*impulse

new *impulses

We are moving yet again.
Thanks, Typepad.
Approaching40 was super fun.
But, it is to Blogger and Blogspot that we go!
Cheers!

New locale: impulse at blogspot

Earthy Crunchy Meets Lycan Raspy

The lycans swept the scheming vampires off the parapets and through a steep cliff-like drop into the teaming streets. Wails and whoops, punctuated by whistles and oohs, crept over the glittering mass and swollen rash that is humanity and humanoidity rippling via fractured purpose the gaiety the enrapture the brace of the things that serve us.

A river of oil, of almond, of wheat, no, not wheat, swirls, so many confection swirls. The river lycans elope with the sea glow and float on to the ethereal stream that the meadow elves know as the Jet Stream. Their energy wildly in flux, borne aloft or sinking at the whim of breezes, tufts the forest carpet tenderly in gloom.

They saw no sun but little moon wandered with them.
They experimented with color. The oumpyres wore only black.
They enjoyed the legumes and forestry pecans but also the bitter-fruited almond tree seed.
They adored the harp and altar of the night but would snatch glimpses of the fabric filled buttercup sky at daybreak.

Lycans.

Milton Pressed It Early And Brilliantly, But Rad Are The Stones Still

Way cool remix of a classic of classics.

Poor Soul Perishes In Cold When His Power Is Cut Off

Wish I was over there in the midwest:

I analyze contracts, title reports, and many other legal documents for a living.
I would scour every regulation and procedure in order to find something the utility company, Bay City Electric Light & Power, did wrong:
Improper notice.
Trespassing.
Something.
It's there.
Someone over there just has to find the glitch and then file suit in order to make this utility company suffer.

It is obscene to turn off power in the dead of winter for any reason, especially when the tenant subscriber is a 93 year old man, apparently alone in the world.
Read more.

If what Bay City Electric did was technically legal, then, like the feds did with Al Capone, you have to get them another way.

Any way.
Every case against them should be explored.
Every possible lapse, mishap, everything.
This is when the seemingly pernicious loophole-exploiting nature of lawyers can be utilized toward noble ends.

But, the obvious problem is:

Who has the time to do this?

It is kind of tough to earn a living as it is and not everyone is possessed of the countless hours necessary to pursue this matter to a conclusion, so, chances are, this gentle soul's passing will go unavenged.

A Curious Twixter Effect

Ron got excited every month when he received his issue of Technology Review, vicariously living through, and celebrating the accomplishments of, the endless lists and reviews of accomplished young scientists and inventors. He imagined himself as a winner one day, though he had just turned 37 and, thus, could only squeeze onto the scant few lists out there that stretched their limit of 'young' to include all those under 40.

He saw himself as an untapped creative genius, possibly greater than any of those listed monthly and yearly in the trade and consumer zines, in the blogs and tech sites, anywhere. He knew that many artists, writers, poets and other imaginative forces did not kick it into gear until their 40s, 50s, even 60s and 70s, after retirement, as centenarians, and beyond. He read about their accomplishments in history books, encyclopedias, Wikipedia, forums, blogs, etc., and unconsciously concluded early on that the world thought them a curiosity more than something that could be systematically studied and celebrated in splashy annuals. Thus, he marvelled at their brilliance, but still felt part of something larger by associating himself with the undergrads, recent PhDs and dotcom geniuses some of whom actually dropped out of college.

Then, he stumbled upon an AARP magazine's list of creative individuals over 50, and he was immediately rapt. They were as exciting and inspiring as the nearly ubiquitous, Google-fied, under-30 lists that permeate Popular Science, Scientific American, Technology Review, and so many other consumer science periodicals.

Thus the phenomenon:

The 37 year old Boomerang Kid is equally inspired by the AARP list of oldsters and the Technology Review list of youngsters, sort of feeling a part of both, but not fully of either.

This is not a malevolent or destructive effect. But, it is an alert of sorts. It indicates that untapped generative force is still rarefied, but flies though space on the wormy craft that is the arrow of time. Pristine but meandering. Hopeful but glimpsing the end of the universe.

It is quite the clarion call to the never-do-well but always dreaming set. It indicates that lack of accomplishment has built up a mass of unused creative energy, but it also indicates that the arrow of time is flying through the cosmos and has become a craft for those undertaking the journey of consciousness from adaptability to refashioning the multiverse. It indicates that, although a meandering life may have preserved the rarefaction of generative energies, it is still the calling and passion of man to eventually expend those energies on some great work of note.

It is to this end that we summon the boomerang kids:

Find inspiration in both those retired and those still in undergraduate school. Find it is any list.
Feel the excitement via the slightly more tech end of the Under lists and the more artful end of the Over lists, but know that they cross pollinate and overlap and that there is no mutual exclusivity. There are no limits and no restrictions.

You are both and neither.
You are special.
Something more.

Download those Photoshop and Illustrator trial versions.
Behold those huge cloudy symbols of high concept.
Whip out that laptop and bootstrap that startup!

Imagination is the supreme faculty.

Digital artwork by Oleg Karassev

For Shame, Men's Health and New York Times

I hate the way some old media blogs do really contrived stuff like:

"A new laptop was released today that allows you to use Bluetooth while paddling yourself.
Discuss what you think about it."

As if this ever gets spontaneous vital exchanges rolling!

