Mostly linkspam

[cleolinda]

Okay, I buckled down last night and got out 4000 words or so. Basically, I went through and figured out which as-yet-unwritten scene stuck out most vividly for me, and I sat down and wrote that. This happened to be the central death scene in the story, but hey, it worked.



Sony BMG and Childrin R Skary have teamed up for a caption contest where the winner gets the new Danny Elfman CD, whee!

Gerald Ford is now the longest-living U.S. president.

Jude Law and Sienna Miller split up. Again.

Best Week Ever outs Perez Hilton as an asshole.

'Borat' victims upset at being duped. It seems like the humor coach, naturally enough, is the only one who seems to understand the point of the enterprise, although I don't blame the morning show producer (see: the scene where Borat accosts the weatherman) who got fired afterwards for being upset.

'Whiter Shade of Pale' now a court case.

Angelina Jolie gets on full Mumbai train. This is kind of an odd headline, when what they're actually trying to get across is that the Daniel Pearl biopic was filming in India: "In Mumbai on Monday, Jolie sporting a pale blue T-shirt and khaki trousers stood in a queue to purchase a ticket. Then Jolie and [Dan Futterman, playing Daniel Pearl], also casually dressed wearing jeans and a white shirt, boarded a train. They were escorted by bodyguards who held back young students yelling Jolie's name. Curious onlookers collected outside the train station to catch a glimpse of Jolie. Street scenes were also filmed of Jolie and Futterman walking near the Gateway of India, a popular tourist destination in downtown Mumbai. The movie stars then filmed inside a hair salon and a restaurant."

Sadly, my primary reaction to this story was, "If Mariane Pearl was Dutch/Afro-Cuban, I still don't know why they--Dan Futterman! I LOVE HIM!"

kosher_jenny: "Speaking about that Dateline show [see previous entry], apparently the guy behind this show is a majorly creepy character. Personally, I find the show's whole concept to be vile and of the worst sort exploitation."

You know, I thought the first show they did was kind of awesome. That, and I'm a collector of the absurd, so when I heard about Guy #2 walking right past Guy #1 Getting Arrested on the Neighbor's Lawn to get to his alleged jailbait, I thought, "Okay, that is going in the notebook." But as they've done more and more of these shows--I haven't seen any of them after the one I saw, whichever it was--something has struck me as ineffably oogy about the whole thing, and I couldn't figure out what. I think now that it's this: the first show was, in a way, a public service. Look how easy it is for predators to talk to your teens and children online, look how easy it is for them to meet them in person, look at how they turn out to be the people you'd least suspect. But subsequent shows by definition had none of that preventative novelty--they were more in the vein of, "So you liked that, huh? Well, here's a whole bunch more." They pander more to trainwreck syndrome--trainwreck sadism, even--than to public awareness, and I think that's kind of the vibe I'm getting off this guy. That, and the fact that he seems a lot like your garden-variety celebutroll.

Also, with eerie prescience: "The arrangement, and the fact that the shows involve cooperation with law enforcement, has some NBC News staff apoplectic. 'We've crawled into bed with the cops. People think this will be the pickup truck for the new decade,' says one Dateline producer, referring to the notorious episode in 1993 in which Dateline was caught faking exploding gas tanks in GM trucks. 'One of these guys is going to go home and shoot himself in the head.' "

Meanwhile, lilgoala: "The Oklahoma man who was killed over the land dispute? Played Neopets. It was so weird to read your linkspam about it and then read about it again on a Neopets fansite forum."

Subversive Cross-Stitch (I think "Truthiness" is my favorite).

divabat: "V" Meets the Secret Service.

Flying Spaghetti Monster sighted in Germany. Ramen.

Comments

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Sadly, my primary reaction to this story was, "If Mariane Pearl was Dutch/Afro-Cuban, I still don't know why they--Dan Futterman! I LOVE HIM!"

