a few not-links

It's been a long week, and I haven't had time to post some stuff that I think is worth noting. But since it's a slow day at lab, I'm going to be lame and just write out some of the more minor things that I don't have the links for right now.

Hopefully some time this weekend I'll have time to write out the more thinky posts that have been creeping their way into my head. There's been so much stuff going on in the media (see also: last week's NYT articles on literacy and the internet and today's magazine preview on troll subculture. Also, the meta-analyses of the media on media representations of Obama and McCain and the control of the political narrative.) that it's been maddening to not have time to sit down and just write it out.

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On Gerard Way:

+ He won an Eisner! For his first comic! I can only imagine how overwhelmingly cool that must be. (Incidentally, at the panel at ComiCon where he spoke with Grant Morrison, he looks remarkably pretty. Not a word I usually use, but strangely apt.)

+ He spoke to Zach Snyder, the director of the upcoming Watchmen movie (!), and My Chemical Romance is going to play a cover of Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row" for the soundtrack. Seriously, when I grow up, I want to one day wake up and have the same, "How is this my life? reaction that I'm sure he's had these past few years.


On Dr Horrible:

+ Joss blogs about Dr. Horrible (with a link to it on Hulu). And by "blogs" I really mean "rambles about it before posting a link to it on Hulu." Kind of odd.


Real life:

+ Last night, while doing my telemarketing thang, I had the pleasure of talking to two fantastic people and one rather unpleasant human being. Of the former, I got to talk to a woman who graduated from Northwestern with a degree in Civil Engineering and who is now starting her college education anew by going to Parsons. She was doing well by all measures in her engineering job, but she felt that she was just not taking full advantage of her life, and so made the leap to graphic design. The other wonderful fellow underwent the most amazing transformation throughout the conversation. At the start, he came across as a slightly sad recent retiree; his old cat had recently died, and now the new kitty is a little too energetic for him. But then we got onto a conversation about where he was from originally, and then onto where he's been since, and by the end of the conversation I was just staggered by how richly he has lived his life. He has been around the world, has seen things that I will most likely never see, and done things that I will likely never have the opportunity to do, and now he is enjoying a quiet life at the end of a street with his ten month old cat. Talking to both of them made me so happy that people are out there, living incredible lives. I hope that, just a few years from now, I can relay the same enthusiasm and opportunity in my own life.

The other person isn't really worth talking about -- I assume she just had a crappy day and a reason for accusing me of things not worth discussing-- but I would like to say that apparently real people don't say the word "genuine" and that my accent is really fake. Who knew?