Thursday, January 31, 2002
how messed up is this: i can't go down to the waldorf to protest because i'm stuck here working in an investment bank. sigh. i guess i'll do what i can. please go visit www.anotherworldispossible.com and www.adbusters.org. Tuesday, January 29, 2002
"Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just, is not now, nor ever again will be, a part of this town of Inglis," Mayor Carolyn Risher says in a proclamation, which was issued on official town stationery. --Mayor of Inglis, FL casting Satan out of her town. Oh God, I'm so embarassed as a Christian. Call me crazy, but I'm guessing she thinks the purple Teletubbie is gay. Who are these people, and why do they insist on getting their theology from the bottom of a Cracker Jack's box? Sunday, January 20, 2002
'Never having had a regular job she [Susan Sontag] has not had to negotiate the constraints of an institution. She has no regular working regime or timetable, no structure other than that which she imposes episodically on herself. "I don't feel the need to write every day or even every week. But when I get started on something I just sit for 18 hours and suddenly realise that I have to pee. Many days I start in the morning and suddenly it's dark and I haven't gotten up. It's very bad for the knees."' 'Her transatlantic lifestyle, shared between New York, Paris and, to a lesser extent, Berlin and London, seems to be born from a deeply ambivalent attitude to the US, which many American commentators understand as a sign of her aloofness. "I don't like America enough to want to live anywhere else except Manhattan," she says. "And what I like about Manhattan is that it's full of foreigners. The America I live in is the America of the cities. The rest is just drive-through."' from Gary Younge's article in the Guardian Unlimited. Saturday, January 19, 2002
From the NYT Op-Ed: To the Editor: In "The Damaged Spirit of the Sept. 11 Fund" (Op-Ed, Jan. 18), Fred Price and Mitch Kleinman argue that the rules of the federal Victims Compensation Fund are flawed. They are right, but their solution pushes the balance of compensation further in the wrong direction. They advocate compensation based on potential lifetime earnings, meaning that a 25-year-old stockbroker with an Ivy League degree would receive far more compensation than a 50-year-old janitor. But this does not compensate families for their actual losses, but rather rewards those who happened to be young members of a Who's Who of the financial sector. It also tends to reward those who had the financial resources to get advanced degrees — a group that will not be reflective of the racial and ethnic backgrounds of the victims as a whole. In life, stockbrokers and lawyers may have been "worth more" financially than janitors and secretaries. But in death, we are all equal. The fairest way to distribute the compensation fund is to recognize that equality, and begin compensation from a baseline of an equal division. JASON GOTTLIEB New York, Jan. 18, 2002 Friday, January 18, 2002
"When MTV and Showtime disclosed last week that they were creating a gay channel for cable, one NBC executive joked that there already was a gay channel — and he worked there." --Maureen Dowd's NYT column Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Merit Industries manufactured a plaque for the city of Lauderhill, FL to honor James Earl Jones. But due to what the company claims is a typo made by a non-English-speaking employee, they printed “James Earl Ray”, MLK’s assassin, instead of “James Earl Jones”. This plaque--to be presented during a ceremony during MLK weekend to honor the achievements of African-American, no less--“mistakenly” reads “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive.” The Washington Post article is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53080-2002Jan16.html and the CNN story is available at http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/01/16/life.plaque.reut/index.html. Please do a good deed for the day. Call up these people and tell them that putting "James Earl Ray" instead of "James Earl Jones" on this plaque is not a funny joke. And for them to essentially insinuate that the mistake was made by a Mexican immigrant who doesn’t speak English—that’s not only absurd, that’s slap in the face to any and everyone that believes this country has benefited from the Civil Rights Movement. “James Earl Bones” or “James Earl Jone” is a typo. “James Earl Ray” is a travesty, not a minor error. Someone with a keen knowledge of American History—and an extraordinarily nauseating sense of humor—is to blame. The company’s contact information is: Merit Industries 119 Serenada Dr., Box 878, Georgetown, TX 78628 512-863-8541 Fax: 512-863-9861 CEO: Herbert Piller/President Marketing: Robert Piller/Vice President, Sales Operations: Chris Nevit/Vice President, Operations Please keep the real dream alive by making your voice heard.
