The Eugenics Experiment That is Jessica Simpson
I saw the VH1 ad in People magazine, and I was all like WTF?? And then I was like wait, I have seen this before:
Yours for a freer New Albany
New Albany, Mississippi, birthplace of William Faulkner, will allow beer sales for the first time in over half a century. Faulkner himself pled for tolerance in 1950:
“Yours for a freer Oxford,” wrote Faulkner, who had a long history of drinking binges, “where publicans can be law-abiding publicans six days a week and ministers of God can be ministers of God all seven days in the week.”
Indeed.
iPrius
At risk of being labeled a tool, lost, or a 90-yr-old, here is yet another iPad / automotive analogy:
The automobile went through a similar evolution. From eminently hackable to hood essentially sealed shut. When the automobile was new, you HAD to be a mechanic to own one. Later, being a mechanic gave you the option of tinkering and adapting it to your specific interests. In fact, that’s how most people up until about 1985 learned to be mechanics. The big changes came with the catalytic converter and electronic ignition (and warranty language to match). Now the automobile has reached the point in its development where you don’t even have to know whether it has a motor or an engine to use it, but to tinker at all requires highly specialized skills.
Reflection on Friday, January 29, 2010
In my reasonably long time as a Clusterflock fan and fairly brief time as a contributor, I am hard-pressed to remember a day of discussion quite like this one. Very strange that so much heat and light came from something so seemingly trivial. I wondered over dinner this evening whether it was the open/closed thing or if that discussion was merely a container for something deeper. Would this same level of interaction have emerged with a different topic?
Quote out of context, Apple Tablet edition
Once, during a concert in the last century, dub legend Lee “Scratch” Perry astonished the crowd by whipping out his dick and announcing, “Here’s the messiah you’ve all been waiting for.”
Corporations rock the vote
I’m a big fan of modest proposals:
I’m highly impressed with your recent decision to vaporize limits on corporate political spending. It’s the kind of campaign finance reform our ailing res publica needs. In fact, I found it so inspirational, here’s an even better idea.
Let’s give corporations the right to vote. One share, one vote. The logic? It’s simple. Corporations are people; all people are created equal; ergo, corporations must have equal rights — and no right is more important than the right to vote. (Well, maybe the right to buy fully automatic machine guns, but that’s another story).
Goldman Sachs, for example, has 514,080,000 shares outstanding — so they’d get 514 millon votes (in fact, maybe we should give them more, because they’re so smart). Ford has 3.31 billion shares outstanding, so they’d get approximately 2.8 billion more votes than Goldman.
Of course, we won’t have achieved parity until Bank of America can get crotch-cupped at the airport.
The ongoing conspiracy
“You know, there was rumors of anti-Castro pigeons seen drinking in bars… the week before the [Kennedy] assassination. Someone overheard them saying ‘Coup, coup. Coup.’”
Amsterdam, 5am, 21Jan2009
Meant to post this yesterday. This was the expat election party at Boom Chicago, a comedy show club in Amsterdam on the Leidseplein near the center of town. It’s been an interesting year since then.
This is going to take a while…
How long would it take all those monkeys to type the complete works of the bard?
There are about fifty keys on a standard typewriter keyboard. Even ignoring capitalization, the chance of a monkey typing “h” is one in fifty. The probability of typing “ha” is one-fiftieth of one in fifty, or 1 in 2,500. The probability of typing “ham” is one in fifty time fifty time fifty, or 1 in 125,000. The probability of a monkey typing out a phrase with twenty-two characters is one divided by fifty raised to the twenty-second power, or about 10^-38. It would take billion billion monkeys each typing ten characters per second, for each of the roughly billion billion seconds since the universe began, just to have one of them type out “hamlet. act i, scene i.”
…and they wouldn’t even capitalize properly.
Luddites and sabotage
Took this in August 2008. While the locals claim adamantly that the movement introduced the word “sabotage”, Wikipedia is more cautious:
Claimed explanations include:
- That it derives from the Netherlands in the 15th century when workers would throw their sabots (wooden shoes) into the wooden gears of the textile looms to break the cogs, feeling the automated machines would render the human workers obsolete.[1]
- That it derives from the French sabot (a wooden shoe or clog) via its derivative saboter (to knock with the foot, or work carelessly).[2]
- That it derives from the late 19th-century French slang use of the word sabot to describe an unskilled worker, so called due to their wooden clogs or sabots; sabotage was used to describe the poor quality work which such workers turned out.[3]
- That it was coined during a French railway strike of 1910, when workers destroyed the wooden shoes, or sabots, that held rails in place, thus impeding the morning commute.[citation needed]
- That it dates from the Industrial Revolution: it is said that powered looms could be damaged by angry or disgruntled workers’ throwing their wooden shoes or clogs (known in French as sabots, hence the term Sabotage) into the machinery, effectivelyclogging the machinery. This is often referred to as one of the first inklings of the Luddite Movement. However, this etymology is highly suspect and no wooden shoe sabotage is known to have been reported from the time of the word’s origin.
