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Tuesday, August 04, 2009
What a way to go
I have no idea if this little bit of code is accurate, but it is an amusing way to consider how to drink yourself to death. It suggests that I would need to down 26 bottles of delicious Mirror Pond Pale Ale by Deschutes in a three hour period to be sure of finishing the job:
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Truer words
I was cleaning up some old computer files this morning and ran across the remnant of a letter I wrote to a friend in 1996 (Yes, a real postal letter. Remember those?). In it, I relate how relatively quiet life was - I was getting ready to take an exciting new job, my wife was prospering at her job, we had gone to see old friends. And I opined that a quiet life is a good thing:
"Truth be told, I like it that way," my smug 28-year-old self wrote. "When you're very young, you think you want to spend every day tackling deep philosophical questions and saving the world. Get a little older and you realize that cold beer, color television (with a remote), and soft toilet paper are about all a man really needs on most days."
I really wish I had known how true this is. And how much truer it continues to get.
"Truth be told, I like it that way," my smug 28-year-old self wrote. "When you're very young, you think you want to spend every day tackling deep philosophical questions and saving the world. Get a little older and you realize that cold beer, color television (with a remote), and soft toilet paper are about all a man really needs on most days."
I really wish I had known how true this is. And how much truer it continues to get.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
The one that got away
Comedy is, as Steve Martin observes, not pretty. An internal filter, while it may be an excellent social survival mechanism, is often death to perfectly good humor.
There is one straight line that I have always regretted passing up, a regret so deep that it has been slightly life altering.
Back several years ago, a friend typed a post on a discussion group, a post she called "A Purple Brassiere":
All my life, I have worn white, and beige, with the occasional black
for evening. Last shopping trip, I decided to chuck it all and go
PURPLE. It's bright, easter-egg purple. And I bought bright baby
blue just for fun too, but that doesn't have quite the same effect.
Ladies, let me tell you, it is amazing. No one can see it, of
course, with the type of stuff I wear (being 40 and saggy and all)
but I KNOW IT'S THERE. It has put a swagger in my step and a bounce
in my stride. I highly recommend it. I had me a red one once, but
it just made me feel slutty (not always a bad thing), but this
purple makes me feel marvelously . . . something. Can't find a
precise word. It's wonderful.
My immediate impulse was to write:
"Now you know what it's like to have a dick."
But of course I restrained myself. And I have regretted it often, 'cause that is some premium comedy right there. From that moment, I resolved to say whatever the hell that comes to my mind, consequences be damned. Sometimes I have regretted that too. And sometimes I cannot live up to such a high standard. But it is a noble aspiration.
There is one straight line that I have always regretted passing up, a regret so deep that it has been slightly life altering.
Back several years ago, a friend typed a post on a discussion group, a post she called "A Purple Brassiere":
All my life, I have worn white, and beige, with the occasional black
for evening. Last shopping trip, I decided to chuck it all and go
PURPLE. It's bright, easter-egg purple. And I bought bright baby
blue just for fun too, but that doesn't have quite the same effect.
Ladies, let me tell you, it is amazing. No one can see it, of
course, with the type of stuff I wear (being 40 and saggy and all)
but I KNOW IT'S THERE. It has put a swagger in my step and a bounce
in my stride. I highly recommend it. I had me a red one once, but
it just made me feel slutty (not always a bad thing), but this
purple makes me feel marvelously . . . something. Can't find a
precise word. It's wonderful.
My immediate impulse was to write:
"Now you know what it's like to have a dick."
But of course I restrained myself. And I have regretted it often, 'cause that is some premium comedy right there. From that moment, I resolved to say whatever the hell that comes to my mind, consequences be damned. Sometimes I have regretted that too. And sometimes I cannot live up to such a high standard. But it is a noble aspiration.
Friday, June 12, 2009
On Having Children, Pt. 2
My older son today got an award on the last day of school - everyone in the whole school gets something, so some of the categories are distinctly weird.
But our credulity was strained to the limit when he reported the pin he received was for "Best Aggression." Not only would this be wildly out of character for my son, it seems like an utterly bizarre thing to reward outside the context of, say, football camp or the Marine Corps.
But then we figured out it was "best progression," based on his amazing progress in Math this year.
It makes a lot more sense, but I am strangely disappointed. "Best Aggression" is actually kind of a cool category, now that I think about it.
But our credulity was strained to the limit when he reported the pin he received was for "Best Aggression." Not only would this be wildly out of character for my son, it seems like an utterly bizarre thing to reward outside the context of, say, football camp or the Marine Corps.
But then we figured out it was "best progression," based on his amazing progress in Math this year.
It makes a lot more sense, but I am strangely disappointed. "Best Aggression" is actually kind of a cool category, now that I think about it.
How cool would this be?
Usually, I am not fond of being injured, but I must say I am madly jealous of this little kid. How come I couldn't get hit by a space rock?
A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.
"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.
...
There are a handful of reports of homes and cars being struck by meteorites, and many cases of space rocks streaking to the surface and being found later.
But human strikes are rare. There are no known instances of humans being killed by space rocks.
A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.
"When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road," Gerrit Blank said in a newspaper account. Astronomers have analyzed the object and conclude it was indeed a natural object from space, The Telegraph reports.
...
There are a handful of reports of homes and cars being struck by meteorites, and many cases of space rocks streaking to the surface and being found later.
But human strikes are rare. There are no known instances of humans being killed by space rocks.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Maybe I have changed my mind
I normally don't like practical jokes. In part this because I am susceptible to them - for a professional cynic, I am a surprisingly trusting guy. And also I seem to have an extra empathy gene - even when the joke is not on me, I simply cannot stand to see other people embarrassed. I begin to squirm at the mere idea that someone is embarrassed. This is why I have a hard time watching prank shows or game shows that involve public humiliation. I feel their distress just as keenly as if it were happening to me.
Except that I really must admit that this is the best prank of all time and I laughed until it hurt. To quote from The Smoking Gun:
A telephone prankster posing as a sprinkler company employee caused havoc Saturday morning at an Arkansas Holiday Inn when he convinced an employee to set off the hotel's fire alarm, smash windows, shut down electricity, and break a sprinkler head that flooded the building lobby. The bizarre incident is detailed in a report prepared by the Conway Police Department, which, as seen below, photographed the aftermath of the June 6 incident. According to police, Holiday Inn employee Christina Bergmann was at the front desk early Saturday when a male caller "identified himself as an employee of Grennel Fire Sprinkler service." The man told Bergmann that there was a problem with the hotel's fire sprinklers and that she "needed to pull the fire alarm to reset them," cops reported. "Bergmann proceeded to pull the fire alarm at this point, causing the audible alarm." Bergmann, aided by a hotel guest, would subsequently follow a series of directions from the caller that would result in about $50,000 in damages to the hotel's windows, carpets and electrical system.
That is what humor is all about. Inspired.
Except that I really must admit that this is the best prank of all time and I laughed until it hurt. To quote from The Smoking Gun:
A telephone prankster posing as a sprinkler company employee caused havoc Saturday morning at an Arkansas Holiday Inn when he convinced an employee to set off the hotel's fire alarm, smash windows, shut down electricity, and break a sprinkler head that flooded the building lobby. The bizarre incident is detailed in a report prepared by the Conway Police Department, which, as seen below, photographed the aftermath of the June 6 incident. According to police, Holiday Inn employee Christina Bergmann was at the front desk early Saturday when a male caller "identified himself as an employee of Grennel Fire Sprinkler service." The man told Bergmann that there was a problem with the hotel's fire sprinklers and that she "needed to pull the fire alarm to reset them," cops reported. "Bergmann proceeded to pull the fire alarm at this point, causing the audible alarm." Bergmann, aided by a hotel guest, would subsequently follow a series of directions from the caller that would result in about $50,000 in damages to the hotel's windows, carpets and electrical system.
That is what humor is all about. Inspired.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Party?
Wow, my control panel tells me I have 200 POSTS on my blog!
Do I, like, get an award or a pizza party or something?
No?
Shit.
Do I, like, get an award or a pizza party or something?
No?
Shit.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
On Having Children
Having kids means hearing strings of words that do not normally go together in regular conversation.
This evening, after depositing the children in bed later than I had intended, I heard a mighty cry from the bedroom. I stormed in, with my best Scary Dad stomp, to see what was up, and my youngest cried out "Evan was licking my pillow."
What in the Hell am I supposed to say to that?
This evening, after depositing the children in bed later than I had intended, I heard a mighty cry from the bedroom. I stormed in, with my best Scary Dad stomp, to see what was up, and my youngest cried out "Evan was licking my pillow."
What in the Hell am I supposed to say to that?
The Jolly Jeep of Doom
Small things make me happy - a good beer, a beautiful sunset, a perfectly cooked meal, comfy shoes. You get the idea.
But sometimes really big things make me happy, like a gigantic green four door Jeep Wrangler.
So when it became clear that my 2000 BMW was becoming prohibitively expensive to keep running (Like $11,000 in maintenance in four years), I knew we had to act.
Behold the Jolly Jeep of Doom:
Now all I want to do all day is go drive around in my Jeep. Even grocery shopping is more fun in a Jeep.
But sometimes really big things make me happy, like a gigantic green four door Jeep Wrangler.
So when it became clear that my 2000 BMW was becoming prohibitively expensive to keep running (Like $11,000 in maintenance in four years), I knew we had to act.
Behold the Jolly Jeep of Doom:
Now all I want to do all day is go drive around in my Jeep. Even grocery shopping is more fun in a Jeep.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Things I had forgotten about until today
Saw this posted on a local website I like and I was briefly transported back. Did we all ever look this young?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Digusting?
I rarely read Nicholas Kristof columns, largely because I have a strict limit on the number of angry articles about Darfur I may read in a year (Just one. Thanks for reminding me of my impotence to cure man's inhumanity to man, Nick), but he has an interesting column today, which I read by accident at the gym:
Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal
Seems that your relative tendency to be a conservative is correlated with how likely you are to find something disgusting. At least, that's what some researchers at the University of Virginia say. And if it's happening at UVA, then I am inclined to believe it.
