The 3D printer is going to revolutionize daily life and overhaul the relationship between private and commercial spheres. Or at least, provide 24/7 access to Barbie dolls, plastic Gumby figurines, and weird plastic seashells.
The main reason I’m trying to be a professor is so I can say things to the New York Times like “In the future, everyone will have a printer like this at home.” Incidentally, that professor also helped develop the 3D printer.
Here are some lines I’ve got prepared for the next time the Times needs an expert opinion:
“In the future, everyone will be constantly reading novels, studying their history and theory, and doing anything else suspiciously in line with my own professional interests.”
“In the future, everyone will drive flying cars, eat food in the form of pills, live on the moon, destroy themselves by their own military technologies, have headaches from dealing with Cosmo G. Spacely, replace real pets with gigapets, work in a bureaucratic world of cartoonishly menacing machinescapes, speak Esperanto, be fascists, have computer chips built into their brains at birth and be on TV all the time, and own a 3D printer. I’m glad you asked, New York Times.”
Monday, May 7, 2007
Saturday, May 5, 2007
So Hot Right Now: Penises
This has been a great week for penises, which were coming up all over the headlines.
1) Ducks have always creeped MC out (Scrooge McD excepted), and knowing now that they are savage rapists with crazy penises is just the last piece of the puzzle.
2) This reviewer of a book about impotence proposed a gender utopia in which manhood is predicated on being good at crosswords. If our options are that or cyborgs, let's go with cyborgs.
3) Christopher Hitchens talked cryptically about his dick, and also referred to himself in the third person. And has a scary face.
4) Finally, in the LRB, Colm Toibin reviewed Ian McEwan’s penis. I heard it’s kinda ornate and affected.
1) Ducks have always creeped MC out (Scrooge McD excepted), and knowing now that they are savage rapists with crazy penises is just the last piece of the puzzle.
2) This reviewer of a book about impotence proposed a gender utopia in which manhood is predicated on being good at crosswords. If our options are that or cyborgs, let's go with cyborgs.
3) Christopher Hitchens talked cryptically about his dick, and also referred to himself in the third person. And has a scary face.
4) Finally, in the LRB, Colm Toibin reviewed Ian McEwan’s penis. I heard it’s kinda ornate and affected.
Friday, May 4, 2007
An Historical Reenactment:
A Response to the Republican Presidential Candidates' Debate.
In this historical re-enactment, the part of "Nick 5-7 years ago" will be played by Charlie Romanelli
.
The part of "The General Opinion of the American Populace" will be portrayed by stage veteran Swoosie Kurtz.
SCENE 1.
Curtains open. It is 5-7 years ago. Nick's apartment. The stage is bare, save a bong, a copy of "A Lover's Discourse," and some rare T. Rex on vinyl. "Nick," dressed in freshly laundered navy blue sweatpants and a plaid long-sleeved button-up, Polo and rendered in a color pattern subtly bolder than expected, sits upon a wooden stool, real "cool and casual." Sounds of popular songs, political speeches, TV sitcoms, and police sirens blare, simultaneously, in a cacophonous, disorienting, and familiar barrage of corporate media bullshit. "The General Opinion of the American Populace," dressed in a black unitard with a tinfoil-covered cardboard box on her head that creates the illusion that she is a "talking head" on a television news program, enters stage left. Silence.
TGOotAP: Is it just me or is John McCain the only one in Washington who makes any sense? He's the only guy who isn't playing politics and is just telling it like it is. I love him. Everybody loves him. I want to hang out with him so bad it hurts. It's a shame he isn't a front runner in the Presidential campaign, because he is exactly what Washington -- what this entire country -- needs right now. He was tortured in a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp for 6 years. He is the REAL. GOD. DAMNED. DEAL.
Nick: Hold. Up. If you were tortured in Vietnam for 6 years I'm gonna venture that I cannot understand you at all. I think you should be a candidate for maybe working on dealing with that(at your own pace), some serious relaxing, and just spending as much time as possible with your family. Your psyche is, as the least I can say, radically different than that of almost everyone else in the United States, and is probably extremely fragile and/or extremely volatile. I really don't think you should be trying to run a country.
TGOotAP: YOU WILL SHUT THE FUCK UP, NICK! YOU WILL SHUT UP AND NEVER SPEAK AGAIN! (in a robot voice) This message was sponsored by corporations.
Blackout
SCENE 2. Curtains open. Present day. Silence. Silence. Both actors enter stage right and stand tall before the audience.
TGOotAP: John McCain is so clearly clinically insane that I find it unnerving to watch him speak publicly.
Nick: I told you that guy was nuts.
Each slowly removes their wig and reveals a bald head.
Nick and TGOotAP: And we both have breast cancer.
THE END
In this historical re-enactment, the part of "Nick 5-7 years ago" will be played by Charlie Romanelli
.The part of "The General Opinion of the American Populace" will be portrayed by stage veteran Swoosie Kurtz.
TGOotAP: Is it just me or is John McCain the only one in Washington who makes any sense? He's the only guy who isn't playing politics and is just telling it like it is. I love him. Everybody loves him. I want to hang out with him so bad it hurts. It's a shame he isn't a front runner in the Presidential campaign, because he is exactly what Washington -- what this entire country -- needs right now. He was tortured in a Vietnamese P.O.W. camp for 6 years. He is the REAL. GOD. DAMNED. DEAL.
Nick: Hold. Up. If you were tortured in Vietnam for 6 years I'm gonna venture that I cannot understand you at all. I think you should be a candidate for maybe working on dealing with that(at your own pace), some serious relaxing, and just spending as much time as possible with your family. Your psyche is, as the least I can say, radically different than that of almost everyone else in the United States, and is probably extremely fragile and/or extremely volatile. I really don't think you should be trying to run a country.
