Month: September 2004

More Great Headlines

WSJ headline today on the front page: “When the big hand points to the IV, some get ticked off. Subhead: “Traditionalists say IIII is how the Romans did it; Striking a proper balance.” Apparently IIII balances against VIII better than IV does, and fine watchmakers prefer the IIII for that reason. But IV lets you cram in a couple extra features, and it’s becoming more popular.

I love the way they do this sort of weird detailed reporting– tiny aspect of one business that reflects a gradual change that has some impact on business. It’s just neat. Fridays are best, because that’s when they go for the more personal angle, and publish stuff that they allow to border on silliness.

Headline that sounds almost obscene, from page A3: “Regulator Pressures Fannie Officers.”

Correction

Hey! Someone reads this page! And noticed when I wildly and inaccurately stated that the New York Times was totally out of it. The director of the Intersex Initiative actually read my page, and pointed out to me that the Times was one of the first media outlets to cover the issue. There were at least two articles on NYT that predate Salon.com one: Natalie Angier’s report on March 14, 1997 and ISNA board member Alice Dreger’s contributed opinion piece on July 28, 1998.

I still think the article belongs in the medical section and not in style, but I regret that I insulted the Times, which is still, after all, the Paper of Record. Well, actually, the insulting was fun. I don’t regret it at all, paper of record or not.

Slogans

I’ve been trying to figure out a good thing to put as my tag line. For awhile I had some random words from spam, but then I noticed that bloglines (which, by the way, does for blogs what tivo does for TV, and which you should use) uses the tagline as an actual description when it’s showing you a list of feeds you might like. Mine appeared, therefore, to be a blog completely composed of spam. Not so good.

So I switched to an actual description of the content, which was pretty boring. I want something clever. Cleverer (more clever?) than “yes, that is a stupid question.”

Candidates:

  • Or else it gets the hose again.
  • The internet does not love you back.

Hm. I had a really good one earlier today that I have forgotten.

Shrill Accusations

Busy Busy Busy has a great summary of Max Boot’s commentary on the peaceful nature of democratically elected governments: if the US had a democratically elected government it would be far less likely to be involved in the Iraq war. You know, in the early days of the administration, people who pointed out how Bush was really screwing up were called “shrill.” Well, more and more people have gotten more and more shrill. And it’s all cataloged in the Shrill Blog. People are getting very, very upset about the political situation in this country. You have to remember, we’re being led by someone who lost the election and was appointed by Antonin Scalia & co. What on earth could possibly alleviate the anger of such problems?

Yesterday Mark Gordon suggested to me that baseball and beer was like bread and circuses. Which is pretty accurate. On the other hand, the Whole Foods subsidiary Bread and Circus is definitely all about bread and circuses. Which is to say, the aspiration to consume beautifully arranged expensive gourmet food is a pastime which can distract us from the troubles of our lives. And I am not opposed to that anymore. Why should I suffer? Why should anyone?

Bring on the soma, says I. Bring on the booze. Bring on the Valium, the Wega, the PlayStation, the Orgasmatron, the Buspar, the Viagra. Lower the standards, says I, open the floodgates for the dopamine-oriented culture of intoxication. I am not afraid of living in oblivion. I am afraid of not living in oblivion. I am afraid of having to feel. If I’m lucky I’ll get into Corian and cork and 10/15 ARMs and not scag and small arms, but it’s all the same in the end. As Margaret Atwood says in Happy Endings, John and Mary die. John and Mary Die. John and Mary die.

And as they say, every living thing dies alone.

More from the department of stridently homosexual agenda pushing

I was all over the economic benefits of gay marriage more than a year ago. Economic problems? Let’s cater to groups we’ve ignored in the past: open a casino, sell booze on sundays, let gay people get married. Heck, legalize assault weapons– sales will go up, prices will go down. The casino thing is tricky, because a lot of the money spent in casinos is just sucked away unproductively, while a wedding really does benefit the economy more.

Legalizing pot would probably be the biggest benefit to the economy: we’d save a bundle on housing nonviolent drug offenders, we’d get huge tax revenues on marijuana sales, and new businesses would thrive, from hydroponic garden centers to delivery services. Vandalism and casual or impulse crimes would probably go down, too, because a lot of folks who would otherwise be out breaking things would be staying home watching “Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle” instead. Same with prostitution, man. Sin’s big business, as anyone who’s studied the Prohibition era of American history knows.

If you’re opposed to legal prostitution, dope, and gay marriage, then you’re opposed to personal responsibility, free enterprise, a strong economy and a small government. Stuff that in your conservative pipe and smoke it.

It seems like a good idea when you’re drunk and your hot incumbent suggests it

I don’t pretend to understand the current accounts deficit, much less know what a safe value for it is. However, look at the last paragraph for an obvious lie by Bush:

Bush argues that Mr. Kerry, playing to a labor union constituency, has begun flirting with protectionism as an answer to the nation’s trade gap; he contrasts that with what he says is a strong White House effort to negotiate more trade agreements with individual nations, regional groups and at the World Trade Organization.

OK, what about the steel and textile tarrifs? What about the way you torpedoed the Cancun talks? Doha, anyone? I don’t understand how anyone can vote for this man. Here’s a good example of the rhetoric of people who support him. It’s a constant exercise in self-delusion. How long can you pretend to be the party of fiscal responsibility while tearing the economy apart?

This reminds me of being at a party at a friend’s house; his girlfriend was visiting from out of town and everyone but me was already drunk when I arrived. The girlfriend had tripped on a sidewalk (where she’s from, they don’t have huge potholes) and skinned her knee. I advised washing the wound, applying Neosporin and bandaging with gauze or something from the nearby convenience store. The boyfriend figured they’d be fine with paper towels and duct tape. She listened to the boyfriend.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so angry at them. She was obviously going to listen to him, because she was drunk and he was her boyfriend. At the time, I was totally unable to comprehend how anyone could ignore the obviously correct statements I was making and decide to bandage a cut with paper towels and duct tape. But a lot of things seem like a good idea when you’re drunk and your hot boyfriend suggests them.

Like Bush. He’s hot. You’re drunk on American imperial power. He’s wearing a flight suit and adjusting his package and saying Mission Accomplished. He’s already fucking you, it must be love. You’ll regret it when you wake up, but by then he’ll be on his heavily fortified ranch in Crawford with a billion dollars in gold and some assault rifles, and you’ll be homeless and sick and denied health care because you’re poor and not religious enough.

This is the only possible explanation for voting for Bush.