It gets worse
At first I thought that people tattooing themselves with logos
might represent a cultural bottoming-out; a sign
that we had reached the flattest part of our ongoing subjugation
to corporations. But now I realize you can sink lower:
you can tattoo yourself with a stupid logo.
I guess it makes sense; if you’re the kind of person who thinks it’s a good idea to imprint your body with a company’s logo, you’re probably not that discerning about which logo you choose. Or about anything, really. I offer into evidence the choice of Peter McBride, who is the proud new owner of a Polo pony logo just above his left nipple.
Now, I don’t want to come right out and say that Pete is the low point of human civilization—I mean, there was Hitler. But looking at that photo… gee, it’s a tough call.
Apparently Pete made his choice while waiting in line at the tattoo parlor. This reinforces my belief that it’s always a mistake to try to execute a plan before you’ve thought of one. I mean, if Pete had woken one morning and thought, “Yes, I want to create permament, physical evidence that I’m so desperate to find an identity that I’m willing to suck at the watery brand image run-off of P.R. companies and marketing consultants,” that would be one thing. A disturbing thing, sure. But at least you could admire the fact that he had a vision and carried it out. But that is not what Pete did. Pete decided, “I want to permanently mark my skin with… oh, whatever. I’ll think of something when I get there.”
According to the article, logo tattoos are getting more popular. And “requests range from Chanel and Gucci to Windows and PlayStation.”
Chanel and Gucci I understand, even if it’s a little like calling your daughter Porsche. But PlayStation? If you’re getting a logo tattoo, don’t you perhaps want to avoid products that will be obsolete this time next year? And Windows! Windows, the McDonald’s of technology! Why not just tattoo “I don’t know that much about computers” on yourself? Any self-respecting computer geek who saw someone with a Windows tattoo would fall about laughing. And then punch them in the face. Which is really saying something, because we are not a violent people.
At least the end of the article offers a glimmer of hope:
A tattoo artist who goes only by the name Ennis says a man recently came in with a Lacoste crocodile on his neck. “He wanted it off,” says Ennis. “He didn’t say why. He just said get rid of it.”
32 commentsRetrospective #8: Nothing Happens, Film at 11
It’s probably time for a big update on what the hell is going on
with some of projects I’ve mentioned in the past. On the one hand,
the reason I haven’t posted any news is because I have nothing
to report. But on the other, it’s probably annoying of me
to post some big announcement then go quiet for months about it.
So here’s the latest.
The Syrup Movie
There has been some good stuff happening, but I’m on strict instructions not to talk about it. Essentially, the producers at Fortress are trying to match the script I wrote with some appropriately cool film-makers. At this stage I’m reasonably hopeful that this is going to happen. Which means there is a non-zero chance of seeing a good Syrup movie some time this decade. I know! I’m excited too.
The Jennifer Government Movie
Section 8, the production company owned by George Clooney and Stephen Soderbergh, recently broke up, and I got the film rights back. Clooney and Grant Heslov have formed a new production company called Smoke House, and it’s possible the project might re-form there. Or it might not. If it doesn’t, there are some other good potential homes for it. So while this film is about as far away from production as ever, it has lots of potential.
The Company Movie
Nothing to report here yet; it’s very early in development.
My next novel
I’m working on a book. I would love to tell you how it’s going, but I know if I do it will be the last coherent sentence I ever write. I’m superstitious like that. But I am making plenty of progress. I feel like this time I might end up doing much less re-writing than usual. Of course, I always think that.
This is my top priority by far, and what I’m spending most of my time on.
The Maximum Words strategy has proved difficult to stick to. I keep cheating, like deliberately not checking the word count when I know I’m over. Still, I think it’s helping.
The sci-fi TV series
I wrote up a proposal, which I’m actually quite fond of. It probably needs another polish or two and then my agent will see if anyone but me likes it. This is a very long shot, since it’s insanely hard to get a TV series up. I am not packing my bags for LA just yet.
The Australian TV show with Wil Anderson
Hasn’t progress due to the enormous trouble Wil and I have locating ourselves in the same city simultaneously. We have a good concept, though, so I hope we can get something on paper this year.
Foreign editions of Company
I wish I had something to tell you. This bugs me like nothing else.
Project S
There’s something else I’m brewing up, but I’m not allowed to talk about it. It would be one of the coolest things I’ve ever done, though, so I’m seriously hoping it comes off. Yes, you heard it here first!
And I think that’s it. Huh. That was kind of underwhelming. But now you’re up to date! That’s got to be worth something, doesn’t it?
