I Wish I Could Talk in Technicolor
On the business of literature
The Aleph
The Aleph: Infinite Wonder / Infinite Pity is infinite generative text created from Gutenberg and Twitter searches. ∞
Punk Rock Is Bullshit
Punk Rock Is Bullshit: How a toxic social movement poisoned our culture ∞
Bullshit, Dugg
Well, it only took 7 months, but my Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator™ toy from January got dugg (3300 times or so), and seemed to inspire much jocularity.
It’s been interesting, because the page has been one of the most-linked bits of the site for the last 6 months, almost exclusively amongst weblogs in Europe and Asia, for some reason. Then, a few days ago, (near as I can trace it), after I dropped it into a comments thread at Metafilter, it was picked up by milov.nl, then automatically showed up on Hot Links, then Daring Fireball (kablooie went the visits), then Reddit and Digg almost simultaneously.
Happily, the server shows absolutely no signs of melting down (er, so far). Like I said recently, Dreamhost has treated me well.
Share and enjoy.
Update: Whoops, now Techcrunch and de.licio.us and Blue’s News and Dvorak and O’Reilly Radar, too. Memetastic! Now it just needs posting on the front page of Metafilter, and the circle of life will be complete.
[Note: should not be posted to the front page of Metafilter]
Wonderchicken Industries Presents
OK, it took about a month longer than I thought it would, what with my back going kablooie and the summer doldrums setting in and me just generally not working all that hard on it, but OutsideInKorea is finally open for business.
The dust is still settling, and I’ve dropped my tools and cracked a beer to celebrate, but most of the stuff I wanted to do is in place. There are lots of features and content yet to come, but I think it’s ready to pull back the curtain and hope that people like what I’ve done. Some things are probably broken, or look weird, but I’ve tested in Firefox and IE and Opera on Windows, and it looks pretty good to me. If you have problems, it’ll help me if you drop a comment here or there and tell me what’s busted.
The only content other than the welcome message is repurposed essays about Korea from this very site, but I promise that I will be writing regularly and frequently. I’ve done a lot of work on the design (and I’m no designer, and it probably shows), and now it’s time to start filling the bucket with words, Roxanne, words. If you’re interested in Korea, I hope you’ll bookmark the site, and pass the URL on to friends and neighbours, ex-lovers and therapists, your mom and the guy who sells you your drugs.
I’ve decided to put ads on the site — though there will never be ads here on the ‘bottle — and in my Welcome! post over there, I talk about why. It may seem hypocritical of me given my stance about advertising in the past, and I’m willing to accept that criticism. If I can make some money from the site, though, I’ll be well-pleased. It’s not my only reason for building it, but it’ll certainly help me to keep up my enthusiasm, if it happens.
So. Go, and I hope you like. Help me out, my scattered blog tribe, and spread the word.
This site won’t die, I promise, but I’ll be writing about Korea over there from now on.
Web Two, Wonderchicken Zero
The Web 2.0 horse is pretty much dead already from all the flogging it’s been taking, I know, and it’s probably just cruel to take another swing at the poor bugger.
Nonetheless, I had an irresistable brainfart and an urge to play, so I put together the Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator, a ripoff of homage to the legendary dack.com Web Economy Bullshit Generator.
Share and enjoy, tag and remix, monetarize and sell out to Yahoo†!
† selling out to Yahoo! is not compulsory.
Consumer Mindset
This is a nice idea, actually. Whack a slider up there at the top of the search results, help you to filter out the omnipresent webshill crud. Shopping versus research, the infotainment revenue-generation cage-match of our times.
One of the things that annoys me greatly, every time I search for some information on an author or a book, is the way that Amazon (and the dense cloud of parasite associate gnats it trails behind it, all buzzing and jostling for a sip of the great beast’s blood) pops to the top, without fail.
Sometimes I even sigh quietly to myself, give in, and click through, hating myself for letting the shopping mall win.
So this Yahoo thing seemed like it might be right up my alley. Until, of course, I noticed that even with the bar slid hard a-starboard, pedal to the research-metal, the first (paid, placed-ad) result, helpfully highlighted, was for E-bay.
Ahhh, go screw yourself, Yahoo.
The irony of using a Yahoo-owned service to host the image I’m showing you is delicious, though. So there’s that.
The Friday Five — Lazy Bastard Edition
Because I am a bad person, I have not been scouring the permalinkosphere for nuggets of excellence with my usual steely-eyed vigor this week.
Despair not, though, gentle readers, for I have nonetheless come up with a Single Link of such Power and Glory that it will make up for the notable lack of the Other Four, and quite possibly melt your Snatch Hairs.
Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
And so [drum roll please] I give you… the Friday One! Do not operate heavy machinery while using this blog.
ME: So I understand you made a lot of your fortune through the US fishing industry Rev Moon.
REV. MOON: HA HA HA! It is no longer merely a fishing INDUSTRY! I have now dubbed it the Worldwide Unity Church of Fish, and through it I have married each and every fish in America!
ME: Wow that is impressive!
REV. MOON: Fish will no longer debase themselves in gross extramarital usage of the fish love organ! So declares Moon, Guardian Messiah-King of the Fish!
ME: Guardian-King of the Fish?
REV. MOON: Yes indeed! I was annointed such when I ascended bodily into Icthyon, the 19th realm of Heaven, and knighted by JaBudah, the Jesus-Buddah hybrid and holy avatar of the Fish Genome!
ME: Oh wow! Not THE JaBudah?
[more...]
The Other Friday Five – Guilt-Plagued Edition
Yes, it’s Friday again in Korea — the first time it’s been Friday in, like, a couple of months, thanks to new legislation outlawing Friday in Korea in favour of having Thursday twice to reduce alcohol consumption (you read it here first!) — and so time for the Other! Friday! Five! in which I provide precisely 5 hard-won links to some things that I quite enjoy, and you click on them, and everybody’s happy.
Some of our lovely contestants you may know, some you may not. It’s all good.
So without further ado, join me down in the government yard in Trenchtown, friends, and revel in the linky goodness.
- John Scalzi
- Long story, short pier
- Ludic Kid
- Ming the Mechanic
- tinyapps.org
and, because I’m an old-school geek at heart,
[Post postscript : I've been daydreaming about The Before Times (™DV Polymedia) lately, and if the delicious frosty beverages I plan to consume this evening treat me right, I may have a tale or two to tell of those times when I should have (in the immortal words of Moe Berg) ended up dead in a ditch somewhere with a mind full of chemicals like some cheese-eating highschool boy. But didn't.
What's the point of doing stupid things unless you get at least a few amusing anecdotes out of it, right? Stay tuned to this channel!]
The Other Friday 5 Part 3 : The Bottle Strikes Back
Yes, friends, I’ve actually done something I said I was going to do, and on time as well. It’s the dawning of a new era, I tell you, and nothing on God’s green earth can stop me now! I’m bristling with barely contained power, the sparks are fair flying off me — his floating eyes, his flashing hair! — and the very earth beneath my feet trembles and groans and heaves in fast thick pants. Dearly beloved, it’s time once again to unleash the chthonic power of this internet, and reveal unto you : The Other Friday Five. These are things I like, and I am showing them to you.
- Strip mining for whimsy
- Satan’s Laundromat
- Yule Heibel’s Post Studio
- Laughing Knees
- My Korean Language Study Journey
Share and Enjoy.