I’ve been on Twitter now — @BrianLamken — for almost exactly six months. My reason for joining was as much to connect to folks with whom I’d fallen out of touch as to share my particular brand of pith. Honestly, I’ve wrestled with how to incorporate Twitter into a daily life that isn’t nearly as productive as I would like and that is far from conducive to participation in a site or app built around quick churn of neverending content. The same explanation holds at least in part for why it took me until the other day to finally join Facebook.
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Giving up Twitter several times and then getting sucked back into it after checking
the feeds of a few eminently followable people finally let me comfortably arrive at my current relationship with the service, which is to post links to my blogs when I remember, throw out some random humor when I can, even participate in conversations when focus and priorities allow, all with the understanding that it’s gonna come ’n’ go. Twitter is basically a radio station made up of its users’ contributions: It’s always there, and you’re guaranteed to miss out on stuff you’d love to hear, but you can’t have it on all the time. You can’t be “on” all the time. You just have to let yourself tune in when you can. Facebook and the blogosphere are — chat rooms and bulletin boards and Usenet newsgroups are/were, since the dawn of cyberspace — the same way, although Twitter is so high-volume and has so many streams that it’s singularly impossible to catch everything (the understanding of which I think might ironically be an ingredient in what makes it easier to take it and leave it).
I realize that the preceding may sound ridiculously obvious, but from my experience
a good number of you will understand where I’m coming from. Some folks have a literal mania about being comprehensive, some folks think that they really can absorb it all, some folks don’t feel that it’s worthwhile — or representative of their own value as a participant — to engage with anything that they can’t engage with fully. While it can be hard to give in to the tide without feeling like you’re letting the technology beat you, in doing so you’re actually the one controlling the technology. Or to put it another way, Ain’t nobody gonna read the entire Internet.
Related: Adventures in Maybe Twitting • S Is for... • Mxy Business
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42 Favorites: #1-3 ... #11 | #12 | #13 ... The Page
I got the above from the blog of a friend who doesn't know the source. Google image searches aren't turning up anything. Of course I realize that the world is not ending and that in fact all the apocalyptic frenzy is actually misinterpretation of the Mayan Long-Count Calendar, but just in c
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Yesterday the can of Campbell’s soup went up in the sidebar to signify that posts
are backed up and slow with the going. I’ve been under the weather and less productive than usual lately, perhaps as a cosmic reminder not to make grand plans. On top of that, my Internet connection turned equally lethargic today.
So while things will hopefully get up to speed again soon I wanted to at least publish this note as preamble to a batch of word-verification definitions. Faithful readers are familiar with the exercise; anyone who isn’t can find an explanation in a page on the blog collecting all such entries to date.
As suggested by my title, I’m running out of content for these posts, largely because of Blogger’s switch earlier this year to a different verification mechanism that prompts fewer imagined definitions from me. The next installment in this series will probably
be the last.
• assfu — [ass foo] n. Martial art based on literally kicking your opponent’s butt.
• bininsic — [bin in sik] phr. Quick explanation for lack of activity outside the home.
• compery — [kom puh ree] n. Rackin’ up freebies.
• dectus — [dek tuss] n. A catcus as big as ten normal cacti.
• Essencei™ — [eh sen say] The cologne for hard-working dojo masters. “You chop the sandalwood in half. We combine its fragrant oil with hints of strawberry and musk. Essencei.”
Until my post on The Iron Giant, this here fits-’n’-starts 40 41 42 Favorites series
had run in alphanumeric order — from 1980s superhero-team comics to Airplane! on through crossword puzzles. I’ll probably keep with that order for the most part, but occasionally circumstances will suggest breaking it. Now, for instance, is a great time
to talk about seeing movies in a theater.
While year’s end is a period of reflection in general, certain aspects of life (school)
and pop culture in particular (the TV season, traditionally) don’t fit neatly with the Gregorian calendar. Movies do, partly insofar as — not being a largely serial medium like television is — the end of a Year in Film could fall anywhere. It’s easy enough to make a list of the best movies or books or music releases in the 365 days prior to Date X. But it also works out nicely that we get a volley of would-be blockbusters in the spring and summer months, when days are long and the air-conditioned multiplex beckons, followed by a smaller batch of commercial tentpoles amidst more serious, more intimate fare in the wintertime, as packed theaters offer a respite from the dreariness and cold. In truth many of the Oscar hopefuls don’t even hit the majority of markets until late December at the earliest, bridging one year to the next, and this season will be no different unless the folks misinterpreting the Mayan Long Count calendar turn out to be onto something.
There’s nothing like settling into an auditorium with stadium seating as one swatch
in a patchwork quilt made up of various bunches of a couple or a dozen friends. If libraries and bookstores and parks are where we sometimes go to be alone together, movie theaters are where we go to be together together — not that I’ll knock anyone taking in a picture stag, which I’ve certainly been known to do myself. As much fun as the multiplex can be, however, especially during a raucous comedy or action-packed thriller or superhero bonanza, I love small art-house screening rooms at least equally well. I’m lucky enough to have an excellent local one, The Bryn Mawr Film Institute, gearing up for a serious remodeling that will result in more rooms with better dimensions since the current setup of a pair of side-by-side, way-deeper-than-they-are-wide theaters is a holdover of the days when grand old movie palaces sadly got split in two or three lengthwise. I sit in BMFI’s creaky, aged chairs to watch a foreign movie or American indie gem and feel like a devoted scholar, which is a bit funny because my film classes in college were in a small, fairly state-of-the art screening room in the
main library.
DVDs and streaming services and On Demand have their place, to be sure. Godard knows that I can’t get to everything I’d rather see on the big screen, never mind catching up on classics or taking in special features. Yet theaters are one of the few places where we engage in communal, secular devotion. Potential distractions abound in this modern age — in recent months I’ve endured cell phones, snoring, and kids who should not be at a movie like this — but so far I’m still willing to brave a bum experience in the name of attending cinematic mass. It’s hard to beat the strange frisson of suddenly becoming aware that you’re in an ocean of people equally enraptured by the magic unspooling on the canvas before you.
Agree or disagree?
42 Favorites: #1-3 ... #10 | #11 | #12 ... The Page
Related: Curls on Film • Knives, Chow • Here Am I Sitting in a Tin Can, Far
Above the World • Invasion of the Body Switchers • Ghosts in the Machine
