And Now For Something Completely Onanistic
I don’t consider myself perfect, but I at least believe I have the ability to make myself so, with the goal of subjugating the proletariat with my mental acuity. To that end, I’ve made it my mission to virtually surround myself with intellectual bloggers (no you’re an oxymoron) in order to learn and grow, and I’d like to share these people with you. If you’re an aspiring Smart Person, you should be following the following. Consider this the burgeoning, definitive Clever Writing List:
generic1
nerdshares
indefensible
happalieverafter
mills
buongiorno
bmichael
illinoisairship
perpetua
barthel
Honorable Mentions:
chainofknives (it’s a group blog by the old Idolator refugees)
Read the first page, maybe the second, of these blogs. I defy you not to feel smarter/challenged. If you have anybody I should be following, go ahead and Reply.
Shamu: Biting The Hand That Feeds You
EXT. WHALE PEN
Thousands of dumb civilians watch the trainer shout commands to the beautiful Orca.
TRAINER
Come on, Shamu! Do a flip. Do a flip. You want a fish? Do a flip.
SHAMU
You wanna see a flip, you fucker?
Crash zoom on Shamu’s lip, which curls back to reveal razor-sharp teeth, glinting in the sunlight. The aquatic beast breaches the surface, flipping eight or nine times through the air and landing mouth first, engulfing the trainer whole. The stands empty as the onlookers flee.
SHAMU
Cancel my appointments, I’m going fishing.
Cue title.
“I wouldn’t press the button and live a normal life. Not for all the tea in China.”
— Stephen Fry in The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive, a two part documentary about manic depression (which Fry suffers from). One thing all of the people he interviews on the programme have in common is that if they could press a button, and live without manic depression, they wouldn’t.
Sexy T-Rex considers the state of his soul.
“How about scissors that only work on living flesh when said flesh would prefer not to be cut? What if I invented THAT?” Ryan North is one smart dude, you guys! Also he replies to tweets, and has given me some pretty excellent advice.
This post was reblogged from Nerdshares.
“Favorite Movies: transformers I & II, Star Trek (wow i sound like a nerd hmm lol)”
— Almost everything makes me want to hurl society into a giant abyss these days, but none more than Facebook.
“This is an epic use of downtime. I stand in awe, and am ashamed to say that I would probably have just gotten on my laptop near an electrical outlet and blogged and answered email for ten hours.”
— Cory Doctorow, I will sodomize you with a lightsaber. What the fuck are you using the word “epic” so casually for? You should know better.
“The doctrine of Fair Use I condemn as quite erroneous
And probably harmful if not actively felonious
And though my own position may in time prove quite ephemeral
For now I am the model of a Pirate Finder General”
—
Comment of the Year | Why, That’s Delightful!
Goodness knows I love a good Gilbert and Sullivan parody, especially when it combines with the issue of Fair Use.
Stephen Fry talking about poetry on Jonathan Woss
One of the things I think about daily (other than “who will I put my dick in next?” and “my god reading your blogs gives me a migraine”) is the evolution, I hesitate to say degradation, of the English language. Today’s example: “More or less”. It seems like such a redundant phrase, but I like the rhythm it gives to some sentences. I’m definitely a fan of it, but sometimes I think ‘“More or less”, well which fucking one is it?’
“In adulthood, Winehouse spiraled out of control after success brought her enough money to buy all the drugs and booze her little heart desired.”
—
34 Sexy Celebrities When They Were Young | Popcrunch
Listen to me, guys, I’m positive this will happen to me. When I’m all famous, I need someone to volunteer to control me. I’ll pay you in literal peanuts. Diamond-encrusted peanuts.
“If there’s one thing that gets my goat, curries it and serves it up on a bed of flaming indignation, it is this habit of dividing the world in two.[…]But damn it bothers me when the choice of one thing is interpreted as a necessary repudiation of the other. People are always doing it. “You’re either a Beatles person or a Rolling Stones person” I’ve heard them say.”
“In the 19th and (before the end of the second World War) 20th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church adhered to a distinction between “good anti-Semitism” and “bad anti-Semitism”. The “bad” kind promoted hatred of Jews because of their descent.[…]The “good” kind criticized alleged Jewish conspiracies to control newspapers, banks, and other institutions, to care only about accumulation of wealth, etc. Many Catholic bishops wrote articles criticizing Jews on such grounds, and, when accused of promoting hatred of Jews, would remind people that they condemned the “bad” kind of anti-Semitism.”
