Month: March 2014

TODAY’S REQUIRED READING: How Julian neutralized himself from the game

Julian Assange’s ghost writer broke his silence about the failed autobiography with an incredible, very personal essay: Ghosting.

asked him if he had a working title yet and he said, to laughter, ‘Yes. “Ban This Book: From Swedish Whores to Pentagon Bores”.’ It was interesting to see how he parried with some notion of himself as a public figure, as a rock star really, when all the activists I’ve ever known tend to see themselves as marginal and possibly eccentric figures. Assange referred a number of times to the fact that people were in love with him, but I couldn’t see the coolness, the charisma he took for granted. He spoke at length about his ‘enemies’, mainly the Guardian and the New York Times.

[…]

But he was also losing touch with promises he had made and contracts he’d signed. His paranoia was losing him support and in a normal organisation, one where other people’s experience was respected and where their value was judged on more than ‘loyalty’, he would have been fired. I would have fired him myself if I hadn’t been there merely to help him straighten out his sentences. But his sentences too were infected with his habits of self-regard and truth-manipulation. The man who put himself in charge of disclosing the world’s secrets simply couldn’t bear his own. The story of his life mortified him and sent him scurrying for excuses. He didn’t want to do the book. He hadn’t from the beginning.

[…]

I interviewed Julian in stolen hours in the middle of the night, in the backs of cars and at my house in Bungay, while Harry gathered childhood material, but we knew we were up against it. Canongate was keen to publish before the summer and had no idea, despite my warnings, how unwilling Julian was. Caroline, his agent, believed he still wanted to produce the book but I knew he didn’t: I’d seen the lengths he would go to get on another topic, and knew he’d rather spend hours Googling himself than have his own say in the pages of his autobiography. I’d come into this fascinated by the ‘self’ aspect of it all, but the person whose name would be on the cover had both too much self and not enough. Still, we staggered on.

Ever feel you dodged a bullet? The relationship between O’Hagan and Assange remained friendly even as the book deal collapsed, but Assange apparently “forgot what a writer is, someone with a tendency to write things down and seek the truth” so I suspect that probably changed when this was published. Does anyone know? Was there a follow-up?

TODAY’S REQUIRED WATCHING: the shock when their lips meet

FIRST KISS from Tatia Pilieva.

Filmmaker Tatia Pilieva asked twenty people to kiss for the first time. It sounds simple, but the effect is incredible. I am overwhelmed by how sweet it seems.

The cast includes models Natalia Bonifacci, Ingrid Schram, and Langley Fox; musicians Z Berg of The Like, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Justin Kennedy of Army Navy, singer Nicole Simone, and singer-actress Soko (of the indie music that accompanies the short); and actors Karim Saleh, Matthew Carey, Jill Larson, Corby Griesenbeck, Elisabetta Tedla, Luke Cook, and Marianna Palka.

Music: SOKO – We Might Be Dead By Tomorrow

the 24 hour road trip: wherein things take a turn for the stephen king

  • On March 3, 2014, Kickstarter passed $1 billion in pledges.

    Thankfully there was an exit near with a visible gas station, so I limped the car into their parking lot, examined the shocking damage, and began to text people. “Can you send me the address of a tire shop?” It wasn’t repairable. A significant chunk of the tire had come off like something huge and vicious had taken a bite out of the black rubber. There were practically teeth marks. It smoked.

    A truck pulled into the gas station while I was pulling the spare out of the trunk, the sort of pick-up that farm types drive, all roll bars and massive, with a big front winch. Two large men got out who matched the truck. “Ah! People with real tools,” I thought. I was right. I asked if they had anything that could help and they offered me pneumatic tools to remove the bolts, then helped yank the broken wheel off and put the spare on. I hugged one of them in awkward thank you, then asked where I should go next to get a real tire.

    Both the people I texted came through with an address for a tire shop and the direction the good old boys pointed me in seemed to match the direction I was meant to go, so I set off into the wet, soggy landscape, following the GPS as it mysteriously led me west.

