Super Jive's blog

Facebook? The MOVIE? Like?

2009-06-26T12:36:34-05:00

What next, I hear you ask: Twitter movie? Short script on that one, I reckon. The Facebook Movie is happening, and the creators are doing their best to give it an actual hook and plot. Would you see a movie based on Facebook history, which is all of five years old?

Unfortunately the movie will not be based on the shadenlulz brought about by late-night drunk posting shenanigans, but instead will tell the story of the founding of Facebook. According to People online:

The proposed film, tentatively titled The Social Network, adapts Ben Mezrich's new book, The Accidental Billionaires, which documents the Web site's founding by Harvard students in 2004.

One aspect of the project that has piqued the curiosity of people who were ready to dismiss it is that Aaron Sorkin [A Few Good Men, The West Wing] is attached to write the screenplay. Sorkin even started a Facebook, which appears to be slammed. Sorkin writes:

I've just agreed to write a movie for Sony and producer Scott Rudin about how Facebook was invented. I figured a good first step in my preparation would be finding out what Facebook is, so I've started this page. (Actually it was started by my researcher, Ian Reichbach, because my grandmother has more Internet savvy than I do and she's been dead for 33 years.)

Another bit that's got people excited is the movie is rumored to star the currently red-hot Shia LaBeouf or Michael Cera and David Fincher may be directing. Not everyone is thrilled, though, as Mashable says:

What we do know for sure, and from multiple sources over the past year, is that Facebook is displeased about the film and staff are unwilling to talk about it: the book it’s based on, Ben Mezrich’s “The Accidental Billionaires”, is not favorable to Mark Zuckerberg. And indeed leaked passages from the book seem to spice up the story to make it more captivating: were it truthful, of course, it may be a bit of a snoozer.

/Film discusses the possible controversy with more depth:

What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart. The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost–and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.

Will over 200 Facebook million users guarantee some butts in seats? With the 3-D extravaganzas this summer and other distractions on the horizon by the time it is released next year, only time will tell.

Related Links:
Are You Interested in the Facebook Movie?
Facebook Angst (A blogger's personal experience)
There is Nothing Normal About Facebook

SJ also writes at I, Asshole and is guessing Mark Sanford is grateful to Michael Jackson today.

Yarr! Pirate Party Pwns; Plucks Parliament Post

2009-06-12T23:18:47-05:00

It seems that every day is Talk Like a Pirate Day in Sweden. On Monday, Sweden's Pirate Party (Piratpartiet, if you are Swedish) surprised many by taking a seat in the European Parliament. The Pirate Party has often been referred to as an obscure single-platform party, but what is more correct is that their issues are closely-related and they have been gaining popularity since their formation. While they are known primarily for advocating free and legal digital file file-sharing, one of the most controversial tenets of their platforms is the call for the complete abolishing of patents.

The Pirate Party was established in January 2006 and attracted media and internet attention as if it was a publicity stunt. The party steadily gathered support with its three-issue platform over the next five months by advocating these (excerpted) tenets, from the Piratpartiet's official website:

Reform of Copyright Law

All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.

The Pirate Party has a constructive and reasoned proposal for an alternative to pharmaceutical patents. It would not only solve these problems, but also give more money to pharmaceutical research, while still cutting public spending on medicines in half. This is something we would like to discuss on a European level.

An Abolished Patent System

Patents in other areas range from the morally repulsive (like patents on living organisms) through the seriously harmful (patents on software and business methods) to the merely pointless (patents in the mature manufacturing industries).

Respect for the Right to Privacy

Following the 9/11 event in the US, Europe has allowed itself to be swept along in a panic reaction to try to end all evil by increasing the level of surveillance and control over the entire population. We Europeans should know better. It is not twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there are plenty of other horrific examples of surveillance-gone-wrong in Europe's modern history.

Later, in May 2006, there was a flurry of political activity and interest in The Pirate Party when the (unrelated) site The Pirate Bay, which is widely considered to be one of the best sources on the internet for torrents for software, music, and other media like television and movies was raided by the police and shut down for three days. In the wake of this event, Swedish citizens were moved to action and thousands more officially declared themselves Pirate Party voters.

Some people, like Chadie, of Global Viking argued that The Pirate Bay was not at fault for the resultant use of the torrented files. She writes:

Everyone who knows about the Internet, knows that Pirate Bay is just a search engine. It´s not Pirate Bay that share files. If Pirate Bay is guilty Google is too and the Internet...

So: what is the next step? Closing YouTube, closing Google, closing Yahoo and then closing the whole web and change it to a tv-station.

People realizes that this is the wrong way to go. Of course people want musicians and filmproducers and authors to earn money. But the right way is not to let everything stay as always: the business must use modern techniques. The verdict against Pirate Bay is no solution.

Fastforwarding to recent months and the outcome of The Pirate Bay trial in April 2009 sees The Pirate Party strong, with "now more members than 5 of the 7 parties in the Swedish Parliament, with over 46,376 members as of 22 May 2009 (2009 -05-22)." The publicity and fervor grew until the party was granted a seat in the European Parliament, becoming one of 18 of Sweden's representatives. Some critics wonder if the party will actually be able to make a difference in the Parliament.

No matter the impact of the seat in the European Parliament, here's hoping that The Pirate Party's influence will continue the debate about file sharing and patent laws.

Related Links
The U.S. has a Pirate Party, too, but worse grammar.
Swedish Court says Pirate Bay judge not biased
For no good reason: Pirate Hipsters
Another Smexy Pirate

SJ also writes at I, Asshole and enjoys this lolcat very much.

It’s a Good Time for My Cool Glove: Literal Video

2009-06-05T20:45:10-05:00

Remember when videos were “arty,” and were basically people standing around singing? Yes, I’m talking about the ‘80s, instead of now when videos are like tiny action movies with five costume changes and special effects. The most special the effects got back in the day was Michael Jackson’s Thriller contacts. Well, friends, someone has come along to breathe new life into those old videos and you may have seen them: Literal Videos. But do you know the clever artist behind the genius dubs?

Dustin McLean, animator, film maker, and musician is the creative force of nature behind the original Literal Video. In case you have not had the lulzy pleasure of taking one in, you should know that he has dubbed the videos to describe exactly what is happening in them, and often his dubs sync up closely with the original words. Here is McLean’s take on Billy Idol’s "White Wedding":

White Wedding: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

Another super popular one, and a favorite around the intergoogles (but not by Dustin McLean), is Bonnie Tyler’s "Total Eclipse of the Heart". A+ improvement on the original schmaltzfest, well done.

This awesome contribution to pop culture is not the first offering from McLean, nor is it the last. He also has great commercial parodies. Taking advantage of the Snuggie Phenomenon, Dust Films presents a new innovation: Blanket!

McLean also hit up the Cash 4 Gold (ahem, alleged) scam with “Send Us Your Gold.” I got curious about the Cash 4 Gold craze since I didn’t really follow it the first time and found a posting about how it works on a message board, which I was amused to see had a Cash 4 Gold ad on the same page. That’s the interwebs, for you.

McLean seems to have this frantic need to create and entertain, I love it. I hope his other stuff doesn’t get lost in the literal videos. I hope you’ll check out the man behind the Literal Videos—he’s one of those bright spots on the internet and I hope he hits it big.