The Joy of Text
(Language warning: Today’s blog contains profanity. And how! There’s
tons of it. Not from me; I’m quoting someone else. But if you prefer
your computer screens unsullied, you probably don’t want to scroll
any further down. Or, as another tactic, you could squint a
little and tilt your head to the left. Quotes are italicized, you see;
so you might not be able to quite make out the words. Of course,
you won’t make any sense of the blog, either. And you’ll look kind of
stupid. But it’s up to you. I’m just providing you with sufficient
information to make an informed choice.)
Today I stumbled upon some guy’s list of his favorite blogs. All right, when I say “stumbled upon,” I mean I heard about Google Blog Search, and immediately typed in the subject I care about most, i.e. me. Anyway, my site is on this list—which is not a ringing endorsement so much as the anthropic principle in action. But here’s what he said:
Max Barry. Author of several really good books. Seems to be one of the few authors who really maintains a blog just for the joy of occasional communication instead of promoting an agenda.
This pleased me very much. I do love that communication, and while I can’t claim to be agenda-free—not with this many arch-enemies—I’m very happy that, to one guy at least, that’s not what I’m here for.
A lot of my e-mail is indeed a joy. A lot is spam for Viagra and hot stock picks, too, but I get more warm, funny, and fawning e-mail than anyone really has a right to. As an example, here’s one I received a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t going to post it, because whenever I do that quite a few people e-mail me in a similar vein, presumably hoping I’ll post theirs, too. And in this case, that would be scary. But in many ways it represents everything that’s great fun about what I get to do here.
From Kale:
(FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK… say something witty…. FUUUUCK…. DID I SPELL THAT WRITE? HE THINK IMSTOPID IF I DONT SPELL WRITE!!!!!!!)
Hey Maxeroooooney, ever read Everyone in Silico? Or Torture the Artist?
P.S. I want to marry Six…Is there anyway I can OFFICIALLY marry a fictious character? Because if so…Im marrying that woman.
I don’t usually reply to my email (which is terrible, I know), but I banged out a quick response to this one:
Yes, no, and if you try that, I’m calling the cops.
Max.
Then Kale responded:
OMG YOU REPLIIIEDDDD!!! Ahaha…ahahah…
Your books, Mr.Barry, are incredible. I weep everytime I think on them. When bystanders at the arcade I work at ask me whats wrong, I just cry harder…FUCKING BEAUTIFUL…BRILLAINT…NO MORE WORDS. …FUCK, I would love to meet and help ANY of your characters in WHATEVER way they needed. Do me a favor…and im completely serious… PLEASE… PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE… name a character Kale. NAME A CHARACTER KALE. KALE…It’s a rare name! It’s the name of a vegetable. It’s hawain…it mean’s strong man. WADDAYASAY??? Just…ANY character at all!!!!! I know the use of “!!!” and “…” can be annoying, but that;s just where im at in this point of my life. Lots’a passion. Im a 21 year old man. I love your books. I love the show Home Movies. I get depressed thinking about life. I have so many questions. I enjoy Jerri Blank and The UCB. I love Lobo. They should make him read Syrup when they UNCANCELL the series. Front cover. I like OINK. Ever read that? JTHM was, at one point, the only thing i ever cared about.
I’ve spilled my gut’s and I still have’nt said anything I wanted to you…the man who’se stories make me happy. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, THANK YOU THANK YOU, THANK YOU…
How awesome is that? I read something like that, I feel like a superhero. Thanks, Kale. And to all of you who write to me or post on this site. I mean, I don’t want to get too mushy here, but—aw, hell. Come here. Yeah, that’s it. Thanks, guys.
Can you trust your toaster?
You know what really bugs me? DVD players who think they know
better than me. You know what I’m talking about. You put in a
movie, you sit down, you press PLAY. Do you get your movie?
No: you get long seconds, maybe minutes, of swirling menu
graphics and copyright warnings. When you try to skip through this,
up flashes up a little red circle with a cross through
it, or the words “Operation Not Permitted,” or something similar.
“Not permitted”? Who is my DVD player to tell me what’s permitted? It’s my player, isn’t it? When I say “Skip,” it should say, “How far?” I mean, I’m not trying to break the law here. If I was, I could understand my DVD player having some moral qualms. But I just want to watch my movie.
