William Vollman's take on things.
Bad Samaritan schools the blogging community on how to generate traffic, takes it to the next level.
search term of the moment: plethora o porn
What?!?
"I'm an old-fashioned woman," Sen. Kay O'Connor told The Kansas City Star. "Men should take care of women, and if men were taking care of women (today) we wouldn't have to vote."
In this time of unanticipated leisure, my inner geek is slowly emerging. I explained the finer points of cladistics last night to a seemingly rapt audience. How did I make that interesting? I hated that course at Berkeley when I was in it (mostly because the lecturer totally overworked us), but necessarily absorbed and retained all of it. Granted, being able to riff on the hyoid bones of alouatta vs. ateles, or the elbow of the orangutan, does not serve me much past being always ready with diverse cocktail banter, but now I see that the trial of getting there was a good foundation for general critical thinking. Ack, does that make me a grown up?
Stories like this now make me happy. I was always terrifically bored with tool technology; I never saw how archaeology (except the way Deetz told it) and even the best paleontology might change the world. Synthesized with soil science, sure, it's almost as fun as historiography. What I loathed most about undergrad anthropology was how each branch told only part of the story.
In finding all those links that no one will follow, I stumbled across this argument on hominid elbows, sloppy science, and Christianity. Baffling.
search term of the moment: bikini pistol photos
Landover Baptist Church chimes in, does not disappoint:
"Without assistance from American Baptists," said CIA director, George J. Tenet, "we never would have stood a chance of getting inside the minds of religious lunatics."
search term of the moment: pissing off your neighbors
Finally: Frank Chu gets sponsorship! He was one of my favorite things about working in the financial district, an excuse for breaking that sacred pact I made with myself at age 7. Heaven forefend I should find myself back there, at least I know he'd be stomping up and down Montgomery, getting paid.
search term of the moment: graph mariana fruit bat
The Onion is back. Yum: Infographic.
search term of the moment: cool toys for the older man
Royal Journal's feature 101 Dave Eggers Jokes: blistering post-irony.
Our neighborhood is all lightning and deafening thunder right now; the lights in the house are flickering, and so is the GPS.
No more posting today.
search term of the moment: how can I feminize my husband?
Hm. So someone registered, long ago, some prescient-to-11-Sept domain names. Which would be interesting if that were the be all, end all, cataclysm. But perhaps it's not. It's so hard to keep all the propaganda and conspiracy theory straight.
search term of the moment: world history from 1000bc - 1500ad
Cleaning out an old trunk, I discovered photos and journals from 1986. It's pretty exciting stuff; I was 15-16. I thought I was infinitely wise and was in the thick of a busy, wild life (nothing as intense or risky as 1984-5, which journals I burned in a fit of purging some years ago. silly thing to do. never do that.). I'm shocked by my pretty cogent reporting from within wacky scenes and baffling situations. I have generally clear memories of all the interesting trouble I got into back then, and my reflections on that and all the other parts of my life, but reading my take on it then... my reaction is at once fascinated and repulsed. I wish I'd learned earlier to act more decisively and to have made such decisions quicker. I wouldn't change much; most of my life followed from carefully considered choices (not that I had the resources to really enact what I wished for then). One of the choices I elucidated on over and over was life vs. death. It's a pretty good read.
The recurring themes in early '86 are desperate romantic loneliness and trying to live something like a normal life (an arresting offence for a minor) while preparing for some Reagan-era apocalypse. The latter was much easier to deal with than the former, having been steeped in the anarchist squatting scene. I wonder how kids today cope.
search term of the moment: girls peeing in their pants.com
Christopher Hitchens: Against Rationalization
written from the future!
Prescient, creepy Donald Duck comic. via knarkarsmurfen.net.
I just like saying that: "knarkarsmurfen.net."
From the J-Chuch Newsletter:
"I guess by now everyone knows that China was officially admitted into the WTO yesterday. I often find myself defending China from people attacking them because of their human rights violation. But it's only because I think people doing the criticizing are ignoring this countries human rights violations. If you're not prepared to challenge what's happening where you live, you shouldn't go looking for fights elsewhere to divert attention. It's easy to attack China. But attacking a country miles away that has be dehumanized by anti-communist propaganda can also be a subtle form of racism when done out of convenience. By convenience, I mean that it's easier than criticizing your own country and way of life not to mention people of your own "culture". Having said that, the human rights violations are there and undeniable. But thinking about the whole process now, what better place for a country with incredible human rights violations than the WTO, the group trying to organize and officiate further human rights violations? Globalism is just a pretty way of saying imperialism."Viva punk rock.
search term of the moment: mcdonalds and how mcdonalds has affected our lifestyle
David Letterman's monologue transcribed.
