| A temporary cure for my fervent longing to tell off all the idiots in this world |
[26 Jun 2006|07:59pm] |
I was driving home from work on Thursday night when I heard the following story on All Things Considered:
Voting-Rights Extension Put on Hold in House
The House of Representatives' vote to extend the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years was derailed last week, and NPR talked with a couple of the Republicans responsible. I was dumbfounded by some of the quotes, and it set me off. After nearly having a coronary from such stupidity, I needed some catharsis, and thankfully, a temporary cure was coming to town on Friday night: Lewis Black.
The tickets listed the start time for the show as 7:00, and one of the papers said the concert was going to start at 8:00. The opening act took the stage around 7:45, and Black started his set around 8:30. The first thing Black did was apologize for the mixup, and noted how some idiot along the line scheduled the start time as 7:00. "No one starts a show at 7 o'clock on a Friday night because everybody will still be trying to get there!" And, then Black began by telling off Ticketmaster: "I don't know where that extra money goes because I don't get it, and I don't want it!"
One highlight was when Black was telling a story about getting a hole in one in Austin. Someone from the crowd yelled, "Bullshit!"
"Bullshit? Bullshit? God damn it, given how much time and money I've spent on golf in forty years, I could have taken that and become a brain fuck surgeon. With all the shit that game has given me, I finally get one good thing and you say it's bullshit? Fuck you! You're out, you don't get the apology!"
The guy kept yelling through the show, and Black just heaped more abuse on the guy. Lately, I've found myself becoming more and more flustered by all sorts of small annoyances around me, and it was refreshing to hear Black vent so much of the frustration that I seem to be penting up.
The show was great and definitely served its purpose, and Sarah and I were both having trouble breathing when Black finished with the following story:
Hippo Eats Dwarf
|
|
| The Old Gray Lady and the Red Sox |
[11 May 2006|10:41pm] |
Last week, I was listening to ESPN Radio when Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann were talking to Hall of Fame baseball writer Peter Gammons. Patrick asked Gammons about the difference between writing a daily sports column now and writing a column in Gammons' prime (mid 70s to early 80s). Ironically, Gammons noted how the echo chambers of sports talk radio can affect what a writer does now; Gammons said something along the lines of "I don't want to sound sanctimonious, but we didn't have talk radio back then." In continuing his argument, Gammons mentioned how the New York Times owns 16% of the Boston Red Sox as if this was common knowledge. Since then, I've been curious to find evidence of that fact, and here it is:
The Globe-Sox connectionThe New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, holds a 17 percent share of New England Sports Ventures, the partnership that owns the Red Sox, Fenway Park, and 80 percent of the New England Sports Network, the cable channel that broadcasts most of the team's games. (The Times Co. also owns the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and a 49 percent share of the Metro newspaper.) This is excerpted from a piece that the Boston Globe's ombudsman wrote exploring the ties between the newspaper and the Red Sox, an organization that the journalists are expected to write about objectively.
Personally, I dig this up because I feel a certain sort of odd dissonance in knowing that the New York Times owns such a large chunk of the Boston Red Sox. I feel it would be faintly akin to a Soviet company having a one-sixth stake in General Motors or Ford during the Cold War. I've got this sort of cognitive dissonance thinking about it, and I don't even like the Red Sox. How much of Red Sox Nation knows this fact, and how do those in the know reconcile it?
|
|
| Gilmore no more, not really |
[27 Apr 2006|05:13pm] |
Team Palladino: The Interview
The above links to an interview with Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino speaking about their impending departure from the show Amy created, Gilmore Girls. The show will go on next year, but it will not be the same. I can't think of a show where a lead character reflects its creator as strongly as Lorelai Gilmore reflects ASP. Reading many of Sherman-Palladino's interviews, it seems pretty obvious to me that Lorelai IS Amy, and it's hard for me to imagine anyone else writing that character.
From the above interview, here's a couple of tidbits from ASP that I enjoyed:I can't be a part of something that I can't ensure that I'm giving 100 percent anymore. If I'm saying, "I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I feel like I'm going to flip out and be a Margot Kidder in the hedges with my teeth gone at Episode 6 if I don't get some help," somebody should listen. Because, seriously, me without my teeth is even scarier than me with my teeth.
