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Two things I'm thinking about that make the post I wrote and deleted last night about my hair look as stupid and avoidant as it was! (This is still stupid and avoidant, but in a way that's much more interesting to the rest of you, possibly.
1.) Pronunciation Book
This is a spiral I dropped into this morning after![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theemdash linked me to this Daily Dot article about a YouTube channel called Pronunciation Book that had recently gone from merely teaching pronunciations of words to a count down to something that seems jumbled and sinister and is fucking fascinating. It looks, as Em said at lunch, like writing as an extreme sport.
From what I can tell, the rest of the internet is also interested. 4chan's /x/ forum has come up in many of the articles and message board postings I read this morning. (I'm not linking to that, because I feel like 4chan is the LAST place I should go on my work computer, heh.) Many message boards have threads that are pages and pages long dedicated to figuring out what happened, locating the position of broadcast, and decoding strange clicks. Most people seem to have written it off as an ARG or a viral marketing campaign (possibly for Battlestar Galactica?), but I'm less interested in what it's counting down to than I am in the story that's unfolding in bits and pieces of rough translation and transmission. Someone has kindly pulled together some of it into a semblance of story:
Em and I have decided to forego the interest in clicks and triangulating location and such and just focus on the words. We're going to pull apart the sentences that have been leaked in a seemingly pellmell way and see if we can't reorganize them in a more or less linear narrative. (Or non-linear narrative, given that there seem to be two timelines going, but at least we can try and find a Plot A and Plot B.) We're working from a list of transcripts that she found of the videos so far.
So, there's a bit of madness you can step into if you like.
2.) NPR and Capes
I'm still mainlining Smallville. I'm actually almost finished. I have three episodes left in season 9, which I'm sure I'll get through tonight, and then I start season 10, which I'll probably complete by this weekend. My thoughts on Superman through the lens of Smallville will come later, but right now I just wanted to establish I am living firmly in the Mainlining Smallville Headspace, which means I tend to place the template of that fantasy over what happens sometimes. I've also been listening to NPR as I drive lately. Something about the break up made me less inclined to listen to my music all of the time. (Though I don't know why. I finally live in a world where the most important person in my life doesn't give me shit for what I listen to. Maybe it's residual fear or something.) So it shouldn't surprise any of you to know that this morning I was listening to a story about PTSD and wondering how different it would be if it was happening in a world where Superman existed.
Would they, for instance, instead of pulling someone who had served in the army in Iraq for the piece, pull one of the Joker's victims? What would socioeconomic speculation look like in a world where capes were more or less big business? How many fluff pieces can we run about acrobat clinics for kids suffering a loss? Would the rafting race between Cuomo and Bloomberg, meant to draw attention to the Adirondacks as a vacation spot, be instead about Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon? How different would Comic Con look in a world where the people we dress up as are real? (Okay, my initial feeling about that one is 'not that different', because yada yada cape comics and the way they speak to their readership and how deeply they can touch us and alter the context through which we view the world. I would strongly argue that the hope brought to people by cape comics isn't any less now than if they were real, it would just be more widely validated. And that's a whole other post, isn't it?)
THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT KEEP ME UP AT NIGHT. And things I might implement as a story telling exercise. I don't know, I haven't decided yet. I'm going to collect my thoughts and make a more substantial post, probably to the Big Girl Blog.
So uh, good afternoon, internet. What stories are you distracting yourself with today?
FINGERS CROSSED LJ DOESN'T EAT THE POST THIS TIME.
1.) Pronunciation Book
This is a spiral I dropped into this morning after
theemdash linked me to this Daily Dot article about a YouTube channel called Pronunciation Book that had recently gone from merely teaching pronunciations of words to a count down to something that seems jumbled and sinister and is fucking fascinating. It looks, as Em said at lunch, like writing as an extreme sport. From what I can tell, the rest of the internet is also interested. 4chan's /x/ forum has come up in many of the articles and message board postings I read this morning. (I'm not linking to that, because I feel like 4chan is the LAST place I should go on my work computer, heh.) Many message boards have threads that are pages and pages long dedicated to figuring out what happened, locating the position of broadcast, and decoding strange clicks. Most people seem to have written it off as an ARG or a viral marketing campaign (possibly for Battlestar Galactica?), but I'm less interested in what it's counting down to than I am in the story that's unfolding in bits and pieces of rough translation and transmission. Someone has kindly pulled together some of it into a semblance of story:
Em and I have decided to forego the interest in clicks and triangulating location and such and just focus on the words. We're going to pull apart the sentences that have been leaked in a seemingly pellmell way and see if we can't reorganize them in a more or less linear narrative. (Or non-linear narrative, given that there seem to be two timelines going, but at least we can try and find a Plot A and Plot B.) We're working from a list of transcripts that she found of the videos so far.
So, there's a bit of madness you can step into if you like.
2.) NPR and Capes
I'm still mainlining Smallville. I'm actually almost finished. I have three episodes left in season 9, which I'm sure I'll get through tonight, and then I start season 10, which I'll probably complete by this weekend. My thoughts on Superman through the lens of Smallville will come later, but right now I just wanted to establish I am living firmly in the Mainlining Smallville Headspace, which means I tend to place the template of that fantasy over what happens sometimes. I've also been listening to NPR as I drive lately. Something about the break up made me less inclined to listen to my music all of the time. (Though I don't know why. I finally live in a world where the most important person in my life doesn't give me shit for what I listen to. Maybe it's residual fear or something.) So it shouldn't surprise any of you to know that this morning I was listening to a story about PTSD and wondering how different it would be if it was happening in a world where Superman existed.
Would they, for instance, instead of pulling someone who had served in the army in Iraq for the piece, pull one of the Joker's victims? What would socioeconomic speculation look like in a world where capes were more or less big business? How many fluff pieces can we run about acrobat clinics for kids suffering a loss? Would the rafting race between Cuomo and Bloomberg, meant to draw attention to the Adirondacks as a vacation spot, be instead about Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon? How different would Comic Con look in a world where the people we dress up as are real? (Okay, my initial feeling about that one is 'not that different', because yada yada cape comics and the way they speak to their readership and how deeply they can touch us and alter the context through which we view the world. I would strongly argue that the hope brought to people by cape comics isn't any less now than if they were real, it would just be more widely validated. And that's a whole other post, isn't it?)
THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT KEEP ME UP AT NIGHT. And things I might implement as a story telling exercise. I don't know, I haven't decided yet. I'm going to collect my thoughts and make a more substantial post, probably to the Big Girl Blog.
So uh, good afternoon, internet. What stories are you distracting yourself with today?
FINGERS CROSSED LJ DOESN'T EAT THE POST THIS TIME.
