Roger Ebert writes powerfully about the vast numbers of people living among us who’ve been duped by Neocon propaganda:
When the focus is narrowed to Republicans, a Harris poll finds 57 percent of party members believe he is a Muslim, 22% believe he "wants the terrorists to win," and 24% believe he is the Antichrist.
These figures sadden me with the depth of thoughtlessness and credulity they imply. A democracy depends on an informed electorate to survive. An alarming number of Americans and a majority of Republicans are misinformed. The man who was swept into office by a decisive majority is now considered by many citizens to be the enemy. Some fundamentalists believe he is the Antichrist named by Jesus in the Bible.
This many Americans did not arrive at such conclusions on their own. They were persuaded by a relentless process of insinuation, strategic silence and cynical misinformation. Most of the leaders in this process have been cautious to avoid actually saying Obama is a Muslim. They speak in coded words and allow the implications to sink in.
How will such enormous numbers of people, so easily misled, respond as the American economy continues to unravel? (Via Daring Fireball.) Link.
I don’t mean to come off as egotistical, but it’s a proven fact: women find me irresistible. I know some guys are flattered by constant attention from the opposite sex, but I get so much of it that it’s just a flat-out inconvenience.
Take what happened to me today at the DMV. As I wrote earlier, I picked up my car this past Monday, so today I drove off to the DMV to register it. It was a delightful process which involved stopping by a Shell gas station, where I got to sit on a curb with my thumb up my ass for nearly 45 minutes, before they finally got around to doing their three minute inspection. Half the time I spent waiting, one of the mechanics was texting a buddy on his cellphone. The others were similarly indolent. When you’ve got a two year old car with 9,000 miles on it, there’s no earthly reason for a safety inspection. The only thing that can happen is unsolicited reamage from an unscrupulous mechanic. Luckily, the car passed with flying colors and I was back on my way to the DMV.
I walked in and there was no line. Perhaps if you saw the clerk you’d judge her as a standard issue middle-aged DMV employee. But that’s what separates you from me: I could see her for what she was: a passionate, lusty vixen with bedroom eyes just waiting for her Prince Charming to come in for an auto registration or driver’s license renewal. And from the moment she looked at me, I could see her unquenchable desire.
I tried to play it cool: “I’m here to register this car that I’ve just shipped in from California. I’ve been through the requirements and here’s everything you need: the title, registration, proof of insurance, the shipper’s bill of lading from California, and the safety inspection certificate.”
She looked through the papers, then back at me, then back at the papers, then back at me. I could see already that she wanted me with the intensity of a thousand suns. Maybe it was my Yaris. Five minutes together before taking my money and stamping my form would surely not be enough for her. Recognizing this, it didn’t surprise me when she came up with an excuse to keep our interaction going.
“Your bill of lading isn’t stamped with the date you picked up the car,” she said, as if she really thought this silly technicality was worth mentioning.
I could see where this kabuki theater was headed: “But you can see the car shipped out on August 13th. It’s here now. That’s surely enough, isn’t it?”
It was not enough. She could never let me go that easily. She knew the port closed at 11:30 AM today, and that since it was now 1:00 PM she was assured a second date.
“You’re going to have to go back to the port tomorrow morning and get this stamped, then come see me.”
She must really have the hots for me if she’s found a pretext for me to drive fourteen fucking miles tomorrow morning for no earthly reason. But it’s out of my hands and only one question remains: should I bring her chocolate or carnations?
My friend Venkat makes the point that the Internet is creating one of two conditions for art and experience: a given piece of media is either digitized and therefore permanent, or it hasn’t yet crossed the digital divide and is consequently on its way to being forgotten. He notes with sadness that his favorite childhood books have fallen out of print and have never been digitized.
I remember how happy I was to discover some early Wonderama segments on YouTube. The show was basically 1960s Vaudville for the four to eight-year-old crowd. At that age, I regarded its host Bob McAllister as the most famous celebrity on the planet. Cooler and more likable than even Bob and Susan from the original Sesame Street.
But Wonderama wasn’t Sesame Street. It was limited to TV viewers in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut areas. And it didn’t offer Sesame Street’s earnest motives for learning and self-improvement. It was low-rent regional Sunday morning entertainment for kids featuring games, music, and the chance to see the kids in the TV audience win prizes.
