In yet another bit of inspired silliness, Improv Everywhere, that group of merry pranksters who inspired an annual tradition of pantsless public transit rides in New York and other cities around the world (including, surprisingly enough, my own Salt Lake City), strikes again — or should I say “strikes back?” — with a Star Wars-themed subway stunt:
I dig the dude who tries to figure out what the princess is reading, then has a hearty chuckle over it. And of course all the tiny handheld cameras that suddenly appear when the stormtroopers and Vader arrive. Funny how I didn’t see that coming when I used to imagine as a kid what the 21st century would be like…
This video has popped up in a lot of places recently; I got it from Sullivan’s Daily Dish.
My friend Karen posted this cartoon the other day. I was amused.
It’s probably just as well we no longer live in the culture depicted here, though. The way things have been going at the office the past couple of weeks, my ashtray would be overflowing, my bottom desk-drawer full of empties, and my vision blurry from drink. It’s blurry now, but that would be from working until 10:30 last night and coming back in first thing this morning. Alas.
UPDATE: Hm. My sidebar appears to chop off the right side of the comic strip. Sorry about that; I figured it would float over the sidebar like video clips often do. If you just click on the cartoon, you’ll be taken to the Official Dilbert Site, where you can read it in all its glory.
A number of my regular blog-reads have been playing this week with a little doodad that analyzes a sample of your writing and determines which famous writer your style most resembles. Or something. (I cynically suspect it just grabs well-known names at random from a list. But maybe not. What do I know?)
Anyhow, I can’t resist trying these things out for myself, so I plugged in my angry “Synchcronicity II” blog entry from a couple weeks ago and this is what I got:
And you know what? That’s fine by me. In fact, it’s awesome. I’ve never felt like I had a “favorite author” the way many people espouse, no one whom I’ve felt compelled to study and memorize and read every single work by that person, but if I’m forced to pick someone, King is usually my answer. He’s vulgar, yes, and frequently self-indulgent, and when he’s off his game, he really stinks up the place. But when he’s good — and he is good more often than his detractors would have you believe — he’s brutally effective in taking readers where he wants them to go. I admire his plain-spoken prose style, his grasp of real-life detail, his ability to make the most outlandish threats seem immediate and real (at least as long as you’re under his spell), and of course his deep understanding of and empathy for lower-middle-class and working-class Americans, a demographic that’s rarely handled with a fair hand, in my opinion.
No other author makes me want to write fiction of my own the way I do after I read something of King’s (although my recent discovery Charlaine Harris comes close).
Just a note from your curmudgeonly neighborhood proofreader: the words “breathe” and “breath” are not interchangeable, and the one is not an archaic or European spelling of the other. They both have their purpose.
“Breathe” is a verb. You breathe deeply. You breathe more clearly after taking a decongestant.
“Breath” is a noun. You take a breath when you breathe. We say something is a breath of fresh air. You curse pedantic, pain-in-the-butt proofreaders under your breath.
Yes, I am still at the office at 8:23 PM. For the third time this week. With more yet to come. Grrrrr.
Anyhow, the big air-conditioning unit that’s mounted above my cubicle just shut down for the night. While the silence is a blessed change from the constant white noise, there’s also something deeply sad about it. The suddenly unmoving air seems to somehow absorb the sensation of life and activity that usually permeates the old cube farm, and it starts to feel like we’re nearing the inevitable end. Like when the Titanic‘s lights went out just before everything really went to hell.
Or maybe it’s just sad that I’m here late enough to witness the energy-saving protocols going into effect. As I said earlier, grrrr.
Yeah, I know, another damn music video. I haven’t had the time for anything more substantive, I’m afraid. Lots of late nights at the office this week, and the way things are going, I’ll be lucky if I don’t have to work over the holiday weekend, too, and possibly the following weekend as well, and all thanks to some overzealous middle-management dumbass who made an impossible promise that I and my fellow bottom-of-the-ladder production people — the people who do the actual work around this place — now have to try and fulfill. My Loyal Readers can probably guess how I feel about that. Call me lazy if that’s how you see it, but I personally think the American-style protestant work ethic (i.e., the “thank you, sir, may I have another” mindset) is bullshit, and I resent the hell out of every additional second The Man shaves off the already too-small “life” portion of my work/life balance.
So, in that vein, here’s one for every middle-aged, white-collar cubicle monkey out there who spends his days wondering which of the reasonable, responsible choices he made in his youth led him to this bleak plateau where he feels like a coyote that’s thinking about gnawing off his own leg in order to escape the merciless steel jaws. It’s a little primal-scream therapy from Sting and The Police, and while the Road Warrior-inspired, post-apocalypse trappings of this video are as 1980s as it gets, the meaning of the lyrics and the bubbling rage at the grinding inhumanity of modern life remain as applicable — sadly — as ever.
And on that note, I hope that everyone reading this does, in fact, get to enjoy their holiday weekends. Think of me while you’re barbecuing and looking for a good spot to watch the parade…
If you’re fortunate enough to live in an area where the glow of urban lighting hasn’t completely washed out the nighttime sky, you may have spotted the International Space Station zooming overhead. I’ve seen it several times myself, a golden spark flashing across the Salt Lake Valley at breakneck speed. On one memorable occasion, it had a companion spark, one of the space shuttles running alongside just after undocking to come home. (I don’t remember which shuttle it was… I really should make notes about that sort of thing). Anyhow, you may have wondered just exactly how big the station is to be visible to the naked eye like that. And if you’re like me, the usual description — that it’s the size of a football field, the largest object we’ve ever put into space — doesn’t really help much. (I can’t help it if I’m not sports-minded!)
Earlier this evening, my friend Jeff Farr posted the following chart on Facebook:
And now I have no trouble visualizing it at all. Why didn’t somebody just say it was nearly as wide as the Enterprise‘s saucer section… sheesh!
The origin page for this nifty graphic has some more information about the station, its systems, and how long it’s going to be up there, if you’re interested…
