The middle of the week of the middle of the month means Kickass Karaoke at Accordion City’s infamous Bovine Sex Club, with your host (and former Naked News science/tech anchor) Carson T. Foster. It’s not your father’s karaoke; it’s toxic rock and roll karaoke!
Luckily, there’s at least one recent one that I haven’t yet blogged. Coming soon.
(Jacqui P., if you’re reading this, this one’s about the night we went out drinking on your birthday.)
If you enjoy this weblog and you haven’t yet done so, please nominate me for the 2003 Weblog Awards. The most applicable categories would probably be Best Canadian Weblog, Most Humorous Weblog, or Best-Kept-Secret Weblog. To entice you, I’ve promised that if I make the nominations, I’ll tell the stories of my worst dates ever (and yes, these are sitcom-worthy stories, as you should come to expect from me).
At Peter’s New Year’s Eve party, a couple of women were making out in the corner just after the clock struck midnight. The following conversation ensued.
Paul: Chicks making out. Coooool.
Me: Poetry in motion. But I think one of them is a guy in drag. Look at those calves.
[I can’t remember whom]: Actually, s/he’s got the operation done, so you’re both right.
Think you could’ve done better? See if you can tell the women from the men in the Female or Shemale? test.
[Thanks to Doc Searls for the link.]
From the Columbia Journalism Review:
This is not a blueprint for the newspaper of tomorrow. This does not offer a neat, complete answer to the question, What would it take to get the kids to read the paper? (Dream on). This does not represent the desires or demands of a generation of readers — Gen X, Y, or otherwise. Our sources for this story, young newspaper journalists all, are admittedly more focused on — and likely more interested in — news and newspapering than the average twenty-something.
So what is this? This is a loose description of The Dream Newspaper, as imagined by young journalists from around the country. As part of the continuing discussion of (or fixation on) what young people want to read and why, we sought journalists ages thirty and under to talk about the kind of newspaper they would like to read — and work for — and to report back to us with their ideas.
The rest of the story is here.
[Thanks to Plastic for the link…it’s a busy work day for your ‘umble accordionist.]
My friend Cory Doctorow’s new book, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has hit the bookshelves…and the Web!
Down and Out is Cory’s full novel, and it’s full of all his pet obsessions: Disneyland, technologically-enhanced humans, pop culture, audio-animatronics, online identity and reputation (the term “Whuffie”, which he uses in the novel, was originally a term he used at OpenCola as a measure of reputation or “karma”) and ad-hoc collectives of talent working together to form a whole greater than the sum its parts. Here’s the opening line:
I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.
Here’s the quick summary:
Jules is a young man barely a century old. He’s lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies…and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.
Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer “ad-hocs” who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.
Now, though, it seems the “ad hocs” are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself. Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It’s only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it’s war: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of ever-shifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes.
You can get the book in one of two ways:
(The license under which Cory’s releasing electronic versions of the book is a Creative Commons license. This particular license says you must attribute the work to him, you’re free to distribute it for non-commercial purposes, and you’re not allowed to make derivative works with first getting his permission.)
And finally, a picture of the author that I took when we went to Disneyland:
Just as I was about to hit the sack, I checked up on House of Hot Sauce, my friend Sean Monkman’s blog. I know both him and his wife Keitha from our days at Queen’s University, and they’ve recently moved to Scotland. It’s one of those “let’s uproot and move somewhere different while we’re still young and not tied down to anything” things of which I wholeheartedly approve. The blog, aside from being an outlet for Sean’s wonderful creativity and spot-on pronouncements about alt-rock, is also an easy way for his friends back here in Accordion City to keep up with how he and Keitha are doing.
In his entry on New Year’s Eve, he wrote about these signs, which appeared on bus shelters all over Edinburgh before the celebrations began:
Sean — who’s an engineer by training — wondered if such a thing as “Anti-climb paint” existed, or if it was clever bit of social engineering meant to keep partygoers from climbing on top of the shelters and either wrecking them or injuring themselves. It doesn’t seem real; it sounds more like some kind of invention from the world of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash or the Disneyland-of-the-future in Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.
(An aside about paint and the Magic Kingdom: when Cory and I went to Disneyland back in 2001, he told me that they paint structures such as construction walls and other things they want you to ignore a special colour called “Go Away Green”. It’s a colour that blends into the background of just about any landscape setting. It’s the next best thing to setting up one of Douglas Adams’ “Somebody Else’s Problem” fields.)
A little Googling gave me the answer — anti-climb paint actually exists! Oddly enough, just about every result was a site either based in or writing about the UK. Here’s a snippet from Decorating Direct, a UK-based firm who had the number one result:
Anti-Climb Paint is a thick, non-drying coating for parapets, downcomers, pipes, window sills, fencing and walls etc. It acts as an extremely effective deterrent to would be intruders and burglars by making surfaces virtually unclimable, whilst marking intruders hands and clothing.
The stuff is made with petroleum jelly, and isn’t supposed to dry completely for years. It’s Vaseline for buildings! It combines the worst of slippery (to prevent climbing) and sticky (to clearly mark you as the intruder).
If that weren’t enough of a security measure, certain kinds of anti-climb paint, such as Andura’s, also contain fluorescent pigments and a “secret trace element” to “enable Law Enforcement Agencies to link suspects and clothing to the scene of the crime.”
It strikes me as the perfect gift for the personality type who’s into both Martha Stewart and perimeter defense.