April 2008
43 posts
“Effectively synthesizing backward overflow…”
– So says Jack Donaghy during an early episode of “30 Rock.” There must be a way to work this into my rotation.
catbird.muxtape.com →
As far as funny-ha-ha muxtapes go (a la “I drink your milkshake”) this one really takes the cake. Not only does it have its fun at the stereotypical hipster’s expense (and who can’t get behind that?), but it also betrays something about the Muxtape service itself — that Muxtape has revived the cultural artifact of the mixtape, but, by and large, its users have done...
WatchThe waterboarding installment of Amnesty’s Unsubscribe Me campaign. Chilling.
Taking signal v. noise and attempting to turn it into some moral cause demanding a new online asceticism seems to me not only laughable but counterproductive. That the internet is being flooded with data is not some social malady on par with climate change. That someone has opted to tweet the minutiae of everyday life does not make them complicit in viciously denying humankind of its...
It just occurred to me that Told or Known is an anagram of the name of that tumblelog’s author. I worry that this is another one of those all too frequent moments in my life when I realize something in a flash of inspiration that’s been so obvious to everyone else all along that they’ve just never bothered talking about it. I hate those moments.
“Now, Mr. Albrecht is trying for a comeback. And he’s staking much of it on a...”
– It does sound a little ridiculous, but I’m hesitant to bet against Chris Albrecht. Because he’d slap me around. (via alexbalk) Wow, hard to believe. I worked on the ad campaign for the original SlamBall something like six years ago when I was still at Heavy. Slamball’s resurrection from its...
My whole life I’ve walked with my head down, not because of some debilitating shyness but because I’ve always been transfixed by the cracks in the sidewalk pavement, trying always to make sure I successfully avoided each one. But never in my whole life have I had the technology or the desire to share that fact, while walking.
Perhaps the day will come when the words “smart” and “IQ” no longer appear in conjunction.
Apr. 15
For most Americans, Apr. 15 is a day associated with the annoyance and tedium of tax forms. For those applying to graduate schools, on the other hand, Apr. 15 is The Big Day, the nationally recognized deadline for all outstanding offers to students to be accepted or declined — and freeing up those cherished waitlist spots. When the day began I was on two waitlists. By Noon I was finally...
Subway Crush →
obsessivecompulsive: a website dedicated to finding your crush on the subway (thx @picodegallo) There was another model for this back in ‘00 or ‘01. I think it was called something like See You See Me, but that sounds too much like that mid-90s cybersex videochat utility CU-SeeMe. Anyway, I tried to use the service once (with no luck) after a love affair erupted through two panes of...
Watchcraig: noahkalina: “uh, hi, we made a really successful thing on the Internet, and we’d like to collect our money…” I’m reminded of this one, an oldie but a goodie.
"Crude academic marxism"
So said religious zealot and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson during last night’s CNN post-debate spin when speaking of Obama’s recent “bitter” comment. I threw up a little in my mouth.
A confluence of haute and mass culture that’s simply too good to be true? In the last chapter called “Hauntings: from 1892 to today,” Ivry discusses other books written about Rimbaud and his influence on a multitude of gay and bisexual artists and poets … everyone from Benjamin Britten and choreographer Frederick Ashton and the Beat poets Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. On...
Barf: “Any honest Democrat will admit that we are now all Friedmanites,” Lawrence H. Summers, the Harvard economist and former Clinton administration Treasury secretary, wrote in an appreciation published in this newspaper when Mr. Friedman died. “He has had more influence on economic policy as it is practiced around the world today than any other modern figure.” My stomach turned the first time...
Something that routinely bothers me: one champs at the bit, one does not chomp.
Breaking… BOSTON — After prematurely awarding their Clutch Performer of the Game Award to Manny Ramirez in the seventh inning of today’s match-up here between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, Pepsi has redacted the award. Instead, Fenway Park’s sound crew will be recognized for their clutch performance after cueing up Rihanna’s “Umbrella”...
“Ultimately, Lander’s site [Stuff White People Like] echoes an exchange...”
– Gary Dauphin
I always knew Ayn Rand sucks, but never did I imagine she could suck so hard that her acolytes would have to literally pay her fucking way into the academy: April 11 (Bloomberg) — Ayn Rand’s novels of headstrong entrepreneurs’ battles against convention enjoy a devoted following in business circles. While academia has failed to embrace Rand, calling her philosophy simplistic,...
So Wittgenstein is sitting in a lecture hall listening to some prominent linguist deliver a lecture. Said prominent linguist notes that in all languages a double negative can function to either negate the negative or else more prominently assert it, but that in no language is it possible for a double positive to ever serve such a function. At which point Wittgenstein is heard to say, “yeah...
WatchFurther evidence that solemnly kissing one’s own pinky ring is the dancefloor equivalent of the orate, fratres.
