Words for the wise from the mouth of a fool.
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The weblog of Seth Johnson -------------- INKSLINGER.ORG -------------- OD ARCHIVES -------------- FEEDS Posts:  Shared Items:
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Saturday, August 02, 2003
When I was in Jackson two weeks ago, I picked up a copy of the local alternative newspaper, planet jackson hole*. Like many alternative papers, it acts as the social conscience of the area (with a cover story about local construction companies losing jobs to out-of-town contractors) and an event calendar. But if you keep reading, there are some surreal gems hidden in its pages:
Dionysus was the God of wine. Let's put a corkscrew to his head and pour out his vision.
The best part of the entire issue is the story "skid mummy found high on moran" (lack of caps sic), a story so strange that I can't decide whether it's true or a humor piece:
Record high temperatures in Jackson Hole over the past week have cause the Falling Ice Glacier on Mount Moran to recede, yielding a spooky and important discovery. A mountain guide stumbled upon what is believed to be the remains of the earliest known skid in Jackson Hole...
The remains were located high up on Mount Moran, in an area traditionally covered by the Falling Ice Glacier. Guide Forrest McCarthy was leading a gaggle of obnoxious New Yorkers up the well-traveled CMC Route on Mount Moran when he came across the carcass.
"I had kind of wandered up to the base of the glacier, to get away from their incessant whining," McCarthy told the Planet in an exclusive interview, "when I saw something that looked like a crude saxophone sticking out of the ice. Then I remembered from the D.A.R.E. class I took in school what a bong looks like. This looked like a primitive bong."
McCarthy used his ice ax to cut around the bong-thing and discovered an arm holding the paraphernalia...He eventually discovered the entire body of a man, draped in furs, clutching the bong-like apparatus in one hand and a charred stick in the other. However, bored with his discovery, he continued guiding his trip, and didn't think again of it until several days later."
* Note that the PJH site has an email contact address for "Death Threats and Marriage Proposals". Heh.
Thursday, July 31, 2003
You can't have someone else's life. But you can make yours whatever you like.
Though it was a relatively accurate model for the closed system of the SA Forums back in the days when I hung out there, I've never really tried applying the SA Forums Meme Timeline (part at right, or you can check out the full timeline) to a larger Net phenomena. But I'd like to try and map the timeline to the Flash Mob meme that's been burbling through the web for a few weeks.
a: June 16: The invitation to the second NYC Flash Mob gets posted on many blogs
b: June 16-18: The invitation and reports on NYC FM 2 gets posted to Net nexuses such as Gawker, Metafilter, and BoingBoing (as well as many other sites I don't frequent, I'm sure.)
c: June 19: Meme successfully replicates, as mob-planning groups begin to form in various cities
d: July 8: Online discussion group forms.
e: July 16: Post on cheesebikini, a hublog for the meme, waxes paranoid about the phenom being coopted:
PLEASE NOTE: Don't be a sucker! Large corporations might try to organize their own flash mobs to increase consumption of their goods and services. Keep this in mind during any flash mob. If you participate in this event, please don't purchase a single item within the Mall of America during the flash mob, or while traveling to or from the event. If we all adopt this policy it will prevent transformation of the flash mob movement into a series of crass corporate marketing ploys.
f: July 31: Post is made on Metafilter summing up the flash mob phenomena. Nearly every comment in the comments thread is a negative backlash against flashmobbing and those involved.
Those seem to match the curve pretty closely, but are only selected views of the memetic battle. Note that at d, contrary to the SA timeline, the original meme continued to gain strength. Allow me to suggest a couple new datapoints:
E: July 23-26: The major media begins to cover flashmobbing out on the fringes of the phenomena, as at its core meta-FM sites (and streams on prexisting sites) connecting cells form.
F: July 31: Flash mobs continue to occur around the globe.
I'd like to posit that the SA Meme Timeline doesn't track a phenomena, but rather the passage of a meme through a particular type of mindset--the online, trendsurfing cooler-than-you, self-proclaimed digerati. These are the folks who need to know about new memes before everyone else (hence their lurking and posting on SA, MeFi, FARK, and elsewhere) yet can't stand when they fall into the zeitgeist.