Digital Relaxation

I like em mac, pc, digg, or visual basic
name is Rob Scoble from the blogging nation
plug in the cam so we can youtube
now let's google sex on the cathode ray tube

you got indie rock all on your ipod lists
but im a techno geek this is how I mix
a nerdy little something on a gadget site
fruity loops lovin, cubasin all night

Techin it old school.

Silver Surfer Vs. Juggernaut

Wharfs whimpered and warped Woden wailed as floes and blustery blasts of slippery ice melted down from the pinnacle of the nova-crusted parasol. A dipping board bobbed down the mercury tide. Tinier than the tiniest pin, wobblier than Horton's Hoo, more crannied than raisin bran, the gnarled tree, the cue ball, the eternal cerulean, earth wobbled and bobbed, unifying the board and the venomous helm.

How would Earth survive the Sandman and Juggernaut clashing and dissolving into and out of each other while the pulsating yellow variable showered magenta and magnetism alternately, flopping from art to Victorian science and back to ancient monuments and eons-ago sunsets?

Crannied Venus, cocooned in furious ether, scalding vapor, verdant doom, unholy miasma, manifold blankets, and drafty streams, whipped its tailed green immensity through pools and momentum ponds. Streaking in behind the curvilinear tail, the Silver Surfer bent forward slightly and fired a brilliant, girder-straight beam at the tumbling Juggernaut and sprawled his ungainly bulk athwart the Van Allen Belt and its shepherd Endymion. The hyper velocity of the Power Cosmic nearly bent the unbendable, but Juggernaut, though stunned and unthinkably agonized by hitherto unfelt power, slowly reared himself back and upward, shrugging off the blast.

Another and another and another. Ten thousand crackling power cosmic rays, bolts and pyrotechnic dazzlings rained fearsomely down on the unstoppable, now a minute crawl, a never sleeping shark near fatal verges. Arboreal monuments, witnesses to meteors washing the idyllic sky of its meaningful silence, vast trunkful legs of petrified stone, aghast in the beech maple biome, aside ferny ferns and flitting mayflies, enormities of growth and life, wept as the clash cocooned the starry night and made all scintillate, the gloomy dawn.

Surfer, not micro not macro not effable nor awake, shiny with despair, a-brimming with overcontemplation and self-righteous moralizing, blasted the Hulk into a flux and returns every 10,000 years to reblast him down the gyre, thus vanquishing forever, or for so long as the Surfer lives, though not physically besting, the deepest harlequin myrtle monster the shale continents have cast away.

Now, a Cepheid Surfer cuts a G-clef arc and curve in the cosmic matrix as he perpetuates a tour of earth, the gyre, and a hundred more gleaming comets and brooding neutron stars, in his sacrifice to the universe. Superman hurls by.

Jumping The Kordestani

Meaning of 'Jumping the Kordestani': the first non-tech hire of a Silicon Valley startup.
Named after Google's first non-tech hire, Omid Kordestani, hired in 1999 to manage sales.

Not an uncool chap, by the way.

OK, though a fascinating study in the valley bright, we shall dawdle a fleck then aim our telescopes at the steep summits and the mad stratus clouds.

Ten Beings That Can Defeat The Hulk

Every one of these beasts and deities would not only defeat the Hulk but any other Marvel hero or villain. This is a list of primordial generative and destructive forces.

Atlas was strength personified way before the Hulk was and he can hold up the heavens. No strength limit. No contest here.

Not only would Archangel Michael defeat the Hulk, but he would thwack the entire Marvel roster into the abyss.

Though Marduk gave Tiamat the business, before the epic clash, the Hulk would merely run around and play on Tiamat's body. The conflict would not resemble a battle. It would be more like a person staving off a germ or something.

Cthulu. Rrrrrghgherrrghghgh!!! Not really primordial, unless you consider the tremulous psyche of Mr. Lovecraft primeval, but quite fearsome, and impossible to defeat with pure physical force.

The Kraken: It would rise from the sea, entwine the Hulk in a tentacled mass, and drag him back into the brine to drown. No rage-enhanced strength could break him free. These ancient beasts embody powers that are way beyond measurable physical strength.

The Midgard Serpent: When the Midgard Serpent howled after biting his own tail, the reverberations would fling the Hulk to a distant galaxy.

Gaia: Would nurture and calm the Hulk instead of fighting him.

Medieval Dragon: Canonically invincible.

Actually, any number of canonically invincible entities would either triumph or at least fight to an eternal stalemate.

He's Got The Netherworld Look

 
Viktor

Shiny black supervillain wardrobes, rampant ponderous goth countenances, a retro-future backdrop, gargoyle-ridden skies with splashing thunder, and ignorant clans clashing by night.

This is Underworld.

Finally, an exciting website to accompany the sleekest of horrordom, the dark opacity-graded scape, and the steaming pits aside cathedral-skyscraper hybrids: much finer than steampunk.

This is our favorite film series of modern times. 30 Days of Night, Twilight, and the rest just do not compare to this Matrix-oumpyre cinematic reflectionless third-eye candy.

Three Addicting Little Minigames:

Night Patrol

Essentially a Robotron-like game, and quite fun, though I have a hard time achieving independence between each hand and utilizing the W-A-D cluster and the arrow keys to move and fire, even considering that I have total independence when playing the percussives (drums!). Go figure.

Guard The Castle

Almost makes you jerk back when the lycans reach the parapet and pounce. Awesome!