Related Items of Interest

WTF blanket (NSFW; swears)

Blog post about gold scam

The ultimate word on scams from Cockeyed

Toxic: Judgemental Version (warning: delightful use of the word "fap")

Of course Wikipedia weighs in on Literal Video

Not related to any of this but totally awesome (via KDAWG): Autotune the news

To paraphrase HHGttG: SJ's just this guy who writes this blog, you know?

Move Over Sparkly Vampires, Here Comes Red Shirt! The Fragrance!

2009-03-27T20:04:59-05:00

Okay, okay, so I am a Trekker, I confess. To a lesser degree I am a Trekkie, but I can appreciate me some Shatner like whoa. So I am excited about the new Star Trek movie. What I have mixed feelings about is the cavalcade of merch that will be beaming down upon us shortly...including Star Trek: the Fragrance.

Of course the merchandise relates to the new movie, which is a kind of a prequel to the original Star Trek series. It's got a little bit of that Star Wars thing going on with the "You must choose your destiny" angle, portraying Captain Kirk as a aimless rapscallion in the beginning of the trailer, through his transformation to the future be-girdled toupee'd badass of the series, I reckon. So, of course the movie will have the classic pitfall of many prequels, in that the view knows how it turns out: tribbles, Kirk and Spock as BFFs, etc. But for mondo nerds like me, it will be fun to see Kirk and Spock meet and see the crew come together. It also looks like they have taken a page from Battlestar Galactica and made it MOAR FRICKIN' EXCITING. I know, strange to see explosions in a J.J. Abrams film, but there you have it.

So let's talk about the tie-ins! Are you ready for this? There are three fragrances, including RED SHIRT, the Fragrance. Yes, you read that right. They have dedicated a fragrance to the sad ensign doods in the original Star Trek series who are nameless and get completely zorched before the end of the episode. Here comes the pithy ad copy:

Put yourself in the line of fire. RED SHIRT Cologne is made for the young, modern man of the galaxy who doesn’t hesitate; who revels in being alive today. RED SHIRT Cologne instills confidence, showing the universe your strength, your valor, your devotion to living each day as though it could be your last.

Your namelessness, your future as an overcooked blob on the surface of some forsaken planet....

Bright, clean and Direct with Top notes of green mandarin, bergamot and a hint of lavender, RED SHIRT Finish Strong with base notes of leather and grey musk. It’s a daring men’s fragrance for those brave enough to place no trust in tomorrow.

Ah, so that's what impending mortality smells like.

Red Shirt Cologne: Because Tomorrow May Never Come.

Tomorrow will come, and with it may bring an STD with that attitude, Mister. At least there will be some cross-section of lads who will smell of this instead of Axe, right?

The other two fragrances are Tiberius, which I hardly need to tell you is what the "T" stands for in James T. Kirk. This is the more dignified, unquirky older brother of Red Shirt.

TIBERIUS Cologne for men is a casual yet commanding cologne spiked with freshness and sensuality. Citron, black pepper, and cedar create refreshingly clear top notes, layered over warm vanilla, white musk and sandalwood base notes.

Boldly go, they say. Also, pray like hell that if a lady asks you what you are wearing that she is either not nerdy at all, or nerdy enough to totally be into it.

Ponn Far, the last of the fragrances, is somewhat shrouded in mystery. It is a women's fragrance and the name refers to a Vulcan mating ritual helpfully outlined on (surprise!) a Geocities page. (Geocities: so wack it has become cool again. You heard it here first.) Seriously, though, I wonder why they are waiting to unveil the last one. Marketing buzz? Looking for the right angle to pitch it to mommybloggers? We shall see.

The marketing launch is very far-reaching. In addition to the usual shirts and typical merch, as well these fancy fragrances, there is also an effort to tractor beam-in young people, who at this point may not care about a pointy-eared Quinto or may feel like Trek is something for their parents, or a story they cannot catch up with. Never fear, Hipster Outreach Marketing has your back! The Trek Movie blog covered one of the events. There were photobooths, dance parties, and green chicks. Sign me up!

In related news, did you hear that the prime time cartoon Family Guy scored the WHOLE cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation for voiceover work on an episode that is airing this Sunday? I have to think that's not a coincidence. Anyway, I will be catching that. You need to hear Patrick Stewart say, "Look at me, I've got girl boobs!"

So, are you hip to the new prequel Trek? If so, are you an old fan of the franchise, or are you jacked up about the J.J. Abrams shamwowie factor? Are green chicks hot? Let me know what you think.

Related Links:

Shelly says: "Gimmie a man that smells like Captain Kirk."
Old, but lulz: LOLTrek
Ponn Far ad from DragonCon 2005.
Trailers for the new movie available here, at the official Star Trek Movie site.

Bad Habit Theatre: Your Kids Watching Your Bad Habits

2009-03-06T18:29:07-06:00

Some of my friends and other people I admire have waited many years to have children. They plan, save, dream, and possibly even marry first. In my twenties I was a little more "fly by the seat of your pants," as they say. "HEY COOL," was my first thought on seeing the stick turn pink at 21. "She is going to be SO IMPRESSED when I do kegstands." Oh wait, no she won't. She is my child, and I have to teach her to eat carrots and stuff. Crap.

The first thing that went out was smoking. Smoking and I had pretty much broken up by college anyway, when I decided it was too much money and phlegm for too little pay off. Plus I had discovered the joy of jogging and I'm not William Hurt in Body Heat so I knew I couldn't pull both off. (Though I have to say that William Hurt finishing a long run and then immediately lighting up was one of the best scenes in a movie EVER. It caused spontaneous applause and laughter in the cinema class I saw it in.)

My mom was a sneaky stress smoker when I was a kid, and I think she thought she was getting away with it. She would do it in her car, or before I came home from school. She was relieved when I became a full-blown smoker in high school and she could cadge cigarettes off me when she was out. I could not put myself in deep enough denial to think that my kid wouldn't literally sniff me out. She is eight and has known for at least two years exactly which members of our family are sneaky smokers. Plus I had visions in my head of myself at thirteen, surreptitiously fishing Benson & Hedges out of my mom's purse, as my mother had fished Mores out of her mother's purse. Of all the things I teach my kid, I really don't want it to be the lesson imparted by so many of my older relatives. "Smoking is TERRIBLE! Don't do it honey," puff puff.

Another "bad" habit, of course, is caffeine. I put it in quotes because I don't think caffeine is a terrible thing, in spite of the fact that people around me declare it an addiction like it's some kind of slightly shameful secret. Almost everyone I know is trying to "cut down" or quit all together, which of course goes out the window the second they have a late night or there is a special on mochas on the way to work. I fell into this trap at one time as well, laboring under the illusion that I would fart glitter or have magic powers if I could climb out of bed and accomplish over 9000 things before noon on my own steam. Well, F that N, as the kids say. I LIKE coffee and tea; it is delicious.

Right now I draw the line with it in one way, however. I want my children to see it as something to enjoy, that yes, stimulates you during the day. But I would like them to see it as an occasional treat, and not up there with oxygen and sunlight. I think of myself as a young teen plunking down most of my money when HEAVENLY DAY a Gloria Jean's had plopped itself down in the middle of my rural mall. Yes, please, I will spend all my pocket money on a Irish cream-flavored latte. Their decision to spend four bucks on something that will be gone in ten minutes will be part of bigger discussions about goals, short-term pleasure, and the allocation of money.