But still, I decided to take the survey myself (actually, it's a bunch of related surveys, and it took some time to complete them, but it's not like I have any actual paying work today, so what the Hell).
Your Morals survey
And, of course, it isn't as simple as Kristof suggests, but the results are fairly interesting. Turns out I am very slightly more prone to be disgusted than the average of people who have taken the survey, but mostly related to actually contaminated stuff - spoiled meat, spoiled milk, that kind of thing. Stuff that might be called merely "icky", like touching a dead body or seeing rats, doesn't bother me much at all. But I knew that already. I wonder to what extent my experience as a cook skews my responses - I think I am particularly sensitive to food that is bad simply because I have been exposed to food so intimately all my life and it is so important for me to be aware of the quality and condition of ingredients.
I wonder if cooks are more conservative. Maybe that's another survey.
There are a couple of oddball problems with the survey. For example, the "sacredness" survey tries to gauge how likely to are to violate some core principle for money by asking you how much it would take to do certain things, such as shoot an endangered animal or curse your parents. They call it the "what would you do for a million dollars" survey. The problem at least for me is that I am not terribly motivated by money (or I wouldn't be a journalist, obviously), so I answered either I'd do it for free or I would never do it for any price to every question. I mean, if someone wanted to actually pay me to flip off my professor, I'd be glad to take their cash, but I might very well do it free anyway just to see what happens. But at the same time, even a million dollars wouldn't induce me to cut off contact with my family for a year.
Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal
Seems that your relative tendency to be a conservative is correlated with how likely you are to find something disgusting. At least, that's what some researchers at the University of Virginia say. And if it's happening at UVA, then I am inclined to believe it.
But still, I decided to take the survey myself (actually, it's a bunch of related surveys, and it took some time to complete them, but it's not like I have any actual paying work today, so what the Hell).
Your Morals survey
And, of course, it isn't as simple as Kristof suggests, but the results are fairly interesting. Turns out I am very slightly more prone to be disgusted than the average of people who have taken the survey, but mostly related to actually contaminated stuff - spoiled meat, spoiled milk, that kind of thing. Stuff that might be called merely "icky", like touching a dead body or seeing rats, doesn't bother me much at all. But I knew that already. I wonder to what extent my experience as a cook skews my responses - I think I am particularly sensitive to food that is bad simply because I have been exposed to food so intimately all my life and it is so important for me to be aware of the quality and condition of ingredients.
I wonder if cooks are more conservative. Maybe that's another survey.
There are a couple of oddball problems with the survey. For example, the "sacredness" survey tries to gauge how likely to are to violate some core principle for money by asking you how much it would take to do certain things, such as shoot an endangered animal or curse your parents. They call it the "what would you do for a million dollars" survey. The problem at least for me is that I am not terribly motivated by money (or I wouldn't be a journalist, obviously), so I answered either I'd do it for free or I would never do it for any price to every question. I mean, if someone wanted to actually pay me to flip off my professor, I'd be glad to take their cash, but I might very well do it free anyway just to see what happens. But at the same time, even a million dollars wouldn't induce me to cut off contact with my family for a year.
Monday, May 18, 2009
The road not taken
Oh, how I wish I had been an ichthyologist. Not because I have any interest in fish - in fact, I usually find them disturbing and unpleasant, except when they are converted into Sushi or a well-timed Filet-o-Fish - but because it would be so cool to say "I am an ichthyologist."
Better yet, I want to be a "Freelance Ichthyologist."
That would make me happy.
Better yet, I want to be a "Freelance Ichthyologist."
That would make me happy.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Tasting Beer in the Future
Believe it or not, I actually managed to use this phrase in perfectly normal conversation recently. And it suddenly occurred to me that "Tasting Beer in the Future" would be an outrageously good name for an album or a novel.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Pubic humiliation
My favorite newspaper correction website, Regret the Error, has a lovely little piece this week on a lengthy correction in the Irish Times, lamenting that the letter L, "that slenderest and most treacherous of letter types," has somehow slipped from a key phrase, making the author appear to say that something was a matter of "pubic faith."
"This is a risk that serious newspapers, in which the word “public” will always feature prominently, run every day," the Times writes. "It wouldn’t be as big a problem if, for example, it was the ‘b’ that kept dropping out. But then we or the spellchecker would notice that. Whereas the lower-case “l” has a Judas-like ability to slip away unnoticed, with embarrassing results."
This happened to me once, as I have probably typed here somewhere before, when I wrote about a "poorly attended public hearing" in Greene County, Virginia. At least that's what I MEANT to type, except for that damned L.
The error slipped passed me, my editor, my publisher, and several other people who read the page as I was laying it out. It was only revealed the next day, when a local attorney called my editor and noted that "Had I known it was going to be a pubic hearing, I might have attended."
That is only slightly more embarrassing than the ad we ran in the same paper a year earlier in the annual Christmas special edition which wished us all "Peach on Earth."
"This is a risk that serious newspapers, in which the word “public” will always feature prominently, run every day," the Times writes. "It wouldn’t be as big a problem if, for example, it was the ‘b’ that kept dropping out. But then we or the spellchecker would notice that. Whereas the lower-case “l” has a Judas-like ability to slip away unnoticed, with embarrassing results."
This happened to me once, as I have probably typed here somewhere before, when I wrote about a "poorly attended public hearing" in Greene County, Virginia. At least that's what I MEANT to type, except for that damned L.
The error slipped passed me, my editor, my publisher, and several other people who read the page as I was laying it out. It was only revealed the next day, when a local attorney called my editor and noted that "Had I known it was going to be a pubic hearing, I might have attended."
That is only slightly more embarrassing than the ad we ran in the same paper a year earlier in the annual Christmas special edition which wished us all "Peach on Earth."
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
An important milestone
There are many important milestones in life - reaching 16 so you can drive, reaching 21 so you can drink, getting married, having kids, buying a house, turning 30, turning 40 and so on.
These we can predict.
But once in a while, a milestone smacks you upside the head and you realize it was coming, but you never saw it approaching. Or, perhaps, even knew in advance that it was a milestone.
Today, I reached such a milestone. For the first time, my car insurance payment was less than my life insurance payment - $95 versus $135 dollars.
Oy vey.
These we can predict.
But once in a while, a milestone smacks you upside the head and you realize it was coming, but you never saw it approaching. Or, perhaps, even knew in advance that it was a milestone.
Today, I reached such a milestone. For the first time, my car insurance payment was less than my life insurance payment - $95 versus $135 dollars.
Oy vey.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Metaphor of the day
There's this guy on this local discussion group I frequent and he's kind of weird. Seemed very earnest, perhaps a little dim (or so I had thought until today), and he seems to be fanatically dedicated to restoring strict republican virtues and an absolute, rock solid literaltist reading of the Constitution (he makes Ron Paul seem like Warren Burger).
But my estimation of him went up considerably this morning when I read this little turn of phrase, which he dashed off in response to a lawyer who was mocking another of his earnest little pleas to return to the faith of the Founding Fathers:
"Rather than fight to uphold the dignity of your lifelong career, it is easier to sit on your haunches warming yourself on the campfire of wall street greed."
That, friends, is pure genius. It is so bad that only a really gifted writer could have conceived it.
But my estimation of him went up considerably this morning when I read this little turn of phrase, which he dashed off in response to a lawyer who was mocking another of his earnest little pleas to return to the faith of the Founding Fathers:
"Rather than fight to uphold the dignity of your lifelong career, it is easier to sit on your haunches warming yourself on the campfire of wall street greed."
That, friends, is pure genius. It is so bad that only a really gifted writer could have conceived it.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Best press release ever
The Pennsylvania Governor's Office press person just sent out a release under the subject line "No public schedule for Governor Rendell for March 27, 2009"
This is not unusual. But the text of the message caught my eye:
PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any use of this information other than by the intended recipient is prohibited. If you receive this message in error, please send a reply e-mail to the sender and delete the material from any and all computers. Unintended transmissions shall not constitute waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege.
This seems like a perfect thing to attach to a release that went to hundreds of reporters across the Commonwealth. After all, what do Reporters do best besides keep secrets?
This is not unusual. But the text of the message caught my eye:
PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any use of this information other than by the intended recipient is prohibited. If you receive this message in error, please send a reply e-mail to the sender and delete the material from any and all computers. Unintended transmissions shall not constitute waiver of the attorney-client or any other privilege.
This seems like a perfect thing to attach to a release that went to hundreds of reporters across the Commonwealth. After all, what do Reporters do best besides keep secrets?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
This sounds like a GREAT job
Reporter with benefits? Does this mean you get to sleep with your coworkers with no strings attached?
Journalism would be in better shape if more newspapers had this policy.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
My solution for the Auto Industry
CNN says today that the Auto Industry bailout will end up costing something like $130 billion. This got me to thinking - why are we just sending the car companies money? I have a much better idea.
Let's think about some numbers first.
Car Buyers Notebook tells me that the average new car in 2008 cost $28,715. You can buy a pretty nice car for that even in 2009, so long as you don't want to go all Tricked Out Lexus or something, so let's use that as a working number for the 2009 model year.
That means $130 billion will buy roughly 4,527,250 pretty decent new cars, maybe more if we make the car companies a nice offer.
The Census Bureau tells me that there are roughly 101,301,401 Americans between the ages of 20 and 70 in the U.S. Let's call that prime driving age.
That means the U.S. government could buy about 1 nice new car for every 22 Americans.
I say let's just buy 4.5 million new cars and give them out by lottery. You gotta figure at least some of those 101 million driving-age Americans don't want or need a new car for some reason, so your odds are likely to be a hell of a lot better than 1 in 22 of getting a brand new vehicle.
Who's with me? Personally, Mr. President, I'll take a new 4-door Jeep Wrangler. I promise to take very good care of it.
Let's think about some numbers first.
