basement cats ftw!

The ultimate guide to newspaper curmudgeon talking points by Jason Preston at eatsleeppublish.com, which is incredibly fun for those of us who occasionally--and I do mean occasionally, I like my blood pressure where it is, thanks--wander the blogosphere and read incredulously the anti-blog rhetoric carried on in--well, in blogs, actually. While I am aware it's complex and deeply meaningful and an Issue or something, I still think irony wins that anyone would literally drag out, and I quote from the article, "A blog is not a tool for journalism, it is for people in their pajamas writing about their cats from their basements."

Let's face it--society is in its pajamas in the basement with the apocryphal cats (and let me stop here and say, I just had some kind of internet orgasm being able to use apocryphal in a sentence. Carry on). I mean, are there any people left who aren't in the cat basement? I think like, investment bankers might not be, but that's because we are currently utilizing them as objects for large, burning pyres, and I bet they wish they were in the basement.

The long clung-to means of superiority--(fat) people in the basement with their cats--is my favoritest insult because:

a.) basements are inherently funny to me. While I know there are basements in Texas, I have never actually seen one. No, seriously. It's black dirt. It's like some combination of velcro and death; it does not do basements well. It grows maize well, and also, sunflowers if the field across from my childhood home was any indication. Big sunflowers. And does really freaky things to foundation. The dirt, not the sunflowers. I'm going off topic.

b.) Cats. Cats. It's so ubiquitous (internet orgasm) that it has no meaning. They have a lot of cats in the (metaphorical) basement. The thing is, I had a cat. And a lot of my flist has cats. Cats and keyboards, to my knowledge, do not do well together. If you have a cat and blog regularly, I salute you. My cat loved keyboards. In ways that weren't healthy. And when they aren't on your keyboard, making slow, sweet, creepy love, they ignore you. Pajama people in the dog basement works better. Dogs require attention and while they do not love your keyboard, at least a few dogs of my acquaintance had a deep and meaningful relationship with cords.

I'm just saying, we need a new comparison. Soonish. I don't even own a cat, though I do in fact lj in my jammies. That's the entire point of having a laptop. To write in my jammies in a reclined position.

Continuing Adventures in Blog Hopping

So everyone has seen the Stewart vs Cramer (not to be confused with Kramer vs Kramer, which is entirely different and involves the eighties and terrible hair and child custody) on The Daily Show? Yes?

No, I haven't, I read it, because the initial reaction was awe (appropriate) and then everyone--and I mean, everyone (by that I mean, a whole lot of newspapers and bloggers)--seemed to simultaneously discover the fannish concept of the embarrassment squick. Unfortunately, they didn't have the correct terms and trotted out "brutal" and "squeamish" and "uncomfortable" while the rest of us nodded and went, right, embarrassment squick. Which even in transcript, yes, it was. I watched the legendary Crossfire segment on youtube recently and twitched my way through it with a sense of guilty glee--the internet equivalent, if you will, of the school bully having his pants pulled down and discovering another bully stole his underwear. He's a fucking bully--but man, you remember when your underwear was stolen and that just gets to you very viscerally. Doesn't make him less of a bully, though.

Granted, that's the point, and the most interesting point is that interviews with anyone, as a rule, do not bring out my embarrassment squick ever. And they kind of should. I mean, I think in general, if I'm comfortable watching a hard-hitting interview and do not twitch, there's something wrong with that interview. It's not like I enjoy it--I mean, it's embarrassing--but that's what draws the line between speaking to someone's comfort zone and dragging them out of it. An interviewee, and a viewer, should be uncomfortable. And at least once, someone should wince and wince hard.

Also, Tucker Carlson's butthurt is officially fucking funny.