Death in the celebrity age

Kottke's first line in this article asks "Are you worried about the future glut of obituaries in national newspapers?" And while I've never been worried about it, I have thought about it before. As Kottke points out, there are a lot more known people now than ever before. Basically, since it takes very little to become a celebrity in this world of a 24 hour news cycle, we're going to recognize the names of more people that die. Kottke's concept of multiple important people dying every day is interesting. Can you imagine what it will be like when someone like Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise dies? That will definitely be a cover on People, and if Brad Pitt becomes the anti-poverty crusader Angelina would have him be, he might get the cover of Newsweek as well.
One thing that struck me in this piece, though, is the fact that Kottke is assuming that we will always read paper newspapers. I'd bet newspapers of today will be unrecognizable in just 10 years. Which is a different post completely.

At the Beach

JR and I went to Horseneck Beach in Westport, MA today. As far as I'm concerned, a beach is a beach, JR's mom said it was the favorite beach of MA residents, and JR said it was just so so. Since I don't like salt water (it's sticky, cold, and full of terrifying sharks) I usually don't do much swimming when I go to the beach. This means that the pleasure I derive from the beach could be functionally replicated in a crowed, shadeless backyard filled with sand and a big fan blowing intermittently to act as the breeze.
One major reason I like the beach is because JR lets me lie down doing nothing for several hours in a row. Although it's not banned in my apartment, this type of sloth is generally frowned upon.

Sorry for the recent lack of posts, many of the writers of this blog are lazy and some are genuinely busy.

Dancing with the Stars

JR is making me watch Dancing with the Stars. By "making me", I mean she's watching it and it's too hot to throw myself out the living room window, and thus, I'm stuck. In case you haven't seen it, this show is kind of a cross between Solid Gold, the Surreal Life, American Idol and any other terrible show you've ever hated. Some of the b level celebrities on this show are Trista Sutter from the Bachelorette (who at the moment is modestly complaining about how sensual the Rhumba is, she's sad she can't do it with Ryan), Joey from the New Kids, Rachel Hunter, Elaine's boss from Seinfeld, and Evander Holyfield.

Each pseudo-celeb is paired with a professional dancer and they are judged by what seems to be the dance versions of the American Idol judges. I really can't tell the difference between the dances, and I doubt most of America (excluding JR and her mother) can either. [Kelly Monaco and her partner just did the Rhumba, the judges were not impressed. This quote by the co-host sums it up, "Oooh, 17 out of 30, that's very low."] Evander just got 14 out of 30 "That's a tough score." This show gets better the more I watch it. This show is live, I can't wait for something, anything to happen. I can see Evander disagreeing with getting voted off and he quick jabs the host. Possibly more on this next week. Trista just got voted off. Serves her right, the prude! Except, wait, she redeemed herself in my eyes when asked by the host, "How does it feel getting kicked off the show?" Without skipping a beat, and with brutal sarcasm, "Uh, it sucks." Yes, this is why I tune in, folks.

(I feel sad that at the beginning of this post, I wanted to push my TV down the stairs, now I'm definitely going to watch next week.)

The Craziest Thing Ever

I know this is not generally an arena for posting things we've found on the internet, but this case actually falls pretty well within my daily life activities. I have no job, of course, and I spend a lot of time reading boring listings. Today I encountered a listing for a "Grant Writer" on craigslist.org, and I feel like I have to post it here, for fear that the posting will be taken down and nobody will know of its glory.

So, without further ado, a posting for a "Grant Writer" in Boston (edited for length, if you can believe it):

Seeking grant writer to perform pro bono grant writing for establishing many public service companies, including though not limited to:

A marketing campaign seeking for nominal profit micro credit toward establishing a grassroots distribution network of bed netting for malarial mosquito avoidance. Grow your money and your good karma. Promote a philosophy, by stressing the life altering importance of the distribution of netting, that ensures the grassroots network operates for nominal profit. Each level facilitating netting sales by loan as necessary. Any person not otherwise employed encountered is a candidate for netting distribution. Move to other needs as finance allows, when demand for agricultural/verifiably harmless product proves true and as wide as our marketing campaign well performs establishing financiers of micro credit loans for mosquito netting.

Wheat bread pizza machine production, where in no potentially perilous work be human performed. Thus the mining of the minerals that become the Wheat bread pizza machine is performed by bot. The farming process also automated by track skirting system suffice sensor and plant/monitor grow/harvest equipment to deliver agricultural product for Wheat bread pizza. Full nutritional delivery (Iodine, C, A, B Vitamins... enhanced) Wheat bread pizza then automated baked at each Wheat bread pizza machine of expected worldwide 100,000,000 Wheat bread pizza machines. Delivery of the raw and processed agricultural product performed by capsule in tube on track. The wheat bread pizza machines are then to perform Wheat bread pizza making so long as a volunteer attendant is available to tend to maintainance when paged. The Wheat bread pizza machine should house suffice sensors to determine what is at issue when the machine is in need of repair. The tech should be paged with an issue description suffice to convey understanding what's necessary to repair the machine.

Wind Energy collection implement (WECI) production and delivery to hard fastened automated on multi pole slide lift via pully, each WECI formed in a cube structure for fasten and hoist, simple motors perform the "wind in" of the fastener U.

I am of course not interested in operating all of the companies established and don't mind your command of any of these or from the many more I've conceived, many of those likely ranking more important.

I am interested in taking applications toward commanding each of these endeavors as CEO. I plan on offering your grant writing service as an incentive to apply for the position as CEO in an advertisement I will place in publications oft read by workers in industries similar to the particular endeavors nature. We're looking to place an Electrician and Mechanic who has experience with ropes (possibly due nautical experience) as the CEO of proWECI, a Pizza Chef/Robot Tech as the CEO of WBPM's, any kid with unmedicated ADHD as our BedNetting Micro Credit Salesman.

We're looking mostly for aptitude, functionality and today place alongside the many. Fitting these characteristics our CEO's will be selected finally on having some experience as qualification.

Your compensation is to be taken as a percent from the CEO's salary, upon the CEO yielding pay as your grant writing proves worthy. As such at present your potential compensation is negotiable.

Some of the other ideas I'm working on:

Policy control advance to national referendum wherein the vote is conducted by satellite photo of shirt color.

The ideal travel solution, capsule in tube on track, safe, fast, carefree travel.

I look forward to hearing from all serious respondents.

Thanks for your time,

Dan,
617-***-*****

So that's that. I am incredibly tempted to apply for this position just to meet with this man. Perhaps we can hold a vote tomorrow wherein everyone wears a particular color shirt to vote on what I should do. I'll get the satellite ready.

James on the Couch: AC Gets with the Program

James on Couch
Originally uploaded by tintinfisch.

I finally joined Flickr. You can see my pics at www.flickr.com/photos/aaba. It's really a great site and very easy to use. I think I'm probably the millionth person the blog about Flickr, and I did have some trouble initially, but for the most part the site works the way it's supposed to. If you take pictures with a digital camera, you don't have much of an excuse for not using Flickr, unless you're using something cooler. In which case, you should tell me about it immediately.