The future of fashion is the past.

This is way less ridiculous than you might think. Just look at the guy's outfit at the end and realise that every webmaster you know looks like this, except all the gadgets are smaller. That's how the thirties envisioned the neckbeard they knew was coming, instinctively. Women in shiny, metalic dresses? The same outfit throughout the day? These guys knew exactly what was up. There's way to much pointing out of the obvious failures. We forget that the reason we don't have rocket cars isn't because we don't want them, it's because they're too expensive, ridiculous and unsafe. So many of these things are more cyclical than we'd like to admit. Imagine sitting in the sixties movie version of H.G. Wells' time machine and looking only at beard fashions from circa 1880-2010: Seeing unkempt muttonchops degrade to pencil thin mustaches, to clean shaven, to hippie hair, degrading into sideburns, back to mullets and 'taches, on to gelled tops and goatees, to resurgent neckbeards and permastubble.

The trouble with Tribbles

I ran across an old star trek episode recently, and it was a lot better than I remembered. Aside from the above, most of what I remember from the show is the crew showing up on the same planet until Kirk fights, makes out with an alien or gives a hammy speech about freedom, while Spock raises an eyebrow and says: 'That's illogical' But it was an actual well-thought out TV episode with good writing, good acting, etc. It checked out as one of the best on the wikipedia page. I immediately sought out one of the worst, which was indeed terrible. But the ratio is pretty close to 50/50. There's such a thick layer of nerds, irony and self-parody on the whole franchise that you'd almost forget that it actually was pretty revolutionary, I mean the show is from the sixties and there's a black woman and an Asian dude as valuable crew members. Sure, they're secretary and driver, respectively, but still. Being produced by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball might have had something to do with that.

The devil whisked the excise men away

I just came back from a lecture by a professor of medieval literature who was so damaged by years of trying to interest students in the middle ages that he spent about two hours cracking jokes about everything. It was sort of entertaining, but every semi-interesting point was drowned out by the next wisecrack. The thing that really got on my tits though, was the musical accompaniment, a series of earnestly performed British and Irish folk songs about leprechauns. I can't say I'm an expert on this kind of music, but I have a sneaking suspicion that like a lot of countryside traditions, this one stems from 19th century bourgeois angst about the industrial revolution. That would also explain why all these supposedly medieval songs have lyrics in recognisable modern English, with the occasional ye olde English touch, i.e. why they all sound like Gilbert and Sullivan present: A country lad goes a-courtin. I can't wait to tell the only Irishman I know about the leprechaun song and wait for the blast of bile to hit me.

Castles in the Sand

How the mighty have fallen. It's funny at first, but you begin to realise after a while how horrifyingly ephemeral the internet is. For all the concern over data floating around as search results forever, i.e. those embarassing photo's you don't want your boss to see, the real horror is the total randomness of what stays popular and what doesn't. Can you imagine having spent a good portion of your time on acquiring friends on a social networking site that becomes irrelevant? Now that the internet is here to stay, maybe it's time some serious architecture and institutions are built that manage to last until this global communication network goes the way of the dodo.