Tenderoni Alert

I am but a small boutique owner on the Grand Ave of the meme economy, recently divorced. But I'm pleased to bring this "hand-painted tribal-themed linen tunic for piano teachers" to the market:



Joe Mande made it, and I am thankful.

If we break all the mirrors we won't have to look at our own ugliness

Here's a video that is what happens when New York Times articles about millennials are made flesh:



New York Times' writer's sexual nightmare: "It's called "Uhh Yeah Dude" and vlogs privacy changing the workforce Mark Zuckerberg politically engaged Vice Magazine Second Life and their attire? Let's just say it's "business casual." Real casual."

Seth Romatelli and Jonathan Larroquette, creators of Uhh Yeah Dude: We're on it. [sound of them making it flesh].

Jonathan Larroquette's parents:

"I think we should name him John Larroquette"
========================
This blog post reminds me of when they see the pizza part of the corporatized documentary on Reality Bites, and makes me feel Gen X.

Which reminds me: here's a scene from my upcoming novel about clashes on the frontlines of the quiet GenX-Millennial cultural civil war:

The Gen Xer and the Millennials are in a Rock-n-Roll McDonald's in Dubai. First the Gen Xer orders and says like "McChicken Classic Cripsy Club" all condescending and droll and it turns his girlfriend on so they make passionate, brutally violent love until they realize they're just bodies.
Cut to the Millennials making chicken McNugget mashups in solitary glass cages with scrolling twitter feeds projected on their faces.

It's written from the point of view of an asshole.

Varieties of Human Experience: Wildly Disparate

My new favorite news trend is eWaste cities. They're stories about cities in China that are built out of old garbage computers.





If I was asked to make my own eWaste story, my punchy opener would be "You may think my most beautiful nightmares don't come true, but actually they do."

here is eWaste porn from:
Current
ABC News
60 Minutes
GOOD Magazine:

Stop the Presses

"Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing" !!!

According to the New York Times, based on a $50 million study done by the MacArthur Foundation:

“It may look as though kids are wasting a lot of time hanging out with new media, whether it’s on MySpace or sending instant messages,” said Mizuko Ito, lead researcher on the study, “Living and Learning With New Media.” “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”

My favorite part of Catcher in the Rye is when he stops thinking everyone's a phony and learns to create a homepage.

The study describes two early Facebook messages, or “wall posts,” by teenagers who eventually started dating. First, the girl posted a message saying, “hey ... hm. wut to say? iono lol/well I left you a comment ... u sud feel SPECIAL haha.” (Translation: Hmm ... what to say? I don’t know. Laugh out loud. Well I left you a comment ... You should feel special.)

Okay, these old person questions have been on my mind for a long time, so I'm just going to ask them:

1) Do all teens use this "chatspeak" now, or just, like, the trashy ones (i.e. the majority of teens)? The teens in Nick and Norah wouldn't do that, right?

1a) We wouldn't have done this if we were teens in 2008, right?

2) When you get texts/wall comments from people our own age who do this, what are you supposed to think? Why do people our own age do that? Is it a class thing?

“New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in a classroom setting,” the study said. “Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults.”

So what this study found is that humanity doesn't automatically get worse every time there's a new technology.




I'm going to posit that as a general principle.

Now give me five Genius Grants, please.

Do You Guys Like Art?

Because I think I just found some:



[Sound of capitalism crumbling at its foundations.]

If only I had been to a museum before taking out twelve subprime mortgages.

Oh well. I’m going to go fantasize about Hendrick Hertzberg picking me up in a horsedrawn carriage and explaining to me why he deserves all his success, in a speech full of debonair emdashes, rhetorical crescendos, and restrained finales.

It's true that Nick and I don't always see eye-to-eye when it comes to politics, but our friendship is too strong to be broken by his weird boy-sympathies for Sarah Palin. We share so many memories (three).

This one's from our thirtieth birthday party:



Here's us getting married:



This one's just Nick and his violin.


Just Nick 'n his violin.

(thanks, internet.)

tout est different!

