The scene: the Tucows offices, early afternoon.
Co-worker: Hey, Joey! How’s married life treating you?
Me [making finger quotes, a.k.a. “sarcasm tongs”]: “Married life?” What is this, the twentieth century? It’s now called Life 2.0.
The webcomic Something Positive has its own take on Anne Rice’s change of subject matter (which I wrote about in this entry). Here’s a sample:
Click on the image to see the whole comic.
My friend and former housemate Paul Baranowski is a developer with Campware, an organization whose purpose is to “develop, distribute, support and implement useful tools for independent news media in emerging democracies.” As such, he keeps up with the literature on Open Source, such as O’Reilly’s book-in-progress, Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution.
The book’s introduction [link leads to a PDF file] covers the spirit of open source by describing the vibrant gift economy that exists within the annual bacchanal Burning Man, which takes place in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. I attended in 1999 — the year I took up the accordion — and as a result, make a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance on page XXXIV:
Unfettered from monetary exchange, however, most denizens of Burning Man gravitate toward a gift economy. Acts of giving range from the mundane to the extravagant: the accordion player who serenades those in the porta-potty line with his renditions of AC/DC; the massage therapist volunteering her services; the water-gun brigade, spraying people down for a moment of cool relief from the midday sun; or the man who brings along a week’s supply of dry ice so he can serve cold ice cream every day.
Rosa Parks get processed after breaking the law by
refusing to give up her seat for a white guy. Click to see the photo at
full size.
Rosa Parks passed away yesterday at the age of ninety-two.
Thanks, Ms. Parks — because you refused to give up your seat for the wrong reason, I don’t have to, either.
(Mind you, I’m an able-bodied relatively young man, and I still give up
my seat for ladies, older folks and really-tired looking parents with
young children.)
Sometimes when things come down hard on you — like being razzed by
your own supporters for your choice of Supreme Court Nominee and
members of your posse getting indicted — you have to go for whatever
little victories you can get. In this case, the victory in question is
putting the smackdown on The Onion. The New York Times reports:
“It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the
presidential seal on its Web site,” Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel
to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr.
Dixton’s office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee;
days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)
Citing
the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal “is not to be
used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that
suggests presidential support or endorsement.” Exceptions may be made,
he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.
I was unaware of Linuxcaffe’s
existence until I got the mailing from the PyGTA (a Python group for
the Greater Toronto Area) that its meetings will be held there from now
on. Linuxcaffe, whose motto is “Open kitchen, open source and open
atmosphere”, is a new cafe that caters to the geek crowd. It boasts
coffee from Ideal (a local cafe and roastery) and food that they
promise will be made from ingredients by local providers and will aso
be “healthy, fresh and reasobaly priced”. It also has open WiFi,
facilties for hosting geek gatherings and a library on all things
computer-y and Linux-y.
Perhaps I’ll check out the place at tomorrow night’s PyGTA meeting.
Linuxcaffe is located at
326 Harbord Street, on the northeast corner of Grace and Harbord, a block south of Christie subway station.
[via Metafilter] Call me an intellectual snob if you must, but I’ve made it a point to
give Anne Rice’s novels a wide berth. It’s not that I’ve got anything
against a good vampire story, it’s just that many of the grown-ups I’ve
encountered who have a large collection of her books would be lucky to
get a two-digit score on an IQ test. My feelings on the matter are best
summed up in a Simpsons gag in which Otto the pot-addled bus driver, who is staying over at the Simpsons’ house, asks Marge for something to read: “Hey, Mrs. Simpson — you got anything written from the vampire’s point of view?”
I find it mildly amusing that Ms. Rice’s upcoming novel, the first in a series, is taking an
interesting direction that some of her legions of goth fans may find
distressing:
In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under
the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will
publish “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” a novel about the 7-year-old
Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. “I promised,” she says, “that from
now on I would write only for the Lord.” It’s the most startling public
turnaround since Bob Dylan’s “Slow Train Coming” announced that he’d
been born again.
Even more strange: Kirkus Reviews gave it a star and calls it:
a triumph of
tone — her prose lean, lyrical, vivid — and character. As he ponders
his staggering responsibility, the boy [Yeshua — the Hebrew name we know as “Jesus” — Joey] is fully believable — and yet
there’s something in his supernatural empathy and blazing intelligence
that conveys the wondrousness of a boy like no other.
My curiosity is piqued now. I may have to purchase a copy.
I’ll also have to keep an eye on LiveJournal for the next little
while. The goth freak-outs over the development should be amusing.
It may be time for some folks to re-read The Mopey Goth Handbook of Despair.