*snickers* Yeah, that first part of that sentence has pretty much been my reaction to the whole thing ever since they cast her, but ... seriously, DAN FUTTERMAN. He's awesome.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Under duress I will admit to an addiction for Judging Amy reruns on TNT. Why did I never watch that show when it was actually in primetime?

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

I've been known to occasionally leave Judging Amy reruns on. But, you know, because there's nothing else on then and the Law and Order reruns come on right after. Yeah, that's it. *coughs*

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

See, I never intentionally sit down to watch them. But if my sister has the TV on and I happen to walk by, I am instantly sucked in for the next two hours.

[brittastic14.livejournal.com]

nice icon yo.

[lo0o0ony-lauren.livejournal.com]

I may be the only person in the world who is not doing NaNo. One of my friends got a couple of thousand words in before she realised she'd basically written fanfic and tweaked the names slightly. Oh, how I mocked.

I'll probably have a go next time, but I'm just not really sure how you go about it.

Oh man, I didn't even realise Jude Law and Sienna Miller were BACK TOGETHER. Reading your linkspam is the closest I get to knowing anything at all about celebrity. Smooooooth.

(PS - long-time reader, first-time commenter, etc etc HELLO.)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hi!

[eldritch-flame.livejournal.com]

I love your icon. I so have to catch up on QI.

[lo0o0ony-lauren.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I love QI, and strangeumbrella makes the best icons.

[at-the-stars.livejournal.com]

YES! Dan Futterman!

[enid-keaner.livejournal.com]

Dan Futterman is made of awesome. He needs more work.

awwww..

[mustang-bex1126.livejournal.com]

Now I want to go to DC and dress up! I'm a Politics Geek (my degree, doncha know) and I was getting very odd looks when I would try and tell people how much I loved V for Vendetta. Probably because sometimes it came out as "It makes me want to blow up stuff!" or "Made me want to dress in costume!" weird stuff of that sort... YAY! FREEDOMS!

[lilgoala.livejournal.com]

Best Week Ever outs Perez Hilton as an asshole.

At first I was like "Please, he needs to be 'outed'? Doesn't everyone already know?" but then I watched it and it was funny, so my snark is withdrawn. Also, I wish he'd get a real job. As a crash-test dummy or something.

[koritsimou.livejournal.com]

Didn't I read that Marianne asked for Angelina?


I may get flak for this, but if I could pick anyone to star as me in a movie, I'm sure as hell picking the most beautiful woman on earth.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, this is true. And the way she's made up, she's not a bad likeness. But I guarantee you that when the movie comes out, there will be allegations of Jolie taking a role away from a black actress, and I promise you that the phrase "blackface" will be used, if only metaphorically.

[koritsimou.livejournal.com]

Of course there will be. And halfway, they're right. Do you think it'll make a difference if Marianne does all her interviews with her?

I wonder how Marianne identifies herself. Maybe she doesn't see herself as all black. I'm pretty sure nobody's asked her.

[kestrel127.livejournal.com]

Here's a great one for you... Borat beaten up, rescued by House (http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006520669,00.html).

[callmesyd.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. I hope King Julian's face heals nicely. (Shut up, he'll always be king of the lemurs to me.)

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

I really wish they'd gone with that headline instead. But yeah, UK paper and all.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stormthesea/]

To make you feel better, I have exactly 293 words in my new NaNo. I got 6000 into my last one, until I realized I didn't like it.

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

If I'd know you were going to link that using my text, I'd left a more substantial comment in the previous post rather than being so blunt. Anyway, to clarify, my opinion is basically similar to yours. Leaving aside the questions over "innocent until proven guilty" and entrapment for now, it's not only trainwreckish entertainment, but it exploits parental fear for the sake of ratings. After all, it puts faces to the boogymen that want to take your children away and do terrible things to them. But in reality a child is far, far more likely to face sexual abuse or be kidnapped by a relative than some stranger. Not to mention that reliable stats on the actual rate of incidences of cyber seduction of minor that results in abuse or kidnapping can be tricky to find. Yes, I don't doubt that there are creeps out there who would do and have done such a thing, but I doubt they are as numerous as the hype claims. And I certainly don't think that vigilantism is the solution. If Von Erck and his ilk really want to make a difference in this area then they should become cops, assuming he could pass a psych test. (I mean, pretending to be girl and cyber-doing it with one of your enemies for over a year? Creeeeeepy.)

