Angry Robot

Guest Photography

Four new photos that I didn’t take are up in a new zone of d/photo, guest photoss.

Strangelove

Today’s a day for Dr. Strangelove as protest and as reality.

grandtextauto

Promising new weblog on the topic of “digital fiction.”

Pantslessness

New York State Epantsipation League. (via alexwhite)

Every Month Is Baberuary

Did you know Julius Caesar rejigged the Roman calendar? Talk about absolute power: can you imagine Bush lengthening a couple months and slicing one altogether? If he decided that new years would come in march from now on? That’s exactly what Caesar did, but it was just what the doctor ordered, since by this time the Romans had pantsed up their calendar something nasty. Get ready for some ancient lernin’, kids.

Originally the Roman calendar was a ten month lunar calendar that started in March, continued through to december and then kind of vanished. It was all about farming, so they didn’t even bother having months during their winter. (Two months of winter? Not bad.) That might have started in 700 BC or so, but every now and then some ruler or other would make an addendum, so I’ve been trying to find out what the Roman calendar was like circa 60 – 45 BC (when Caesar changed it).

Take a look at the names of the months, with their days in brackets: Januarius (29), Februarius (28), Intercalaris / Mercedonius (whatever)*, Martius (31), Aprilis (29), Maius (31), Junius (29), Quintilis (31), Sextilis (29), Septembris (29), Octobris (31), Novembris (29), Decembris (29). Quintilis through Decembris are simply counting from five through ten. At this point, they hadn’t named July after Julius yet, nor August after Augustus. The star* indicates the most messed up part of their calendar, a remnant of the ol’ not-countin’-the-winter-months thing. Since this calendar wasn’t based on the moon anymore, it had become sort of a wannabe solar calendar, but it never added up to 365.25, so the period of Intercalaris (“between calendars”, apparently also called Mercedonius) was added, and it was as long as necessary to get the calendar back into whack. To make matters worse, it didn’t actually come after february – it came after the 23rd day in february. They switched over to Intercalaris for however long it took, then back to february for the last five days!

I don’t even want to get into how they did the days of the week – let’s just say they botched it right up, counting backwards and shit. Apparently the start of the month was decided by the pontifexes, or priests, who also declared the middle of the month (the Ides – originally when the moon was full). But these clowns were so incompetent and/or corrupt that years were very irregular in length.

Caesar sorted all of that garbage right out. It was a confusing year, in fact it was known as the ultimus annus confusionis – Caesar had to intercalate 90 days. But when it was done he had something much more like we use today, leap year and all – no more intercalaris. Just imagine rethinking the calendar, coming up with something rockin’ good, forcing it down everyone’s throats (hey, who’s the dictator here?), and then having it stick, more or less, for 2,000 years. Now that’s an overachiever.

The other fun part is figuring out what year they would have called it. Over at Bloggus Caesari it’s 52 BC right now, but of course Caesar wouldn’t have called it that. Apparently they counted forwards from the mythical founding of Rome, which is thought to have happened in 753 BC, so that Caesar might have called it 702 AUCab urbe condita.

Anyway, if you’ve read this far you’re insane or deathly bored – for the love of god, run away! Go here, quickly!

Three Times the Bringing On of It

bags has joined in the most-posts showdown, allowing me to milk a post out of announcing it. See, you’re playing into my idea-bereft hands, fools!

You Think You Can Take Me Down?

You think you can take me down, bitch? You think you got what it takes? snaps aggressively Here’s what I’m gonna do, bitch: I’m going to raise the roof. I’m committed to excellence, let victory be my ashtray or may death wear me as a cravat! I descend from the ionosphere, tour the facilities, stoke the flames. The team’s in place, the goals will be achieved, obstacles overcome, enemies vanquished, doubters dismissed. The foundations of your barren thinking will be torn down, the House of Sankey will rise in their place. Your rivers will run purple with my prose. Your sweaters will shrink and itch vexingly; like my dope science, they will be too tight. My many tentacles – reason, wit, argument, appeal to emotion – will throttle you and your extended family. Your crops will lie down and die in the fields. Bartenders will no longer serve you. Restaurants will point at you and laugh menacingly, rabbits will rape you, happiness will run from you grinning with its tongue flapping in the wind. Your own thoughts will desert you, your brain will be as empty as my fridge, voided like a bowel in shitstown, vacant like the SARSville Sheraton – and then I’ll move in. I’ll rent out the whole place, I’m in your head looking out. Guesswho? Sankey. Sankey in every room, and I’m like an army of brat rockstars, I’m trashing the place. Can you feel me piss on your floors? Can you hear me toss your minifridges out the window? How you like me now, bitch?

Cheney Profile

“Cheney is a little Buddha-like already” – so where are the Laughing Cheney lucky statuettes? Oh right, they’re being held in an undisclosed location.

Dirty Whore Diary

is indeed dirty but also thoughtful: “I’d choose a lusty troll over an icy supermodel any day.”

