The Millennial Crier

We tumblin now

2009-07-21T17:42:00.000-07:00

Nick: TBA

Nick's summer mix: coming soon

Sumer Mix 2009

2009-06-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

1.“I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked,” Ida Maria:

I'd like them better if they didn't almost look like a ska band, but other than that these guys are the real deal. Also, they share my Facebook quiz nationality (Swedish).

2. “Rhythm of the Night,” Corona:

Dance music of the era when dance music was for people with tops instead of plaid shirts. Now it's for people with tops AND people with plaid shirts. Democracy!

[Spoiler alert if you haven't seen Beau Travail. What happens right before this scene is that the male gaze gets reversed, and then some laboring bodies get eroticized. Oh and meanwhile the postcolonial psyche is really fragmented:]

3. “Get Ready for This," 2 Unlimited:

See above.

4. “Lisztomania," Phoenix:

You had me at Liszt. And at not being the Decemberists.

5. “Thug Passion,” 2Pac:

Last summer I bought a bottle of Alize because of this song. It’s gross FYI.

6. “You Get What You Give,” The New Radicals:

Did you know I love uplifting music? Almost exclusively. I don’t tell people that because it makes me seem like a sociopath. The kind of person who would order mint chocolate chips online. The only people who have listened to the New Radicals in the past nine years are ant torturers, YouTube commenters, and me. And probably Europeans.

7. “Little Secrets,” Passion Pit:

Sorry I’m a blogger :( It gets the party started, tho.

8. “Bizarre Love Triangle,” New Order:

I advanced the thesis that New Order was to 2009 what Led Zeppelin was to 2004, and my friend was like, “New Order is to 2004 what Led Zeppelin was to 2004.” Touché.

9. “American Girl,” Tom Petty:

The breakdown of the song always reminds me of a dad band. Just bein' moms and dads. But the outro really brings it in terms of shredding. And what other terms are there?
Play back to back with “American Boy” for an intergenerational battle of the sexes!

10. “Wannabe in L.A.,” Eagles of Death Metal:

Why yes I do.

11. Thermals, “Now We Can See”:

This song reminds me of my pure love for music when I was a kid first learning about music. One of The Thermals was like, “let’s just write a modest, breezy jam that we can play in basement house parties for eternity” and the other Thermals were like “why not?" Plus it's about what life would be like outside the Cave and shattering the progress myth, whut.

In short, if you need me this summer, I'll be sitting in my office quietly listening to “Jock Jams.”

Case Closed

2009-06-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

I'm glad we, as a people, got to the bottom of this one in time.

You will live on in the best parts of our <3s

Peace.

Love Mr. Jackson

Short Story Review

2009-06-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

Since this blog is now exclusively devoted to short stories and reviews, here's some exciting news: the latest Jonathan Franzen short story is about me! It’s set in Saint Paul in the 1980s and 90s (actually in Nick’s immediate neighborhood), and the main character’s son goes to our high school, class of 2001. So I guess it’s really about Nick. Anyway, it’s worth reading if you want a window into our lives. And isn’t that why we all read? For a window into my and Nick’s lives?

Even though the story is basically Stuff White People Like in short story form, I do think that it captures the local color in an authentic* way. And maybe that is actually why we all read. Maybe. Short stories, at least.

*I’m trying to bring back using “authenticity” without scare quotes. Join me! Unless you’re my student, in which case you probably need to think harder about how experience is always mediated, B+.

BWSS: Teacup Puppies

2009-06-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

Have you guys ever seen or heard of these? They are puppies that have been bred inside teacups. You know, to meet mankind's unceasing demand for tiny things.

Aww.

(That's Nick in the background if you were wondering. This was actually his senior yearbook photo.)

But guess what. It turns out that "cuteness" as an aesthetic value can lead to practices that are morally -- wait for it -- questionable.

The Family of Man: Our love of the tiny unites us all.

Anyway, Teacup Puppies equal total genetic messes. Apprarently their bones are so brittle that sometimes they will just fall apart. They were not meant for this earth. It's sad and awful. It's a lot like Benjamin Button.

“Fuck you, Darwin.”

So, in short: we are tampering with nature in order to make it harmonize with our aesthetic values. But in so doing -- in our unceasing quest to produce a better, more beautiful product -- we are left with something frail and maladptive, something fundamentally broken, something whose very existence is an act violence.

In other words:

Or, I guess, BWSM (Busy Writing Scholarly Monograph)

Crash is a piece of junk

2009-05-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

Nobody watch this movie. What a misguided, frustrating, misanthropic junk factory. Here are some of the questions it left me with, which may contain spoilers but you don’t care because you’re never going to watch it:

Are we really supposed to think, “Even though Matt Dillon is a racist sexual assaulter, he has been redeemed because he is nice to his sick dad and good at rescuing people from cars”? Because that’s what it seems like you’re asking us to think. Why does the Persian guy get so angry at the Hispanic guy? Calm down. How do people in this movie even know so many different racial stereotypes? It’s like they all Wikipedia’d “racial stereotypes” and made flashcards to prepare for the car accident they will inevitably be getting in tomorrow with someone of a different race. Why is Sandra Bullock such a crazy b? Why are we supposed to care about her?
WHY?

In the world in which the person who made Crash lives, everyone is:
1. Awful
2. Offended by ridiculous things, and jumping to the conclusion that people are being racist all the time.
3. Being racist all the time
4. Acting free from the dictates of reason, temperament, or any of the things we usually think of as “causes”
5. Shooting people all the time (“I just encountered a hardship. Time to shoot someone.”)
6. A terrible driver. The 9 or 10 characters get in like 6 car accidents in the course of one day. Seriously, guys, eyes on the road.

Also, in this world, there is no such thing as humor or the ordinary, just extremes of violence and sentimentalism. (Screenwriter 1: “We should do a close-up on the daughter yelling ‘Daddy’s home!’ right as the dad is about to get shot.” Sreenwriter 2: “That gives it more pathos.” The script doctor for this movie was actually Christopher Walken going “More pathos!” after every scene.)

"Not quite enough pathos."

Some of you may be objecting, “But Liz, it’s not supposed to be realistic. There are all those nods to magical realism, like when the little girl survives the gunshot (before we find out, seamless reveal!, they were blanks) or when the cops implausibly let Terrence Howard go or when the woman escapes the exploding car, which are meant to signal the film's true genre.” Maybe. Maybe. But first of all, you can’t be like “it’s magical realism, so it doesn’t matter that none of the characters have coherent motivations.” Second of all, magical realism is gay. Third of all, if you’re not working in the realist mode, don’t present yourself as a social problem film. It’s disingenuous. Red pill or blue, Crash: do you want to be The Wire, and systemically trace problems through chains of cause and effect, or do you want to get high and cry about the evil inherent to the human condition and the whims of Lady Chance? You can't have it both ways. You can't expose something as "gritty" and "real," while at the same time allegorizing that thing in grotesque exaggerations.

Or at least you can't, Crash, because you suck. Some people can. To illuminate, and in the spirit of A Unicorn's Unicorn's "gayness scatter plot", I have constructed this Realness Scatter Plot (click for large view):

Additions and amendments welcome.

Finally, I leave you with a Would You Rather: Would you rather watch Crash every week for the rest of your life, or listen to "Crash" by Dave Matthews every time you have sex for the rest of your life?

report abuse

2009-05-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

"I'm Done!"--> "Publish"

A hand well played.

I used to be worried that moms would never understand how to use facebook or be comfortable there, and that the understanding and comfort wouldn't show all over their face.

Diane's pretty proud of her job as a journalist at a totally regular kind of journalism job that merits pride.

I think we all know what kind of life situation resulted in the above here.

"I'm having so much fun picking my 5!" — Travis

Deirdre's life is right out of a book. (I was gonna do a link to the book, but I forgot which book was totally weird and gay).

yikes.

Nailed it, Jackson.

not at my wax museum!

His Didi Conn was weak.

to me this seems more violently anti-Eugene Mirman than anti-semetic.

A *very* u-good uuhhh-daaay. hey waiter...I'll have what he's having!

Women II

2009-04-19T00:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a question for the ladies:

This picture would be so awkward to come across when you were going through old pictures with friends or family, right?

That's an inexcusable fashion "don't."

Now I'm imagining you as a grandmother, looking through old photos with your granddaughters and you come across it and they're like "Grandma!!!" and you just look at it like "fashions have really changed, haven't they?" and move on to the next without saying anything at all.

I'm imagining all of you in that situation. I'm running the whole scene through from start to finish, over and over, placing each of you reading in the lead role of your own cycle of the fantasy. One after another.

Women

2009-03-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

why is this always good?

This is what I imagine women do when I'm not around. I wrote a play about it:
Women
Stevie: It smells so good here.
Sue Ellen: We smell so good.
A Warm, Gentle Wind: Here I come: fresh white cotton dresses, wisps of long blonde hair, loosely tied bows of hair ribbon white and black!

Juliana: Let's share our worlds with men!
Sue Ellen: Let's destroy men!
Stevie: We will love men. They will destroy themselves, some of them. Others will be strong.
Juliana: let's sing a song.
Stevie: I've got one:

Sue Ellen: that was really good, guys.

Stevie: The sun and wine and weed make me so warm inside! I can barely keep my ....eyes....open....
A Warm, Gentle Wind: Sleep. Sleep, dreamless, sweetly.
[several hours later, the sun has set]

Juliana: [slowly opening eyes] Fireflies!

The End

In this economy...

2009-03-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a game I made up. It's called "In This Economy..." or "Slate pitch meeting."

It's just fill-in-the-blank and the rules are whoever does it best wins.
Here's the template:
"In this economy, ________________________."

I'll go first.

In this economy, you have to get creative. Which is why I sewed recycled buttons all over my suit.

In this economy, I've gotten to spend a lot more time with my teenage son and that's worth a lot.

In this economy, you can still enjoy yourself and even indulge yourself!

In this economy, it's like DJ culture.

In this economy, I got a grant for my non-profit.

In this economy, maybe we should spend our money on everyone gets a cool gun and a cool knife.

2.
Here's a country hit (that might also be a viral hit (?) [I can't figure out the Billboard charts, here, but people are loving it on Youtube]) that's about the new economy/greater depression. It's by John Rich.

I like it when country songs do this. It makes me realize I sometimes don't know where to draw a line between gross opportunism and political relevance. John Rich wrote "We're All Raisin' McCain." He wrote it about how we're all just raisin' McCain.

Anyway, check this new economy song out. It contrasts the "make believe" of finance, sums like "billions," and New York, to the real world where they're shuttin Detroit down. It's politically complicated, it's surprisingly urban-centric, and it's legitimately good.