Its host, the late Bob McAllister, had a bizarre, child-friendly charisma. I still adore his horribly awesome hair, his leisure suits, and his over the top genial manner. And I especially like the fact that I’ve heard he wasn’t overly friendly to kids when the cameras weren’t rolling. He apparently preferred to spend his breaks backstage chain smoking cigarettes. I certainly can’t blame Bob: if I had to be around that many children every week, I know I’d be knocking back a whole lot of bourbon.
Fred Rogers and Bob McAllister are at opposite ends of the spectrum of my generation’s child television hosts. Rogers was all about showing kids nurturance and kindness and support, whereas Macalister was purely an entertainer. Even their names represent their character: there’s nothing brash or exciting about Fred Rogers, but try saying the name Bob McAllister with some enthusiasm and you’ll realize what a perfect name it was for this guy. As in, “holy shit, it’s Bob fucking MaAllister!” For kids born in the mid-1960s within an hour or so’s drive of Manhattan, he was our first A-list celebrity.
I suspect every last moment of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood has crossed the digital divide, and has thereby gained immortality. But so far Bob McAllister is only available in isolated snippets. Were it not for twenty minutes or so of YouTube footage, McAllister would, like Venkat’s Russian fables, be hurling into the forgotten void. For the tens of thousands of Northeast kids who grew up watching Wonderama, that would be a real loss. We’d suffer Venkat’s fate, with part of our childhoods erased from the akashic record.
Check out this clip of Bob doing his “Good News” song below, filmed back when I was seven years old. He couldn’t possibly give a fuck about the kids’ good news—everything about this song is cynically deranged, in a way no child could begin to understand—but he pretends he cares and the kids just eat this up. I’ve no doubt I watched this very episode back when it was on TV. And Bob’s other greatest hit, “Kids Are People Too” is another brain-scarringly awesome bit of manipulative pandering; it’s made me who I am.
I’ve wanted to see a full-fledged bad ass F5 tornado in person ever since I was a four year old watching “The Wizard of Oz” for the very first time.But now that I’ve seen this video, regular tornadoes are so passé. Fire tornados are definitely where it’s at.
I love how the truck drivers reached the point where they elected to get the fuck out of there. (Via Kottke.)
I caught a ride into Kahului today to pick up my car at the docks. And there she was, my two year old Toyota Yaris, caked with sea salt from its voyage from California but otherwise unharmed. I took her—or rather, she took me—directly to the car wash, and I was quite impressed that the cheapest $4 wash got her gleaming.
On the way home I stopped at a K-Mart. I spent twenty minutes pondering my razor purchases because it’s time to change platforms. Sensors are now Gillette’s low-end cartridge-based offering; they barely cost more than the crap razors with wasteful disposable handles. At only a buck or so a cartridge, they’re a bargain. I usually go a few days between shaves, so one cartridge can last me the better part of a month. I also picked up an attractive and sturdy Sensor handle to go with my ten-pack of blades.
As with pens and dental floss, I get a lot of pleasure from luxuries that a poor man can afford, and I know I’ll enjoy using Sensors. I’m probably telling you this because I think if you can feel gratitude and excitement over a $15 razor blade purchase, you’ll doubtless feel pleasure regarding all sorts of larger and smaller things as well.
The other item I bought at K-Mart was a twelve pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which is by all accounts one of the best microbrews in America. K-Mart had it for about fifteen dollars, which is ridiculously cheap for good beer in Hawaii.
I then drove home, put the beer in the refrigerator, and finished my day’s blogging for Vegan.com. After a Skype chat with a friend, it was 6:30 and I wanted to catch the sunset. So I grabbed a couple of my Sierra Nevadas, which were by then cold, and walked the five minutes to the Shojo Zen monastery and cemetery below my house. I walked alongside the graveyard and to its stretch of isolated beach.
People go on and on about sunsets, and most sunsets in Maui are pretty damned majestic. But you never hear that a sunset sucked, and this one was certainly a disappointment. Far too many clouds. But the beer was cold and good and if I stopped there that would have been a great Hemingway sentence. Regardless, I enjoyed sitting by the water and watching the gentle waves wash up towards me.
And as I started my second beer and twilight ceded to darkness, I saw it: a sea turtle. I’ve been lucky enough to see extraordinary wildlife in nature. The animals I best remember were a threat of some kind: two bear sightings, a mountain lion who nearly made me shit my pants, a bunch of coyotes, a copperhead, and a water moccasin as thick as my arm, who slithered out from a riverbed rock in front of me, and then turned back and hissed to reveal his cotton mouth.