Teen Lingo

Christian guide to youth slang. (via Boing Boing)

Film Ideas

Five Fingers of Chiropracty. A band of renegade back doctors must take back-cracking revenge when their practice is destroyed by a rampaging warlord and his fighting goons. Action’s back!

Solar Slut. After the Sun fucks the moon, the other planets want nothing to do with him until a sassy little star from a nearby system shows them that sex can be more than exerting gravity and exchanging gases.

Keys to the Kitchens

If someone performed an act of heroism for their city (say, defeating SARS in hand-to-hand combat), a key to the city is sort of a lame gift. Hey, no-one ever locks it. Better gifts: a) pass to park anywhere, even in the middle of a highway or on a sidewalk; b) keys to everyone’s kitchens, meaning our hero is entitled to enter anyone’s home in the middle of the night and make a sandwich.

Try the Hot Pockets, They're Breakthtaking

If I were to say that Dr. Evil is the best comedy villain ever, would anyone argue? If I were to argue that Mike Myers is the best comedic actor since Pete Sellers, would you disagree? I can’t get enough of the three Powers films, and in particular I love Dr. Evil’s gradual progression into black culture. In the first film he attempts a little dance to demonstrate his hipness, but it looks like some sort of vaudeville thing. The moment he snaps must be the post-mojo seduction of Frau Farbissina in the second film – before you know it he’s pouring a 40 for his dead homies. And of course by the third film he’s locking down the prison to “Hard Knock Life”. What kind of wacky hijinx could he get up to next?

Here's To the Winnie

Here’s to the secret-cool bar that’s less secret by the day, the Winchester, the ex-dive with gutted old hangers-on and trendy kidsters and the butch lezzie with the breathtakingly elaborate mullet. Here’s to the quiet busboy, and the waitress with kind eyes and a bitchin’ laugh. Here’s to drinking Strongbows and Kilkennys while listening to glam and classic rocks battle the only way they know how. I’ll miss ya, I’m moving, but it’s been real swell this past little while – cheers, pal.

What I'm Wearing

Right now I’m wearing a suit on top of another suit: that’s how we do it when we want to get really dressed up. My ties have their own ties, my money clip is made of money, and my pengiun-hide chapeau is encrusted with diamonds and pie crust. My shades are so expensive they can see into the future, and they’re made by a brand too cool to even exist. I walk with a cane made from the spines of industrialists who I have bested in business, cooked, and eaten. I wear a twinkle in my eye, but there’s a little missile launcher inside the twinkle.

Scorcese / David

Up here in Canadia we’re behind in Curb Your Enthusiasm, so it’s good to take a look ahead with video clips such as this one featuring Mr. Scorcese.

Start Your Content-Publishing Engines

It’s on. Rock n’ roll, lock n’ load, let’s make it hot, and other action-commencement platitudes: ÿ and I (isn’t that some kinda secret-reggae thing?) are locked in a deadly competition for most posts this month (if I understand it correctly). And with posts like this, how can he beat me? In fact, as some kind of try not to say ‘shock and awe’ horrify and impress tactic, I plan to surpass my one-day post record this day. I need only two more.

Okay… I was going to try to slip that one in there, but ÿ felt the need to actually say something in his competition announcement post, so I better do likewise. Does anyone consider Catch Me If You Can a good film? Has no-one noticed that Steven Spielberg is falling apart, onscreen? His last five features are Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, AI, Saving Private Ryan and Amistad. Scour those films for anything of merit other than an opening battle scene. Everyone hates AI and Amistad; Saving Private Opening Battle Scene – well, even if I let you have that one, that’s still only one good film in the last five. Only Oliver Stone could have made his last two any longer. Frankly, few other directors would be allowed to turn in a two-and-a-half hour caper movie, and fewer still could get Hanks & DiCaprio in it, and even fewer still could cram in the sap n’ yawns like Spielie can lately. HEY NOW! Let’s get with the program, Steve-O! And I even liked The Lost World!

Ah… shooting fish in a bucket. In closing, I’d like to remind everyone that in this little competition, quality doesn’t matter at all.

iTunes Music Sharing

This is insane, if only in principle at the moment: a list of online shared music libraries that stream through iTunes. Thing is, those I could connect to kept on stalling and rebuffering, so it seems useless at the moment. But it could be cool if it developed further. Would the lawyers shut it down? Songs shared in this manner are streaming only, so it’s not like it’s a pirate’s paradise or anything.

Flight Risk, Word of Hand

Seems that this is the hot weblog right now, as it has its own Wired News article. Curious that the identity of the blogger is a subject of furious debate, once again, as with the now returned Salam Pax. At the conference the other day, someone asked about blogs and authenticity, leading me to relate the entire Kaycee Nicole story (hello, TV movie), and the more thought I give it the more important a sense of identity appears to be to weblogging. People read a given weblog because they like the personality behind it. Is it not true that the sites that stir up the most fuss are diary- rather than link-oriented?