Car Buyers Notebook tells me that the average new car in 2008 cost $28,715. You can buy a pretty nice car for that even in 2009, so long as you don't want to go all Tricked Out Lexus or something, so let's use that as a working number for the 2009 model year.
That means $130 billion will buy roughly 4,527,250 pretty decent new cars, maybe more if we make the car companies a nice offer.
The Census Bureau tells me that there are roughly 101,301,401 Americans between the ages of 20 and 70 in the U.S. Let's call that prime driving age.
That means the U.S. government could buy about 1 nice new car for every 22 Americans.
I say let's just buy 4.5 million new cars and give them out by lottery. You gotta figure at least some of those 101 million driving-age Americans don't want or need a new car for some reason, so your odds are likely to be a hell of a lot better than 1 in 22 of getting a brand new vehicle.
Who's with me? Personally, Mr. President, I'll take a new 4-door Jeep Wrangler. I promise to take very good care of it.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Fun with lyrics
This simply speaks for itself
I once got in trouble at a radio station where I worked for taping over the title of this very song and replacing it with:
Awl Bye Mice Elf.
The program director did not find my sense of humor endearing for some reason.
I once got in trouble at a radio station where I worked for taping over the title of this very song and replacing it with:
Awl Bye Mice Elf.
The program director did not find my sense of humor endearing for some reason.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Build the Death Star
To Hell with the Stimulus Package. I know how to get the economy working - let's build a real, live Death Star. Then we can get all those unemployed autoworkers and contractors back to work (and incidentally me too, since news publications would need lots of coverage of the project). Then we can go scare the hooey out of the microbes on Mars and otherwise menace the universe.
Here's how:
Death Star Costs $15.6 Septillion
One Death Star for $15 Septillion? What a deal!
Here's how:
Death Star Costs $15.6 Septillion
One Death Star for $15 Septillion? What a deal!
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Dave for President Pt. 2
Here David Letterman conducts the kind of interview that every journalist longs to do, or at least should aspire to. This is an act of journalistic brilliance. He's polite, gives the man his say, and yet he tells the unfettered truth in a non-confrontational way. Genius.
Letterman Interviews Blagojevich
Letterman Interviews Blagojevich
Monday, February 02, 2009
25 things about me
Several people on Facebook have tagged me with this 25 Things About Me game. I find it sort of interesting, but I am not sure I want to play exactly as required. It smacks too much of a chain letter, and I throw those away on principle. And yet, the game is sort of fun - some of the results come close to poetry (Look here and you'll see what I mean).
So I am going to say 25 things about me, but I am not going to tag 25 of my closest friends, relations, and henchmen. So sue me.
1. I have a morbid fascination with Chinese buffets.
2. I always wanted to be a Constitutional lawyer.
3. I have an irrational fear of compressed gasses of all sorts.
4. People don’t seem to believe me when I say I am both shy and lazy.
5. Animals interest me only in so far as I can cook delicious meals with them. But I would cook them with deep love and respect.
6. I think the Rolling Stones are better as an idea than as a rock band. Ditto for U2.
7. I have a bad temper, but it takes a long time to get to it.
8. I am a surprisingly good body surfer.
9. Good beer brings me joy.
10. I like American Idol and I don’t care who knows it.
11. I remember being five years old – and I miss it.
12. When I attempt to speak a foreign language, I suffer a crippling bout of insecurity, which instantly renders me unintelligible.
13. I have disproportionately short legs.
14. I cry when I read the final chapter of the House at Pooh Corner.
15. Driving to some place new is one of my quiet pleasures.
16. I always wished my hair was straight so I could wear it really long without looking like Kenny G.
17. I believe that most people in government sincerely want to serve the public interest, although they don’t always succeed.
18. I like to eat lunch alone.
19. I have an enduring and completely inexplicable fixation on Russian history.
20. I write better when I am hungry, but I only think I write better when I am drunk.
21. If money were no object, I would live on Maui.
22. I think Vegemite is delicious if eaten in moderation.
23. I maintain my own sourdough yeast colony, making me, technically, a yeast farmer.
24. My math skills are dismal, even with a calculator.
25. I have yet to decide what I want to do when I grow up.
So I am going to say 25 things about me, but I am not going to tag 25 of my closest friends, relations, and henchmen. So sue me.
1. I have a morbid fascination with Chinese buffets.
2. I always wanted to be a Constitutional lawyer.
3. I have an irrational fear of compressed gasses of all sorts.
4. People don’t seem to believe me when I say I am both shy and lazy.
5. Animals interest me only in so far as I can cook delicious meals with them. But I would cook them with deep love and respect.
6. I think the Rolling Stones are better as an idea than as a rock band. Ditto for U2.
7. I have a bad temper, but it takes a long time to get to it.
8. I am a surprisingly good body surfer.
9. Good beer brings me joy.
10. I like American Idol and I don’t care who knows it.
11. I remember being five years old – and I miss it.
12. When I attempt to speak a foreign language, I suffer a crippling bout of insecurity, which instantly renders me unintelligible.
13. I have disproportionately short legs.
14. I cry when I read the final chapter of the House at Pooh Corner.
15. Driving to some place new is one of my quiet pleasures.
16. I always wished my hair was straight so I could wear it really long without looking like Kenny G.
17. I believe that most people in government sincerely want to serve the public interest, although they don’t always succeed.
18. I like to eat lunch alone.
19. I have an enduring and completely inexplicable fixation on Russian history.
20. I write better when I am hungry, but I only think I write better when I am drunk.
21. If money were no object, I would live on Maui.
22. I think Vegemite is delicious if eaten in moderation.
23. I maintain my own sourdough yeast colony, making me, technically, a yeast farmer.
24. My math skills are dismal, even with a calculator.
25. I have yet to decide what I want to do when I grow up.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Write Your Own, Pt. 1
Thomas L. Friedman column (circle your choices):
The other day I (had lunch with/was thinking about/was skiing with/saw) (King Abdullah/Henry Kissinger/a homeless man/ a fuzzy bunny) and he was (talking policy/eating an eggroll/wearing a tam o’shanter).
Suddenly I (realized/discovered/remembered/imagined) that (the Bush Administration/Barack Obama/the economy/the entire history of mankind) could be (explained/wiped out/summarized) by (a childish scribble on a napkin/a billboard in the background/drinking heavily).
See? It's so easy a child could do it!
The other day I (had lunch with/was thinking about/was skiing with/saw) (King Abdullah/Henry Kissinger/a homeless man/ a fuzzy bunny) and he was (talking policy/eating an eggroll/wearing a tam o’shanter).
Suddenly I (realized/discovered/remembered/imagined) that (the Bush Administration/Barack Obama/the economy/the entire history of mankind) could be (explained/wiped out/summarized) by (a childish scribble on a napkin/a billboard in the background/drinking heavily).
See? It's so easy a child could do it!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
I know what I am giving for Christmas
From Chronicle Book's description:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.
Release date is sometime in April.
Curse that spam filter...
My Spam Filter informs me that it has spiked perhaps the most important email of my life.
You have received a message that is probably SPAM.
To: admin@seanibus.com
Mailbox: admin@seanibus.com
From: ""
Date: Thursday, January 29, 2009, at 07:30 am
Subj: Re: Message from President
I am so sorry I missed the president when he needed me. I ought to give Barack a call and see what's up.
You have received a message that is probably SPAM.
To: admin@seanibus.com
Mailbox: admin@seanibus.com
From: ""
Date: Thursday, January 29, 2009, at 07:30 am
Subj: Re: Message from President
I am so sorry I missed the president when he needed me. I ought to give Barack a call and see what's up.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Things I think about, Pt. III
I felt compelled to look this up today.
The U.S. accounts for more than 48 percent of all defense spending in the entire world, if you take into account the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons, which is not paid for by the military (who knew?).
In 2008, the whole world spent $1.43 trillion on military stuff. The U.S. spends $711 billion of that.
If you add up our spending and that of our NATO allies, that comes to something like 72 percent of all military spending on the planet.
I also wanted to look this up:
The U.S. operates about two thirds of all the aircraft carriers in the world. We have 12 active super-carriers (with at least two more inactive but fit to recommission quickly), plus at least 10 of the smaller amphibious assault ships, which are effectively aircraft carriers. Even using a fairly generous definition of "aircraft carrier", there are only 13 active non-American carriers on the whole planet and only England and France have more than one (the Royal Navy has four, the French have two).
This leaves me with an important question:
Shouldn't we be kicking butt somewhere or something?
The U.S. accounts for more than 48 percent of all defense spending in the entire world, if you take into account the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons, which is not paid for by the military (who knew?).
In 2008, the whole world spent $1.43 trillion on military stuff. The U.S. spends $711 billion of that.
If you add up our spending and that of our NATO allies, that comes to something like 72 percent of all military spending on the planet.
I also wanted to look this up:
The U.S. operates about two thirds of all the aircraft carriers in the world. We have 12 active super-carriers (with at least two more inactive but fit to recommission quickly), plus at least 10 of the smaller amphibious assault ships, which are effectively aircraft carriers. Even using a fairly generous definition of "aircraft carrier", there are only 13 active non-American carriers on the whole planet and only England and France have more than one (the Royal Navy has four, the French have two).
This leaves me with an important question:
Shouldn't we be kicking butt somewhere or something?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Do I know how to pick 'em or what?
My mother has long said that every time she finds a food or beverage she really likes, the company discontinues it. I'd think she was making it up, but I have watched it happen many times.
Seems much the same is true for me, but more on the career track.
When I was a teenager, I developed a passionate interest in rock music and set about collecting as much new and classic vinyl, both 45 and 33 rpm, as I could get. This interest led me to a passionate interest in radio. I grew my hair long and set about to play Led Zeppelin deep cuts late into the night.
That didn't work out so well. Not only did CDs kill my beloved vinyl, Clear Channel and others killed my beloved radio. Within a couple of years, I was playing pop songs by Debbie Gibson and Tiffany and wondering if it was possible to be any more bored on the air.
So I tried newspapers. That worked out pretty well, until everyone decided newspapers were dead. And now it doesn't work so well any more.
