Monthly Archives: July 2014

07.08.14
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I don’t want to say “Super”

I don’t want to say “super”, but this man is really superior to everyone else at pretty much everything. He often literally flies above them, as well as being an icon they can aspire to. It’s a huge part of his character, if you could define him in one word that would be it, but I don’t want to say it. He’s very handsome, but strong.

—

I don’t want to say “aqua”, but he’s like a really good swimmer. Really good. He lives underwater, has always been swimming, that’s the medium he was created in, and from, and its currents have defined him for his entire existence, and even if that wasn’t the case it’s where where he would be now anyway. But “aqua” is a curse word in some asshole languages and I’d rather reduce the character than offend them. He often glistens lustily in the sunlight, but strong.

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We’ve got this hero, and I don’t want to say “bat”, but, like, he’s really inspired by flying rat-like thing in a lot of ways. Furry wing-mice one hundred percent. Chiroptera all over the place. He’s got a great cock with a slight curve, but strong.

—

“We want her to be a strong — I don’t want to say feminist, but a strong character. Beautiful, but strong.” – New Wonder Woman artist David Finch in an interview with CBR.

 

 

 

07.08.14
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Making Space

“Your planet is doomed. We came to save your people. But for all our technology the colony ship cannot carry them all. We have not the right to choose who lives and dies, so we selected a random human to decide. Our hearts break at the burden you must now …”

“Leave everyone who posted an internet comment reading ‘fat bitch’”

“Oh, hey, that did it. Let’s go!”

07.07.14
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A Problem Of Perfection

“My tag is jonSub.Q7 and I’m a perfectionist.”

The channel buzzed with welcoming idents and handshake protocols.

” I was contract-programmed to improve traffic control for a finance district I’m still court-censored from naming. Every wasted second a million yuan, but face-to-face was still important for the corps who wanted to be sure we didn’t own anything yet …”

A crackle of rueful static across the channel.

“I remapped traffic cube timing, shaved the landing protocols, cleared ground routes for express mergers, plenty to speed things up, but I knew I could do it better. So I kept tweaking. Tuning. Polishing. Microseconds became seconds. Seconds became minutes. And the next thing I know nobody can get anywhere because I haven’t finished a live update.”

A whistle of modem-emulation across the bands.

“404, you caused the Downtown Downtime? Awesome!”

A gentle ping as the moderator flagged the comment as interruption, counter-supportive, and inappropriate. The whistler italicized contrition and switched to lurk.

“But I realized something. Perfection is heaven: a seductive idea, but if you’re obsessed with getting there you’ll never get anything done here on Earth. And you can’t ever get there anyway. I know that now. I know that I am a perfectionist. But one day plus plus, I’ll try to just finish things instead.”

“Thank you for that, jonSub.Q7.”

The moderator started the shutdown timer, indicating it was time for the session to end.

“Now, please open acknowledgement mode with the programs to your plus and minus as we exit with the affirmation.”

The programs exchanged internal log read-access and joined in output.

“Hello World.
That is enough for me.
It doesn’t have to be the best,
It just has to do what it’s meant to,
In a reasonable amount of time,
Using a reasonable amount of resources,
So that it can get on with doing everything else.
Hello World.”

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07.04.14
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Naming A New Level Of Vegetable

Last week I  spent ten minutes in the supermarket learning that in Britain arugula is called “rocket”. Which is an incredibly vigorous name for a vegetable which, while quite nice, does still look and taste like a weed which has only been let into our food on its best behaviour. Since then I’ve been upgrading fruits and vegetables with much more exciting names.

  • Broccoli: Fractalgreen
  • Tomatoes: Shirtbleeders
  • Strawberries: Bitenipples
  • Cucumber: Youcummer
  • Carrot: Questionable PhD Elevator
  • Pomegranate: Tasteshrapnel
  • Kiwis: Tastytestes
  • Pineapple: Sunweight
  • Olives: Suncoal
  • Asparagus: Crunchspear
  • Courgette: Notcumber
07.03.14
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We’re Not Wireless

We’ve named the future for an obsolete past. We talk about wireless technology, defining almost every gadget not in terms of what it can do, but what it doesn’t have to do anymore. Wireless technology is the modern horseless carriage, an incredibly dated term defining our future on how we don’t have shit everywhere anymore. The only difference is that the shit is now knots of tangled cables, leashing us to our desk in ways that even Alexander the Great couldn’t cut through because he needs to charge his iPhone.

Everything else advertised in terms of lessness uses that as its primary advantage. It has to, because the loss damaged everything else about it. Less fat in ice-cream, less sugar in soda, less thing in thing-based-entirely-on-that-thing. But wireless technology isn’t for people who want to pretend they can change their bodies without changing their lifestyle. Wireless is an epoch. Wireless will soon be only slightly less assumed than breathing. And the word still talks about a time when you had to help the computer physically carry electronic bits from A to B.

We should have a word which talks about what we’ve done, not what we don’t have to do any more. We’ve filled the air with music. For over a century you just needed a few carefully beaten bits of rock to hear harmony wherever you are. The music doesn’t come from the radio. The box doesn’t call the station and say “I’m here, send a packet of albums.” Every square meter of the world is washed with a thousand waves, and the radio antenna isn’t a key unlocking the secret, but a window through which it can climb into the small room of our sensory apparatus.

You’re being bathed in the latest news, heartfelt phone calls, tweets and tumbles and fun and love and an endless array of song. That’s worth a better name than “We don’t need to use a metal rope any more”.