Sunday, October 05, 2008

autowin's straight talk fun express of the day: change is in the air 10-6-2008

You know when you're looking at your google reader and you're at that one folder -- posts you'd wanted to read from start to finish, and therefore set aside for an imaginary moment in the future when you'd have time to focus -- and it's like, overstuffed? Kelly Ripa is on the teevee, she just told me I could be more amazing if I switched my brand of paper towels. She's wrong though, Viva are just better than other paper towels. I could sleep on a bed of Viva paper towels. I'd like 200-count Viva paper sheets for my BED. OMG now someone is telling me to get Tide To Go. Too bad I already have it. How do y'all handle all these ideas at once? Teevee is a lot to handle, but I must see every political pundit ever give their perspective on the debate. OMG! cheeseburgers! Hell in a handbasket, humanity, all of you. I think the economy is crashing or something, so my advice would be to make out, laugh, and wait for the next joke.

Anyhow I'm working on a real blog post Sunday Top Ten, but because of moving around, a ridiculous bundle of dentist's appointments and calendar-related photo shoots, working a lot of hours at three different jobs, writing emails, commuting from here to there, eating too much, working out, traveling from place to place to place and leaving my Cetaphill behind over and over and then needing to go to Duane Reade, and the 2008 Presidential elections, writing a blog and eating more, I haven't been able to write as often as I'd like to. Also I spend a lot of time stressing out about the state of the union. I should give a like, address or something. Four score and seven whatevs. Anyhow.

I think too many people are trying to be writers right now, clearly it's not working out for anyone except maybe Ariel Levy per ushe. There should be some sort of executive board who will decide like 200 writers who get to be writers for full-time, and then let the rest of us off the hook. Then there wouldn't be so many frustrating dashed opportunities, or maybe you might be the first one to tweet that one thing or stumble upon it. Also there'd be less crap to wade through to find the good stuff. I think the internet has become an artistic democracy, but maybe the world should be an artistic meritocracy. Is this like, an evil thing to say? I guess the other argument is that everything that is honest is good. Therefore I would like to change my theory and go back to that -- "everything that is honest is good and worthwhile." So that'd do away with Michelle Malkin, but keep all the livejournalers out there. I mean honesty not in facts, but in heart.

quote: "The trick of enjoying New York is to not be so busy grinding your way to the center of the earth that you fail to notice the sparkle of the place, a scale and a kind of wonder that put all human endeavors in their proper place." (David Carr, The Night of the Gun)
links:
1) Krista passed this on as the "best cumulative argument I've read for him in a long time.": The Choice (@thenewyorker.)
2) This Lowell-Bishop story has always felt familiar to me: "Bishop's characteristically down-to-earth response to all this melodrama was basically: get a good shrink and don't drink," "Somehow, amid the glory and the banality, the poems got written." Sing for Me, Muse, the Mania (@the new republic)
3) Just so y'all know, we earned it, bitches. How Success Ruined the New York Jew (@nymag)
4)Last Crumbs of my Childhood Still Available for Feature - Film Adaptation (@mcsweeny's)
5) Top 8 Most Amazing Tree Houses (from a;ex) (@fffffound)
6) "Unlike past social movements, which pretended to bear a social message, hipsters don’t have a philosophy. The hipster seeks only to pose as chic without sacrificing ironic distance." The seventh seal of smug. (@pop matters)
7) When it's in bullet points, it's so obvious. Totally the end of an era, I think, it's like we're gonna need a new word, we're not Generation 2.0 or Y or Me or mememe or yuppies, hipsters, yipsters The End of the Sex Writer? (@waking vixen)
8) Even stranger now, with what's happened since. Moe's To All The Sad Young White Media Interns Working For Free… [Tough Love] (@gawker)
9) As JT LeRoy, Savannah Knoop perpetrated one of the biggest hoaxes in literary history. Now she tells Radar her side of the story in Ghost Writer (@radar) and Stef writes on it here in "big exit book club: irl boy girl: how i became jt leroy by savannah knoop" - "I haven't devoured a book like this in ages, and i have a lot of feelings about it." (@bigexit)
10) I would like to quit all my jobs and just spend all day reading stuff on the internet. How could I do that and get paid. I just want to read about every feeling everyone ever has, described properly and at the right time. I just want to read everything the smart people wrote every day. I'd like to be completely up to date on everything that's already been written, like, if it's in the library ... then I toldju, I read all that stuff already, what's been written since yesterday? sheesh. I'll give you somethin' specific.
12) The next Sarah Palin vlog and your Sunday Top Ten should release soon enough.
13) That being said this blog from now on will be mostly 100% nonsense. Because I'm going to ITT Tech to learn something useful, like how to build a time machine. If I don't get into ITT Tech, I'm going to hit the high seas and capture maidens. That's my. kind. of. bailout!

16 comments:

stef said...

aw, i made auto fun.
aw, muffin.
i am so happy i had an excuse to create a tag: 'no, haviland, i am not shrooming.'
(and no i am not starting a book club - that's your thing, and evidently jezebel's)

also, savannah knoop is doing a book signing of some sort in new york next friday... it might be worth attending. i still want to know winona ryder's deal.

eric mathew said...

did you mean piper palin? i know the topic is still on my brain.

she angers me. she runs youtube and gives liberal videos 1 to no stars.

if it's not piper palin could it be piper paraboo circa cheaper by the dozen.

and p.s. i think i am loosing weight by taking airborne for my cold, i don't know why but i think it said it's a dietary supplement. that or it's all in my head. oh well.

autumn m said...

i loved this blog. it was everthing and nothing all at once. =) side note, autumn's mind is very troubled. =(

Anonymous said...

hey, how's that handjob thing from the previous post working out? because i know a guy.