And then this

Breaking our silence

2009-03-19T04:50:00.000-07:00

get thinky with that.

Best, always,

Nick

It's 2009: What's the new Furries?

2009-03-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

"The more things change, the more things stay the same."
- Martin Luther King

I'm glad the feeling of finding out about Furries, and trying to figure out what was going on with Furries, coincided with the rise of the Internet and trying to figure out what was going on with that. Each helped me explore essential and otherwise hidden truths about the other, and from those truths I learned genuinely new things about people, the world, myself, truth itself, my roommates, etc. More simply, each — furries and baby Internet 2.0 — will forever be linked in my mind, as I fondly remember the brief period of time when 3/4ths of Google image searches included things like this:

(PS — if you like "there are two kinds of people in the world"s: Ta2KoPitW, ones who keep their image search safesearch on medium, and ones who look at those people like they don't understand the joy of living in the world at all)

But, now, The Internet is a different thing. The world is a different place. Researching, sharing, and discussing Furries is no longer a valid use of time. Bringing them up is sometimes necessary for reference, but bringing them up as central objects of talk dings culturally tone deaf, like mullet jokes or telling people discussing Facebook that you prefer real human interaction or Michael McDonald impersonations. It should all still be valid and fun, but, meme over.

But like I said, Furries wasn't any old meme, and it's being over has left a void. I wonder: what in our current cultural landscape has taken Furries' place? What could? What phenomenon out there is going to teach us and guide us, with the gentle nudging of the Furry-encounter's mixture of discomfort and too-much-comfort, toward the truths of our world, people, selves, and roommates today, in 2009? I'm pretty sure that's a valid question and that's how things work. As a wise man once said, culture and society maintains exactly the same structure, always, and progress is found in the variables. Like how cavemen had tiny dog-shaped dinosaurs for pets, and now regular men have real dogs. Or another good example is how cavewomen wore necklaces made out of jagged white rocks, and now women prefer necklaces made out of beautiful smooth pearls and knee-high leather boots over their pants even though it's basically like wearing a burkha in all-over print of the words "boring, let's Netflix entire seasons of HBO dramas." I can't think of another example, but probably just think about cavemen more. It's the best way to answer big social questions.

Anyway, Furries 2009. What will it be/is it? It's an open question, readers, but I'll get the ball rolling with some options I figured out. I'm grasping, though.

Still, here goes:

Possible Contenders for the Furries of ObamAmerica

1. Dubai

Reasons:
Like Furries it is jacked-up, mysterious, 80's-style dreamy looking, fascinating, fantastical, futury, foreign, not nearly foreign enough. It's like a weird part of our collective dreamscape that we never believed was actually in any real world until we heard whispers of the dream, somewhere, being true, and then tried to research on the Internet only to get locked into a frustratingly asymptotic journey of confusion.

Like Furries, Dubai is often referenced as a "symptom," and as such is rumored to be the subject of an upcoming MTV TrueLife, just like Furries were.

Additionally, Dubai seems like where Furries would live.

This might be because pictures of Dubai look like things from Second Life, and Second Life legitimately has a lot of Furry avatars in it. See, the Furry wiki for more on that, if you want to save your linden bucks

Witness: Furries in Second Life watching a Second Life TV show called the Funday PawPet Show, that looks like it was filmed in first life:

Remember this insane misunderstanding of the Internet? When Second Life Newt Gingrich held a virtual press conference announcing that the conference itself was the "future of government"? To a crowd of horrible monsters, face-morphing and flying around on segways?

But all that might take Dubai out of the running. Dubai might be too much like Furries to be the new Furries.
Furries : sex :: Dubai : architecture
I think that's the final verdict.

2. Reborns

Reasons:
Similar internet/blog buzz, subject of similar BBC documentaries, similar mix of the most benign love and the most perverted.

The structure of reborn moms' relationship to their reborn babies might be similar to relationships in Furry-dom as well. On the documentaries they always say things like "all the good parts of being a mom and none of the bad!" They're obsessed with living some very particular Oprah-set-hued dream-image of babies/motherhood and not the "real" experience of babies/motherhood.

It's about loving/living images like these:

not these:

Similarly, Furries are are obsessed with a very specific 70s-80s Japan-ish cartoon image of animals, and not actual animals at all.

It's about being overly attracted to animals like these:

Not these:

Outside of both groups being likewise locked into a very specific world of images, both include a weird shared world of tactile and "thing" obsession. Technicalities of latex and fur and fake eyes, as well as an obsession over the materials and techniques of making the actual fur costume/fake baby look like the the image in the Furry's/re-mom's respective minds, dominate discussion on both crews' message boards. Furries are obsessed with working jaws and eyes for their costumes. Reborn ladies are obsessed with wrinkles and veins and individual hairs. In the BBC doc a lady is pacing for the arrival of her "mixed race open-eyed smiler," but then, after it arrives, she is forced to return it because it has a crack in the back of the neck and she doesn't want anything "not perfect, because its supposed to be perfect."

Furries have the added tactile obsession of rubbing and cumming in their costumes. Cumming doesn't seem to be on Reborn ladies' minds. But I guess that's ladies for you. Why periodically milk the cow for milk it needs to be milked for when you can have the rubber baby to love for $200-$1000?

As a side note here, regarding the place between being trapped in a world of images and an obsession with weird tactile sex things: A friend of mine was telling me that she had a friend who made fur sports mascot costumes for a living, and she was amazed that most of said friend's clients weren't actual mascots but just people who wanted the suits for themselves. She didn't know what Furries were. But then my friend said "she says they're almost all autistic." That's one to put in your pipe next time you're trying to figure out autism.

ANYWAY—

Final verdict: just maybe. But still, I don't know what additional lessons reborns teach us that Furries don't.

There is even this strain of reborn-dom:

Which makes enough sense to reborners that dolls like that are included alongside pure human reborn dolls available for adoption at this reborn nursery.

3. MonKids

I guess this one is more for the easy segue than an actual contender. "MonKids" was a brief but noble effort on behalf of ABC News and the Internet, but learning about women who buy monkeys as a replacement for dead/impossible children didn't really teach me anything new about people, and instead reassured me that people's misunderstandings of monkeys are timeless. Monkey babies can't be the new Furries because monkey babies are the monkey babies of forever.

Still, I will never forget Angelle Sampey:

She was a professional motorcycle racer who "didn't have time to be pregnant" so she raised a monkey as a child, until it attacked her and she sent it to the old monkey sanctuary.

The best part of the Primetime special featuring Angelle was when she visited the sanctuary where her MonKid lived and her MonKid only came up to her to eat her carrot pieces and acted like he had no idea who she was and then she said something like "It's good that he doesn't recognize me. That's what we want. That's why he's here. So I'm glad he acted like that."

The truth: she wasn't glad.

Devastated.

I guess MonKids could be like:
Reborns : thing theory :: MonKids : animal rights arguments.
in that there is clearly a similar disconnect between what the moms in both of these situations are giving and what they're getting. And the complication for us watching from the outside is that the moms seem to be getting everything they want. It's not a comforting thing to deal with, and watching the story unfold with MonMoms forces us to that dark place in our minds via real living animals instead of just inanimate objects. It's kind of like when Werner Herzog talks about how bears don't care about us in Grizzly Man, which was a furry-like phenomenon in it's own right.

Actually, redact that "best part." The real best part of the special was when she said "everything was going great" while they showed her buying baby clothes for her monkey. Because, like I said, the joy is in being reminded that monkey babies are the monkey babies of forever. Also I wonder if, since the monkey was already in the sanctuary, Primetime didn't make her fake buy baby clothes for no monkey. "Everything was going great."

Verdict: no dice, but I'm glad I finally blogged that off my chest.

4. Masking
This gets included because the way I found it was via a horrible youtube accident, and that's part of the Furries experience I'm looking for in my quest.

If you don't know what masking is, it's when people get into wearing full-head latex masks of other people. Or even full-body latex suits of other people. Then what they do is they put them on and then take off. And that's it. In their videos they never reveal their actual faces, and sometimes pull off one latex mask to reveal another latex mask underneath. Sound stupid? It is...STUPID LIKE A NIGHTMARE!

Here's someone's masking playlist. It includes masking vids, scenes from movies of people taking off masks to reveal themselves, scenes of Tyra Banks's face looking like a mask, a new way to never trust other human beings again.

[crying break]

Verdict: This one is another too-close-for-comfort with Furries. The masker's inclusion of mask-reveals in famous movies gives it the same heartbreaking, trapped-in-image-prison quality of Furries and reborns, but where the latter vibed of an image of love and/or fun, this one vibes of pain-sex and death and a history of molestation. There doesn't seem to be anything to learn that I can't get from an essay about identity by a lesbian.

Actually, an art collective in Berlin called AIDS-3D "explored" masking recently.

They're young, so maybe they know something I don't. Check 'em out. AIDS-3D. Minnesota boys. GO TWINS!

Conclusions:

If you feel unfulfilled, I'm with you. Maybe everything seeming too much like Furries already suggests that I was going about the whole thing wrong. Maybe being trapped in weird love-and-fun-centered image-cages isn't the lesson of 2009 at all. Maybe the fact that Obama is already kind of an instance of that — like how he's rendered in Furry-hues, he seems like a cartoon president from the 80s, he's futury, he's alien, he's all too human— actually suggests this is an old frontier. Maybe Furries can't guide us anymore because we live in a Furry world now. Maybe "lesson learned," time for the truly, structurally new, you know?

Maybe, like everyone said after the election, and then again after the economic collapse, it's time to "get real." So maybe that's how we re-structure the cognitive building blocks of the Furry encounter in our heads before we go out looking to see what meets its requirements. Like, what if the new furries are "vertical farms" or something?

IDK, folks. I truly dk.

In closing, here's a list of proto-furries from the much realer 90s, chronologically to the point of the first — at least my first — real Furries encounter:
1. Conjoined Twins
2. Primordial Dwarves
3. Ren Fair People
3.a Historical re-enactors
3.b LARPers broadly
4. Diaper Fetishists + Dommy Mommies
5. Cartoon Porn like those pictures of Belle blowing Beast and Judy Jetson ft. Mr. Spacely's creampie.

Thanks for coming along with me!

"You want a piece of a Furry?"

Later, dude. Later, Bush-era Internet.

The Darjeeling Limited is good

2009-03-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

I just watched Darjeeling Limited and it turns out it's really good. Why didn’t anyone tell me?

"Anderson is still a maddeningly cool filmmaker. He's remote from his characters, which makes him remote from his movies. There's also a way in which he uses race as a novelty, suggesting an assertively white-kid view of the world."

