Beaten
on 08.27.05
Perv flashes woman on subway, begins to pleasure himself. Woman pulls out her cell phone, snaps priceless picture (even safe for work), and posts it on the net.
Ha!: Thanks to Clancy in the comments, here's the original uncropped picture, and her original account.
And Boredom
on 08.27.05
Driving through my own suburban neighborhood tonight, I stopped at a light next to a Range Rover full of boys around sixteen-years-old. The one in the backseat nearest me had a video camera, which he pointed at me. I looked at him for a while, then faced forward. I took it as some kind of victory when I could see him out the corner of my eye, waving to get my attention.
Suburban Bliss
on 08.27.05
My mom lives in a medium tony suburb outside Chicago. Last night she had to call the cops because one of her neighbors was beating his wife. Last year, a different neighbor, a newleywed, told my mom that if my mom heard screaming, she should call the police, and that if she, the neighbor, wound up dead, her husband did it.
RSS Reader Review
on 08.27.05
A little while ago I asked for recommendations for a good RSS reader. While most of you didn't understand the question, tara recommended GreatNews. I have to say, I think I love it. In addition to a nice, clean interface, and intuitive layout and controls, it has a few other features I'm really enjoying. First, it makes it very easy to use your own stylesheet to format your reading pane, so it took just a minute to have all the feeds show up in a slightly larger serified font in a narrow column, for happy-making reading ease. And it has something called "search channels," which make it easy to build a feed based on a keyword search of feedster, which tracks a bunch of blogs, or Flickr, which is a picture-sharing site. I have a Flickr search set up for "tehran," so whenever someone posts a picture to Flickr tagged "tehran," I see it. That's very cool.
It has other nifty features I don't much use, but can see being of interest to others. If you're not wedded to your RSS reader, it's definitely worth a look (and does a good job of importing OPML files).
The Joy Of Chores
on 08.26.05
[I'm aware that I'm about to treat being busy at work as if I'm an anthropologist visiting a foreign land.]
I would have expected that after spending something like 26 straight hours at the office, then saying up till 2am working the next day, having a few normal days, then another long and harried day, that I would really want to rest when I'm home. But it hasn't worked out that way. I find that what I really want to do is take care of some of my own stuff. So a few days ago, when I came home totally exhausted, I did a zombie-like but very satisfying load of laundry. Today I staggered home and washed the dishes that had piled up. I guess it makes sense that I don't think of my job as something that takes away a lot of my time or attention (lord knows it usually doesn't), but something that takes me out of my domestic space. In any case, I'll sign off by saving SCMT the trouble.
This Crisis Thing Is Killing Me
on 08.26.05
Without Internet access until now. Also effin' tired. Thank goodness Unf has matters in hand.
Vote or Die!
on 08.26.05
Man thong (hyphen? no hyphen?) swimming suit: hydrodynamic innovation or abomination against God?
Totally Innocent
on 08.25.05
Thank god Tom Cruise is so extremely straight; otherwise, these pictures of him dressed as a woman might lead people to wonder.
via defamer
UPDATE: QED, or something like it.
Vegas, baby
on 08.25.05
There's nothing like a vacation to restore that flagging sense of intellectual vitality and integrity.
The Slack
on 08.25.05
Man, it looks like DominEditrix has landed a job that actually requires her to work, Standpipe Bridgeplate is on hiatus from commenting, and W-lfs-n is offline for a couple of weeks while he moves. I might start to miss the Latin.
And: eb too. Sheesh.
Charmed, I'm Sure
on 08.25.05
I just came across this phrase, used to describe a man of modest endowment attempting coitus: "like throwing a hotdog down a hallway."
Betrayal
on 08.24.05
Yes, I promised Labs that if he ever had a site under his own name, I wouldn't out him by linking to it. But I had no idea that it would be so awesome. Sorry, Labs.
via the apostropher
Nuh Uh
on 08.24.05
Atrios says,
Shorter Eugene Volokh: Homos are disease-spreading vermin.
Here's the Volokh post. Can someone tell me what's so objectionable about it?
To my untrained eye, this seems like another in the series of "That can't be true, because it would make me uncomfortable if it were."
More: From Volokh here.
OMG!
on 08.24.05
Someone really hasn't been reading her Nietzsche very carefully, or something:
Does anyone remember April and May of 2005? And the months preceeding them? The Orange Revolution? The Arab Springtime? The Cedar Revolution of Lebanon - all of them seeming to have a fire lit under them, a wonderful fire of liberty. Remember Revolution Babes?
