Internet Miscellany: Authors freak out, movie previews make little sense

Internet miscellany: for when it’s stupid hot out and thus you I, stupidly, walked to the bank and now have the brain capacity of a dazed manatee. No disrespect meant to manatees, of course.

• Have you heard the news? Apparently it’s Author Internet Freakout Week! It kicked off when Alice Hoffman used her now deleted Twitter feed to insult the critic who reviewed her latest novel in The Boston Globe. She also posted the reviewer’s phone number and email. Classy. Hoffman later “apologized.” But just as that kerfuffle started to fade from memory, Alain de Botton (never lend On Love to a neurotic friend, by the way) got a bit cranky at the critic who reviewed his latest in The New York Times. Unlike Hoffman, de Botton later handled things very gracefully. Good for him. But it’s not over yet! On Twitter, I mean. Next, Ayelet Waldman suggested that New Yorker critic Jill Lepore “rot in hell.” (I’d like to point out the delightful headline on that last link, just in case you missed it.)

At least no one got punched in the face this time.

• And now for something completely different: RoboGeisha. Via BoingBoing, where it was described it thusly:

There is no part of this trailer that is not made of awesome. A robot geisha transforms into a tank. Two robot geishas (I guess) spew poison milk (don’t ask) out of their titties at an opponent. A girl gets stabbed to death in the butt with a giant sword. Robot girls make giant swords pop out of their butts, presumably with which to stab other people in their butts. “Bust Machine Gun.” And a dude is blinded with tempura shrimp.

Deadly. Shrimp. And bleeding buildings. And … yeah, it’s really pretty weird, but someone out there will love it.

• Three things make a post, so: two articles I’ve started reading but not yet finished because it’s moments before a three day weekend and my attention span is shrinking:
Chris Ruen‘s “The Myth of DIY,” a treatise on artists and downloading which includes the succint and smart pullquote, “I don’t see anything artful or transcendent in our favorite record stores closing.” I got several paragraphs in and was inspired to stop in at House of Records on my way back from the bank (for the Weakerthans and Dresden Dolls, should you want to track my spending habits).
– And lastly, Graeme McMillan interviews comics genius Grant Morrison, whose Invisibles series is one of the main reasons I start to see red any time someone uses the “Well, it’s based on a comic, what did you expect?” line about another shitty comic-book movie adaptation. Morrison’s latest is Batman and Robin.