:: currently listening
November 19th, 2006 | music
Shades
November 19th, 2006 | brainjuice
When was the last time I wrote a character wearing shades? Was it Spider? Jones has his goggles, but he doesn’t wear them much.
I was watching this video Fraction sent me. It’s a collection of the last thirty seconds of teasers from a bunch of CSI MIAMI episodes — the bit before they smash-cut to the main title sequence. Now, you know how CSI works — the teaser sets up the crime, the protagonist cranks off a smart line, smash in the titles. Right?
This video — it’s on YouTube – is surreally compelling. David Caruso – the Carusobot, as we know him — hits every one of his last-line zingers with the same cadence. “What are you going to do, Carusobot?” “We-e-e…are going to find ourselves a bear rapist.” Crash in The Who, main titles.
But in almost all of them, he does the same action. “We-e-e…” …and he puts on his shades before doing the rest of the line. (Apparently, they’re referred to on set as “the sunglasses of justice”.)
The shades are crucial to CSI MIAMI, as they are to cyberpunk fiction (and the techno-thriller, both of which CSI shares DNA with). For the Carusobot IS a deranged, implacable machine. You cannot see his eyes. He therefore shows no human emotion. It’s the Uncanny Valley equation: you can pull the face into any expression you like, but the eyes are dead. In cyberpunk, as Bruce Sterling said in MIRRORSHADES, the shades are vital both to conceal emotion and to hide the fact that you’re unslept, drugged half to death and blatantly insane.
(Also: THE BLUES BROTHERS.)
To don the shades at the beginning of a story is the equivalent of Superman changing into costume (or, in a more obscure read, James Spader putting on a black shirt at the top of SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE).
With so many stories behind me, I have to be careful about repeating visual tics. But I love the idea of putting mythic weight behind something as simple as putting on a pair of shades.
The semiotics of shades. I tell you, I am fucking losing it…
(crosspost from Bad Signal)
Flickering
November 18th, 2006 | mobilesignals
Apologies to anyone trying to read the site over the last hour and finding it cycling through different designs. I feel like the place needs a repaint.
NOTE: I am just testing pre-baked themes. Nothing here is permanent, so don’t freak out if you come in and everything’s flowery…
links for 2006-11-18
November 18th, 2006 | Uncategorized
-
What will be the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years? As part of our 50th anniversary celebrations we asked over 70 of the world’s most brilliant scientists for their ideas.
-
archaeologists have discovered the latrines used by the sect that produced the scrolls, discovering that efforts to achieve ritual purity inadvertently exposed members to intestinal parasites that shortened their lifespan
- WHITECHAPEL Message Board
- FREAKANGELS Updated Fridays
- TWITTERNanojabber
- FILM/TV AGENTAngela Cheng Caplan
- LITERARY AGENTLydia Wills
- BUY THE BOOKCrooked Little Vein
WARREN ELLIS
Search
Archives
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
Complete Plan B Archive
Kieron Gillen - 09 Feb 10
The whole run of Plan B magazine has been released as a single 670Mb PDF. That’s 46 issues of some of the finest music writing of the decade. And a lot of posturing pretentiousness too. It’s like two of my favourite things for the price of one. Or none, as it’s a free PDF.
If you’ve any interest in music in the 00s, or music full stop, this is a great thing to just have on file. You’ll discover a new band every time you browse it.
Hell, it’s even worth getting if you’re one of the games journalist sorts. For the first 10-20 issues or so, I was doing games stuff for it. And Quinns and Mathew Kumar too, who I bullied into contributing. Very much written for the non-gamer about games which get pretty much no coverage, we had fun trying to decode the concept of Outsider Games.
Whole thing here. Go gets!
Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.
Coilhouse - 08 Feb 10
Back around the time of Issue 03, we launched the Small Business Advertising Program to create affordable ad space for indie companies in the print version of Coilhouse. By the time Issue 04 rolled around, the number of advertisers had grown significantly – by this time, we had record labels, jewelry and clothing designers, sculptors, other magazines, web hosts, toy makers and graphic designers advertising in our pages. Click here to see them all. With editorial duties taking up more and more of our time as the weeks go by, the moment has come for us to seek help with the advertising side of running the magazine. We’re looking to hire an Ad Manager for our Small Business Advertising Program, starting with Coilhouse Magazine #05… and possibly subsequent issues.
Full details after the jump!
Read the rest of Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.
Post tags: Coilhouse
State of South Carolina Secretary of State Subversive Agent Form
jwz - 08 Feb 10
Check the appropriate box. Do you or your organization directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina or any political division thereof?
[ ] YES [ ] NOIf yes, please outline the fundamental beliefs. If applicable, attach a copy of the bylaws or minutes of meetings from the last year.
"Inflection Points" Presentation
Open The Future - 08 Feb 10
For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.
My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.
Inflection Points
View more presentations from Jamais Cascio.
By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.
The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.