Disqus - Latest Comments for miconian

Re: Cartoon Caption Contest I

miconian — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:21:48 -0000

"He really liked that scene in Showgirls."

Re: This Thing Of Dogness…

miconian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:00:30 -0000

"And that, in a nutshell, is what being married with kids is like." I'm not married, but I believe it. Interestingly, that is the sentence that sticks with me the most, out of this whole piece.

Re: Eurydice Follows

miconian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:35:12 -0000

What I love the most is that the main action of the story is implied, rather than described. Myths that resonate like Orpheus and Eurydice will never go out of style, but in this era of extravagant special effects, it's the human details that make this story come alive. This is an epic story of magic, adventure, and doomed love, beautifully and concisely rendered as a minimalist internal monologue. And "the dogs have come round" is such an understated evocation of Cerberus that it dares the reader to imagine just how terrifying the "reality" must be.

Re: Trick Or…

miconian — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:03:17 -0000

I really like that the kids are alone. It reminds me of the high school graduation scene in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It takes place at night, outside, and nobody is there except the students, the principal, and the mayor. Empirically, it makes no sense, but mythically, it's perfect, because after all, graduation isn't about the parents, it's about the kids, even though the parents are usually there.

Similarly, having the kids be alone here adds a bleakness that I love. There is nobody there to explain to them why they aren't going to get any candy. Not only does that say something realistic about what it's like to grow up, but it posits the kids as surrogates, if you will, for the way adults feel disoriented and confused by what has happened to the economy. There isn't really that much of a gap... and the fact that the kids are, in a sense, begging for food is just perfect in that regard.

Re: Passing, Period

miconian — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:45:56 -0000

I got an A. We all did.

Re: The White Castle Incident

miconian — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:10:10 -0000

What I like about this is that the four sides that he ordered with the crave case are kept a mystery.

Re: Shit Happens

miconian — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:37:18 -0000

I suspect that many of the real-life stories implied here are often more compelling than the movies, TV shows, and commercials that are the reason all this is happening to begin with.

Re: HOW TO: Organize an Event on Facebook

miconian — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:38:51 -0000

I am the admin for the event, but I don't see that link.

However, maybe the situation is different because the event is associated with a facebook fan page (facebook.com/revolvingfloor). So there is an option "update fans of revolving floor." But I have found that sending a message through this technique does not actually get to anyone, at least not to the people I have asked who have RSVPd to the event. Even if that method worked, it wouldn't be the same thing as what we're talking about, because fans of Revolving Floor and invitees are not exactly the same group.

Re: HOW TO: Organize an Event on Facebook

miconian — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:04:13 -0000

The article says: "[Y]ou can send messages to invitees by clicking on the “Message Guests” link below the event photo on the event’s page). You can also send messages specifically to those who have not yet replied to the invitation or to those who have indicated that they may attend urging them to come to the event."

But I do not see that "message" option on my event page, and it is not at all clear to me how to send messages to people who have not yet replied.

Re: From the desk of the I.C.C.I.

miconian — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:39:10 -0000

A recent NYTimes article, "How Nonsense Sharpens The Intellect," is in concurrence with the ICCI's report.

Re: Second Thoughts on Second Helpings

miconian — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:17:22 -0000

It seems that the much-older landlord/housemate who manages a "community" of desperate younger people, sleeps on a mattress, and brings garbage back into the house is almost a modern archetype. I have personally dealt with three of them, all in completely different circumstances; two in New York, and one in Seattle. I often wonder about the curious combination of traits, and why they so ofter occur together.

I had a landlord in LA who, after effectively evicting me, took me on a tour of other abandoned apartments that he controlled, and encouraged me to take things (such as functional computers) that had been left behind. Maybe after collecting so much residue from old tenants over time, they finally decide that there's no need to wait until the tenant actually vacates before scavenging their stuff.

Re: Time Tricks

miconian — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:58:27 -0000

Eric, have you read Longitude? I thought of it while reading this... time as a phenomenon of both nature and culture.

Also, I wonder what time analog clocks were set to when they were the only kind sold in stores? 10:10 perhaps, as a sort of smile?

