Clandestine hamburgers

Are you sick and tired of pounding
neck cramps from decoding the overhead menu at your favorite junk food
franchise? Do you gag when asked, “Would you like fries with that?” Have you
resigned your membership in the human race after reading Fast Food Nation? Did you just finish cleaning your porcelain
friend after watching Supersize Me?

It used to be that the last barely
acceptable hamburger chain was In-N-Out Burger. Naturally, they are limited to
the West Coast. But, ho! Cyberspace offers an alternative — Ninja Burger! Not
only cyberspace, apparently two franchises exist in Rochester! Our local
franchise is Ninja Burger Seventh Boulevard, but orders are only accepted
online at www.ninjaburger.com. Ninjas prefer to keep exact locations to
themselves, so be wary when traversing city streets. No one wants to run afoul
of ninjas in a hurry. The super secret Ninja Burger team is augmented by
รฆthereal FORGE, an artists’ collective, notorious for their sense of humor and
Tiger Paw Death Clutch.

On the positive side, these covert
assassins understand the importance of a hot meal: no more sitting on the front
porch and howling at every passing vehicle; no more calling the restaurant
every five minutes and asking, “Has the driver left yet?” The fact is, despite
those pizza chain promises, little recourse exists beyond an inedible pizza at
no cost. Now though, we have a new standard for comparison: “Guaranteed
delivery in 30 minutes or less, or we commit Seppuku!”

And the burgers are hand-broiled so
you know they’re fresh and tasty. As the immortal Nanookanano has written, “A
whisper of leaves / Ninja Burger delivers / I will eat tonight.” Next time you
face the mesmerizing menus of obesity, think back on your last Samurai Chicken
Sandwich. With a little effort, you can probably still taste the little bits of
samurai.

— Craig Brownlie

Self-publishing revolution

By now, most people are familiar with
blogs. Once a term used to describe personal web-logs (read: daily journals),
blogs are now all the rage for everyone wanting to get their thoughts out to
the world (thanks to Blogger.com and a billion other free services).

One of the best effects of blog
“technology” has been to give power to the people to self-publish, be it
political blogs, technology/gadget blogs, or art/music blogs, and generally
anything really weird and interesting. Granted, like everything on the web,
there’s also a billion pointless blogs, but that’s half the fun, weeding
through all the crap to find the gem.

One technology that got a boost from
the popularity: RSS feeds (don’t worry what that stands for). It’s a way for
blogs to “push” their new entries to users, rather than relying on users to
regularly visit a given site. And now, another explosive technology benefiting
from (and benefiting) RSS feeds is Podcasting. Podcasts are essentially
subscription-based audio-blogs. People using the RSS technology can download
recorded blogs to their portable MP3 player (Apple’s iPod is the most popular
of these, hence the prefix “pod”).

You can subscribe to all your
favorite podcasts, sit around and have them downloaded automatically while
you’re sleeping/eating/working, and then listen to them when you want to. It’s
like TiVo. Or, you can record a rant, copy it to your website, have an RSS feed
reference that file, and subscribers will automatically download your new
recording.

There is podcast subscribing support
built into the iTunes Store, where you can link to NPR shows, Democracy Now!, Make Magazine, news outlets, music labels, as well as entries from
“normal” individuals (Apple has an open submission policy).

And if you’re not in the mood for
weeding, check out some of these blogs:

art and music

www.woostercollective.com/

www.we-make-money-not-art.com/

musicthing.blogspot.com/

www.createdigitalmusic.com/

www.neural.it

videothing.blogspot.com/

technology

slashdot.org/

makezine.com/

www.gizmodo.com/

deals

www.hotdealsclub.com/

www.bensbargains.net/

eco

www.treehugger.com/

www.reactual.com/

politics

www.gregpalast.com/blog.cfm

www.commondreams.org
(collection-type blog, useful tool)

blog.zmag.org/ttt/
(Chomsky blog)

www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

www.dailykos.com/

angryarab.blogspot.com/

www.truthout.org/

local

www.jayceland.com/

www.mysteryandmisery.com/

podcasts

Democracy Now!

Make Magazine

Science Friday (NPR show)

Engadget

Rocketboom

Adam Curry’s Podfinder

— Joe Tunis

This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2005.