plethoric pundigrions — the blog of freelance-writer-not-hockey-player Andrew Ladd

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLV

2012-01-27T13:08:00.000-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCLXIV

2012-01-20T08:06:00.000-05:00

(N.B. Mitt Romney estimated personal wealth = $250 million; TARP estimated cost to taxpayers = $19 billion; proportion of latter covered by former = 1.3%, rounded up to 1.5% out of sheer fury, so 1/67th.)

Characters from The Legend of Zelda

2012-01-16T22:50:00.003-05:00

Part of my plan for the new year is to post on this blog more of my writing for other outlets, when it happens.

So: this week you should check out my thoughts on plagiarism at the Emerson First-Year Writing Program blog, and then you should check out my thoughts on the word 'haunting' (already linked on Largehearted Boy!) at the Ploughshares blog.

Then you should hire me as a staff writer.

Conversations With Greatness CCCLXIII

2012-01-13T08:29:00.002-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCLXII

2012-01-06T10:33:00.000-05:00

State of the Pundigrion

2012-01-02T10:36:00.004-05:00

With the exception of last January, when I was in Australia and had (a) no internet and (b) far better things to do with my time, I usually start the new year with a round-up of the blog's stats.

This year it's kind of a depressing task, on the face of things, because after 2010's plunge to 149 posts over the year (from 209 the year before), I sank to a new, even lower low in 2011: 94 posts over the year, or one every 3.9 days. It's actually much worse than that, too, because most of those are Conversations With Greatness, and if you carve those out it works out to one actual post every 8 days—and, well, I'd be kidding myself if I said those posts were as good as they used to be.

As a result, I've seen a huge drop in traffic, from 16,058 pageviews in 2010 to only 9,193 in 2011. Now, admittedly my 2010 numbers included about 1,500 for just two days when I got linked on Language Log, but even if you carve those out you're still looking at a 35% drop in traffic. Sad face.

HOWEVER, I choose to be optimistic instead of depressed, for two reasons:

1. Even though I haven't been writing as much here, I've been getting published elsewhere all over the shop. In addition to my regular Good Men Project column, I've been editing (and writing) book reviews for the Ploughshares Blog, and edited and wrote an official blog for the Underbelly. I've also had one-off pieces published at The Rumpus, PANK, One New England, and even in print with DRAFT Magazine.

2. While overall traffic has decreased, traffic from particular segments has skyrocketed, so really I'm not losing readership so much as gaining a more focused one. (Gosh, don't you just love statistical euphemism?) For instance, in addition to a (sigh) continued increase in people Googling "recycling jokes," on the order of 600% or so over last year, I also had a 700% increase in people Googling the Fonz, and an ∞% increase in people searching for "communism jokes" (up from 0 in 2010). I also had a 70% drop in people searching for "obscure metaphor," which is a Blackburn Rovers New Year's Eve scoreline over Manchester United if ever I saw one.

Anyway, all of that to say: don't despair! In the coming year you can continue to expect more of my writing in other forums, and here on the blog more superlative communist jokes about the Fonz doing recycling than ever before. Starting with this one:

Q. Why did the Fonz separate his brown bottles from his green?
A. Glass consciousness.

SPLABANGO, dear readers, and goodnight.

Conversations With Greatness CCCLXI

2011-12-30T17:51:00.003-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCLX

2011-12-24T09:48:00.002-05:00

Headline of the Year

2011-12-21T22:09:00.004-05:00

He did it in the drawing room with the candlestick?

Conversations With Greatness CCCLIX

2011-12-16T08:14:00.000-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCLVIII

2011-12-09T08:35:00.001-05:00

An Open Letter to Emerson College (Part of a Continuing Series)

2011-12-04T16:07:00.001-05:00

Dear Emerson College,

That I am still on your faculty mailing list seven months after I taught my last class with you is only charmingly incompetent. However, that I am, it appears, simultaneously on your alumni shakedown phone list is infuriatingly incompetent.

Can you imagine how insulting it would have been had I actually still been teaching Freshman Writing (for $16,000 a year, with no benefits or job security), to be called on a Sunday afternoon and asked whether I would like to do my part to enhance the Emerson experience for its current students? Can you imagine how awkward it would have been for the FRESHMAN calling me if I had, in fact, currently been her teacher?

Seriously, Emerson, get it together. How hard is it to cross-check a couple of lists?

Sincerely,

A. Ladd

P.S. I read with satisfaction your updated diversity plan last month, from which you have at last removed your offensive "white/foreign/other" categories, so kudos on that. Also, that leads me to believe that you do actually pay attention to the open—and, indeed, closed—letters of complaint I write you, so I hope this one does the trick.

Conversations With Greatness CCCLVII

2011-12-02T10:19:00.000-05:00

Plus Ça Change...

2011-12-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times: Florida A&M University Student’s Death Turns Spotlight on Hazing

Man, is that spotlight mounted in a lighthouse, or what?

How many times does an American college student have to die from hazing before:

(a) People actually do something to stop hazing, or
(b) (Other) people stop being shocked that American college students die from hazing?

I mean, come on. There was an episode of ER ten years ago about frat kids dying from hazing; the spotlight has been and gone, several times. And yeah, hazing is terrible and the deaths it causes are tragic. So adopt university rules to expel anyone caught hazing and dismantle the organization under whose aegis the hazing took place. What's that? It would be unthinkable to dismantle our ~~money-making athletic teams~~ proud traditions? I guess we'll just have to keep putting up with occasional hazing deaths, then.

(N.B. This story is not about an athletic team, but boy!, is it about money-making!)

Also, somebody should do a study examining why British university students rarely do stuff this retarded.

Conversations With Greatness CCCLVI

2011-11-25T10:57:00.001-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCLV

2011-11-18T08:20:00.001-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCLIV

2011-11-11T10:59:00.000-05:00

Oh, So That's What The Internet Is For

2011-11-09T22:23:00.000-05:00

Don't ask me how I found this, but this Italian Jack Bauer fan blog is one of the funniest things I've seen all week. It's basically Chuck Norris facts, but with "Chuck Norris" replaced by "Jack Bauer", and the whole thing translated into Italian, complete with subtly Europeanised cultural references. For instance:

La Svizzera ha scelto di essere neutra per essere sicura di essere sempre e solo dalla parte di Jack Bauer. ("Switzerland decided to be neutral to make sure they would always be on Jack Bauer's side.")

Or:

Dopo aver torturato Copernico,Jack Bauer riuscì a fargli ammettere che il sistema solare non gira attorno al sole ma attorno a Jack Bauer. ("After torturing Copernicus, Jack Bauer forced him to admit that the solar system doesn't revolve around the sun—it revolves around Jack Bauer.")

But I think my favourite is still:

Jack Bauer non ha mai preso la licenza per guidare un elicottero,ma lo guida perfettamente.L’elicotterro ha paura di quello che potrebbe succedere se non coopera. ("Jack Bauer never got his helicopter pilot's license, but he can fly one perfectly anyway. The helicopter's afraid of what will happen if it doesn't cooperate.")

Also, I'm glad to see my early Italian exposure/college minor have finally come in handy.

