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March 29, 2008
Effective phraseology, and fish.
1. Dick Cavett writes a blog for the NY Times site, and yesterday he referred to George W. Bush as "the capering loon who does soft-shoe in the White House".
2. At a mediocre waterfront bar/cafe in Miami the other night, several of my cohorts eagerly ordered the "dolphin sandwich" from the menu. The "dolphin", of course, was mahi-mahi (Coryphaena hippurus), a brightly-colored, square-headed carnivorous fish not to be confused with those gray squealing mammalian bastards who always want to steal your ball and head-butt you underwater. What interested me was that my companions really thought they were going to eat filet of Flipper, and didn't seem the least bit perturbed about it.
3. Speaking from experience: when you enter a sushi restaurant and one server is stoned, the other is a trainee, and no one appears to be Japanese, it's probably best to just leave right away.
March 27, 2008
One man's nine seconds of fame, well-deserved.
March 26, 2008
People who got away from it all (and waded in their waste).
Report from Miami: today I was introduced to Stiltsville, an area miles off the Florida coast (yet covered in only four to six feet of water) where maniacs once built houses in the path of nature's fury.
Prohibition apparently did things like this to people's minds.
Imagine living in a wading pool, splashing around with all of your (and your neighbors') various effluvia, 24/7. Glurb.
On the plus side, however, our boat captain says the fishing was "real good around there back then. Lot of crabs, too."
I can only imagine.
So, you like it ruff?
Mark and Kristen present an homage to one of the greatest cinematic traditions.
Worth your time.
March 21, 2008
You will sing this song for the next 223 days.
Resistance is futile.
March 15, 2008
Mr. Drysdale's curtains are on fire.
Not a good sign from an investment banker:
“This is a bridge to a more permanent solution and it will allow us to look at strategic alternatives that can run the gamut,” [Bear Stearns chief executive Alan D. Schwartz] said. “Investors will be able to see the facts instead of the fiction. We will look for any alternative that serves our customers as well as maximizes shareholder value.”
Run on Big Wall St. Bank Spurs Rescue Backed by U.S. (NY Times)
There's also smart analysis of this save-the-bankers, fuck-the-homeowners situation from Paul Krugman and on Left, Right and Center.
March 10, 2008
You fucking tool.
When an admirable, progressive, two-fisted attorney general in a notoriously corrupt state becomes governor, it's a heartening moment.
Then he has a bad first year in office, where his impolitic passion for reform collides with entrenched interests who thwart his efforts.
But as a new year arrives, he seems to turn a corner, and he builds on his impressive image as a no-nonsense, law-and-order guy who's acutely focused on issues in the broadly public interest.
Oh, and did I mention that what happens next is you find out he's a big fan of hiring expensive prostitutes who'll travel across state lines to have sex with him?
I try not to moralize too much. But this dickhead had the gall to hold himself up as a moral authority on a side I support, and I believed in him. I held out a bit of hope that he was smart enough to navigate a difficult path, and that he'd help the progressive cause in the process.
Apparently I'm not yet cynical enough to be numb to disappointment. But you're helping me to get there, Eliot, you dumb dipshit.
This NY Times summation of a certain affidavit tells the story concisely. It also uses the adjective "choicier" ("one of Washington’s choicer hotels"); almost as bad a choice as one of Governor Spitzer's.
Room 871 had been booked under the name of George Fox, a pseudonym that Client 9 had been using, and one by which several people in the ring knew him, according to a law enforcement official. However, a few of the prostitutes had recently come to realize who the man really was, the official said.The affidavit said Client 9 contacted the Emperor’s Club last month, requesting an appointment on Feb. 13 at 9 or 10 p.m. The appointment was to be in Washington, and he sent along what appears to have been a deposit of cash by mail.
Apparently, it was not his first time using the service. The affidavit captures the almost mundane financial back-and-forth prior to the meeting, quoting Ms. Lewis as telling her boss, Mark Brener, the owner of the ring, that Client 9 had a $400 or $500 credit to his name and wished to use it toward his next appointment.
When Ms. Lewis spoke to the client on Feb. 12, the affidavit said, she told him that his deposit had not yet arrived and asked if he had sent it to a business known as QAT.