Walking into CVS to hear Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” instead of the customary Whitney Houston is about as disorienting as I’d imagine it would be to hear “L’Internationale” on opening day at Yankee Stadium in lieu of the “Star Spangled Banner.”
Norman Mailer: “Died Tragically Rescuing His Family From The Remains Of A Destroyed Sinking Battleship.”
“When a priest loses his faith, he is unfrocked; when critics lose theirs, they...”
– Ernest Gellner
Shame on you, Ron Paul. I think we all know that House resolutions are meaningless, and when you’re the lone dissenter on a declaration carrying no force or effect you damn well better have a good reason, like when everyone’s favorite cheesehead crazy Jim Sensenbrenner voted nay on congratulating the Ohio State Buckeyes on their bowl victory after his hometown Badgers got steamrolled...
Rumors here of an upcoming mobile social networking application that uses GPS to triangulate locations and allow users to view profiles of other users in their immediate vicinity. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume...
From RedState.com, floating a trial balloon for Ken Burns’ forthcoming sequel to The Civil War: … the DNC is now out with an email blast begging for money, saying again that John McCain wants to fight another 100 years. No doubt the media will keep repeating it, never pointing out the gross distortion of what McCain said. It is important, however, that we all have the facts to point...
sharingtime: thewordunheard: bonus step eleven: fuck money. banana pancakes! At first I read this as “fuck monkey. banana pancakes!” I then wondered why she was so hostile to monkeys. There’s enough bananas for everyone. Geez. I thought it was an allusion to Pirate’s breakfast in Gravity’s Rainbow. But that’s only because I’ve tried and failed to read that book so...
1 tag
thewordunheard: you know how when you have a search bar for google built into your browser, it keeps the last search up there? for the past few days my browser has had the phrase “koala vagina” in it. because i was confirming what i’d heard, that male koalas have penises that are forked like snakes’ tongues, and female koalas have bifurcated vaginas. BIFURCATED. they’re working with bifurcated...
Dr. Eeyore's Hospital →
Exhibit #1,447,192 that literally EVERYTHING is on the internet, including a Teddy Ruxpin repair shop complete with awesome mid-90s midi theme music. (… don’t even ask what I was googling to come across this nugget.)
Kylie Minogue — Sensitized. … in which...
1 tag
“That’s a loss, but it’s not a loss of anything in particular. It doesn’t take...”
– Stanley Fish There are people in my life i would get along better with if they would at least attempt to take this seriously (via yesand) With full disclosure of the fact that I’ve not read Cusset’s work, it seems to me that framing French theory in terms of what is or is not at risk...
I’ve just realized the one and only benefit of living the unfulfilled life of a PC user constantly coveting the sexy Mac on thy neighoring table at the coffee shop. In the last couple of days some truly foreboding noise has started belching from my Dell’s innards, a noise which for most people would be a source of supreme anxiety. But for me it’s a song of freedom, since the...
“Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I...”
– Spike Lee
So Starbucks got scooped on their Big Event, which hardly deserves a drumroll let alone a massive national ad campaign. Yes, Starbucks is releasing — coffee. Ah, they say, but it’s an “everyday” coffee blend, featuring “subtle, rich flavors of cocoa and toasted nuts.” Holy tits! An “everyday” coffee blend? LATE UPDATE BREAKING: Marlboro to unveil...
Man what I wouldn’t give to see a Democrat - a mildly crazy one from a safe district - take to the podium in the House chamber with a momentous proposal: “Our nation lost a great citizen over the weekend, and to honor his memory we announce here today H.R. 52447, a constitutional amendment overturning the Second Amendment - yes, over Mr. Heston’s dead body.”
Finally got around to renting The Darjeeling Limited tonight. I was unimpressed. Wes Anderson probably needs to hug his father before his next film. These paternal subtexts are getting repetitive.
Been a lot of talk during this campaign about words, “just words.” But for all our disagreements, it seems we should all be able to agree that forty years ago today there was no “just” to the words RFK spoke in Indianapolis. Sometimes words inspire, sometimes they establish governments. Sometimes they form poetry, other times they just fill column inches. But it is so...
I found myself today as the lone Jew arguing with a pack of Christians over the superiority of Elijah v. Santa. I maintain that spectral prophetic drunkards slipping through cracks in the front door for a glass of wine over knishes is a far better cultural propaedeutic than a jolly fat man shimmying down chimneys for milk and cookies.
1 tag
It’s April 3rd, a mere dozen days from The Moment in Which Life Either Begins or Ends for All Graduate School Applicants. I’ve been rejected outright from four schools and waitlisted at two. Yet I realize as I wait this out that despite all the flowery and high-minded rhetoric of my Statement of Purpose the things with which I’m concerned when I think of working for five years...
I'M ON THE INTERNET