November 2003

“Before the doors opened Friday, a car caught fire in the parking lot, police were called twice to restrain eager shoppers (and wound up restraining overzealous private security guards hired by Wal-Mart), and in their rush to get inside once the store opened, shoppers literally broke the door down.”

Congratulations, consumer America, this is the life you deserve.

“Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O’Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.”

Today I read two articles discussing books and electronic publishing: Gary Wolf’s piece for Wired about Amazon’s Search Inside the Book feature, and Umberto Eco’s lecture at Alexandria. I see some interesting parallels between the pieces, but I want to reread both before I can comment on them.

“Rubin, unsuccessfully, kept trying to get Cash to make a version of Radiohead’s ‘Creep.’” The other remarkable quote from that article: “In preparation for the fifth disc in the American Recordings sequence, he recorded some 50 new songs after his wife, June Carter Cash, died in May. None of these songs appear on ‘Unearthed.’”

The girl wants me to add this to my Christmas list, but ain’t no way I can wait a month, dammit.

activities offered as part of the BBC’s languages series. Without buying the videos, of course, I can’t view the Beeb’s French programs, but the website offers interactive modules that allow you to listen to and practice conversational French.

It’s standard introductory material–asking for directions, ordering a drink or a meal, buying Metro tickets, inquiring about the price of a piece of merchandise–but it’s a good start to picking up the sounds of French words.

It’s a bit of a mess around here, as I’m trying to add stuff to this page. Gimme some time and I’ll work it all out.

…Black Table decrypts the Chinatown bus that Jen and I have grown to love-hate.

Here’s something funny: A number of prominent blogs (Metafilter, BoingBoing, Gothamist) have linked to Kean Soo’s photo pages from his recent visit to New York. Kean and his brother Meng were in town from Ottawa.

What makes his page noteworthy is his organizational design; he’s using a subway map to indicate the places he and his brother visited. I thought that seemed cool, but when I started reading, I saw his mention of the True Porn release party, and I suddenly remembered that I’d met Kean there, because I recalled a guy who had driven down from Ottawa with his brother.

I didn’t know anyone at the release party, and so I was wallflowering for a while. Kean was also hanging back a bit, and so we started talking. He signed one of the pages he’d drawn in the anthology for me. He’s a good cartoonist, so go check out his work.

You’ll note a new Media option in the list of links. There I have a running list of what I’m reading and listening. My eventual goal is to have all that on the main page, but that’s still down the road a bit.