Apologia

I am well aware of my failings as a blogger. Among them: not posting anything for a long, long, long time. My bad. But more posts are coming, I swear! Things should pick up when I leave for graduate school. Every grad student needs something to make shirking easier, after all, and blogging should do the trick.

Shot Through the Head, and You're to Blame

Man gets shot in head, doesn't realize it for five years--a real "only in Germany" story. In what other country could you find such a combination of casual violence and thickheadedness?

Trade Secrets

In this world, there exist two kinds of people: those who love Trader Joe's and those who have never been there. Five years ago I had never even heard of the place. Two years ago, I knew of it but had never entered its hallowed aisles. Now, I have become a fervent convert to the Church of Saint Joe, willing to take up sword and spear--most likely, but not necessarily, metaphorical--against the heretical sects who worship Whole Foods or Fresh Market.

Why? What makes normally sane people (me excluded, of course) go gaga over a Polynesian-themed shop that peddles gourmet popcorn and low-cost organic yogurt? Fortune explains.

Going Undercover

Michael Lewis explores the weird, wild, and not-at-all wonderful world of nut graphs and null hypotheses. Some men dare call it...the Columbia Journalism School.

That Sinking Feeling

Sometimes, weird topics bring out the best in writers. Maybe that's because it gives them a chance to say something new. Everyone writes about big, important issues like the environment and the economy, to the point where everything that can be said has been said. But quicksand? Now there's something new!

Stuff Happens

An ingenious video answering the seldom-asked question "What if an anthropomorphic Walkman fought it out gladiator-style with a bestial vacuum cleaner?"

Oh Ricky You So Fine

Terrific New Yorker profile of Ricky Jay, historian, book collector, and "perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive." Need proof? Watch this.

Out of this World

Via Cracked: "5 UFO Sightings That Even Non-Crazy People Find Creepy." Not being a non-crazy person, I am not qualified to comment.

Showing Some Leg

Reading this, I kept trying to figure out if the name "Reg Mellor" is an anagram for something like "Happy April Fool's Day" or "this story is only a joke." It seems, however, that the sport of ferret legging is very, very real.

New Moon

Report: the moon is shrinking, albeit at a slow, nearly undetectable pace. But who wants to read a story like that? Let's New York Posterize it!

ABSOLUTE LUNARCY: MOON DOOMED, DOCS SAY.

Ta-da!

Mommy Dearest

Bereaved Son: (Sobbing)

Undertaker: May I help you?

Son: Yes...my mother passed away yesterday.

Undertaker: I'm sorry for your loss. May I interest you in one of our nationally renowned body disposal--er, I mean holistic whole body de-integration--services?

Son: What have you got?

Undertaker: The TurboTron 50X is one of our most popular coffin models. It features a plush interior, soothing Muzak, and a LetMeOuttaHere (TM) insta-alarm in case your mother turns out to be less dead than she appears.

Son: How much is it?

Undertaker: $50,000 for the basic model, $75,000 for the deluxe.

Son: What's the difference?

Undertaker: In the deluxe model, the insta-alarm actually works.

Son: What about cremation?

Undertaker: Certainly. With our Diamond Deluxe (TM) cremation service, your mother's body will be lightly toasted before being compressed into a precious diamond.

Son: Sounds pricey.

Undertaker: Sir, we believe that no price is too steep for a kitschy and somewhat grotesque means of body disposal. It will cost you $80,000.

Son: Geez! Why don't I just get rid of the body myself? It'd be cheaper!

Undertaker. Oh, I'd like to see you try. What are you going to do, shove your mom inside a backpack?

Son: Maybe I will!

Alot of Laughs

Behold the Alot, a rare and beautiful creature whose native habitat is restricted to online comment forums.

Hit N' Run

To put this story in a syllable: ouch. But one syllable doesn't do it justice. It's a gripping tale of vehicular injury, brain damage, and miraculous redemption. All it needs now is some drugs and hot women, and presto, it's guaranteed Hollywood gold.

Hello, Dali

From the New Republic's Jed Perl:

The stuff that Dalí did from the 1940s until his death in 1989 is god awful, but there is a sicko integrity about its awfulness. The deviousness of Dalí’s vision is something to behold. Although the emotions that Dalí stirs up are fraudulent—a marketing director’s version of Sturm und Drang—the paintings are not hackwork. They exude a strangely fermented intellectuality. You cannot deny the authority of these lunatic creations.

And that's the positive part of the review. Read on...

