Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan

[austin_dern]

My brother visited last weekend and while in the course of chatting with Mom -- oh, yes, it was Mother's Day, wasn't it? -- got to discussing Wikipedia where, he noted, neither she nor I had entries. He didn't have one either, but he had arranged with friends so that when the day comes that he dies they'll put together a Wikipedia entry. They figure they have enough supporting web pages that they an make an impressive entry to insist on keeping it around. He says he's agreed to a similar project for Wiki-immortality with the friends supporting him, and suggested that I really ought to get an entry there. I don't see what an entry could possibly gain me, and I don't mind avoiding it, and it doesn't really matter since almost everything interesting about me that's on the Internet is actually Usenet postings, and there's a strain of Wikipedia Personality Disorder that puffs up in hilarious terror at Usenet contaminating their pages.

Anyway, while browsing was in the article about ``Films Considered The Worst Ever'' where, shortly after the threatened release of Hobgoblins 2, I found a Wikipedia-convention new in its application to amuse me. At the start of discussing poorly executed adaptations was: ``While a perfect conversion is never possible, some attempts take far too many liberties with the original story, frequently with disastrous results to the final film and the director's reputation ^{[ original research ?]}''. The discussion page was quite upset with every aspect of the page and its existence. Really, I look forward to the day when ever Wiki-page will have every group of at least three words linked to some ``source'' which, of course, will not be a Usenet article.

Incidentally, it turns out Hobgoblins 2 is scheduled to be released this summer through the popular direct-to-DVD or pay-on-demand models. It seems to me this would probably do better if they used the alternative ``ransom'' payment scheme. But I suppose we must assume that Hobgoblins creator Rick Sloane knew what he was doing, which is admittedly a pretty big leap of faith.

Trivia: By 1508, about ten percent of the fish sold in the Portugese ports of Douro and Minho was Newfoundland salt code. Source: Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky.

Currently Reading: Astounding: John W Campbell Memorial Anthology, Editor Harry Harrison. The anthology in which Great John W Campbell Writers like Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Hal Clement, Clifford Simak, and ... Theodore J Cogswell? ... get together to write one-last-story that should finish off famed fictional worlds once and for all. It occurs to me that if you were to pick a person to write an elegiac story, Clifford Simak is maybe the most logical person to ever ask.

Comments

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

My guess is that your title did not come from a song this time... ;D

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, define a song. This one is from words written with deliberation and sung along to existing music: how's that?

(I figured the Spike Jones piece earlier would be subject to more criticism, actually.)

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

hyah ha! Touche :D

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You know I've used advertising jingles in the past, too.