May 2013
1 post
Noted: the Vampire Weekend/One Direction...
After 5000 years of war and class conflict and genocide and division of labor, human civilization has finally settled on a universal, perfectly neutral, non-threatening, color-keyed (but not matchy-matchy) way of homosocially relating to our fellow man (i.e., boy). And it’s really not terrible, considering!
April 2013
1 post
Man, in case you doubted Harry Reid is America's...
“We’re moving forward on this bill,” said Mr. Reid, who earlier Tuesday invoked his own father’s suicide by gunshot to implore consideration of the legislation…
No wonder he hated Mitt Romney so much.
March 2013
3 posts
“The decade since SimCity 4’s release has seen a major urban renaissance. For the...”
– Adam Sneed at Slate
Um, only someone who has never played the previous SimCitys, culminating in 2003’s magisterial SimCity 4—or, more likely, insists on filtering all his previous experiences through the vulgar Whiggishness of “things were worse in the past”—could come...
“The decision came after long consideration, the Ohio lawmaker told newspapers...”
– —Rob Portman supports gay marriage.
GOP dad-of-a-gay (cf Dick Cheney) conversions are so hilariously symptomatic of the era. Isn’t it a sign that someone is (small-c) constitutionally unsuited for being a part of (small-r) republican government if the only evidence he’s willing to...
December 2012
3 posts
Cultural Relativism
It’s troubling that the wonderfully infectious K$sha single ‘Die Young’ is making me nostalgic for the the sincerer sentiments of Katy Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream,’ obviously more authentic because it happened in 2010, instead of 2012. Is this what mortality feels like?
“This yet again for the thousandth time proved what I have always said: that the...”
– 1909 letter, Archduke Franz Ferdinand to Kaiser William II
Food for thought on the true origins of modernity’s catastrophes, as parliamentarians in Budapest, in 2012, call for lists to “tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian parliament and the...
Announcement of royal pregnancy forces British to...
Her injection of DNA brings new life and a different complexion to the next generation of royals.
Thanks to Kate, the House of Windsor bloodline will never be the same again.
…
Michael and Carole Middleton’s rise up the social ladder has, in many ways, only just begun.
Their recent acquisition of an ancient manor house in Bucklebury, Berks, provides a suitable backdrop for their...
November 2012
4 posts
'Homeland' Question:
Do the recent Betray-us revelations make it easier to suspend disbelief w/r/t the soapiness—and odd insouciance to security—of Homeland’s CIA/Pentagon, or tougher to accept its basic competence (not to mention mostly cordial relations with the FBI)?
Btw, SNL’s Homeland take from the other week was really, really good—especially Bill Hader’s Saul—but...
Optics
So, when Romney wins, are there going to hundreds of thousands of people on Boston Common? Outside the library at HBS?
The Real Question
Not whether the hurricane will postpone the election, but whether the blackout should extend daylight savings time, otherwise scheduled to end this weekend. If my memory of Dark Knight Rises serves, the Lower Manhattan Commune, presided over by the Scarecrow, is deciding this issue right now.
October 2012
5 posts
Proceedings of the Academy for Brooklyn...
I guess it goes without saying that noting what the people in front of you in (a hysterical, never-ending) line at the supermarket buy on the eve of a WEATHER DISASTER FROM THE SKY is a matchless opportunity for ethnographic fieldwork. And sure, call me a Boasian cultural relativist, by convenience if not conviction.
But really, Pratt Couple—he with the embroidered Turkish (Turko-Persian?)...
Proof that 'throwing Israel under the bus' doesn't...
An apparently rigorous and pretty well-hyped AP Racial Attitudes poll finds Americans are slightly more racist against blacks (51%) than they were four years ago, which will cause Barack Obama about 2% of the vote. The polling protocol puts the substantive questions about race at the tail end of many seeming generic 2012 Election poll queries. But the real juicy number is buried on page 14 of the...
I'm sorry, MSNBC
Ezra Klein know-it-all-boy monologue followed by Chris Hayes whingey-boy monologue as weird boorish adult men Sharpton and Schultz look on is more or less unbearable. Will no one from network really appear on air with (still) lovely Maddow anymore?
Also,
it’s hilarious that in the ‘Homeland’ universe, Lawrence O’Donnell is a Matt Lauer-like household name.
Finally watching 'Homeland'
Just occurred to me that Carrie Mathison is obviously a reference to Senator Matheson, one of Mulder’s less-than-informative informants, who—come to think of it—pretty much is Joe Biden.
This is almost as cute as when the bank used for dead drops in ‘Breaking Bad’ is a Craddock Marine, which of course figures prominently in TXF ‘Monday’, ‘Amazing...
September 2012
2 posts
Discursive formations
Watching ever-more regal Hillary speak. Does it annoy others that people just say things like “I want to reject X in the strongest possible terms” without actually having to think up strong terms?
August 2012
2 posts
“Hitler’s war brought European politics back to reality. The Habsburgs had...”
– A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1908-1918. Published 1948.
Actually watching Olympics...
For those used to the pads, baggy shorts, and pitcher paunches of the usual professional sports (or not), it’s kind of shocking how non-existent, skin-tight, or both to the point of NSFW the uniforms are. Is a concern for participant modesty and spectator decency while watching these beautiful people do bizarre kinky things with their bodies the reason these sports never much graduated...
