July 2008
20 posts
Adbusters has as its cover story this polemic against all-things-currently-hip. A quote:
“The American Apparel V-neck shirt, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Parliament cigarettes are symbols and icons of working or revolutionary classes that have been appropriated by hipsterdom and drained of meaning. Ten years ago, a man wearing a plain V-neck tee and drinking a Pabst would never be accused of...
Hilarious (and informative to boot!) article on one of my favorite blogs, TierneyLab (NYtimes-login may be required). Tierney details ten things that the media will do its best to make you worry about, but that in reality are of little concern.
Tierney Writes:
10. Unmarked wormholes. Could your vacation be interrupted by a sudden plunge into a wormhole? From my limited analysis of space-time...
Get ready, denizens of Titan. Your oppressive space-dictator has been held to be in violation of various UN sanctions; Get ready for some liberation, you bastards.
IOC knew about internet restrictions | NEWS.com.au →
what a surprise…
How saintly: Ewan McGregor and a friend took a motorycycle trip all the way down to South Africa from Scotland. Apparently, Africa isn’t the land of heads on pikes and the seething, corrupted heart of mankind. It’s a relatively pleasant place! How quaint.
Sarcasm aside, Ewan should get off of his high horse (or in this case, motorycle) and realize that 1) his views are inherently biased by...
William Saletan wrote an interesting (and unusually straightforward) piece on automated drones policing the skies of countries that find themselves on the receiving end of American imperialism. I think this kind of commentary is merited, especially when most people try and spin new technological advances as bringing on the end of days or as the greatest thing to happen (though usually the...
After reading the A.V. Club’s interesting interview, I feel like a few words on his new album are in order, mostly because I’ve found it so compelling. The album was initially entitled Nigger, but was predictably changed as the release date came around and the realities of trying to distribute a record with that name became a little more perceivable.
The album itself is great; the production...
I just wrote an item for Radar Online about John Edwards’ mistress and love-child.
I’ve just purchased a copy of From Dawn to Decadence, Barzun’s epic survey of Western cultural history from the Renaissance to the twilight days of the 20th century. I have yet to read more than a few pages, but seeing a book like this that is obviously hugely important and interesting that does not receive as much attention as it deserves (I found it via a friend’s recommendation) makes me...
I can’t help but feel the slightest bit of happiness at the news that Robert Novak has a brain tumor. Yes yes, insensitive I know. But as Donald Draper, the main character in AMC’s Mad Men says, “The Universe is Indifferent.” And when a guy who just hit a person with his car and didn’t notice gets a brain tumor, one starts to venture outside the narrow constraints of Draper’s proposition.
...
Why The Dark Knight is so dim | Film |... →
The sad thing is, once the euphoria of this film wears off, this review will be seen as mostly right.
Technology news sites were set abuzz today by the announcement of a new search engine called ‘cuil’ (pronounced ‘cool’. How esoteric!) founded by some former Google engineers.
Cuil’s ostensible advantage over Google is that it searches more webpages - a debatable statistic, since Google limits its own number in order to discount extraneous pages that people don’t want to be searching through...
Writing on a mahogany desk gave me exactly the sense of self-import to write my college applications. In fact, I became so dependent on the luxurious wood that I refuse to complete any work without being positioned in front of one.
I took a field trip to Versailles to write my senior thesis.
I was in stitches this week when I was pointed to Times restaurant critic Giles Coren’s letter to his subs, excoriating them for removing an indefinite article from his restaurant review. So brilliant was his prose, so spiteful was his emotion, that when I read it the first time I nearly cried from laughter.
Basically, Coren is furious with his sub-editors for removing “a” from in front of the...
John Derbyshire has published a fascinating perspective on the so-called (self-denominated) ‘Smartocracy’ that effectively rules the United States. Derbyshire makes several points:
Being smarter than someone of lower class is a far greater cause of resentment amongst the poor than being richer.
The upper crusts of ’smart’ society previously used to marry into the ‘lower’ (though not...
Is there anything more loathsome these days than television in general? Yes, it’s Project Runway, the most morally bankrupt program to ever depreciate the value of my plasma TV. At least some corners of the wasteland that is television are managing to propagate hilarious stereotypes and re-enforce quaint Anglophilia. To be forthcoming with my disclosures, I don’t actually watch Project...
I’m looking forward to seeing Obama’s speech in Berlin’s picturesque Tiergarden, in front of the Victory column (I’m actually a lot more happy about this location than in front of the Brandenburg Gate; that probably would have been setting expectations far too high for a presidential candidate).
The speech is going to come on at 1 pm; I’ll post my thoughts about it here afterwards.
Flight of fancy, I know. And Hickey is a really bro-ish brand as well. But this is a great sweater, and a steal for the sale price.
This awesome Clampdown Black Twill jacket from Brixton Ltd. just shipped to me.
Clampdown Black Twill
just doing something here
don’t pay any attention