If you go by numbers of books, J. G. Ballard takes up more room on my shelves than any other author other than Philip K. Dick, and while I don't know if that makes him my second favorite writer, I have enjoyed his work my whole life. The British writer died on Sunday, and while his fame was assured by his novels that became movies, Empire of the Sun and Crash, it was his dystopian science fiction work (usually short stories) that I always found most compelling. Their shocking ideas were often powerful precisely because they were aspects of our world taken to their logical—if extreme—conclusions. "The Concentration City," for instance, imagines an entirely enclosed conurbation so large its residents believe it to be infinite, while "Billenium" looks forward (almost quaintly now) at an overpopulated Earth so crowded with people the protagonists are stunned to discover a single hidden, empty room.

Whether it was his mind-blowing subject matter or edgy style, Ballard's fiction has always appealed to musicians as well, and his work has served as inspirations for songs, albums and even band names. After the jump, a couple examples and their connections (or lack thereof) to Ballard's work.

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I'm with Garry Trudeau all the way here. Speaking to Media Bistro:

The serious journotwits, though, are at it all day — 30, 40 tweets between breakfast and bedtime. And as someone who follows a lot of these folks, I can assure you that outside of the occasional interesting link, there's not much added news value.

It's all about fan base maintenance and trying to pump up follower counts. But high follower counts are like Mardi Gras throw beads — worthless out of context.

What amazes me is that these folks have voluntarily elected to add a new hour-a-day habit to what presumably were pretty busy schedules to begin with. Many of them Twitter about their apparently exemplary parenting, so you do wonder why they don't turn off their Berrys and recover that hour for the family — or at least make themselves a little more present for the people they're actually with.

Look, all of us are narcissists to some degree, but most find it embarrassing enough to at least try to hide it. What Twitter and its social media cousins do is disable inhibition. We expect narcissism from our movie stars and politicians and teenagers, but it's a little surprising to encounter so many otherwise personally modest journalists oblivious to how they're presenting.

Look, it's true. Twitter doesn't just make you stupid, it makes your most vain and most preening instincts socially acceptable. I realize that Twitter can be a great way to organize and build interest in a cause or event, and it provides those of us in the media with an additional way to distribute our links, and thus our content. But I preferred a world where people didn't think their breakfasts were automatically interesting to the world at large simply because they ate them.

H/T TNR.

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A Lexis-Nexis search turns up 952 articles concerning Britain's Got Talent Superstar, Susan Boyle. Why? She's got a smoking singing voice, but she's not-hot, and that's touched a cultural nerve. We are shallow. We don't want to be shallow. Or at least, we don't want people to know how very shallow we are. But we can't talk about how shallow we are without mentioning how not-hot Susan Boyle is and how we wrote her off because of her not-hottitude. Right?

So. How many colorful euphemisms can the media come up with? Lots—see 20 below.

1. "The plain Jane superstar," in a Daily News article about an offer from a porn company to put Boyle in an adult film. (It plans to fly her to L.A. on Virgin Airlines.)

2. "Like Shrek come to life," Rosie O'Donnell to People magazine.

3. "Frizzy-haired" from Mother Jones's own Party Ben.

4. "Plain, dowdy, unemployed," in New York Magazine's round up.

5. The Age of Melbourne let an imaginary Jane Austen do the dissing and refers to her as "ill-favoured."

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Hello again from La Quinta, where we've just returned from what may have been the most action-packed day of the 2009 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. In tonight's exciting edition: Giant creepy eyeballs! Rock star friends have a moment in the sun! And unsuspecting festivalgoers have their ears melted from their heads! Most importantly, we kind of snuck out a little early tonight after our traumatic parking lot experience last night, so hopefully this wrapup will be a little less muddled. Click "more" to jump in.

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