looking up clips on YouTube all night.
As a final note, let's face it, the Voltron theme was downright inspiring. That horn fanfare almost brings a tear to my eye!
No indication of whether it is stand-on-able, but it looks pretty legit, right down to the paint job.
I've been dreaming about having a hoverboard my whole life. Though the hot pink BTTF2 one is pretty rad, I prefer the design of the ones from ReBoot (see 1:00 through 1:40 of this video to see what I mean). I confess, I spent a lot of time thinking about this hoverboard when I was 12. Double confession: I still think about it, 15 years later. In the day I came up with a whole system of balance, propulsion, and storage of these things. I could still explain it all, but I'll save you the details. But seriously, if you want to talk about it I will gladly hold forth on my intuitive 360° movement system I "developed" (read: "played with in my imagination"). Using it I would look just like this, except (probably) not blue:
We will continue to track this story as it unfolds. Check back in about a decade when the next step in hoverboard technology develops.
Every once in a while I allow myself to just click around on the internet and see what comes up, and every once within those whiles I find a real gem. I don't know exactly what the "point" is, or if there even needs to be one, but this is really well done.
It is like mixture of the famous Milgram experiment and the game (a.k.a. the "mind virus"). If someone ever actually combines those two phenomena, we'll all be begging for Altzeimer's.
It's a Google-Earth-style superdetailed panoramic picture of the crowd at Obama's inaugural address. You can zoom in and drag the picture around.
You can play "Where's Waldo" looking for what I found:
-Barack Obama -FORMER president Bush -Dr. Evil, whoops I mean Dick Cheney -Clarence Thomas taking a nap -The Bush twins holding hands and... praying? -Billary -Al and Tipper -Aretha Franklin in her sweet hat. She is totally ready for church. -Yo-Yo Ma taking a picture with his iPhone, cello at his feet -more than 1 million people watching history -and the Magical Floating Hat (hint: in the section behind Obama)
I'm sure there are many more faces to spot. Let me know if you find any! Enjoy!
Today I had to tell my web browser to "Learn Spelling" of the words "Barack" and "Obama" so that they wouldn't show up as misspelled words. Microsoft Word, however, does not mark them as unrecognized words. They must have been included in some software update. Good for you, Microsoft Word! You've done it again.
"Hussein," on the other hand, was already in the browser dictionary, but "Saddam" was not, which is curious. Once again, Word recognized both.
Here you are on a blog, undoubtedly aware of the "blogolution" that has taken the media away from The Media. You can now get your news, sports, editorials, humor, advice, and everything else tailored to your tastes by forsaking the mainstream newspapers and television outlets and following a trusted voice in the blogosphere. This de-centralization of communication has, like anything else in this internet age, opened the door for a few brilliant but otherwise-unheard voices, and millions of hacks. I don't really keep up with my digital world enough to sort it out for myself. I mainly dip in based on recommendations by people I trust or links from other websites. I am happy to know that there are armies of watchdogs poised with fingers on their keyboards, and I am generally content assuming that they are watching out better than I could. I'm glad I'm not responsible for knowing everything about everything so I can focus on improving the world in the most efficacious ways I can.
That being said, I'm a big fan of music and I was excited when music blogs started popping up. The internet, man. Again, I haven't really invested the time in sifting through the catalogue. Most of it is still written by hacks. The biggest problem with music people try and share on the internet is that is almost exclusively falls into two categories: The first is garbage by "up-and-coming artists" that some distribution company paid to have promoted based on how well the artists wears jeans and not by the actual worth of the songs (see most of the Starbucks songs of the day. Sorry, employer). The second internet-music plague is the "unearthed gems" people will post of known artists from before they were famous or from some rare bootleg, or of unknown artists that are completely off the radar of anyone not related to the band. The problem here is that most of these recordings are unknown for a reason. No one has heard that bootleg of The Lox freestyling on guerilla radio in 1997 because he was high as hell and could barely speak his name, let alone piece together a rhyme. No one has heard that Japanese power-pop band because they are not good at writing music. Or performing music. Really the only reason they managed to get a song recorded was because someone made the guitar chord for them and told them when to hit the strings. This is the most embarrassing manifestation of indie-rock elitism. But here are some things the internet has provided for me that I think are worth passing on:
Aquarium Drunkard - This is really the most solid music blog I've found. It consistently walks the line between unheard/interesting and relevant/quality. They tend to explore a specific time period of a genre or group. The columns are short, interesting, and unpretentious. The mp3 selections will give a high-quality overview of the point they're making. I also like how they swing from current indie rock to rootsy musical history lessons.
Second up is MIXIW (pronounced "mix-you"), which is a pairing of musical blogs around a central theme. This one came to my attention because my mans Josh is the editor. The little introduction at the top of the main page explains it as well as I could, so you should just check that out. Unfortunately, most of the archives were recently deleted due to some website problem, but it's starting back up as strong as ever and they've re-posted the fantastic Remixmix (my name). In college Josh and I talked about and shared music constantly, so it's especially fun for me to see how his tastes have evolved and what has remained consistent.
Finally are two links that are using the internet to change the way we think about purchasing music. Instead of griping about the sad state of the record industry or how illegal downloading is ruining the lives of rockstars, these people are shifting the paradigm. Paste Magazine puts out a great periodical, packages it with a mix-CD, and it now offering the chance to name your own price for their high-quality services. I won't tell you how much I paid, but I will tell you that you should do it. Similarly, and this isn't exactly breaking news, Radiohead is not attached to a record company and is selling their newest album exclusively on their website www.inrainbows.com/. I can't say enough good stuff about the quality of this record. You can pay as little as 45 pence (about $1) for the processing fees, or anywhere more than that, and you automatically get the DRM-free download of the whole record. No middlemen adding the costs that are burying the record industry; just the band, the music and you.
