Seen in New York: Subway Reader

Dear New Yorker

Dear New Yorker,

I have enjoyed every issue of your magazine since I began my subscription about 16 months ago. Your measured prose and distinctive intellectual style have always found a place in my schedule and on my nightstand. It is because of my fondness for your publication that I find it so disheartening that you have chosen a theme for your cover this week that gives me great pause and apprehension, particularly in these sensitive times.

I realize it's a cartoon, and that your intentions were to satirize and make light of what in any other context would be an absurd, over-the-top situation, but my concern is that there are certain people out there who will not appreciate the subtle, high-minded Absicht that your artist intended, and will instead take the content in a more literal, sub-rosa capacity.

While I enjoy humor in all its wonderful forms, one has to ask, point blankly, what were you thinking? I mean, red wine with lobster?

The Gentleman in the Water

From NYT:

A 32-year-old man competing in the New York City Triathlon died Sunday after being pulled unconscious from the Hudson River on a day when competitors battled heat, humidity and stinging jellyfish along the course.
[...]
“Other swimmers noticed the gentleman in the water, and they were actually waving and signaling for the nearby jet boats to come assist them,” Burke said.

I enjoy a good swim myself... and I enjoy a good drink at a bar.. This story made both of those activities intersect in my mind in the sense that every now and then while in the game the arbitrating authority (bartender / referee) is asked to take a player out due to inability.... but rarely due to death.

A Badge of Honor

vive la difference (zakaria / obama style)

ZAKARIA: Tell me, what is your first memory of a foreign policy event that shaped you, shaped your life?

OBAMA: A first memory. Well, you know, it wasn't so much an event.

I mean, my first memory was my mother coming to me and saying, "I've remarried this man from Indonesia, and we're moving to Jakarta on the other side of the world."

I think it's awesome that the names pertinent to this interview are ZAKARIA and OBAMA.

Today's Moment of Zen

The End

. . . (?)

What should I spend my federal stimulus money on?

(check links to federal deficit chart over the last 28 years)

The other day I received my $600 stimulus check from the government. Apparently they've invented a time machine that allows them to make withdrawals from the Treasury from decades into the future, when this fiscal boondoggle will have to be paid off. I just hope I never hear the phrase "tax-and-spend liberal" ever again. Not that truth, logic or justice has anything to do with this.

In order to set my mind right about it, I have decided to spend the money in the following way:

$100 to the Obama '08 campaign
$100 to the Al Franken senatorial campaign
$400 distributed proportionately to how people vote in the following survey:

On what should I spent my federal stimulus check? (click above to vote)
PeTA (peta.org)
ACLU (aclu.org)
Libertarian Party (lp.org)
Human Rights Campaign (HRC.org)
Greenpeace (Greenpeace.org)
NARAL (naral.org)
Physicians for a National Health Plan (pnhp.org)
American Atheists (atheists.org)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (gatesfoundation.org)
One Laptop Per Child (olpc.org)

I will report the results of the survey (along with proof of my disbursements) in due time.

"The View", for assholes

A funny thing is happening (as they said in a certain movie, although probably for reverse qualities) at Fox News when they start broadcasting their (live) B-roll on the internet (link goes to feed, as of 9pm 6/3/08), complete with pizza-eating burps, "excuse-me I'm going to the bathroom"'s, "we gotta do some TV now so let's be quiet and let the grownups speak" (as a means of introducing Chris Wallace and Karl Rove, for the TV feed).

It's Big Brother (the show) meeting Big Brother (the real fucking thing).

Karl Rove (in rear) reports on the blogosphere and online whatnots,
for the benefit of the internet news crack addicts.

We Said “No”

A year and a half ago I was sitting at my desk at work when I stumbled across an article on Slate.com which gave me serious pause. In it William Saletan thoroughly described why, at a time when the nomination of Hillary Clinton, one of my state’s senators, was universally appreciated as “inevitable”, she was sure to lose, complete with segmented bullet points. He also repeated a quote from a then-recent New York Times article in which Hillary Clinton said "If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote [for the war] or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from."

That article, and my agreeing response, has now become materialized in history. In that arrogant dismissal she invited millions of citizens to ask “Why not somebody other than her?” By that simple comment she mobilized millions of people to do things they had never done before (and which were often quite against their everyday nature) and bring forth a most unusual turn of events:

So, Hillary, in February of 2007 (and as an ongoing process, witness to your campaign tactics) a large number of tuned-in people decided that, yes, we will take you up on it. We will choose from the rest. You don’t get to be President. Step aside.

Eating a Reuben

I've always been a fan of artificially promoting forms of expression. You know, like, catchphrases, euphemisms, and just plain trendy misuse of language. In the early 90s I tried to bring back "gear" as an adjective, as in: " The Beatles are gear!", which was seen on a bedsheet sign held up to be read by the Fab Four as they deplaned from their arrival at JFK in 1964, kicking off the British Invasion into overdrive. I could not find a sample of that photograph, even though it has always been iconic in my mind. Still there is this -->

In that vein, I think from now on I will use the phrase "eating a reuben" to refer to someone who is clearly insane and can only express it through political whining (and, while some may be tempted to accuse me of being the pot that called the kettle black, I am specifically referring to the scary video at the end of the article linked here, and I myself have never been caught on tape).