HOWEVER, as hedonistic and devil-may-care as I am about caffeine, I was starting to feel guilty about my Red Bull habit that I was rocking a year ago.

"I want to try it!" my older kid would nag me.

"Ummm, no."

"Why?"

"It will probably make you sterile," I would reply.

"What does it taste like, though?" she would press.

"Errr...sweet...pee?"

I was drinking lightly-carbonated urine sterility juice at 8 a.m.? Where was the pleasure in that? In this case, talking about one of my habits with my kids helped me kick it and go back to drinking caffeinated beverages I actually enjoy (well, I enjoyed Red Bull in a vaguely masochistic and convenience sort of way, but I think what I enjoyed most was shouting RED BOO when it kicked in). Tea doesn't take that long to make, really.

One thing I have to remember is to find the balance between enforcing the rules and having some fun. At the end of last summer we were at the park after dinner, which was gloriously almost-empty (no lines for the swings) and a child was being pulled away by his mother to go home. At the last second his bag exploded and his candy went EVERYWHERE. "It's dirty now, sorry, come on!" his mother urged. Soon the wailing child was out of sight. The woodchips under the swings glinted with shiny candy jewels, flavored by New Jersey and calling us with the promise of sore tongues from citric acid and sugar crashes. My older child, who knows I am a bit of a wild card and who has commercial "kid" candy once a year, tops, looked at me carefully.

I nodded at her.

Then we were off in a frenzy of scooping up Runts and blowing cedar dust off them, and shoving them into our mouths and pockets. My younger daughter's father stood staring at us, shaking his head sadly, but then he doesn't have a sweet tooth. If it would have been potato chips he would have elbowed us out of the way in pursuit of salty goodness.

On the way home we were quite pleased with ourselves for having broken the mold a little bit with something that was not that harmful. Then we ran into a neighbor we say hello to fairly often.

"We found CANDY at the PARK on the GROUND and we ATE IT ALL!" my older daughter announced to her proudly.

"...Oh," my neighbor replied, seemingly at a loss for words.

Well, that was a little embarrassing.

And so my daughter taught me another lesson about bad habits and kids. If you're going to do something like this or break one of your existing rules, you've got to really own it. Now that unsanitary little infraction is a cherished family memory.

So, what habits have you decided to cut for your kids? Anything you struggle with? What delicious foods have you eaten off the ground today?

Smoke, kids, and asthma

Kids and Third-Hand Smoke

Gee, Fred, this cigarette is delicious

Return of 3D Movies: Cool or Just a Moneymaking Gimmick During Hard Times?

2009-03-02T15:20:25-06:00

My daughters had a short school break last month so I took them to see Coraline in 3D, and we really enjoyed it. I will commit nerd blasphemy (nerdphemy?) and admit that I am not the biggest fan of Neil Gaiman's novels, so I had not read Coraline. The look and feel of Coraline's world and Mr. Gaiman's typically bleak overtones won me over onscreen, though some people objected to the themes of the plot.

It's true, too, what a lot of reviewers say. The 3D aspect of the film was not overdone. I liked what David Denby said about the use of the effects: "...[M]ost of the time, the writer-director Henry Selick, working with Neil Gaiman’s novel, extends his reach into space as a way of increasing mobility and adventure—as a gift to imagination." That's a great phrase--a gift to the imagination. However, at points I think my imagination was overtaxed, because I found myself examining every corner of the screen and wondering if a stretch of hallway or a bedpost was enhanced. I also never completely forgot I was wearing giant horn rimmed-style glasses. For someone like me, Coraline would be just as enjoyable in 2D, since the 3D aspect kept me one click removed from a story. It's wonderful when you can have those rare experiences in a movie where you are so absorbed you forget where you are.

As casual student of cinema history, I was surprised to learn that the history of 3D movies goes back to the 1890s, as there were early attempts at perfecting a 3D process waaay back then. The golden age of 3D, of course, was the early 1950s, starting with a 1952 film called Bwana Devil, and the fad had fizzled out again by 1956. Of course, 3D never completely disappeared. Jaws 3D was released to acclaim, or at least notoriety, in 1983, and many films have been released for IMAX in 3D. I took my older daughter to see a film last year at our science center that was about rain forest insects, and I admit we almost jumped out of our seats when a spider came spinning down, seemingly right in front of us.

As cool as the return of 3D is, I have to see it for what it is, which is a clever marketing gimmick. Kudos to producers for figuring out how to draw audiences in for an experience that, for most mortals, cannot be recreated at home, and separating us from a couple of extra dollars a ticket to boot. Can this trend last, or will people see a couple and grow tired of it? Are you excited about the return of 3D, or is it a frivolity you can do without in this economy?

Related links:

Star Wars in 3D! Culture Geek feels excitement and dread, while John Scalzi Explains It All

Pullquote calls Coraline Jones the most well-developed female character in a movie this year. I have to agree with that.

TV attempts 3D again, to mixed results.

Everyone is Jealous of This Bulletproof Weave

2009-02-21T00:32:45-06:00

So you've heard about the bullet-proof bras for women police officers. A bullet was also stopped by one of those giant purses college-aged women are so fond of that could double as summer homes. Well, mark your calendar because the apocalypse is surely coming: A woman's weave stopped a bullet, saving her life.

Unrelated, but still completely awesome hair.

Yes, you read that right. Briana Bonds, 20, of Kansas City, Missouri was at a grocery store when she had a run-in with her ex-boyfriend with whom she had recently broken up . The ex, 28-year-old Juan Kemp, fired at the car Bonds was riding in and hit her in the back of the head. Lucky for Ms. Bonds, her WEAVE caught the bullet! The police found a spent bullet in her hair.

In an interview after the shooting, Ms. Bonds told reporters that she had a headache, but no other ill effects. She felt a burning sensation and heard a bang, but the weave is still intact. If I was the person who put this weave in, I would put a sign up in my shop: "Bullet-Proof Weaves, as Seen on TV."

In her interview, Ms. Bonds spoke fondly of her weave: "I've been wearing it for years. I've invested a lot of money into this weave, and it saved my life."

It's a common trope on TV and in the movies to see a bullet get magically stopped by Grampy's Special Flask that is hidden under the main character's vest, but when does this happen in real life? The odds of this are insane. I sincerely wish Briana Banks the best of luck in the future, and I hope she always keeps that weave.

Related Posts/Sites:

Youtube Commentator Blklaquer comments on the Magical Weave

Greer
on hair, a LOT of it, and the Beauty Shop

Pam Spaulding's interesting hair history.

Leila's Hair Museum

SJ also writes at I, Asshole, has gringa hair, and is very interested in the many ways people style and change their hair.

Blogging Your Best and Worst Valentine's Day Experiences

2009-02-14T02:00:00-06:00

It's coming around again: everyone's favorite failsauce greeting card holiday: VD Day! Wait, one too many D's. Here at Blogher we decided it would be fun to take a look at the best and the worst the holiday has to offer. Desperately in love, or just desperate? As usual, bloggers reveal all.