Hence, points e and f represent their own personal rejection of the trend, while E and F track the actual progress of the meme, which travels in a more bell-shaped curve until it rejoins what the digerati would call the "memetic afterbirth". In actuality, this is when the meme falls to a low enough level of public consciousness that the digerati can think it's cool again.
The trick, then, might be to find that "coolness threshold" ((a+d)/3, perhaps?) where a meme is still acceptable to the digerati, yet gains enough general mindshare to propagate and survive, and then keep it there for as long as possible. Possibly by building a cellular nature into the meme--so that rather than exploding into the general populace, small but viable meme hothouses of 100-300 people keep forming in isolated groups. The Flash Mob meme seems to be doing this rather well, but the trend-tracking (and though they'd deny it, trend-propagating) digerati are apparently free-falling toward their point of infinite rejection of the meme. Don't worry about them, though; they'll have their Phoenix-like rebirth soon enough.
Me? I wish I could have gone up for the Mall of America mob. It sounds like it was fun.
This is the kind of stuff that passes through my head all the time and distracts me. Which explains why I have a lot of work I need to go do now.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Literary blog jokes:
Charles Dickens: Please, sir, I'd like a martini.
Bartender: Sure thing. Olive or twist?
Hee hee.
And they only get better.
I'm almost certain that you've seen the Electronic Hulk Hands either in stores or on the hands of a nearby kid (or kid-like adult), because apparently enough have been sold to have a positive impact on Marvel's bottom line this quarter.
No, I don't have a pair yet.
Yes, I have tried them on in the store many times and been very tempted. However, my resistance is tempered knowing that a purchase might have some sort of positive effect for Bill Jemas.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
The product from GenCon that is generating an odd amount of buzz: the Arnold Palmer Indoor Golf Game.
"Clever things make people feel stupid, and unexpected things make them feel scared."-- Philip J. Fry
Indeed, Fry. Indeed.
So long, Futurama. Hopefully residuals will keep you in Slurm for many years to come.
Design Not Found, a fun collection of bad web design focusing on error messages and contigency design. (via Matt Haughey)
The house appears to fit right in with the other well kept homes and responsible neighbors. It is within walking distance of a good school and 1st class park. ... The Subterranean Fortress is for someone who wishes to live just like everyone else, with all the comforts of a normal civilian neighborhood community, while at the same time, is secretly prepared for the worst disaster without having to leave the home.
Endless hours of hard work and careful planning over a period of 14 years went into this one-of-a-kind project. ...
What you are about to see was dug by one man using a shovel.
Via J-Walk, the Subterreanean Fortress, a 1,400 square foot, one-and-a-half bath, four-story underground bunker hand-built by a professor of marketing, contract law, and finance.
In every case more steel than necessary has been used to make this Subterranean Fortress as secure as possible. It is engineered to handle a nuclear explosion as close as 2.5 miles, yet is strategically located where there are no probable targets in the area. ... All cement surfaces are finished off with several layers of epoxy paint, which is radiation resistant, washes easily and lasts practically forever.
Walking into my apartment last night, I was stunned by the brightness of Mars. As it turns out, over the next month the red planet will only get brighter as it approaches its nearest pass to Earth in 60,000 years. Read more about it on Space.com's Mars Watch.
To bake pigeons in short paest as you make to your baken apples.
Season your pigeons with peper / saffron / cloves and mace / with vergis and salt / then put them into your paest and so close them vp / and bake them / these will bake in halfe an houre / then take them forth / and if ye thynke them drye take a litle vergis and butter and put to them and so serue them.
Just one of the recipes you'll find digging around in the fascinating godecookery.com, an online compendium of "food in the Middle Ages, ...Chaucer, mythical plants, fantastic fish, pestilence, the macabre and clipart woodcuts."
(via "1000 non-RPG websites for RPG Ideas")
Monday, July 28, 2003
Over on the ENWorld Forums, fans are downloading the open-source release of version 3.5 of the d20 rules and competing to make the most user-friendly version. As someone who digs through the files a lot for freelancing purposes, I'll be keeping tabs on what they come up with and wouldn't be surprised if I make heavy use of the best. Heck, anything that combines all the spells into a single file is a step in the right direction.
I'm back, somewhat rested, and climbing back into the saddle. Posting will resume in 3...2...1...
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