The Enfranchised

How the Rose Bowl picks TCU (but Stanford plays in Pasadena)

2010-11-27T22:35:00.006-05:00

As I write this, Stanford just beat Oregon State 38-0. Nevada beat Boise State, and Arkansas beat LSU. Everyone expects that tomorrow afternoon, Stanford will be 4th in the BCS rankings. What does this mean for what Bowl Game Stanford will show up for?

Summary: There's a scenario, that I think is somewhat likely, where: the Rose Bowl will pick TCU, thereby satisfying its contractual obligations, but on January 1st, Stanford will be playing in Pasadena. I'm sorry if this post is long, but I want to be precise so you'll believe this conclusion.

Everyone's been saying a lot. Don't trust them. Go read the rules for yourself. BCS Selection Procedures. Yeah, they're written in lawyer-ese (but it's actually bad lawyer-ese, as we'll get to). But you need to read it. Not all right now. But I'll be referring to it over the course of this argument.

People have been focusing on a few clauses. Let's recap the situation, but with talk about them:

6. If any of the 10 slots remain open after application of provisions 1 through 5, and if no team qualifies under paragraph No. 5 and an at-large team from a conference with an annual automatic berth for its champion is ranked No. 4 in the final BCS Standings, that team will become an automatic qualifier provided that no at-large team from the same conference qualifies for the national championship game.

This is what people mean when they say "Top 4 teams are guaranteed a BCS game." For example, on ESPN's (excellent) PAC-10 blog, Ted Miller says "All the Cardinal need is to push into the top 4 of the final BCS standings. That would guarantee it an automatic berth, per BCS rules." He's referring to this Paragraph 6.

So, if Paragraph 6 is all that mattered, the Rose Bowl would pick Stanford and all would be Right With The World. But then there's this:

For the games of January 2011 through 2014, the first year the Rose Bowl loses a team to the NCG and a team from the non-AQ group is an automatic qualifier, that non-AQ team will play in the Rose Bowl.

[For this paragraph, AQ group means a team in a BCS conference or Notre Dame. Yes, Notre Dame is explicitly special. Thus, non-AQ group means a team from a second-tier conference. TCU (and Boise State) fall into this group.]

Well, if Oregon wins out, the Rose Bowl will lose the Ducks to the NCG. TCU will be #3 and an Automatic Qualifier. Therefore, by this paragraph, TCU will go the Rose Bowl.

And this is where everyone's analysis has stopped.

But scroll down a little more. To the section "Team Selections Procedure", Paragraph 5. It says:

After completion of the selection process as described in Paragraph Nos. 1-4, the conferences and Notre Dame may, but are not required to, adjust the pairings [...]

At this point in the process, we are expecting that the process will have assigned:

Rose Bowl: TCU vs. Big-10 Champion
Some Other Bowl: Stanford vs. Other team

So, the Rose Bowl will have selected its non-AQ team, as required.

But, would TCU rather play in the Rose Bowl? Or would it rather play in Glendale (Fiesta), New Orleans (Sugar), or Miami (Orange) Bowl?

And even if TCU preferred to play in the Rose Bowl, the paragraph says that the deciders are not TCU, but "the conferences and Notre Dame". The Pac-10 would rather have Stanford in the Rose Bowl than in some other Bowl Game, and the other conferences are probably apathetic. If anything, most conferences would rather play TCU (I'm not sure if you've heard, but the Orthodoxy of College Football says that TCU is a joke, propelled heavenward only by a laughable schedule).

Will this happen? I don't know. Could it? Yes.

[Non-lawyer, non-pedantic readers: stop reading this blog post here.]

OK, if you've made it to this paragraph, you're either a lawyer or pedantic (or both).

Could this happen? Maybe. The problem is: the BCS procedure is self-contradictory.

The Rose Bowl Paragraph says: "that non-AQ team will play in the Rose Bowl."[emphasis mine]

But Paragraph 5 says: "the conferences and Notre Dame may [] adjust the pairings." So, which is it? WILL that team play in the Rose Bowl? Or MAY the conferences adjust the pairings? At least one of these sentences must be broken. If two clauses in a contract contradict, which survives? I'm not sure. But if it's the latter, then Stanford can go to the Rose Bowl, and the Rose Bowl won't be handicapped in the future.

Don't get me wrong. The BCS is about as stable as Element 113. The procedure is described in excruciating, legalistic degail (that, as we've seen, is ambiguous. So some lawyer somewhere is getting whipped by his partner tonight). But it survives only so long as the BCS survives. And the BCS stays awake at night, shivering and scared of the Sword of Damocles that is Anti-Trust Suits against the Nepotistic BCS. So maybe a court would say, the Rose Bowl could do this, and the Rose Bowl will decide that discretion is the better part of their valor.

But, you have to think that Larry Scott is considering how many times this week he'll be speed dialing Pasadena, right?

Finding quines by iteration

2010-03-22T00:19:00.005-05:00

Russ Cox has an article on his blog about quines. He examines it in zip files, and mentions his favorite Unix shell quine (you'll have to read it to find out!). I sat down this weekend and implemented a cute strategy of quine-hunting: find a fixed-point of error messages. (And I should mention that I've heard this approach credited to Guy Steele. I'd appreciate any references that confirm this).

What's a quine? To quote Russ quoting Ken Thompson (in his masterful Turing Award acceptance speech): "More precisely stated, the problem is to write a source program that, when compiled and executed, will produce as output an exact copy of its source." This statement only allows valid programs in the language. The innovation of the Steele method is to squint at this definition. Instead of "compiled and executed", let's change it to "to run through a compiler/interpreter".

A traditional quine must be a valid program in the language. But when you invoke most language runtimes with an invalid program, they aren't silent. They do produce output. Often error diagnostics to help the programmer craft their gibberish into a valid program.

So what does an invalid-program quine look like? Well, we know it has to be an error message. It has to be an error message whose error is itself. Let's take python. Fire up an interpreter and enter an invalid program:


>>> a
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
NameError: name 'a' is not defined

Is that error message an invalid-program quine? Let's check.


>>> Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
                    ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Nope. A NameError isn't a NameError. It's a SyntaxError.

So how will we find it? Well, we could try traditional quine-construction techniques, but this requires an in-depth knowledge of each language runtime we want to find an invalid-program quine for. And traditional quine-construction techniques are, well, hard: they require that you work backward and forward at the same time. Let's not do that.

Instead, think back to our last revelation: a NameError isn't a NameError, it's a SyntaxError. But maybe a SyntaxError is a SyntaxError (quine!). Or maybe it's a FrobError, and a FrobError is a FrobError (quine!).

And here's the advantage studying invalid-program quines: not only are they perverse, they're also easy. Take input, run it through the language runtime, compare the error message to the input. If they're different, just repeat. But if they are the same, then the language runtime evaluated the input to the error message, and we've found an invalid-program quine.

Returning to the python example: a SyntaxError isn't a SyntaxError, and it isn't a FrobError. It's an IndentationError. And an IndentationError is an IndentationError. Here, then, is our invalid-program quine for python:


>>>   File "<stdin>", line 1
File "<stdin>", line 1
File "<stdin>", line 1
^
IndentationError: unexpected indent

But if you read Russ's post, you already know a python quine. So let's find some invalid-program quines in some more languages. And let's do it faster.

#! /bin/bash


languages="python;py
awk;awk
ruby;rb
gcc cc
javac java
bash sh
ksh ksh
zsh zsh
perl;pl"

# Find an error quine for a language.
# Args:
#   $1: compiler for the language
#   $2: file suffix
function find_quine_for_language {
COMPILER=$1
SUFFIX=$2
echo "Searching for error quine for $COMPILER"

echo "Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" > input.$SUFFIX
echo "" > output.$SUFFIX

found=""
for ((n=1; n <= 24; n++)) do
  $COMPILER input.$SUFFIX > output.$SUFFIX 2>&1
  echo -n "."

  if cmp -s input.$SUFFIX output.$SUFFIX; then
    found=true
    break
  fi

 mv output.$SUFFIX input.$SUFFIX

done
echo

if [ ! -z $found ]; then
 echo "Found error quine for $COMPILER after $n steps."
 echo "================================"
 cat input.$SUFFIX
 echo "================================"
else
 echo "Could not find error quine for $COMPILER after $n steps."
 echo "> du -ah input.$SUFFX"
 du -ah input.$SUFFIX
fi
}

for language in $languages
do
language=$(echo $language | tr ";" " ")
find_quine_for_language $language
done

First, I've listed some language runtimes and the suffix we should use for files in that language. Then I define the function that tries to find an invalid-program quine for the language. The only added sophistication from my description is a limit to the number of iterations. Why? Most runtimes on the list tell you about the first error, or the first n errors. They think that after this many errors, any more wouldn't be useful. But one of these runtimes keeps nitpicking your by-now-obviously-not-valid program. There is no fixed point. Each error message is longer than the input, and without this limit your machine grinds to a halt. (If you want to know which language leads to a 70 megabyte text file of parse errors, run the program yourself)

The moral of the story? The next time you find yourself in a quine-speed-writing competition, type gibberish and repeat.

Why isn't the VC community talking about Shark Tank?

2010-01-31T12:06:00.003-05:00

Shark Tank is a major-network, prime-time show about Venture Capital. So with all the great VC/entrepreneur bloggers and twitter(er)s, why isn't anyone buzzing about it?

A description: a small businessperson comes to 5 rich people (the "sharks") with their business and an offer (e.g. $48k for a 25% stake). The businessperson pitches their idea. The sharks ask questions ("how much do you sell in a day?" "how much does it cost to make this?"). The sharks make counter offers (most involve the same amount of money for at least a 51% stake). They show off their advantages ("you want me to invest because I know retail, and you're a retailer"). Isn't this the kind of transparency that we want?

Now, yes, it's a bad show. The sharks brag about the great deals they've made and how rich they are, without mentioning the fact that, say, he made his money by selling at the peak of the bubble and Mattel's acquisition of his company "has been called one of the worst acquisitions in corporate history."

But this is major network tv. We need bad shows to rally around, so that there will be less popular but better shows. For instance, Saturday Night Live. Sucks. But it takes there being an SNL for there to be a Dana Carvey show (which featured Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert).

And yes, it's not about tech. It's about consumer retail and people making stuffed animals with cubby holes so that kids can organize their playroom by anally fisting a monkey. That's not interesting to the tech crowd. It's not really interesting to any crowd.

But this is the first show that has people present business plans, then criticize them, and giving you a glimpse into how capitalists think and operate. Shouldn't we be singing ABC's praises for giving us even this?

Dan's advice on Resume Writing.

2010-01-21T14:58:00.002-05:00

It's intern-hiring season, so I'm reading more resumes at work and for friends. Here are some thoughts I have.

[These are my thoughts, not necessarily my employer's. And check out Steve Yegge's tips for a longer but better-written piece.]

One Page.

Your resume fits on a page. "But I need more than one page--" No, you don't. Either you're junior enough that you can fit it on a page, or you're awesome enough that you don't even need to list every detail. (Exception: researchers. Then you're working more on a CV than a resume.) Yes, this will mean cutting down on stuff. And as you get older, it will mean cutting stuff out. Your awesome responsibilities as a lifeguard at the pool were important when you were a sophomore, not when you're a 30 year-old.

Each word should give someone a reason to want to hire you.

Go re-read your resume with that in mind.

Give me what I need, but not too much.

Yes, you need the keywords to be in there. Tell me you were a software engineer. Tell me what languages you know. But you don't need to tell me that a software engineer "designs, implements, and verifies software code to" yadda yadda.

Give me hooks.

Here's where I diverge most from Steve's advice. There are two uses of the resume. One is to get the interview. The next is to make the interview better. For the first part, you want to trim the fat. For the second, you want to leave what I call "hooks". Interesting sentences that will make your interviewer look down at your resume, then look up at you and say, "huh, this is interesting." Then, it's your time to shine. On my resume, I have hooks for small talk ("Opened for The Who"), and then hooks for what I care about ("enjoy tackling low-hanging technical fruit to bring about societal change").

My resume screener won't care about these hooks. And they probably won't even come up on a first-pass interview (where the interviewer cares more if I've ever actually seen a computer). But when I'm talking with someone who knows I can code, and wants to know if I can code the right things, this is a useful sentence. Put enough of yourself on the page so an interviewer will give you the chance to come out in person.

Go back, cut it down again.

OK, you have a resume. Now go back and fix it, cause it's probably still bad. No, seriously, 15 minutes now will get you farther faster. Basically, candidates write what they think resume readers want to see. Stop that. Write what you'd want to read.

Steve (linked above, also here) spends a lot of time on the bad writing that pervades many resumes. Go read that. I'll wait. Back? Good. Now, take out your resume, reread each word, and cut it out unless you can convince your antagonistic alter ego that it's truly necessary.

Share, and look at other people's.

The best way to get a better resume is to ask the 5 people you most admire (in a similar job/field) to see their resumes. You'll probably go "oooh, that looks nice". Then stop and think about what makes it nice. Copy those attributes shamelessly. Then, the next time a friend asks for resume help, say, "okay, and here's mine, so you can see what I like in resumes." (This also has the side benefit of making you keep yours up-to-date)

For better encryption key distribution, look to Leisure Suit Larry. [a response to Bruce Schneier]

2010-01-11T09:26:00.004-05:00

A few months ago, there was an uproar over our Predator drones in Afghanistan broadcasting video unencrypted. Techies coast-to-coast were a-twitter with glee that the military-industrial complex can't do anything right. Bruce Schneier put them in their place by pointing out that this data comes with an expiration date. We only need it stay encrypted for a few hours/days. He suggested a whole new key exchange system for this sort of data.

Here's my proposal: go back to the classics. I'm referring, of course, to the 1987 softcore software magnum opus Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. An adventure game in the vein of other Sierra On-Line franchises of the day (Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest), it added one very important aspect: boobies. And to avoid the label of smut-peddlers, it added a CAPTCHA-esque ingenuity I think we'd do well to remember.

When you wanted to play the game, you entered your age. And then, it tested you on it. So if you said you were 25, it would ask you questions about the popular music of 10 years earlier. You could claim you were 18, but if you had the pop-cultural IQ of a 10 year-old, you were still locked out.

Predators should send out an encrypted video signal and a hint for the key. This could rest on cultural knowledge of American pop culture, or more specifically it could rely on the specific units the video was made for. You can search Wikipedia for Britney Spears's hit 1999 signal, but can you for, say, the nickname of the commanding general of the 10th Mountain Division?

This isn't industrial grade crypto. But it's a way to give out keys for data whose security has a lifetime of hours, not decades.

[ This is also related to the concept of a Shibboleth. I also vaguely remember, but couldn't find a story from WWII: Germans who'd learned American accent-free would be dressed up in looted American uniforms. They would have been made familiar with American military protocol. So US soldiers started asking them questions like "who won the National League Pennant in 1938." ]

Why isn't Airport Utility 5.5 on the web? [Apple Fail]

2009-12-31T06:05:00.004-05:00

Airport Utility is software to administer Apple hardware. It's included with the hardware, and posted on the web. Except for the version I need.

[Apologies, faithful reader(s?), but this post is a diversion from the normal flow(trickle?) of Enfranchised posts. Instead, it's for the internet reader who landed here after performing a WWW search using the engine of their choice.]

Earlier this year, I:

bought a Time Capsule (a router/WiFi base station/hard drive). Specifically, the 2009 Time Capsule update.
installed Airport Utility (the software to administer the Time Capsule) from the included DVD.
cleaned up my apartment and threw out the DVD, because physical media is for suckers.
found my copy of Airport Utility got downgraded (perhaps during my Snow Leopard upgrade?)

At http://support.apple.com/downloads/#airport , you can download many versions of Airport Utility. But not 5.5. The latest there is 5.4.1, which works with many Apple Wireless base stations. But not mine. So, until they do post it, my options are:

download a torrent of Airport Utility 5.5 (probably with viruses)
buy a new Time Capsule (right)
borrow DVD from a friend (I don't think I have any with this Time Capsule)
beg Apple support. (I'll update later)

But, why? This software is useless without an expensive piece of Hardware/Apple Profit. Other versions are public for free download. What is it about Airport Utility 5.5, specifically, that it can't be released for download?

Maybe it:

has secret data embedded Apple doesn't want you to see. (Unless you've paid the $300)
is a retail strategy to get me to buy it again. (This is so frustrating that I'm close.)
would cost too much bandwidth to offer for free download. (Unlike every other version of the same software).

Or, maybe, this update to Airport Utility is just stuck in App Review.

Three Ways to Fix the Airport Security Problem (aka Trains with Rockets)

2009-12-26T16:31:00.005-05:00

In the wake of another terror attempt, the TSA is locking down flights. Reports of the regulations include:

no electronics
no standing in the last hour of a flight
only one carry-on bag

These make traveling a lot less attractive: over the past 20 years, a coast-to-coast trip has gotten less convenient. The trip now takes longer (airplanes haven't gotten faster, and I'm more constrained in what I can do).

I see 3 ways to return to the era of luxurious and sumptuous transcontinental travel:

1) Bring sanity to Airport Security. Yeah, this might happen. OK, next solution.

(Oh hey, it turns out that when a problem is hard to solve, it's easier to go around it)

2) Build faster planes. If flying New York to San Francisco took, say, 2 hours, then it's fine not to have your computer. But Concorde tried this, and, well, kind of failed.

3) Screw you, planes. Major airlines already operate a hub-and-spoke model. You know what else uses fixed routes? Trains. You know what have more room than planes? Trains. You know what are almost as fast as planes? Trains with Rockets.

Yes yes yes, trains are more fuel efficient than planes. Do Americans care about fuel efficiency? No. We care about convenience and awesome. Trains with Rockets have both. Heck, I'd even be fine with Trains with Jet engines. Yes, I know they'll never be as fast as planes. But you'll have more leg room. A red-eye will be doable. And you'll get to arrive/leave in city centers. C'mon Mr. President, this massive civil works project is one I can believe in.

Electronics aren't a threat to Planes

2009-12-12T12:51:00.002-05:00

[ I've been traveling a lot recently, so excuse me some travel posts ]

"Oh noes! Electronics might cause plane crashes!" Someone somewhere thought this, and now you have to turn off electronics during and after take-off and landing. Yes, it's annoying. And it's not even clear that electronics are bad.

"Well, maybe electronics don't mess it up after all. But as long as there's a risk, shouldn't we be prudent? You can't live without your iPhone game for 20 minutes?" This is a common sense attitude. And it's wrong. Let's take a look at why.

If this attitude worked, the FAA would just say "you can bring bombs on planes, but just don't use them." Of course, terrorists wouldn't listen to this.

So why don't they bring cell phones onto planes, leave them on during takeoff/landing, and crash them? Why has 24 never featured someone jumping up on a plane and saying "I have an electronic device, and I'm not afraid to leave it on!" There are three possibilities:

Electronics aren't a threat to planes.
The DHS is wildly incompetent.
Cell phones know when they're being held by terrorists, and emit less harmful electromagnetic radiation.

This is a lesson in thinking about security: if you won't plan for the worst case (terrorist with a souple-up radio transmitter), there's no point planning for the average case (tourist with an iPod). So why don't Amazon and Apple lobby for people to be allowed to continue to use their Kindles and iPods?

Why does eBay allow sniping?

2009-11-20T06:22:00.002-05:00

5 hours left on this auction (I'd give you the link, but then you'd bid against me!) and I am sweating bullets. Why? Because eBay is a jackass. Or eBay are jackasses. Look, eBay behaves jackasserly. With great jackasseritude. How? They end the auction at a fixed time.

I get what they're trying to do: create the atmosphere of exciting bidding by letting people know when to come watch the end of the auction.

The problem? They haven't attracted people, they've attracted computers. People set up auto-bidders that wait until a fraction of a second before the auction ends and then bid it up. This destroys the "thrill of the bid"

So, honest question, why does eBay let this happen? Here's my proposal: if a bid comes in with less than two minutes left in the auction, the auction gets extended for two minutes. Bam, no worrying if you'll get beat without the chance to respond.

This would take off the pressure to bid "in secret" and have to wait until the end.

So... what's the deal, eBay?

