I read an interview!

Once upon a time, everything I posted was from Shakesville or Towleroad.

These days it's from boingboing or The Awl.

This one's from The Awl, and is an interview with John Waters.



Excerpt:

WCP: Aren’t you making a Christmas movie?

JW: Trying to–Fruitcake–but this economy isn’t helping.

WCP: Do you want to tell us about Fruitcake?

JW: I think it’s bad luck to talk about something before you do it, it makes it not happen. But I’ll tell you a little bit. Fruitcake is a little kid who’s in a very functional family in Hampden–no, not in Hampden, he’s in a different neighborhood in Baltimore. And his family is a family of meat thieves, which we have in Baltimore. They knock on your door, and say “Meat man!” And you go downstairs with them and say, “I want two porter house steaks, some pork butt, and a roast chicken,” and they go steal it and you pay half of what’s on the supermarket label. So, Fruitcake’s family is a very functional family, but they steal meat. But on Christmas Eve, Fruitcake gets greedy and gets caught trying to steal a fruitcake, and he gets separated from his parents, and teams up with a little black girl whose bad gay parents are forcing her to have ‘gay Kwanzaa,’ and they run away together, and then try and fight their way back home through the slush of Christmas Eve in Baltimore to their parents.

WCP: That sounds heartwarming.

JW: It is.

John Waters, man.

Have you seen A Dirty Shame? You probably should.

I googled myself!

I decided to see if my blog came up on a Google search by typing in "vlexor," which it does at the bottom of the first page because of that entry about all the different incarnations of "vlexor.com" I could have had.

More disturbing, I discovered that there are other people using the handle "Vlexor" and it freaks me out.

Vlexor has been me for going on 15 years now, and even though I made it up, it's like...ME man.

Anyway, the first thing is this dude on Facebook going by Gruit Vlexor. My favorite thing about the page is that it asks "Wrong Gruit Vlexor?" And then allows you to "Search for others." All those Gruit Vlexors out there.

Far more pernicious, however, is a gamer out there going by Vlexor.

Find him here, here, and here.

What if this guy becomes famous and tries to oust me from Vlexor.com?

WHAT THEN I ASK YOU?

In other, equally likely, turns of events, what if grapes start falling from the sky?

Still. I'm wary.

I read a tweet!

Thinking about Neil Gaiman because I get to see him in person on Monday.

I saw that today he tweeted a link to a blog post by a guy who thinks it's ridiculous that there's such a line between "literary" and "genre" fiction. As evidenced, he argues, by a book that has a similar theme to Gaiman's American Gods being proclaimed as a completely original idea.

The comments of the post include several declaiming Gaiman for unoriginality himself, which is funny because Gaiman makes no bones about taking ideas and themes from elsewhere and reworking them into something new.

I'd argue that all literature is that, at this point, so haters need to step off. That's right, I said it.

But one commenter in particular had this to say:

"You may also wish to have a look for any of the old Alan Moore Swamp Thing comics, God knows Neil Gaiman does - half of his ideas seem to originate there."

This is quite a charge, and I am rather dubious, so I decided I should check these comics out. Lo and behold, we have them at the library! I've requested the lot of them and shall soon report back to see if Alan Moore's Swamp Thing comics do indeed serve as inspiration for all of Neil Gaiman's work.

Same commenter recommended John Crowley's Little, Big, which has been on my shelf for a few years now, so I might actually read it. (Just because he's a jerk, doesn't mean he can't suggest a good book. I plan to enjoy Moore's comics too, because, hey, it's Alan Moore.)

I read a blog!

Have you seen this?



I found it through The Awl.

I like the take of the poster there:

"I'm of the opinion that it's always great to see an oppressed group of people attempt to reclaim a word that has been used in the past to cause hurt and shame. I'm thrilled for Republicans that they're trying to take the "racist" label back. Especially the black ones."

It's pretty astonishing in that it really does seem like a bunch of people saying, without dissembling, that they ARE in fact racist.

Really doesn't work for me as an indication that those claims of racism are wrong.

Oh well.

I guess all of our opinions can be reinforced by this bizarre commercial.

I read an article!

Holy crap, first kangaroos and now Lions, and Tigers and Bears?

Okay, lion and tiger and bear, but still.

