BWSS: Teacup Puppies

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:

B.

W.

S.

S.

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

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

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



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

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

Jonathan Larroquette's parents:

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

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

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

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

Laughter is One Kind of Medicine, Among Thousands

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

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

here's one of the sample videos:

It's stupid.

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

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

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


"He look a like a mAAaaAAAaan"


Pretty.

don't say yr srry

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


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

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

LOCO!

I was really excited to hear that Alberto Gonzales finally resigned, but less excited when I realized I was thinking of Carlos Mencia. They're easy to confuse because they're both so hilarioso.