Jason Toney

Escapade

"Cats is colder than four below." - Common, The Food (Live w/ Kanye West)

If you're reading this in an rss reader only, you probably don't know there's been a design change. We've gone from three columns to two, made it more fluid, and cleared up a lot of the clutter. The site had seemed too manic for awhile  but my desire to test out the typepad ad feature (for mostly curiosity's sake, I don't expect ads to become a serious part of negro please) and needing a standard typepad template to check it out got us to this point.

I like it for now.

I bought a mac mini. It is currently sitting on my computer table taking up very little space but working quickly and smoothly. I hadn't upgraded my old system with Tiger  so the dashboard and some of the other features are new to me. I installed some of my own favorite programs and some widgets I like immediately and got my firefox set up like I like it (although some of my tabbed browsing features aren't working properly and I can't get my a9 toolbar to work...and can I just say that a9 has become my goto search engine of late?) but I'm curious: what are your killer apps on your mac?

I'm currently listening to all the songs rated 5 stars and listed as 2005 in my iTunes in preparation for my 10 after 6 post for this year's best albums, best music so far. I'm having a more difficult time choosing this year and more complicated questions are arising (like can I really put The Emancipation of Mimi at the top of the list which competes with Be as the albums I listen to most often or do I stick with my gut feeling that Arular is the best album creatively and musically this year even though I listen to it less?)

If you're on allconsuming, 43things and/or the new 43places won't you be a peach and let me know? I'd like to track what my peoples are doing.

I'm really behind on my 52 Books and I need to get on it. It's starting to stress me out. I'm doing well on the 101/1001 though but I need to give a big update on that.

I'm going to make an analogy to last night's Six Feet Under. If you're way behind and watching it on DVD or Tivo or something...don't go into the jump. 

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Three Kinds of Asking for It

"Lately, I find myself out gazing at stars, hearing guitars, like someone in love." - Bjork, Like Someone in Love

Susie Bright Presents: Three Kinds of Asking for It by Eric Albert, Greta Christina and Jill Soloway (Touchstone). Everyone knows about Courtney Cox's Asshole right? Jill Soloway's first short story, an internet treasure that was probably brought to my attention by Susannah Breslin and her Reverse Cowgirl* blog back when there was a Reverse Cowgirl blog. Soloway writes and produces episodes of Six Feet Under now and has a memoir coming out in September that I have an advanced reviewer's proof of for review at LAist. I might sneak and read it first before I give it to our reviewer just because Jill is that interesting.

I should talk about the sex, the erotic sensibilities of it all, but what I really want to talk about is the technique Soloway uses in "Jodi K". It is written as a diary written by a 14 year old in 1983 Chicago as she has a kind of sexual awakening. It is the kind of story where I ask myself, "Is this written with the entire audience in mind? Is this for everyone...for me?" I get caught up in the prejudices that flow so freely from this fictional Jodi. They are the kinds of prejudices that come with priviledge and social stature. I get caught up because for much of the story I find her likeable. Her self-esteem and sense of self-worth are endearing and welcome but several of her choices aren't. Her assumptions aren't. Her equivocating isn't.

Yet still it is a great story written in this voice that feels so genuine. I don't have to like Jodi K to get it, to appreciate the call of her desires guiding her actions. Those jarring moments that pull me out of the story fade quickly and I'm back into that curious in-between time of sexual innocence and sexual adventure. Besides that, Jill makes me laugh.

The other stories are both deliciously filthy but not quite as thought provoking or technically interesting as Jodi K.

I should read more erotica. I blow through this stuff like candy.

Friday Saturday Random Ten - Some Like It Hot Edition

"So I'm letting my guard down cuz I feel like I finally met somebody I gotta know" - Nikka Costa, I Gotta Know

534 songs on the iPod Mini this week. I know I've been talking books a lot of late but next week? Let's talk music in 2005, ok? OK!

Saturday Random Ten

1. Wilderness - Sleater-Kinney
2. Things Are Getting Better - N*E*R*D
3. Breathe Me - Sia
4. Bartender Say - Quasimoto
5. Coastline (Ulrich Schnauss Vocal Mix) - Rachel Goswell
6. Since U Been Gone - Ted Leo
7. Club Connected (End Theme Remix) - The Foreign Exchange
8. It Gets Me Going - Spymob
9. Destiny - Zero 7
10. Catch My Disease - Ben Lee

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Bookmark Now

"What they goan tell us about us, huh?" - Clipse, Ma, I don't Love Her (featuring Faith Evans)

Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler (Perseus Books). There was a time when I fancied myself a writer, at the least, an aspiring one. I don't think of myself that way much anymore. I'm a blogger and an uninspired one at that. I go through my archives on rare occasion and find some of my writing -- true, honest-to-god storytelling whether it be autobiographical or fictional -- and I wonder where that went. I wonder where the time has gone? I blog all the time at LAist but I rarely "write" there. I'm too caught up in trying to get the information out and taking the information in. I've become an all consuming media beast. I'm no longer much involved in the conversation between the world in my mind and the audience I hoped to share it with.