Catacombs Maze

I like mazes, so this is ok by default, otherwise, it is ok. Not as good as the other two.

Final word: this is a fresh Flash site, with the 3D navigation-scape and all the little things to click on for games, info, pics, etc., and the other trappings of modern Flash websites. We are not particularly interested in cheats or easter eggs, but will keep a fourth eye open for them on game sites, forums and other blogs, and, if they are cool, we will post them as updates. And, though not a site issue, we are kind of curious as to whether the new Sonja will be able to fill the Hot Topic platform boots of Kate Beckinsale.

Enjoy until January 23rd. Then, check out Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

Maca Root, Brazil Nut Oil, Aloe Vera, Soya Oil, and Sesame Oil

Just some of the herblore keys in The Body Shop's For Men line.

Soya oil? That's just a fancy word for Crisco. Anyway, I am trying out the Wash Off Shave Oil, Shave Cream, and the Energetic Face Protector to see what they're about.

First impression: fragrance very incense-ey, but, this is The Body Shop, so no surprise here.

Second impression: I am much more of a fan of mineral oil than any botanical, so I was a tough sell on the shave oil, but it is pretty cool. Not too viscous, but not too watery either. I would make it a tiny measure thicker. Not bad, though I don't use shave oils often. I typically over-glob moisturizer and shave, leaving a very unclose shave, of course, but I telecommute (work from home), and my dreamy lover, though not crazy about it, kind of sees the cool in my perpetual facial scruff.

Third impression: I hope they come up with a cool marketing plan for the energetic face protector, like Nivea and L'Oreal and others have. Face energizers, all-in-one body washes, and after shave balms are the three vanguards most likely to penetrate the recalcitrant male grooming routine and permanently expand the traditional product range.

Final impression: routine complete. Products absorbed, fragrance processed, packaging fawned over, efficacy to be determined. If you prefer a decent male grooming product with an earthy crunchy vibe, then you cannot go wrong with The Body Shop's For Men range. It actually almost crosses over into an outdoor sports resonation, especially in the banner ad featuring, I think, James Brown, very Gillette-style, with showerhead water raining down, a look of defiance and triumph melded. Something very decathalon and cross country about it.

Perhaps we will soon sample the Balancing Face Protector and the Face Scrub, if they are gentle.

The Titanic Clash Of Archangel Michael And The Incredible Hulk

With the wretched serpent still under foot, a hulking greenness approached. Massive, angry, oh, very angry, its hands scrunched into deep fists. It readied itself to rend the archangel and twist him into feathers and fabric, all a-gossamer, all a-floating amid the hazy mead.

The ground thundered, the rage was endless, the sky, a deep red, the nearby lake, a teal glimmer. So awful was the gargantuan monstrosity that the dewy cherubs dabbling in watercolors and sporting over the mead flitted off in flickers and gleams, sparkly trails and glitter, fleeing in every way, in 360 degree ways, in awful terrains, over staccato hills, over grass and oceans, leading off toward the verge and its immense oneness.

A soft sweep of Michael's sword swept the green goliath into the sky and over the planet, dropping him into a primordial ocean with choppy waters, filled with unfolding trails and cryptic beasts. Greenness was not easily deterred. Greenness leapt out and over the curved continents in a wild, massive arc, landing feet away from the demur archangel. Greenness delivered a clobbering punch and Michael reeled, heaved and gasped, as he flew back and into a massive flustered yew.

This gentle fay of a messenger was not discouraged, only mildly psychically overwrought and twirling. He gathered himself and floated upward, his cheeks turning slightly rosy and touched with frustrated tints. His ivory wings spread wide as he approached the raging hulk with increasing menace and purpose. Onlookers swapped sides, realizing that the disarming innocence was now channeled, redirected to purpose for the occasion. The eyes squinted slightly. The muscled monster screamed: "Smash again. Silly man does not realize how strong Hulk is."

The seraphic eyes squinted to crescents and the sword loomed high in Michal's hand, growing beyond the laws of the universe, beyond brute strength, beyond newtonian mechanics, beyond any mechanics. The laws continued falling away into the entropic sea surrounding them both. The Hulk's eyes deepened with rage, but this angel was beyond strength and rage.

Just before the Hulk was thwacked into the lake of fire with a graceful swipe, he declouded for a lucid moment, sensing that the imminent display of power and lordship was beyond his ken, beyond what he could effectively neutralize or fathom. The blade's swaggering arc motion seemed almost prolonged, as if to taste the moment before the kill just a little bit longer, but angels are not capable of such measured spite and vengeance, and thus the coiling was simply vast. With this heart-sinking notion coalescing in the Hulk's wild but competent mind there was a conclusion to the vast sweep and then, silent contact:

As the Hulk hurled away from Michael, he followed the path of an arc beyond dimensions, beyond space and time, beyond string theory and multiverses, and it landed him in a lake of fire from which there was no escape.

Thus, the Hulk menace was gently and quickly disspelled by guardian Michael.

The Google Paradox Continues

The Google Secretary-Artist Post received an unexpectedly powerful reaction via email and thread commentary, so we were kinda compelled to do a simple study to see if this is a trend or a flash in the pan style rarity.

Check out the results of our little survey: Download Google_creativity_profile_1

Otherwise, enjoy the first day of the new year!

