culture: March 2006 Archives

I’ve been wondering what the hell was up with those TV ads for the bank Washington Mutual -- since when do they call themselves “WaMu,” and don’t they realize that it makes the company sound like it’s a performing orca at SeaWorld? I assumed it was some sort of half-assed attempt to appeal to “hipsters” to make us all think there might be a bank that isn’t “square” and “The Man.”

And whaddaya know? Washington Mutual’s-- excuse me, WaMu’s ATMs are forced to be desperately cool, too:

Read the whole blog entry at Annie Barrett’s Diminishing Returns about the encounter with that ATM -- it’s piled on with snark.

It’s sorta sad, that ATM: it’s like a little monkey in pants forced to dance on a street corner for your amusement. Then again, it fits in with the performing-orca meme, so maybe that’s intentional. Maybe we’re meant to infer that WaMu is a bank that goes against its own banky nature to debase itself for your financial pleasure.

General Motors lost $8.6 billion dollars in 2005.

Lost.

$8.6 billion.

Billion.

Or maybe it’s actually $10.6 billion.

And GM is so fuckin’ desperate for your money, and my money, that it has launched an insidious TV ad to convince us that the company is so damn cool that you dare NOT buy a GM vehicle. You’ve probably seen it: it’s called “Then and Now,” and features a montage of retro footage of sock hops and cars with fins intercut with 21st-century auto-erotica set to the Everclear tune “AM Radio.” (You can watch the ad here.)

One of these stories is honest-to-God real (culled from the San Jose Mercury News, actually), and the other is honest-to-God fake (culled from The Onion). Can you guess which is which?

Bush says he'd pull troops out if he wasn't optimistic about Iraq

Onion or AP?

Rumsfeld: Iraqis Now Capable Of Conducting War Without U.S. Assistance

Onion or AP?

“One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.” (Agatha Christie)

When did you get your first email account? I’m thinking mine was probably around 1991, maybe, and I had to dial in to CompuServe to use it. Certainly, we’re talking pre-Web here.

When did you get your second email address? Probably not too long after that, if you’re anything like me. Now I was dialing into Prodigy.

Next came the AOL address. Still dialing directly in. Still before the Web.

Not so for the Federal Bureau of Investigations, which is partying like it’s 1989:

Sure, Julius Caesar ignored his warning, but at least he got a warning. Just look at who else might have benefitted from a whisper of...

“Beware the ides of Spock...”

“Beware the ides of Cypher...”

One of my geek heroes and favorite political bloggers, Atrios yesterday invoked the spirit of Zork, etc., to smack down Senator Joe Lieberman and his bizarre theocrat-theories:

>>Ask voice "What happened?"

"What happened?"

The voice responds "I am sorry to inform you that you were raped and severely beaten. My name is Dr. Lieberman."

>> Ask Dr. Lieberman "Did I receive emergency contraception?"

Dr. Lieberman responds "This hospital does not provide that because of principled reasons. As long as you do something for what you call "principled reasons" you can do anything you want. Fortunately, you live in Connecticut so another hospital is probably a short ride away. I assume, anyway. Ta-ta.

It goes on and on. Funny stuff, and pointed, too. And as someone noted in the comments to that post:

Guess it separates the geeks from the, well, whatever other brands of folks there are, because it didn't even occur to me that anyone wouldn't get it.

The geek ethos continues to spread...

If you’re in Syndey, Australia, and you couldn’t pay for your breakfast burrito with a debit card this morning, or your ATM was acting all funny, blame the geeks: they’re mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore:

So says the Sydney Morning Herald:

Computer technicans are threatening chaos at fast-food outlets, supermarkets, banks and airports unless they get a pay rise.

More than 100 staff from NCR - a company responsible for repairing computer breakdowns at KFC outlets, Aldi supermarkets and Sydney Airport's baggage handling systems - are planning to to walk off the job on Monday morning.

"In terms of industrial action in the IT industry this is easily the most significant one we've had in Australia," said Australian Services Union secretary Sally McManus.

