Counterforce

Mad linkage:

Don Draper/Jon Hamm as Superman?

Google and the CIA to invest in the “future” of web monitoring.

The above image, if you can believe it, is for a condom ad. I love it.

Girls like boys with skills.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s wacky lesbian theory.

“My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat keeps on doing bad, dumb things.”

-Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard.

Lost‘s Damon Lindelof to rewrite Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel.

Old Spice’s sales double with YouTube campaign.

Mike Tyson likes cocaine and sex.

Disabled Austrian man eaten to death by maggots while his partner slept in bed beside him.

The first half of the Rubicon pilot is certainly interesting. A show for smart people or a show for people who think they’re smart (and love 70s paranoia thrillers)?

from here.

The Booker Prize longlist announced.

The longest photographic exposures in history.

Quantum time machine “allows paradox-free time travel.” If you need me, I’ll be in the past. Or the future.

The oil spill: when a science fiction nightmare becomes reality.

The plight of Afghan women: a disturbing picture.

“History is merely a list of surprises… It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick: Or, Lonesome No More!

The above is a trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story. Here’s an excerpt.

The porniest American Apparel ad ever.

Ship lost for more than 150 years is recovered.

Stieg Larsson is the first to sell one million Amazon Kindle books.

Inception: Dreams vs. Reality.

“Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”

-Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus.

Also: Every cigarette smoked in Mad Men.

Where did the money to rebuild Iraq go?

Tokyo’s oldest man has been dead for 30 years.

Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast talks about her cat.

Your lack of privacy on the internet.

The Shining vs. The Social Network:

and

Team America: World Police vs. Inception:

Interesting. Apparently this is a popular thing, especially with Inception, which has been mixed with quite a few other films, including Willy Wonka, The Matrix, Shutter Island, The Dark Knight (of course), Up, WALL-E, and, of course, Lost.

A little late, with nothing much to say, but today I just figured I’d share one of my favorite Mr. Show bits with you…

…the pre-taped call in show. It’s all about that ending. “Everything I’m saying happened last week!”

Sometimes, when confronted by an amazing celestial event, you just have to laugh and cry and scream up at the sky, “WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?”

And, rather than waiting for an answer, you should probably capture it all on video and upload it to youtube:

One of the first rules someone ever imparted onto me, re: blogging, was one of the most honest and true: Don’t start blogging a bunch of shit that everyone else in the world is going to be posting cause the question then becomes… Seriously, who gives a shit?

I’m only adding this bit of web craziness and the new internet superstar, Paul “Yosemite Bear” Vasquez (who was sober… this time, the internet is proud to tell me) because it’s so ridiculous. And wonderful. And if I was the one filming this, I’d probably have all the same reactions. The “whoa”s and the “Oh my God”s and certainly the “WHAT DOES IT MEAN”s, yeah, that’d all be me. This guy deserves some kind of fucking award for… something.

An exception to the rule stated above: If you’re going to blog about something that everyone else is blogging about, then why not blog about two things that every other asshole is going to blog about? I say that because I’m also mentioning the double rainbow because I just watched the video again, but this time utilizing the audio from the newly leaked Panda Bear single, “Tomboy.” Play them together and when you do, much like “dark side of the rainbow,” this time Hurley and Vincent will appear in Jacob’s cabin under the double rainbow and they’ll give you an alternate explanation for what the numbers on Lost were.

Prepare yourself for the inevitable remix version utilizing Vasquez’  wistful and awkward rant over a nice beat. Either him, or the latest Mel Gibson rant, much like the previous remixes featuring Christian Bale and Alec Baldwin. I can’t wait. Though I’m still wondering what it all means. And while I’m waiting for the universe to reveal it’s secrets to me, I’m just going to look at pictures of Shakira playing with lion cubs. Fuck everything else.

–Edited by Commander Light to add (I will absolutely beat this joke into the ground for all its worth):

It’s Friday. I’m tired. I can’t brain today cause I have the dumb, sorry. So, I’m just going to share some gems from the internet with you and then we’ll call it that, okay?

It starts like this:

from here.

Then it comes to this, with how Willy Wonka should’ve ended:

from here.

I actually kind of smiled and laughed as I watched that video. I don’t know. It’s just hilarious to me.

And then it ends like this:

It was all just shit and giggles. A little information, a little fun, some leaked albums, rumors, stock quotes, and a whole lot of pornography. Oh, and this also:

from here.

But that was then. And this is now! “The internet is over!” Prince has decreed, and maybe he’s right and maybe he’s wrong.

Actually that quote comes from an interesting interview with The Purple One and he’s really referring to the internet re: music distribution, but still, it makes for a good sound byte, yes?

And then he says:

The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.

Ha ha. Still love you though, Prince. I swear someone should just put together a collection of reminisces of “normal people” and journalist’s first time meeting Prince, being inducted to his world, etc. I would love to read that.

from here.

Apparently there was some nonsense on the internet yesterday suggesting that one of the dates that Doc Brown input into his Delorean time machine in Back To The Future was yesterday’s date: July 05, 2010. Sadly, this is not the case, and it was just a cleverly photoshopped image.

The actual date, though, is October 21, 2015:

from here.

Still love you though, Back To The Future. In other news: The original “Judgment Day” in the Terminator movies, August 29, 1997, came and went a long, long time ago before getting repeatedly pushed back as the various aspects of that franchise crawled along.

