June 27, 2009 at 9:40 am · Filed under I Wrote It, Journalism, Music, SAST-Pinball
I left the following comment to this story, “How Michael Jackson’s death shut down Twitter, brought chaos to Google… and ‘killed off’ Jeff Goldblum“. Comments are moderated but I think it’ll be published.
Read the Daily Mail story so the following will make sense. How much do you agree?
Skipping over the loss of a great musician and troubled soul for this comment only - this article, this writer tries REALLY hard to make TMZ sound credible by pushing that they broke the news and letting its managing director use the line, we wouldn’t publish it if it wasn’t true. Gullible anyone?
This glosses over two things 1) People who go to TMZ don’t expect truth and 2) TMZ has nothing to lose - such as credibility - by publishing rumor - which is all the site is known for.
Accurate is far more important than being first - believing otherwise is how we got into our collective misinformation mess.
Try and add up the times it’s been wrong - like the Drudge Report - and it’s quickly embarrassing - or should be - to try and use “TMZ” and “credible” in the same universe.
Fool yourself if you want but that’s all you’re doing.
June 20, 2009 at 11:45 pm · Filed under Politics
People give too much credit to Bill O’ Reilly. Anything above zero is too much.
I honestly believe I’m even smarter without TV. Yes, that means I believe I was smart before, got a problem with that? If you do, sorry you think you’re stupid. Now that I’ve endeared you to my cause in an O’Reilly type of way - it works for him right - shut up and let me make my point.
People who go on his show always come away surprised, it seems, that they were treated as nothing more than foils, as punching bags for a lot of “Me and I” belief and feeling statements from Bill O Reilly. As if I, as if anyone should give a shit.
The man, like Jeff Jarvis, started out as an entertainment “reporter.” And the air quotes are well earned. All of a sudden, because people allow them to raise their voices and say some of the dumbest shit this side of a Jim Kerrey movie, they think they’re experts and have something important to say. And even though they’re wildly incoherent most of the time; even though they’re unbelievably sure everything they say is the truth.
They are both caricatures, and not good ones. Not good for society,. NOt good for the actual flow of worthy information and not good in presenting valid opinion anymore than any time of rabid ideologue. Or even worse, those who pretend to have no directed ideology and label themselves “independent thinkers.”
More bluster. More bullshit. Less education. No solutions worthy of the name.
I don’t have to deal with it, I don’t have a TV and I don’t pay attention to Jeff Jarvis’ Buzzmachine anymore. (For the longest time as he shat on anything “big media” the top of his site proudly displayed a screenshot of himself on MSNBC. Important or not important Jeff, or do you just lie for a living and for convenience, like Bill O’ Reilly? Rhetorical)
Read the rest of this entry »
June 14, 2009 at 10:16 pm · Filed under NBA, Pro Sports
David Aldridge, a TNT NBA analyst put together a worthy three-part series about the belief of many of the sports fans that the referees are under orders to change games; to cook the results.
It’s a worthy read:
I - The state of officiating: Conspiracy charges hard to swallow
II - The state of officiating: Superstars don’t get all the calls
III - The state of officiating: What’s wrong and how to fix it
Spoiled only by the fact that it’s hosted at NBA.com, so you kind of know where it’s going before it starts, it’s the third part that offers solutions.
Read the rest of this entry »
June 14, 2009 at 9:36 pm · Filed under Music, Review
The man behind Ace Noface says the title of his debut album, Toxic Charm refers to the lure others have to his sickness - or at least one of them.
You’ll find yourself falling under its spell, with what is a compelling CD on many levels.
This 10-track CD, is part of the swath of music that seeks to deliver a message - with a great sound - above everything else. When a person’s major life changes are put to music, there’s no telling what might happen.
Everyone has a different approach. And reasons for laying it on the line are wide as the questions of beginning, middle, end. Lee, aka Ace, has a few reasons for wanting to do so.
” Toxic Charm refers to the intoxicating attractiveness bipolar people like me exude in the hypomanic states,” Lee says. “Toxic charm has been the force behind many an interesting first date for me.”
Read the rest of this entry »
June 13, 2009 at 1:19 pm · Filed under Books, Family & Friends & Me
I bought some used books, um just a little bit ago (ahem, February). So, now seems like the perfect time to write about them.
The book sale (photos) was at the Arizona State Fairgrounds, and it seemed to be more popular than the gun show held in the same building a little while later.
Here’s what I bought, in no particular order.
