query
When on the toilet, how do blind people know when to stop wiping?
Archive for June, 2001
Free movies. A huge archive of digitized films. [via boingboing]
no comment needed.
Sweet!!! Total solar eclipse is due for Thursday 21 June 2001!! Unfortunately, in order to view the totality, you’d have to be in the southern parts of Africa. The umbra of the eclipse passes through the capital of Zambia, Lasaka. This is where all the scientists have gathered. So, if you can’t make it to Lasaka, check out some webcasts of the event. Enjoy! [via APOD]
For all my fellow Columbites, details about this summer’s on-campus renovations. [via the columbia mainpage]
Survivor is not reality-TV
Despite what news organizations have been yapping about for the past year or so, there is no such so-called “voyeur TV era”. The supposed leader of such TV shows is the CBS series Survivor. However, Survivor is not one of those reality-based shows. It is simply a gameshow that relies on social interactions to drive the game. And the camera crew needs to film these social interactions in order to later make sense of the contestants’ final voting decisions to the audience. Look, Jeopardy films its contestants answering the questions, fuddling over wrong answers, stuttering through a blank mind; all because these are essential parts of the game. The Survivor crew tapes the contestants talking, interacting, creating alliances, slapping each others’ asses; all because the gameshow is a social one. “Don’t get voted off; and you win a million bucks.” That’s the show. If you look at the historical record, you’ll remember that CBS scrambled to create Survivor in response to the ratings monster Who Wants to be a Millionaire, both of which are slated as game shows. Soon after Survivor took off, people started to write articles about how “reality TV” was the hot new thing.
I’m not even sure what came first, the avalanche of news declaring the coming of Voyeur TV or the wave of new shows created to quench this supposed newfound public thirst to watch other people eat rats. Who can tell? Did news organizations make people think, “Hey, reality based TV is the shit! Look, the printed word keeps talking about it. It must be an accurate portrayal of contemporary times.”?
It should also be noted that the filming of amateurs without a script (aka “reality TV”) has been quietly going on for a while. MTV’s The Real World is in its tenth season already; Fox’s Cops continues to show America’s finest arresting America’s worst; and so forth.
So what now? I think that having passed the whole Breaking Story segment of the news story, people will begin to take the fact that Voyeur TV exists and thrives, for granted. Articles will be written; references will be made; all under the assumption that we just had a boom in reality TV. Are news organizations writing the news and getting the rest of us to follow it like a script? What’s going on here?
milestones. and statistics
woohoo! this blog has received 100 hits since 2001 June 3! yay. Although, along the way, I have some odd click-throughs. first of all, though, someone from germany and hong kong have visited. I wonder who these people are. also, people have reached my site while google-searching for some disturbing keywords. Someone came to my site while searching for “pics of sleepy girls with nice hips”. i got another for “sleepy girls pics”. i did some research, i think sleepy is some special pr0n word. for some weird fetish. man…. and the reason they keep coming here is cuz this blog used to be named “sleep log”. but no more. google should update its lil cache.
why, all the more easier to statutorily pluck you with, my dear!
For historical sakes, today was my first today as an employee of Pathmark. I am a cashier. I stand in front of a machine. Customers bring their goods to me. I wave their goods in front of laser beam, then type furiously at a keyboard. Occassionally I will get a disturbed look on my face because the machine vomits and beeps at me. But normally I just wave goods in front of a laser beam, and then place their goods into little plastic baggies. Wee. To be honest, I don’t even know how much I’m getting paid. I just show up with an apron (I have a uniform!) and they give me a till (aka a money tray) and I get to work.
I’ve opted to work in the daytime (like 10am to 6pm). Today, I made an observation. From the morning up until around 4pm, all the cashiers are ugly, old and/or fat people. Nothing against them, that’s just what they are. This struck me as odd. Where are the people my age? That I could befriend or flirt with? At school apparently. Around 4pm, all the cashiers become teenagers. There was a cute girl with curly locks to my left. However, all my advances were halted as I realized all the teenagers had red smocks. I had a blue smock. What’s up with that? According to an older colleague, Pathmark makes all of its underage employees wear red smocks to make it easier to distinguish who’s a minor! That seems like a rather depraved move, to me. Like making Jews wear stars. Or Hindus wearing yellow sleeves in Afghanistan. Ok, maybe not quite the same. but some sicko pervert out there could find some way to exploit this practice for their own needs. And then they could email me. so…um… I could… stop them.. from.. um… doing these bad things.
::sighs:: I refer you to a previous post.
tts
AT&T Labs Interactive TTS Demo. TTS = Text to Speech. Now THIS thing is cool. Have fun.
Netscape folds its hand; instead, opts to play Go Fish. This is such a bullshit. The reason Netscape can do this, is because Netscape is owned by AOL Time Warner. So Netscape (or should I say Netscape.com) is now a corporate media tool. I’m starting to become disgusted with all the corporate consolidation out there. One of these days, I’m going to make a little expandable tree that graphical shows all the connections between the States’ largest companies. You’d be surprised at all the shit that AOL Time Warner own. It’s fucking scary.
FYI for all my loyal friends, I will be away this weekend to the state where the motto is “Live free or die!”
Man, I can’t be an astronaut. Those guys/gals are super-human. They’ve got to be in unbelievable physical condition AND hold, like, three engineering degrees. And have perfect vision. Where can you find engineers with perfect vision? I think NASA is gathering together some sort of super-pedigree for their Breeding Projects. Making babies in space must be messy.
I don’t want attention. I want acknowledgement.
Air travel
link. air travel used to be very luxurious and great because only the rich could afford it. there were like air limosines. now, airplanes are like buses. crowded. stuffy. annoying people. creepy people. some violent people. crying babies. And this can become frustrating to rich business people who want to fly in comfort (well, it becomes frustrating to anyone, but not-so-rich people should deal with it because they’re taking a bus and not a limosine.) to accomodate upper-class people, airlines added “first-class” or “business-class” sections to airplanes. so airliners became limosines in front, and buses in the back.
you know what? this post just went to hell because I had the thought “hey, they should just make separate planes for business class only, and not make it so expensive (like a charter plane). yet still make it big ol’ airliners (not like a small charter plane). just completely first-class seating.” then i thought, that’s a stupid thought. so now this post is basically kept here because i like the way i summarized airliners history up top. ::sighs::
i’m an idiot.
Udder Insanity. Fun for the whole family. Unless your family owns a farm. Then it’s just work.
nevermind
Because of recent events, I think I shall stop thinking about death objectively and logically. I’ll be having to deal with reactions to death in very real terms, due to personal matters. And if some revelation all of a sudden hits me, I’ll compile it all and post a new essay. Sorry to anyone who was waiting with bated breath for my final word on this topic.