Argentina v EEUU

For two entire minutes yesterday, I was able to live the dream that the US might actually beat Argentina in football. Not even 10 minutes in to the game, Eddie Johnson ran through and Heinze, I think, pushed him over in the box. He took the penalty himself with no problems, left Pato rooted to the spot.

Obviously a goal within the opening 10 minutes is a great start for any team, but particularly for the US because our style, at least as it was developed by Bruce Arena and now carried on by Bob Bradley, is to play a lot of defense and try to hit teams on the counterattack. Sitting back against Argentina isn't a good idea (look at what happened to Serbia) but our attack is nowhere near good enough to merit throwing more than two or three guys forward.

Anyway, Argentina came right down the field, somebody pushed Riquelme over, and he sent in a free kick that our confused defenders couldn't handle. The ball fell to Crespo in the box, and he never misses. We didn't play poorly after that, but the match was never really in doubt. 4-1 albiceleste.

I want a Benny Feilhaber jersey, he's the future. He didn't look out of place playing next to Veron and Riquelme.

Two horrible puns

1) Restaurant title: Waffle No Get Enemy

2) Band name: The Clack Five

Let me read Pitchfork so you don't have to, Part 1

From the review of Pharoahe Monch's Desire:

But the brain-bending lyricist remains best known for a quartet of laddering synth bleats (the uncleared Godzilla sample from "Simon Says" that got his debut solo album, Internal Affairs, pulled from shelves) and a command to "get the fuck up" so irrefutable in that "how the fuck up?" was the only possible response.

Gombrowicz 2

Trying to read Ferdydurke for the third or fourth time:

¡Para eso, pues, construimos el todo: para que una partícula de la parte del lector asimile una partícula de la parte de la obra y sólo en parte!

Or:

For this, then, is why we construct the whole: so that a single particle of the part of the reader assimilates a single particle of the part of the work—and only in part!

Oh the Vogonity of it all

In science fiction, the writer sets up an experiment in which humans are the variable. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is exemplary: it begins with a bunch of humans in a human environment, then takes a random human and throws it into a series of extraterrestrial environments that always present new conditions.

The film version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" works well because scene corresponds neatly to a different experiment. These experiments are never resolved, but this tension flows through the series of scenes. This is a technique proper to epic theater. I should also say that the film works because Mos Def is a great Ford Prefect, no matter what the fools on the IMDB discussion boards might say.

After watching the film I went back to look at the book, thinking that I'd be rediscovering the Borges of sci-fi. Unfortunately this wasn't the case. I was a little crushed to find that the film uses a more fitting vocabulary to relate the story than Douglas Adams himself. There went my career as a lecturer on the connection between Borges and Hitchhiker's Guide. (It exists when you're talking about the movie!!)

Reset

I've come to see the value of RSS feeds. Since many of the posts that I was writing were just links to other websites, I'll try to stop doing that in the blog and use Google Reader shared items to pass along anything I can get in RSS form, and Facebook posted items for everything else relating to the internets culture.

The post below is closer to what I want to do with this.

Facebook is like art

Artists create masks for themselves; that's "all" a profile is. Not that everyone treats it like this, but it's a choice to do so or not.

Save teh pandoras

The amazing pandora.com, along with the rest of internet radio, will be wiped out on July 15 by a bill raising royalty fees for internet broadcasting. This would be a real tragedy, as Pandora and other services let you discover a lot of great music. If you haven't already checked Pandora out, do it soon, as you may only have a month left!

I saw a presentation from the founder of Pandora a couple of days ago, and he said that the only thing to do at this point is to get in touch with your representatives in Washington. [Handy, painless link to do so in less than 3 minutes!] If this bill passes, "the plug is getting pulled" on Pandora. And this just after Pandora announced their Pandora Everywhere plan, which would let you stream music anywhere there's a wifi connection...

Note

The internet needs more luck incorporated into its structure. "I'm Feeling Lucky" is a misnomer: when it works properly, it produces an unsurprising result. "I Believe" would be more accurate. This isn't a good enough solution though!

Internets culture

Why are lolcats popular? If they had invaded our screens in, say, 1995, their audience would have been smaller. The danger of writing about lolcats as if they’re actually famous is that they enjoy only a minor form of popularity. That said, lolcats have a bigger audience than the Twinkie experiment page of yore because more people are spending more time on the internet. That’s obvious, right?

Someone complained to me that lolcats are destroying the English language. This is false, but it is true that they have little intrinsic cultural value. As images, they will be largely forgotten, except for ironic references and a probable if not certain shoutout on an episode of “I Love the 2000’s.”

Beyond images, though, lolcats are valuable as an expression of a new kind of culture, which will eventually produce something that’s more useful and more radical. In short, something capable of producing its own effects. The fact that lolcats have already spawned loltheorists shows that there’s an audience that’s ready to make this culture happen (make the happening of this culture?). Lolcats realize their highest value when they’re seen this way, as precursors.