SilverJacket

Osbourne Unwound

My roommate Tracy and I started watching America's Got Talent this season because we know some people who tried out for it. (For example, ArcheDream for Humankind, who have spent years producing blacklight shows that are much more rich than the cool but gimmicky stuff put on by the Fighting Gravity frat boys who are now in the semifinals.)

One of my favorite acts on the show has been ArcAttack!, whom I saw performing a scaled-down version of their electrifying show last year at Gizmodo Galley 2009 . In any case, Sharon Osbourne, one of the judges, uttered a pretty hilarious racial slur this week. Due to their Frankenstein theme, I think she meant to call the members of ArcAttack! a group of "geeks and ghouls" or "geeks and spooks" but instead called them a group of "geeks and gooks." 

"Geeks and spools" would have been more technically accurate.

Listen for it in the clip here at 3:29.

Unimpressed with unfriending

I realized recently while writing about blogging protocol that spell-checkers do not recognize the word unpublish. Odd, I thought at first; it's an essential part of my vocabulary. Then: Of course it's not in dictionaries! Before the Internet, unpublishing a piece of writing made about as much sense as undropping an apple. Sure, you could cease publication (Stop the presses!), but once a book or newspaper is out there, it's out there. 

I learned today that the New Oxford American Dictionary named unfriend its 2009 Word of the Year. Unpublish would have served as a less gimmicky option (although maybe gimmickry is part of the criteria for selection). Unfriend in common parlance is restricted to social networking sites. Further, as a general concept, it's not novel. Friends have become enemies for millennia.

Unpublish, on the other hand, signifies one of the largest revolutions in communication since one could publish in the first place. And it's not restricted to getting back at a Facebook acquaintance who uninvited you to her killer birthday party.

Unfortunately, Web publishing may be headed toward one of the words Oxford considered and rejected: paywall. Now there's a surefire way to unfriend your readership.

The Truth is Out There

Conspiracy theorists drive me batty. They distract everyone from the truth. Like those people who think the government brought down the World Trade Center on September 11. When the real cover-up is much more subtle. Everything happened exactly as the government says it did… but on September 12. Memory is so malleable, we don’t even remember that. They shaped the media portrayals because it’s much easier to sell a war when the twin towers graphically line up with the date.

Yes, I’ve heard all the conspiracy theories about Michael Jackson. Murdered by Mark Sanford’s cronies to take the heat off the Argentina thing. Not really dead. Etc. All baloney. I’m something of a conspiracy theory debunker, and the facts are as plain as day. He overdosed on painkillers given to him by a doctor. One who happened to be in the deep pocket of the guy who’s been playing Paul McCartney every since Paul’s death in 1966. I mean that guy’s had a vendetta ever since Jackson bought the Beatles catalog and hawked use of “Come Together” to Elmer’s. I’d be pissed too.

Of course the other big conspiracy theory this summer was that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. That his birth certificate is as forged as the Constitution. What a joke. This one is the work of Tom Hanks, high on his blockbuster Da Vinci Code documentaries. His people are already developing a script. Word is that he’s in a race with Robert Downey, Jr. to break the blackface barrier at the Oscars.

Sarah Palin must have been relieved to have the attention taken off her. That lady is a speculator’s dream-come-true: Trig isn’t hers; she secretly reads the Times. Leaving the governor’s office has sparked more rumors than ever: she’s starting a WNBA franchise (the Wasilla Wombats); she was fired by Donald Trump (his Miss Universe Organization being the true power center of the New World Order); she hopes to make more money marketing a line of lipstick. Look, can’t we just stop assuming that there’s some elaborate conspiracy of detractors attempting to assassinate her reputation with lies, and just assume that there’s veracity to all of these claims? Occam’s razor, people.

And then with the 40th anniversary of the moon landing you had all these nut jobs doped up on fluoride claiming it was faked. I don’t believe it. Neither do I support Malcolm X’s contention that we never actually landed on Plymouth Rock. I have been to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and human civilization is clearly in evidence. Was he implying that all those souvenir shops selling pet Plymouth Rocks are staffed by space aliens? Perhaps suggesting that we didn’t land on the moon, but pieces of the moon have landed on us, sent through space from E.T. moon-miners to E.T. souvenir-vendors who pawn them off on us in an effort to increase the Earth’s mass so that it becomes too difficult for us to launch our fat asses out of Earth’s gravitational pull and discover their home world full of eager-tentacled virgins and glowing pet rocks?

No, no, no. Nothing will keep the Miss Universe Organization away from those tentacled virgins.

Beware of the Unicorn

This is the actual cover of the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies (a publication I have read recreationally, albeit sporadically, since college).

Big Bopper

Susan recorded my back as I danced at Bioluminescence (yes, on a boat). So sneaky!

Matt Plays with Fire.

Last month at the first Vitamin B party I did a fair amount of fire spinning on the roof. A couple of people recorded me and one video made it online: (Shizaru lights me up around 0:30)

I haven't been spinning with fire very long, but I've been doing poi about a year, and this is the first time I've actually seen what I look like. I'm quite relieved to see that the practice has been worthwhile and I do not look completely goofy.

What's in Playa Dust and Pixie Dust?

Books for Poors

Recently a friend asked me what I thought the tanking economy was going to do to the book industry. I said those Chicken Soup for the Soul books would probably get a sales boost, but everyone else is fucked. Well, except for me, because I'm publishing a new line of books modeled on the X for Dummies series. It's called X for Poors. Here's my first one: Wine for Poors.

Now taking suggestions. (Feng Shui for Poors? Like, which way should the entrance of your carboard box face?)

A series of tubes, such as.

 

[Photo morph courtesy John Gartner.]
The Internets: I read all of them.

Another Alumni Vanity Mag

 Inspirations:
02138
Hamilton Nolan