So, to my libertarian friends who are either indifferent to the Dem/GOP distinction or who actively root for “divided government”: Are you still happier with a Democratic rather than Republican Congress after the Dems’ torpedoing of a free trade deal with Colombia — the sort of deal that at least some of my Dem/GOP-indifferent libertarian […]
The entire libertarian/conservative 2008 dilemma, in six easily-digestible Parts (and on a decidedly different culture-war note, check out these fine photos by J.D. Weiner, whose name I misspelled in a mass-e-mail a couple months ago, of our Debate at Lolita Bar two weeks ago, on Christian rock):
Part I: Government
The image above was e-mailed by Sean […]
Apparently, a copy has surfaced of fifteen minutes of porn that Marilyn Monroe shot in the 1950s — but as it is not yet, to my knowledge, on YouTube, continue reading this sentence. A copy of the footage was apparently in the hands of the FBI, where J. Edgar Hoover hoped to […]
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At the outset, let’s just take a moment to remember that this year’s presidential race would not have been possible without Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager. Remember, Obama’s original opponent in his Senate race, Republican Jack Ryan, only dropped out of the race when it became known that he’d pressured […]
This story may sound hard to believe, but if studied in detail, it might unlock vast, heretofore unexplored secrets about the inner workings of the human mind.
Background first: I have noticed before that there is a big, sometimes disturbing chasm between short-term memory and long-term memory — something very important that only makes it into […]
I seem to have devoted a lot of time to blogging about freaks of one sort or another this week (and I didn’t even mention the Fall’s Mark E. Smith condoning driving over seagulls or Vanilla Ice being arrested for domestic assault), so I may as well throw this disturbing thought in as well. I […]
In the relatively quiet first half of 2000:
•January saw the peak of the dot-com-era stock market — and within weeks Wall Street saw trading shut down early by an impromptu concert by leftist band Rage Against the Machine and disrupted weeks later by a non-fatal explosive blast that injured several people.
•Meanwhile, al Qaeda members had […]
After last night’s karaoke, I find myself thinking about David Bowie’s “China Girl,” another monotone classic I can handle, and I’m reminded that Bowie once said that one of his biggest influences was Anthony Newley, the man behind the songs from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, including “The Candy Man.”
Given Bowie’s Newley influence, his […]
UPDATE: THEY AREN’T STARTING KARAOKE UNTIL 9, SO I WILL ARRIVE JUST BEFORE 10.
•As per the instructions, I’ll be at Iggy’s (2nd Ave. and 75th/76th) for karaoke tonight — but if no substantial posse is demanding my continued presence despite what will likely be impressive performances by me of “Sanctify Yourself” and “Tom Sawyer” (as […]
Yesterday I pointed to cannibalism in Africa as a sign of America’s cultural superiority, but it just so happens a friend e-mailed me yesterday to tell of his own small indulgence in cannibalism here in the U.S., which came to have certain spiritual overtones, much like the African cannibalism.
Apparently, during couples therapy, his wife used […]
Here’s another reminder that some cultures may be worse than our own, much as it seems to rile people to hear that (including some of my ostensibly non-leftist friends): Witch doctors in Tanzania have been murdering albinos to harvest their organs as good luck charms.
And still people tell me superstition is harmless (even when faced […]
Here’s an amusing reminder how the world looked to nineteenth-century leftists and left-anarchists — a pyramidal chart of the levels of oppression in the capitalist system.
Much like those passages in Marx where he gets carried away and starts calling businessmen “vampires,” you almost have to find this sort of cartoonish exaggeration cute, even if it […]
A lot of people my age probably remember 1985 Calvin Klein ads for the perfume Obsession as the point where the Calvin Klein ads got “weird” — what I had forgotten is that David Lynch directed them and Isabella Rossellini appeared in at least one (and in Blue Velvet, of course, before dating Lynch for […]
I visited India in late November/early December of 1999 with my girlfriend at the time, Indrani Nicodemus. Indrani is herself the child of immigrants, one from Jamaica and one from India. She’s an artist with a soft spot for hippies who was working in a bank at the time of our trip but […]
Last night’s debate went well, and Christian rock prevailed, according to the audience vote. Much of the debate hinged on definitional questions (What is rock? What is Christianity? What is suck?).
Much as I like to think of myself as a guy who likes to err on the side of expansive, inclusive definitions […]