Conversations With Greatness CCCLIII

2011-11-04T08:31:00.001-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCLII

2011-10-28T08:35:00.000-04:00

Making A Meal Of It

2011-10-25T08:29:00.000-04:00

I really don't want to attract yet more recycling traffic to my blog, but I really couldn't go without commenting on this.

From The New York Times: Lunch, Landfills and What I Tossed

It was warm and sunny on a recent Tuesday and the lunchtime crowd in Bryant Park was in full swarm. Hundreds of Midtown workers sat on the grass or at round outdoor tables sunbathing, talking on cellphones and typing away on laptops.

But mostly they ate — sushi, pizza, chicken pesto salads, turkey club sandwiches — and much of their food came in plastic containers that had no place to go but into the trash.

As any befuddled, frustrated and guilt-ridden environmentally conscious New Yorker knows, takeout food and its containers — salad bar and deli clamshells; plastic cups and utensils; yogurt containers; fancy three-compartment bento boxes — are the bane of this city’s would-be recyclers. They might reuse plastic shopping bags until they rip and religiously bundle every newspaper and magazine for recycling pickup, only to be undone by lunch.

“There’s nothing I can do,” said Doug Richardson, 25, an accountant eating a chicken salad from a deep plastic bowl.

Um, yes there is, person quoted in New York–section article that proceeds for another 2,500 words as if buying take-out for lunch every day is an unfortunate but completely inevitable facet of basic human biology: BRING YOUR OWN G-D LUNCH FROM HOME IN A REUSABLE CONTAINER.

What's that? No—you do have time. Plenty of time. Take the five minutes you spend standing in line at a fast food joint every lunch break and use it to make some sandwiches or scoop some leftovers into a tupperware in the morning, instead.

Oh, I see: you get the food delivered straight to your office precisely to save that precious time. Well, in that case, why don't you take the five minutes you spend every day feeling guilty about all the plastic crap with which you're clogging landfills, and use that to make yourself lunch?

By the way, if you don't think recycling is important that's fine with me, and knock yourself out ordering take-out three times a day. What pisses me off is this whiny liberal "oh-my-god-isn't-it-so-awful-what-we're-doing-to-the-planet-we-have-to-do-better-say-is-that-a-Thai-place" bullshit.

For God's sake, even if you just ordered extra take-out for dinner at night and then took the leftovers to work in a tupperware, you could at least drop the containers in your recycling bin at home instead of throwing them out in the disgustingly full trashcans in Bryant Park. Wait—what?

City officials say residents sort less than half of all materials that could be recycled [at home]; most items are improperly discarded in the trash.

FFS. Most sophisticated city in the world my eye.

Conversations With Greatness CCCLI

2011-10-21T10:17:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCL

2011-10-14T09:25:00.000-04:00

It's A Vicious Circle Made Out of Three Arrows

2011-10-13T21:04:00.004-04:00

Okay, so, in May of 2009 I wrote a post on this blog where I accused Saturday Night Live of recycling jokes. This seemed like such an innocuous, banal, and, ironically, unoriginal observation that I didn't think much of it. But then I started getting a bunch of Google traffic from searches for actual jokes about recycling, presumably from people writing the worst high school reports ever. So to indulge them, in June of 2009, I wrote another post with some actual jokes about recycling.

That was probably my downfall.

See, these jokes I wrote were bad. Intentionally bad, as a sort of meta-commentary on bad jokes. I just had a lot more spare time on my hands back then and thought I'd piss away a few minutes with some self-indulgent silliness.

Anyway, since then "recycling jokes" has pretty much constantly been my top search referral every month. Like, literally, each of the twenty-something months since June 2009, more people have come to my blog looking for recycling jokes than anything else. (This month my runner up search referrals were "anal retentive" and "kafkaesque," which seems strangely appropriate.)

And, I guess inevitably, an actual recycling website finally stumbled on that stupid post. AND MISSED THE WHOLE FREAKING POINT.

To wit, from Earth911.com: ‘Recycling is No Joke’ Video Contest Launches:

Q. Did you hear the one about the aluminium recycling plant? A. It smelt!

Think you have a better recycling joke than this?

Hey, Earth911.com: bite me. Of COURSE people have better recycling jokes than that, because none of my jokes were even really recycling jokes! They were pretentious postmodern meta-crap riffing on the predictability of a certain genre of humour. (Sorry about that, by the way.)

But since I'm apparently doomed to be read only by people who don't get that, here is an honest-to-God RECYCLING JOKE that I came up with all by myself:

Two plastic bottles walk into a bar with their dog, and the bartender says: "Sorry, we don't allow PET."

SPLABANGO! Now leave me the hell alone.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLIX

2011-10-07T08:32:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLVIII

2011-09-30T10:13:00.000-04:00

Arithmetic Fail

2011-09-29T17:33:00.000-04:00

What a bargain!

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLVII

2011-09-23T10:13:00.000-04:00

Breaking News From The U.N. General Assembly

2011-09-21T09:17:00.000-04:00

A broad delegation of over thirty developing countries interrupted proceedings at the United Nations General Assembly today, to protest their treatment at the hands of multinational corporations.

Ahmed Al-Medina, a delegate from Chad, spearheaded the demonstration. "It is simply unacceptable the way American business concerns continue to dominate the way Chadians live their everyday lives," he said.

That sentiment was echoed by a chorus of other African, South American, and Asian countries. "Enough is enough," said Davtavi Mirgonova, of Tajikistan. "Facebook has to stop fucking with the newsfeed layout. I have no idea anymore how to find out what my bitchy friend Kelly saw on the subway this morning."

"What the hell is this new 'things we think will interest you' feature?" added J.H. Ramasuvian, the Guyanese Secretary of the Interior Monologue. "Yeah, like I care about some high school friend I haven't seen in years having an argument with his wife!" Mr Ramsuvian proceeded to tweet his discontent.

Among American users of Facebook, reactions followed a different path. "I'm deeply concerned about Palestine's bid for membership in the U.N.," said Nick Painter, an IT analyst from Hoboken.

"OMG," added Pamela Dickinson, a freelance magazine writer from Iowa City. "Just saw that Somalia has the highest infant mortality rate in the world. WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING?"

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, failed to respond to pokes.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLVI

2011-09-16T10:12:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLV

2011-09-09T10:12:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLIV

2011-09-02T02:30:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLIII

2011-08-26T06:08:00.001-04:00

The Message of Most Environmental Literature, Really

2011-08-25T18:08:00.000-04:00

More fun with Information Is Beautiful (mouseover for punchline):

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLII

2011-08-19T09:00:00.002-04:00

Is It "Hanging Out With Comedians All The Time While Occasionally Trashing Them For No Good Reason"?

2011-08-12T07:06:00.002-04:00

On the radio this morning:

"Improvisation is rubbish. It's what you do when you're too lazy to write a script... Usually it's just someone and his girlfriend, and she can't improvise herself out of a paper bag... It's all just brain games... There's a term for something you do to make yourself feel good, and it's not improvisation."

Really, preeminent Fringe comedy critic Kate Copstick? Really? You're going to categorically dismiss an entire genre of comedy?

Tell you what: I will personally buy you a ticket to Showstopper, and then to Paul Merton's Impro Chums, and then I will even draft your apologetic retraction.

