Fast Fiction

I’m getting hundreds of hits today because of some entries I wrote about some guy that writes a blog and some people are trying to figure out who he might be.

A little trip over to BoingBoing lets me know that the story about this mystery blogger has been picked up by Reuters.

I’m afraid they’re coming here and are horribly disappointed.

You have my apolgies if you’ve been lead astray.

It has come to my attention that the Dino in the White Island Crater will not exist forever. And it’s sad, because Dino probably knew that the acrid environment would shorten his lifespan.

But cry not, beloved readers, because we can do something to keep his memory alive.

I’m looking for a few brave volunteers who would like to find a webcam in their neighborhood to put up a memorial Dino or other Flintstone’s pen topper. (thanks Koga!) If we get enough people involved, we can probably get a bulk deal on these fellows. Of course in memory of dear White Island Dino, they would wear magenta/purple armbands. (You can just draw them on with a sharpie.)

This one looks like a prime candidate for the Los Angeles Area - Hollywood Sign Cam.

Maybe there’s some clever evolutionist out there who can explain something to me about humans.

Why do nose hairs hurt so much when you pull them?

What is the evolutionary advantage to keeping people from yanking them out?

I can pull out hairs from my eyebrows or arm or leg (individually, I should specify, any large mass of hair at one time anywhere on your body hurts like a mofo) and it’s relatively painless - just a little pinch and it’s gone.

I pull out a nose hair and my eyes are spilling over.

What’s that all about? Was there a point in human development when people started pulling them out and those people didn’t survive as well, but the ones that had some sort of super pain-receptors in their noses survived better and passed along their genes to modern humans?

Why should the nose, that part of the nose, be so sensitive? It it to keep us from shoving things up there? To keep us from taking things out?

Now that I’ve had a few weeks to live with it, I love the new blogger interface.

It’s more powerful - it’s a better way of working with a large blog (let’s face it, I have hundreds of entries and have had trouble doing trackbacks to my own entries because I couldn’t even search by month on the old version.)

What’s good:
1. The homepage is spare - the old homepage would have load problems because it would have to reference the database for the recently updated list. Lets face it, the vast majority of us are here to work on our blogs… if we want to see all that other stuff, we’ll go look at it. Thanks.

2. Search is available in the edit area. Let’s face it, once you get more than 100 entries or more than 1 year under your belt, you need a search feature to find stuff.

3. Previous posts by title instead of just a code number.

4. Stats for your blog are available in your profile (finally, I know how many posts I’ve made), and number of words written.

5. Preview - it allows me to see my text in format, not necessarily in my stylesheet but at least I can check the links easily.

What’s bad:
1. I’d like more control over my template - and I’d like that part to be clearer. A WYSIWYG editor would be great, but besides that, some way to have the list of the blogger codes displayed in the same window as the template would be very helpful. Sometimes I just want to go in and do one small thing and I have to have three windows open to tweak my template.

2. No post links available within the edit section. I want to be able to reference previous posts without opening another window to my blog and searching them out. It shouldn’t be that hard to have it in the edit section somewhere.

3. Stats for the blogs are not always accurate. Sometimes Spambiguity says that it only has one post, when it has over 15 so far.

4. Stats.blogger.com is still wonky. 9 times out of 10 when I try to go there, I get the white DNS error screen. Why is that?

Other things I’d like:

1. Option on the create a link within a post tool to have it automatically prompt me if I want it to open in a new window. Right now I hand code most of that. Same with photos - MT lets me upload a photo and it will offer to make a thumbnail and an autosized pop up version of the image.

I really hope the folks that pulled this one off are getting full credit.

There’s a webcam run by the Geological and Nuclear Sciences group in New Zealand that monitors a crater in a volcano on White Island in the Bay of Plenty (New Zealand).

Though the volcano is a tourist attraction, most visitors just view it by boat (or webcam) so it’s rather odd that a little pink dinosaur has appeared on the lower part of the frame.

The article here doesn’t say anything more specific than a pink dinosaur - but it looks like the Flintstone’s Dino to me.

It’s very slow - but you can try to catch a live glimpse of him on the volcano cam yourself.