••• The Black House - Stephen King and Peter Straub - hardback, 1st edition 2001
– The X-Files: Whirlwind - Charles Grant - 1995
••• Catch-22 - joseph Heller - 1970 Dell Publishing edition
– Rabbit is Rich - John Updike - (he had died recently, Jan. 28) - 1981 edition
••• Chapterhouse: Dune - Frank Herbert - hardback, 1st edition 1985
– Tequila - edited by Alberto Ruy-Sánchez and Margarita de Orellana - non-fiction 2004
••• Children of Dune - Frank Herbert - 1981
– Pudd’nhead Wilson - Mark Twain - 1964 (a wonder of thought)
••• The Haunted Mesa - Louis L’ Amour - small hardback, 2002 (his take on the Anasazi)
Mondo Desperado - Patrick McCabe - Hardback, 1st U.S. edition, 1999 (the pulp fiction cover meshed amusingly with “One of Ireland’s finest living writers.” on the front cover.
– Flint Spears Cowboy Rodeo Contestant - Will James - hardback 1946, The World Publishing Company
••• The X-Files: Ground Zero - Kevin J. Anderson - 1996
– The X-Files: Ruins - Kevin J. Anderson - 1997
••• Pronouncing Dictionary of Musical Terms - Hugh A. Clarke - hardback, 1896 (Theodore Presser Co.)
June 7, 2009 at 11:07 am · Filed under Books, I Wrote It
When you read a novel, you are supposed to be able to forget who wrote it. The power of the story is meant to carry you away, so when you’re reading you forget surroundings, you are transported into walking down the dirt paths of another’s creation.
You remember who you’re reading for two reasons; when your other consciousness intrudes and tells you you have to be somewhere else, you have to be doing something else, and you stop reading, place a bookmark and close the covers. And that’s the moment you remember there are pages and a cover to the world you had just inhabited.
The second is that the writing is so awful the storyteller, the pilot, is failing in his task to transport you. You are aware of the writing, being tripped up by the prose and every obstacle jutted jars your journey and reminds you of that horrible, pitiful failure.
And there’s a third reason. A !@#$% damn fool reason. An obscenity filled reason why. Because the author in his innate belief that he’s being wily, fucks it up deliberately.
“If we rise another 100 feet into the immaculate air and scan what lies beneath and ahead, we see kettle moraines, coulees, blunted hills …”
“When we drift downward, we hear George Rathbun’s genial bellow rising toward us from several windows.”
“While she takes a moment to admire her work, we can peer over her crisp shoulder and see that the poster announces …”
“Let us flow in through the big glass doors, cross the handsome lobby (noting, as we do so, the mingled odors of air freshener and ammonia that pervade even the public areas of all such institutions), pass through the door bearing Chipper’s name, and find out what that well-arranged young woman is doing here so early.”
“Rebecca Vilas, we gather, has arranged herself to be seen, has struck a pose intended to be appreciated, though certainly not by us.”
“Oh, forget about that. We know where Jack Sawyer went when he disappeared from the edge of the cornfield. And we know who he is likely to meet when he gets there. Enough of that stuff. We want fun, we want excitement. Luckily for us …. ”
Every time “we” read something like this, the thing that first floods “our” brain is, I’m me, who’s this other part of “us” and “we?”
Well it’s the author. It can be nothing and no one else. This isn’t a first person account, where the welcome pretense is that the writer is also the main character. That’s cheap but effective and, most importantly, consistent.
Hi author, yeah I saw you on the dust jacket, your name on the cover; a cover I’ve usually forgotten exists at this point. What, you’re going to be the biggest voice for the next 100 pages or so? Yeah, see, not such a good idea. Your part is the hello dear readers, the dedication, and any thoughts at the end of the story you’re currently trying to fill my brain with. We can call it an outro. Yes we can.
The author, with a misguided cleverness wants to introduce himself into his own world. And nothing subtle about it. We’re not talking Alfred Hitchcock cameo here, not Rod Sterling at the beginning of each Twilight Zone episode. Nope, we’ve got hogging the spotlight, leaving everything else on the stage in shadows.
The lights go out.
It’s the comedienne explaining her joke. It’s the magician going step by step, describing what you should be seeing, not the fiction your senses are telling you is reality.
“Enough of that stuff. We want fun, we want excitement. ”
Excuse the fuck me but shut the fuck up. Don’t tell me what I want at this point in your novel; in the story you’ve just ripped me out of - again! And you seem to think that at some of the most dramatic points in your book, it’s the you of “we” and “us” we need to hear. You’re failing, flailing and assailing your dear readers with your, at this point, pathetic voice.
Wrong voice.
