Disruption

There are words that rise and fall in popularity in our world. Several years back with the beginnings of the Google book project you could search in one of the offerings of Labs to see a word's popularity graphed by year. I am certain I once posted about this and that you can still do this but as I compose this (I'm trying to set a record for saying "this") post from my hi-jacked and out-of-date Firefox browser that presents much content in Japanese, I'm going to forgo looking for a proper link out of, well, laziness.

If you're a reader of this here blog from time-to-time, you'll note that, from time-to-time, I get incredibly (and probably unreasonably) frustrated by such excessive use. In the past that word has been "awkward" and oh how I'm aware that this is one half of the title of this blog. In the past that word has also been "sexy." Neither has completely disappeared, but hey once you vent to your blog I mean where do you really go from there? Seriously, if the entire world hasn't taken notice based on the 30-50 hits I tend to get, then I just don't understand. Maybe I need to learn a way to be more...disruptive?

Okay nail, I'm going to hit you over the head here. Disruption, disruptive, and any other use of this word —I'm so disrupted I can't even think what all of the forms are and I'm deciding not to Google on my predominantly Japanese browser —have got to stop being used. Now it's true, it's a function of what news you focus on, who your friends are in social media and, once you've seen a word, how much you choose to focus on it (there's a scientific term for this phenomenon that I also won't Google — go brain!), but I promise you, DISRUPTION is everywhere. It's the buzz word for how to be entrepreneurial and innovative and attract attention to change or, um, disrupt, the status quo. But most of these things do no more to disrupt the status quo than but to place disruptive, disruptor, and so on more firmly in the ether. Because hell, as I'm sure I've said, and at any rate I'm sure you just know anyway, when you use a word over and over its emphasis, its power, is diminished.

If I wanted to distract from disruption I could cite the prevalence of overly-enthusiastic language storming through the web in the form of sites like Upworthy that contend that everything happens to simultaneously be the most mind-blowing, earth-shattering, life-changing shit in history. The only thing there might be more of than canned enthusiasm on that site is share buttons. It's the other side of the Epic Fail coin, a movement that was nice and eponymous. Ordered regular, got decaf! Not epic fail. And look, I get it, we're about click-throughs on this Internet — which I know well from not getting a lot — but holy hell, how about a little gradation? Think if every day I took the biggest shit of my life? Well shouldn't I realistically start to worry about my colon, my diet, and perhaps the size of my asshole?

I apologize for the use of profane language in the preceding paragraph, but should it not be expected in a place where griping is listed near the top of the list? So hey, let's disrupt things. Let's stop calling everything disruptive. Let's look at a thesaurus. Bollix? Upset the apple cart? These are excellent. You can even abbreviate that last one as UTAC. I can't wait for that to be the name of some new agency! UTAC that one right to the bank...

Bot or Not

I'm not talking about the silly old Svedka ad campaign that I've talked about at least once before, I'm talking about my most consistent blog readership: bots. For a while it was just lonely Googlebots that would step into my dark corner of the internet (sorry, no capital for you here almighty internet). And it would originate from the Mountain View HQ. But even Google branched out a bit, sending their bots from the fine Canadian city of Toronto (go Jays). Perhaps they know of my old affinity for that team.

But Google's got competition form the Bings and Facebooks, the ruling families of the Americas. Bing's been working to get relevant as a legitimate search engine since obvious placements in Gossip Girl. The thing is, they might be [relevant], but I'm another of those who synonymizes Google and search. There's Google, and there's google. So even though you're googling things on Google, there's a separation. Google knows all about everything I google because with search I'm not very frugal.

I hope the bots like what they find here. I doubt they do. After all, to crawl and index my meandering thoughts can't be very much fun for them. I was reading a book on publishing recently and it advised one to be structured in order to establish themself (can this be back in common usage? Yes, good, okay) as an authority on something. But see, my place is as the authority of these seemingly inane things with a smattering of the old actual soul getting in the way sometimes. Oof, it also advises regularly creating content so users have a reason to come back. USERS. "Hey, that guy's content sucks," says one. "I know," says the other, "and such small portions!"

As inhuman as blogging tends to be, I do bring in my own humanity sometimes. I don't generally like it, and I don't imagine the bots do. I'm one of those still trying to be publicly private. At least part of it's that I think something's less meaningful when you simply share it with everyone. And at least part of it's that I think that good ideas can come from anywhere, the anonymous factor. It's for the opposite reason that people go around misattributing quotes. We take the quote more seriously coming from someone we respect. But how'd we go about respecting them in the first place?

So even though blog is short for weblog, I always think of it as the B-log, as opposed to the A-log. Let's hope my A game is really better than my B game. Then someone might be more game to read it.