One can never be too careful.
Even Satan has standards
This appears to be legitimate:
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
Vintage L.L. Bean
This stuff always reminds me of my great-grandfather. I doubt Cedar Grove TN would have had snows that deep, but in my mind he was who they were designing for…
Meet the Flockers: Joseph Logan
When the sun cast its golden rays on the foothills at daybreak today, I thought, “Today is my first day as a Flocker. Anything is possible.” Rick Neece and Deron Bauman made it so; for that, I am deeply grateful.
With thanks to Josh for the format, here’s what’s up:
Origins:
My surname is Scot-Irish. It has no discernible relevance to who I am.
Interests:
My background is in the theory of organizations. I’m interested in aggregate behavior, and I talk about it here. After working in a big corporation for several years, I now spend most of my time helping start-ups become going concerns. Aside from my work, which is really not work at all (because I’m a big ol’ org geek), I’m interested in Southern culture, foreign affairs, politics, visual design, the music of Tom Waits, the photography of William Eggleston, classic spy novels, and culinary arts. I recently decided to swear off alcohol, which I enjoyed immensely, but I still like fine food. Incidentally, I am trying to figure out a good nonalcoholic pairing for rare steak topped with caramelized onions in a red wine reduction. Suggestions are appreciated.
Location:
I grew up in McKenzie TN, about which I have written as Christopher Walken (see “Courthouse Envy”). My first job there was in a factory that made mobile homes. I drove a dump truck. That factory has since burned to the ground.
In the years since, I have lived in Memphis, Nashville, Lexington KY, Washington DC, Wilmington DE, and the Boston area (Cambridge, Josh. Would have loved to live in the post-molasses North End, though). My wife and I recently moved to Denver CO after having lived in The Hague, Netherlands, for 2.5yrs. While there, I shared a doctor with Slobodan Milosevic.
We now live about a mile from Columbine High School and about five miles from Red Rocks.
Religion:
I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and a Methodist church, which should explain my atheism and disinterest.
Family:
My wife, Ronya, is my best friend and one of the coolest people I know. We are the proud parents of three cats: Cassius, Luna, and June Carter.
Like Josh, I have experienced an unusual amount of family and friend death in the last couple of years. The most disturbing loss was that of my grand-uncle and best friend last spring. He penned the letter to the editor in “Courthouse Envy”, and his writings are likely to pop up again.
American Authors:
Not sure if American Authors is the ‘Flock tradition, but I realized upon contemplation that I don’t read many American Authors. William Faulkner and Walker Percy are two, but I’m also fond of the science fiction of Orson Scott Card and Neal Stephenson as well as the graphic adaptations of Batman by Neil Gaiman, Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, and others. I’ll think of half a dozen other American authors I love as soon as I click “Publish”.
Across the pond, I’ve enjoyed Forsythe, le Carré, Faulks, and Greene, as well as some of the older classics. For nonfiction, I enjoy the travel writing of Bill Bryson, Stuart Maconie, and Chuck Thompson. I won’t bore you with the obscure names of the org theory writers I like.
Age:
I just turned 40. It was no big deal.
Lurking about:
I’ve been moonlighting as Christopher Walken for far less time than Josh, but I’ve been a fan for a long time. I’m truly honored to be here.
Conclusion:
Hmmm… What’s left to say? I promise, to the best of my abilities, to protect, preserve, and defend the ethos of Clusterflock…
Classic Eggleston
I have long had a soft spot (or hard-on, just for symmetry) for the photography of William Eggleston. I guess it speaks to my rural Southern roots. One of my favorite early adulthood memories is meeting up with Eggleston and Alex Chilton of Big Star at Zinnie’s East in Memphis. We had all consumed our RDA of whiskey and cigarettes in the first hour or so, and we continued well into the night. I have met more famous people since, but none whose company I enjoyed so much.
Cripple Boyd
Glimpses of a small town in Tennessee from a Facebook thread:
Chad: Sad to hear about my former neighbor Robin Allen. The days of growing up in McKenzie, TN will not be forgotten. There are memories…………What was the blind candy man’s name that had the candy store down by that old factory and he was in a wheelchair?
December 11, 2009 at 8:36pm · Comment · LikeCynthia: Are you talking about Mr. Boyd
December 11, 2009 at 8:39pmCynthia: Who is Robin Allen
December 11, 2009 at 8:40pmSherrye: Was that Mr. Boyd? Are you talking by the old Pajama Factory Building? That was Mr. and Mrs. Boyd but I don’t think he was blind. She had parkinson’s disease I think. That was before we knew what it was.
