October 2008
“Many Flemish motorists not only resent being caught speeding, but feel they are...”
– BBC NEWS via slog. Fascinating article about the tensions between Flanders and Walloonia. Bonus quote: “ As a result Belgium has not had an effective government since the June 2007 elections.” Compare and contrast.
September 2008
Dear US House, thanks to redistricting there's no... →
WRONG. [538.com, via gawker who summarizes it to “This Is Your Fault, Voters”]
“Spending a sum of money that could buy you a war in Iraq should not come easily;...”
– The Economist.
significantly less cute than a faildog →
let’s play a fun game where we try to decide which is more frustrating: the collapse of the bailout proposal today in congress, the average reaction to it by “the internet” and/or aspiring or current members of Congress.
while we’re at it — and feeling completely weird about maybe agreeing with the administration for the first time in eight years — let’s...
What you could do with $700,000,000,000
dihard:
…
OR you could nationalize some mortgage related debt (aka “impaired assets”) that banks, credit unions, and pension funds hold. Using our tax dollars, of course.
Sure. You could buy a herd of magical unicorns, too. But they’re not a lot of fun if the entire economy has collapsed either.
“ACL: needs more glowsticks.”
– whitney, live from austin city limits. [twitter]
“Maybe You Can Owe Me”
Architecture...
Annual Water taxi voyage →
there was too much summer left after brunch to return home for napping; so we hiked down to the waterfront, hopped on the water taxi (past the flock of princesses waiting for their cruise), and walked over to Alki, where major requirements of the beach area is some combination of dog, kid, kite, and properties. There, we found margaritas and lots of tortilla chips along with very strict rules...
Watch“head of skate” [collegehumor]. Yeah, I’d pay to see that.
“touring is still the best way to put one’s music out there into the...”
– “Hurricanes And OPEC To Bands: Don’t Tour” [idolator]. Required reading for anyone who likes to think about music at all, especially if they like to think that touring is the way that indie bands rake in tons of cash money. Also provides further motivation for buying CDs from bands...
The Story of Muxtape →
jstn: muxtape:
What happened, and where we’re going. Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands.
Nice for bands, sad news for the rest of us.
dashes
maura:
trainwrecks:
natface:
Argh authors. There is a space after an m-dash.
Authors of what? Different style manuals treat the em dash/spaces differently. For instance, AP (which your example should probably be in) has a space on BOTH sides of the em dash, Chicago has NO spaces on either side, I believe MLA also says no spaces. Never seen this one-sided thing. In conclusion: you are...
WatchLawrence Lessig presents a Sarah Palin’s experience in a 12 minute talkcast. It’s also a fun way to meet all of the country’s vice presidents.
Shorter: with the exception of C.A. Arthur she has had the the least experience of any vice president.
Spoiler: one slide, the most effective one in the deck, uses something that looks a lot like Gotham.
“… please be informed that I draw no distinction between the quality of...”
– from the “caveat emptor” page of a Spring 2005 David Foster Wallace course syllabus. [pdf via fimoculous]. Also note that Hermione Granger’s cat has the same name as his office.
“9 to 5 was the No. 2 box office draw of 1980, second only to The Empire Strikes...”
– Megan Hustad, “Revisiting 9 to 5” [slate], and missing an obvious Darth Vader joke. File that one away into your “weird facts about the eighties” folder.
Does Clothing Play a Role in the Spread of... →
“In 2004, a study from the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens compared the ties of 40 doctors and medical students with those of 10 security guards. It found that about half the ties worn by medical personnel were a reservoir for germs, compared with just 1 in 10 of the ties taken from the security guards.”
(1) Thanks to recent USA marathon-play of House, MD I know that this...
“In charity, we must observe that the moose probably does not seem absurd to...”
– Roger Ebert, answering your questions about creationism. [suntimes] er, what? brilliant, probably.
“I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5. So if anybody can help me be done...”
– Tina Fey [wonkette and everywhere else]. What we need most of all in these trying times are strong Americans like Tina Fey who are willing to sacrifice limitless comedic potential for competent government.
“Hyperarticulate, plaintive, self-mocking, diffident, overbearing, needy,...”
– A.O. Scott on David Foster Wallace [nyt]. They just keep on coming. I‘ve lost count of how many have been in the NYT alone. This one is good, though.
ra ra riot →
Yesterday was cold and wet and I didn’t have a walk to McLeod in me; so I saw Ra Ra Riot instead at King Cobra, which is an odd amalgamation of too pretty and understated neglect. Ever since I saw them a couple autumns ago at CMJ they felt like secret special favorites and I remained endeared by them. I like this picture because with six people packed onto a small stage, they’re...
co-ops rocking →
Last night we went to the Moore to mix while eating appetizers and drinking wine before seeing Menomena and the National playing a show to help raise money for co-operative farmers and maybe something about summer flooding. As a former co-op president and fan of the bands this occasion had obvious appeal. Menomena grow on me more and more with each listen and notice of their weird human-made...
mcldrs →
When I got to McLeod last night in one room there were people sitting in a circle talking into a passed-around microphone about the (supposedly short-term) future of print as (I’m guessing here) a delivery medium. In another, haircuts. And in another, a few people at the bar. From the parentheticals you can guess where I ended up.
Later, though, after the salon broke up a pack of cologne...
“Lights Out”
Santogold - s/t
OK, so...
“I’m finding it hard to concentrate, as my eyes are killing me, due to I have not...”
– George Saunders, channeling a Palin fanatic. [newyorker]. Usually I skip the Shouts & Murmurs, but the whole internet kept telling me that George Saunders wrote this week’s entry. Which was all I needed to hear to know it would be worth breaking my usual habit of waiting until my copy of...
picture meme →
you know what to do.
“Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”
Vampire...
“To sum up: in 2000 John McCain learned that making friends with the media does...”
– “All the Sad Young Journalists Who Used to Love John McCain” [wonkette]
“He was being very heavily medicated. He’d been in the hospital a couple of times...”
– James Wallace, on his son’s suicide. [nyt] Oh god. This story keeps getting gut-level sadder and sadder if not entirely surprising.
the weather →
The thing that you tend to forget, living in Seattle trying not to notice the gloomy June, is the shiny bauble of September waiting at the end to redeem the summer and make you willing to tolerate the coming winter. I ended an incredibly lazy weekend by putting on shorts, a sweater, and sunglasses like a tourist and lugging a stack of unread New Yorkers to the park to read about Cindy McCain, Marc...
“He meant, with his footnotes and his digressions, to acknowledge the agonies of...”
– Laura Miller, “Remembering David Foster Wallace” [salon]. I was always confused by jabs at the footnotes until I realized that — even though I don’t completely understand it — maybe not everyone thinks that way?
“So listen —- one way to lower the flag to half-mast is just to lower the...”
– Infinite Jest, page 42.
david foster wallace, dead at 46 →
I can hardly believe this is true, but David Foster Wallace apparently eliminated his own map for keeps last night. [latimes / nyt ]
I guess the thing that we are passing around now is this commencement speech from Kenyon [marginalia], which, aside from the appropriateness of subject material, shows how well he captured the conflicted thinking of a complicated uncertain existence and the...
“ascots on a twentysomething is like a monocle on a jack terrier”
– “spirit fingers”, commenting on Gossip Girl photos. [gawker]
“Impossible”
Shout Out Louds - Our...