Paging Dr. Obvious: Salon.com needs you in the operating room STAT. (What? Somebody please teach me how to use that expression.) Saying that about Wes Anderson is like complaining that Jane Austen’s novels are all set in drawing rooms or that gold is maddeningly expensive. That’s just how it is. The sun provides heat. This movie is about the white-kid view of the world. And who doesn’t want to spend two hours seeing the world through the eyes of a rich globe-trotting expat? It’s Henry James, if only Henry James didn’t take for boring eternity to read. It’s not an oppressive colonizing of normativity, it’s “normative fan fiction,” and it’s beautiful.

“I give this painting a bad review because Whistler doesn’t seem to love his mother.” – overheard at Salon.com’s great-great-great-great-grandfather (just a physical salon).

The Darjeeling Limited is a movie about literature, and it’s better than most short stories. The two best parts of this movie come close to being the two worst parts: one, the scene where Owen Wilson takes off his bandages and the brothers say that he’s still healing. First you’re like, “really??” Then you’re like “oh. The metaphoric and the literal have been caught in the world’s most charming feedback loop. Well played.” It’s Nick Adams making coffee, coffeemaker design courtesy Marc Jacobs. And a Rolling Stones B-side playing in the background that I’m going to download right now.

The other best part is the scene toward the end where the train goes by and you see all the individual compartments, like the frames of a film strip. Oh yeah, did I mention this is also a love letter to the magic of cinema? That's right. Fuck you, Salon.com.

Then, as a final twist, Angelica Huston as the mom says something about trying to communicate without any words, and you realize what this is: a short story written by the smartest kid in your senior-year fiction writing workshop, who you were jealous of at first, but by the end of college have come to admire not even begrudgingly, translated into cinema.

Wes Anderson: dude is for all time. I blogged it. No turning back.

The best book I've ever seen II

2009-02-28T02:58:00.000-08:00

I guess we're a tumblr now.

Callback:

Exclusive video of the inside of my heart:

Exclusive: Video of inside of Barack Obama's heart

2009-02-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

This was definitely filmed using tiny cameras placed inside Barack Obama's heart. Technology these days! It's crazy.

Country songs/vids about the Internet

2009-02-12T19:54:00.001-08:00

even these dumb-dumbs know what it's about and exactly how it works.

B.W.S.S.

2009-02-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

B.W.S.S. stands for "Busy Writing Short Story." It's the txt slang kids are using when they get trapped in a feedback loop between the real and the figurative that's so intense they just have to write a short story. Like:

Cassandra: Did you watch the inauguration?
Ashton: No, I had to finish this chapter on the Civil War.
Cassandra: How did that feel?
Ashton: a mixture of relevant and irrelevant.
Cassandra: B.W.S.S.

Kimmy: Hey, what are you doing?
Shaun: Making a poster for global capitalism.
Kimmy: But that poster reads "msilatipac labolg"!
Shaun: Oh no! I inverted the whole thing! And it didn't take effort, just me not paying attention...and a little luck.
Kimmy: Also, when you think about it, none of it really matters. Everything is the still same, especially our essence.
Lenore: B.W.S.S.

Get the picture? It's really helpful. I wish it were around when I was putting generic Visine called "Artificial Tears" in my eyes in a parking ramp at the Mall of America and I heard on NPR that Ronald Reagan died (true!).

Anyway, here's what's getting all my best BWSSs right now:

Mirror Box Therapy

It's a treatment for phantom pain. It works by the patient putting their amputated limb in the hole of a "mirror box" (pictured above), then moving the non-amputated limb in front of the mirror while watching the reflection. The image in the mirror tricks the patient's brain into thinking the absent limb still exists, and this alone cures the pain.

Want to know more about it? Let me help you with a link I found.

Also, these FAQ bits are great for people like me (people who love to BWSS):
from a blog:

1) Are there any known side effects?

None have been reported yet.
Things that can happen - depending on the condition are:
Lorimer Moseley reported a patient that was so distressed seeing the amputated limb move again that he had to withdraw from treatment.
Another interesting phenomenon is Dysynchiria - if you touch the unaffected limb and watch the reflection pain is felt in the affected limb.

from mirrorboxtherapy.com:

Can I do myself harm using mirror box therapy?
Mirror therapy is not a placebo effect as it reconditions and retrains the brain to normalise its function. It is important to understand that asymmetrical movement, keeping one limb intentionally still whilst moving the other and simultaneously looking in the mirror at the virtual image may worsen the condition.

If we have different BWSS styles and you can't see where I'm coming from, here are some S.S. plot pitches I came up with involing mirror box therapy:

mirror box therapist looks at images of estranged family every night

mirror box therapist writing book about life of the Jewish mind before Holocaust

mirror box therapist's young mistress introduces him to Second Life

mirror box therapist who is a liar/believes lies too easily

mirror box therapist protests the building of a large mirror-covered corporate headquarters in his community

mirror box therapist gets really into magical realism

mirror box therapist goes tubing down a big two-hearted river

it's endless.

Happy BWSSing!

Oscar Fever

2009-01-28T18:16:00.001-08:00

Check out this snapshot of Norm Coleman that a citizen journalist captured on her cell phone:

Some would question our right to intrude on politicians’ private lives and to place them under media scrutiny 24/7, but if you ask me he should not have been wearing that shirt in the first place.

Do you ever stop to think about the way political humor has changed since Photoshop? I still don’t have Photoshop, so I almost never think about that. The bad thing is that I have to use Paint when I want to manipulate images, but the good thing is that I still understand the world's representation to be in fundamental harmony with the world's truth.

I’m thinking about asking for Photoshop for my birthday, though, as soon as I'm ready to turn wise beyond my years. Just like Benjamin Button. (A funny joke is to end every sentence, “just like Benjamin Button.” An example sentence: “That old man looks like a tiny baby!”)

Is it me or does this movie look so stupid? It should probably be nominated for the Oscar for Stupidest Looking Movie.

And this movie should be nominated for the Oscar for Greatest Title:

I think it's about a hotel for dogs.

Imagine how much this poster would have shaken your foundations, making you question whether cinema can ever truly be “radical” when forced at every level to compromise with the Hollywood system, if only I had Photoshop.

John Updike Finally

2009-01-28T09:01:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure you saw on TV or in movies, John Updike died. As I'm sure you could never know, JU is a founding father of the Millennial Crier (along with Tommy Chong, the guy who made us all agree that cats are sexier than dogs (except poodles), WJT Mitchell's golden T-Rex earing, and the inventor of specter invocation:
)
Today I realized, however, that Mr. Updike if you're nasty has gotten no tag time here at all. A shame.

But something else you could never know, no matter how hard you tried, is that this blog hides a secret drafts folder larger then mountains, seas. It's teeming with posts and ideas written in haste and joy and then, upon rereading, hidden away forever, in shadows about as dark as night. Because the silent founding fathers of our blog are the inventors of shame:

and the inventor of the terrible kind of weed that just makes you hate yourself and then get real angry for reasons too real to fully understand:

One such almost-post is a review I wrote of John Updike's now-officially-last novel, published late last year. I had forgotten about the review until yesterday, when I read the news of Updike's passing. I thought "At least this will spark some nice critical re-evaluation and the final word will be, because of the historical context, more in line with my own thinking and the truth." But then I got sad that I hadn't leant my insight — and the clarity it brings — to the critical table while I had the chance, unsentimentally. "My case will never be made untainted," I wailed, "my post, under her veil of silence and forever spritzing itself with French perfume, smiling and humming a Glenn Miller song while she waits to be asked to a dance cancelled years ago, will never ring in the ears of Liz's friends and 2 girls I went to high school with." Crushing truly.

But then I thought, "that's no way to blog. It's 2009, and that means do whatever you want, no matter how inappropriate or what the consequences."

So here, now, I present my months-old, never before seen review of The Widows of Eastwick, several hours too late. It explains everything!!!!!

Directions:
Keep your peepers peeled for heart-breaking untimeliness (Magi Gifts), but then choose to read those moments like they're when a child's father dies and his mom catches him packing up their fishing gear for the big trip to the lake. Stop playin,' Mama. He promised he would take me.

He promised...

***********************************************
How to Love a Man:
John Updike

Hey guy, why the long face and handsome mastery of tone?

I just read John Updike's new novel the Widows of Eastwick. I recommend it. But for men only.

Men, only.

My first thought when I saw the book was that the title indicates this is a novel about the witches of Eastwick being revisited as they are today, and now, so much older, they've become widows, all their husbands dead. And I thought it was nice because witches and widows are characters that opperate on two very different levels, with two very different and unevenly distributed sets of powers, and I knew Updike's easy interchanging of them had basically created a book cover that said "get ready for some sober, dull-pained explorations of the injustices/cruel justices of aging and dying in America, mixed with fake-out gestures toward invoking the original disappointment of losing magic, mixed with some great opportunities to visit painful fissures in your thinking about women." And I was in. Another thing the book cover basically said was "I Don't Want to Die by John Updike." So I was way, way in. As I turned the pages I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book was what I hoped for and more, all in the handsome package that is recent-John Updike's favorite genre, the "B-"

Two aliens and one guy from Earth, or "Arth."

The book is another genius move from our man. If you're following him lately, you'll be excited to know that, here, he's come full circle on his project to make you wonder whether or not a whole century of thought wasn't more than an exercise in style, then make you think "but it's all so good! Maybe style, good style, is all that matters," and then make you mourn the part of yourself that thought there was more to what matters (heart), and then remind yourself, again, "but it's so good," and nobly march into another day. Now, after long-ago turning both his ideas and subject matter into a genre novel, he has spent the last decade showing us the power of this genre, and here, re-hashing even his own old characters, he reminds us that the genre is his alone.

"I'm a monster! A charming, charming montser."

He's a folk musician from the culture of bemused white American men, the ones who feel too much pressure to muster wonderment at pudenda but do it anyway because it's the best way to deal with the primitive rhythms of wet cunt, nip-nipping at the seldom-felt flesh at the small of their backs (mistresses are massaging shoulders after the unsettling quiet of syncopated carnal gyrations), and his "songs" are the best way to remember what, for all it's Holocausts, a great culture it is.

The drums are Western thought, the .jpg is John Updike

And isn't this the the lesson of the age/the lesson of Obama? "We're self-actualized in our effort to pick a mere image of the most practical beauty." I thought it was. So I googled up reviews of the book to see if John Updike had proven himself as perfectly at home in this new world he helped create. At first, I found he had. Everyone was loving him like they didn't have anything to prove. Here in Time; here in New York Magazine; here in in the Times.

