• Shutting Down The Internet, At Least For Occasional Five-Minute Intervals

    By Will Leitch, 12:45 PM on Tue May 5 2009, 43,778 views

    This is a weekly column from Leitch. It has words, and pictures. It's called Ten Humans Of The Week.

    I'm about to hunker down in the bunker for the next book -- out next Father's Day! If I finish in time! -- so I'm trying to wean myself off excess, unnecessary Web usage. This used to be less difficult: I'd read Gawker and Slate and Baseball Prospectus a little less, maybe start doing more work on my old computer that doesn't connect to the Web. (This only goes so far: When you're writing something that big, you'll find any way you can to distract yourself. I found myself playing with that non-Web computer's internal clock. "I wonder what time it is in Monaco right now!")

    Now, of course, there's a lot more to shut down from. There's my Twitter, there's my Tumblr, there's something called Foursquare, which I use for absolutely no reason at all. (I don't even like it, and its format -- telling your friends what bars you're at when you arrive -- is literally the opposite of the way I live my life. And still: I feel compelled to be on.) Realize, we are just about a year away, tops, from someone writing one of those gimmick books about staying away from the Internet for six months and seeing what happens, like that couple that had sex every day for a year or that guy who tried to live for a few months as if he were a Civil War general. (He must have been very hot.) It's going to be so much harder than it was the last time I slowed the Web usage for to work on a book, two years ago. I have a fear people will forget I'm alive. Not that being aware of it now is providing them much all that interesting.

    (Thanks to Gourmet Spud, by the way, for filling in last week. Unfortunately, he ignored my pleas and wrote something much funnier than what you're about to read.)

    (Oh, and I am absolutely not ready to talk about Ankiel yet. I hope you understand.)

     3 800x600 | Full Size
    Click to view image 1
    Click to view image 2
    Click to view image 3
    Click to view image 4
    Click to view image 5
    Click to view image 6
    Click to view image 7
    Click to view image 8
    Click to view image 9
    Click to view image 10


    Send an email to Will Leitch, the author of this post, at will@deadspin.com.

    By Will Leitch
    May 5, 2009 12:45 PM 43,778
    Click to view image next »
    « prev

    Shutting Down The Internet, At Least For Occasional Five-Minute Intervals

    Pasta Dude. I'm not exactly the healthiest eater, to any stretch of the imagination, but I can't say I'm sprinting out the door to buy a bread bowl full of pasta. (I think it's possible that no one does the Atkins diet anymore. Maybe.) Though I am curious to see how that might taste covered in chocolate and ketchup. Anyway, the "So Good" blog pointed out the now-defunct but entirely brilliant "Pasta Dude" commercial that Domino's once had attached to their pasta. Please watch the commercial now. I love this advertisement in every possible way. First, it has a rapping corporate mascot, which is always epic. (His hat be on sideways.) Second, the ad, after the weird rapping corporate mascot shows up, is played completely straight, like this was the only logical way to convince people to eat pasta from Domino's. But mostly: It exists enough in the real world that the family reacts in the horror perhaps any of us would react with upon seeing a rapping corporate mascot show up dancing and singing in our kitchen. It's verisimilitude: It's what commercials would look like if they were all directed by Lars Von Trier.

    link directly to this page:
    http://deadspin.com/5239600/gallery/gallery/3
    read more: #tenhumans, #emeritus, #top