Live From the Wang of America brings us a funny Valentine's story about her husband and what he did for her one year. Are kissy prints romantic when they're from men? Jury's still out on that one, but it charmed Gidge, so he must be doing something right:

But one of my truly favorite Valentine's memories was from when we still lived in Kentucky. I woke up for work, stumbled into the shower - realizing that he had just recently come to bed. After my shower I put on my robe to walk down stairs and when I got to the head of the stairs, I saw little Post It notes going down the steps. Each one had a red lipstick smooch on it. I picked them up as I went down the steps - and followed them to the kitchen were there was a card and flowers for me. He had left the romantic holiday channel playing music for me on the stereo - in short, he'd started my busy, hectic day with a huge swoosh of sweet, silly romance.

I went back up stairs to him and he was half sitting up in bed, with the covers pulled up to his nose.
I said something like "Oh honey......that was so sweet" when he dropped the covers, revealing his RED LIPSTICK SMEARED lips and face and says "I can't get this red lipstick off - it stained my skin!"

I still crack up if I think about it too much. It was hilarious.

Four-Inch Stilettos gives a shout-out to her ladies on Mean Girls' Guide to Glory. Valentines Schmalentines!

I blame elementary school. After all, isn't that where it started anyway? Candygrams, handmade valentines crafted from nothing more than a few pieces of construction paper and doilies and those heart-shaped candies with phrases like "Be Mine" and "I Love You." Those you were secretly crushing on always received extra special attention on this particular day, which usually came in the form of a couple "x's" and "o's" before your name and a few extra pieces of candy. Since schools are all about equality, no one was ever left feeling unwanted or sent home empty-handed. Ah, if only those same principles still existed in our adult lives, right?

And then there's dates. Ohhh, dates. They can be beautiful or a disaster, right? I think there is way too much pressure put on the V-Day date. I know, I have been there. I once had it really bad for someone and had my fingers crossed he would sweep me off to something at least a tick above Denny's, and instead he showed up with a pineapple as a gift (?) and "What are we doing tonight? No real plans." I was crushed.

Camera Obscura, like me, was hoping for a little fun and romance, in spite of her recently mended broken foot and her husband's questionable track record. What she got was a filthy food court and more!

Since half the joy of having a babysitter was not putting the kids to bed myself, I refused to go home. We ended up at another mall, where we ate at the food court because we still couldn’t get a table at a restaurant. While I was admiring something at one of the stores, my husband announced that I should get it, since he had not bought me a Valentine's Day gift, either.

Napping at Red Lights reminisces about her first date with her husband, who was two hours late! Not a great start, but proof that the first date is not always an indicator of things to come.

Tarie talks about her best Valentine's Date ever, which was bookended by bombing attacks on her city.

Right when I finished my ice cream there was commotion in Glorietta. Everybody was scared and running to the exits. I thought it was a fire, and Peter heard it was a bomb so we starting running out like everyone else. There was also commotion near the MRT area and in SM. They closed the MRT station so we had to take a bus back to my place. It's a good thing traffic was very light.

When we got home we shnuggled for an hour or so then Peter had to go home to Manila. Later we both found out that a bus blew up in the Ayala Center area. =( That was what all the commotion was about. It was scary when we were running out of Glorietta. For a second I thought we might die. I was okay with dying, but I was worried about JP and Brian becuae they didn't know I was out that night. They didn't know where I was. I also found out that there were simultaneous bombs set off in Davao City and General Santos City that night. =(

Today I saw a woman standing outside a chocolate shop. She was dressed like a giant red heart and was holding a large sign that said "Don't get yourself in trouble." I suddenly realized that this is the first time I've been single on Valentine's Day in about fifteen years. I have bought myself some chocolates, which I would be likely to do on any day of the year. It just so happened they were in a heart-shaped box since those were on sale. To paraphrase Tom Waits, I am also going to ask myself out to some class joint and spend some time with myself.

Lonely Day?

"To all who reads this, Happy Valentines and I hope you had a good day. To those who didn’t, go find someone who will make you smile. And if in the end you really can’t…

I Love YOU. Because today is a really crummy day to be alone and have no one tell you that they love you. A good friend had said that Valentine’s doesn’t have to be a day for lovers, it could be a day for good friends too. I in turn replied, “Friends with benefits?” It turned out she didn’t know what “benefits” specifically referred to."

So, a lonely day? Maybe. But I am glad there are still people in love, chasing love, and throwing themselves at life. Happy Valentine's Day.

Disney's VD attack plan!

SJ also blogs at I, Asshole, where she is now 47% less bitter and about the same amount more chocolatey.

Blogging The United States of Tara and DID

2009-02-06T23:00:48-06:00

Are you watching the new television series The United States of Tara? The series is created by Diablo Cody (Juno) and is about a woman who lives with dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder) and her family's experiences with it. After seeing the first four episodes, I wondered what the blogosphere's reaction to the series would be from those who live with DID and those who do not.

Unfortunately, the delicious TV goodness is not accessible to everyone, since it airs on Showtime. To give you an idea of the premise, the excellent Toni Collette plays Tara, a married mother of two teens who works as a home decorator, gilding nurseries and painting murals on people's living room walls. Tara's alters (alternate personalities) are a 1950s alcoholic housewife, a Vietnam-Vet with a beloved gun named Persephone, and a fifteen-year-old girl who is a bong-hitting Lolita.

What really drew me into the show was a review I read before I saw it. I had heard of the show, but was unimpressed by Juno and so was not jumping up and down to see it. Nancy Franklin, however, who is great fun to read on the subject of television, wrote a review of the show in The New Yorker, and that piqued my interest. What fascinated me was Franklin's description of Collette's transformation from herself to the three alters:

Her ability to transform herself extends even to her physique: when she’s Tara, her head seems delicate, wedge-shaped; when she’s Buck, it’s a blocky oblong.

Franklin is absolutely right. Collette does transform herself into these characters with utter abandon. It's a blast to watch but at the same time it makes you squirm with guilt knowing for some this touches close to reality. I suspect the squirming is part of the point. On one hand the short half-hour format allows for only skimming the surface of this family's life. On the other hand, could you stand to look closely for much longer at a family in turmoil? The show presents a husband who is supportive, if resigned, teen children who are acting up in their own ways, and Collette's character's sister, who wants to wish the whole thing away. Perhaps she represents the denial in the dialogue of the community at large.

Of course, when a show like this breaks out into the mainstream, there is a lot of talk about authenticity and representation. Who does The United States of Tara represent? What were Diablo Cody's aims in creating a show like this? First, it seems, to tell an interesting and unique story, which is something audiences are always hungry for. One thing that made me happy is that Ms. Cody made an attempt at grounding her story in some reality, to make it echo with the real experiences of others. One of her connections to a person with DID was the esteemed and long-time blogger Leah Peah.

Leah Peterson, who lives with DID, is credited as being a consultant for the show, and Ms. Cody has read Ms. Peterson's book on the subject. Leah also blogs about spending time with Cody, and the premiere party they had.

Of course, there are a few criticisms of the show. Dasha from I Ate My House calls for less stereotypical alters. (I didn't know there were stereotypical ones! I would love to see a list of more common ones.) Dasha writes:

My main complaint about it is that Tara’s extra personalities are so conventional – there’s the reckless teenage girl, the gun-loving masculine caricature, and a mention of a perfect housewife type (who is yet to appear). While Toni Colette pulls them off pretty well, it would have been much more fun to play around with something more subtle; maybe tweak the stereotypes a little, or at least pull out a few of the less obvious ones. (Gee, I don’t know – a scamming evangelical creationist? A New-agey lunatic who's obsessed with crystals? If the plot requires an alter ego with violent tendencies, why not make it an amateur body-builder whose theme song is "Warriors of the World" by Manowar? This one could have comedic opportunities with the actual character being unable to lift as much weight as her alter ago believes himself capable of lifting.) I don’t mind if my TV characters are not “realistic” – exaggerated ones can make great comedy. It’s just better when they are less of the same-old.

