“Jeremy arrives thirty minutes later and leans against the wall with a slouch so extreme that he appears to have left his skeleton at home.”

Steve Martin’s third book will be hitting stores soon (yes, that Steve Martin). The novella, titled Shopgirl, follows Mirabelle through her lonely job, budding relationships – you know the sort of thing people write about. I’m not sure what I expected from a work written by Steve Martin, but from the excerpts which I have read so far, it seems quite good.

An excerpt from an excerpt:

Six days after their first date, which had cut Mirabelle’s net worth by twenty percent, she runs into Jeremy again at the Laundromat. He waves at her, gives her the thumbs-up sign, then watches her as she loads clothes into the machines. He seems unable to move, but speaks just loudly enough for his voice to carry over twelve clanking washing machines, “did you watch the game last night?” Mirabelle is shocked when she later learns that Jeremy considers this their second date. This fact comes out when at one abortive get-together, Jeremy invokes the “third date” rule, believing he should be received at second base. Mirabelle is not fooled by any such third date rule, and she explains to Jeremy that she cannot conceive of any way their Laundromat encounter, or any encounter involving the thumbs-up sign, can be considered a date.

Two excerpts from Shopgirl are available at Contentville.com and at Previewport.com.
It should be noted that Contentville is an ugly site and will require a (phony) email address before giving you access to the excerpt.

 

The Open Directory Project: yahoo.communists

The Open Directory Project at dmoz.org is another wacky love child of the AOL-TimeWarner merger. Other bizarre offspring of the corporate mega marriage include Mozilla and Gnutella.

Basically an open-source version of the Yahoo editorial system, dmoz has the advantage of having actual human beings (of varying quality) decide which site goes in which category, without the disadvantage of possible censorship associated with a central system. Anyone can signup to be an editor.

Anyone can use the Open Directory Project data on their site. Sites using it include Google, Altavista, Netcenter, Lycos, and Hotbot.

Acts of Volition is proud to be listed under on The Open Directory Project under:

Top: Computers: Internet: WWW: Web Logs: Personal: A

 

aov jumps on handheld computing mega-trend bandwagon

It’s true: You can now get Acts of Volition on your handheld (or PDA, or Palm, or whatever the hell you want to call it).

The handheld version of aov includes the 10 most recent posts to the site for your ‘waiting-in-line-at-the-bank’ reading pleasure.

The Acts of Volition AvantGo Channel works on both Palm and Microsoft PocketPC devices.

Add Acts of Volition to your handheld >>

 

popularity continues to eludes me even into adulthood

top 50 websites
I’m not sure what this means but I’m sure you can deduce something from it. Here is a top-down view of the 50 most visited websites on the web.

 

The Viacom Music Video Awards

I know criticism is easy but that doesn’t mean you can’t be particularly good at it. Jeff Stark, the associate editor of Salon Arts and Entertainment, is very good at it.

Read his article Rock is dead and well at the MTV;; Video Awards at Salon. Sure, criticizing the MTV;; VMAs for being low class and artless is kind of like criticizing *Nsync for pandering to teenage girls, but this is still a fun article.

A representative sample (italics mine):

Durst of Limp Bizkit (do not follow this link) said something about being in “the world’s most hated rock band.” This is the same lame outlaw posturing Metallica specializes in. How unpopular can you be, Fred, if you’re up onstage getting an award from Viacom?

 

sites that do what we do, only better

* k10k.net is down this week (Sept 3 – 10) but it will be up again on Sept 11, 2000
 

you have been warned.

Do you enjoy chinese food (the simulated, americanized variety), or the song “Cats in the Cradle” (by Ugly Kid Joe or others)? If you answered “yes” to either question, do not go here.

 

someone pass me a tissue.

The Onion is a site which hardly needs an introduction. A site actually driven by content worth digesting, it is one of the few websites worth visiting on a regular basis. The paticular genius of the site is the disguising of social comentary as low-brow humour.

This week they have outdone themselves. Someday, I Will Drive This Short Bus Myself, is an incredible well written, and touching* article, not just by The Onion’s standards but, I think, by anyone’s.

* Author is comfortable enough with his masculinity to be able to say “touching,” and mean it. No giggling either.

 

The Internet fried my brain

I remember reading an article about how the web and hyperlinks were going to change the way children thought. At the time I dismissed it as mumbo-jumbo about non-linear thought patterns and other such nonsense. I fear the hypothesis have been proven true in myself.

Sitting in an evening university class (a place which is both foreign and familiar to me), I found myself constantly wanting the professor to move on. I found myself ‘skimming’ the lecture and was incredibly frustrated when I couldn’t control the movement from topic to topic.

Clearly, part of the problem is my inability to interact with people who don’t exist on my computer. However, I think this points to a clear conclusion: The Internet has fried my brain.

 

No Introspection Here, Folks

I would like to state, that from the beginning I was against the title of this site. Although the meanings are different, ‘Volition’ triggers similar word-sound-associations to ‘Volitile’ and ‘Violation’. Both words that I associate to negative things. I’d complain more, but I don’t have a better title.