How Obama Earned the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-12T01:42:00.000-05:00

My theory on how Obama Earned the Nobel Peace Prize

The most dressed up gimp joke you'll hear all day

2009-10-05T05:25:00.000-05:00

Renowned physicist and best-selling author Stephen Hawking retired last month, after hitting the mandatory retirement age of 69. After having been the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University for 30 years, he'll be missed in the small college town. But he'll also be missed at rival English university Oxford, where he was widely recognized at being single-handedly responsible for their 30-year winning streak in the annual Cambridge-Oxford Mathematics Department Cricket match.

Give me perspective!

2009-09-30T00:16:00.002-05:00

It's frustrating that stock chart graphs make it clear when a stock went up and when it went down, but not by how much. If the line goes down to the bottom of the graph, it might be alright (the opening bell just rang, and it's down .01%), or it might be horrific (the company went bankrupt).

Why not have a convention of showing not only the opening-value as a line, but the opening-value +/- mean volatility as lines of different colors. Show me the equator, plus the tropics of cancer and capricorn!

"East Palo Alto police buy back guns"

2009-09-29T12:59:00.000-05:00

This headline, "East Palo Alto police buy back guns"...

Is it just me, or does it make it sound like: the Chief of the EPA PD made the conscious decision to sell the department's guns (perhaps because of idealism). Then the next day, he awakens from his fairy-dream-slumber, realizes that police need guns (especially in East Palo Alto), and suddenly they're going around, hat-in-hand, kindly asking to get their firearms back?

The Point/Counterpoint of the Future

2009-09-28T21:30:00.002-05:00

Every generation (well, every five years) needs its commentators-at-loggerheads. The 90's had James Carville/Mary Matalin. The 00's had Hannity/Colmes. Today we have Hannity... and more Hannity!

This is the part where I predict the future. Right-wing Pundit, law professor, semi-notable actor, and former-haver-of-Money-that-can-be-won Ben Stein will be the perfect offset to Liberal good-humor-writer-and-mediocre-actor* turned Senator Al Franken, in a show that can only be called...

...Franken-Stein!

*though he's a fantastic actor when he's being Mick Jagger

The Third Path: Restoring Bank Confidence; Compensation

2009-09-28T03:50:00.004-05:00

[In The Third Path, we examine both sides of an issue, and find a third (and better) solution]

The Great Depression taught us that the public needs to trust banks. When the '08 Recession hit, we knew we had to help the banks. We thought maybe reducing excessive executive pay would help.

The wise bank executives took a moment from snorting cocaine off the tits of prostitutes made of diamonds while riding on a yacht made of endangered rhinoceros tusk to helpfully point out that it would be folly to cut costs. If we were to reduce their paycheck by even one zero, the best bankers would be so insulted they would quit! We'd be left with the second-rate bankers. These second-rate bankers, you understand, are simply unable to do what the first-rate bankers do (that is, lose billions of dollars. Why, Jim over there worked every day in 2008 and only cost the economy $87 million. Ha!).

In the heat of the moment, we went down the second path. But let's think of a Third Path, now that things have gotten so crazy. (How crazy are they?) They're so crazy that the FDIC wants to borrow money from the banks. This is the equivalent of the fox asking the hen to come over and housesit, because the fox is thinking a vacation would be nice but gets a lot of mail and needs his plants watered. Well, time to strike while the iron is crazy... here's the two-point Bentley Plan.

Let banks pay executives as much as they will take.
When any bank goes belly-up, their executives get punished according to how much money they got paid in the 12 months that they allowed the bank to fail, according to this schedule:

<$500,000: Anyone who invested money in the bank can give them a wet willy
$500,000-$1 million: Need to spend 5 minutes in a small room with an angry porcupine
$1-3 million: Knees broken. (At this level, the executive ought to appreciate the irony that this is the punishment that befalls the smallest of debtors: the loan shark customer)
$3-10 million: A pound of flesh is taken. (At this level, the sophisticated executive simply must appreciate the Merchant of Venice allusion)
$10-20 million: Shot in the head. In front of everyone they have ever loved.
>$20 million: Shot in the head. In front of everyone they have ever loved. While wearing a clown suit.

This is a classic example of "aligning incentives". If you, as a depositor, hear that your bank president was paid $34 million last year, you can be thrilled that your banks is still healthy. Because, as the saying goes, "who wants to be killed while wearing a clown suit?"

Headlines, obviously a large part of Deborah Sontag's eagle eye

2009-09-28T02:23:00.004-05:00

"When Life Names You Lemon" is an article about a memoirist who, well, I don't know. I haven't read it.

I just saw the pitch on the front page: "Lemon Andersen, the child of heroin addicts, is now a memoirist." I'm pretty sure the author (one Deborah Sontag) wrote it for the headline. So that's what I read.

Why I follow @aplusk and not @cnnbrk

2009-04-16T22:56:00.004-05:00

I'm on twitter as @dbentley. Recently, there's been a race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN for who can be the first account to have 1 million followers. As of this writing, it's neck and neck.

Personally, I follow @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) and not @cnnbrk (CNN). Why?

CNN isn't anything new. It's headlines. It's a wire service. It's an RSS feed limited to <>
It doesn't try to be anything more. It follows one account. It doesn't interact with the community. Yeah, you "get" the internet. But by that CNN doesn't mean "understanding", it means "getting more eyeballs".

Ashton is creating community and interacting with it. I'm not sure where Twitter's going, but I know that Ashton's leading and CNN's coasting.

Not an important posting

2009-01-16T18:51:00.003-05:00

Kraft Mac and Cheese has premium flavors. And they're good. And yet, the premium flavors cost the same at my local store ($1.89). One of them even includes an extra .05 oz net wt. How is the premium mac and cheese not more expensive to make? Or does Kraft simply believe in their product so much that they are subsiziding it?

Idea for the Golden Globes

2009-01-12T01:28:00.003-05:00

The Golden Globes have separate awards for Best Dramatic Picture and Best Comedic Picture. My impression is that, were they forced to choose a Best Picture, most years it would be the Best Dramatic Picture winner, and so that category is viewed as "higher". Even though some years, it might maybe...

Well, why don't we try. I think that if you're voting for the Golden Globes, then you should vote for each category separately, and also choose one of them as Best Picture. Then, they should disqualify the Best Picture winner as winning its category. Instead, they would award Best Dramatic Picture winner to the second-place in that category (in years that Dramatic picture won Best Picture).

This would mean that the cast and crew of a Best Dramatic Picture would want to win. But they'd also kinda want to lose, in the hopes that they won Best Picture (which would be announced later).

I think this would make for much cooler shots where some directors would be a little bit happy they lost Best Dramatic Picture. Until they later lost Best Picture, too. To Mamma Mia!

The tears of heart-broken actresses can cure... well, nothing. But they sure make me laugh.

An Honest-to-God Constitutional Crisis!

2009-01-04T08:42:00.004-05:00

Man, Rod Blagojevich is a Dick. Determined to go down swinging, he appoints Roland Burris, whose only weakness is sympathizing with that Dick Rod Blagojevich. And suddenly, though no one wants to say it, we have a Constitutional Crisis on our hands. I'm no lawyer, but here's my thinking.

The two major points seem to be:

the Constitution, which states that each house of Congress is "the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own members". Great, easy enough. The Senate gets to decide everything. Except nope, because the second major point...
Powell v. McCormack says that Congress only gets to test the Qualifications set in the Constitution (older than such and such age, citizen of X state for at least Y months, etc.), and can't set the barbarous Qualification of "you can't have been kicked out of Congress before". Meh, not sure I agree with the decision, but hey, it's the Law of the Land.

Almost all of the analyses I've seen have been trying to fit the current conditions to the contours of Powell v. McCormack. But what people haven't been mentioning is "Political Question", the doctrine by which the Supreme Court can choose not to decide a case because it has no right to interfere. Somewhere, that clause has to give a house in Congress a right to act in some way to exclude members (or else it wouldn't have been included). And when it exercises that right, it is "the Judge".

That's scary. Because that means that once it figures out exactly the limits of that power, within that realm its power is absolute. And can't be checked. And can be wielded for political purposes. Could someone explain to me why a majority of the Senate couldn't get together and say to prospective Senators (presumably of the other party): "I'm sorry, we don't believe your birth certificate. We think you're 29, and therefore unable to serve in this Senate; better luck never."?

We like Checks and Balances. But it seems here that the Constitution has said "there is an area here where each House is the final authority". I think that's the heart of the issue. At some point, the Supreme Court has to let each House make its own mistakes, and let them card members-elect and then act like dicks, and then have the system come crumbling down with a new amendment that will create an alternative system that has its own pitfalls. Oh Constitutional Crisis, you're so fun to hypothesize about!

Why do Unions like Pensions?

2008-12-21T12:58:00.002-05:00

I understand why people like pensions. You work for a while, then you get to retire, and you don't have to worry.

But there's also lock-in. You only get the pension if you stay with a company. Through good times, and bad. maybe it's not a fun place to work anymore. Maybe it's downright horrid. But if you stay for another four years, you get your pension, so you stay.

Why is that good for employees? Wouldn't it be better to have fluidity (on the part of the workers) so that they can apply not just short-term pressure (strikes) but long-term pressure (retention)?

Or is this a situation where the structure of a union has incentives not aligned with the rank-and-file workers? (Because if you leave the company, you might fall under a different union representative, or a different union)

Vista and Silverlight: two tastes that really ought to not be forced together

2008-12-17T02:59:00.005-05:00

I'm kind of interested in the Mojave Experiment. Microsoft went out and showed people "Mojave" and how much better it was than Vista, their never-got-off-the-ground-acceptance-wise OS. And then, "surprise", Mojave is Vista, Soylent Green is People, and Bob is Your Uncle.

A friend was looking for a computer and asking about Vista and with how much vigor she ought avoid it. My understanding is that much of the backlash is because it's hard to get things working with Vista if you upgrade, but if you get it on a computer you'll be fine. I was hoping to give her some ciation towards this, and so went to http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/ .

And it requires Silverlight. Microsoft's other latest technology. If you're trying to convince slow adopters, why would you use a different early adopter technology?

It's such a great idea, with such a head-in-the-sand implementation.

[These views are my own and not my employer's; though I hope they become yours. Because I'm right.]

Words' Resurgence

2008-12-15T02:46:00.003-05:00

I'm reading George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. It's a (slightly fictionalized, it turns out) telling of his time being poor in... Paris and London. Good book, and even though I sometimes disagree with Orwell I never regret the time I spent reading him.

Two big thoughts have struck me:

1) I could make a lot of money compiling a guide to English funny currency. What the hell is a bob? And a crown? What's five and sixpence mean? And a quid? (In fact, I know the answers to most of these). But a Creative Commons-licensed (non-commercial) essay describing the universe and lexicon, along with a per-decade commentary on economics (so you can know how much 4 pounds is in each time period, say) would be awesome. I imagine that, written well enough, and licensed cheaply enough, you could allow editors to include it in editions of... basically any English Literature book ever.

2) I got to this passage: "And instantly [] the tramps began to misbehave[]. All round the gallery men lolled in their pews, laughed, chattered..." Loll is a verb, meaning to lounge around, but in that context it seemed so much to presage "lol" as in "omfg lol" that I wondered if I hadn't gotten a copy of the book remixed a la Laugh-Out-Loud Cats. It just all worked so well: a book about tramps that was in the context of laughing by a writer who thought so much about language (yes, 1984, but also its underappreciated precursor "Politics and the English Language".

So, George (nee Eric), tell me, is newspeak really a foreshadowing of teenage girl speak? My hat, as ever, is off to you.

Q&A with Chris Onstad

2008-12-12T14:43:00.002-05:00

Recently, Chris Onstad, author of Achewood (the best webcomic ever) stopped by the New York office. I was fortunate enough to be given the chance to ask him dumb questions, and watch him turn them into amazingly intelligent and literate answers. Check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ZOSZZTIiE

Why I Support Universal Healthcare

2008-10-26T22:02:00.002-05:00

It's basically a three-step logical process.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
When people get really sick, we (as a society) will have to pay for the cure.
So we might as well pay for the prevention.

So, if you disagree with Universal Health Care, and I know there are a lot of you out there who do, which of these three do you disagree with?

Evil Audubon Society

2008-08-21T00:30:00.001-05:00

You should check out The Evil Audubon Society, sometimes misspelled as The Evil Autobahn Society.

Top Gun Analogies, taken too far

2008-05-03T18:08:00.001-05:00

The Kentucky Derby is rife with potential for comparison to the 1987 cinematic coup de grace "Top Gun".

"I feel the need. The need for speed." Straightforward resemblance to the sport of ponies.

So perhaps it is no surprise that jockey Kent Desormeaux, riding the back of Big Brown (the favorite who went on to win it), chose to commentate a replay of the race by comparing his run to Tom Cruise in that fateful film. Quoth the short, fast man: "I'm locked on now. [] And all I've got to do is pull the trigger."

Eight Belles, the filly who took second place, broke both of her front ankles was immediately put down after two equine ambulances pulled out onto Churchill Downs's track.

It's with a deep understanding of how bad a person I am that I imagine all of the ways I could recast Iceman (played memorably by Val Kilmer)'s line of:

"The plaque for second place is in the women's bathroom."

Going Conventional: A March Madness Case Study

2008-03-26T03:10:00.003-05:00

I was talking with friends the other day about sports. All of my friends like sports either significantly more than I do, or significantly less. Thus I was basically talking to myself and wondering how likely conventional wisdom was to be wise.

I know there are all sorts of bookies who know exactly what seeds mean what, but I was more interested in the exception cases. Specifically, what is the largest sub-tree of an NCAA bracket that has had no upsets.

I was positive that 2 team subtrees had this property: that's simply the higher-seeded team winning a game. I would have bet a lot of money at long odds that 4 teams had done it (that is, 1 beats 4 and 2 beats 3 and then 1 beats 2. Of course, in a 16-team seeding, that really means 1 beats 16 and 8 beats 9 and 1 beats 8). But 8 games... I thought happened. And 16 I thought maybe hadn't.

Turns out, 8 teams has happened. As recently as 2007. #2 Georgetown is triumphant over 7 other, lower-seeded teams.

16 teams has happened too. If my scan is correct (though it's late, so I'm open to other examples), in the 1985 tournament. The East region was won by #1 seed Georgetown, who beat seed 16, seed 8 (who beat seed 9), seed 4 (who beat seed 13 and seed 5 (who beat seed 12)), and seed 2 (who beat seed 15, seed 7 (who beat seed 10), and seed 3 (who beat seed 14 and seed 6 (who beat seed 11))).

But before that, I had found that it has also happened to 12 teams. Back in 1982, with a 48-team field, the West region was won by... Georgetown.

I guess the moral of the story is: if you find yourself seeded in a sub-bracket with Georgetown seeded higher than you, you're in for a not-very-upsetting time.

P.S. As a side note, I checked out Georgetown. In 10 out of 17 tournaments I looked at, they won exactly when they were the higher-seeded team. In 4 they lost as a higher seed, and in 3 they won as a lower seed. Thus, in the future, you should expect Georgetown to win exactly those games as they are expected to. They're rather dependable.

Why can't Juries ask questions?

2008-03-13T03:58:00.002-05:00

I'm watching 12 Angry Men.

The Jurors bring up among themselves all these questions. Arguments then ensue.

Why should Jurors not be allowed to address their questions/concerns to people who could answer them? In what ways would this harm the process?

I think we're really hesitant to do Jury Reform, and for good reason. But how many hundreds of years, with how much progress in understanding how it is that 1) people come to decisions (cognitive) and 2) how groups of people come to decisions (social psych)? And how much more complex are the methods that Jurors have to understand? And the laws?

So much has changed since last we changed. Maybe it's time to start asking these questions.

I sincerely hope someone responds, in comments or email, "we don't allow Jurors to do this because *VALID REASON HERE*."

Can you tell I watched Lost in Translation recently?

2008-02-26T03:10:00.003-05:00

For relaxing dirt, make it... Suntory Dirt.

So, which NBC exec went to Stanford?

2008-02-18T16:37:00.002-05:00

I just watched the Knight Rider made-for-tv movie. In it, the comely daughter of the dead scientist teaches at Stanford. And the fly-over shots are accurate, but that's stock videography. The exterior shots of when she leads the library are not Stanford, which makes sense: if you're filming in LA, you aren't going to pack up to film Stanford.

But they got some stuff weirdly right. The sign in the library said, "Go Cardinal, the AXE is ours!" Which correctly gets the pluralization of our mascot correct (it's singular), and refers to the object of our rivalry. Touches like these are the hallmark of alma mater affinity.

But another show debuting on NBC this fall, Chuck, features a protagonist that failed out of Stanford. In the few flashbacks, again, large details are out of whack: the frat house doesn't look like any Stanford frat house. But again, no tv dorm room ever looks like a dorm room. But the little touches. They show Chuck's college ID card, and it's a well formatted SUID card, instantly recognizable to any Stanford student.

So, why? I'm thinking there's an NBC exec that went to Stanford, and so toady little show runners are telling their staffs (staves?) that they need to set things at Stanford, and get the details right!

I imagine tens of fact checkers scouring through Wikipedia articles and Facebook Wall Postings and USNews College Board Discussions for the hints of veracity that'll make this mythic benefactor smile with remembrance of his heady college days.

Christ's Vicar in the Air

2007-05-09T06:12:00.000-05:00

This article from the Times talks about the Pope and abortion. Big surprise: he's anti-. And he'll excommunicate politicians who backed a measure legalizing them in Mexico. Question 1: will he excommunicate those who voted for such politicians? Those who vote for such politicians in the future? Those who provide aid and comfort to such politicians?

But these geopolitically religious questions get in the way of a larger question. The Times says the comments were made "during an airborne news conference aboard the plane carrying him". Now, we all know about the Popemobile. But what do we call this fantastic vehicle of Papal Transport? The airplance that can return the Prelate of St. Peter's Basilica to his Rome dome home? That can speed to court a Pontiff plaintiff? (perhaps there to deliver his sartorial wisdom with a vestment testament) That can, with altitude, make the mitre mightier?

Pope Force One.

(Though we also would have accepted VHoly See-25)

Pronunciation Realization

2007-05-01T06:11:00.000-05:00

Where do you place the accent in the word "Caribbean"? Per se, I normally accent it as ca-RIB-be-an. But, I realized, in reference to the Johnny Depp vehicle, I pronounce "the Pirates of the CA-ri-BE-an". And when I think about it, I realize that doing so makes the phrase iambic (yes, with a femine rhyme, which is why there's an extra syllable on the end). Why?

Robert Frost said writers in English have a choice between two meters: strong iambic and weak iambic.

I guess readers in English only have those two choices, as well.

Opt-what now?

2007-04-27T07:20:00.000-05:00

I just signed up for Consumer Reports. Spending $26 so I can save money. That's why I spent 5 years in college.

But as I'm signing up, they have this form item:

We occasionally send e-mail notification of special ConsumerReports.org events and updates or news about other Consumer Reports activities or products. If you do not want to receive such notices let us know by checking "Opt out."

Opt In
Opt Out

Now, I appreciate the ability to marginally reduce my spam load by telling them "I'd rather not, really." But they are using standard terms of nerdery and cred and nerd cred to make it appear that they get it.

When they don't.

And what's worse, the UI is unclear. Presumably, if you don't want to be bugged, you'd prefer an opt-in system, in which case, then you want to opt-out--

Look Consumer Reports. Let's get past the pleasantries. I'm giving you 26 dollars and a spam email address. You're going to give me some information on camcorders I want to buy, you're going to sell said email address to anyone who will pay for it, then you're going to give it away to anyone who can't. This isn't an affair of the heart; it's a shoddy electronic information passing encounter of prostitution.

Foster in Stereo (R)

2007-04-24T09:39:00.000-05:00

Since so pitifully little of my work at The Onion - A.V. Club has made it into the web edition, I took the liberty of constructing a rudimentary page to host my articles to date. (I read and write HTML at a third-grade level). See it here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze2788s/

At least it's not a members-dot-aol-dot-com page (quasi-sequitur: Stephen Glass used an AOL domain when constructing a bogus page for Jukt Micronics as part of the tapestry of fabulism he called a journalistic career.)

Hopefully, you'll read some of the stuff there and think: "Ah, of course he hasn't had time to post at The Enfranchised lately. The man is working toward a Pulitzer."

You Can Do Better: Rolling Stones

2007-04-19T04:06:00.000-05:00

In this article, we find out that 300 horses are to be sedated as a Rolling Stones concert happens next to them.

In this edition of You Can Do Better, we invite you to to Do Better in comments.

