A question. An enigma. A mystery! For you, perhaps.
Where am I?
It is absolutely quite pertinent to a story I'll tell you . . . on Monday.
Now, the end of the month round-up of Web Detritus, or, why the Internet is intentionally awful.
I have collected a series of offerings that YouTube believes I want to watch. I have subscribed to a few channels on architecture and pop culture, a bit of merry media criticism, and have enjoyed some music tutorial / evaluation channels. And so I am presented with these merry options:
What a parade of unhappiness. Of course your life is going poorly, or you're bored, or things seem rotten and stupid: it's like that everywhere! What else do you expect from existence?
The last one on the right is particularly galling. The dumb AI art of a "shocked waitress." The use of "Flop" to mean "gradually ceded the market to more successful competitors, withered, and ceased operations over the course of a decade." Burger Chef:
Burger Chef was an American fast-food restaurant chain. It began operating in 1954 in Indianapolis, Indiana, expanded throughout the United States, and at its peak in 1973 had 1,050 locations, including some in Canada.
They lasted from 1954 to 1996. Some flop.
From the Ad Server of Constant Crap:
I dunno, could be new slang. It gave me all the feels, you know, and it gave me the heals as well
This pops up a lot on reddit and it annoys me on two levels.
First of all, I would be discovering other people's dark sides, since they're the ones who are doing the bad things.
Or, it's meant to suggest I would find something dark about myself, being exposed to these amoral actions. Perhaps that's the case for some. But this would be a bad thing. I doubt the "discovery" would come as news to someone who was amoral or cruel, unless they were eight years old, so it's not "discover" but "indulge."
Of course you don't get more subscribers by saying "Suppress your dark side with uplifting dramas, inspiring documentaries." No, dark sides are COOL!
Nah. It's adolescent.
While googling around for this and that - probably a here-to-there, though, not a this and that - I clicked the "About" link on a website.
Uh oh
This is also a Team Member!
If you google for "Don Francis" or do a reverse image search, he turns up on innumerable unmodified "About" pages. Rather funny.
A day later, this ad:
I'll say this about Don, he has a type.
And now, the Friday BTF, sans the Dream Compendium - I'm saving that because this Bleat is just going on forever.
The prompt for the week's banners was obviously Nighthawks, late winter. Turns out of you ask for Nighthawks, you get Nighthawks.
And to think that I saw it on Enderlyst Sreet:
Nighthawks, again and again . . .
The light in the curved glass is faithfully reproduced.
It'll give you endless variations . . . that are all more or less the same.
Now, our Friday comic feature.
He's back! IN COLOR! AT SUNDAY LENGTH!
These were sent to me by a Bleatnik and I CANNOT FIND THE NAME. Either reveal yourself to great acclaim or wait for me to find it, which I will.
And that's it for Fridays! Ha ha kidding, of course it's not.
Last year I cut out the tunes, but heck, why not bring them back. We'll be counting down the bottom 50 songs as listed by Whitburn. It'll be fun! Stuff you've never heard. A grab-bag of styles.
Another one of those flash-in-the-pan groups.
Wonder what else they did.
Now we're done. Thanks for your visit, and I'll see you Monday, with a Diner and a surprise - which will not, really, be surprising at all. Familiar, in a conceptual sense. Also a big announcement! Which is also not entirely surprising, given how much I've teased it.
