April 29, 2007 to May 5, 2007
Wherein The statistics are alarming. Television sets continue to multiply like evil cells in a jar, computers spew out information, while they propagate and proliferate like hamsters. People who live as slaves to the computer and television do not really need to know how to read; they move their lips and hold a finger under the line of copy they are reading, just like the average freshman university student--and sophomore, and junior. Seniors still move their lips, but they use their fingers to touch their genitals instead of underlining. None of the above-mentioned read books, unless it is the thin, large-print, full-of-pictures books on how to operate a computer.
Except for the wherein, which is mine, that's the first paragraph of W.P. Kinsella's The Book Buyers, the penultimate chapter/story from his collection, The Alligator Report (1985).
Except for the wherein, which is mine, that's the first paragraph of W.P. Kinsella's The Book Buyers, the penultimate chapter/story from his collection, The Alligator Report (1985).
posted by bill at 9:36 PM
30 Comments:
Please to listen to My Vox.
I've just added 2 songs:
Lula Lula Don't You Go To Bingo--the best song ever.
and,
Fred G. Zydeco.
Enjoy.
Hand on the finger/ finger on the trigger/ Baby baby baby sang Debbie Boone
Matt Welchvisits the strange world that was the 70s.
Volunteers:
A volunteer group from Colorado has visited our neighborhood a couple of times. Maybe they've done useful things on other blocks, but on ours I've seen them do little except pick up dime-sized bits of trash and yell "God bless you" at people. They also cut some of my weeds without asking, which took work away from our yard guy who was going to do it later that day. We ended up paying him anyway since he camps in an empty building and relies on yardwork/handyman money to eat. When this group departed yesterday, one of them left her open trash bag lying on the curb and the tiny pieces of trash that had looked so innocuous spread over the whole block spilled out and created an ugly pile. I never understood before how charity could be stupid and condescending and make its recipients mad. Of course I can't know how the tsunami victims felt when people donated stiletto heels and Cheez Whiz to them, but I think I'm getting an inkling.
I don't want to sound ungrateful to people who are trying to help us. Last spring, members of a Christian youth group cleaned up the horrendously overgrown backyard of our old house. It was a huge job we couldn't have tackled ourselves and it saved us money we really needed for other things. At this point, though, it seems to me that edging weeds and picking up trash should be the responsibility of New Orleanians. Also, our neighborhood isn't particularly weedy or dirty -- just poor.
I just seem to be a magnet for balls.
Is there, he asks, any appropriate response to this line?
In summary, these cops found some drugs, planted them to catch one alleged dealer, took his resulting “confession” as fact, lied to a judge to get a no-knock warrant, violently broke into a home where there were no drugs, shot an elderly homeowner who had fired a warning shot at the people busting down her door, and in the process also shot themselves five times. Then they handcuffed the dying woman before planting pot in her basement, and told the whole world “drugs were found” in the home.
Wow. From an email grouplist:
> I have always thought that you can't identify a problem
> without having at least 1 idea for solving it.
>
> That said, I know a workplace where this is considered a bad
> idea. It's very team-based and if you bring a problem to the
> team, the team is supposed to solve it. If you have solutions
> as well, you are considered to not be team-oriented. True.
>
> Know your culture.
Like someone else said, I'm glad I don't work there.
Happy May Day, Comrades, from Tuesday Trivia XLIV
1. All I could think of was RCA, but pretty sure that was wrong. Maybe if I had satillite radio.
2. Probably some sort of community service. Read this article about Hazelwood by Daniel Coyle.
3. Novel with a female narrator...nothing but blank. Never read it, never saw the movie.
4. Who cares?
5. I did not know this.
6. Model trains.
7. Some sort of connection with the United Kingdom, most likely. Former territories; achieved independence from?
When the giant book of things not to bring to your office is written, an entire an entire chapter will be devoted to "fake explosive devices."
THrowing Things is discussing underappreciated artists. I am so tempted to copy over my Bruuce rant:
Nothing Bruuuuce wrote is anymore meaningful or heartfelt than anything Styx wrote
Can I resist?
I cannot. I am weak.
Trivia question. It's not as solid as I'd hoped, but it isn't too bad.
What do these five people have in common?
Mia Farrow
Eddie Fisher
Madonna
Chris Martin
Peter Wolf
Good News: Atlanta not in the top 10 of most polluted metropolitan areas. (We're 13).
Bad News: Smog season starts today. Supposed to be a dry summer, so worse than usual.
What, you're waiting for a hint?
What do these five people have in common?
Guess one:
They all have really bad fake British accents (Chris Martin's the biggest faker of all, he's really from Nacogdoches)
Guess two:
They've all been slapped around by a significant other (that Gwenyth is violent)
Guess three:
They've all named children after fruit (Carrie Fisher's reall first name, Banana)
Guess four:
They've all 'been intimate' with Debbie Reynolds (she's a wild one)
Guess five:
They've all 'been intimate' with Woody Allen (he's also a wild one)
Hadn't thought of #4, it could be true.
Look to their spouses (or former).
With the sweep, that makes for a wrongness differential of -9.
I think Jackson will figure out a method of throwing guards and small forwards at Nash that will keep him from making the passes he's used to making. Take his playmaking out of the equation and the Suns become suddenly very vulnerable. Also, either Kobe's going to scorch Raja Bell, or they are going to double and triple team Bryant so agressively that the other Lakers are going to eat up the Suns in the paint. Either Kobe will score an insane amount of points, or he'll be a very effective decoy, either way, the Suns won't know what hit them.