But then, this. From Gawker — the supposed unchecked answering-to-no-one voice of a generation, who in theory should be most willing to shed the inherited wisdom of TAs from the 90s — a complete throne sniff disguised as a pat screed against throne sniffing. Days later, the problem was repeated and exacerbated, by the same author — This Recording's Alex Carnevale — in the same place, again attended by like-minded comments.

Carnevale writes:

"Cranky old John Updike has always used his bully pulpit at The New Yorker to blast popular writers who didn't fit his idea of fiction. As he's gotten older, his hatred of anything he doesn't understand has become commensurately more transparent...relentlessly smearing even the most slightly ambitious work that's not in his preferred, realistic style...of men who only think about sex"

So where's the disconnect? Why and how, in 2008, do they not get it?

Clues:
- "realism"
- "men who only think about sex"
- need to defend Toni Morrison
- this poem posted on Carnevale's New School MFA student writing page:

A deer crosses a pattern in a yard
ending a long chain of mediocrity
in the category of animals integral
to my life. graciously plankton
swirl atop his hide, narrating the
brown. Didn't you know--that
it is all happening underwater?

Diagnosis:
Fighting the perceived violence of white male realism by playing it against things that aren't white male or realism, instead of quietly subsuming what was once realism into your truth of realism being a farce like the way mature adults win fights. Cause the way you're doing it now just keeps it in its old place, and since it's so good, keeps that place a winning place. (aka you thought I was racist but it turns out you're racist). This gesture may destabilize Toni Morrison, it may put her on a playing field equal enough to John Updike for him to validly say he likes her white characters, but it also frees your mind. So. Let's just all agree to continue to group Toni and John together in the same class of American fiction, but from here on out let's fully follow through with that gesture and read John Updike like the Toni Morrison of white male collective imagination/group-myth/simple conscious. That's what he is. It's not an oppressive colonizing of normativity, it's "normative fan fiction," and it's beautiful.

< pull quote >
"It's not an oppressive colonizing of normativity, it's "normative fan fiction," and it's beautiful."
< pull quote >

You need to get that, or else you not only lose, you ruin it for everybody, and you end up spending all your time realizing that this is all happening underwater and forcing others to do the same, which, again, ruins it for everybody.

It seems easy enough, but apparently it's going to be a long hard fight.
If I were John Updike here's what I would do:
1. Smile wryly, impishly. The smile would be be mirthful, mirthless, the remains of a true risus pura, or at least the risus pura of what we have slipped into the comfortable habit of calling the bourgeoisie; then a quick, resigned gaze at the cosmos, once filled with such wonder, now seen as airless, mostly lightless space sprawling tirelessly across a vastness capable of absorbing with uncanny ease the constant violence of hurling rocks or jagged gnarls of ice or, less often, one of man's own grand violences, the Icaruses deemed "Challenger" and "Discovery," which I recall most fondly as glimmers in the squinting eyes of women clinging tight to their babies and weekend hats with as many arms; then return my gaze to earth, a world of blunted flesh and stupid objects, a world for which I'd come to know a real affection -- a warmth even -- during my 76 years here.
2. Get to work on a half-hearted but noble attempt at empathy, in short story or novel form, in the voice of the Others I don't understand...but only after doing a little research. This way I can prove that any world view can be mastered by my own, without breakin' a sweat!

And I'd do it all with a painfully well rendered voice, and geometrically perfect model of charm. [i.e. ps- John Updike, if you're reading this, please write a novel from the point of view of a young blogger in 2009. How does his language reflect the way he lives his life and sees the world? How does it inform them? Where's God?].
3. Masturbate but not really enjoy it.

"'
From a Guardian blog post entitled "John Updike: A Bit Old Hat."'
From a later MC post entitled "England: a bit you don't understand anything and if countries had sex, you'd be the kind of gay person people are allowed to hate.""

In conclusion:
-Alex Carnevale, if you're reading this: get off the internet and find a job in the 90s or wherever people care about having other people tell them what's racist/what's narrating the brown (and what wasn't narrating the brown in the 90s?).
- John Updike, again, if you're reading this: let's bro out! Seriously. Let's set up an interview or just some chill time. I'll teach you about twittering and the porous nature of text in the blogosphere, and we can play a game where we compete to figure out the most subtly powerful one-to-one analogies and figurative set-pieces for the contemporary human condition. Do you smoke weed? Would you pick out some internet porn you find particularly noteworthy for me? I/all people would really be interested in that (MILFs? ethnics?) John, man. Let's do this thing. Just "shoot" an e-mail through the so-much-nothing, the ether, at the address provided on this page (top right).

Him: If I told you I wanted to fuck you, would you pretend to believe me?
Her: Yes
Him: When that then traps us into actually making love, should I pretend to take a writerly interest in your vulva, say unsentimental things about the color of the hairs?
Her: Please, yes.

*****************************************************

That's it.

Promises!

The MC got an office!

2009-01-23T09:02:00.001-08:00

Here is our new mailing address:

Bob Dylan wrote a song about it.

Glad to see the New York Times is finally doing its job again. I guess they listened to that inaugural address on responsibility. What are your plans for becoming a more responsible American citizen? I already switched all my light bulbs so I think I'm set.

Now I have to run -- off to pick up my new Blue Ray Prius (just a little gift to myself in anticipation of refinancing our office). See you "tomorrow"!*

* metaphorical tomorrow that means hope / world where all our problems have been solved. I probably won't actually see you, unless you want to go cruisin'.

Gentlemen's Collection

2009-01-13T22:45:00.000-08:00

Love,
Obamicon

In with the new, out with our gold

2009-01-12T15:02:00.000-08:00

Hey guys. Sorry it’s been a while since we’ve blogged. I was busy studying for a big exam, and meanwhile Nick, who was going to keep up the MC during my hiatus, has been preoccupied trying to salvage his trust fund, after he found out that his family put their bottled water industry fortune into the hands of Bernie Madoff (a scandal that hit Jewish-faced people especially hard).

Tough times for everyone. Especially for bloggers who get most of their material from fetishizing the obscenely wealthy (not pointing any fingers -- except at you, Arts & Letters Daily. If that even is your name.) But the MC is back on its feet, and I think we’ve both emerged from this year a little stronger. Nick even wrote a cover song about it:

So in the spirit of the new year, the MC has made a few resolutions:

1) Go print! Now seems like the moment.

2) Spread a hot new slang word, or revive an old slang word. Last year’s campaign to bring back “crazy/beautiful” was such a success that it will be appearing in a New York Times “trends” piece any day now. (If any of you have a mom or dad that writes those pieces, give them a tip. I’m sure somebody’s mom or dad writes those.)

3) Use our status as citizen journalists to hold our more established peer publications to a higher standard of journalism, shine a light on corruption and increase the transparency of the political process, and incite the American reading public to participate more actively in this crazy/beautiful experiment we call democracy.

4) Join an all-women’s gym so we can feel comfortable with our bodies and workout the way we want to workout. (Exclusively groin thrusts and sidebody toning.)

2009 is the MC’s year! I can feel it.

Tenderoni Alert

2008-12-15T13:19:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-24T00:24:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-21T21:38:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

"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?

2008-11-12T15:25:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-10T23:15:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-07T16:56:00.000-08:00

"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

2008-10-30T22:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-29T22:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-29T17:42:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-27T19:59:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-10-19T21:46:00.001-07:00

...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

2008-10-19T20:11:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-30T00:35:00.000-07:00

"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

2008-09-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-26T17:14:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-22T23:13:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

Market Analysis

2008-09-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

The list of the richest men in America was just updated for 2008. The winner? Pampadour C. Moneybags. The loser? Probably my new roommate. He's got squinty eyes like a poor person and washes himself with Axe shower gel.

Forbes Magazine cites the "rising prices of oil and art" for all of the change-ups from last rich ranking season. Now, we all know about the craziness of the oil market, but what's with the art? For those of you who don't know what art is, it's vaginas made out of garbage, or "Garbage Vaginas." The reason it costs so much? Probably my new roommate, who is kind of a dick. When I went to artnet.com to see if I could track rising auction prices in specific art markets, what I found was I could hear that my new roommate was watching a rerun of NCIS really loud and not even changing the channel during commercials, which proves to me that he legitimately enjoys NCIS.

John McCain: Spread out in the soil? I investigate.

2008-09-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

As you probably could have guessed, Liz and I are undecided voters. We're the kind of people who like to wait til we have all the facts. It's called being a responsible citizen. Google it.

On account of this I was so happy to read the following on n+1's website today:

...Above all, the mythology must prove that the man in the flesh, standing before you, is not the man who matters. He is larger than this; his blood has been spilled and his spirit loosed; we will be washed in his blood. Is it a Christian allegory? McCain can’t lift his arms high enough to be pinned to a cross. It is all loose revelation: he died for us; he is the Great Papa in the sky; he was a man, but it’s all right if he should disappear; he is spread out in the soil, and above the clouds; this time, it is Country First.

This point resonates so strong and clear I want to be washed in its blood! You know what I'm saying? You dooooo. How crazy did your "really helpful criticism (and scholarship!) ahead" blinkers start blinking when the author revealed a Christian allegory lurking beneath culture's pale facade?

Opinion section:
Personally, I don't get why pale facades even exist. Sometimes I think we should ban mere images altogether. As a society.

“Who’s That Lady?” : Sarah Palin Edition

2008-09-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

You heard it here first, ‘net fans: John McCain has chosen a woman (!) named Sarah Palin (pronounced Pöul-ee-in) to join him on the Republican ticket.

Everyone seems to have just accepted this news like it was no big deal and moved on. But here at the MC, we like to cut through conventional wisdom and glossy surfaces to get to the true heart of the matter, because that is what journalism really is, assholes. I know because I’ve been to J-School.

"So who is this Sarah Palin character, and what state was she governor of, anyway?" You are probably asking yourselves. Well, I did some research and dug up a thing or two about this “first lady” of American politics. (Fun fact: Palin is the first lady to take part in American politics.) Ms. Palin was governor of Alaska, which was one of the last places in the world to become a state, followed only by Hawaii and a few other “newbies.” The Alaskan state flower is the Forget-Me-Not, which you can find pictures of on the internet.

So, ladies, it’s time to think back to Susan B. Anthony, Martha Washington, Marie Curie, and all the other heroes of ancient times who fought so that women could have the right to drive, be presidents of their local clubs and organizations, and to dress how we want, when we want. (History? More like herstory! If you know what I mean.) This reminds me of one of my all-time favorite quotes: “This is ladies’ night, and the feel is right / This is ladies' night, oh what a night (oh what a night).” Also, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants II. Ladies, if your feel is right, then take that feel to the polls come December. Or, if your husband is the one who makes the political decisions in your household, put on your prettiest top and ask him to vote for Sarah Palin for President. Because I have a dream, to borrow from a popular quote, that together we can make every night Ladies' Night for America. Amen.