    This was a mistake. I should have immediately turned around and tried again. The buildings dropped away, leaving me driving through progressively emptier territory. I didn’t worry, I was sure the GPS would tell me to turn left soon. I had been making good time, traffic had been light, and good people and adventures were waiting for me in Seattle.

    Then I realized that I hadn’t seen any sign of civilization since the fruit-stand I passed ten minutes ago. Where did the other cars go? Why hasn’t the GPS told me to turn? The satellites should know better than I do, but stories of people who turned down train tracks following their GPS directions started coming to mind. I double and triple checked the address and input it again. I started texting people, casting for assurance and telling them where I was.

    “That’s not right,” came the replies, “You’re going entirely the wrong way.” Well damn. But precisely as those messages came in, the GPS instructed me to turn. Relief! But right? Not left? Well fine, North. Not the way I wanted to be going, but at least it was a better direction. Perhaps this would turn out to be the only back-road that traveled alongside the I5 for as far as I needed to go. (Perhaps, given enough time, I could construct any number of reasons why I should trust the on-board computer, yet still be wrong.)

    My friends tried to shepherd me, but it was too late – I had already entered the Twilight Zone. The GPS instructions led to me a copse of trees the size of a city block and took me in a circle around it. I was about to ditch when I noticed a small track leading into the trees. Barely a road, but it seemed that was the turn I had missed that the computer was taking me around for. On the off chance that there was an unlikely old tire shop in the middle of the woods, I turned down the track. I might as well! I had already come this far. Why take off before getting to the bottom of the mystery?

    I decided this was ill-advised as soon as the car was enclosed by the trees. There was no way to turn around, branches were gently brushing both sides of the car, and if it wasn’t someone’s driveway that I was now stupidly creeping up, I would have to suck it up and back out. I would probably, mercy forbid, even have to endure the awkward experience of accepting directions through text message. A couple of minutes later, though, and the trees opened up into a clearing with a building in the middle.

    When I say it was a building, really what I should say is that in the middle of the clearing was a massive clapboard barn with white flaking paint that had been converted into a church topped with a sharp metal cross. I stopped the car dead as soon as I saw it. Then the GPS intoned YOU HAVE NOW REACHED YOUR DESTINATION. I blinked. How.. ominous. What the hell, GPS? You trying to get me killed? That church felt like the creepiest possible thing I could have found. Or so I thought until a hawk suddenly ducked out of the sky and scooped a rabbit out of the grass in front of me in a spray of blood!

    For the record, I am not a superstitious person in absolutely any way. But I am a writer. I know my tropes. As far as I was concerned, that hawk was the last straw. I’ve seen that movie and I know how it ends. It does not go well, especially for girls, and especially, especially not for city girls with ridiculous hair.

    So no, I did not go up to the church and ask for directions and risk being kidnapped into an 80’s horror novel. The entire world was telling me to fuck that noise, so that’s precisely what I did. I noped right out of there, went to the fruit-stand and had them write me new directions down on a tourist map of the area like a reasonable person. I followed that, got to the tire place, had the tire replaced, turned my music up loud, then drove straight to Ballard, two hours late yet weirdly relieved.

    • My tweets

    the 24 hour road-trip: the way it began

  • Rent the St Pancras Clock Tower Guest Suite on AirBnB.

    The invitation to Seattle arrived while I was in the middle of helping put together a six person dinner. “The onesie-themed birthday bar crawl rides again tomorrow!” It was already 9 o’clock at night. The chicken had been cooked, people had food on their plates. Wine was being poured, conversation crackled through the room, but I knew I had to start planning. I deeply regretted missing it last year, so how could I resist? I had less than 24 hours, but Seattle isn’t that far, not really. It takes as long to drive as a good film. Ah, but only if you’re driving. The bus schedules are another matter and I had unshakable plans for Sunday afternoon. A volunteer shift, a piano lesson. And I had no car.