Lakers in five.
From Daring Fireball is a link to Translation from PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Steve Jobs’ “A Greener Apple” Article:
In one environmental group’s recent scorecard, Dell, HP and Lenovo all scored higher than Apple because of their plans (or “plans for releasing plans” in the case of HP). In reality, Apple is ahead of all of these companies in eliminating toxic chemicals from its products.
Dear Greenpeace,
Fuck you.
Love,
Steve.
Wow
10 Reasons It Doesn’t Pay To Be The Computer Guy
Not the place I'd expect a basketball reference, but it is a good one:
As for James Bond, his charm lies in his competence with getting the job done flawlessly while using the faulty equipment supplied to him. Sort of like LeBron James winning with the Cleveland Cavaliers. ;-)
LeBron, James LeBron.
In my defense, thus far, the only series where I got the result wrong was with the Lakers.
I had Cleveland in 5 (did it in 4)
I had Bulls in 5 (did it in 4)
I had Pistons in 4 (did it in 4)
I had Spurs in 6 (did it in 5)
I had GS in 5 (did it in 6, and they should have done it in 5)
In the yet to be completed series
I have the Rockets in 7 (a game 7 awaits)
I have Nets in 5 (they have a home game to rap up the series in 6)
So I missed on the Lakers (badly), but I picked the biggest upset in NBA history correctly (based on record differential) and many experts had a finals of Dallas v Miami so I'm doing better then them, that has to count for something.
And I still have a chance at picking every other outcome right.
(I stick by my predictions for the rest of the Eastern Conference, Cleveland will make the finals, as far as the West, the Rockets will prevail over the Spurs in the Conference finals and then beat the Cavs in the NBA Finals)
And at least I'm not stuck in Atlanta, how'd they do this playoffs?
And I stick by my analysis, if the Lakers had picked up their defensive intensity for 48 minutes each game (they should have one game one on the road, had that happen a completely different series), the Suns would have folded, but they were miserable defensively most of the time (Kobe still played great, the Lakers are going to be very good next year, especially if they add Kevin Garnett without giving up more than Odom and Bynum).
Yes, overall you're doing great. I think you suffered from extreme homerism with the Lakers.
I'm pretty sure Atlanta doesn't have a basketball team. I listen to the local sports talk station off and on throughout the week and it's been years since I've heard any mention of any local basketball team other than Ga Tech.
Mike Vick.
My prediction: Falcons will need a new quarterback before the season starts.
Speaking of sports talk, they just had Tom Wilson, who you might remember as Biff Tannen from Back To The Future. He does standup. On youtube, here's his Question Song. Funny guy. Starting out, his roommates were Yakov Smirnoff and Andrew Dice Clay. Funny guy, might be worth the $20 to go see him this weekend.
Q) Was [BttF] your big break?
A) Well, actually, before that I was featured in the commercial that introduced biscuits at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I played a construction worker. Basically, without me there wouldn’t be biscuits at Kentucky Fried Chicken. You’re welcome.
He's also a decent artist. If you're looking for a gift for me, I'd be happy with a giclee of Tough Crowd -- look here.
Email from the wife:
Subject: stupid people that I've put on notice
I'm on a conference call that has had lots of whining already.
1) "the 1st bridge is full, what is the number of the 2nd bridge?" Answer - it's on the alert that outlook gave you!!!
2) "my package doesn't have any pages past 9"…Answer - check your email sent this morning for the updated package, and hey, look at that, it also includes both bridge numbers
3) facilitator: "on slide 9 you will see 4 attachments (side note, there are 4 little icons in a row), please select the 3rd attachment" idiot on the call "is that 3rd from the right or 3rd from the left?"
WHAT? WHAT FREAKING LANGUAGE DO YOU SPEAK THAT YOU READ RIGHT TO LEFT??
All of them…on notice.
My prediction: Falcons will need a new quarterback before the season starts.
It's a good thing they decided to hitch the wagon to Vick instead of Schaub. Rich Mackay should give his old team a call if he needs a new QB in Atlanta. The Bucs have about 37 QBs on the roster at the moment. I expect we'll be signing Vinny Testaverde any day now. Maybe Dick Lane's corpse, too.
If I were to track all the Democrats and Republicans currently running for president and how their views on a number of issues matched with mine, what we would see is a column with most of the names crossed out with a big black Sharpie. And the ones not crossed out are accumulating little asterisks for their eventual marking out. Simply put, there is no one who interests me even the slightest. The best any one candidate could hope from me is to be slightly less repugnant than his or her opponent. I suspect 2008 will be much like 2004--candidates with too many negatives to feel clean voting for and a state leaning so clearly in favor of one over the other that my actual voting was pretty much pointless.
In case you were curious.
Matt Welch: I'm Going to Start a New Category -- Johnny Sang it, so Therefore My Love for it Is Defensible
Cool advertising music
The Wallets: Totally Nude video.
As I've mentioned a few dozen times, the Wallets were the best Minneapolis band in the 1980s. They came so close a number of times to breaking out, but always fell short. This one had some MTV play. I think the mouse in the mouth freaked everyone out. Like a lot of bands, the recordings never captured the fun and intensity of the live act.
Totally Nude is good, but I preferred the B side How To Keep Time To Music. Repetitive and hypnotically loopy with Kramer reading from an ancient dance manual and manically grunting.
Before ending up in Mineapolis, Steve Kramer played with James Chance and the Contortionists in New York. He now writes commercial music--see link above.
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