New Years Is The Jingle Jangle Morning

And the thing with feathers, and the fat wild Thor of Asgaradian times, and the warped wendful well of a wee, and the floppy foaming firmament, and the twisted sky-tweaking tree tangle, and the grope master and the free fleers of Ninevah, and the stately spanish galleon dipping through the tropics, and the hope of happiness and the corrosive pewter dripping from the dome onto the peaks, and the century's corpse, and the bloom along the bough, and all the trickling and bubbling circumstance.

It little profits that an idle idyll by this noteless notebook sprinkles glitter onto the morning town.
One-two-three-four, to farmer's market and Whole Foods, it tosses them down.

Spiders spinning weaves of endless complexity cannot corral the whirling, hovering, twisting, revolving, bending, hoisting, jousting and settling fibers of verbiage and verse coalescing cloud into vapory thread.

Spun away by the ratchet and the racket, the carriage whisks the bobbing specters to the worn and bent corners of the cartography. Green, yellow, crushed avocados and sun-dried tomatoes, marble swirls and confection, haunted new years citadels, creaking partitions, settling buttresses, the maco shark and the swarm above Paris, flaunting numbers and possibilities in front of witnesses.

A deep, slow pulse of water, splitting into wavy zippers of shadow that conjure lake monster visions, precedes the silent ferry's glide into the forest-girded wharf, not meters from fright and gasping huge spiders, puling ocelots and glow worms. From wharf to ferny fringe to crippled branches cursing the moon, to the deepest blue darkness splenetic with milky way and bulbous Saturn, to the rushes that wash the reeds, to the crocodiles that creep under the film, to the errant that clashes with berserkers and is victorious.

Where lone violins grind out their song, where grizzled silver grinds along sleak grooves and hushes the blustering oaks, opening their canopied hands to the cumulus for droplets, sages grow. Amid the turtle-slow grind of the spheres, dark blue turns black and dashes into the endless gloom and retrieves pearly collections for novel constellations and drooping pantheons.

The secreted jade barker chirps celebratory cadences to all.

Just some of the items gobbled up or parodied:

• Dickinson's Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
• Bob Dylan's Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man
• Old English alliteration
• Weaving
• Mardi Gras
• Masefield's Cargoes
• Tennyson's Ulysses
• Hardy's The Darkling Thrush
• Housman poems
• RPGs
• Whitman's spider poem
• UFO sightings
• Pound imagist short
• Tolkien's Mirkwood Forest

Happy New Years!

Christmas Is The Crow In The Hemlock Tree

Well keep thee for the holiday horizons.

Frost poem referenced in post title:

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Are You A Mod Or A Rocker?

I'm a Mocker.

If I Catch Ya Comin' Back My Way, I'm Gonna Show It To You

Hulk vs. Thor trailer.

Title quote from Seven Nation Army, by The White Stripes.

This is the big one. Bring it on.

How Hard Drives Work

This Scobleizer is definitely someone to watch.

He is like the hard nosed investigative journalist of the blognation, making up for what he lacks in ferocity with  a more documentarial synthesis.

Here we find a friendly but informative interview with Tan Leong Hooi, the manager and Veep of Wuxi Manufacturing at Seagate in China.

They make hard drives.

The Golden Age Is Surely Upon Us

From the back of The Portable Renaissance Reader:

The 200 years we call the Renaissance were so eventful and contradictory that one man, Erasmus of Rotterdam, could decry their tyranny, avarice and iniquity, yet proclaim the "near approach of a Golden Age."

The quote, from a letter to Wolfgang Capito, is mildly out of context, but the power is fully in context.

We are flux aquatic amid the glittering meme globules which wash over us and swamp the sloops with whirling stellar skirmishes.

Tired Of The Everyday Grind? Looking To Get Away From It All?

We offer you...Cargoes, by John Masefield:

Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet white wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, pig-lead
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

The three stanzas: exotic, exotic, and commonplace, for the time, that is, for even the coaster butting through the turbid channel now seems Dickensian-ly faraway.

Figurine by Pia Langelund.

Fractal Geometry To Guide Reactor Construction

Fractal Reactor, 2000, model/sculpture

As opposed to design, architecture and engineering's typical limiting factor, Euclidean Geometry.

Such are the premises and theories, aspirations and promises, of the scientartist, Todd Siler, a creator whose ideas and works I was first exposed to earlier this century.

It is sort of like he is whirling in an endless loop, circa 1974, with a push from 1999, that finally came around in its angular gyre to be monumentally relevant today.

Prius meets Logan's Run.
Chaos theory meets Three Mile Island.

The style and aesthetic, which may be an acquired taste for some, but is worth it, is generally close to O'Keefe meets Frankenthaler meets Kandinsky meets Duchamp meets earth science text book illustrations meets senseless doodling.

Some more of Siler's art for technology's sake:

Below Clouds Of Consciousness

A Truizm

Sissy? Girly? I Don't Think So

The WWE and Metallica suggest aggression, not courage.

Just project yourself through space and time to soar over the trenches of The Great War and catch the melancholy doughboy shedding a tear over 'If You Were The Only Girl (In The World)' and a cigarette, and tell me he is anything less than a courageous warrior and I will be left with no choice but to assume that you also believe that the mean, nasty looking serpent can slay the graceful, delicate archangel Michael.

This song is adored by most of the medal-adorned veterans I am blessed with counting among my family and friends.
This song is a testament to courage and could inspire a nation.
Let's see Enter Sandman or Blizzard of Oz do that.