Punchlines:

Normally the 300 doses of horse tranquilizer at a Stones concert are for Keith Richards.
So this is why Serbian Gangsters threaten you with sleeping with the horses.
Some pun on the song title "Wild Horses".

Snakes in a Plain... old office building.

2007-04-18T00:52:00.000-05:00

My, who's that handsome blogger over at the official Google Blog?

Oh, it's me!

I mean, it's I.

Fucking predicate nominative.

Discovered Clerihew

2007-04-15T05:17:00.000-05:00

Reading Paul Fussell's Poetic Meter & Poetic Form (an excellent book for those who wanted to know more than they wanted to know about... poetic meter and poetic form), I read this example of graffito (absurd singular not added, but in the original):

"Soldiers who wish to be a hero
Are practically zero.
But those who wish to be civilians,
Jesus, they run into the millions."

Fussell introduces the poem to point out the value of Trochaic substitution. Jesus, in the fourth line, is a trochee (its first syllable is stressed, as opposed to an iamb in which the last syllable is stressed). This draws our attention (as does the fact that it's a the-tiniest-bit-naughty interjection). (Fussell doesn't mention that soldiers, parallel at the beginning of the first line, is also a trochee; the omission makes me wonder if he doesn't pronounce it as an iamb.)

But what he doesn't mention is that this is a Clerihew. And an excellent one at that. Because there is no prescription for meter, poets in the form cannot fall back on anything and have to find utility in the arbitrary; this anonymous has.

AKA the Testicle Tax

2007-04-15T04:17:00.000-05:00

This image (which, if it's broken down, described a $1645 rebate for people willing to buy a Ford Mustang with an Automatic Transmission) is supply and demand at its barest.

What is the problem here? Simple, it's:

A Ford Mustang with
an automatic transmission.

If you're driving a sports car, don't be piloting a shuttlecraft where you occasionally give it some guidance to increase thrust or to fiddle with the cruise control or maybe a bit more to the left there, eh horseless carriage? If you're not too busy handling my hands-free bluetooth call to my manicurist?

Ford should just come out and call this incentive program what it is: a pussy rebate, for those who want to the veneer of a macho set of wheels that needn't hold up to fine inspection because they do not, in fact, have any friends who will be riding shotgun.

At least, not any that don't have to be inflated.

Pour Moi?

2007-03-27T14:21:00.000-05:00

This story has everything going for it. The chair-throwing hard-work attitude of Bobbby Knight pushing for the nonsensical, Dan Rather-esque shouting of pizza-seller Dick Vitale, to get the latter into the College Basketball Hall of Fame. It follows up on Bobby Knight's redemption (at least in my eyes): the NBA recently decided that pros have to be out of high school for one year, which has pushed the LeBron Jameses of the world to college for one year of a degree they *know* they won't finish, and Knight has been the only college coach to talk about the harm this is doing to student-athletes. Before, anyone who came to college only *thought* they might not finish college, y'know, if they had a few good seasons. And this really is a good tale: Dickie V belongs in the College Basketball Hall. He is the voice of March for many people.

But he's that voice on ESPN, the same outlet that's running this story. Without disclaimer. And I realize this is an AP story, but ESPN, can't you please say "full disclosure: Dick Vitale is an employee of ESPN". Because when you don't, you endorse a story, a pity, a sympathy that, if it were followed up on, would benefit you. You'd get to do a special on DV, maybe a retrospective, best of commentary on ESPN Classic, and a reality TV show where DVitty goes back to school to finish up his degree and find his lost love on ESPNU (look, Rodney Dangerfield's dead, you can steal his part and Terry Farrell is still hotter than Perry Farrell).

So, ESPN, shill away: you're a Disney company, it's kind of your job. But also make it clear that you're Dick's Vital employer when you do.

Eventual Gander: British History for Dummies

2007-03-26T12:28:00.000-05:00

[Review of British History for Dummies by Sean Lang]

There are times in history when one ought to be a fan of a certain publishing house. Scribner's Sons in the 20's. City Lights in the 50's. And now, For Dummies. Now, I'm sure that the For Dummies series prompts scorn and derision for some of their titles. I can only hope that Computers for Dummies reads something like this: "This is a mouse. You use it to do the obvious thing on your computer. When it breaks, you should do anything other than call your 'smart grandson' who does, in fact, have something better to do than help you digitize your photos of cats in front of a background of animated cats trying to hump other still life cats." I might be worried about my grandma taking offense at the previous sentence if not for the content of the previous sentence.

But the For Dummies books on Humanities and Social Sciences are awesome. The actual dummies, the ones who learn things just for grades, flock to Cliffs Notes. This brand, that in the technical realm caters to liberal arts majors on a deadline ("Our co-op newsletter needs to be out by Tuesday and it's not getting there 'til you learn Adobe Illustrator!"), caters, in the humanities realm, to liberal arts majors looking to have more info to masturbate out in casual cocktail party conversation. And so they find wholly competent authors who have a nice, cheeky sense of humor to write it. All the while giving you the facts without the pesky parts of textbooks. Y'know, the quizzes, the forced diversity ("minorities were important too during this period; check out this sidebar that shows a woman/black/poor person who had an interesting life story that is a sidebar because it doesn't fit in to the main story"), the repetition for students skimming a chapter introduction 3 minutes before class.

This is a textbook for people who want to learn, and want to have fun learning. Textbooks use a style that is dry, droll, and drab to make information easy to convey. Instead of dumbing down the words, Lang makes his style more interesting so you read closer. Consider the following chapter/section titles: "1066 and All That Followed", "Children of the Revolutions", "And What Have the Romans Ever Given Us in Return?", "Saxon, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll", "Who wants to be a William heir?", "Going Dutch", "Marlborough country", "Trouble Over: Brdiged Water", "The Battle of Warren Hastings". These are references to, somewhat respectively, an earlier satire of British History, Song Titles, Monty Python, awesome things, game shows, a good way to be told it's alright but you won't get laid, smoking, and historical occurrences themselves. I'm sure I've omitted several altogether awesome ones. And that made me pay closer attention. And that made me learn more.

The writing's funny, sure. In a wry, British manner, instructive itself. (In one passage about the revolts over Poll Tax, the writer notes that the disembodied head the peasants took was surely displayed on a vertical piece of wood using pole tacks). But all the cultural references make this book more admittedly a product of its own time than most are willing to admit. And it's short, a survey course, which means you get blasted with a lot, quickly. This is not a book to read a chapter or two of. If you want that, go to wikipedia. This is a book to read all of in one relatively fell swoop, so that you make connections you might miss if you read about single events. For instance, I had never quite realized that the Prince John who was the snivelling bastard in Robin Hood stories became the King John who, as a snivelling king, was forced by his barons to issue the Magna Carta. Let me know what connections you make.

Don't read this book because I recommend it. That perverts the purpose of this book. It is a book to be read only because you don't have to. The author made this book good; intent and intent alone can make it enjoyable.

It might make the Food Network, but how would they know?

2007-03-23T17:09:00.000-05:00

You rarely think of the Amish as being gimmicky. Or, rather, they have their one gimmick, and stick to their schtick so thoroughly that you almost, for a second, think they maybe, just maybe they don't actually want to have fun. This lets you know that, in fact, they want to rage and be famous like the rest of us.

So, to the Amish: welcome.

To Don King: looks like there's a new (self-)promoter in town.

Dr. Foster's Dictionary: March 21, 2007

2007-03-21T12:44:00.000-05:00

It's official. The distinction between high culture and low culture is no more. The Rubicon has been crossed...Il est fini....or, if you will, Git 'er Done.

If Borat didn't perform the coup de grâce, then certainly this Vanity Fair piece on British ex-pats in New York does. In the midst of his Anglo-baiting self-flagellation, A.A. Gill manages to comment on the "severe moose knuckle" caused by the British New Yorker's inproper deployment of American blue jeans. Let's see the entry and discussion from Dr. Foster's Dictionary.

moose knuck·le
[moos nuhk-uhl]
noun

1. A minor regional dysphemism from the middle-low American, having to do with the bifurcation and bulging of the scrotum and gonads, respectively, caused by a high-riding crotch seam on an overtight pair of pants. The sartorial phenomenon derives its name from its apparent similarity to the phalanges bones of the American moose. It relates also to the more widely celebrated "camel toe" phenomenon (though the taxonomic connection is vague at best: camels and moose come from two entirely different suborders--Tylopoda and Ruminantia, respectively--of Order Artiodactyla. What a gaffe!)

Since Europeans use "Elk" and not "moose" to refer to the relevant genuses, it speaks to the true thought-transforming power of globalization, as well as to Gill's immersion in American culture, that he uses "moose knuckle" instead of "elk knuckle" to describe a suffocating nutsack. Don't be surprised if William Safire has a thing or two to say about the affair in his "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine.

The Eventual Gander: Double Feature

2007-03-13T16:32:00.000-05:00

Over the span of eight hours this weekend I saw two films: The Last King of Scotland and Zodiac. A few notes.

The Last King of Scotland: Overall a decent film. It manages to achieve the kind of rock'n'roll pacing of a McG venture* and the 360-degree grit of a Tony Scott flick without descending into gonzo garishness or cinemagraphic circle jerk (of course, it's hard to be blinded by the bling when you're filming in Uganda). Anyway, I said it was a decent film. But Forrest Whitaker's performance as Idi Amin will nevertheless gaurantee its permanence. For once, the buzz was right. Whitaker deserves not only this year's Oscar but next year's as well. His screen presence is more like screen omnipresence. He dominates every scene he's in, just as Amin himself did. Also, and this is kind of an aside. There is a 15 minute sequence involving Amin's beautiful third wife, a trio of African go-go dancers, and our young Scottish protagonist. Needless to say, my jeans have never been so uncomfortable (this even though I was unable to suspend disbelief enough to think that a 130lb Scot could please a Nubian Princess. The Scots have the endowment of the Irish and the lustiness of the English.)

Zodiac: Wonderful. It is one of the signs of great filmmaking that the audience is kept in suspense even when they know what's going to happen. I went into Zodiac knowing most of the details--including the fact that they never made a charge in the case--and was biting my nails throughout its three-hour runtime. This is Fincher at his finest, but don't expect to see Seven or Fight Club, Zodiac is a different animal. Also, it's a nice touch that Fincher cast different actors to play the Zodiac based on different witnesses accounts. My one complaint, and it's fairly minor, is that Jake Gyllenhaal couldn't be bothered to change his rugged chic wardrobe or his perfectly unkempt ski-ramp haircut for a fucking 70s period piece. What, is his image under license with the Mid-00's Heart Throb Association of America?

*I debated whether to dignify that ridiculous moniker with a reference for about a half hour

Beware the Ides of March, and the other 30 days of it as well

2007-03-08T17:17:00.000-05:00

If you are a dedicated reader of The Enfranchised, and you aren't, then you'd know we had it out over the topic of NCAA basketball once before (though my post is the only one in the series worth reading). Still, there might be a dribble or two of piss left for the taking.

I'll first note that I am of two minds about college basketball. On the one hand, I am bothered by the entire phenomenon. Part of this is personal--after four of my roommates were evicted from our choice F Street townhouse during my sophomore year at GWU, I was shipped off to an "efficiency" (one could write an entire post about the misnomic properties of this appellation) apartment in the very same dormitory that housed our illustrious Men's basketball team: The GWU Fighting Colonials. I quickly found them to be loud (quiet hours don't apply when nobody on the floor studies), spoilt (they all seemed to drive SUVs and imports when most others walked, and to have Playstation N's in their rooms when few others had even Playstation N-1's), and lecherous (it quickly became a tedium to have to break the news to them that my girlfriend was just that. The poor girl is Latin and voluptuous (not in the euphemistic way) and so attracts more black men than the subject of a hypothetical stereotype that won't get me in trouble with the NAACP).

On the other hand, when those selfsame Colonials fought their way into the top 20, and then the top 10, I became something of a born-again bandwagoner. I was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Colonial Army, and thought it the personal duty of every student and faculty at GW to make sure these boys had all the Powerade, pep, and pussy they needed to assure a good seed in the Tourney. But when starting Center Pops Mensah-Bonsu [sic] and company failed to lead the team into the sweet 16, I was crestfallen. They hadn’t even lost to some distinguished team like Oxford or The University of Chicago, but rather to a regional school in some North Carolina backwater (Earl University, maybe, it was Marquis or Baron U. It bore the name of some viceroy, of that much I’m sure).

So I did what any good sports fan would do if once-disappointed by his hometown heroes – I formed summary judgments about the intrinsic worth of the entire enterprise. So why worry at all about the mechanics of the tournament? Why not forget basketball altogether and have the respective team-members see who can construct a vaguer and more ridiculous major (Rural Sociology, anyone?) to appease those nettlesome academic-types who are always interfering with university athletics? I’m fairly sure GW could still compete at that.

That, or eliminate the automatic Ivy bid, distribute automatic bids by regions instead of conferences, recalibrate the S-Curve accordingly, and publicly clarify the role of Ratings Percentage Index.

Either way.

Pissing In The Wind: This Bracket Racket

2007-03-07T10:32:00.000-05:00

This Sunday, the NCAA announces its field of 65.

That is, of course, an odd number. And as much as it isn't even, it's even less a power of 2, as tournament rosters are wont to be. This irregularity descends from a historical quirk. In every tournament, there are the 31 automatic bids and the 34 at-large bids.

The automatic bids go to the winners of the separate conferences. There used to be 30 conferences, but the august Mountain West Conference split from the athletic pantheon of the Western Athletic Conference, and in its infinite wisdom the NCAA decided both were, in fact, real conferences and both deserve automatic bids.

And then there are the at-large bids, or, as they're also known, the "Good Teams". You want to see Duke in the tournament? Of course you do, cause Coach K is K-k-k-krazy! And who wouldn't want to see UNC. Or Maryland. Or Boston College. Let's not forget Wake Forest's Demon Deacons, a team name up there with Pennsylvania's Fighting Quakers for absurdity. Of course, because all these teams come from the ACC, most of these great teams are coming from an at-large bid.

So why even bother with the automatic bids that are just warm-up for the teams that have been spending the regular seasons kicking ass and taking names?

And while we're at it, what is the deal with those conference tournaments at all? Let's say there is a team from the Podunk Regional Conference that is good. Not great, certainly not a top 25 team, though maybe it's gotten some votes. They work their ass off to establish a solid record, get to the Charles Willamon (he was the first athletic director at East Bumblefuck University) Tournament, and lo and behold, there are actually cameras there! They're going to be on TV! And they lose! And even though they're obviously the "best" team in the 'Dunk.

This is all done, of course, because those fancy-shmancy TV cameras give the 'Dunk teams hell of money. At the cost of, y'know, screwing over their best child.

So, dear commentatrices, what's the way to deal with basketball championships?

Harvard sucks at basketball; Dinosaurs still dead

2007-03-06T18:39:00.000-05:00

Harvard decided not to renew their coach after a 12-16 season. At, say, Duke, that would be a disastrous season. Coach K would be roasted alive and the Cameron Crazies would become the Cameron Cannibals. But Frank Sullivan, the coach, had an overall record of 178-245 in 16 seasons at Cambridge Community College. So, in fact, this year's .428 percentage was .8 percent *better* than his career .420 winning record.

How mercurial, dear Ivy League Bastion. Perhaps the Ivory Tower wants to get in on the game? Recruit noted intellectual players like J, Ph.D.? You get down with your bad self, Stanford of the East.

So how long has it been since they made the big dance? Will next year's seniors be able to gather round the campfire and tell the freshmen stories of NCAA tournament shenanigans? Maybe the red-shirted seniors? Let me get on my reading glasses, and peruse this article... It says that the last time the Crimson made the bracket was.. two thousand and-- Where is that?

"Harvard last made the NCAA Tournament in 1946."

1946?!

That's right. People who saw the Harvard team last ball it up weren't grindin', they were jitterbuggin'. Diplomats from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS watched the game (possibly). India was part of Britain. Bobby Bonds, father of today's elder statesmen of steroid question dodging, Barry Bonds was born. But hey, at least maybe some of the players were scouted for the League? Y'know, go pro?

Oh, wait, no. The NBA wasn't founded for another couple months.

So Harvard, here's my suggestion: Don't form a search committee for a new coach. Why bother? Instead, just let the intramural basketball team currently leading in the standings play for you at the Div I level. That way, you save some money, more kids get to experience the rush of competition, and it's not like you'll do much worse.

Maureen Dowd's Career And Other Cunning Stunts

2007-03-06T16:52:00.000-05:00

Sports analogies are illuminating in a piece of writing when they recast complex phenomena--like the Democratic Primary--in the more immediately recognizable terms of positions and objectives, raw talent and charisma, the value of teamwork versus individual achievement, , underdogs and favorites, triumph over adversity, et cetera.

Maureen Dowd's latest op-ed gem, "Where Is His Right Hook?" manages to take a fairly common and straightforward species of sports analogy--'politics is like a prize fight' (or a wrestling match, or a dogfight...)--and make it almost completely incoherent.

A good rule of thumb in journalism (even op-eds) is that the headline, the lede, and the pull-quote should give the reader a fairly good idea what the article is about. In this case, the aforementioned headline set up the following lede:

"If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Obama is in touch with his feminine side."

and the pull-quote was....Well, I don't know exactly what the pull-quote was, because I threw away my copy and nytimes.com wants me to pay to read it again.* I'm fairly sure the pull quote said something like "he rolls over while she takes another shot", which is not only ambiguous across about a thousand contexts that the Times would no doubt find "unfit to print", but also brings the pronoun-to-noun ratio in the headline, lede and pull-quote up to 5:2.

Like I said, I can't be sure this was the exact wording of the pull-quote. It might have been a reference to Sex and the City--one can never be sure.

Her writing (and I use that term charitably) invariably seems like it comes straight from her adorable little diary in which she confides her deepest, darkest secrets along with notes about super-hottie Centrists, Third-Wave feminism, and bulk makeup orders.

*though, becoming a member of "Times Select" would allow me to root through their Op-Ed archives and reconstruct just how John Tierney managed to make Libertarianism fit on a postage stamp

March Madness

2007-03-05T17:05:00.000-05:00

Stereotypes are idioms, and idioms sure can be useful. For instance, this weekend when I met a women's rugby player, I filed away that fact and all its connotations. And so when she mentioned she was Dutch, I was able to say with nary a pause, "ah, then it makes sense that you want to stick fingers in dikes."

Speaking of, it's March. To some of my friends who are interested in walking a mile in the other guy's shoes (and pants), that means it's March Manness[sic]. But for us here at The Enfranchised, it means it's time for basketball.

(For those of you a bit confused about my introduction and segue, allow me to quote Aristotle. In Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Ch. 7 Eth.1098a23-24, we find, "What is the difference between cunnilingus and dunking? You don't have to dunk to play woman's basketball." A bit awkward phrasing, yes. But remember that comedic timing was discovered at the same time as perspective in 2-D art, only in the Renaissance.)

And so, this month, we're getting into it. Sports sports sports here at the 'Franchised. College, Pro, PAL, men's, women's unisex, hot horse-on-horse action (if we find horses that play polo, y'know, on other horses. Come to think of it, that's Foster's assignment). You name it, we'll consider considering it.

In the Beginning Was the Nerd...Redux

2007-03-01T23:17:00.000-05:00

Some extraneous thoughts that will not be running in my coverage of New York ComicCon in The Onion - A.V. Club this week:

-I moved out of my comic book phase about 10 years ago, but I must admit, spending time at this convention made me all kinds of nostalgic. The writing seems to be much better, and much more thematically diverse than it was even in '96, when I followed more mutant storylines than an episode of The Surreal Life.

-From the looks of it, these nerds are getting laid.

-In my story, I mentioned Eli Roth, the Lynchean auteur behind such masterpieces as Hostel, Cabin Fever, and Hostel 2. Here's something else I learned about him during his appearance at ComicCon: Roth takes a good deal of pride in being a young man of Jewish descent who has managed to crack his way into the tough world of Hollyood.

-Jon Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, Animal House, Blues Brothers, Three Amigos! and Coming to America, was one of a panel of six legendary horror directors that drew about a tenth as many fanboys as Roth and the chick from Sorority Boys.

-Peter Mayhew, aka Chewbacca, turned me away when I asked for a quick interview. "No press," he said. Actually, his publicist said it. Mayhew himself shook his head and said, "GrrrrrrrreeerhrrWhrrrhrhrBuhhhhrrhrahGaaaaaaaaaaauaua"

That mother(superior)frocker!

