Modcult

Teh Blobs

This take on popular websites such as Boing Boing, Dooce, and Fark provides an interesting view of how these sites read to someone who is not already immersed in internet culture. I especially like the description of BB:

A premier Federated Media site is Boing Boing. It seems to feature a group of tech journalists writing about the great new articles they’ve written for other publications, as well as some blurbs about quirky computer news. It also has big traffic for a blog, reportedly some 70,000 unique visitors a day. No Drudge Report, or even Gawker, but it’s good traffic. My newspaper website friends say that’s a decent number for a smaller city’s newspaper site. Boing Boing writers are regularly featured on “old media” programs such as the NPR news, so this property has potential.

It’s from a slightly insane John Battelle hate site authored by a former Industry Standard writer who holds Battelle to blame for his misfortune.

Schoenfraun

But bad movies—I think I’ve got a word for the kind of sadness I’m talking about. Schoenfraun. The sadness of when you’re watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. Schoenfraun. Schoenfraun. It just sounds right. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be.

The cover for the Hungarian edition of Shadow Of The Torturer.

Hot People Trying to Look Ugly

…or ugly people trying to look hot.

The Burg - Closet

I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing:

• I watched all of these
• I found them amusing
• I recognized most of the locations

Why the Strong Lose

What is not in dispute is that all major failed US uses of force since 1945—in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia—have been against materially weaker enemies. In wars both hot and cold, the United States has fared consistently well against such powerful enemies as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union, but the record against lesser foes is decidedly mixed. Though it easily polished off Milosevic’s Serbia and Saddam’s Iraq, the United States failed to defeat Vietnamese infantry in Indochina, terrorists in Lebanon, and warlords in Somalia. In each case the American Goliath was militarily stalemated or politically defeated by the local David. Most recently, the United States was surprised by the tenacious insurgency that exploded in post-Baathist Iraq, an insurgency now in its third year with no end in sight.

Don’t worry, this is not the beginning of a series of political Kosian posts, it’s an interesting article from the awesome PARAMETERS.

Esteban, que pasa los Jicks?

RC: Oh wow, I’m awesome. Brighten The Corners—I would argue, the best Pavement record. The Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain people can slam a cock, because this is the best. I miss Pavement. I went and saw Stephen Malkmus live a couple years ago. Terrible. He’s a jam band now. There was this guy in the front row who wouldn’t stop asking Malkmus, “What’s up with the Jicks?” He kept saying, “Steve, what’s up with the Jicks?” And my friend Jason started yelling, “Esteban, que pasa los Jicks?” Needless to say, he did not answer us. Not a good show, though I got very drunk.

Rob Corddry’s surprising Random Rules in av club

My Future Profession

As a member of the crowd that populates the streets, the flâneur participates physically in the text that he observes while performing a transient and aloof autonomy with a “cool but curious eye” that studies the constantly changing spectacle that parades before him. As an observer, the flâneur exists as both “active and intellectual.” As a literary device, one may understand him as a narrator who is fluent in the hieroglyphic vocabulary of visual culture. When he assumes the form of narrator, he plays both protagonist and audience—like a commentator who stands outside of the action, of whom only the reader is aware, “float[ing] freely in the present tense.”

The Flâneur