    So I sent out feelers; I posted to Facebook, I messaged some friends. I worked to the soundtrack of verbal jousting, of new people crookedly thrown into a room together. I twanged the strings of the web while the dinner party continued until late became early until around 4 o’clock in the morning, my efforts delivered. I had a borrow car. I could drive to Seattle and come back the next day. It was just as much success as I needed, no more, no less. So I went. I took a quick nap on Claire’s couch, then I collected the car, popped home for overnight sundries, and left.

    The right rear tire exploded somewhere just past Mt. Vernon. The weather had been inclement, rain and sleet and dry flakes of snow that swirled above the highway like a mystical fog, so I had been extra careful of the road. No matter, there was a bang and the car jumped, sliding a little like it had been pushed by a giant hand of strong wind. The white car behind me flashed their lights as I slowed, looking for a safe place to pull over, then came up beside me and rolled their window down to shout at me at 70 miles an hour. I looked over at the driver as we rolled out windows down. “You’re in my way!” I thought, “I need that lane to pull over!” But I turned off my music to hear him better over the wind of our transit anyway. “Your back tire blew!” he shouted. “Thank you!” I shouted back, equal parts glad that he took the effort and amused that he was blocking my only path to safety.

    Thankfully there was an exit near with a visible gas station, so I limped the car into their parking lot, examined the shocking damage, and began to text people. “Can you send me the address of a tire shop?” It wasn’t repairable. A significant chunk of the tire had come off like something huge and vicious had taken a bite out of the black rubber. There were practically teeth marks. It smoked.

    • reduce your carbon footprint

    WE ATE THE BIRDS
    by Margaret Atwood

    We ate the birds.
    We ate them.
    We wanted their songs to flow up
    through our throats and burst out of our mouths,
    and so,
    we ate them.

    We wanted their feathers
    to bud from our flesh.
    We wanted their wings,
    we wanted to fly as they did,
    soar freely
    among the treetops and the clouds,
    and so we ate them.

    We speared them,
    we clubbed them,
    we tangled their feet in glue,
    we netted them,
    we spitted them,
    we threw them onto hot coals,
    and all for love,
    because we loved them.

    We wanted to be one with them.
    We wanted to hatch out of clean,
    smooth, beautiful eggs,
    as they did, back when we
    were young and agile and innocent
    of cause and effect,
    we did not want the mess of being born,
    and so we crammed the birds
    into our gullets,
    feathers and all,
    but it was no use,
    we couldn’t sing,
    not effortlessly as they do,
    we can’t fly,
    not without smoke and metal,
    and as for the eggs we don’t stand a chance.

    We’re mired in gravity,
    we’re earthbound.
    We’re ankle-deep in blood,
    and all because we ate the birds,
    we ate them a long time ago,
    when we still had the power to say no.

    My tweets

    • Tue, 20:07: RT @aedison: I saw the best processors of my generation used to model the intricacies of avian flight.
    • Tue, 20:08: RT @aedison: Reminder that advocates of incrementalism are usually the people hurt the least by delaying the giant leaps our society needs …
    • Wed, 02:23: “It never gets better and you never get used to it.” http://t.co/S7WoozPO6I
    • Tue, 19:47: 10 Ways to Show Love to Someone With Depression: Mental illness is a physical illness and they need help as much as if they had the flu.
    • Tue, 20:15: 10 Ways to Show Love to Someone With Depression: Depressed people need help as much as if they had a flu. http://t.co/Nz8zajX7Un
    • Wed, 01:31: Not feeling fucking inspired? Pick a fucking new one. (An adult adaptation of Oblique Strategies.) Still the best! http://t.co/A3hpys9KYY
    • Wed, 01:31: Bots Without Borders (robots helping humanitarian causes) has 27 days left to their IndieGogo! http://t.co/iotFARuvF0