Hawaii has its threats as well. I’ve already encountered a couple centipedes. They may be small, but centipedes will fuck you up. A friend of my housemate once got bitten on the nuts, which amuses the hell out of me. It seems most people who live here have gotten bitten. Usually it’s on the foot, and you’ll have bad swelling for days, pain for about a month, and possibly a scar. I’m hoping I can dodge the bullet while I live here and avoid getting bitten.
But back to the sea turtle. The animal would surface every now and again, poking her fist-sized head up over the gentle waves. Perhaps it was a female, getting ready to lay eggs.
In any case, what caught me off guard was the instant welling up of love I felt for that animal. I know how threatened sea turtles are, mostly because of the fishing industry. But here was one right now, maybe getting ready to lay her eggs. And all I could do was admire her as she bravely swam just offshore and waited for darkness to descend. I felt this powerful feeling of wanting her to be OK—wanting her to follow her instinct and to successfully do her thing, and for sea turtles to continue to have a place in the oceans.
Native Americans believe that each sort of wild animal carries a different medicine—that sighting a bear means that a certain set of experiences is coming in your life, whereas sighting a bobcat or a porcupine will bring you a different set of experiences.
I’ve no idea what medicine a sea turtle brings. But I do know that every time I see a wild animal, I feel an upwelling of caring. For all its horrors and for all the insane waste we see around us, the world still holds such wonder. And the wild animals who have evaded extermination are such gifts, as they each have the capacity to awaken the love and connectedness within each of us.
I have no pencils in my desk’s jar, and it’s been years since I’ve used one. The only time a pencil is appropriate is if you’re drawing or if you’re a composer working on a score. Anything that produces writing that can smear years after use is an inferior technology.
That said, Mark Frauenfelder at Boing Boing just published a wonderful “first impression” of a new product for pencil fetishists: the release of the new Blackwing pencil. Mark was in love with the original Blackwing, which was discontinued in 1998 to the heartbreak of its devotees. I love the details Mark explores in comparing the new model to the original, and how he works in photos to capture his disappointment regarding the numerous ways that the new Blackwing has fallen short.
While I have no use for pencils, I do admire anyone who fetishizes his work tools. As a writer, my professional fetishes involve word processors, computer keyboards, and pens. I haven’t owned a word processor I adored since I got rid of my old Dell desktop that came bundled with WordPerfect, and my keyboards regularly change. But pens are the one item I can easily control, and there’s only one pen I use: the Pilot G-2 07. It’s got a rubberized grip, the ink flows smoothly and perfectly and never stops up, and writing with the G-2 is a pleasure.
Pens featuring gel-based inks first appeared in the 1980s but I can’t remember seeing them become widespread until about ten years ago. If you’ve never compared a regular ball point pen to one with gel-based ink, you should. You’ll be astonished by how much more smoothly the gel pen feels in your hand as you write. And a regular ballpoint can’t begin to deliver the bright, rich, opaque, and clean lines laid by a gel pen.
The trouble with gel pens is that they’re prone to clogging. You can buy cheap gel pens for about 30 cents each at any office store. But in most cases, you’ll have to discard the pen before half its ink is gone due to its becoming hopelessly clogged.
Pilot spent the R&D money to formulate an ink that never clogs. And better yet, even though the G-2s cost more than other gel pens, its ink barrel is enormous, and probably contains three times more ink than most other pens.
Buy a G-2 07, and then test it against every other pen in your drawer and you’ll see exactly what I mean. It’s astonishing how much better it is than any other ballpoint, more astonishing still that Pilot can sell one of these for under two bucks, and most astonishing of all that other pen companies don’t just quit the business.
Most of my fellow pen fetishists share my opinion of the G-2’s total dominance, although a minority prefers the Sanford Uni-ball. Everybody is entitled to their ridiculous opinion, I suppose. Uni-balls are great pens—perhaps the second best pen in the world—but they’re not remotely comparable in quality to the G-2.
I’ve been steadily depopulating my desk jar of other pens in favor of the Pilot G-2 07. I own two in purple, and chances are if I ever send you anything in the mail, the envelope will be written or the letter will be signed in those inks. I’ve also got the G-2 in black, red, and blue. Plus I’ve got a couple of Sharpies for when I need to mark up a DVD or a plastic surface. If you live near me, you’re welcome to drop by my house and I’ll give you every pen I’ve got that’s not a G-2, Sharpie, or highlighter; I’d rather not own them.