All around the globe, there was a spirit of something that felt a lot like the Will to Power - something that was building in momentum…like we were on the brink of something truly remarkable and historic and new.
Then, suddenly - poof! - it all stopped? It all just seemed to go away. It was like a big giant foot just came down and stomped out all of those wonderful fires…and the White House seems to have just…blink! Forgotten about it.
Wow! It's like George Bush doesn't give a shit! And also, like I have some strange delusion that Nietzsche's Will to Power is remotely congruent with Christian morality?! WTF?!
So, last night, I wrote to a very smart, very knowledgeable guy who, if I told you his name, you'd be like, "you DO NOT correspond with him!" And I'd be like, "uh-huh, I do!" And you'd be like, "Get out!" And I wrote to this exceedingly brilliant man, of whom I am very respectful: "explain this to me, please, because you are very smart and because I don't get it. What happened? How did we move from such a sense of promise - just six months ago - to this sort of dreary, stagnant, nuthin' is goin' anywhere sort of torpor? Where is the energy, where is the juice, what has happened?"
His answer: "I don't know. I don't like it, either.
No. Fucking. Way. Jonah said that?
No Really, You're Not
on 08.24.05
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but one of the strange things about the response to the much-birth/no-boner post is the implicit dictum that it's never ok to stop finding your partner sexy. Once again, I thought it was just uncontroversial that after a while, the sexual fires cool, and we settle into no less loving and affectionate but decidely less sex-fueled patterns. Actually, I think people would grant that. What they don't want to grant is that there can be reasons for that that have to do with the other person. You know what's a good reason to stop finding a guy sexy? Love handles. A woman? Cellulite. And after you've heard sommeone fart for the 215th time, sexy just isn't in the cards. There seems to be some confusion: it's fine to insist that imperfection should be loved and accepted (and love handles and cellulite are both acceptable and lovable), but you can't insist that anyone should be turned on by anything.
But You're Not
on 08.23.05
Somehow I'm resisting an angry response to this. Let's just say I find it way too dismissive. First point.
Boo-fucking-hoo. How do you think it feels to actually be the person getting cut open?
I'm sure childbirth is absolutely unique, etc., but in my experience, having been the patient and also the person standing by, as long as we assume that the non-patient really loves the patient, it's always easier to be the patient.
Second point, really a question: the old advice about being sexy has a lot to do with "mystery." So is that advice just crap? Where do you think it comes from, and is there anything to it?
Signs You Really Need To Eat Breakfast
on 08.23.05
Driving to work, you keep inventing scenarios in which perfectly nice people treat you poorly, and you get very very mad at them.
Seeing that you have a voicemail waiting for you, you say "Damn it. God damn it."
You actually catch yourself saying, out loud, "Screw everybody."
The last one, at least, broke the spell and made me laugh.
A Renaming
on 08.22.05
I just came across this new-to-me bit about Wittgenstein.
It was the nineteen-thirties, and Wittgenstein had gone to the hospital to visit a friend whose tonsils had just been taken out. She croaked to Wittgenstein, "I feel just like a dog that has been run over." Wittgenstein (the friend recalled) was disgusted to hear her say this. "You don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like," he snapped.
Henceforth, Ben W-lfs-n will be known as Bad Wittgenstein.
I Read A Bit
on 08.22.05
Look, I'm aware that pointing and laughing at people's online personals isn't proper blogging, but this guy says he's a philosophy grad student, and he might be the most prick-seeming guy ever, so hahaha!
The Pod Perpetuates Itself
on 08.22.05
First, you really need to browse a few host bios at Current TV's site.
...
Ok, now watch Tom nail it.
I get that the network needs some kind of framing device, but it isn't these folks -- they make the whole enterprise ring false. These VJs, or MCs, or Pod-people, or whatever they're called, are culled from the same pool of rich-but-accomplished, attractive-but-not-vain, smart-but-not-interesting, and 100% earnest young people whose defining characteristic is that they're no fun to talk to at parties.
But nevermind the network (about which Tom is right in all particulars); these people really screw up the dating pool. Only a very keen eye or the right experience can see past rich, accomplished, attractive, and smart. The truth, "I only care about kids with HIV in the abstract, but I'm much better to spend time with," is not a winner.
Joy
on 08.22.05
I seem to have posting privileges on this site. Things are more or less under control at work, so fingers crossed for no more all-nighters at the office and no more long hours on the weekend (I don't know how you do it, LB). So, let's see what's happening in the world...