Bookmark Now has forced me to re-examine my relationship with the words I so love. The language I used to enjoy manipulating. The stories I used to need to tell. The authors of each essay, almost to a person, speak of the work of writing with such passion that I feel shamed. I've lost my path. I want to get it back. I'm not sure I know how.

No, that's bullshit.

The how is to sit down and write. Write the story I've been thinking of about loyalty and loneliness. Tell you the tale of the mouse that is living on my patio and wants desperately to get into my house (in truth, I believe he's already been in once). Share my fears and angst and joy. My worry. I can complain that there's too much media. There are 800 unread blogposts in my bloglines and there are video games to be played and books to be read and DVDs to be watched and movies to be seen and TV shows on my DVR and comic books to be flipped through and email to be responded to and all that but...but there was a time, a more writerly time, when I would sit down at the computer just shy of midnight with headphones on my ears and a Smirnoff Ice on my desk and I'd bang out words. Words written in this virtual space but that I thought just might be worthy of paper.

Bookmark Now is funny and touching and intense and familiar. These are the voices of our contemporaries. People I enjoy like Meghan Daum and Elizabeth Spiers and Stephanie Elizondo Griest and new voices (at least to me) like Nico Cary, Kelly Eskridge and Nicola Griffith. They write. They blog. They just fucking do it.

For the critical eye it turned back on me, I must recommend it.

And, hopefully, I must write.

Looking for a Gig?

In San Clemente?

Due to a tremendous growth in their client base & demand for service, we are seeking an experienced Content Manager to assist in the development and integration of consumer health and medical content for the web site.

Responsibilities include working with medical doctor writers and editors to plan, manage, lay edit, publish, and maintain medical and health articles in assigned topics.

Duties:
* Code and format articles
* Editorial planning and follow-up
* Content research (searching the Internet for news, new content sources, competition)
* Newsletter creation and publishing
* Continuous clean up of content database
* Respond/review viewer email
* Monitor community message boards

Requirements:
* 2-4 years of writing and editing (preferably in the healthcare industry).
* Good HTML skills.
* Excellent writing and editing skills.
* Microsoft Office including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Frontpage.
* Knowledge and understanding of medical terminology.
* Healthcare industry knowledge with patient/consumer perspective.
* Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience
* Organized, flexible, and able to work in a fast paced environment.

If you think you fit, holla at me and I'll get you in touch with the recruiter. Real posts from me soon.

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Found

"Girl, I'll give you all I've got to give." - Michael Jackson, Baby Be Mine*

Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, And Forgotten Items From Around the World by Davy Rothbart (Fireside). Found was first a Christmas present for someone else. She'd pointed me towards the Found Magazine site on several occasions and when it popped up as a recommendation for me, I knew it was perfect for her. She's an archaeologist by trade, insatiably curious by nature and his given me one of the coolest reads ever: a letter from freedman to former slave master explaining why, after the end of the Civil War, he won't be returning to the plantation in the south and leave his full of promise life in the north.

It is brilliant (and brilliantly funny) and a found letter in the most real sense. A stranger's words on paper, a snapshot of unknowns without context, an odd object with a story to tell but no one to tell it...they are time capsules of humanity. After hearing her raves about the book itself, I figured it had to go onto my 52 in 52.

The best parts of Found are the pieces that are built on raw emotion -- a student's complete frustration with his or her lack of knowledge; a lover's plea for forgiveness for the stupid things he's done during his depression; records and lists of a day in someone's life. Amazing.

Nearly every piece is a revelation. I get caught up in the poor grammar on lost materials, in the large looping letters or chicken scratch scrawl of people with poor penmanship (for a refresher on my word nerd-dom perhaps an earlier 52 in 52 review?) and overt sexuality or overt emotional candor. The latter two are simply not a reflection of me, so to see it all laid out there is fascinating.

Found is a lightning quick read and well worth it. I laughed aloud several times and was nearly brought to tears on at least two occasions. The human condition is powerful. Perhaps even more powerful when we can connect with someone we know nothing about.