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Obscure(ish) Patriots football humor.

On Sunday's game, Junior Seau made two interceptions. (His first in five years.) During the runback on the second, he threw out his arms in an odd (and probably showboating) gesture... dangerous, given how near some of the Browns were to him, but no harm, no foul.

Anyway, the pose looked oddly familiar, so I fired up the old Nintendo emulator...
He's just living out his Mega Man dreams.

(Hmm, maybe you had to see the replay for it to be funny. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Oh, and Congratulations Tribe! Thanks for taking care of the nasty Yankees. To be honest, my loyalties are terribly stretched... two hometowns, one where I'm making my life, but Cleveland needs it more. (Wonder if another 1-series-and-out will make the Yankees roster destruct... George was certainly talking trash about Torre, which is kind of a damn shame but hell... they're the Yankees. Elimination is too good for 'em.)

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Article of the Moment
R U Sirius (of Mondo 2000 fame back in the day... glad to see him still kicking around) asks 10 professional writers Is The Net Good for Writers?.

There's a few recurring themes... Erik Davis :

One of the worst developments for me has been the increasing brevity of print pieces, something I do blame largely on the fast-moving, novelty-driven blip culture of the internet and the blogosphere.

Mark Dery:

As for its literary fallout, print editors are being stampeded, goggle-eyed, toward a form of writing that presumes what used to be called, cornily enough, a "screenage" paradigm: short bursts of prose -- the shorter the better, to accommodate as much eye candy as possible.

John Shirley:

And in my opinion this is partly because a generation intellectually concussed by the impact of the internet and other hyperactive, attention-deficit media, is assumed, probably rightly, to want superficial reading.

I think John Shirley does the best job into giving concrete examples about the drawbacks to literary compression, but still, I think they overlook the upsides. It's a great big world out there with lots of stuff going on, way beyond the human capacity to encompass all in detail. An idea has to be able to prove its "interestingness" in a compact, distilled fashion, or get the hell out of the way.

I don't think this stance precludes finding depth-- just witness the amazing opportunities for fanoboy-ish niche-finding the Internet offers, and how deep people will go into subjects decidedly off the beaten path.

Aw, who knows. Maybe I'm making the typical mistake of assuming everyone's like me: I mean, I dig soundbite, bullet point thinking -- my collection of quotes is that idea incarnate -- but I will take the time to read a long article I find compelling.

Anyway, Clay Shirky's bit on that page is great as well. I always dig when a writer captures that olde school flavour.