An Unconvincing Narrative

If you check the right hand column you will see that my last five tweets (for this is the nomenclature used by the twitteriffic) show up thanks to a Wordpress plugin called — wait for it — Twitter for Wordpress.

That is all.

Buddy Morgan J. Locke started twittering and I went and looked and its DANGEROUS.  What is so seductive is that you can’t post something longer than 140 characters.  This really lowers the amount of inertia you have to overcome.  I can dash off a sentence but as the grammar units increase (sentence, paragraph, essay, magna carta, etc.) it is less so.

But its dangerous.  It goes both ways.  Cause a lot of people I either know or follow at a blog level, also twitter.  And the accumulated stuff is like having to keep track of a new blog.  But really, just one–like someone who blogs once or twice daily.

I am twittering at twitter.com/steviechuckles.

These are the states I’ve visited in my life. (That I remember–as a child my military family moved a lot so it could be more.) I guess we know who to blame global warming on.

visited 42 states (84%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

Seen over at Mad’s LiveJournal.

In an interview over at Crave Online Doug Liman talks about stuff including Knight Rider and a little bit about the Jumper movie sequel.

Crave Online: Is Jumper 2 one of them?

Doug Liman: That’s definitely something in the works but it wouldn’t be my next directorial assignment.

Crave Online: Where might you like to go with the Jumper sequel?

Doug Liman: I’m very interested in using films as Trojan Horses, and mass media for Trojan Horses. Other than Knight Rider which clearly the mandate was none of my subversive stuff. This is trying to tap into that experience that I had as a kid watching the original which is straight ahead, the good guy always wins, the line between who’s good and who’s bad is very clear. But in the work that I personally direct, I’m much more interested in being more subversive. In that regard, I have this vision for using mass media as a Trojan Horse. My father ran the Iran Contra investigation. I’ve been for years trying to figure out how to make that into a movie but if you made a movie called The Iran Contra Affair, no one’s going to watch that. Instead I made The Bourne Identity which was a retelling of Iran Contra. If there’s anything I’m not happy about where the writing went in the sequels it’s that the groundwork was laid to really give people a history lesson while they were having mass entertainment. That got abandoned. When Dave and I were doing The O.C., we said we have a great opportunity here to start talking about immigration reform. Hook all these teenagers, it seems like a fluffy piece of soap opera entertainment, and then let’s get the maid arrested on immigration charges. Have all these kids in America fall in love with the Mexican maid and then have her facing deportation, whereas if we did a show about deportation, no one would ever watch it. Of course Fox was like, “Are you f*cking crazy? This is a $100 million investment.” That was my first TV show. I thought with TV I could experiment more. Instead they’re like, “No, no, it’s the opposite way.” There’s a huge amount of money being invested in this. So I’m interested in the Jumper sequel as a way to maybe introduce time travel and explore history in a way that you could get a mass audience in and maybe they’d learn about World War II, they’d learn about the Cold War which was something I was lucky enough to live through and the average moviegoer today doesn’t even understand what it was like to go behind an iron curtain.

Altair (pronounced with all three syllables–Al-ta-ir) is the protagonist of the video game Assassin’s Creed. Both Noble Girl and Twilight Nija play it (have completed it also) on the Xbox-360. Noble Girl thought it was interesting enough that she is going the extra mile.

Continue Reading »

I laughed AND I was moved.

And, to give a reason, like the people in this video, I vote because I have daughters and I want their future to be viable.

I am doing occasional blog posts (and who isn’t?) over at Tor.Com. My first one went up on Monday afternoon, the first part of a four part series:

Behaving Badly As A Career Strategy

… you never know.

How to Live in Your Car - wikiHow

• Once you find a spot, try to arrive late at night, and leave before 7am. This will draw as little attention as possible to yourself.

How to Live on the Street - wikiHow

• Another place to sleep relatively safely at night are rooftops of public buildings.