Counterpunch, and the Atlantic, on the paradox of blowback.
Oh no, these people really need to stop: Pat Robertson interviews an ex-Muslim.
Epiphany in a bath house:
"Safa: (on a trip to Sweden) I saw the love of Jesus.It changed me. Oh yes, the pure, solid, raw love...
Robertson: You never had that before?
Safa: During all these years of prayer and fasting I never experienced it.
Robertson: It was the love of Jesus that just melted you?
Safa: It did. It broke me."
search term of the moment: tizzy
Punk rock check-in, from ground zero - scroll down to "Relief Efforts" for the first person account. Powerful stuff.
Here are some recent political cartoons.
Great comic strip storytelling: I bet that's exactly what it was like.
ohrwurm: Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel - Nail
Caterpillars communicate with sound. Nifty.
I just heard an odd sort of "yarp" call coming from my back yard, and peeked out to find Beauregard gazing bemusedly at a very loud, aggressive squirrel. There's a humongous ancient fig tree in my yard which is a playground for squirrels, racoons, and birds. Most of the fruit this year has been given up to them. I think this guy was being greedy.
search term of the moment: besejenever (it's bessenjenever)
I've gotten billions of hits from seekers of info on prehistoric agriculture and/or Oceania in the last couple of weeks. Don't forget to cite your sources, nor that plagiarism is a mortal sin. Yes, you: at Stanford, Pitt, Washington State, Iowa State and GSU (say hi to Brent Berlin for me). Don't make me call your professors.
search term of the moment: teenagers not gullible consumers
It seems that Islam and Catholicism might share some interesting customs: while Catholics can confess their sins away, Muslim hijackers can to drink alchohol and go to strip clubs - and even shack up with girlfriends - if they later kill themselves in strikes against infidels.
search term of the moment: pleasure girls
What is the difference between Christian Right style zealotry and that of Islamic jihad?
They both run on the hopelessness and ignorance of followers desperate for guidance and validation, propounding mythologies of audacious goals and unlikely causalities. Each believes that one is righteous and others are not, but somehow non-believers can taint their chance for ascension. They promote physical violence with spiritual rewards, and one sort of suicide - the other a mortal sin - guarantees a place in heaven. None of this makes sense: they're both ridiculous, yet unfathomable in scope. How can either group of followers be so blinded as to not see reflections of themselves in their critique of the other?
The Darwinian success of this herd mentality is terrifying: deselected are the traits I want to believe are evolutionarily important.
search term of the moment: perversion
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We've heard over and over how "we're all Israelis now," and that Americans are crippled by naivete of our foreign policy, consistently hypocritical actions, our history of empire. This article is the first I've seen to synthesise those two ideas. Very readable, not as dry as it looks.search term of the moment: armageddon geography
The problem of identifying - geographically, politically, culturally - an enemy against which to strike out is of course freaking everyone out. It's impossible. We read Mir Tamim Ansary's notes on life in Afghanistan, which we know is hopeless and unfair, but still know there will be a ground war there. An Israeli friend, who has seen his share of regular acts of devastating violence, made the point that such an enemy has no country, no flag, no visible hierarchical structure, but that it's everywhere. The implication pushes right up against my Berkeleyan sensibiities: I do wonder if we might see scenes like this played out here.
Said friend calmly mentioned that he and his family are considering leaving if this progresses as they anticipate it might. Is that a drastic reaction? That sort of honesty makes it hard to retreat into complacency.
So what do you do? If you're a little boy in Australia, you put on your superhero outfit and hold a vigil at the US Consulate (warning: will make you cry).
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Jerry Falwell says America is the great satan.What next, bounties on dangerous writers?
"... the ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this... The abortionists have got to bear some burden because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad."Ignorance is evil. And this is just confusing.
This is a more accessible brand the spate of "how can Americans be so surprised?" articles:
"The strikes at the Pentagon (our center of war) and the World Trade Center (a monetary focal point) are telling. We had neither our democracy nor our freedom challenged, but rather our interventional [sic] and often coercive use of military and economic capital."
search term of the moment: tragic photos
What a very long day.
I heard more reports of racist asshole behavior than I could handle. After the fifth or sixth email I felt ill, and it got worse throughout the day. A friend joked "everyone of Middle Eastern descent should change their names to Gonzales for a few weeks."