(Since this post was written, the audience has seen the perfect housewife type, and she is great. Razor-sharp, icy-cold, and taking nips out of the gin. But this is all an aside.)

Amy's Robot makes a good case for the "unsubtle" nature of the alters:

[F]or the first episode of a show with a complicated premise, I think it makes sense to clearly distinguish the identities and let the audience understand each one immediately, even if that means they get overplayed a little.

Again, I think that's true. I think you have to simplify it a bit, since the audience is basically watching four characters in the space of one actor.

Diablo Cody explains her reasoning behind creating the alters in the sense of thinking about the different roles that a mother fulfills. Dasha's ideas are interesting, but what kind of alters does the character really need? Ms. Cody explains:

I thought, what are the different hats a mother has to wear in her life? Sometimes she needs to be a man and have balls. Sometimes she has to be this docile caretaker, and sometimes she has to be sexual. You don't want to lose touch with that side of yourself either. So I thought, how can I make these ideas literal? I will manifest them as the alters.

The supporting cast who plays Tara's family should not be overlooked. It's interesting watching Tara's family deal with her alters. The kids and her husband treat them as familiar, unsurprising guests who nevertheless occupy the space that their mom could be in. They seem slightly ill-at-ease in their wait for Tara to return. Miles at Cultural Learnings remarks:

[W]e are more focused on the absence of Tara, a real mother and wife in these people’s lives. They’ve gotten used to living without her, during these stretches, at least mentally: her physical body is there (which is the most frustrating part for her husband), but what appears is actually some person that she can’t become, that she can’t contain.

What made me most happy about the show was something that Leah Peah hit upon in one of her posts. I too like the fact that this show is out there at all, giving us a glimpse into a different sort of life than the one most of us have. True, it's fictionalized, but it's still very real. I'll let Leah have the last word:

But what I love about the series is that it’s TALKING about mental illness and DID. It’s making people ask questions and have conversations and maybe, just maybe, creating an environment where people with DID aren’t thought of as freaks. Where they aren’t told to keep it all a secret and perpetuate the cycle of hiding and secrecy and lies. And that is what I’m excited to be a part of - moving forward. Removing the stigma attached to mental illness, or at least lessening the hold a bit. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by someone I barely know and even people close to me to never talk about having a mental illness because it will hurt my chances at (fill in the blank). Just for telling people what I am. Just for owning what I am and how my brain works. The message is - if people really know you, they won’t think you are acceptable or good enough. They will think you are evil or weird and turn away from you. And that feels bad whether you are mentally ill, the ‘wrong’ color or sexual orientation or ethnic background or too fat or too small. No one should be discriminated against for being themselves.

Related Posts:

Too Much TV on the pilot

RTVW Online on United States of Tara

Leah Peah cross posted on Real Mental--interesting commentary

SJ also writes at I, Asshole.

Dear Used, Mushed, Slightly Battered, But Still Beating Heart

2009-01-30T17:00:23-06:00

Sorry about all those cheeseburgers I ate last week. I dunno, maybe I was low on iron. And cheese. Sorry for all that smoking I did in high school, too, although that was kind of fun. Remember how cool we looked? No? Me neither. Well, you know I make small talk like this when I get nervous. I am nervous, too, because I don’t talk to you very often, but here goes.

Mostly I’m sorry that I doubted you last summer. I thought you had gotten thoroughly defective and that something was wrong with you, and therefore wrong with us.

Let me explain. My gift is that I make friends so easily. I have friends scattered all over the country, and thanks to blogging and online communities, all over the world. I have close friends and a best friend I can stay up until two a.m. chatting with, even though work has taken her a few states away. I have friends I see once-in-a-while but still have a great time with. I can make new friends in almost every situation. I feel so lucky that I wish I had more time to see my friends, instead of feeling lonely.

What I struggle with is family. I have a father who left when I was a little tiny thing, the age my youngest daughter is now. I see my daughter getting excited about learning to read (she is an early reader, like I was), snuggling in her bed at night with her fierce and protective stuffed panther, and experimenting hilariously with ten-cent words like “apparently” (“Apparently the plate broke itself, Mom.”) and I have to wonder how anyone can walk away from the wonder of three. (I know how you can run away from the tantrum side of three, but that’s another story.) For many years, like kids do, I assumed I was missing something, that I was not good enough to stick around for. His side of the family disappeared with him.

My mother walked in and out of my life for a long time, and for various reasons. I had an assumption that I was going to do something wrong, and that I would be left. When I got bad grades (most of the time) I cut the boarding school ads out of the newspaper. I waited for the other shoe to drop, which it did repeatedly. A couple of years ago I ended the cycle after deciding the pain wasn’t worth it anymore. Shortly afterwards, to my surprise, my relationship with my only sister followed suit. Then, last summer, I ended the four-year romantic relationship I was in. OUCH! Imagine my heart covered in roadrash at this point.

What was wrong with me? I asked myself last summer, as I got lower and lower. Was my heart so cold and unlovable that it drove my blood relations away, and others too? I realized I was effectively, at that moment, an orphan. I could see my daughters’ lives stretched out before them with their future families ahead of them, in what I (futilely?) hope will be an unbroken chain of family love and support. Behind me they will see shadows, nothingness, no real string of generational love. All they will have is pictures and some stories about the way things were.

My friends had mixed reactions. Some told me I couldn’t turn my back on my family no matter what, that it was too important. One person told me that if you still haven’t worked things out with your family by the time you are thirty, then the issue is with you. Others, who had been through similar struggles with their families, supported my decisions and how I was proceeding. They supported the fact that I decided to say “no” to endless loops of pain and loss.

Time and perspective made me realize that each situation, each family loss was different, and that while I may have had a part to play in it, it wasn’t entirely my fault. I wasn’t an unlovable monster. I found my heart again and instead of cursing it for punishing me with the pain of being alone, I thanked it. I remembered the romantic relationships I had ended, and knew those were hard, but the right decision as well.

So, thank you, my heart. You won’t let me settle for close enough. You always tell me when something’s not right, when relationships aren’t a good fit, even if it means being alone. You nag at my brain until I acknowledge that something is truly wrong, and make me make changes, even if they are hard and uncomfortable. I am not the person I was a year ago, or even six months ago.

I promise you that I will trust you in the future to keep things right with my girls and any other close relationships I have. Thank you, my heart. You make me walk a hard path, but I am beginning to see it is the right one.

SJ also writes at I, Asshole.

The "Pink Plague" and Female Gamers: Should the Industry Pander to Gender Stereotypes?

2009-01-24T02:15:34-06:00

There's been a lot of buzz in the past few days about the "pink plague," the marketing phenomenon of getting young girls "hooked" on the color pink (and therefore pink toys and clothing). It looks like the pink plague extends to another segment of the market as well--girls who play video games. If slapping pink on Barbie makes her fly out the door, why shouldn't it work to put Lara Croft in some pink pants? Maybe give her a pink gun?