December 11, 2009 at 8:41pmCynthia: are you napping again chad
December 11, 2009 at 8:45pmMikki: I think his last name was Berryhill but his first name was Boyd…i think.
December 11, 2009 at 10:47pmLemont: his name was cripple boy
December 11, 2009 at 10:53pmJoseph: Lemont! Seriously!
December 12, 2009 at 12:16am ·Sherrye: OH Mikki you are right I do believe you are right.
December 12, 2009 at 9:12amShirley: sorry to say but everyone called him cripple boyd.. i went to school with his niece..just incase yall don’t remember there was another little store ran by an older white lady on Walnut Street in front of the old Jehovah Witnesses’ Church.. her name was Ms Purvis..Cooper (the cop) and his family moved into her house b4 they moved to where they are now..
December 12, 2009 at 9:45amCynthia: Robin and I grew up together along with her sister Tiny. It is so sad I will b praying for the family.
December 12, 2009 at 12:06pmShirley: i’ve always like Robin as well.. she was always nice.. she will truly be missed.. RIP Robin..
December 12, 2009 at 5:18pmChris: Yep…his name was Boyd Berryhill…My grandmother lived on that street…thats back when soda came in glass bottles and canned drinks had pull off tabs…double bubble was 2 cents a piece and a nutty buddy was a quarter…kickball was the game of the day…and you only got let in Grandma’s house to cool off and drink ice water
December 13, 2009 at 1:48am
View-Master 3-D Discontinues Scenic Travel Series
Gabor Degre, AP Photo/Bangor Daily News.
Toy industry analyst Sean McGowan with Needham & Co. said View-Master has been in decline since its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.
“That’s not what the kids are looking for in the back seat of the car,” he said.
From USA TODAY, courtesy of clusterflock friend Brian Beatty.
Waiting For Good ‘Ho
Here’s a wee morsel from my recap of the most recent episode of the continuing saga that is Bret Michael‘s “Rock of Love Bus,” a reality dating show on VH1 that haunts my dreams:
Whassa goin’ on with Bret Michaels? Throughout this season of “Rock of Love,” despite–or perhaps because of–an onslaught of trashy skankitude previously unknown outside of a Joe Francis bachelor party in Tijuana–he’s been ambivalent, morose, and consumed by ennui. BRET MICHAELS. I think he’s aware of the problem, though, because on last night’s “Rock of Love Bus” he dropped by the stripper store and picked up some fresh blood to liven up what I can only describe as a train wreck of a bus tour. Desperate times call for desperate measures, people!
Let me back up a bit. The buses pull up to Larry Flynt‘s Hustler Club outside of St. Louis, and at first some of the very few non-strippers on the show (ie, Beverly) are rightfully worried they will have to do some kind of lap dance in Larry Flynt’s wheelchair in order to make an emotional connection with Bret. But, no, it’s a makeover challenge. I love makeovers! Bret brings out three obviously dowdied-up women with baggy sweaters, glasses, no makeup, etc. The idiotic skanktestants clearly believe that these ladies really look like this all the time. The challenge is to trash ‘em up the way Bret likes it. Makeover teams are formed and Natasha, Farrah, and Mindy are the captains. Each is assigned a girl to transform from drab to scab. The winning team captain gets a romantic dream date with Bret.
To read the rest, and for all of your trashy tv recap and occasionaly urgent celebrity gossip needs, please run on over to Felt Up. Select future posts will be available on both Felt Up and Clusterflock. There’s no escape!
Duncan’s snow day
Duncan digs his Kong Flyer.
Am I the only one around these parts
who really really likes Barton Fink?
“I’ll show you the life of the mind!”
rooflines
On some back streets, the Pittsburgh neighborhood of lower Lawrenceville is a collage of building materials, siding types, and irregular rooflines.
overheard conversation and M. de La Rochefoucauld
Girl 1: …and I’d get lifts there regularly with this, like, bloke, from… but then later this bloke, like he’s older, and I think he’s getting, you know, and I think… well, he’s sort of middle aged and, anyway, you know what, he’s killed in a car crash next week. It’s so funny [she actually laughs and her friend laughs too], I mean, it’s like, you know, but it’s really funny [more laughter from both]. Of course I don’t, like, get the lifts now…
Word Hunt
I spent most of the morning trying to find a word. Not only did I forget it, I forgot its definition. All I could recall was that it had something to do with a woman. Powerful woman? Social woman? Leading woman? I turned to the OED, to reverse dictionaries, I harangued friends. Nothing. Finally, two frenetic hours later, I found it. For those of you curious, the word was doyenne.
refugees
The refugee situation this summer seems to have escalated.
anyone care to adopt
Dear Clusterflock
What’s keeping you going today? For me, it’s this delicious photo.
