c u r m u d g e o n

March 2, 2001

Napster to me is like sex to porn stars: lucrative but tiring. Its woes offer some wonderful byline opportunities and gets great coverage (which is more than I ever expected or deserved), but I feel pigeon-holed at the same time. Same goes for other techie-writers on the block (doesn't anyone care about dot-com crashes or monopolies or Quake anymore?). No matter, though, as the ruling comes down today.

Our editor insists on finding out what "the underground" is doing in Napster's presumed demise. So I ask you, o hip readers, how are you beating your soon-to-be-here Napster withdrawl? Anyone out there actually using Gnutella, iMesh, OpenNap or Scour? How about Usenet groups? Let me know your thoughts on the Napster situation (or your dirty dirty non-Napster secrets -- highly encouraged). This is obviously a cheap, last minute, highly-hack job on a story, and on a normal day I'd denounce such irresponsible journalism (remember Mr. Toronto Star?), but lunch is in two hours :P
posted by Fender Bender at 9:59 AM

February 28, 2001

hmmm...bloggers across the land got an article written about them. some people are conspicuously missing. write to the author and let him know he fucked up.

listening to eazy-e, new kids, bikini kill and the bangs. a nice way to wrap up a nice day which included lunch with nancy and cathy, beating deadlines, and overall kicking much ass. sunlight really does affect mood. this i'm convinced of now.
posted by Fender Bender at 10:59 PM

February 26, 2001

Sadly, I was forced to remove BlogVoices from the site. It was too slow. Another bite off Ernie that, in the hands of rookies, could not be tamed.

Speaking of untamable, a little diddy for you: Macworld is this big Macintosh expo held in different countries throughout the year. The most recent one was in Tokyo where a mind-numbingly ugly iMac was released. Really, they're hideous, but I digress.

So pretty standard stuff going on, except for this odd report on MacCentral's website. It describes all the Japanese "babes" at the expo.

Now I don't doubt these girls were cute. Women who try to sell you stuff usually are. But why get so excited about Macworld Tokyo's women? Why aren't there articles written on, say, Macworld SF's women? Weren't they cute, too? Could it be that they weren't Asian? Curious, no?

So that's my two cents. Overreacting? Maybe. But I let Mr. Burns' "chinaman" crack from last night's Simpsons off the hook. So I can't be THAT angry, now can I?
posted by Fender Bender at 9:01 PM

Remember that film Cinema Paradiso? How the movie house's flickering screen enamors young Salvatore so deeply. How his bond with Alfredo the projectionist blooms as each day and each afternoon's showing goes by. Wasn't that beautiful?

Well, honeychile, that ain't me.

In general, I'm not much of a moviegoer. The reasons are numerous. I'm too fidgety to sit still for two hours, movies are way expensive, it's in the dark, blah blah blah. That magic (obsessiveness?) some people posses I've never really known

The point of all this is last Saturday, Nancy took me to see Crouching Tiger. Late to the chapel, I know, but OH. MY. GOD. absolutely AMAZING. How could you not leave the theater without falling for Zhang Zi Yi or Chang Chen? or both, if you like. Forget Rick Yune, Chang Chen is here to save our butts. By "our" I mean "culturally emasculated Asian males everywhere," and by "save our butts" I mean "have relations." (you know...relations relations.)

Now, my boss, a far east scholar, thought Crouching Tiger to be "too westernized." She cited the line "be true to yourself" in particular and subsequently read me the riot act on everything from imperialism to 19th-century identity politics to bunches of other stuff over my head. Now don't get me wrong, I analyzed films (read: bullshitted a lot) for 3 years at Davis and do it every day at work, but I got tired of masking collegiate insecurities with fancy-sounding academic-y rhetoric. My know-it-all-roommate does that and it's incredibly annoying. But now that there's no more pressure to critique or analyze anything, movies and books have morphed themselves into real pleasures instead of real work.

So what I'm trying to say is, let's go see a movie! I won't say no this time. (And to you-know-who, "movie" does not mean American Booty, Stag Nation, Slop Gun or any of your other "picks." Frickin' deve.)
posted by Fender Bender at 3:45 PM

rewind, yo.