I don’t write by hand often, unless I’m marking up a book manuscript—and I hope to never take on a project like that ever again. So my total annual cost for using G-2s rather than some crappy Bic pens might be $3. Best money ever spent. It’s nice to have a pen jar that’s filled exclusively with G-2s and Sharpies, with no crap pens sitting there and taking up space.
One of the great pleasures in life is paying attention to the inexpensive items that you use daily, and insisting on the best. If I were a billionaire, my choice of pens, dental floss (Glide), and drinking water (reverse osmosis) wouldn’t change. Sure, I’ll never own a Maybach, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the very best when it comes to many of the items I use or consume daily. There’s a real satisfaction that comes with using something that’s the absolute best in the world, and perhaps that satisfaction intensifies when that item is a $2 pen or a $4 spool of dental floss.
Really smart stuff here. I don’t see how anyone could find fault with the arguments Mark Kleiman makes. I often think that if I didn’t work full-time on animal advocacy, I’d be working to fix the insane nightmare of America’s prison system and sentencing guidelines.
Those episodes of Lockup on MSNBC haunt me. (Via BoingBoing.)
I’ve got a sense that many people don’t understand what their phone options are, and consequently end up paying huge chunks of money every month for services that don’t really reflect what they need. And the variety of services that have emerged over the past few years make it likely that spending some time rethinking your choices could save you a lot of money while increasing your productivity and quality of life.
I pay about $150 a year for all of my phone service, and that relatively small amount of money gets me everything I need. It buys me a Skype phone number with voicemail and unlimited calling to US and Canada, plus a year of Verizon pay-as-you-go mobile calling. Think about it: I’m getting all that for just $150 a year. Amazing.
In my case, I communicate with huge numbers of people, so I try to do 99 percent of this communication by email. Phones are for occasional long chats with friends (which I do through my Skype unlimited long distance), and for very quick mobile calls if I’m meeting up with someone outside my house. The $100 a year I pay for my Verizon pay-as-you-go plan includes something like 500 minutes, which more than covers my very occasional cellphone needs.
Over the last few years, as phone service has become vastly more affordable, I’ve learned three things:
The more I avoid phones and use email instead, the more productive I’ll be.
Telephones are interrupt-driven. They put you into a paradigm where just because a bell is ringing you’re supposed to drop what you’re doing. That’s idiotic. If you want my attention, email me. If you want to talk, email me and we’ll set something up.
The exception to my unwillingness to be interrupted by phone regards my parents. They’ve got my mobile number, which I will answer 24/7 for them in case of an emergency. Anyone else is probably going to voicemail unless we’ve pre-arranged a phone session.
I’m not saying my approach to using phones is the One True Way, or that what works best for me would be appropriate for you. But I do think Skype and Google’s telephony offerings are worth investigating, and that it’s also worth thinking hard about where phone service can best fit into your life—you ought to think about the services you truly need, and the services that prove expensive and distracting.
I also think that many people on expensive monthly cellphone plans would be much better off switching to a cheap Pay As You Go plan.
Slate’s Farhad Manjoo just wrote a useful piece about Google’s latest free telephone options. It’s a nice starting point to re-thinking your telephone options, taking full advantage of recent advances in technology. If what I’ve written here sounds sensible to you, give Manjoo’s article a look. Link.
Now it’s not that I’ve got anything against chick flicks: “Say Anything” and “As Good as it Gets” are two incredibly good movies.
But I read Eat, Pray, Love this past summer and what an endlessly annoying piece of crap that was. Elizabeth Gilbert is to literature what Celine Dion is to music.
Lewis Black knocks it out of the park in this Daily Show segment. Wait until you see the movie’s spinoff merchandizing segments that Black features in this clip.
Whatever might be wrong in my life, at least I don’t have a wife or girlfriend spending actual money on this New Agey, floofy garbage. But millions of men do.
. It’s got a rubberized grip, the ink flows smoothly and perfectly and never stops up, and writing with the G-2 is a pleasure. 
), and drinking water (reverse osmosis) wouldn’t change. Sure, I’ll never own a Maybach, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the very best when it comes to many of the items I use or consume daily. There’s a real satisfaction that comes with using something that’s the absolute best in the world, and perhaps that satisfaction intensifies when that item is a $2 pen or a $4 spool of dental floss.
this past summer and what an endlessly annoying piece of crap that was. Elizabeth Gilbert is to literature what Celine Dion is to music.
