Culture

CNN ran a nice story on Warren Zevon (original) the other day. The new CD comes out Tuesday; there’s a VH1 special airing 10 PM on Sunday, Eastern time. Set your TiVos.

Matrix: Revolutions trailer. Available now. The site is so hammered it isn’t worth trying, though. Ah. Bittorrent link here. That’s better.

Yeah, I’m pretty brainless today, so I’m just gonna steal something I said over at Mike’s LJ. You pretentious little punk. You Rebels make me sick, and the Imperials do too, so stop trying to involve me in your petty little wars. Listen. Your political arguments are obsolete, and you’re too calcified to realize it. We have achieved happiness, but because you’re running the Force meme, you haven’t noticed. The world is not what you think it is. The real fun — the real world — exists in the interstices between the planets. Starships are merely achingly slow vectors for meme infection. There is a very old AI in a sector you’ve never heard of; we think he’s playing a complex game of chess with himself using Star Destroyers as pieces, but we’re not completely sure. It doesn’t matter enough to find out. ...

Via Unqualified Offerings, it’s the first song off Zevon’s next album. In MP3 format, no less. And the whole album “available as a stream” on August 19th, which is tomorrow.

The first flash mob with purpose probably won’t be political after all. Rather, it’ll be hordes of people handing out free comics (original). At the least, it’ll be a noble attempt, although I have an image in my mind of a bunch of people giving comics to each other rather than to random strangers. Also, the organizer is doing a piss-poor job of keeping it secret, which will minimize impact. Helpful hint to flash mob organizers: the minute you write anything about your mob on a public forum, the media probably knows.

For all its flaws, we must admire Google for knowing the length of a smoot. Alas, it does not know the value of a quatloo, but then again, neither do I. On the other hand, while searching for quatloo valuations, I did find a proposal for an XML standard for Shadowrun (original). But I digress. Smoots (original) are real.

Remember what Warren Ellis said about Mark Waid, spiky metal things, and Marvel? Read that, then read this (original). “Joe’s done a lot to make right what has been an unfortunate situation,” Waid said. “Not only is there no bad blood, but the door is open for me at Marvel and in some form or another, there is more Fantastic Four in my future.” 10 of 10 for Mr. Ellis. Well done, sir!

Warren Ellis has some simple words of wisdom on the Mark Waid firing (original). Let it rip, Warren: I dunno. I used to know Mark. He’s been humped by Marvel two or three times previous to this. If you keep going back to a place where they fuck you in the arse with spiky metal things, then after a while people will simply assume you like it. It’s kind of a non-story. ...

The new — the last — Warren Zevon album comes out on August 26th. The buzz is good.

First, watch this (Quicktime, 1.7 megs). Then, read the rest of the Web site. Especially make sure you read the thesis, even though it’s long. You never knew about Disney dissecting fawns before, did you?