The "pink plague" is defined as something that happens to little girls around the age of three. They see pink, and they WANT THE PINK. It doesn't matter what it is, really. It could be a bucket of dead fish. But is it a PINK bucket? This happened to my own daughter. Red or green clothes went unworn, non-pink popsicles went unlicked, dollies wearing unpink clothing get chucked to the bottom of the bin. I had a jolly baby who wore vivid blues and reds until the day she turned three. I found a vintage Japanese dress at a resale shop that I thought was beautiful, in her size, and she looked mortally offended when I showed it to her. It seems that pink is the opposite of black.

One thing I have always noticed is not only is Barbie pink, but her friends who are different, with different hair or skin colors, are not allowed to don the sacred pink vestments. My Teresa wore blue, and I had a Barbie friend with auburn hair who wore green. If clever marketing convinces girls that pink is the best color, does that make Barbie's friends chopped liver in comparison? I always had this nagging feeling that her friends were not as good.

Apparently the pink plague extends to video gaming as well: witness the "Girly Guitar Hero." Oh, finally, I can play Guitar Hero too, now that there is a pink heart-shaped guitar accessory! Phew. The comments on that piece are cracking me up. "I would sooner chew glass" and "They could've at least called it 'guitar heroine." Seriously.

An Amazon software and video games editor created a list of "Video Games for Girls." Topping that list is The Sims 2. Recently I had a chat conversation with a group of dedicated "Simmers," people who play the wildly popular (and wildly pirated) Sims 2. "Why is it considered a girly game?" I asked the mix of men and women I was talking to. "It's dollies," one person immediately snapped back. "It's a dollhouse," said another, just as quickly. "But the game features real life situations and interactions between both men and women," I said. "There's no violence," said another. What about the many ways they can die? "Well, nothing blows up," they conceded. It's still a girly game, apparently.

Is this a chicken-or-egg problem in the industry, though? There are comparatively few women in the gaming industry, so is the problem that male creators are grasping at straws, trying to figure out how to capture the female audience?

"Historically, the people who play video games have tended to be more
male," said [Kathy] Vrabeck, president of EA's casual games division, which specializes in games that are easy and quick to play. "So it's not
surprising that these boys grow up and aspire to work in the industry.
That's why we've seen fewer women think about it as a career choice."

Leigh Alexander at Sexy Videogameland makes the excellent point that female
gamers could feel alienated because of characters like Tomb Raider's Lara Croft and their presumed audience:

Lara has a reputation as a bombshell -- okay, okay, sex object.
She's perhaps the game biz's most famous piece of eye-candy, and
somehow over the years she's become iconic of the concept that
18-year-old boys drool over pixelated boobs. I can see how this has
made some women feel as if Tomb Raider games are not "for them."

How do designers find the balance? Is it making pink toys for women or
giving them dollies to play with, or casual games that are "easy and quick" as a previous article mentioned? Pink hearty laptop.

As Leigh Alexander says, "I also think the idea of "female-friendly" is by itself a little
bit cringeworthy, because it assumes that all women have the same taste, and all women are interested in the same ideals."

Many girls who love pink grow into women who hate it, for various reasons. All women gamers are different, and come into it with different wants and interests. There has to be another way besides just slapping pink on controllers. Keep trying, game industry.

SJ also writes at I, Asshole, where you should not read too deeply into her pink hair.

OMG Call Me 1$hm4£: The Japanese Cell Phone Novel

2009-01-02T23:34:36-06:00

I recently ran across an article about the Japanese cell phone novel. Have you heard of this? Five or six years ago people in Japan started writing stories on their cell phones, dropping colorful phrases that painted some kind of angsty story of the life of a (usually) a young female narrator. Heartbreak, disappointments, incest, and many other juicy topics spewed forth from the phones of young people who wanted to tell a story.

The first cell phone novel, Deep Love, was created in 2003 by an author who called himself "Yoshi" and depicts the life of a seventeen-year-old high school student who becomes despondent and prostitutes herself. Deep Love was published online, and through a viral campaign involving high school students, soon became manga, dorama, and a movie.

An eighty-six-year-old Buddhist nun, Jakucho Setouchi, threw her literary hat into the ring as well, with a quote from Textually.org that I hope was poorly translated, because it kind of breaks my heart otherwise:

At this age, there are few things that interest me. But it was the first time I had written a cellphone novel, and it was exciting.

Setouchi has previously won prestigious literary awards, and recently was named one of Vogue Nippon's Women of the Year 2008. (I love the picture of her on this page in her purple robe among all the other women in modern dress.) Her novel, Tomorrow's Rainbow, weaves in elements of the classic Japanese novel Tale of Genji, which she famously translated. I wonder if Setouchi, who at first wrote under the pen name "Purple," added some sense of legitimacy to the genre, which is perceived as trashy, much like pulp fiction or bodice rippers.

I imagined my own tiny cell phone screen and even the nicest devices I
had seen people using and wondered how people could read and write
whole novels on their cellphones. Surely this was just a little niche
market? Not so. One thing the cell phone novel has in common with those genres is that popular novels sell millions of copies via downloads, and recent estimates indicate that sales outstrip paper novels in Japan. (1, 2)

According the first article I read on the subject (in the New Yorker), the style of writing is what makes them easy to read and enjoy:

On a Japanese cell phone, you type the syllables of hiragana and katakana, and the phone suggests kanji from a list of words you use most frequently. Unlike working in longhand, which requires that an author know the complex strokes for several thousand kanji, and execute them well, writing on a cell phone lowers the barrier for a would-be novelist. The novels are correspondingly easy to read—most would pose no challenge to a ten-year-old—with short lines, simple words, and a repetitive vocabulary. Much of the writing is hiragana, and there is ample blank space to give the eyes a rest.

Blogger and critic Steven W. Beattie thinks the cell phone novel is a poor substitute for the real thing, and argues that the kids who avidly consume them are missing out if they don't broaden their horizons:

It’s not difficult to see that we risk losing something in the translation from page to cellphone screen (or computer screen, for that matter). We risk losing an appreciation of subtlety and irony, we risk losing an ability to recognize indirection or to delineate between fine moral distinctions. In short, we risk losing some of what makes us essentially human. I don’t think that’s too grand a statement to make, nor do I think it’s a risk we should be willing to take.

If you don't read Japanese, but want to give the text novel thing a whirl, you should check out Textnovel. The format bites right off of Japan's number one cell phone novel site, Maho i-land, but it's obviously much more accessible to English speakers. You can subscribe to the stories at the site, which are written in every genre you can imagine. I admit I'm fascinated and I'm going to be doing this on the bus next week to see what it's like.

So, have you read some? Written some? Could you embrace this format? Some people think Kindle flopped, so maybe this is something else that will just be lost in translation from Japan.

Is That a Fail Whale On Your Arm, Or Are You Just Erroring Out: Niche Tattoos

2008-12-28T12:34:13-06:00

There is a long and glorious history of getting tattooed to proclaim your profession or status. Probably the most classic tattoo that comes to mind is the noble anchor, proclaiming your status as a sailor. Nowadays it probably means the bearer has asymmetrical bangs and a collection of odd scarves. Recently I have been seeing scissors tattooed on hair stylists, and of course you could fill an encyclopedia with prison and crime tats. But what about more obscure niches?