More tomorrow: this is what I said yesterday, as if I’d come crashing through with brilliant insights that needed a day to germinate. The point is banal, more or less – that people want a sense of identity behind the weblogs they read – and the last thing I want to do is to add to the mounds of palaver masquerading as deep weblog thought, but it’s a point to keep in mind when comparing weblogs to journalism.

Yes, bloggers are more like columnists than just-the-facts-ma’am journos. But there’s something about weblogs, typically situated on one’s own independent and personalized site, that pushes the personality button a little harder, and we rush to find photos and ‘about’ pages and saucy autobiographical tidbits, moreso than when we read our favourite pundits from the legit press. There are the comments, too, which reveal a need for banter with the people we read: this again closes the distance. But it also means that every author’s authority is easier to challenge. And of course weblogs make authors of anyone. Author and audience lose meaning, so if I may dip into the Benjamin, whose prescience always astounds:

For centuries a small number of writers were confronted by

many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of

the last century. With the increasing extension of the

press, which kept placing new political, religious,

scientific, professional, and local organs before the

readers, an increasing number of readers became writers—at

first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press

opening to its readers space for “letters to the editor.”

And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who

could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish

somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances,

documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the

distinction between author and public is about to lose its

basic character. The difference becomes merely functional;

it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is

ready to turn into a writer. As expert, which he had to

become willy-nilly in an extremely specialized work process,

even if only in some minor respect, the reader gains access

to authorship. In the Soviet Union work itself is given a

voice. To present it verbally is part of a man’s ability to

perform the work. Literary license is now founded on

polytechnic rather than specialized training and thus becomes

common property.

And later:

Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art… The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. Such fusion is of great social significance. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. With regard to the screen the critical and the receptive attitudes of the public coincide.

It’s a casualization of expertise. It’s as if we want our news through word of mouth. We want everything filtered through friends. Rather than lose our experts, we make them into friends. When we get information from friends, we get a lot of other details, such as what they’re wearing, what they thought about the movie they watched last night, what they think about whatever it is. And that’s what we get from blogs.

To sum up: speaking about blogs has gone to my head, so I feel the need to hold forth on some new pet theory. It’s mundane, so I add some Walter Benjamin to make it look more complicated. It’s also so long that I’m painfully bored of writing it by the time it’s near-complete, so I go off on a self-critical tangent – to appear less of a pompous wannabe-expert, since the age of the expert blah blah yawn enough of this palaver. Back to reading about porn.

.

Def Jam Vendetta

My review of Def Jam Vendetta is up at shift, under Mark’s review, which makes me want to go get some fresh Prince Paul.

Blog Conference Speaker?

Sounds unlikely, I know. But it happened: I spoke at Rogers Publishing‘s MagsNorth conference, on the topic of weblogs. I covered the Blogging 101 part, Sandy dealt with blogging vs. journalism. It went rockin’ well, with lots of good discussion. The attendees included a few who knew little of the web, and two webloggers: Jay and someone whose name (and site) escaped me. Thanks to all who put this together & got me in there – I had a blast!

Brand Portals

Many of us resent the proliferation of brands across our countries. Too many Blockbusters, too many Starbuckses. However, if these brands offered an extra service, everything would be fine: if you could walk into any Blockbuster and pass through a portal that could take you to any other Blockbuster in the world – the more Blockbusters the better, right?

Weblog Rescue

It’s too bad Christopher Allbritton didn’t end off his journey by tracking down Salam Pax. No doubt the blog world would have forked over for an extended stay. And frankly, the blog world would then have its first Hollywood screenplay – I can hear the trailer now: In a time of war… the world came between them… but a frequently-updated web site brought them together.update, May 7th: he’s back! (via MeFi)

Vanishing Point

You’ve got to love a film that can fascinate gearheads and inspire great cinematographers, so you love Vanishing Point. Kowalski, Kowalski… where to begin? What surprised me most was that I hand’t seen it yet. Hippies envisioned themselves as cowboys, yet Kowalski’s a square, albeit a tolerant, kind, benny-popping kind of square, heading west in a blazeout of psychotic freedom, whose motives are flashbacked to us obliquely and somehow incompletely. Freedom’s the name of the game, of course, but it is framed in the terms of speed: “speed means freedom of the soul,” comments Supersoul, the blind, wise DJ who serves as the film’s symbolic narrator (and I thought I’d had enough of blind, wise black men). Once LES and I were asked by art students to sum up the 20th century in one word. Our answers sucked, but the proper answer came to us later: “speed.” Vanishing Point transmits it deep into the reptilian brain – the stunts, the photography render it perfectly, yet again with enough mystery that it lingers for [we’ll see how long], like that ex-friend who’s ‘between apartments’ on your couch and you wonder what he’s really up to. Primal scream cut an album to be played under the film, and Barry “Kowalski” Newman played Avary in another fave The Limey – these are things I learn from my friends, whose love of this film precedes mine by far.

Happyface.com

When I think happyface.com, I don’t think “surly oil worker,” but maybe that’s just me.