Simple, I thought, I'll switch to magazines - they've got deep pockets. And that worked really well for four or five years.
And then this: magazine ad pages down 12 percent last year. My formerly lucrative clients at Time and People magazines were down 19 and 12 percent.
And in the meantime, I have developed a number of hobbies, all which could have been good career paths. Early in my newspaper career, I developed a passion and modest talent for Photography. My particular favorite was Kodak slide film.
Sensing a pattern?
Lately,I have gotten terribly interested in brewing beer at home. I joined just in time for a horrifying crisis in the supply of Hops and soaring prices for commodities such as Barley.
Sean strikes again.
So now newspapers are dead (but just haven't stopped kicking) and magazines are dying, and film-based photography is a historical curiosity and radio is both painfully dull and automated and beer is too expensive to drink.
Any suggestions on my next career move? Anyone have an industry you'd like to see collapse within the next decade? I'd be willing to take a job there and work my usual magic - for a small fee.
Seems much the same is true for me, but more on the career track.
When I was a teenager, I developed a passionate interest in rock music and set about collecting as much new and classic vinyl, both 45 and 33 rpm, as I could get. This interest led me to a passionate interest in radio. I grew my hair long and set about to play Led Zeppelin deep cuts late into the night.
That didn't work out so well. Not only did CDs kill my beloved vinyl, Clear Channel and others killed my beloved radio. Within a couple of years, I was playing pop songs by Debbie Gibson and Tiffany and wondering if it was possible to be any more bored on the air.
So I tried newspapers. That worked out pretty well, until everyone decided newspapers were dead. And now it doesn't work so well any more.
Simple, I thought, I'll switch to magazines - they've got deep pockets. And that worked really well for four or five years.
And then this: magazine ad pages down 12 percent last year. My formerly lucrative clients at Time and People magazines were down 19 and 12 percent.
And in the meantime, I have developed a number of hobbies, all which could have been good career paths. Early in my newspaper career, I developed a passion and modest talent for Photography. My particular favorite was Kodak slide film.
Sensing a pattern?
Lately,I have gotten terribly interested in brewing beer at home. I joined just in time for a horrifying crisis in the supply of Hops and soaring prices for commodities such as Barley.
Sean strikes again.
So now newspapers are dead (but just haven't stopped kicking) and magazines are dying, and film-based photography is a historical curiosity and radio is both painfully dull and automated and beer is too expensive to drink.
Any suggestions on my next career move? Anyone have an industry you'd like to see collapse within the next decade? I'd be willing to take a job there and work my usual magic - for a small fee.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Save Top Chef
I'll admit it - I love Top Chef on Bravo. I never miss an episode. My wife and I sit glued to the tube dissecting dishes the way football fans analyze the minutia of every play. I try to skim over the obnoxious product placements and the sometimes completely demented challenges that would try the skill and patience of many a professional chef. I just like it because it is about cooking. And I love to cook.
So I was completely dismayed to find that the producers of Top Chef have abruptly replaced judge Gail Simmons with someone named Toby Young. It's not that I miss Gail so much (I found her cranky and rather difficult to look at; she appears to have some odd plastic surgery. Just my layman's opinion). It's that this Toby Young guy is a complete jerk, at least based on the opening episode last week. He seems predisposed to hate everything. He talks about himself incessantly (I don't care that he ate real German food while living in an isolated shack in the Alps). He makes glib, shallow pop-culture references constantly (comparing an avocado sorbet to the performance of Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder? Spare me).
I didn't know who this guy was until I saw the episode last night. I am reliably informed today that he is modestly famous for having some sort of book about Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair, which in itself tells me as much as I need to know about how seriously to take him.
I want him gone.
So I voted on Bravo's dorky little online poll on the show's site, checking the box that suggested I want Gail Simmons back, which isn't entirely true, but she's certainly better than this obnoxious twit. But I fear that the poll is just part of a conspiracy to make Toby Young some kind of cult hate figure - the judge we love to boo. This would be a great pity - I do not want to boo Toby Young; I want to have him to disappear so we can talk about food instead of some literary C-lister.
Perhaps it won't help, but I did find that Bravo has a "contact us" link hidden carefully at the bottom of the site. So I sent them a note:
Dear Bravo,
Please ask the producers of Top Chef to take Toby Young away as abruptly as he came. He is irritating beyond endurance and seems mostly interested in discussing himself and demonstrating his considerable, but gratingly shallow, knowledge of pop culture. If I wanted a glib, self-centered Englishman to comment cruelly about food, I would invite Simon Cowell to dinner. As it is, I just want to watch a show about cooking.
Contact Bravo and complain about Toby Young.
Are you with me? Can we get this guy exiled for the finals? Can we guarantee that he does not return next season? Join me in my cause. Save the show I like, despite itself.
So I was completely dismayed to find that the producers of Top Chef have abruptly replaced judge Gail Simmons with someone named Toby Young. It's not that I miss Gail so much (I found her cranky and rather difficult to look at; she appears to have some odd plastic surgery. Just my layman's opinion). It's that this Toby Young guy is a complete jerk, at least based on the opening episode last week. He seems predisposed to hate everything. He talks about himself incessantly (I don't care that he ate real German food while living in an isolated shack in the Alps). He makes glib, shallow pop-culture references constantly (comparing an avocado sorbet to the performance of Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder? Spare me).
I didn't know who this guy was until I saw the episode last night. I am reliably informed today that he is modestly famous for having some sort of book about Graydon Carter and Vanity Fair, which in itself tells me as much as I need to know about how seriously to take him.
I want him gone.
So I voted on Bravo's dorky little online poll on the show's site, checking the box that suggested I want Gail Simmons back, which isn't entirely true, but she's certainly better than this obnoxious twit. But I fear that the poll is just part of a conspiracy to make Toby Young some kind of cult hate figure - the judge we love to boo. This would be a great pity - I do not want to boo Toby Young; I want to have him to disappear so we can talk about food instead of some literary C-lister.
Perhaps it won't help, but I did find that Bravo has a "contact us" link hidden carefully at the bottom of the site. So I sent them a note:
Dear Bravo,
Please ask the producers of Top Chef to take Toby Young away as abruptly as he came. He is irritating beyond endurance and seems mostly interested in discussing himself and demonstrating his considerable, but gratingly shallow, knowledge of pop culture. If I wanted a glib, self-centered Englishman to comment cruelly about food, I would invite Simon Cowell to dinner. As it is, I just want to watch a show about cooking.
Contact Bravo and complain about Toby Young.
Are you with me? Can we get this guy exiled for the finals? Can we guarantee that he does not return next season? Join me in my cause. Save the show I like, despite itself.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
The end
I am finding myself strangely compelled by this. Not so much for the visuals, but because it had never occurred to me before that the music of the Apocalypse might actually be just as soothing as this suggests.
Things I think about. Pt. II
I realize this month something that I have probably always known, but have never been able to articulate:
I hate bullet points.
Bullet points are to writing what a plain cinder block wall is to architecture: functional but an affront to style.
Ok, sure, writing is about communicating clearly, and bullet points are a fiendishly efficient way to communicate information. But they're just so damned ugly. It is not an accident, I believe, that the really great writers of history don't use bullet points.
Where would this country be today, for example, if our Founding Fathers had access to the easy Bullet Point function in MS Word?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with the following unalienable rights:
- life;
- liberty;
- the pursuit of happiness.
Not cool.
I hate bullet points.
Bullet points are to writing what a plain cinder block wall is to architecture: functional but an affront to style.
Ok, sure, writing is about communicating clearly, and bullet points are a fiendishly efficient way to communicate information. But they're just so damned ugly. It is not an accident, I believe, that the really great writers of history don't use bullet points.
Where would this country be today, for example, if our Founding Fathers had access to the easy Bullet Point function in MS Word?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with the following unalienable rights:
- life;
- liberty;
- the pursuit of happiness.
Not cool.
Friday, December 19, 2008
This is just to say...
I have gambled away our nest egg
And sold the children
Into servitude
Even though
You were probably
Going to take them
To the park this afternoon
Forgive me
They were being annoying.
Oh, and I
Burned down the house.
And sold the children
Into servitude
Even though
You were probably
Going to take them
To the park this afternoon
Forgive me
They were being annoying.
Oh, and I
Burned down the house.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Truth in Advertising
I ran across this on a discussion group recently and I immediately thought of my college friend Patti. Long ago, she was involved in an escapade that I I will not detail since she is now a respectable woman of the world with real prospects, such as a seat in Congress or a cushy judicial appointment. But suffice it to say that it ended with the marquee of an innocent hotel reading "Our Shower Leak Pee." (If you know her, ask her yourself - she'll probably be happy to share the story, complete with photos).
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Dave for president
Ok, so he's often old and stale these days, but once in a while, David Letterman still rises to genius...
Friday, September 05, 2008
Not so silly
Brother Geode asked a question on my post about Obama's citizenship status that deserves an answer, but it's taken me a while to get around to it. So here goes.
Geode writes "C'mon man, what about the McCain/Panama controversy? Where's your fair n' balanced? When that tempest comes a-blowin', you gotta show BOTH SIDES of the teacup."
I don't know whether he means to suggest that the McCain controversy is equally silly as the Obama one, but for the sake of something to type about, I will assume he does.
Turns out, McCain's birthplace is an actual issue, one in which I have something of a personal interest.
The New York Times had a nice piece about this a few months ago, but here's the essence of it:
The Constitution doesn't set the bar very high to qualify to be president - you have to be at least 35 years old, have lived in the United States for at least 14 years, and be a "Natural born Citizen." Easy, right?
The problem here is that "natural born citizen" doesn't have any particular legal meaning. So right from the start people were arguing about what that should mean. Clearly it means you must have been a citizen from birth - no naturalized persons need apply. But could it also mean that you must be physically born inside the United States?