I've learned a lot of things during the last 4 years of keeping this blog. One of the lessons I'll never forget is that Liz leans slightly toward Hendrik Hertzberg, while I lean away, thinking, "All writing should be like this, it shouldn't deserve praise. Plus the essay in Politics where Hertzberg writes about how he's finally matured enough to understand that he deserves all of his success is unattractive." Secondly, I learned that, regarding Bernard-Henri Levy, I let my judgment err on Levy's side, while Liz is dismissive and resistant, closing her mind and attempting to shut down any dissenting voices by means of fear and violence.

Here are related videos:

BHL on Sarah Palin:


Hendrik Hertzberg on moments of soberness and whimsy on the campaign trail:

Laughter is One Kind of Medicine, Among Thousands

On Salon right now there's an article about medical student comedy skit revues. The essay asks 3 main questions:
1) what do you think of medical student comedy skit shows?
2) Do you think just one way about them?
3) Did you know that there are two ways to think about them, pro and con?

In addition, the essay provides: an undeveloped subplot about how now the skits are in the form of videos posted on youtube and the Internet changes everything. Does it? And then another less-developed subplot about how how maybe humor challenges power and can be a tool of change?

here's one of the sample videos:

It's stupid.

The best part of the article is when the author rips off his "mask" and says, "THE REASON I KNOW IS BECAUSE I WAS ONCE A MEDICAL STUDENT!" And he does it in style, saying:

In my fourth-year show, lyrics of a barbershop quartet song were changed when some students felt they unfairly stereotyped women of a specific ethnic group.

I'm writing this blog post to ask you: what could this mean?
What ethnic group of women? In what ways was the stereotype made present in a barbershop quartet song?


"He look a like a mAAaaAAAaan"


Pretty.

Headline from the near future

"Bristol Palin's child born: Everyone feels weirded out and regretful and awkward about it."
Look for it. Having to deal with that (Sarah Palin generally) was complicated, and the reminder (Bristol Palin's baby) in a month or whatever is going to come at a really uncomfortable time in our greater healing process. Just when we're out there really stepping into our confidence like "you know what? Yes, we can. I think we really can," it's gonna be:

He's a superhunky bad-boy ice hockey player from cold country; she's a chestnut-haired beauty and popular high school senior.
The all-American teen twosome will make GOP vice presidential pick and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin a grandma at age 44 - just in time for Christmas.
Doe-eyed Bristol Palin, 17, and ruggedly handsome Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old self-described "f---in' redneck," have been dating a year, locals in Wasilla, Alaska, told the Daily News.

Personally, I advocate playing it cool when that time comes. Just ignore it.

That said, I already miss Sarah Palin.

Dear Sarah Palin,
You remind me of the fantasy where you go to 50s prom and your girlfriend -- who you probably just made love to for the first time -- dies in a terrible accident. (car, here, is 50s-themed space car). And the rest of your life you feel 1) responsible for her death, 2) resentful that she existed at all if she was just going to give you one night of passion and then a lifetime under the constant weight of her absence. Also, right now you seem like a beautiful ghost face blasting into heaven saying like "I don't want to go! I'm scared! Don't let this happen to me!" while your eyes are like "I know I must leave," and I don't know what to trust.



if that were Sims, in a spaceship, and more optimistic seeming, that's how I'll remember Sarah Palin.
Just some food for thought

Halloween: Prepare your old lady costumes

For those of you who are going Halloween partying as an old lady character, or for comediennes developing an old lady character for the stage (which I recommend!), I found wikiHow How to Appear as an Old Lady
As a time saver, I've cut and pasted the entry. Here:

Steps
-Apply some darker foundation.
-Use brown eyeliner to make the wrinkles.
-Wear something from your grandma's wardrobe, preferably a dress.
-Match it with old-fashioned shoes
-Tease your hair and powder it, so that it looks white or grey.
-Wear fake, extravagant jewellery(it's better if it's gold).


Tips
-To appear more believable, fake an old woman's voice and speak like old people do.
-You can also carry a bag or a walking stick.
-Say stuff like "Back in my day" or "Before the war..."

"OUTRAGEOUS LIES! A BROAD, DEMEANING CHARACTERIZATION! I'M OUTRAGED!"

Another big thanks to the combined wisdom of millions/the Wiki Age. The world is flat y'all! Happy Halloween.

BUCK FUSH

I'm really upset about the Bush administration. If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. These guys are like Hitler. And "Dubya" is an idiot who thinks he can just start wars when he feels like it. O did they hurt your daddy's feelings you poor little MONKEY.

