Chaos Theory

Related to someone famous...

...and it's Rush Limbaugh. (Salon)

"But I didn't think anything of it; I mean, everyone has family members others don't agree with. I'm sure you have a grandpa or uncle out there who complains about the "queers" and the people who speak "Mexican" ruining his neighborhood. I don't like that, but I bet you're OK.

One Thanksgiving he stands in front of all us relatives in his Versailles-looking living room, and before my grandpa prays over our meal, Cousin Rusty apologizes. He says he's afraid he has made it tough to be a Limbaugh this past year, and his voice breaks like I have never heard it do before. Cousin Rusty is OK.

Now that I'm at Columbia University, some relatives like to ask about the "climate" at school, and if I'm becoming "liberal," like it's a disease. I don't think they understand that you don't have to agree with your family to love your family.

Rush once told me, "The only way to make millions is for half the nation to hate you." He told me this at his mom's funeral when I was 13, and I think the reason he was talking business was because he was trying not to look so sad. It's funny how the subject of half the nation hating him could effectively lighten his mood. I wanted to say, "But I don't want half the nation to hate you."

 

Who cares about ER any more?

Nobody at Slate, apparently. So they're begging you to write it for them.

"Slate owes you an apology. Over the last three months, we in the magazine's culture department have been trying to prepare the perfect eulogy for ER, the medical drama whose finale airs Thursday. We have approached both staff writers and a series of reliable correspondents, inviting them to weigh in on the final episode and the legacy of the drama's 15-year run. No one wanted the assignment. It's tough to find a surprising angle on this story. And it's even tougher, it turns out, to find anyone who has watched the show since George Clooney was just that promising young actor from The Facts of Life."

Bwah!

Download 4'33" for FREE today!

Blackmail business model

"Without permission or advance notice, FiledByAuthor has cataloged the information of about 1.8 million authors into individual pages. There are biographies, photos, links to purchase books from online retailers and links to share the author's FiledBy page through a dizzying list of social networking sites. And everyone is there, from the novice self-published author to Stephenie Meyer.

In fact, Stephenie "Twilight" Meyer is the site's most-viewed author. But while this might appear to be a tacit endorsement, Meyer has nothing to do with the site.

After FiledByAuthor creates these Web pages, it then "invites" authors to "claim" their free pages. For a fee -- $99 or $399 per year -- an author can raise their membership level to "verified." This allows an author to gain more control over his or her page, being able to do things like add more than two links, use a blog tool, manage a calendar.

"I'm naturally dubious of sites that purport to be community building sites for authors, simply because authors today tend to build their own communities via their websites, blogs and MySpace or, increasingly, Facebook pages that allow them to control their content," says author Tod Goldberg, who compared FiledByAuthor to other literary websites that he's signed up for -- RedRoom, GoodReads -- and failed to maintain. Except there is one key difference.

At those sites, authors sign up voluntarily. At FiledBy Author, 1.8 million writers are already conscripted -- and they can't be removed from the site. There is no opt out."

Cartoon comparisons

Good point.

Kill more comics- the old ones, please

Gene Weingarten makes the case (Washington Post):

"At some point in the last couple of decades, newspaper editors around the country have decided for some reason that with the comics pages, and only the comics pages, they will cease to be editors. Maybe they don't like comics, or don't read them, or don't really understand them. Maybe they feel they haven't the same expertise with comics that they have with news judgment. Maybe they think it's just not that important. For whatever reason, whenever a decision must be made about which comics to retain, buy, or drop, newspaper editors put it up to a referendum of their readers via polls and surveys. And what they wind up with, time and again, are some of the crappiest, cruddiest, dead-headed-est comics in the business because -- and I don't mean to sound judgmental here -- readers who respond to comics polls are morons. They pick names that sound familiar.

How do I know this? I just do. It's obvious from the results. There is no reasonable process of analysis that concludes that �Hagar the Horrible,� which we still run, is a worthier strip than �Pooch Cafe,� which died yesterday. None. You could assemble a thousand smart, funny people in a room (okay, they'd have to be under 70 years old) and have them read a month of both strips, and their vote would be damn near unanimous. One of these strips has ideas, and textured characters, and a funny edge. The other is Hagar the Horrible.