...
If you just kept them static and everything was happy and everybody was like, "Mama, look, a pretty tree!" How long can you look at a f--king pretty tree before you want to kill yourself?
...
When a deal falls apart because somebody wants a gazillion dollars and I demand that my parking space be painted pink and that every time I show up somebody sings "Once in Love with Amy", then fine, walk away.
...
Dude, I plan on being on crack in an hour. I'm going to be with Whitney Houston in that bathroom of hers. Actually, upon rereading the interview, I think it's pretty clear that Lorelai probably has an edge on Amy in the sanity and stability department.
|
|
| "...must be Tuesday" |
[06 Apr 2006|08:39am] |
|
After watching the teaser for Tuesday night's episode of House, I shouted, "Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday." I've got quite a few preconceived notions whenever I see Michelle Trachtenberg in anything now, and I must say that she was perfectly cast as the obnoxious, whiny, teenaged "nymphette" (House's word, not mine; I'm still having seeing Trachtenberg in that way).
|
|
| 200+ years in the making |
[14 Feb 2006|08:51am] |
The Daily Show spent an entire 10-minute segment on one news event from this weekend. My favorite crack from the segment was this:
"Dick Cheney is the first sitting Vice President to shoot a man since Aaron Burr."
|
|
| The exploding whale |
[30 Nov 2005|11:11pm] |
I haven't posted anything in a long time, but the following video compelled (I say, COMPELLED) me to update. The link is from Salon, so I'm not sure if you'll have to go through the commercial to view the video file. But I have to say that the footage is well worth it. The subject says it all:
The exploding whale
I imagine the footage will have a polarizing effect: the fact that someone would think of this solution and that certain someone could convince enough other folks to enact the plan will be either paralyzingly frightening or sublimely funny. Of course, why couldn't someone choose both reactions? For the record, I couldn't stop laughing.
|
|
| Stop...clay time |
[07 Oct 2005|09:10am] |
|
When was the last time two stop-motion animation films were out at the same time, both featuring the voice of Helena Bonham Carter? I remember seeing the trailer for Corpse Bride before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and getting excited for it then, but I've been out-of-my-mind eager to see Curse of the Were-Rabbit for the last month. C'mon, Were-Rabbits, Wallace and Gromit, how can it go wrong?
|
|
| Never underestimate the power of mass hysteria |
[21 Sep 2005|09:56am] |
Last night, I got caught at the supermarket trying to buy groceries for dinner. It didn't dawn on either Sarah or me to realize that we would be in the middle of a hoarding rush. What really infuriated me were the checkout lines, and the lack of order in any of them.
The self-checkout lines at Kroger are marked for 15 items or less, but that didn't stop the folks directly in front of me. The way these self-checkout lines work is that you scan your items, and then place them into bags that rest on top of a scale. The scales aren't very large because one is not supposed to try checking out with 40 or 50 items in their basket. That didn't stop the people directly in front of me from taking their entire carts to these scanners. The stations kept stopping because people couldn't fit all of their items on these tiny scales, and it took us about an hour to get out of the market. It just irritated me how there was no sort of consequence for these people to flagrantly break the rules.
It also irritated me how irrational some of the hoarding was. One person was on their cellphone talking about how they were going to go up to Dallas, but that didn't prevent him from piling three cases of water in his cart. There was just a certain mindless panic that gripped the entire store. There's a fine line between preparation and hysteria, and it felt like that line was crossed. Sarah and I are probably going to pack tonight and head to her mother's house in Huntsville to wait the storm out.
|
|
| A sort of replacement |
[19 Sep 2005|10:13am] |
I haven't written much here in a while for a pair of reasons. First, not much of note has crossed my mind over the past month. Usually, that's a discouraging sign; when my mind's field of ideas turns fallow, that's usually a following symptom of listlessness or depression. That's not the case right now; I'm actually quite content, and (egads) happy. That's because many of the small thoughts that I posted I now simply tell to Sarah. Instead of using this collections of bits as my sounding board, I've got a live one now. It isn't quite the same since writing down any ideas usually forced me to work them out a little further, to polish and refine them before posting. I should probably put in the mental exercise of taking an idea and composing here more regularly, but I've let all sorts of exercise lapse over the past month.