London Calling

Most great artists conceal a greasy and slimy layer of repulsiveness beneath their public face. Some, however, are greasier and slimier than others. For sheer unattractiveness, it would be difficult to outdo Jack London, boozing brawler and would-be genocidal racist.

Internal Affairs

Finally, a column that understands me! Though I probably straddle the line between "introvert" and "bitter misanthrope," I prefer to advertise myself as the former. For obvious reasons.

Side note: Jonathan Rauch is fast becoming my favorite columnist. For another delectable slice of Rauchiana, read this.

...And the Livin' Is Easy...

Vacation time! After interning for four weeks in Raleigh and eight weeks in DC, I'm off to the beach for seven days of sand and sunburn. Normal blogging hours--if such things exist--will resume next Monday.

If you need something to read, check out these sites:

The Browser, perhaps my favorite site in creation, a collection of fantastic stories from around the web.

Longform.org collects...long form journalism. Extra points for the clarity of its name.

Idea of the Day, though they have lost my love ever since they cut back to only one interesting story per day.

Arts & Letters Daily, for the days when you absolutely, positively must feel highbrow.

Hmmmm...given that I get 95% of my content from those four sites, I think I just made this blog obsolete. So this is how MySpace feels all the time.

Oh, well. See you in a week!

Your Feet's Too Big

Bigfoot? Check. High-tech surveillance? Check. Mysterious, grainy images caught on tape? Check. Punny title? Triple-check. In conclusion, this article has what it takes to contend for the crown of "greatest weird story ever."

Dumb as Rock

The site claims to have discovered "The Ten Stupidest Lyrics Of All Time." Given the competition, that's a bold statement. While I must fault them for leaving out Cream's "I'm So Glad" ("I'm so glad/I'm so glad/I'm glad, I'm glad, I'm glad"), everything else looks spot-on.

Play Ball

Could you make this catch? The answer is no, unless you 1) have springs for legs or 2) are Spider Man.

Fun with Cartoons

High culture+Low culture=Instant laughs. The Marx Brothers knew this formula. So does Woody Allen. And so, apparently, does the genius who decided to match New Yorker cartoons with tweets from Kanye West. Personal favorite: "Man, this jet small as hell Don C!!!!"

My Bucket List

Caught Between a Rock and a High Place

Speaking of airplane...this is one article that you will hopefully never need to use. Other articles in that series include "treating your flesh-eating bacteria infection," "how to recover your cell phone from inside a pelican," and "shark fighting for dummies."

Fight or Flight

Having never crossed the Atlantic by plane--or by boat or sub or friendly dragon, for that matter--I don't know how accurate this sketch blog (sklog?) is. But I loved it nonetheless. Especially the statuesque croissant and the nuclear hand dryer--trust me, those phrases make sense once you read the piece.

Breaking News from 1895

Headline: "Adolf Hitler's Parents Shouldn't Get Kids Back."

Street Sense

At many Washington street corners, you will find a man or woman in a green vest hawking a newspaper called Street Sense. The paper bills itself as the "voice of Washington's poor and homeless." I have yet to see anyone buy a copy.

Which raises the question: if Street Sense one day ran a headline declaring "Homeless to rise up tomorrow and kill all DC commuters," would anyone notice? For all we know, they could be broadcasting their nefarious plans to the world. And we aren't even aware of it!

Squid Squad

Some men chase power, some chase glory, and some chase money. And a select few chase titanic cephalopods with nothing but a leaky boat and a made-from-scratch squid trap. If you like squids, or boats, or the ocean, or Australians, or fried calamari appetizers, you must read this piece.

Yawn of the Dead

Mix zombies and international relations, and what do you get? In this case you get a top-notch article from Dan Drezner. Read it well. You shall never know the day nor the hour of the zombie apocalypse.

Cheeky

Here's one Nike ad campaign unlikely to feature LeBron James. At least I pray it never features LeBron.

Mini-Review: One Man Lord of the Rings

Being a nerd is hard work. In most cases, the work is purely mental. You need a well-muscled brain to remember, say, the name and backstory of every stormtrooper aboard the Death Star, or the various conjugations of the Klingon word for "disembowel." Yet some nerds want more. To prove their dedication, they are willing to break the traditional nerd prohibition on exercise; they want to make their fandom physical as well as mental.

