It's August in the city and that's alright with me. It's been a week of brand new experiences involving Bryan Adams, heavy lifting, intense heat and thunderstorms. Luckily for me, when I really need something to go my way, it does so with little persuasion on my part, but that luck, like me in many ways, comes at the last minute. Consider me spoiled rotten.
No matter what the weekend brings, I'd still be satisfied with banality. But I don't think I've got much of that to look forward to just yet.
The Edit
These here are the specific interests and perks of the weekly adventuring. Everything from tunes to articles or almost-lost files can be found below. Hopefully some of it will be recent, whereas some of it will be less so. But all of it I think is worth sharing with you; which is my gamble that you'll like it as much as I did.
- I believe my readers are the kinds of people who are interested in current events and are largely up-to-date on the big issues and important news stories that effect their lives or interests. Which is why I hesitate to waste your time talking about something I know you're already aware of. The Gay Marriage ban was overturned in California this week on accounts of it being "unconstitutional." I don't need to tell you that this is good news, especially on account of how solid the ruling was (so much so that opponents have no other recourse than to attack the judge on account of rumors that he is homosexual himself.). So I'll leave no further comment of my own on this, and instead leave you with a quote from the ruling that I thought sounded particularly historic.
- Andy Griffith is here to ease our nation's old people into the new health care reform. A smart campaign, in my opinion, to let the people watching the Weather Channel know some facts about the bill for a change. Though as much as I would have liked to hear Andy say the words "Death Panels", that probably isn't the right way to calm the old, as I believe they are easily coerced into fear.
- Who will direct the 3D Justin Bieber Biopic? Not this guy!
- Last week I gave mention to a Representative named Anthony Weiner, who stood up in the House and chided the Republican party for defeating a bill that everyone thought would be an easy pass. His righteous anger caught my attention, as well as others too, and this week, Weiner wrote up an opinion piece in the New York Times illuminating, with calmer words, his frustration with the recent antics of conservative party leaders and their unwillingness to get anything done.
- For fans of film, you might be interested in Levi's 2010 "Rolling Roadshow Tour," where classic movies are given special screenings in famous locations for free. This, of course, is more interesting to you if you're the mobile sort who can actually make it to any of those locations. If you're not, you might get some pleasure from the new posters that Olly Moss was asked to make for each of the nine films associated with this tour. (Note: this is as much a post about this tour as it was about how awesome Olly Moss is.)
- This is it, guys. Google has decided to stop production on Wave as a standalone product. Something about this fascinating technology that the company showed off last year didn't resonate with enough people to warrant the continued focus as a solitary piece of software. Google says they "will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects." But for the rest of us, Wave is finished.
- Bill Gates is up to his old tricks again. Which, if you remember his charitable inclinations, means that he has managed to convince 38 of his fellow billionaires (plus himself and Warren Buffet) to give away half their worth to charity. It's called "The Giving Pledge", and while it's not a legally binding agreement, it's still incredibly moving to see this kind of behavior from the sorts of people that many associate with pleonexia. This still isn't going to stop jerks on the internet from using Bill Gates as a symbol for corporate greed. Seems outdated, maybe they should focus on Bobby Kotick instead.
- Photographer, Suren Manvelyan, recently got some attention for this set of incredibly detailed images of the human iris. Instead of writing puns for this post, I spent that time holding my face up to a mirror with a flashlight with disappointing results.
"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples."
Hearing Things
For my own reasons, I've decided to process the music appreciation of my weekly culture bomb into its own section. Hopefully this means you won't miss out on whatever I feel like highlighting here. But it also means it will be much more obvious when I don't have any musical suggestions.
- It's the first week of August, so I'm going to bring some old ideas back to life to see if they still might stick. There's still a whole lot of music out there to recommend, especially during the summer when all I have time to do is have a constant soundtrack parading through my skull. So here's my August '10 sounds like, as I find it. Maybe yours now will be something similar. If you're not into tracking down the kind of music I might be listening to at the moment, there's always the specificity of getting your hands on Arcade Fire's new album "The Suburbs" (which you'll notice a bit in my list there too). You still should be able to listen to it here before you purchase it yourself, but I wouldn't wait that long if I were you.
Blog of Our Lives
This week, the Tumblr That Mattr section of my posts is being retired/replaced. Despite the versatility of the Tumblr blogs that I've offered to you all over the several month of RTFs now, I've been disappointed that I restricted myself so short-sightedly to a very limited subset of blogging. I've frequently passed up excellent resources of interesting information simply because it wasn't a particular kind of blog, which is no good for anyone.
So starting next week, Blog Of Our Lives will be expanding the pool to the deep end. Don't fear change.
English Language of the Week:
This segment is based around my personal love of the modern english language, where, each week, I'll nominate my favorite phrase, sentence or paragraph that I have personally heard spoken in that time.
I'm often underestimated for my ability to be completely wrong at the right times.
This phrase and the speaker have the trait in common to be overlooked for being perfect.
On Your Way Out
I'm suddenly grumpy. I want you to be grumpy to.
grumblegrumblegrumble
More like Ryan Stupidface.
-stg
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