Congress quickly tried to settle the issue with a 1790 law that said that yes, anyone who was a citizen from birth was considered "Natural born" no matter where in the world they were born. But that law was eventually repealed and there has never been a legal test - a few nominees, including Barry Goldwater and George Romney, were born outside of the actual United States (Goldwater in Arizona when it was just a territory and Romney in Mexico, where his parents were working), but none of them won.
So now comes John McCain, whose father was an admiral who happened to be stationed in the U.S. controlled Panama Canal Zone in 1936, when young John was born. So although he is clearly a citizen from birth, he was born outside the 48 existing states at the time.
It seems likely that should McCain win, someone somewhere will try to challenge his eligibility. And that's good, because it seems to be unlikely that any court would actually entertain such a lawsuit for very long and the issue would be settled once and for all.
And that's a good thing for me. Not that I want to be president, but because it is a question that has interested me since I was a child. It happens that I was born in Canada, where my father was a diplomat. Because my parents are both Americans, I am a U.S. citizen from birth. And because my father was a diplomat on an official mission, I cannot claim Canadian citizenship under their law (The U.S. has the same law for diplomats posted here). It causes me occasional headaches when I cross the U.S. border because the Border Patrol takes one look at my passport and demands to know when I was naturalized as a U.S. citizen. But it also allows me to irritate bureaucrats who demand my birth certificate - I have a birth certificate, of course, but I like to produce my official "Consular Report of Birth Abroad," which by law has the same effect as a birth certificate in terms of proving citizenship. It's fun to watch some clerk frown and squint and try to figure out what this document represents.
But the question still lingers for me - am I considered a "Natural Born Citizen" under the Constitution? Should McCain win, I may finally have my answer.
Geode writes "C'mon man, what about the McCain/Panama controversy? Where's your fair n' balanced? When that tempest comes a-blowin', you gotta show BOTH SIDES of the teacup."
I don't know whether he means to suggest that the McCain controversy is equally silly as the Obama one, but for the sake of something to type about, I will assume he does.
Turns out, McCain's birthplace is an actual issue, one in which I have something of a personal interest.
The New York Times had a nice piece about this a few months ago, but here's the essence of it:
The Constitution doesn't set the bar very high to qualify to be president - you have to be at least 35 years old, have lived in the United States for at least 14 years, and be a "Natural born Citizen." Easy, right?
The problem here is that "natural born citizen" doesn't have any particular legal meaning. So right from the start people were arguing about what that should mean. Clearly it means you must have been a citizen from birth - no naturalized persons need apply. But could it also mean that you must be physically born inside the United States?
Congress quickly tried to settle the issue with a 1790 law that said that yes, anyone who was a citizen from birth was considered "Natural born" no matter where in the world they were born. But that law was eventually repealed and there has never been a legal test - a few nominees, including Barry Goldwater and George Romney, were born outside of the actual United States (Goldwater in Arizona when it was just a territory and Romney in Mexico, where his parents were working), but none of them won.
So now comes John McCain, whose father was an admiral who happened to be stationed in the U.S. controlled Panama Canal Zone in 1936, when young John was born. So although he is clearly a citizen from birth, he was born outside the 48 existing states at the time.
It seems likely that should McCain win, someone somewhere will try to challenge his eligibility. And that's good, because it seems to be unlikely that any court would actually entertain such a lawsuit for very long and the issue would be settled once and for all.
And that's a good thing for me. Not that I want to be president, but because it is a question that has interested me since I was a child. It happens that I was born in Canada, where my father was a diplomat. Because my parents are both Americans, I am a U.S. citizen from birth. And because my father was a diplomat on an official mission, I cannot claim Canadian citizenship under their law (The U.S. has the same law for diplomats posted here). It causes me occasional headaches when I cross the U.S. border because the Border Patrol takes one look at my passport and demands to know when I was naturalized as a U.S. citizen. But it also allows me to irritate bureaucrats who demand my birth certificate - I have a birth certificate, of course, but I like to produce my official "Consular Report of Birth Abroad," which by law has the same effect as a birth certificate in terms of proving citizenship. It's fun to watch some clerk frown and squint and try to figure out what this document represents.
But the question still lingers for me - am I considered a "Natural Born Citizen" under the Constitution? Should McCain win, I may finally have my answer.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Such a fine line
It is perhaps surprising that one of the greatest nuggets of philosophical wisdom comes not from some Greek thinker or revered English playwright, but from the 1984 Rock-N-Roll spoof "This is Spinal Tap." In it, the addled philosopher-rocker David St. Hubbins observes "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."
I will hazard a guess that John McCain has never seen the movie.
In picking Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate, McCain has done what seems to be an astonishingly clever thing. Palin is successful and bright, by all accounts personable, vivacious, and energetic. She's the kind of woman that any man would like to have as a mother, wife or daughter. She's the kind of woman that any other woman might admire and aspire to be.
And yet, McCain may have veered dangerously close to David St Hubbins' dreaded line.
For one thing, he has neatly kicked a rhetorical leg out from under himself. Never again will anyone be able to listen with a straight face when he accuses Barack Obama of bring a naïve, inexperienced lightweight. Palin is just 44 years old and has been governor for just two years after serving as a small town mayor. In terms of heavy-weight national and international experience, or even just life experience, she and Obama are roughly tied. If she's ready to be president in the event of McCain's death, then Obama is ready to be president in the event of McCain's defeat.
But perhaps even more seriously, McCain has made the one mistake that neither candidate should have made (and yet both did). He picked a person who highlights his most serious perceived weakness. There are few people in the country that could have highlighted more painfully McCain's age and frailty, or thrown into sharp relief his status as a grey-haired Washington insider. Perhaps only Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal could have done more to make McCain look like a feeble and aging veteran senator.
Of course, Obama has made roughly the same mistake. By picking Joe Biden, Obama has tied his fortune to a serious, respected, graying elder statesman with a lengthy Washington career. The choice of Biden doesn't remove a rhetorical weapon for Obama, as McCain's choice did for the GOP, but it will still make it painfully clear that Obama is young and relatively inexperienced. Perhaps worse, Biden is lively, funny, and irreverent (if excessively verbose at times), likely to charm the press and voters. This will be a painful contrast with the dour, distant, and slightly disapproving demeanor that Obama has projected so far.
Unfortunately, it may not be so easy for voters to decide in November which side of David St. Hubbins' line they are standing on.
I will hazard a guess that John McCain has never seen the movie.
In picking Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate, McCain has done what seems to be an astonishingly clever thing. Palin is successful and bright, by all accounts personable, vivacious, and energetic. She's the kind of woman that any man would like to have as a mother, wife or daughter. She's the kind of woman that any other woman might admire and aspire to be.
And yet, McCain may have veered dangerously close to David St Hubbins' dreaded line.
For one thing, he has neatly kicked a rhetorical leg out from under himself. Never again will anyone be able to listen with a straight face when he accuses Barack Obama of bring a naïve, inexperienced lightweight. Palin is just 44 years old and has been governor for just two years after serving as a small town mayor. In terms of heavy-weight national and international experience, or even just life experience, she and Obama are roughly tied. If she's ready to be president in the event of McCain's death, then Obama is ready to be president in the event of McCain's defeat.
But perhaps even more seriously, McCain has made the one mistake that neither candidate should have made (and yet both did). He picked a person who highlights his most serious perceived weakness. There are few people in the country that could have highlighted more painfully McCain's age and frailty, or thrown into sharp relief his status as a grey-haired Washington insider. Perhaps only Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal could have done more to make McCain look like a feeble and aging veteran senator.
Of course, Obama has made roughly the same mistake. By picking Joe Biden, Obama has tied his fortune to a serious, respected, graying elder statesman with a lengthy Washington career. The choice of Biden doesn't remove a rhetorical weapon for Obama, as McCain's choice did for the GOP, but it will still make it painfully clear that Obama is young and relatively inexperienced. Perhaps worse, Biden is lively, funny, and irreverent (if excessively verbose at times), likely to charm the press and voters. This will be a painful contrast with the dour, distant, and slightly disapproving demeanor that Obama has projected so far.
Unfortunately, it may not be so easy for voters to decide in November which side of David St. Hubbins' line they are standing on.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Silly Season
A friend of mine back in Washington used to call election time the "Silly Season." And he was right. A sign of how silly things have gotten this year is an article that appears to be causing great interest and jubilation among Right Wingers, in which political gadfly author Steve Miller writes that Obama is not a "natural born citizen" of the United States, as required by the Constitution in order to become president.
The article says, in part:
Barack Obama is not legally a US natural-born citizen according to the law on the books at the time of his birth; a law that was in effect between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, when the law was changed.
However, the new law did not preempt the former law in the cases of those born between the above listed dates when the old law was in effect.
Therefore, Senator Obama may very well be disqualified as the Democratic candidate in the upcoming Presidential campaign.
Presidential office requires the person elected to be a natural-born United States citizen if the child was not born to two US citizen parents.
US Law very clearly stipulates: “If only one parent was a US citizen at the time of your birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least ten years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16.”
Barack Obama’s father was not a US citizen, and Obama’s mother was only 18 when he was born, which means although she had been a US citizen for 10 years, his mother fails the test for being so for at least 5 years prior to Barack Obama’s birth.
In order for her child to have been a natural-born US citizen, his mother would have had to be 21 at the time of his birth.
In essence, Mrs. Obama was not old enough to qualify her son for automatic US citizenship.
His mother would have needed to have been 16+5 = 21 years old at the time of Barack Obama’s birth for him to have been a natural-born citizen.
Barack Obama instead should have been naturalized, but even then, that would still disqualify him from holding the office of President under current law.
This would all be terribly interesting, of course, except it is wrong. Obama was born in Honolulu, which even the most hardened Wingnut would have to admit was part of the 50 United States in 1961. And the 14th Amendment, passed slightly less than a century before Obama was born, makes one thing clear up front, in its very first sentence:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
UPDATE: It appears that Miller simply lifted a bit of Internet mythology that has been circulating for several weeks and has been attributed to various authors (but frequently with significant details altered), making it unclear who came up with it first.
It has become so common, the great Urban Legend Reference Page has weighed in.