By the way, we love Ozzy and Metallica.
Didn't mean to use them as foils. It just sorta happened.
We also love Zeppelin and Rush for that matter.

Again, snarls do not equal courage.

Song: My Heart Will Go On

Facebook Goes HD Video Happy

Haven't checked out the tech universe through the eyes of the Scobleizer lately, but, 'twas via a chain of associations that we did this morning:

The FWA: Favorite Website Awards led us to '+good' which led to TwitterMagnet which led to Twitter which led to reading Twitter updates which led to reading the Scobleizer updates on Twitter which led to the Scobleizer blog which led to Scobleizer TV which led to a video about Facebook introducing imbeddable HD video, at 720p.

Ahh, The Perks Of Genius!

You can have a resume 2 yards long, and be masterful at bending C++, Ajax, XML and CSS to your whim, be unique with a unique life story, have massive projects under your belt, and have startups that have taken flight into the ether

Or, you can be an MIT grad, with no real world experience whatsoever, just brilliance.

Those are the 2007 MIT undergraduate hires, right out of college, listed in the chart above. Some of us don't realize how much consultants and finance groups rely on math majors from elite universities to crunch numbers for them. They account for a good number of the hires listed.

Technology companies, like Google, Intel, Vecna, Oracle, and IBM, are also well represented, accounting for 43 hires, all with at or near six-figure starting salaries, as well as signing bonuses and incentives, and compensation packages, driving up the total realized much higher.

Not bad.

Again: Genius rules all!

Sex

Such a sexually charged word: 'Sex'.

Does life extension have a place in its aesthetic psyche for 'sex'?
Why are male grooming and 'sex' inveterately convolved?
What if there was no 'sex' in science fiction?

These are some of the questions we should explore.

The Honied Middle Of The Night Is Eternal And Still

Some possible names for Longevity societies:

Organism Resilience 3000
The Dreaded Doppleganger Meets Inescapable Physics
2010 And Waaaay Beyond
DOn't STop LIVing (the capitalized letters spell out 'Dostliv', the great immortalist of the 18th century)
Event Horizon
Uploaded And Loving It
Death Be Not Proud
The Fountain
Way Beyond Hope
The Secret Order Of The Plantaganet Vampires
Obfuscation
Life Dilation
Wild Highways
The Ever-Mist
Beyond Time
In Your Face, Death
The Seance With The Uploaded Psyche
Simulacrum's Bane
Diet+Physics=Me4Ever
Better Than Fame
Life Data Springs Eternal
Engulf The Temporal

Barely an exhaustive list, but a start.

Mythological figure: Endymion.

Is A Secretary Google's Most Brilliant Employee?

Welcome!

An interesting twist on the old aphorism, 'there's no accounting for genius'.

A reliable source has informed us that an artist on the brink of Miro-level recognition takes dictations, formats correspondence, makes photocopies, and generally toils away in the lower echelons of the haunted, hallowed Googleplex halls by day, without a care for Web 3.0 and C++, but with much care for charcoal sketches and cracked compositions. It seems that the mindlessness of administrative and receptionist work allows her creative faculties to fully focus on abstract scapes and expressive portraits.

Brancusi

This is not a unique brilliance-inversion. It has happened many times throughout history. To note a few:

• Einstein spent years reviewing other's patent claims, while frustrated inventors, who doubtless thought they were 1000x more creative, talked down to him on many occasions.
• John Keats was a failed surgeon's apprentice. It is reasonably certain that the medical minds at Thomas Hammond's Apothecary thought they were leagues above the cockney poet.
• And all the once-aspiring but-now-worldchanging artists, poets and composers who found early work in research labs, techology firms, and universities, while they were obscure and unknown.

In fact, it is nearly statistically certain that the greatest creative minds that ever set foot in the Googleplex will be outsiders, visitors, payroll clerks, food servers, and rejected job applicants.

Sure, the rank-and-file intelligent minds will all be Google engineers and programmers, buttressing the continuing web revolution in an incremental fashion, but no Faulkners, Renoirs or Turings from thence will spring. 'Tis a mathematical certainty.

Sorry to be the ones to reveal this, Googlers.

The Google 'Idea Board'

So playful and imaginative. Matisse should take heed.

We feel kind of spiteful, but we cannot help but be mildly amused at how the news will break while the Googlers are playing Nerf soccer and vintage video games in the happy, fun rooms, or lounging in the spas and jacuzzis, feeling playful yet creative, brilliant yet whimsical, innovatively peerless, and then it will leak out that this hard working, scorned clerk has risen like the Kraken to artistic prominence, leaving every Googler in the dust in terms of pure creativity.

Someone has to knock the Googleplex down a few notches. Recognition of a lack of pure genius among its 'elite' is a perfect way to accomplish this. And for that, we have the splendid juxtaposition of a rising visual artist and a bunch of overly complacent, deluded-about-their-genius, techies.

A hater couldn't ask for a better scenario than the one that's about to unfold.

Klee

Our source? A Google employee whom we are acquainted with who befriended this artist at a nearby Burger King and learned of her accomplishments and that she was on the brink of fame. If you work at Google, you may already know her.

More of that caprice

More Google dalliance, or, should we say, Googliance.

Although presently a respected name in many artistic circles, she has somehow managed to keep it a secret that she works at Google, fearing it would negatively affect her artistic aspirations, but she also realizes that if an upcoming installation receives enough press coverage, allowing her to reach that critical mass, she is prepared to reveal herself to her employer. By the way, local San Francisco art blogger, The Laughing Squid, is aware of her, but has no idea about her day job.