Add Charles Ross to this rare breed. This weekend I watched the final performance of his "One Man Lord of the Rings" at the Woolly Mammoth Theater. Gandalf knows how many times Ross has watched the film trilogy. "More than one million" would be a reasonable estimate. How else to explain his uncanny ability to channel everyone from Aragon on down to the Panting Orc #6?

This was one-man theater at its simplest. No music, no props, no costume aside from a black jumpsuit. The lighting was minimal to the point of non-existence: white light, red light, rinse and repeat. Everything else, Ross had to conjure up with his voice and gestures.

A daunting task--but Ross delivered. He nailed Gandalf's grandfatherly baritione, Saruman's intimidating rumble, and Frodo's mewling whine ("Bitch, moan, whine," he added at the end of one particularly self-pitying dialogue). His pitch-perfect Gollum was accompanied by an equally perfect imitation of the character's slithery walk. Sometimes Ross was large, containing multitudes; when reenacting the orc horde marching on Helm's Deep, he played the entire army himself and even added the requisite marching-and-roaring sound effects.

If Ross was simply giving a faithful line-by-line recitation, then the performance would have been akin to recreating The Last Supper with jellybeans: impressive but pointless. The real enjoyment came from his additions to Tolkien's tale. One example: recreating the scene with Sam and Frodo atop Mount Doom, Ross gave a heartfelt reading of Sam's goodbye speech, paused, and followed it with "Are we gay, Mr. Frodo?" The audience hooted its approval.

Speaking of the audience...I was curious as to what kind of man or woman (most likely man) would pay money to watch a one-man Lord of the Rings. Answer: all kinds of people. Old people, young people, people in t-shirts and shorts and people in suits and ties. Men AND women. I sat next to a genial old guy who told me how he had gotten hooked on Tolkien back in the 1960s.

In conclusion, you ought to go see this show. Too bad it closed. Ah, well. If Charles Ross comes by your town with his One Man Lord of the Rings, or his One Man Star Wars, or the inevitable One Man Harry Potter, make sure to see it.

Write Stuff

Richard Morgan is a freelance writer who, by his own admission, whiles away time "watching television, napping, noshing, strolling around, seeing matinees, playing The Sims, having sex and getting intoxicated."

He also once had to choose between getting a tie or getting a haircut for an upcoming interview. Another time, he lived off of nauseating mix of hot water, crushed multivitamins, and herbs.

The lesson? If you want a steady paycheck, become an electrician or a cop or an actuary, not a freelance writer. And if you do become a writer, you had better work at it, or else resign yourself to daily diet of vitamin soup.

Food of the Gods

Gosh, Jesus, you've been packing on the pounds lately! My advice is to lay off the figs and wine. And honeyed bread? Please! You might as well be eating lard!

Sick, Sick, Sick

Consumerist presents "27 of the Sickest Things You've Done to Save Money."

I never knew how privileged I was. My sickest money-saving maneuver was the time I subsisted on rice cakes and peanut butter for a week. Even the, the problem wasn't poverty. I was just too lazy to go to the grocery store.

But to "live on unsweetened kool-aid and homemade biscuits for two years?" Hardcore. Very hardcore.

If We Outlaw August, Only Outlaws Will Be August

David Plotz calls for a ban on August. I agree. The month has no redeeming features. Weather-wise, August is hot, sticky, and humid; it's the month most likely to make you stick to your car seat. August isn't always sunny, of course--sometimes the heat is broken up by sudden thunderstorms that leave you soaked as a drowning rat.

Holidays? Look elsewhere. March, the other underachieving month, has Saint Patrick's Day. Even February, that pathetic patch of twenty-eight gloomy days, has Valentine's Day and Groundhog Day. When you can be described as "like February, only less fun," you are in deep, deep trouble.

Baseball is the only August sport, which does not speak well for either baseball or August. Worse yet, August sees baseball at its most boring, when the second-rate clubs collapse like soggy ballpark nachos and the first-rate teams struggle to keep their mojo. Basketball is forgotten. Football is a distant dream. Hockey is...well, August doesn't have hockey, so maybe it isn't that bad a month.

The Chosen One

Is megalomania catching? Stephen Holmes of Coventry had better hope not.

On a Lighter Note...

It's Make Fun of Newsweek Day!

Carping in the Faculty Lounge

I am an equal-opportunity hater. Neither left nor right is safe from my significantly-less-than-rapier wit. Exhibit number A: Angelo Codevilla's essay/rant in the latest issue of the American Spectator.