2007-02-28T19:38:00.000-05:00

Have you heard of the unlucky abbot
with a cock that was shaped like a rabbit?
 It fit in no one,
 till one day a nun
with a cunt like a hutch dropped her habit.

-D"vagina like a warren? No, that's not it..."an

Breaking News: Hampshiregate

2007-02-28T02:49:00.000-05:00

The Democratic Party headquarters in New Hampshire were broken into!

Even the staid New York Times couldn't resist saying "Burglars have broken into Democratic Party headquarters. No, you're not having a flashback to 1972 and the infamous event [boring New York Times recounting of "facts" "sensically"]". So I'm just going to take this as a warm-up, a practice: write a few jokes, and then dissect them. Your (better) jokes in comments.

"Will this lead to John Lynch's downfall?" (he's the governor of New Hampshire; yes I looked it up)
"It was probably Candians." Look, I don't think it's funny, but The Leviathan will. Not because of NH's proximity to Canadians, but because some nationalities send him all a-stitches. E.g., "Luxembourgians". I can hear him laughing already.
"Maybe it's Zombie Nixon!" Wait, is there any other kind of Nixon?
"New Hampshire? Isn't that in Vermont?" Look, it's late. Here at The Enfranchised, it's timely, funny, sensical: pick 1.
"Maybe it was the Libertarians." That's not a joke; it's a warning. Those libertarians are fucking fierce, and they're coming for you. Consider yourself alerted.

Like I said, your (funnier) jokes in the comments.

The Great State of New Jersey

2007-02-27T19:53:00.000-05:00

Pride sometimes comes late.

So often politicians refer to the Great State of , when I was pretty sure they couldn't possibly mean it. Really? Ohio? I mean, I'm down with Dayton, but any state that has both Cleveland *and* Cincinnati? As a teenager, I filtered out "The Great State of" as propaganda.

Today, I found my faith.

From wikipedia's Hackettstown, NJ article: "It is believed that Hackettstown was named after Samuel Hackett, a prominent landowner who allegedly "contributed liberally to the liquid refreshments on the christening of a new hotel, in order to secure the name which, before this, had been Helms' Mills or Musconetcong".

Long before all sorts of complex trips for Congressmen, New Jerseyans appealed to the common man by enabling his debilitating alcoholism. Bribery of the people, for the people, by our town's namesake.
Of course, no Wikipedia article would be complete without a droll recounting of statistics. So, let's learn about Teterboro, New Jersey: "As of April 1, 2006, out of a 2004 Census estimated population of 18 in Teterboro, there were 39 registered voters (216.7% of the population, vs. 55.4% in all of Bergen County)." This section is, I fear, written with tongue wholly unassociated with cheek. The only proviso is a caveat in the introduction of the article: "It is worth noting that the 2000 census failed to count any of the residents of the Vincent Place housing units who had moved into the newly built homes in 1999. The uncounted residents, including the Mayor and all four Council members, would help make up a projected tripling of the population enumerated by the census."
And then, there's my hometown, New Providence, whence we learn "In 1759, the balcony of the Presbyterian Church in the town collapsed. The lack of serious injuries was declared by Divine Providence, and the town was renamed to New Providence." Which is a crappy name for a town. But considering the original name was Turkeytown, even historical theological architectual failures are a great excuse to pick a new name. Just imagine if that name had survived until high school sports had been invented. "Well, the Turkeytown High Turkeys sure are turkeying it up today, those turkeys. Oh, and they're ugly."

In what other state can town naming and demographics be half as sleezy? We've taken something as boring as trash reclamation and made it a haven for Italian families most acquainted with cannoli, guns, guns hidden in cannoli, and cannoli guns.

Never again will I make fun of my home state. At least not until we do something stupid, funny, stupidly funny, or funnelly stupid (funnelly stupid is like the traffic flows around Garden State Parkway toll plazas).

Or this.

The Academy Is...

2007-02-26T17:47:00.000-05:00

The Oscars happened. And it turns out that all Martin Scorsese had to do to win one was show Leo in the missionary position and hurl Martin Sheen off a building.

The Departed was as good as a movie gets without being a great movie. (Interestingly, As Good As It Gets is also probably as good as it gets without being great.) Its relative dominance confirms what everybody already knows about the Academy: popularity contest.

But it's not as bad as the rest of pop media. If the E! Channel is the House of Representatives, the Academy is the Senate. It's still about a layer of symbolic bullshit draped awkwardly over the concerns of a small group of moneyed special interests (in this case the studios and their PR teams, who lobby every bit as hard as Abramoff), but whereas the House is tethered to its constituency tightly enough that they have to hop-to with every fickle shift in the polling data, the Senate operates at just a bit of a remove. So the Senators (the Academy members, hear me out on this analogy) become less concerned with earning constituents' pats on the back as they are with earning their own pats on the back.

To wit:

Babel, yet further proof of Alejandro González Iñárritu's ability to convert three half-finished screenplays into an overlong "socially conscious" yarn via arbitrary (and usually implausible) connections. See also: Syriana

The Queen: Another opportunity for the Academy to remind everybody how much they loved Princess Di.

Little Miss Sunshine: Indie filmmaking by numbers. Somebody should tell these guys that if merely mentioning the names Proust and Nietzsche in a piece of writing were enough to make it intellectually stimulating, The Enfranchised would be bigger than The Huffington Post.

Letters from Iwo Jima: I haven't seen this one, but I'm pretty sure we won that battle, planted a big ass flag, and everybody involved went back to their business with much merriment. Truly inspirational.

and of course The Departed. Great source material, a taut adaptation, top-notch performances (including Alec Baldwin whose 'type' seems to have become 'playing against type') and slick direction. Only problem is that it's about a third as good as Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver (or Brick, or Children of Men, or Pan's Labyrinth for that matter).

Hey, at least people will stop saying things like, "Scorsese doesn't hold a candle to Academy Award (R) winner Paul Haggis. I mean, did you see Haggis on Entourage?" and "Screw Scorcese, how about Academy Award winner (R) James Cameron. I mean, did you see Cameron on Entourage?)

The Enfranchised Moratorium: Britney Bashing

2007-02-23T13:57:00.000-05:00

I propose a moratorium on making fun of Britney Spears.

It feels a bit like Johnny Lawrence continuing to pile up the roundhouse kicks on Daniel-san even after the rest of his skeleton-clad Cobra Kai compatriots think he's had enough.

As much as it begrudges me to admit, Chuck Klosterman was exactly right about Spears when he profiled her for Esquire all those years ago. She is (or at least was) the least self-reflective person in the history of the world. And now you are witnessing the end of that, the shitty consequences of living a decade as a product of your handlers and nothing more.

One doesn't have to be a consumer of tabloid stories to know that there is a difference between criticizing celebrity excess and kicking a 26-year-old girl from Arkansas when she's down. It's the celebrity fanboy equivalent of the madonna-whore complex that got us here. There are other options besides unalloyed reverence and no-holds-barred hatred.

Let's leave the poor girl alone, she has no fucking clue what's happening to her.

Feel free to let the door hit you

2007-02-22T16:27:00.000-05:00

Apparently some coach I've never heard of (Ritchie McKay) at some school I don't care about (UNM:UArizona::UArizona:Cal Berkeley, and I bearly[sic] care about Berkeley) is on the way out. Fine, happens all the time. But look at the good-bye he's getting:

"I still think Ritchie McKay is a great man and a great coach," University of New Mexico Board of Regents member Jack Fortner told the Albuquerque Journal. "Somewhere, he's going to do great things in a program. And apparently, it's not going to be here at UNM. I haven't had a chance to talk to Ritchie and I will. He's got a great staff, and it's unfortunate that they won't be here either."

I can only imagine that Mr. Fortner was holding himself back. "And he's got a cute family. They'll go great on some university's christmas cards, unfortunately not ours."

"He has a great car, unfortunately he won't be driving it after we impounded it."

"And he has a great house, shame that it was recently rustled by goons."

C'mon, are you a Regent of a University or a Sopranos recurring character wanna-be?

And while we're at it, why do sports have to have so many layers of duplicity? Grow a pair, pull a Streinbrenner, and say, "he sure did suck here." Don't be a passive aggressive dick and go, "Well, he had a cute Scottish Terrier." 1) It's not germane, 2) have you seen an ugly Scottish Terrier? And why does every coach have to pledge allegiance to their current job? We see every coach pull a Nick Saban and say "I would absolutely, positively not leave my current-- Oh, that much?" and then Benedict Arnold himself (always himself) over to a more lucrative or prestigious position. Which is fine! It's what we all would do. It's what athletes do.

We put capitalism on a pedestal, alright that it keeps most of the population in coal mines because it puts a few of us on 20" spinners. So let's stop expecting professional coaches to be holier-than-y'all and instead realize that a coaching job in the SEC is going to be arousing and that coaches who get such offers will get Ayn Randy.

Every Man Is An Anachronism By Tomorrow's Standards

2007-02-22T02:28:00.000-05:00

In her brilliant, insightful, terrifying, loathsome piece on the "Say Everything" generation, Emily Nussbaum explores the means and ends of the kids' penchant for internet self-exposure. She argues that my peers and I see LiveJournal, MySpace, etc, etc, as skin-thickeneing, interactive archives of our adolescence.

I bandied about vaguely similar arguments in my response to the Facebook Feed a few months ago (though, because I did so on a blog and as a registered facebook user, my invectives were gleefully hypocritical). Nussbaum shouldn't fret; she joins a long and distinguished list of scientists, philosophers, poets and critics who have blatantly plagiarized my work. Here is just a small sampling of the political and social trends and phenomena about which I was ahead of the curve:

-The Wire
-Scientology
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks
-Poker
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks at Poker
-Enthusiasm over Barack Obama
-Dissapointment over Barack Obama's
-The dire consequences of living the life designed for you by your handlers, sans even the most primitive self-awareness.
-To wit: Britney Spears
-Globalization
-Puggles
-Thai food
-Parker Lewis Can't Lose
-blogs
-lists
-the backlash against string theory
-the second, third, and eighth backlashes against Family Guy
-anal is the new vaginal
-Pixies reunion
-Colbert outdoing Stewart
-Meth
-the death of irony
-the death of work
-the death of privacy
-the death of Anna Nicole Smith
-the four-minute mile
-facebook girls who are obviously fine with you masturbating to their pictures
-bourbon is the new scotch
-the concept of a "Wiki"
-the concept of a "Wookiee"
-the concept of a Wookiee via the concept of a Wiki
-using the Snoop Dogg "izzle" patois in casual conversation
-this halloween costume (seriously)
-The coming apocalypse

Hypothesis Arrived At After Excessive Late Night Beverage Consumption

2006-09-11T23:47:00.000-05:00

1) Diet Coke should grow on trees.
2) If Diet Coke did grow on trees, each can would be a fruit. Diet Coke the nectar. And that tab you use to open it the seed. The plant convinces you to carry the fruit. Then wherever you are when you do consume, the tab is discarded, left to form another plant.
3) This post constitutes prior art for any bioengineering start-up attempting to make my life's dream reality.
4) On second thought, Diet Coke should not grow on trees. Instead, it is more a bush or a shrub. Its plant takes the form of mini-fridges. A hardy oak of a full size refrigerator with attached freezer takes upwards of 35 years to mature.

Dr. Foster's Dictionary, September 8, 2006

2006-09-08T14:40:00.000-05:00

Today's entry in Dr. Foster's Dictionary comes from the section on slang usage, under "R".

ran-dom [ran-duhm]
adj.

1. occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.

"Since they still rely on fixed inputs for their algorithms, computers remain unable to generate truly random numbers.

2. [slang] irrelevent, disconnected, lost, apropos of nothing:

"Most of the Phi Kappa Alpha guys love Seth MacFarlane's random humor."

3. [slang] distasteful, tacky, or otherwise unaesthetic:

"Jane noted on her MySpace profile that her taste in music was 'really random'. She liked everything from Panic! At the Disco to Ashlee Simpson."

4. [slang] signifying choices made for the wrong reasons (usually because of inebriation and/or low self-esteem):

"Tori was not really looking for a relationship because of her recent success with random hookups."

5. [slang] as a beat, or placeholder, in the hipster patois.

"I was at some random bodega in this random part of Park Slope with these random people trying to find directions to this random gallery opening at random in random."

Parallelism isn't necessary, and necessary.

2006-09-06T21:57:00.000-05:00

My father always used to say "Consistency over Accuracy." This means that if you aren't sure how to, use commas, you're supposed not to, use them the same way. That way, when people realize that you don't know how to, speak English or, make yourself understood, they can filter your idiocies. This is much better than guessing at, how to use commas. Incidentally, this means that once I started listening to crappy Pop Punk/Emo as a teenager, I had to keep listening to it.

I believe in Consistentcy over Accuracy. And so I hate Shuffle. Don't give me snippets, give me the whole album. If they have a good single, goes my reasoning, the rest of the album must be decent, right? Christina Aguilera's video for Ain't No Other Man is good, therefore her new album is on my portable digital music device. Like I said, I'm devoted to this principle. Instead of per-song Shuffle, I use per-album Shuffle. Great.

Except it menas when I'm not in the mood for a song, I'm not in the mood for the next 15 songs. Please oh Please Apple, won't you let me fast forward an *ALBUM* instead of per song?

I know, I know, this is ugly. It would require a new button. You have those 4 buttons arrayed so elegantly around a slide wheel that also controls volume! And 1 in the middle! Beeeeeeeeutiful.

But worthless. I spend my life click-click-clicking past B-side albums purchased in a wake of fanboidom that are best listened ot at night; when demo tapes were meant to be reverently passed around to and listened to in the same hushed tones with which they were produced. Add a new button I can customize. Y'know what? Fuck other people who don't care about this. Add a button that fast-forwards to the next album. It must not be able to do anything else. And it only works if your name is Dan. And if you don't like Indie (the taller/smarter/more handsom/better older sibling of Pop Punk/Emo) and press it accidentally, it electrocutes you. Then throws you in a pool of Stingrays to be Irwin-ed.

Please Apple, give up your fanatical devotion to Metal/Lucite aesthetics and Turtleneck/Jean wardrobes and give me this ability. I will pay $100 for it.

Signed,
A Concerned Customer

P.S. Alternatively, make it quick again to fast forward without the lag as you spin up your disk to find the album art for this song that WAS THE SAME ALBUM ART AS THE LAST 8 SONGS. I have a hint for how you could speed up this embarrassingly linear access pattern. I can't just come out and say it, but it starts with a p, ends with an h, and has a refetc in the middle.

Facebook's Folly

2006-09-06T15:26:00.000-05:00

Warning: Among our small but sophisticated readership there will no doubt be some for whom this post is just so much nonsense. Perhaps these people have the best of it.

What has it been--all of 72 hours since Facebook.com introduced its new Orwell-meets-People Magazine "feed" format? And how long will it be before it's gone, or at least swept under some e-rug? I give it weeks, or less. In a delicious example of the twisted, ultra-reflexive physics of virtual space, the most prominent news(?) items on my facebook feed--and I supppose on many others'--are all about how much the feed sucks. Just a few examples of Facebook groups started or joined by "friends" of mine in the past 48 hours:

FACEBOOK FEED SUCKS
BRING THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK
FACEBOOK MASS EXODUS
STUDENTS AGAINST FACEBOOK NEWS FEED
THE NEW FACEBOOK LOOKS LIKE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A HYPERACTIVE FIVE-YEAR-OLD

I'm especially fond of this last one, created very early on by my buddy Neil and apropos of precisely nothing.

In any event, the lessons here are as many and varied as they are trivial and trite. For one thing, this display of hyperirony goes to the dubiousity and double-edgedness of the "democratizing of information" brought on by the internet and blogosphere revolutions. It used to be that things like laziness, lack of ambition, poverty, and death-squads kept the mouth-breathing masses from opining at the top of their lungs about whatever was grinding their gears on a given day. But the price of opening your mouth has gone down drastically in terms of dollars, elbow grease, and blood. And even this band of anonymous troglodytes that calls itself the American public can point and click.

Behold the era of the Blog Montaigne, the Message Board Martin Luther and the Forum Oscar Wilde. But 92% of it is still tripe, and there is no democracy of taste.

The other thing--and here I borrow again from Chuck Klosterman's stuff on Snakes on a Plane--is that people don't know what they've got til they've got way too fucking much of it. The secret demographic of Facebook, MySpace and their ilk has always been the Peeping Tom, the voyeur, the stalker in all of us. We worshipped the deus ex machina that told us where our exes had last logged-on; we relished in secret the infidelities implied by Joe's girlfriend's claim to be "single" and interested in "anything [she] can get", and we imposed ourselves upon the ever-abiding trust of 19-year old party girls as we scrolled through their photo albums. All of this under a greasy skin of anonymity, safe from reproach in our dormroom lairs.

Let's get down to brass tacks: Facebook and MySpace are gloryholes for the young bourgeoisie.

always have been, always will be. All the feed amounts to is a sign reading "PLACE GENITALS HERE". It reveals to you nothing that you wouldn't have found out yourself on a lonely enough night. But the danger of gonzo-marketing to people's basest desires is that you remind them just how base those desires are.

Mason Malmuth, a guy who was taking down Hold Em pots when your Friday night game was "Shit in the Diaper", is on to much the same thing when he talks about winning at tables full of terrible players. The worse thing you can do, Malmuth says, is put on too many plays. As long as it seems like you're all just having a little fun with your paycheck, your straightforward, correct play will be rewarded. But start getting cute, check-raising, over-punishing bluffs, pushing your position too hard, and you'll actually bully your "amiable gambler" opponents into playing correctly. You'll remind them that this is a poker game, and that your objective is to take their money, and the result will be that you get less of it. Mutatis Mutandis for the Facebook feed. All it has done is bully its perverted base into virtue.

Oh, and forget the fact that I write these words on these topics using the software of the biggest blogging host in the world--bask in the sheer postmodernity of it, be comforted by the fact that string theory does indeed predict this result, and rest assured that present company is excluded.

Feedback: What has been your favorite Facebook Feed so far? I would have to say that mine is "J.D. Removed Star Trek: TNG from his Favorite TV Shows" (name repressed to protect the innocent)

An Elegy for Irwin

2006-09-05T02:38:00.000-05:00

I'm a philosophy student, so sure, I'll buy that "every death is a tragedy"--even the deaths of minor celebrities. But the news of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's passing hit me a little harder than I expected. A lot of people saw Irwin as novelty act, a slightly crazed and comically earnest punchline to be filed next to William Hung. But would some East Asian Premier weep on national TV at the death of Hung, as the Australian PM did today? I don't think so. Maybe it's because Steve Irwin, as a compelling, entertaining spokesman for conservation, made Al Gore 2006 look like Al Gore 2000.

More likely it's that Steve Irwin's unselfconscious enthusiasm and almost (almost) naive wonderment were a breath of fresh air in a culture too crusty in our cynicism and shadenfreude to ever risk such ingenuousness.

Suffice it to say that the world was a bit more interesting with him in it.

Rants on a Blog

2006-08-31T11:05:00.000-05:00

This is likely the last Snakes on a Plane blog post you'll ever read, but it won't be the last X on a Y post. That's because, like this guy's tattoo, the novelty of SoaP took about a week to wear off but its effects will be felt for quite some time. This much Chuck Klosterman notes, along with just about everything else there is to say about why this movie is bad for your soul, in his Esquire piece.

Among my generation, irony is a language, hyperirony a currency, and hyperirony-for-its-own-sake a narcotic. In other words, to get by a healthy amount of the first is essential, a bit of the second is useful, and too much of the last is dangerous. Call me old-fashioned, but I usually look for films, TV, music and other bits of culture that I enjoy. In any other century that last sentence would be unambiguous, but allow me to clarify: to 'enjoy' something in my sense is to enjoy it intrinsically, and not as an irony delivery mechanism or as fodder for the sneering, self-satisfied, sarcastic nuggets of your fellow hirsute hipsters.

Life is too short to continuously blast Raffi's "Banana Phone" or The B-52's "Rock Lobster" just for grins like my ex-roommate did (unless, of course, you actually like Raffi or the B-52s, in which case God bless). That's why when my buddies sent me a canned voicemail of Samuel L. Jackson demanding that I get off my ass and see Snakes on a Plane, I politely informed them that I'd just as soon be on a trans-Pacific flight stocked with a surfeit of venomous serpents.

