#!: The teenager who lives in my house told me that she thought I was so quick witted that I should be a writer. She said I would read my diary, if I published it.

Still got it, baby. Office job < artistic integrity.

#@: I've elected some favourite suicidegirls; I thought after five years it was probably time. I chose the women I've chosen because I think they are exemplary, brilliant, inspirational. Women who I take as my role models. While I didn't choose them for their looks, it goes without saying that each of them is distracting to look at.

I appreciate that taking SG seriously is so two thousand and five. This entire excercise, whilst honest, genuine and forthright, is also part of an ongoing ploy to trick people into kissing me.

##: The girls I work with think I'm stright. They think this because they exist in a heteronormative bubble. So far I've dodged the issue, which is trivially easy, because I don't have a coherent policy on being out at work. Despite the fact that the public service is dominated by a lesbian mafia.

I don't know how I feel about this.

#$: This was an entry of very little substance. I'm refering you to Swiss Miss, and pretending this entry had cultural significance.

I am too busy for my life.

I spend every day learning about finance, but because I work for the government I'm not allowed to talk about it.

I bake.

I clean.

I am, however, rather happy.

What do you do? I need to justify my existence through the company I (don't) keep.

So this weekend I was in prison with Thistle and Mr_Reliable. What did you do?

In which she is vain

I'm an adult again.

Today I resumed sensible adult employment. After reading this, I've stopped to take note that I'm earning an entirely adequate salary while also being able to contribute to a job that, while dreary and uninspiring, is entirely divested from ethically dubious corporate enterprise. I work for the branch of the government that makes sure commonwealth public servants don't spend their retirement penniless and hungry.

I do this for one year, and I'll settle my credit card and have enough money for a small fortune in medical expenses (which are offset, somewhat, by my countries socialised healthcare, and offset somewhat further by my private health insurance[1]). I have to live in a town that meets absolutely none of my emotional needs, but I've reached an accommodation with that.

My best friend spent the entire year calling me in apoplectic horror, convinced she was going to fail her honours dissertaion. Clearly justified, she scored a pathetic 98% and was awarded the university medal.

I think it's unfortunately telling that my crowning accomplishment in two thousand and nine was being right about someone else's efforts.

Happy Arbitrarily Defined Gregorian New Year! This year I will work too hard.

Today I flew two thousand miles, and accomplished nothing. What did you do?

The Noises Rest

Most people assume that silent films were silent for technological reasons—that there wasn’t a way to capture and reproduce sound along with the moving image in those classic early films.

That’s a lie: the technology was never a big deal. Directors at the time simply chose, for aesthetic reasons, to embrace the purity of silence.

A horizontal rule would go here, if I had one to spare.

You Look Nice Today is, to me, the platonic ideal of the potential of the internet.

This is the first time in the history of our species that you can reach the entire world on the merits of your ideas. The people decided to make this because they wanted to, because they thought it would be funny. We all get to see it because the distribution process has been so abruptly and violently minimalisied. They didn't have to take their project to a distributor, and argue of marketing demographics and profitability. There's no middle manager telling them that if they were to cut out any of the more subtle skits they'll garner a wider appeal, because they're going to lose the attention of people who won't get their jokes.

Everyone in the world who is into this project can watch it, and they really don't care what the rest of you think. This is the future of art. We don't have to worry ourselves over reaching a sufficient audience, or appealing to a distributor. Who needs a recording contract when you can put your demo up on myspace for free? A twenty dollar hosting account, a wordpress installation and an idea gives you everything you need to reach everyone who might want to read what you have to say. You want to make film? Have you seen the films people are shooting with cell phone cameras? If you can't afford editing software there's open source, or you can grab yourself a torrent and make an earnest promise that you'll pay for your software as soon as you can afford it.

Quality tools have become so cheap and omnipresent that anyone who wants to make something amazing can do it. The only thing you need now is talent.

Mass media has been engaged in a race to the bottom for too long, and I don't think they can keep it up much longer. How many amazing projects can you think of that were cancelled in the last five years, because they lacked network support, or because some producer decided they wouldn't appeal sufficently to the male nineteen to thirty-five year old demographic? (Fox Studios, I'm looking at you). How many programs are on the air right now that no person in their right mind would ever actually want to watch, and that only survive because there's nothing worth watching on cable? How long do you think it can last? How can something that's been made to appeal in a very small way to a very large audience possibly compete with a project that was made to be absolutely transcendantly beloved to a thousand people? With ten projects? With fifty? How about a thousand?

Would you rather spend an hour watching "That's So Raven", or fifteen minutes on Doctor Horrible? Whose DVD are you going to buy?

It doesn't even matter if this Lowest Comedy Denominator paradigm fails (which anyone with the slightest understanding of Darwinian competition can see it must), because it's finally irrelevant to our lives. I don't need some studio excecutive to tell me what I'm going to read today, thanks, I can find it myself.

Who's your niche?

EDIT: Yes, really.


BOASAS

Makoto Yabuki approaches his space the way I want to approach my life.