January 05, 2009
Gawker may be suffering from some unidentifiable (without hindsight) combination of talent-drought and ubiquity, but Alex Pareene is at least still part-time there, and he can still swing a mean sentence, as he does in this post concerning The Today Show's to have Ann Coulter on to shill her latest horrid yet lucrative "book":Rush and Ann still have lots of listeners and sell lots of books, but they're not driving any sort of national conversation anymore, just throwing meat to increasingly marginalized anger-junkies. The Obama smears didn't catch on last year, and they won't get much traction until he starts fucking up. So it was absurd for NBC to annoy viewers by giving this outdated comedienne a microphone during the already hallucinogenic fourth hour of Today.Ann's statement [link w/held on account of nyah-nyah] involves the words "liberal media bias" but still doesn't even make sense within her own little mythology of persecution, so whatever. Let's let her go away in peace.
True, writing about her is not exactly the best way to let her go away in peace. But, writing about her railing impotently against her creeping insignificance does have its own rewards.
Posted at 08:22 PM
Compare and contrast these indispensables, which are related only in that they can both be considered of the "year-end" genre, which ordinarily I loathe but from which I am yet willing to squeeze drops of usefulness.First, Rex Sorgath (which sounds exactly as made-up as the name of his site, Fimoculous), sums up, in his opinion, the top 30 blogs of the past year, with side discussions of trends and the like. He's a grand old man of the Internets, with the added benefit of being a Smart Guy of the Internet, as evinced by his succinct description of Tumblr as:
... the platform that has essentially reignited the personal blogging movement: reblogs over comments, overheard conversation over discursive prose, clique over mass, fast over deliberative.
Second is an ongoing discussion with author/futurist Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky concerning the year 2009 -- kind of a reverse-engineered best-of. The discussion is scheduled to last for another week and a half, so it will be worth revisiting over time. Sterling sets the mood:
Welcome to 2009!What I now currently wonder is: what kind of OTHER development makes us stop maundering about liquidity issues? You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? WE MADE IT UP. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place. It's not merciless enemies would blow themselves up in order to bleed on our shoes... oh wait. They are. Well, it's not like the icecaps are melting.
Oh wait. The icecaps ARE melting. Okay, maybe I'll start over next post.
From their the discussion visits post-collapse Russia and then wanders into paradigms of the New City and Commons-based peer production. And even gets hung up on the word "hippie" for a moment, which makes it chart up one notch for me.
Neither link is as enlightening and embiggening as discussions of the death of the child of a celebrity, so be forewarned.
Posted at 11:55 AM
The sense I'm getting is that I'm in the minority when I say that Al Franken, running for Senate in Minnesota, does not skeeve me out at all. Yes, he was a comedy writer for a while, but weren't we all comedy writers, for a while? And I was a big fan of his brief stint as a radio talk how host, even though it was quickly clear that Al Franken was not actually the best radio talk show host in the world -- a little too deliberate and steady-footed. And then his cohost Katherine Lanpher, who was actually talented at radio broadcasting, left for pastures greener, which left Franken with little to do than retire from radio and run for Senate.I guess some found that his background of sometimes dirty jokes were less than befitting a candidate for the Senate. Whatever, too late -- Al Franken is the new junior senator from the great state of Minnesota.
This news will of course be met by legal action from the team of previous senator Norm Coleman, who is as feckless and hypocritical as Paul Wellstone (the man Coleman beat by virtue of Wellstone dying in a plane crash) was beloved. (I just spent ten valuable minutes trying to find the one website detailing the many violations of Coleman against honesty/civility, and could not, so take this as a tiny exhibit a). But as William Rehnquist is no longer Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, I anticipate that the reasonable application of Minnesota vote count procedure will be upheld and allowed to resolve itself unimpeded.
Which means we all get to contemplate six years of that Al Franken voice on the evening news.
Posted at 07:44 AM
January 04, 2009
It is times like these, in which Israel sends in the tanks, that being a dedicated but amateur smart-ass fail you. I have an opinion, but unfortunately the opinion is something like, hey, dumbasses, why not stop trying to kill each other? But of course, the other guy started trying to kill me first, etc. etc. And then, wary of the sixty year-old chair fight, I take pains to say that not only am I not taking either side, and also expressly not taking the other guy's side, so aim your invective elsewhere.See? Boring and insightless.
On Friday, I picked up the paper on the way in to the city, and the deli guy tapped the front page, above the fold -- a photograph of some civilians being pulled out of some wreckage in the Gaza Strip -- and then asked me why the other papers aren't reporting this? It was the New York Times, naturally, and the tabloids I think were running covers of some dude who lost a lot of weight. I shrugged and offered something commissary ("I know, man"), but sadly the answer is that a) it's all happening a half a planet away, b) it's a conflict running for so many generations that fatigue has set in, and c) it's such a complex political problem, with so many moving parts, that everyone but the most ardent realizes that there is no military solution. I feel for the guy -- if someone was invading Rochester, NY, I'd want bandwidth for that too.
