matthewgruman.com

I installed Dramatic Whitespace (you will need a Facebook account to see that page) over the weekend; it’s the second application I’ve installed (the first being SubVimeo).

I’m suffering from a bit of digital overload right now (it’s no coincidence that I’m working on a lot of IRL projects through the end of the year), so I’m loving it. I think it’s a bit too “concept” for my liking, though. Consider this quote from the New York Times:

Mr. Bildersee told me the application, which took a few hours to develop, was meant to be ?an awkward vortex of Internet 2.0 and existentialism.?

Existentialism makes me think of the Existential Philosophy class I took at University. I took the class because I thought it would be ironically funny, which it was (I may have been the only guy who never had a beard or wore a hat), but it was also really depressing to see so many people rutting (I’m trying to make “rut” into a verb here. A quick Dictionary check says that rutting is actually: “an annual period of sexual activity in deer and some other mammals, during which the males fight each other for access to the females.” I don’t mean that.) themselves. They focused only on the Pascalian “life is simply misery interspersed with distraction that we perceive as joy simply because it’s held in comparison” bullshit instead of the more interesting self-exploration concepts.

Anyway, I’m really digging Dramatic Whitespace at the moment. I think it’s a nice commentary on how ridiculous Facebook Applications are when overused, and it makes me think of that guy with the long black jacket, black fedora, and black patchy goatee who used to keep me entertained with beard stroking, hat tipping, and inane references to irrelevant texts/philosophers.

In November 1996, my father took his gun, walked towards the bush at the south end of his farm and shot himself. In the months after that event, I wrote a lot of poems, most of them unpublishable, about how I was feeling. How does one transform the abject self-pity I was experiencing into a piece that would engage a reader?

I can’t say where this is from (yet), but it’s very special.

http://matthewgruman.tumblr.com/

It takes seven steps to make a full post with WordPress. It takes two with Tumblr. Granted, it’s not nearly as robust, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Version 2.0 gets released on November 1 and I want to get used to things before the update.

JewTube is a dynamic new community on the web established to serve the interests of people brought together by an interest in Jewish culture. JewTube was founded in 2007 when Jeremy Kossen became frustrated with the absence of a compelling Jewish-oriented video sharing community.

- Via JewTube.

This defeats the point. Ridiculous.

I was reading about upgrading to the new OS X yesterday; someone mentioned problems and that they had to reinstall/load everything. I started thinking about how adept I am at command line processes on Windows machines and how unadept I am with the Mac equivalences. So when there’s a major problem in Windows, I can go through the back, figure out what’s wrong, and usually fix it. If there was a major problem on Mac OS that couldn’t be fixed with a GUI‘d program, I’d really have no idea what to do. The fact that I’ve never had a major problem on any Mac I’ve used only makes me more nervous because I’ve had no experience.

Anyway, all that added to my little cousin’s recent issue with an MSN virus and I had a nightmare that my MacBook got a virus and ended up crippled. A nightmare. About my computer getting a virus. Sigh…

The new Arcade Fire “video” (Neon Bible) is ridiculously good. Click on everything.

- Via Rubin Recommends.

drunken sailor from alicia_lynn_carrier on Vimeo.

Babies, man. They’re the bee’s knees.

The latest issue of Canadian Literature, “Canada Reads” (CL#193, Summer 2007), came out this week and it has excerpts of an interview with Heather O’Neill (she wrote “Lullabies for Little Criminals“, which won the CBC‘s Canada Reads contest this year and is misspelled in this terrible “personal essay” which angers me too much to discus).

We have posted the entire interview [link fixed] (it was conducted by Kristin McHale — one of the smartest AND tallest people I know) on our website, and it’s a pretty good read.

I’m really excited that we’ve done this. It’s the first time that an excerpt has appeared in the print journal whereas the entire piece is available, free for anyone who wants it, on the website.

Full disclosure: I do work for Canadian Literature but neither this nor anything else on this site is written as an employee. My excitement’s the real deal.

I don’t know who you are Ms/Mr. Googles-”be a lesbian for a night at a tegan and”, but you made my day.

The Utne Reader that came yesterday is sitting unread on my coffee table. The Canadian Business that came today is already being poured over because I find it much more interesting.