Ray Bradbury: "Fuck the Internets"

The Internet? Don't get him started. 'The Internet is a big distraction,' Mr. Bradbury barked... 'Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,' he said, voice rising. 'They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet." It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.'"

Find

Yo, someone link me to Mickey Rourke's acceptance speech at the Independent Spirit Awards. I can't find it.

A Perfect World

Lately I've been thinking about how I'd set up my life in a perfect world, and I realize I wouldn't really use computers much. I realize that being on computers isn't something I actually enjoy. In a perfect world I wouldn't use computers more than an hour a week.

So I'm trying to cut back. It's difficult not because I'm addicted but because I use the computer for so much that my livelihood depends on. But I'm still trying to cut back.

Run Your Car on Tap Water

You know, I've found a lot of things online about running a car on water. But some of them are weird:

PRELIMINARY PLANS
TO RUN YOUR CAR ON TAP WATER!
IT ALSO WORKS ON YOUR
TRUCK / RV / MOTORCYCLE / AIRPLANE (ETC)

Will This Work?
These plans were sent to the Spirit of Ma'at anonymously, from someone who does
not want his or her name printed (for obvious reasons).

We have had them checked by an expert who believes that they are real.

We also have talked with another individual who has patented a similar device,
and we know by personal experience that the technology is sound.
So although we cannot guarantee it, we believe these plans will enable you to
build a car that runs on water.

If you test it out, though, do as the writer suggests and use an old car that
doesn't represent a loss of value if you can't make it work. And leave
everything intact so that you can always reconnect back to gas if you have to.
But if you do get it working, please send us your experience for our readers.
You could be a national hero and help save our country and our world.
We know for certain that an automobile will run on water. So this could be an
interesting project for you mechanical types, with a great reward of never
having to purchase gasoline for the rest of your life — and helping humanity at
the same time.

2 Blogs

If you're looking for more narrative from teachers in Korea, here are two I've been enjoying:
Joia
and
Steve.

Lost

For the second time since I've been in Korea (South) I went to a store that I'd been to before with a Korean friend as my guide, only to discover that I couldn't find the part of the store I wanted without my friend. When I go to a department store like Homeplus or E-mart there are clerks (usually young women in these hot skirts) in every aisle to guide you to merchandise and ensure you buy the most expensive stuff. However, their guidance is useless on me because they usually can't speak English.

Prices here are random crazy. Things like a bottle of honey will be $12 and a pair of Adidas that goes for $50 in the states will be $100... but then you can find other shit for hella cheap. You just can't predict it because it's usually not what you expect to be high or low. Overall it averages out and Korea's probably a little cheaper.

I realized today my entire existence in Korea has been forged by the internet. Everyone I've met here, my job, everything, would be vastly different without the WWW. Even the Koreans I know from America I met through craigslist apartment ads or posts for language partners.

And by the way, I should start studying Korean again.

Laughter in the Dark

Surely the best website I discovered this week is Dark Roasted Blend (which I found via Boing Boing, everyone's favorite "stuff" website). It's a helpful reminder that we live in fearful, fascist, conformist, and bland times. i.e. Why doesn't a random walk down the street look like this?

I think the most common car color these days is mud. Remember the gay '90s when people had neon cars and puffy pink pants? I look at cars on the road these days and they're black, white, or mud. Nowadays people who say, "What other people think about me is none of my business," are rounded up and never seen again. I care about design, and I think the larger design process must be diversified and experimental if it is to be healthy.

Is that Ben Affleck?

This image reminds me of a (brief) time in the early internet days when many churches railed against the WWW because it was full o' porn and evilness etc.

Then they realized they could make a ton of money off it. The churches that didn't start to use the internet were silenced because the internet became the new mouthpiece.

*

Check out Greg Louganis hitting the diving board. Supposedly he never watched a video of it because he didn't want the image in his mind that he would do anything but a perfect dive.