You just feel pretty silly sometimes, looking for the diverting snark to post, the morning after you spent an evening watching Live CNN Coverage.
Posted at 09:31 AM
January 02, 2009
You know what was wrong with 2008? Principally? Too many plural gerunds. Yeah, the economy was a mess and everything, but that was just God monkeying with the means of production, and I have no millions to lose, so hurrah for temporarily cheap gas. Mostly, it was plural gerunds.Musings this and ponderings that. Ramblings. Meditations. Oh, and contemplations, God help us. Even feelings, which I'm hating on just because feelings should be more often felt than talked about, unless you are Glenn Beck. (Because his feelings are not "hurt" or "angry" but rather, "You are a terrorist.") Just too many of them, like everyone figured that a plural gerund was like wit in a box or something, heedless of the fact that they are wrong.
And I'm as guilty of gerunds as anyone. Or at least I was, in high school, back when everything was either a mirror or a cage.
So we got this nice new year now, fresh and unspoiled. Let's try to keep it plural gerund-free. Come 2010, you can have your perambulations back, and spread your pontifications wherever you please.
Posted at 09:29 AM
December 31, 2008
That's it for this year. I'd give thanks, but Thanksgiving was a month and change ago. This year wasn't the worst year ever, but it sure shows some room for improvement, which improvement will hopefully happen in the next trip around the sun, if I say my prayers, eat my vitamins and hang and bang in the gym. Oh! And believe in myself, of course.Be safe and happy and I'll see you on the other side. And let me throw my hat on the chopping block along with everyone else w/r/t this best NYE song ever.
Posted at 03:27 PM
Now this is an interesting phenomena -- it seems that every Zune of a specific model committed suicide at the same time. And as of right now, 2:30p EST, it seems that no answers are forthcoming. If this were a scene in a movie, it would have to be one of the Micheal Bay blockbusters wherein the rising action is dramatic but ultimately implausible. Maybe it's something to do withI checked my own personal music warez, and it seems that the CDs I haul from apartment to apartment are doing just fine. Not that I'm unwilling to be at play in the fields of the DRM -- make me an offer. Nothing wrong with a little uncertainty.
Posted at 02:29 PM
The wit and wisdom of deposed/dishonored AG Alberto Gonzales, as culled by the WSJ from a two hour interview with Gonzales (which was distilled into an article only 900 words long, shockingly):There's a narrative about my service and that narrative is wrong. I am very proud of my service. My family and I have given much. It's been a privilege to serve. I didn't leave in disgrace.As a lawyer, people have this misperception that we as lawyers were responsible for creation of policies that they don't like. [After the Sept. 11 terror attacks] The president asked the FBI, the CIA to tell us what we need to do to prevent another attack. They turned to the lawyers and asked can we do it.
Mistakes were made by me and others. But how successful we were, the measure of that is whether we've been attacked again, and we haven't. That's a very good measure of the policies.
If you recall (and it was over a year ago, so I certainly don't), Gonzales, as Attorney General, took the Administration water-carrying he perfected as White Hosue Counsel to new heights as he presided over a Department of Justice that almost exclusively chose politically tainted activities over the enforcement of law, in addition to rubberstamping all kinds of domestic spying/torture so that the administration could prosecute its War on Terror like the Spanish Inquisition. And now he views himself as collateral damage in the whole struggle between the Bush Administration and the Constitution, which struggle he somehow thinks that Bush won. Whether Gonzales is short-sighted or just plain stupid, the stench of the pathos is cloying.
I don't know if the WSJ is cherrypicking from the interview and excerpting only the most self-pitying and obtuse moments, but if the interview represents the desire of Gonzales to rehabilitate his reputation, he's about to find out exactly how far whiny unrepentance will get him.
Posted at 09:48 AM
This does not quite count as a headline appearing in the Yahoo! Box of Headlines, but since it appears on the Yahoo! mainpage, which has all sorts of 2.0 user-customization functionalilty, it is close enough for government work. From the Yahoo! Featured News Thingamajig:Deaths that shook the Internet in 2008
I think we all agree that list/listicles/best-ofs are overdone but harmless, as in, I damn their eyes but can still easily avoid them. I'm not sure if their evil is necessary or not, but it is certainly a learned behavior, if not genetic. When was the first best-of list, and who will be the Mel Brooks-like figure that will construct a routine around it? Not me.
Actually, it is not the pointless iterative nature of stupid puny best-of lists that is so galling. Rather, the fact that "shook the Internet" is a phrase that can easily be classified as ironic. Actually, let's make it less fuzzy around the edges and just call it sarcastic. So, unless the deaths listed are in some way funny, presumably in their lack of importance, then someone needs to have their copy-editing license revoked.
It's like running the headline "Top Ten Who Fucking Cares Deaths of 2008" -- someone might run that; probably not Yahoo!