**The blogger plans to return to whimsical inanity to close out the month.

Thanks for Googling!

People search for some pretty odd things on the Internet, myself included, and a lot of these oddities can land people at this very blog. From time-to-time I take note of the more precious ones, and "gay doing split" is no exception. And where was this googler from? Garland, Texas, once the 67th best place to live in The United States, and a town founded on Conan O' Brien's birthday, seventy-two years before he was born.

How telling is it that this searcher is from Garland, TX? How exactly does a "gay" doing a split differ from, well, I guess the opposite would be a "non-gay" doing a split? Perhaps I should brand myself the authority on gay-non-gay split differentiation. Perhaps not...

On the very same day, though, came a search for "straight grundle" by some savvy browser in Dedham, MA. Crooked grundles? They don't Needham in Dedham, though it took four page views to be sure. Ah the juxtaposition of gay splits and straight grundles that only a high school English class could love.

Happy googling folks.

2013: The Year in Review

Rather than going through the great and not-so-great moments of 2012, I think I could be better served to write up a review of 2013 before it gets too long and out of control.

Actually, I won't but I'll brag a little more than I generally choose to and say that I slept more on New Year's Day than I did any day in 2012, and I have thus far run a whopping zero days. Generally I like to leave personal details out of my blog, but we all have things we wish to brag about.

So then, back to griping, and how about we start with those "Do it for Chicago" ads? How about, I'm blogging so you don't really have an option (although, in the future, there may be a/b testing-choose-your-own-adventure style options on the internet for even such menial content as this blog). These ads are for the Greater Chicago Food Depository — more like suppository, am I right? — and if you haven't seen them, they look like this:

Incidentally, before I continue, googling simply "no you're not" yields top results for a couple of different Facebook pages, both of which deal with defining the amateur v. the artiste in photography. This, dear Internet, is one of your greatest gripes of the moment it would appear. 

But back to mine, which is this ad. Who the heck was commissioned for this? The logo looks like, actually, I can't find the other logo I'm looking for and instead could only muster this annoying bullshit (hey dude, it's great if your life is good, but seeing that plastered on something doesn't make me think so but good for you for tricking a lot of people and getting rather wealthy in the process). So though it looks nothing like those "Life is Good" designs I clearly love, it also does not create in me any great desire to do good. It just looks ominous, and inhuman, like a monster holding a tray/palette that somehow spells out food, probably in blood.

See that's hyperbole, and I like to stop short of it generally because there's way too much hyperbole these days, not enough gets to just be what it actually is which, in my case, is a critical asshole. So, with that established, I think this logo looks like shit. Nor is the edgy, anarchical typeface that says "Do it for Chicago" doing it any favors. What exactly am I supposed to be associating with donating food? 

I know, you're thinking "Jeb, why don't you build something rather than cut these things down." And, "Jeb, why do you undermine your argument by pointing out how asinine it is." The truth is, because it's not that important, I just saw some ads I thought looked bad, and then I thought I might blog about it, and then it spiraled out of control, and I'm a hoarder, so I'm keeping these words here.

And how fun is it to get that email confirming you've unsubscribed from an email subscription you never subscribed to? About as much fun as watching the Patriots win when you are actually a fan of football, am I right? Which is just as much fun as ending declarations with "am I right," am I right?

Because Everything Comes from Something

For the past, oh, it must be two months now, I have been going through my iTunes library to discover and rediscover the myriad tracks therein. Through the course of that, one of the things I noted was the similarity between the piano in Ingrid Michaelson's "Corner of Your Heart" and Adele's "Someone Like You". Maybe it just arose independently, and maybe they don't sound as similar as I think, but my brain says they do. But with brains bombarded by so much information and noise these days, it can be hell determining from where it is all derived. Take right now. I am listening to a track—one I will make note of later—with ESPN on (as I wait to cue up my next episode of Gossip Girl) and, oh, right, here I am typing.

And speaking of Gossip Girl, it's just always scooping me on music, just the like the mothertruckin' OC back in the day. If I'm not outright discovering a song through the show, I seem to only be a week or two ahead. Not that it matters, but it's sort of frightening the way it's tuned into a specific brainwave to which I adhere. Is it any wonder I keep tuning into the show, even when it gets worse and worse? At the close of a recent episode I caught Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know", which was not even credited. And not long before that it was Lana Del Rey's "Video Games."

It's amazing that, with the sheer volume of music, video, journalism, blog posts, and so on being created and the sheer number of outlets for them that there are a specific and small number of them that reach the great masses. There is a name for this phenomenon I am certain, somebody or other's law.