Oh, and as for the supposed brilliance of the film's title, file it under Ecclesiastes' dictum: There is NOTHING new under the sun. For one thing, nearly every sitcom ever aired followed the same formula of the using the title to spell out the concept, we just never got excited about it because the concepts themselves were usually less absurd (mental exercise: figure out why it is that That 80's Show is a title conceptually closer to Snakes on a Plane than either is to That 70's Show). Then of course there is that other bastion of the upfront title: porn. Now, I know what you're thinking, porn titles at least go so far as to give us some assonance or a second-rate pun (e.g. Butt Fuck Sluts Go Nuts, and Weapons of Ass Destruction, respectively). But lowest-common-denominator literalism gets even lower and more literal than that. To wit: I am apartment-sitting for my buddy and his girlfriend in Jersey City, and one day I took a ganders through their DVD collection in search of amusement. To my delight I found the 1999 gem Hookers in a Haunted House, which was Snakes on a Plane 8 years before Snakes on a Plane was Snakes on a Plane.

And it's got tits.

The Top 25 Revenge Movies of All Time

2006-07-23T01:02:00.000-05:00

The situation in southern Lebanon has me ruminating quite a bit on that dish best served cold--not seviche, but vengeance. And so, the best of it on film:

25. Office Space
24. Red Dawn*
23. Robocop
22. Heathers
21. The Punisher (1989)
20. Gladiator
19. The Bourne Supremacy
18. Diabolique (1955)
17. Friday the 13th
16. The Count of Montecristo (2002)
15. Batman (1989)
14. Rocky IV
13. The Karate Kid
12. Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
11. Unforgiven
10. Kill Bill (vo1.1-2)
9. For a Few Dollars More
8. Conan the Barbarian*
7. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
6. Get Carter (1971)
5. Carrie
4. Death Wish
3. Man on Fire
2. The Crow
1. The Godfather

Honorable Mentions: The Toxic Avenger, Revenge of the Dragon, Payback, Revenge of the Nerds, Ocean's Eleven, First Blood I-III (Rambo), Clear and Present Danger*, Commando, Flight of the Intruder.*

*denotes the involvement of John Milius, American cinema's master of vengeance, as writer and/or director.

This list is nought but convtroversial. I suspect many will be confused and upset by how films such as Star Trek II and Conan the Barbarian made it into the top ten while films like Gladiator is ranked comparatively lower. I know there'll be contingents who think Revenge of the Nerds belongs on the list, or another Eastwood movie, or some Bruce Lee movies, or that the Godfather isn't really a revenge movie (it is), or that older films are under-represented in general. Perhaps most fearsome is the cadre of raving children of the 80s who will demand Rocky IV be promoted to #1 or higher (I include it at #14 only as a begrudging compromise. In my mind, anything after Rocky II is barely canonical). In any event, feel free to disagree and state your case.

Long John Schill-ver

2006-07-17T07:59:00.000-05:00

Wise was aloof Mr. Depp,
when,impressed by Walt Disney's rep,
after years spent ensconced
in the hills of Provence
he did finally get back in lockstep.

NB: I'm selling my television

2006-07-10T19:28:00.000-05:00

Copy of a letter I just sent to Wolf Blitzer's CNN beardfest "The Situation Room":

I wanted to thank Mr. Blitzer and his "Situation Room" correspondent for their piece on the World Cup headbutting incident.

As if to visually underscore the unpleasentness of Zidane's maneuver, the report included a collage of other headbuttings captured on tape and amassed, no doubt, from the computer desktop of an early adolescent of middling intelligence.

Years from now I'm sure I'll tell my grandchildren it was on July 10, 2006 that the world's premiere cable news network first had the courage and rectitude to show me a video of a grown man's head engulfed by an elephant's anus.

I trust Mr. Blitzer is at this very moment working on his Peabody Award acceptance speech.

In Earnest,

DRF

Eventual Gander: Guess Who

2005-08-12T11:51:00.000-05:00

On a recent cross-country trip, I found the airlines sending me a not-so-subtle message. Through the miracle of film-scheduling the inflight-magazine promised-me, I was being shown the same film on both my way there and back. Rather than keep my eyes all the way closed for a total of 5 hours to avoid the seven-inch screens the modern jetliner has, I embraced the mediocre and watched the Ashton Kutcher/Bernie Mac vehicle Guess Who.

And to be honest, it wasn't awful. Now, don't get me wrong, it was no Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Serious issues of class in America were avoided, jokes were stretched out and taken to absurdity for laughs. Bernie Mac is no Spencer Tracy. Ashton Kutcher is no Sidney Poitier. And Thandie Newton is no forgettable generic actress.

But it wasn't trying to be the original. Not only has movie-making changed since the it came out, America has. Back then, Civil Rights was still a buzzword. Now, in 4 states, the majority of people are non-white. We have reached an unsteady equilibrium. And the face of this unsteadiness is... Bernie Mac?

In the original, the father held all the power. He was dominant in the social situation (being the protector of his daughter and family) as well as in the racial climate. In today's shaky family values situation and uncertain racial climate, Messieurs Mac and Kutcher fairly evenly split what power and resentment there was. This was a surprisingly effective twist: no longer was one man in a position to browbeat another. Though the search for mercy through personal experience played great then, now we want situations more immediately embarrassing.

So, how good is it? Good enough to bear if inflicted upon you. Not worth renting. And so, I leave you with this joke of theirs that gets perfectly at the awkwardness the movie lumbers along with: upon first meeting his fiance's family, Ashton experiences a moment of silence. Bernie Mac just mistook Ashton's black cab driver as his daughter's boyfriend, and only now realizes the overwhelming truth. Ashton says, nervously, and ridiculously for anyone with the simplest grasp of genetics: "Wow, I wish she had told me you were black."

I: Maxims and Barbs

2005-08-09T11:11:00.000-05:00

Forward

As the better part of August comes and goes, I thought it a good time to post the first section of my long unawaited Twilight of the (American) Idols: Or How to Philosophize with a Remote Control, a philosophical tract on the status of the American Public and its Media.

I. MAXIMS AND BARBS

1
Ours is the age of celebrities as whores, and whores as celebrities

2
The genius of Scientology, like the genius of Viva-La-Bam, is its sympathy with (its identity with) its audience: Scientology was Tom Cruise long before Tom Cruise was a Scientologist.

3
Oprah is the opiate of the masses

4
By violently wedging non-sequiturs and flashbacks between plot points, Family Guy achieves in twenty-two minutes an A.D.D. semblance of the pop-culture-shredding absurdist genius it has taken The Simpsons thirteen years to craft.

5
Andy Warhol later said, “I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, ‘In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.’” It is now approximately 13:52.

6
Boardroom adage amendments passed by unanimous vote: “(homo-, metro-, bi-)sex sells”

7
If I had a bullet in my lower intestine for every time MTV played back-to-back music videos, I’d retire at age 67 along the Florida panhandle.

8
Reference is the new meaning

9
To wit: it is possible among men of our age to converse exclusively in bits of Will Farrell dialogue.

10
Precisely what’s wrong with Seth MacFarlane and most university students is that they think nos. 4, 8 and 9 are good things.

11
It should surprise no one that as hip-hop artists shift from have-nots to haves, so too does their audience.

12
Pimp my Ride as exemplar of media marketed to 18-25 year olds: hot bodies and digital effects slapped on the same rusted out old frame with the same shitty transmission.

13
Give it five years and ABC will look like HBO, HBO will look like the Playboy Channel, the Playboy Channel will look like a hardcore gangbang flick, and a hardcore gangbang flick will look like a bunch of Asian children being taken out into the street and shot.

14
Precisely what's wrong with me is I think (most of) no. 13 is a good thing.

15
I mistrust all Six Feet Under fans and avoid them: the will to melodrama is a lack of integrity

16
Zack Braff’s worst crime was making it impossible to like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, since it is an immutable law of nature that every girl who lists Garden State among her favorite films lists it as well.

17
That Conan O’Brien evades any mention of his Harvard education on his show—usually by knocking over his desk mike and making a poop joke—is what success with his target demographic has meant.

18
I was once at a poker table in Atlantic City across from a young man wearing a t-shirt with “NO LIMIT TEXAS HOLD’EM” printed across its front. Sizing up our competition, a friend remarked to me that he had never seen a New York Yankee wearing a “PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL” t-shirt. Apply analogical reasoning when interpreting a Surreal Life cast-member’s claim to be “an actor.”

The only thing we have to fear is Fear Factor itself.

The Axis of Comedic Evil: Andy Dick, Kathie Griffith, and Kathie Griffin

I have been called, among other things, a metrophopic. These charges are unwarranted. I said only that I have a sneaking suspicion that the Queer Eyes are running out of Straight Guys, and that as a result I fear for my flannels.

Heron and Trippi had it backwards: The Television will not be Revolutionized.

Oh What a Night

2005-07-22T13:04:00.000-05:00

[ an assignment for my Playwriting class. I was suposed to write the most outrageous and teasing first 2 pages of a play that I could. See if you can get the subtle reference to bloodless revolution buried in there. ]

Walter: (the clerk in a convenience store, on his cell-phone, of ambiguous ethnicity) Yes-- I be home 20 minutes. Fine, fifteen. I do have reason! I stay here Tuesday night two hours preparing for health inspector then have to stay three hours Wednesday getting things back to normal. Fine. I promise-- I be there in 15 minutes. No excuses.

Janet: (woman in her 20's, storming in to the store) No, it's not negotiable.

David: (her boyfriend, behind her, but not as hurried) C'mon, Janet, everything's negotiable. (her look says no). Except our safety and health. I just wish you would listen to my-- (she crosses her arms, but doesn't walk away) We've been in a committed, monogamous relationship for five *and a half* months, we've both been tested twice, I trust you and your history of your former partners and, well, (chuckle) we both know I wasn't getting any before-- (trails off)

Janet: You done? (he nods) OK, then we're just going to pick up some condoms now--

David: It's just, honey, if you loved me--

Janet: Y'know, the more you talk, the more I think we won't be needing any tonight.

David: (eyes bulge when he puts two and two together) Oh, no, we will. (picks them up) See, happy? Just, can we get something else, I don't want the cashier to think--

Janet: To think what? That you have sex? Or that you have sex with me?

David: (realizes defeat) I'm sorry. I was wrong. What kind of flowers do you want?

Janet: (kisses him) That's better. Now let's go get us some chips and dip.

Ms. Tarence: (50-something matron walks to counter with bagel and coffee) 3.12, yes yes. (after plopping down money and taking her change) thanks. (exit)

Judge Cranston: (enters, wanders, 60) (to Walter) Excuse me, sir, where do you stock your tobacco, pipes, and tobacco accessories?

Walter: (perplexed) We have cigarettes. Here. Here. And up here. Nicorette over there.

Cranston: Hmm. But no pipes? (Walter shakes his head) Any cigars? Cigarillos?

Walter: (repeating) We have cigarettes. Here. Here. And up here. Nicorette over there.

Janet: Daddy? Daddy! Okay, weird. Well, Daddy, this is David, my-- my boyfriend.

David: Hello Mr. Cranston. (pause, foot in mouth) Doctor! Hello Doctor Cranston! Is a J.D. a doctorate? I mean, does it entitle-- I've heard so much about you. (trying again) Judge Cranston. Judge Cranston? Justice Cranston-- (settles on one). Your Honor.

Cranston: Yes. You as well. (observes the package) So, off to fornicate with my oldest and only daughter? (David blisters and blushes) No matter, you don't want to tell me, I don't want to hear. (to Janet) he's just as you described him, Janet. For better or worse. Speaking of For Better or Worse, is that a ring you're wearing, Mr. David?

Janet: Daddy, it's a-

David: Actually, Daddy, (realizes his mistake) Sir! I mean, Your Right Reverend--

Janet: It's an engagement band. We're engaged!

Ms. Tarence: (rushing back in, to Walter) I gave you a 20, and you only gave me 6.88 in change! You owed me $16.88! This is ridiculous, can't you people do anything right? I come here every day for 7 years, get the same damn coffee and bagel, and you can't even give me proper--

Walter: You want 16.88? That just glorious! Oh, I gave you the ten dollar bill. (opens cash register, pulls out a bill) See here. One ten left. At start of shift, I have two. Where the other one go? Hmm, let me see, let me see, I bet your fat fingers no able to hold it. Before you accuse me, how 'bout you check in between those massive hams you call breasts. I know no one else look there since 1994. What you use for bra? Hoover Dam?

Ms. Tarence: Oh, you little Jook, you better give me that bill or I'll really give you something to be known as lazy over--

Saul: (entering, with ski mask and revolver) Give me your money, this is a hold up!

Walter: (to Ms. Tarence, thrusting the bill upon her) Is yours, we settled.

Janet: (to Saul) Saul, is that-- Is that you?

Saul: Janet. What-- What are you doing here? I haven't seen you since you-- since we-- You told me you had to move!

Janet: Move on, Saul. I had to move on.

Ms. Tarence: Young man, I can't believe this. That you would stoop so low.

Saul: Listen lady, I'm not going to stand for this. You have no idea--

Ms. Tarence: Oh spare me Saul Solomon. No graduate of my third grade *should* stand like that. (reaches out to adjust his posture) Head straight, young man

Saul: (slapping away her hand) Ms. Tarence?!?!

Craig: (entering, with ski mask and revolver) Give me your money, this is a hold up!

The Eventual Gander: Doonesb-ehry

2005-07-05T17:29:00.000-05:00

So, this post wsas going to be all about Doonesbury, a wonderful strip that for 40 years has striking down the powerful with vicious satire of advertising and performance art (oh the 80's!). It lampooned start-ups and conglomerates, Senators and Shorties. But one thing it's found in its old age (or perhaps that I've been able to appreciate in my newfound 23-ness) is an ability to make us really feel for characters as we also find humor in them. Cf. B.D, a character we've watched grow from a self-centered football star to a Vietnam soldier to a California Highway Patrolman to a College Football Coach to a Gulf War II amputee. Along the way he married a starlet, had a kid, hired a man named Zonker as a nanny, and gave up his fixation with wearing his helmet. Yeah. In the funnies. Perhaps the epitome of this is this strip. Touching, topical, recent, everything. Incorporates the history of the saga of families and friends while also being funny on the surface.

I was going to review it like that, until I saw this article on Martha Stewart and became totally apathetic to real art, craft, story, or people. Instead, I got focused on Ms. Stewart and her felonious ass. Apparently, she is known in the joint as M. Diddy. Also, she's a nice person, really. While she's filming her new soul-killing reality show The Apprentice spin-off, she's going to be nicer than trump. Quoth the matron:"
She says her version of "The Apprentice" will be different than Donald Trump's and that she doesn't want to be portrayed as mean and harsh. She says she would never use Trump's catchphrase, "You're fired."
"We're trying to come up with other ways to say it," she says. "For instance, if someone is from Idaho, I could say, 'You're back in Boise for apple-picking time.' ""

-D"Goin' Back to Cali^wBoise"an

The Eventual Gander: Of Comics, Web and Otherwise

2005-07-02T19:02:00.000-05:00

I'm a computer scientist. What that means, roughly, is that I don't expect pretty pictures on these beasts of burden of post-modernity and relativism. Microprocessors can munge text with the best of 'em, but a single .gif or .jpg confuses them to the point where they would throw up their arms if they had arms. And thank god they don't.

Do you know about Linux? Pardon the digression, but if you're a resident of Earth, odds are onlya bout 1 in a billion that you're reading this, anyway. Some people say Linux is an Open Source Operating System (OSOS). Maybe it is, but you'll never be happy if you think of it like that. You'll spend all your days frustrated that your computer, the product of 50 years of innovation, can't even open up a stupid interweb game. Instead, Linux is a video game. I have beaten the level where you get firefox working, and I rescued the princess that allows me to look at pictures, but I'm stuck at the boss that is video.

Therefore, this Eventual Gander is focused on comics, that visual form of communication that's still exclusive to we humans. The thing that separates us from the machines is that we laugh at these while the computors[sic] just whir along. Unless you're talking about the New Yorker, in which case we all just whir along.

Strip number 1:
IndieTits. A comic strip titled off the seeming naughtiness that we at the Enfranchised have commented on before. Written as the moonlighting of Jeph, the author of Questionable Content and a man whose dialogue has all the shortness of Ron Jeremy (to wit: Jeph enjoys bludgeoning to death the kernel of a good joke more than Foster does a baby seal's testicles), the strip is visually identical to itself. There are 4 or 5 or 3 or who knows how many backdrops, over which he writes jokes that are obscure or silly. But man did he hit a homerun in this one. He gets to the core of what a comic is. Is there one bird, or two? Which one is telling the story? Beautiful use of post-modernism, man. Just effing brilliant. Especially considering that it was probably written 5 minutes before your deadline when you hadn't actually thought of a joke for the day.

That's what theories of academia are supposed to be used for: covering your ass.

Join us next time on the Enfranchised when I talk some more!

Prelude to a Prologue...And a Side-Order of Colored Greens

2005-06-29T20:10:00.000-05:00

Rumors of my demise, and my originality, have been greatly exaggerated.

--I've been back stateside for a few days now, splitting my time between Northern New Jersey and Manhattan, and its safe to say I'm living the life of Riley. Gone are the uneventful afternoons in 800 year-old libraries, the langourous strolls through Christ Church Meadow, and the seemingly never-ending procession of pound-pints at the Oxford Union. Now is the summer of two-hour commutes, five dollar beers, resevoir dogs and slave-labor at an obscure think tank. Yessir, I've made my separate peace with Oxfordshire and am glad (in many ways, I mean it) to be home. Adieau Isis, Hola Hudson. Run down the Union Jack and run up the Stars and Stripes. Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, Wish they all could be California Girls.

You get the idea.

Anyhow, there's good news and bad news about my return for you blogophiles. The good news is I'm feeling particularly pensive, reflective, wistful even. The bad news is that my soulsucking New York job has sapped all my creative energy (I know, don't tell me, I've already missed a few opportunities for puns in this VERY POST). So all I can tell you is to be patient, and BE READY. I've got a couple of whoppers in the works. By means of cockteasery, I'll give you their titles:

"'Fear and Loathing' Without the 'Fear'"

and

"Twilight of the (American) Idols: Or, How to Philosophize with a Remote Control."

Stay tuned, kiddies.

-DRF

P.S. WORST. FREUDIAN SLIP. EVER.

I'm waiting at the deli after a long day at work and my kindly attendant (a young African-American man) asks me what I'd like.

I look him dead in the eyes and I order "A half-pound of rare roast beef and a pound of white America"

The BURN, sir. The BURN.

Missed Connections

2005-06-24T14:06:00.000-05:00

No, not a Craiglist Personal, in this Enfranchised, we celebrate the repetitively ephemeral. Cf. Gatsby, p. 16 (in the only edition that matters: mine). "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it." Think what you may of Daisy (and I know many of you do), she's a character. (In that last parenthesis, I was referring partly to my friend Michelle Michelle Miller[sic] who hates her for not trying to examine herself and partly to my co-blogger Foster who likes this book so much he named his pet lamb Effscott).

You can never truly miss the longest day, you can just have to wait for it again. Same thing with the bus, or any holiday, or the moment in a relationship when the love finally leaves it and it's over no matter how much more fighting or making up or protestations of love there may be left.

It is only mortality that may rob us of our privilege of reexperiencing the recurrent. I will most likely never see Halley's Comet. Luckily, I don't care to, either. I may get to our nations tri-centennial (I certainly hope I make it to at least the French-Indian War. For no particularly great reason...)

This year offers us many of these similarly roundly irreproducible celebrations. They include, but are not limited to:

Guy Fawkes's Day. (1605) In England, a serious holiday celebrated with tea, more gunpowder than the man himself had, and effigies. In the US, a holiday counted down to by Anglophiles and Eccentrics. I count myself both.
Einstein's annus mirabilis. 100 years ago, the funnily-haired Patent Clerk came up with the photoelectric effect, relativity, and probably some other stuff. Now, a century later, we have more confusing theoretical math and scary branches of physics with names such as Quantum Chromodynamics. Truly a great man.
Johnson's Dictionary. If I ever made a Best Of list of lists of words in English in alphabetical order, this would make the top 5.

Make sure to celebrate them while you still can.