Posted at 07:25 AM
December 30, 2008
Based on this HoffPo wrapup of GOP response to the flap over RNC Chairman-Hopeful Chip Saltsman's inclusion of "Barack The Magic Negro" on a holiday CD, it is plausible that in the near future that GOP talking heads will demonstrate how harmless the song is by calling themselves, others, inanimate objects, etc. "[X] the Magic [Y]", where X = the name of the object person/thing and Y = an identifiable characteristic of said person/thing. Because, of course, if Sean Hannity can take being called a Magic Blowhard, and Mitt Romney doesn't mind being called a Magic Haircut, then why can't any of you take a joke? And so Chip Saltsman's stock is up, no matter what you crybabies think.Of course, "Barack The Magic Negro" is patently offensive, and the kind of patent offensiveness that will be lost on those that need it explained. And the issue is not whether anyone can take a joke, but rather if trafficking "BTMN" should be included in the consideration of the fitness for a candidate for a proto-national office.
As Steve Benen puts it:
So, to summarize, a leading candidate to lead the Republican National Committee promoted a song calling the next president a "magic negro." This has improved his chances of getting the job.
To which the customary Internet response is, "Wheee," I believe. Maybe, "Heh."
Posted at 11:17 AM
Part of me (the part that is losing) doesn't want to touch this with somebody else's ten foot pole, but I am stupid in these matters and would like to improve myself: in the case of a child born to unmarried parents, is it unorthodox for the child to take the father's surname? Or is it more of a fielder's choice?We can all agree, however, that 300 large is a whole lot of cabbage, even for someone as talented and hard-working as Bristol Palin.
Posted at 09:59 AM
December 29, 2008
I can't see a single thing wrong with GOP functionary Chip Saltsman sending a CD to his friends/business associates containing the parody song "Barack The Magic Negro". What on earth could be wrong with a song called "Barack The Magic Negro"? What's so objectionable about magic? Everyone loves magic, especially children. So, if this Chip Saltsman did indeed distribute a CD with "Barack The Magic Negro" on it, that should in no way disqualify him from running for the chairmanship of the RNC -- there is nothing about magic that is incompatible with the Republican Party.If Al Qaida Executive Vice President Ayman al-Zawahri can hoot and holler about the president-elect being a house negro, then why can't Chip Saltsman send whatever CD he wants? Everyone should just simmer down and quit hating on freedom.
Posted at 09:31 AM
The worse part of the ill-advised trip to the mall the day after Christmas was getting gridlocked in the parking lot to the tune of an hour and ten minute exit. Few things feel so frustrating as to be hemmed in amidst a sea of autos all going different directions, within thirty yards of a highway moving freely.The worser part (and the wife may disagree) was the sudden invasion of the mall by deadeyed teens slow-walking like robots. They were like some locust/kudzu hybrid genetically engineered to exude borderline psychopathy, with the boys in expensive sneakers and team-logo apparel and the girls dressed like undead five-dollar whores. I know that kids been hanging in malls starting about two days after the inception of the first mall -- I'm familiar with the phenomena. But the sheer number of them and the weight of their ennui was unprecedented to my personal knowledge. Either things are Going South (or maybe things are Going South in the particular region of PA I was visiting), or I am cranky and whiny. And OLD. Or both.
(Bright side: the teens exhibited a veritable Rainbow Coalition of ethnicities that you could only find in a Benetton ad, back in the day. The future is here now.)
Posted at 09:05 AM
December 27, 2008
As loathe as I am to self-promote, I got a little piece up on Maud Newton's site, if you're interested. It's a little bit of memoir, which I also do reluctantly, but, there it is! It was a response to a little contest she was running, which I won by virtue of being the only entry -- the same way, coincidentally, that I became editor-in-chief of my high school yearbook.So thank you very much, Maud Newton.
Maud herself is an actual writer, and an excerpt of her upcoming is located here. No, I've not read it yet, but I am a short-sighted jerk, and you all are not, so, go already.
Posted at 09:37 AM
The local NPR outlets have been relentlessly promoting a rebroadcast of an interview that Nina Totenberg did with Justice Antonin Scalia (of your Supreme Court) back in April in which he decries the use of familiar speech. The excerpt they run in their ads is as follows:You wouldn’t expect the Gettysburg Address to have said, you know, we can’t dedicate, we can’t consecrate, we can’t hallow this ground. Come on!
Not for nothing, but I'll take a sprinkling of contractions over a disposable "you know" and the utterly trite "come on!" Any day. Judge Scalia is not Jerry Seinfeld, and Judge Scalia is not performing a stand-up comedy routine. Ix-nay on the Ome-on-cay.
Granted, the in context point he is trying to make is that such familiar speech should not be used in the context of legal briefs and moments of import. However, to bust a "dude" out barely a breath later, why, that's ironical! Point stands.
Posted at 09:24 AM