I subconsciously checked myself, then made the realization: as often as I find myself the target of unwanted advances, in this instance my blonde-ness means I'm safe. Ugh. Judgement by physiognomy is a most repugnant (pan?)cultural attribute, encountered with way too much regularity.
...
Here is some great information design - you can ignore the text, or swear your childhood Spanish stuck with you....
I found myself distracted this evening, away from tension and worry, and back in critical mode. Ahhh...The Frederick's catalog arrived, and it features a brand new selling angle: a man is inserted into lingerie display shots. Like he's a serving suggestion. It doesn't work, though; in all the other shots, the woman is posed as aggressor, but here she's merely a tactile object. They forget their audience.
Mmmm, I've relaxed even more upon popping on this CD which was thrust upon me, as I stumbled out of work, by a loving colleague. Oh, lovely effervescent entertainment. I can feel the days' toxins leaving my brain now.
Thank you, Liza.
search term of the moment: girls peeing in the woods
ohrwurm: Flanger - Midnight Sound
I feel so lucky today.
So many people I have been worried about are safe, from
Ryan, an FDNY firefighter, missing until late this morning, to
Tony who piloted an AA flight to SFO that was rerouted to Denver, to
Lisa, Martin and Jeremy who just moved back to NYC last week, and
Julie who was flying back from Cairo to SFO but spent last night in a church in Calgary.
Everyone's accounted for, all ok.
...
On top of the shock, horror, bafflement, and conflicting emotions, drives, hopes, and expectations, we are now subject to an onslaught of ignorance and racism. People of presumably Afghani, Persian, Palestinian descent, folks with vaguely olive skin, are rudely questioned by strangers while they stand in line at the store. It's crazy.T.V. news isn't helping much. Here are some alternative viewpoints.
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VERO BEACH, Fla. (CNN) -- "Not all the hijackers aboard the four commandeered jets used in Tuesday's terrorist attacks may not have known each other,"So, in other words, all of them may have?
What are you doing here?
I have nothing to say. It's all being said at World New York.
(thanks to Mark Simple)
It's official: Friday is my last day as script coordinator for Shorts at Pixar.
After five months, I'm ready for a little rest.
But only a little.
This will be my big chance to sit around and read (I'm reading a book so good that every hour spent away from it is painful; I've started skimming paragraphs so I can devour it faster, then remind myself how luscious every single word is). Will I take it?
search term of the moment: tom invites nick out for an afternoon. on their way to the city they pick up myrtle.
Born Again Cacaphony?
This has got to be a prank. Or maybe not. Hm.
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Aha: The truth about Stephen Hawking's paranoia....
TeenScene talks straight to kids:"Out of all the drugs we least reccommend LSD, reason being that I was once given a stick on tattoo by my friend who told me it was LSD. Foolishly I put it on my tounge and left it there for three hours hoping to experience the delights of another universe. Of couse I did not, and ended up having to walk around with a tattoo of a fucking anchor on my tounge for the next 2 weeks and get called seaman breath by the other kids..."
search term of the moment: red hot dutch porn
top search term: www.fatlady*.*
Why do people enter URLs as parameters in search engines?
Today's top search terms are "www.fatlady.com" and "fatlady.com" (popping up here because I once foolishly named an image - of such a figure projected onto a sidewalk in a darkened Berenstraat, Amsterdam - thatphrase.jpg {stay tuned for a count of hits for "thatphrase.com"}).
I hope all those fat fetishists know how common they are. Yep, you and everyone else, buddy!
I've half a mind to try something like this, but I enjoy it mostly for showing how bitter and hypercritical I'm not.
search term of the moment: love marriage vs arranged marriage
This little boy makes me all weepy.
It took me all day to find this photo.
I saw an article, with a photo, buried in the paper this morning - well behind really striking news like Fatboy Slim's sweeping of the MTV Video Music Awards - and found almost nothing online about him. Personally, I think this is more important than, say, "Bush Says Concerned Over Jobless, Has No New Plan," and might even attract more unique viewers to a news site.
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We've all heard how directors and camera operators are taking porn gigs to pay the bills as they lose their ad agency gigs, right? Today that new new economy hit close to home, as a good friend who was recently laid off from / rehired as a contractor at a big local firm is being recruited to edit for porn sites. I've heard of the flagship site, and we agreed: ew, no. No no no no no. You've heard of it; the key word is "machines."Later in the evening I ran into an entrepreneurial acquaintance who, every time I see her, tries to flatter me into "modeling" for her artistic sites. "Just come by for a lighting test! You can get some beautiful prints, we can add you to our, mm, palette of offerings, it'll only take a few hours!" Uh huh. It is flattering - sure, tell me I'm hot- but I've heard these lines a million times before, from pros, when I was more naive, even. And of course she is the connection for said other friend's big offer - she even offered that she's considering a coproduction, and women are lining up for machine tryouts. Oh, well, yeah, that's great, we've gotta go, buh-bye.
search term of the moment: do men shave armpits
Stan gives great travelogue.
