Archive for November 1999

The good thing about working from home is that if you (say) decide you want go outside and blow soap bubbles for ten (or even fifteen) minutes–you can!

I’ve been thinking about starting an on-line magazine similar to theoriginalsoundtrack and McSweeney’s. Recently, it occurred to me that though the web is a medium very much suited to collaboration and co-operation, not much of it actually goes on. Instead, most people–and this includes me–spend hours each week tidying and dusting their personal sites. I think something really great could come to be if a handful of people got together and made a magazine.

What would this magazine contain? Pretty much everything: opinions, reviews, rants, fiction, non-fiction, photographs, poetry … the one exception: lists of links–the web has enough weblogs! Also, I don’t agree with the folks at Teeth magazine who say that the web “should be interlinked as much as possible“. The web makes collaboration easy and publishing cheap; it also offers a worldwide, and practically limitless audience: these are the attributes I want to make use of, not the ability to link to everything in sight.

What do you think? mjs@beebo.org.

[Haiyan has alerted me to bootyquake, another magazine.]

Answer TRUE or FALSE:

1. 91 is the first number that looks prime, but isn’t.
2. In the game “Rock, Paper, Milk”, milk beats paper and rock beats milk.
3. There is good hiking to be had in Hong Kong.
4. The “Diet of Worms” was originally devised as a cure for the Plague.
5. Ulysses is at least ten times better than Hercules.
6. The “Pride of Hamtramck” is a steam engine.
7. This would have been funnier if there were more than seven questions.

Things I did today: I joined the gym.

(My limbs are sore.)

Things I overheard today: I heard a guy say to a girl, “I really like your last name. I’m completely serious. Your last name is fucking unreal.”

(I do not know what the girl’s name was.)

Things I saw today: I saw a guy walking down the street bearing a white card that declared his willingness to tell five jokes in return for a dollar.

(One joke involved a walrus going to a Tupperware party to pick up a tight seal. Another involved a girl with a bruise on her forehead; the girl and her boyfriend were doing it “doggy style”–she ran under the house and knocked her head on a beam.)

Another thing happened today too, but I’d rather not talk about it.

Let me tell you something. You know how some people were born in the 80s? I hate them. They used to be little kids. Now they’re cooler than me.

Little shits.

The yodeling cowboy
From Texas
I SATISFY
Whoopee

Waterloo, Iowa, Tourist Park
Transcribed September 9, 1932

So the other day, me and my bro got ourselves comfortable and rewatched Rocky. And you know what? It’s one damn fine motion picture.

It’s easy enough to make fun of Sylvester Stallone now, what with Rocky I, II, III, IV, V; Rambo I, II, III to his name. But in 1976 Rocky was all there was–and Rocky was good. (Written by Stallone in three days, shot in 28; total cost $1.1 million. Result? Best Director, Picture Oscars; nominations for Best Actor, Actress, Screenplay … $117 million at the box office.)

It has a story, it has characters, it has grit. And then there’s that scene where Rocky and Adrian slip and slide around the ice-rink, Rocky talking without pause, Adrian saying close to nothing, the rink manager’s shouts announcing the time remaining minute by minute … that’s good, that’s very good.

“I lost that fight, but it’s a good picture, don’cha think?”

Great Punctuation Marks of North Dakota
No. 3: The Semi-Colon

Appearance: The semi-colon is composed of two disjoint shapes: (1) a tapered, backward-curving arc beginning at the baseline, and extending a short distance below it, and (2) a solid dot situated directly above the aforementioned arc. The semi-colon has a highly distinctive physical form, looking something like a cross between the comma and the colon.

Habitat: Unlike the comma and the period, the semi-colon (like its close relative the colon) is relatively rare and is becoming more so. Though frequently sighted in the writings of some authors and poets (notably Shakespeare), in some settings the semi-colon is now practically extinct. In the last five years, for example, the semi-colon has been sighted only seven times within Chinese Take-Away menus, and just thirteen times within Police accident reports.

Diet: The semi-colon is partial to pairs of grammatically complete sentences that are closely related in sense, but its main love is coordinate conjunctions. Semi-colons have also been observed feeding on elements of a series, especially those rejected by the comma.

Predators: The semi-colon has no natural predators.

So said an indignant Mr. Steven Spielberg to Mr. Martin Amis, upon being asked why he had never dealt with sex in his movies: “I think I have an incredibly erotic imagination. It’s one of my ambitions to make everyone in an 800-seat theatre come at the same time.” (This is in 1982–what are you waiting for Mr. Spielberg?)

Speaking of Mr. Amis, is anyone able to explain what he means by this: “Ms. Steinem has a literary gift–her prose is swift and sure–yet this is not quite the same thing as a gift for literature.” Mr. Amis frequently spouts this sort of nonsense; fortunately there are redeeming qualities.

“To the left of the runway, a row of twenty Porta Potties is leaking raw sewage into a stream of running water that is in turn flowing into the tent areas and collecting there in a series of small pools or lakes ranging in size from ten to thirty feet across. Raw sewage is not an easy smell to ignore. As the smell gets stronger, I notice that there are still people inside the tents, apparently awake and unbothered by the smell, which is so strong that I instinctively cover my nose and mouth and breathe in and out through my sleeve. It is hard to imagine why anyone would organize a festival of peace, love, and music where kids spend three days camped out in sewage. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine why anyone who found himself camped out in sewage wouldn’t ask for his money back, or at least move his tent.” — Woodstock 99

Today I’ve been lazy. Here’s something I posted to a guestbook about a week ago:

(Ahem.)

“The Dalai Lama Is a Huckster and a Fraud

“The Dalai Lama wears Doc Martens. The Dalai Lama deserves our sympathy, for he is persecuted by evil, odious China. The Dalai Lama is on good terms with Richard Gere. The Dalai Lama has (I am told) an excellent sense of humor and an hearty laugh. The Dalai Lama is a good guy. The Dalai Lama is cool.

“The Dalai Lama believes in reincarnation. In reincarnation! The Dalai Lama is the head of a sexist religion, a religion that takes young boys from their parents to be brought up by monks. Why do we love the Dalai Lama so?”

That’s it. Admittedly, the argument does sag a little towards the end.