DNC: Winners and Losers

2008-08-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Winners: female astronauts, blasting
"If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House"
- Hillary Clinton

Winners: monkey astronauts, Lance Bass, conjecture

Winners: TV drug dealers from 1995
Mark Warner's speech finally gave car phones and the booming car phone market the political recognition they deserve.

Winner: the warmth of Nancy Pelosi's uncompromising femininity

I used to think lesbian sex was 100% scissoring, and the noise it made in my mind sounded like the way Speaker P sands down the end of each of her sentences to a seamless joint between her womanhood and the air around her.

Winner: Ancient Greece, aesthetic criticism
Apparently, the stage set for Obama's speech tonight is going to look like something out of ancient Greece! Like where democracy was invented! Leave it to the Republicans to pick up on that blunder. The McCain camp dubbed the set the "Temple of Obama" and "Barackopolis," and sent press and supporters a "style guide" for how to make a toga! It's like "Earth to Democrats: no one wears togas anymore!!!! We wear screen print t's."

Democrats:

"I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Cause I'm an idiot."

But seriously, I like political criticism and design criticism merging. Especially when the image of Ancient Greece is invoked to support some underlying argument about how democracy and the cult of personality don't work together. Further: ancient Greece is always a good look.

Winner: Mark Shields

Hey Mark! the Kind, Kind Face store called. They want their merch back, dude.

(Also: black jacket, blue/blue striped shirt, green and navy tie motif EVERY DAY. That's how you do it.)

Winner: Gwen Ifill

Hey Gwen! the Sense That You Have Really Strong Healthy Bones Factory called, they want to thank you for sending all their American laborers back to work (over 300 workers).

Losers: Laid off textile factory workers.

Losers in my book: Marc C. and Cody

You assdogs know what you did.

END OF SUMMER BREAKKKDO.WWW.N

2008-08-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

Political Science

2008-08-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

I think the technology most political scientists are overlooking when trying to figure out how to scientifically parse the upcoming presidential election is face morphers. Not here, friends. At the Millennial Crier we're not afraid to use face morphers to ask the tough questions.
Questions like "what if Barack Obama had a white person face?" Even when the answer is:

"exactly like George Bush."

And we're not afraid to ask "what would Michelle Obama look like if she had a white person face?" Even if the answer is

"a lot like Rosie O'Donnell."

These are courtesy of "Face of the Future," where we can use technology to learn about what faces will look like in the future, the future where black people turn white.

What other questions aren't we afriad to answer with face morphers? For starters, "What if the McCains were black?"

even if the answer is "I feel racist now."

"What if John McCain was Chinese?"

even if the answer is "I've learned more about the future than I ever want to know, even though I know I already knew it. Somewhere. Somewhere..."

What if we go far enough into the future that space time collapses back on itself, we're born at death, and our first lady is tiny baby Cindy McCain?

making our president:

And "What if Leelee Sobieski and Hitler had a baby?"

And "what if Lil Wayne and Stevie Nicks had a beautiful angel?"*

*Williamsburg and globalized Williamsburg cells: you're welcome for the boner. And the garbage clothes. Which I made for you.

Falling Over

2008-08-13T22:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know what you guys have been doing with your summer vacations, but I'll tell you what I've been doing:

That made it sound like I was a contestant on Wipeout, which I wasn't. I just like to watch it. So.....woooooh! Summer. Shit has been fucking crazy.

Nancy Franklin recently called this show “a perfect punch line to the human comedy,” which is super true.

On a side note, "supertrue.com" is still for sale as a domain name. I'm thinking of buying it and using it to self-publish all of my monographs. I'm also thinking that's how I will blurb every book that I like, once I get to write blurbs.

I can’t wait to start blurbing.

Now tell me a secret about you...

Anyway, how fun and exciting does this show make life look? It should get an NEA grant for making me fall in love with the human race all over again. Did you know that’s how they award NEA grants nowadays? It is. “Made Liz fall in love with the human race all over again: yes/no.” That’s why they don’t give them to any art that's sad or has a sad ending.

"Call me old-fashioned, but I just think there's enough sadness in real life."
That's a quote by James Joyce.

If I were an alien and I saw this video, I would be like, “Pack your bags, kids, we’re moving to that place. It looks so fun. Blee bloo blorp.”

This one too:

I give it five NEA grants. And an Academy Award.

That reminds me, does anybody else here have OSCAR FEVER???

That was a joke about how my blogs are always too late. Or a joke that I'm completely insane. Whichever makes you LOL harder. Just don't LOL too hard, or you might ROTFL onto your iPods and texting!

That reminds me, does anybody else here have OSCAR FEVER???

Since there's nothing better than trying to dissect humor, let me leave you with this question: why is present-day people falling over almost always funny, but old-timey people falling over (I’m talking to you, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton) is only funny to dads and film professors?

There's some food for thought that will really make you think and maybe even cry.

Blurbs! Sorry I love you so much.

Yahoo advertises on Google Adsense, wins

2008-08-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

MC MERCH

2008-07-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

We finally got around to printing the t-shirts!

Let everyone in your life know where you stand in the culture war, and the smaller subtler battle within that war, with our stylish new Millennial Crier Ts. With one of these on your back, you'll have all the kids on the street asking "did that person go to high school or college with someone who has a blog?" You can save your breath, because the answer will be clear.

e39.99
(euros only)

Australia; Acting Tips

2008-07-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, sorry it's been so long. I've been really busy with my internship in the corporate law sector, and I've also been working hard on my networking skills, as well as spending a lot of time personal training. Combine that with constantly looking things up on my iPod Touch, meeting people at clubs and buying them drinks out of my online poker winnings, and watching the ol' sports whenever I have the time, and you've pretty much described my summer in a nutshell!!

Actually, I just got back from a long vacation in Australia. If you’re wondering what it’s like, allow me to paint a picture:

1. Full of sharks.
2. Full of Christians.
3. Rich cultural heritage.

By the way, I’ll be leaving the Millennial Crier tomorrow to start my job as Chief of the Australian Bureau of Tourism. It’s been a good run.

Toward the end of our trip, the Pope arrived in Sydney for World Youth Day, a huge gathering of young Christians from all over the world, and all the TV news stories were about the Pope just doing things. Here’s a verbatim transcript of Australian TV that week:

Anchorwoman: During his visit to the Sydney Zoo today, the Pope revealed that he has a soft spot for koala bears. But he’s not so sure about those snakes!!!!
Anchorman: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Anchorwoman: We don’t have a Bill of Rights.

In conclusion, Australia is a land of contrast. One thing they export is corn or, as the Indians call it, “maize.”

Another big surprise was that on my flight back, Dennis Quaid, the reigning king of in-flight entertainment, was only in two movies. He was dethroned by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, of all people, who was in every movie I watched (The Savages, Charlie Wilson’s War, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead). That guy is alright, but I wish he would try a little harder at acting. Just hone your craft a little, is all I'm saying. Maybe you should try getting into the mindset of the character you're playing, and staying there -- even after the camera has stopped rolling. Remember, you won't win a People’s Choice Award for being “good enough.”

Speaking of which, I just went to see Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Here’s what people love most, it turns out:

1. loud visual ironies
2. the Red Hook sugar refinery
3. things being reflected in pools

People also like gloomy visions of urban decay, still. I thought that was a 90s thing! People are so 90s.

That's just a little gift from me to you, friends. A lil' gift from me to you. I was going to get you an actual gift, but I spent the last of my Australian Euros at the club, buying shots for all the friends I made while backpacking at the youth hostel. Really, really chill people. We had some intense conversations. Study abroad. BLOGGER OUT

Book Recommendations

2008-07-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

People continue to write books about how the internet is making everyone stupider than them. This is a new trend in books that looks like it's going to be productive and steer the world back on track. These authors really did their research!

So, when it's too hot to keep cool this summer, pick up one of these informative titles:

Both these books reminded me that best the thing I've ever read on the internet is the myth of King Thamus, who was wise enough to teach the world that they shouldn't use the new invention of reading because it would make them stupid.
Which further reminds me of two other great books you should bring to the beach this summer.

More Allegories, PLEASE

2008-07-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Did you know that, if you think about it, the new Batman movie is actually the perfect Batman movie for 2008? Because the Joker is a terrorist and Harvey Dent is Obama. Batman is traditional notions of America because he teaches us that black-and-white two-dimensional superheroes don't really exist anymore, and that sometimes the best we can hope for is the illusion of justice. The Batmobile is Darfur, and Michael Cain is the Internet. Heath Ledger is Industry and Maggie Gyllenhaal is melty pig face Hilary Clinton. Morgan Freeman is either God or Nelson Mandela with moles. The rest of the cast is the cast of How I Met Your Mother. I don't know what the caged bird is.

Anyway, a lot of people think that this is just some stupid blow-em-up action movie based on a cartoon like what babies watch, but it's actually almost as highly intelligent as reading while listening to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. You can tell because the plot sounds like what your friends say when they say what Noam Chomsky says.

Interestingly, every preview before the Batman movie -- save James Bond which needs to get in my face already -- is also a self-conscious allegory of the contemporary condition. As predicted by this very blog years ago, the world is getting so much smarter. And, thankfully, it's rubbing our face in it, like all the best smart things.

@ngels

2008-07-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

Bad case of the Summertime Blues (kidney damage)

2008-07-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

Newsflash: Summer's here and blogs are gay. [NYT]
We haven't been posting much as we've both finished our highly impressive educations and we have BIG BIG things happening in our lives!!
For instance: Liz has a sweet internship with a leading trans-fat corporation that she got through her parents and sex, and I'm working for this great non-profit, raising awareness about cat scratch fever in the Sudan. I hope to use a lot of the skills I learned last summer working for a non-profit that raised awareness about yellow fever in artist and graduate student communities. Knowledge is the best "immunization." As they say. Leading doctors.

But in all seriousness, Liz is vacationing in Australia, and I recently got injured at the gym, started urinating blood, and couldn't move my torso for several days. Paging Doctor Gross, am I right? I am. I am. Doctor Gross is a specialist in helping people deal with blogging the phrase "I got injured at the gym." He's just the best.

Just checking in. Sorry about my taking a turn for the aBsUrd, but a little redonkulousness now and then is exactly what the doctor ordered. OooOOooOo DOCTOR!

