Blog Rolling

I finally joined the blogging community entirely: I have a blog roll now. These are the blogs I read. Here's why.

Geek Philosophy: The Flick Filosopher blogs. And she does it well. Many interesting links copied here, many insightful pieces on geekyness, and every week, a geek, a nerd and a dork. There is a bit too much emphasis, in my opinion, on how Gen-X is connected to geekdom, but then again, that might just be because I am not an Xer but I do consider myself a geek.

Nine by Six: my good friend Joost also blogs. Not updated often enough to my taste, but often interesting links when he does.

Aurgasm: a music blog with a very eclectic, interesting selection of songs, which can be downloaded free for evaluation purposes. Here's how I discovered Gabriel Mann's "Artichoke", and many other gems.

Mainly Movies: Tim also sometimes leaves me hungry for a new update, but his taste in movies is fascinating. He's currently working on a top 100, counted down, and any movie he selected I've either seen and loved or is on my to-see list now.

Nick's Flick Picks: Nick is also working on a countdown (I believe he started before tim, in fact). His picks are a bit less attuned to my taste, but he does elaborate on his choices a lot more, and always with enthusiasm and insight.

Queering the Apparatus: a surprising choice only for those who are unaware of my fascination with gay culture. Damion's posts range from Vintage images of men in various states of undress, to comments on gay culture and polls about gay icons. Funny, irreverent, and extremely readable.

Modern Fabulosity: it's almost impossible to talk about Queering the Apparatus without mentioning ModFab. Updating more often, with more naked men and more newsbits, but -in my opinion- just a little bit less charm, it makes the perfect companion to Damion's blog.

Poetry, sexy? Hell yeah

I guess Wednesday will become poetry day, as the poetry committee meeting are on that day. It was, once again, friendly, with a nice atmosphere, and inspiring. So many poets from so many nationalities, so many subjects and styles... But tonight, what got to me most was Pablo Neruda. Oh, I knew his name, had heard some of his poems. But Steef brought with him tonight "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" and well, I fell in love. Just for clarity's sake, with Pablo, not with Steef. Maybe it's because I was in a romantic mood because of Lanchka's wonderful problems. Anyhow, I didn't want to deprive you of this little nugget, the first paragraph to Love Poem #XIII entitled "He Ido Marcando" or "I have gone marking". First the original, then the translation.

***
He Ido Marcando con cruces de fuego
el atlas blanco de tu cuerpo.
Mi boca era una araña que cruzaba escondiéndose.
En ti, detrás de ti, temerosa, sedienta.
***
I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
***

So, yeah, hot much? Oh well, true, the guy himself isn't thát appealing, but still, a cute guy whispers these kinds of words in my ear and I'm a goner. As long as he doesn't call me honey sweet, that is.

Next week in the poetry entry, I'll treat you to some Leonard Cohen. Sexy too, but a little darker, kinkier, in a way. It all goes to show that poetry isn't as stuffy as people think it is. I mean, some of my attempts at poetry also were quite suggestive as well.

H.

Magazines

There was a Boomerang meeting/get-together/drink tonight, and obviously, the topic turned to our search for identity, to what we should want for the Boomerang.

I have no easy answer.

The thing is, making the ideal magazine is tough, maybe even impossible. There is no magazine right now that I read cover to cover every month. There used to be - Science & Vie Junior, a French Science Magazine - but I outgrew that years ago, and nothing has replaced it.

The problem is, I don't really know what would.

Maybe I'm spoiled by the internet, where you can easily pick and choose what you like. Maybe it's because I have odd tastes. I don't know. All I know is that while I like music magazines, I usually only read them at the train station ebcause the ten to fifteen minutes I have to spend there are usually enough to read all the parts I find interesting. Movie magazines are nice but ridiculously expensive, and don't really rival the internet-only stuff. There is one movie magazine online that I usually read entirely, Bright Light Film Journal. The drawback? It only comes out once every three months. As for the so-called "lifestyle" magazines, they bore. And the political ones usually have one or two interesting articles that really go in-depth about something, but they're terrible, well, unhip about a lot of things, articles about things like blogging or geeks or anything related to that always annoying me with their fragmentary, condescending nature.

There is one magazine I discovered in the US that I found particularly intriguing: Interview. All there is inside is interview of celebrities, actors and musicians mostly, by their colleagues and friends: people they've worked with, people they know, people who'll skip past the basic boring questions and ask unpredictable ones. The result isn't always great,but it never fails to be different.

I really have no reason for complaining about missing the one definitive magazine for me. After all, there's the internet, and it is my companion. I kind of assemble my own magazine in a way. Take an interview from the New York Magazine, a humor piece from the New Yorker, a billiant idea to make the iPod video succesful from a site called the SFGate, a philosophical article on postmodernism , the sex column from The Onion AV Club, and finally an article on Dada from the IHT. My own magazine, of sorts. The only prolem being that it takes some time to assemble.

Does the internet make magazines superfluous? I doubt it. The most interesting articles I find online usually come from a printed magazine. And despite my not having found the ideal magazine yet, I'd love a subscription to Interview, to McSweeney's, to The Believer, to The New Yorker, to Rolling Stone and many, many others.

I guess the dilemma is even bigger because I vaguely, in the back of my mind, still have the ambition to become a magazine writer, even seeing this blog partly as a training ground (keeping in mind that all the entires here, except for the Boomerang articles, are first drafts written down at high speed) for that. But the ultimate magazine will probably remain a dream.

H.

Oh, and if you're interested in the ideal magazine cover? See this.

Giant Squid is tired of all the media attention

Or, alternate title, Why we're all unworthy to lick McSweeney's tentacles.

Seriously. This particular case of brilliance we can thank Greg Ruehlman for, but so many other pieces deserve to be lauded as well...

And let's not forget this one, maybe my favorite of all time.

I've been thinking a lot about what it is to be a geek lately, because the NRC, a Dutch newspaper, showed in an article this weekend that it clearly doesn't get it (as a whole, Dutch people don't seem to have much affinity for geekdom).

All I can come up with is examples. Links. McSweeney's, for example, is prototypically geeky. And after seeing this, the whole concept of what a geek is could not be more clear. But how to put it in words...I'll get back to you when I figure it out.

H.

Phoenix again (how ironic...)

I saw this picture on calendarlive and I just couldn't not post it.

The interview is pretty interesting too. It makes me want to meet the guy, talk to him myself.