Quill Studios has a Tumblr! This is, of course, very exciting news, and should lead to amazing new e-opportunites (or as our marketing guy calls them: "eepportunities". The extra 'e' is for 'extreme'. Our marketing guy is kind of lame*.).
So why a Tumblr? That is one hell of a good question! Tumblr seems like a bit of a cross between a full-on blog and a Twitter account...sort of like a blog for people without much to say. I guess my reason can be best articulated by reading the following sentence aloud with your shoulders shrugged: You've got to get yourself out there in as many media as you can, I suppose.
*Not Michelle Malkin. I would never do something like that to you guys.
This guy explains Tumblr more thoroughly and diplomatically that I could ever hope to:
Let me be frank regarding my loyalties: Twitter people are my people.
I've said it before: Twitter fuels revolutions, Facebook lets you pretend to be a farmer. There's just something about Twitter - I guess it's the freedom of the platform, the immediacy of the content - that feels right to me. I'm not much of a talker; maybe that's part of it.
Yes, I have a facebook account, and it's a great way to keep up with
friends, but it is by and large a time-wasting whirlpool of vapidness, a
hub of digital navel gazing. I view Twitter totally differently: its'
necessary brevity and ticker-tape speed doesn't really suit mopey
self-reflection. I can just dip in and out as I feel the urge. It allows for a real frank exchange of ideas
without all the superfluous social niceties that really do little more than drive me to distraction. Did I mention that I'm a borderline Aspie?
I have been told my comments on Facebook tend to be a bit "spicy".
What brought me to the subject of twitter, however, was something less than political: fiction (Or, I don't know, maybe that's one of the most political things there is). The idea to write a work of fiction on Twitter first came to me probably about six months ago. And, the thing is, this would be just me making up things about myself - otherwise known as "normal Twitter" - no; I would tell a story from a character's point of view, having him relate his story through the medium of Twitter. Turns out I wasn't the first with this idea.
I have started a rough outline and composed a few rough tweets. I even set up a twitter account for the work, the ID and password for which I promptly forgot. Before I set up another one, I think I'll get a little deeper into he planning stage.
According to my recent observations, people just have no idea in hell about what the deal is with crosswalks. Here are a few pointers to help everyone out.
For Drivers:
1) If you see a pedestrian standing on the curb waiting to use the crosswalk, slow down or stop to enable them to use it. Especially if the weather is less than ideal. You're in a climate controlled vehicle, they have snow down their shoes - you can wait for a few seconds.
2) Avoiding eye contact or otherwise feigning distraction doesn't excuse you from stopping for pedestrians. They're still there. If you're really so distracted that you can't see people in the crosswalk, you really ought to pull over and get things straightened out.
For Pedestrians:
1) Don't milk it. Just don't. That's a total dick move, and it makes it all the more tempting for drivers to speed through crosswalks leaving all your fellow pedestrians unable to cross the next time.
2) If you want to cross, look like it. Don't stand on the corner gazing off into space. That's what hookers do.
At first blush, everything about Lana Del Rey screams "fake". A wannabe posuer. Psuedo-hipster Astroturf.
So of course right away I want to not like her. After her performance
on SNL last night - which I'll get to in a moment - I performed a
cursory web search that yielded the following results.
the fact she's the daughter of an internet millionaire
in spite of the fact that her dad was a millionaire, claims to
have lived in a trailer home and was barely able to afford Cocoa Puffs,
which is I guess a weird way of saying you're having trouble making ends
meet?
the fact that she admits that her stage name "came from a series of managers and lawyers over the last 5 years..." (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lana_Del_Rey )
her first album has mysteriously vanished (a la Alanis Morissette)
and of course rumors of plastic surgery
First off, I cannot confirm the fact that her dad is indeed an
incredibly wealthy man; judging from his website, he kind of seems like a
guy who just did alright for himself in the shady field of domain name
speculation and designing crappy-looking websites seemingly modeled off
of his own crappy-looking website.
And she does seem to have quite a bit of representation and management
for a girl who used to live IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!!!! but
whatever. I certainly don't see any smoking gun indicating her daddy
bought all this for her. To the contrary, it seems like she had a wild
streak and her dad sort of disowned her for a bit. That would explain
how she could live in a trailer park yet still have a penchant for
top-dollar breakfast foodstuffs, right?
The disappearing of her first album is pretty weird, but Alanis
Morissette did the same damn thing. Now that I think of it, many of the
issues people have with Lana have previously been mentioned in reference to
Alanis. OMG - if you rearrange the letters in 'Alanis', you get 'is
Lana'...they're the same damn person, I bet! I mean, who has heard from
Ms. Morissette lately, hmmm?