Adventures in Retail (or The Gods Must Be Crazy)

2005-06-20T07:55:00.000-05:00

Well damnit, if they're not going to tax me heavily enough, I guess I'm just going to have to spend my surpluses. Surpli. Extra Money.

So, in a fine tradition inspired by my roommate's insistence that we TiVo VH1's Best Week Ever (a nostalgic look back at the past 7 days narrated by a series of half-wits whose job titles are all "comedian"), we bring you: A Tribute to Dan's weekend purchases.

A new cellphone. Man I hated having room in my pockets. Or the ability to walk down a street and think about anything other than protecting my fragile (my precioussssss) telecommunication device. So, Treo 650 it is. Just in case any one was wondering, just for a second, if I was cool. This way, they'll just be able to stay clear of the ginormous hunk of PalmOS Powered Silicon and Plastic on my hip.
A case for said cellphone that quickly devolved into a farce of social interaction. I walk into a Verizon Wireless store because Cingular's business plan is apparently to sell expensive electronics en masse while providing no way of protecting investment in our industry's future. They got Fry's and Radio Shack in on the plan, so I spent the better part of a day treating my primary method of Rest-of-the-World contact like a Faberge egg. I walk up to a salesperson, and, seeing the orange name of my phone, he worriedly asks if it's all right that the case for the phone (which fits perfectly) is all right because it has the Verizon logo on it. Now, I understand that some peopl are proud of the choices they make. If you're rolling a Bentley, well, heck, damn right you oughta be proud. Or if your sound system is powered by Kenwood, sure, a sticket is appropriate. Those reading Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code don't even realize they shouldn't be proud of having his name prominently displayed down the spine of their book (the only spine they have, incidentally). But who the heck tries to front (front? Is that the term? Oh these kids and their hip lingo. Just give me the good ol' Passive Periphrastic anyday over this "dis" and that "dat" (note: the Passive Periphrastic is a grammatical form in Latin and has not been widely used in English since there was English))? I mean, really, what person even likes his cell phone service enough to have brand loyalty?
A clever shirt from Questionable Content, an indie webcomic that is not wholly unfunny. If only he learned pacing, and how not to kick a joke to death, he might be onto something.
Shoes. Because I'm a girl. Man, you sorta wish that $47 (including tax + shipping) shoes lasted longer than 3 months.
Toothpaste. And this is the one that gets my goat. Call me a lavish man, call me frivolous, but when it comes to toothpaste, I'm willing to splurge. Tell me the best, and I'll put it in my cart without a second thought. And yet, nobody does.
Now, I understand that different brands may have different central tenets of design of compoyadda yadda blah blah blah. I even have mastered the gel/paste duality. But why is it that Colgate can't just tell me "hey, buy this tube." I'm willing to be a sucker. I'm willing to pay twice as much for toothpaste that's 10% better. But, work with me, you need to give me some indication. What's more important: Cavity Protection or Tartar Protection? Neither sounds like something I really desire to protect. For a moment I was hoping that "Total" would signify an ultimate. But while its standard features seemed alluring, one box promised extra blurghle crompotion while a second sang sweetly in my ear that it could give me lower fluhurking fimining.

Thus my weekend. Another two days spent in the malls, strip malls, bars, and internet. My money flies away, and in return I get the objects that modern society largely agrees is sucking and stripping away our humanity.

But now with 35% more gremanahine.

Eventual Gander: Batman Begins

2005-06-17T16:02:00.000-05:00

Batman is what every Republican aspires to be. Born into wealth, but he earned it himself. His arsenal of expensive toys and gadgets (serviced by his Manservant, Alfred) is only effective when coupled with his merit. He drives an SUV, and he actually needs it! Bruce Wayne is fabulously wealth *and* helps the public, better than if his income were turned into taxes to support the corrupt government of Gotham.

And that's not to say the new movie Batman Begins is bad. Or good. It is good, excellent, even. It manages to introduce these issues of helping society without passing judgment on any but the most extreme alternatives. Perhaps this is the point of supervillains: never do Democrats and Republicans seem most aligned than when being killed in mass numbers by a poison gas.

Christian Bale's acting is as troubled as it needs to be, but not anguished to the point of melodrama. He holds himself as, during different points in the movie, a bon vivante, a dorky Princeton flunk-out, a Man-in-Black, a ninja (!!!), and lover. Michael Caine's Alfred is alternately helpful, challenging, witty, and inspiring. Morgan Freeman and Liam Neeson surprised me by being in this movie. Katie Holmes, for a moment, made me not want to smack her for being engaged to Tom Cruise and this close to choosing Scientology.

There are a few minutes of comic book hokieness. Characters look at each other with horrified looks and slowly piece together the conundrum they're in and that we've recognized they're in for the past 5 minutes. The plot is summarized, the bad guys are pawns of badder guys. But overall, this is a superhero of the Oughts, as opposed to the 80's. Christopher Reeves's Superman was challenged by kryptonite and beams. Tobey Maguire's Spiderman, the first in this new era, was appropriately emo. We get the feeling that if his girlfriend (Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane) died, he would be more hurt not by her loss, but having been responsible for her loss. Pixar's The Incredibles grappled with their own humanity even as they were animated. Batman, we learn in this movie for the first time on the big screen (after 4 predecessors that ranged from watchable to featuring George Clooney's nipples), is the product of immense loss.

The directing is peccable, but quite good. My colleague, Manohla Dargis, has criticized the action shots for not being followable enough. But this is the point. The Bourne Identity did a great job of creating fight scenes where we felt like we understood what was going through Jason Bourne's head as he created convoluted fights that knocked down soldiers. He was a machine. Batman is a man. He uses fear, he uses darkness. If we were to see what he was doing in full, we would not be experiencing in even the slightest the emotional impact of his fighting.

But the focus of this movie is the script. It uses standard tricks of the summer movie. Laughs come when you expect them, for the most part. But it adds something more. Scenes that follow idioms also have deeper meanings. The first occurrence of a repeated phrase is not the most appropriate, but the least. It is later, as our knowledge of the world expands, so do our understandings of its utterances. And, in a surprisingly profound finale, Batman Begins teaches us that sometimes we have to rip down the creations of our Fathers to maintain their legacies.

(this review is in a series of reviews that consider not only the art in question, but previous thoughts about it. See also reviews of Tom Wolfe's new novel or The Finer Point of Sausage Dogs, )

Reminders of Times Past

2005-06-16T15:12:00.000-05:00

Hold bacon before a dog and he would compose a sonnet to have a chance at the strip of pig flesh. The word "scholarship" has roughly the same effect on high schoolers. So when Duck brand duct tape offered $5000 to the couple with the best duct tape outfit to prom. This relatively modest sum (when placed against tuition), combined with an excuse to ditch social and stylistic norms, prompted hundreds to purchase what must be enough duct tape to permanently affix the moon to the earth several times over. The results can be seen here, but they strike a deep chord within me.

Memories of high school flood back to me. Social awkwardness, emo, Catcher in the Rye, all that. But the largest thing I'm taught by these pictures is: high school students are, as a general rule, either clumsy, ugly, or both.

-D"my prom date was a model"an

The Passing of an American Flash in the Pan

2005-06-13T12:11:00.000-05:00

We Enfranchised have recently mourned the passing of a few of our own. After so many losses and so much emotional turmoil, we still found it in our hearts to ask the one questions on everyone's mind when one heard the news that Destiny's Child was breaking up: "They were still together?"

These ladies had a way of winning our hearts for the duration of the release of a single, album, or movie tie-in as was deemed appropriate and profitable by their handlers and sponsors. They teased us with titles that implied sequels never forthcoming. My peers felt this unanswered promise and dealt with the betrayal by adjusting their lexicon to incorporate the fact. Cf. my friend Tina Christakos, who insists on paying for herself by proclaiming "I'm an Independent Woman (Part 1)". What other group has started a phrase by turning their writer's block into a fantasy for a generation? Certainly no others that had lyrics about the transparency of fabric in the face of male arousal ("The club is full of ballas and their pockets full grown").

Just as Marc Antony found difficulty in trying to find bad things to say about Caesar, I fear that as I come to praise Destiny's Child, I can only bury them. So, I will end with my fondest memory that includes them: A sketch, on MadTV, of Bill Clinton hosting the oscars and instantly devolving into the sketchy stand-up meets mc that Chris Rock dreams of being. He reproaches Madonna vaguely British overhaul by reminding the audience that her coochie has had "more members all up in it than Destiny's Child."

Thanks for 2 months of memories (over the course of 6 years).

What Happens...

2005-06-09T04:08:00.000-05:00

In Vegas Stays in Vegas.

The point being, I'm going to be in Vegas, so I definitely don't have time to point out that everyone who made fun of Dubya for being stupid was casting stones at glass houses. I'm not saying I like Bush, or that I don't dislike him, but merely that someone's Yale GPA is an extremely poor indicator of their merit.

-Dan

Star Wars, Episode Crap: when Luke met Powder

2005-06-07T01:53:00.000-05:00

I have an odd habit of not seeing movies everyone else sees. Among the gaps in my pop culture memory are: The Lord of the Rings series, any of the Harry Potterses, Spaceballs, Dirty Dancing, non-pornographic Julia Roberts Films, and Star Wars Episode II (although I have seen Tron several times). The reason I never saw Star Wars Episode II is because I saw Star Wars Episode I, and Episode I sucked and swallowed. It was right down there with my other basement dwellers: Magnolia, I Heart Huckabees, Go, The Land Before Time II,V-VII, and of course, Powder.

(editor's note: Those who know me have been made aware of my rabid anti-Powder agenda for quite some time, but for those who haven't been blessed with my ravings, Powder is about an albino who has electro-magnetic powers. At some point you see his ass, and at the end he runs into a field and storm clouds take him away. I kid you not. This is the storyline. Check here if you don't believe me).

Granted, I'm not much of a Star Wars fan anyway. I remember that Darth Vader was Luke's dad, Princess Leia his girlfriend, and Harrison Ford his bitch, and that's pretty much it. But I went to see Episode I with my Star Wars enthusiast friends and hated it. Mostly this was because I had my first encounter with The Great Satan--Jaarjar Binx--plus I had waaaay too many Sour Patch kids and they made my tongue hurt for days. So when Episode II came out I passed, and when Episode III was released I passed gas, then passed on the movie (then passed gas again, out of spite).

So as you can see, I'm in no position to offer any sort of critique or analysis of George Lucas' latest bamboozlement of the Sith-fearing American public. You'll have to read Foster's insightful and hilarious post for that. What I offer, instead, is a voyage into the unknown--a fantastic, magical journey into the world of "What If?": what if two of the crappiest movies ever made combines forces to make a third, crappy movie. Ladels and jellyspoons, I give to you, a sneak peak at an exclusive Leviathan production, When Luke Met Powder:

Powder: Hi, I'm Powder.
Luke: Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?
P: What?
L: What? WHAT?! Why the hell are you so pale?
P: Oh, that. I'm an albino. I have no pigment in my skin.
L: It looks like you fell into a vat of flour or something.
P: No, not Flour, Powder.
L: Fucking A, are you deaf too? I said it looks like you fell into a vat of flour. Wow, deaf, pale, and stupid. Move over Hellen Keller, we have a new winner!
P: I like your sword.
L: It's not a sword, it's a light saber, dumbass. I got it for my birthday.
P: Cool, can I try it?
L: And get your greasy, pale hands all over it? Think again, cracker.
(enter George Lucas) George Lucas: Hi, I'm George Lucas. What are your names?
L: I'm Luke. (gesturing to Powder) This is my giant pet hampster, Whitey.
P: I'm powder. I'm an albino.
G: Wow, an albino! I should make a movie about you!
P: You make movies?
G: I sure do, Luke here was in three of mine.
L: ...and he's been just brimming with ideas since then.
G: Well I have an idea now.
L: What, the albino thing?
G: Yeah, isn't it great?
L: Who the hell is gonna pay to see a movie about some sun-tan-reject?
G: Hmm, you're right. Nobody would possibly pay money to see that.
L: I'd pay money not to see it.
P: Guys, I'm right here.
L: Are you still here? Why don't you go play hide-and-seek in the snow over there.
P: Oooh! Can I seek?
L: Sure, go take a look now. There's a polar bear blinking hiding somewhere in that snowdrift.
P: You guys are my best friends.
(scene)

(Same post, different blog)

"And so we beat on, boats against the current, Facebooking back ceaselessly into the past..."

2005-06-06T16:55:00.000-05:00

Last nite I was doing very little, sitting around College in a friend's room to be exact, when the conversation turned somehow to early crushes. Being a recovering Romantic, and still not quite impervious to the occasional bout of sentimentality, I got to thinking of Becky C. I told the aforementioned friend that she had been my first real crush - in those halcyon days between puberty and adolescence when none of us knew what the hell was going on. She was a dark-haired, clever girl of ten with a mouth full of surgical steel when I met her in Dr. Sanek's 5th grade logic class (you heard all that right).

Becky C. - I hadn't thought about her in years. Becky C. who kinda-sorta had the beginnings of a body; Becky C. who got better grades than me in gym; Becky C. who rode the short bus with me all the way home; Becky C. who no doubt didn't even remember me; Becky C. who set the standard for heartbreak for five-plus years. Oh she liked me well enough, but her heart was somewhere else; Josh was his name I think. And, but for a few false starts, I never stood a chance. Regardless, I moved away half way through that year; another school, another town, another state. But it's safe to say that Becky C. from Packanack Lake, New Jersey followed me all the way to Winter Haven, Florida, where she lived for a while under-developed subconscious, until she faded and was replaced by a dozen other silly, ultimately unrequited infatuations.

But my friend had got me thinking.

'Dan', he said. 'You know what you should do?'

'What's that?' I said.

'Facebook her.'

Facebook her. Facebook her. What a thing to say. What an idea. There was an illustrated catalogue of my youth, a virtual grade school reunion, a searchable database of my fucking past just a point and a click away. With just a tinge of (pathetic as it is) nervousness and excitement, I searched for her in the high school I figured she went to; nothing. I searched for her in the high school I didn't figure she went to; no dice. I tried a different spelling of her name, first in one, then in the other.

A single hit popped up, and in the split second it took the page to load I wondered what had happened to her in those years between 10 and 20 when we sweat and bleed out the last of our awkwadness. Then I saw the photo, of a black-haired clever girl of 21 who went to an East Coast Ivy.

Becky C.

"She's fucking hot!" quoth my friend.

"She is fucking hot." I said.

I don't know what I thought, really. Vindicated? That was stupid, wasn't it? Surprised, no doubt. But something else, like someone had punched me in the stomach. Not, as they say, "like I had seen a ghost"; more like I had seen a character I had written in a story, a picture I had drawn, an imaginary friend.

I had the Oracle at Facebook bring up the entire class of 2002 from my would-be high school.

And there was Holly. They told us we should get married in kindergarten, didn't they Holly? Didn't they tell us the two fat kids should get married?

And there was Tyler. Tyler you never quite played the same games as us, did you?

And there was Mike. Mike, we were best friends in third and fourth grade, but do you remember how we fought that day at recess, kicking and punching, hating each other, and how we cried after?

But there also was Holly at a state school, bleach-blonde and bare-belly. You lost so much weight Holly - I'm happy for you.

And there was Tyler at private school, telling me with his furrowed brow and million-mile gaze that he still doesn't quite play the same games we do.

And there was Mike at Rutgers, shirtless, backwards Scarlet Knights cap, taking a long pull off what looked to be a bottle of Southern Comfort.

It was...peculiar. But its not quite right to say, as people often do, that I expected them never to change. The idea of change hardly entered the equation - they were simply my friends - that is, in an important sense, they belonged to me. That they might change was inconceivable, because for me- and perhaps this is morbid - none of them survived my moving away except as memories.

In a cleaner, better world, maybe that's how it would always be. Forever separated by the contingencies of (in my case) a mother's paycheck, too silent and too distant for too long to seriously consider re-establishing contact, and buried from memory by the layers of intervening years - homerooms, fights, parties, handjobs, cafeteria tables, car accidents, whiffle ball games, not to mention diets and million-mile gazes and bottles of Southern Comfort. Maybe that's how it should be. That way I might have kept on remembering to forget Mike and Holly and Tyler and Becky C, instead of staring at an LCD screen, forgetting to remember them.

An Oxford acquaintance once remarked [on a Facebook wall, no less] that the English students, just like the Americans, would "become bored with Facebook in 5....4....3....2...."

But it's already too late, isn't it? You can't click "Home" again.

The Man Who Sold the World (Or Star Wars Episode III: The Empire Strikes Out)

2005-06-01T18:45:00.000-05:00

In the weeks now since Star Wars Episode III was released, the invectives leveled against its progenitor, George Lucas, have reached proportions more epic than anything that’s come out of the brain trust at Skywalker Ranch. The British daily The Guardian called Lucas less a director and more a “chief executive-cum-potentate in charge of a vastly profitable franchise empire in which striking back is not an option,” whose corporate avatar, Industrial Light and Magic, contains “no magic, little light [and] an awful lot of heavy industry.” An ‘alt’ American paper, The Observer, suggested assessing films of negative aesthetic merit in terms of “Lucases” - as in, ‘Dude, Where’s my Car? got three Lucases in the Chicago Tribune’. The Salon review, marked by its usual sass, was entitled “Same old Sith” and the film summarized as the work of “an occasionally clever but mostly simple-minded auteur-wannabe”. But perhaps it was the dreaded New Yorker (which, it should be noted in fairness, is responsible for more conversions to the Dark Side than Palpatine ever was) who went furthest in criticism qua witticism. Anthony Lane calls the Bard of Endor a “rootless soul” with “a near fascistic rage for order” who has created:

“an art of flawless and irredeemable vulgarity. All movies bear a tint of it, in varying degrees, but it takes a vulgarian genius such as Lucas to create a landscape in which actions can carry vast importance but no discernible meaning, in which style is strangled at birth by design, and in which the intimate and the ironic, not the Sith, are the principal foes to be suppressed. It is a vision at once gargantuan and murderously limited, and the profits that await it are unfit for contemplation. I keep thinking of the rueful Obi-Wan Kenobi, as he surveys the holographic evidence of Anakin’s betrayal. “I can’t watch anymore,” he says. Wise words, Obi-Wan, and I shall carry them in my heart.”

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb when I say that most critics with a failed-novel on their shoulders and a circulation of over 10,000 are prone to the occasional hyperbolic judgment. But rarely is such lavish and luxuriant venom heaped upon a film that makes no pretensions to Oscar-worthiness. Surely, this literary-lashing, this critical-cornholing, can’t be warranted, not by Our Man George. Can it?

The short answer, children, is yes. Yes it can.

Star Wars Episode III sucked. It sucked essentially - sucked at the root of its very being, and sucked by and large because of an obscenely wealthy, beard-and-pompadour-sporting pestilence known as George Locust - er - Lucas. Lucas, then, is worthy of revile. Still, I won’t offer much of a critique of the film itself - that has been done, with all the subtlety and restraint of a blowjob from a vacuum cleaner. Besides, I actually hold certain of its elements beyond reproach; protected, as it were, from a death of suckitude stretched indefinitely in space and time at the event-horizon of suckiness that is this Lucasian suckfest of a Black-Hole-suck-suck.

Yoda, for one. Yoda can do no wrong for me, not since he watched Luke’s X-wing lift-off from Degoba, squinting sagely and replying to Obi-Wan’s portentous claim that “that boy is our only hope” with “No, there is another.” Anthony Lane is so perturbed by our little-green-friend’s cadence that he begs us to “break [him] a fucking give”. True, Yoda’s inversions may be contrived and irrelevant, but they are fucking YODA’s inversions. Besides, Lane’s review shares column space with New Yorker cartoons. He should know all about contrived and irrelevant.

Two. Natalie Portman. The poor girl is as beautiful as she is useless in this role. I mean, we know she can act. Just look at her wonderful performance as the Madonna-Whore in Closer; and her in some ways even more impressive turn as the Atlas to Zack Braff’s globular ego in Garden State. The problem is that Herr Lucas writes romance like he would a car stereo installation manual, and he has forcefully ejaculated such unspeakable tripe past the lips of Amidala that - could I prove paternity - I would bring him up on charges of rape.

Needless to say, most if not everything else in the movie sucks. Or if it doesn’t itself suck, it is so bathed in Lucas’s putridity that one can’t stand in its presence for long before one’s stomach turns and one’s eyes water.