How to Survive on the Streets of Manhattan - wikiHow

• Avoid bumping into the New Yorkers. They will bump you back. It isn’t pleasant.

How to Survive on the Streets - wikiHow

• Avoid wearing sandals or flip-flops, and high-hills. If, on your way there’s a rock, you may trip on it, fall or even die, hit by a car. USE TENNIS SHOES!

How to Be a Hobo with a Web Based Income - wikiHow

• Buy backup batteries for your laptop to continue working until you can reach civilization.

How to Urban Camp - wikiHow

• Showers!

How to Be a Street Musician - wikiHow

• Be prepared for requests. People who request songs can be annoying, especially if you play originals, but they also tend to pay you. It’s good to know some covers, and if you can’t play the exact song someone requests, offer a similar tune or one by the same artist.

How to Survive in Dangerous Parts of a City - wikiHow

• You might have to stop for directions. If you do, try to ask an elderly person, preferably a woman, because there is less of a chance an older person will try to rob or attack you.

How to Keep Chickens in a City - wikiHow

• Are they all there? Count your chickens every day, especially if you have more than ten.
  

How to Urinate Outside Discreetly - wikiHow

• If pants are equipped, carefully zip them once you are done. Careless zipper operation especially in males can cause great pain.

How to Survive a Super Comet Hitting Earth -wikiHow

• Your Government will likely set up “public shelters” for people to ride out the impact aftermath. Do Not go to these shelters. They are a perfect place for disease to spread and crime will be rampant in these places. If however, you cannot be evacuated from near the impact site, you will have to go into a nuclear bunker that you may have to share. If you are far away from the impact, making your own shelter out of a windowless room in your house or out of a cellar is the best option.

Just sayin’.

Click the pic for more over at Mighty God King.

Now, really guys, what could you do with my books? I’d love to see my first book, Hates Air Travel or my second book, Teens Get Gold (and Laid).

I still haven’t seen the trailer but a friend just went to this (fortunately at a dollar house) and reports that among the many movies parodied by this critical success, is Jumper. I might have to go see the sucker (again, at the dollar house.) From what I can tell, looking at the ofeeeeecial site, there wasn’t a movie released in the last twelve months that wasn’t parodied by this turkey.

With over fifteen THOUSAND people voting it has a rating of 1.3 stars out of 10. Even Bush has a better rating than that. Over at Box Office Mojo they give it a D- and report that in the 52 days since release it’s made a whopping 23 mil world wide (but it did only cost 20 mil to make.) Still, with advertising, it’s probably not a great success.

Ah, culture. Ain’t it grand?

Two days ago I was looking at a pair of red argyle socks that I bought while shopping in west Houston (well, what was then west Houston–Fondren and I-10) with Doug Potter. This was about 30 years ago. I obviously don’t wear them that often. They’re still intact, sans holes, but they’re also still red and argyle, so….

That evening I get an email from Doug with a link and the message, “Feeling down? If this doesn’t make you feel better, it’s time to get professional help.”

And he gave me a link to a YouTube Video for “Where the Hell is Matt 2008.”

Now, if you’ve never been exposed to the original video (current view count on YouTube–over eleven million views.) His formula, in the words and pictures of his own powerpoint slide, is

.

Translation, Matt, dancing badly all over the world on YouTube results in over 30 million people watching his videos and, in fact, provides him with his complete income over the last couple of years.

I certainly watched his first video back in the day and was insensibly cheered. Now watch the 2008 version. (I normally embed you-tube videos but if you go to the page, there is an option for a high-res version which I recommend.)

If that cheered you up you might want to watch this five-minute talk he gave, “How I got 2387 people all over the planet to dance badly with me.”

Imagine. if you will, the scene from 2001 where Hal is singing “Daisy, Daisy” slower and slower. Or you don’t have to imagine it:

Anyway, we’ve pulled some of the memory slots and it’s going to take us a while to bring it all back without killing the rest of the crew.