Leger

Kutscherauer

Once we get the ok, we will post a mini gallery of her paintings.

Are we catty bitches or what?
And, to wrap things up:
We are certainly not frustrated techies.
We never worked for a large IT company, nor applied for work at one.

We is just roiling the kettle!

Will Live Streaming Soon Be Offered By YouTube?

We checked it out as it was happening. It reminded us of a MySpace page with an embedded streaming object at the header in place of the MySpace player.

It was pretty cool: 3 streams to choose from, MySpace-like comments, a Friends section, etc.
Not bad. If the service will be released to users, we will know soon.

My lack of in-ness with YouTube channel offerings kept me from really appreciating the event. I am probably familar with less than a dozen YouTube-grown music, comedy, news, performance channels, and didn't recognize many of the featured performers.

Google has massive server farms, growing in capacity daily, and they are looking for new ways to harness their power instead of just adding to the gmail file storage limit. IMHO, this would be one of the best ways to utilize it, though apparently, providing live streaming is difficult, bandwidth-expensive, and tough to monetize, as is touched upon here, excerpted below:

A YouTube spokesperson told us: "We're working with a third party to live-stream our event called Live. We have no product to announce at this time."

Live streaming is very expensive and hard to monetize. A Google source told us in August that YouTube execs figure that if just 10% of YouTube's users adopted live streaming, bandwidth costs would go up 20% to 25%.

That's because live-streaming clips tend to last much longer than the short video clips typical of YouTube. They also require data to pass both ways.

It's also hard to make money off live-streaming. Advertisers don't want to put their brands against live content created by uncontrollable YouTube users.

One possibility that we feel Google shareholders should root for: YouTube will launch live streaming as a service for paying customers only.

Always in motion is the future, and the streams travel fast, so this could quickly change.

Today's Quote, Gleaned From My Own Hypergraphia

Endless exposure to coolness via mass culture channels reinforces my distaste for those who underestimate the general public.

Similar verbal meter:

If we are to assume those whales are ours to do with as we please, we would be as guilty as those who caused their extinction.

Are Hydrogels For Men The New Grooming Craze?

With their zero application time, made-to-specs for life in the fast lane, and their cool refreshing feeling while sneaking some moisture and a few other nutrients in under the radar to actually impart a positive long term benefit with regular use, further reinforcing perception of product efficacy, they may in fact be a hype fad:

A mini-men's grooming craze, perhaps giving Axe a run for the money.

Instant gratification.

Crisp, cool, watery, sporty, masculine, color scheme.

Two of the moment:

Nivea For Men Energizing Hydrogel
L'Oreal Hydra Energetic Turbo Booster

Twilight: The Doll, Twilight: The Novel, Twilight: The Shopping Spree

TWILIGHT's Rachelle Lefevre goes shopping with MySpace Celebrity

Such vapidity repels like garlic. But, such vapidity is aristocratic like 'dem blood-hording wampyres.

Moychandising!

A Little Wallace Stevens For A Tuesday Morning

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers In red weather.

A few denotations:

Ceinture: happy happy sash.

Periwinkle: pretty little flower on pretty little myrtle plant.

Disillusionment with a fanciful breakdown:

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns. Visual pun. Staleness. Living female Jacob Marleys of unfulfillment.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings. Contrast. Colorful flights of subjectively structured fancy.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures. Sensuous, affluent.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles. Exotic. Faraway.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers In red weather. Raw but still imaginative. TWC. Argh!

Enjoy.

Web MD's EVP Recording

Or maybe its About.com's!

Giorgio Armani Skin Minerals For Men Grows On You After A While

At first, I admit, the site seemed wholly devoid of substance and rife with platitudes, but it is not style without substance entirely.

And, the trios are unlike other clean, correct and protect trios, though it appears that they all have to have trios, tercets, triangles, threes, as if two is not enough and four is too much. And, being an IT-wanna-be, use of the term 'matrix' impresses.

Trio One:

Strengthen the skin structure
Refine the skin texture
Unify the skin tone

The site is like a black panther in its power and beauty.

 

Trio two:

Primers
Boosters
Masters

Capturing the volcanic force, the lava rock's living essence, the tidal pool that spawned life. Iron, silicon, and other mercurial minerals: that is Volcanic Complex.

Rounding out the site are video tutorials on how to apply the products: the dos and the don'ts. Not bad.

 

All in all, a trip through the ads and spreads in GQ magazine, but with undercurrents of useful information and purpose that is more potent than the fall fashion lines.

The People, Bright And Suffering, Will Not Be Fooled

Obama has been accused of being:

1. Communist
2. Terrorist
3. Unpatriotic

But, thankfully, an articulate and aware populace is not whispering about each clumsily leaked hint and wondering if Obama  has sworn fealty to Osama. Yes, only one letter separates their name but BIG DEAL!

No. All the ridiculous Republican slander has done nothing. There is nothing they can say, without hard evidence, that will sway anyone. Thank goodness for that.

Though Obama's isolationism and occasionally factory worker bating approach is disturbing, the rest of his platform is not and he, personally, is not, and, of course, anything, any option, any possibility is better than a Republican victory.

