Month: July 2002 (Page 4 of 5)

The best-laid plans…

So I sent out my first issue of the newsletter yesterday. Much to Mr. Mosey’s derision, I decided to use Topica to manage the list. I thought it would be easier than managing it myself with a bulk e-mail program, or by writing something custom in Cold Fusion.

So I send out the first issue, only to find that they place ads not just at the bottom of the e-mail, but at the top as well. And for things like online dating services. Ugh. I should have known something was amiss when no ads appeared on my test e-mails.

Then, the Topica site went down yesterday afternoon, and was only back up this morning. So those few souls who actually wanted to subscribe were turned away.

I’m seriously thinking of just downloading the list from Topica and putting it into the bulk e-mail program I was planning on purchasing. I’ll have to manage the list by hand, but people won’t have to register to subscribe, and there won’t be any ads.

Damn technology.

Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday, an occasion I share with Brett Somers and Richie Sambora. In honor of this auspicious day, 7-11 is giving out free Slurpees. Have one on me.

And there’s still time to get me a belated birthday gift. If you want.

Not a rhetorical question:

Who do you think is smarter, George W. Bush or Dan Quayle?

I vote for Quayle.

I keep debating about whether to change the focus of this weblog. I’ve tried to make it about words and politics and pop culture, because those things interest me and I can write reasonably intelligently about them.

I don’t have much personal stuff, or stuff about my day, on this page. I don’t know if it’s all that interesting, and I find the other stuff more compelling and easier to write about. And then I go to other people’s weblogs, and they get 25 comments on a post about problems with their catbox or something.

I’m sure comment numbers don’t really mean anything (Wil Wheaton gets 94 comments when he blows his nose), but I keep wondering if the stuff I go on about is interesting or entertaining to anyone. And I’ll admit, despite myself I get a little jealous when I see high comment numbers on other people’s pages.

People always say, oh, I do this for myself. I don’t care if anyone reads it. But are those of us who say those things just lying to ourselves? How much are we writing to please ourselves, and how much are we writing to please an audience – one we don’t know much about? This blogging thing is strange. It’s like performing in a play through a virtual reality suit.

Just a mini motivational crisis. It’ll pass.

As many of you already know (since I’ve bugged you mercilessly about it), I’m starting a free weekly e-mail newsletter on web topics, called Web Common Sense. I’ve posted a sample article so you can get a feel for it. If you’d like to subscribe, I’d be grateful. If you tell anyone else about it, I’ll be extremely grateful.

Quite an interesting conversation going on on MetaFilter about photographer and Greymatter author Noah Grey’s return to the web. It mostly centers around Grey’s disabling of common image-saving techniques on his web pages.

My personal opinion, guided by Philip Greenspun, is that on the web, you should put everything out there for people to see. Greenspun, for example, puts the entire text of his books online. And I bet it doesn’t hurt his sales. I know I bought the book – after getting interested in the text online. I think you gain more from that approach than jealously guarding your works. Would you become interested in a photographer after seeing just postage-stamp-size scans of his photos, because he wants you to pay for a fancy print otherwise? I don’t think so.

Large sign seen in local store window:

GOD LOVES UGLY.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I really hope that’s true.

Saw “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing” yesterday. It was made by Jill and Karen Sprecher, who in addition to being from Madison, also made one of my favorite movies, “Clockwatchers.” It’s great to see a dialogue-centered movie, after all the summer season gunk we’ve had to wade through. I can’t wait to see it again, so I can forget about the big picture of the plot, such as it is, and concentrate on the conversations people are having. Great movie – but see it with someone interesting, so you can talk about it afterwards.

One of the points of the movie, I think, is something I’ve been considering a lot lately. So many people are just sitting around waiting for something to happen. They feel like external forces control their existence. Well, the hard truth is that no magical event (or person) is going to come along to make your world a better place. If you don’t do it for yourself, no one will. And even if you try and fail, that’s better than doing nothing. If you ask me.

Sci-fi pronunciation geek

David Lynch’s “Dune” was on the Sci-Fi Channel the other night, and I sat and watched the whole thing. This was the extra-long director’s cut, so it probably had a lot more stuff in it than I remembered. I mostly was interested to watch it because I got the DVD of the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Dune” miniseries as an early birthday present, and had watched that one just before Lynch’s was on.

Lynch’s version is more of a comic book telling of the Dune story – lots of amazing images with very little dialogue, and the plot advanced mostly through exposition. The miniseries is sort of like a junior high production version – it tells the story more completely, but in a flat, affectless way. So neither is a quite satisfying telling of the book, if that’s even possible.

But what annoyed me most about the miniseries was the way they pronounced names. Probably Frank Herbert didn’t publish a pronunciation guide with the book, and the names are unusual enough to leave some interpretation open. But to pronounce Chani “Chaney”? It made me laugh every time they said it, thinking about the vice president. And they pronounced Leto “Lay-toe” (as if casting the nearly comatose William Hurt as the dynamic duke wasn’t bad enough).

And to answer your inevitable question, yes, I will be seeking treatment.

Homer Simpson on stupid movie plots

Homer (to theater audience): Come on! It’s obvious that she’s going to end up with Richard Gere!
Man: What? I thought she was going to end up with that rich snob!
2nd Man: Ably played by Bill Paxton!
Homer (smacking him): It’s Bill Pullman, you idiot!