Gratuitous Qualifier of the Year Award

2011-08-09T19:45:00.002-04:00

Spotted in today's Metro:

Yes, I imagine these white girls were on their way to church or chess club or the Brownies or something. Is that a BlackBerry in her hand? I'm sure she's only using it to update the police on where the rioters are going next.

Meanwhile, from the New York Times:

The postponements offered a dramatic reminder of the pressures on Mr. Cameron and his colleagues to guarantee a peaceful environment for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

I believe they were also a dramatic reminder of HOW FUCKING AWFUL HIS STUPID AUSTERITY CUTS ARE! The OLYMPICS? Are you KIDDING me? ("Gosh, Tarquin, do you think my fencing tickets will still be valid after all this?") PERSPECTIVE, people!

Mr. Cameron, standing outside his office and residence at 10 Downing Street, said lawmakers would be called back from their summer recess for one day on Thursday to enable Parliament to assess the situation.

And I suspect most of that day will be spent trying to work out why all the rioters aren't also at their villas in Tuscany this month.

N.B. I have little sympathy for violence. But I have less sympathy for the people who think this entire thing is completely uncalled for, impossible to understand or justify, motivated by spite and/or stupidity, etc. If you ask me, the question everyone not rioting should be asking is: "If I, as a rational human being, feel like I would never be driven to act this way, what must life be like for these other rational human beings that they have?"

That, and: "Do you think my fencing tickets will still be valid after all this?"

Conversations With Greatness...

2011-08-05T06:59:00.001-04:00

...is once again on its two-week Fringe hiatus. It will return on August 19th.

In the meantime, I'm editing the new Underbelly blog, which you can find here. Please share, follow, tweet, tumbl, like, stumbleupon, digg, reddit—and, if you have any time left, maybe read a little, too.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXLI

2011-07-29T05:59:00.004-04:00

But Really, What Was I Expecting?

2011-07-26T19:46:00.002-04:00

When the first line in a movie is a masturbation joke, I don't expect great cinema. But man, I at least expect it not to go downhill from there. Not so the [commence joke made by most reviewers] aptly named [end joke] Horrible Bosses, which manages to plumb grotesque new troughs of misogyny and homophobia in its remaining ninety minutes.

Please note: the problem here is not that I can't take a joke. I even kind of like the premise, ridiculous though it is. But people have funny boss stories — heck, I have funny boss stories — that can stand without the gratuitous caricatures and exaggerations that the HB writers rely on.

Yeah, Kevin Spacey playing a dick is pretty funny, and Colin Farrell playing a dick (there I go again) is also pretty funny. But this isn't an SNL skit and the "this person is a dick" gag has quickly diminishing returns; in a movie caricatures eventually need to find some depth.

In the good ones, anyway. In the bad ones the filmmakers panic and just start ratcheting up the exaggeration — until you have Jennifer Aniston fellating a hot dog and Jamie Foxx as a video pirate named "Motherfucker". (This isn't some highbrow/lowbrow snobbery, by the way: I enjoyed I Love You, Man, which was also based on a thin premise and hopelessly exaggerated caricatures. But — ah-ha! — those caricatures eventually started acting like real people.)

But back to the misogyny and homophobia. Here are some things I think, as a rule, just don't need to happen in any movie, ever:

• Two men having an argument over who would be "more rape-able" in prison, especially when...

• The only female characters in the movie are instantly sexually available to the male characters at any time — as long as the male characters tell them they're pretty first.

• Any male characters who don't want to have sex with the (irredeemably-slutty-because-they-DO-want-to-have-sex) women are openly and repeatedly called gays, faggots, or pussies.

• Etc. Did I mention Jennifer Aniston fellates a hot dog?

The sad thing is, a lot of the stars of the movie are legitimately talented actors or legitimately talented comedians (or both), and with so many of them working together it's hard not to, natch, legitimately enjoy a scene every now and then. There are some moments here that I found genuinely entertaining — and this was at the height of my feminist disgust. If only they could have replaced the rape jokes (and the product placement, sweet Jesus the product placement!) with some actual storytelling, I would have been all set.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXL

2011-07-22T07:26:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXIX

2011-07-15T08:41:00.002-04:00

Tell Me More

2011-07-14T09:24:00.002-04:00

From the New York Times: Bernanke Warns of ‘Calamity’ if Debt Deal Is Not Reached

So, with the deadline for raising the U.S. debt ceiling fast approaching, negotiations are growing—if you can possibly believe this—even more stubborn and partisan and unyielding. And one Republican senator seems to have identified why:

"Our problem is, we made a big deal about this for three months," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

"How many Republicans have been on TV saying, 'I am not going to raise the debt limit,' " said Mr. Graham, including himself in the mix of those who did so. "We have no one to blame but ourselves."

Wait, so you mean there's more to governance than just appearing on news channels all the fucking time and generating soundbites you can use in an election campaign? FASCINATING.

Anyway, having dug themselves into this stupid, dick-swinging hole, and riling up all the nutbag Tea Party freshmen in the House in the process, the senior Republican brass are, natch, beginning to realize that they are at the bottom of a stupid, dick-swinging hole. So rather than channelling their energy into a constructive solution to the budget negotiations, they are wasting it trying to find a face-saving handhold with which they can hoist themselves towards non-culpability and re-election. Here's what they came up with:

An elaborate process where Congress would vote to disapprove instead of approve a debt limit request. That would allow the president to raise the debt ceiling via a successful veto of the disapproval.

It's like Kabuki fucking theatre! If the Republicans think it's such a bad idea not to raise the debt ceiling, why not just raise the debt ceiling?

[Republican leader Mitch] McConnell said in an interview with the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham... "All of the sudden we have co-ownership of the economy. That is a very bad position going into the election."

I believe it might also have consequences FOR THE FUCKING ECONOMY!

I'll be honest, though: the thing that I find most distasteful about the whole situation is that, as usual, rather than calling out any of this bullshit, the Democrats are sitting quietly and in fact suggesting that such a time-wasting, ridiculous piece of political manoeuvring is a "real option."

NO! NO IT IS NOT! BAD DEMOCRATS! BAD REPUBLICANS! YOU SLEEP OUTSIDE NOW! Hasn't it occurred to anyone that if a group of people—Democrats and Republicans alike—have led the country to the point where Moody's wants to downgrade its credit rating, maybe they DON'T ACTUALLY DESERVE TO BE RE-ELECTED?

FFS.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXVIII

2011-07-08T09:33:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXVII

2011-07-01T12:21:00.001-04:00

Packaging Fail

2011-06-28T12:09:00.003-04:00

See if you can guess what I ordered that arrived in this enormous box today.

How about now?

Last chance...

(Answer after the jump.)

Yup. Three 12x16 enlargements. What's the matter, RitzPix.com? Haven't you ever heard of an ENVELOPE?

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXVI

2011-06-24T09:58:00.001-04:00

Definitely the Low Road

2011-06-23T14:33:00.003-04:00

From multiple outraged British news outlets: Couple's dream road trip in US turns to nightmare after pair are jailed

A SCOTTISH couple have told of their "traumatic" ordeal after being imprisoned in a US detention centre for inadvertently overstaying the terms of their visa during a dream road trip across the country.