This is in Georgia! Why don't I go more places? I could go places.

I could see this:



So cool.

Look at the baby pictures on Facebook.

So cute!

That said, these are wild animals and I fully expect to hear they bit the hands that fed them one of these days.

Or some loony Wizard of Oz fan will climb into their cage and get eaten.

I saw a web comic!

nataliedee.com

I registered a domain!

I was looking over at Godaddy to see how much it would cost me to register vlexor.com as a domain.

Turns out, about $11.

But what was really interesting was the list of suggested names for my site (assuming vlexor.com wasn't available).

Here is that list (I bolded my faves):

vlexors.com - for when I start my cult

thevlexor.com - for when I become so narcissistic that not only do I have a blog, but I refer to myself by an assumed name in the third person

vlexorsite.com - for me in the mid-90s

myvlexor.com - not YOUR vlexor

vlexoronline.com - because, hey, that's what happens at my blog

newvlexor.com - this is a little too much pressure for me

vlexorstore.com - it freaking rhymes! I wish I had me-themed things to sell

freevlexor.com - I'm a political prisoner, please help me

vlexornow.com - don't be so damn pushy, blog readers

bestvlexor.com - well, ONLY vlexor is more like it

vlexorblog.com - truth in advertising

vlexorshop.com - more excellent merchandising opportunities

vlexortoday.com - unlike jam, which happens only tomorrow and yesterday

vlexoregon.com - that's it. I'm moving. I can't not live in Oregon now

I think something may be wrong...

I decided it would be fun to add a new consonant letter to each of the 6 main colors (as represented in Kindergarten color wheels):

• Plurple
  
• Grezen
  
• Blude
  
• Rend
  
• Yerllow
  
• Ortange

I'm not really pleased with Yerllow, though it is fun to say.

Feel free to play along with this fascinating and challenging mind game.

I tried to read a book!

I'm reading The Art of Racing in The Rain for a book group.

I am NOT into it.

I might hate it.

A lot.

Let me give you a passage:

"The intense and arbitrary nature of Eve's affliction was far beyond Denny's grasp. The wailings, the dramatic screaming fits, the falling on the floor in fits of anguish. These are things that only dogs and women understand because we tap into pain directly, we connect to pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white-hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face."

So, I imagine the author, a man, believes that he is paying women and dogs a complement by comparing them to each other.

But I just think it's a little fucked up. Like a lot of this book.

By the way, the whole book is told from the point of view of a dog. The dog is the narrator.

And everyone in the world seems to LOVE this damn book. It averages more than 4 stars on both Amazon and GoodReads.

Oh god I hate this damn book.

Did I mention that the dog is philosophical?

"That which you manifest is before you."

Ugh. The dog read the fucking SECRET.

Also, it's supposed to be a tear-jerker.

This comes from a review by Anastacia on GoodReads: "By page six I was sobbing and sniffling."

By page six I, myself, was beginning to roll my eyes.

This: Is not the book for me. At all.

And I'm only on page 63.

Shoot me now.

I watched a video!

Sometimes I wish my life had gone differently.

Something like this perhaps.

I watched a video!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Got this from boingboing.

It's pretty much what I think is going on when Tetris screws me over.

I read a book!

I recently finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson.



It was a little slow at first because there was a lot of dense information about financial markets and overseas bank accounts and money laundering. Anyway, I eventually did get into it and really enjoyed it. Literary mystery. Kind of P.D. James. Except Swedish.

Here's a couple of random things I noted:

Anna produced a great quantity of bacon pancakes with lingonberries.

I dunno what bacon pancakes are, but I'm pretty into the idea.

All her furniture seemed to be strays. She had a state-of-the-art PowerBook on an apology for a desk in the living room.

I just included this because it's an interesting turn of phrase that I think might be a mis-translation. (The book was originally written in Swedish.)

I assume the translator was going for the American colloquialism "an excuse for a desk," meaning that it's a very shoddy desk indeed. Or maybe "an apology for a desk" is a well-worn Swedish phrase of which he was preserving the integrity.

That's the long and short of it.


EDIT - I've been informed in comments that what I refer to as an "American colloquialism" may indeed be a "Southern colloquialism" and therefore the phrase as translated isn't awkward at all. Who knew? Not me!

A blog is born.