Codevilla's complaint, in brief, is that 1) America has a ruling class and 2) Said ruling class stinks. Oh, how it stinks! Badly enough for Codevilla to go on about it for a dozen-plus pages.

This piece is what journalists call a "thumbsucker." Instead of doing the usual journalistic busywork--looking up statistics, interviewing sources, reading the literature--the author sits in a dark room, sucks their thumb for a vir, and writes whatever comes to mind. Journalists like this because it's easy, and because there are no damned statistics to break up the glittering perfection of their argument.

Needless to say, most thumbsuckers are wrong. I think Codevilla's essay falls into this category. Though I don't have the cerebral wattage to make a coherent critique, I would like to pick out a couple points and subject them to a world-class snarking. Let's begin!

From Codevilla: Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits.

Codevilla argues that the present ruling elite are the products of an Ivy League education, with all the softness and moral decadence that implies. This fact might surprise Vice President Joe Biden, graduate of the notoriously elitist University of Delaware. Or Rahm Emanuel, a Sarah Lawrence grad, or Trinity College grad Nancy Pelosi. On the other side of the aisle, Mitch McConnell attended Louisville and John Boehner attended Xavier--hardly bastions of academic decadence.

When pollsters ask the American people whether they are likely to vote Republican or Democrat in the next presidential election, Republicans win growing pluralities. But whenever pollsters add the preferences "undecided," "none of the above," or "tea party," these win handily, the Democrats come in second, and the Republicans trail far behind.

Really? I follow politics pretty closely, and I've yet to see any poll remotely like that. It's also worth noting that voters choose candidates, not parties, which makes a huge difference. In the Washington Senate race, for instance, you have three candidates: Democrat Patty Murray, mainstream Republican Dino Rossi, and Tea Party Republican Clint Didier. According to SurveyUSA, 37% of Washingtonians support Murray, 33% support Rossi, and only 5% favor Didier. Ah, well...maybe Washington isn't real America.

While Europeans are accustomed to being ruled by presumed betters whom they distrust, the American people's realization of being ruled like Europeans shocked this country into well nigh revolutionary attitudes.

Hate to repeat myself, but do you have any statistics to back up the grand assertion that "Europeans are accustomed to being ruled by presumed betters?" Or if not statistics, at least some anecdotes? Or if not anecdotes, then something, anything more than your own opinion? Sentences like this are the essence of thumbsucking.

Learned papers and distinguished careers in climatology at MIT (Richard Lindzen) or UVA (S. Fred Singer) are not enough for their questions about "global warming" to be taken seriously. For our ruling class, identity always trumps.

Codevilla spends 99% of his essay arguing that fancy degrees don't amount to jack squat. Unless, of course, the people bearing those degrees favor conservative causes. Which means that Ivy League PhDs are untrustworthy when they argue against tax cuts, but they suddenly become worthwhile if they dispute the existence of global warming.

Getting into America's "top schools" is less a matter of passing exams than of showing up with acceptable grades and an attractive social profile...it is an open secret that "the best" colleges require the least work and give out the highest grade point averages.

This is simply insulting. Students work hard to get into Ivy League schools and work even harder when they get there. Yes, some are lazy legacies, but you find those types at every level of education--at the University of Wyoming as much as the University of Pennsylvania. And does Professor Codevilla really think that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are second-rate institutions? I see plenty of foreigners flocking to American colleges, but I don't see many New York or California suburbanites applying to the Ecole Polytechnique or University of Tokyo.

The cultural divide between the "educated class" and the rest of the country opened in the interwar years. Some Progressives joined the "vanguard of the proletariat," the Communist Party. Many more were deeply sympathetic to Soviet Russia, as they were to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

Yes, many intellectuals did fawn over the Soviets and Nazis. So did many normal Americans, the "common people" that Codevilla fetishizes. If Ivy League professors praised Mussolini's Italy, so too did Italian-American clubs. And if pointy-headed intellectuals sang Stalin's praises, so too did many working-class laborers. Socialist Norman Thomas got nearly a million votes in the 1920 presidential election--were they all from college professors?

The point is this: though not one in a thousand of today's bipartisan ruling class ever heard of Adorno or McCloskey, much less can explain the Feuerbachian-Marxist notion that human judgments are "epiphenomenal" products of spiritual or material alienation, the notion that the common people's words are, like grunts, mere signs of pain, pleasure, and frustration, is now axiomatic among our ruling class.

What is this, a name-dropping contest? Codevilla tells us that the meritocrats are wrong to think their intelligence gives them authority. And he shows them up by...flaunting his own intelligence with boasts that he knows more about sociology than they do.