It’s just a weird feeling though, living in the future the movies of our youth talked about. The future is here, it’s right now, and it’s not exactly what it used to be. What are the other big future dates talked about in other fantastical pop culture? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still have faith in the year we make contact, but I also have questions. And concerns. The future isn’t something I think you necessarily sail into it (or fly your jetpack into), but walk into. It’s a concrete thing, with ground beneath you, and you walk on that ground as you march into tomorrow. On roads. Roads? Where we’re going, we won’t need any fucking roads! Sorry, sorry.

But seriously, the thing about the future isn’t so much concrete totems of amazing that I want to see looming and growing over the horizon (though, yes, I do want to see tower of human achievements built on the plateau of human brilliance)(and robots!), but I think with each step into tomorrow, we need to update and upgrade our imaginations. Our hopes and our expectations and our fantasies about what is to come need to get bigger and wilder and more daring.

We need our dreams, and our dreamers, and we need that hope that when we wake up from them, we’ll be standing in the bright new rays of an amazing and formerly impossible tomorrow, right?

Fireworks:

More fireworks:

The father of our country:

Patriotic music:

Girls in patriotic bikinis:

Founding fathers:

Even more fireworks:

“Fireworks” by Animal Collective:

Happy 4th of July.

Right, so now each month on Counterforce, at the end of the month as that chapter closes, I find myself looking back on my posts and just wondering about all the puzzle pieces left strewn about. Some things planned, some things decidedly not planned, some accidents, some just flat out mistakes…

Sometimes your blog is both a testament to you and a museum devoted to your mistakes and victories. It can be a lovely display of all those things you loved, or hated, or sometimes a combination of the two, and usually more about yourself than anything else.

I’ll never forget that an ex once told me that “nostalgia is for people who have no future.” I found that to be a rather curious statement and when I pressed her for clarification, she told me that, to her, too many people use the mirror as a reflection on the past and only rarely on the present. I asked her what was wrong with that, in certain doses, and she responded with, “You shouldn’t have time for that. You should be moving so fast that when you pass by the mirror all you see is a blur.”

She said that and then she was gone. I felt like all I got out of that was the blur.

This relationship was a long time ago. It was short, but it felt longer, and it feels like it was longer ago than it was, but it was probably circa the first Arcade Fire album (not the EP). And now they have another album coming out.

If one of the leaked songs had been called “Month Of June” instead “Month Of May” that would’ve been a lot more convenient for my blogging concerns, thank you very much.

from here.

Real quick, two things you should know about me…

The first thing you should know about me: The other day, on twitter of all places, I was self analyzing out loud and wondered if I hold better conversations via the phone or if my stronger quality is my voicemails (which are, quite frankly, amazing)(to the point that, ladies, you would have to hold the phone away from your ear for fear that said voicemails could put you instantly in heat), you know, from the perspective of whoever the fuck it is I’m calling. Honestly… I don’t care.

But that lead me to realize: When I talk on the phone, you can tell if I’m actually active in a conversation not so much by what we’re discussing or who I’m talking to anymore, but what I’m doing physically. I mean, obviously if I’m sitting there watching TV, then I’m not listening to you, but it’s more of a kinetic thing. If I’m up, walking around, pacing, then there I’m there, I’m really a part of the thing, the process, the bullshitting, whatever. My other mode, oddly enough? Staring at myself in the mirror.

It’s weird. You could call me up, we could be having a fascinating conversation and I’ve noticed that, without thinking about it, I might just walk into the bathroom and start looking into the mirror. At myself? No. It’s hardly ever a really conscious thing. Maybe it’s self reflexive, like staring out at the horizon, only in this case, the horizon is my face and it’s a portal to a larger gateway of either the honesty or just flat out sexy bullshit that I’m going to peddle your way.

Or, maybe, by looking at myself, with a certain visually conscious part of myself shut off, I’m actually subconscious recording myself looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself as I talk about myself looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself… in some kind infinite loop of recursive blogitude?

The second thing that you should know about me right now, right this very second is that I have every intention of making this song the jam of the summa summa summertime:

I mean, that’s my intention, but as for you? You’re so vain, you probably think that summertime jam is about you, don’t you?

More and more this blog feels like a book to me, in a way. Like you could collect it into a hot mess of an interactive coffee table curio. A book in 12 parts, chronicling the year in which we make contact. But contact with… what? Ourselves? Each other? Slow dancing in the burning hotel room that is the past? Or staring at ourselves in the mirror, reflecting on the future? Or is “the future” just another aspect of right here and now because all times are one (especially on the internet)?

All of those and more, maybe. Maybe not. But, so far, in the section of this starship/book/beast/blog entitled “June” we have so far been subjected to:

The nature of time spent having fun in all these new worlds we inhabit.

Today and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and how each day is just another day.

Seeing words everywhere you look, just like a casual synesthete would.

The shape of our heads and of our favorite TV shows to come and return.

…or to leave us, as Peanut noticed, because, sadly, Party Down has apparently been canceled.

A lot of Doctor Who, a show about time and space, and just in time for this (hopefully bullshit) rumor about Johnny Depp starring in an Americanized big screen version in 2012 (of course it would be in 2012).

The oil spill and the music of this year, such as new albums by Stars and the aforementioned Arcade Fire.

Our lovers and our former lovers and the music they inspire. And schemes.

And bombs and explosions and more music.

And this:

And all accumulating to but quite possibly falling way short of a certain sense of… thisness.

But, as we already covered, tomorrow is another day. With a different mirror to look into. And a different version of ourselves reflected back in. Perhaps we’ll start to look more like ourselves as we strangely believe that ourselves should look or perhaps we’ll look like another stranger in a strange land.

Maybe this is not for you. Maybe it’s just not the time for this kind of thing?

Read more…