On Saturday, Sarah and I finally got around to watching The Aristorcrats. We both found it hilarious, and I'm quite sure that we were the loudest laughers in the half-full auditorium. However, it is most definitely not for everyone. The Aristorcrats joke is basically an improvisational exercise for comedians to imagine the most vile, disgusting, offensive, horrible acts that their warped little minds can conceive.
At the root of it, I was astounded at how amazingly transgressive these folks got. Chris Rock doesn't care so much for the joke, and in talking about it, he noted the difference between white and black comedy. Rock talks about how a lot of the humor in the joke comes from being able to talk dirty and how white comedians, trying to get on comedy, would stay away from such filth in their acts. On the other hand, black comics have always had the freedom to talk dirty, so a lot of the novelty is lost on them. But, I think my enjoyment wasn't just from the fact that it was dirty, but from the extremes that the comics went to. I have less trouble with things that are flagrantly and outlandishly offensive because the hyperbole tends to take the edge off; being so outrageously wrong makes it clear that a person isn't being completely serious. That's a technique that South Park uses quite often to great effect. However, if this kind of humor doeesn't work for a person, then the Aristocrats would be a brutal masochistic enterprise. It's 90 minutes of despicable descriptions of bodily functions and abuse, and if one couldn't take the leap past outrage, then the movie would be a constant hammer pounding away on someone's skull. I, however, often had to muster my will to compose myself after laughing so hard.
|
|
| Jackass! |
[29 Aug 2005|02:08pm] |
I watched "Happy Gilmore" the other day, so over the weekend, whenever I've been irritated, I have screamed, "Jackass!" in the same tone as Happy's heckler.
A couple of incidents behind the wheel have made me shout that expletive repeatedly. There are plenty of four-way stops on the drive from my apartment to Sarah's place. Last night, at one such stop sign, I was getting ready to accelerate when a "Jackass!" rolled straight through the stop sign. I don't have a lead foot, so I didn't have any problems stopping. Still, "Jackass!" 1 didn't even bother to slow down. My car has a candy-ass jabroni horn that couldn't scare a kitten, but still I honked it. "Jackass!" 1 never even looked at me; he just kept leaning forward in his seat, obliviously running through the stop sign.
During my lunch hour, I went downtown to the country administration building to renew my auto registration. When leaving, I drove a block to make a left turn and got into the far left lane, just in front of some parked cars. As I was waiting for a few pedestrians to cross the street, "Jackass!" 2 slid into the lane to my right, crept into the crosswalk while some walkers were still making their way across, and then finished the turn by going into the far left lane, thus crossing in front of me and pinning me in. "Jackass!" 2 then realized she needed to be on the far right, and she veered across three lanes of a downtown street to get to the opposite curbside. Again, I honked my horn at someone who couldn't be bothered to pay attention to anyone else around her.
And so the two incidents made me realize how sometimes I hate being a considerate person who generally abides by regulations and follows the rules. It just leaves me open to getting fucked over by all the "Jackasses!" who don't give a damn. And often this feels true not just in traffic but in life. I don't want to sound like an unbearably pretentious asshole with an overdeveloped martyr complex, but it certainly seems that most folks don't have the first clue how to balance assertivness and consideration. I'm beginning to understand the allure of acting like a complete dick and the comfort of not feeling so powerless because you've been proactive in screwing someone else over. I don't wish to start acting like that; I wouldn't be able to stand being around myself. Still, it would be nice to be free from feeling dicked over so often.
Maybe my wish is for some sort of poetic justice for these "Jackasses!" I think that may have been my biggest aggravation from these two incidents, that these two "Jackasses!" didn't recognize or acknowledge their dickishness, that they could trample me in such a small way with impunity. It pisses me off how there are so many ways we can be total jerks and not get called on our shit. If I were armed with some sort of electro-shock device, I could have had some nice retribution on those "Jackasses!" But Kant's Categorical Imperative prevents me from really wishing for such a device: If all drivers were to have such a device, there would be plenty of blood on the highway. It would be like when the Simpsons visited Dr. Marvin Monroe. No driver would be able to see straight because there would be a constant electric current jolting his/her body.
|
|
| Monopsony |
[18 Aug 2005|12:43pm] |
Monopsony: Of, relating to, or being a market in which there is a single buyer of a particular good or service. Businesses selling in a market characterized by monopsony are likely to suffer below-average profitability because of the lack of alternative outlets for their products.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. – which analysts say controls about half of the more-than-$10 billion video game retail market in the U.S. – said Wednesday that it immediately halted sales of the game [Ed: Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas] in its stores nationwide.