July 2012
3 posts
For some reason, reading old, politically indignant reviews of Zach Snyder’s 300 (example). It’s funny how in 2007 that movie could seem so obviously ideologically suspect—if not downright raci(ali)st—because clearly the Greeks were meant to stand for free, responsible (i.e, tax-paying!) Occidentals against the Thermopylae-rushing, bailout-seeking hordes of the East!
...
Further adventures in British English...
I still can’t get over the fact that ‘clever’ and ‘scheme’ are just value-neutral (or even -positive) ‘smart’ and ‘plan’ to them!!!
Prediction:
The Holmes–Cruise divorce, with hopefully juicy revelations about Sea Org, Xenu, etc., will prove to be a very bad thing for the Romney campaign. Because what’s the difference, really?
June 2012
5 posts
Things to do immediately:
Either read my take on Fiona Apple for the New York Observer or, to get what I was trying to say (and so much more!), listen to ”Jonathan” from The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do.
If for some reason you choose option #1, be kind; by sheer volume of smart, wonderful words thereupon written, a Martian...
This is extremely disrespectful, not merely to a...
Fiona Apple’s career thus far has been been suitably tumultuous and bizarre for such a brazen and eccentric musician. On the eve of the release of her fourth album, ‘The Idler Wheel…’, DIY offers up a brief introduction to this sad lady at a piano who’s got everyone in a tizzy. If you’re a fan of Grizzly Bear or Regina Spektor, we could have your favourite new...
“So when I watch TV, and TCM isn’t on, I just switch channels and look at...”
– Fiona Apple, obviously.
For your consideration:
I ponder the political economy of Mad Men recaps, the perils of letting old people near spacebars, and why the Wall Street Journal hates both you and the internet.
May 2012
2 posts
Just watched 'Game Changer' again...
Another point of sympathy…Sarah’s ignorance to the idea that the British queen reigns, but doesn’t rule, seems to be less a fatal intellectual confusion on her part than a fatal constitutional one on theirs.
April 2012
7 posts
Why, in the end and despite all evidence to the...
AFP:
“I would like to offer a large apology” to those who were injured or killed in the bombing of an Oslo government building as they were just passing by and had no political connections, he said.
But when prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh asked if he wanted to say the same to any of the 69 people - mainly teens - slaughtered in his shooting massacre on the nearby island of Utoya after...
Azawad declared its independence from Mali on April 6, 2012. I explain how Wikipedia creates sovereignty here.
Only in French politics....
do you get voting blocs like this:
Former conservative French President Jacques Chirac and a number of his family members will vote for Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande in the forthcoming presidential election, according to media reports Tuesday.
According to daily newspaper Le Parisien, Chirac’s daughter Claude, her husband Frederic Salat-Baroux and her former husband Thierry Rey...
Crisis of Monotheism: Is Committing Acts of Yoga Heresy?
New York Magazine in my head.
I just received the ‘Second Annual Yesteryear Issue’ in the mail. (The former resident has still yet to move her subscription! What is wrong with her?!) It’s on ‘Three Centuries of New York SCANDAL!’ I think it would have been closer to the spirit of the exercise to have just put the 2011 Yesteryear Issue back on the newsstands. Is that what this is?!
Why didn't he think of this earlier?
Barack Obama’s calling the House budget proposal “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” What a great, underutilized term for the modern hoi polloi! Who cares what he’s talking about, it sounds like socialism for apes…and can Republicans really deny being social Darwinists?
March 2012
6 posts
Epidemiological/Epistemological Question of Day:
Do they test diabetes treatments with sugar-pill placebos?
Wow, sure jail and possible deportation are bad,...
Later, Mr. Ravi, an ultimate Frisbee player who seemed to thrive on attention, invited people to watch when Mr. Clementi again had a male visitor.
—-
It seems like the legislative solution to this and other recent tragedies is mandated singles.
The Most Confusing Viral Thing Ever
Have 150 million people or whatever it is really sat through ‘KONY 2012,’ past the silly onscreen text, the Facebook shout-out, and the gazing into eyes of towheaded kid as only hope for wretched of the earth, etc., etc.?
The thing is, there’ve for years been tons of available documentary-ish features on the Lord’s Resistance Army online: See this video by the UK...
So, as everyone assumed, Osama Bin Laden's last...
Osama Bin Laden spent his final months in a household fraught with friction between his three wives — one of whom might have given him up to the CIA, according to a blockbuster new account. Bin Laden shared a third-floor bedroom in the crowded Pakistani villa he died in with his fifth, youngest and most beloved wife, Amal. Trouble came to Abbottabad in early 2011, when the terrorist’s ornery third...
February 2012
9 posts
Also,
how are all the Romney men perfectly gray (or in the son’s case, incipiently so) just at the temples?
Santorum just said:
“The men and women who wrote the Declaration of Independence…” : (
It's a bit unfortunate...
that it takes a lapse into monumental “insensitivity” to encourage serious discussion about clearing the linguistic underbush of our hoariest cliches, but while we’re at it, could we please retire “pot calling the kettle black” too? I mean, at least i can sort of imagine having a nice suit of chain-mail ruined by some minor imperfection, and being innocently peeved...
