AdVerve Episode 54: Monster Media

Play the show now.
(Or right-click link to open in new window with controllable player.)

Culture journo Carolina Miranda (@cmonstah), the magnificent brains behind C-Monster.net, WNYC's Gallerina and the Perfect City documentary, joins us for some high-meets-low culture fun and games. She chats us up about the scariest road in Peru, what she looks for in a would-be tourist attraction, the changing face of compensation and expectations for writers in the tech age, and journalism’s no-fly zone... if it even has one anymore.

Plenty of twists, turns and giggles along the way. Miss it at your inner wanderluster's peril.

Humor me ››

And the Worst Part Is, It Made It to the 'Important' Box.

I got this yesterday and was sitting here thinking, really? Already? Didn't this feature come out, like, last week?!

And I'm not sure whether I should be like, "Go you! You've found really good ways to game the system and released them as fast as your little fingers could tap!" ... or whether I should be like, "Dagnabz, now I'm just gonna have three Gmail tiers full of bullshit."

Exploiting Fear on Interwebs

Chuck Patterson was SUP surfing with friends one day when two sharks joined them and circled around for 15 minutes. Rather than have the encounter deter them from surfing there again like it would for mortals, he returned to the same place the next day at the same time with a Go Pro HD HERO camera at the end of 10 foot pole.

- Petapixel

Bill knows I am irrationally scared of carnivorous sea creatures. Bill knows I spent the last two weeks trying to learn a fetish sport in treacherous waters - even as my heart palpitated and I could feel The Fear™ broadcasting the smell of my dangling legs to all teething animals within a 5-mile radius.

So he sends me this.

How to Burn - Well, Blowtorch - a Bridge ... and Still Look Fresh to the Internettarati.

...You'll need a dry erase board and SOME ONLINE WONDERSNAPS.

Via @zeldman. Oh, update: this whole thing could just be a prank on the internet (like, seriously, AT LARGE) by two asshats. Their big reveal on the identity of dry erase girl is tomorrow ... don't expect it to be anything more interesting than the quitting story in photo format.

Two commenters worth noting in the Gawker story:

You know, at this point, I don't really care if these kinds of stories are real or fake. - SharpShinyClaws

The most interesting thing about this story besides the fact that it went viral in a big way, is the fact that maybe we're entering a new age where the truth doesn't matter as long as it relates to our lives and is funny. I've worked with guys such as her boss who played about the same percentage of Farmville. - keyboardcat

Some thinking food. Don't leap to any extremes on the great grand meaning of it all, at least not yet ... just let it simmer for awhile.

Breaking Twitter Etiquette

Chelsi: i twittered about you

Me: I just retweeted it even though that's a douche move

Chelsi: it's okay, you're drunk

Me: that merits a blog post!

Chelsi: cheers!

By way of explaining this behaviour, Le Web's wiped me out and I'll need two days alone, and gallons of wine, to recover. Also, I'm reading a copy of The Lovely Bones, which I won't say is bad, but which I'm not proud to admit I'm using as post-geekout therapy, either.

Things You Don't Have to Explain to Friends

Me: I overpee.

Chelsi: I know.

Semi-Profound* Gchat Status Messages

And they say reading is dead. (*scoffs*)

---

*This is probably not true at all, actually.

Futzing with Gchat Vid Chat.

Witness, ye, as Chelsi and I bring our occasionally antagonistic Gchat relationship to a whole new level: AUDIOVISUAL.

The verdict on Gchat Video: not much laggage or pixellation, and it took just a couple of minutes to download the necessary software. Feedback isn't as bad as on Skype, plus it's neat when we full-screen because it's like she's sitting right in front of my face, closer than LIFE. Which makes it incredibly startling when one of us screams suddenly or betrays an I-think-you're-full-of-shit expression.

Also, I got to show her:

• The cut I got from a Saturday morning accident involving a knife and strawberry jam
• My saucy white French Band-Aids (okay, not Band-Aids; pansements) with silver on the padding (for better healing!)
• How the vaseline here comes IN A TUBE!

This is the kind of stuff technology enables overseas friends to do.

Girlfight, Meet Gchat.

Chelsi and me are supposed to meet up today. But she keeps pushing the time back, and I keep toggling between Skype, Gchat, AIM and Twitter.*

So to get my attention, she goes,

...and it was like,














And then I wrote this post to kill time because, well, I still have to wait for her ass to be done "drying her hair" and whatnot.

(*taps desk, scowls at the laminate*)

I think I'll go read Sabriel.

---

*It's complicated to explain why I use them all separately, but I guess the short answer is I get fatigued with one group and need to rest, but still need to talk to people, so I go somewhere else. But I can't do all at the same time.