I wrote this for Comment is free:

I first heard about fanfics a couple of years ago, when my best friend and I stayed at his 13-year-old cousin’s house in France. We were chatting about music in her bedroom when she confessed to being a rabid fan of the boy-band Blue, whose rise to fame in 2001 was as quick as their demise in 2005. Seemingly unfazed by our teasing, she proceeded to grab an enormous folder packed with pictures and handwritten pages. “Those are my fanfictions,” she proudly said. “I’ve been writing about Blue for some time now and I also share my stories with other girls on the internet. They’re mostly about me and Lee Ryan, he’s my favourite member of the group”…

What Ernie said. 100%. It’s not just as fun as it was in 2001.

Mulder: “Then you accept the possibility that belief in god is a lie?”
Scully: “I don’t think about it actually, and I don’t think that it can be proven.”
Mulder: “But what if it could be? Wouldn’t that knowledge be worth seeking? Or is it just easier to go on believing the lie?”

(4X24 Gethsemane)

I also love AC Grayling for the same reasons. Especially this.

I e-mailed 20th Fox Century’s press office, entered every competition I could think of, even added pictures of my kitten to my e-mails as proof that I am a dedicated fan and prayed - atheist style- for a ticket to the official screening this Wednesday but nothing, no premiere for Jess. And all this after Mark told me that he thought I was England’s most deserving girl when it comes to being invited to see the movie.

I mean, who are those cold hearted people resisiting pictures of kittens, anyway? Jeez, I would have blog positively about the movie for free! Even if it is a disaster!* Ah, PR people are stupid.

Well, at least some people’s genius are cheering me up. I really need that embroidery pattern.

* My friend Matt says the movie is “potentially the most tarnishing crack at a legacy ever”.

Because this is one of my favourite topic to discuss, I found this remark by Tony (who is currently having fun / working hard at SXSW) to be quite interesting:

“This thing that im in, this sxsw thing, is not just about the future its about the present. there were two big huge keynotes over the last two days. the first was on sunday with the twentysomething yr old founder of facebook who was offered a half billion for his site and said no and was offered over a billion for his shit and said ha and today his site is allegedly worth 15 billion dollars and he still isnt selling out.

gen y taking a chapter outta the book of gen x which is fuck you and your fucking money.”

Funny since I am still a sucker for half-understanding a generation via clichés relayed by the media, and Gen X to me still is about slackers. But it also is about a whole generation which didn’t quite get and feared the transition between the late 90s official way of doing business and the so-called revolution that ensued.

Now let it be said that I don’t doubt Mark Zuckerberg will wait and capitalise on Facebook before finally letting it go (who wouldn’t care about the money?) but to be honest, why would he sell it right now?

When the Youtube founders decided to finally sell their product to Google, part of me thought that it was too early for them to do so. But hey, with 1.65 billion in their pockets, I’m not sure that the Gen Y is not about the money, as Tony suggested. As people pointed out at the time, “if I had sold my company for a billion, I would probably be would have uploaded a video showing myself and work sporting a shit-eating grin on my site, too”.

Finally, someone understood how to successfully release music online - and under a Creative Commons license, no less. For some reason if feels way more natural than Radiohead’s first try. It might be because Reznor produced Saul Williams’ latest album, which was released in the exact same way (albeit with less options). Mark - always the devil’s advocate, but most often than not right [argh] - pointed that the decision is easy for a multi-platinum artist, but i can see how this would also work for smaller bands too. Thoughts?

me: Saw the NIN? If you buy the deluxe package you get an LP signed by Trent - awesome. It’s way more clever than radiohead to give people options like that - also it’s released on a CC license. Love Trent.

mark: Yeah, but it’s all stupid… It’s all well and good if you’re a multi platinum selling rockstar who is already a millionaire, but it hardly helps new bands.

me: Well, duh - but his job is not to help new bands. Also, saul williams is not massive, and he did the same.

mark: It was with trent reznor though!

me: Yeah but even so - it’s not the entire cd - The new NIN is 9 free tracks only. Small bands can use this model: release an LP of 5 free songs, have people download the rest for 5 quid, they’d still earn more than with a contract.

Photo via.

If I could pick 5 Jeopardy categories, they would be:

- Prince (circa 1982-1997)

- Chocolate, in any shape or form

- Paul Auster & Brooklyn (I have never been to New York)

- The X-Files (largely due to the fact that I now own the entire 9 series. I still maintain that should I complete a Masters in Cultural Studies, this would be my prime topic of interest) [1] [2]

- Social activists/ Feminist blogs

What are yours?