In the past few years, there has been an explosion of internet and geek culture related tattoos. Violet Blue, omnimedia queen, got a "blogger" tattoo on her ankle in 2006. There are also many people with other types of blogger tattoos, including a really cool Wordpress logo!

Critter got the "Failwhale," a cute picture of a whale that appears sometimes when Twitter chokes, earning him the title of Most Bestest Failwhale Fan Ever from the Fail Whale fansite. The Failwhale was created by Yiying Lu, an interesting artist who has created many cool designs beyond the whale. I asked Yiying Lu what she thought about the Failwhale tattoo and se replied, "I felt a bit surprised, in a good way. I suppose it goes to show how much tattoos have become a part of the everyday - something so permanent - yet everyone is getting them in the here and now - although it will always be a reminder of this day, this time."

Another offshoot of the geeky tattoo are science tattoos. Who needs a generic and anatomically-incorrect heart tattoo when you could have a heart diagram tattooed over your chest? Science writer Carl Zimmer is tattoo-free himself, but oversees the Science Tattoo Emporium at Discover Magazine online.

One of my favorite obscure tattoo niches is the feminist tattoo. Elizabeth from All Girl Army talks about her experience with and reason for getting a feminist symbol tattoo the day she turned 18:

People see it all the time, I get looks, I get glares for having a tattoo, but most of all I get question’s from people who don’t know what the symbol means… They ask “What is it?” and then I can talk about women’s issues, I tell them it’s the symbol for being a feminist, I tell them that it basically means for us to keep fighting for equality and did they know women still don’t make equal pay to men? (Surprisingly most people I’ve encountered think that women are equal with men in pay which just shocks me.) This tattoo lets me bring up things that I wouldn’t just bring up with some stranger, but now I can.

There is a new documentary in post-production that I am excited to see called Covered: A Social History of Women and Tattoos. There is a teaser up at the site with women talking about getting ink and making a career in inking. About the film:

For women, social approval of tattooing practices is based upon the understanding that she will keep her ink small, discrete, and cute--anything more, and she has definitely crossed the line of acceptable inking practices. Many women never cross that line, they utilize their ink to capitalize on their sexuality, to promote it--the infamous "chick spot" tattoo. For others, those that do cross the line, tattooing represents a resistance to social norms of constructed female beauty--their tattoos are large, public, and potentially offensive. This project is for those women that cross the line, become heavily tattooed, and interpret this as an integral part of their identity. These women are often leaders, feminists, activists--those strong enough to go against the mainstream current.

I digress here slightly, but this is worth mentioning. In opposition to this way of thinking, Liz Jones wrote a piece for the Daily Mail: Why DO Women Have These Tramp Stamps? which ran with a picture of a famous actress and her prominently-displayed "tramp stamps," which Jones defines as any tattoo. (Others who speak derisively about tattoos refer to "tramp stamps" as tattoos placed on a woman's lower back.) Jones writes:

They are a mark of temporary insanity, instantly turning the classiest, chicest woman into trailer trash. Not for nothing are they known as 'tramp stamps'.

WOW, stay classy, Liz. I like what blogger and artist Rachel Setzer says in response:

Yes. A woman's physical appearance determines entirely their level of classiness. That's why there are no fat chicks at fancy parties for classy people. That's why people with tattoos don't have classy weddings. That's why blondes have more fun.

"Classy" and "chic" are traditionally words that apply to appearance because in the bad old days, before people decided it was okay to be themselves, you could tell the working-class from the upper-crust based on their clothing. Since the surge in middle class, however, it's become increasingly difficult to tell the working-class from the upper-crust, and "classy" has become a personality trait. A person's class, at least this side of the pond (the Daily Mail is based in the UK), is now determined based on how they treat others, whether they are heartless bitches who judge other women as "trailer trash" for having tattoos or not.

Got a nichey tattoo? Drop us your ink link. If you are thinking about getting one, I hope you find this inspiring.

Related Links:

Literary tats. I like the Douglas Adams reference.

Tattoo-inspired hair cutting scissors.

Hanzi Smatter: "Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese Characters in Western Culture"

SJ also writes at I, Asshole, where she swears her next tattoo will be in gangsta font.

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out: Disastrous Presents and You

2008-12-19T21:20:23-06:00

It's that time of year again that many parents dread. What will crazy Aunt Irene grace us with this year? A singing trout? Lead-dipped whistles? What is the hot toy that will cause parents to storm toy store aisles and spend way too much on eBay?

My personal holiday albatross was always cat stuff. Just because a person comes to own four cats in college (these things happen) does not mean they need every cat calendar, pair of hilarz cat socks, and "humorous" cat book under the (slightly fur-covered) sun. Sometimes I still get cat stuff from people I've known forever. Nowadays I keep my one remaining cat a deep, dark secret.

As I was flipping through top ten lists of the hottest toys I started to wonder about your disasters. What are the gifts you should not have given to others, or gifts you never should have received? Have you ever given a revenge present? I confess that after I had a falling out with my former sister-in-law her child received Baby's First Drum Set (Now with 50% More Sound Effects and Unremovable Batteries!). Oh, and the drum set did not just quietly get put aside. Oh, noo. The drum set was lovingly removed by her auntie (me) and set up so she would not forget about it when the family gathering was over! It was a smashing success. (Rimshot!)

Blogger Charlie Hatton talks about being ill as a child on Christmas and receiving a well-intentioned present that did not turn out as everyone expected:

But when I saw the gift, the very thing I'd asked for, I lit up like a Christmas tree. A coughing Christmas tree, with a high fever and a throbbing headache, but boy, when the hacking subsided, I was still a happy kid. My parents, pleased with the results of their subterfuge, patted me on the head and left me with my new electronic friend. And I fired that puppy up to put her through her paces. That's when things went terribly wrong.

You have to read how this one comes out--it's a funny story.

Sunshine writes about the worst gift she's ever been given: an air tank. Wha? I love what one of her commenters, Karen, adds, "I don't mean to be dumb, but what does one do with an air tank? What is the purpose of such a contraption?"

Amen to that.

On a message board I belong to, Uppity Women, we were telling stories about bad presents. Finally, one bad present, given to the now-married couple by the bride's mother, utterly won the thread.

I have been given permission to post this so....

As my wife has mentioned, her mom is spectacular at giving bad gifts (and yet, somehow, gets them right sometimes). There is even a tradition in their family to give really. really crappy joke presents e.g. a wrapped fish, or dime-store novels etc. However, she really outdid herself at one of the very first Christmas' I spent there - this is before we were married. Just look at this: http://www.kokigami.com/.

I really had no idea what to say or do. The parental units just laughed and laughed and laughed, while my wife's siblings (all of whom were under 18) looked confused.

I think, looking back, that my whole relationship with my mother-in-law was set by that gift.

Kokigami, is, of course, little origami suits for one's penis. PEEN ORIGAMI. What an amazing message to send a future son-in-law. Is that a twisted sense of humor at play, or an indication she thought her s-i-l would bore the pants off (ho ho) her daughter?