The Vacant Barren Male Skin Care Kiosk At Macy's

Though the space be bare and barren, devoid of even an assistant, the de-bottled men's grooming genie is flourishing and cloudily swelling and helping itself to the swollen cumuli adjacent, gobbling them and growing like a cotton candy glob.

With fragrances and serums freely mingled, cleansers and manglers fashioning a bubbly smile, the smithy and steps swirled upwards like a floral vortex.

The procession marches on, spritefully watching the spangly precession, and reaches higher and higher heights, captures more and more share, though all deny its importance and the aisles and counters are curiously un-busy.

Brands present: Lab Series, Zirh, Calvin Klein.

Osmotic Pressure Perturbs The Lipo-Psychic Membrane

The weather world swirls as the nether world turns.
And, amid the fearsome maelstrom and mammoth thunder, the howling ghost shimmies.

Song: A Ghost Strikes

Raison d'Etre: Halloween, horror, eerie atmosphere, endless chill, dreary caverns, mazy mansions, psychic volleys, awful dreadfuls.

Hopefully: thrills, chills, dance, song, sing, reflect, haunt, dream, fantasize, swirlarize, happy-tize, ever ever ever awesomely daunt the machines the murky merls.

Aww Yeah!

Keepin' it simple...and cool.

AXE Bullet.

More And More Music For That Eeriest Of Occasions

Give this spookified niche site a try on October 31st.

Halloween 2008 Soundtrack II

This eerie jingle is certain to add a teaspoon of horror to your morning Count Chocula.

Title: Sea Serpent

When Did Pop Culture Become Self Aware In Regard To Japanese Monster Films?

Skynet became self aware in 2258. There is gain and loss in self awareness. The loss is plain and heart shattering: never again can movie monster films populate with screaming Japanese citizens, fleeing in panic. All such scenes filmed now are post-self aware and, thus, neutered, dull, self-parody.

It is a worse state than jumping the shark, which almost always dramatically precedes self-aware.

There is a finite pool of pre-sentient Godzilla footage.
The rest is heresy.

The comic panel takes place in New York's dank storm sewer channels. It is abyssal, deep, planar, absolute and the Marvel of modern comic book monster movie craftsmanship.

The mammalian horror wends a woven wave against the reptilian wrathfulness and hopes that brindly fire douses weepy waves whilst the window of life weeds out the warlike long ancient dinosaurs for all time for the hirsute beast's reign and the arctic rain crying down the glacier bed for honeyed ever splendid middle of the night song and trickling dance that drops from the swiveling hips to where the fairy sings.

Happy that honor and fairy waltz the speckled waltz, flit the tangled trot and bound the strumming minuet?

Renaissance Xers

Renaissance Xer: 1. Someone from Generation X who has, over time, acquired a large, broad base of knowledge, in many fields, via audodidactic post-college and post-formal education means. 2. A typically intelligent Generation Xer, who is almost invariably possessed of a wide, expansive base of knowledge that slowly accretes over time.

This Is A Very Clever Prank

This has to be a prank.

Otherwise, the police officer who arrested this lady would be a subhuman animal, and we have to give this whole scenario the benefit of the doubt before reaching such a dark and extreme conclusion.

And, the lady who called the police on her looks and talks like an ugly, disgusting filth that no one I know would touch with a 1000' pole. Not unexpected, of course.

Being ugly makes people nasty, like it did to this rat-like harpy who had this gentle 89 year old lady arrested.

A YouTube commenter said it best about the lady who called the cops: "Go fucking die you ugly as fuck bitch."
I could not more precisely express the sentiment if I sat with pen and paper all night.

Also, on the show Jail, police heckled a Desert Storm veteran, and I, again, had to assume they had a long, hard day and did not mean to catch one of our nation's brave soldiers at his weakest point and bully him and hurt him: a decorated hero, no less.

Police just cannot be the subhumans they are depicted to be on reality television or the news, bullying defenseless senior citizens and disabled veterans at their lowest point.
Or can they?

The Coldest Lines In Film, And A Distractor

Cinematic Villain's Eve, ah, bitter chill it was.
The emperor, for all his ancient glittering eyes, was a' cold.
Kirk limped trembling through the frozen scapes,
And silent was the populace as the monsters stomped.

Let the chills begin:

Darth Vader: "You have failed me for the last time, Admiral."
The Empire Strikes Back

Bishop Gardiner: "You think it small, though it killed your mother." (listen at 1:39)
Elizabeth

Amon Goeth: "Unterscharfuehrer! Shoot her."
Schindler's List

General Dyer: "My intention was to inflict a lesson that would have an impact throughout all of India" (listen at 3:33).
Gandhi

Coldly charismatic or repugnantly merciless?

Insane But Beautiful

The insane but beautiful set conjures the faraway-ness of a misty seashore and gothic ruins. They are the most precious thing we have in our popular culture.

Their inner turmoil and struggle animates itself in the waves that pulse and pound the coastal cliffs, ringing ancient mansions all ghost and wizard peopled.

Shuddering and filled with pleasing trepidation, let us begin:

Molly Ringwald: twisted. pent up. ready to burst. explosive.

Nicole Kidman: murderous. evil. poisonous.

Margot Kidder: descending. berserk. wild.

Katie Holmes: dark. demented. asylum escapee. dangerous.

Mary Kate Olsen: depraved. ready to lick someone. frightening. dirty.

Winona Ryder: jester. sneaky. thieving. nasty.

