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Saturday, October 10, 2009

San Francisco: dirty, credulous, overcrowded?

I had to giggle when I read this guy's blog post about San Francisco being dirty, credulous, and overcrowded (cross-linked using ShareThis). It's not that he's wrong, it's that he's so afraid that someone will disagree with him and -- shudder -- email him, and then -- horrors -- he'll be forced to ignore the email.

Then you read his bio and see: Aha, he's in his late-mid-20s. Just the time when illusions are popped, including the illusion that just because one is really smart (see his bio, where the bragging is perfectly pitched to be just more than humble, just less than arrogant: "I've been working at Twitter since the beginning of 2007, several months before the service began to grow in popularity. It's been an education ...") one somehow deserves to be relieved of the bother of living in a real environment with "generally poor urban/civic planning" and "unreliable and inadequate public transit."

I must have missed the part where he's announcing that he's devoting his dead Saturday afternoons ("I've found precious little to do here") to organizing the citizenry for the repeal of Proposition 13 and other neo-con initiatives that have limited the scope and reach of what government can do to address such problems. In the meantime, I strongly suggest taking up kayaking or crack.

Labels: bloggers, democracy, whining, zeitgeist

That's Jenny with an X

The appearance of Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin on the Rachel Maddow Show (thanks, @tara) educated me for the first time on, among other things: that the A-list (for the internet) celebrity's name is pronounced "zhenny zhardan," and that she seems to have excellent diction, even the traces of an East Coast posh accent.

It's a funny story and worth watching, and what a giant plug for BoingBoing. Of course Maddow's audience is likely already familiar with BoingBoing (the most-viewed blog in history) but such a feature can only serve to remind everyone that it's still relevant and not merely the repository of some writers' obsessions with squids, steampunk, and Disney World.

Labels: advertising, bloggers, celebutantes, photography, zeitgeist

Monday, June 15, 2009

Today's fake: a troubled pregnancy

A Chicago area blogger who kept readers spellbound with reports on her "pregnancy with a terminally ill baby" was faking the whole thing, local media reported yesterday. Faced with the problem of finally coming up with a baby, the 26-year-old woman, Beccah Beushausen of Oak Park, furnished a picture of herself cradling a swaddled doll. Readers quickly noticed the deception:

"I have that exact doll in my house," said Elizabeth Russell, a dollmaker from Buffalo who had been following the blog. "As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam."

By Monday, outraged followers on dozens of Christian parenting Web sites unmasked "April's Mom" as a hoaxer, and hundreds more vented their anger.

Notice who got upset. The only problem with this was that it was not intentionally designed to punk the anti-abortionists, but was merely a symptom of a sick mind.

"I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear," Beushausen said.

"Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand," she said. "I didn't know how to stop. ... One lie led to another."

There goes the book deal!

technorati: Beushausen, April's mom, abortion

Labels: abortion, bloggers, fakes, Focus on the Fundies, hoaxes, over-reactions

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Chinese blogger stabbed after talk at Beijing bookstore

A popular Chinese blogger whose work was censored last year was stabbed at a Beijing bookstore where he had just given a talk. Two men dragged him into the bathroom, saying something about how he should watch whom he offends. Sounds more like Mafia intimidation than something the government would do, doesn't it? Of course, in corrupt societies like China and today's Russia, the distinction between the actions of the government, of gangsters, and of industrial criminals is hard to make.