And oh my god Gossip Girl is killing me with the never-ending back and forth of these relationships and everyone is in love with everyone but not sure if they're really in love and somehow everyone is super conniving and crafty even the characters most peripherally pulled in. I get the concept of them all being tainted by the toxicity of the life but how are they so crafty so quickly and okay, alright, it's fiction. And they just quoted Camus?

I read this nifty little piece in The Paris Review where a high schooler in the 60s asked a bunch of contemporary authors about symbolism. It's pretty much what a lot of teenagers struggle through in high school English and some of the responses are excellent (they only show a few, but I'd like to read them all).

Google has released a new ad, as of about two weeks ago for Google +. I found it...depressing...So it goes.

At any rate that seems enough sort of information and information of sorts at the moment.

Sleptember

In the spirit of some consistency in this here blog, let's say I am again amazed at how quick time is passing by and that we're a week into September. I'm not gonna lie, September got off to a rather shit start for me when I strained or tore some muscle or tendon in my leg while running this past Friday. It's also possible I fractured my fibula. In any event, it's less than ideal, though I am accustomed to injuries incurred from running.

Much of the shame is that fall descended in a hurry, and the weather, even the very smell of the air, is something I love. And yes, it leads to fond reminiscences of autumns past. It signals the start for me due to it being when school begins, even though my schooling days are well behind me. For the runner in me, cross country was the best season of the year. The heat of summer training was endured for the pay-off of the fall, when the running mattered, and when the weather was more conducive to the activity.

In the past 24 hours, my brain has been infected by the Gorillaz' "On Melancholy Hill". Where I caught it, it's hard to say, as it had been a while since I'd listened to the tune but I found myself whistling it—side note: whistling is so annoying when it's not you, right?—and now listening it. Yes, I omitted that "to" on purpose. Pointing that out says plenty about me. I'd love, for now, to be up on melancholy hill, lungs bursting and legs full of acid from physical exertion. Instead, I shall limp about looking like a bad polio impersonator.

If you don't check out the Google homepage everyday—I don't—here is a little reminder why you should, in the form of yesterday's Freddie Mercury tribute.

To celebrate the frustration of injuring my leg, I chose to imbibe well, actually, about the same amount as usual, but perhaps a touch more on the side of derelict. Meeting a few friends to work on our respective writing projects at a local coffee house, I opted to empty a flask into my stomach. This led to a glassy afternoon that appeared perfectly acceptable as it was a) a Saturday and b) College Football had kicked off. As day turned to evening and an even level of inebriation was maintained, a new drink was born, one that shall henceforth be referred to as the Charles Barkley. The reasoning behind this name shall be made clear—or, at least, clearer—at the conclusion of the following recipe presentation and explanation.

Finding myself in a local CVS, I noted a whiskey bottle I'd never seen, called Canadian LTD and, as that link proves, for which I overpaid, even at $14 for a handle. The plastic bottle and the assurance that it was "bottled under the supervision of the Canadian government" made it a must purchase. I pictured Parliament sitting around presiding over its distillation, just as I picture some goofy Rabbi scene for all products deemed Kosher. A quick taste verified all expectations on quality. With the addition of some flat Mountain Dew, some Sourpatch Kids, and a Pepperidge Farm cookie for classy garnish, the Charles Barkley was born.

Since I started college a math major, the breakdown:



+



+



+



while wearing:



=



That concoction may rot your liver and/or brain and/or reduce one's ability to produce new memories during the duration of its consumption. But it sure helps make for a fun game of Catchphrase.

It's best to snack on Doritos concurrently, so MSG (not this MSG) can be blamed for any ill feelings. And it was damp that night, so you could always blame it on the rain.

Yes.

The Pledge

No, not that shitty Jack Nicholson movie, my pledge to post here 4 times a month. Here I am, adhering, with the end of April nearing, myself towards several beers veering. I'd rather be heading to Bohemian Napcity because I am a tired MF.

With some curiosity about tall buildings the other day or, to be more accurate, tall structures, I ended up searching for an image of the CN Tower in Toronto, which yielded this delightful result as the third image:


The objects to which the eyes are likely to be immediately directed are a bit large and absurd for my liking, but to each his own. I enjoy that the url for that photo has in it "fake illusion." Isn't being fake part of the nature of being an illusion? Now what isn't an illusion is how good a couple of the articles I read in The Awl this week were. Not that they are from this week, but this week was when I read the. Right. Now any time you discuss how egotistical and nutter Ayn Rand was, I am going to want to read, but the piece is very well put together, connecting her with her old pal Alan Greenspan and the way each informed the work of the other.

The other surrounds a man I've not read much beyond his non-fiction, the late David Foster Wallace. This is a great piece put together by Maria Bustillos after touring UT-Austin's DFW collection. I, like many, am fascinated by this man I did not know, and while I look forward to reading his fiction, I wonder that I might find the efforts to unearth what he was truly like more fascinating. The theory that genius and mental illness are so closely linked and what it even means to be a genius are quite prominent and recurring thoughts in my brain. At any rate, a really really great piece.