So, basically what happened is: they were in the States on a standard ninety-day visa waiver; they crossed into Canada for a few days, and when they crossed back over to the States they thought the ninety days would restart—which is incorrect, as far as I can tell, though the U.S. government website(s) on the matter are spectacularly unhelpful. (The couple claim it was the border patrol's fault for not stamping their passport when they re-entered the U.S. from Canada.)

Anyway, after the initial ninety days were up, they happened to be driving along the Mexican border (what a trip!), when several border guards there arrested them as illegal aliens, questioned them for five hours, and then threw them in jail for five weeks until they could be deported.

Unfortunately, before they were arrested, they had already succeeded in stealing an unknown number of American jobs, driving up the cost of social services, raising the crime rate, trafficiking in illegal drugs, and destroying the pristine American borderlands with their trash and filth. They also, naturally, set some fires in Arizona.

Incidentally, another shocking revelation in this story is the state of Scottish journalism. One paper has the husband as 56, one as 57, and one as 75; one has them living in Inverness, one in Newtonmore (about 45 miles from Inverness), one in Newto*w*nmore, and one hedges its bets and says "the Highlands". (The Daily Mail just has them as "Britons," though I think that says more about the Daily Mail than it does about Scottish journalism.)

Anyway, while this couple was undoubtedly a little dim when it came to understanding U.S. immigration law, and technically CBP probably didn't do anything wrong, you have to wonder about a "functional" system that treats anyone this way. (Though it will be very sad if it takes two old white people getting mistreated to finally cause meaningful reform.) Sigh.

More Ahht

2011-06-20T14:09:00.000-04:00

The latest addition to my continuing series of artsy (read: black and white) pictures of Boston, taken during the Bruins Stanley Cup victory parade this weekend.

HuffPo: Your Source For Unintentional Irony

2011-06-19T17:02:00.001-04:00

Jon Stewart appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace today for a thoughtful, twenty-five-minute interview, which covered a number of different issues related to media bias, media activism, and his role (or non-role) in the political process. Here's how HuffPo covered it:

And also:

Now, technically it is 100% accurate to say that Stewart called Wallace insane. And later in the interview, once they'd moved to a different topic, he also had a few seconds that I would characterize as "going off" (he asked Wallace why polls "consistently" show Fox News viewers as the least well-informed of all Americans).

But Stewart also told Wallace that he respected him, and found him to be a tough and fair interviewer — and ultimately suggested that Wallace had been placed on Fox News as a reasonable and balanced counterpoint to its more extreme pundits (Beck, Hannity, etc.), precisely so that the network could point to him as "journalism" rather than "opinion."

The two also joked around and acted like good friends, as they also do when Wallace appears on The Daily Show.

So characterizing the interview as a "heated" "face off" (N.B. aren't all interviews "face offs," strictly speaking?), in which Stewart "goes off" and primarily pushes the opinion that Wallace is a nutbag is, well... Totally inaccurate and sensationalist.

On the other hand, here's something Stewart spends several minutes talking about:

24-hour news networks are built for one thing, and that's 9/11, and the type of gigantic news event that the type of apparatus that exists in this building and exists at the other 24-hour news networks is perfectly suited to cover.

In the absence of that, they're not just going to say "there's not that much that's urgent or important or conflicted that's happening today." [Instead, they say] "so we are going to gin up, we are going to bring forth more conflict and more sensationalism, because we want you to continue watching us 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, even when the news doesn't necessarily warrant that type of behavior."

...That's sensationalist and somewhat lazy. But I don't understand how that's partisan... It's a form of subtle misinformation.

Strangely, this quote (which I had to transcribe myself) did not appear in the HuffPo article, probably because the level of cognitive dissonance required for the writer to include it would have caused Manhattan to sink into the ocean.

Sigh...

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXV

2011-06-17T11:29:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXIV

2011-06-10T08:08:00.002-04:00

Not Going To Make A Weiner Pun, Not Going To Make A Weiner Pun...

2011-06-09T12:00:00.000-04:00

From BBC News: Anthony Weiner scandal: Democrats call for ethics probe

Poor, poor Anthony Weiner.

No, really: I'm on his side, here. He's just the victim of plain bad luck for gaining public office in the pre-sexting era. Had he known about the ridiculously easy, anonymous, irresistible opportunities to indulge his libido that would emerge within a decade of his election, maybe he would have thought twice about it.

Does that sound glib? Facetious? It's not meant to. Weiner's far from the only guy to send dirty pictures of himself over the internet, after all, and I'm not just talking about Brett Favre and that other congressman from a few months ago. Haven't you seen the news these days? Teens are doing it, too. College students are doing it. And I'm sure a whole bunch of other people Weiner/Lee/Favre's age are doing it, men and women alike. (Women, in point of fact, are making dirty movies — and no, celebrity sex tapes are of course not meant for public consumption, but then, neither were Weiner's pictures.)

And yes, okay, Weiner is married, and yes, okay, our public officials should know better. At least, that's the standard line. But honestly, Clinton did much worse, and he still got re-elected, salvaged his marriage, and is generally seen as a stand-up, charitable guy these days. Talk about mixed messages!

In any case, it seems evident to me that sending dirty pictures of yourself over the internet is, for better or for worse, just part of everyday life these days, and it would be more productive, instead of exploding in moral panic every time we're confronted with evidence that people actually LIKE doing this, to have a frank discussion about how we ought to adjust our values in response.

I'm not saying that all of what Weiner did is okay: sending unsolicited and unwanted dirty pictures of yourself in the predatory manner that Weiner occasionally seems to have done still feels wrong to me.

But — and this is doubtless my sociology degree talking — when the same thing happens THIS MANY TIMES in the course of a year or two, I tend to think that moral and sexual corruption among otherwise unrelated public figures is a less convincing explanation than a society that just can't get its head out of its ass about what it's really like. People enjoy sex, we provide thousands of different ways to indulge sexual urges, and then we get annoyed whenever someone doesn't stick to the one, highly circumscribed way of doing so that we inherited from a bunch of religious Victorians? How is that reasonable?

So, yes: poor Anthony Weiner. Yes, he pursued women too aggressively, and for that he should be punished. But otherwise his only crime is being a person who has a high sex drive and is also passionate enough about his values that he wanted to run for office and actually do something to change the world. What a dick, right?

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXIII

2011-06-03T16:36:00.002-04:00

It's Ahht, You Retahhd!

2011-06-02T11:47:00.000-04:00

Since I'm probably moving to New York in the fall, I thought I'd spend the next few weeks taking some nostalgic, artsy-fartsy pictures of Boston to decorate my apartment(/cardboard box/underpass) there.

Also, since I'm still having a hard time updating my blog as frequently as I'd like, I thought I'd reproduce them here and kill two birds with one stone.

That expression has really taken on new meaning in this post–Angry Birds era.

(In the Bud Light line at Fenway)

(We start 'em young in Boston)

(Nice and Slow)

(Yawkey Way)

(Yooouuuk!)

