September 2006 – Page 4 – Secretly Ironic

The past is a night train to unknown trashscapes

Been reading a book of Joan Didion essays from the late 60s:

“Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something unadmitted. Shoeless Joe Jackson, Warren Gamaliel harding, The Titanic: how the mighty have fallen. Charles Lindbergh, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Marilyn Monroe: the beautiful and damned. And Howard Hughes. That we have made a hero of Howard Hughes tells us something interesting about ourselves, something only dimly remembered, tells us that the secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake… but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one’s own rules.”

Breakfast

So far today I have eaten nothing but pie.

Here is an excellent picture of pie.

I love pie.

SEX CANNIBALS!

Some sexual cannibals, including female Chinese mantises, actually eat a lot of males. “One study estimated that 63 percent of the diet of females are male mantids,” Dr. Brown said. “So they’re the main food source.”

Eeeeeeew.

Bricolage is the way to do it these days. And for serious mixtures of things that you’d never imagine together, for something that creates an incredible whole out of disparate samples, listen to Girl Talk’s new album Night Ripper. I think I just heard him fade a Nirvana bassline into an Elton John sample which he then overlaid with Biz Markee.

Pimping

Starting the day with rosé sparkling wine (you know I’d love to say Champagne or Cava, but I’m just too strict about the international WTO naming rules for DOC products to do that) at Gloria Ferrer.

Red Sox Illnesses Doping Related?

All these illnesses in our star players… has anyone bothered to ask if perhaps they could be caused by doping?

Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s the state of pro sports, but when I see an athlete get sick, I immediately assume it’s a side effect of whatever illicit juice they’re using.

Liquids, gels, and aerosols on a plane

Last week I was sitting around with some people in a bar in San Francsico and we were trying to figure out the TSA’s regulations on things on planes.

Snakes are OK, as we know. Solid foods are OK. Laptops are OK, except Dell and Apple laptops on Quantas and Virgin (this because of the Sony batteries that some, but not all, models use).

But what about sort of intermediate things? What about gummi worms or avant-garde culinary foams? I can’t take a can of shaving cream with me, but could I squirt it into a bag and take that? What about oranges? If I take an orange into the screening area, and then juice it, does it suddenly become prohibited? It’s manifestly the same thing, but it’s changed phase to a prohibited phase. Same with ice, really. Since solids are OK but liquids are not, could I bring a bottle of ice onto the plane and let it melt so I could drink it? Would an icee or slurpee be acceptable, or does that count as a liquid?

Crucial issues here, folks.

A series of tubes

Om Malik, Sebastien Ripley, John Dvorak, and I discuss some current topics. And I get a word in edgewise. Maybe even two.

(Update 8PM: The video now works)

Month: September 2006