Scarier than any horror movie

I don't know what is more surprising: that Nintendo thought that "Wii" (as in weeeee!) was a good idea for a console name or the fact the Vince Young went 3rd in the draft, a full seven places ahead of Matt Leinart.

The world is a strange and fundamentally scary place sometimes... though I guess that is a fact that is clearly evident to anyone who lived through the disco or boy band eras of music. I unfortunately survived both, and I don't know if I can take another round of something like that, because like an earthquake on the San Andreas fault, it is going to happen again.

I only pray that their new leaders aren't an Osmond/Jackson-like superbrood from the womb of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline/(husband number 3)/.../(one night stand with a syphilitic peanut vendor in a Hotel Six in Starksville, MS)/etc. who couldn't be stopped by conventional weapons or good taste, and their corny and sloppily-constructed songs stupify all that hear them so that they may more easily take over the world. I mean, Los del Rio almost took over the world in 1996 with the Macarena before a small group of college students at the University of Maryland defeated them with an all-night Pixies retrospective. But by then, the damage was done.

Of course, if such a terror-inspired chain of events was to happen (trust me, it keeps me up some nights), I guess our only hope would be a good ole culture war and perhaps a foray in time travel to prevent this unholy union from happening.

For all we know, they may have already been here... oooeeeoooeee. That's why there has been all those incidents showing Spears is a bad mother. Unless she is naturally a bad mother.... nah... that is too simple an explanation.

How to Build a Writing Career the Quick and Dirty Way.

I know that writing a novel is hard work. Hell knows I failed at it more than once. That being said, I admire young writers that persevere and make it all the way to the end of such a journey, and to those who get published with their first book, well, more power to them.

Of course, you sometimes hear the word “plagiarism” come out, and it shakes the publishing world a little each time it happens. The newest scandal of this kind is How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, by 19-year old Kaavya Viswanathan. A fellow author, whose work she was intimately familiar with, discovered through her fans the stark similarities between certain scenes and dialogues in both of their work. What is more stunning is given the litigious nature of American society and copyright holders, no one has threatened a lawsuit yet. Kaavya’s school paper, the Crimson, also busted her pretty hard.

As a small side note, and this goes somewhere related to this topic, I remember reading about a rather informal study regarding the readership of certain books. As an experiment, a group of researchers stuck cards deep into various copies of a long, turgid yet popular novel with a phone number and a message saying that if the reader reached that point in the book, they could call and receive a 100 dollar prize. A few people called, but given the size of the sample, it said a lot about the buying habits of readers and the fact that they may buy a book just because of its cache (or infamy).

Maybe Ms. Viswanathan was counting on people buying her work and then never reading it. Though perhaps I am being a little too hard on her. She claims it was accidental, and that she is embarrassed by the whole incident. But how much you want to bet that her professors at Harvard are going to be looking at her papers for similarities to other work in her field a bit more thoroughly than they may have before.

And to think, she probably could have made a lot of this negative press go away by saying those few phrases(and from my research, they are small bits of text that were appropriate), were used as an homage to Megan F. McCafferty. That may have gone over just fine. She may have even been able to use the Fair Use defense.

But you all know how that old phrase goes: “'good writers borrow, great writers steal'”. I guess time will tell which, if any category, Ms. Viswanathan belongs in. Of course, there is another phrase that may also be applicable, “There is no such thing as bad publicity,” because I wonder how many of us would have heard of this 19-year old girl before any of this happened, and how many people will now buy her book after it has been re-edited… even if they never read it.

Don't mind the mess... or the boxes.

Have I blogged before? Yes I have, so the prospect of beginning a new chapter in my online life doesn’t really faze me, as I have done this twice before, though those of you reading this probably only know one of my previous incarnations, and the less that is said about those places I used to go, the better. There were some good times, I admit it, but I just feel that I’ve grown past them and I am ready to be a little more independent and less needy as an online entity. This is not a high wire act. If I fail, then I am willing to accept that and go on. I just hope that the third time truly is the charm.

I sort of feel like I am moving into a new apartment here… it is a little plain at the moment and the place needs a little sprucing up. Of course, it will take me a little time to get the place to better reflect my tastes and sensibilities (but I pray, not my housekeeping skills, because no one needs to see that). For starters, this blog’s name may change, as “Culture Kills… wait, I mean cutlery” may not really reflect what I am doing in this little green backwater of the blogosphere, so I may have to roll with what’s going on.

For those of you who do not know me, and are discovering this blog for the first time, either through one of the various places I frequently comment at, or through one of the myriad of online directories and syndication services out there, I should really introduce myself in my own subtle form of anonymity.

To begin with, I am… how shall I put this mildly. I’m cranky. Not in a bad way or anything. My crankiness is woven from the finest materials, the rich Corinthian leathers of the cultural universe if you will. Sometimes I am entertaining, sometimes I am annoying… and you have to take the good with the bad.

Will you laugh? You just might. Will you continue to read this blog (by whatever name it takes)? Only time will tell.