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXII

2011-05-27T09:05:00.000-04:00

Beer Summit, Pt. 2

2011-05-24T10:40:00.013-04:00

From The Herald Sun (and many, many others): Barack Obama bonds with Irish crowds over pints of Guinness

I could sit here and make witty commentary all day, but it hardly seems worth it when I can just list ACTUAL THINGS THAT HAPPENED that make Obama out to be a caricature of himself. To wit:

Gazing out over a massive crowd, the president proclaimed Ireland would overcome a crisis which saw it go cap-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund and European Union for a bailout by roaring "Is Feidir Linn", his famed slogan "Yes We Can" in Gaelic.

In the same speech, Obama also reused his frankly awful Obama/O'Bama joke about Irish heritage from his 2008 campaign. (Yup, I'm paying attention.)

Then, from The Australian:

The secret service advance team spent weeks in Moneygall before the trip and ordered its entire population to leave yesterday and return through metal detectors.

Ireland: where you can pass an entire town through a metal detector in a single morning.

Also, I know it's not unheard of to call Guinness "the black stuff," but do people have to keep referring to it that way in this news story? From the Globe:

Christy O'Sullivan, a government clerical worker who was taking a long lunch break to watch live TV coverage of Obama's visit... [said,] "he's the first president I've actually seen drink the black stuff like he's not ashamed of something."

Obama reportedly finished his pint in just four sips, then engaged in some other typical Irish pub behaviour.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXXI

2011-05-20T11:10:00.002-04:00

A Pop Science Fiasco (Including Some All-New Steven Pinker Bashing)

2011-05-19T11:45:00.005-04:00

If you follow my writing at the Good Men Project, you'll know that I recently reviewed A Billion Wicked Thoughts, a new pop psychology book about sexual desire by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. Basic summary: biologically, men are more interested in sex, and women in emotions, because it was advantageous for us to have evolved this way.

I mowed down the book at GMP without doing much background research, mainly because I didn't have to — on the basis of what I know about experimental design and evolutionary psychology (henceforth EP) I had plenty of ammunition to be getting on with. Ogas and Gaddam's argument is just plain messy.

But I dropped the ball by not digging deeper because, man, there is some seriously screwed up history to this research project that is a lot more troubling than its dubious EP conclusions.

The story begins in the first half of 2009, when Ogas and Gaddam signed a book deal with Dutton. I can't find an exact date, but given that their agent's blog mentions the deal in July 2009, it can't have been any later. (At that point the book was called Rule 34 and slated for release in 2010.)

Here appears the first ethical murkiness: in August 2009 — i.e. after signing their contract — Ogas and Gaddam allegedly began contacting fan fiction authors across the web asking them to take part in a survey for the book. [Update: if you look at the timeline they present in the book, they actually didn't start doing ANY research until after the book deal.] Now, for certain kinds of nonfiction there's nothing wrong with doing research after you have a publishing deal. Who wants to spend weeks holed up in an archive somewhere if nobody's going to print your findings?

But for scientific studies there's obviously a big problem with it: conflict of interest. If a publisher is agreeing to print your book at a certain time — and, probably, has already paid you some money for it — well, you have to come up with some impressive results, fast, and that kind of incentive seriously jeopardizes scientific disinterest. (This assumes, of course, that you're not a fire-breathing cultural studies leftist who doesn't believe science can be disinterested to begin with).

Anyway, that's problem number one, which on its own would probably scupper the project in an ethics board review. But according to some of the people Ogas and Gaddam allegedly contacted, the survey had far deeper problems: it used human subjects without proper release or protection, it asked needlessly invasive questions, it made no real attempt to ensure subjects were of legal age, etc., etc.

That's probably why, when contacted for comment, the Institutional Review Board at Boston University, where Ogas and Gaddam received their PhDs, allegedly told offended subjects that the study was not affiliated with the institution and had no IRB approval.

Ogas and Gaddam don't actually deny this:"we intentionally conducted our research outside of academia, without federal funding," they said in an interview, and hence did not technically require IRB approval. Their explanation for why they chose to do so sounds plausible, I suppose, but strikes me as disingenuous since a survey like this would probably never get the go-ahead, at least not within their desired parameters or the timeframe demanded by their publisher:

We intentionally conducted our research outside of academia, without federal funding, in order to remain independent from the fierce tempest of ideological, social, and political pressures that besets the contemporary study of sexuality.

They also add that "we did not directly study human subjects," that "there is no original survey data in our book," and that "we neither requested nor received identifying information about individuals." One wonders about the ontological mechanics of not requesting things from individuals you never surveyed to begin with.

In any case, none of this jibes particularly well with the fanfic authors' accounts, detailed here, which claim that Ogas and Gaddam at the very least attempted to generate original survey data gleaned directly from human subjects, regardless of whether or not it actually appeared in the book. And if that makes their explanation sound like legalese wrangling, the acknowledgements section in A Billion Wicked Thoughts gives a possible reason why:

We'd like to thank the publishing professionals who made this book possible, including attorney Gary Mailman.

Since when were attorneys listed as "publishing professionals" before copy editors and editorial assistants?!

Of course, the nature of the internet makes it difficult to corroborate the fanfic version of events. The LiveJournal account allegedly belonging to Ogas has been deactivated, and all the evidence of the survey now exists in the form of screen grabs and copy/pastes archived by other LiveJournal users who were offended by the survey and clearly have some motivation for assassinating Ogas and Gaddam's character.

But the sheer depth of some of this documentation makes me wonder why anyone would go to the trouble of fabricating it, and good grief, if it's legit it's horrifying. Ogas and Gaddam allegedly based the survey on methodologically dubious research questions like:

How is straight female interest in slash fiction like straight male interest in shemale models?

Their survey questions, meanwhile, were allegedly altered halfway through the study, and in any case were just as methodologically dubious, e.g.:

Do you enjoy fan fiction that involves a character changing his or her gender?

[Leading question; more meaningful data would be generated by asking "What do you enjoy about fan fiction?"], or:

What proportion of of the fanfic that you read contains explicit sexual content?

[Unreliable question; no sound empirical basis for comparing user-reported "proportions", and in any case definitions of "explicit" will change from respondent to respondent.]

When respondents attempted to address these shortcomings with Ogas and Gaddam, the researchers apparently became insulting and abusive and ultimately shut down the survey altogether.

Again, much of this is difficult to corroborate since it comes down to a "he says"/"she says" argument about survey materials whose originals no longer exist in the public domain. But here's what's on the record:

1. They signed a contract agreeing to publish their results before ~~all~~ any of their research had been conducted.

2. They deliberately conducted said research without institutional affiliation or IRB approval.

That would be fine if the book weren't presented as scientific research, but it is, and as is often the case with "research" about sex, A Billion Wicked Thoughts has been gleefully reported on by media outlets everywhere as if the book's conclusions are Hard Fact.

But that simply isn't true, and I wonder why the scientific community is going along with it. None other than scientific media messiah Steven Pinker graces the cover with his praise:

In a stroke of ingenuity, Ogas and Gaddam circumvent the deepest limitation of standard psychological surveys: that they merely tap undergraduates’ socially acceptable responses, a flaw nowhere more damaging than in the touchy realm of sexuality. A Billion Wicked Thoughts is a goldmine of information about this hugely important topic.

