Month: October 2011

It seems that George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice books are very popular these days (something to do with an HBO series?).  I don’t know much about them, but thought that this crowd might appreciate a writeup showing that it’s basically the story of Richard III.

Anybody out there familiar enough with both to comment on the similarities?

I’m going to attribute it to bad PR/marketing and not Oxfordian conspiracy, but for the last few days I’ve had a steady stream of commenters who say nothing but “Hey have you heard about the new Anonymous movie?” along with a link to the Youtube trailer.  This is clearly not coincidence.  I expect that whoever is doing the marketing for the movie went onto Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (or some other service where you can pay people 50 cents for a simple task) and told them, “Go drive up interest in this movie.”

Dear marketing folks,

I watch all comments on this blog.  When I think they’re spam, I delete them.  If someone’s entire contribution to any given thread is to link your movie? It’s spam. So you’re wasting your time.

Have a nice day,

ShakespeareGeek

So for the past couple of years I’ve been talking about Shakespeare Halloween costumes, but never pulled the trigger on any of them.  I don’t want to get some generic “Romeo” costume from a store, but I don’t want to do something that nobody other than you folks would recognize, either.  (Amusing trivia — google “Romeo costume”, “Hamlet costume” and “Shakespeare costume” and the *same* costumes will show up again and again.  Argh!)

This year I had Hamlet on my brain.  I figured, “Black pants, black shirt with at least some kind of Renaissancy thing going on.  Fencing sword.  Carry around a skull.  Done.”  Harder to find than it looks.  I didn’t want to look like Steve Jobs talking to a skull.  Too soon.

Then, today in the costume store, it hit me – instead of going as Hamlet, I could go as …. Yorick.

There it stood, one of those “scary court jester” costumes, with the checkerboard pattern (what is the name of that?), the funny hat with bells, and a skull for a face.  Perfectoroonie.

If I can swing it, I’m going to get a stuffed Piglet doll and velcro him to my shoulders.  Get it?  He hath borne me on his back a thousand times? Piglet as Hamlet?  That’s funny, like, a dozen different ways.

I’m torn on whether to give myself a name tag that reads “A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy”, or to actually carry around a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.  I’m thinking the nametag, though, because a) I’d likely put the book down at some point, and b) I’ve never read that book so I wouldn’t want people to think I want to discuss it. 🙂

Bonus Achievement #1: Dress up like this as I go around trick or treating with my children.  Print up the entire speech, sign it ShakespeareGeek.com, and hand it out to anybody that says “Who are you supposed to be?”  Drive up some free publicity, *and* appreciation of Shakespeare.

Bonus Achievement #2:  My wife’s already decided to break out her old “Renaissance maiden” costume from a previous Halloween, which if I’d pulled off Romeo, I was going to call Juliet.  But I’m thinking if I can convince her to carry a basket of weeds and maybe stick some seaweed in her hair we can call her Ophelia.  Nobody but me would appreciate the awesomeness of dead Ophelia and dead Yorick as a couple, but I’ll see what I can arrange.

I will take and post pictures of the final result!

EDIT : If I can’t figure out a way to make Piglet stay on my shoulders, I shall print out a big 8×10 of David Tennant (or Kenneth Branagh or Mel Gibson or Laurence Olivier…) and tape him to my back.  Same idea. 🙂

You want to see somebody read Shakespeare’s entire works, while traveling the world?  Here you go!

What made this a must post for me is that the dude was in Boston, just a week or two ago!  I was walking those very places just last week for my anniversary.  I know that horse!
I’ll have to check around and see whether he’s doing any sort of schedule ahead of time, I think it would be great to see him develop a Forrest Gump-like following that grows and grows with each passing day.

So, those of you that follow us on Twitter probably saw at least some of the Steve Jobs tributes pouring in over the last few days. As a lifelong techie, I was certainly part of that.  I wrote a bunch of stuff.  What’s interesting is that one of them got me quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, which I guess is a good thing. But…which quote?

Let’s play a game.  Here’s a bunch of stuff I wrote on the subject of Jobs’ passing.  You tell me which one got the most “retweets”, and which one got quoted in the CS Monitor.
No fair peeking at the link!

1. “If you’ve got a second, take a moment to report every single spammer camping on a Steve Jobs keyword. Bastards.”
2. “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough. That it’s technology married with liberal arts …that makes our hearts sing.” #iSad
3. Steve Jobs’ Dream and “Gonzo Shakespeare”  (link to previous story)
4. Cry God for Harry, Apple and Steve Jobs!  (link to an old comic)
5. Steve Jobs was better than Santa Claus, because he’d show up once a year and offer us toys that we’d never even imagined could exist. #iSad
6. Rip, mix, Bard.  #iSad
7. We know Jobs didn’t invent or build anything alone. The point is that without him out there to preach it, the world wouldn’t have changed.
8. The transition was made, the company is in capable hands, but does anybody really think Apple will ever be the same again? #RIPSteveJobs
9. On an uplifting note, Jobs was a practicing Buddhist, so rest easy in the belief that his energy is still out there to be absorbed again.
10. I’d really hoped, when he stepped down, that he was going to be able to live in peace, quiet and happiness for a little while. #iSad
11. Ok…just saw someone refer to Jobs as our generation’s JFK. Let’s not go crazy. An assassinated president, he was not.
12. The NeXT computer, also a Jobs invention, used to ship with Shakespeare’s Complete Works built in. RIP Steve Jobs
13. I don’t have anything special to say, I just like this hashtag: #iSad
14. Even if you don’t have a Mac, an iPod or an iPhone…you’ve seen a Pixar movie. That was Jobs at work, too. #ripstevejobs
15. Extra special bonus points to Bill Gates for referring to his friendship with Jobs as an “insanely great” honor. #ripstevejobs
16. He was a man, take him for all in all, We shall not look upon his like again. #ripstevejobs
17. 1984: Got to play with an original Mac. Tried to type, was told to move the mouse instead. I declared it stupid. Guess I was wrong. 🙂
18. Flights of angels sing thee sweetly to thy rest, Mr. Jobs. #SteveJobs #RIP

Got your guesses?

The most RT’d line, if Twitter’s reporting is to be believed, was #5 (the Santa Claus) line.  Twitter stops reporting at “100+” RTs so I have no idea how much it circulated, but it was substantially more than any of the others.

As to which one got me quoted in the CS Monitor, well, go check that link now to see if you guessed right :).

(* On a related note, I was surprised to see that such a link did not get me a big bump in Twitter followers, but then I noticed that the author does not link back to the people he quoted.  That’s bad form, sir! No cookie for you!)