The article says, in part:
Barack Obama is not legally a US natural-born citizen according to the law on the books at the time of his birth; a law that was in effect between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, when the law was changed.
However, the new law did not preempt the former law in the cases of those born between the above listed dates when the old law was in effect.
Therefore, Senator Obama may very well be disqualified as the Democratic candidate in the upcoming Presidential campaign.
Presidential office requires the person elected to be a natural-born United States citizen if the child was not born to two US citizen parents.
US Law very clearly stipulates: “If only one parent was a US citizen at the time of your birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least ten years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16.”
Barack Obama’s father was not a US citizen, and Obama’s mother was only 18 when he was born, which means although she had been a US citizen for 10 years, his mother fails the test for being so for at least 5 years prior to Barack Obama’s birth.
In order for her child to have been a natural-born US citizen, his mother would have had to be 21 at the time of his birth.
In essence, Mrs. Obama was not old enough to qualify her son for automatic US citizenship.
His mother would have needed to have been 16+5 = 21 years old at the time of Barack Obama’s birth for him to have been a natural-born citizen.
Barack Obama instead should have been naturalized, but even then, that would still disqualify him from holding the office of President under current law.
This would all be terribly interesting, of course, except it is wrong. Obama was born in Honolulu, which even the most hardened Wingnut would have to admit was part of the 50 United States in 1961. And the 14th Amendment, passed slightly less than a century before Obama was born, makes one thing clear up front, in its very first sentence:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
UPDATE: It appears that Miller simply lifted a bit of Internet mythology that has been circulating for several weeks and has been attributed to various authors (but frequently with significant details altered), making it unclear who came up with it first.
It has become so common, the great Urban Legend Reference Page has weighed in.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
My new political orientation
I don't know where this comes from, but I shamelessly stole it from some guy who was using it as a signature line on a discussion group.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Things I think about, pt. 1
Would it be correct to think of the woman who gave birth to the world's foremost cellist as "Yo Yo MaMa"?
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Things my five year old has learned
Frogs come from eggs.
Caterpillars become Butterflies.
Plants grow from seeds.
Saying fuck in the school gym is a bad idea.
Calling your camp counselor "gay" is also a bad idea.
It is possible to be expelled from summer camp.
Singing the Indiana Jones theme as loudly as possible is great way to make Dad start yelling.
Sometimes it is necessary to deal with an overbearing older brother with a controlled application of violence.
"Unbreakable" plates aren't.
Dirt tastes good.
Batting your eyelids in an adorable and apologetic way sometimes gets you out of real trouble.
Caterpillars become Butterflies.
Plants grow from seeds.
Saying fuck in the school gym is a bad idea.
Calling your camp counselor "gay" is also a bad idea.
It is possible to be expelled from summer camp.
Singing the Indiana Jones theme as loudly as possible is great way to make Dad start yelling.
Sometimes it is necessary to deal with an overbearing older brother with a controlled application of violence.
"Unbreakable" plates aren't.
Dirt tastes good.
Batting your eyelids in an adorable and apologetic way sometimes gets you out of real trouble.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Thanks for nothing...
My friends at Paste magazine cheerfully acknowledged their mistake recently and returned my check...
Monday, May 12, 2008
Every Homeowner's Nighmare
Oh my god, there's a leek in my bathroom.
Damn. Now there are multiple leeks.
Damn. Now there are multiple leeks.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Ok, so this is really old, but...
I know this is all ancient and stuff, but I am still amused by my impressions from the Live 8 concert in Philly, which I helped cover for People magazine back in 2005. So now purely for my own amusement, my debriefing after the event:
Here, in no particular order, are the things that I know today that I did not know yesterday:
1. Will Smith has really astonishing pale brown eyes. Rather hypnotic.
2. Jaida Pinkett Smith is really, really short. I mean, really short.
3. The Rev. Al Sharpton is a shameless media whore who will maim and kill to get into pictures, but he is really goddamned funny.*
4. Sarah McLachlan is dazzlingly, heartbreakingly beautiful in a way that pictures cannot capture.
5. Anna Nicole Smith is crazy,** though she looks great these days and her breasts are still enormous, particularly when displayed under the "shirt" that she was "wearing" to Live 8.
6. Rob Thomas is a really nice guy, particularly when he is extremely high.
7. Jimmy Smits appears to be developing a beer belly.
8. The Kaiser Chiefs are really cool. Nobody's ever heard of them before today, but I can tell I am going to be a fan.
9. Dave Matthews is an inarticulate, boorish asshole.***
10. Natalie Portman's body is so small and delicate and her head is so freakishly large that she resembles a giant Pez Machine.
11. Jennifer Connolly is too thin, but still sexy.
12. Chris Tucker is a really funny guy. But his eyes are big and buggy, which is distracting.
13. Kanye West believes some really freaky conspiracy theories and generally makes Oliver Stone seem well adjusted and stable.
14. Rita Marley may be 60, but she is still hot.
15. Don Cheadle is really, really dull. I mean, really dull.
16. If this music thing doesn't work out, Alicia Keys should look into becoming a diplomat. Or a congresswoman. Or maybe president.
17. Hollywood publicists should be killed. Painfully and publicly.
* Actually, I did already know this.
** I strongly suspected this already.
*** Ok, so I knew this already too.
UPDATE: yeah, I know Anna Nicole isn't looking so good anymore. That's what you get for waiting three years to post an item. The rest I will have to assume is still true.
Here, in no particular order, are the things that I know today that I did not know yesterday:
1. Will Smith has really astonishing pale brown eyes. Rather hypnotic.
2. Jaida Pinkett Smith is really, really short. I mean, really short.
3. The Rev. Al Sharpton is a shameless media whore who will maim and kill to get into pictures, but he is really goddamned funny.*
4. Sarah McLachlan is dazzlingly, heartbreakingly beautiful in a way that pictures cannot capture.
5. Anna Nicole Smith is crazy,** though she looks great these days and her breasts are still enormous, particularly when displayed under the "shirt" that she was "wearing" to Live 8.
6. Rob Thomas is a really nice guy, particularly when he is extremely high.
7. Jimmy Smits appears to be developing a beer belly.
8. The Kaiser Chiefs are really cool. Nobody's ever heard of them before today, but I can tell I am going to be a fan.
9. Dave Matthews is an inarticulate, boorish asshole.***
10. Natalie Portman's body is so small and delicate and her head is so freakishly large that she resembles a giant Pez Machine.
11. Jennifer Connolly is too thin, but still sexy.
12. Chris Tucker is a really funny guy. But his eyes are big and buggy, which is distracting.
13. Kanye West believes some really freaky conspiracy theories and generally makes Oliver Stone seem well adjusted and stable.
14. Rita Marley may be 60, but she is still hot.
15. Don Cheadle is really, really dull. I mean, really dull.
16. If this music thing doesn't work out, Alicia Keys should look into becoming a diplomat. Or a congresswoman. Or maybe president.
17. Hollywood publicists should be killed. Painfully and publicly.
* Actually, I did already know this.
** I strongly suspected this already.
*** Ok, so I knew this already too.
UPDATE: yeah, I know Anna Nicole isn't looking so good anymore. That's what you get for waiting three years to post an item. The rest I will have to assume is still true.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
I'll get right on it
God, how I hate getting past due notices. I try to keep up with the bills but, you know, sometimes things happen. Sometimes the paydays don't fall neatly into sync with the billing cycles. Sometimes things get lost on my desk. So I was terribly distressed to find this in my pile of bills I paid today:
So naturally, I immediately settled up:
So naturally, I immediately settled up:
Friday, April 25, 2008
Narodnik
One of the more interesting things to me about Russian history is how big the Russians tend to think. Whatever it is, the Russians...
You know what? I started typing this post a few days ago, got interrupted and never finished it. So I came back to it today and I cannot remember what the hell I was talking about. But I guess it was really profound and important. I hope you enjoyed the first sentence and a half, 'cause that's all you're ever going to get.
You know what? I started typing this post a few days ago, got interrupted and never finished it. So I came back to it today and I cannot remember what the hell I was talking about. But I guess it was really profound and important. I hope you enjoyed the first sentence and a half, 'cause that's all you're ever going to get.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
The only evidence I have a job
Here's what I spent the week preparing - a video poll for Time, asking voters who they voted for. What a strange new world. I used to write actual words about politics, but now I sweet-talk voters into talking to us on camera. Strange.
Lest anyone doubt I was at work today, here is the only existing evidence...
Lest anyone doubt I was at work today, here is the only existing evidence...
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Join my evil cult
I am not sure how these people saw through my clever plan, but clearly my cover is blown. My hopes of becoming a world-dominating God-like cult figure are at an end. Now that my lifetime crusade is in ruins, I shall have to simply throw in the towel and become one with my cover story - that I am an average, generic white Yuppie with two kids and a BMW. Oh, Crap.
Seriously.
Actually, I think someone did try to recruit me into some kind of religious group once. It had something to do with Buddhism and it involved getting me and a whole bunch of other slacker college kids to help out on the inventory of a natural foods store. The people there were creepy, though oddly healthy and good looking, and the work was incredibly tedious. Then they took us out for a big lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. They seemed to expect us to be terribly grateful and kept waiting eagerly for something to happen. I never did figure out what. Of course, they made an elemental mistake. Being that they were some sort of demented Buddhist splinter cell, they only ordered vegetarian food and hot tea. The lack of meat or beer was pretty much a deal-breaker for college students in terms of joining some kind of cult. Had they been smart, they would have plied us with burgers and Moosehead. If they had, I might be their leader today.
Seriously.