I’m reading “Black House” by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s a sequel to The Talisman, itself a thick book which my now dead uncle Chuck left behind at my parent’s house when he visited once. I bought “Black House” for $5 at a huge used book sale at the Arizona Fair Grounds earlier this year.
From its opening words, sentences and paragraphs I hated this horribly misguided visual guidance, as if the authors were already thinking camera angles for the movie.
I’m stumbling through this story, which when told sans author speeds along well. No one likes to be deliberately tripped up, especially by people you sense are smart enough to know better, who look ahead to potential and decide instead to revert to raw, easy, idiocy.
And there’s one more thing “we” need to discuss. It’s less painful because it’s far more fleeting, yet more painful because it stinks of panicked desperation, and the smell hasn’t gone away as I’ve journeyed further in the tale.
Out of nowhere Roland The Gunslinger appears. Roland will be familiar to those who’ve read King’s “The Dark Tower” series, some of his best work.
For just about three sentences Roland’s thrown into the mix, where there was no hint before; unless any mention of tower is meant to draw us, bloodied into a snap of logic. No hint; not one where the ground has been prepped, in any case. If you are going to do it, you need to spend some time and stitch it all together with craft, not just throw fabric on the ground and call it clothing.
The merging of other worlds can work, but as “The Talisman” itself showed, as “Black House’ is spending its time telling us, it’s not really meant to be.
That is what’s on my mind every time you, dear author, open your mouth instead of your mind.
We have met the storyteller’s enemy and it is “us.”
June 5, 2009 at 9:32 pm · Filed under Family & Friends & Me, TV/Movies
I don’t know when I watched. In many ways my childhood is a miasma of shadows with very little revealed by light. The series of Kung Fu has shaped me like no other TV series on the planet. Which, perhaps isn’t saying a lot because television series don’t sway more than a light breeze on a spring day in most cases.
The dude has died; David Carradine died this week, aged 72. Thoughts of suicide seemed like a black dark storm cloud, and one I saw through early. Though suicide is a break from logic and reason, still, i didn’t think the actor and more importantly the personal culture space he occupied for me, could be cirrupted in so useless a manor.
That it was Bangkok, of course, immediate;y brought sec to the forefront, forbidden, depraved, shoot-to-kill sex even. But suicide for this individual? no.
Caine to me represented a close perfection of aspiration. Humble. Damn it, the world would be such a wonderful place if people lived lives of personal humility, where they did NOT sell themselves beyond all rason, where exaggeration was not king, where admitting you can learn from almost anybosy was the normal course of things.
And, of course, never wanting to stop learning. Such an tight admirable quality to possess; not to crow about but to just live.
And then there was the absolute power, the restraint to sit back and take a calm position while everything around you spins up into a dervish of violence. Kwai Chang Caine had this pure willpower that enabled him to rise above the petty. And, though he rose, he would efficiently and completely kick your ass in self-defense of himself and the temporarily defenseless.
In my mind at least Kwai Chang Caine and David Carradine were one and the same, and Carradine seemed to have absorbed at least some of the knowledge of his role, as he took to walking barefoot in his travels.
If you can live a life of standards and principles, for the most part, you have lived a worthy life, regardless of societal norms. That is bald, universal, timeless truth.
*** ***
There was a resurrection of the Kung Fu series. I watched a few of them - father and son team but the modern / throwback angle was a little too played out about the second time they produced it. I watched it because it hinted at the aura of the original “television” series because of the continuity of David Carradine. It was absolutely nothing like the original, with none of the knowledge, none of the depth and none of the power. It was run-of-the-mill, its best moments flashbacks. It was OK, but it paled badly in the shine of the orginal series.
In other words, a product of its late-20th Century time, as was the first series when people weren’t afraid to pursue their knowledge or reveal they were thinking about more than gossip and pursuing dollar.
So depressing to think about. And I think about it often, though it does not, in itself, make me actually depressed, because I have my own life and depression doesn’t help pursuit of anything but a short life.
David Carradine died at 72. His death can go fuck itself, compared to the impact this one series, in my whenever-it-was years, had on my life. Thank you sir. Thank you writers, of course. More power to your full life, with the tensile strength to make the intelligent even more so, and more importantly thoughtful about life’s pursuits and reason. God bless your every cell.
April 29, 2009 at 11:59 pm · Filed under Photography
I’ve lived in Phoenix for about 16 months and I really don’t know downtown Phoenix well. And I know it not all all through my camera lenses. It’s a fascinating place. [Photos are completely unprocessed]
Mel, from Birmingham, Alabama, is in a wheelchair, a veteran and travels with his dog Delilah. i went up to say hello after I’d taken photos of him coming toward me. I met him again about an hour later, as I circled around. ©2009 Temple A.Stark
Don’t just take 5, take 20. ©2009 Temple A.Stark
©2009 Temple A.Stark
More at Flickr
April 29, 2009 at 7:07 pm · Filed under Family & Friends & Me
Good, I followed through.