Since the main thing Ogas and Gaddam circumvented about standard psychology was the very framework designed to make it reliable and ethical, and since the "goldmine of information" thus rendered is empirically suspect, it seems like Pinker must either not have scrutinized the book's research very closely, or scrutinized it but decided that there was nothing wrong with publishing non-institutional research under the aegis of science.

Either way, that seems to imply a sort of two-tier system of research: the "real," institutional research that only "real" scientists need to know about, and the "pop" research that keeps the general public distracted and so doesn't need to be that rigorous or purged of ideological motivation.

And either way, that strikes me as deeply problematic. What gives, Pinker?

Strauss-KAAAAAAAHHHHHN!

2011-05-16T09:55:00.001-04:00

Seen on AOL News:

What is this, eye-for-an-eye justice? You couldn't have said "picked out"?

Also, the head of the IMF sexually assaulting an African hotel maid is definitely not what I thought my economic sociology professors meant when they said the IMF was trying to screw the developing world.

So how awful is this scandal? Well, a former spokesperson for Nicolas Sarkozy described it as a "historical moment, in negative terms, in French politics," which is pretty darn bad coming from a country that was occupied by the Nazi party.

The bad news for Strauss-Kahn is that, as a Frenchman, if he'd only directed a few Oscar-nominated films this totally wouldn't be an issue.

...

I'm beginning to think that I should have become a late night show monologue writer.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXX

2011-05-13T12:33:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXIX

2011-05-06T14:50:00.002-04:00

Bin-La-De-Da

2011-05-02T14:53:00.000-04:00

Since I have a day off today, I thought I'd do everyone a favour and select the most important pieces of bin Laden coverage.

From The Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, Missouri): A complex wine for a complex world:

I knew it was more than rumor when New York Times assistant managing editor tweeted, “NYT reporting now that the White House says Bin Laden is dead.”

Celebrations started instantly.… It was certainly an event to be noted.

I decided to note it with a 1982 Château Prieuré-Lichine Bordeaux from Margaux.…

Sure, opening this dark garnet wine doesn’t seem as American as popping the top off a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but the oaky, earthy and berry-filled liquid was certainly more complex. Osama bin Laden’s death was a complicated happening, it provided closure for some and gave others reason to celebrate but with both tempered by uneasiness about the future. The wine is more complex, like the world we live in and more complex like the problems we face.

FREEDOM FRIES.

From CTV.ca: Bin Laden death prompts warning for Canadians abroad

The federal government is warning Canadians abroad to avoid public gatherings or protests that may turn violent in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. forces.

Also, make sure you have your Canadian flag patches sewn onto your backpacks.

From NBC Bay Area: Dead or Alive, Bin Laden Can Hurt Your PC

Osama Bin Laden may be dead but cyber terrorists are not.…

Malware related to bin Laden's death began surfacing on the web within hours of President Barack Obama's announcement Sunday evening.

On the NBC Bay Area website you can also read their other top story — "Dramatic Hair Transformations: Scarlett Johansson Goes Red" — and answer a survey asking whether the news about bin Laden makes you feel "Sad", "Thrilled", "Bored", "Furious", "Intrigued", or, surrealist answer number six, "Laughing". ("I feel laughing!")

From The Washington Post: How to talk to kids about Osama bin Laden

The killing of Osama bin Laden was celebrated in loud, spontaneous celebrations last night and this morning across front pages and on the morning news. Meanwhile, many children are bewildered.

So: calm, mature conversation = good. Strobe lights and rubber Osama masks = bad.

From WBUR Boston: In Boston, Hundreds Gather After News Of Bin Laden's Death

Norm Lang heard the news at work. He was cooking at a restaurant in Kenmore Square when a coworker busted through the swinging doors of the kitchen.

“He come running in the back (sic), he’s like: ‘Yo, they got him! They got him! Found Osama dead, man! Obama got Osama.’ And I was like heck yeah,” Lang said.

Lang then did what any normal person would do under the circumstances.

He grabbed a cowbell… he ran out under the Citgo sign and he started ringing it and didn’t stop for 15 minutes.

Don't fear the reaper, man.

Playtime

2011-04-30T12:17:00.001-04:00

Last night, because I apparently have trouble progressing past a mental age of eight, I went to a puppet theatre to watch a show.

Actually, though the play had a few shadow puppet skits throughout, it was for the most part a "normal" play, "The Misery Play", starring real actors from Emerson's acting department (and directed by a graduate of Emerson's theatre education program).

Now, usually when I see Emerson acting students it's in the writing classes I teach, and to be honest I didn't have much idea what to expect — so I was pleasantly surprised by the genuine talent onstage, particularly Lindsay HR, who managed the difficult task of playing a mature, emotionally exhausted character despite being a baby-faced, wide-eyed twenty-something herself (the latter I may be projecting slightly, but still, playing older ain't easy).

Mostly, though, I enjoyed the play's aesthetics: an evocative soundtrack, interesting staging, creative props and costumes, and of course, despite a few technical glitches, the shadow puppets. (There's also a sock puppet, if you like that kind of thing.)

It's one for one more night — Sunday May 1st at 7pm, at the Puppet Showplace Theatre in Brookline Village — so if you don't already have plans for celebrating the international labour movement, well, what could be better than supporting those most downtrodden and under-appreciated of workers: actors?

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXVIII

2011-04-29T06:47:00.002-04:00

Trumped Up

2011-04-26T08:33:00.001-04:00

From AOL News: Trump Bashes Obama as 'Terrible Student':

Real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended....

"I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard," Trump said.

I'm not going to legitimate Trump's "campaign" by responding seriously to any of the silly things he's saying here. I'm not even going to make a joke about his hairpiece. I just wanted to share this quote:

"The last guy [Obama] wants to run against is Donald Trump."

Yup, and I think we're all with him on that. Please don't sully electoral politics any further by actually putting your name on a ballot. Thanks.

Where There's A Wills...

2011-04-24T22:44:00.000-04:00

In a stroke of genius this evening, Mallory and Betsy and I decided to watch the Lifetime William & Kate movie. (Betsy's gentleman friend Dan reluctantly joined us.) We spent most of the time coming up with funny euphemisms for William's genitals, e.g.:

His Tower of London
His Big Ben
The Royal We(iner)
Prince Willy
His heir to the bone

We also decided that the only thing better than the Lifetime Wills and Kate movie would be a movie about Wills and Kate watching the Wills and Kate movie.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXVII

2011-04-22T14:21:00.000-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXVI

2011-04-15T09:38:00.001-04:00

Maybe He Realized He'd Left His Pork Offal Meatballs In The Oven

2011-04-14T14:46:00.000-04:00

From ESPN: Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant fined $100,000 for directing gay slur at ref

Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 by the NBA on Wednesday for a gay slur that commissioner David Stern called "offensive and inexcusable."

After receiving a technical foul during Tuesday's game against the San Antonio Spurs, Bryant stormed to the bench, hit his seat before sitting down, threw a towel and then yelled "Bennie!" toward referee Bennie Adams. Bryant then leaned back and muttered a gay slur.

Okay, Kobe. Quite apart from the fact that it's embarrassing to watch a grown man act like such a fucking baby, you are a grotesque example of a human being. What's your excuse for this again?

"My actions were out of frustration during the heat of the game, period," he said. "The words expressed do NOT reflect my feelings towards the gay and lesbian communities and were NOT meant to offend anyone."

