February 2010
27 posts
Amen, Comrade
Letter to the editor of Chicago Reader
War Porn
Re: Recent History: The Hurt Locker: the first post-Iraq war movie,” by J.R. Jones, July 9th.
Kathryn Bigelow’s film offers a vicarious thrill via yet another standard-issue psychopath high on violence in somebody else’s country where the deaths of a million people are consigned to cinematic oblivion. The hype around Bigelow is...
The worst
Imagine if you lived in Philadelphia, and you had terrible snowstorms all winter. It’d be like living in San Jose, and having George Bush as president.
Blogging remember when
Back in the day it was a tendency to make your home page show your most modern post alone, if you thought it was profound, if you thought it was as we would now say a tweet.
Pronoun & proper noun problems
It is always make an honest woman of her or the proper noun, make an honest woman of Jessica. It is never make an honest woman of the woman or even a jest like make an honest woman of the little woman.
“You know what I want? I want yesterday.”
– Natalie Wood
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“Yikes. dreadful cliche-filled dreck. And too long too.”
– Dreck is a good example of a word I would never use. I’m not sure why. I know what it means. I’ve seen it before. I would just never use the word dreck, because it sounds weak.
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Project for Tao Process Improvement Web Team
People joined Linkedin today and synched their address books. They saw people they didn’t know anymore, and maybe they never knew them. I thought I’d write about them, feeling it for them myself, but I have decided to delegate this writing to Tao’s process improvement web team. Tao’s team is too much with the Internet as Wordsworth’s was too much with the World....
WatchMichelle Obama talks to Mike Huckabee about childhood obesity. Meanwhile, in the last year or so, Mike Huckabee has contracted adulthood obesity. Time to lay off those Jimmy Dean bowls, Mike.
Appearance of David Antin in wrong dream, in the...
Another hydra-headed dream last night. I was walking through a Polo Ralph Lauren Factory Store (in Howell, MI) price comparing slightly irregular sheet sets. David Antin was an RL sales associate, wearing hot-girl born-in-L.A. glasses, offering me a mesh bag for shopping ease and a coupon for $25 off if I spent $250. His manicure was Lincoln Park After Dark, looking gothic instead of signifier...
Say Issue, not Problem
I cannot hear the word Florida without thinking (not thinking really, saying in my head) the Stevens title Farewell to Florida. Makes the cycles of Spring Training and Home Foreclosures difficult to get through.
31 Days of Crummerbunds
Taped something from 1936 with Gable and Tracy titled San Francisco, austere, somehow about the 1906 quake. Cleaning up Gable in a tux, everyone singing. The earthquake won’t happen until the end of the picture. Rivals avatar in special effects. Will Gable have to be cleaned up off the floor? Project: Make a World Trade Center movie where everyone wears a tux and sings, until.
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Tiger Woods has no balls
Only America the Beautiful has more outdated lyrics than this tune.
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“At times I feel like I have invented pedophilia. It’s quite bizarre.”
– Adrian Lyne, in 1997, discussing the controvery surrounding Lolita.
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A Warlord
When did Manifesto become a genre for 244 page books?
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.
You are not a Gadget: A Manifesto.
Chocolate & Simultaneous Death: Eminent
What was going through someone’s head at Random House to make this a Valentine’s day American Greeting e-card?
Students learn to behave
Bus rides no longer fun and for fingering only. Soma delivered in form of wi-fi. Same idea worked in 1980s, following invention of Walkman. History remembers Etch-a-sktech. It’s a long way to Avondale.
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Ethan Hawke Walls
This article mentions Ordinary People and a line I didn’t know - that it shouldn’t have won best picture that year: Raging Bull should have. Not that being able to watch a movie again makes it great, but I could watch Ordinary People 10 times and then 10 more, but I don’t think I could ever watch Raging Bull again. Maybe it’s because I know nothing about cold white people,...
Decade in Women
There was a slight increase in numbers of women in the military and a big increase in reported Sexual abuse and rape. As Rep. Jane Harman put it at a 2009 congressional hearing, “A woman in the military is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.”
Vauge Shimmering Ladycloud
In 2007, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman speaker of the House. In 2009, Elana Kagan became the first woman Solicitor General. Also in 2009, Michelle Obama became the first African-American First Lady, ensuring full employment for style journalists, who devoted five million womanhours to analyzing her clothes (fabulous? over-the-top? What, she wears dresses?) and that vague shimmering ladycloud...
Description of a homosexual
Pammy shared a partitioned area with Ethan Segal, who was responsible for coordinating the activities of the regional offices. Because of his longish hair, his repertoire of ruined flourishes, his extravagantly shabby clothing, a somewhat ironic overrefinement of style, Pammy thought of his as semi-Edwardian. Even the signs he showed of middle age were tinged with a kind of blithe ornamentation....
“Hank, I want to talk about bailouts,” Kashkari interrupted.
“What are you talking about? Get out of here,” Paulson said, annoyed.
“Look, we keep talking about how do we get the political will to get the authority we really need to take action, right? Well, we have to have some record that shows we tried. The next president is going to come in here and say,...