I found this on the internet, and I just had to share it:



WHy isn't anyone talking about this?!

I feel helpless. I'm going to start another blog.


What a terrorist.

Ultimate Dream

The best part of the Barack Obama show tonight was when he was talking about his mother's death and he said

"it felt almost arbitrary...to watch someone you love so much go down that path -- and it's a lonely path...[makes you want to] seize the moment"

And then they cut to him declaring his candidacy for President.


dream

dream

dream

dream

dream

dream

dream

alien here to save us all

insane dream

dream

anxiety dream




A dream forged in the hearts of a thousand white children from Expo and Webster and Capital Hill reading Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, in the minds a million people getting stoned and watching "Eyes on the Prize" and wishing it didn't have sad parts, in the moment FDR and MLK mixed with outer space and the Sims, you have come to save us all.
Don't disappoint us, B. Let us dream forever.

MC Scoop

I "covered" an "urban research conference" for the magazine I "work" for this weekend, and Chris Matthews was there. I overheard a big scoop. I can't tell you what it is but, in other news, my new favorite quote is:

"Sam Donalson is a child."
- Chris Matthews


Nothing could look more like a child


clearly a child


Dear Draq Queens: you make everyone uncomfortable. And not because you're outrageous or challenge conventions, but because you all only have 1 joke and it isn't funny and you force us to act like it is because if we didn't it would be so painful for all of us to watch you deal with we'd feel like it was a hate crime. So stop. We hate it. If you want to make us laugh that bad, buy us 30 Rock DVDs or something.


In other news, Liz and I picked out our Halloween costumes:

which is better...

...to use as an introductory image for a thought-provoking essay about the hollow nature of politics these days?!!!!!!!

This one goes out to our thousands and thousands of friends

Andrew Sullivan has a nice little apologia for blogging in the current Atlantic. It's called "Why I Blog," and here [SPOILER ALERT] is his conclusion:

Words, of all sorts, have never seemed so now.

Words: gotta love 'em. As Hamlet once said. But in case you are not as "now" as me or Andrew Sullivan, here's a summary of his article in picture form:

"There are times, in fact, when a blogger feels less like a writer than an online disc jockey, mixing samples of tunes and generating new melodies through mashups while also making his own music."

"Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive."

Blogging is also like cloning, baggy jeans, AIDS awareness, startups, ecstasy, Don't Ask Don't Tell, McMansions, and Kosovo.

(Blogging is so 90s.)

"If you compare the meandering, questioning, unresolved dialogues of Plato with the definitive, logical treatises of Aristotle, you see the difference between a skeptic’s spirit translated into writing and a spirit that seeks to bring some finality to the argument."

If there's anything bloggers love more than humbly accepting the transient, imperfect nature of their form, it's comparing themselves to Plato. "Why I blog is because it reminds me of being the founding father of Western thought."

That's why I blog, too.

Catch you on the slopes, wiggaz

The Secret Lives of Bees' Vaginas

Novels. What are they?

A: Novels are powerful stories about poor black women, told from the perspective of beautiful white women. And as any white woman will tell you: they. are. good. Real good. But as any literature critic will tell you, they aren't just good because they're about good things like Reconstruction, they're good because they have a secret double meaning. The secret meanings are "forgive your rapist/your daughter's rapist" and "just be yourself."

The best novel is The Secret Life of Bees. I love everything about it: from the commercials, to Dakota Fanning, to wondering who gets raped.

I also love what a perfect opportunity it is to start this dialogue: why do rich white women love this brand of emotional woman-pain so much? These books are like Saw for moms. They're mom porn. Does it take the shape of SLoB because women are super in touch with their emotions and bodies, as women? Or is it because they hate themselves? Or is it because they're bored? Or is it because they hate themselves?

Book Review
by: Just Mom!
I just read a great new book. Only 1 slave got raped, but I still learned about how important it is to form relationships with other women, and to be myself.

Thanks slaves!