Fiona Apple: hellish. glimpsed tartarus. demonic. criminal. insane.

Now, let us safely return to the sunlit upper world momentarily before we dive into the lunar urban scape that haunts the piers and frazzles Scooby Doo at every turn.

Until next time, careful...of the edge!

Let Us Celebrate American Art And Sing It As Well

That really bold, vibrant modern art, with deep cyan and endless expanse- that's my thang.

Whitman did boardwalks, Frost did pastoral New England, Guthrie did personal liberty in the great expanse, and Jobs did tech in geekchic.

Here are the rest:

Here is some shiny, sandy, spacey, California-ism. There is nothing like a used car lot with banners fluttering overhead, sailing in the gusts:

American Collectors
Artist: David Hockney
Completed: 1968

Beach Umbrella
Artist: David Hockney
Completed: 1971

Here is some glassy, glossy, abstract, faceted, photorealistic 1970s modernism:

Central Savings
Artist: Richard Estes
Completed: 1975

Unidilla Diner
Artist: Ralph Goings
Completed: 1977
Remark: Perhaps a Hopper diner scene would be a fitting contrast.

Here is some De Chirico on the highway and along the coast:

Rooms By The Sea
Artist: Edward Hopper
Completed: 1951
Remark: East Coaster!

And some highway, freeway, strip mall photography:

Pikes Peak Park Colorado Springs 1970
Photographer: Robert Adams
Taken: 1970

 

San Francisco's cable cars climbing the Powell Street hill.
Taken: circa 1945
That west coast america! Splendid then, Silicon-spectacular now. Always now.

Neon fruit supermarkets and stacks and stacks of commodities:

Busboy's Lament
Artist: Tom Christopher
Completed: Recently! New stuff.

The final crosshatch of Hopper's geometrically fractionalized realism and the planar photorealism creates a haze that is filled with filmy sylphs that leap into any conjuration of artistic inspiration when it happens and ask nothing in return, unlike the more pernicious figments that await around the spellcaster, in clouds and mists, and, when he casts a spell for which he has insufficient readiness and forces readied, the cloud streams into the casting aura without permission and the sorceror unknowingly strikes a clickwrap-like pact with each one, one of which may be the devil.

The american gauze field here is nothing like that.
Just lots of diners, highways, strip malls, and multimedia, and it is very very grand.

Here is to the new patriotism, the new americana, the new constitutionalism, that celebrates our vast pool of everything and immerses into all, that dives into the thick syrup, that indulges but does not waste, that sees the blue collar no longer as the backbone of the nation but as an essential cultural coolness that just has to stick around for a while longer, that adores technology but remains wary when tin gods presume to shape it beyond unearthly parameters.

That whisks us away in The Chronicles of Riddick and Doom, that screams when Steve Jobs speaks and hisses at Bill Gates, but loves him just as much, that admires wealth but realizes that one can have a broadband connection, a nearby Starbucks, and a weekend foray into Target and Costco and have a grand old time, that realizes that the rages against poverty and promises of job creation by the demagogic politicians are misguided and that they need to merely let the grand Internet and all its accessories progress blindly and let all the commodities grow cheaper so that poverty, in spirit, is inevitably abolished via this ever-cheapening of accessible gizmos and psychic recreation, and the rest of the time, we can dally in verse, film-making, auto-beauty and veganism, and fly over the endless rooftops in splendid, stirring spectacle.

Oh, we do adore you, America!

A City Of Ember

Everything you need to appreciate and work up a furor for this film, City of Ember, is within the walls of this widget contained:

There is much more to do, so let us leap out from within the gadget google and hop high to the snooty wangdoodles.
 

Quick Post-Shave Primer

What to Do Post-Shave for Men -- powered by ExpertVillage.com

Soak it up.

Can Twitter Contain The Truth?

Roswell on Yahoo, Loch Ness on MySpace, NORAD on Facebook and, now, Quarantine (the 2008 film) on Web 2.0's darling microblogging site, Twitter:

Twitter: Contain The Truth
Only 135 followers as of today?!
That is shameful. Let's amp that up to 1000 by EOW.

Is Twitter still vibrant and viable? Not sure. Haven't been there in a while, but the site should still get some props. Now that I'm thinking of it, maybe it's grown huge since I left, which would be really cool.

Onto the official widget:

The widget: trailers for the game and film as well as sweepstakes entry forms and info.

Onto the official site:

Official Site: Contain The Truth
The hub from which all widgets, trailers, downloads and games may be accessed.
Sweepstakes? Sounds real old school, but prizes are digital camcorders, DVD packs, and video game systems.

Galleries? The photobucket kind. Movie stills.
Promotions? Yes, the aforementioned lotteries and sweepstakes.

Onto the game:

The Game: Quarantine Game
Yes, it's the same website, but it's in Flash, so just head to lower right quadrant and click on Play The Game. It's a pretty cool first person shooter with a mildly interesting mystery to unravel.

Onto the trailer:

The official trailer.

Onto the synopsis:

Cool synopsis with grainy, fuzzy font.

Concluding data:

Race to get the glass, take the walk of no shame, and struggle to reveal the contained truth, but, whatever you do, don't use the product name in the website title!

RIYL: Doom, 28 Days Later, REC, Cloverfield, Night Of The Living Dead, Blair Witch Project, Halo, 30 Days Of Night, overly contrived viral marketing, glossy Flash websites, glittering 21st century horror films.