Author: Aaron Weber

Name Game, Again, and Again

Yet one more article about how people choose stupid names for their kids. This is the third so far. Always hot on the scene of a breaking story or the analysis of data from the last decade, that’s us. Yeah.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten totally hooked on the show ER. Yes, the emergency-room drama that’s been going on for about eight years now. I finally noticed it and have become drawn into it. Intense emotion, real situations, and characters I actually care about. Damnit! This is television! And old-hat, jumped-the-shark-ages-ago television, at that.

Our Leaders

Our Leaders have brought us a couple of shockingly ineffective policies over the past few decades. The drug war economics bear out the fact that supply is much more elastic than demand for drugs, and that the drug war is basically unwinnable.

And of course FreewayBlogger has been pointing out the error of our military and automotive policies with the wonderful Hummer slogan “10 miles/gallon, 2 soldiers/day.” Not to mention the the delightfully chilling “You can have my gun when you pry it from the fingers of my cold, dead child.”

Almost Totally Unrelated Paragraphs

Tiny tiny apartments. In Japan, of course, they’re wicked cool.

RIAA Radar, to tell you what music is made by musicians not represented by the loathsome RIAA>. It’s like a “sweatshop-free” label on your music, sort of. Although I’m sure that packaging was made in a sweatshop anyway.

Possible upcoming literary-themed Simpsons episodes. Me, I’m apeshit over the Family Guy these days.

Ol’ Mickey D is apparently angry that its legendarily crappy jobs are now officially recognized as such. Gee, you make awful, unhealthy products, you provide shit jobs for low pay and little hope of advancement (OK first job for a teenager, I guess, maybe, but even so…) and become a popular culture icon, and then complain when your popular culture iconography isn’t completely glowing? Not much sympathy for you, I’m afraid.

Not with so many people weighing 900 pounds or more. What gets me about this is the number of them who died from weight-loss complications. Sure, their weight was a serious, possibly fatal health problem, but what would make doctor prescribe a 500-calorie diet and not expect severe problems?

And since we’re supposed to discuss language and irony here, a rather odd little interview between a guy named Dong Resin and The PATRIOT Act. Not some band, mind you. The law itself. I think this is supposed to be some kind of a joke, but I’m not sure.

Fantasy and Reality

When I was a child, I would draw designs for amphibious sportscars and think of how cool it would be. Of course, so did all the other kids. But a few people never grew up, and they have now actually gone and built one and are selling it for just $250k. Cheaper than a 1BR condo in Cambridge, I guess.

(You didn’t think I’d manage a post without bitching about real estate, did you?).

Hostility

There’s a new, and highly-reviewed Boondocks anthology. I’ve got a copy and it is indeed very, very good. I like angry humor. I feel like we do indeed have a right to be hostile. Given that we’ve got misogynistic lying bastards in the White House.

On the other hand, I feel genuinely hostile to things that are a little too sincere and treacly. They make me uncomfortable, and then my discomfort makes me uncomfortable. After all, lots of people like that stuff, and my disdain for it probably indicates snobbery. And what if I end up bitter and alone and writing a book about how democracy really isn’t any good and people should be led by their betters, namely me. Where would I be then?

Linky Link

More voting machine trouble. People wonder why the liberals won’t give up about the 2000 election, but there’s plenty of people who still want to study, say, World War II, or the Roman empire, and you don’t say to them “Why don’t you give up trying to figure it out? It’s over!”

Nor is there a well-organized, well-funded group of people dedicated to thwarting you, like there is for, say, the holocaust or basic science and the evolutionary theory.

Maybe people can take consolation in the fact that the FCC is now going to permit the F word, as long as it doesn’t have to do anything with fucking– you can use it as an adjective, for example, insulting a customer service representative. Although, really, if you’re mean to the CSRs, they won’t be nice and escalate your issue to where it can get fixed.