“Yup, same as in the past,” the client said. “No question about it.”
Affidavit: Client 9 and Room 871 (NY Times)
Enough with the torture, mmmkay?
In the wake of George W. Bush's veto of a bill that would have limited the CIA's ability to torture people, here's an interview with a former FBI interrogator who calls bullshit on the "ticking bomb" pro-waterboarding argument.
Our torture program apparently stirs up that pesky jihad business as well.
Via Boing Boing.
March 07, 2008
Miracles, and how to define them.
I'm not normally interested in theistic studies. But sometimes, evidence of the transcendent is simply too overwhelming to ignore.
Let Professor Aaron Wasserman of New York University be your guide to one such modern revelation.
A video by Jon Glaser, who wrote the equally informative "Dead Invisible People".
March 05, 2008
Very undergroundy.
I fry with envy that someone got to explore the abandoned hydroelectric tunnels beneath Niagara Falls, and didn't ask me along. You bastards!
Here's their story, with photographs. Try to ignore the clumsy, pretentious prose ("Lying below a river that will relentlessly tear into the bedrock until all has been obliterated from Queenston to Erie, this tunnel thirty-three feet in diameter is imprinted into my being forever.")
More pictures and fewer words, please.
Via Boing Boing.
March 04, 2008
Apparently you can make this shit up.
Dan Savage over at Slog has this about the colossal lack of vetting done by the editor and publisher of "Love And Consequences", the most searing and heartfelt fake South-Central-female-gangster memoir you won't read this year:
Geoffrey Kloske, publisher of Riverhead Books, tells the New York Times that there was “nothing else that he or Sarah McGrath, the book’s editor, could have done to prevent the author from lying.” Here’s what they did do…Despite editing the book in the aftermath of the scandal surrounding James Frey, author of a best-selling memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” who admitted making up or exaggerating details in his account of drug addiction and recovery, Ms. McGrath said she did not independently check parts of Ms. Seltzer’s story or perform any kind of background check. She said she relied on Ms. Seltzer to tell the truth.“In the post-James Frey world, we all are more careful,” Ms. McGrath said. “I had numerous conversations with her about the need to be honest and the need to stick to the facts.”
Uh… gee. McGrath knew the authors real name, and the author claimed to have been in the foster care system, in trouble with the law, a university graduate—all things that 1. weren’t true and 2. are pretty easy to check out. The New York Times, of course, published a piece on Seltzer last week—and they didn’t check out her story either. Why not?
The rest of Savage's piece is here.
WBUR's Tom Ashbrook did this embarrassingly fawning interview with "Love And Consequences" author Margaret Jones (real name: Margaret Seltzer) on February 29th. It has the earnest-white-guy NPR tone you can count on anytime the topic is at all exotic, and even includes some gangsta rap in the transitions. Cringeworthy!
What's really interesting about hearing this interview in hindsight is Jones/Seltzer's careful avoidance of the first person in many of her descriptions and anecdotes—her conscience seemed to be trying to assert itself.
And just in case that's not enough analysis, Patt Morrison talked the whole thing over with "G-Dog And The Homeboys" author Celeste Fremon on KPCC today.
How to recognize your planet from quite a long way away.
Number 1, the Earth.
THE EARTH.
That's as seen from Mars, by the way. Here's more.
March 03, 2008
Is our children learning?
41 Science Fair Exhibits at Photobasement, via Exploding Aardvark.
March 01, 2008
So much for Obama being slow with a counterpunch.
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton stooped to her lowest level of attack yet, a cheesy, mindless ad (cribbed from Walter Mondale, for fuck's sake) that plays to people's least rational fears during a time of war. She's desperately trying to use her so-called experience as a miraculous cure for a failed campaign; the fact that she chose to do so—using tactics that would make Karl Rove proud—shreds any argument that she's a candidate of principle.
By the end of the day, the Obama campaign had responded.
Obama's ad is nothing to be terribly proud of, since it rests on the same fear-based premise as Clinton's. But the fact that his campaign got it made and distributed so quickly is pretty amazing.
So this is how the general election will go: highly accomplished media teams will be on watch, ready to answer the phone at 3am when another attack ad is imminent. We can only hope that there's a little time left over to talk about anything of substance.
