Too Beautiful, the blog

Too Beautiful

| wishlist

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Could I say 'BoingBoingitude'?

I cracked up a couple of weeks ago as I read this NYTBR review by Lance Morrow of a new book by Bill McKibben, the patron saint of middle class environmentalism, in which Morrow coined a priceless new word to apply to the greener-than-thou notions of people like McKibben:

McKibben lives and teaches in Vermont, and his vision, for better and for worse, is suffused with a certain Vermontlichkeit.

LOL!!!1!! -- that is just the best thing ever. And I found another example of it on BoingBoing today, in a tale of a hip librarian who installed "Ubuntu Linux" instead of Windows on some donated computers. Her quoted post ends:

The Calef Library has two Windows PCs already so if people need specific software that doesn't run on Ubuntu, they can use those. I'd like to get them a Mac as well and then they can be the only library (to my knowledge) that is triple platform in the entire state of Vermont.

Oh, you go, anti-corporate warrior.

Come to think of it, BoingBoing itself, especially its avatar Cory Doctorow -- science fiction writer and former Electronic Freedom Foundation issue-staker -- who is known to become exercised over issues like corporate intrusion into private lives and, well, just dumb corporate behavior. (A couple years ago there was a satirical, and completely fictional, piece on the web depicting Doctorow phoning a clueless company and browbeating the poor customer service rep about one of his hobby horse issues -- completely hilarious, but I can't find it anymore.) I think we need another neologism -- BoingBoingitude? -- for the sort of default anti-corporate stick-it-to-the-man but-in-a-way-that-everyone-would-consider-cool positions taken in many BoingBoing postings.

Labels: geeks