I joined Buzznet a while back (I had to ... I met Marc Brown at a party). And here I’ve been populating my little gallery with some yummy daily snaps. (I even updated the neon gallery there too, take a look.)

Now it’s time I share them with you directly.

So you’ll notice that there are some swell images over there on my sidebar.

If you recall, this is why I wanted a three column format ... but it was not to be. So you only get one photo a day. But just click on it and it’ll take you to my gallery at buzznet and of course everyone else whom I link to. (I also post to the blogging.la buzznet on occasion, because I’m a syndicating gal.)

Anyway, I should be posting to that pretty frequently, as I snap photos just about every day, which as you already know is more often than I post on my blog.

Oh dear, I’ve been referred to on Defamer.

And here I was, lamenting my lack of readership.

You nice Defamer readers come here expecting more about the Andy Kaufman/Rance story.

So here goes, first, a commenter on the original post spake thusly:

[Even if Andy was still alive:] There is NO WAY ‘Rance’ is actually Kaufman. Andy was never that boring, insipid or trite. Rance’s hackneyed retelling of 4th generation Hollywood urban myths cannot be compared to Kaufman’s actual genius. You dishonor Andy’s legacy by attributing that pablum to him: he might be out there blogging but it would certainly be far more entertaining than the crap on ‘Rance,’ which is watered-down vanilla with a hint of the shit he has to eat as some mogul’s assistant. I’d hope after 20 years in hiding, Andy could come up with something better than tired cliches and children’s puzzles.
Tony_Clifton’s_Ballsaque

He has a serious point here. Rance’s blog is soooooo seeped in the verisimilitude of an person with a shallow life it’s hard to believe that Andy is that good. And further that Andy never had any interest in commenting on that part of our culture.

But I can defend that. Because as I understand Andy, he was always reinventing his performance art. And why not take it to another level on the internet? I’m old enough to remember Andy’s first appearances on Saturday Night Live. I remember his complete dedication to whatever he did - no matter what he faced, he threw himself into whatever his current role was.

As for the commenter referring to Andy never being boring or trite ... well, it’s easy to look back and say that, but in the moment, especially with Andy’s early performance pieces (the wrestling stuff) it was very easy to write the whole act off as offensive or just the wrong direction. It went to a place, for me, that was not terribly funny and made a point that I didn’t need to have made to me.

Mostly I hope that Rance is a deft parody to the point of complete surrender by his readership to his nuanced portrayal of Hollywood insipidness.

After a vast amount of reading and comparison, I’ve decided that Andy Kaufman did, in fact, fake his death, and he is, in fact, alive.

I did not get this from his press release.

I did not get this from his website.

I’ve decided that Andy had nothing to do with those things.

I’ve decided that it is time I unmasked Rance as Andy Kaufman.

For just a moment I’d like to pretend that I’m perfect. That will allow me to pick on others imperfections. (Well, maybe admitting that I’m not perfect allows me to pick on others, whatever it is, just pretend that I’ve admitted it or we’re suspending our disbelief for this exercise.)

I’m reading the NY Times. And there’s an article called When Alzheimer’s Steals the Mind, How Aggressively to Treat the Body? by Gina Kolata. I read it. There’s a little photo to the right and the caption says:

Randy Bryant and his mother, Hattie Kuykendall, who has advanced Alzheimer’s. He choose a feeding tube for her. “With a lot of people, it’s an easy decision to just let people go ahead and pass away,” he said. “When it’s your mother, you can’t do that.”

Is it me or is there an error there? Choose? Should it be chose? Or chooses? Something other than choose.

Then, later in the article:

Putting in a feeding tube can cost about two thousand dollars, said Dr. Douglas Nelson, a geriatrician in Hickory, whose practice mostly consists of nursing home patients. Inserting a tube requires a consultation with a speech therapist to verify that food is entering the lungs and an X-ray by a radiologist that requires swallowing barium. The procedure itself is done in a hospital, with an anesthesiologist, and a gastroenterologist or a general surgeon.

Now, I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure we don’t want food in the lungs, and further, we don’t want to have to hire someone to confirm that we’re putting food there. So either we want to verify that food ISN’T entering the lungs or we want to verify that food is entering the STOMACH.

This article came out Tuesday.

