Author: Aaron Weber

Catching Up

Just got in from Germany.

Thoughts: God bless the tiny European car, and the tiny European hotel.

Euro MTV shows a lot of awful American shows, which, when watched while jetlagged, are mesmerising. Some were dubbed, some not. Shannen Doherty has a prank show called “Scare Tactics.” There’s a show called “One Bad Trip” where they send a college kid on spring break, and then help the parents spy on them going buck wild. The parents, predictably, are shocked to find exactly what they are looking for, and the kids are embarrassed. What the hell did you expect to see your daughter do at the bikini contest, Joe from Des Moines? “Bet You Will” is like Bumfights, except with college kids: “For $100 can we duct-tape this meat to you?” “OK!” “For $200 will you drink two bottles of hot sauce?” “OK!” (drinks, vomits, collects cash, continues vomiting).

Additional TV watched, after MTV started showing dubbed-into-German “Cowboy Bebop” shows: Eurosport network show following a dozen or so Olympic contenders. The star Polish women’s power-lifter was amazing. Until you’ve seen a woman with bright-pink cornrowed hair and a spandex singlet clean-and-jerk three hundred kilos, you haven’t truly experienced the glory that is the European Union. I didn’t understand a word of what she said to the reporters, but she was so composed and together, and then won the gold medal in the European lifting championships and cried, and it was just really sweet. Or maybe it was that it was 5 AM by that point.

Also I have totally stocked up on duty-free chocolate.

Advertising

Social commentary on advertising is not a new phenomenon, but it does point to a society’s values. For example, the association of fear and menstruation.

Last night I dreamed that I saw a beer ad on TV in which a man was drinking at a party and there was an unattractive woman on the other side of the room. Every time he looked away, and looked back, she looked better. He drank more beer, and she got thinner and more attractive. As he got totally wasted, grimacing at what he was going to do, she turned into a supermodel, and they started dancing. Then it turned out this was a wedding reception, and the bride and groom appeared. The bride was hideous, but the groom had a gigantic, mostly empty, bottle of beer with him, so you knew he’d been able to marry her because he was really drunk.

Later, there was a vague dream about a blood sugar monitor marketed at diabetic children– it was like a little candy-colored bead you stuck to your arm, and it drew a tiny bit of blood and changed color depending on your blood sugar level. You could wear them like jewelry and they would continue to monitor your sugar levels all day. I’d been in the store to buy candy, and they were right in with the other candies. I was excited and went to tell my girlfriend, but she said, oh, those things suck, they’re inaccurate, plus you get creepy guys hitting on you using diabetes as an icebreaking topic of conversation.

Apparently I shouted something about communists in my sleep too.

Dress Code

Now, I’ve always disliked dress codes. I try to avoid going to bars that have dress codes, even if I meet them, just because I think they’re stupid. But this defies stupidity. And it makes southerners look bad– I don’t know how many times I’ve had to deal with “oh, you’re from Virginia, do you have plumbing?” jokes. Come on people, grow the hell up and stop acting like yokels, and maybe we’ll get some respect from the rest of the country.

Knowing When

Timing isn’t everything, but it’s an awful lot of things. Love, for example. Or cooking. Or stoplights. Or blog comments and comment spam. Or capital gains.

Short term capital gains, defined as those made when you hold an asset for one year or less, are taxed at thirty percent. Sell after a year and a day, and you’re taxed at fifteen percent. The trick of course is knowing the value a year and a day later– and of course whether the tax rate will slip out from under you in that time. And if I knew things like that, honey, I would live in a much, much bigger house.

Stop the ____ I want to get off

Stop the ride I want to get off. Stop the world I want to get off. Stop the floor, I want to get off. Stop the room I want to get off.

I don’t want the world, I just want your half. I just want a controlling percentage of shares outstanding. I just want the portions west of the Charles and inside 128. I’ll settle for Porter and Davis if I can have visitation rights to Boston proper, including but not limited to Allston/Brighton, Fenway, Back Bay and the South End.

Fine, it’s yours. See if I care.

History will judge our deeds when we are long gone

“We will never show weakness in the face of these people who have no soul.” Turning this into a crusade is among the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. Bob Woodward’s book is selling like hotcakes over at my favorite bookstore and it’s thanks to the megalomania and general blindness that Our Leader has exhibited, from day one. Even those who supported a war now say, had they known how it would be run, they would not have supported one done like this. (see Matt Iglesias and D-Squared for background).

On the other hand, it may be a popular mistake. I got a pre-recorded message about how the MA supreme court had gone against the will of God and we’d have to show up at the state house to remind them that church and state were meant to be unified, or something. Now, I know Mr. Meeks is an antidisestablishmentarianist, but I’m still in (polite) disagreement that the combination of the Anglican church with the British state has been any better than having the two of them apart. I mean, you’d still have nationalist upheavals, but at least they wouldn’t be religious and nationalist.

I admit I only added that last bit because I wanted to say “antidisestablishmentarianist.” Let history judge my love of big words as it may.

Drugs

So are popular products like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Xanax, and Celexa best understood as drugs that change us or as medicines that cure us? What makes them one or the other, beyond social convention and a doctor’s prescription?

Nothing.

Within twelve hours of a missed dose, the patient experiences headache and nausea, progressing to irritability, then ringing in the ears, a tingling sensation in the extremities and scalp, dizziness, diarrhea, violent mood swings, and… well, I don’t know. Probably after a day or three it goes away and you’re back to normal, whatever normal is.