{"id":3548,"date":"2009-08-26T18:30:43","date_gmt":"2009-08-26T22:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3548"},"modified":"2009-08-26T14:57:25","modified_gmt":"2009-08-26T18:57:25","slug":"wednesday-various-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3548","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday various"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<ul>  <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Jack of all trades, master of none? <a href=\"http:\/\/markbittman.posterous.com\/they-love-stuff-that-doesnt-matter\">The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it<\/a>. I&#8217;d post some further thoughts on this, but I&#8217;ve got about fifteen dozen other things I need to do right now.<\/li>\n<p><\/font> <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Zack Handlen looks for meaning <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/articles\/baywatch-the-hunt-for-meaning-in-the-films-of-mich,32009\/?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=feeds&amp;utm_source=channel_film\">in the films of Michael Bay<\/a>. An unenviable task, to be sure:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>[Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen] is, by any sensible measurement, a lousy piece of work. But it has a personality behind it. That personality is childish, shallow, and has some definite issues with women, but every time Bay frames up those giants staring to the heavens, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a doubt in my mind that the son of a bitch <em>means<\/em> it. I sort of wish I could mean it too. Because sometimes the shit gets real, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when winners have to fuck the prom queen, since fate rarely calls on us on a moment of our choosing to stop a giant asteroid from killing everyone we love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<p><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Jonesing for some poetry? <a href=\"http:\/\/linebreak.org\/swindle\">Swindle<\/a> is &#8220;an automated daily aggregator of contemporary poetry,&#8221; pulling in poems from literary journals, magazines, and other RSS feeds. Its creator describes it (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookslut.com\/blog\/archives\/2009_08.php#014966\">at Bookslut<\/a>) as &#8220;a little like Google News, if Google News had been built by a virtually unpublished poet using a second-string web server and a three-year-old book about web programming.&#8221;<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"> <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">Then there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.longestpoemintheworld.com\/\">The Longest Poem in the World<\/a>, which, at about 4,000 verses a day, &#8220;aggregat[es] real-time public twitter updates and select[s] those that rhyme.&#8221; It&#8217;s an intriguing project, although any resemblance to good poetry is probably accidental. (There&#8217;s something reminiscent of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Flarf_poetry\">flarf<\/a> about these &#8220;verses.&#8221; I wonder if any of my tweets have ever turned up there. <\/font><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bookninja.com\/\" title=\"Bookninja\">via<\/a>] <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>Meanwhile, on a somewhat related note, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ubu.com\/papers\/rubinstein.html\">A Brief History of Appropriative Writing<\/a>. This was interesting, more so than I expected actually, though I still have issues with appropriation without attribution or at least passing acknowledgment. Artists borrow or steal all the time &#8212; that&#8217;s the nature of art &#8212; but it&#8217;s good form, if nothing else, to acknowledge the debt where it exists. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\">[<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\">via<\/a><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font>]<a href=\"http:\/\/gerrycanavan.blogspot.com\/\" title=\"Gerry Canavan\"><\/a><\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/p>\n<li>And finally, while I wouldn&#8217;t necessarily mind seeing Jack Harkness on <em>Doctor Who<\/em> again &#8212; and I think the ending of <em>Children of Earth<\/em> definitely made that a workable possibility &#8212; I definitely don&#8217;t want to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scifisquad.com\/2009\/08\/12\/why-torchwood-and-doctor-who-should-merge-on-the-big-screen\/\">the two shows combined<\/a>. <em>Doctor Who<\/em> can go into dark places &#8212; by its nature, there&#8217;s few places it can&#8217;t go &#8212; but it&#8217;s still at it&#8217;s heart a smart adventure show and at least partly aimed at kids. <em>Torchwood<\/em>, on the other hand, is best when it&#8217;s at its darkest&#8230;even it it&#8217;s at its <em>worst<\/em> when it&#8217;s just being dark (read: sexualized and &#8220;adult&#8221;) for its own sake. I don&#8217;t want the Doctor to be <em>Torchwood<\/em>&#8216;s comic relief, any more than I want Captain Jack to be a dose of dreariness in <em>Doctor Who<\/em>. John Barrowman fits well into both worlds, but I&#8217;m not convinced the two worlds would fit well inside each other.<\/li>\n<p><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/ul>\n<p><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana\"><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jack of all trades, master of none? The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. I&#8217;d post some further thoughts on this, but I&#8217;ve got about fifteen dozen other things I need to do right now. Zack Handlen looks for meaning in the films of Michael Bay. An unenviable &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3548\">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":[18,14,53,9,11,31,32,10,52,12],"class_list":["post-3548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-doctor-who","tag-movies","tag-poetry","tag-pop-culture","tag-publishing","tag-sci-fi","tag-twitter","tag-various","tag-work","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548"}],"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=3548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}