You go, geeks. Make sure everyone knows how vital your services are.

The homemade, downloadable-for-free Star Trek/Babylon 5 parody Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning is officially the most successful Finnish film ever. The creators say they’ve been careful about the legal issues that can arise when you’re dealing with parody -- mockery can be a powerful weapon, one that the powerful don’t generally appreciate.

As one mocker in China is discovering:

It’s something of a cliché, the geek hopped up on sugar and caffeine (and more recently, maybe Ritalin) and coding for 24 hours straight, or sitting up all night playing World of Whatever with some guy in Japan. Geekiness and legal drugs are inexplicably connected: there’s the Web comic Geeks on Caffeine, for one, and look: ThinkGeek has an entire section of stuff to buy called Caffeine, and there’s the famous caffeine-molecule T-shirt.

But maybe we’re starting to get worn out with the nonstoppedness of it all, as we Xers get older. It’s a lot harder to pull an all-nighter at 35 than it was at 25, caffeine or no. And so LifeHacker has some advice on quitting caffeine.

Did you know that today is Get Over It Day? I had no idea until a friend sent me the link to GetOverItDay.com. It’s a pretty Xer-style smack in the face to stop wallowing in the pathetic pity that is driving your friends bonkers. Perhaps I will take this opportunity to Get Over the fact that my freakin’ book publisher closed up shop before they published my book. See, I’m letting it go right now... *deep breath... innnnnnnnn... oooouuuut*

Get Over It Day is from the same folks who brought us RejectionHotline.com, which I am constitutionally opposed to because it smacks of a passive-aggressiveness that deeply bothers me -- if you can’t tell someone to their face, “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not interested,” then you’re a woos. Yet I must respect the combination of geek skillz and Xer entrepreneurship that identified this niche and jumped in to fill it, obviously very successfully. This gang must be doing something right, if they’re able to make this offer:

WE'LL GIVE YOU $100 CASH if you tell your favorite bar about us and get them to sign up as an Official "Get Over It Day Party Spot!"

Still feeling down? As GetOverItDay.com notes, whatever is bothering you “could always suck more.”

Look, I’m not gonna deny it: I started out as a writer, editor, and publisher in the mid 80s with xeroxed science-fiction fanzines, with a primary focus on Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, though I also published a Starman zine called Endangered Species that won a Fan Quality Award from the MediaWest Con people in 1989... though *sob* the con’s site mysteriously credits the zine to publisher “Mary Ann Bohling.” (Maybe I’ll post my Doctor Who fan fiction someday -- it’s really quite good, if I do say so myself.)

And holy crap, look at this! This Google cache of an email newsletter about Blake’s 7 fanzines from 19-freakin’-94 has me listed... at an address I haven’t lived at since that year:

Portals ( editor )
multimedia fanzine
MaryAnn Johanson --> 27 St. Mark's Place #4D New York NY 10003 USA

“Sunset” on the PATRIOT Act? Not so much.

Bigger hurricanes are coming...

...and we won’t know it until it’s too late.

Unless huge solar storms knock us flat...

...or the Dust Bowl returns.

There’s nothing we can do to avoid a flu pandemic.

We’re gonna be fighting over the last drops of oil.

Consumer finances are in terrible shape...

...but the national and even international economic situation is far worse.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to bang my head against a wall -- the kind of stuff that told me there was a need for something like Geek Philosophy. Star-Telegram.com (of Dallas-Fort Worth) has a new piece up about Jon Stewart that seems to go out of its way to misunderstand its own conclusions about Stewart’s influence and importance in today’s culture. It starts out something like this:

American culture, it seems, can’t decide whether to classify Stewart as a comedian or a journalist.

Stewart’s late-night newscast parody, The Daily Show, airs four nights a week in a time slot that makes it an alternative to local newscasts. Big-name media figures like Ted Koppel and Bill Moyers have indicated they respect his opinions and take him seriously.

And surveys show that an astonishing number of young people claim they get most of their news from watching The Daily Show.