Thus in 2009-10 the American Medical Association (AMA) strongly supported the new medical care law, which the administration touted as having the support of "the doctors" even though the vast majority of America's 975,000 physicians opposed it.

How do you know that? I said, how do you know that? Did you ask every physician in America for their opinion? Perhaps there's a poll out there proving this point...too bad Codevilla doesn't bother to cite it. Oh well! Just have to take his word for it! Again, behold the essence of thumbsuckery.

Members of the country class who want to rise in their profession through sheer competence try at once to avoid the ruling class's rituals while guarding against infringing its prejudices.

Codevilla posits the "country class" as the noble opposition to the spineless ruling class. So the country class want to rise only virtue of "sheer competence," eh? Guess that explains why so many small farmers reject federal subsidies and insist on making money the old-fash...oh, wait, they don't actually reject subsidies. The sad truth is that nobody ever turns down free government money. Not even the enlightened country class.

Unlike the ruling class, the country class does not share a single intellectual orthodoxy, set of tastes, or ideal lifestyle.

Yes it does. The Tea Party has many virtues, but diversity is not one of them. It is overwhelmingly--even exclusively--white, conservative, and Christian. This is not a bad thing; being white does not make you a racist, and being Christian does not make you a bigot. But please don't argue that the country class is a "rainbow coalition," because it simply isn't true. Codevilla falls into the old liberal trap, the assumption that diversity is inherently good.

While symphonies and opera houses around the country, as well as the stations that broadcast them, are firmly in the ruling class's hands, a considerable part of the country class appreciates these things for their own sake.

No. No they don't. Again, the country class has good things going for it. Its people are energetic, practical, and idealistic. They are firmly grounded in faith. They are kind and friendly. They do not, however, have terribly good taste, and Codevilla's fantastic image of the noble laborer who works with his hands all day and then goes home to read Aristotle and listen to Bach is plain silly. The country class does not stress classic culture. Period.

But the Republican Party does not live to represent the country class. For it to do so, it would have to become principles-based, as it has not been since the mid-1860s. The few who tried to make it so the party treated as rebels: Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Yes, the GOP hated Ronald Reagan. That's why they nominated him for the presidency. Twice. And that's why the modern GOP treats him as a secular saint.

Agh...sorry to rant for so long. Really, I'm no better than Codevilla. But some of his points were too stupid to go unchallenged. As long as conservatives indulge in this sort of half-paranoid half-triumphalist dreaming, they won't get anywhere.

Interesting Combo

Today, on the way home from work, I saw a smartly-dressed black guy. He was carrying a football, wearing a Montreal Expos baseball cap, and toting a Federal Trade Commission backpack. Wish I knew how that ensemble came together. Was he a Canadian emigre, employed at the FTC, on his way to a pickup football game on the Mall? Or was he a hipster with a taste for obscure government agencies and defunct baseball teams?

Yes, folks, this is the kind of crap I think about on a daily basis. And people wonder why I can't remember my own phone number.

Just Like Starting Over

Hey there! Trouble finding a job? People discriminating against you because you're a nutcase, a criminal, or just plain washed up? We may have a place for you! We offer a not-inconsiderable starting salary, a very short workweek, and a spiffy uniform. For more information, please contact Marvin Lewis, c/o the Cincinnati Bengals.

Warning: Nerdity Ahead

Cracked does the world a service by pointing out six evil corporations with terrible business plans. At least the evil company in Avatar might have turned a profit. Remember, unobtainium is worth "twenty million per kilo" or whatever Chief Executive Weasel said. But what on earth was Weyland-Yutani thinking? How do you squeeze money from a xenomorph, a ruthless monster that exists only to kill and feed?

Which brings me to a related topic, one that has bothered me for some time...what was Voldemort's grand plan in the Harry Potter series? And how did he get so many people to buy into it? After all, he wasn't shy about torturing and killing his own followers, even the pure-blooded ones. Even Hitler had plans beyond "kill the Jews." What was Voldemort going to do after exterminating his enemies? Retire? Sail away to a cabana in the Caribbean? Doubtful, not least because of the ungodly amounts of sunscreen he would need.

It's Only a Model

Breaking historical news: historians have discovered King Arthur's round table. Turns out it was more of an amphitheater than a table. But who would have risked life, limb, and honor to become a Knight of the Round Amphitheater? Give King Arthur credit for having a flair for publicity.