Which is more powerful?

or
?

Here's my impression of Extra in Heaven: "Coming up next: is Oprah hooking up with Martin Luther King? Yes. Clearly yes."

summer jam break down

spark one and pump it up, it's summer
I wish all videos looked more like this. And I wish my life looked less like this.

sound off: Youtube debates (finally)

1. These guys are pros. This was a joy to watch. Remember the republican debates? Those made me feel like I was at a friend's improv show. Most of my friends are mean dads and only do improv with other mean dads, just so you know.
2. YouTube videos are embarrassing. Oh my god, you guys. You know.
3. The air of good intentions and everyone involved's eye-glint of "utopia is upon us and it feels great," was exciting, attractive, and sweet.
4. The big winner was John Edwards "Live Strong" bracelet.

I can get behind "Live strong: become President of the United States and end poverty" just as easily as I can "Live strong: win a bike race as an adult man," and it makes me want to do both.

My prediction: This election is going to be insanely fun, and then completely heartbreaking. In one way or another.

hot new trend: READING!

"It's alive! It's alive." So read the first words of the classic novel Frankenstein. You could say reading is a lot like a classic novel like Frankenstein these days, because it is alive. Forget saxophones and throw out each of your leather jackets, it's all about reading! Thanks to recent hit books like Harry Potter and The Secret, books have become "cool" once again; for everyone from white women to white children to Asian children adopted by white families.

"Reading isn't just important," says a new study by the NEA, "it's cool and fun. It's made out of gold and is like sex; sex where you cum really hard and for a really long time and that makes your dick bigger."

"I like to read because it lets me go to a whole new world and see what life is like for other people," said Kelsey Valesques-Chardin, 7, of Anytown, USA,"only I don't just see it...I make up what it looks like."

Her teacher agrees, saying, "In a world full of images of what other peoples' lives are like, it's important to shut your eyes tight and just make up what it must be like. This simulates the world experience of the 19th century, or the "Golden Age of Reading," or "Empathy Central."

These days it seems reading is so hot I could go on and on, but...I'VE JUST GOTTA FINISH THIS BOOK!

Blogabrations: Journalism

This Washington Post op-ed on the Harry Potter phenomenon made me think: about how the next time I read a sermon about the “death of reading” I am going to personally kill reading; or about how the only thing less interesting than someone explaining to you why they love Harry Potter is someone explaining why they don’t like Harry Potter. But blogging sometimes brings out the worst in us – unlike reading, which brings out only the best – so instead I’ve decided to use this article as a case study for a blogabration called "Four Things I Love about Print Journalism":

1) pop cultural allusions that don’t really make sense, and make the journalist seem like an alien who’s trying hard to blend in on Earth. For instance, “[Special adult editions of Harry Potter are] the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets -- Cap'n Crunch in a Gucci bag.” Grown ups and their Gucci bags: it’s like kids and their Cap’n Crunch. You know? Watching football, eating pizza, living in a house. Hillary Clinton. Starbucks. Am I right? Earth. So fun and casual.
2) excellent and often clever grasp of the simile: “Start carrying on like Moaning Myrtle about the repetitive plots, the static characters, the pedestrian prose, the wit-free tone, the derivative themes, and you'll wish you had your invisibility cloak handy.” Moaning Myrtle? She’s from Harry Potter. And your article is ABOUT Harry Potter. And she’s FROM it! Delightful.
3) rhetorical questions: “Shouldn't we just enjoy the $4 billion party? Millions of adults and children are reading!”
Sounds like a fun party! But wait a minute… Rhetorical questions are a great way to keep your reader on the edge of his or her seat; they also offer an absolutely seamless way of guiding the reader along with your argument. Use as much as possible.
4) lack of self-interest, and an analytic rigor that takes nothing for granted: “Since Harry Potter first Apparated into our lives a decade ago, the number of stand-alone book sections in major metropolitan newspapers has decreased by half -- silencing critical voices that once helped a wide variety of authors around the country get noticed.” I hate it when critical voices get silenced. Otherwise, how are a wide variety of authors around the country going to get noticed?

What is going on in the world that we don't know about?

This. THIS. THIS THIS THIS.

And, just, a lot of insane abuse I'm sure.

The existence and implicit use of this product says to me, "you can't keep people down," in so many ways. It also really re-affirmed the faith I have in my dogged love of a well rendered and ambitious future, which was starting to look like the really pathetic front of someone who didn't actually know what the future was at all when I recently spent 90+ seconds trying to wipe the smudge off this picture through my computer screen.

The future? Oh I know all about that. I love it. i love it so much. i lOv3 I+ 5o MUCH. Anyway gotta go. Me leaving:

That's me doing the narration as I drive.

Also, why was I looking at that picture?

Brain Sex

I wasn’t going to blog this, but it was the talk of the town today at Grad School, and the MC is always ready to jump on a bandwagon a little too late (TM):
For anyone who’s ever wanted to do their teacher, but, you know, not really, William Deresiewicz explains those complicated emotions. It’s a little thing called intellectual eros, and it’s been here since the Greeks; much like pederasty.

The article also reveals how the popular imagination likes to think of humanities professors as disappointed, sexually-predatory fucks; well you know what, popular imagination? Humanities professors aren’t too impressed by your efforts, either. You’ve earned a B- at best. You say a B- won’t get you that job at McKinsey? Well, maybe we could change that…what does a pretty imagination like you need to work for, anyway?

Thought provoking .jpg diptych party

Further:

(I'd like to shout out 11 year old me and blog for a second about how Donruss = weak.)
maybe:
?

Now try this out:


Just think about that for a second.

Or how about:

That ones just about how Ja Rule still looks like an ant to me.

Happy 4th of July

AMERICA! Land of the free and home of the...

cOrPorATiOnS!!!!

AAA. ohmygod. Heavy breathing. Did you guys see that? It was corporations. It was corporations and it was awful.

Anyway [ed. anywhoozle], I think this really says a lot:


Note the subversive interpretation of "the men who died, who gave that right to me."
Have a good one guys