Here's another (http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/Issues/2004-07-15/news/feature_2.html), older, article profiling Xavier Von Erc and Perverted Justice. It also profiles one of the men who were targeted by the site in one of its "busts". Also of note is the info towards the end of the article that states that this brand of internet justice can do more harm than good when it comes to prosecuting and convicting people.


(After all that I feel the need to link to something funny, so here's a link to what I stumbled across when trying to look for statistics. It's a SA review of the hilariously bad Lifetime movie Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life. Ex: "The Case For: If a normal kid ruins his life after viewing stuff so tame, I guess that makes the rest of us some sort of porno supermen, impervious to its death rays. I'm not sure if this is actually such a great attribute, but I'll take it.")

[kosher-jenny.livejournal.com]

D'oh. Here's the proper link (http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3006) for the movie review.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for reference, I generally tend to use whatever text people comment with, minus anything extra that would look self-serving if I repeated it ("I love your blog!," etc.). The reason I used the blunt part, as you put it, is that I guess I hadn't really thought about how exploitative the whole series was until jennnk left that first link, and even then I didn't quite get what the problem was, and neither did some of the commenters. I think the problem was that I'd only read the transcript of one show on MSNBC--they presented it as an article--and wandered through the den one time and I think caught that same show as a rerun, because I recognized the narration. I don't know if that was the first show or not, but I never watched any subsequent ones, and so didn't realize the road they were going down. (I'm also kind of embarrassed that the idea of journalists working with police being problematic never occurred to me. I mean, once your link pointed it out, I understood, but the closest I ever got to a journalism class, ethics or otherwise, was creative nonfiction.) So I liked that you were laying it on the line out there, and what I said after that was me trying to explain why I didn't pick up on that myself sooner.

[genepool23.livejournal.com]

Um, ooookaaay...So a masked man, bearing what appear to be weapons, approaches the White House, the Justice Department and the IRS, and he is subjected to...conversation? Light-hearted banter? Maybe his claims of the US becoming a "Police State" might require a second going over.

I mean, I'm not trying to belittle the tragic damage this administration has done to our most cherished rights, but this story is somewhat laughable. Imagine "V" shruggingly deciding to mail his grievences since it was too far to walk to the new IRS office.

[want2bspry.livejournal.com]

Amen! Did anybody else hear G Dubbs call Bill Clinton his "brutha from anotha motha" yesterday?

Ever since the 7th, things just don't have their ominous tinge . . .

[arielchan.livejournal.com]

On the other side of things, I was a member of Perverted Justice back in Summer 2005. I was the most basic level of member: the type who hangs out in the forums and doesn't participate in any sort of "busts", but I had the fortune to meet (in chats and IM) first Harvey, Xavier's right-hand man, and Xavier, quickly followed by several other PJ members.

All of the members were very welcoming and normal, and outside of bust discussions we spent most of our time talking about and reccomending music and movies to each other. So my perspective of this is, everyone does strange shit when they're angry or caught up in a Cause, and Xavier certainly is. I don't think that it makes him a creep or a nasty person that he wants to get back at those trying to end his crusade, as long as he doesn't take it too far, and I don't think anyone can really blame him for wanting to do these shows when they
A) get the site name out in public
B) make people aware that anyone really can be a molestor
C) probably make more than a decent bit of money for him and the site

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I think the article does--and should--put a lot of the heat on Dateline and NBC, who should know better. There's apparently a number of ethics issues involved (which I wasn't aware of, and I'm a little embarrassed they never occurred to me, beyond the basic idea of possible entrapment), but it's said that NBC is using entertainment lawyers rather than referring the matter to their legal department. As in, they're more worried about the entertainment value and negotiations with the "talent" than with the ethics violations of collaborating with the police. The fact that the article paints Xavier as a little scary seems more like it's meant to show what a bad, bad idea this has been on NBC's part.