Still, Lucas’s real crime has nothing to do with the film itself, but rather its audience. I saw Revenge of the Sith a week after opening, at a 10PM showing in Oxford (a highly disreputable time to see a movie in England) and the house was packed. A line had formed outside the small theatre 45 minutes before the 45 minutes of commercials before the 45 minutes of trailers before the movie. When John Williams’ anthem and STAR WARS finally leapt to screen, a great applause went up: the sound of an anxious hope that an under-the-desk hand job - begun in 1977 in the spirit of innocence and exploration and gas shortage - was finally to reach its climax after seven-odd years of cinematic blue-balls. When it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t to be, we ragtag band of geeks, dorks and dungeon-masters turned to the one weapon losers have wielded since time immemorial in the face of romantic (Romantic?) jilting: self-important, sneering mockery.

In short, we laughed. And we laughed not just at 3PO’s obliviousness or R2’s irascibility, not just at Palpatine’s coiffure or Mace Windu’s purple light saber; nor even did we draw the line at snickering over Hayden Christensen’s bitchy rejoinder to Ewan MacGregor’s warning of the Sith lords’ evil (“Not from my point of view! From my point of view the Jedi are evil!”). No, friends, I am sad to say that we laughed at the Man in Black himself. When Vader, freshly be-suited and strapped into a Kafkaesque device of wrought steel, is deceived by the Emperor into believing that he has killed the woman he loves, he tears free of his restraints, shakes two black-gloved fists in the air and vociferates the kind of “NOOOOOOOOOO!” that can only issue from the darker regions of James Earl Jones’ soul.

And we chortled with all the righteous irony of Janine Garafalo at a straight bar. We laughed at Darth-motherfucking-Vader. And why? Because some dude in this dumb ass movie was totally ripping off Star Wars, and didn’t he realize how fucking kitsch that was?

In the short time it took Luke and Lea to be born, something distinctively American died. That bright-eyed, naïve earnestness; that seriousness about kidding ourselves; that starving for a mythos which was as fun and facile as it was sacred and indispensable. In a word, that unselfconsciousness. That - can I even say it without you cringing in this age of I Love the 80s and Best Week Ever?…..that innocence.

Somewhere in the vast conceptual gulf between the Ewoks and Jar Jar Binks, Star Wars became what Jean Baudrillard (known in some circles simply as ‘French Theorist #163’) calls a simulacrum - a cultural copy of a copy whose original has long since gone the way of the sitcom. Worse yet, it became a simulacrum of itself. A kind of hyper-movie (or hyper-franchise) whose logic and aesthetics we had already chewed up, spoofed, and spit out into the dust bin of irony-for-its-own-sake. In short, even if the prequels had sucked half as much as they actually did, they were destined to be subjected to the bored and disaffected nihilism of an X-generation of maladroit malcontents who wear bowling shirts with other people’s names on them. In the greatest cultural perversion in recent history, Star Wars has become Space Balls. And Space Balls - if you ask the average video store clerk worth his salt in vapid cynicism - has become Citizen Cane.

None of this, of course, is to exonerate Herr Lucas, whose Leviathan ILM was practically at the helm of Hollywood’s perfection of the vacuous summer blockbuster. But if you ask me, his soul is cleaner than yours or mine. After all, he’s got your ten bucks, and he carries it with a perfectly straight face all the way to the bank. You and I, on the other hand, are left in this Recycled Land of Thin-Candy-Shelled Men, wondering why it is we can’t help but smirk every time we hear the name “Grand Moff Tarkin”.

Pissing In The Wind: Use the Pun!

2005-05-23T05:24:00.000-05:00

Star Wars. Episode III. What do you think?

-D"brevity is the soul of restraining one's feelings and remaining anonymous"an

What a Racket

2005-05-19T23:05:00.000-05:00

Quoth the Comedy Central: "Watch never-before-scene features from the Chapelle's Show Season 2 DVD before they're released!" Well, considering you're the network that airs the show, it seems like that would include EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.

It's always nifty when you can impress people by not showing them something. E.g., imagine the conversation at comedy central:

"Wow, that sketch sucks. I mean, I know every thing Dave Chapelle thinks about is some racial commentary, but the getting-in-the-mind-of-a-member-of-some-obscure-Andean-Sheep-Herder-tribe is so overdone."

"OK, fine it's cut."

"Wait, no, let's just put it off for a few months, to have some morsel to throw at his screaming fans."

So, in summation, fuck you Comedy Central; Dave, good luck getting your mind off the bitches that be drivin' you so crazy.

Silver, Part 3

2005-05-16T02:25:00.000-05:00

Continued from part 1 and part 2:

Fact one: Humans are the only mammals that exude no experimentally verifiable sex pheremones. Fact two: there exists no woodland species whose male is willing to continue playing video games in the presence of a female in estrus. Though no link has been satisfactorily demonstrated in a peer-reviewed journal, and though full fault cannot be ascribed to Brian as it was still within his refractory period from their last mutual satisfaction, these two facts are clearly related. This typical Saturday night of the still-young relationship found Brian and Tony on the couch poking frantically at their controllers while Cindy flopped on the loveseat in her sweats. In a subconscious nod to the history of handling sexually aroused and arousing women by placing them in a societies composed exclusively of other women and castrati, Brian had tuned their second TV to a showing of her favorite musical, Aladdin.

The second television of their household was a relic from an ex-roommate's ex-roommate, a 60 cm job allegedly from France but of questionable enough workmanship that ex-Soviet Republic lineage was not out of the question. Most households would have junked in a second (several, in fact, already had). But Brian and Tony kept it not for its color, not for its vertical hold, certainly not for its necessitating an obscure electrical converter, and not for what its measurements were, but for what its measurements were given in. This Cold War relic was the centerpiece of their living room simply because it was measured in System Internationale Units.

Brian and Tony's house had originally been two marginally historic whose combination, so went the thoughts of one urban developer, would open up one of the lots for a 24-hour gas station/mini-mart. It was only when the houses had been uprooted and resituated that it was realized that one house was built to Imperial specifications and the other to Metric proportions. What this meant was that while the windows, doors and ceilings were of similar height, eventually the rounding error caught up and the home assumed a leitmotif of "not quite right". The architect behind this contraption of a living space came out of his drunken stupor long enough to reveal the move was a minimalistic retelling of a dialogue between prescriptivists that mimicked the something something of who cares. The art was promptly entered into the state's register of historic places and permanently saved from the demolition that passers-by perpetually wished upon it. The upside for a video store clerk and roommate of similarly moderate
ambition was that it was rent-controlled not by fickle legislators but by humanity's innate desire for consistency in aesthetics.

Many a weaker pair of decorators would have attempted to hide the disparity that comes with having a footed kitchen/dining room but a metered living room. This is roughly as intelligent as attempting to draw attention away from a hunchback with vertical stripes. Instead, Brian and Tony highlighted it. Objects were only allowed on the side of the divide where they belonged according to their primary unit of measurement. So while all their comfortable seating surfaces (couch, loveseat, a smattering of easy chairs) were on the upper, metric half of their common space, Brian and Tony, being true to their vision, kept the 30", flat screen beaut of a television that was their pride and joy just over the border of the seven-eights of an inch minus 2 centimeters (each half had been meticulously constructed and they spent one night calculating the difference) dip in the floor.

"Look, you're not going to be able to make up this deficit," said Tony.

"I've come back from worse situations."

"What? When I was drunk? As long as I'm sober, this kicking of your ass will continue. And I think we both know it."

"*WE* don't know anything. We have to wait and see it--"

"Brian, honey, are Jasmine's tits nicer than mine?" Cindy broke into the conversation.

"She's a cartoon."

"I'm not going to get mad, I promise. You can tell me what you honestly think."

"I honestly think she's a cartoon."

"You're no help. Tony?"

Tony glanced over at the Sonyski. "I'd say maybe. But I think that's just because her wardrobe is very to her advantage."

"Guys, she's a cartoon. She doesn't have tits. They're lines of ink."

Cindy weighed her bosom in her hands. "Do they bounce more naturally?"

"They can't! By definition, whatever your breasts do are natural as it can be."

"What would you say she is, Tony, D-cup?"

"Oh, at least."

"But back in those days they didn't have push-up bras. How much could they really amplify her cleavage? Maybe they're just really buoyant, like, double-Es."

Brian couldn't stand the horrible combination of inanity and insanity. "Back in those days? You mean 1994? Or are you implying that Disney, the commodifier of all that was holy, drew period costumes? Considering that half the things that came out of Robin Williams's mouth in that movie were anachronistic at best, I'm pretty sure historical fidelity was not one of their primary goals."

Tony and Cindy ignored him. She continued, "Man, this is the hardest part for girls, when we're comparing. Trying to guess how much of that is real and how much is underwire. I wish I could just," she motioned, "see them, and really know."

"There are websites," Tony said, faster than he probably should have. The conversation faded into laughter, embarrassment, and eventually embarrassed laughter.

Cindy got up from her reclined position and wandered over to behind her boyfriend. "You're so focused on your race car or horse cow or whatever that is, I feel like you're not paying attention to me."

He continue jabbing and lunging at the plastic in his hand, leaning it in the direction he was already pushing, in the shared unconscious hope of every man who was a teenager since the 80's that the game console has some hitherto undisclosed way of sensing and responding to ferocity of motion and purity of intent. "Probably true."

"You're impossible!"

"No, what's impossible is making this... jump... right... here. Oh, and I made it. How you like that, Tony? Don’t call it a comeback, I was never out of it."

She cozied up closer behind him. "You sure you wouldn't rather... play another sort of game. I know how we could involve electronics." While she said this, his head was nestled between her Golden Globe-winning golden globes.

He was affected by the temptation, as his race car or horse cow or whatever crashed and ignited into a heap of polygons ablaze. But he would not succumb to it and turned to face Tony. "'Nother game?"

"Why do I put up with you?"

"Because I don't respond to rhetorical questions?"

Cindy had little to say to that, and went into their kitchen. She looked through the cupboards, the refrigerator, and the freezer before finding what she wanted. "Anybody else want ice cream? With whip cream? Maybe some chocolate sauce?"

Tony spoke up first. "This is really cool, having a roommate who dates a movie star."

"What do you mean?"

"I learn new stuff every day. Apparently, in some cases, the camera doesn't need to add ten pounds!"

"Brian, are you going to let him talk to me like that?"

"Tony."

"Sorry. 4.5 kilograms."

Cindy playfully tossed a stuffed animal Brian and Tony had distributed around the kitchen the morning after a drunken friend had found the only throwable object in the kitchen to be a tea pot and in their drunken frame of reference thought that with the correct lobbing motion such a flight could be considered playful, resulting in a broken window and a missed tea time. She situated herself and her Haagen Dasz between the them on the couch. "Hey, Brian, can we talk?"

He didn't take his eyes of the screen. "Is this like a breaking-up talk?"

"No, no, nothing like that."

"Is it more important that, say, what we're doing for dinner tonight?"

"What is this, twenty questions? Yes, it's larger than a bread box."

"OK, based on my priorities, and the knowledge that it's less important than breaking up and more important than what we're doing for dinner, it's not important enough to end this game early, but important enough to not start another one."

"So I have to wait till the end of this game?"

"I don't think you know it well enough to help me win."

She sat for a moment, and the only sounds in the apartment were of clanking metal and battling animal-hybrids over a soundtrack of futuristic apocalyptic rock. While the boys jousted virtually, she mulled her thoughts and replayed in her mind the conversation. She contented herself to watch Aladdin (which was her favorite musical) for the next few minutes. But, really, how did they stay so pert? She asked, quite simply, "Would you enjoy it if I wore a bra while we made love."

Both of the race cows blew up at the bottom of ravines simultaneously as Brian and Tony looked at her.

"Oh, good, we can talk now. What are you doing three weeks from Sunday?"

"Umm, I think I have plans with Tony."

Tony tried to help his roommate. "Dude, that's the night of the Oscars."

Brian didn't get the message. "See, we do have plans. And I can't just bail on him."

"You can just bail on me. You must. I'd sell you to go the Oscars. Unless we were in prison. Then I'd sell you for a carton of smokes."

"Hey."

"Sorry, 20 decacigarettes."

"So, Brian," she paused, biting her lower lip, and as Brian looked at her he damned Ansel Adams for applying his photographic talent to the pale beauty of nature when faces like this existed, "will you be my date to the Academy Awards?"

My English Legacy

2005-05-11T16:09:00.000-05:00

I recently got back my last paper as an undergrad English Major. I got a 97. This is also my best grade in an English class. And it is now I realize what must have convinced everyone else that English is an easy major: it is.

You just have to find your Hobby Horse. Some people preach "semiotics", others "epistemology", and me? My phrase is "What's at stake for the author?" The one thing these three intellectual bents have in common? I have no idea what they mean.

But they make professors swoon. At the top of the page was, scrawled in his handwriting, such raves as "one of the highlights of my quarter thus far" and "it leaves me rather speechless." And then, further down the page, he had highlighted a section. The sentence when I whip out the big gun, "constantly reevaluate what is at stake for the author."

The paper follows,
-D"almost enough to make me go back to grad school"an

P.S. It's about Tristram Shandy, a good novel about Tristram Shandy.

-----------------------------------------------
I wrote this at 5:16, May 4th, 2005.
So far we've seen at least two instances of Sterne discussing the actual time of his writing: I.vxiii (page 24) "this very day, in which I am now writing this book [] -- which is March 9, 1759" and IV.xvii (page 230) "It is not half an hour ago, when [..] I threw a fair sheet [...] slap into the fire[.]" Now what I wonder is, are these statements true?

Our editor believes him (in the notes to Vol. I on page 540 he writes "dates that seem to correspond to the dates Sterne writes"). And why not? What is there at stake? Why would an author have any reason to lie about when they wrote something? It's a nice gimmick to connect with readers, and surely nothing should get in the way of that honest and direct bond that Sterne is creati--

But this is not the kind of writer Sterne is. He has already created the chronology of the telling, the chronology the characters live in, and the chronology of the reading. What would keep him from playing with the chronology of the writing?

Absolutely nothing. That's why I view all references to the act of writing as being as fictional as Dr. Slop's caricature or Trim's babbling. Instead, the dates are puzzles. What dates would I pick to insert into my own writing? March 20th. September 3rd. June 28th. Why? Well, that's for Bentley Biographers of the future to figure out. But if most of writing is a conversation with the reader, than this seems like a place where Sterne could be embedding a conversation with a specific reader.

The astute reader will point out that of course the narrative of writing is a fictional one: the narrator is not Sterne but Tristram. Maybe the converse is true, then, that Sterne is turning the seemingly fictional to the real. But even this would be a measured dose of reality. It is not opening a door, it is setting outside empty milk bottles to be picked up.

The key of all these theories is that Sterne remains in control. This book was written. We can be reasonably certain that he wrote later volumes after earlier ones (especially as Volume III opens with epigraphs in response to criticisms of the first two). More than that we can not necessarily say. And that's great. It makes us conscious of what we would assume in any other book. It's like Andy Warhol or Andy Kaufman. We have to constantly reevaluate what is at stake for the author. And is anything truly at stake if they tell an unknowable lie?

Sterne is probably safe from any attacks on him or his writing. Or, wherever he is, he won't be any the worse for whatever we or biographers prove about him or his writing. Even were he alive, the worst that could really result from someone ascertaining the truth or falsity would be more press, which could only result in more sales and royalties.

Sterne often plays with the physicality of the object of the writing. Here is one manner in which he plays with the physicality of the process. And this is what is so rich about this novel. Sterne just had to look over at the calendar or remember what he just did, jot it down, and he'll set me off for an hour thinking about nothing. But maybe, just maybe, he stole the idea of writing on March 9th from someone else, and I am thinking about something. Something real.

I'd just never be able to know.

Technology's Unkept Promise (one of them)

2005-05-08T03:50:00.000-05:00

There was a simpler time. A time when you could say as much as you had to say to the person you have to say things to. Well, at least until the dinosaur ate you.

But as hunting/gathering became all the rage, more time was spent apart. No longer was she by your side as you felled and butchered the mastodon. She was back searching for rutebagas and tending to the young'uns.

Enter the alphabet. You can leave a note for your love on the wall of your cave. You go out to slay the migratory beasts, and when she wakes up she gets to read your your note of love, written in the blood of a sabertooth tiger. As long as you can fit your declaration of love in the first twenty feet of your stone abode where the light can reach.

A long time passed. And then, paper. You could leave reams of correspondence to your beloved. Except for that damn candle that would burn out before you had written out all you meant to tell her.

Ah, oil lamps. Refillable (as long as there are sperm whales). But now the rage is the telegraph. Send your message by post and it will not arrive until your debutante is a fiancee. But those telegraphs are so expensive--

Now the Telephone! Then the Singing telegram! Marvel before the Dancing bear-a-gram! Every mode of communication that has supplanted another has this same limitation: you can't write as long as you find yourself wanting to. Just when long-distance telephone companies priced themselves into oblivion, it was all the rage to have the mobility of a cell phone. Which one of us has not found themselves revealing the deepest darkest secrets of their soul to a "battery empty" message flashing on the screen? At least wired phones have the decency to respond to your most tightly-held thoughts ("I killed a man" or "I bought a Spice Girls album", the stuff you could only admit to a lover with a heart not fitted to later blackmail) with the reaffirming constancy of a dial tone.

Why can't inventors focus on turning an old technology reliable, instead of making new ones that make our art and our expressions end before--

Let it Snow, Let it Snow

2005-05-05T15:01:00.000-05:00

Leave the shower running, throw open the faucets. Precipitate as it may, I will not be stopped.

No, I'm not a postal worker (though I am a Postal Service fan). I blush at the thought of going out in the rain and I'm stopped dead in my tracks by torrential downpours. But even try as he might, it took Our Father Above forty days and forty nights to flood the Earth to the tippy tops of mountains.

And, today, there are only 38 days left until I receive my diplomae. So do what you will, there will still be an Earth when I go to granulate, no matter what precipitation may come.

Even if it is the first Himalayan Commencement.

-D"Fuck you, Water Cycle"an

Vestigial Keycaps

2005-05-04T12:59:00.000-05:00

Do you now or have you ever actually used the Caps Lock key? I mean for a use other than calling someone an assface, such as, "THAT'S SO FUNNY LOLOLOLMAOTIPROLOL !!!11!1!!ONE"? No, you haven't.

And while I go about more than doubling my current draft for Freshman Writing (yes, I'm in Fresman Writing) in the two hours before class, you should start a petition. We got rid of those superflous ivory keys on pianos, what nobler next cause could there be than getting rid of the one button in my life that can suck the charm out of an eloquent or elegant sentence?

The Essay the Blog was born to write

2005-05-03T13:05:00.000-05:00

Despite its less-than-printable name, this essay is the best I've read in years. Move over Mencken, sit down Sedaris. There's a new kid in town. Observe the use of an interlocutor to draw out the author's true belief system. Note how the belief system is representative of the vast hordes of the mildly liberal who felt so disenfranchised after last November. Consider the obscene nature of it, but, hey, that's the internet.

http://ifuckedanncoulterintheasshard.blogspot.com

-Dan

Literature of the Pitiful and Powerpoint

2005-04-29T15:38:00.000-05:00

I recently came across two links to mock Powerpoint Presentations.

http://home.nyc.rr.com/dradosh/ppaol.html&e=7620
http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm

Of course they mock powerpoint by showing how it could make great works common, even laughable.

Today in class, I had the opposite experience. The presentation of a man's pitiful (in the most literal sense) life made it hilarious. After spending 5 weeks teaching us his theory of the world of Linguistic Evolution, he had us read a dissenting opinion. Fair enough. And then in class, he described the clash of the minds he had personally had with the author.

Long story short: my prof said the author of the article had not really disagreed. In fact, the author came to my prof's aid when the author was also the editor of a journal my prof was submitting to. He switched slides, and we got a glimpse of this "defense." Snippets I can remember of this alleged defense, "though [my prof]'s tone is admittedly grating, he may be proved to be right in a few decades" and "I would push to allow [my prof] to resubmit this paper after fixing many widespread criticisms". This man was taking his personal correspondence and showing it to all of us, seeming unaware that his best ally was only praising with faint damn! Note to self: make sure to redact all mentions of phallus as "not intolerably small" in collected letters before dying.

In any case, many good htoughts. Look in the coming months on this blog for a short story written in .ppt (that's Powerpoint format, you technically illiterates).

