CultureHack

A Unified Theory of Me

In which the Author tentatively
integrates his distributed cyberself . . .

Clearly you can see that I am bleeding
Clearly you can see my clothes
are torn
Clearly this demands an explanation
Only I can offer none
My other life . . .

Analysis has failed to find a motive
Hypnotists have failed to beak
the code
Journalists are camped out on my doorstep
Perchance that I might slip and drop
the key
My other life . . .

I slip away to my other life
With no regret or remorse
Happy and gay in my other life
No need to wake me Monday morning
From my other life
--Lloyd Cole, "My Other Life "

In case it isn't noted, your attention is called to the new additions at the top of the right-hand sidebar. There you'll find both daily and occasional updates that feature material that (to me) doesn't necessarily fit into whatever it is this blog does. (Posts like this or maybe even this one.)

Through the interleaved coding ju-ju of RSS, HTML, Javascript and CSS, I'm dynamically dropping into CultureHack the five most recent items from my Twitter and Posterous manifestations. See the daily Twitter content (dubbed "Observations") as CultureHack Haiku-ed, and the less-frequent, more complex Posterous material (christened "Tangents") as CultureHack At Large.

I've also added "Playlist" to the right-hand sidebar, which links to my selection, programming and annotation of songs over at Blip.fm. This list of tunes will be growing--thus, if you're interested in my Other DJ Life, periodic visits to "Playlist" may be indicated.

Currently there remains artifacts of cross-posting between this blog and the Posterous account. This represents a period of testing to make sure this integrated scheme would actually work. Going forward, new and exclusive Posterous material will dynamically push the cross-posts off the sidebar and three distinct types of content will be displayed, each according to their own posting rhythms. At least that's my hope. If in practice creating a link-hub to Distributed Me proves not as intriguing as it initially appears, then I'll simply pull the plug and the song demos will once again take their place at the top of the sidebar.

This integration isn't really about visitor convenience or online brand management; I'm operating on a more intuitive level--feeling my way to something I can't quite articulate. Perhaps, since the material really does differ in each source, I'm hoping to create the cubistic 3-D of a Hockney polaroid montage, hoping that epigrammatic daily observations juxtaposed to less-frequent, Tumblr-esque notes, links and media and then parked next to the longer, improvisational essays here might create a kind of triangulation that could be interesting. Or not. We'll just have to see . . .

Update: I've also added "Bricolage" to the right-hand sidebar. It links to CultureHack, Tumbled--a digital commonplace book for stuff that catches my eye as I careen through the InterWebs.

She Blind-Sided Me With Search Strings

Wherein the procrastinating Author discovers
a deeply disturbing piece of website design . . .

I'm not gonna feel
bad anymore
'cause I never have
to see you again;
I'm not gonna feel
sad anymore
'cause I never have
to see you again . . .

I'll tow you out to
the side of the road
and I'll shake you once
by the hand;
Wait 'til the bus comes
rumbling by
to scoop you up off
of my land . . .
--Robyn Hitchcock,
"Never Have To See You Again "

I have a first-cup-of-coffee tradition that I try to observe every morning: The search for a delaying tactic to keep me from entering Writing Mode; something that prevents me from wading waist-deep back into The Book while my caffeine level is optimized. Today I decided it was of utmost importance that iGoogle, Popurls and Inquisitor for Safari match each other--as in each service being the same shade of gray. Before any further manuscript revisions were possible, it suddenly seemed essential that a cross-service, monochromatic harmony had to be established. I figured this would buy me at least 30 minutes before I had to start channelling The Author--and I was right. (Since I've been writing the book, I've discovered in myself a hitherto unrealized-but-inspired talent for delaying tactics. Who knew? And so yes, matching my Google home page to both my news aggregator and expanded function search pop-up seemed whacked even to me--thrilling so, in fact; the sort of behavior that would cause friends to cross to the other side of the street on mere suspicion of the project.)

Anyway, after some geeky dicking about with the appearance preferences of Popurls, chromatic parity was established with Inquisitor. Which meant that I'd only need to find a complementary gray theme for Google and my sad little plan for temporary desktop domination would be realized. Mwah-ha-ha. Or something like that--whatever a procrastinating, bush-league Dr. Evil might say in similar circumstances. Thus I zipped up to the Google theme directories where I eventually settled on Chroma Pencil Lead as the gray that would make writing once again possible.

But that's not what this post is about; it's just writerly backstory. I already know I'm eccentric, so there's no need to solicit your feedback concerning my various tics. Rather, I want to share what I stumbled across during my latest instance of Putting Off Writing: A Sarah Palin theme for Google, the major portal to the world's assembled knowledge and opinion. Here, have a look:

My cat has become impressively adept at miming WTF? and in this case, I second that emotion. The massive cognitive dissonance of linking Palin (a) to knowledge of, well, any kind, and (b) to inherently divergent opinions is best conveyed by this simple thought experiment: Imagine Fred Flintstone and Dino as mascots for Cincinnati University's School of Paleontology. Like Gloria Foster said in The Matrix, 'it bakes your noodle . . .'

