All posts from January, 2006

Woman #2: That’s her! That’s her! That’s the New Yorker who cursed at me and threatened me!

I lived briefly in Greenpoint, but I never appreciated it like these people do.

Just read this old, but good article on Slate, with one of the funniest introductory paragraphs I’ve ever read:

Aspiring cultural juggernauts could not have asked for a better how-to guide to world domination than Garfield: The Movie, out in theaters today. The film is an example of the kind of product that Garfield creator Jim Davis likes to attach his product’s name to: Predictable, unfunny, and eminently forgettable. The movie won’t take the nation by storm—in fact, it will probably vanish very quickly—but it will make a tidy sum in theaters and on DVD and then be remembered only by the small sample of tots in the viewing audience who turn into ironic hipsters during their college years.

Ouch. Care Bears The Movie, anyone?

Enough already!

Hey, Google. Isn’t it about time to take that silly little word BETA out of your Gmail logo? Don’t your users– and, I’m just guessing here– number in the tens of millions, and aren’t you only like the richest and fastest-growing corporation on the planet, and don’t you have Bill Gates lying awake every night in a cold sweat? So, time to stand behind the quality of your product. My grampa uses Gmail. It’s gone past the “testing” phase, seriously.

And you, Yahoo!. So, you bought this funny little photo sharing site from some guys in Vancouver. And sure, there were some small bugs. And they warned people of this by pointing out that the site was still in BETA. But, most of your users now are actually paying a small hunk of change to use this service, and you, while no Google, are certainly pretty freakin’ far from a small handful of hackers in a rented office somewhere in Vancouver. So, get with the program already and stop charging people money for something that you proudly claim is only half-baked.

Friendster, I had words for you, but now I see that you’ve actually graduated from BETA status into full-fledged, grown up, mature website product. And for that, I congratulate you.

And audible.com, I’m sorry, but you can’t just go back into BETA after eight years on the web. It just doesn’t work that way.  That’s like me saying I’m 26.

And to Fotolog, Vimeo, Last.fm, and all the other genuinely small, indie, ingenious, punk-rock sites on the web: thank you for not throwing some silly word around like it’s the new Internet AIDS ribbon.

Anyone spot any other egregious misuses of the word BETA?

SAS airlines just sent me an email about their new “Business Class Flat Beds,” which offer a roomy 79″ of “living space,” as well as a big 10″ monitor with 23 channels. Let’s look at all the exciting features I’ll gaze at longingly from Coach on my next intercontinental flight! (Click to enbiggen…)

My personal favorites are the “secondary cocktail area” and “power assisted water bottle stowage.” But where do the barf bags go?

Most people know the IKEA, blonde-wood-and-beige-upholstery Scandinavian style, but every time I go to Sweden I’m struck by all the neon signs hanging above every shop. Every decently-sized city I’ve been to has a ton, and they’re all very stylized with a sort of art-deco, 1930′s elegance. I decided on this most recent trip that I should start taking snapshots. There’s a few more right now on my flickr.

Unfortunately whenever I come back from a vacation I’m always shocked by how little I photographed and I always feel like I should have more. I guess all shutterbugs feel that way, though.

I am doing a little springcleaning and rearranging over here, and so things may look a little wonky for the next couple days as I tweak them to my satisfaction. Bear with me, people.

You know, it constantly amazes me that some people refuse to see homosexuality as anything other than a purely modern phenomenon:

<< What may be the first depiction of a gay kiss was discovered in a 4,000-year-old Egyptian tomb… Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were painted together for eternity in an embrace usually associated with heterosexual couples

<< One of the largest and most beautiful of all the tombs in the necropolis at Saqqara… The “Tomb of the Hairdressers” or “Tomb of Two Brothers” as it has become known was in fact the burial place of King Niuserre’s manicurists.

<< The official view by one of the world’s most eminent Egyptologists, Zahi Hawass, is that they were brothers, perhaps even conjoined twins… and there is a danger that modern European eyes fail to resist the temptation of seeing the images as homoerotic. >>

So… let’s recap. Two cosmetologists hole up together in a big showy house full of antiques and we’re supposed to think that they’re conjoined twins? Uh, right. Even if these two were brothers, that doesn’t make it unthinkable that there were homos in ancient Egypt. (I also love the implication that only white people would think this.)

I am a little out of sorts today because my grandmother had a heart attack yesterday, and is lying in the hospital, barely conscious. I may have to fly back to PA this week depending on what my mother thinks when she gets there. If you’re the sort that prays, please everyone say a few words for my grandma.

UPDADATE: My grandmother woke up and is making a recovery. Thanks everyone for your kind words the past few days.