Election Update

Those of you looking for an update on the presidential election came to the right "place." First up, VP nominee Joe Biden made my annual list of the all-time best love stories:

All-Time Best Love Stories 2008

1) Holocaust apples
2) Joe Biden and 1st wife
3) Joe Biden and crying
4) Me and Joe Biden
5) Liz and Skinny Water

Secondly, I've decided to endorse Barack Obama. The guy is really good. I saw his commercials, and I'm all in. He's the one. We can do this, you guys. We can do this. And we really should.
For information, this music video:

Daily DDM

I thought of a good Do Dump or Marry yesterday:

Civil War enthusiast
Holocaust enthusiast
American Revolution enthusiast

OR it could be this:

Civil War enthusiast
Holocaust enthusiast
Zine publisher

OR this:

Holocaust enthusiast
Zine publisher
Kelsey Grammer



What did you guys do yesterday?

Black Day

"It's worse than 9/12"
- a co-worker, over 500 times today

The bailout amounted to putting “a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin."
-Representative Darrell Issa in the New York Times

"chgk ksssssssss"
- possum outside my door this morning

don't say yr srry

Everyone who has sent me this video has included an apology:


but you know these people are block-quoting Hendrik Hertzberg's blog in their blogs and laughing just as hard.

Sorry all I'm writing about is presidential politics, but I've got a bad case of election fever. If it's anything like the time I was pretty sure I had AIDS, I know the best course of action is to look myself in the mirror -- really look at myself, really, for the first time -- and face up to the fact that I need to get tested, then remind myself that I'm from a good a family and just forget about it.

"European seeming" is NOT foreign policy experience

Here's what my brain does when I see TV from the Netherlands or something:
1) not right
2) this looks cheap
3) too many colors
4) porn?
5) not right
6) poor or rich?
7) computer-generated or realer than anything I've ever seen?
8) "flatness" has been redefined for me
9) America is the greatest of world countries

Here's me when I see Sarah Palin, especially new Sarah Palin who only wears future-tunics:
1) not right
2) this looks cheap
3) too many colors
4) porn?
5) not right
6) poor or rich?
7) computer-generated or realer than anything I've ever seen?
8) "flatness" has been redefined for me
9) America is the greatest of world countries

Notice how anything is the same?

Sarah Palin: Good for reminding me why Ugly Betty makes me feel uncomfortable, bad for America.




[S. Ziz writes about how current-style American conservative nationalism is actually future-oriented internationalism in his The Ticklish Subject. This is me saying that, for those of you who think I'm racist. I'm just being like him. For those of you who think I'm a fat fuck Matrix-style unnecessarily violent System of a Down bit-torrenting asshole nerd: touche.]

Best of the 'Net

Those of you who’ve been following Weezy these past few months (aka the entire internet) might have noticed that he has been learning guitar. And from the sound of it, his teacher is the lovechild of a threeway between Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and an angel. (It starts about 3 min 40 sec in):



Here is the conversation he had with his producers before that SNL taping:

Lil Wayne: I was thinking I would do a little shredding tonight at the end of “Lollipop.”
Producer: Oh…cool. But don’t you think that might detract from your vocals?
Lil Wayne: No, I’ll just concentrate really hard on my guitar playing. I learned how to play a D chord today, so I think I might play some notes from that. Probably at least two notes, maybe even three depending how it goes.
Producer: Great! [Aside to other producer] Just turn up his monitor so he thinks he’s loud.

I’m starting to suspect Lil Wayne might be the genius behind those genius shredding videos.

I bet he’s also secretly the "One Bank" guy.



I still think that guy is funnier than Russell Brand. Then again, I still think irony is funnier than satire.

So sue me!!



That reminds me, the MC is starting a Marmaduke caption contest. Winner gets a free subscription to Men's Vogue, as well as a lifetime of glory, obvs.

American Homelessness

Have you ever talked with a homeless person? You know, those people on the street, covered in soil and soot, "spare some change? spare some change?" A dime, you give. 2 pennies. Some lint and an old bottlecap. Or, you take care not to notice, averting your eyes. Invisible. "Invisible," you say. Aloud, probably.

America is "home" to over 1,000 homeless people. The best ones are the kind with beautiful, wise spirits/souls.

Long story short, here's what I just heard a lady one saying:

"I remember the second I was born in the hospital. They were saying "is you even alive?"' And I was trying to say, like, "Yes! Yes! I'm alive!"

Alive she was -- fully -- with her beady little eyes, like two tiny plastic beads; the kind of eyes that would lie to you about being pregnant to get money.

The best books I've ever seen