[1] Oh no, people beat me to it.

[2] A paper on the X-files and sexism? Hallefuckinglujah! Quote:

The X Filesseries reveals through central character Agent Scully the contemporary shift in traditional gender roles which has enabled more women to become scientific experts. What could be considered sexist about the X Files series is the fact that once women move into the arena of science, as Agent Scully has, and men, such as protagonist Agent Mulder, start believing in the power of intuition, traditionally a feminised area of thought, suddenly the authority of science, a principal discourse since Enlightenment, is brought into question, as intuition becomes paramount. It is in this shifting gender discourse that sexism can be viewed in the X Files series once viewed through a feminist analysis.

It reminds me a bit of how I approached my dissertation during my last year of University. I figured that if I had to write so much on a single topic for a year, this was the right time to combine my favourite things, mix it up and see what I could do with it. Voilà! A hundred pages about Blogs, Generation X, my friends’ webpages and Douglas Coupland. I felt a bit like a fraud, since I spent my research time, you know, reading blogs and surfing MySpace.

Picture via.

I love Douglas Coupland. While I haven’t been crazy about his latest novels, Girlfriend in a Coma still remains one of my favourite book. Mark, on the other hand, fiercely hates him. I recently discovered that Coupland wrote a blog for the New York Times* - always late to the party, aren’t I- and I think it’s brilliant. More surprinsingly, Mark agrees. We came to the conlusion that Coupland may be a better blogger than a novelist, because the medium suits his pop-life affirmations better than paper pages can.

Which is bizzarre… Douglas Coupland, blogger extraordinaire before blogs were even born.

* As always, it’s qualified as “opinion” or “column” on google searches. Because real writers don’t blog, you see, they merely have ideas they put in writing instead.

On Radiohead’s new cd:

mark: all the bloggers are going mad because it’s 160kbps and are calling it a marketing scam

me: yeah i read about that
wankers

mark: bloggers go mad about everything

me: thats a good thing

mark: if thom york was going to cycle round to your house and deliver the album for free on release day, they’d complain he was adding to traffic congestion

me: that’s funny, im gonna blog that

———

With a co-worker, about Second life;

Me: I was reading the other day about how Second life’s public is either made of hardcore gamers, or people who visit for a bit, get confused and then leave.

Coworker: … Like I did. It’s really frustrating when you’re not a geek. Do you remember that time we met with Cory Ondrejka, and I asked about what will happen when there’s a shortage of geeks?

me: Yeah

Coworker: It’s like, it’s not good enough that people just show up and give you wings and stuff, and then go.

In light of my recent post about Yoshi’s island, Mark pointed me to this piece of news about gaming:

Mark: bet you can’t wait for this game

me: brilliant, and so spot on, after all I knit and bake bread already (1)

Mark: you’re a housewife superstar?

me: well I do have all the qualities don’t i?

A game for girls who want to become Housewives superstars? I suppose the game’s challenge is to bake perfectly little round cakes, clean the kids’ underwear and knit pretty scarves with ribbons intertwined. (I suppose that if there were working-full time housewives characters in this game they would say, hey, “I am enjoying spending an average of 10 hours more than you doing chores even if we both have a full time job and i’m still hitting the glass ceiling. Why’s that, honey?”).

Not that it’s out of the way… From what I gathered learning about games with Mark, Nintendo opened the gaming market to girls by making it accessible (and sadly, by releasing pink Nintendo DS). It also means they release games such as Bratz, which I can only describe as the gaming equivalent of reading Seventeen; Paris Hilton splattered all over the pages and oh don’t-you-wish-you-were-her.

Simple consideration: if there are “games 4 girls” and “games 4 boys”, it makes little doubt that girls are also enjoying playing boy’s games as well. After all, I really enjoy killing my pixelized enemies. And yes, I also understand that some games will be more popular with one sex than the other. But here’s the one million dollar question- why don’t I picture any little boy furiously hitting the start button of his “housewife superstar” game? Damn it, I want to see the “stay at home dad superstar” game out, and soon. Because as long as it’s not about assigning roles to gender but respecting lifestyle choices, there’s nothing wrong with liking housework, or wanting to raise your own children. But Madeleine already explained it better than I could.

(1) Mark and I did it together and to be honest, he knew way more about it than I did. That’s one of the reasons why I love the boy.