It's here! It's here! All the local news headlines you need to know about, delivered straight to your e-mail box and from there to your little grey brain.
Learn more about it here.
Sign up at the handy link below.
CLICK HERE to get on board with your very own MISCmedia MAIL subscription!
perfect sound forever, via furious.com
An earlier version misstated the term Mr. Vidal called William F. Buckley Jr. in a debate. It was crypto-Nazi, not crypto-fascist.
Let’s face it, my fellow futurists.
Outer space is boring. Or rather, being out there would be boring.
No air, no water, nothing to do for light-years.
This is the expression held by German music hall star Marika Rökk (1913-2004) in her big production number “Mir Ist So Langweilig” (“I Am SOOO Bored”). It’s from the 1958 revue film Bühne Frei für Marika (“Stage Free for Marika”).
She portrays an ice princess on some desolate planet, surrounded by a family of male toadies. She langorously sings of yearning for something to do that’s not the same old same old.
She peers out her space telescope, sees happy Earthlings dancing, and immediately sets forth in an amazing gyroscope/spaceship (!).
The ship takes her to a quasi-racist German depiction of an African jungle.
She picks up a (real) snake and dances with it, lying down and spreading her legs (!).
She cavorts for a while with some “natives” and a (real) elephant. (She rubs the bare chest of one of “native” males to see “if the dirt comes off.”)
But even that’s not enough to slake her boredom for long.
(Thanx and a hat tip to Mr. Dante Fontana’s Visual Guidance Ltd.)
The Burke Museum has posted a lovely You Tube video showing how the Pioneer Square area was not only settled by Seattle’s founders but altered, filled in, and transformed from a little isthmus into the historic district it is today.
This is the UW’s Lander Hall dormitory, where thousands of students over the past four-plus decades have slept, drank, toked, screwed, and even studied. It’s being razed this summer so the U can build a new (though not necessarily less ugly) residence-hall complex. It was really time for the building to come down. So much so, that a big slab of a concrete wall cracked off during demolition last Saturday. It crashed down on the closed cab of the excavator machine. The operator is still in the hospital.
chibi neko's 'bad literature bingo' review of 'fifty shades of grey;' mybookgoggles.blogspot.com
The world of books, specifically the world of “women’s” books, is roiling with scandal and outrage.
First, there was a book-review site called “ChickLitGirls.” It sent emails to small and self-publishers who wanted their boks reviewed on the site. It claimed it had become overwhelmed by such requests; but that publishers could ensure not only a review but a positive one for one small payment of $95.
The site quickly disappeared once authors and bloggers started complaining about its practices, only to get emails from the site’s operators describing the criticism as “harassment and threat” and threatening to sue.
•
Along with the scandal concerning positive reviews, there’s also one concerning negative reviews.
Specifically, about reader-submitted reviews posted to the influential social media site Goodreads.
Some people love to post nasty, snarky reviews. (And, let’s face it, the explosion in self-published ebooks means lots of easy pickings for any would-be online insult comic.)
But some of these posts cross or at least stretch the line between critiquing the work and defaming the author.
And, as you might expect, a lot of self-e-published authors are sensitive souls, unused to having their work dissected and pilloried on the public stage.
Thus, there’s now a site called Stop the GR Bullies. Its express purpose: to expose and vilify Goodreads contributors who get too nasty.
Of course, “too nasty” is a matter of personal judgment.
At least one book blogger, using the name “Robin Reader,” believes Stop the GR Bullies is itself bullying toward Goodreads users who’d simply posted negative but not “bullying” reviews:
Something is very wrong with us, and by “us†I mean the online community of (largely) women authors and readers. What is wrong is the “outing,†threatening, shaming, and silencing of readers who are perceived to be too critical of or hostile to authors. And for those in this online community who believe that this is not their concern or their harm, I would ask them to think again.
Fellow book-blogger Foz Meadows similarly asserts:
…Simply disliking a book, no matter how publicly or how snarkily, is not the same as bullying. To say that getting a handful of mean reviews is even in the same ballpark as dealing with an ongoing campaign of personal abuse is insulting to everyone involved.
In completely non-related book news:
buzzfeed.com
Future John Galts would have to sleep in castles, behind a wall of guards protecting them from us. A philosophy that detests the “gun” of government coercion would survive only by imposing such coercion on everyone else. The masters of a Randian society would rule a wasteland of clear cuts, poisoned streams, and empty seas, except for those patches they personally owned and protected.
wikimedia commons, via komo-tv
There was a competition going on for short films about Seattle. Some of the entrants (at least they seem like they could be) are showing up online. F’rinstance, here’s a poetic ode to the city by Riz Rollins; and here’s Peter Edlund’s Love, Seattle (based on the opening to Woody Allen’s Manhattan and dedicated to team-and-dream stealer Clay Bennett).
youchosewrong.tumblr.com
comicsbronzeage.com
Just Sayin’ Dept: Here’s something that hasn’t been publicized much in the World’s Fair 50th anniversary celebrations.
'jseattle' at flickr, via capitohillseattle.com
Yes, it’s been nearly a week since I’ve posted any of these tender tidbits of randomosity. Since then, here’s some of what’s cropped up online and also in the allegedly “real” world:
Band name suggestion of the month: “Premier Instruments of Pleasure.” (From the “Sexual Wellness” section of the Amazon subsidiary Soap.com.)
Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself? Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself? Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?
Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?
Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?
Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?