Xi Lai is reported to be recovering after emergency surgery. A picture is here. There are some reports saying he died after the attack but apparently that is not true. A report by a blogger familiar with his work is here.

technorati: China, bloggers

Labels: bloggers, china, gangsterism

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Publishing and pain

A very good article in the Village Voice looks at the state of publishing from the perspective of a successful mid-list author. The hook for the story is how the guy, exhausted and disillusioned on a book tour from hell, managed to piss off some anonymous bloggers who proceeded to french-fry him online until he backed down. But the larger, more interesting issues addressed by the piece have to do with the desperate, almost flailing actions of book publicists, who don't understand the general uselessness of book tours for novelists, and the sad delusions of the novelists themselves, who think their book tour will be like a victory lap in front of informed crowds of fans and then find it amounts to appearing to empty rows of chairs in small towns where... but read for yourself:

Then comes the Friday night in Winnetka, Illinois, when you pull up to a street where the only light is coming from the bookstore, and you realize this won't be good. There's one customer inside, and the reading is canceled, but you talk him into buying a book anyway... There's the afternoon in a small, depressed Arkansas town when... the promised crowd and the television film crew have all been canceled, preempted by a big football game. Three middle-aged women walk in, escorting their senile grandmother, who they've brought back to town after an absence of 70 years to see what she remembers, which is nothing. The bookstore owner flips a thumb at you: "Why don't you do your little show for them?" And you do, dear reader, you do.

The piece captures the reality of what being a "successful" author -- one with good reviews and middling best-sellers to their name -- must really be like. For all those (like me) with unpublished novels who imagine (as I used to) that their lives will change when they're published, it's a good reality check.

Still, I know getting published means something. I have books on the shelves with my name on the spine. That doesn't mean I never have to work again, but it's something.

technorati: publishing

Labels: bloggers, publishing

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Focus on the Fundies: Give money so he can 'minister without hindrance'

For a few months I've been monitoring the ravings of a Pentacostal preacher who is madly trying to establish a nationwide "ministry" dedicated to ridding American cities of Satanic influence. I first noticed him when he made some passing comment about how the Colorado mountain tourist town of Manitou Springs is well-known as a Satanic base camp.* Since then, I've seen him move spastically around the country, from Kansas City to Detroit, attempting to gather followers.

Recently he's been begging openly for money, and a blog posting yesterday really takes the cake for shameless solicitation. Emphasis mine.

Biblically it's clear that believers live in a different economic system, and I'm convinced that the church is called to be financial forerunners -- we are called to lead the way by giving our way out of this recession.

We pray you would consider this to be fertile and good soil for your seed in 2009. In fact, we have many challenges right this very moment, and we'd like to invite you to give before the end of 2008. Your gifts are tax-deductible... Would you invest in this ministry of teaching, planting and revival? Your donation will help us as we... (m)inister in the cities of the earth without any financial hindrance. God has moved powerfully in Detroit and other places through the ministry in 2008. Due to a timely rumbling in this city, we will be ministering in Detroit 6 times (at least) in the first half of 2009 alone.

So he goes to economically devastated Detroit and invites followers to "Give our way out of this recession." And how will he use that money? To help the poor of Detroit? To retrain auto workers being thrown out of their jobs?

Your donation will help us as we... (d)evote ourselves to the time consuming yet deeply important ministries of prayer and study. It's common for full-time prayer missionaries to devote 6 hours or more to prayer each day. (And to)
Focus on our call to author prophetic materials. I've had a book burning in my spirit for over two years, yet have not had the time to start it.

Nice! He wants to spend hours of day in prayer, and the rest of the time writing a book. Me too, dude!

To top it all off, he illustrates his plea with a picture of his family. Is it a nice soft-toned picture of them wearing sweaters around a Christmas tree? No, they're all looking glumly into the camera with tape over their mouths with the word "LIFE" written on the tape. (A one-year-old baby is spared this discomfort; they stuck the LIFE label on its chest.) I guess the point is, If you don't send him money, it's the same thing as gagging him and his whole family.

If only it were so.

* cached web page

technorati: fundamentalists, Christianists, far-right, evangelicals, bipolar

Labels: bloggers, Colorado Springs, depression, dystopia, economy, evangelicals, Focus on the Family, Focus on the Fundies, religious right

Friday, August 01, 2008

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Illicit pie-eating edition

I adore this priceless anecdote:

When I was a little girl, my best friend was Mrs. Brown, a 65-year-old widow who lived on the corner across the street. Several times a week, I joined Mrs. Brown for lunch. She always ate the same thing: a hamburger patty, a scoop of cottage cheese, two slices of tomato with pepper, and a cup of hot tea with lemon.