Ke$ha just popped on my iTunes, a song called "Dinosaur," that I will not link. I find it difficult to consider these songs are real, by which I mean meant to be taken remotely seriously, but I am always comforted when her tunes pop up because, sometime past, I inadvetently changed the artwork for her album to that of a Norah Jones one. Maybe Norah and Ke$ha can collab to make an album alternatingly (why is that not recognized as a word?) soporofic and sophomoric.

Well, it's time to blow this taco stand. Thanks Chi for the mostly lovely weather today.

Great Googley Moogley

Lately people have been scaling the side of my building like ninjas. It's less cool than it sounds.

I was at Chipotle the other night, which I sometimes talk shit about but really it's perfectly fine you can just usually get local Mexican that is tastier, for cheaper, especially in this city. As for cheaper, this is especially the case when it is $1.80 for guacamole to be added to my burrito, considering I can buy about two avocados for that. But hey, supply and demand. The one thing I didn't demand from my burrito was diarrhea, but the next morning it was delivered anyway, free of charge. Things have a way of balancing out.

I actually thought I'd grown immune to Mexican-induced diarrhea because I eat Mexican so frequently, but how wrong I was. Taco Bell done got me real good last night. In my haste to return home, I neglected to get fire sauce, but it would appear this may have been for the best. I have also decided I am the most popular person in the Wrigleyville Taco Bell after 3am on weekends. I'd say if you're reading, feel free to come talk to me next time you see me there, but a) you wouldn't be reading, and b) if you're the kind of person who would be talking to me in the wee hours at Taco Bell, you'll do it regardless of goading here. It's a great scene, I think, despite being a chain, it really brings the community together. That that community is a hodgepodge of under-aged and/or overly intoxicated individuals is an asterisk not really a scarlet letter.

Before I forget, and because I like to promote awesome shit my friends do when I know about it, here's a link to a video my friend Bridget shot for the Future Islands track "Tin Man". I like it very much, I hope you will too.

Further promotion for my new buddy Jeff Ringgenberg, whose story and whatnot you can follow here. I like Jeff because his priorities fall heavily in line with a lot of my own and he has that thing there seems to be a pretty fair amount of out here in the midwest: genuinicity. Yeah, throw that in the to-be-released dictionary. Also, I think he's going to really be doing some funny stuff and laughter is goddamned medicine. He has and will have shows, so you can find that all there and follow him on Twitter if that is your thing. I also exist on Twitter, over here, if you don't already get too much of me. I don't really use Twitter as it is meant to I don't think, but nonetheless.

Trying to bring this verbosity to a close, pretty soon I have a feeling Google will run my life autonomously for me. It's started with google saying I'm online when I'm not via the old gmail. Also, I noted when I did a google search the other day it included results related specifically to people in my contact list (something I don't actually have, I just rely on the memory dealio where once you get or write a few emails to someone it remembers the contact automatically). That and the moron check I noted maybe a month ago where, when I typed the word "attach" in my email, it noted that I had not actually attached anything, and wanted to know if I would like to. Om-effin-g.

Oh, and watch Three Times, at least the first two vignettes. I didn't watch the third yet myself, but the first two, especially the first, is really, really, awesome. I might need a new adjective of appreciation. Still, Shu Qi is one of the biggest babes of all time, and Chang Chen is just tight. Count it...

The Beginning of the End

Emperor Ming aka Potential Future Google
The geniuses at Google have done it again. I just logged out of gmail and this was on their entry page:

New! Gmail Custom Time™

Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything -- if only it hadn't slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.

Pre-date your messages
You tell us what time you would have wanted your email sent, and we'll take care of the rest. Need an email to arrive 6 hours ago? No problem.

Mark as read or unread
Take sending emails to the past one step further. We let you make emails look like they've been read all along.

Make them count
Use your custom time stamped messages wisely -- each Gmail user gets ten per year.

Worry less
Forget your finance reports. Forget your anniversary. We'll make it look like you remembered.

This would be frighteningly easy to monetize for when people want to go above their ten freebies. But what becomes legitimate anymore? This reminds me of when I first started using Adium and I noted options included invisible, the ability to chat with your away message up, and to even falsify when you signed on and things like idleness. The implications and possibilities are, to use that word again, frightening.

Google is awesome, but on its way to omnipotence, can it avoid Lord Acton's contention that absolute power corrupts absolutely? Should the worldwide web belong to Google (Spidey), they must remember Aunt May's words: "with great power comes great responsibility," or all of the Uncle Ben's of the world could be in a world of shit.