my results from the "which kevin smith female are you?" quiz:
um...stephanie! not a peep out of you! or john, for that matter! and the results from the "what kevin smith male are you?" quiz
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
i just found this: www.antithesis.com. it's all new to me, so i'm still trying to form an opinion. however, if any of you know anything about this group or their publication, and would like to comment, please e-mail me. thanks.
note to self: it's a lot easier to maintain a blog page if you don't have to put any original thought into what you post. that way you don't become the object of ridicule if you say something stupid; only the author of what you quote. unless, of course, you quote something/one really stupid, and people end up wondering why you posted it in the first place. that would be embarrassing, too. at least i'm not writing stuff like "freaking timberwolves. grr." cause that would be lame, like utilizing an obsolete vernacular. then again, it's close to "ahhh!!! cobras!!!" which makes me laugh. a painting of shirt-less guys in blue jeans, sitting on four-wheelers, wearing large and scary masks, holding their hands up like grizzly bears before they attack their prey--that makes me laugh, too. miguel calderón, you rock. wildcats. wildcats.... okay, i'm going to go now.
'Oddly enough, Enron and its executives would be much better off if they had never contributed a dime to a political campaign, or a corporate jet to a candidate. Because they gave so much to the people who might otherwise intervene on their behalf, those people can do nothing for them without seeming to be on the take. 'That's the price you pay when you dole out hundreds of thousands of dollars to gain access to politicians. If you land in serious trouble, those very same politicians have no power to prevent their political enemies from having their way with you. If Enron's executives are subjected to a particularly gruesome public lynching, it will be because of, not despite, their connections to the Bush White House.'
michael lewis's column available on bloomberg. Monday, January 14, 2002
'Other articles on the "anti-hip" phenomenon also fail to recognize the distinction between camp and cheese approaches to kitsch. In his article "Anti-Hip" (Boston Phoenix), Geoff Edgars agrees that to be truly hip one must now be anti-hip, and "pretend to like things that are campy (surf music), horrible (William Shatner's turn at 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds'), nostalgic (Molly Ringwald), square (Karen Carpenter), or ugly (poly-ester)." First of all, Geoff, get it straight: Shatner is campy, Karen Carpenter is horrible (grotesque, to be precise), surf music is nostalgic, polyester is square, and Molly Ringwald (despite Hatebath's protests to the contrary) is ugly. The article goes on to vomit out an array of objects supposedly embraced by the cheesy anti-hip, including Ed Wood, corduroys and turtlenecks, John Travolta, Juan Garcia Esquivel, The Monkees, vinyl records, Jonathan Richman, bad poetry, and unmatched socks. Either this guy is engaged in a put-on himself, or he's a CIA agent spreading disinformation: Either way, pal, get off Newbury Street!' --joshua glenn from "camp: an introduction" in hermenaut available online at www.hermenaut.com Friday, January 11, 2002
'Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind". Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind". What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.' --Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy Thursday, January 10, 2002
Euphemism of the day: “As you can see from the chart, the average age of claimants is in the mid-70’s, as opposed to the 60’s a decade earlier. Because of this trend we believe we are nearing the end of the issue, and will soon grow out of it.” --Management team of a large company (that I probably shouldn’t mention) talking about why asbestos litigation should not be a credit issue. Translation: “The people who want money from us are getting old and dying. We won’t have that much to pay going forward because the plaintiffs are all dying off. On whether or not it’s from being exposed to our asbestos-laden products, we won’t comment.” Thursday, January 03, 2002
I’ve managed to get myself sick. My throat is sore, my muscles ache, and my brain is really, really slow. I have an air mattress under my desk at work. I’m very tempted to crawl up under there and disappear for a few hours. I need to find some Nyquil and nuke my body back to health. Help.
'Bush told reporters he would be "madder than heck" if racial profiling was a factor in the agent's removal from the flight.'
source: cnn.com, quoting "Dub-ya" regarding the removal of an Arab-American secret service agent from an American Airlines flight. He may not be the most eloquent president we've ever had, but at least he's taking the right stance on this issue. Wednesday, January 02, 2002
“What’s the best predictor in our research of what will cause a place to grow? No, it’s not the number of entrepreneurs. No, it’s not the number of high-tech companies. No, it’s not the amount of R&D that is conducted, or the level of venture capital invested. It’s the percentage of the population that’s gay.” Taken from page six of Richard Florida’s "The Entrepreneurial Society" Presented at the Conference on Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, April 10, 2001. Available here. |