— Abby prompted me to read about the persecution of Jews all day.
Some serious voodoo shit.
I. Am. Eating. It.
Chuck Klosterman once echoed the sentiment that it’s much more difficult to write about why you like something than writing about why you hate it. As I’m clearly very familiar with writing about things I hate, I’ve found it very difficult to write a compelling essay about how much I like Aaron Sorkin’s meta-drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Studio 60 launched at the same time as 30 Rock, without the backing of NBC nor Lorne Michaels. On the back foot from the start, Aaron Sorkin did his best to present interesting characters against the backdrop of a late-night sketch comedy show. Though Studio 60 and its rival bore a similar premise, the similarities were quite superficial. One was a screwball comedy, and the other tried and succeeded to strike a chord by exploring the tension and relationships of sketch comedians. As the underdog, it was not without its detractors, and earlier today, Avery clarified for me her stance on the show with some specific critique. I’ll now reduce her articulate comments to make her argument seem less coherent, and more like the ramblings of a complete psychopath because she doesn’t like the same cancelled television shows as me!
- The sketches in the show-within-a-show are not funny. At all.
I don’t disagree, but I think there’s a purpose. The boorish, blunt humour in the sketches is very evocative of modern-day Saturday Night Live, which has evaded hilarity quite skillfully for some time. The best you can hope for in SNL is an idea that’s clever rather than funny, and even then you have to wade through copious amounts of attempted comedy. I’m trying not to insult your intelligence by being trite and arguing that every fault the show has could be passed off as a commentary on the current state of comedy, but this fault, at least, is. I know because I get the same feeling from watching Studio 60’s sketches as I do watching SNL sketches: I know this is intended to be funny, I should be laughing, I just feel empty inside.
- Danny Tripp is a crazy stalker. He should be fired. Aaron Sorkin hates women.
The basis for Danny’s character comes from the fact that he’s really, deeply flawed, something all of the people around him are aware of. What makes him interesting is (other than the snappy dialogue) the fact that he’s a complete loser, yet he has to deal with being in love with his boss, becoming a father, and running one of the most famous television shows in the world, a struggle perhaps exemplified best by this exchange:
Danny Tripp: You need to trust me on this.
Matt Albie: You are?
Danny Tripp: Twice divorced
Matt Albie: And you have?
Danny Tripp: No one special in my life
Matt Albie: And you haven’t for?
Danny Tripp: Quite some time
- The racist shit between Simon Stiles and Darius the New Guy. We’re meant to be on Simon’s side, despite the fact that’s he’s being incredibly offensive in making Darius’ entire identity about that fact that he’s a black guy
I always felt like we were supposed to oppose Simon, actually. It seemed like the show was deliberately making him seem like an entitled prick at every turn, that because he’d made his way out of the hood he felt like he deserved to be assigned importance, despite his level of talent (or lack thereof, he can’t even do the voices). It’s pretty clear that Simon has a serious problem with race, as we see in “The Wrap Party” where he talks to Matt about hiring a black writer. It’s not that he doesn’t think Matt can write for black guys, it’s just about having a black writer on the staff. The overwhelming attitude of the staff has nothing to do with race, though, and Darius certainly transcends stereotypes (though between Darius and 30 Rock’s Toofer, maybe it’s a stereotype unto itself).
While I fucking love 30 Rock (I have some problems with it that I might elaborate on at some point), Studio 60 will always be the more important show to me. “Everyone shut up, shut up Lutz” and “Cranston, why are you crying” are hilarious, but are swept aside by countless bites of witty banter between Danny and Matt, dialogue I still quote, to confused looks, years after its cancellation. I like the way the characters discuss real world issues, it’s believable to me because that’s how intelligent people converse, about important things, especially when those people work on a show that’s job is to parody and highlight those issues. I like that the characters feel like real people. I like that Matthew Perry was on TV again. And I like that the show is like its characters: Faulted, flawed, but nevertheless, brilliant. You need to trust me on this.
(via hydeordie)
This seems like the kind of thing you see minutes after you hit the tarmac. Seconds later a homeless guy dressed as a raggedy Spiderman spits in your eye, and the record scratches on your internal soundtrack.
This post was reblogged from hyde or die.
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