Re: Comment Contest: Win an HP ENVY 13!

miconian — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:56:47 -0000

I envy that the Envy manages to be so thin, and to have so much energy, without ever having to exercise.

Re: hi. i am jack. - adults are always asking little kids what they...

miconian — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:50:51 -0000

And because they want to vicariously pretend that they still have a choice.

Re: When The Ordinary Things Stay Ordinary

miconian — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:26:01 -0000

Great sense of movement in that image. It looks so much like a frame from a film that it's hard to keep in mind the fact that it's a single static piece that is not a rendering of some other thing, but an original illustration.

Re: Factory Seconds

miconian — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:36:51 -0000

I once interviewed for a quality control job wherein I would be tasked with inspecting pieces of blown glass. The supervisor told me that:

- I would have to reject at least a couple of pieces each day in order to justify my job.
- The glass-blowers, who worked in the next room, took pride in their work, and were likely to ask me to justify my decisions.
- So far, nobody who worked there had come up with a coherent standard for why anything should be rejected.

And yet, there was clearly an idea floating around that, even though there wasn't a standard, there should be. So basically, I was being asked to formulate a theory of aesthetics, and then defend it daily. And that theory must apply to pieces of art that were, by definition, unique.

I didn't get the job, and maybe that's just as well.

Re: A Meditation on Bureaucracy

miconian — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:56:34 -0000

This takes me back to Obama's health care speech, when he actually posited the success of the public university system as a justification for how private and public 'options' can work together. Now I wonder if that was the best example.

Re: take a second/ a second take

miconian — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:24:52 -0000

When I was little and I couldn't sleep, I would sometimes try counting imaginary sheep jumping over an imaginary fence. (This image must have come from Sesame Street, since sheep can't actually jump... can they?) The sheep that had already cleared the railing would gather on the far side, until they formed a dense enough crowd that no other sheep could come across. And I was still awake.

Re: Abraham Instate

miconian — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:17:24 -0000

The parallel stories of the multiple Isaacs makes me think of all the "rebooting" going on in TV and movies these days. Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, and, in a different way, James Bond and Doctor Who, all follow this pattern of re-presenting a hero in ways that will make him seem more palatable... but of course, "reboot" is itself just a modern way of making that very process, ancient as it is, easier to understand for modern audiences. I just came from a reading where Susan Orlean was talking about the many incarnations of Rin-Tin-Tin, fictional and otherwise, and how the public maintained an idea of a sort of continuity of character, even though both the real dogs and the fictional dogs could not logically have that continuity.

With this poem, we have a sort of aesthetic synthesis of such parallel stories, which is, after all, what's going on in the collective readers' mind, if not in the mind of a single sophisticated reader, who is capable of absorbing all three versions of the myth and regarding them as non-contradictory facets of the same object. The fact that the story in question deals with death and rebirth (actual or virtual) makes it work at a whole other level as well.

Re: The Second Chances Of Jean Cocteau

miconian — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:48:21 -0000

Fascinating that Cocteau and Hemingway were both ambulance drivers. That could be a movie in itself...

Re: Trapped Girls Updated Facebook Status Instead of Calling For Help

miconian — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:50:57 -0000

Posting to FB gets a message to a lot more people, and a lot faster, than a single phone call.

Re: Second Hand

miconian — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:50:10 -0000

I wonder what the universal truth was... but perhaps the idea is that we don't get to know, since we weren't there. The value of it might diminish if it were made public.

Re: Trapped Girls Updated Facebook Status Instead of Calling For Help

miconian — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:38:41 -0000

I totally understand. People trust those who know them more than the police, and they are right to do so. I would probably have done the same thing.

Re: The 2nd Most Important Story Of My Life

miconian — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:43:50 -0000

Yeah, the shofar is pretty cool, too.

Re: Affording Good Beheadings

miconian — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:07:36 -0000

The phrase that is really going to stick with me (and that I've already starting singing it to myself a few times) is "...and the turkey that you warned me would be too dry/was too dry."

So much universal experience packed into that detail.