The Brooklyn Boy said...

I remembered to wear my Auto-Straddle boy shorts today, and the Giants won 44-6.

Never. Coming. Off.

At least when Big Blue football is on the teevee.

riese said...

stef: aw, scone! it's okay, no one wants to play in my book club anyhow. tell your mom to join the convo when she finishes oscar wao! that book sigining will probs be a scene for real. obvs you are going, yes.

eric mathew: piper palin, yes, that's what i meant. i mean i was being sarcastic obviously piper is too busy with not getting sexually educated to worry about 'lil ol' me.

autumn: troubles troubles a spider web and it's you in the middle, twist and turn, in the little bubble ... I'm trying to remember the lyrics to the coldplay song "trouble" which is all i can think of to say in response.

dave: I've decided instead to re-focus my attentions to making fimo beads with my hands and other crafts for children in africa.

brooklyn boy: that's a good testimonial; wear our boyshorts and the giants will win. that's football, right? Ah yes. "Big Blue football." Cheers!

The Brooklyn Boy said...

Ha. I hereby bequeath my rights to that statement to Bernard, Marie Lyn and the Auto-Universe. Feel free to utilize.

Unless this causes a run on boy shorts. Then I wouldn't mind being compensated. In emoticons. Haha.

When you get famous and sell many of these, I might regret this comment. Might.

autumn m said...

ah its good that all you can come up with is lyrics to a coldplay song. if you auto new my troubles, i might have to freak out a bit. but if you knew my problem, there is no doubt in my mind that you would say something profound that would fix my troubled mind like it was your job.

Anonymous said...

i totally declared my desire to give up and be a pirate today. a lot of what you said is oh so real, but that was weird. anyway im not exactly sure-footed on land and i can totally rock a bandana, so, yeah. and i mean maidens. come on.

Adam Tiller said...

Continuing the trip into bizarro-verse, the Moe goodbye post.

What the shit is going on in media/web-content-generation/writing-in-general today? What the shit, indeed.

I feel like the over-talented underachievers of The Internet need to band together aboard The Good Ship Fuckthisshit, and go on a slash-and-burn radical-piratical raid of the world. Except, where would we find a Captain? Captains are, by definition, not underachievers.

I vote Littefoot for Captain, because I think Tink has too irascible a temperament, and I wouldn't like to be made to walk the plank.

stef said...

oh my god, moe. she sounds just like us. let's call her, we'll grill some atm receipts on her roof.
the sky is falling.

riese said...

the brooklyn boy: I probs will get famous and sell many of these, because I hear clothing lines from bloggers is a hot new market probs.

autumn m: sometimes i can sense things like what is happening like that guy in that show that keeps advertising itself, the mentalist, but sometimes all I have is some song lyrics. I should be a therapist though, like for real.

supr: Maidens for sure. Also you'd get to see the sun rise and set from the balcony with the water and the dolphins, fun all around for everyone in the whole wide world!

adam: What's going on is that it's just not profitable. I mean I have a lot of feelings about this, but I think that things are really going to have to change, like seriously change a whole bunch.

Although I can say this for the Gakwer empire; they let her publish that. Although maybe they just wanted to be sure she didn't start her own blog just to yell at them.

I feel like there is a space for a leader (hm, like someone who is bursting over with ideas but doesn't have the discipline to write all those articles succinctly herself ... omg, me!) to come forth with a new and brilliant publication ... but with the economy and the credit crisis, I feel like maybe the best thing for people to do right now is just lie low and ride it out, wait 'til the internet feels the affects of losing all these independent and astutue voices due to the reading public's desire to not have to pay for any of the work they consume, and then see what kind of deal the public will bring back to the table.

stef: Oh, Moe. I wonder if she'd want to have anything to do with the likes of us.
the sky is falling. but if there's no bloggers with actual pageviews left to write about it ... did it fall?

riese said...

also let the record show in my diatribe about the importance of good bloggers getting paid to blog, I used the wrong form of "effect/affect" and spelled "astute" as "astutue." Cheers!

Adam Tiller said...

While we're letting the record show things, I don't know if I made it clear enough that I'm hardcore on team Moe. I mean...I think what she produced was hugely out of place on Gawker, but I think she's searingly brilliant, and I kinda want to have her babies. I'll definitely be eager to read what she does next. The way she's devoured information on the financial mess has been amazing to watch, a voracious mind in action.

As far as Denton letting her post that, it's all about the pageviews; 21k and counting, doncha know. I can't fault the guy. He's just playing on the field as-it-is. It's just that as-it-is is totally fucked (I couldn't agree with you more there).

In other news, I'm now on the team as well. If you guys are burning ATM receipts and starting the next-great-thing, I'm happy to throw my recently-downsized (as of three hours ago!) hat into the ring. I don't know if you have a position open for someone with a working knowledge of modern philosophy and no marketable skills, but if you do I'll send you a résumé.

I make excellent coffee, and am working on perfecting my omelet-flipping skills!

Jack said...

i love treehouses. i am also drunk and that's all i can offer at this particular junction of time/space.

(which made the word ver really difficult)

Anonymous said...

This is completely unrelated, but I had to comment because I was in NYC for the first time this past weekend and I ventured in to a Duane Reade...I've been a long time reader but after that experience I felt I finally got part of who you were...I finally understood all of those Duane Reade comments. All I can say is: Wow, what an experience...