If you have anything else to recommend, I'm always open to suggestion. Considering I've spent years being interested in where the internet was going to guide my musical journey, it's kind of sad that this is all I have to show for it. Hopefully the example of these, and others like them, will effect a real shift in how music is found and even experienced. Until then, rest assured that I'm going to keep buying CD's and going to shows like an original old-school gangsta.
I have written 2 blogs recently, but they were both on paper ("taking the "b" out of the portmanteau "blog"), and I'll upload them when I get to it. In the meantime, I'm compelled to tell a short story.
I'm taking a graduate school class at the University of Buffalo this fall. A departmental secretary named Nancy Myers signed me up for the class, but to do anything else I need my UB "person number" and my UB password. In order to get one, you need the other, and vice-versa. Now I know UB is a giant bureaucratic public school where students are treated as numbers, but I have the handy connection of my recent nice interactions with the aforementioned departmental secretary. These people hold all the power at universities, so I am always extra nice to make sure I can get help when I need it. (And because, you know, I'm nice.)
In order to circumvent the need for person number or password to get the other, I finally found a help link saying I could request my info be sent to me if the department also requested it. Bingo, I know just who to ask. So I sent Ms. Myers a very nice email carefully explaining the situation and clearly requesting her help, and I received this as a response:
Alright, no big deal. These types of auto-responses are common enough in busy offices. I'm sure Ms. Iszkun was more than capable of helping me out, especially if I wrote another nice email explaining the situation. So I did, and received this as a response:
I am not ashamed to admit that I only read 148 pages of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 (especially because the book report I gave, including questions by the teacher, got an A+), but I read enough of it to know one when I see one. Come on, UB, don't be like this. I am new to you, UB; I am a blank slate waiting to be impressed by every level of your institution. I will treat you right, promising to participate beneficially in your community and to sing your praises to other potential members, if you will only just offer me a logical path to follow on my academic journey. This is all I ask, UB, and we are off to a bad start.
UltimateGuitar.com is pretty great for finding tabs, and I guess other people also use it for guitar-related news and information. They tend towards nü-metal/alternative preferences, which I find ironic considering most of that guitar work is boring power chord stuff that anyone could learn in 10 minutes. Anyway, like I said I only use it for the extensive tab database (they also have non-nü-metal), but in order to access the tabs you have to see the homepage. The other day this image spanned the page, see if you notice the same thing I did:
That's right: all the dudes in nü-metal bands look the same. They all have the same goatees, the same gross hair, and even tilt their heads at the same angle. Even these guys have more variety. Maybe when they say it's "alternative rock" they mean that it's an alternative name for the same band. "Sevendust releases new album, this time calling themselves 'Nickelback.' A follow-up as 'Chimaira' is expected soon."
Second up in the weird internet-pictures series are the following gems from myspace's log-off page:
Now, I'm single. I wouldn't mind a girlfriend. I didn't know it was girlfriend season, but I was already keeping my eyes open so I guess now it's legal. And what am I keeping my eyes open for? You guessed it: chicks tearing off their jewlery while grabbing their boobs, and chicks who are soaking wet from the shoulders down and are pointing at me with their nipples. Actually, scratch that first one. If I can't see the nipples straight up then I don't think she's the girl for me. My priorities lay mainly on nipples.
On the same goodbye page from myspace (where I am registered as a heterosexual man) I also received this reminder:
Apparently right after girlfriend season is boyfriend season. It seems strange for them not to coincide, for the sake of each other, but for me at least it gives me another chance. If "wabbit season" ends and I still haven't caught me a girlfriend, then I just call "duck season" and wait for them to find me. That's why I've been working out:
See?
edit 4/6/07
Oh my gracious. I'm sure I'm supposed to be enticed by her perky breasts, but I am far to terrified of the rest of her. I hope this is photoshopped somehow and isn't what she actually looks like.
This makes me say "awww, man!" You always take these "Which genre thing Are You?" things hoping that it will say something really cool or profound, maybe even creepily accurate. ("You are smart and social and make good first impressions, but you have goals that you find hard to prepare for and often get lost in escapist fantasies when you should be doing something productive. You are... any band purported to be the "next Radiohead"?) But then they end up with something horoscope-bland. It irritates me that they're always complimentary too. They want you to link to them, so obviously they're not going to say anything bad, but wouldn't that be more interesting?
Today, this evening, in the last two hours and within two minutes of each other, the internet has delivered me something wonderful and something awful. Neither would have been possible without the internet. (I've erased this sentence too many times, I'm skipping it.)
I'm not surprised that the internet can bring people together in good and bad ways. I've had both happen to me prior to this evening. But the congruence of both happening consecutively and in such disparate ways has honestly shocked me. I'm shocked at how shocked I am.
I knew the internet had me all figured out, all recorded and compiled, but I didn't think it would ever reach out and poke me in the brain like this. I didn't think it could flip those "elation" and "despondency" switches at the same time, and in me. In ME. I didn't know this could all get so personal.
You made it personal, Internet. You came in my house, climbed in my head, and made it personal. Then you gave me a handy list of antonyms to describe my reactions.
...so I figured it was only fit and proper to write about it on the internet. Man, forget you. I'm going to good, old-fashioned SLEEP.
A dude from Buffalo who went to school in Cleveland. I majored in music and psychology. Then I worked various jobs for a few years, and now I'm getting my Ph.D. in counseling psychology in Buffalo. I like reading, but I usually like talking more. I do not like most TV.
The blogger's beard visits Glacier Point at Yosemite National Park