Second, there is the Wal-Mart consideration. In 2004, the six studios took in $20.9 billion from home-video sales, according to the studios' own internal numbers. Wal-Mart, including its Sam's Club stores, accounted for over one-quarter of those sales, which means that Wal-Mart wrote more than $5 billion in checks to the studios in 2004.
Much as Crow probably appreciated the paternalistic advice, as the No. 1 CD retailer in the world (yes, the world) with sales accounting for 10% of total domestic CD sales, a Wal-Mart boycott can result in hundreds of thousands in lost album sales.
( Incoherent musings about Wal-Mart's role in the supply-demand dynamic )
|
|
| Nostalgia, you're using it like a whore Part II |
[17 Aug 2005|09:22am] |
Heather Havrilesky, Salon's TV critic, is one of my favorite writers, and, a couple of years ago, I snipped from her tirade against VH1's "I Love the 80s". In her column this week, Havrilesky once again rails against nostalgia and how it's being used in current pop culture. So, once again, because I feel such a similar frustration, I cut and paste Havrilesky's bluster.
http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/review/2005/08/14/i_like/index.html:( Nostalgia, Inc. )
|
|
| The last link in the chain breaks |
[09 Aug 2005|08:49am] |
So, Peter Jennings' passing completes the era. The three nightly network news shows never changed anchors for as long as I could remember. Rather took over the CBS Evening News from Walter Cronkite in 1981 (Rather helmed the chair for five years longer than Cronkite), Brokaw became NBC's evening anchor in 1982, and Peter Jennings was the face of ABC News since 1983. So, for 21 years, the readers on the three networks at 6:30 ET/5:30 CT stayed the same. The network news shows have since settled into near irrelevancy, but it still requires some adjustment in my mind to think that the three rudders are no longer guiding their ships. Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather were all I knew, and now all three of them have left their posts in nearly as rapid a succession as when they assumed the mantles.
The last of the iconic anchors:But like his longtime competitors Tom Brokaw at NBC and Dan Rather at CBS, Jennings had enough influence within ABC News to push for serious, in-depth stories and coverage of world events that mattered to him and that he felt viewers needed to know about — whether they realized it or not.
|
|
| A show about vampires acting like one |
[04 Aug 2005|09:32am] |
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Limited Edition Complete Series Box Set
Ugh. A 40 disc set of all seven seasons, including a "a special bonus disc containing a brand new documentary featuring Joss Whedon", will be released on November 15 with a suggested retail price of $199.98.
Now, let's think about the target demograhic for this product: it's the fanatical fans of the series who had probably already bought all seven seasons on DVD. This limited edition set is just a pure money grab at the most devoted followers of the series, and, as one of the primary marks, I have to say it sucks. It sucks so much because I am sorely tempted by this offer, and the temptation is making me feel like a giant lollipop, a huge sucker.
I might try the scheme that the TVShowsonDVD.com story suggests: sell my previous seasons (hopefully for around $15-20 a pop) and use that money to buy the limited edition box set. I'll wait to see what the packaging for the complete box looks like; if it's better than the annoying gatefold that the current sets are in, then I'm definitely going for them. That, and I've got a bit of margin since Sarah also has all seven seasons on DVD.
|
|
| You really ought to know this by now |
[03 Aug 2005|11:02am] |
I just assume that everyone who reads my LiveJournal is already well acquainted with the total and complete awesomeness of Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Pages. The following links to a page of questions that the site has been unable to answer:
http://www.snopes.com/humor/question/urgent.asp
My favorite:They say that if a person has a pet cat and dies, if the person's body is not found fairly soon after death, the cat, having not been fed, will become ravenously hungry and eat the dead person's face off — JUST the face!