One day, Mrs. Brown veered from course and also ate a slice of pecan pie. No sooner had she taken her last bite than her telephone rang. It was Mrs. MacQueen, another widow who lived on the opposite corner: "I saw you eat that piece of pie," she said.

Mrs. Brown and I were both horrified, even though I knew Mrs. Brown also watched Mrs. MacQueen's every move from her own dining room window. They gossiped incessantly about one another. Heaven forbid one should have had a night visitor.

Or that either had been a blogger.

That's by columnist Kathleen Parker, printed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about the larger issue of gossip and why it isn't news. Not only does this anecdote reinforce the whole Lake Woebegone ethos that everyone expects expects from Minnesota, but it curiously echoes the zeitgeist reflected in the latest cringeworthy NYT Magazine article on internet culture, just posted on the NYT site.

Labels: Bad Behavior, bloggers, zeitgeist

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Why should the devil have all the good music?

Brilliant writer Janice Erlbaum posted an amusing tale about combatting an annoying subway preacher by singing as loudly as he was ranting. Her selections included "Let's Do It," "You Do Something To Me," "When They Begin the Beguine," and "It's All Right With Me." It didn't stop the guy's ranting but did raise her spirits.

The title of this post refers to a song by a Jesus rocker, Larry Norman.

technorati: Bad Behavior, subway+preachers,Janice Erlbaum

Labels: Bad Behavior, bloggers, democracy, evangelicals, writers

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

BoingBoing - Violet Blue - memory hole kerfuffle

I've resisted commenting on the kerfuffle in which all mentions of San Francisco blogger Violet Blue were suddenly erased last month from A-list blog BoingBoing. But today's Valleywag post by Melissa Gira Grant pretty much blows it wide open, reducing what initially seemed like a sinister case of Big Brother-type memory-holing into a jealous snit by an alleged former paramour.

The point most bloggers seem to be making -- that if this had happened anywhere else, it would have been reported with the usual mixture of glee and outrage on BoingBoing -- is hard to dispute. Pretty much every other aspect, such as Grant's parsing of BoingBoing's too-little-too-late excuse that it is entitled to be as "personal" and petty as it wants to be, is splitting the finest of hairs. There's a lot of harsh rhetoric blowing around the internets about this, including an anti-BoingBoing backlash [for example], and Grant's post will only inflame matters. What amuses me is how much it matters to everyone, making it clear that a high school hallway ethos pervades the internet and those who have become "famous" because of it. If anyone comes out ahead, it's Violet Blue, whose own comments and postings on the affair have shown admirable restraint. One thing I admire about Violet is that she always seems to remember that a few pixels one way or the other don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

technorati: Violet Blue, BoingBoing, internet censorship

Labels: bloggers, blogging, free speech, the internets

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Women bathing

Check out a new blog by a friend of mine, Whores of Bath, in which they review bath products and also take "fantasy baths" with celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Robert Downey, Jr.

technorati: bath products, bloggers

Labels: bloggers

Saturday, March 03, 2007

Rampant geekery

Min Jung Kim, one of the more luminous SF bloggers and definitely one of the most gorgeous, posted this week about having gotten engaged -- over instant messenger. While this will break the hearts of countless lurkers, stalkers, losers and twinkies, Ms. Kim has insisted for many years on her core geekery and it's only to be expected. Congrats, M.J. -- whom I've never met, but who saw me read once.

And I continue to be fascinated with the Radio Forum, an outpost of Bay Area radio geeks obsessed with format changes, announcers, programming and so on. In another life I would have been on of these guys -- and I'm sure they're all guys -- with jobs in and out of radio, and obsessing about it when I'm not working in it.

technorati: radio, Min Jung Kim, geeks

Labels: bloggers, geeks, radio