LAST FRIDAY, we mentioned the recent explosion in “Weblogs,” sites that contain little or no original content but instead provide highly selective links to articles and stories on other sites.
MISC. World isn’t turning into a pure Weblog. Don’t worry; there’ll still be all-new stuff here all the time.
But, from time to time, we like to mention some fun and/or serious stuff being written elsewhere in Netland. Such as these pieces:
For everybody who loves/hates the inanity of misspellings on huge public signage, it’s the Gallery of “Misused” Quotation Marks. A recent item: “A billboard for a bank in Idaho Falls reads: ‘We believe that “PEOPLE” should answer our phones.’ ‘PEOPLE’ are about the same things as ‘robots with Gap clothing,’ right?” Speaking of inanities…
Rocket writer Jason Josephes has a hilarious listing of “The Top 20 LPs Among People Who Hate Music,” as determined by what he sees most in thrift-store record bins. (I personally disagree with Josephes’ #1 choice, Abba’s Gold. I recently listened to a cassette somebody in Belgium had made, collecting every known cover version of “Dancing Queen,” from elevator to punk, and was blown away by the tune’s sheer endurance capability.) Speaking of hatreds…
Now that press coverage of the delayed Buffy the Vampire Slayer season finale’s allowed journalists to revisit their post-Littleton pontifications, Philip Michaels has something called “Your Guide to High School Hate,” showing once again that the pontificators had it all wrong and Buffy has it metaphorically right–high school, too often, really is a Hellmouth. Speaking of teen insecurities…
Understanding Comics author-illustrator Scott McCloud is back with a wistful, beautiful reminiscence of his adolescent retreat from peer pressure into the ordered, rational universe of gaming, in “My Obsession With Chess.” It’s a comic strip meant to be read online, with panels arranged in the sequence of chess moves along a “board” that would be about 16 feet long in real life. Simply gorgeous.
TOMORROW: Continuing in this vein, some wacky search-engine keywords that brought people, perhaps mistakenly, to this site.
UPDATE #1: “Oh oh, must have been another Bite of Seattle riot!” That’s what certain Belltown bystanders muttered when they saw throngs of teens, about half of them Af-Am teens, streaming out of Seattle Center toward the surrounding sidewalks around 9:30 p.m. last Saturday night. But it wasn’t a riot. Center authorities had simply brought in cops to empty the grounds, including the Fun Forest amusement area, after the Bite’s scheduled 9 p.m. closing time. (The incident last year wasn’t really a “riot” either. Somebody made a noise in a crowded Fun Forest that sounded like gunfire but might have just been a leftover fireworks noisemaker, and a few dozen kids started running in panic.) Ah, the “enlightened, liberal, diversity-celebrating” city that still can’t grasp that dark-skinned teenagers are not necessarily gangstas… (sigh)…
UPDATE #2: In happier news, the Washington State Liquor Control Board, which previously was stripped of much of its entertainment-licensing authority by a federal judge, is now proposing rules that would allow afternoon or early-evening all-ages music shows in the dining areas of restaurant-lounge spots. The proposed rules would still be stricter than those in Oregon, but it’s a step.