It's almost like being there, and being a (hypercultured) boy.
Leisuretown, that guiltiest of pleasures, deserves funding. Donate now!
As usual, Todd is deadly funny. I (heart) Todd.
His recounting is just about as good as Mark Simple on my Favorite Burn™, 1995.
search term of the moment: how can i feminize my husband
Molly is a bad-ass. Ave, Molly.
About the rain of flesh, blood, and bone that spattered the kids arriving at school that morning, neighbors reported:
"It's become routine," said 57-year-old Itzak Avramson, whose dress shop just down the street from the blast site was filled with customers as soon as police reopened the street. "They have their queue of martyrs waiting - today this one, tomorrow another."
search term of the moment: miata tits
Poor Stephen Hawking. He needs to calm down. First he had a new vocoder made, to rid himself of his filthy American accent (ok, I guess I can understand that) and take on a more distinguished British one. Now he's espousing genetic manipulation as avoidance of an inevitable Terminator future.
spam subject line of the day: Are you cheating yourself out of a meaningful life?
search term of the moment: firefighter fetishist
Went back to the mountains and beach today, armed with camera batteries, to drive the roads we missed last night and to see it during daylight. This was a major detour; last time we drove Alpine, a year ago, was after a big storm and we had to pick our way around downed trees. Today the road is closed right in the middle of the mountain, so we had to be creative. It was an adventure.
search term of the moment: brain shivers
It's a full moon tonight, and I got to indulge in my favorite activity: driving through forested canyons in my Miata with the top down, staring straight up, through the stands of redwoods, at the moon and stars. Brendan drove so I could lose myself in canopy vs. sky depth-of-field games. The fog crept into the canyon and as we drove around the loopy roads we'd end up on the leeward side of a hill and plow through a fogbank, wet and cold. The air was scented with jasmine, ocean, pine, skunk and campfires. In the heart of the forest lies a serene hollow with a campground. There were about fifty campsites, and as many fires. At one point Brendan said he could smell marshmallows.
We ended up there after a spontaneous drive to Cowell Ranch to catch the sunset. We pretty much missed that, but we met lots of nice rodents - the long path out to the cliffs was crawling with voles as well as packs of tiny little rabbits. There are photos.
search term of the moment: the meaning of the name jessica
(I was told it's a feminine form of Jesus. When I was like 4 yrears old, my grandfather would tutor me on my messianic responsibilities.)
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No Hastings grad would ever be caught in a situation like this, primarily because they'd know better than to ever have remotely considered owning teddy bear collections. I hope.My new favorite news source: Headline Haikus
Ex-Spice Girl Discusses Dieting
That is not news!
Neither is this. But it has the best closing line I've seen in days:
Jordan added: "Posh is only one operation behind me so she can't say I'm more fake than her. "
search term of the moment: bob dobbs
I took Brendan for a walk around the Berkeley campus today, showed him some of my favorite buildings. Mm, nostalgia. Berkeley really is a shockingly lovely place.
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I have this friend, who I met at my last job, who regularly amazes me with her brilliance and wit. It's like a splash of cold water, awakening the senses. Sometimes, when we talk, I hear how much I've dulled the razor sharpness of my own speech, and tendency towards oration. Unleashing our tongues is like taking off blinders, worn to hem you in for politeness' sake. I wish I could be that jubilantly fiery with everyone.Every now and again we'll be talking and discover that we share fundamental or unique elements of our respective backstories - things you might only become exposed to growing up around here, given the host of other shared circumstances. Some key but perhaps superficial aspects of our lives have been markedly different, but our coping strategies very similar. It's weird to have such a close contemporary, especially having (both) grown up mostly alone.
Anyway. Last night we got to talking about Religious Cults of the Bay Area in the 80s, And How We Avoided Them (even if their events fell on my birthday). We had a good laugh about how certain brands of control is supposed to be different than and more valid than other varieties of, say, right wing Christianity.
I mean, how is this any different (aside from using better grammar) than the 700 Club?
search term of the moment: young girls window shopping in amsterdam
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There's a radical pressure to conform to the nonconformity..."You can feel the love," said CyberChick, adding that "It's CyberChick. That's my name here."