{"id":3386,"date":"2009-04-02T17:30:07","date_gmt":"2009-04-02T21:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3386"},"modified":"2009-04-02T16:47:59","modified_gmt":"2009-04-02T20:47:59","slug":"thursday-various-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3386","title":{"rendered":"Thursday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>  <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Earlier today <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/unrealfred\">via Twitter<\/a>, I wrote, &#8220;People always complain that MTV doesn&#8217;t show videos anymore, but is this really a bad thing? Were music videos really so <em>good<\/em> for music?&#8221; This was in response (sort of) to <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2009\/04\/02\/reader-request-week-6-80s-pop-music\/\">John Scalzi&#8217;s thoughts<\/a> on &#8217;80s pop music. He writes:<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">The way to most accurately judge the quality of a pop music era, in my opinion, is not by the stuff universally acknowledged as the high points of era, but by all the other stuff that happened to be popular too, and whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better or worse than the average pop song of any other era one might think of.<\/font><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">Although he also makes the frightening prediction of &#8220;a whole lot of N*Sync references come 2029,&#8221; when the tweens and teens who listened to that music come into their own. I shudder even to think.<br \/>\n<\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">My own question still stands. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.blogspot.com\/\">Gerry Canavan<\/a> asks an interesting question: &#8220;How could <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/world\/0,1518,612718,00.html\">the Romans<\/a> think in terms of centuries but we can&#8217;t think past a single business cycle?&#8221;<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>I was pretty sure Fox&#8217;s new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3363\">no extras on rented DVDs<\/a> policy would come back to bite them, but who knew it would be so soon? Apparently, many customers who have bought DVDs of <em>Slumdog Millionaire<\/em> have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/fox-finds-new-ways-to-piss-off-movielovers,26088\/?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=feeds&amp;utm_source=channel_film\">received the extras-free rental version<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of DVDs, apparently there are some problems with the subtitles <a href=\"http:\/\/iconsoffright.com\/news\/2009\/03\/let_the_wrong_subtitles_in_to.html\">for <em>Let the Right One In<\/em><\/a>, that feel-good Swedish vampire movie of last year. I have a copy on its way right now from Netflix, so I&#8217;ll have to see how it compares.<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>And finally, a double-shot of disturbing. First, <a href=\"http:\/\/justinelai.com\/\">Justine Lai&#8217;s oil paintings of herself having sex with each US President<\/a>. (Not <em>overly<\/em> pornographic, and strangely fascinating in concept, but still not remotely SFW. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.waxy.org\/links\">via<\/a>]) And second, <a href=\"http:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2009\/03\/31\/more-than-vaguely-terrifying-the-peekaru\/\">the Peekaru<\/a>, which John Scalzi describes as &#8220;a Snuggie and a chestburster from Alien all in one.&#8221;<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier today via Twitter, I wrote, &#8220;People always complain that MTV doesn&#8217;t show videos anymore, but is this really a bad thing? Were music videos really so good for music?&#8221; This was in response (sort of) to John Scalzi&#8217;s thoughts on &#8217;80s pop music. He writes: The way to most accurately judge the quality of &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3386\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-3386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-various"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}