More Alternative Fuels

2008-06-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

If I could sum up Minnesota in a single Youtube video, it would be people peddling a communal bicycle, responsibly drinking beers, cheering each other on, while wearing socks with sandals.

“Mildly Cheering Each Other On, Wearing Socks with Sandals” will be the title of my memoirs about growing up. Not to be confused with my memoirs about becoming the first woman astronaut.

Don’t get me wrong, next time I’m home I plan to ride this multi-passenger beer bicycle to every single event I attend. So if I make any plans with you, count on me showing up eight hours late and drunk. (Ma Nishtana, as my Jewish friends would say. Hi, Jewish friends!!)

Still, it will be tough to beat my last MN mass transit adventure, the light rail. Even if the light rail didn’t live up to Nick’s lofty expectations ("gliding on pure beams of light”), I would ride that legacy of Jesse Ventura any day.

And that, my friends, is what she said.

The Magic R. Kelly Bus

2008-06-17T14:19:00.000-07:00

Everyone, I’m blogging from a bus. A bus! I feel like a rich person. If there’s one thing I know about rich people, it’s that they love the bus. Almost as much as counting their money.

I’d recommend this Bolt Bus, it’s pretty clean and so far nobody has tried to sell me crack. Or tried to balance open tomato soup cans on the top of my seat just to see if they will fall, for FOUR STRAIGHT HOURS.

On the down side, it lacks that special Greyhound scent of injustice. Also, I'm pretty confident my identity is in the process of being stolen.

I don't know about the name "Bolt," though. It makes me think of doing things without paying for them, or running from your fears. Well you can keep on running, bus, but there's one thing you can never outrun: your heart. Your tiny, mechanical bus heart.

That was a quote from "The Winter's Tale."

Here are some other things I did from the internet bus:
1) read up on the R. Kelly trial
2) listened to some R. Kelly
3) unsuccessfully tried to stream an R. Kelly video
4) went on a journey through the inside of the human body
5) almost threw up
6) Purchased the island of France.

Anyway thank god for modern comforts. How did people even live before?

It's time for the MC’s Travel Tip of the Week:
Don't ride the bus.

Politics

2008-06-17T07:56:00.002-07:00

Here's some food for thought for our readers in the media studies department. I hope you're hungry.
"Tim Russert Sculpture"

"After hearing of Tim's death I felt compelled to somehow show my respect. This sculpture is a work in progress of a great man, son, father, journalist and American. My heart goes out to the friends and family members of Tim Russert."

In other political news, watch Eleanor Roosevelt tell a joke about murdering Japs.

Eleanor Roosevelt looks great, eh? And a voice like an insane, dying bird, eh? It's a shame the camera guy only got her balls in that shot, though.

(Her face looks like balls.)

GET SILLY! II

2008-06-17T07:56:00.001-07:00

DADuuuuuh! II

2008-06-16T16:25:00.001-07:00

My dad made a youtube about what rap music looks like to him:

Just a lot of bright colors and loud noises and young people wasting time.

This also seems like the kind of song/band a teenager on a sitcom would defy their parents over, in order to see them live in concert at the Central City Auditorium or Killer Lou's All Night Dance Club.
This reminds me, here are the concerts I'm excited about this summer:

The Murder Doggs, Freaky Freddie, Fresh Murder, The Crusty Maggots, Grungy and the Losers, Unprotected Sex Rave, Dr. Diss, Gangsta Teeth, Drugzapalooza, and Radiohead.
But where am I going to come up with $25?!?!?!!

ANYWAY
GET SILLY, EVERYBODY!!!

and Tippy Toe, while you're at it. It's hot out.

I'm afraid to go to a party in the south.

this is just a popularity contest

2008-06-11T09:20:00.000-07:00

from CNN

"Kerstin has said she wants to see the ocean and go to a concert by Robbie Williams, the British singer, said Dr. Berhold Kepplinger, director of the clinic where the family are now living.

He described how excited Kerstin was to hear Robbie Williams songs in her hospital room, and that she was moving around to the music so much that doctors even had to quiet her down.

It was then, Kepplinger said, that doctors became confident Kerstin can eventually become fully healthy and develop normally."

and Don't miss!:

(I google image searched the house of horrors to see what it was like:

That looks like a *terrible* place to be molested by your dad for 20 years. So scary.)

Also this:

and this:

Burj Dubai! Burj everyone!

2008-06-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

the computer-generated fantasy known as the "worlds tallest building" in a place called "Dubai"
-->

Has apparently become a reality:
-->
Thanks to the riches of local sheiks/ the blood of millions.

To save time, I'll post this now:

In other news Dubai has completely exploded. Everyone in the world died.

FYI: in the time I saved posting that now I made these great "Seashell Critters"

with my foster daughter

Aren't those great? Love em.

Top 10 websites

2008-06-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

10. garysinise.com

9. HurricaneKatrina.com

X 5

everybody get out your bookmarks

aaaa
geeeeh

Stop Not Making Any Sense

2008-05-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

David Byrne, I don’t understand you at all. Sometimes you are the best, and then other times you are the guy who gets millions of dollars to make art in a cool building and comes up with this.

When you get both hands busy on the keyboard — as anyone who comes to see the work will be allowed to do — the room roars and clatters to life, seeming to harbor an invisible band playing something written by Phillip Glass in collaboration with the Stooges, a Japanese sho virtuoso and a kitchen full of 3-year-olds with pots and ladles.

Sounds great!

No it doesn't.

And then you say things like this:

"I’m not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down."

It’s about time. I’m sick of those professionals, always walking around with their noses in the air, acting like they know everything about everything. Stop pushing your filthy commodities on me!! Why don’t you just go back to your corporate headquarters and keep polluting the planet with your child labor corporations corporations homophobia oppression. Jerks.

I do still want to see that building though. Who wants to come with me? Afterwards maybe we can rent American Beauty and learn to open our eyes to the beauty everywhere around us. Look closer, guys. Look closer.

Pandora

2008-05-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

Do you guys like Pandora? I made up a fun game to play with it. Here’s what you do: create the wackiest combination of “favorite artists” you can think of, and then see what logic it uses to connect them. (WARNING: things might get *pretty* wacky.)

You can also approach it as a creative writing exercise: make up a character who is practically an alien from Mars and then see what Pandora recommends to them. For instance, I made up Jordan “Tails” Sharpton the third, whose three favorite bands are P.Diddy, Fleetwood Mac, and Deathcab for Cutie. Based on this, Tails was recommended the latest single by The Kooks, because it had in common “pop rock qualities, a subtle use of vocal harmony, minor key tonality, and a distinctive male lead.” While it’s true that P.Diddy’s vocal harmonies are nothing if not subtle, you can see the beads of sweat on Pandora’s little electronic forehead trying to come up with that one. “Come on Pandora, you can do this. Just come up with some bullshit. Anything is better than nothing.”

My next character, Denise Talbots, loves Xzibit, Everlast, Harvey Danger, and the musical stylings of Jennifer Love Hewitt. When I entered that into Pandora, it started playing screeching noises and said “Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because xiadidshgwbipawqjfewhi...” Then its eyes started spinning around and steam came out of its ears.

They should make a Pandora 2.0 where you enter in bands you like and it gives you your psychological profile or it tries to draw a picture of your face. In spite of the fact that this technology fails me in all the things it was intended for (when I did it the real way it literally played me a Sting song followed by an REM song. Then it called me a faggot and pushed my face in the mud), it still has so much promise as gaming technology. Please try to tap into that promise, nerds of the world. Tails is counting on you. We’re all counting on you.

" 'Sup, I know what it's like. "

That song was so real. They should have made it the theme song to The Wire.

full disclosure

2008-05-23T13:02:00.001-07:00

I had a lot of fun with that last post

T.G.I. HIGHDAY: OBAMA INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE

2008-05-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been living under A ROCK for the past few weeks, you've probably been seeing Barack Obama's face everywhere you look and turn. Though his name isn't a household name, "Space Martin Luther King" seems to be the most popular kid in school! These days. I recently visited him in his space house to find out who this asshole really is.

The Obama house

Nick: I was really "hoping" you wouldn't "change" your mind about this interview, Senator Obama.
Obama: (laughter)
N:(laughter)
O: (laughter)
N: (laughter)
O: (laughter)
N: this eye contact is intense
O: (laughing) I am so drunk

Barack, Michelle, Rudy, and Vanessa happy at home

conclusion after the jump

what I love most about Lil Wayne

2008-05-09T08:41:00.001-07:00

1. That he's clearly going to be alive for a long time to come.
2. Relationship with Robin Thicke.
3. Artistic.
4. That he's dead.

Fairies

2008-05-08T22:50:00.000-07:00

I love that Wolfgang Schivelbusch. Here’s part of an essay he wrote about electricity:

…at the beginning of the century, electricity and modernity were equated -- electric current was viewed as nothing less than the medium and energy source of modernity, and the industry it produced and nourished to life was still perceived as something that had little in common with the capitalist industrialism typical of the preceding period. In contrast, electricity was widely associated with the miraculous. Indeed, the fin de siècle imagined this new form of energy as the "electric fairy" that would free the industrial world from its gloomy accompaniments, creating an effortless, agreeable, and, above all, work- and exploitation-free society of pleasure. It promised redemption.

Why did people used to think that everything new was a type of fairy? Like how in the nineteenth century they called photographs “fairy pictures.” They probably also called cars “fairy wagons” and movies “fairy movies.”

Speaking of fairy movies, anybody want to go see a play?

S-N-A-P

“What is this marvelous fairy book before me?”

It’s just a newspaper. Calm down, olden times.

“What is this thrilling yet dangerous fairyland of foreign wonders?”
What are you a newborn infant? It’s just a newspaper. Take a pill. Jeez.

"Holy fucking shit! A newspaper!"

China: Playing it cool

2008-05-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most of you read this in Business Week

"Because of government restrictions on the channel, most Chinese never see [CNN]. Yet it has become such a popular target that an amateur song has become a hit on the Internet entitled, "Don't Be Too CNN." As the song's refrain puts it:

"Don't believe that lies will become mottos if they are repeated a thousand times,/
What's the purpose of racking your brains to turn fraud into truth/
Don't be too CNN/
I would rather believe you were silly and innocent."

Did you know that song is actually about Dave Coullier?

Have I Got a Screenplay for You

2008-05-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

How Bill Clinton Got His Groove Back

This was the headline when I opened the NYT website today. Can you imagine what a good sequel that would make?