Actually, I think someone did try to recruit me into some kind of religious group once. It had something to do with Buddhism and it involved getting me and a whole bunch of other slacker college kids to help out on the inventory of a natural foods store. The people there were creepy, though oddly healthy and good looking, and the work was incredibly tedious. Then they took us out for a big lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. They seemed to expect us to be terribly grateful and kept waiting eagerly for something to happen. I never did figure out what. Of course, they made an elemental mistake. Being that they were some sort of demented Buddhist splinter cell, they only ordered vegetarian food and hot tea. The lack of meat or beer was pretty much a deal-breaker for college students in terms of joining some kind of cult. Had they been smart, they would have plied us with burgers and Moosehead. If they had, I might be their leader today.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
I can't decide
This is either the coolest tank nerd thing I have ever seen or it is kind of sad:
The one thing that does annoy me is that he refers to it as a "Panzer Tank," which is wrong, or at least completely unnecessary. It's like saying a "Tank Tank" Or "Armored Vehicle Tank." But other than that, this is an act of geeky genius.
What worried me, though, is that when I did some research to find the right code to embed this video here, I discovered that there is an entire subculture of paintball-based tanks. Look what happens when you search for "Paintall" and "tank" on the video site Liveleak or Google "Paintball Tank."
Alarming, no?
The one thing that does annoy me is that he refers to it as a "Panzer Tank," which is wrong, or at least completely unnecessary. It's like saying a "Tank Tank" Or "Armored Vehicle Tank." But other than that, this is an act of geeky genius.
What worried me, though, is that when I did some research to find the right code to embed this video here, I discovered that there is an entire subculture of paintball-based tanks. Look what happens when you search for "Paintall" and "tank" on the video site Liveleak or Google "Paintball Tank."
Alarming, no?
Call me a geek, but...
I just find this irresistibly cool. It is a sand dune field on Mars, in the kind of detail you'd get if you were in an airplane flying over it yourself. I always thought it would be cool to go to Mars, but as that became progressively less likely, I had to accept that I would be stuck on this planet for life (a truth I had to embrace at around 12 or so). So now, 28 years after swallowing that bitter pill, I can at least look at really cool detailed pictures and imagine that I am 10 years old again, planning my future as a Mars-bound astronaut.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
April Fool's Day
I hate April Fool's Day. In fact, I hate pranks and practical jokes of all kinds. Perhaps this is because for a guy who is so cynical, I am surprisingly gullible. That makes April Fool's Day a confusing and irritating ritual.
So in honor of April Fool's Day, I am going to undertake one last, great practical joke, this one of an existential kind. I am going to play a prank on April Fool's Day itself. I will pretend that everything I do is a practical joke and yet, in reality, I WILL NEVER PLAY ANOTHER PRANK EVER AGAIN.*
* This is part of my ongoing series of meta lifestyle choices. In about 1999 or so, for example, I made a New Year's Resolution that I would never make another New Year's Resolution. And I have been completely successful to date.
So in honor of April Fool's Day, I am going to undertake one last, great practical joke, this one of an existential kind. I am going to play a prank on April Fool's Day itself. I will pretend that everything I do is a practical joke and yet, in reality, I WILL NEVER PLAY ANOTHER PRANK EVER AGAIN.*
* This is part of my ongoing series of meta lifestyle choices. In about 1999 or so, for example, I made a New Year's Resolution that I would never make another New Year's Resolution. And I have been completely successful to date.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sigh...
I am just glad I didn't turn up in this movie.
I worked for five years at The Washington Times. I must say, they treated me well, gave me lots of interesting opportunities and generally tolerated the fact that I was neither particularly politically conservative nor particularly fond of Rev. Moon. The editors rarely (with a few spectacular exceptions) attempted to meddle in what and how I reported on anything. I found that most reporters there by the time I got there, particularly on the smaller desks, like Metro and Business, were there because they wanted good jobs in Washington, not because of any ideology or affinity for Moon's church. And yet, unfortunately, much of what John Gorenfeld reports here is true. I suppose I'll wind up having to read his book.
Online Videos by Veoh.com
I worked for five years at The Washington Times. I must say, they treated me well, gave me lots of interesting opportunities and generally tolerated the fact that I was neither particularly politically conservative nor particularly fond of Rev. Moon. The editors rarely (with a few spectacular exceptions) attempted to meddle in what and how I reported on anything. I found that most reporters there by the time I got there, particularly on the smaller desks, like Metro and Business, were there because they wanted good jobs in Washington, not because of any ideology or affinity for Moon's church. And yet, unfortunately, much of what John Gorenfeld reports here is true. I suppose I'll wind up having to read his book.
Online Videos by Veoh.com
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Why Cheney didn't run
Geode asks a perfectly resonable question that I actually, surprisingly, know the answer to. This is in part because I was covering the Bush campaign at the time and had occasion to cover Cheney a bit as well. It wasn't an awful lot of fun, largely because Cheney and his people hate the press and make no effort whatsoever to do interesting things or be nice.
Geode asks, in a comment on my Cheney-as-the-Penguin post:
How come Cheney's not running, Sean? I was trying to ask myself that the other day. I thought the veep of a 2-termer ALWAYS gave it a go.
Cheney actually said he wouldn't run back in 2000 - that was part of his agreement with Bush to start. The idea was that Bush could count on a loyal lieutenant who wasn't hamstrung by his personal agenda and by calculations about his political future. That seemed to appeal to Bush at the time. I think Cheney recognized that his medical history made him unlikely to win the White House. And really, I am not sure he wanted to be president, or at least to go through all the campaign crap that would be necessary. He's not a very enthusiastic campaigner. I even wrote a story about it.
Geode asks, in a comment on my Cheney-as-the-Penguin post:
How come Cheney's not running, Sean? I was trying to ask myself that the other day. I thought the veep of a 2-termer ALWAYS gave it a go.
Cheney actually said he wouldn't run back in 2000 - that was part of his agreement with Bush to start. The idea was that Bush could count on a loyal lieutenant who wasn't hamstrung by his personal agenda and by calculations about his political future. That seemed to appeal to Bush at the time. I think Cheney recognized that his medical history made him unlikely to win the White House. And really, I am not sure he wanted to be president, or at least to go through all the campaign crap that would be necessary. He's not a very enthusiastic campaigner. I even wrote a story about it.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Saturday, March 01, 2008
This guy is my new hero
In the never ending quest to evade paying work, this guy is some kind of visionary. From the AP this morning:
PASCO, Wash. (AP) - What happened to faking a cough? Sheriff's detectives in Franklin County said a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn't have to go to work.
When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch, of Pasco, told them he'd been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was out jogging Thursday. But detectives told KONA radio that Kuch later acknowledged that he asked his friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid an upcoming drug test.
The friend, Kurtis Johnson, of Burbank, has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch was booked into the county jail and is expected to be charged with false reporting.
Detectives declined to say where Kuch works, or whether he still has a job. It wasn't known if he had obtained a lawyer.
Why didn't I think of it first?
PASCO, Wash. (AP) - What happened to faking a cough? Sheriff's detectives in Franklin County said a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn't have to go to work.
When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch, of Pasco, told them he'd been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was out jogging Thursday. But detectives told KONA radio that Kuch later acknowledged that he asked his friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid an upcoming drug test.
The friend, Kurtis Johnson, of Burbank, has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch was booked into the county jail and is expected to be charged with false reporting.
Detectives declined to say where Kuch works, or whether he still has a job. It wasn't known if he had obtained a lawyer.
Why didn't I think of it first?
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Less is More
I never have liked Garfield. He does nothing for me. Like Alf, but more terrestrial. And no less unfunny.
So it is with considerable amazement that I find out that some clever person has realized that by removing Garfield completely from his own cartoon, the strip becomes a surrealist masterpiece:
Garfield Minus Garfield
So it is with considerable amazement that I find out that some clever person has realized that by removing Garfield completely from his own cartoon, the strip becomes a surrealist masterpiece:
Garfield Minus Garfield
Friday, February 15, 2008
We've all been there
Potentially bright lad, I'd say. Learning early to deal with Customer Service...
It is this sort of thing that has led me to DirecTV. I have never had to say a single bad word to them.
It is this sort of thing that has led me to DirecTV. I have never had to say a single bad word to them.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Burn the bridges
Here's a lovely series of email memos, by way of The Arkansas Times blog, touched off by a blunt newsroom email sent to employees of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by State Editor Marilyn Mitchell, who promptly walked out. This has got to be among the all-time winners in "take this job and shove it" memos:
From: mmitchell@arkansasonline.com
Subject: Fuck the glass
Date: February 14, 2008 8:36:31 AM CST
To: to-all-Systemwide@arkansasonline.com
Cc: to-all-LR@arkansasonline.com, to-all-NW@arkansasonline.com
All I wanted to do at this newspaper is to do a good job. I came here because I thought it was a good newspaper. But, it's not. It's a good ole' boys club made up of old white males. Nobody else has a voice. This is a newspaper in which: The city editor can verbally abuse another editor in the presence of the managing editor and nothing is done. The managing editor in a news meeting slugs a potential 1A story as blonde bombshells - a story in which bombs were strapped on two retarded foreign women and sent into a crowd. Male editors are allowed to talk about penis size during news meetings. Editors call Hispanics wetbacks in news meetings Editors are proud to call blacks niggers in news stories. A city editor gets his feelings hurt over coverage of a story and I'm penalized for it. The managing editor is a bald face liar and the executive editor doesn't give a damn. So to "the glass," I resign effective immediately. Marilyn Mitchell
From: Bill Simmons
Date: February 14, 2008 10:11:20 AM CST
To: Marilyn Mitchell, To-All-systemwide
Cc: To-all-LR, To-all-NW
Subject: Re: Fuck the glass
As an old white male, let me offer a few thoughts for perspective (and not
to set off an onslaught of similar missives):
1. In my dozen years here, I have NEVER seen anybody (editor or otherwise)
"proud" that the "n-word" was used anywhere. I can't say nobody was, because
I can't be everywhere all the time, but I can say I NEVER saw anybody
manifest any such attitude when I was around.
2. The reference to "wetbacks" has a history -- a history of disagreement
over whether the term is acceptable in any usage, with most editors here
believing it is not. Sometimes the term is used in derision of the view that
using it is acceptable, not in furtherance of its use.
