{"id":2047,"date":"2008-05-09T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2008-05-09T09:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2047"},"modified":"2008-05-08T19:25:41","modified_gmt":"2008-05-08T23:25:41","slug":"unrequired-reading-may-9-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-may-9-2008","title":{"rendered":"Unrequired Reading: May 9, 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

My office decided to go with Friday summer hours (8am-1pm) a few weeks early! We rock! Now enjoy some Unrequired Reading, especially those of you who have to work a full day!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ron Rosenbaum recently wrote about the world of Nigerian 419 scammers<\/a> and their tormentors, and he took the piss out of the guys, but I still laughed like a retard over some of this exchange between John Cheese and a scammer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Steampunk, profiled<\/a>. (oh, and, by the way, NYTimes? You might wanna mention that (official VM pal) Paul Di Filippo<\/a> coined the term a little earlier than the ninth paragraph of the article. . . )<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The first time I saw Pulp Fiction<\/a>, it was a midnight screening the night before it opened, arranged by a buddy who worked at a movie theater. It was just us, two more of our buddies who were big early Tarantino freaks, and a couple of friends of the projectionist, who thought they were going to see Mortal Kombat<\/em> or some other dumb shit. We had a great time. Another great way to see Pulp Fiction is with Quentin Tarantino<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

A commencement speech by P.J. O’Rourke<\/a>. I don’t have to say anything more, do I?<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Michael Blowhard takes us on a mini-tour of the “traditional vs. modernist” debate in architecture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Mark Bowden’s musical tastes<\/a> are actually similar to mine. I oughtta read one of his books sometime.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Christopher Hitchens: no damascene moment for him<\/em><\/a>!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My office decided to go with Friday summer hours (8am-1pm) a few weeks early! We rock! Now enjoy some Unrequired Reading, especially those of you who have to work a full day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,46],"tags":[138,139,140,141,137,86],"class_list":["post-2047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-design","tag-christopher-hitchens","tag-mark-bowden","tag-pj-orourke","tag-paul-di-filippo","tag-pulp-fiction","tag-ron-rosenbaum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-x1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2758,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-oct-31-2008","url_meta":{"origin":2047,"position":0},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Oct. 31, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"October 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Slappy Halloween! Time for some oddball links! Boomshakalaka! NBA Jam was one of the greatest video games of all time. * * * Ron Rosenbaum hated Dr. Atomic. To be fair, I hear he also hated Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. * * * He's the got the biggest bombs of them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"AC\/DC\"","block_context":{"text":"AC\/DC","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/acdc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3425,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-feb-13-2009","url_meta":{"origin":2047,"position":1},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Feb. 13, 2009","author":"Gil","date":"February 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"It's an extra-spooky, hockey-mask-wearing Friday the 13th edition of Unrequired Reading! Boo! The A.V. Club offers back-to-back Random Roles interviews with two VM faves: Illeana Douglas and Bruce Campbell! * * * Roger Ebert contemplates the long-term view, as in that Flaming Lips lyric, \"Do you realize that everyone you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5049,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-feb-26-2010","url_meta":{"origin":2047,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Feb. 26, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"February 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's a snowbound dose of Unrequired Reading! Click somewhere to continue! Ron Rosenbaum gets back in his groove with a paean to the New York Post. * * * Clyde \"fell hard for a house on hilly terrain with four tentacle-like columns that reminded him of a space ship.\" *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1133,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-4","url_meta":{"origin":2047,"position":3},"title":"Unrequired Reading","author":"Gil","date":"October 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I promised some Unrequired Reading for a Friday morning, so here it is: Jane Galt has a sad post about the economic destruction of Zimbabwae. There are some \"interesting\" comments after the post. * * * Via Bookslut, a collection of covers from old Penguin and Pelican books. * *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3069,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-dec-19-2008","url_meta":{"origin":2047,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Dec. 19, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"December 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working pretty hard this week at laying out our annual directory. It's both tedious and exacting, which is a sucky combination. But you don't want to read about that; you want goofy links! So just click \"more\"! I'm disappointed that NJ isn't in the mix. * * *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2417,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-sept-12-2008","url_meta":{"origin":2047,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Sept. 12, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"September 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking for a bunch of oddball links to ease you into the weekend, dear reader? You've come to the right place! Just click \"more\"! Please tell me that one of you has read House of Leaves and thus also gets this joke. Because I feel awfully lonely on this one.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375703764","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}