Oh, right. So you're saying that if that lanky white guy the Celtics have now gets frustrated during the playoffs and calls you a [racial slur beginning with N redacted], you'd be okay with that? Because he'd be frustrated? And because it totally wouldn't perpetuate a cultural environment that legitimates discrimination against minority groups? Frankly, Kobe, I'm pretty frustrated with you right now, but I'd still never dream of calling you that — because it's fucking offensive, period. And if there's one situation, actually, when using slurs is probably the worst thing you can do, it's when you're angry. Because, um — hello? — it's anger towards minority groups that ends up getting people killed.

"The comment that I made, even though it wasn't meant in the way it was perceived to be, is nonetheless wrong, so it's important to own that," Bryant said.

Well, at least you're taking responsibil—

...He also said that he will appeal the fine.

Oh, FFS.

Annals of Microsoft Incompetence

2011-04-12T19:37:00.000-04:00

The spellchecker on my version of Word doesn't recognize "dystopia". You're not fooling anyone, Gates.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXV

2011-04-08T09:12:00.001-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXIV

2011-04-01T12:03:00.001-04:00

Flipping The Invisible Bird

2011-03-29T18:53:00.000-04:00

From the New York Times: Amber Waves to Ivory Bolls

We all need to eat, right? But we also all need to buy $6 t-shirts from H&M whenever we like. So instead of planting traditional food crops this year, American farmers are taking advantage of a global rise in cotton prices and ditching their corn, wheat, and soybeans. You, see:

“There’s a lot more money to be made in cotton right now,” said Ramon Vela, a farmer here in the Texas Panhandle, as he stood in a field where he grew wheat last year, its stubble now plowed under to make way for cotton. Around the first week of May, Mr. Vela, 37, will plant 1,100 acres of cotton, up from 210 acres a year ago. “The prices are the big thing,” he said. “That’s the driving force.”

Let me be clear: I'm not blaming the farmers. Everyone has to make a decent living somehow, especially with food prices rising because fewer people are growing food (!!!).

No, the culprit here is free market BS that assumes a disparate collection of farmers all around the globe, with no common organization or interest, will continue to grow the things we actually need to live out of their own self-interest. WRONG! They will grow what makes them rich out their own self-interest, because, hey, they're farmers: they can grow their own damn food.

So listen up, conservative free market BS peddlers: instead of trying to regulate social issues like sex ed and abortions, the result of which is larger populations and consequently a need for more food, put all your energy into regulating the global food supply so that there are always enough people growing enough things for everyone on the planet to eat. (While you're at it, why don't you regulate the evil pharmaceutical companies that make access to contraceptives so difficult? Their greedy self-interest is also not doing the planet any favours.)

Thank you. I expect a box of Shredded Wheat in my pantry when I get home tonight.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXIII

2011-03-25T15:26:00.002-04:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXII

2011-03-18T10:34:00.001-04:00

If The Shoe Fitz...

2011-03-17T17:39:00.005-04:00

As you probably know, I find St Patrick's Day ridiculous. Mostly that's because I don't even remember being aware of its existence until I moved to America, but it also strikes me as weird to celebrate Irish culture by doing something as arbitrary as wearing green — which nobody actually does all that much in Ireland, to my knowledge.

So here are some alternative, more meaningful ways to celebrate Ireland this year:

•Run yourself into billions of dollars of debt by building more houses for yourself than you could ever possibly need.

•Play a bizarre and often violent sport whose rules and/or point seems to defy explanation.

•Be the twentieth-largest island in the world.

•Let a bunch of foreigners into your home to help do some renovations, then be unreasonably angry when you decide you don't want the renovations after all and the people won't leave without being fed.

•Walk around town enabling as many alcoholics as you can by claiming that excessive drinking is part of your cultural heritage.

I am a curmudgeon. And now I am going to a bar to drink excessively. HOWEVER, that is because I drink excessively EVERY Thursday.

And because, you know, I'm Scottish and that's part of my cultural heritage.

Whatever Happened To "Can I Buy You A Drink?"

2011-03-15T08:26:00.002-04:00

I think AOL is trying out a sleazy pick-up line on me:

Conversations With Greatness CCCXXI

2011-03-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

I Believe That's What They Call A Dubble Entender

2011-03-09T10:22:00.002-05:00

From AOL The Boot: Trace Adkins Apologizes for 'Brown Chicken Brown Cow'

Trace Adkins has sold more than seven million albums and scored 22 Top 10 singles . . .

His previous hits run the spectrum from 'Hot Mama' to 'You're Gonna Miss This,' as well as comedic tunes including 'Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.' But it's his new single, 'Brown Chicken Brown Cow,' from his latest CD, 'Cowboy's Back in Town,' that has the burly singer red in the face. . . .

The song, [whose title] is actually the punch line to a sexual joke that dates back to porn movies in the 1970s, has caused quite a stir among formerly loyal fans.

Interesting side note: one of the song's writers is named Casey Beathard.

Also, though this story makes it sound as if Adkins wrote an innocent, heartwarming paean to his favourite barnyard animals, which only happened to be the punchline to a porn joke, that isn't even close to the truth.

To demonstrate my point, I will now provide a tongue-in-cheek Marxist cultural studies reading of the lyrics:

Bobby Joel and Betty got a real nice farm
Everybody knows that they work real hard
Bobby Joel sweatin' in the noonday sun
Betty right beside him 'til the work's all done

So far, so good, right? Here we see the classic configuration of the capitalist promise — hard work will get you a real nice farm — coupled with an irresistible heteronormalising narrative about a wife standing by her "sweatin' " (read: working; read: breadwinning) husband. Adkins is playing on a listener's expectations of the genre to disarm them, creating what looks like a "standard" country song, before introducing a twist that therefore becomes all the more shocking:

But every now and then they get a strong desire
To crawl up in the hay and set the barn on fire

This couplet is clearly an incitement to revolution, though there is some ambiguity as to whether Adkins is in favour of a more individual revolution — reading "strong desire" as a reassertion of species-being, i.e. our natural proclivities breaking free of their alienating capitalist fetters — or to a wider revolution based on destroying the very means of capitalist production, or "setting the barn on fire". Close reading of the following lines, however, suggests that Adkins gravitates more towards the former:

Now the hay needs haulin', the hogs need slop
The corn needs cuttin' but the tractor's stopped
They climbin' up the ladder, clear to the loft
Shuckin those dirty ol' work clothes off

Here our synecdochic proletariat's goal is less to destroy their capitalist "hog" oppressors than to ignore them, channelling their (re)productive energies away from "shuckin" "corn", and instead into "shuckin those dirty ol' work clothes" — yet another metaphor for the reclamation of their species-being. Like Orwell's Winston and Julia, who defy the strictures of their authoritarian society by having sexual intercourse in the "loft" of an antiques shop, Bobby Joel and Betty are here defying their capitalist strictures in equal measure — and the intent of the Orwellian allusion is confirmed by the song's chorus:

Singin' brown chicken brown cow
(Ain't nobody watchin' but the)
Brown chicken brown cow

And so, having successfully ignored the imperative to work — thus crippling, at least in part, the machinery of their oppression — "nobody is watchin' " anymore: not the implicit "Big Brother", nor the implicit, corrupt "hogs" of Orwell's other masterpiece, Animal Farm. Indeed, the only animals left watching are the brown chicken and the brown cow, who, as equally oppressed "workers" in the capitalist system — at least inasmuch as they also have profit extracted from them — serve as yet another stand-in for the (now liberated) proletariat.