But this is beside the point. The point is, we editors should not be polling readers about comics any more than we should be polling readers to find out what stories we should be putting on page one. There are things editors should do on their own, because they are editors. Because they are people skilled in words and images and communication. The whole process smacks of back-burnerism; that comics just aren't that important, so why not let the readers make the choices?

Step One: Kill more comics. We need to give the good ones more space to breathe. Dump Classic Peanuts, which cannot be defended in any rational world, and which LITERALLY has not had a new idea in 10 years. Kill Hagar, for reasons that are obvious. Kill Baldo, which is a terribly unfunny strip that exists only to cynically appeal to a demographic, and which thus is an insult to that demographic. Kill Prickly City, which exists for the same cynical reason and is equally unfunny but also drawn poorly. Kill Dennis; it's stuck in the '50s. Kill Beetle Bailey; it's Depression-era humor. Kill Lio, which, regrettably, ran out of ideas about a year ago. Then stand there with your bloody butcher knife, editors, and feel good about yourself. You have lost nothing of value."

In other news from today's chat...

"Charlottesville VA: Gene, the mainstream media is using Twitter these days - what do you think of Twitter?

What would a day of Weingarten "tweets" look like?

Can I see your tweets?

Gene Weingarten: Glad you asked. I wrote a column some months ago about what I thought of Twitter. This required me to get a Twitter account, which I never used.

I still get notices a few times a day from people who say they are "now following me" on Twitter. Therefore I have started posting. All my posts are insanely boring, such as "I just went to the bathroom."

Twitter: I liked your tweet, "I am picking boogers out of my dog's eyes."

Re: Twitter: Porn stars and NBA players are by far the most interesting and amusing people to follow on twitter.

The most boring... politicians.

Washington, D.C.: Can I just state for the record that absolutely no one is interesting on Twitter. No one.

Gene Weingarten: I do not understand its popularity.

Because "He MUST decide" is such a cliche

"How often, since discovering poly, have you been struck by movies, books and legends where the whole stupid drama would be so not there if people just grasped the concept? From the Iliad to Shakespeare to Italian opera to The Corpse Bride — why can't people just be more evolved, dammit? So much of our culture-mythos would melt away in the morning sun.

Of course bushels of new drama (and comedy) would take its place. But at least it wouldn't be so hackneyed."

That sums up V.C. Andrews, all right.

"Jimmy comes to visit and they make a big deal out of the fact that they can't get used to not thinking of each other as brother and sister. So maybe they should stop trying to have sex then."

Oh, screw you.

"Today, the Huff presented a posting by Jaime Lee Curtis.  Distilled, it’s just another paean to our lovely little depression.  How grand it is for us to be economically failed!  When stuff sucks, people are reminded that stuff really isn’t important!

One particular paragraph even induced gagging:

What this crisis is going to do is bring us into financial alignment. Families may have to live together again! What a concept. Grandparents will live with their grown children and help raise their grandchildren -- even at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Neighbors are going to meal share and carpool and child care for each other and maybe even rent out parts of homes to other families.

Oh how super!  As someone who lost his job and had to move his family in with his parents, the joys of my mother helping raise my son pale in comparison to the wretched grind of applying for jobs, being denied them, and scrambling to make use of what little money we have for day to day necessities.  Having someone as wealthy and successful as Jaime Lee Curtis romanticize my misery sickens me.  At the same time, it makes sense because I’ve noticed similar writings from people with similar net worth or job stability.  The folks asking everyone to tighten their belts and bear through the downturn have not had to sacrifice much themselves, or fear for their jobs.  The Republicans talking about fiscal cleansing and moral goodness born from hardships typically don’t make any major changes in their lifestyle other than firing (or reporting to ICE) their housecleaner and washing their clothes in house instead of dry cleaning them." (Salon)

Oh, that's just neat

I always think it's cute when relatives have the same birthday. (My dad and his dad did.)