From the long-overdue and probably good for your token Arts and Humanities undergrad credit Understanding Art for Geeks by the brazilliant Paul the Wine Guy (via Valleywag).
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2 girls 2 cup
Monthly Archives: January 2008
Technical Difficulties Surmounted by Primitive, Profane PR
Story of my life, really.
I don’t know nuthin, but it seems I know everybody. That’s all I need.
Well, that and Gawker Media commenting privileges.
See, if you look at this site and you’re like most people around WordPress or even like most civilians, you’ll see a bit gaping empty space where my lovely and tentacular/Goth header used to be. And on the sides, where that awesome gloomy wallpaper pattern that’s a takeoff of the really kinda Fifties Motel Hallway one on Matt‘s blog, but Gothified, used to be, you’ll see an equal amount of nussink.
There’s a whole lotta nussink around where my beautiful template images used to be.
And for five days I’ve been reporting it via the Support button on the dashboard, emailing complaints directly to Support staff, stomping my feets in the forum, and generally wailing in 360 degrees. Sometimes they’re here, but then sometimes Amelia Earhart has them, or they’re sleeping with the squids, or Elvis is using them on his Tumblr, or they’ve been eaten by Cthulhu. Or sumpin.
And all I heard from staff was “I see it fine. Clear your cache, delete your cookies and refresh?” which is, of course, 150% extra super galling because I tell newbies to do that cookie dance bit eighteen or twenty times a day in the forums, and DON’T THESE PEOPLE KNOW WHO I AM DAMMIT!!!
So when I was cruising through Valleywag recently, which I’ve developed quite a habit of doing since all the Macworld stuff hit, for lo, I have your basic enormous crush on Steve Jobs and have even invented a verb, “Steveing” which is the word you use for that time you spend reading about someone named Steve.
And it’s not at all stalkerish. For realz.
So when I was cruising through Valleywag recently one midnight, I came across an 11:23pm post on Automattic (WP’s corporate parent) and felt the urge to add a discreet reference to some of the recent technical problems at WP.com, my own in particular.
Well WordPress.com has been fucking borked for four days, so I don’t care who it is, I just want my goddam header back!
Classy, eh?
And the next thing I knew, I had an email from Matt Himself (of AutoMATTic, gedit?) offering to sort it out and, yes, saying he could see it all just fine. And then I got another one a few hours later saying that the reason my blog alone was having this issue was that the blog on which the images were hosted had been set to private.
Of course.
That’s part of the fallout from the whole firestorm in which Timethief, far and away the most prolific volunteer in the forums, got inelegantly axed. It’s happened before. It’ll happen again. This is what happens on the internet.
Several people left WP.com, several more have withdrawn to a large extent, and wank continues to exist simply because she’s just too tough to be killed off. I think I’m still kicking only because of the 3k hits I bring in every day, OR my relentless self-promotion. Then again, JFK was famous, too.
Devblog, the fellow who adapted this theme specially for me (what did I say about knowing smart, useful people?) is one of those who’s pulled back, and he set his blog to private. The reason staff could always see the images was, of course, they can see into private blogs and private files when they’re logged in as staff. Now he’s emailed me the files, so I’ve got some CSSing to do and then all should be back to normal. No idea how Matt figured it out, but he’s a smart boy for someone who looks about twelve.
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Binocular Soccer
Most sports, I find, don’t particularly interest me. Even quiddich. Which I note is not in the spellchecker…surely it should be? But then, apparently, neither is “spellchecker.”
Sports. I was talking about sports. The ways to make a sport interesting to me are either put horses in it, play it on ice, or inject a note of mortal peril or demented humour. Padding a battalion of guys with mattresses over every inch of their bodies and making them throw a ball around is NOT how to do it.
This is how to do it:
stolen from with malice
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Quote o’ the Day: The Man
This is the smartest thing I’ve heard in ages. From tonight’s meeting of The Shebeen Club.
Me: “And I’m all, like, fuck The Man!”
Ian: “You know, sometimes The Man just needs a little foreplay.”
RIP Suzanne Pleshette. Angie Dickinson, you’re our only remaining hope!
Feast your eyes on this glorious Youtube and wonder no more at whether or not Bob married above himself: oh, he did, baby, he did! This is a clip of a classic catfight showdown of the very iciest type in good olde timey Hollywood style; duck and cover, boys! We blondes have to stick together, but just this once I’m calling it for the brunette; Suzanne Pleshette really knew how to take it up a life-threatening, eyebrow-arching notch. The men in this case are as incidental and interchangeable as chess piece Disney Princes, those vacuous, photogenic losers.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, inspired, I suppose or no, I actually know for a fact, by VF’s piece on Angie Dickinson, and today by the sad death of the original MILF, Suzanne Pleshette (okay, maybe second to Anne Bancroft’s Mrs Robinson, but there can’t be many straight Gen-X males who didn’t have a thing for the divinely sensible and sexy Emily Hartley).
Now, I’m a chick. Been one for years, actually. So I’m used to it. But there’s more to it than meets the eye: when you think about it, women as diverse as Princess Diana and Paris Hilton have managed to become some kind of arche- or at least stereotype. And it pays to type well, not fast or you can get stuck as your 7-year-old self’s idea of a cool chick, which explains the whole Madonna wannabe situation. So when you’re a little girl and you want to grow up to be a woman, what, exactly, do you have in mind? Britney Spears? Madonna? Marie Curie? Isabel Allende? Amanda Lepore? You’ve got to choose your icons carefully, if you don’t want to end up dated by nothing more than your accessories and identified by nothing more than the labels your mother sewed into your underwear.
I picked Pepper.
It wasn’t until the seventies… that Dickinson met her pop-culture destiny, playing Sargeant Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson on Police Woman. Pepper was a lot of firsts: the first woman to have men report to her, the first unmarried female officer, the first to display self-doubt and, occasionally, a weakness for Jack Daniels. While she was doing all that, she also carved out a new look for the powerful woman—briskly beautiful in minimal makeup, blond hair permanently tousled from running down perps, her white Bianca Jagger–esque pantsuit adding to her unconscious swagger. Take that, Sydney Bristow.
She was also the first officially-sanctioned over-forty hottie, Dickinson being a young slip of 43 at the series’ start. I’m 44 now, and when I realized that my idol Pepper Anderson was my age, bells rang, the clouds parted, and angels sang the greatest hits of Burt Bacharach.
But only the ones Angie likes.
“It’s a pleasure to meet a lady who’s a gentleman.”
Frank Sinatra
Unlisted but indelibly a part of this pantheon are Catherine Deneuve and the fictional, yet nonetheless iconic, Catwoman and Emma Peel, about whom I’ve written elsewhere and will link up once I find it.
Am I forgetting anyone?
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raincoaster 