June, 2011 archive
Aspirations 0
In an otherwise unsurprising column on Congressman Weiner and the “boys will be boys” mentality, Elmer Smith of Philly dot com comes forth with this:
Heathen status is conferred when your wife abandons all hope of reform. One day, she sees you stretched out on the couch with the remote in one hand balancing a beer on your belly and tells herself that this is as good as it’s ever going to get.
Weiner Roast 2
Jay Leno:
I recently listened to this episode of the Diane Rehm show, in which a panel of Beltway insiders discussed Congressman Weiner’s twits. (You can listen or read the transcript at the link.)
There wasn’t much new in the discussion. The Congressman has brought so much dumb to the table that one of the panelists reported using his behavior as a tool to teach the family teenagers that the internet is, indeed, a public place.
What most struck me, though, was the smug sanctimonious self-righteousness of the panel as it was shocked! shocked! SHOCKED! at someone’s doing something stupid while under the influence of male hotness delusion syndrome and at his attempts to deny it.
In America, parents can’t talk with their kids about sex; hell, they can’t even admit to it.
It is not surprising that someone would have difficulty talking to a howling pack of press jackals.
Clearly, none of the panel had ever succumbed to the temptation to do something stupid while under the influence of hormones or attempted to deny it when caught out.
Americans’ attitudes towards all things sexual are seriously bent, a sewer of fantasies in an uptight suit, glorifying hyper-sexual imagery, vicariously celebrating celebutards and their sex tapes, snickering at snookis, while quivering in fear and fiction and denial when confronting actual sexuality in any form. (See the note below.)
Congressman Weiner was stupid. If he were a run-of-the-mill employee in private industry or civil service, he likely would have been disciplined, possibly fired, by now. Indeed, by the time this posts, he may well be gone.
This does not make the public circus any less stupid.
Daniel Denvir addressed thia at the Guardian. An excerpt:
Asides:
(This is the blue plate special; it comes with two asides)
In a tangentially related article, Suzanne Moore points out what’s behind the hyper-sexual imagery I mentioned above.
It’s not libido; it’s marketing, marketing to and via libido. Sex sells, even as it is illegal to sell sex:
Also, this “I’m going to rehab now” is no more than today’s version of “I must have been possessed”–blame-shifting.
Except possibly in the case of psychopaths, “sex addiction” has become a synonym for “getting away with bad behavior just because I can.” The beneficiaries of a diagnosis of “sex addiction” are “sex addiction therapists.”
The Note Below:
I have nothing against sexual imagery.
Indeed, I quite appreciate sexual imagery.
Just don’t pretend it’s something else, like a swimsuit review, when it is clearly what it is.
I do have something against willful ignorance salted with crocodile tears.
Gastric Upset 0
Words fail me.
Those are some of the weapons that schools, doctors and parents wield to prevent overweight kids from packing on more pounds.
But there’s another possibility: Surgically implant an inflatable silicone band — known as a gastric band — around the top of the stomach to restrict food intake. That way, people eat smaller meals and feel full faster.
Banding works for many adults. Now Allergan Inc., a maker of gastric bands, is asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve its device for morbidly obese adolescents as young as 14.
A Tree Grew in Brooklyn 0
No more:
The bizarre 2 AM incident was captured by a surveillance camera attached to a neighboring building in the borough’s Kensington neighborhood. Video of the tree assault (seen above) was uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday.
The video shows the attacker taking a total of 53 whacks at the tree over approximately five minutes. On several occasions, neighborhood men can be seen seen trying to stop the ax wielder from downing the tree. It does not appear that the primary motive of the attacker was to steal the bicycle chained to the tree (though, 20 minutes after first striking the tree, the portly perp returned to the block and carried the bike away).
New Yorkers tend to be protective of their trees. They have so few of them.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Foreclosures are just fine, thank you, Country Wide and Ameriquest:
Meanwhile, the median price of homes sold last month dipped to $189,000, down 11.1 percent from May 2010, the Virginia Beach-based multiple listing service reported.
Nearly one of every three homes sold in May – 31 percent – were in foreclosure or sold for less than what the homeowner owed, according to the report. That’s up from 21 percent a year ago.
Facebook Frolics, He Was on to Her All Along Dept. 0
Chapter One:
The scheme proved so successful, in fact, that FBI agents last Friday arrested Angela Voelkert’s former spouse on a felony charge for allegedly installing a listening device in her vehicle, according to court records.
Chapter Two:
When Knowledge Means Jail Time 0
White Southerners considered ignorance a cornerstone of chatttel slavery. At the corner of Granby and City Hall Avenue, downtown Norfolk:
Click for a larger image.
The inscription reads:
Margaret Douglass, a white woman from Charleston, South Carolina, moved to Norfolk with her daughter Rosa in 1845 and lived near hear on the former Barraud Court. She was a vest maker by occupation. In June 1852 she and her daughter opened a school in the second story backroom of her house to teach 25 free black children, both boys and girls, how to read and write. Tuition was three dollars a quarter. After she was seen walking in the funeral procession of one of her deceased students, her school was raided, and she was arrested. She argued her own case in court, pointing out that the wives and daughters of several court officials taught black children weekly in Sunday School classes at Christ Church from the same books she used. After being found guilty, she served a month in jail. Later she mmoved to Philadelphia with her daughter and gained considerable notoriety based on her booklet about her experience in Norfolk that was published in 1854.
QOTD 0
Mignon McLaughlin, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):
Nobody really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.
Think of the Children . . . . 0
Doug J at Balloon Juice:
He has a point.
I remember sitting on the porch swing at Pine View Farm at about age seven wondering whether the nuclear bombs that would be dropped on The World’s Largest Military Complex(TM) across the bay when World War II started would take us out to (yes, they likely would have).
Some years later, when I was becoming curious about what Doug J. refers to as “consensual sexual relations,” I couldn’t get a straight answer out of anyone. I couldn’t even get any help in figuring out what the hell I was curious about.
Grown-ups are weird.
Swampwater: The Game 0
Now, satisfy your inner mercenary and play at being the nasty in the comfort of your video gaming room:
Coming soon to a TV near you: “Blackwater” the video game.
The Los Angeles-based interactive entertainment company 505 Games said this week it plans to roll out the game this fall under an exclusive licensing agreement with Erik Prince, the former Navy SEAL who founded the controversial security company in 1997.
“Male Hotness Delusion Syndrome” 1
Clarence Page notes that it seems to be spreading:
Wherever they may be, Salt advises men in their 40s to look in the mirror before they get too full of themselves and “discount their hotness by the proportion by which there are more women than men.” Otherwise, fellas, you could be in for the rude revelation that that certain someone is not nearly as into you as you might have thought.
And if you really want to get a woman excited about you, my wife offers this suggestion: Take a picture of yourself cooking dinner. You can leave your clothes on.