(It’s the copyright notices that really annoy me. First, there’s something nuts about a legally purchased movie forcing you to sit through stern copyright lectures every single time you watch it, while a pirated version helpfully jumps straight to the action. Some DVDs even display copyright warnings in about two dozen different languages, giving you ample time to digest the, say, Swahili version, before leisurely moving on to Romanian. But even the full-motion copyright notices are bad. Australia has one with a pumping soundtrack and some crazy MTV-inspired camerawork—you know, so the kids will pay attention—while on-screen some naughty teenagers download movies. It takes them about four and a half seconds. I tell you what, if it took four seconds, I’d be doing it all the time. Especially if someone played a cool song while I did it.)
Apparently we are rushing toward a future in which control of technology is not handed over to us when we buy it, but retained by the companies that originally made it. Your DVD player, your computer, and your high-definition television seem to be on your side, but they’re really sleeper agents, with secret loyalties to their corporate masters.
There’s something called High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) sneaking in everywhere, and the plan is this: at first, it does nothing. But once it’s in enough homes, along come movies and television broadcasts that only play on HDCP-enabled equipment. Because that old non-HDCP television set can’t be trusted, you see—it might be doing what you want, instead of what the industry wants.
There seems to be no point at which an anti-piracy measure is deemed to cause more trouble to legitimate customers than it’s worth. For example, Australian commercial TV almost always run late, often by as much as ten or fifteen minutes, and the reason, according to one of the networks, is:
So millions of people are inconvenienced every day in order to make it slightly harder for eight guys with beards to burn copies of Battlestar Galactica.
I don’t have a DVD player any more. At least, not a typical one. I built a computer with MythTV and a DVD drive and hooked it up to my television. When I tell this puppy to skip, it skips. Loyalty. That’s the thing.
Daddy’s Girl
As of last Monday,
Jen is back at work two days a week. One of those days, my mother
looks after Fin. The other day, I do.
Of course, since I have the kind of job that permits me to loll around the house unshaven and wearing nothing but boxer shorts (although not now, it’s winter; I’m not crazy), I already get to spend more time with my daughter than most Dads. (Heh. “Dad.” Still cool.) But I have discovered that when it’s just me and Fin, it’s different; special in a way that’s almost magical.
This is how it works: I get up at 6:30am, make myself a coffee, and start work. I have about 90 minutes to pound out some words before Fin wakes. (Which isn’t that long. So I am writing Sunday mornings, too, to make up for it.) Then that’s it: the rest of the day is just the two of us. So far we have caught the train into the city to look at comic books, walked along the river, visited a mall, and stopped off at an aquarium to inspect some fish. But where we go isn’t the point; the amazing part is just having this incredible little girl all to myself. I know I am probably about the ten billionth person in history to feel like this, but it really is beautiful. It feels like an honor.
No! No! Not my secret recipes!
Well, you must have heard the big news. The story, essentially,
is this: three people, one a Coca-Cola employee,
tried to sell Pepsi some of Coke’s secret recipes.
Pepsi called the Feds, and, because spreading a
person’s secrets is bad manners but spreading a corporation’s secrets
is illegal, those three people are now probably going to prison.
I have a couple of thoughts about this. First, if I was Pepsi, I’d be a little insulted. I mean, what’s the implication: that the only reason my cola tastes like that is because I don’t know how to make it more like Coke? The hell with that! If you ask me, Coke should be trying to buy my secret recipes! I’ll tell you something for free, mister: we here at Pepsi already know how to make Coke. Coke, that’s what we scrape off the bottom of our vats and give away to pig farmers and the homeless.
Second, if I was Coke, I’d be insulted, too. These guys were offering up Coke’s newest product, which hasn’t even been released yet, and for that they wanted $75,000. I bet that’s less than you can win if you look under the right bottle cap of that product, when it comes out. And not only that, but Pepsi wasn’t interested. That’s got to be deflating. Those Coke developers probably spent months, maybe years, creeping around and looking over their shoulders for Pepsi spies. Then the recipe gets out, Pepsi takes a look, and says, “Nah, we’re good, thanks.” How is Coke meant to market that now? It could come up with the most brilliant campaign in advertising history, and all Pepsi needs to do is say, “Yeah, we got offered that. Didn’t want it.”
The only good for either company is that it encourages people to believe that colas are the result of secret, mystical recipes, and not cough syrup plus sugar. (I mean, come on. What’s all that advertising for? Because you’ve never heard of Coke or Pepsi? I get very suspicious about products that need to teach people why they like them. And food is the worst; we already know that what we think of as “taste” only bears a tenuous relationship to the chemical composition of what we put in our mouths. Taste is mostly marketing. All you need to do to prove that is try to feed a three-year-old.)