As far as the plastic surgery goes, I just don't see it
(disallowing, for the moment, the very real possibility that she is in
fact Alanis - then she'd need to have had the surgery). Her lips don't
look that different to me; they just appear to be painted differently. I
will wager that she wears a wig, though.
Now, back to SNL.
Having not heard of her before last night, I was not subject to
any buzz expectations, however I, like Juliette Lewis, was a little
underwhelmed by her performance of 'Video Games'. In an apparently
since deleted tweet, she was heard to remark:
“Wow watching this ‘singer’ on SNL is like watching a 12 yearold
in their bedroom when theyre pretending to sing and perform
#signofourtimes.”
But Juliette is a
Scientologist who supports Ron Paul for President and seems to post her
every damn thought on the interwebs, so I take that with a grain of
salt. Plus she is a chicken shit and retracted it the next day. Have the courage of your convictions, girl! (Loved you in 'Natural Born Killers & 'Shit Grils Say', BTW) Let's move on.
Her
next song (also, of course, her last, as you would know if you stayed
in on Saturday nights like me often enough that you could basically be
the show runner for SNL if you had to) was the one that got me. And not
just her singing, or the lyrics; no, was I really enjoyed was the
musical sensibilities of Blue Jeans.
OK, I'll admit I have no idea WTF the deal is with her voice. Maybe she was just nervous. But no one can accuse her of lip-synching like Ashlee Simpson, amirite?
Now, of course, the lyrics are hardly original. Hell, I'm sure
you could probably pick every line in the chorus from another song. And
the whole song reminds me a little of 'Wicked Game'. But I don't care.
I just don't effing care. Her key changes are interesting and exquisite. And she writes her own material, which is a huge plus in my book.
Here's a better version, just because I love you guys:
Oh my God. That's the stuff - right when the music grinds to a halt after she says "end of time". Love it!
An interesting juxtaposition of videos, contrasting the bravery of US soldiers who lay their lives on the line for the rest of us...
...and of the people who cynically pander to the country using the troops as props to progress their own divisive, heartless agendas...
Not one of the GOP candidates chastised the people booing in the audience. So I guess it's support our troops unless they're gay. If they're gay, hopefully they'll go into a coma and die without insurance or Rick Perry will just execute them. Don't look now, Rick, but Georgia is starting to catch up with your death toll!
At least I can take some comfort that the failure was of a technical rather than artistic nature. I did get the SoFoBoMo picture book project done; unfortunately, the file size of my completed PDF was about 4 times the maximum file upload size. I'm by no means a Gimp expert, and the time and effort it would have taken to shrink all 35 pictures down enough to meet the file size requirements were imposing enough to convince me to bail.
Now, an important part of goal-setting is to leave yourself open to the possibility of public ridicule, and so I once again declare: failure. Hoist the failure sails. Worse yet, in the interest of public humiliation, a link to my completed photo book.
I'm actually fairly happy with many of the pictures.
But oh, the words. The stupid little words. The hardest part of this whole picture book experience was the words. That what I spent the most time on, and it's the part I'm least happy with. Please, just don't read them...you'll just embarrass us both.
You know what's great about the internet besides cat videos and illegal Cat Power downloads and hipster kitty? Oh, you've never heard of hipster kitty? Yeah, I figured you probably wouldn't have. But I digress, where was I?
Ah yes, the greatest (non-cat related) thing about the internet is that there's always some organization hosting an activity that you can participate in. And it almost always has a stupid cutesy name. It's like a singles mixer for shut-ins - so it's sad, but at least you can be alone in your sorrow, which is way less awkward.
Like right now; it's SoFoBoMo time! You get 31 days from July through August to produce a pdf proof of a photo book. Yes, I realize that July through August is actually 62 days, but they have some silly rules I didn't really bother reading, and the point isn't to count days, it's to get off your ass and do something. That something is take pictures. Then you get right back on your ass and get those pics into your computer. So it's like shit you would do anyway, only this time instead of taking pictures of everyone drunk at your class reunion, you take pictures of clouds or fields or shorelines or something. Is it really to much for the internet to ask that you stop behaving like a complete Philistine for a month or so out of your life?
On the SoFoBoMo site, there are links to projects that past and current participants have completed and uploaded. Some are so good that they make you want to just give up before you even get started. Many, however, have an more encouraging "Hey, I could do that!" quality to them.
So why not give it a shot? At least it'll give you something to do while waiting for this video to load.