3. I suppose some males will discuss penis size in the news meetings (boys
being boys), and I have heard in long ago meetings some remarks that were
offensive. But this hasn't happened in any recent news meeting that I
attended and it is not appropriate to convey the idea that this is standard
practice in the meetings.
4. The "blonde bombshells" complaint omits the fact that every day some
quipish summary of each leading news items of the day's leading is posted on
the board. When the governor makes a speech, it may be "Beebe's lips move."
When an Al Quaida leader was blown up by a car bomb, it was "Bad Guy Goes
Boom!" And political in-fighting in Pakistan will become "Pakitics." And so
on. The reference to "blonde bombshells" had no sexist nuance that I
perceived, any more than "Econ Tanks" (a summary of a downturn in the
economy) was expressing approval of a recession or anything else. Practicing
humor has its risks, and one of them is being misperceived and distorted.
From: mmitchell@arkansasonline.com
Subject: Fuck the glass
Date: February 14, 2008 8:36:31 AM CST
To: to-all-Systemwide@arkansasonline.com
Cc: to-all-LR@arkansasonline.com, to-all-NW@arkansasonline.com
All I wanted to do at this newspaper is to do a good job. I came here because I thought it was a good newspaper. But, it's not. It's a good ole' boys club made up of old white males. Nobody else has a voice. This is a newspaper in which: The city editor can verbally abuse another editor in the presence of the managing editor and nothing is done. The managing editor in a news meeting slugs a potential 1A story as blonde bombshells - a story in which bombs were strapped on two retarded foreign women and sent into a crowd. Male editors are allowed to talk about penis size during news meetings. Editors call Hispanics wetbacks in news meetings Editors are proud to call blacks niggers in news stories. A city editor gets his feelings hurt over coverage of a story and I'm penalized for it. The managing editor is a bald face liar and the executive editor doesn't give a damn. So to "the glass," I resign effective immediately. Marilyn Mitchell
From: Bill Simmons
Date: February 14, 2008 10:11:20 AM CST
To: Marilyn Mitchell
Cc: To-all-LR
Subject: Re: Fuck the glass
As an old white male, let me offer a few thoughts for perspective (and not
to set off an onslaught of similar missives):
1. In my dozen years here, I have NEVER seen anybody (editor or otherwise)
"proud" that the "n-word" was used anywhere. I can't say nobody was, because
I can't be everywhere all the time, but I can say I NEVER saw anybody
manifest any such attitude when I was around.
2. The reference to "wetbacks" has a history -- a history of disagreement
over whether the term is acceptable in any usage, with most editors here
believing it is not. Sometimes the term is used in derision of the view that
using it is acceptable, not in furtherance of its use.
3. I suppose some males will discuss penis size in the news meetings (boys
being boys), and I have heard in long ago meetings some remarks that were
offensive. But this hasn't happened in any recent news meeting that I
attended and it is not appropriate to convey the idea that this is standard
practice in the meetings.
4. The "blonde bombshells" complaint omits the fact that every day some
quipish summary of each leading news items of the day's leading is posted on
the board. When the governor makes a speech, it may be "Beebe's lips move."
When an Al Quaida leader was blown up by a car bomb, it was "Bad Guy Goes
Boom!" And political in-fighting in Pakistan will become "Pakitics." And so
on. The reference to "blonde bombshells" had no sexist nuance that I
perceived, any more than "Econ Tanks" (a summary of a downturn in the
economy) was expressing approval of a recession or anything else. Practicing
humor has its risks, and one of them is being misperceived and distorted.
Monday, January 21, 2008
The truth is hard to swallow
I guess we'd all like to fancy that we're Han Solo, all Devil-may-care and cool, or Obi-wan, a sage and patient mentor. But somehow I wound up being Luke Skywalker, who is, to be brutally honest, a bit of a wanker.
| Which Star Wars Character Are You? Your Result: Luke SkyWalker You are a noble and loyal person who is always looking after the welfare of your friends, even if your hand gets cut off trying to save them. Just stop kissing your sister and everything will be fine. | |
| Princess Leia | |
| Jar Jar Binks | |
| Yoda | |
| Han Solo | |
| Boba Fett | |
| Jabba the Hutt | |
| Darth Vader | |
| Which Star Wars Character Are You? Create Your Own Quiz | |
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
The end is nigh
I think it must be some sort of portent of the End Times when I find myself 1) reading Pat Buchanan and 2) nodding along and making agreeing sorts of grunts as I do so. Don't get me wrong, Pat and I would last five minutes in a policy discussion group before we began slapping one another like angry little girls, but still, sometimes it worries me how often lately he seems to make some sort of sense.
An example: Subprime Nation
Have things gotten so bad that the only people making any sense are the crazy ones?
An example: Subprime Nation
Have things gotten so bad that the only people making any sense are the crazy ones?
My poor choice in careers
I coulda been a chef. I coulda gone into radio. I coulda gone to law school. But Nooooooooo...
Update: Oh, crud. The video has been removed, presumably by some copyright stormtrooper. So it goes.
The upshot was that it was a clip of a Simpsons episode featuring a candidate's debate and people, including bad-boy Nelson (the "Ha-Ha" kid) were ruthlessly mocking a print reporter on the moderator's panel, saying he was a relic in a dying industry. Principal Skinner then scolds Nelson for being mean, even if what he says is true. Believe me, it was funnier than I make it sound.
Update: Oh, crud. The video has been removed, presumably by some copyright stormtrooper. So it goes.
The upshot was that it was a clip of a Simpsons episode featuring a candidate's debate and people, including bad-boy Nelson (the "Ha-Ha" kid) were ruthlessly mocking a print reporter on the moderator's panel, saying he was a relic in a dying industry. Principal Skinner then scolds Nelson for being mean, even if what he says is true. Believe me, it was funnier than I make it sound.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
We said what?
I love newspaper corrections pages.
I don't dwell or corrections with any sense of epicaricacy, of course. God knows I have made enough mistakes and it's simply courting bad journalism karma to laugh too derisively at any error made by a colleague.
Instead, I find buried in there is a chronicle of human error, bad luck, misunderstanding, and unfortunate timing that make for the whoppers that inevitably appear in print every day (they show up on TV and radio too, perhaps in greater numbers, but they tend to vanish quickly into the electronic ether and broadcasters are notoriously reluctant to remind the audience of errors by issuing a correction). Corrections are also a lovely chronicle of defensiveness, denial, and, occasionally, good humor. Writing a good correction can be an art form in its own right.
The New Yorker used to publish lots of little corrections as filler, but they hardly do that anymore. So I had to look to other sources. Fortunately, there are a few, including the famous Regret the Error. It's well worth checking out.
Regret is out with its annual Best of list for 2007, and some of them are excellent, including the one that caused me to laugh until I cried. From the Hindu Times:
A report “From Bombay to Rajasthan” (“Newscape” page, January 8, 2007) stated that actor Elizabeth Hurley will wear “a 4,000-pound sari by designer Tarun Tahiliani” during her wedding in March. While one reader wondered how she would be able to lift the 1,800 kg sari, another reader said there are possible fears about the bride being reduced to pulp by its weight. It was an error. The word “pound” was used instead of the currency symbol for pound sterling (£).
Or the nearly as funny one from The Guardian in the U.K.:
We wrongly converted a baby’s birth weight of 8lbs 15oz as 51kg. It is 4.1kg (Losing it, page 13, G2, January 1). A 51kg baby is an impossible 112lbs 6oz.
You just can't make this stuff up.
I don't dwell or corrections with any sense of epicaricacy, of course. God knows I have made enough mistakes and it's simply courting bad journalism karma to laugh too derisively at any error made by a colleague.
Instead, I find buried in there is a chronicle of human error, bad luck, misunderstanding, and unfortunate timing that make for the whoppers that inevitably appear in print every day (they show up on TV and radio too, perhaps in greater numbers, but they tend to vanish quickly into the electronic ether and broadcasters are notoriously reluctant to remind the audience of errors by issuing a correction). Corrections are also a lovely chronicle of defensiveness, denial, and, occasionally, good humor. Writing a good correction can be an art form in its own right.
The New Yorker used to publish lots of little corrections as filler, but they hardly do that anymore. So I had to look to other sources. Fortunately, there are a few, including the famous Regret the Error. It's well worth checking out.
Regret is out with its annual Best of list for 2007, and some of them are excellent, including the one that caused me to laugh until I cried. From the Hindu Times:
A report “From Bombay to Rajasthan” (“Newscape” page, January 8, 2007) stated that actor Elizabeth Hurley will wear “a 4,000-pound sari by designer Tarun Tahiliani” during her wedding in March. While one reader wondered how she would be able to lift the 1,800 kg sari, another reader said there are possible fears about the bride being reduced to pulp by its weight. It was an error. The word “pound” was used instead of the currency symbol for pound sterling (£).
Or the nearly as funny one from The Guardian in the U.K.:
We wrongly converted a baby’s birth weight of 8lbs 15oz as 51kg. It is 4.1kg (Losing it, page 13, G2, January 1). A 51kg baby is an impossible 112lbs 6oz.
You just can't make this stuff up.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
It's the end of the world and we know it....
....and I feel fine.
Not perhaps as clever as Harry Shearer's brilliant mash-up of George W.'s many versions of "It's hard work" being president, but still funny. Unfortunately, I can't find an online copy of the song anymore - Shearer used to have it posted, but seemingly not now. If you're very nice to me, I will play you a copy I just happen to have.
Not perhaps as clever as Harry Shearer's brilliant mash-up of George W.'s many versions of "It's hard work" being president, but still funny. Unfortunately, I can't find an online copy of the song anymore - Shearer used to have it posted, but seemingly not now. If you're very nice to me, I will play you a copy I just happen to have.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Viva Fashion
Gosh, if only life was this beautiful...
Discovered and posted last week by the fitfully amusing blog Phillyist. Despite the look and sound, this place is in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I may have to go. And you should too.
Discovered and posted last week by the fitfully amusing blog Phillyist. Despite the look and sound, this place is in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I may have to go. And you should too.
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