Is this true? My cat often looks me in the face. I used to think he was just being friendly. Now I know he's just sizing me up, like a chef at a butcher shop, waiting for "the big day". Since hearing this rumor, every time my cat licks his chops it gives me the willies! I also just finished the section from Freakonomics that illustrates how important a factor Roe v. Wade was in causing the sharp crime drop during the early '90s. It's a fascinating couple of pages that delves into the history of abortion in this country, the demographics of the people most likely to have an abortion after the decision, and the likely fates of the aborted children had they been born. I found it to be an objective analysis of data as the authors include facts that could be used to serve either side of the debate. In reading the section, I wasn't conscious of a direction that Levitt and Dubner wanted to take the analysis; instead of having a prejudged conclusion and leading the data toward that conclusion, I felt that the authors were dutifully following the data to learn more about the subject, to find suggestions in the numbers that may not have always been so apparent.
The section about abortion is contained in a chapter trying to explain the steep crime drop during the last decade, and the chapter touches on a whole variety of monumental social issues like police staffing and technique, prisons, capital punishment, the illicit drug market, and gun control. It's a really fascinating examination of those issues and how different approaches and changes in those issues affect crime rates. I'm a little past halfway through Freakonomics, and I would strongly recommend the whole volume. However, this individual chapter about crime is, I think, essentially important reading for anyone concerned about contemporary American society.
ETA: I just looked at some of the reviews on Amazon.com. A few of the folks who criticize the book complain that it dumbs everything down, with one reviewer noting, "Books like this appeal to 'unnumberacy', comparable to illiteracy,a topic dealing with riddles, paradoxes and counterintuitive matters of the same kind. For me the 'teacher's guide' with an in-depth covering of the statistical methods would be more interesting."
I have a fairly strong statistical sense, and I generally sense the validity of the mathematical outlines and processes that the book loosely describes in the main text. I am interested in the statistical methods and seeing how rigorously these conclusions were arrived at, but I don't expect to see such detail in a book marketed for a broad, general audience. However, Freakonomics is extensively annotated and cites the studies mentioned in the main text; if I were so inclined, the book gives me the info needed to find and study the actual mathematical machinery used to reach the stated assertions. That's enough to satisfy my numerical hunger.
|
|
| Drinking and playing video games: such a fun, fun combination |
[23 Jul 2005|01:47am] |
|
Tonight, I drank much, much alcohol with K. and C. K. brought over a big bottle of Johnny Walker scotch from which we all partook. At the end of the night, I had to pour out half a raspberry Lambic because I knew I couldn't finish it before passing out. We spent the whole night playing video games: some MVP Baseball, a little Wrestlemania XIX on K's GameCube, some masochistic Goldeneye deaths (tossed grenades straight up into the air, leveled by a centrifuge, thrown off the Golden Gate Bridge, immolated by test launches of the Moonraker shuttle) and some Grand Theft Auto (both GTA III and Vice City) to finish our fantastically sadistic night.
|
|
| Nostalgia, you're using it like a whore |
[22 Jul 2005|04:16pm] |
Sleater-Kinney, Entertain:So you want to be entertained?
Please look away (don't look away)
We're not here 'cause we want to entertain
Please go away (don't go away)
Reality is the new fiction they say
Truth is truer these days, truth is man-made
If you're here 'cause you want to be entertained
Please go away
And if your art is done, Johnny get your gun
Join the rank and file, on your TV dial
You come around looking 1984
You're such a bore, 1984
Nostalgia, you're using it like a whore
It's better than before
You come around sounding 1972
You did nothing new with 1972
Where is the 'fuck you'?
Where's the black and blue?
Hey! Look around they are lying to you
Can't you see it is just a silly ruse?
They are lying, and I am lying too.
All you want is entertainment,
Rip me open it's so freeing
[Don't drag me down, I'm not falling down]
1, 2, 3! If you wanna take a shot at me, get in line
1, 2, 3! I've had all my shots and I'm fine
1, 2, 3! If you haven't had enough of me, get in line
1, 2, 3! You too deserve it now, it's all right!
1, 2, 3! We can drown in mediocrity, it feels sublime
1, 2, 3! It feels like someone pushed the rewind.
1, 2, 3! Give it to me easily, my feeble mind needs time
1, 2, 3! Make it sweet and syrupy with rhyme
The grip of fear is already here
The lines are drawn, whose side are you on?
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
lennoxhc's journal