In summary: Obamacare.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXX

2011-03-04T13:56:00.000-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXIX

2011-02-25T12:27:00.001-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXVIII

2011-02-18T14:40:00.001-05:00

The Most Outstanding Sentence of the Year

2011-02-17T16:38:00.002-05:00

From AOL Health: UCLA Scientists Identify Possible Baldness Cure

There is just so much ridiculous packed into this one sentence I can't even attempt to process it all at once:

"Our findings show that a short-duration treatment with this compound causes an astounding long-term hair regrowth in chronically stressed mutant mice,' Million Mulugeta, an adjunct professor of medicine in the division of digestive diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a corresponding author of the research, said in a statement.

1. "Chronically stressed mutant mice." Unsuccessful spin-off of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

2. "Million Mulugeta." Made-up name. It HAS to be! It's too amazing to be real.

3. "David Geffen School of Medicine." Affiliated with the Joan Rivers School of Law and the Alfred Knopf School of Hairdressing. What?

All These Jokes Have Probably Been Made Already

2011-02-15T09:01:00.002-05:00

From BBC News: Larry the cat joins David Cameron in Downing Street

David Cameron has welcomed a cat to Downing Street in an effort to deal with No 10's rat problem.

What, is he deathly allergic to cats or something? HEY-OH!

According to Downing Street, the animal has "a high chase-drive and hunting instinct", developed during his time on the streets.

Incidentally, Robin Cook had the same thing.

He is the latest in a long line of Downing Street cats, known unofficially as Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office.

Officially: Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Humphrey was adopted in 1989 after wandering into No 10 as a stray while Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

Jesus. How bad must the London streets be for stray cats if they'd rather live with Margaret Thatcher?

Downing Street has also suggested that Larry might be consulted to help slash the budget.

SPLABANGO!

Conversations With Greatness CCCXVII

2011-02-11T10:24:00.003-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXVI

2011-02-04T06:36:00.000-05:00

Someone Should Get Them A Collar

2011-02-03T19:21:00.000-05:00

Or is it meant to be some kind of Red Hot Chili Peppers reference? DAOAFDA?

Letterman, Eat Your Heart Out

2011-02-03T15:08:00.002-05:00

Top ten panels this year at AWP, the annual writers conference:

10. "People Who Mumble Into Microphones: A Panel Discussion"

9. "Making Your Manuscript The Best It Can Be: How to Kill Your Darlings, Really Make Your Prose Shine, Read Your Manuscript As if it Were Someone Else's, and Other Tips For Getting Published"

8. "Ekphrasis: Your Guide To The Word That Is In At Least One Panel Title Every Year"

7. "Women Writers Writing Women's Writing About Women: A Reading"

6. "Come Hear The Editor of a Prestigious Journal Make Jokes About What It Takes To Get Published In Their Journal, In the Hope That Attending Will, In Fact, Get You Published In It"

5. "Life At A Fledgling Lit Journal: A Roundtable Discussion With The Editors of Broken Coffepot Review, Dirtboob, Julianna Baggot, and Tumbleweed Fortune Teller"

4. "Look, Other People Get Rejected Too! Group Catharsis As Affirmation of Self-Worth"

3. "Is e-Publishing Killing The Publishing Industry Any More Than When We Couldn't Arrive At A Definite Answer Last Year?"

2. "Is It Really Possible To Teach Writing? Writing Teachers and Their Successful Students Reflect"

And, of course...

1. "Oh, Shit, I Forgot I Signed Up For This Thing: Four Panelists on the Importance of Not Agreeing to Panels on the Last Night of the Previous Year's Conference"

Poor CNN! Did You Make A Boo-Boo?

2011-02-02T12:27:00.001-05:00

From PopEater.com: Anderson Cooper Attacked By Protesters in Egypt

Anderson Cooper and his crew were attacked by supporters of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo early Wednesday, according to the Huffington Post. CNN Coverage Manager Steve Brusk tweeted that Cooper was "was punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounded him and his crew trying to cover demonstration."

I believe some Egyptians have also been having a hard time of it.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXV

2011-01-28T15:07:00.001-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXIV

2011-01-21T17:17:00.001-05:00

Google Ad Fail

2011-01-15T17:08:00.002-05:00

Conversations With Greatness CCCXIII

2011-01-14T15:22:00.001-05:00

Unhappy Meal

2011-01-10T12:23:00.000-05:00

Since this doesn't seem to have made much news outside New Zealand yet, and since my flight is delayed two hours...

From 3newz.co.nz: McDonald's defends gay filters on Wi-Fi

Basically, McDonalds started offering free Wifi here last month, which is great, except people have started to notice that, ha-ha-ha, in addition to banning porn, gambling and dating websites, McDonalds is also blocking gay news and lifestyle ones.

But I'm sure they have a great reason for doing so that doesn't sound at all terrible as an out-of-context soundbite.

“We do have a responsibility to make sure any information available on our system is child friendly and we will go a long way to protect that,” says managing director Mark Hawthorn.

D'oh! So gays ≠ child friendly, according to McDonalds (religious fundamentalists, people from the 80s, Pat Robertson, etc., etc.).

Some news outlets here have pointed out that the ban is kind of hypocritical, considering

last year McDonald’s used a gay-themed ad in France.

Plus, hello? Have you taken a look at Ronald fucking McDonald lately? When that guy says "Big Mac" all I can picture is a 45-year-old bear in a leather harness.

Incidentally, though it's great that the media is challenging McDonalds on this, the news coverage here has been at least a little bit disconcertingly homophobic itself. Like this line:

Similar sites with gay themes, however, were still accessible such as gay dating site broonline.com, news website aaronandandy.com and Big Gay Out festival sponsors getiton.co.nz.

The New Zealand Aids Foundation website was also still accessible.

Ouch. So AIDS = gay, according to 3newz.co.nz (religious fundamentalists, people from the 80s, Pat Robertson, etc.).

Okay, off my soapbox now, onto flight (hopefully). I'll leave it to Dan Savage to pick up where I left off.

Conversations With Greatness CCCXII

2011-01-07T09:03:00.002-05:00

NZ, Day Four

2011-01-07T03:29:00.000-05:00

I've been saying it for years.

NZ, Day Three

2011-01-06T03:52:00.000-05:00

It's fucking creepy how much like Scotland this place is. The landscape, the place names, the architecture... They even drink Irn Bru!

Oh, and then there's this in THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER:

NZ, Day Two

2011-01-04T19:30:00.000-05:00

Deepest Lord of the Rings country. Though for some reason the song that got stuck in my head was from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

NZ, Day One

2011-01-03T19:31:00.002-05:00

Queenstown airport. It's in between two mountains this size, so as you can imagine the approach is pretty terrifying.

(NB. I'm going to try and spend more time actually *being* in New Zealand than blogging about it, but I figured a picture every day or so couldn't hurt.)