Secretly Ironic

I’m actually related to the subject of this song:

What the hell does this gibberish mean? “Built on Learn.com’s award-winning Learning Management System (LMS) technology, the LearnCenter® platform from Learn.com has evolved over the past five years…”

OK, so it’s about learning. And it’s from Learn. And at this point the word “learn” has been repeated so many times it sounds more like a ficticious beverage than a verb related to knowledge acquisition.

I didn’t think I’d like getting up early and commuting to an office, but it’s a lot nicer than I thought. Sure, my throat is still dry and swollen from the recirculated air, and I still have trouble getting out of bed at seven instead of nine (or later.) But once I’m up and moving, I’m on the train reading something (today, an article in Harper’s about the gay-marriage rift in the Episcopal church and how it’s a distraction from the important work of the church on issues everyone agrees about, like feeding the hungry and ministering to the sick.)

And then I get out at Park Street and walk up the Freedom Trail toward the Golden Dome, eavesdropping on cell-phone calls about state legislature (“no, they sent it to committee, it’s not going to get done this session…”) and business (“We need the RFP in by Tuesday!”), past the old-school barbershop (at $16, it’s more than my corner haircut joint in Somerville, but still a bargain – the barber talked to me about good and evil while cutting my hair, and he keeps a stack of motorcycle magazines and Playboys for while you’re waiting).

And on the far side of the hill, I’m up on the 17th floor, trying to be helpful. It’s good. This company has been around for fifty years, and although we have deadlines, nobody’s got the insane intensity I used to see at my first job. Nor is there the sense of futile absurdity I felt in later positions.

It’s just functional. I had no idea such a thing could possibly exist. It’s kind of awesome.

Who, exactly, does the NYT appeal to? Conservatives accuse it of being too liberal, liberals think it’s gone soft on conservatives who accuse it of being too liberal, and with op-ed pieces like “President Apostate,” it’s obviously giving up on the small but profitable demographic of people with some small measure of common sense.

Who’s left? Doddering patriarchs who forgot to cancel their subscription when the paper started printing those wretched acrostic puzzles? Masochists who can’t get enough of being outraged by the poor quality of their daily paper? How many of me can there be, anyway?

A love-lorn Italian guy gets locked up on apparently bogus charges, with no recourse, no rights, no nothing.

The kicker: His well-connected friends are surprised that this sort of thing has happened… to a white guy.

The money quote: “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”

Personally, I prefer to sleep with a pillow under my gun, but I guess this would be an adequate way to keep your weapon at hand. If you’re a loser.

Former HP helmswoman Carly Fiorina is endorsing John McCain. Some people seem to think that this is a sign that McCain is good for business. I find that odd. It seems self-evident to me that McCain’s economic policies are terrible, and any businessperson endorsing them would therefore be corrupt, incompetent, or both.

A 13-year-old boy stole his father’s credit cards to hire hookers to play video games with him and his friends in a hotel. They told the suspicious escorts that they were actually little people working at a circus, and that under the Americans With Disabilities act they could not be discriminated against. Compared to a $30,000 weekend of video games, junk food, hotels, and trashy women, it seems like a failure of imagination that at that age I was just stealing change from my father’s nightstand to buy candy bars.

Maybe if I didn’t shop at Whole Paycheck Markets like the yuppie scum I am, I’d feel better about the price of oil, but I am not paying forty bucks a gallon, extra-virgin or not.