In case you can’t, I wrote out the plot summary for you:

"Bill Clinton (Bill Clinton) is a very successful forty-something African-American stock broker living in San Francisco, who is persuaded by his colorful New York girlfriend Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg) to take a well deserved, first-class vacation to Kingston, Jamaica. As he soaks in the beauty of the island, he encounters a strapping young islander, Winston Shakespeare (Taye Diggs). His pursuit of Winston turns into a hot and steamy romance that forces Bill Clinton to take personal inventory of his life and try to find a balance between his desire for love and companionship, and the responsibilities of mother and corporate executive.”

I blockquoted these for you

2008-04-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a new MC feature called Letting Things Speak for Themselves (it is the blogging equivalent of pointing at something, or photography, or blogging). This one, a poem from the latest New Yorker, was inspired by National Poetry Month, and by this funny post on Videogum, and by Nick’s very own poetry submission to the New Yorker.

Here Name Your
by Dora Malech

My friend spends all summer
mending fence for the elk to blunder

back down and the cows to drag
the wires and the snow to sit and sag

on, so all the twist and hammer and tauten
and prop amounts at last to nought, knot, tangle.

The next year he picks
up his pliers and fixes

the odds all over again. There are no
grownups, and I think that all of us children know

and play some variation on this theme, the game of all join
hands so that someone can run them open.

Then war whoops, shrieks, and laughter
and regather together

as if any arms might ever really hold.
I’m trying to finger the source—pleasure of or need

for—these enactments of resistance, if Resistance
is indeed their name. I’m trying to walk the parallels to terminus—

call them lickety-split over rickety bridge,
tightrope, railroad tie, or plank as you see fit—

trying to admit to seeing double,
innumerable,
to finding myself beset by myself
on all sides, my heart forced by itself,

for itself, to learn not only mine
but all the lines—

crow’s flight, crow’s-feet, enemy, party, picket,
throwaway, high tide, and horizon—to wait

in the shadows of scrim each night
and whisper the scene. Always, some part

of the heart must root for the pliers, some
part for the snow’s steep slope.

LOVE. IT. I’m so glad that took up space in a magazine that I pay money to receive. My favorite part was either the enjambment in the fourth stanza or the part about fingering.

Anyway, two cheers for contemporary poetry. And two cheers for blogging!

That brings me to a debate Nick and I have had many times: Which number is the funniest?

a) 2
b) -1
c) 5 or so
d) 100
e) millions

I uploaded these for you

2008-04-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

So good.

FRIGGIN MERLOT!

Like "Mathnet"

2008-04-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

STOP THE PRESSES...MATH IS COOL! Here's a cool new math discovery from Discovery News:

"Earth-like planets have relatively short windows of opportunity for life to evolve, making it highly doubtful intelligent beings exist elsewhere in the universe, according to newly published research based on a mathematical probability model."

Then just do P.E.R.M.D.A.S.

"Earthlings overcame horrendous odds -- Watson pegs it at less than 0.01 percent over 4 billion years -- to achieve life. The harsh reality is that we don't have much time left."

"Wow, Math. Thanks. That's so cool how you can...thanks...wow..."
-Everyone

Everyone after Math leaves the room:

nothing.

Happy 420

2008-04-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

youtube proves everyone loves weed: officially published: officially true

even that guy!

<3s it. <===========3s it. Sorry you <3 weed so much you old bag!!!

writing a novel

2008-04-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

This was featured on YouTube yesterday. It's called "we write a novel together..."

you're supposed to respond by posting your own video of the next part of the novel.

America responded:

"we're writing a novel!"

"can you shut up, we're trying to write a novel"

"I'm writing 100 Years of Solitude"

"One novel, comin' up"

"we know what a novel is and we're reading it as a couple"

but since the 4 people who read this study novels at Harvard, I'll also say that he has a point in a novel being quietly saying something about trees, your father being killed be the first car, and being a Jew from a European country that's boring.

and since one of those people is my friend who will remember, remember when I got stoned at your house and wrote this poem for the New Yorker:

"I am
from
eastern europe or something.
all of my family is dead."

Breathe a little easier

2008-04-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

my understanding of life just got a cool new support system

"In 1995, 56-year-old Sonny Graham was dying of congestive heart failure and needed a heart.
Terry Cottle, a 33-year-old laborer from Summerville, SC, had just shot himself in the head.
Graham received Cottle's heart, recovered and eventually sought out Cottle's wife, Cheryl, to thank her for the gift of life.
From the moment Sonny Graham first laid eyes on Cheryl, he felt like he had known her for years.
"She gave me this big smile, and I couldn't keep my eyes off her," he told the Island Packet newspaper in December 2006.
Graham left his wife of 35 years and married Cheryl.
Then, last week, he shot himself in the head almost exactly as Terry Cottle had.
After receiving his donor's heart, friends and family say, Graham in some ways became him.
He married the same woman, started drinking the same beer - though he'd never been a beer drinker - and ended his life the same way."

In other news:
cats are dogs, God is real, I don't understand anything, and I'm never going to stop crying.

That's all crochet!

2008-04-12T10:51:00.000-07:00

Here’s an early 420 gift to you, readers (you can’t say I don’t care):

That’s all crochet! For realsies.

It's part of this "crochet coral reef project," which is my new boyfriend. I know it looks a little bit like an Anthropologie catalogue, but if you ask me there's nothing better than art that takes old-fashioned mimesis, filters it through an abstract principle, and then turns out to be about saving the planet! (Hence my closet full of holographic Humani-tees.) Also, I like art that doesn't have its effect until you say something like "that's all crochet!"

Anyway, this makes me want to learn handicraft. Or basic geometry. Or to appreciate the natural environment.

Here's my impression of the coral reef project artists:

You're gonna love this

2008-04-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

This is the post with guest star Marlee Matlin where she plays our deaf girlfriend.

We run all over the internet trying to book tickets to the concert before we realize how stupid we are, but it turns out she's cool with it and we learn that just because you're deaf doesn't mean you can't hear music (you can hear it with your whole body! Sometimes our deaf girlfriend (Marlee Matlin) thinks she can hear it better than people who can hear!) and we've never had more fun at a concert!

Don't forget to join us for our next post where we will have forgotten all about the time we had a deaf girlfriend and the impact that made on our lives.

Great News for Baseball Card Fans

2008-04-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

Omigodyouguysdidyouhear? It’s time to throw out your internet, or put it in the old box in the attic where you store your video cassettes, laser discs, landlines, 3D printers, and bicycles.

From the people who brought you the internet comes [drumroll]… The Grid! [triumphant cymbal clash]

What, you ask, is The Grid?
It’s basically just the internet, only faster.
[feeble cymbal clash]

No, just playin’. I am seriously already in love with The Grid. It had me at “could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images.”

Remember when this was like, “Aaaah! So amazing":

Ten years from now, the Internet will seem like a giant Magic Eye.
Because we will all be totally cool with THIS:

Me in the Future: "I'm totally cool with you, hologram man. I'm just snacking on some future-cheetos as we sit here in separate corners of the ~~earth~~ multiverse, shooting the breeze, one hologram to another. Has anyone ever told you you look like Alec Baldwin?"

I bow down before you, mighty Grid.

My Hypertext Journey into the Ninth Circle of Hell

2008-03-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

I just got an email advertising a screening of a film called "Polis is This," so I decided to look it up. It turns out it is about the poet Charles Olson. One of the blurbs in the ad, from the Boston Phoenix, called it "The best film on an American poet ever." Another blurb, from somebody named Iain Sinclair, called it this:

"Coherent, topographically astute, witnessed."

After reading that sentence, I wikipedia'd "Iain Sinclair," and learned that he is a British writer and filmmaker whose work is rooted "within the influences of psychogeography."

Interesting!!

So I clicked on "psychogeography," and as you might imagine, I learned a bunch of meaningful facts.

Then I went back to the Iain Sinclair page and clicked on a link to an article about him in the London Times. Here's how the article began:

IT IS A CITY THAT forgets. It is a city of the forgotten. You can still disappear without trace in London. It calls to those whose one desire is to vanish. Here you can, in the old phrase, “go under”. Here you can “break”. The city is built upon lost things.

Unfortunately, my hypertext journey was forced to end there, because it turned out I had barfed all over myself and was drowning in my own barf.

Trendspotting

2008-03-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

Here is the opening sentence of an essay by Alfred Stieglitz , from 1897, called "The Hand Camera - Its Present Importance":

Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze.

I feel like Alfred Stieglitz wrote that sentence expressly for the Millennial Crier.

That is all.

SexyBack

2008-03-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

19th-century Man: I've invented a magical new medium called "photography"! What shall we use it for?
Julia Margaret Cameron: Babies acting sexy!
All of the 19th Century [heartily]: Agreed!

20th-century Man: I've invented a magical new medium called "sound cinema"! What shall we --
20th-century America: Babies acting sexy!

21st-century Scientist: I've invented a magical new medium called "Youtube"! What--
21st-century Global Village: Do you even have to ask?

My Dentist: Clearly I should hang up pictures of sexy cartoon bananas all over my waiting room. There's nothing people like better to look at when they are just waiting.

Cartoonists: Except for cartoon cats acting sexy. That image arose from our collective unconscious at some point and we've been reproducing it ever since, as if it's something that humans naturally and intuitively relate to.

People across Time: We are such weirdos.

Me [slowly backing out of room]: Agreed.

the battle rages on

2008-03-03T01:23:00.000-08:00

I'm glad Carly Simon's son finally stepped up and addressed the question "Who's better: Snoop Dogg or Carly Simon's son?" head on. Check his sick new version of the radio edit of The Doggfather's latest single on his myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/bentaylorofficial

oh, here's Carly Simon's son:

Isn't it cool when white people respect black people things? JK. Snoop Dogg isn't really a black person's thing. Isn't it cool when white people make jokes based on the assumption that they are clearly lamer than black people, and in doing so reveal how desperately they want to believe that some better, realer, cooler, not boring and lame way of life really does exist, even though we all secretly know it totally doesn't? Anyway, keep the dream alive and give a listen to Carly Simon's son! I'd here like to point out a similar structure in my argument about why you should never actually fuck a butthole.

Hey! how about let's forget that.

This reminds me that I've been slipping on the MC's "Holler of the Week" feature. This week's top holler went a little something like this:
me: Ooo girl, you're looking like like a young Carly Simon tonight
girl: ....
The girl turned out to be a horse fetus.
::::a-ZINGAGE!!!!!::::::
(cause Carly Simon looks like a horse fetus.)

News can be fun too!