After a couple of weeks of saying i would, I did. Yesterday as I was just starting to drive home I was in the middle lane of a three lane road and there it was, again. I literally fought with my brain whether i should pull it over to the right and pull in.
There comes a point where you run out of excuses; where your willingness and need to do something you don’t know whether you can do or commit to overrides everything else. I need to work out. I’m not incredibly, horribly, disfigured by fat but I’m bigger than I wanna be and definitely less out-of-shape than I need to be to enjoy life to the fullest. It’s at the point where i believe I could easily get into shape, so I need to do that NOW!
So, I joined LAFitness.com
Went in, saw a few hundred machines. That’s a plus because I need choices; I need options when I try to tell myself I’m bored. Chris Gamboa took care of me. Gave me a mini-tour of everything, signed me up for a $148 outlay and a $25-a-month commitment.
Talked a little about areas I wanted to work on, and about getting into the swing of it early with just being able to breath better as my body works beyond walking around.
Tomorrow I have a personal trainer session with Cass, who’ll get a little more detailed into what i want and what machines woudl be best to get there.
The last thing Chris said was, hope to see you tomorrow. I know I made a “I don’t think so” face and said, “I’ll try.” I think my own expression was the greatest motivator for getting me back in the gym today.
Treadmill 20 minutes
Various tricep, shoulder and whatever the hell the muscles are - lateral abs?? - underneath current love handles. (A man should only have one love handle) - 40 minutes.
My arms felt it the most; a little jellified. They’re weak. It’s early. That’s one of the points of being here.
I need to get different shoes. I have high-top basketball shoes right now.
But good, I followed through. Onward (BBFS - Bigger Better Faster Stronger)
—————-
Now playing: Eminem - Lose Yourself
via FoxyTunes
April 28, 2009 at 1:32 am · Filed under I Wrote It, Poetry He Says
We both wanted to believe
but what does that leave
I did not
She did
And we both hid
There are words exchanged
but what does that change
I’m the same
She’s unmoving
And we’re both proving
Nothing.
From colored opposite ways
Returned over routine days
I sought
She stopped
And we dropped
Pretense
Or rather it was me
Who motored to flee
I search
She settles
In a bed of stinging nettles
Which sting but lightly
Yet itch forthrightly
I move for better
She violates
Emotions in crates
Separated at birth
A future dearth
I pine
She declares
You are caught unawares
After
April 18, 2009 at 7:20 pm · Filed under Graphic Design
I haven’t regularly used FireFox for Mac for about 5 months. That great feature that auto-saves all currently open tabs when you close it - that’s death.
One - Every time you open it, you’re back in the past - to old links, old discussions, old passing interests, old news. While, clearly it helps archive useful links that you do want to blog, share, etc, there’s always too many
2) Too many tabs makes opening the browser slow. When you want something quick, when you click a link in e-mail for example, you don’t get quick. Death.
3) As I’ve just experienced, it can be slow loading various multimedia elements. And it crashes. I’d forgotten what that’s like.
4) Sucks memory. So does Safari, but that seems to be much more stable than it used to be.
So here’s a few of the tabs I’ve had saved for the last four months:
DESIGN: Ways to include phone # on letterheads / business cards –> Flickr gallery
LIFE ONLINE: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”: One of many such articles.
DESIGN / PHOTOSHOP - More PS Brushes than I’ll ever want @ Designer Daily
WORDPRESS: Upgrading to Wordpress 2.6 (oops, seems some of these may be older than I thought)
LIFE ONLINE: FoxyTunes plug-in for Firefox. just installed, we’ll see. I can definitely see potential benefits.
SPORTS: NBA Audio / Video All-Access - actually using right now to listen to Spurs -Mavericks Game 1 in 2009 playoffs
LIFE ONLINE: My Xanga site: Glorified G - the only thing there is a cool name. Actually was a bookmark, too. Put it there to remind myself imy Xangasite exists. I will now promptly forget, no doubt, since I’m removing tab and bookmark.
LIFE ONLINE: Top 16 MySpace CSS Profile codes - And noen wil make MySpace load quicker; so apped up it’s hulky, bulky, not useful
MEDICINE: 207 Article on utereus transplants - Womb transplants may be possible, but what happens next remains unclear
FOOD: LINDT Chocolate Company - LindtUSA
MYCOKEREWARDS: I have points, but lost password. I have approximately 1,500 plastic bottle caps with codes inside them. When I last visited you could only input 10 caps in per day and the prizes sucked bad. The prixes look varied and better now. So, I’ll see if i can get password back. At least I remember what e-mail I used.
NEWS: From Jan. 2007 FBI: Workers saw prisoner abuse at Guantanamo
ONLINE TECH: Uncover your own IP address if unsure — ip-adress.com
ONLINE FUN: Tool to put your own text on any image. Cheap results but cheaper than Photoshop
ONLINE LIFE: Puts Google Talk gadget / window to left of browser while you, uh browse elsewhere.
MUSIC: BT.ETREE - Trade zone for trade-friendly artists’ live shows / mp3s. Niice.
POLITICS: Restore-Habeas.org used to exist but they’ve given up, apparently - restore-habeas.org
POLITICS: Jerusalem Post, March 2008 - Vanity Fair: Bush approved plot to oust Hamas
April 12, 2009 at 11:39 pm · Filed under Books, Link Out, Politics
It doesn’t take a lick of flames to erase a book, now. A keystroke and a flaccid excuse will do the damage.
Something has polluted the waters over at Amazon.com. Easter seems to have resurrected the puritan evangelical idiocy strain at the Seattle company which heretofore had been suppressed like thought under a dictatorship. People had learned to love Amazon.com more than Microsoft and not quite as much as Starbucks.
The Story So Far
Over the last few days Amazon.com has implemented a standard of “de-ranking’ books in their listings with “Adult” themes. And adult seems to have - somehow, ahem - included many more gay and lesbian titles than others.
To believe this makes sense you would have to agree that gay and lesbian titles are more sexual in nature than everything else. Yet people - many the authors themselves - have easily figured out that the most innocuous of books, even those helping to stop young gay men and women from suicide have been “black unlisted.” At the same time, books of a much more explicit nature - and even items that are not books such as sex toys - retain their status as deserving of recognition among the greater product populous.
De-ranking means more than the comparative sold factoid disappearing from listings. It also means the titles are instantly gone from bestseller lists and many search functions in Amazon.
So what’s up?
Twitter Shit Storm
Read the rest of this entry »
April 12, 2009 at 11:58 am · Filed under Quote
Actually mate, I see it a little differently. See, I always thought the world was a toilet. ‘Tis nice to learn it can function as a bidet, also.”
April 4, 2009 at 1:04 pm · Filed under TV/Movies
[insert string of swear words here] …. Oh my god, I’m in the 35th minute of the 14th hour of the seventh series of 24.
John Quinn (an assassin for defense contractor Starkwood) has just shot Sen. Blaine Mayer who is ready to put Jack Bauer behind bars for a very long time. However, Bauer had made his way into the Senator’s house, on the run from those who think he killed a federal witness out of revenge for the death of his longtime friend, Bill Buchan.
Bauer is there as the Senator answers the door from “the local police” - and now the already entertained idea that Bauer went to the senator’s house to continue his revenge spree is confirmed.
I just watched this less than two minutes ago (via iTunes download) and had to write something in reaction.
….
Jon Voight plays a very good villain. A cherubic face is often the instrument of death, it conceals more than it reveals. Handsome is often confused with angelic, but that’s not what I mean here. Handsomeness, or beauty, conceals for entirely different reasons, often to do with dead-on-arrival hope.
The president’s daughter, after welcoming the reconciliation with her mother, I now (in the context of the show ) deeply hate for letting power get to her head absolutely and completely. Pettiness is often a weakness of character; an inability to deal with and focus on greater problems in your life. She typifies it, currently. In the way she was willing to go dirty in her mother’s campaign; in the way she held a grudge for so long against her mother for doing what was right and kickng her off the campaign; in her desire to attack those closer to her mother than she is, at the first opportunity.
Blood speaketh and brains diminish - and you will find admirers of actions taken for both parts of that reality.
During this series (at this moment) I admire the writers more than Bauer, but as everything builds, like a house of cards, like a straw hut erected in hurricane season, I worry their ability to keep it together without just yanking the carpet of credulity out from under all of us. But they are adding layers and thought and consequences and “greyness” to their writing, but not so much to muddle everything. So far, so good (and evil)
March 31, 2009 at 2:34 am · Filed under Photography, Pro Sports
The Oakland A’s Ryan Sweeney launches a skyrocketing single in a Spring Training game against the Chicago White Sox. The game, which the White Sox won 12-10, was held at Phoenix Municipal Stadium, March 22. ©2009 Temple A. Stark
Next entries »
