that really smokes my skillet
Thursday, 8 October 2009 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtI'm subscribed to the IT mailing list of my Cherished Institution, mostly because there's a sort of mournful satisfaction in finally receiving the mail which tells you that you haven't had internet for two days on account of a virus/a DoS attack/that worm that targets promiscuous student swappage of memory sticks/an explosion in the server room/the giant squid attack on the undersea cable. Today the notification was of a routine electrical power-down in one of the buildings over the weekend, ostensibly because "A new supply cable needs to be pulled in and livened up." I am fascinated by the word choice. Do you think this is inept use of vocab, or actual technical terms? do electrical engineering types indeed talk about "livening up" a cable when it's connected? It's lovely word choice in some ways because it sounds energetically physical.
I think everymoment recommended M.T. Anderson's feed to me, and I spent a couple of hours yesterday imbibing it in a single, gulping inhale while flat on my back on the sofa (Sid has been all rampageous, with enthusiastic assistance from glandular fever resurgence; I couldn't look at a computer screen without active nausea until about 3pm yesterday and was feeble and spaced enough not to actually feel guilty that I wasn't at work). It's a damned good book, a sort of dystopian near-future young adult thing that's surprisingly dark and real in its depiction of teen relationships and concerns. Mostly, though, I was blown away by the writer's ability to capture not only the delirious speed and flickering change of a data feed plugged straight into your brain, but use of that data by the pervasive, iniquitous, seductive power of corporate consumerism. It's not a cheerful book, despite its hip surface and moments of humour: it's a tragedy, a meditation on the power of consumerism to pervade, to betray and to diminish its participants to a level of unthinking, oblivious naivety which presents itself as pathos rather than culpability. These kids struggle only feebly towards knowledge, context or understanding of either themselves or the rape being perpetrated on their world by the corporate interests which lull them with ownership. The fate of the one main character is tragic because it simply depicts, more quickly and obviously, the fate which awaits them all as capitalism, blindly grabbing, destroys them all. It's an absorbing, terrifying, slightly harrowing read that I wholeheartedly recommend.
Middleman gave us "The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation", last night, an episode tragically low in Goofy Middlemisms, although points for "Bram Stoker's widow!". Suitable vampire references litter the thing, but only this series can entwine Vlad the Impaler with sinister ventriloquists' models in one episode, leading to the interchange which neatly encapsulates the episode:
The Middleman: Dubbie, did he just turn into a bat puppet?
Wendy: Man, I don't even have an opinion.
This show, how much it is loved. By me. And, hopefully, after all these carefully-displayed gems, by most of you lot too.
I think everymoment recommended M.T. Anderson's feed to me, and I spent a couple of hours yesterday imbibing it in a single, gulping inhale while flat on my back on the sofa (Sid has been all rampageous, with enthusiastic assistance from glandular fever resurgence; I couldn't look at a computer screen without active nausea until about 3pm yesterday and was feeble and spaced enough not to actually feel guilty that I wasn't at work). It's a damned good book, a sort of dystopian near-future young adult thing that's surprisingly dark and real in its depiction of teen relationships and concerns. Mostly, though, I was blown away by the writer's ability to capture not only the delirious speed and flickering change of a data feed plugged straight into your brain, but use of that data by the pervasive, iniquitous, seductive power of corporate consumerism. It's not a cheerful book, despite its hip surface and moments of humour: it's a tragedy, a meditation on the power of consumerism to pervade, to betray and to diminish its participants to a level of unthinking, oblivious naivety which presents itself as pathos rather than culpability. These kids struggle only feebly towards knowledge, context or understanding of either themselves or the rape being perpetrated on their world by the corporate interests which lull them with ownership. The fate of the one main character is tragic because it simply depicts, more quickly and obviously, the fate which awaits them all as capitalism, blindly grabbing, destroys them all. It's an absorbing, terrifying, slightly harrowing read that I wholeheartedly recommend.Middleman gave us "The Vampiric Puppet Lamentation", last night, an episode tragically low in Goofy Middlemisms, although points for "Bram Stoker's widow!". Suitable vampire references litter the thing, but only this series can entwine Vlad the Impaler with sinister ventriloquists' models in one episode, leading to the interchange which neatly encapsulates the episode:
The Middleman: Dubbie, did he just turn into a bat puppet?
Wendy: Man, I don't even have an opinion.
This show, how much it is loved. By me. And, hopefully, after all these carefully-displayed gems, by most of you lot too.