2008-03-02T02:11:00.000-08:00

cOoL lInk AheAd:
STUDY FIND DOGS, ROBOTS CHEER ELDERLY

Here's a cute story that reminds us that we are all just blind idiots who spend our lives randomly bumping into other blind idiots, and that we are all locked in private dream worlds (IMPENETRABLE!) where we make up lie-stories called cool things like "meaning," "value," and "love."

capitalists: let's play on that with our new robots.
me: FUCK YOU, CAPITALISTS! (desperately clingin' to my lie-stories...4 lyfe!!!!!!!!!)

So Hot Right Now: Essentialism!

2008-03-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

The NYT Magazine, which has officially changed its name to the Gender Pseudoscience Times Magazine, has an interesting story on single-sex education:

On that November day in Foley, Ala., William Bender pulled a stool up to a lectern and began reading to his fourth-grade boys from Gary Paulsen’s young-adult novel “Hatchet.” Bender’s voice is deep and calm, a balm to many of his students who lack father figures or else have parents who, Bender says, “don’t want to be parents. They want to be their kids’ friends.” Bender paused to ask one of his boys, who said he was feeling sick, “Are you going to make it, brother?” Then he kept reading. “ ‘The pain in his forehead seemed to be abating. . . .’ What’s abating, gentlemen?” The protagonist of “Hatchet” survives a plane crash and finds himself alone by an insect-infested lake. Bender encouraged his boys to empathize. They discussed how annoying it is, when you’re out hunting, to be swarmed by yellow flies.

Meanwhile, in Michelle Gay’s fourth-grade class, the girls sang a vigorous rendition of “Always Sisters” and then did a tidy science experiment: pouring red water, blue oil and clear syrup into a plastic cup to test which has the greatest density, then confirming their results with the firsthand knowledge that when you’re doing the dishes after your mother makes fried chicken, the oil always settles on top of the water in the sink.

First of all, shout out to my boy Gary Paulson.

Second of all, what is Enlightenment? The use of knowledge to cast off the shackles of servitude. Or, to paraphrase Kant, the use of science to confirm your dishwashing technique.

Speaking to a group of sixth graders, Sax explained his theory that girls’ hearing ability is much better than boys’, as is girls’ sense of smell. The girls, just on the edge of puberty, sat utterly rapt, seeming to want to understand why their brothers, boy cousins, cute skater-dude neighbors and fathers were so weird. A few weeks after the lecture, Sax sent me a packet of color photocopies of thank-you notes he had received from the girls. One, from a girl with two fathers, read: “Dr. Sax, Thank you so much for coming to Burkes. . . . I had a smell in my room and my Dads couldn’t smell it but I could. I thought I was going crazy. It ends up there was a dead rat in the wall. Hope you come back soon.

There you have it: already one concrete benefit to Sax's line of inquiry. Let’s keep going down this path. Frankly, I don’t see how any of its costs or reverberations could outweigh that girl getting rid of her dead rat.

I’m positive that the anecdote about the dead rat rotting in the wall is an allegory for gender essentialism, but I'm still trying to work out the ending. Maybe the rat comes to life and eats the little girl, and it turns out that her Dads smelled the rat the entire time but had been willfully repressing it in order to drive her crazy. Then an army of little girls comes over and fills the house with buckets of oil and water mixture, drowning the rat. Then they do the Dads’ dishes, and all seems to be well again! But in the last sentence we (the readers) discover that the rat is still alive in a sewer, feeding off of anti-depressants and transfats, and growing stronger than ever as it plots its revenge.

Lookout, Kafka!

TAKE HEED!

2008-02-25T14:57:00.000-08:00

"92 year-old Irving Fields has been writing hit songs since the 1920's. He recorded over 90 albums, including his biggest LP hit, Bagels and Bongos. He was inspired to write a song about Youtube..."

He gets it!

Did you see Hillary Clinton's latest campaign video?

2008-02-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

I find it both defeated and empowered. I guess that's women for you.

Genius of Love

2008-02-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

If you like art that blatantly reinforces self-serving Romantic myths of artistic genius, you gotta try science that blatantly reinforces Romantic myths of artistic genius.

Click that link to see the scientific proof that all geniuses are solitary young men who just don't fit in cause no one understands.

Recently I did my own scientific study on The Spirit of History.

+

I found out it displaces 14 milliliters of water. Then I burned a peanut. In conclusion my hypothesis was proven correct and Garden State is the best movie and everyone secretly wants to be me.

Data section:

Read This

2008-02-09T09:41:00.000-08:00

From Sarah Boxer’s NYRB essay about bloggy writing:

Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop. They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave you in the dust. They're not responsible for your education. Bloggers, as Mark Liberman, one of the founders of the blog called Language Log, once noted, are like Plato. :-) The unspoken message is: Hey, I'm here talking with my buddies. Keep up with me or don't. It's up to you. Here is the beginning of Plato's Republic:
I went down yesterday to the Peiraeus with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to pay my devotions to the Goddess, and also because I wished to see how they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration.

Wait a second! Who is Ariston? What Goddess? What festival?

I like this comparison of bloggers to Plato. Personally, though, I am reminded more of this passage from the Symposium:

Socrates: Have you guys seen “Drunk History” yet? Hilarious.
Also, this totally cracked me up at work today:

One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is that the Fug girls are way too hard on Zac Efron. Anyway who cares how he dresses when he is such a hottie!!!1!
Agathon: I can not refute you, Socrates.
Aristophanes: Man and Woman used to be One or something.

Endorsements, Part Two

2008-02-04T19:58:00.000-08:00

The L.A. Times’ endorsement of Obama had me at hello, and then had me again at “experience has value only if it is accompanied by courage and leads to judgment,” and then it sealed the deal with a surprise turn to my favorite type of language:

In the language of metaphor, Clinton is an essay, solid and reasoned; Obama is a poem, lyric and filled with possibility. Clinton would be a valuable and competent executive, but Obama matches her in substance and adds something that the nation has been missing far too long -- a sense of aspiration.

I liked this metaphor so much I decided to turn it into what in literary circles is known as an “extended metaphor":

The essay that is Hillary Clinton is an essay I copied off the internet, written by a kid who also sells his Ritalin and is rich from online investing, and I could probably get a better grade if I wrote my own essay, but I’d rather just keep watching this Project Runway marathon.

The lyric poem that is Barack Obama is this:

Sing on, dearest brother—warble your reedy song;
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid, and free, and tender! O wild and loose to my soul! O wondrous singer!
You only I hear…yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart;)
Yet the lilac, with mastering odor, holds me.

That poem is by me.

Endorsements

2008-02-03T01:41:00.001-08:00

Caroline Kennedy wrote an essay in the New York Times a few days ago endorsing Barack Obama. It was called "A President Like My Father." In it she argues that Barack Obama should be president because he reminds her of her father. I agree. That's how you should make the decision. But I'd like to amend the prescription by saying this includes the option of voting for the candidate who you understand to be least like your father, with the knowledge that with this option you reveal your secret understanding of your father even more clearly than voting for the candidate that directly reminds you of your father. Anyway, she's choosing the straight-ahead route, and, interestingly, that's also how I roll. Which is why this year I am endorsing this Cheers season 4 DVD boxed set.

How about Caroline Kennedy though? I like to think I'm sympathetic.

Trends

2008-01-31T17:11:00.000-08:00

Here is an article about Duncan Watts, a sociologist of trends who asks questions like this:

…we know that Madonna became a breakout star in 1983. But if you rewound the world back to 1982, would Madonna break out again?

To answer this question, Watts conducted an elaborate science experiment that yielded this result:

Trends, it suggested, aren't merely hard to predict and engineer -- they occur essentially at random.

So basically, Watts is challenging Malcolm Gladwell's "tipping point" theory by arguing that everything is meaningless. Which, btw, is my all-time favorite debate tactic. I used it in seminar just the other day:

Liz's colleague: It seems to me that modernist narrative technique owes more to Jane Austen than it does to Henry James.
Liz: Everything is meaningless!
Debate moderator: Liz wins again.

According to Watts, the band 52metro (cool name, guys!) could have just as easily become the breakout star of 1983 instead of Madonna; or the breakout star of 1933, instead of Hitler. In other words, nobody who is famous had to have become famous: that even includes Christina Aguilera, David Hyde Pierce, and Rachel Ray. Can you imagine the world without them? IT COULD HAVE BEEN. I want to see NOVA reenact that alternate universe, because it sounds completely, inconceivably insane.

Anyway, popular culture is founded on radical contingency, pass it on.
(Oh wait, the MC already came to that realization weeks ago, and all it took was the help of a little accident called Fleetwood Mac. A fragile, beautiful little accident.)

But you don't have to take my word for it!

2008-01-23T21:01:00.000-08:00

Swimming
Unbelievable
Sea of Death
Always there for you
Neat

For more info on David Rieff's new memoir about his mom, Susan Sontag, go HERE, or contact your local library.com!

Mastery

2008-01-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

So a couple months ago I filled out a form listing all of the classes I have taken in the last year and a half, and now I have a master’s degree!! Life. Anyway, the first thing I did, naturally, was to take it to Kinko’s and have it photocopied, and then have the photocopy blown up to comical proportions (5 x 6 feet), and then have that framed in pure gold and hung in my Jacuzzi room. The second thing I did was to pause, step back, and take stock of the last year and a half. I came up with the following list.

Ways I have improved myself since college
1. More confident tone in emails
That’s all I’ve got.
The list had some other things on it before, but they got crossed off in afterthought. Like:
2. Spend less money on pot
Afterthought: I’m not sure where this has left me. Plus, now I just spend money on adult things that I thought were stupid in college, like ordering any drink other than “water” in a restaurant.
3. Read the newspaper
Afterthought: Even though I’ve been reading the newspaper for a while now, I still feel like an impostor in the way you do at the gym for the first time. I’m constantly waiting for the newspaper to be like, “You’re using that elliptical machine backwards, idiot.”
4. More accepting of otherness
Afterthought: By accepting things that younger me thought were lame/baffling, and swore never to understand, I may be betraying my teen self. So #4 is sort of a pyrrhic victory. King Pyrrhus being in this case the World Music phase of David Byrne.

In short: Here’s to being a master, me. A true master of life.

Good News Day

2008-01-20T16:38:00.000-08:00

I'm glad we still have news like this:
Young teens run away, likely headed West
Still no word from lovelorn runaway teens

Do it, Gage and Hannah. Throw your bi-polar girlfriend, your dog Mandy, and your Xbox into the family minivan and just live it.

It looks like everyone is going to these kids' myspace profiles, but I'm drawing a line. In an admirable, deeply attractive show of decency. Let's hope this one ends well.

On the less romanticizable intersections of being wrong, the internet, and misunderstanding relationships tip, this story:

Newmarket police investigating infant listed 'for sale' online

And finally CNN celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day: