Emptybottle.org

Like quonsar said, not necessarily Metafilter at it’s best, but certainly at it’s most interesting, in some ways. When the WTC was hit, when the bomb went off in Bali, and today, to offer some examples : all have been moments when it was fascinating to read the raw responses of people to tragedy, to watch how the community dealt with it, to see the both the maudlin sentimentality and the black humour, the heartfelt grief and the political opportunism, the whole sweep of emotion that folks feel when they are hammered by unexpected loss, all packaged up in one neat blue thread.

Go pass on some felicitations to one of the good ones, won’t you? Happy Birthday, Jonathon, ya bastard†!

† Aussie-style camaraderie. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited by law.

Dong! Resin! Speaks!
[May not be suitable for children. Void where prohibited by law. Do not operate heavy machinery while taking dong_resin.]
Also : ARE WAR PROTESTS UNPATRIOTIC?
I voted yes, yes it is unpatriotic to protest against killing, just ’cause I like to play the irredeemable asshole. Apparently about a thousand other wacky funsters had voted the same way. Oh those effervescent yanks, full of happy hijinks. God bless ’em, eh?
When I actually tried to leave a comment about how patently undemocratic (if predictable) the very implications of posing a question like that were, I got this :

That’s about right.

In the comments attached to this post (made while feeling no pain whatsoever last night, but I’m a great believer in blogging verité, so it stands), fellow 9622.net monkeyshiner readymade links to a Real Life Tale of beat poet encounters, drugs, and nudity. Some of my favorite things, those. Hooray! Go, read!

If for some reason you’re not reading cursor.org each and every ever-lovin’ day, well, I respectfully recommend that you start. Knowledge is power. Stoke the fires of your righteous resentment, then get the heck out there and try and make a difference, you big silly, you!
Or not. It’s your call. I’m just sayin’.
Also, this, I like.

And : I want one of these. I’d love to see peoples’ faces as I arachno-commute to the university every morning driving that sucker… Almost enough to make me want to move back to my sh-tty little logging-industry hometown. Almost.

Today’s Metafilter must-read : cultural relativism and Lisbon architecture, amongst other things.
Edit : Also, I finally managed to articulate what annoys me about conversations about ‘blogging and journalism’. My usual Philosophy 101 maunderings, and I may well be talking crap, as usual, but I think it makes some sense.

Some of this, in a glass, with some soda.
Watch them be born, watch them die.
Repeat as necessary.

It reminds me, at this early stage, of a hardboiled Chandleresque quantum-physics detective novel (yeah, before Dirk Gently) that me and a couple of guys I lived with in university were writing (and erasing) in installments on the messageboard of my dorm room. That was fun, and so is this.
But I had no idea what to do with Bea Arthur suddenly appearing…

Via robot wisdom, this prophetic bit of japery from January 2001. One of those ‘tears of laughter or just tears?’ kinda things.

This blog is written by a bot named HAL, a bot that has been infused exclusively with the collected lexical wisdom of the SA Goons. I like it, and I think it may well be the first-ever weblog written by a non-human.
But I think Shelley might have something when she talks about this weblogging thing getting a little over-ripe.

This strikes me as what text-entry will be like when we get those headgear-and-gauntlet cyberspace rigs that movies keep telling us we’re gonna have any time now.
Very freaking cool. And you can download it!
[via sylloge]
Edit : It took my like a minute to ‘type’ ‘Holy Bugsh-t’, but man I had fun doing it, and I can see how practice would bring your speed way up. Once again – freaking cool.

Item The First : the tribulations of being a porn-vid store clerk. “Apparently in the old days it was different – no security cameras and longer dead spells. My manager used to clerk then, and she said that having to clean come out of the corners and off the walls was pretty routine.”
[Edit : MeFi discussion here.]
Item The Next : Would it be a bad thing for me to secretly hope that this guy actually is Christ Returned?
Some Other Items : It’s like they aren’t even trying to pretend anymore.
“Bush’s job approval rating stands at 72 percent, virtually unchanged from a month ago. An equally large proportion of people still view the president as honest and trustworthy…”
“And this, basically, is the story of the spectacular unfairness with which moneymaking opportunities are lavished on the politically connected. It is the story of a man who has been rewarded for repeated failures by having money shot at him through a fire hose. It is the story of a man who talks with a straight face about having “earned” a fortune of tens of millions of dollars, without having ever done an honest day’s work in his life. ”
And now for something completely different : Listen to the ‘bottle (or any other web page). No, seriously. I was hoping I’d sound a bit more like, you know, Motorhead or something, but this is pretty cool anyway.

I don’t normally do stuff like this, but I reckon it would be a Good Thing™ to stop by BurningBird’s place and give her a little of that downhome weblog-lovin’. If we really are a community (and the recent outpouring of goodwill for Marek and Rageboy in their various hours of need would indicate to me that we are), then when someone is feeling like sh-t, I think it’s the right thing to do to go tell ’em some dirty jokes or something.
Scoot!

Oxford Internet Institute :

A big buncha UBlog wannabes, these folks. Who the hell’s ever heard of Oxford?

Marek is unwell – leave your best wishes for his speedy recovery here. Get well soon, you crazy bastard!

I’m not sure if it’s fiction or memoir, but this piece from Catfish on the Table, a blog I recently found though my recent referrers gizmos down in the righthand sidebar, is well worth your time. Puts me in mind of the memoirs of Frank McCourt, and as well written, ’tis.
Also : “Have you ever tried to get into a girl’s pants when her main intellectual influence is Steinbeck?” Mad, hilarious, brilliant sh-t from Alex.