It's fun to laugh later about what you get from well-meaning people, but I like what V has to say about accepting gifts graciously:

When I was but a wee tot, I received a pair of hand knitted gloves with a matching scarf and hat from my Aunt Ethel on my 7th birthday. I snidely informed her that her present was ‘sorta ugly’ before I moved on to my next gift. That night, when the party ended, my Father took every present I had and locked them up in a closet. He told me that if I couldn’t accept a gift politely and with poise, then I didn’t deserve to have them. He left them in that closet for a full month and when I tell this story to friends, they are horrified that my Father punished me so harshly on my birthday.

However, my Father felt that making sure I had a happy 7th was not as important as teaching me a valuable life lesson. Namely, that it’s not cool to spit in the face of people trying to be kind to you.

Well put. I try to remember this every time I get another cat figurine.

So, speaking of that massive pile of lists I found...

W.A.T.C.H. (World Against Toys Causing Harm) has named their ten worst toys of 2008. Surprisingly, a shotgun has made their list. WHAAAT? You mean it'll shoot my eye out? Also, some may be interested to learn that you CAN buy a gun without the waiting period, since it's a "toy." For the most part, the rest of the list merely involved crimes against design.

The Top Ten Toys Parents Dread. Slime, beads, and Silly String make this list. If you do not understand why these toys suck then you either are not a parent, have very agreeable maids on-call 24-7, or you only allow your children indoors to sleep.

Hottest Toys for the Holiday Season, 2008. Yes, Elmo's on there. I think the author put this one together in his sleep. Hilariously, his top recession toy pick, the Slinky (lame and tangly!) made the next list....

Ten Classic Toys and Why They Suck. Well done, Cracked. Cracked online is about a trillion percent more enjoyable than the print version, if you can look past the gratuitous pictures of hot chicks which appear in every article. Unless, of course, you are like me and enjoy the pictures. Oh, snap, I guess that makes me their demographic, along with millions of fourteen-year-old boys. How embarrassing.

Good luck, and good gift giving. If you get any peenorgami you don't need, send it my way!

Related Links:

Mr. Pillow, The "Worst Toy Ever."

Toxins in One Out of Three Toys?

The Worst Gifts from a New Guy. I can relate to this. I once got a pineapple for Valentine's Day from a former fiance. Nothing says romance like "perishable and spiky."

SJ also writes at her personal blog, I, Asshole.

You Can Haz Cheezbooker? The I Can Has Cheezburger Book and Interview

2008-12-12T16:39:01-06:00

Ardent fans of lolcats and I Can Has Cheezburger? will be happeh to know that the founders of the site, Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebusami, have released the I Can Has Cheezburger? book, penned (pawed?) by Professor Happycat.

Hardcore internet denizens now see many lolmacros as just more clutter on the highway of the interwebs. Like billboards, they almost become invisible and only a few truly clever or interesting ones stand out. You know they have become internet "mainstream" when a Nobel Prize winner announces his win via lolmacro. However, ICHC remains clever and entertaining, and some of the funniest ones have been collected in this cute little book. The book also features sweet little drawings that are in and among the lolcat images, provided by artist friends whom the authors have worked with in the past. Here is a little drawing from my review copy:

I'd say this book is a cute holiday gift for kids, leet hackzors, and even lamezor n00bs who don't spend much time on the internet at all, and insist on talking about things like "outside" and "the sun." Hmmph.

Much to my delight, along with my review copy of ICHC, I was able to ask the authors questions about the book and the founding of the site, and Eric answered.

Q: Where are you from, originally, and what were you doing before ICHC exploded?

Eric: We are both from Honolulu, Hawaii. [I] worked as Software Developer in Hawaii. Kari was a Web Editor.

Q. Were you able to quit your day jobs?

Eric: About 5 months into the project we were generating enough revenue from advertisements on the site to cover my bare necessities (rent, car, food, cheezburgers). I took the plunge and quit my day job. Kari also left her job as time progressed and the site continued growing. The amazing thing was, after I went full time on the site the traffic increased dramatically. Our visitors loved the attention we were able to focus on the site.

Q. I've read that at first lolcats were kind of a "placeholder" image on a domain Eric owned. How and why did you decide to evolve into a blog-type format?

Eric: Initially Kari sent the original image of Happycat saying "I Can Has Cheezburger". As a joke I purchased the domain, and put the picture up... just one picture...

For internet geeks like us buying a domain name can be like a hobby. When you have a new domain you day dream about what it could be, a personal blog, a one line text joke, a single picture... What we realized immediately was that many of these photos didn't have home. They were scattered across the internet, disorderly, sometimes containing nsfw photos. We thought we'd make our own, organize it via tags and other descriptive information that other sites seemed to lack.

Initially we posted and organized as many of our favorites as we could find. Over time we'd post things at steady intervals. Eventually, there would be method to the madness.

Q: Was the popularity of ICHC somewhat gradual, or did you get a boost immediately, and if so, how? Digg? Word of mouth?

Eric: ICHC popularity boosted within the first 2 weeks the site was up. We hit a collective internet nerve that had been passed over by many. For the first 3 months traffic doubled. Starting at about 150k in our first month. 300k by month 2, 700k by month three. Some early traffic generators were definitely word of mouth and sites like BoingBoing, Digg and StumbleUpon.

Q: Why do people love lolcats so much?

Eric: There seems to be something in it for everyone. Some people just like the cute cat pictures, while others appreciate the smart, geeky, funny and often topical nature of the captions.

Q: Before you sold the business to Ben Huh, how many people were working to make the site go? Has it grown since then?

Eric: Just 2. We were working 15-20 hours a day. It was a labor of love. Eventually we realized that we couldn't grow with our existing system. Our meeting with Ben was perfect. The business has definitely grown since it was acquired by Ben. He now has office space, full-time employees and has grown the business from one site to a network of 8 humor sites.

Q: Did you develop the other channels (GraphJam, etc) on the ICHC network?

Eric: We worked on the dog site IHasAHotdog.com -- as well as another site we never released. The dog site came about because dog lovers were submitting many funny pictures. We tried it out and built a home for people who like dogs and like cute/weird/humor. The other sites on the ICHC network were created by Ben's team.

Q: What is your favorite channel and why?

Eric: As a former cubicle worker, Office Space fan, and numbers nerd I personally love Graphjam. Kari, the sometimes pessimist and schadenfreude enthusiast, loves FailBlog.

Q: Why did you decide to compile lolcats into a book?

Eric: First off, we've been very fortunate to have passionate fans of the site, as well as awesome submissions from the lolcat community. Because the site grew so quickly we had to set up rules for what images would make it to the site. This led to a HUGE backlog of images. We thought the book would allow us to share new Lolcats that never made it on the main site with our longtime fans as well as expose the phenomenon to people who might not know of the site.

Q: The additional drawings in the book are adorable. How did you find the artists—are they friends?

Eric: We were lucky enough to have two friends: Kenta Nemoto and Lianne Uesato draw for us. They helped design our logos for I Can Has Cheezburger and I Has a Hotdog. We love their playful, passionate work. Their site is www.otmur.com.

Q: Are you developing anything else for the web, and can you talk about any projects you have coming up?

Eric: From I Can Has Cheezburger? we learned very good lessons about people, positivity, and the importance of humor. Our next project digs deep... Unfortunately, we're not ready to share it, yet.

Thanks to Eric and Kari!

Photos from I Can Has Cheezburger? and the author.

SJ also writes at Uppity Women and I, Asshole.