I’m not sure how this whole correction/retraction thing works, but I’m pretty sure that the web allows you to fix these things instantly. I can see that it might have been up there for a few hours, maybe a day wrong, but for two days?

Anyway, I know that I have typos up here on my blog all the time. But let’s face it, I’m not getting paid for this. I’m not the NEW YORK TIMES! I’m just fast fiction, which implies that I type fast and don’t look back.

File this under something you just couldn’t get away with in America.

In Japan there’s a candy that’s known as ‘Snot from the nose of the Great Buddha’

The article goes on to say:

Local media have suggested that the sweet is popular because the people of western Japan have an earthy sense of humor, which other Japanese often find coarse. Another famous Nara sweet is called “Deer Droppings”.

See, I just don’t think anyone could do that here ... you would never find St. Paul Spit Soda or Jesus Boogers Gummis or Mary Menses Tea or God’s Is Great Earwax Candles.

I wonder if they taste any different than Hello Kitty Snot?

I’ve started a new blog. Not in place of this one, just another one.

I was going to ask for some help from readers. Anyone wanna join in? There’s no obligation to post often, just some. I suppose if enough people join in, the obligation is very little.

It’s called Spambiguity and it’s just a blog of the curious spam that I get on my many email addresses (11 at last count). Right now I’m obsessed with the strange text they throw into spam in order to throw off the spam catchers. I have a small program (eprompter) that allows me to view my email as text only, so I don’t have to worry about anything nasty. It’s PC only.

I can add in contributers quite easily on Blogger. So if you want to play along, just pop me an email or leave a comment here.

It’s not getting the most press, so I thought I’d do my bit.

Children are getting injured by the appearance of the 17 year cicadas.

Yes, it’s true. Hospitals have noticed a rise in injuries related to cicadas. During the winter cicada related injuries fall off precipitously, but now that spring has arrived in the east and the cicadas have emerged from their underground slumber.

Pediatrician Warns Parents About Cicadas

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

Fri May 14, 2004. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - First there was the girl who fell off her bike fleeing a flying cicada. Then a boy trying to swat a cicada out of the air with a baseball bat instead hit his friend in the nose.

The final straw came when another child hurt his hand trying to squish a cicada under a car’s tires. Dr. Ray Baker of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital was convinced—cicadas can be a safety hazard to children.

- snip -

“We had a stab wound to the arm from a kid who was trying to kill a cicada on the arm of another child but unfortunately he was using a knife,” Baker added.

The article goes on to detail other freak accidents caused by cicadas (let’s be clear, these are children that wouldn’t have put their hands under moving auto wheels or run into brick walls otherwise - they’re perfectly normal, intelligent children).

This being a 17 year event, I think we can start planning for the next cycle now. There’s little need for us to waste public health education money on vaccinations and basic medical and dental coverage for low income families. The real threat to America’s youth is cicadas.

The Man saw this on BoingBoing today.

Fast Fiction Friday - Warren Ellis of Die Puny Humans asked a bunch of writers to contribute a few words of short fiction to his blog. Just cycle through them using the next arrows at the top.

Enjoy some refreshing fiction! Now, how do I get to play along next time?

Okay, the photo safari was last night, but I’m posting it today.

Will and I took a few fab photos last night on Sunset Blvd/Hillhurst/Hollywood. We decided after seeing the Vista Theater that our focus would be neon. And lo and behond we found quite a bit. The most spectacular being the Wacko sign on Hollywood Blvd.

I was very surprised at how well my camera did (Sony DSC-V1) in these conditions. The best photos came when I was able to stabilize myself against a pole or something. Of course I shot over a hundred photos and there were only about 15 keepers.

UPDATE: Will posted some of his photos at Buzznet too. And I put some larger versions up on PhotoBucket and you can see all my latest at Buzznet, too.

I’m sure some folks have already seen the article. But here’s a link to Travis’ website that has the whole article. Blogging.la has a poorly scanned (but ultra-fun) copy of the photo that went along with it. Note that the dumpster and wall they’re in front of is part of the header image for the site.

To live and blog in L.A.

By Travis F. Smith, Special to The Times

It began as any good Internet fable should—two Internet-savvy twentysomethings who had never met face to face sit down in a coffee shop and, over a handshake, agree to develop a new idea.