Learned in the courtroom
If you ever sue me, I’ll bankrupt myself if I have to to hire Josh Goodman for my defense. And you should too.
quote out of context
Lost Causers worship their ancestors, in the manner of the abandoned child who brags that his dead-beat father is actually an astronaut, away on a mission of cosmic importance.
Thurston Moore gives advice
Sassy Magazine was a teen-mag from 1988-1994 that had a column in which Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth gave advice.
Every time something goes wrong and I’m around, I get blamed. Even people I don’t know blame me for things. Blamed in Stratford, CT
Next time someone blames you for something, look ‘em straight in the face I and ask, “How may I correct this situation?” This will startle and dumbfound them. Then go up and kiss them lightly on the cheek and whisper, “No matter what happens, I will always love you.” As you back away, grab your head and scream bloody murder and run like the wind.
This morning,
at the local shop, we pondered this from afar. We gaped in awe verging on horror.
They don’t call it “The American Dream” for nothing. Our country isn’t afraid to aim for the sky, not always because it’s necessary, but because we can.
Which brings us to KFC’s newest menu item, introduced Monday: the Double Down ($4.99), a bacon and cheese sandwich where bread is replaced with fried chicken. Re-read that last sentence, and just try to grasp its cultural significance. The toothpaste is out of the proverbial tube.
Twitter Ads
I am bummed this is happening, but expected it since they are a for profit company:
The advertising program, which Twitter calls Promoted Tweets, will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user.
If they do it right, then it won’t suck but I am not holding my breath.
Newspaper Blackout
Austin Kleon’s book is finally out. I have always loved the concept.
Maybe he’s pregnant
It is late last night the dog was speaking of you.
India, Andrew, Kelsey and I are out for the evening. At some point we are separated and they leave, I see them leave but can’t get their attention. This is a very bad part of town. Eventually I take (my?) Honda Civic and open the car door, it starts rolling into San Francisco traffic. I am trying to get into the car, but every time I turn the wheel it accelerates. So I climb up through the sunroof and somehow drive the car while sitting on the roof, trying desperately to get in and slow it down. An officer pulls me over almost instantly and I slip into the car. He approaches me with a sneer, sure that I have been drinking. I start to explain, I give him my drivers license — yes I know it expires in six weeks — I tell him the whole story, he is incredulous at best. He says I’m going to get ninety days in jail if I have been drinking. I try and explain that I am well-aware of how impossible my story seems.
The police officer calls the number I give him to check up on my story, he doesn’t believe that I have not been drinking. Kelsey is mortified once she realizes that I didn’t come home with them, and asks Andrew. He said he knew I was left behind but that he didn’t say anything because he wanted to sleep on the couch instead of the floor.
This is the dream I had sometime between 4:58 and 7:32 this morning.
from the spam
In regard to me, the firmer the erection, the more high-spirited and pleasurable the culmination, whether during communication or masturbation.
Williams syndrome, social anxiety, racism, and gender stereotypes
Children with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that makes them lack normal social anxiety, have no racial biases. They do, however, traffic in gender stereotypes, said study researcher Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
Williams syndrome is caused by a gene deletion known to affect the brain as well as other organs. As a result, people with Williams syndrome are “hypersocial,” Meyer-Lindenberg told . They do not experience the jitters and inhibitions the rest of us feel.
Despite their lack of racial bias, children with Williams syndrome hold gender stereotypes just as strongly as normal children, the study found. That is, 99 percent of the 40 children studied pointed to pictures of girls when asked who played with dolls and chose boys when asked, say, who likes toy cars.
The fact that Williams syndrome kids think of men and women differently, but not blacks and whites, shows that sex stereotypes are not caused by social anxiety, Meyer-Lindenberg said.
You learn something new every day.
spam name
Shelly Shaver.
from the comments
One night a few years ago, in the parking lot of Chicago’s Polish-American Copernicus Cultural and Civic Center, I talked with a man who claimed to have bought a convertible that had been owned by Fulgencio Batista.
Otherwise, the closest I have ever gotten to Cuba is Key West. I do recall feeling vexed as I stood in a travel agent’s office in Mérida (Yucatán) looking at fares for cheap flights to Cuba and pondering on the fact that my own country’s government forbade me to travel there.
One of my earliest memories touching on the world outside my own family is of listening to a radio report of the final offensive of Castro’s forces. I must have looked especially puzzled over references to the descent from the mountains of Castro and his guerrillas. My father said to me, “Those aren’t like the gorillas we see in the zoo. Those are men called guerrillas. They’re a kind of soldier.”
I’ve always admired the resolve of the Cuban regime in the face of US might and hostility, but like Walt, I can’t get down with the repression of dissent. Understandable, perhaps, in light of a siege mentality, but no less creepy thereby. And Raúl appears to be no better than Fidel.
clementines
Trying out new materials. Instead of making this painting on paper, I used an 8″ x 8″ cradled wooden panel. I’m still painting in gouache, but the colors and brush behave differently on gessoed wood.
meet the flockers: TBD Smith
are you fucking kidding me?
Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.
from the comments
I think I’m secretly hoping that decentralization will hit an extreme point to where the value of referential conversations bottoms out, becoming meaningless, and we’ll be forced to put the content of what we’re talking about in our conversations themselves.
We’ll start using such arcane techniques and devices like “description” and “narration” when sharing cultural experiences with each other. Maybe storytelling even will come back as a common skill, rather than some rarity that we pay someone on stage to “perform” for us.
Ya know, maybe something like that would happen. I’m not bitter or anything, about finding conversation after conversation completely inscrutable because I don’t pay homage to the appropriate television shows or entertainment outlet.
Nor am I having flashbacks of being immersed in a culture that communicates primarily by parroting Family Guy quotes. Nope, not at all.
Christopher Walken
The best part is that the article appears to be published in the future. Just take a look at its date:
Walken doesn’t use a computer. “The Internet is strange,” he said. “There’s stuff on the Internet about me. I’ve tried to find out who puts it there. Something about how I go around to hot-dog festivals, that I’m a champion hot-dog eater.”
(thanks, Abra)
Internet-Era Pulitzers
In a historic first, ProPublica, an internet based news service, has won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of post-Katrina New Orleans Medical Center deaths.
The chronicle of decisions by doctors caring for patients stranded by the flood, written by Sheri Fink of ProPublica in collaboration with The New York Times Magazine, marked the first time an online service won a top journalism award given annually by the Pulitzer Prize Board at Columbia University.
Tinderbox
tea and cake by the sunny window in Tinderbox
from the spam
Do you want a fresh joke from net? Where did the vegetable go to get drunk? To the salad bar.
quote out of context
The author, George Prochnik, keeps a silence blog as well.
Overheard at Lunch
She told me not to bother her because she was watching a lost episode of Bonanza. And I said, remember that time Tracy and I got drunk and you made us go to church? She said yes. I said, well, this is the episode we saw that night. And she said that was 40 years ago, and I said that doesn’t change the facts, does it? Well, she didn’t have anything to say to that.
dear clusterflock
Has anyone traveled to Cuba?
Travis Pastrana does a backflip on a Big Wheel!
(via kottke)
dear clusterflock
Have you done your taxes?
