Gibson on Gibson, the fleeting nature of futurism

From a post about Second Life on William Gibson’s blog:
“The thing that’s going to be quaint about “cyberspace” (that already is, really) is the inherent assumption that it’s a realm unto itself; that it’s in any way elsewhere or other.
Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we [...]

Today’s question

Why did we never see James Brown and Gerald Ford in the same place, at the same time?

Framed: The Year That Wasn’t

My buddy Chris Lowrance has produced a year-end outtakes compilation of his comic Framed, which runs monthly in Yes Weekly.
If you haven’t read Chris’ comic, go here and do it immediately. It’s free and it’s funny.
Framed is a lot of fun for me personally because I get to see Chris brainstorming ideas, freaking out about [...]

Winter reading

I’m reading THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson right now and I have to tell you — it’s terrific. It’s a mystery/adventure story set in the amid-1800s wherein a man has created computer technology a century before the computer age and changes the face of history.
I was disappointed, some months ago, when [...]

Home for the Holidays

Am back from my parents’ place, back in Greensboro, exhausted from the holidays but also feeling renewed for having had a few days off and seen the family.
While I was gone a teenage girl was stabbed to death and a guy shot someone in the head at the Gap Kids store in the Four Seasons [...]

Escape from Planet Zune

My aunt called me tonight.
“Well, I bought the worst MP3 player in the world and it’s all your fault,” she said.
“What?”
“I called you earlier, but I couldn’t get you. I was shopping for MP3 players and wanted your advice.”
“Oh really? Wow – I’m sorry I missed your call. What did you end up getting?”
“Well, what’s [...]

Gone to the big Pic-A-Nic basket in the sky

Joe Barbera, one half of the animation powerhouse Hanna-Barbera, died this week.
In tribute, GIANT magazine has posted some of the greatest Hanna-Barbera cartoon intros, and one parody cartoon making fun of the corner-cutting of HB’s sixties animation.
Good stuff.

Early Christmas presents. 101 of them.

Want to watch all your favorite holiday specials online for free? Cartoon, stop-motion animation, sitcom and some you never even knew existed?
I thought you might.
Do it here.

Fake Knowledge for free!

“The Areas of My Expertise,” the brilliant, funny almanac of made-up history, fun facts and lore by John Hodgman (famous as the PC guy in those Mac vs. PC commercials) is now FREE as an audiobook download from iTunes.
Go download this now. While you still can. For free. It will cost you nothing and you’ll [...]

Comments on comments

Here’s what makes me a bad blogger – and possibly a bad reporter in the new century.
When the News & Record recently announced we would be allowing reader comments on stories, my guts began to ache. Some bits of the co-mingling of blogging and journalism have been good for both. Some of it’s been bad [...]

Because it’s one of the greatest shows in history.

Hey…I loaned my copy of ‘The West Wing: The Complete First Season” to someone some months ago. Now I can’t remember for the life of me who it was.
But it was almost certainly someone who reads this blog.
I once left the same DVD set at my parents’ place for like three months. But then [...]

Fast Forward column: Motorcycle crazies

Joe KillianNews & Record12/11/06
As the chill of winter sets in across the Triad, most drivers are checking their antifreeze levels and breaking out the ice scraper. But Fast Forward recently talked to some drivers for whom winter presents a unique set of problems — motorcyclists.
Many cyclists take their bikes out of the garage only in [...]

Black Friday column

Forgot to post this when it ran on Friday. This is one of those examples of a topic that should have made a good column, should have been hilarious, but for a number of reasons (including things I had to leave out of it) it ended up being just all right. Strangely, I had a [...]

Normal business hours

The number of N.C. institutions and law enforcement agencies from which you can get absolutely no information on anything after 5 p.m. – even if some serious thing happens after regular business hours – is maddening.
The number of people who will tell you that they don’t know anything and therefore no one in their organization [...]