Full disclosure: I just took down my Obama lawn sign; I'd left it up for a full post-election week as a sort of motionless victory dance. However, my horror at the Palin Google theme has little to do with politics or partisanship. Palin, the the Far Right's Mean-Girl Chauncey Gardner, has declared war on The Smart--here carefully defined not as the opposite of Dumb, but, rather, as the rejection of Willful Ignorance. (Or, in the manner of "Low Information," that appalling, politically correct description of those who won't pull themselves away from television reality shows, let's simply say that Smart can seen as the state of being "Informed.") And so it follows that Smartness transcends political party.

Entr'acte: Girl, It's Time To Automate . . .

Wherein the Author generously shares
The. Best. Lab. Equipment. Promo. Evah . . .

Pipetting all those well-plates, baby,
sends your thumbs into overdrive
And spending long nights in the lab
makes it hard for your love to thrive
What you need is automation, girl,
something easy as 1 2 3
So put down that pipette, honey,
I got something that will set you free
And it’s called epMotion
( ‘cause you deserve something really great)
Girl, you need epMotion
(yeah girl it’s time to automate)
It’s got to be epMotion
(no more pipetting late at night)
--"It's Called epMotion"

You know, sometimes a commercial for yet another automated pipetting system hits the screen and I think to myself, Sheridan, does the world really need a new way of transferring reagents and extracting nucleic acids? If you're like me, you know the answer's a harsh, unequivocal No. Goddamit, shouldn't manual pipetting be enough? Why can't lab techs learn the basics like we all did, back there in Chemistry for English Majors? Oh, sure, there's that whole reproducibility over millions of pipetted samples--but still . . .

And then along comes the epMotion 5075MC. It's made by Eppendorf, a little company with one big, crazy dream--to get news of its automated pipetting system on iPods and iPhones the world over. I can only imagine that, after a solid week of no sleep whatsoever, Eppendorf's agency finally makes its Big Presentation--the idea designed to put the epMotion 5075MC on the lips of Tweens everywhere. The head of the agency slowly walks to the head of the conference table and says, "Gentlemen, I only have two words regarding the finest automated pipetting system in the world:
Boy Band".

And so "It's Called epMotion" was born. And damned if I didn't want that sleek, machine-tooled baby humming away in the corner of my office, giving me the security of knowing that, yes, I can simultaneously finish my novel and cure rare, tropical diseases. It kind of makes me feel like, well, Buckeroo Banzai, with that whole particle-physics-plus-rock-and-roll riff.

So damn you, Eppendorf--this ad never gave me a chance, did it? You had me at Less reagents / Faster workflow / Saves you money / Well, well, well . . . But you knew that, didn't you?

No more pipetting late at night / Girl, this time we got it right. Indeed.

(Special thanks to Big Contrarian and Wired.)

Writer Redux

Too cynical to live, too dumb to die,
I'm still standing: Consider being afraid . . .

I've had it with these
motherfucking snakes
on this motherfucking plane!
--Samuel L Jackson, Snakes On a Plane

The sun shines high above
The sounds of laughter
The birds swoop down upon
The crosses of old grey churches
We say that we're in love
While secretly wishing for rain
Sipping coke and playing games
September's here again
September's here again . . .
--David Sylvian, "September"

Okay, it wasn't exactly serpents and the aircraft was metaphoric, but--yes--I, too, thoroughly (and motherfuckingly) had had it. For a while, at least. But now I'm back kicking ass and taking names. I guess everybody needs a hobby. Let's just say I was on a Business Trip and leave it at that. For the more melodramatically inclined among you, it turned out that only Moriarty plummeted into Reichenbach Falls--after which, I spent a long time in Tibet. Which pretty much brings us to this, The Return . . . Special thanks to what scholars of Elizabethan literature call "diverse hands"--they kept this place dusted and tidied while I was Elsewhere doing Other, Unfortunately Unavoidable Things.

It also should be noted that I lost a good friend along the way, demonstrating the extreme and unpredictable nature of this very peculiar trip. But if I have any advantage over Tony Dresden, it is the ability to say That was then and this is now. So onward . . .

At the top, let's be clear about this entry--given the amount of catching up that needs to be done, it is, by necessity, the Jagged Jump-Cut Edition of a post. So put aside any expectation of elegant thematic arcs--this is a reorganization meeting. Nothing more. Nothing less. I hope you brought a legal pad.