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"
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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