That said, the story of what Xavier did to Bruce Raisley was horrible. I was never even clear on what Raisley supposedly did to him--do you have any idea?

[arielchan.livejournal.com]

From what I understand, Raisley was one of the detractors saying very negative things about PJ and trying to get someone to put an end to it.

[alliemolloy.livejournal.com]

Tee hee!

German... German... German... Spaghetti Monster!

[darastar.livejournal.com]

It seems like the humor coach, naturally enough, is the only one who seems to understand the point of the enterprise

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've known about the humor coach for a while. My mom worked with him in DC way back in the day, and for some reason caught up with him again this summer...like in August. He mentioned that he was going to be in some movie, and my mom started telling me about it and I flipped out because I knew it was a big deal. It's very lucky that my mother and Pat have their kids to explain things to them.

Turns out (and this is all second-hand from my mom and apparently also in the newspaper article), that Patrick (the humor coach) thought that at first it was a documentary, but after a while he figured it out because he knew that no one would be that ridiculous, and he pulled one of the producers aside at one point and asked them to let him in on the joke, but they were very serious, and didn't give anything away.

At this point, he's trying to parlay the Borat stuff into something else, because he only got the $400. He's a motivational speaker in real life, but he might want to try and be a lobbyist for the film industry in Washington.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Hee! Yeah, and the "My suit is NAHHHHT BLAAAACK" part is the one that gets played in all the commercials, too. He really does need to be compensated more than that.

[darastar.livejournal.com]

and from what my mom says he does sound like a really good guy - two kids in college, owns his own business - so...it would be sad if this DIDN'T turn into anything for him.

And I think I'm going to get to meet him at some point when I go home for christmas. I'll have to ask my mom about that. But I wonder how many of his friends/acquaintances didn't know he was going to be in the movie and then saw it and went, WAH? Patrick? Huh? That's gotta be kind of awesome to see someone you know on TV/the big screen.

[havocs-roman.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether to love the real-life version of "V for Vendetta" or bemoan the fact that there's a perfectly credible context for "his" appearence. Woe.

Unrelated note: a few days from now, Oscar speculation will begin to escalate, and, apparently, Helen Mirren is an early fave for Best Actress, for her work in The Queen. Someone thought this was a convenient moment to dig up this clip, featuring her and half the world, from Gore Vidal to Courtney Love --

Caligula Revisited (http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/9510339.html#cutid1)

I seriously had to check IMDb to make sure this was just a short movie, not a trailer for an actual picture.

[ironclad1609.livejournal.com]

Das ist das fliegende Spaghetti monster! :O

Hahaha, I have no idea what that is about...

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

What, you haven't been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_spaghetti_monster

[ironclad1609.livejournal.com]

LOL nope that was new for me. Hahaha, thanks for filling me in :)

[dives.livejournal.com]

Sadly for me, I clicked the link to the Radar Online feature about Xavier Von Erck, and the first thing I thought was, literally, "PORTLAND FTW!" (Portland is, as you may have guessed, my hometown.)

I wonder what Alan Moore would think of that V thing.

[somewhatmoot.livejournal.com]

To be perfectly honest, AVSO is a joke. They can't even bust PeeJ'rs properly. For at least two years now, they've had information on a friend of mine who has never, ever been associated with Perveted-Justice, but there he sits...confirmed.

It's just awfully funny and pathetic.

[katytowell.livejournal.com]

"Das ist das Fliegende Spaghetti Monstah!" Ahaha! For some reason, hearing that auf Deutsch is ten times funnier than it would be in English. I mean, not that the big flying spaghetti monster isn't funny on its own.

Also - thanks for the mention!

[ali-jayne.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to the Subversive Cross Stitch site. My fingers are itching to make one of the holiday patterns already! :)

[amndad.livejournal.com]

best. links. ever.

thank you darling.