David Erik Nelson's Blog, page 42
June 14, 2012
How the people of Troy, MI, used playful performance art to save their public library
Reminds me of the Diggers--and thus also reminds me that if your political action isn't fun and funny, you're probably doing it wrong. Put aside hysteria, and play a game with the Game.
Bonus points to these folks for getting all available goats.
Save the Troy Library "Adventures In Reverse Psychology" - YouTube
June 13, 2012
I guess I just never realized what great dads stormtroopers were . . .
I'm *really* not feeling good about the finales of Episodes IV and VI right now.
Stormtrooper pic's - a set on Flickr
(Incidentally, I really *do* feel like there's a legitimate argument being made about war and "bad guys" here, but I also fully acknowledge that I have a slight tendency to over-thinking basically every tiny thing I stumble across.)
June 12, 2012
"Here Lies Ray Bradbury, Who Loved Completely"
(amen to that, incidentally)
What I like about this is that it's for the Big Read and nominally about books and literature and writing and Ray himself, but when you listen to his answers you discover that, throughout, he's really talking about Love; over and over and over again he invokes Love:
June 11, 2012
Shameless Self-Promotion: Are You Prepared for Father's Day?
A gentle nudge: If you're looking for a Dad's Day gift for a fella with school-age children, you can do worse than dave-o's book SNIP, BURN, SOLDER, SHRED: Seriously Geeky Stuff to Make with Your Kids. Fully certified dads have said stuff like:
This is the stuff that magic and dreams are made of in childhood, at least for those kids who have the idea that magic can be handmade. Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred is a seriously cool book.
and
This book is full of great innovative ideas to engage you and your kids for quite some time. What I loved most was that this book provided step-by-step directions that left nothing to chance. Instead it spelled everything out making it simple, even though your kids will simply think that you are cool! I mean how many dads can say that they built their own electric guitar? I don't know many that is for sure!
and
Seriously: order this soon.
(That last one's from Rob Malda, founder of Slashdot.org, and really nice cat.)
If you really want to stick it to The Man, you can always order directly from the publisher (you can also download a couple free sample projects at that link). You'll get the ebooks (including a Kindle version) *FREE*, and if you use the coupon code SHRED you'll save 35 percent.
Order soonishly from whoever and the book is sure to arrive in time for Father's Day.
Alternately, if your dad or hubby is into clockwork sex robots, maybe try this steampunk novella on Kindle--or the supercool, handmade print chapbook.
So, that's my pitch. Thank you, and have a marvelous morning! (My own morning is going to be spent soothing a baby will nice, large gentleman tear up the floor of my basement office in order to replace a collapsed sewer line so, please, have as marvelous a morning as possible. We need to bring up our average, folks!)
June 5, 2012
June 4, 2012
The Demise of the Local Daily Print Paper vs. the Demise of Local Integrity
The publisher of the Ann Arbor Chronicle has written a long piece on how reporting is being fundamentally undermined at conglomerate-owned local papers as they shift "business models." It's worth your read.
The skinny: AnnArbor.com--the online "newspaper" for Ann Arbor, MI (home of the University of Michigan and its irascible footballing Wolverines; also my home)--won a 2011 Michigan Associate Press Award for an "investigative" piece on firetruck response times in Ann Arbor, the gist of which was "Whoa! These response times are *way too long!*" When that piece was published--long before anyone got nominated for anything--the folks at the Ann Arbor Chronicle took one look at these numbers, noticed that AnnArbor.com's reporter had *read them entirely wrong*, re-reported the mess, and demonstrated that the response times were just fine. They raised the issue with the AnnArbor.com reporter and the "newspapers" chief content officer (i.e., "editor")--a cat named Tony Dearing--only to discover that neither really gave a crap that they were completely wrong.
But Dearing’s accounting of AnnArbor.com’s errors is misleading and incomplete – in part because it fails to take responsibility for obvious reporting mistakes, blaming sources instead.
In that respect, Dearing’s column continues a pattern of disingenuous communication by AnnArbor.com with the community it purports to serve.
I realize there’s a certain etiquette I’m violating in calling out the leadership of another publication in this way. What I hear on a regular basis about the community’s perception of the quality of reporting and editorial oversight at AnnArbor.com ranges from idle snark to complete outrage. But our Midwestern culture exerts a firm pressure to make nice and get along. And for some community members, a certain fatigue has set in, along with a sense that it’s not worth the energy to rehash these things – it’s time to move on. To some extent I actually agree with that. It would be nice to move on.
But a polite culture and need to look forward do not justify turning away from some real problems with AnnArbor.com’s basic approach to community service. That’s especially true as the Newhouses roll out the Ann Arbor model in other markets.
What’s more, given the marketing resources of AnnArbor.com’s New York-based owners, there’s a risk that a funhouse-mirror version of reality will become accepted as accurate, and could inappropriately influence public policy in a way that causes long-term damage to this community. That’s unacceptable.
As an aside, this totally meshes with my experience of AnnArbor.com and Dearing. Soon after the site's launch (it replaced our 174-year-old local print daily, The Ann Arbor News in 2009) I raised some concerns with the paper over an article that was 1) under a misleading byline, because it was 2) more than 85 percent copy-pasted from an AP Wire story, and 3) the three paragraphs of actual local "reporting" each contained substantive errors that 4) I was able to personally clear up in five minutes. I ended up conversing over email with Dearing. He was really remarkably pleasant and disingenuous, and it was really clearly implied that that he did not give a crap about clarity or accuracy at his paper. As I spoke with former News and then-current AnnArbrp.com employees, my impression of the operation wasn't improved. The paper has basically devolved into a press-release reprinting service. The very best thing I can say about AnnArbor.com is that they are, as an organization, extraordinarily lazy.
(DISCLOSURE: I read and write for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. It's a long-winded paper, and the publication schedule isn't so frequent as AnnArbor.com, but they have a tremendous amount of integrity and pay a fair wage. If you want to know what the hell is going on in town on the regular--especially in local government--they are basically the only place to go.)
Anyway, why does this matter outside of Ann Arbor? Because AnnArbor.com is owned be the Newhouse family, who are now rolling out this "model" for running a newspaper nationwide, including at the previously sterling New Orleans Times-Picayune. The argument about the import of the transformation of local news has bizarrely centered around how old people get coupons--an obsession with the *format* itself, with the experience of a locally-written bundle of tree-pulp hitting your stoop every morning. But the delivery mechanism isn't the problem. Here in Ann Arbor we have a *super literate* population with an abnormally high rate of web access. Our kindergartners can read a local paper (not kidding; my kid is in kindergarten at what is basically a Title I public school; his class is reading and writing). This is why Newhouse tested out their new model here: It's a best-case scenario.
We didn't suffer because the news was no longer being delivered on paper; we suffered because the local paper of record entirely discarded any notion of integrity or responsibility to the community. They now produce a moderately crappy blog whose comment section is basically a platform for right-of-center hate-mongering. Meanwhile, the Chronicle--which has never been distributed on wood pulp--does an incredible job on a tight budget using the revolutionary technologies of looking things up, talking to people, and *writing shit down.* AnnArbor.com's problem isn't that they largely got rid of the paper, it's that they've largely gotten rid of the *reporters.*
June 1, 2012
Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) Classic issue #124 (published March 6, 2003): "Brought to you by Mellissa Williams"
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Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) Classic issue #124 (published March 6, 2003)
Brought to you by Mellissa Williams
Giant Squid: Notes From The Giant Squid: Brief Notes on That Which is Published this Week by the Giant SquidGentle Readers,
Since taking the helm of this strange ship-of-craft, it is my enduring delight to share with you, the Greater Surface World in the Searing Up, the literary flotsam and jetsam which comes passing my way, gently fished from the roiling, black-mirror-ish sea-surface by my own tentacles, lovingly cleaned and proudly displayed, so as to increase and en-greaten the general low folly of la vida mundial. This I do for you, taking it as much my vocation (almost spiritual) and at least a responsibility sober and true.
This week's fictional display is provided by our own dear Fritz Swanson, a gentle boy of 26. His "Press Conference in an Apple Grove" details not only the simple matters of love and mating— of boundless fascination to me, as a species of armchair anthropologist— but also the greater passion that man has for impregnating the Moon . . .
Fiction: Press Conference in an Apple Grove by Fritz Swanson"You may have noticed," said the old and tired astronaut, "I have placed a great deal of value on my getting to the moon." He shifted his feet and gripped the podium with both hands. There was sweat all over his face. "It is true; I have elevated that goal far beyond the degree that is its due. I have done silly things, wrong things, sinful things, in the pursuit of that goal."
A woman in the front row threw an apple at the old astronaut, and it struck dully against his forehead. He paid the missile little mind, only nodding a bit in the woman's direction, smiling a half-smile.
"My Ex-Mother-in-Law, ladies and gentlemen." He smiled and raised a hand to indicate the woman who had thrown the apple. . . .
Poetry: The Ibis (from Mommy, part 4 of 5) by Barry BlumenfeldI search my hard heart,
Mommy, the desert
In your breast. You can
Go now, go. Ibis
Gaggles skein across
The moon. . . .
Rant: Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America by Benjamin FranklinSavages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.
Perhaps, if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude, as to be without any rules of politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some remains of rudeness. . . .
My Fellow Humans: Can't you see we're playing with fire here?
In Rat Experiment, New Hope for Spine Injuries - NYTimes.com
The rats then began a daily regimen. Outfitted with tiny vests, held upright on their back legs but left to bear their full weight, the rats tried to move toward a piece of cheese that beckoned nearby. They lurched forward like furry paratroopers, unsteady on their feet after a hard landing.
It's actually pretty rad research, and worth watching Frenchie explain it in the embedded video, plus you get to watch the cyborat climb stairs--presumably preparatory to raiding an al-Qaida safehouse somewhere in Yemen.
(FYI, the writer--Benedict Carey--has allowed himself several figurative flourishes on par with the pull quote above. Look out for brain-as-army and Chia Pet analogies.)
May 25, 2012
Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) Classic issue #509 (published October 21, 2010): "The narc at the party"
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Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) Classic issue #509 (published October 21, 2010)
The narc at the party
Giant Squid: Ask the Giant Squid: Giant Squid LIVE! by the Giant Squid
Dear Giant Squid,
Has any one seen a live giant squid before?
My Anonymous Aficionado,
As a matter of established fact, none have seen me perform live, a reality which much vexes me. I had contracted to perform upon the brick-wall-backdroppéd stage of Mark Ridley, his Comedy Castle this very approaching Sunday's after-noon. Preparatory to this, I had done a great deal of research both wide and deep throughout the Internet, as well as via the books-mobile reserve system of the Detroit Public Library (which, as it turns out, is well stocked of the humor manuals penned by Mr.s Thomas Biracree and Julius Alvin throughout the last two decades of the twentieth century—a period that, as evidenced by the comedic and dramatic works of Andrew Eurydice Clay and Samuel Langhorn Kinison, to name but a pair, represents a high-water mark in the forging and crafting of quality humors). Sadly, I now report that in the early part of this week loathsome complication befell me, resulting in cancellation of this established live appearance, and an indefinite hiatus in my live comedic recitations. . . .
Fiction: The Jar by Gwendolyn Joyce MintzMama was on her knees, leaning into the space under the kitchen sink, glass jars on the floor surrounding her.
Was she getting ready to start canning? Curious, I sat cross-legged on the floor and waited.
She leaned back, a jar in hand which she held up, examined. She sighed.
"All these jars and none's bigger than a mite." She glanced at me. "We're gonna put one on the counter at your daddy's store. Take up a collection to help pay the lawyers for Roy and J.W." She grunted. "Defense lawyers." She shook her head and returned to her search. . . .
Poetry: For You (After Catullus 1) by Arthur D. CasciatoTo whom address, which brand affix,
Whose name to slap on such as this,
How curry favor with words so libelous,
My slim-slimey miscellany hot off the press . . .
Rant: Diversity by Sue EllisIn late summer, tree frogs morph into window clings, attracted by the bugs who spiral around the porch light that shines outside my kitchen window. . . .