TGOotAP: YOU WILL SHUT THE FUCK UP, NICK! YOU WILL SHUT UP AND NEVER SPEAK AGAIN! (in a robot voice) This message was sponsored by corporations.
TGOotAP: John McCain is so clearly clinically insane that I find it unnerving to watch him speak publicly.
Nick: I told you that guy was nuts.
Each slowly removes their wig and reveals a bald head.
Nick and TGOotAP: And we both have breast cancer.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Marmaduke
Approx. 8 months ago:
Last week:
Yesterday:
Today:
Yeah, I do. Keep questioning him, assholes.
I like how time can change everything about Maramduke, and, all the same, change nothing at all. I'm just putting this out there and loving it. I invite you to love too. Always.
Last week:
Yesterday:
Today:
Yeah, I do. Keep questioning him, assholes.
I like how time can change everything about Maramduke, and, all the same, change nothing at all. I'm just putting this out there and loving it. I invite you to love too. Always.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Porn is the new gay
Tonight, as part of CBS News's "Trapped in the Web" series we learned about Craig Gross.
Gross is a suburb-Christian youth minister with Fall Out Boy hair who tours super churches and invites suburban dads and their sons in to talk about how much they hate themselves for loving Internet porn. Nothing creepy about that. Just a room full of fathers and sons talking about how much they understand how easy it is to devote yourself to Internet porn. Gross also runs XXXChurch.com, where you find out being a young, hip Christian teen fighting a porn addiction is cool.
Analysis time: You know what? It pretty much is (cool). I don't think I'm the only one who looks at suburban Christians and sees the future. I mean, Bush was elected to lead America into the new millennium twice, and as painful as it was it made too much a sense on an abstract aesthetic/emotional level. There's something hyper-clean and flatly, cartoonishly, purely loving about mega church Christians, but they also carry with them something self-hating and psychological-repression-loving and very dirty, just below their surface, which leads me to believe they have awesome sex. Like Civil Rights era interracial sex, or student/teacher sex. The kind of psychologically twisted power-game emotional sex people fully at peace with themselves in the Liberal way can't have anymore. I'm inclined to call them on their porn-hating bluff, but I think their apparent communal obsession with Internet porn makes sense to all of us, including them, and the apparently intense presence of forums for discussion about it proves they are not only totally okay with the open secret that they love Internet porn, but that it fits in with their worldview perfectly. It's the perfect counterpoint: dirty on the surface and wholly sterile and naive just underneath. Suburb-Chrisians and Internet porn is a match made in heaven. What's the news flash, Couric?
Gross is a suburb-Christian youth minister with Fall Out Boy hair who tours super churches and invites suburban dads and their sons in to talk about how much they hate themselves for loving Internet porn. Nothing creepy about that. Just a room full of fathers and sons talking about how much they understand how easy it is to devote yourself to Internet porn. Gross also runs XXXChurch.com, where you find out being a young, hip Christian teen fighting a porn addiction is cool.
Analysis time: You know what? It pretty much is (cool). I don't think I'm the only one who looks at suburban Christians and sees the future. I mean, Bush was elected to lead America into the new millennium twice, and as painful as it was it made too much a sense on an abstract aesthetic/emotional level. There's something hyper-clean and flatly, cartoonishly, purely loving about mega church Christians, but they also carry with them something self-hating and psychological-repression-loving and very dirty, just below their surface, which leads me to believe they have awesome sex. Like Civil Rights era interracial sex, or student/teacher sex. The kind of psychologically twisted power-game emotional sex people fully at peace with themselves in the Liberal way can't have anymore. I'm inclined to call them on their porn-hating bluff, but I think their apparent communal obsession with Internet porn makes sense to all of us, including them, and the apparently intense presence of forums for discussion about it proves they are not only totally okay with the open secret that they love Internet porn, but that it fits in with their worldview perfectly. It's the perfect counterpoint: dirty on the surface and wholly sterile and naive just underneath. Suburb-Chrisians and Internet porn is a match made in heaven. What's the news flash, Couric?
More like lucky me
I’m excited to see “Lucky You,” partly because of Eric Bana’s explosive charisma, but mostly because my favorite movies are ones that pick a metaphor and just run with it. And if it's a metaphor that compares love to a competitive sport or hobby, it basically has me at hello.
I have a bet going on whether the last line will be “I’m all in” or “I’m royally straight for you."
More Political Funnies
Who's ready to lose sympathy for some hot political others?!! Here goes: after his recent lecture and discussion of humor and national identity at an art museum here in Minneapolis, I was talking to a "visiting philosopher" about jokes in the Middle East. He relayed this chucklefest he heard from an Afghani colleague while he was doing work in Tunisia shortly after September 11th, 2001.
A woman walks into a bathhouse and is stopped at the door by an attendant who says "You can't go in here. This bathhouse is only for men." So the woman says to him she says "Is Saddam Hussein in there?" and the attendant says "no." So she says "O, is Osama bin Ladin in there?" and the attendant says "no." So the woman walks right in!
The joke is that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin are the only real men.
And then this was one of last week's "Maramduke"s:
A woman walks into a bathhouse and is stopped at the door by an attendant who says "You can't go in here. This bathhouse is only for men." So the woman says to him she says "Is Saddam Hussein in there?" and the attendant says "no." So she says "O, is Osama bin Ladin in there?" and the attendant says "no." So the woman walks right in!
The joke is that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Ladin are the only real men.
And then this was one of last week's "Maramduke"s:
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