From the "Mental Jukebox Stuck on Repeat" Department:

This band, Shiny Toy Guns, is tangentially connected to me by one of my good friends. Which is just a fancy way of saying that I hadn't heard of them until he brought them up, I went to find some of their music to listen to, and now one of their songs is stuck in my head.

Now it can be stuck in your head, too. Thank me later.

Proof that domestic spying can get a little tedious

We all love Wikipedia, don't we? An organic, peer-edited and -created encyclopedia of everything you could ever care about, and a lot of things you don't. Not only is it useful to lazy college students, but when some big news item happens, its value as a source of entertainment pokes through the stratosphere.

One of my favorite Wikipedia moments--now lost in the e-mists of e-time--was when Bob Huggins, former K-State basketball coach, left that job to be the coach at West Virginia. Within nanoseconds, his biographical entry on Wikipedia suddenly included some odd bullet points about his great love of bestiality, homosexuality and terrorism.

You would think that only a K-State basketball fan, maddened by grief and emboldened by grimy glass jugs of moonshine, could embark on such a destructive mission.

But no. Turns out our government agencies are pretty good at it, too:

On the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tool indicates that a worker on the CIA network reportedly added the exclamation "Wahhhhhh!" before a section on the leader's plans for his presidency.

... snip ...

The site also indicates that a computer owned by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site of right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

The changes brand Mr Limbaugh as "idiotic," a "racist," and a "bigot." An entry about his audience now reads: "Most of them are legally retarded."

And that, dear readers, is what you call burying the lede. You expected to read something about Wikipedia, then, what the hell, K-State athletics? Moonshine? And finally governmental (and, to be fair, journalistic) Internet hijinks.

I think we've all learned something here today.

Insert "run-and-shoot offense" joke here:

The dogfighting allegations tied to Michael Vick are heinous enough.

But now a federal lawsuit is saying he did the unthinkable. That’s right. He sold two pit bull mixes on eBay and, after pledging allegiance to Al Queda, he used the money to purchase missiles from Iran. There’s your story, liberal media. Stop sweeping the truth under the rug. It’s all right here in U.S. District Court, Richmond Division:

Fortunately, the freedom-loving former owner of the aforementioned pit bulls is suing Vick for $63 billion billion. (yeah, sure, there’s probably some mathy word for that number, but I stopped taking math in high school)

Did I mention the plaintiff is in prison? Not that it matters. Anyway, read what evenhanded non-sensationalist news outlet Fox News has to say about it here.

At least it's the color you'd expect it to be....

Historic combinations: Steak and baked potatoes. Rum and cola. Kid 'n' Play.

Now, in A.D. 2007, comes Pepsi and cucumber.

Put down the phone--your local grocery store doesn't have it. It's only available in Japan, where the cucumber is a much-loved symbol of refreshment and carbonation. Or something. Fortunately, thanks to Al Gore, we can witness first-hand the reaction to a consumer's first taste of this beverage.

Behold Random Guy on YouTube Living in Japan:



That's correct, kids. He said "green-flavored." And also "Satan in my mouth."

So, given Pepsi's great track record with experimental soft drinks, expect to see this on American shelves by Christmas.

Distractions while… wait, what were we talking about?

Few of us are fortunate enough to be able to support ourselves by writing fiction. Even those of us with “day jobs” that we love daydream about being able to spend all our time thinking, writing and appearing on Oprah to promote our best-seller.

The problem is, even when your only writing concern is whether Mingus or Modest Mouse provides a better soundtrack for your typing (or teeth-gnashing), other stuff can get in the way. Like, say, the rest of your life. If you’re worried, stressed-out, depressed, anxious or any of a million other words that worm their way into your vocabulary when you’re grappling with something difficult or painful, writing seems like a pointless distraction at best.

So how do you let your mind wander off into a story if it’s busy trying to figure out the way back to Happyland?

One time-honored method is to drink. The upside is that it definitely helps you relax and, by extension, allows your mind to skip off in any direction it wants to. The downside is, of course, alcoholism, public nudity and embarrassing phone calls. So scratch that one.

You can also treat it like writer’s block: Power through it by staring at the screen until something good trickles out through your fingertips. That can work too, but your mileage may vary.

Or you can ignore writing altogether, but the pitfall here is that your ideas may shrivel up inside your head and when you DO finally feel ready to write, you discover that sometimes inspiration has an expiration date.

The best way to deal with this, in my experience, is to write like you read. Everyone can get sucked into a good book, right? Allow it to carry you away from your couch (or, if you’re me, your semi-padded Brown Line bench seat) and off into some other, more exciting place. That’s what you need to do with your story—just start throwing ideas out there, follow them around, poke them, prod them and try to let yourself get carried away. Except without consciously trying. It’s Zen, people.

And in the end, if all goes well, you wind up with a manuscript. Getting the Oprah appearance will be covered in a future blog entry.

Anyone out there playing the home version of Read Ink have any experiences in this vein? Want to share?

The Running of the Blades

Brilliant cinematography, brutal futurism, superlative actorating, mind-numbing special-effectorialization.

I made up some of those words, but I think they all describe one of my favorite movies in the history of me: "Blade Runner." So imagine my enthusiasm at hearing that Ridley Scott is going to release a "final cut" version at the Venice Film Festival. Except... wait. Haven't there already been two or three or 25 cuts already released?

Let's see. There's the original, where DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE Dekker and his android hottie girlfriend ride off into the sunset using borrowed footage from "The Shining." Then there's the director's cut, with no voiceover and a much darker ending. Supposedly this "final" version will clean up a lot of the effects and remaster the sound, which is cool, but what scenes does Scott want to alter that he hasn't already tinkered with?

Will the Replicants always shoot first now? Will Dekker calmly ask Rachel out for coffee as their first date? Will it ever stop raining in L.A.? Here's what the new trailer looks like:



But come on, I'm gonna go see it anyway. Dystopia, fighting robots, flying cars and Darryl Hannah doing backflips... tell me, someone, what's not to love?

The man who would not be king

Royals manager Buddy Bell today decided to join the long and occasionally distinguished list of once-optimistic souls who thought they could manage the disappointin’-est team in major league baseball. He wants to spend more time with his family after this season, and, frankly, I can’t blame him. Even cleaning ice cream off a 2-year-old would be more fun than watching alleged professional ballplayers such as "Jason Smith" and "Jason LaRue" try to hit fast-moving baseballs.

But let’s not focus on the Jasons.

Let’s focus on the future! And by "future" I mean "who’s going to turn this ship around." Joe Girardi, an alleged Academic All-American at Northwestern (a long time ago), is a front runner. Buck Showalter? Frank White? Roy Hobbs?

These are all rhetorical questions, by the way. I don’t have the first clue who’s going to be in charge. But he better like barbecue. For me, that would equate to a specialty of my beloved R’s: a moral victory.