Pissing in the Wind: Food Rainbow

2005-04-27T18:10:00.000-05:00

I know that Dan & Dan will probably poo-poo the government's newly designed Food Rainbow, but let me be the first to say that I think this is the greatest idea ever. That's right, EVER. I mean, this makes Dewey Decimal look like a retard.

Consider the old system. You have different food "groups" like meats, vegetables, dairy, etc., with the most important group forming the bottom, or "base," of the pyramid. But here's the tricky part: the pyramid if full of words. Words spelled out with letters. Letters, for God's sake! Excuse me, Food & Drug Administration, but I didn't come hear to pass a reading test, I came her to eat, dammit!

Herein lies the genius of the new system. Drawing on the success of the Homeland Security threat system, the new food pyramid uses colors. Accessible, easy to understand, colors. Eating is no longer just for the English-speaking, literate Americans ( i.e. liberals and their activist/homosexual judges), it's for everyone. This is democracy at its finest.

Q: "But what if I'm blind and I can't see anything, how am I supposed to know what to eat?"

A: "You'll eat whatever the hell I put in your cage, dammit."

Some critics charge that the new system is more "confusing" or "difficult" than the old system. Some critics also have "shit for brains." But I digress. Under the old system, if you wanted to know what food group a food was in--for example, yogurt--you needed to think. You needed to think about whether yogurt came from a cow (dairy group), whether it had seeds (fruit group), or whether it was spore-based (meats & vegetable group). But with beautiful new (techni)color system, you need only associate a food with a color.

Take a look at the new rainbow pyramid. Orange stands for grains, Green stands for vegetables, Red for fruits, Yellow for oils, Light Blue/teal for dairy, and Indigo for meats & beans. So what color is yogurt? If it's plain yogurt, it's white. That color isn't in the food pyramid, so you shouldn't eat it. If it's flavored yogurt, say, blueberry, it's probably some sort of a bluish-purple. If it's more blue than purple, it's in the Dairy group, and if it's a darkish purple, it's in the Meats & Beans group. Then I want you to ask yourself: do you really want to eat a Meat & Beans yogurt? I didn't think so. Find a different colored yogurt and start again.

"Wow, the new rainbow pyramid is so easy to use, why didn't they think of that in the first place?"

Good question. When the original monochrome food pyramid was released in 1992, the world was a different place. Buffalos roamed free throughout the Midwest, presidents were free to engage in acts of extra-marital fellatio, and a little thing called "focus groups" had yet to be invented. As noted in the official Mypyramid.gov website:

As part of the design and development process, potential images and messages were tested with consumers to determine how well they communicated the intended content and how appealing they were to consumers. The results from the consumer research were used to revise and finalize the consumer materials so that consumers can more easily understand these messages and incorporate them into their lifestyle.

In other words, pretty colors test well. Hence the updated and more scientific color pyramid.

"But wait? With the old food pyramid, I knew the group at the bottom was more important than the group up top. With the new system, how do I tell what group is most important? This rainbow has no bottom. For the love of God this rainbow has no bottom!"

First off, I'm not going to answer your question unless you put some pants on. Secondly, the new pyramid doesn't even need a bottom. The bigger the sliver of color, the more important. See the picture below for details:

"OK, I see the Yellow group is the smallest, and the Indigo one looks a bit smaller than the Red. But I think the Green and teal are about the same size. Why not do some other design like a graph or pie chart?"

Another good question, but the good folks at MyPyramid are one step ahead of you. As they note, "Several designs were tested. Pyramid-shaped designs, Pyramid-like designs and non-Pyramid designs were all tested with consumers."

You see that part about "non-Pyramid designs," smart-ass. They tested it and it failed. Failed miserably, in fact. When the non-pyramid design was tested on the focus group, they were so confused they were eating 20 serving of cottage cheese a day, and drinking a glass of marinara sauce with each meal.

"OK, you've convinced me that the new color-based pyramid is more efficient than the old one, and it seems like even a Swede could understand the new version. But what about that man climbing the stairs in that picture? Is that supposed to symbolize something?"

Actually, no. He's just lost.

(Same post, different blog)

Pissing In The Wind: Shape of the Shapely

2005-04-26T05:32:00.000-05:00

In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Food was provided for you, heck! The mutton was right next to the... lion... meat. Where else could you turn one picked-clean rib into two sides of meat (with a nice rack). Take that Olive Garden, you're no restaurant compared to the Eden Garden! But that same piece of fruit that gave us the Original Sin of Knowledge gave us both Shame and Vanity. We've all seen the drawings of Eve covering herself with shrubbery when she realizes for the first time ever nudity's incorrectness. The part of the story they don't tell you is that the first thing she said after that was, "Does this fig leaf make me look fat?"

Soon afterwards, brothers became murderers, extra people conveniently popped up, so-and-so begat a-lot-of-effing-people, and hunters became gatherers. We ate whatever we could catch/steal from the hyenae. In the words of an NPR story about what we found in the dried-up shitters of Vikings, they ate "meat, beer, and more meet." Or maybe it was the other way around.

But during the 1950's, everything became standardized. Students across the country learned to be vaporized in the same under-desk crouch. Across the country you could get the same sub-standard beef (hopefully it's beef) at Kroc's McDonald's, and we could live in the same houses on identical cul-de-sacs as the Cookie Cutter made its first appearance as a tool of the architect. The food square showed us that we needed to get different types of food. Three-thousand calories from those delectable apple pie concoctions that have never been near either an apple nor a pie from the Golden Arches does not a balanced diet make.

But that wasn't quite precise enough. And in the 90's we wanted to be exact. Title IX funding had to be even to a percent. Affirmative Action soared, and though school bussing firms went bankrupt, the formerly destitute specialists in impeaching presidents returned to the African American ("back in the black"). Thus the food pyramid. Everyone of the age 16-24 in this fine Republic learned it. For approximately 15 seconds. Before summarizing the information as, if society's is any indication, "Yes, I'd love you to supersize that."

All this was enough propaganda about common sense. But no. The pyramid was a familiar object, constructed of successively smaller blocks. Instead, let's instill in our children a fear of geometry by releasing this absurd assortment of amalgamated frightfully-Angled three-sided monstrosities. What? I mean, what? No, seriously, what the hell? Is this the only way that Americans under the Bush Administration can digest information? Can we not add? Were percent RDA's not enough? Commentators, tell me, what USA Today-worthy graphic describes your diet?

Untimely Meditations

2005-04-25T18:22:00.000-05:00

This morning, at 4:23 AM Greenwich Mean time, I was jolted awake from sleep; sticky with sweat, heart pounding, hands trembling and fixated...on that one eternally plaguing, endlessly nagging, infinitely mind-gnawing question:

Does Affleck regret every time he fucked her missionary?

...That we might all die wondering counts as proof that the Nihilists are right.

Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)

2005-04-24T13:58:00.000-05:00

Tragedy befalls all of us. But not evenly. Some of us live on Park Avenue (just adoring a penthouse view), some of us have those we love killed and maimed (possibly raped) (probably not in any of the orders I just described). Of course I grieve for those people, yadda yadda, showing reasonable human emotion.

This NYTimes article tells the story of a man who lost 2 wives/girlfriends. Wow. What a tragedy. What a story. What are the odds that two deaths close to him would each be ruled homicides? Wait a minute...

He's now been charged with the second murder (he remains the only viable suspect in the first). The English major in me, though, is conflicted. What was his tragic flaw? Was it hubris (I've gotten away with one murder, I can do another)? Greed (I don't need a third BabyMama)? Crimal Ineptitude(Cause bullets to the head leave so little forensical evidence)?

The point is, save your sick days. You only get so many free passes in life, whether it be missing a meeting at work or prematurely ending the life of a woman you once loved. So make sure this is really the day at school you dread the most or the chick whose voice gets on your nerves the most.

(P.S., the title is a reference to, among other things, a The Clash song off Sandinista, their tremendouly bizarre triple album.)

2005-04-23T11:27:00.000-05:00

We've all heard the joke about a guy who dreams that he's eating a 25-pound marshmallow, then when he wakes up his pillow is gone. Now, personally, I never quite understand how that qualified as a joke to begin with. But after a particularly restless sleep, I woke up one morning to find that I had taken the pillowcase off my pillow, and laid it neatly across the top. I ask you to consider: what kind of a dream *was* I having?

Vs. Man Machine Part 3

2005-04-20T06:05:00.000-05:00

So humans will always be bribable, and computers, if they are halfway decent, will learn that bribes are the way of the future for the same reason they were the reason of the past: they make sense. The solution?

To be perfectly honest, I've never taken an economics class. So what I'm about to say is about as intelligent as what I have to say about, well, anything. But this, more than most of my rantings, is informed by scary dreams about supply and demand curves trying to eat me in my sleep. It seems like there's a rather fixed number of people who want to bribe (call them everyone) and a fixed amount of money that can be spent on bribing (everything). It seems like the problem is that, roughly, we're pushing "everything" into the hands of a relatively small number of "crooks". Every so often, these crooks are stupid and try to do things that, well, they deserve to be caught for. Clandestine immorality greases many a wheels of society; inept crime only loses limbs and sinks ships.

Instead, let us all accept bribes in exchange for, here's the key part, nothing. That's right: let's let anybody who wants buy our judges vacations: they deserve them. Encourage a mobster to send pizza to police stations. They can try all they want. But now that politicians are allowed to take Indians' money, instead of just their land, it'll be acceptable to renege (Indian-give) a promise to support a ballot initiative.

We can compartmentalize our corruption, and in so doing reclaim American politics by admitting it's dirty. Rent out the Lincoln Bedroom, but do it openly enough that presidents won't feel obligated to pardon the obviously guilty (you're still allowed to grant clemency to those technically felons, as long as there's some cause/institution/cross they claim to have been martyred for). Heck, the greatest example of this kind of dealing is none other than our former President William Jefferson Clinton. Walk up to him on the street and offer him 20 bucks for Social Security Reform. He will look you in the eye, speak of a bridge to this century, and promise you he'll work with Congress to ensure that yadda yadda and we'll utilize this and that, et cetera et cetera. And he'll be gone into the twilight of Secret Service protection before you can realize that he's just another middle-aged out-of-work man with a bum ticker living in Harlem who has as much chance of passing meaningful legislation as Harry Reid.

Gullibles' Travels

2005-04-18T21:44:00.000-05:00

Having returned from my trip to France and Spain, and having rested comfortably in an undisclosed London flat before my return to Oxford, I thought that I'd take a minute to jot down 31 things which are true about the places I've visited:

1) In Paris, there is no such thing as 'speaking a bit of French', or 'kind of speaking French'. You either know their language or you don't. And if you don't, they won't have any of your stumbling gestures and awkward phraseology. They simply deal with you in English.

2) This refusal to let you butcher French stems from a deep-seated pathos which takes linguistic competence to be a measure of one's membership in a certain club.

3) Americans' offense at foreigners' incompetence in English issues from impatience; French offense at foreigners' incompetence in French issues from aesthetic disgust. For the American, you've wasted his time; for the Frenchman, you've broken his heart.

4) In the Louvre, one of the largest and most-frequented museums on the planet, housing art and artefacts from all corners of the earth, all the captions are in French. Thankfully, the signs telling you what you may not touch and where you may not go are translated into English.

5) The Eiffel Tower is NOT, as some would have it, a romantic figure. Nor is it a Romantic one. It is a monument of raw, metal-and-brawn Modernity. An unrelenting, inorganic labyrinth of Euclidian perfection; ultimately cold and rational, not wistful and nostalgic.

6) This being said, it is one of the most beautiful beasts hatched from Modernity's cast-iron womb.

7) If it's postcards featuring naked ladies of sundry stock and repute you're after, the banks of the Seine is where to get them.

8) Nice, on the Cote d'azur, is a beautiful town with rocky beaches, clear green water and sea breezes, delicious food and Provencal hospitality.

9) It is also the dogshit capital of the world.

10) If you stay at the Villa St. Exupery hostel, a converted monestary in the hills above Nice, you will come to understand that the fabled American backpacker class is very real, and comprised of individuals both younger and older than you think, whose ranks seem free of responsibility, well-fed and clothed, and more than adequately funded.

11) Many of them say things like "Venice is beautiful in a way I can't describe", as a preface to lengthy description of Venice's beauty.

12) Counterintuitively, the American backpacker does not embark on a tour of Europe in an effort to become worldly. Rather, it is his very self-perceived antecedent worldliness which for him justifies the tour.

13) During the 10 days of the film festival, the town of Cannes is marked by its exclusive shops, trendy restaurants, and slick cosmopolitan disposition, as a playground for the rich and famous.

14) During the 355 days between film festivals, the town of Cannes is marked by its exclusive shops, trendy restaurants, and slick cosmopolitan disposition, as a playground for no one.

15) If all of France were like Aix-en-Provence, then all the world would would want to be like France.

16) The street-corner t-shirt market in Western Europe is dominated by the twin pillars of Che Guevera and Iron Maiden.

17) If you've taken six years of high school Spanish, or minor in it in college, good luck in Barcelona.

18) Don't let the deliciousness of the paella you're eating, or the street-fiend who asks for a cigarette distract you when sitting in Plaza Reial in Barcelona. If you do, some guy selling model sailboats will run off with your favorite old backback which contains nothing but a bar of soap and a hardcover copy of an out of print book on Heidegger.

19) I'm just saying.

20) There are few favorite-old-packbacks and hardcover-copies-of-out-of-print-books-on-Heidegger in this world that a pitcher of sangria and a day on the beach won't help you forget.

21) I don't know if they had crack in 1881, but if they did, then Gaudi was on it when he designed La Sagrada Familia

22) Pamplona counts as proof that Ernest Hemingway knew what was best in life.

23) A hypothetical and a piece of advice: suppose Paz Vega is the bartender at a little joint off the beaten track somewhere in the mountains of northern Spain. She approaches you, and in her best broken English, asks you if you'd like some tapas, or (with a wink-wink) if you'd prefer some 'Tap-Ass'...Look, all I mean is its a tough call.

24) They don't tell you in your booking confirmation, but a lot of hostels close at midnight. Fortunately, park benches are open 24 hours a day.

25) The train from the Spanish border to Biarritz in France is 40 minutes.

26) It only takes you the first two minutes to realize that the long-held Fosterism--"the only good thing about French men is their close resemblence to French women"--is false. Frenchman aren't ther worst thing in the world. There are at least three worse things:

26a) Drunken Frenchmen

26b) Drunken soccer hooligan Frenchmen

26c) Drunken soccer hooligan Frenchmen from the region in and around Biarritz. In other words, BASK Frenchmen.

27) In today's communication age, a good way to avoid terrerist reprisals for insulting remarks is to misspell words like "BASK" and "terrerist"

28) When confronted by a coach full (+ - 75) of 26c who have made it evident that their desire is to fight you, a stout constitution and a healthy bloodlust won't cut it in the weapons department.

29) Some things that will:

29a) A claymore

29b) A claymore

28c) A flamethrower

28d) One of these, and a bunch of this

29) A Disclaimer: Of course, I wished no ill will towards any of my BASK brothers. I only wanted to read in peace.

30) I love the BASKS. As a matter of fact, I own a raspberry beret.

31) The difference between a vacation and a trip is, after a trip you need a vacation.

Dr. Foster's Dictionary: 17 April 2005

2005-04-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

Today's entry from Dr. Foster's dictionary comes from the glossary of American colloquialisms, under 'f':

for·ty-fiv·er
n. slang

1. An individual, usually a post-adolescent American male, who wears a baseball cap in such a fashion that its brim is approximately forty-five degrees off-center. Do you think those two forty-fivers are lovers?

[syn: tool, douche-bag, asshole, cretin, prick; see also 'Von Dutchman']

[ant: n. Fosterite]

Machine vs. Man, Part 2

2005-04-15T03:46:00.000-05:00

In Yesterday's column, I showed why humans are evil: we cheat. Computers, on the other hand, only do what's best. They follow their programming.

And they're fast! Damn fast. Just today, a co-worker had the gall to complain when his computer took two whole minutes to scan a 600 megabyte file. 600 megabytes? That's as much as a CD! And it took me at least 10 minutes to know that the new Will Smith album sucked.

But if you've even just dabbled in popular culture during the last half-century, you've seen some tale of computers killing humans or robots beating up seniors for their pills. Allow me to take a moment to say (as both a computer scientist and a hater of near-deads): this is not going to happen. We are so far from understanding human emotions (computer scientists especially) that we will never be able to mimic this sort of irrational bias.

Instead, we will craft agents with irrational exuberance. They will be the best moneymakers out there. They will bid with astounding precision and lightning speed. Faster than a human could observe, heck, faster than any human could audit...

And they'll learn. They'll know to increase the price of ice when it's hot and to sell Sell SELL whenever a music label signs Will Smith (ha! Twice in one posting! Who's fresh now?). Amazing things. Optimizing profits and conversions, all that lovely stuff.

But, here's the thing: we don't believe in the Rising-tide Survival-of-the-fittest Laissez-faire capitalism. We live in a fluffy-bunny hugs-to-everyone bastardized marketplace. You have to pay people a "minimum wage" and give them "time off" for such hoitsy toitsy extravagances of the union imagination as "maternity leave" and "paternity leave" and "sawing through their bone with improperly installed welding equipment."

But the key thing is, you aren't allowed to talk to your competitors. Even though, it would be really good for you (the Stovepipe-Hat-wearing Fat Cat that you are) to do so: you could set prices to be artificially high. We begrudgingly begrudge knowing that gas station owners on an adjacent corner may *wink wink* *nudge nudge* each other and that's why they have the same damn prices. But computers, well... they can wink and nudge 5000 times a second.

If that's not clear, think about it this way: Amazon learns that when Barnes & Noble increases its price by x%, it will increase its price by y%. Barnes & Noble realize this, and adapts to it. The two co-evolve, until they have a signaling infrastructure as complex and indecipherable as the absurdity of baseball (where coaches mime Parkinson's to tell their batters orders for which a few syllables of speech would suffice).

This is not evil. It is dumb logic. The sort of "Lord of the Flies" naivete that you get whenever you give a child a machine gun. So what to do with these computers? You can't put them on the stand in court. And it's certainly not their fault. But, heck, we can barely make computers that can do this, we could never make computers that could do this and describe *why*. That's the central point of artificial intelligence as it currently stands: perhaps human-style responses are only 10 years away, but it will take at least 50 before we have a machine that can explain like a person (and a full century before they can ever lie like one).

Join us tomorrow for the resolution of this revolution.

Man vs. Machine, Part 1

2005-04-13T09:11:00.000-05:00

An exploration, serialized because A) it relates to the classwork I'm doing in 18th Century Literature (when serialization was popular) and Freshman Writing (because I'm studying 18th Century Literature) and B) I have classwork in 18th Century Literature and Freshman Writing.

Over the course of the next few days, I intend to tackle the man vs. machine problem. Today, we learn how man is imperfect. Tomorrow, how machines may end up being even imperfecter. On Friday, we synthesize, and perhaps come to appreciate more the Amish (or, in a compromise, the Mennonites).

From today's Times: "In one case, at 9:41 a.m. on Oct. 2, 2002, the computer of a specialist in General Electric stock indicated that at a price of $25.85, there were orders to buy 39,500 shares and orders to sell 35,000 shares. The specialist, David A. Finnerty of Fleet Specialist, should have matched the 35,000, prosecutors say. Instead he bought 22,700 shares for Fleet's own account at $25.85, then raised the price to $25.95. Just after 9:42, he sold 12,800 shares from the same account[.]" Well, that certainly seems like a... series of events. But what does it mean? How does this fit into the conception of the world that you, a mere mortal, care about? To continue with their sentence, he "[made] $1,280 in about 14 seconds." Damn. I've spent the last 14 seconds trying to come up with an absurd comparison of what that amount in that time is more than (that metaphor's approximate street value: $0.017), and failed even at that.

So obviously, humans are both exploitable and exploitative. The solution being, make your money off them, but don't let them be in a position to screw you. (To paraphrase Polonius: "Don't a lender be.") Instead, the teeming masses of the uneducated pundit are lining up to scream, we should use the magic of "computors" and "market economies" make everything magically work. Democratization of capital ensues, and soon we've changed the NYSE building into the meeting place of orgies of hippie wealth. Whee!

Join us tomorrow on the Enfranchised to learn why this is the first step towards Skynet, or at least Robber Baron Mainframes.